New gun laws

[Goat]

Obama Administration Slashed Funding for School-Safety Programs

Obama Administration Slashed Funding for School-Safety Programs - By Andrew Johnson - The Corner - National Review Online

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by Off Road

And so it begins. . .
The left calling for tighter restriction and control of our freedoms
The right fearing a total ban on guns will push for more freedoms and less control

I was just looking at some concert reviews in the LA Times, and happened to come across the article below. It's an avowed right-winger calling for reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. Some liberals seem to be opposing gun reform and some conservatives seem to be promoting gun reform. Interesting times.

Link: The conservative case for an assault weapons ban - latimes.com

Extract:

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 high-capacity 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 vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (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 smaller-capacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and high-capacity 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.

[Goat]

MICHAEL MOORE has it all figured out.

Michael Moore: Americans Buy Guns Because ‘We’re a Very Frightened People’ With an Unresolved ‘Race Problem’ | Video | TheBlaze.com

I would like to hear his explanation of this story.

Black Community: Why Is Urban Gun Violence Ignored?

Note its not suburbanites going into the city for a shot em up.

Take a look at this Brady center chart http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/...d_Rankings.pdf

Do you see what I see? looks to me like most violent states with the best efforts at gun control. Chicago for instance is getting worse not better.


As Chicago deals with a surge of murders that, thus far this year, has outpaced that of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Chicago Police Department has assigned at least 100 officers to secure the wedding of White House advisor Valerie Jarrett's daughter.

Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Troop Killings In Afghanistan

This chart is interesting FBI — Table 20

Maybe just maybe its how the urban centers are governed that is the problem?

[Tannhauser]

Originally Posted by Goat

MICHAEL MOORE

I was wondering when MM would come up on this thread and what people would make of his views. Because although he is about as popular as cholera on here, on the other hand he doesn't seem to blame the problem on the ready availability of guns.

It's a long time since I saw Bowling for Columbine, but I seem to remember him visiting Canada (high gun ownership, low gun crime) and concluding that the difference in the gun crime between the two countries lay in different cultures, so therefore it was nothing to do with gun availability.

Race comments aside, does that mean MM is broadly on your side?