Friday, January 18, 2013

Where we are with the 2nd Amendment


So I've been pretty quiet for some time on this issue.  I assumed after things calmed down common sense would prevail, but that is obviously not the case.  Let me start this post with a tad bit of background information on myself.  I'm a registered democrat although I think the whole party scenario is pretty stupid. (But that's another post.)  I'm also a registered gun owner.  Absolutely love them and if I could legally get my hands on a tank I'd own one too.  I have a son in middle school, one in daycare and one entering kindergarten.  I also live in Florida.

With the rash of gun crimes it seems that common sense has gone out of the window.  People are in a rush to do stupid stuff and spread misinformation which is a bit more than annoying.  Our biggest gun control issue is every state has different laws.  I think Florida's gun laws are great, Texas is pretty awesome too and a lot of the states in the Midwest.  To give you an idea in Florida you are required to pass a background check when purchasing a weapon from a dealer.  Private sales are excluded.  Concealed carry permits are available.  You have to take a weapons class, get fingerprinted and a host of other things.

My biggest issue is that everything they are currently trying to pass won't make any difference at all.  The amount of crimes committed by legal gun owners is negligible.  And the amount committed with assault rifles is even smaller than that.  The majority of all gun crime is committed by criminals in the first place, which oddly enough do not follow laws.  Any laws you pass in addition to the current ones are just annoying.

The shooter in the movie theatre.  Yes he purchased those guns legally, but only because of an issue with the GOVERNMENT systems.  He shouldn't have been able to, but the agencies involved do not share information so nothing was flagged on his background check.  Spend your time fixing that.

The Virgina Tech shooter.  He purchased his guns legally.  He had no psych profile to preclude him from buying them.  You can't stop every crazy person although if guns were allowed on college campuses this may have never happened.  I bring him up more as a counter to the assault rifle argument.  He used two pistols and this was the deadliest school shooting in history.  Anyone that knows anything about guns can tell you magazine size won't matter nor will pistol vs. AR to the determined.  You can unload a glock just as fast as an AR because the speed is determined by how fast you pull the trigger, nothing else.  Changing magazines takes a fraction of a second.

The Newtown shooting.  He stole his mother's guns after killing her.  Please tell me what law could prevent this from happening.  Again there was no one there that could return fire, which is a huge issue.  In Florida all Middle Schools and High schools have armed resource officers present.  I think this should be required at elementary schools as well.  Furthermore if you have a concealed weapons permit you should be able to carry your gun everywhere.

The big issue in America is mental health, but we refuse to talk about that.  Who cares about guns, I'm more concerned on what would make someone crazy enough to kill a classroom full of children.  And it's not video games.  If you kill your mother and then a bunch of six year olds something is really wrong with you.  If you walk into a movie theatre and open fire...something is wrong with you.  If you chain the doors at a school and then to proceed to shoot everyone, guess what...

It's time we start dealing with the real problems in America.        

******More ridiculous arguments.

(Why do you need an assault rifle)
Why not?  An assault rifle is a more ergonomic version of any semi auto rifle.  It has more user features and is lighter and better to shoot.  Many people say they were designed for killing, but make no mistake every gun ever manufactured was designed to kill people.

(Why do you need a 30 rd magazine)
Again, why not?  If you are practicing or fighting off an army of invading zombies reloading sucks.  A 30 rd. magazine is very practical in both situations.  A law on magazine size only stops me from having as many bullets ready to fire as the criminal attacking me.  Is there enough info to say that 30 rd. magazines are somehow more detrimental than say a 10 rd? 

(Universal background checks)
Not a horrible idea, but how do you apply this?  Private party sales don't have access to this and even if they did how do you regulate it?  I don't have an issue with a background check as I'm not a criminal, but why throw money at something you can't enforce. 

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