What exactly are gun rights activist against?

[Medusa]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

I was just curious.

I mean do these people really have a problem with extra scrutiny in getting a gun license? If so, shouldn't we wonder about their sanity perhaps?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

I was just curious.

I mean do these people really have a problem with extra scrutiny in getting a gun license? If so, shouldn't we wonder about their sanity perhaps?

Personally, yes. I wonder as well.

Having talked to many of them I can honestly say that the readiness to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation worries me, too.

[monsno_leedra]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Personally I think a lot of it has to do with defining Assault Rifle and guns in general. It's like the media calls everything and anything an assault rifle yet to be an assault rifle it has to have the capacity to go fully automatic. None of the ones they've recovered have that capacity but the media keeps calling them assault rifles. So your average 22 for instance with a capacity to go semi-automatic, ie pull the trigger and one round fires with a clip that holds up to ten rounds gets classified as an assault rifle. Because of the magazine one can pull the trigger quickly but it is never fully automatic where you just squeeze the trigger and all the bullets get shot. Then factor in just because something can be made to resemble something else again doesn't make it an assault rifle. So the many AR-15, AK-47, M-16 look a likes are not assault rifles, they simply look like the assault version but still are restricted to single shot.

So in general when people start talking about banning weapons or such they generically say assault type but by today's media definitions that's anything that is not a single bolt action feed gun. So a shotgun with an internal chamber for up to 10 rounds gets conflated into the same category. So people are really resistant to anything that would seem to restrict or impede purchasing of semi-automatic weapons that typically match what is used for hunting for instance.

I think back ground checks and such are causing issues because the government hasn't really proven they can honestly track and record government data bases. Heck look how easily our credit scores get screwed up because wrong entry of SSN info, names, places of birth, dates of birth, etc. All the years I served in the military I encountered more than a few occasions where someone else's info was placed in my military records and medical records. That affected / effected my security clearance, promotion eligibility, pay and a number of other things. So the idea of thinking the government would handle the entire population and access to guns seems truly absurd at best. Then all those checks will only apply to people who are trying to obtain them legally anyway. Which the criminals wouldn't be bothering with anyway.

[Spiny Norman]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Personally I think a lot of it has to do with defining Assault Rifle and guns in general. It's like the media calls everything and anything an assault rifle yet to be an assault rifle it has to have the capacity to go fully automatic.

Yes, you're right, guns like the AR15 are semi-automatic rifles and not assault rifles. But it seems they can still do a lot of damage. I've heard that conversion kits are available to change a weapon from semi-auto to full-auto?

As for the OP it seems to me that gun-ownership is a deep cultural thing with Americans and I can't see that changing. The more people try to regulate the more resistance there will be.

[thalassa]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

I think back ground checks and such are causing issues because the government hasn't really proven they can honestly track and record government data bases. Heck look how easily our credit scores get screwed up because wrong entry of SSN info, names, places of birth, dates of birth, etc. All the years I served in the military I encountered more than a few occasions where someone else's info was placed in my military records and medical records. That affected / effected my security clearance, promotion eligibility, pay and a number of other things. So the idea of thinking the government would handle the entire population and access to guns seems truly absurd at best. Then all those checks will only apply to people who are trying to obtain them legally anyway. Which the criminals wouldn't be bothering with anyway.

Credit agencies are private companies.

[Briton]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Then all those checks will only apply to people who are trying to obtain them legally anyway. Which the criminals wouldn't be bothering with anyway.

You can but guns can be bought fairly easily without background checks and they are completely legal. Private sales. This needs to require background checks.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

I was just curious.

I mean do these people really have a problem with extra scrutiny in getting a gun license? If so, shouldn't we wonder about their sanity perhaps?

Yes. They have serious plans for when the SHTF, including throwing away all cell phones, etc., which could possibly be tracked. Because if you can be tracked, then "the President his self can come for yo' guns." They don't even like having social security numbers. These are the same folks who refuse to wear seatbelts, because they don't want to do what the government says, even when friends/relatives have died from being ejected from cars in accidents. I kid you not.

[Hickory67]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

I lean to the Right on this issue (not all). I've owned guns all my life, am licensed to carry as a private citizen and do so periodically. I don't carry it to "look more masculine" - I carry concealed and have no compulsion or desire to make it known. I don't carry out of fear - I carry because I wish to be prepared in the event I need one. There's a difference in the two mindsets. I do admit there are many in this country in the former mindset, but 100% of the concealed carriers I know are, like me, of the latter.

I do not fear, nor do I prepare for a rogue government at all. I've been a part of it for 30 years - all my adult life, in uniform and now as a civilian, so I have a pretty good feel for the tenor of the same. I don't discount it as impossible, it's just not on my current radar. I do wish to be armed at least as well as a criminal, because that can be a threat at any time and in any place, but even that is not always of great concern to me. I don't feel the need to have a firearm every time I leave the house - most days it's just so I can retain the "muscle memory" required to carry concealed. That's because I have been or may at any future date be required to do so in an official capacity.

As far as regulation, we may need to do a better job of enforcing existing laws rather than adding more restrictions, but the point that criminals, psychos, and terrorists will ignore them is entirely valid and is proven daily. The greatest heartburn I have with the recent attempts at legislation is that they only punish the law-abiding and every one of them has been made solely by the anti-gun crowd. If there needs to be a solution the gun rights side should, in my opinion, have a part to play in it.

