http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/08/seattleking-county-announce-gun-safety-initiative-gun-buyback-and-free-trigger-locks Comments On: Seattle/King County Announce Gun Safety Initiative: Gun Buyback and Free Trigger Locks by Goldy en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Thu, 23 May 2013 14:45:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Why? Usually the cutoff on these events is when they run out of money, not when there's a shortage of guns to be turned in. They will get lot more for their money at these prices. Were I a donor, I'd want them to price it just like they did.
Posted by doceb]]> Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:29:10 -0800 The Stranger Posted by scratchmaster joe]]> Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:57:20 -0800 The Stranger
@88: I feel like you're setting up the narrative so that when legislation over-reaches the will of the people and fails, you can throw up your arms and cry "the gun lobby!" Like I said, I really do think that the current political will and popularity are both on the side of some sane gun control laws, but you're going to have to reign it in a bit if you expect to eventually get your way. You absolutely realize that what's required is a cultural shift as much as anything else, and cultural change never comes from a single piece of legislation.
Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:52:52 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Mister G]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:47:54 -0800 The Stranger "That's the thing, though; they really don't."

The problem is that you are arguing with someone who is so uninformed on the matter (even after months of being corrected in these forums) that he says that they do.
There is a limit to how much communication that can happen when one side refuses to accept basic facts.

Adding a flash suppressor to a gun does NOT make it a military gun.
Adding a flash suppressor to a gun does NOT make it more dangerous in a school/mall shooting.
Adding a flash suppressor to a gun does NOT make it more dangerous for gang violence.
And so on.
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:38:25 -0800 The Stranger
It's not going to pass. The best shot is to unseat the guys who vote against it by having them run on their vote in the midterms.

These dead enders don't cave. Obama plays nice with them and doesn't call them names, but when it comes time to pass anything you have to play hardball. They don't negotiate, so fuck them. Vote them out by demonizing them. They'll have blood on their hands for the shooting rampages that we'll see in the next two years. They'll have it coming.

The attack ads are not going to be pretty, nor should they be.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:14:49 -0800 The Stranger The reason why "gun-nuts" are outraged at the "assault-weapons" ban is because rifles, of any kind, make up about 4% of all firearms related deaths. Whereas handguns make up 50-75% of firearms related deaths. The vast majority of rifle (and "assault" rifles) are owned by law-abiding citizens, not criminals. If you really were interested in effectively saving lives you'd be looking at how to regulate cheap handguns, but you're not - you're too wrapped up in your penis issues.

I'm convinced that most "progressives" have never actually been interested in addressing gun control in any serious way, either practically or politically. How else to explain the series of bonehead maneuvering over the years, starting with essentially inviting the NRA to aggregate handguns and long guns and their owns into a single undifferentiated group, when in fact there have always been gigantic political and social differences between them?

To that, we add basic ignorance about guns, i.e., not bothering to understand that a "semiautomatic" gun is basically every gun or damn near every gun manufactured in the last 75 years or more. Okay, some shotguns no, some rifles, no. But you know what I mean.

And then we have the whole "assault weapon" deal, which is mostly a matter of cosmetics, along with basic ignorance about "large capacity magazines." It just goes on and on. Like so many issues, I'm convinced that "progressives" take positions not to accomplish anything other than stoke their sense of self-righteousness. This of course is equally true on the far right, but the "progressives" think they are so much smarter, and so much better, when in fact they're just the same as Sarah Palin and her tribal, faith-based friends.

So we just go on, saying everything and doing nothing.
Posted by Mister G]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:03:11 -0800 The Stranger
But hey, I could be wrong. I don't own any firearms that would have been restricted under the 1994 ban, so it's not as though I'll be all that affected by it, either way. That is to say, I'll be surprised, but not by any means upset, if such a bill passes. Heck, I'm sure there's more than a few "assault weapon" owners out there that are looking forward to a new assault weapons ban. Just the *prospect* of one has already doubled prices.
Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:00:20 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Lew Siffer]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:47:53 -0800 The Stranger
Demographics is killing the opposition. America's gun nuts are a shrinking pool of angry white males who like the Tea Party. Women, minorities, young people can't stand their bullshit. The strength of incumbency and House district gerrymandering are the only reason they're even part of the conversation.

Most gun owners know what assholes these flash suppressor, 30 round magazine pencil dick losers are. Most gun owners want to close the gun show loophole, and most gun owners want stricter regulation and enforcement. The numbers are even higher among all Americans.

