What legislation would you pass that would be a true deterrent?

If you made the penalties for distributing illegal guns way steeper, it would act as an actual deterrent. As I said, the NRA is a powerful lobby.

they also make plastic bullets, but nobody uses those. I've never known anyone who hunted anything with a pistol, an I've grown up around hunters my whole life. I'm sure people do somewhere, but people pork farm animals somewhere.


I'd also like to point out that it's a LOT harder to bludgeon someone's skull in than it is to pull a trigger. we're a violent culture, but we don't make it any harder to be one with the availability of handguns. If some dumbass kid wants revenge because he was picked last in gym it'll take a lot more to have to do something about it. point and shoot makes revenge all to easy.

Couldn't you do that and still keep handguns legal?

Agreed. And you're never going to make them go away 100%. If someone wanted a handgun, just like anything else that has ever been banned....they will find a way to get it.

Yeah, drug legislation in NYC is REAL SOFT. 5 grams of rock = 5 years
in Michigan, you have the 650 lifer law...650 grams of h or coke and your go to jail FOR LIFE..that's barely over half a key..LIFE

And now, you have gun laws at least in Bama and GA where if you use a handgun in commission of certain crimes, you have to a minimum of 15 years to life.

Those are some shitty laws. I would love them to be harsher. You think there is a simple solution to these problems, I think its a bit more complicated.

Again, I can put a weapon any place you want it that will stop THEM.

You want to have one in your home to stop the rapist? Here's a rifle.
You want to go hunt wild boar? Here's a shotgun.

I would illegalize handguns and make jail sentences egregiously long for first time offenders. Who is going to run guns if getting caught with a handgun is an automatic 10-15-20 with no parole?

you think drug laws should be stricter?

Admittedly, I had no idea such laws were in place, but I would like to see what the actual legislation says. 15 to life, no appeal, no parole?

There's billboards and shit, with fancy anagrams. I'll ask the DA when he gets back to my office..

And I was pulling out drug laws to show that harsher laws don't always work, again unintended consequences...

Now, as to your harsher laws for gun dealers, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY endorse this.

echo.

ha!

I'm in the 'guns are tools' side of the argument. My dad is out this very second stalking deer. I've never been much of a hunter, but when I moved to the southwestern region of the province, I turned into this pro-gun spokesmen without realizing it. Northern ON is basically viewed as being like the Southern US in other parts on ON, a bunch of gun crazy backwoods nutters.

<----Hates hunting and keeps no guns in the house.

I do own three shotguns at my parents house though.

I'm anti-gun for me, but don't give a good goddamn about decent law abiding citizens owning guns. As for the hood rats, they are picking that shit up illegally anyway, so outlawing them is pointless.

I did witness an interesting discussion between two friends, both with Criminology/Criminal Justice degrees, one in the private sector and the other is a U.S. Capitol Police who routinely aids DC Metro Cops. Both of them agreed: decriminalize the drugs and your violent crime rate in Baltimore & DC will drop by half almost overnight.

i don't understand this logic.
they are so easy to get illegally because they are so easy to get legally.

Pistol, meet roof of mouth.

Except that, if you halted all manufacture of handguns and outlawed them completely tomorrow, not only would the existing number still circulate freely, but imports would bump up.

There aren't a whole lot of cocaine or poppy fields in the states, yet we still have plenty of junkies.

i've never even touched a gun.

can we combine three friday threads?
if you aborted all the black babies for a year hand gun crime would go down!

now it's got everything!
race! abortion! gun laws!

oddly enough the most controversial conclusion of Freakonomics, the book I cited earlier, is that Roe vs. Wade significantly contributed to the drop in violent crime in the 1990s.

that book was what spawned the "if you aborted all the black babies" conversation.

I thought Bill Bennett started that conversation

What he said exactly.

Especially the kids angle, as a parent you have enough shit to worry about then whether or not your kid comes home alive from an innocent playdate because the parents own a gun you don't know about. And you shouldn't HAVE to ask everybody if they do.

I don't get the necessity for one.