Pardon me, I Apoligize!

[HeyYou]

Removing all privately owned guns from their owners, at the government's behest, isn't merely 'difficult', it is impossible. It would mean instant civil war. The government's only option for implementing said policy, would be to have the army go door to door, and search each house.......Somewhat less than practical, and also unconstitutional..... (using the army against private citizens is a big no-no.) Assuming that the army would even follow such an order...... The end result would be death on a grand scale. A 'solution' that would be far worse than doing nothing at all. Sure, some folks would turn in their weapons voluntarily, most, would not. NONE of the criminals would turn in their already illegal weapons..... initially, all this would do would be to remove firearms from the law-abiding....... I suspect we would see crime spike right along with this.

 

Cops are already issued tasers, and pepper spray...... at least, in larger police departments..... I don't know if officer wilson had either of them though. But, given that Mr. Brown was 6'4", and 295 pounds, and charging at him.... not sure I would have trusted my life to a taser, and certainly not to pepper spray....... He was a threat, and needed to be put down. Officer Wilson did what he had to do. He did not TARGET Mr. Brown, he asked him to not walk down the middle of the street. Brown escalated the encounter, and is completely responsible for his own death. I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

[Daedthr]

 

Cops are already issued tasers, and pepper spray...... at least, in larger police departments..... I don't know if officer wilson had either of them though. But, given that Mr. Brown was 6'4", and 295 pounds, and charging at him.... not sure I would have trusted my life to a taser, and certainly not to pepper spray....... He was a threat, and needed to be put down. Officer Wilson did what he had to do. He did not TARGET Mr. Brown, he asked him to not walk down the middle of the street. Brown escalated the encounter, and is completely responsible for his own death. I have no sympathy for him whatsoever.

 

This I can agree with, Wilson did do his job and in the circumstances his actions are understandable, I also accept that Mr. Brown was certainly in the wrong in the instance. I'm simply questioning whether or not situations such as this could be handled better should society undergo certain changes, one of which is private disarmament. Also I feel like rubber rounds would at least be a compromise, and are as far as I'm aware not regularly employed by standard cops, more riot police the like of which have recently been dealing with the Baltimore riots.

 

 

Removing all privately owned guns from their owners, at the government's behest, isn't merely 'difficult', it is impossible. It would mean instant civil war. The government's only option for implementing said policy, would be to have the army go door to door, and search each house.......Somewhat less than practical, and also unconstitutional..... (using the army against private citizens is a big no-no.) Assuming that the army would even follow such an order...... The end result would be death on a grand scale. A 'solution' that would be far worse than doing nothing at all. Sure, some folks would turn in their weapons voluntarily, most, would not. NONE of the criminals would turn in their already illegal weapons..... initially, all this would do would be to remove firearms from the law-abiding....... I suspect we would see crime spike right along with this.

 

There lies a fallacy here in the idea of impossibility. The only way to prove impossibility is logically so e.g. "Something is what it is not" is a logical impossibility. However other than that nothing can be proved to be impossible, for to do so would warrant the application of every possibility to result in an outcome of failure, but as suppositional possibilities are infinite, this cannot be done, the best you can get is "beyond reasonable doubt."

 

However ignoring this issue, and continuing based on the assumption that you refer only to the concept of "practical impossibility" I must still disagree. Want to end private armament? First thing to do is stop the manufacture of domestic-use ammunition, which is relatively easy to do as said government could pass legislation warranting armament manufacturers to sell only to the government, foreign governments, or any other government permitted exceptions. Governments pass legislation limiting manufacturing all the time, it is in no way practically impossible. So now you've got no supply in ammunition or new weapons.

 

The next step would be to introduce a federal law by which a deadline is placed for the handing in of all weapons to the local state authority, after which any unauthorised private possession of firearms is illegal. Now how do you encourage people to hand in their guns?

 

Well the truth is despite the Firearm Owners Protection Act, your government probably has most of the firearms in your country tracked. All Title II weapons are tracked under National Firearms Acts in addition to some others, and the ATF Fire Arms Tracing system has hundreds of millions of firearms records across multiple databases (your country only has about 400 million people in anyway, and considering only 37% of American's claim to own a gun(s), knowing your government it's probably got records of just about every domestic ownership.

