Serious Dialogue. Why are you against.....

The vast majority of folks in Baltimore city carrying firearms are breaking the state's concealed carry laws. There, I said it. The city leadership knows it, too. That's why they are against Hogan's latest attempt to crack down on first time gun offenders. I am too. It perpetuates the concept of illegal carry and illegal guns.

There are parts of the city where you are a moron if you travel through without a weapon. For most folks, the weapon is their car. It is a 4,000 lb 200 HP bludgeoning device. A safe and formidable weapon. For folks on foot, it is their friend in their pocket. Never spoken of, just understood that it is, or could be there.

Folks go about their normal business, go to work, hangout in restaurants and bars and nothing comes of it. We hear about a car wash shooting. Terrorism? Nah, 2 days later it is reported that it happened at 3 am and involved a domestic dispute where drugs may have been involved. Too late. The city council has already flown their "get guns off the street" banners and told the police to start shaking down "the usual suspects".

The real question is, "Why would citizens ever obey a law that makes it illegal to carry a weapon?"

We don't need to speculate about Campus Carry , we already know .

AR , CO , Ga , ID ,Kan , Ore , Tx , UT , and Wisc allow Campus Carry . They don't have blood running through the class rooms , dorms , and greeks . And that roll call of states includes plenty of schools with party cultures .

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And as to the " OMG , I saw a yahoo be stupid at a range ! " , I always counter with real world statistics . Safety is generally good , and even rare things would ideally be reduced even further .

But members of the public struck by either AD , or targeted in error are very rare. Struck by lightning while holding winning lottery ticket rare . Substantially rarer than such incidents by LE . ( No , that is not a good comparison , and is decidedly an apples vs mangos thing . But people will compare .)

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ToolAA said:

The thing I hear the most is that what they see as military weapons are simply not necessary in “a modern civil society”. Most express no issue with hunting, sporting clays ...

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Right. Ask them if shotguns should be banned. They will likely say "of course not". Then tell them that more people are murdered by shotgun annually than they are by rifle. Why do they want to ban something simply because of it's cosmetic appearance? There is no logic in their reasoning.

While it may be deduced I am in agreement with the above sign , Tim the OP started this thread on purpose for those favoring certain specific restrictions to freely discuss their reasoning thereof . So far this thread hasn't gone off the rails like that other notorious thread.

I've been around , and talked with enough people , I KNOW there are a couple more ideas out there frequently brought forth by generally pro-gun people , and even seem potentially worthwhile at a quick glance .

I"m not Tim , but for myself, I invite those I know are out there , to give a shot at presenting . ( I could provide an accurate outlining of the consensus points brought up , but please , the floor is open for the adherents .)

j_h_smith said:

The 1930's is where it all started. The National Firearms Act and the Federal Firearms Act started all this mess. Then US vs Miller I believe enforced those laws without a fight. The poor guy (really, he was poor) didn't fight what could easily have been a win against the anti gun movement.

I don't agree with your training. How many rural or city folks will have access to a community college or a local range? If the firearm wasn't taken out of the family equation, the kids would be taught by their father. Just like was done for decades. Again, take away the gun control of the 1930's and many of the gun control problems of today, would go away.

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Ok, 1930 works for me. The training is for those who now would like own a gun, but have never been taught.

Brychan said:

Ok, 1930 works for me. The training is for those who now would like own a gun, but have never been taught.

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So, you're willing to mandate a condition to gun ownership? Setting conditions to the 2nd Amendment is how we got to where we are today.

It should be up to the individual to seek out the training if they think they need it. But to mandate training is wrong.

j_h_smith said:

So, you're willing to mandate a condition to gun ownership? Setting conditions to the 2nd Amendment is how we got to where we are today.

It should be up to the individual to seek out the training if they think they need it. But to mandate training is wrong.

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Nope, if you look at my original post I said no mandatory training, but inexpensive training would be nice, for those who seek it. Also, I would be very happy if my membership and donations to the nra or similar group would be freed up from the need of law suites to fight crap laws and instead be used for firearm safety education in schools.

A lot of people are filled with smug arrogance, they KNOW they can do something like carry a gun with no issues. But they're not quite sure about you and I. For some reason Maryland seems to have more than their fair share of these people.

The anti comments thus far don't shock me at all. There are many here on MDS that are our enemy.

