The intent of the 2nd amendment was so that The People could rise up against a tyrannical government and overthrow it, should the need arise. That was practical back then, when both sides were just a bunch of dudes with muskets.
Nowadays, it would be impossible to rise up and overthrow the military (and militarized police), even with the best assault rifles. So an overthrow-by-violence just isn't practical.

I think it would be OK for active military or SWAT police to own and practice with AR-15, but I support a ban for everyone else (similar to what was in place 1994-2004). I like your idea about allowing them at shooting ranges too, where they are rented, not owned.

Some AR-15 owners say they use them to hunt coyotes, but give me a break- you can use any rifle for that.

Respect. I live in Canada. So my perspective is probably warped or highly misinformed and ignorant of the USA's gun control, 2nd amendment argument. But my thought is, what's wrong with not being able to own anything that exists? Assault weapons shouldn't be made available to the public, it should be restricted to the military. Period. It's just incredible how these mass murdering weapons were even allowed to be owned in the first place. Even if the argument is that it's enshrined in the 2nd amendment, then the political discussion should be about changing/more narrowly define the amendment. How old is the 2nd amendment? How applicable is it to modern needs?

Even only allowing regulated shooting ranges to have these assault weapons just for on-site shooting is good thing. It allows gun lovers to hold them in hand, try them for target practice, have some fun but not allow anyone to take them out of the shooting range. Take the private ownership part out of the equation.

I love fighter jets, tanks, rockets & lots of high tech military stuff. Not crazy about guns, but I do appreciate their beauty. Still, I don't need to own them to appreciates them.

Society (not just the USA) really need to away from the assault weapon-ownership mentality... yes, that means asking gun owners to give up that particular rights. But there's virtue in doing it for the society...

Just can't believe the cowardice of those "nothing we can do about it" Republicans like Rubio. It's part of a big, sick symptom of government under the choke-hold of the NRA, Big Business, Big Banks, lobbyists instead of the constituents. Just feel sad for the People.

Thanks for that link -- really good.

I do think that "the left" is perhaps a bit too focused on specific weapon or accessory types. AR-15's, bump stocks, magazine sizes, etc. It's not completely ridiculous to say that if we banned AR-15's with 20-30 shot magazines, most of these shooters would just move on to the next best thing; maybe a Ruger Mini 14 or something with a 15 shot magazine.

Would that mitigate some of the deadly potential? Sure. Slightly. But it wouldn't prevent things at all, just (slightly) mitigate them. That might be worth doing, but it isn't beneficial enough to be what we should be focusing on.


I think two things could help contribute to prevention. Registration, and Licensing.

Step 1) Anyone who owns or purchases a firearm would be legally required to get it/them registered. Serial numbers (if they exist), etc. Anyway, descriptions of the weapon(s) on file and linked to a registered owner. If a firearm is used in a crime, the registered owner could be partially liable for that crime. Crime resulting in death? Owner subject to charges of negligent manslaughter. Violent crime, but no deaths? Owner subject to charges of conspiracy to commit X. Registered owner finds one or more of their firearms stolen or missing? Report them as such, and your liability could be removed or mitigated. Failure to register a firearm would also carry criminal penalties.

Step 2) Anyone who wants to use a firearm would be legally required to get a license. Licensing requires taking a proficiency and safety test. The initial license would require practical examination (safety and proficiency) at a range. Initial licensing and renewals (every 4 years?) would require passing a written test of knowledge about ownership laws, safety, etc. Just like a driver's license. And just like a driver's license, there could be things that might reasonably preclude your ability to get a license. Felony record? No license for you. Mental health issues? No license for you.


The NRA loves to tout themselves as responsible gun owners. Well, responsible people take responsibility. Remember that one kid in your class back in third grade that talked back to the teacher, so she made you all stay in and read during recess? Yeah, he ruined it for the rest of you. Guess what -- that's happening again. These nutjobs that shoot up schools or into a crowd of civilians are ruining things for the rest of you. We've tried unfettered access and an extremely lax interpretation of the second amendment. It didn't work out well. For evidence, compare the US to any other developed country on Earth.

Guns are a part of American culture, to an extent that taking them away completely would be ... problematic. But there are many, many things between the nothing that we're doing now and that.

*doublepromote , I guess we know which candidate is going to get the harshest, best funded opposition come election time.
I only wish Julie Archer (the next speaker) had gone up and continued listing donations.