 

Sources:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act#Registry_prohibition

 

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/04/a-minority-of-americans-own-guns-but-just-how-many-is-unclear/

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Tracing_Center#Features_-_Computer_Systems

 

Now, if your government has this number of guns tracked in a computer system (ATF), it really wouldn't be too difficult for a government with your nations resources to create a simple algorithm to cross-reference census and tax records with private firearms ownership records.

 

Then, when people go to vote, go to register on the next census, go to claim any kind of benefit or take part in any nationalised activity, have they not done so already, they will be required to prove that they have disposed of their firearm and have therefore not committed an illegal act. This could be as simple a registering a code online that has been given to you upon your handing in of your firearm.

 

A system like this would logically take most domestic firearms out of circulation, because:

 

1. Most people who own firearms may not like some of the laws the government makes, but they still appreciate they must abide by them, so a firearms prohibition is no different, there is no reason why citizens who abide by some laws they may not like now wouldn't begrudgingly oblige to obey yet another law they may not particularly like.

2. Life will become very difficult very quickly for those who do not turn in their arms, as any nationalised services (or perhaps even government reliant ones) will be denied to them should they fail to abide by this law.

3. Those who are more concerned with keeping a weapon than they are with their own self-benefit are of a destructive nature, in addition these people are breaking the law. Those of a destructive nature who are breaking the law should not be excused justice any more than you claim Brown should, therefore there should be no moral issue in arresting those who continue to refuse to hand in their weapons.

 

Now once domestic firearms are out of circulation, you wait a couple of years and then they can start to remove them from the police force in a more gradual process. This should avoid a large crime spike if done effectively, and in fact reduce the number of petty crimes that escalate in to first-degree crimes due to the presence of a weapon. Furthermore, if circumstance really made it necessary certain elite units of the force could reserve the right to wield firearms in order to prevent an increase in serious gang-crime, as is the case here. This would allow the force to maintain it's strength in combating serious, hardcore criminals and gangs, whilst removing firearms from the holsters of street officers where they are not detrimental and not helpful.

 

The above is just one solution, with a nation as rich as yours there would many others, most of which would not involve the army knocking on everybody's door.

 

I understand a solution such as this would be expensive, but again, money is the lifeblood of the US and you spend plenty of it on far less important things, not to mention you would likely make a large amount back selling the confiscated arms to private security firms or other countries.

 

Furthermore education has it's part to play. I think you'd find that if a government was to spend as much time educating people as to why private armament was an issue as they do telling people how good their party is and how the opposition is the Devil, you probably wouldn't end up with civil war.

 

Such change IS possible, but as I have said before it is only possible if someone actually TRIES.

 

However even then I understand it will never happen, not because it is impossible, but because your governments do not want to try, because the real power behind the politics in your country are the wealth (such as the very wealthy arms manufacturers - oho!) and because the moment anybody discusses removing a part of the Constitution a large number of people work themselves up into an apocalyptic frenzy.

 

Also I might add, I think you will be surprised with the amount of support this would have, the January 2014 Gallup pole ended up with:

 

- 40% satisfied with current gun law, 55% dissatisfied.

- 31% want stricter control, 16% want less strict laws.

 

Pretty compelling stuff, especially the latter statistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_States#Gallup_poll

 

Check out the polls, most seem in favour of more strict prohibition and some of the stuff is just weird, you know 5% of gun owners said they own guns just to fulfil the second amendment in the October 2013 poll? Seriously, owning a gun for the sake of being able to say you own a gun?

Edited May 13, 2015 by Daedthr

[HeyYou]

People still make their own ammo in their garage. Ban it, and the illicit manufacture of ammo would become a new cottage industry. Not to mention, our government has already tried banning ammunition of certain types, some, they have succeeded, (black talon ammo) others, they failed miserably. (tracer ammo..... which struck me as kinda odd, I don't really see the point in civilian use of tracers...... but hey....)

 

Long guns are not registered, are not tracked, nor are records kept for more than three years of who bought them. That means that the AR rifle variants..... aren't tracked.... neither are shotguns, or any other firearm classified as a 'long' gun. That represents the bulk of firearms in the US.

