NJ Senators On Guns: "Confiscate! Confiscate! Confiscate!"

You can tell people how to drive a car, require they get training, and make get licensed. You can demand cars be safer and that roadways be properly engineered. You can outlaw certain behaviors while driving on a public road. Yet, tens of thousands of people will still manage to die in car accidents every year.

People are not perfect and they never will be. Even if you explain very carefully to people how to safely do X, and you test them to make sure they know, some of them will still find a way to do it unsafely.

You think you can improve safety vis-a-vis guns? Fine. But we're going to oppose you if it becomes any kind of burden on the vast majority of us who exercise our rights responsibly. And we'll definitely fight you if your "safety" is just code for making exercise of our rights more difficult or more expensive.

This argument is full of fail, as car fatalities are down more than 40% since the 1970 peak, in spite of a 50% population increase and close to 200% increase in annual vehicle miles. The steps you've described have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, even though we all remain free to use the tool. Let's do the same thing with guns. Let's save lives.

It doesn't have to stick with every gun user. Even if just some change their behavior, that's a win, why not try to get a few more people on board the responsibility train?

I drive safely, only speeding when conditions permit. Why should there be a speed limit just because some don't know how to operate at high speeds? It would be disingenuous for me to claim that a speed limit prevents me from effectively using my car in the intended purpose. And hey, guess what! If I want to drive 150, there are private tracks where I can do that. You can have your gun, just handle it in the way you already claim to do, and I'm fine with you. But don't fight the idea that some people aren't responsible. Don't claim that steps taken to ensure that more people understand the rules is a burden on you. Just as I have a responsibility as a driver to understand and follow the rules in order to maximize the number of people who can enjoy driving, so should gun owners be responsible to understand and follow the rules. People who haven't heard of Jeff Cooper shouldn't have guns.

Nope. Self-defense is a right. Nobody, particularly the known bully with the big stick, gets to dictate the means of self-defense of anybody else.

It really is exactly that simple.

It's not that fucking simple you tool. Some dipshit firing a gun in the air on the fourth in a crowded area isn't defending himself. He's puting lives at risk. I have a right to demand that bullets not rain down on me from above. And I don't care a damn if it's inconvenient to you to have to demonstrate you know the difference between safety and stupidity. Actually, for you, that probably would be a limiting factor.

I don't suppose there's any possibility - any possibility at all - that this tape is a fake?

I mean, it's not as if there's some sort of - oh, advanced technology - by which a voice could be dubbed from another source just to serve a particular agenda.

Nah, never happen...

You'd be the first one to demand that it's a fake. If, that is, you were honest and impartial, as you pretend to be.

In the Red Room, undoubtedly. But no doubt someone out there in the Real World has questioned its provenance.

In any case, it's good that you're all having hysterics - particularly those of you who don't live in New Jersey and upon whom this will have absolutely no impact - about legislation whose content you know nothing about.

You're more entertaining than a Warner Bros. cartoon.

You'd have to give me an example that pertains to gun. There are already lots of limits to how guns may be used.

Since I get no exemption for any "steps" you wish to take, I reserve the right to judge whether they're a burden on me or not.

And the rules are already defined and codified into law.

And it's statements like that which make me reject the possibility of compromise.

There are literally millions of shooters out there who behave safely and responsibly and would have ZERO idea who Jeff Cooper was.

Already illegal, against the rules of gun safety, and made the subject of public information messages where it's been an issue.

What more can you do than inform a person that something is dangerous and against the law? You tell 999,999 people that and they'll get it (most of them won't even have to be told). That 1 out of 1,000,000 who doesn't? What do you intend to do? How much do you think the 999,999 should put up with in your effort to head off a one-in-a-million idiot from doing something stupid?

If you say something like "Make the gun buyer sign a statement about gun safety when getting their first gun," I'd say "fine."

If you say something like "Make every gun buyer go to a three-week training course and be tested in order to be safety certified," I'd say "no chance in hell."

So gun owners are being equated with being gay? Holy shit, you guys really do have a persecution complex.


It's a completely stupid analogy, with one exception: both groups are prone to dramatics.

