Guns

Why Liberals Should Thank Justice Scalia for Gun Control
Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

40% of gun sales/transfers have no background check
Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott's Failed Attempt To Correct Obama's Gun Statistic

A 1997 study by the National Institute of Justice on who owns guns and how they use them.The researchers estimated that about 40 percent of all firearm sales took place through people other than licensed dealers. This was based on a random survey of more than 2,500 households.

It is also worth pointing out that neither the National Rifle Association (NRA) nor the National Shooting Sports Foundation, groups that oppose expanding background checks to private sales, provided any data contradicting that figure. Of course part of the problem in obtaining up-to-date figures on the private sales of firearms is that NRA lobbyists have been successful in convincing Congress to block funding for such research.

A 2012 analysis of how handguns are sold in Michigan, the Michigan State Police reported that 48 percent of all handguntransfers in the state are conducted through private sales where no background check is required. Criminals in particular tend to seek weapons from sources where they are not subject to background checks - only 11 percent of inmates incarcerated for gun crimes said that they got the weapon from a licensed gun dealer, according to a 2004 survey.

Data from the gun industry itself also suggests sales without a background check are commonplace. According to 2010 data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, only 45 percent of assault weapon owners reported buying their firearm from a retail location, including independent and chain retail stores. Approximately half of respondents reported buying their firearm from venues where a background check is not required, including over the Internet, from gun shows, or through a face-to-face sale.

Gun ownership is actually down
Actually the rate of people owning guns is down and continuing to go down, not up. It has been for nearly 4 decades now.

That dwindling number of gun owners per capita, buy multiple guns for themselves, while the number of people who own any guns at all is decreasing is totally lost on you and the other gun-cultists.

Not only that, but it completely destroys the "argument" that "more guns" means a decrease in gun related crimes.

12 times more likely to kill or injure yourself or family member than an intruder
The specific underlining study used by the linked one is the from the Southern Medical Journal:

"Out of 395 fatalities occurring at a family home where a gun was present, suicide accounted for 333 cases (84%); 41 were domestic violence homicides, and 12 were accidents, while only nine were shootings of an intruder. Presence of a firearm in the home reportedly results in death or injury to household members or visitors over 12 times more often than to an intruder."

Guns Don't Kill People, Gun Culture Does

Homes with guns are 12 times more likely to have household members or guests killed or injured by the weapon than by an intruder.

Meaning of "well regulated"
The term "regulated" means "disciplined" or "trained". In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that "[t]he adjective 'well-regulated' implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training."

In the year prior to the drafting of the Second Amendment, in Federalist No. 29 Alexander Hamilton wrote the following about "organizing", "disciplining", "arming", and "training" of the militia as specified in the enumerated powers:

"This desirable uniformity can only be accomplished by confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority. It is, therefore, with the most evident propriety, that the plan of the convention proposes to empower the Union "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by congress.""

"A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss."

""If a well regulated militia be the most natural defence of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security...confiding the regulation of the militia to the direction of the national authority...(and) reserving to the states...the authority of training the militia"."

Justice Scalia, writing for the Court in Heller : "In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846), the Georgia Supreme Court construed the Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly. Its opinion perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced in the prefatory clause, in continuity with the English right": "Nor is the right involved in this discussion less comprehensive or valuable: "The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed." The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, reestablished by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta! And Lexington, Concord, Camden, River Raisin, Sandusky, and the laurel-crowned field of New Orleans, plead eloquently for this interpretation! And the acquisition of Texas may be considered the full fruits of this great constitutional right."

Justice Stevens in dissent: "When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated by its drafters or is encompassed within its terms. Even if the meaning of the text were genuinely susceptible to more than one interpretation, the burden would remain on those advocating a departure from the purpose identified in the preamble and from settled law to come forward with persuasive new arguments or evidence. The textual analysis offered by respondent and embraced by the Court falls far short of sustaining that heavy burden. And the Court’s emphatic reliance on the claim “that the Second Amendment … codified a pre-existing right,” ante, at 19 [refers to page 19 of the opinion], is of course beside the point because the right to keep and bear arms for service in a state militia was also a pre-existing right."

Non-handgun fatalities went up after AWB expired
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf


 * 2002 — 2,620
 * 2003 — 2,180


 * AWB expires


 * 2004 — 2,350
 * 2005 — 2,840
 * 2006 — 2,700
 * 2007 — 3,080
 * 2008 — 3,120
 * 2009 — 2,970
 * 2010 — 3,030

Multiple point rebuttal
"Have you ever read any of the bills these people propose?"

Yes.

"Did you read the 1994 gun control law?"

If you are referring to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, yes.

"Yes they want to take away your rights."

No they aren't.

"None of the proposed legislation after Sandy Hook would have done a thing to prevent another Sandy Hook."

Actually it might have reduced the carnage since a magazine limit was proposed in early versions of the main post-Sandy Hook draft legislation if it had been in place.

"The only thing they would have done was put unneeded restrictions on the law abiding while not addressing keeping weapons out of the hands of those committing crimes."

Wrong. Close to 40% of gun sales have no NICS check currently, and we already know that over 2 million sales that were subject to NICS. Are you saying that none of those derailed a single crime?

"What the hades is AWB?"

AWB = Assault Weapons Ban, which is the subtitle of the 1994 law I believe you were asking if I read earlier in this comment I am replying too.

"No one is saying that everyone has the right to own whatever they want."

So please tell us then under the AWB in 1994, what "rights" did you lose?

"Yes there should be restriction, criminals and people with mental health issues."

Good. We agree.

Now let's have all gun sales subject to background checks, instead of approx. only 60% of them, to try and deny criminals and people with mental health issues from purchasing a gun.

"As for where you may carry a firearm, name me one mass shooting that occurred in a place other than a 'gun free zone'?"

For starters

A sizable percentage of mass shootings are were workplace shootings, most of which involved perpetrators who felt wronged by employers and colleagues. and are not "gun-free zones". When studying 62 mass shootings over the last 30 years, not a single case includes any evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns.

Even the very premise that these killers target "gun free" zones because they are safer places to carry out these crimes since most of them are murder-suicide crimes.

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