 

Fully one-third of the population of the US are gun owners. Wanna see a whole bunch of people heading for washington DC with guns? Try and ban them. Simply passing legislation isn't going to magically make them go away, no matter how much you may want to think so. Americans are NOT Europeans/British. If our government attempts to take away our guns, we WILL fight back, first at the soap box, then at the ballot box, and as a last resort, the cartridge box. We WILL fight for our right to keep and bear arms.

 

It would also be political suicide for any administration to attempt anything like that. Even if they managed to pass it, (and they would have to control both house, plus the whitehouse to get it thru) you can bet your bottom dollar that come the next election cycle (two years) EVERY member of the party that passed it that was up for re-election, would be replaced with a member from the other party. Once the dust settled from that, control of at least one house would likely have changed hands, and there would be a barrage of legislation to overturn any bans. (be they ammo, or weapons)

 

Statistics are meaningless without knowing what the questions were, who was asking them, and whom they asked. The polls/studies are pretty inaccurate predictors of legislation passing in any event, as even when the 'polls' were saying 90% of people wanted stronger gun laws, congress STILL could not pass a single one. And then what happened the next election cycle? The republicans (pro-gun) won in a landslide in almost every district that was up for grabs. Kinda puts the lie to "Americans WANT gun control!"........

 

So, let me qualify my 'impossible' statement...... It is impossilbe to disarm the american people without STAGGERING loss of life. Far more than would die if we did just the opposite, and let anyone and their cousin carry a gun. If you think the gun-toting crowd would simply shrug their shoulders, and turn in their guns..... well, I would suggest that you don't know americans very well...... And regardless of what legislation passed, the criminal element still would not turn in theirs..... considering that most of them would be in trouble if caught with one in any event.

 

So what would be the point of hundreds of thousands, if not millions dieing, to remove a tool from the populace that actually kills about 13000 people per year? (I don't count suicides, as they would just find another way to kill themselves.) I would point out that there are MANY FAR more dangerous objects in circulation...... cars, doctors....... alcohol, that kill 10's, and sometimes hundreds of times more people every year than guns do. They tried banning alcohol, we can see how that turned out.......

[Daedthr]

As I am not American, I feel I can no longer continue to debate the feasibility of private disarmament in the US, I don't have the cultural experience to go into hypothetical's regarding the feelings of the populace so I'm forced to take your word for it, though I don't find it particularly surprising either. I've provided purely theoretical solutions which might work logically, but in practice there are too many other variables which could influence the outcome, and these I cannot judge, as I am not American.

 

 

 

Long guns are not registered, are not tracked, nor are records kept for more than three years of who bought them. That means that the AR rifle variants..... aren't tracked.... neither are shotguns, or any other firearm classified as a 'long' gun. That represents the bulk of firearms in the US.

 

Actually certain shot-guns are under the National Firearms Act, though you are quite correct as these are short-barrelled ones.

 

Now in theory, you should also be right about other guns not being tracked, but the truth is your government is a little too paranoid to stand by the laws they made to appease gun owners themselves. You see, the Firearm Owner's Protection Act actually outlaws the registration of any firearms at all in theory, but the truth is the ATF just ignores it, it holds millions of gun records that it shouldn't and is blatantly breaking the law. This is something I find hilarious, as it is a complete breach of the law, but nobody important in government ever does anything about it because the truth is they feel protected by it, and it's also incredibly valuable to forces like the FBI. Governments allowing something to break a law that they have the power change, in order to protect themselves and their interests, oh the irony. In fact, the ATF is building a massive new automated system to track them see this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Tracing_Center#Controversies

 

 

 

We WILL fight for our right to keep and bear arms.

 

I don't doubt it, but to me this isn't something to be proud of at all. But hey, give 'em power and what d'you expect? You sure as hell won't get it back.

 

 

 

The republicans (pro-gun) won in a landslide in almost every district that was up for grabs.

 

Not surprised about this either, but don't pretend it was electoral support for their patriotic principles that got them in, it was money, it always is and always will be, and munitions companies tend to be pretty wealthy.