I certain that they don't get banned because the Admins know they would just rejoin under a different name and I.P.

Brychan said:

Ok, 1930 1920 works for me.

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Fixed.

I want to be able to buy a Tommy gun mail order. Only partly kidding.

Freedom can be dangerous.

Have a few people like that in my and my wife's family. In simple terms, they are type-A personalities (hyper, impulsive, irresponsible). They tend to overreact, sometimes to an extreme, and therefore don't trust themselves with a gun. They overlay that concern/fear onto every other human being, as if everyone else thinks and reacts like they do.

eruby said:

Fixed.

I want to be able to buy a Tommy gun mail order. Only partly kidding.

Freedom can be dangerous.

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Only partly?

Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.
https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/i-prefer-dangerous-freedom-over-peaceful-slavery-quotation

There seems to be a general aversion to the idea of mandatory training to be able to carry a firearm, and I understand that - after all, the Amendment says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It doesn't say, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms after they have gone through training, shall not be infringed."

Before I continue, I want to preface that my next comments are not me saying that I think mandatory training should be required. Let me explain.

I think we need to look back at the context of the times when the Amendment was penned. At the time, cities were not the over-populated metropolitan areas they are now - they were smaller, and there were still many people living in the country, or in small towns and settlements. Shooting a gun was part of life back then, and if you were going to help the family put dinner on the table, training with a firearm was just part of life, and it started at a young age.

Culturally back then, we were more similar than different across the original states that comprised the United States - we were a country based in agriculture so day to day life of someone living anywhere in New York was going to be pretty similar to the people living in South Carolina or Georgia, aside from the climate.

I grew up with guns in Nebraska where guns are a normal part of the culture all across the state, to include the cities, but in other places, that's not the case. I started learning to shoot, and learning the ins and outs of gun safety, when I was just a little kid - maybe 3 or 4 years old, and they have been a part of my whole life. "Training" isn't something I really need in order to be responsible and safe with my guns because in some ways, I've been training for years already. It is so heavily ingrained that I cringe when I see bad muzzle or trigger safety on TV shows and movies.

But with that in mind for our current times, that's isn't the case for everyone. What about that 23 year old Johnny who all of a sudden decides he wants to go buy a pistol - "gotta get me a Glock fo'ty" - because he thinks it would be cool? Provided that he is not a prohibited person, it's his right purchase it if he wants, regardless of whether he knows anything about gun safety or not. (Depending on the state, of course.)

Guns need to be regarded with great respect and responsibility, but it's no longer a normal part of the nation's culture to teach kids to handle and shoot guns at a young age, and I think that therein lies the rub. Should training be mandated for something that's an enumerated right? The letter of the law says not, but common sense tells us that some kind of training needs to come from somewhere, so if it isn't mandated, and the young idiot with his brand new Glock doesn't take the initiative on his own, then we have a very real potential safety issue when young Johnny wants to proudly show off his new pistol to his buddies and girlfriend.

Is there a viable middle ground or compromise that can be enacted which helps to promote good firearms safety and responsibility that doesn't open the door for further bastardization or erosion of that Constitutional right? Not really. At present, I think the best course of action that would help to preserve our rights would be to take the good with the bad, because otherwise we open the door to unconstitutional restrictions.

Ideally, IMO, I've always believed that education is the key - teach kids about guns and gun safety from a young age. It would demystify them, and it would promote some general safety where guns are concerned for when they grow to become adults. Unfortunately, we've become a nation of snowflakes and pansies, and guns are regarded by many as dangerous evil things that should be done away with.

I like this topic, but unfortunately I can't do a good job of playing devil's advocate because so many of the arguments for stricter gun control are based on emotion (don't you care about the dead children in Sandy Hook!?), ignorance (dumb assumptions like rifles with wooden stocks looking less scary than black rifles despite being equally as dangerous; or the assumption that limiting magazine size will somehow reduce gun deaths), or just a complete unwillingness to take their arguments to their logical conclusions (if you want to ban guns or certain types of guns, you have to find them and confiscate them. good luck with that).

Another tactic the other side will take is comparing the US to Australia or England or other places where handgun bans were enacted. Even if we believe the statistics and accept the premise that fewer guns would lead to less violence (which I don't necessarily accept), they are still stuck with the fact that there are an estimated 300 million guns in the US, and many people are not going to give them up quietly.

