The plot’s been cranking along, so I’mma fuck it all up with a bad pun. You knew what I was when you picked me up. Hehehehehe.
No, really, I felt ashamed of doing this joke. But only a little.
So… I have a bombshell to drop on you. Grab a drink. Strap into your favorite chair. This is going to blow your mind. Seriously, get ready. You will be rocked to the core.
Ready?
Really?
Alright then…
3… 2… 1…
It turns out that when it comes to guns, criminals don’t give fuck #1 about gun control laws.
You may now resume breathing. Let the shock wear off. Shhhhhh. It’s gonna be okay.
If you need assistance after this revelation, here’s a help line for you.
THE DEVIL YOU SAY, SIR.
I for one enjoy terrible puns. The more terrible they are, the more I like them
Gun puns are fun! Please don’t run! Even if you’re done! Of beatings you’ll get none!
Well that was an excellent coffee-spilling laugh.
Seriously though, J, don’t feel ashamed of making those gun puns! You should even make a mini-book full of these only for those who want cheap, stupid, funny gun jokes. I’d buy these in a heartbeat.
So what it is saying is, criminals go to places where they don’t have to undergo a background check to buy. And that proves that we shouldn’t do background checks? Or does it show that ALL sales should go through a background check? Or is it that we shouldn’t bother making it illegal for anyone to buy a gun at all, or have any laws at all? I’m confused.
What this shows is criminals will find ways to circumvent the law. A not shocking revelation that those who desire to remove guns from the law abiding citizen use to try and enact more restrictive laws. Of course when these laws prove ineffective it launches the next round.
But wouldn’t removing this avenue make it harder for them to get? Or are you saying that too many “law abiding gun owners” would break the law and sell without the background check anyway? The argument really seems to be that since criminals break the law, there’s no point having laws.
But wouldn’t removing this avenue make it harder for them to get?
You really have no knowledge of that side of the street, do you.
Actually, it’s more like the war on drugs or prohibition. Banning the substance or severely controlling said item does nothing but push otherwise legal sales underground. A firearm is a relatively simple device. I can make one in any machine shop. Even if you ban all firearms, any person with knowledge will still be able to make them, and sell them. Felons are not allowed to own firearms. Yet they still get them, without even slowing down. When they cannot purchase them from straw buyers, they purchase them from people who stole them.
One huge difference is that pretty much every single gun is initially sold legally; they aren’t being illegally manufactured. So controlling that sale at the very least removes some from the illegal market. And most are sold to the person using them in crimes legally, as opposed to illegal sales or theft.
Simply not true. Lots of guns are illegally manufactured (not so much in the U.S. where it’s easier to get a production gun, but…) and quite a lot of guns are originally sold illegally. For example, the total ban on automatic weapons has not prevented gang members from getting a hold of automatic weapons, mostly from central and south America. The nations the gang members are getting AK-47s from have even tougher gun laws than we do, so all of these weapons are either stolen from government, or sold illegally (by corrupt army officers) to the gun runners who sell them to our gangs. Unless you’re somehow able to convince every military in the world to stop using firearms, there’s no way to prevent criminals from acquiring them.
Ever heard of a “zip gun?” Illegally manufactured using a strong tube, and uses a shotgun shell.
Seriously, firearms can actually be manufactured more easily than alcohol, in a shorter amount of time. Sure the majority of illegal guns in the US were originally purchased legally, but that is specific to the US, because the guns can be bought legally. Illegal guns in countries where civilian ownership is prohibited tend to have them manufactured, or smuggled in illegally(very similar to how the booze was coming into the US via boats during prohibition).
I can tell you that you are wrong about one thing, alcohol is FAR easier to make. In fact, the trick in most cases is to prevent fermentation. But on topic. please document how large the illegally MANUFACTURED market is, as a total of the guns in illegal hands. And the smuggled guns, vs. stolen or illegally modified for full-auto. And finally, what does that matter? Background checks do not interfere with your rights in any way, and have been demonstrated to prevent illegal sales on a large scale.
Think of it this way. Murder is illegal, but it does not stop people from committing murder. What it DOES is allow the state to take action when a person commits murder.
Banning guns attempts to restrict the item in the vain attempt at preventing murder. It will neither stop murder nor actually ban the firearms, because they can be easily obtained illegally. You can try to ban the ammunition, but then military bases will have their ammunition stores raided.
Who said anything about banning guns? I’m not suggesting that at all. Or ammo.
The term of art you are missing is “Black Market”.
You can not stop it, you can not control it, you can barely limit it, and that much only in extremely limited geographical areas. (Very small towns, or a few city blocks.) The best you can do is try not to provide an economic boost to it.
See Prohibition I & II for notable failures on this subject.
black markets is free markets!
Only the price can be affected.
For the record, the “1 in 10” figure is extremely suspect in this study.
It was 8 out of 81 identifiable persons in their small sampling.
If you look at the raw numbers used in this heavily biased “study” (the ones that include over 1,600 ads they redacted from consideration for unmentioned reasons), it actually boils down to 0.05%, not 10%.
Indeed; most of the ads I see on craigslist/armslist/ etc are from dealers looking to find people who want what they have. And as mentioned many, many times in previous comments, dealers are heavily interested in making sure every transaction they perform is legit.
Yes! I was just wondering yesterday when we would get another one of these!!
no surprise, you cannot stop a crazy person from getting a gun unless you ban guns outright, which will never happen in the US
the 2nd amendment was great during the founding of our country, and most people having muzzleloaders. but over 200 years later when you have automatics, and a Military-industrial complex it doesn’t make much sense anymore.