So yeah. Name calling is good. They're fucking fucks, and they suck.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:35:49 -0800 The Stranger Posted by randoma]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:35:47 -0800 The Stranger Posted by McGee]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:34:01 -0800 The Stranger Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:03:46 -0800 The Stranger Posted by McGee]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:00:59 -0800 The Stranger
So, saying that car deaths are down due to "Regulation. Licensing. Enforcement. Mandatory safety technology." is a fallacious argument. The reality is much more that car deaths are down due to Safety Technology, period. While regulations..etc have certainly had an effect, it is much smaller than the overall effect of technological advancements in car design/safety features.

The reason why "gun-nuts" are outraged at the "assault-weapons" ban is because rifles, of any kind, make up about 4% of all firearms related deaths. Whereas handguns make up 50-75% of firearms related deaths. The vast majority of rifle (and "assault" rifles) are owned by law-abiding citizens, not criminals. If you really were interested in effectively saving lives you'd be looking at how to regulate cheap handguns, but you're not - you're too wrapped up in your penis issues.
Posted by randoma]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:47:40 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Mister G]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:29:09 -0800 The Stranger
I know you didn't ask me, but I'll answer anyway because I'm a selfish fucking asshole who only cares about myself:

Because your gun plan as you've laid it out here in the past several weeks is to start small where you can get something passed and stick a finger in the eye of a bunch of people you really dislike, disrespect and feel threatened by.

Or, worst (best?) case, watch it go down in flames, do nothing and let a bunch more murders happen for the next couple of years so that you can get a congressional majority and cram something more draconian down peoples throats before Barry O leaves town.

Step 1 is purposely useless or nearly so, so that then when it fails to work (and another bunch of criminals shoot each other, or an undefended classroom full of kids gets mowed down), you can quickly move on to successively more stringent laws/restrictions/registrations/arrests - people will already be used to "common sense steps," so the skids are greased.

In this model, any premature reductions in deaths/massacres in the meantime are bugs, not features, because they have the potential to short-circuit the big program too early, while the people you feel threatened by are still dangerous to you.

So, we gun nuts have a completely different worldview and honestly just don't want you in charge. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but our penises are too small to just stand by and have our guns confiscated, and be left with only Kid Rock, Jesus, Budweiser and maybe fart can mufflers tweaked just past the DOT limits to console our asshole selves, while the actual issues around violence are left unresolved.

PS - I'm all for buybacks or whatever the hell people want to do - raise the price high enough and I have some clunkers I'll gladly sell and you can melt to your heart's content
Posted by Boring Dad is Boring]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:25:25 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Lew Siffer]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:23:04 -0800 The Stranger Posted by McGee]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:13:01 -0800 The Stranger Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:07:35 -0800 The Stranger Posted by McGee]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:05:10 -0800 The Stranger The Assault Weapons Ban defines which weapons it bans by combining various features which, taken together, make a military weapon.

That's the thing, though; they really don't. An SKS is precisely a military weapon: it's the semi-automatic rifle that was commonly by countries that later used the AK-47. It had a fixed magazine, so it didn't fit the bill for the Assault Weapons ban, and there were tens of thousands in circulation at the time. If you want to look at more recent firearms, you get stuck with a problem: very nearly every standard-issue military rifle that came after the SKS had one thing in common. They were all select-fire, capable of firing in bursts or in fully automatic mode. If you want to pick a distinguishing feature for a "military weapon," that's the definitive one. If you want to broaden your view of what "military weapon" is to include more specialized firearms, the US Army's M24 sniper rifle is actually a Remington 700, one of the most popular bolt-action hunting rifles ever. It would fit under no definition of "assault weapon" in any ban that I know of, despite being the exact same firearm the military uses. If you want to broaden the definition beyond that to anything that cosmetically resembles a military weapon, I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve. It certainly no longer has anything to do with the potential for harm that such a device enables.

Here are two muzzle accessories. One is legal under California's "assault weapons" ban, and the other is illegal as it's a flash hider.
http://i.imgur.com/KpIli.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/910gM.jpg

Like I said, cosmetic differences on guns are as silly to try to legislate as cosmetic differences on cars (pro-gun people: PLEASE don't drag this off-topic to directly comparing cars versus guns).
Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:58:44 -0800 The Stranger
Same thing in NYC. They buy guns outside of the city. Could be California needs a border fence. Or it could be we need a national law. And years to clean up the hoarding that the run-up to the law triggers.

These inane arguments you get from your NRA list are sad. Don't you know anybody smart who could give you a good argument? Run upstairs and ask your mom.
Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:57:23 -0800 The Stranger Posted by doceb]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:30:18 -0800 The Stranger Yea they banned magazines in California and now California doesn't have gun crime anymore.

"The figures show that California had the highest number of gun murders last year - 1,790, which is 68% of all murders that year and equivalent to 3.25 per 100,000 people in the state."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/…
Posted by Cascadian Bacon]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:29:47 -0800 The Stranger