Gun Laws

[Gerry Clinchy]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...t_holders.html
Stunning! Local NY paper (Westchester County area) publishes the addresses of all handgun permit holders! It's legal ... freedom of information. How dumb is this? Let me count the ways ...

Fortunately the bad guys may not stop to think that long guns don't need a permit in NYS (according to the article), so if they consider the non-handgun-permit homes easy pickins, they might just meet a shotgun they didn't know about.

[road kill]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...t_holders.html
Stunning! Local NY paper (Westchester County area) publishes the addresses of all handgun permit holders! It's legal ... freedom of information. How dumb is this? Let me count the ways ...

Fortunately the bad guys may not stop to think that long guns don't need a permit in NYS (according to the article), so if they consider the non-handgun-permit homes easy pickins, they might just meet a shotgun they didn't know about.

I like to keep a Stoeger 3500 with 5 rounds of 3.5" #2 Prairie Storm right next to the bed.

That will leave a mark.................

[Cody Covey]

Yes but, if limited in capacity, and forced to reload sooner, is it possible a window of opportunity could present itself for action against the shooter? I practice quick reoading on our range and even in a structured environment have jams and misloads. Juat pondering.

( welcome to RTF M. Love Red Wing, had family there and Mom born there. )

Virginia Tech shooter disagrees, he only used pistols and reloading in a gun free zone isn't really an issue...who is going to confront you when you have a gun?

[Golddogs]

Virginia Tech shooter disagrees, he only used pistols and reloading in a gun free zone isn't really an issue...who is going to confront you when you have a gun?

Another voice and perspective ;

Regulation

A judge’s case for an ‘assault weapons’ ban

By Larry Alan Burns

Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.

Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The ban wasn’t all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.

And it says something that half of the nation’s deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner’s rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.

I am not a social scientist, and I know that very smart ones are divided on what to do about gun violence. But reasonable, good-faith debates have boundaries, and in the debate about guns, a high-capacity magazine has always seemed to me beyond them.

Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don’t even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine _ it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?

I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the “mass” out of “mass shooting,” or at least make the perpetrator’s job a bit harder.

To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious 2nd Amendment, 8th Amendment and logistical problems.

So what’s the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and highcapacity magazines. Don’t let people who already have them keep them. Don’t let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don’t care whether it’s called gun control or a gun ban. I’m for it.

I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia v. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for selfdefense. (That’s why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state. I even say it as someone whose feelings about the NRA mirror the left’s feelings about Planned Parenthood: It has a useful advocacy function in our deliberative democracy, and much of what it does should not be controversial at all.

And I say it, finally, mindful of the arguments on the other side, at least as I understand them: that a high-capacity magazine is not that different from multiple smallercapacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and highcapacity magazines one day, there’s a danger we would ban guns altogether the next, and your life might depend on you having one.

But if we can’t find a way to draw sensible lines with guns that balance individual rights and the public interest, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high- capacity magazines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competition, and make a home invader flee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden.

It speaks horribly of the public discourse in this country that talking about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting is regarded as inappropriate or as politicizing the tragedy. But such a conversation is political only to those who are ideologically predisposed to see regulation of any kind as the creep of tyranny. And it is inappropriate only to those delusional enough to believe it would disrespect the victims of gun violence to do anything other than sit around and mourn their passing. Mourning is important, but so is decisive action.

Congress must reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Larry Alan Burns is a federal district judge in San Diego. He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

[Gerry Clinchy]

Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines.

Was it finally determined that Lanza actually did use this type of weapon?

[cotts135]

This is an outstanding essay on "assault weapons"

http://kontradictions.wordpress.com/...-ill-tell-you/

This article is by far the best one I have read on Gun regulations period. I don't agree with everything he says but this is well thought out and suberply reasoned article. I encourage everyone to read it.

[Gerry Clinchy]

I keep thinking about an exchange I heard on the radio the other day. A liberal was saying that armed guards in the schools of high-profile (or rich) people required them because of the parents' high-profile positions or wealth. That was not the same as putting armed guards in all schools.

Occurs to me that these shooting tragedies PROVE exactly the opposite. It doesn't mean much that the parents of the children in these schools (where shootings occurred) were not well-known or wealthy.

If none of these types of shootings occurred in schools KNOWN to have armed guards ... then does that actually prove that the armed guards DO present a deterent? Same would go for the other public shootings.

If there were responsible teachers in schools who would want to have a gun for protection of themselves and their students, and they are properly trained (as they are doing in Utah), then I would have as many as possible in each school apply for the appropriate permit ... and, as I mentioned before, put a gun safe in ALL the rooms, so that the nutcases would never know which rooms contained the guns. Even have the unarmed teachers apply for permits, to further add to the criminals' confusion. Only those teachers who wished to would actually be armed.

I would further suggest that maybe ALL rooms should have a gun in their safe; and it should be embedded in the building so that it could not be removed by a thief. If teachers rotate rooms, the trained teachers would then have access to a weapon regardless of which room they were in ... but the weapons would not be subject to theft or access by the kids.

I'd say that this would be pretty expensive ... how much is one child's life worth? Which of the parents who lost a child at Newtown would consider spending the extra money?

[Eric Johnson]

The shooter at the Denver theater drove past several theaters showing the same film to get to the one that he selected. The difference? The chosen theater was a "gun free zone" whereas the by-passed theaters all allowed "concealed carry."

Eric

[HPL]

The shooter at the Denver theater drove past several theaters showing the same film to get to the one that he selected. The difference? The chosen theater was a "gun free zone" whereas the by-passed theaters all allowed "concealed carry."

Eric

If that is indeed true, that seems pretty telling to me.

[Jim Danis]

I've heard this a number of times.