We can be certain those benefiting from the legal bribery system they set up will not be working against it, so there is no legal remedy. There isn't a federal ballot initiative we can start to force a finance reform law, and Trump would veto it anyway.
"Throw them all out of office" sounds nice, but isn't even possible in one election, much less likely at all. Even if it were, finding enough people willing to work for others and not their own interests is pretty hard when dump trucks of money are involved.
This is what citizens united was all about, legalizing bribery, and it clearly did exactly that.
Lobby your representatives to write an amendment limiting contributions to actual human beings, even only registered voters, with a clear, low limit (<$1000?), that might be a start....but that's also a non starter.

A Mitt Romney fan, eh? You should probably read this article, which absolutely guts the myth that only half of income earners pay taxes.

As far as the top 1% paying 40% of the taxes, I agree that is atrocious--they are supposed to be paying almost ALL of it! See, when the income tax was introduced with the 16th Amendment, it was primarily meant to be a tax on the rich. The federal tax rate for middle-class people was meant to be around 1-2% whereas the tax rate on the rich was around 7%. You can see the original 1913 tax form here.

Of course, since literally the income tax's inception, the federal government has continuously been shafting the middle classes while reducing the tax burden of the wealthy. It's about as American as apple pie by this point!

The big problem is that the government relies more and more on income tax to fund federal projects. Take a look at the graph in the article I linked to at the start of this comment and note how corporate taxes keep going down while income and payroll taxes keep going up.

It doesn't help at all that most of America's biggest businesses have offshore tax havens where they can avoid paying taxes (think Ireland for Apple, Inc., though that hasn't worked out so well for them thanks to the EU being less corporate cock-sucking than the U.S. government).

So, to solve America's tax deficit problem, the solution is pretty clear--tax rich people more (as was intended), tax corporations more and cut off their tax havens, and maybe give a tax break to the people who actually need and deserve it--the middle and lower classes.

But of course all of that sounds suspiciously like socialism, which as we all know is the devil incarnate and about as un-American as naming your kid Stalin.

Wallets, and cell phones, hair brushes, glasses cases, envelopes, small boxes, sticks, juice boxes, seat belts, toy trucks, cigarettes, cigars .....pretty much anything you can hold in your hand.
A better idea is just ban hands. No hands, you know there's no gun in their hands, problem solved. Then you don't even have to touch the second amendment to end gun violence, guns are pretty safe without fingers.
Glad that issue is resolved.

*quality nutjobs

We are talking about the same idiot that agreed with a conservative talk show host, all the way back in 2011, that doing away with all amendments after the 10th "would eliminate many problems."

The amendments repealed would contain:

13th - Abolishes slavery, and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

14th - Defines citizenship, contains the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and deals with post–Civil War issues.

15th - Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude.

19th - Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex.

24th - Prohibits the revocation of voting rights due to the non-payment of a poll tax or any other tax.

26th - Prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age.

Yeah, I could see how making slavery legal again, making it impossible for the people you don't like to be citizens, and preventing undesirables (Blacks,Women,Poor,Young) people from voting would help a certain section of voters.

Mass=4
4 or more shot = mass shooting.
Derived from 4 or more shot to death=mass murder. (Amended to 3 by congress in 2013)
You may differ with that definition, most people don't. This is from the legal, federal definition of the term mass murder.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting

The framers didn't specify rifle, or any other specific weapon. They thought a person should (not just be able to) own a standard soldier's armament of the day. Today that would include grenades and automatic weapons. Back in the day owning a person was legal. That didn't change because the Supreme Court decided that the definition of a person had evolved, the constitution was amended. There's no reason it shouldn't be for this topic as well.

And after more viewings of video, the rate of fire was not that great and sustained, and could have been pulled off by 2 or 3 weapons.

I think we could draw from this. How about all US citizens that want to purchase a gun have to take a comprehensive exam that test knowledge not just of the 2nd amendment, but also the entire constitution, branches of government, federalist vs anti-federalist arguments, all supreme court cases directly involving challenges to the 2nd amendment, etc. Throw in a federally mandated mental health check from an accredited shrink and voila, guns are taken from the hands of those fighting erectile disfunction and put in the hands of those that actually care about the nation.

PS: don't go off on a tangent about how then only the bad guys will have guns and then we'll all get murdered like, all the time. That's a bs argument and you know it.

The thing about bump stocks that people are not realizing is that they are simply a mod that allows you to do the same thing you could already do with many semi-automatic weapons, emulate automatic fire.

