Guns cost more lives than they save

[sirs]

While in this country more lives are SAVED WITH A GUN, than those lives taken by one.  You may be willing to sacrifice so many more lives to appease your blinding ideology.  Not I.  Thankfully I also have the Constitution backing me up

[Plane]

The presence of 200 million guns make this country a less civilized one.

The more guns there are, the more people will get shot.

  So if we were to halve the number of guns in circulation and this made no difference at all you would be amazed and I would not.

    Then if we reduced the availability of guns 90% and the number of murders skyrocketed,  I would be confirmed and you would be gobsmacked?

     This could be an expensive experiment.

Why do we need to repeat the experiment over and over? The "Assault Weapon Ban " that Clinton was so proud of existed as law for a ten year period, during which and after which  no discernible difference could be detected.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Assault Weapon Ban was watered down to the point of meaninglessness, so of course it did not change anything.
By the time it was finally passed it was merely ornamental.

[Plane]

The Assault Weapon Ban was watered down to the point of meaninglessness, so of course it did not change anything.
By the time it was finally passed it was merely ornamental.

It was never anything but an irritant to honest Americans.
What do you think it lost that made it ineffective?

I would like to say that it never had any features that would have made it effective at crime prevention.

[sirs]

The Assault Weapon Ban was watered down to the point of meaninglessness, so of course it did not change anything.
By the time it was finally passed it was merely ornamental.

It was a joke to begin with, since it merely banned semi-automatic weapons (vs actual assault rifles, which are largely already illegal to own) that "looked mean"

[Xavier_Onassis]

That is exactly my point. It was not a useful law, but it played like one on TV.
So naturally it had no effect.

[sirs]

It was not any kind of a "useful law" in its origination either.  It was all based on cosmetics

[Plane]

That is exactly my point. It was not a useful law, but it played like one on TV.
So naturally it had no effect.

This is the nature of gun control in the USA.

Effectiveness and goals are not considered , pandering and how it sells is.

For instance , Registration does nothing at all to prevent a crime, and it is a weak measure to help retroactively solve some crimes.

Where the ownership of a weapon can be determined it sometimes helps find culprits and sometimes does not.

[Xavier_Onassis]

They pander to those who oppose gun control and the NRA pretends to act like they were being circumcised with pinking shears just to add effect.
Real gun laws are of course possible, but it would lose votes.

Most sane Americans do not consider their ownership of an arsenal to be a crucial issue. Those that do  show up to vote in the non-presidential years.
Single issue voters tend to be fanatics.

[sirs]

Any time there's an attempt to degrade a constitutional right, you bet there's going to be fanatical opposition

[Plane]

They pander to those who oppose gun control and the NRA pretends to act like they were being circumcised with pinking shears just to add effect.
Real gun laws are of course possible, but it would lose votes.

Most sane Americans do not consider their ownership of an arsenal to be a crucial issue. Those that do  show up to vote in the non-presidential years.
Single issue voters tend to be fanatics.

Check out the history of the NRA. In the early sixtys they were helping to compose reasonable restrictions.

People that wanted an issue to demagogue tried to push for unreasonable and illogical restrictions  the NRA membership felt betrayed, after a major shakeup the NRA became a lot more responsive to the people.

The "Assault Weapons Ban" is very representative of what is being offered as "reasonable regulation" being more irritating to honest people than anything like an impediment to the commission of crime.

I think that the NRA would sponsor and support reasonable regulation, if they had not the experience of betrayal .

[sirs]

Bingo!