Long post below but anyone who cares at all about their right to keep and bear arms and about the 2nd Amendment that gives constitutional protection to that right will take the time to really read it, to understand it, and adopt the principles and ideas in it:
That the immediate issue is gun violence is an anti-gun, leftist, lie. They focus on the gun and ignore the violence. Gullible, weak, gun owners follow along.
It is no different than focusing on the suicide by guns as a gun issue rather than a suicide issue. If they outlaw all guns and manage to get most of them off the streets, even from criminals - and, over time, they would succeed by attrition, then the mentally ill just switch to poisons, tall buildings, freeway over passes, head-ons with semi-trucks, or any of a hundred other ways to kill themselves. See Japan as proof.
If all legal gun owners turned in their guns, and as guns get taken from criminals, even when the criminal is let back on the street, eventually the supply dries up and even the criminals don't have guns. Sure, there will always be exceptions; the deeply protected/hidden ones, newly smuggled ones, etc., but gun crime will drop. Crime, on the other hand, won't drop by much. And the no-bail release of violent criminals works in the favor of the gun confiscators. Stupid criminals get caught with guns and the gun is confiscated. Put them back out on the street so they can get caught with another gun and another gun is confiscated. If you want to catch fish, you have to keep baiting your hook and putting it in the water.
In some months, London has had more knife killings as NYC had gun killings. Generally, though, the UK's crime has gone down.
So, overtime, you and the leftists are right; if we confiscate the guns, incrementally, of course, eventually gun crime goes down and crime goes down and even the criminals won't have guns. So if you agree with them that the problem is gun crime and the first goal is to stop gun crime, then confiscate the guns. On the other hand, if the problem is crime, rather than gun crime, the solutions and approach are different.
To stop crime, we disincentivize it. We do that by first defunding the cartels and US drug gangs by letting stupid people do stupid shit. Buy whatever drug you want. But it would actually be safer if they could buy it over the counter from a pharmacy rather than from a cartel and China.
Next, for those still inclined to crime, just because they're scum instead of for the big drug profits, put criminals in jail for a long time. Three-strikes-you're-out laws in every state. Armed robbery, regardless of the arm, 10 years first offense, 20 years the second. Rape - life in prison. Child rape - death. Assault - 5 years.
TV for an hour a day - 30 minutes of local news, 30 minutes of national news. Food - bologna sandwiches for lunch and dinner. Oatmeal for breakfast. No dessert. No exercise yard and no weight lifting and no basketball. Work off their debt to society.
Guns don't cause crime; criminals do. Guns don't kill people; people do.
If you give an inch, accepting that guns cause crime and if you allow them to violate the Constitution by going after the gun then you can kiss your guns good-bye. It's inevitable.
Remember that the gun controllers come to the table with nothing at all. We come with "shall not be infringed". They come with "we'll take them all or we'll take just some". There's no negotiation or compromise that doesn't mean losing some guns. Eventually it will be all of them.
When the FFA was passed in 1938, it was the first time in the history of the United States when the Federal Government ever believed for a minute that they could get away with - not that it was constitutional but that they could get away with - restricting any free person from owning a gun. The FFA restricted access for violent felons, not felony litterers or white-collar crimes.
In 1968 extended to include all felons, including felony litterers and white-collar crimes.
In 1996, the Lautenberg Amendment added misdemeanor domestic violence AND having a restraining order. Charges of violence and court ordered restraining orders are almost an automatic part of modern divorce.
In 2022, the boyfriend loophole is closed.
All of these seem like such great ideas. Stopping violent felons from having guns. Then when that didn't stop crime, extend it to all felons - they don't deserve rights, the nasty SOBs. Who doesn't want a law to protect abused wives? Of course the law did nothing to stop them from being beaten but it added more "Prohibited persons". Whoops, what about boyfriends and girlfriends. More prohibited persons.