Sorry I couldn't provide a more robust argument in favor of the other side!

My take on 2A has always been based on the reasons the founding fathers put it in the BoR in the first place. Coming from a society that removed weapons from the peasants for hundreds of previous years it made any kind of rebellion against unjust government nearly impossible (unless some leaders at the top actually participated). They did not want to continue that policy is a new society that was based on individual freedom (or at least their WASP version of it at the time). And actually the idea was that any citizen should be able to own the same weapons at the military in case it came to a confrontation between a bad government and the citizenry. Little did they know what military weaponry would become in another 150 years. But the point was that to end a bad government you needed the same weapons as a standing or mercenary army (the rage in those days when you could not raise one from your own people). Goes back to the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, you never recruited new soldiers from the area a legion served in, that way they had no compunction about wiping out any rebellion because they contained no friends or relatives. So technically the original intent of the founding fathers was maintained until the NFA limited ownership of real "military weapons" not ones that just looked like them. Nor did the framers of the Constitution ever believe in the development of groups like the Mafia, right-wing para-military groups, communism, fascism, or any other group of troublemakers (they had some of their own already). So technically our rights as citizens have been eroding for quite awhile.
I can see why many ordinary people don't believe in private ownership of "military type weapons". However if the SHTF for real they are going to wish they had. Sheep generally like to be surrounded by other sheep because it gives them a false sense of security. They don't even interact much with the sheepdog who protects them. But let them get a scent of wolf and they start screaming for their protector like he should be right there instantly.

montoya32 said:

....or deeply concerned with allowing Marylanders to own and carry firearms?

It's no secret that this forum is home to some members who do not see the Second Amendment as others do.

I am honestly interested in hearing some explanations as to why you developed this perspective. What information has led you to this mindset and how do you see the level of crime attributed to firearm laws, or the lack of laws.

PLEASE KEEP THIS CIVIL AND RESPECTFUL.

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I would like to put one argument forward that I actually do think is a strong one. It's not anti-gun per se, but rather it is pro-decentralization and pro-federalism.

Personally, I think that everyone has a right to defend themselves, and therefore they have the right to own guns. But I also believe that (insofar as there must be government) the best system of government is that which puts decision making on the most local level possible. For example, I'd rather see public education (insofar as there must be public education) decisions made by people in my community rather than by some strangers in Washington who were elected by people in California. I could say the same thing about drug laws, zoning, welfare state issues, marriage, abortion, occupational licensing, etc. What makes sense or what works in one state (or county or town for that matter) might not work in another. Rather than passing one law that covers 300 million people, why not let the different localities determine their own laws, given they are best positioned to make laws to govern themselves?

This decentralized approach isn't a perfect solution. There will be people in some areas who have their rights trampled (like gun owners in Maryland or California, or marijuana enthusiasts in Bible Belt states, or high income earners in states with progressive income taxes). However, I have two responses to this: 1) it's much easier to move to a different state (or different county) if you don't like the laws in your own state (or county) than it is to move to a different country if you don't like the laws in your own country. 2) I take this to its logical conclusion: if Montgomery County or Baltimore County or PG County want strict gun laws, but Frederick, Carroll, and Cecil Counties want relaxed gun laws, all should be able to get what they want. I would feel bad for MoCo gun owners or would-be gun owners (like me), but like I said, they can move if they care that much.

As far as the Second Amendment is concerned, I have to admit I am less and less impressed with the constitution as the years go by. More or less I take the Lysander Spooner view. Insofar as the constitution was designed to contain government and guarantee rights to people, it is either flawed in design or is completely ineffective, considering no congressional representatives (outside of maybe 10 republicans and 3 democrats) actually pay it any attention. But if you really want to beat the other side over the head with the second amendment, you have to go back to the ratifying conventions and get an understanding of how the signers at the state ratifying conventions felt about it. And my argument would be even then it doesn't matter. The constitution is a contract between the peoples of the states. I can't be bound by a contract to which I was not a party.

Boondock Saint said:

I am against vague thread titles.

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Yes, like the current 'midway' thread title in Intros. How many times has that been discussed?

Having worked on a range and in a store for many years, I'm intellectually on the fence about training because some people are incredibly stupid with guns.

In the end though, after considering history and motives, I oppose mandatory training because I know it's nothing more than a road block thrown up by the left to inhibit ownership/carrying.