age you can buy a gun

[NewCreation435]

I wonder if changing the requirements to buy a gun would help with all the shootings? This kid who bought this AK-15 was 19 years old and purchased it legally. Yet, he can't buy alcohol. I wonder if raising the age to buy a gun to 21 would help? I think there should be classes for people who buy guns to take care of them properly. One thing we don'thear much of is how many kids die from just finding a gun in the home and playing with it and it accidentially discharging and killing someone. If guns and ammunition were stored separately under lock and key that wouldn't happen.

 

[Josiah]

As I understand it (and I ain't saying that's saying much), ANYONE - of any age and in any country - with access to the internet, can buy all the parts of any gun, and then just assemble them. Thus circumventing all gun laws and registration. With the internet being international and with no significant regulation, I'm not sure there's much that can be done about that?

IF it were as simple as making tougher gun laws, then Detriot MI and Washington DC would have the lowest murder rates in the land.... they have the highest.

I'm all in favor of laws (AND DOING SOMETHING WITH THEM) to keep guns out of those mentally irresponsible... the problem is, there are going to be failures. And it only takes one.



The REAL PROBLEM in my opinion is not people having weapons. The problem is two-fold:

1. Mental illness. It's not always easy to detect and many never even are examined until AFTER something like this happens. And (for understandable reasons and because of our American obsession with privacy) they are typically not publicly identified. And we can't institutionalize or generally restrict them so they generally can do and go where they want. Well people don't go around shooting kids (or anyone else for that matter). We need to get a better handle on mental illness in our land.

2. A culture of death. Gun laws in the USA are not a good indicator. The states with the LEAST laws (Utah for example) actually tend to have less gun violance than other states. Washington DC, Detroit MI have the strickest gun laws in the USA and the highest gun violance rates. Some conclusion might be drawn from that about gun laws..... But I think the problem has little to do with gun laws and a LOT to do with the culture. We have sub-cultures in our society which are violent. And there are some things about American culture (witness the films, the video games, even the sport of football). What's happening in places like Detroit and Washington DC and downtown LA and way too many other places has nothing to do with the law (because there is a culture that is lawless), it has to do with a culture of death, a culture that has little respect for life (even their own in some cases). Consider that while in steady decline, a goodly percentage of INNOCENT unborn children are violently murdered - right up to the time when the last toe exists the birth canal - and our society is perfectly okay with that. We will continue to raise up Americans with little to no value to life as long as that reflects our culture.



- Josiah

 

[tango]

I wonder if changing the requirements to buy a gun would help with all the shootings? This kid who bought this AK-15 was 19 years old and purchased it legally. Yet, he can't buy alcohol. I wonder if raising the age to buy a gun to 21 would help? I think there should be classes for people who buy guns to take care of them properly. One thing we don'thear much of is how many kids die from just finding a gun in the home and playing with it and it accidentially discharging and killing someone. If guns and ammunition were stored separately under lock and key that wouldn't happen.

I find it odd that the US allows someone to buy a gun at 18, to marry at 18, to be allowed to join the military (and indeed to be forcibly conscripted) at 18, but not to have a beer until 21.

One issue is that a simple "one size fits all" approach just doesn't work. If you have children in your home you have to be responsible for them, which includes making sure they can't open your closet and play with your loaded guns. But if you don't have children in your home why should you be obligated to take childproofing precautions for your guns?

As far as helping with the shootings goes, I'm not sure that there is much that can be done. Typically after an event like this there is the predictable political whining from the left that we need tighter gun control (despite the fact it's already illegal to take a gun into a school and it's already illegal to kill people, so the shooter already broke two laws and probably wouldn't care about breaking another one along the way), and equally predictable comments from the right that the answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

Looking at simple facts, shootings in schools are safe for the shooter because they can be assured it is very unlikely anyone will have the means to stop them. So in that regard, and given it's proving impossible to physically stop people taking guns into schools, maybe the answer is to allow (maybe encourage?) teaching staff to carry weapons of their own.