There is a slightly more dangerous method which can be done simply by not bracing the stock and using the pistol grip. Many semi-auto weapons also can easily be 'broken' to cause slamfires, where the rounds are auto-fired as soon as they are loaded due to a stuck firing pin.

I highly believe in gun rights and the second amendment. But this latest tragedy has finally done it. There is simply no need to have that many semi-automatic rifles in one's possession. We need to re-enact the AWB from 1994, we need to set a cap limit on how many semi-automatic rifles a person can own, and we need to clearly state that ANY modification that can simulate automatic fire is illegal.

We have fostered a state where the mentally ill are no longer being treated or taken care of, except by drugs. Since it is clear that we have multitudes of people separated from becoming the next mass murderer simply based on whether to not they took their meds (or were diagnosed correctly to begin with), we need to make a stricter environment that prevents these people from getting the weapons to make it easier.

@newtboy and @scheherazade,

I think I may have come up with a shorter line of evidence for a well armed population being protection against tyranny.

Granted, a poorly armed population with strong arms control laws doesn't necessarily devolve into tyranny. We can all demonstrate this with counter examples like up here in Canada. However, can anyone name an oppressive dictatorship that had 2nd amendment level freedoms for every man and woman in their state? I can't think of a single example myself.

As I said before, that doesn't lead me to immediately declare zero restrictions on guns are thus worth any cost to forestall future tyranny. However, I have to acknowledge that the NRA style argument for protection against tyranny isn't entirely without merit.

That leads to my objections with declaring that it is objectively obvious that gun freedoms must morally be pulled back, while at the same time objectively obvious that idealogical/religious practice freedoms must not. We have ample examples of extremists gathering together to plot violence, mayhem and death on a grand scale and putting some extra lines in the sand of when that becomes unacceptable is no more obviously immoral than restricting gun ownership.

WTF does Hillary have to do with any of this?

Let's be very clear here. No-one is talking about banning guns (and if anyone is, they can fuck right off). Guns are useful tools. I've been target shooting a few times, I have friends who hunt. I wouldn't see their guns taken from them because they are sensible people who use guns in a reasonable way.

What we are talking about is a reasonable level of control, like background checks, restrictions on certain types of weapons, etc.

BTW, you might want to actually read the 2nd amendment.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

None of these people are in a well-regulated militia, and in 2017 "a well regulated militia" is not necessary to the security of the state, that's what a standing army and a police force are for.

Your seatbelt analogy also makes no sense at all. If I drive around without a seatbelt and crash, the only one hurt is me (I'm still a fucking inconsiderate asshole if I do that, but that's another story). Guns are all about hurting other people, so it makes sense to regulate them.


Fundamentally, the USA needs to grow the fuck up and stop believing "Die Hard" is a documentary.

You are not Roy Rogers.
You do not need a gun for "home defence".
You are more likely to be killed by a criminal if you have a gun than if you don't.
And the most powerful weapon you have against a fascist dictatorship is not firearms, but the ballot box.

The irony is that while your democracy is increasingly slipping away from you (gerrymandering, super PACs, voter suppression), you have a corporate-funded lobby group protecting your firearms.

Father of one of the (injured) victims on NPR, when interviewed, took the time to point out he was and will continue to be a 2nd amendment zealot (for there's no other word for these people). He gave a thoughtful comment that one man had affected thousands of lives with his shooting spree. When the interviewer asked the father what he thought about one man having such (fire) power readily available TO ENABLE him to affect so many lives, the father had no response.

That's a fair point, Eric. I can't say that I know enough about minority group racism to judge.

So yeah, I'm happy to amend my statement that to "not all republicans are racist, but pretty much all white supremacists/nazis are republican".

Huh, still doesn't read great, does it?

Oh, and @worm, I agree. There is a perception of "anti-white social engineering by the left". Of course, it's complete fucking nonsense, but hey, no reason to let facts get in the way, right?

"David Duke, a major KKK leader of some sort, was a Democrat in Congress."

If you're going to post bullshit, you might want to post something that isn't trivially disprovable by 5 seconds googling. He was never a congressman, instead having failed several attempts at both Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. He did become a state representative for Louisiana, but that was as a Republican (he also lost a governship battle, again as a Republican).

I'm not seeking to demonise Republicans here. I don't agree with them most of the time, but at a point, they were a relatively sane political party, before becoming the international laughing stock they are today.

The problem is that they are now beholden to Trump and almost all of them are spineless fucks with a few notable exceptions.