Posted by swamphawk22 on 12/16/2012 11:27:00 PM (view original):
It always starts with someone talking about something that sounds reasonable,
"We should ban these guns with 30 round clips" someone says. They will show you a picture of an AK-47 knock off.
Then you see the law and hunters shotguns with 6 shells in them are banned. Handguns are being banned. You have to lock up your guns and cannot carry them.
Dont believe the rational talk. This isnt about guns, it is about control.
It is about guns. And it is about control. It can be both.
There has to be a reasonable middle ground.
To imply that because exactly where that line should be drawn is going to be fuzzy and controversial, that we shouldn't do anything at all, is just plain stupid.
I'm sure you're familiar with the saying that goes something along the lines of "those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them". That applies here.
The mistake of the past that we can learn from is the Eighteenth Amendment, i.e. the "Prohibition" amendment. A very good book that I read within the past year was "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" by Daniel Okrent. This book was also the basis of the three part PBS documentary on Prohibition by Ken Burns.
One thing that you learn from the Prohibition era was that during the 13 or so years that it was in effect, alcohol production was unregulated and uncontrolled. Demand was still there, so moonshining and bootlegging proliferated. A line from the Ken Burns documentary stood out to me . . . Prohibition became a "training camp" for organized crime. And one of the big ironies of it all is that after the passage of the Twenty First Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth and ended prohibition, there was actually less alcohol available and consumed than there was during the thirteen years of the Prohibition era.
The lesson to be learned is that you don't solve a perceived problem by instituting a complete ban on something that is seen as the problem, but by regulation and controls. A complete ban just drives the problem underground where there is no regulation, no oversight, no trackability. If there is demand, then you have to accommodate that demand. But it can be done in a reasonable and controlled way.
The same can be said for gun control. A total ban on all guns would be foolish. As well as unconstitutional. There are a lot of regulations and controls in place today. But they may not be enough. You can't throttle all the way down to zero, but revisiting exactly what is allowed today for legal purchase and ownership should be on the table for discussion.