http://news.yahoo.com/baltimore-posts-worst-monthly-murder-toll-since-1972-201119960.html I commend the cops for stepping back and leaving this city to police themselves. This degenerate portion of society wants to make cops the scapegoat for their dysfunction? Okay, cool....now let's see how they do without the intervention of police. Last I heard, they were begging for cops to come back but I say fuck that....let them police themselves.
Shooting victim’s family begs de Blasio: ‘We need stop-and-frisk’ A surge in New York City murders — including four people slain in just five bloody hours as the weekend began — has grieving family members begging Mayor de Blasio to bring back the NYPD’s right to search for guns. “We need stop-and-frisk,” Stacey Calhoun, the devastated uncle of one of the four fatalities, said Saturday afternoon, tears filling his eyes over the nephew he had just lost. Jahhad Marshall — a charismatic 23-year-old with a promising future as a chef — had died of a stray bullet to his back early that morning outside the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City, police said. “Somebody has to put their foot down,” the anguished uncle said.
Does anyone know how hard it is to get a concealed carry permit in NYC? I'm just curious - if guns are so hard to own, why are there all these gun crimes? Don't the gun laws stop them?
The wrong gun laws are in force. Ban their manufacture entirely, and institute general confiscation on discovery laws, and we'd see a sharp decline as the years go by.
How would that get rid of guns already in circulation, again? The general confiscation you speak of, you believe criminals will turn in their weapons?
In time guns in circulation would be discovered, through botched crimes, or removed from circulation via "thrown in the river", etc., and there would be an overall decline of such. Lawful gun owners who do not commit crimes would keep their guns under careful control, probably like they do in Canada.
You tried this argument in the NRA Hijinks thread, and it was just as silly then as it is now. You say "Lawful Gun Owners who do not commit crimes would keep their guns under careful control", but you just called for general confiscation, so that doesn't apply. Let me repost what I did in the original response to this commentary you used before. Please feel free to debate it, because you didn't bother to do so back then. 1. All guns are made illegal. Sales are banned, a grace period buyback is instituted to return all guns to your local police department and you would get the avg. value of the weapon from the Federal Government buyback program. The number of legally owned firearms in America - by civilians is estimated at 290 million. To be ultra conservative (meaning, to take the extreme low side on value) let's assume that the avg. firearm cost is $500. That means the Federal Government's buy back program at 100% of LEGAL compliance (forget the illegal weapons, lets assume criminals don't turn in their guns because the government wants them) is $145 Billion. LOL! Riiight. And that's the low side of the equation. And then there's the cost of the program, managing it and the destruction cost of all those millions of weapons. Who knows how high this goes? Additionally, the ban on all gun sales removes $33 Billion from GDP, and approximately 200,000 employees from the workforce - and that's just the workers that work directly for manufacturers and direct gun sales. It doesn't count all the folks in the gun retail environment, shooting ranges, sportsman clubs, gun smiths, pawn shops,....whatever. But lets ignore all this and say President Ricter doesn't care about the economic impact, he wants guns off the damned street. Ok. 2. Guns are removed from the legal population. Now we've got a few million illegally owned guns out there. Crime statistics show that the vast majority of gun crimes are committed by people who have illegal firearms. So you don't really get rid of any crime. Sure, you might make a 1% dent in the overall crime rate by removing the few and far between situations where some legal gun owner goes nuts or something happens, but this would likely be countered by a LARGE increase in violent crime as criminals now know they don't have to worry about homeowners and people with guns to defend themselves. 3. As time goes on, the price of illegal weapons on the streets skyrocket. Weapons begin to be smuggled in through the border, and legal residents go out and acquire an illegal firearm to protect themselves from the criminals that have them. I know I would. I'd get a pistol and keep it safe in case I was ever attacked in my home. Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6, right? 4. People begin to be arrested for defending themselves with an illegal firearm, and subjecting normal law abiding, otherwise harmless individuals because they now own an illegal gun after you took their legal one away. Meanwhile the criminals using guns continue on their merry way, unmoved by President Ricter's ban - because if I'm a criminal and I'm going to commit murder (which might incarcerate me for life), why do I care about your silly gun law? Is that what you were hoping for? Guns will NEVER be banned. Ever. Ever ever. There will never be the political capital to pull it off, nor the money to make it happen. But even if it did, it wouldn't work out like liberals want it to.
I didn't mean by "general confiscation" the taking of guns from lawful owners, poorly written on my part, it really just overlaps with the idea of picking them up and destroying them when they're discovered at crime scenes, etc. Coupled with a ban on manufacturing and importing, the supply would necessarily fall. I'm not advocating these ideas, only pointing out that if made law, they would work. It would take time, of course. So go stroke your guns and calm yourself, everything's gonna be ok, you're safe now.
Ah, my apologies on misunderstanding what you were trying to say. So let's say we ban manufacturing guns. Lawful gun owners get to keep what they have as long as they are law abiding citizens. You're saying that violence eventually goes down because the illegal guns on the street are discovered, taken out of circulation and eventually the bad guys have no more guns to use? Did I understand your point this time?
That's basically it, though I did not say "violence" would go down. Violence might not change at all; in a highly stratified society like the US it might not change a bit. But violent criminals would, over time, have to resort to weapons with less killing leverage than guns.