Quantity

[tegyrius]

So we have some folks who want to flag any purchase of a thousand rounds of ammo as an indicator of an incipient mass shooting.

Bullshit.

Buying a thousand rounds at once means that someone found a good deal online, or that he's planning to take a shooting class (most of those I've attended have had a 500 round/day minimum), or that he trains at a high volume but doesn't own a reloading press, or that he trains at a lower volume but wants to build a backlog to get him through times of ammo shortage like the current one, or that he just got a new collectible gun in a rare caliber and wants a lifetime supply for taking it out to the range once a year. It doesn't mean he's going to go dump a thousand rounds into a mall.

(Also, from a practical perspective, carrying a thousand rounds to a gunfight is stupid unless your gun is a belt-fed support weapon and you have a few friends to help you carry the load. Even with standard-capacity AR-15 mags, you'd be waddling around with roughly 45 pounds of lead and powder.)

Since 2006, I think I've bought ammo at retail prices twice. Both times, I was at a range teaching friends or relatives to shoot and they were having so much fun they went through the several hundred rounds I'd brought to start them off. Except for a couple of small quantities of odd calibers for some of my C&R guns, all my other purchases since then have been online... and in excess of a thousand rounds each. Why? Not pure evil - pure economy. Buying a kiloround at a time at online prices, even with shipping, saves me 25 to 50 percent over retail.

Comments

So what.

[redbeard13.livejournal.com]

I have to sign in when I buy one pack of sudafed. One pack. Because, god forbid, I might be making meth with my one pack of sudafed, my 12 caplets.

12.

And you're offended that the government wants to track purchases of large quantities of something that can kill other people. That is, when you come right down to it, designed to kill other people. At least my sudafed is being grossly misused if it's being rendered down into meth. When you shoot, you're using ammo for its intended purpose.

I'm sure there are a half-dozen other things that are tracked. Large purchases of certain types of fertilizer, since Oklahoma City. I know I've had to show my ID for something else recently.

So why are you offended that they want to track bullets? If anything, they should track smaller quantities, you know, like 12.

Re: So what.

[elalyr.livejournal.com]

What gets me is the whole lack of anything resembling science or reason in this whole gun debate.

If you want to track purchases of 1000 rounds or more, okay then, I'm willing to listen. Tell me WHY. Did the Sandy Hook shooter buy a whole lot of ammo before that incident? Would tracking large purchases have stopped him or prevented that attack? How?

What I want to see is logic. I want someone to say, "I propose measure X because, had it been in effect, there would have been no Sandy Hook."

Instead, we get ideas that seem more like emotional knee-jerk reactions. There's this pressure to DO SOMETHING NOW, but I just don't see how this particular measure would do anything other than inconvenience a lot of people. Inconvenience itself is not a reason not to have a measure - I agree with redbeard on that - but if you're going to pass a law, it ought to at least do something to help the situation.

Re: So what.

[redbeard13.livejournal.com]

I propose that we repeal the 2nd amendment, as it no longer serves the purpose it was intended for. There's precedent, we've repealed other amendments when they no longer serve their purpose.

The 2nd amendment was written over 200 years ago, in a time when a professional soldier, drilling daily with his muzzle-loading musket, could hope to achieve 5 shots a minute with an effective range of 100 yards. At this time, a citizen could actually own a rifled musket, which was a superior technology to what the state-of-the-art militaries of the world were using, and at the worst, their musket, used for hunting, was comparable to the government issued weaponry of the day.

At that point in history, the US was both wary of standing armies, and concerned about future European aggression in the new nation. And with good reason, as the War of 1812 showed. So, at that time, we had a weapon that made sense for use in national defense, and that also didn't threaten internal peace. (How many cases of musket murders were recorded?)

This is simply no longer the case. The weapons that the government allows you to have are of absolutely no use in the modern world for national defense. If we are invaded, it will involve tanks, and Apaches and F16s, or at least our invader's equivalent.

To expand on this, they're also of absolutely no use in overthrowing our own government, assuming that they turn evil. They've already restricted your access to the anti-tank rockets and air-to-ground missiles that would allow you to put up any sort of meaningful resistance to the government's forces, again assuming they go bad.

This is borne out by examining how the "insurgents" in Iraq and Afghanistan have fought against the US forces. They're not doing it with small arms, they're doing it with IEDs.

As you can see, the two reasons laid out in the Second Amendment as the reasons to allow well-regulated militias to keep arms are no longer valid reasons. We're not still counting our slaves as 3/5th of a person, we can do away with historical detritus that's no longer relevant.

Now reflect on how much more deadly the weapons available to the public are today than what the Founding Fathers could even imagine. 100-round magazines on semi-automatic weapons, accurate well over 500 yards, with a rate of fire an order of magnitude (at least) greater than anything available at that time. Weapons that are of use not to defend the country, or overthrow a corrupt government, but that create a massive threat to the safety of the citizens of the country when they fall into the wrong hands, something that seems to happen too often.

