Sethomas
Apr 19th, 2007, 05:59 PM
I’d rather not see the Virginia Tech thread derailed into its logical extension: Gun control. I post a lot of gun control threads, most recently three months ago, because although I grew up around them and I believe in the Second Amendment I still feel that perfect liberty with guns is absurd. I earned merit badges for shotgun and rifle, and I have a best friend who thinks that any mention of gun control—no matter how innocuous or common-sense the idea—is a threat to his livelihood. So, I think it’s time we evaluate what, how, and why some kind of weapons regulation should come about.
I think that the most pertinent issue is to allow relatively liberal sales of weapons, but it is pertinent that technology be utilized to create accountability. I hear all the time about forensics identifying bullets to a particular weapon, but I have no idea how this actually works. I can understand matching shells to a signature impression made by each gun, but I think there should be implemented some way to identify both the origin of sale and the weapon of discharge of each weapon by the bullet alone. If technology can’t do this already, it sure as hell should work on it. This would insure that people who buy bullets/weapons should be careful to not to let them fall into the wrong hands, let alone do anything illegal.
Once some system of weapons signature were to be enabled, each signature should be registered digitally. I am totally for gun registration at every level. My friend tells me that registration is bad because it was invented by Hitler as a way to monitor from whom all guns were to eventually be taken. Be that as it may, if weapons seizure becomes a serious problem then the NRA has bigger problems on its plate than who owns what. It’s also logically unsound. Either gun seizure would be legal and subject to the democratic process, in which case gun owners would simply have to face facts and obey the law, or it’d be the motion of a corrupt government in which case the Second Amendment would have to pass its first touchstone and the whole issue is moot.
So, how do we prevent school shootings? I don’t think we can in any practicable sense. I wouldn’t mind having some motion to have a system wherein faculty were trained and provided with arms, but I doubt that this would fix everything even if implemented in the best, most efficient manner.
One paradigm example I think I should bring up is the case when my sister was living in Grenada during Hurricane Ivan. The hurricane created utter chaos, and a local friend of hers was assigned to a grocery store to prevent looting. On an island with virtually no guns at all while every citizen owned a machete so as to harvest spices and coconuts, he was overcome and decapitated. My friend’s father remarked that it never would have happened if the guard had automatic weapons. What this fails to realize, though, is that if their laws were like ours then the looters would have far out-gunned the law enforcement. A middle-class American on a gun-laden disaster site, my sister would by all certainty be dead.
So, what I see as pertinent for our generation is to formalize the gun ownership process that all weapons are accounted for. Anti-registration advocates say that registration has NEVER solved a crime, and I’m not one to disagree. What I do believe, though, is that it’s impossible to calculate how many crimes were prevented by registration. I’d rather see one death prevented than see 100 criminals get away with it.
I think that the most pertinent issue is to allow relatively liberal sales of weapons, but it is pertinent that technology be utilized to create accountability. I hear all the time about forensics identifying bullets to a particular weapon, but I have no idea how this actually works. I can understand matching shells to a signature impression made by each gun, but I think there should be implemented some way to identify both the origin of sale and the weapon of discharge of each weapon by the bullet alone. If technology can’t do this already, it sure as hell should work on it. This would insure that people who buy bullets/weapons should be careful to not to let them fall into the wrong hands, let alone do anything illegal.
Once some system of weapons signature were to be enabled, each signature should be registered digitally. I am totally for gun registration at every level. My friend tells me that registration is bad because it was invented by Hitler as a way to monitor from whom all guns were to eventually be taken. Be that as it may, if weapons seizure becomes a serious problem then the NRA has bigger problems on its plate than who owns what. It’s also logically unsound. Either gun seizure would be legal and subject to the democratic process, in which case gun owners would simply have to face facts and obey the law, or it’d be the motion of a corrupt government in which case the Second Amendment would have to pass its first touchstone and the whole issue is moot.
So, how do we prevent school shootings? I don’t think we can in any practicable sense. I wouldn’t mind having some motion to have a system wherein faculty were trained and provided with arms, but I doubt that this would fix everything even if implemented in the best, most efficient manner.
One paradigm example I think I should bring up is the case when my sister was living in Grenada during Hurricane Ivan. The hurricane created utter chaos, and a local friend of hers was assigned to a grocery store to prevent looting. On an island with virtually no guns at all while every citizen owned a machete so as to harvest spices and coconuts, he was overcome and decapitated. My friend’s father remarked that it never would have happened if the guard had automatic weapons. What this fails to realize, though, is that if their laws were like ours then the looters would have far out-gunned the law enforcement. A middle-class American on a gun-laden disaster site, my sister would by all certainty be dead.
So, what I see as pertinent for our generation is to formalize the gun ownership process that all weapons are accounted for. Anti-registration advocates say that registration has NEVER solved a crime, and I’m not one to disagree. What I do believe, though, is that it’s impossible to calculate how many crimes were prevented by registration. I’d rather see one death prevented than see 100 criminals get away with it.