 

 

So I'll accept that you aren't ever going to get disarmament over where you are, but my original point was the the Shooting of Brown highlighted problems in the police force, and to me the main one was that of the use of firearms, though you pointed out others such as lack of financing.

 

The truth is this point still stands, just because a problem won't ever get solved, it doesn't mean it's not a problem. For reasons I've already made clear having a police force with lethal weaponry is detrimental, but of course it is necessitated because of private armament, which won't ever change.

 

This doesn't mean it's still not detrimental, or that this isn't still a problem, it's just a problem that won't ever get solved, similarly to the problem of corruption in US politics that I pointed out in the other thread, or the problem of world poverty.

 

Thus the point that the Ferguson incident illuminated issues in the force still stands, even if those issues won't ever be solved because no solution will ever warrant the cost, as based on principle and in an idealistic world they should be.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Daedthr

[HeyYou]

Yeah, just because a solution is logical, does not imply that it will actually work. Humans have this odd tendency to be totally ILLOGICAL...... and that tends to throw the proverbial wrench into the works.

 

The last round of mid-term elections were indeed at least partially about money, but, it was also a LOUD statement from the american people on the direction the dems were taking national policy. Sometimes, elections actually serve the purpose they were intended for, although, I will admit, that has become an extreme rarity of late...... If we ever want to get our country back from career politicians, and their corporate masters, (or, their union masters for that matter) we need to get the money out of politics. I don't see that happening voluntarily though..... too many people with money (or, politicians wanting money....) are dead-set against it. So, short of a second civil war, nothing is going to change.

 

As for armed police..... They have to be. As you pointed out, with private ownership of firearms being commonplace, and therefore, CRIMINAL posession of firearms.... the cops also need to be armed. Militarizing the cops does seem a bit over the top to me though..... (why some city with a population of less than 50K needs an APC for their SWAT team is beyond me.....) Although, there was a point when the criminals were MUCH better armed than the cops...... Still holds true in too many cases, but, not nearly so bad as it once was.

 

What I found amusing...... The city nearby, (population around 35K) Got an APC for their drug enforcement 'special' group....... they had it for about two years, of which, it was operational for about three months...... they finally came to the determination that they simply couldn't afford it, and gave it back. :) (and they had gotten it for FREE.....)

[Daedthr]

Yeah that doesn't make any sense at all, maybe they just wanted to make a statement to the cartels/gangs nearby or something? Lol idk.

[HeyYou]

If there were any gangs/cartels nearby, I would agree with you...... Personally, I think someone higher up on the food chain in the police department wanted a "tank" to play with, discovered that they break when folks that don't have a clue play with 'em, and are hideously expensive to fix....... I live in a podunk little county, thats main source of employment, is farming...... (legal stuff.... for the most part.) I think we aren't big enough for any large organization to pay any attention to. (cartels) there are zero gangs, aside from some assorted bikers, but, they don't seem to be really into the drug scene... (from a money-making standpoint, using, on the other hand.......) Nope, there was no reason to have it, that made any sense to the casual observer.... (that wasn't hyped on testosterone anyway....)

 

But then, I gave up expecting government to be "intelligent" a LONG time ago. In fact, the outright stupidity our government can demonstrate on too regular of a basis, has now come to be expected.

 

Want to REALLY screw something up? Put a government agency in charge........

Edited May 14, 2015 by HeyYou

[Daedthr]

Hehehe, I don't doubt it. Local governments here don't have as much power, but we're a far smaller country so that works better really. Although the Conservatives are planning to introduce legislation to further devolve some power to local governments I think, I just hope they don't get stupid with it.

[HeyYou]

conservatives giving away power? That's odd.... As for getting stupid with it........ Don't hold out a lotta hope there. :D

[JimboUK]

Americans are NOT Europeans/British. If our government attempts to take away our guns, we WILL fight back, first at the soap box, then at the ballot box, and as a last resort, the cartridge box. We WILL fight for our right to keep and bear arms.

 

 

 

There was little reason to fight back, so few people had firearms before that ban that it made no difference to the vast majority, the exception being shotguns and they're still legal. I think the US is a unique case and can't be compared to other first world countries, the sheer number of firearms in circulation means that criminals will still feel the need to carry them which leaves the general population at their mercy.