#51
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As for background checks: The NICS here in the States is largely uncontroversial; I'm certainly not about to go out and protest to end NICS myself. It has been a fact of life for American gun owners for 30 years now, and only the most radical of gun rights activists want to end it. What is still controversial: Where NICS should be required for all sales, FFL and private (i.e., universal background checks). It is through private transfers that most guns move from legal U.S. gun owners to criminals in our inner cities (and yours up in Canada). I have to admit that I'm of the mindset that, with a few exceptions, I wouldn't terribly oppose it becoming universal. We had universal background checks in VA before I left, and I didn't have a huge problem with it. I do, however, hate that I had to pay FFL fees to get it done - one thing that MD has that I like is that we can do pistol transfers at some Maryland State Police barracks (which is free). If there were to be universal background checks in the U.S., I would want the government to offer similar services. Quote:
And now that Canada has cracked down on owners of what you call Restricted firearms - tactical rifles and handguns - with the former now mostly banned and the latter going down the same path - I think that gun owners in America have good reason to be fearful of the consequences of registration. Canada unfortunately also illustrates that it only takes one zealous idealogue in the highest office to evaporate gun rights overnight. (Side note: I do sincerely hope Trudeau is gone by this time next year.) Quote:
That being said, I've never been one to advocate for "shall issue" or constitutional carry, let alone open carry. I don't have a problem with the notion of the State rendering the militia effective by providing and ensuring training for those who seek to bear arms outside of their homes. I acknowledge that carrying weapons in the public sphere brings a whole other level of responsibility compared to using them to defend one's home. I get annoyed at people who open carry for the same reason that I get annoyed at people who put NRA or GOA bumper stickers on their vehicles: It makes them into walking targets. I go to great lengths to be discrete about my gun ownership; even though my weapons are in a safe, I don’t want my neighbors or potential criminals to know I have them. Quote:
And I've always found Canada's laws on tactical rifles (or MSRs) to be equally strange - ironically, similar to my own state's, where we can own some types of tactical rifles, but not others (e.g., we're banned from buying FN FALs and FNCs, but not newer FN rifles like the FS2000 or SCAR). We probably wouldn't have the need for firearms transfers across states lines to be handled by FFLs if we had your licensing requirements, but IMHO, I don't have a huge problem with the fact that this is how it's done in the U.S. I would also not mind being able to ship guns across the country without paying an FFL, but again, that would only be if we had licensing laws for firearms and ammunition here in the States.
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Cry "Havoc," and let slip the hogs of war. Last edited by MT2008; 05-13-2024 at 09:04 PM. |
#52
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The problem I have, though, is that the opposite also often appears true: Being a gun control supporter nowadays often seems to come pre-packaged with a set of unrelated ultra-liberal social and political views that scare me just as much as the beliefs of some pro-2A folks. I find it very scary that many young leftists in Generation Z regard freedom of speech as a bad thing, and believe that censoring views which offend them is appropriate and justified (and if you don't believe me, look at some of the polls that have been taken on this topic). Many regard anything and everything about America's history as evil, corrupt, and racist, and think that we need a Maoist-style Cultural Revolution to wipe out everything and start again. Since 2020, the left has also promoted tribalism and anti-white racism, as we've seen most recently in the Gaza War. The leftists who support gun control act as if they're objectively weighing the costs and benefits of gun ownership to society, but they never seem to apply that same mindset to their own causes. It's hard for me not to be skeptical of those sorts of people, especially given that they reflexively seem to despise anyone who meets my profile (white and male). Quote:
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I suspect that one difference in our opinions is that you're a British firearms officer, and for the most part, the U.K. trusts its police forces with firearms only a little more than it trusts civilians with them (except in places like Northern Ireland which have had problems with sectarian and paramilitary violence). As you know well, only specialized units like MO19/SCO19/SO19/CO19 are issued any type of firearms for their normal job duties, and training standards are extremely rigorous for those officers who do carry. Whereas in the U.S., every police officer gets at least a Glock or Smith & Wesson M&P on their hip, and many have access to shotguns and AR-15s through their departments. Unfortunately, as Excalibur noted, there is also a much greater problem in the United States with police officers demonstrating negligence and/or incompetence in the use of firearms, because qualification standards are pretty low (there are many officers who never fire their weapons except during annual qualification). In a country like the U.S. where a third of the population is armed, it's not uncommon to find civilians who shoot more and are far better equipped to defend themselves than any police officer. Maybe that says a lot about how we need to hold our LEOs to higher standards; certainly, as much as I don't disagree with the "Defund the Police" movement that emerged in the early-2020s, I think they're at least right that LEOs have brought in far too many officers who are under-qualified and not held accountable enough in the use of their duty weapons. But as you can imagine, many gun owners are going to find it easier to trust themselves than police. For my part: I'm not a particularly great shot, but after 25+ years of experience with firearms, I know my strengths (speed) and limitations (mostly: my awful eye sight), which guns I can handle well, and (more importantly) how quickly I can make them ready for defending myself and my family. Whereas I have dealt with plenty of local cops who didn't strike me as particularly competent at anything, including shooting. Unlike some here, I will say that it is indeed reasonable to expect that security forces have access to weapons that civilians don't. But drawing that line at almost any type of small arms doesn't make much sense to me, as opposed to drawing the line at weapons that require military units and significant infrastructure in order to be effectively used, and which require heightened levels of security to guarantee that they don't fall into the hands of nefarious actors (e.g., nuclear weapons). I accept that a monopoly on force is one of the defining characteristics of a governing entity in any sovereign state, but it's also true that in a free society, the state delegates at least some of its security to individuals. A state that can prevent any acts of violence from being inflicted upon every individual in its population is also just as capable of taking away any of their freedoms, after all.
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Cry "Havoc," and let slip the hogs of war. Last edited by MT2008; 08-30-2024 at 06:39 PM. |
#53
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One thing that I will say in closing: I struggle at times with the thought that not all societies or all peoples deserve the right to bear arms, or indeed, to live in a free society. To cite the obvious example that Nyles mentioned earlier: Afghanistan is a very good example of a country that, frankly, is incapable of achieving a cohesive nation-state, let alone a free society (and I do not regard a failed state as synonymous with a "free" society). Individual Afghans might be worthy of such freedoms, but collectively, Afghans have demonstrated that they are not committed to the principles that are required to live in a free and open society - they value tribalism and theocracy over individual liberty and human rights. A society like that doesn't benefit from having an armed population - on the contrary, firearms only become a tool to enforce tyranny at the individual and societal level. So, I don't agree with the mentality in America's 2A community that an "armed society is a polite society" - or even a free one as we conceptualize it. In order for the right to bear arms to serve as a means to preserve a free society, a population must have a shared commitment to the values of a liberal democratic republic - without that, there's no free society to defend. Even then, the right to bear arms must be seen as a means of last resort to preserve that society.
What keeps me up at night is that I'm no longer so sure that a sizeable plurality of Americans on either the left or right are committed to the values on which this country was founded, and I think that an argument could be made that if we slide too far into radicalism, we are no longer deserving of a right to bear arms because we're no longer committed to the general concept of a free society. Sadly, I think that our federal government now feels the same way, which is why it sees its role as protecting Americans from themselves and is thus more willing to infringe on the 2nd Amendment. I don't exactly support this (quite the contrary), but I have some empathy for the notion that in a democracy, we get the government we deserve.
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Cry "Havoc," and let slip the hogs of war. Last edited by MT2008; 07-30-2024 at 02:35 PM. |
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