I'm looking for something in between, like a written exam to obtain an authorization to buy. The authorization could be good for a set period of time, open for some decent quantity of purchases.

Actually only 39% did in 2010 and Gun ownership hasn't been above 50% since 1959.

http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/owns-guns-america.html

Then do not fucking attempt to treat me like one of them by default.

I'm confused. Do you think I am using the term "some people," as an explicit description of ? Because I'm not. Perhaps you think testing is an accusation, but you'd be wrong there. It's a way to make sure you get to buy your gun without prejudice. Drop the angst.

Only when a person commits a crime of sufficient violence as to justify denying them access to firearms have they failed a "test" I'll recognize as sufficient and valid. And I'll have the penalty for that failure be permanent incarceration before I'll be a party to some futile and misguided effort to build a society where we can let people like Adam Lanza walk free without fearing they'll find a way to hurt someone. You can abandon this fantasy and begin work on the logistics of locking such individuals away at the earliest presentation of violence, or you can complain and piss in the wind.

Either way, I'll not tolerate the most miniscule, incremental erosion of my freedom or intrusion into my privacy until I am guilty of something. Not as an impotent, feel-good response to another man's deeds, and not out of any irrational fear of what I might do. There will be no explaining, no justifying any hobby or item of personal property, and there will be no selling me on the notion that I should place my trust in government entities with a proven history of duplicitous behavior and trampling of individual rights. That is to say, any of the rotten cocksuckers.

Aw, that's nice. So tell me, when was the last time you entertained anybody?

Difficult to be precise. Maybe someday ISBNs will be embedded with an app that notifies the author at point of sale. For now I have to rely on royalty statements and fan mail.


ETA: Any update on the "news" story? Anyone able to identify the alleged speaker? Anyone have access to the actual wording of the legislation, or is this just another case of gun-lubber ?

I'd never heard of Jeff Cooper until JCD started posting here on Wrodforge. But I was taught gun safety by my father and when I took an NRA safety course as a kid.

Doesn't need to be his name, I used it as shorthand for the gun safety principles he espoused.

Hey, garamet? Unless you're joining Black Dove in believing in EVP, it was a Democrat politician who said it. But while you're on the paranormal bandwagon just long enough to pretend that what's on tape wasn't said, find a way to go back in time and muzzle the stupid cunts who said that shit.

I suggest that you tolerate quite a lot of that already. And you haven't started shooting back yet.

Yes, there is an abject lack of pragamtism in opposing regulation that simply codifies what you already think is good practice. Just in case...

Is that a Blomberg quote?

Cool. You must like his Cooper Color Code:

Gun grabbers make me go to orange.

Here's the problem that people like Gul ignore or pretend doesn't exist.

You guys don't want us to "handle it in the way you already claim to do" and instead want to put all sorts of rules instead of "handle it in the way you already claim to do" which leads to large amounts of restrictions with the goal being to make "having your gun" so complicated and expensive that most will just give up dealing with it. Most also want straight up bans of guns.

No one who owns a gun believes any leftist who says, "You can have your gun, just handle it in the way you already claim to do, and I'm fine with you" because history has shown repeatedly that leftists want to go way beyond that simple statement.

Si. Either they're new to the debate, or haven't been paying attention to the debate for the last 30-or-so years, so they think we'll fall for the smoke screens we've been hearing for decades. I've been shooting since about 1978, and thus listening to the anti-gun rhetoric since then.

Howsabout this: I'm not hurting anyone; I don't plan on hurting anyone. I enjoy shooting recreationally, and I want to keep protection against criminals. Whatever crimes or atrocities are committed with firearms by other people, it's not my fault; I didn't do it. Therefore, no one has any reason to restrict, ban, or confiscate my personal property. That about sums up my position.

I don't want you to handle your gun in the way you claim to.
That's boring.
Start raising some hell.
Get on the news.
Entertain me, goddammit.

No going to do it. Not going to entertain you at this time. It wouldn't be prudent.

So on your planet only ghosts can dub an extra voice into a tape. How do you feel about Photoshop? Aliens? You lost your credibility with the inapt modifier, anyway.