A big difference between pro-gunners and anti-gunners here in the States is that a pro-gunner doesn't care if you choose to own or carry one or not. I don't begrudge or dislike people who dislike guns - I live and let live. I just expect the same in return. Yes, there are criminals, psychos, militants, and terrorists - but I'm none of those and don't like being painted with those brushes. I'm a sheepdog - not a wolf.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

My state has castle doctrine, so if someone makes the mistake of trying to break in here, they won't like what happens, and I won't get in trouble for it. But I don't need an assault rifle for that, nor can I shoot more than 2 guns at a time. So, to my mind, it's a little iffy when people keep those kinds of things buried on their property, etc.

[MaskedOne]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Yes. They have serious plans for when the SHTF, including throwing away all cell phones, etc., which could possibly be tracked. Because if you can be tracked, then "the President his self can come for yo' guns." They don't even like having social security numbers. These are the same folks who refuse to wear seatbelts, because they don't want to do what the government says, even when friends/relatives have died from being ejected from cars in accidents. I kid you not.

Because cutting oneself off from the tools of modern civilization will enable one to oppose modern civilization....

I love humans, really I do.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

In the USA we don't have "constitutional rights" we have constitutionally PROTECTED rights. We have the right to choose a religion, to speak our minds, to think and learn, to keep and carry guns whether the constitution is there or not. The constitution recognizes those right and informs the government at all levels that they are to protect those rights. The government is currently not only NOT protecting those rights but working to eliminate them. Instituting a "free speech area" so that people can speak their minds in one area but not another, making it illegal to learn about certain things, and removing your ability to defend yourself or property from criminal actions are examples of this change in attitude of individual rights.
Gun rights activists are against the governmental infringement of the very rights that have been recognized and protected since the war for our freedom. Yes, there is a focus on guns because when the government goes too far guns will be the only way to stop the government. There is another side to the argument and that is defense of one's person, property and others against criminal activity.
We don't have the privilege of gun ownership, or free speech, or education. Those are rights. Rights that we have from birth. They are separate from government and always have been. If you want to get rid of gun VIOLENCE then concentrate on the violence and not the gun.
A loaded gun is not dangerous! I have had a loaded gun with me for 44 years and it has never jumped up and injured anyone. As for modifying guns to be full auto, any gun can be so modified. In WW II the Aussies modified the bolt action 03A3 to make it a semi-auto and it would have been easier to make it full auto than semi-auto. I can put together a full auto gun from stuff in a hardware store in a few hours. It would take a lot more time to make a bolt action rifle. A full auto (machine gun) only needs three moving parts. Anyone who can install a hose can learn to make a gun in less than 8 hours. Guns are only as dangerous as the person operating them. Just as a car, bat or knife is only as dangerous as the person operating them. Violence is the problem, crime is the problem, but guns are not the problem.

[R. Eugene Laughlin]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

If there needs to be a solution the gun rights side should, in my opinion, have a part to play in it.

They should be driving the solutions, ceaselessly, until the situation starts improving, and they should never stop trying to further mitigate the potential harm that guns can do. Private citizens who don't own or use guns shoulder none of the moral weight for the deaths that would not have occurred but for public access to the guns that caused them; non-gun owners bear only the practical burdens of self- and social-preservation.

It's just so much easier to expect others to come up with all of the ideas and then to say no to them than it is to think hard and try solutions until things start to improve. If the gun advocates started proposing sincere efforts to improve the situation, they'd have all the support they needed from everyone else to implement them. Trying to come at it from the other side though... that effort is getting us nowhere at all.

Moral weight apparently isn't motivating enough. It's probably not a conscious thought for most, but private gun advocates have decided that the current rate of preventable gun deaths is a fair price the entire society must pay to sustain their personal attitude. Things will have to get a lot worse before that changes.

Imagine an alternate universe, a Twilight Zone scenario, where everyone is on record: stay the way it is or change things. And then for every person in the change things group that dies by gun, someone from the stay the way it is group is randomly selected and executed. I wonder if that might get things moving?

[monsno_leedra]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Credit agencies are private companies.

Yep just like many of the governmental data bases are set up and run by civilian agencies. Those aren't Navy personal I speak to when I call about retirement pay, medical, dental, etc and all nor were they while I was on active duty as well as retired. The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) is also governmental directed but again civilian companies are running it in many places.

[MaskedOne]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Imagine an alternate universe, a Twilight Zone scenario, where everyone is on record: stay the way it is or change things. And then for every person in the change things group that dies by gun, someone from the stay the way it is group is randomly selected and executed. I wonder if that might get things moving?

Sure, just not in the direction you think it will. As such a society would prove every paranoid militia men objectively right in their beliefs about government, you'll get insurrections that get quashed, terror campaigns that aren't so easily quashed and maybe even an effective civil war if the military splits. Congrats on breaking the US.

Now imagine a twilight zone scenario where implying that your political opponents should be shot can eventually get you banned from PF and understand it's extremely unlikely to break PaganForum if you piss me off enough to make that this reality.

[R. Eugene Laughlin]

Re: What exactly are gun rights activist against?

Now imagine a twilight zone scenario where implying that your political opponents should be shot can eventually get you banned from PF and understand it's extremely unlikely to break PaganForum if you piss me off enough to make that this reality.

If that paragraph really puts me at risk of being banned, I'll gladly remove myself.