In principle introducing a legal requirement to take some form of training before buying a gun makes some sense but there are still endless questions relating to enforcement of it, and relating to maintenance of it. If you take a training course at age 21, buy a collection of guns and keep then for 50 years, are you still "trained" to handle guns at the age of 71?

Of course one major issue is that once someone has decided they are going to go and kill a lot of people, the chances are they will find a way whatever legal obstacles might be thought up in some far-flung city. If they can't buy a gun they can probably find one. Or they can make pipe bombs, as the two perpetrators of Columbine did. Or they can use a motor vehicle, as has been seen multiple times in Europe. Or they can make a toxic gas, as has been seen in underground transit around the world. Or they can use knives, axes etc, as has been seen in Europe. The fundamental trouble is the intention to kill rather than the choice of weapon to achieve the goal. Once someone has reached the stage of wanting to do such a thing the battle is already lost. We'd be better off trying to figure why people reach that point than worrying about the weapons of choice once they have reached it.

If guns and ammunition are stored separately and in separate locked boxes it means they are of little to no value for home defense. If someone breaks into your home you want to be able to reach your loaded weapon quickly, not fuss with trying to unlock one box in the dark to get your gun, to then unlock another box to get the ammo, to then load the gun, and hope you managed to do it all before it's too late.

Although a child dying from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in the home (or from gunshot wounds inflicted accidentally by another child playing with a gun) is a tragedy I'm not sure it warrants attention over and above a child dying from any other seemingly avoidable cause in the home. Is a child dying because they found Daddy's gun and shot themselves with it any more of an issue than the same child dying because he found Daddy's painkillers and ate them all thinking they were candy, or dying because he found a bottle of bleach and drank it, or dying because he opened the window and jumped out thinking his Superman cape meant he could fly? Ultimately it comes back to parental supervision, and only the parents are adequately placed to assess the risks in their home and figure what precautions need to be taken to protect their children.

 

[Albion]

I wonder if changing the requirements to buy a gun would help with all the shootings? This kid who bought this AK-15 was 19 years old and purchased it legally. Yet, he can't buy alcohol. I wonder if raising the age to buy a gun to 21 would help? I think there should be classes for people who buy guns to take care of them properly. One thing we don'thear much of is how many kids die from just finding a gun in the home and playing with it and it accidentially discharging and killing someone. If guns and ammunition were stored separately under lock and key that wouldn't happen.

Remember that Chicago and Washington, DC have among the most stringent gun control laws you'll find anywhere in the country--and also the most gun deaths. Obviously, those gun laws didn't curb the killings, so why would they do so in Florida?

 

[tango]

Remember that Chicago and Washington, DC have among the most stringent gun control laws you'll find anywhere in the country--and also the most gun deaths. Obviously, those gun laws didn't curb the killings, so why would they do so in Florida?

This seems like a good example of correlations not working the way one might expect.

If it was as simple as "more guns make society safer" than South Africa would be a great place to live. If it was as simple as "more guns make society less safe" then Switzerland would be a bloodbath. For that matter, most of the US would be a bloodbath, given the number of lawfully held firearms. I read somewhere that estimates for the number of lawfully held firearms in the US ranged from 250-500 million.

The bit that seems to get missed in much of the howling is the clue in the term "law-abiding gun owners". Despite those who prefer to focus exclusively on the second part, the first part is more important.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

I also think it should be AT LEAST 21 if not later.

 

[Krissy Cakes]

They also need to do a LONG background check to make sure the person doesn't have any kind of mental issues.

 

[tango]

They also need to do a LONG background check to make sure the person doesn't have any kind of mental issues.

Background checks also need to be done in a way that doesn't discourage people from being tested for things if they have concerns about their own health.

Some years ago in the UK if you applied for health insurance one of the questions was whether you had ever been tested for HIV. The question didn't care what the result was, merely whether or not you had been tested. The reasoning was presumably that if you were concerned enough to be tested you probably had a lifestyle that exposed you to the risk of HIV, and therefore your premiums went up. Of course it meant that the more promiscuous members of the gay community (at the time HIV was largely confined to the gay community) were discouraged from being tested. It was subsequently changed to ask whether you had ever tested positive for HIV.

