Quick question on gun confiscation.

[KUSA]

I've still got my muskets and flintlocks..... which is what the Founding Fathers knew about.

You probably knew the founding fathers.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's sort of a strange implication, anyway.  What the founding fathers "knew about" was the most lethal and terrifying piece of small arms tech ever invented.  Not that it matters...they weren't a bunch of infallible precogs whose every word we hang on. The situations we find ourselves in were always going to exceed their circumstances and their imaginations.

[KUSA]

It's sort of a strange implication, anyway.  What the founding fathers "knew about" was the most lethal and terrifying piece of small arms tech ever invented.  Not that it matters...they weren't a bunch of infallible precogs whose every word we hang on. The situations we find ourselves in were always going to exceed their circumstances and their imaginations.

So you know what their imaginations were?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yup.  They were men of their own time, they left no shortage of material as to the contents of their imaginations. What's the problem?

[The Industrial Atheist]

I think in the US when we had some gun control laws it was more buy back programs and that sort of thing than busting into people homes and seizing their guns. I guess if you had an assault rifle when they were illegal the police could take it if they had some reason to search your home.

I was solemnly assured that Obama was going to come for our guns and if he didn't Clinton would.

Of course the NRA is going to say that. They are funded by the gun manufacturers. LOL you couldn't get guns around the time Obama tried to get a very reasonable universal background check passed because the stores ran out of guns.

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I think in the US when we had some gun control laws it was more buy back programs and that sort of thing than busting into people homes and seizing their guns. I guess if you had an assault rifle when they were illegal the police could take it if they had some reason to search your home.

They were never illegal.  It's a common misconception.  When anti gun folks try to make assault rifles illegal, they're crippled by their fundamental ignorance of -all- rifles...and end up making other shit illegal on accident.

There was an assault weapons ban in '94 I believe. I'm not going to get in an argument about what guns are more or less likely to be used in a mass shooting as I don't know too much about guns. But I hope we can agree a universal background check is only a sane minimal step to take.

[Jesster]

Of course the NRA is going to say that. They are funded by the gun manufacturers. LOL you couldn't get guns around the time Obama tried to get a very reasonable universal background check passed because the stores ran out of guns.

I remember this. I absolutely could not find ammo anywhere back then. I remember being so pissed off at the NRA for starting their gun scare lunacy. Even as a gun owner, I knew whose fault it really was.

The improvements to background checks was actually a wonderful idea that people just needed to get the fuck over.

[Pat Mustard]

How many of you actually had your guns confiscated during the last eight years? Show of hands, please.

I once shot my neighbour's rifled shotgun at a broken water butt (he was a member of the shooting club at the time), and have gone clay pigeon shooting as part of a stag do. I've never actually owned a gun to be confiscated, though.

Oh, and I did also get to practise loading and cocking a Steyr AUG (with blanks, don't worry) when I was thinking of joining the Free Clothes Association (the Irish version of the Army Reserve), but as my night job paying for rent during college conflicted with training times, I couldn't join.

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Yup.  They were men of their own time, they left no shortage of material as to the contents of their imaginations.  What's the problem?

The Second Amendment is probably one of the two most shortsighted things the founding fathers did vis a vis the constitutional framework (and no I'm not talking about the very recent interpretation of it that gives free reign for all Americans to bear whatever arms they wish). The wording of the clause is clear in that what the Founding Fathers wanted to do was to set up militias within each state responsible for the defence of the nation, i.e. leave the job of the army up to weekend warriors (I actually have great respect for reservists, on top of their every day jobs, they do give up a significant amount of their free time in an effort to make themselves ready to defend their country during a crisis). At a time when the rest of the world had copped on to the problems of having their armies being largely made up of part-time soldiers, and were either going professional or levée en masse (or in Prussia's case shortly after, a combination of both).

The folly of such a choice was actually seen in the War of 1812, when smaller British forces were able to easily defend Canada and enact an invasion of the US, in the face of the much larger, but largely militia, US army.

[The Grand Nudger]

There was an assault weapons ban in '94 I believe.

-that didn't ban assault rifles.

I'm not going to get in an argument about what guns are more or less likely to be used in a mass shooting as I don't know too much about guns. But I hope we can agree a universal background check is only a sane minimal step to take.

OFC, which is why background checks are federally mandated.

@Jesster, the .22lr (and other) shortage is/was due to manufacturers switching production to a more popular round for a more popular rifle.

@Tazzy, the US had smaller, much more professional (not necesarrily experienced) forces by 1812. This prevented us from being able to defend ourselves adequately on land, but worked out wonderfully on the water. The brits had an aversion to live fire drills, entrenched in their military code, since gunpowder cost money, lol. That conflict did show that militias, whatever their numbers, were demonstrably inadequate, but our own government had long thought this (we thought militias were shit in the revolutionary war as well), and people were already doing the 18th century version of lobbying for the armed forces with limited to middling success. Ultimately, we depended on militias at the time because we still hadn't paid the last set, and didn't feel like paying a new set. The war of 1812, however, properly began american militarization.

I think that too much attention is paid to the second amendment, as though, if the people who wrote it in weren't dead broke and reliant...with a political need to felate the "common man" who fought in militias for them, we wouldn't be in the predicament somehow...or anti-gun laws would pass easily. None of that is true. The strongest objection to broad reaching anti-gun laws isn't reliant on the 2nd amendment. It wasn't shortsighted, on their part, they had a more accurate appraisal of the political and practical necessities they faced...in spite of their own distaste for militias, than people do today when wondering why they penciled it in.

[The Industrial Atheist]

There was an assault weapons ban in '94 I believe.

-that didn't ban assault rifles.

I'm not going to get in an argument about what guns are more or less likely to be used in a mass shooting as I don't know too much about guns. But I hope we can agree a universal background check is only a sane minimal step to take.

OFC, which is why background checks are federally mandated.

You can get around that by getting a gun from a gun show or someone else not federally licensed. The background checks some states have now are not that good and often don't include state and local criminal records.

[Jesster]

@Jesster, the .22lr (and other) shortage is/was due to manufacturers switching production to a more popular round for a more popular rifle.  

No ammo could be found anywhere for a while outside of shotgun rounds. I couldn't find any .357 or .38 ammo anywhere for the gun I had at the time.