Read my signature. "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom." All these infringements are so necessary. Next will be the red-flag laws as states comply with Federal wishes so they can get the Federal money. More prohibited persons. That's very necessary, isn't it? We don't lock up violent crazy people; we just take their guns. They can still throw pipes at women and get away with it but the goal wasn't safety for women, the goal was adding more to the list of prohibited persons.
What about all those on no-fly lists? There have been many calls to ban them from having guns. Who wants a terrorist to have a gun? I certainly don't. It's necessary. More prohibited persons.
What about those arrested for DUI? Can't control your drugs or alcohol consumption? If you can't be trusted with a car, you certainly can't be trusted with a gun. More necessity. More prohibited persons. And not a bad idea in any of it. It all makes sense and only represents "reasonable restrictions". Surely we can all agree that reasonable restrictions aren't really infringements. Surely the Founders would have agreed with us on all these infringements... errr... I mean, all these reasonable restrictions.
If you can't see the trend and the pattern, you're blind.
If a person commits a violent crime, put them in prison for so long that they don't have the strength to do it again when they get out.
If you value your right to keep and bear arms, if you support the 2nd Amendment and enjoy the protections it offers to your right to keep and bear arms, then don't make excuses to yourself for allowing Government to infringe on the right. Stand your ground. For every problem you think a gun law will solve, there's a better solution that doesn't infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. And you can't name a single gun control law that prevented a felon from having a gun so you can't name a single gun control law that helped.
But I can name two laws that have made a difference; how do you feel about those? The NFA 1934 required licensing to buy an automatic weapon. The FOPA 1986 banned making more machine guns for civilian use. Between the two, you never see machine guns used in the streets of Chicago or Philly. They're just too expensive to buy and then undoubtedly lose since they're registered. So you almost have to agree that gun control can work. The question is, are there better laws and better ways to solve the crimes without the tyranny of gun control?
What brought the machine gun into common use by criminals? Prohibition and the black market it created. Did all the gangs turn in their machine guns when the NFA was passed? It hardly seems likely - but there are over 638,000 registered machine guns in civilian hands today.
The article below states that there are only 4 cases where a machine gun has been used in a crime since the NFA was passed.
gunmagwarehouse.com
2 of those 4 were committed by police using their duty guns, not NFA registered guns. Another was committed by a sailor in 1992 at Pearl Harbor using a military machine gun, not an NFA gun. The fourth might have actually referred to an NFA registered silencer, not a machine gun.
So these laws have been very successful.
The new machine gun ban in FOPA, though, wasn't needed since there hadn't been any, as in zero, reported machine guns used in killings from the passing of the NFA until FOPA was passed. The machine gun ban in FOPA had nothing to do with necessity or safety but it was sold as necessary, too. It was more incrementalism.
Next steps of incrementalism on NFA products might be things like banning the transfer of all NFA items. When the current owner dies, they're done. There's already talk of ending the ability for trusts to register NFA items. That would be necessary for the transfer ban to result in confiscation. More necessity. More incrementalism.
So the pattern continues: more incrementalism, more necessity, more laws that don't do a thing but sound like they do.
What you need to do, what all of us need to do, is focus on laws that would work without gun control and without surrendering the 2nd Amendment and, along with it, any constitutional restrictions at all on the Federal and State governments.
So back to the cause of the rise of the machine gun in crime: prohibition. What's the cause of most crime in the US today? Prohibition. If machine guns became readily available, cheaply available, today, who would use them most for crime? Drug gangs. Why aren't those gang members already in prison for their violent acts? Why do we continue prohibition after actually passing a constitutional amendment to end the first prohibition wholly because it was ineffective and led to violent crime? Why isn't there an amendment to end prohibition again? It leads now, just as it did then, to violent crime and is wholly ineffective in stopping drug use - in fact, it increases drug use just as the alcohol prohibition increased alcohol use.
So, what I say to you and all of the gun controlling conservatives, all who pretend to support the 2nd Amendment while actually working to make it meaningless by giving the Government permission to ignore it and infringe, use your brains. There is always a better way that doesn't include gun control. Stand your ground, and do not let the left, do not join in with the left in letting them take your guns or anyone else's guns.