This is where the conversation needs to start

[Shotgun Franklin]

A solution. Do away with nearly every Federal anti-gun law exclusive of background checks at time of purchase. Force Cities and States to recognize the 2nd Amendment. Get Federal Government out of education. Have swift and sure punishment for violation of any crime of violence. (How long has it been since the Fort Hood shootings and NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE). Abolish all gun free zones, they are shooting galleries for mass murderers, nothing less.
There ya go.

[Stu Kettle]

A solution. Do away with nearly every Federal anti-gun law exclusive of background checks at time of purchase. Force Cities and States to recognize the 2nd Amendment. Get Federal Government out of education. Have swift and sure punishment for violation of any crime of violence. (How long has it been since the Fort Hood shootings and NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE). Abolish all gun free zones, they are shooting galleries for mass murderers, nothing less.
There ya go.

A few problems with that proposal: the federal gov't won't go for it because if they would have to give up some power, do their job, and butt out where they're not wanted. Besides, it might work & they would loose public support for their plan to disarm us.

[TwoWalks Baldridge]

O.K. I proposed a solution and some (everyone that responded anyway) didn't like it. I told you in my original post that you wouldn't. But I presented a solution. That being that the police arresting and confiscating the guns of those in possesion of them without registration would reduce the number of guns in bad guys hands without changing the number og guns in goodguys hands. It may not have been the best solution, it may not have even been a good solution, but it was an attempt at a solution. That's a lot better than the rest of you have done. I see only complaints whining around and no solutions from you. If you have a better idea let's hear it, and I don't mean a useless generality. Give us a solution along with what and how you expect that your solution would help. Doggone it DO SOMETHING, even if it's wrong, DO SOMETHING!!!!

Bugs, a bad solution is no solution.  What you are proposing already exists, not by registration but in law.  Bad guys with non registered guns usually have stolen guns.  Theft is a crime, having stolen property is a crime.  So what you proposed already exists without punishing people that have a respect for life and have no intention of taking a life needlessly. To pin this where it began ... The guns were registered, they belonged to his Mother.  He stole the guns, he killed his mother, having a gun not registered to him was probably not much of a concern.

[wildman1]

On 11-12-2012 you stated "I am not a gun control advocate" What exactly would you call another federal gun control law? Sounds ta me like gun control. WM 

Everyone wants to point put the problem, but nobody wants to post a viable solution. Ask your self these questionsL:
1. Who determines whether a person is in need of mental health treatment?
2. How do you convince thiose that need the treatment to actually get that help?
3. What restrictions should we place on thee people that are in need and for how long?
4. What will be the apeal process forrson that is wrongfully acused of being mentally ill ?


Everyone wants to point put the problem, but nobody wants to post a viable solution. Ask your self these questions:
1. Who determines whether a person is in need of mental health treatment? What will be the standards for a person to be adjudged "sane".
2. How do you convince those that need the treatment to actually get that help? Will it be mandatory?
3. What restrictions should we place on thee people that are in need and for how long?
4. What will be the appeal process for a person that is wrongfully accused of being mentally ill?

Do you really want a solution? I have one, but it won't be popular with the readers on this forum. Let's have a federal law that makes it a FELONY TO BE IN POSSESSION OF A GUN THAT IS NOT REGISTERED TO YOU. That means that every gun must be registered and that you must be present when the gun is used or taken out of storage. It means that you cannot borrow or steal a gun. It means that nobody can loan you a gun unless that person accompanies you. That means that if you buy a gun in a private deal, you must register that gun with the government just like you do when you get one from a gun store, within a reasonable period, say one week. If the transfer doesn't get approved you will have to return the gun to the original owner or be a felon. It sounds severe and it is, but it will get the guns out of the hands of the criminals and get the criminals that have the guns off of the streets. Let's make it so that when you register your new gun that you must give the name and address of the person that you bought it from and that the person w\that you bought it from was the registered owner of that gun. This will not prevent RESPONSIBLE GUN OWNERS from buying, owning or using guns. It will only affect those that want to own a gun illegally.

[PJ Hardtack]

C'mon guys, give Bugs a break.

If your going to inject logic, reason and common sense into this discussion, he won't be able to take part. Be nice.

[Professor Marvel]

Ladies and Gents , I maintain the solution is dirt simple.
- Train and arm at least 30% of school personnel
- abolish "Gun Free Zones" and allow CCW of licensed citizens anywhere

We have seen from actual cases that If there is an armed & trained citizen in the area the Bad Guy *is* stopped.
http://news.yahoo.com/know-stop-school-shootings-003203357.html

yhs
prof marvel

[Cliff Fendley]

I agree with the abolish the gun free zones. However I don't believe you can make a number on how many faculty your going to train in a certain school.