I believe some states require individuals with a license to use medical marijuana to turn in their guns while others regard a senior needing help balancing their checkbook to be mentally incompetent and therefore unfit to own a gun. Both situation seem to do little to promote public safety while doing much to discourage people seeking the help they need.

Of course other problems with relying on ever-more government checks are that the government isn't always very good at doing the checks, and that they tend to encourage people to disengage their own brains and simply assume Nanny State did whatever was necessary. If someone displays signs of a serious mental illness but passed government checks, what happens if someone tries to report concerns? After all they just passed a background check so they must be OK, right?

 

[psalms 91]

I believe in the right of gun ownership but thqta being said noone needs an AR15 to shoot bambi, there needs to be common sense laws in place to help keep these things from happening. First the NRA should be banned from lobbying as they are the single biggest roadblock to any meaningful legislation. When ios enough going to be enough or should we just allow everyone to have guns so we can kill each other more effectively

 

[Stravinsk]

I wonder if some people will ever value integrity of the source from which they get their information over the entertainment value that source also provides.

Exhibit 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBfFCDZ_h8w

Exhibit 2:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1chqUZHuY6cXYrRYkuE0uwXisGaYvr7durZHJhpLGycs/edit#gid=0
Source: UNDOC and Small arms survey

Exhibit 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g67mCOP75sk

Confused?
Go back to Exhibit 1. Watch and pay very close attention to 1:24-1:37.
That's you.

 

[NewCreation435]

As I understand it (and I ain't saying that's saying much), ANYONE - of any age and in any country - with access to the internet, can buy all the parts of any gun, and then just assemble them. Thus circumventing all gun laws and registration. With the internet being international and with no significant regulation, I'm not sure there's much that can be done about that?

IF it were as simple as making tougher gun laws, then Detriot MI and Washington DC would have the lowest murder rates in the land.... they have the highest.

I'm all in favor of laws (AND DOING SOMETHING WITH THEM) to keep guns out of those mentally irresponsible... the problem is, there are going to be failures. And it only takes one.



The REAL PROBLEM in my opinion is not people having weapons. The problem is two-fold:

1. Mental illness. It's not always easy to detect and many never even are examined until AFTER something like this happens. And (for understandable reasons and because of our American obsession with privacy) they are typically not publicly identified. And we can't institutionalize or generally restrict them so they generally can do and go where they want. Well people don't go around shooting kids (or anyone else for that matter). We need to get a better handle on mental illness in our land.

2. A culture of death. Gun laws in the USA are not a good indicator. The states with the LEAST laws (Utah for example) actually tend to have less gun violance than other states. Washington DC, Detroit MI have the strickest gun laws in the USA and the highest gun violance rates. Some conclusion might be drawn from that about gun laws..... But I think the problem has little to do with gun laws and a LOT to do with the culture. We have sub-cultures in our society which are violent. And there are some things about American culture (witness the films, the video games, even the sport of football). What's happening in places like Detroit and Washington DC and downtown LA and way too many other places has nothing to do with the law (because there is a culture that is lawless), it has to do with a culture of death, a culture that has little respect for life (even their own in some cases). Consider that while in steady decline, a goodly percentage of INNOCENT unborn children are violently murdered - right up to the time when the last toe exists the birth canal - and our society is perfectly okay with that. We will continue to raise up Americans with little to no value to life as long as that reflects our culture.



- Josiah

And probably the worst of those effected by mental health are undiagnosed anyway, so there is no record of it.

 

[NewCreation435]

Remember that Chicago and Washington, DC have among the most stringent gun control laws you'll find anywhere in the country--and also the most gun deaths. Obviously, those gun laws didn't curb the killings, so why would they do so in Florida?

so what do you recommend? Doing nothing?