*siiiigh*
Very VERY few people legitimately own autos, and fuck your fucking military-industrial complex, which has precisely jack and shit to do with 2A.
“The First Amendment was great before the Internet, when hate speech couldn’t attract such a wide audience!” Doesn’t work that way.
oh yes, thank you. you invalidated my argument when you point out that automatics are not available for everyone. But seem to forget all the other technologies before that. Percussion caps, and eventually cartridges and semi-automatics.
I am not going to try to explain every detail of a post, when you can nitpick your interpretation of what I say, when you can just look at how firearm technology has evolved from hand crafted flint locks, to mass produced semi-automatic handguns a 4 year old can easily use. Then ask me if the creators to the 2nd amendment would have changed the wording if they knew what a firearm would be 200 years later
I think they would.
Puckle gun
Also civilians owned CANNONS back then. Tell me whether a cannon or an AR will do more damage…
There were also several other guns which fired more than 1 round.
Also, look into how difficult it is to get an automatic. Seriously, go buy an automatic and tell me if you think it’s worth using in an argument.
Yep. Technically, here in Arizona I can openly haul around an M-51 Quad Fifty fully ready to rock and roll; Practicality says that I’ll be hounded by tourists and LEO wondering why the hell I’m hauling an anti-aircraft platform, and I can guarantee you that it’ll cost more than a nice home to acquire, and a lot of money to keep fed. 🙂
Be nice to have, though- might keep the damned neighborhood kids from stealing my lawn ornaments….
>Acquire Ma Deuce
>Mount on top of F-billion-fifty XLT
>Paint it a nice rich purple, to contrast nicely with blood spatter
>Bumper stickers proclaiming “PAIN MACHINE” in Comic Sans adorning pretty much everything except the bumper
>Roll through traffic like Rick James on a line of coke
If I had my way, I’d have the RAM from Death Race(recent one) that Machine Gun Joe had. Or pretty much any of those cars.
Why yes, I just commuted in to work. Why do you ask?
Also in AZ.
And good luck even FINDING one in working order for anything less than 300k manufactured before 1986.
I don’t get it. What caliber is the Ruger? Is it also in the .22x diameter range?
The profile is of a Ruger 10-22. So, yes, it too is in the .22 cal range…
Bit of a difference between a 36 or 40gn bullet moving at 1500fps and a 55gn bullet moving at 3000fps.
Yeah- rabbit stew, or rabbit burgers.
Makes it all that much easier for those old, toothless folks to drink their rabbit through a straw.
House got broken into yesterday. Lost: 1 TiVo, 3 laptops (2 belonging to employers), some junk jewelry, a couple hundred in loose change, small bills, etc that were laying around in various rooms.
Ignored – hunting weapons IN PLAIN SIGHT, anything even marginally not obviously laying around (good jewelry, expensive weapons, etc). Flat screen TV.
Hiding in bathtub, cowering? 60 lb pit bull.
Pissed off and trying to calm from the adreniline? 12 lb. cat.
(Perps had JUST left when we pulled in. Know this for various reasons including unplugged clocks and the one video camera available that didn’t show shit that mattered) .
Criminals don’t obey gun laws, but thankfully many of them are stupid.
News flash: criminals are generally not deterred by any laws. That’s what makes them criminals. DUI laws don’t stop people drop downing half a pony keg and then promptly climbing behind the wheel of their Buick. Anti-texting laws don’t stop people from cruising along the freeway at 75 with their eyes glued to their iPhone. Bribery laws don’t stop corporations from buying politicians left and right. Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. What’s the solution? Good question. Stricter enforcement of existing laws? Closing loopholes in existing laws that allow offenses to continue? Tougher penalties for infractions? All of the above? None of the above?
Personally, I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
So we shouldn’t have DUI laws? But if things weren’t illegal, even though criminals ignore that, what would you be able to do to them after catching them? Isn’t part of the point of laws to define punishment, not simply scare people into not doing it?
That depends on what the purpose of laws is.
Is the purpose of law to punish people for committing wrongful acts, or to control people’s behavior?
If the purpose of a law is to punish people for committing wrongful acts, then the law can succeed in that goal. (The question of whether this affects behavior is moot.)
If the purpose of a law is to control behavior, it will generally fail, especially in an individualistic-minded society such as the U.S.
The purpose of the law is to have a written guideline for punishing people. Of course, that guideline is generally thrown out in favor of levels of personal or racial bias, or money paid, or political favor.
I believe the only true solution is for Mr.J.L.Grant to compile each-&-every one of his gun-puns into a single published volume…
…so that we might use it on the criminals…
…because water-boarding them has failed to make them suffer enough…
…& the death penalty would merely put them out of their misery.
😛
PS:
Re_”…take off and nuke the entire site from orbit…”:
The problem with this idea was best explained by “The Tick”:
“THAT’S WHERE I KEEP ALL MY STUFF!!!?!”
Criminals don’t care about laws, but law abiding citizens do. Laws are for them. If every stupid thing under the sun were legal how many stupid law abiding citizens would do them? “I didn’t mean to kill random people with raining bullets, but it was totally legal for me to fire my rifle full auto into the air in celebration”. And so much more.
Besides, deterrents work. If murdering my neighbours for being noisy arseholes was legal, I’d totally do it. But when I have to start thinking about getting them all before they ring the cops, keeping it quiet, deposing of the bodies, alibis; urgh, it’s easier to just go for a walk and hope they shut up by the time I get back. I’d rather suffer in freedom than suffer in captivity.
So you’re saying that since you’re a sociopathic asshole whose lack of a moral compass means you can’t be trusted with a dull butter knife, everyone else has to be protected from you. Got it.
In other news… Fire still hot, water still wet.