There's no reason for anyone to have a military-grade assault rifle, other than that they want one. It's not a good hunting weapon, unless your approach to hunting is pray-and-spray. It's not necessary for home defense. It's a simple risk versus reward equation. The risk, one that has borne out multiple times, is that the weapon falls into the wrong hands and is used to shoot up a theater, a mall, or god forbid, a school. The reward is that you can say you have an assault rifle.

No sane person can believe this reward is worth the risk.

Re: So what.

[elalyr.livejournal.com]

I do see what you're saying, and some parts I agree with. I respect the fact that you're honest about your desire to get rid of the second amendment...I've seen way too many politicians and others dance around the subject in an attempt not to stoke controversy.

I have two concerns about that prospect, though. One is philosophical, and one is practical. Saying "everything is different now" seems dangerous to me. I think this has been stated more eloquently elsewhere, but you could easily use the same argument to revoke the right to free speech. The founding fathers never envisioned a world where anyone could get on a global network and say anything they pleased anonymously. The right to free speech gets abused and people get hurt - so is the first amendment still a good idea?

The other issue I have is more practical. I just don't think a revocation of the second amendment is at all realistic. The constitutional requirements are such that it's just not going to happen in our current political environment. Instead, the likeliest outcome is months of bickering about how many rounds of ammo is too many, or how scary the gun needs to look before we make it illegal.

I have a Facebook acquaintance who spoke to the need to create a cultural change in America before we'll succeed in reducing the prevalence of guns and gun violence. It was long and I won't repost the whole thing, but here's a portion:

"America is in dire need of a cultural change that makes room for better mental-health-care practices for all of us. If you want to stop the violence, change the person’s behaviors. Change the behaviors, and the instrument becomes insignificant. Make it easy for a person to say, “I think I need to talk to someone.” Take away the stigma of doing so. Make it easier for a neighbor to say, “Hey, you’ve seemed a bit stressed lately. How about coming over for dinner so we can talk about it?” America’s neighbors don’t really know each other any more. These types of changes are way more important than any legislation. These types of changes enfranchise people.

Look at this another way: You want to see the end of the NRA? As long as anyone suggests that anybody touches the 2nd amendment, or guns of any caliber or rate-of-fire, this gives license to the NRA and their supporters to dig in their heels. Want the NRA to be obsolete? Help create a world that is simply not interested in guns. Help the audience lose interest, and the organization will disappear. And the world will be a safer place by default."

Banning this or that is ultimately a bandage on a large problem. It's a quick fix, something that will let people feel like something got accomplished...whether or not it actually does help. A cultural change is difficult and happens gradually over time, which is why no one in our instant-gratification society wants to look at ways to make it happen.

Re: So what.

[redbeard13.livejournal.com]

Why is it that everyone thinks about free speech when talking about the 1st amendment. You know, the first amendment is what ensures your right to sue people. :) Which, in these days of spiraling health costs may also need to revision...

The courts have already put limitations on free speech, one reason is in interest of public safety. Banning assault weapons might just meet that criteria.

I agree, repealing the 2nd is not practical. But there's a lot of things that aren't practical these days. There's opposition to health benefits for veterans and 9/11 first responders, opposition to anti-rape bills, the list goes on.

And, I don't disagree, better mental health care would go a long way too. But, as is the case with all mental health victims, they need to recognize that they need help and seek it themselves (unless you're suggesting loosening restrictions on involuntary commitments.

But I disagree with your assertion that banning certain types of weapons would have little effect. Fully-automatic weapons were banned (by Reagan, a Republican, back when they were a noble party with ideals, rather than a bunch of hacks who think science is bad and facts are optional), and how many massacres are being committed with fully automatic weapons? It's a convenient half-truth that if weapons are illegal, only criminals will have them. I mean, it's logically infallible, but speaking to practicality, if weapons of any sort aren't readily available to anyone, even criminals have a hard time getting them. Note that there aren't a whole lot of crimes committed with RPGs.

I have no problem with people owning target shooting pistols, hunting rifles. I agree that restricting magazine capacity is kind of a joke, but restricting ownership to bolt-action weapons would make the sorts of crimes we're seeing in Sandy Hook, Newtown, Aurora, Milwaukee and the others.

Perhaps the cultural problem isn't just about mental health, perhaps it's about our need to own weapons capable of inflicting so much damage on our fellow human beings. If the guns weren't out there, the mentally ill (and the mentally competent criminals) would have a much higher barrier to doing what they're doing.

Re: So what.

[tegyrius]

Point of order: Reagan didn't "ban" fully automatic weapons. Ownership of those was restricted under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (along with several other classes of weapons). What Reagan did in signing the Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 was prohibit any additional automatic weapons from being added to the NFA registry - thereby imposing a de facto ban on the transfer of new automatic weapons to private citizens. This did nothing to prohibit the private ownership or purchase of those already on the registry. Legally, they occupy the exact same space as my short-barreled rifles (also restricted under the NFA). The difference between full auto and SBRs is price, which is an outgrowth of a market with increasing demand and fixed supply.