 

[Andrew]

If bullets were priced heavily for public use (self defense situations) it would be more expensive for someone to shoot someone randomly or chaotic, and for private use (hunting game) it should be for certain hunting areas and access to bullets would be only through a state licensed or government employee and at a drastically lower costs, you can also return all bullets unused for a refund on them.
I personally don't like guns and have never owned one and the issue is always about defense or destroy, make destroy harder to reach

Sent from my LGLS755 using Tapatalk

 

[tango]

I believe in the right of gun ownership but thqta being said noone needs an AR15 to shoot bambi, there needs to be common sense laws in place to help keep these things from happening. First the NRA should be banned from lobbying as they are the single biggest roadblock to any meaningful legislation. When ios enough going to be enough or should we just allow everyone to have guns so we can kill each other more effectively

The trouble with "nobody needs a ..." is that it ever stops. How many people need a V8 in their pickup, yet nobody proposes banning them. Nobody needs a big house with lots of space but many people choose to have them. Nobody needs a 32oz steak but nobody is proposing banning them.

If the NRA is to be banned from lobbying then the likes of Michael Bloomberg and George Soros should also be banned. If anything it just feeds into the libertarian approach that government should be very small, to remove the benefit from lobbying in the first place.

Sadly much of the whining is based on such obvious fiction it's almost laughable. I saw one "discussion" where people were wondering why anyone could justify owning a gun that could fire hundreds of rounds per minute. Er.... what? Nothing the average person can legally own fires hundreds of rounds a minute. Even a fully automatic rifle doesn't fire that many rounds per minute. If you've got something like a gattling gun you could but these people are talking about an AR-15 with a bump stock. I've fired a fully automatic rifle and reckon that, assuming you didn't run out of ammo and have to reload it, you might get 80-90 rounds per minute, assuming it didn't overheat and jam first. Your average semi-automatic handgun might fire a round every second or so if you're good, or if you're not too worried about aiming it. Then after probably 15-20 rounds you need to reload.

It's easy to ask things like "when do we say enough is enough?" but we might ask the same question of deaths on our roads. When do we say enough is enough and ban the motor vehicle? Deaths on the road are comparable to deaths from firearms, the key difference is that deaths from firearms include justified homicide whereas deaths on the roads have no such concept.

A lot of people like to comment about "assault rifles" but the people who want to ban them can't even define them. Unless you can objectively define what differentiates an "assault rifle" from a regular rifle you can't ban one without banning the other, unless you want to get into really silly situations like the law in Pennsylvania that prohibits daggers but doesn't define what a dagger actually is.

I know some will claim I'm just being a mouthpiece for the NRA here but it is curious to note that when a shooting happens in a gun free zone the left claims the answer is more gun free zones. When someone has already demonstrated a total disregard for the law against taking a gun into a school, and a total disregard for the law against killing people, it's hard to see what extra laws would actually stop them. When someone doesn't care about the law the thing most likely to stop them is the credible threat of being stopped by someone else, most likely someone else with a gun.

In many ways the issue of guns is an issue of equality. In London when some terrorists drove a van onto the sidewalk and ran over a load of people, then jumped out with knives, the official advice for such situations was "run, hide, tell". In other words, run away, hide somewhere, and tell someone. Someone clearly means the police, assuming they have the manpower to respond. If you're slow on your feet, mobility impaired etc, too bad. No running for you, you're at the mercy of the bad guys and there's nothing you can do. In an area where people are more routinely armed the advice might be "drop, draw, fire". If you're mobility impaired, not a problem, you can still fight back when you have a gun on hand. If you're desperately trying to find somewhere to reach to get away from the madness but everywhere is locked, you've got a sporting chance. If you're a young girl fighting a 280-pound man with a knife, you've got a sporting chance. If you're an 87-year-old man dealing with a young thug with a knife, you've got a sporting chance. Take away the guns and you simply leave the weak at the mercy of the strong.

 

[tango]

If bullets were priced heavily for public use (self defense situations) it would be more expensive for someone to shoot someone randomly or chaotic, and for private use (hunting game) it should be for certain hunting areas and access to bullets would be only through a state licensed or government employee and at a drastically lower costs, you can also return all bullets unused for a refund on them.
I personally don't like guns and have never owned one and the issue is always about defense or destroy, make destroy harder to reach

Sent from my LGLS755 using Tapatalk

The trouble is that for a gun to be effective as a defensive tool you need to practise with it every once in a while. It's not much good to have a gun with 10 bullets because they are so expensive, so you never train, so when you do need it to defend yourself you find you're so out of practice you couldn't hit a barn from the inside.

 

[Andrew]

The trouble is that for a gun to be effective as a defensive tool you need to practise with it every once in a while. It's not much good to have a gun with 10 bullets because they are so expensive, so you never train, so when you do need it to defend yourself you find you're so out of practice you couldn't hit a barn from the inside.

Practice? To shoot another person? Use blanks or a pellet gun to practise, on a doll.
Its almost impossible for ideas like such to get past legislation. The people are always sold short but again, i will never handle a gun nor have I tried or practised firing one, so my say is not even considered anyway.

Sent from my LGLS755 using Tapatalk

 

[tango]

Practice? To shoot another person? Use blanks or a pellet gun to practise, on a doll.
Its almost impossible for ideas like such to get past legislation. The people are always sold short but again, i will never handle a gun nor have I tried or practised firing one, so my say is not even considered anyway.

Sent from my LGLS755 using Tapatalk

To practise with a firearm you need to use the firearm in question. An AR-15 handles very differently to a pellet gun. You don't need to shoot people to practise, but you do need to fire at an actual target.

Firing with live bullets results in a much higher degree of recoil, it makes a lot more noise, you may get flashes of light from the muzzle - all things that you don't get with a pellet gun.

I don't have a problem with sensible legislation, but much of the proposed legislation is anything but sensible. The gun crime rate in areas where guns are banned is pretty solid evidence of that, if nothing else.

 

[Josiah]

The REAL PROBLEM in my opinion is not people having weapons. The problem is two-fold:

1. Mental illness. It's not always easy to detect and many never even are examined until AFTER something like this happens. And (for understandable reasons and because of our American obsession with privacy) they are typically not publicly identified. And we can't institutionalize or generally restrict them so they generally can do and go where they want. Well people don't go around shooting kids (or anyone else for that matter). We need to get a better handle on mental illness in our land.

2. A culture of death. Gun laws in the USA are not a good indicator. The states with the LEAST laws (Utah for example) actually tend to have less gun violance than other states. Washington DC, Detroit MI have the strickest gun laws in the USA and the highest gun violance rates. Some conclusion might be drawn from that about gun laws..... But I think the problem has little to do with gun laws and a LOT to do with the culture. We have sub-cultures in our society which are violent. And there are some things about American culture (witness the films, the video games, even the sport of football). What's happening in places like Detroit and Washington DC and downtown LA and way too many other places has nothing to do with the law (because there is a culture that is lawless), it has to do with a culture of death, a culture that has little respect for life (even their own in some cases). Consider that while in steady decline, a goodly percentage of INNOCENT unborn children are violently murdered - right up to the time when the last toe exists the birth canal - and our society is perfectly okay with that. We will continue to raise up Americans with little to no value to life as long as that reflects our culture.



.

https://www.care-net.org/abundant-l...eating-human-flesh-during-pro-choice-telethon


I think here is a MAJOR part of this issue no one wants to admit.....

We have a whole culture of death, where human life (especially of the weak and defenseless) is not only minimized but even made fun of. It's legal for a 12-year-old (sane or otherwise) to kill an unborn child, no one protests, no one says she should be at least 21, no one says she should be mentally sane, no one says she should be educated or licensed, it's all defend and yes the whole thing LAUGHED at.... but if she wants a gun to protect a life, well there is all kinds of demands that she be at least 21, be mentally sane, be trained, be registered and licenced, etc., etc., etc. People are horrified when 17 school children are killed (as they should be) and defend and laugh over 50 MILLION babies being killed... We make FUN of that, comedians make comedy skits about it, Mark Hamel goes around with a light saver to kill babies and people laugh their heads off.

There's something SICK in our post-modern world..... and it means innocent people are being killed.



.

 

[tango]

Another aspect is that people are very prone to look at everything bad about the things they happen to dislike. 17 people get killed by guns and the uproar starts about why guns are bad, why they should be restricted if not banned and confiscated, and so on. How many people die on the roads? How many other people suffer health issues from exhaust emissions? Where is the uproar about banning motor vehicles? The people who like to bleat "if it saves just one life it's worth it" obviously don't truly believe it, or they'd have cars in their sights as well as guns.

Looking at the depressingly predictable whines from the different political outlooks:

"The solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" is oversimplified, not least because it would be better if the bad guy didn't have a gun in the first place. But expanding on the meme it makes a lot of sense - if the bad guy has a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver, a brick, or even just good old fashioned fists and feet - the solution is a good guy who is able to stop him. Even the most extreme proponents of gun bans would have to agree, simply because their solution would be to call the police (in other words, a good guy who is able to stop the bad guy).

The people proposing ever more legislation have more questions to answer. Since the shooter already ignored the law that bans taking firearms into a school and already ignored the law that bans killing people, just what law do people propose that would actually be effective against someone who clearly doesn't care about breaking the law?

Taking this line further, let's assume it were an option to confiscate all handguns, and let's assume that every criminal stood in line to turn in their guns, and let's assume that Mexican cartels were prevented from smuggling any more guns and so on. So now we've got a country with no guns except in the hands of the police and the military. What happens now? The same process that currently leads someone to run amok in a school with rifles and handguns isn't going to go away, it's just more likely they'll run amok in a school with a meat cleaver or some such. Are we really in a better place with some goon running around an elementary school swinging a meat cleaver? Is the body count going to be significantly reduced? Perhaps they won't kill as many, perhaps they will, but is it really a success story when the guy who might have killed 23 children with a gun "only" kills 18 with a meat cleaver and inflicts lifelong injuries on others? And if it isn't a meat cleaver it will be a Bowie knife, or a sword, or a bag of home made pipe bombs, or whatever else the goon of the day figures he can use for maximum impact.

 

[psalms 91]

Another aspect is that people are very prone to look at everything bad about the things they happen to dislike. 17 people get killed by guns and the uproar starts about why guns are bad, why they should be restricted if not banned and confiscated, and so on. How many people die on the roads? How many other people suffer health issues from exhaust emissions? Where is the uproar about banning motor vehicles? The people who like to bleat "if it saves just one life it's worth it" obviously don't truly believe it, or they'd have cars in their sights as well as guns.

Looking at the depressingly predictable whines from the different political outlooks:

"The solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" is oversimplified, not least because it would be better if the bad guy didn't have a gun in the first place. But expanding on the meme it makes a lot of sense - if the bad guy has a gun, a knife, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver, a brick, or even just good old fashioned fists and feet - the solution is a good guy who is able to stop him. Even the most extreme proponents of gun bans would have to agree, simply because their solution would be to call the police (in other words, a good guy who is able to stop the bad guy).

The people proposing ever more legislation have more questions to answer. Since the shooter already ignored the law that bans taking firearms into a school and already ignored the law that bans killing people, just what law do people propose that would actually be effective against someone who clearly doesn't care about breaking the law?

Taking this line further, let's assume it were an option to confiscate all handguns, and let's assume that every criminal stood in line to turn in their guns, and let's assume that Mexican cartels were prevented from smuggling any more guns and so on. So now we've got a country with no guns except in the hands of the police and the military. What happens now? The same process that currently leads someone to run amok in a school with rifles and handguns isn't going to go away, it's just more likely they'll run amok in a school with a meat cleaver or some such. Are we really in a better place with some goon running around an elementary school swinging a meat cleaver? Is the body count going to be significantly reduced? Perhaps they won't kill as many, perhaps they will, but is it really a success story when the guy who might have killed 23 children with a gun "only" kills 18 with a meat cleaver and inflicts lifelong injuries on others? And if it isn't a meat cleaver it will be a Bowie knife, or a sword, or a bag of home made pipe bombs, or whatever else the goon of the day figures he can use for maximum impact.

The one that controls what they can buy and who can buy it. More closely monitor the sale of guns, up the penelties for possessing and illegal gun and for those selling them. As for the rest of it I have read it over and over in articles by the NRA, all a part of their effort to do away with any gun laws. And I dont hate guns, I have owned them and I respect them. They are useful and I dont object to reasonable ownership, I do object to weapons that can kill multiple people in such a short amount of time.