These people went into education not law enforcement. Many are women now, most from what I can tell, even the bus drivers. I do agree in additional training for those faculty that wish to have it and those that are already CCW holders.

I think thats the first and best start, if this doesn't appear to be sufficient then a few extra hired security in some schools may be necessary.

Rather than sending money over seas to countries that hate us why not use that money to protect our own children and create some jobs here in America?

[joec]

I agree with the abolish the gun free zones. However I don't believe you can make a number on how many faculty your going to train in a certain school.

These people went into education not law enforcement. Many are women now, most from what I can tell, even the bus drivers. I do agree in additional training for those faculty that wish to have it and those that are already CCW holders.

I think thats the first and best start, if this doesn't appear to be sufficient then a few extra hired security in some schools may be necessary.

Rather than sending money over seas to countries that hate us why not use that money to protect our own children and create some jobs here in America?

Well based on my experience teaching teachers to use the software they taught in the classroom I wouldn't even attempt to train them with guns. First as you said Cliff they are their to teach not to be a COP. It would be the same as on a plane with pilots as one wrong shot could bring a pressurized plane down at worse or at best missing a number of passengers thought a gaping hole where the bullet passed through. This job is best left to the professional be it an air marshal or an armed police guard/guards. I find it funny how now all of a sudden teachers are suggested for guarding your schools when just months ago I would of thought based on many comments they where over paid, lazy etc.

[Shotgun Franklin]

I'm retired. I had 35 yeas in Law Enforcement, nearly 6 as a Campus Cop. I also carry a security commission. I'd be willing to work at a local school providing a First Line Defense. I'm willing to interact with the kids and check on them, inside and outside the classroom. I'll meet them each day as they enter the building. I doubt any school district will go for it. To much money.

[PJ Hardtack]

I don't think that anyone is recommending that ALL teachers be armed, just those that are CCW trained and qualified. If they can take turns doing other duties, they can surely organize shifts so that one is always available and armed.
Putting a designated armed guard (uniformed or plain clothed) on school premises is an invitation - take out this person and you have free rein.

Naw, far better a political knee-jerk reaction like an 'assault weapon' ban, restricting semi-autos to 5 rd magazines, etc., etc. Of course, that will create an instant black market for both, but that will keep the BATF and other agencies in work for years, not to forget the court and prison systems ..... ;>)
And you KNOW that the bad guys will be totally disarmed by these laws and restrictions, and a new PC era will dawn.

A while back, we had a Minister of Justice named Alan Rock, a left wing  small 'l' liberal and a capital 'L' member of the then ruling Liberal Party. His boyhood hero was John Lennon and there is a picture of him interviewing Lennon when he was a law student.

When Lennon was gunned down outside the Dakota Building where he lived with Yoko Ono, Rock decided to enter politics. He was the right man in the right place at the right time as the Liberal gov't decided to use their large majority to implement Draconian gun laws. He became infamous for publicly stating that his vision of Canada was one where "... only the army and police would have guns ...!
If this isn't 'police state' mentality, then I don't understand the term. He forgot about criminals in his Utopian pipe dream, who ignore any and all laws, gun laws included.

Has licencing of gun owners and the registration and/or restriction of long arms been any more successful at preventing gun crime and mass shootings than has handgun registration we've had since 1934? On the contrary, like the US, such events increased dramatically, for the same baffling and complex reasons. Most have been committed with legally registered weapons by licenced users.

Gang related and random street shootings are regular occurrences in Vancouver, Toronto and Winnipeg, the new 'murder capital' of Canada. Very few of these incidents have resulted in prosecutions or convictions. Any guns recovered are either stolen or smuggled in from the US. Registered owners of these guns face charges of 'insecure storage', despite the fact that their homes/businesses were broken into and their firearms stolen from locked vaults.

If we use a gun to confront these sh!t rats, we are in more trouble than the thief! More charges for having access to a loaded gun which is supposed to be stored separate from ammunition. In other words, our entire country is one big "Gun Free Zone" as a result of 'gun control' laws that only affect the law abiding.

If this doesn't alarm you enough to oppose the anti-gun lobby in the US, then I suggest that you order a copy of "Gun Control - Gateway To Tyranny" by Aaron Zelman from the JPFO - Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. It will show you how your 1968 Gun Control Act (and our gun laws) are based on the 1938 Nazi Gun Laws. It will cost you $25 shipped.

When the GCA was being drafted, the late Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) had his copy (brought back from the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal where he was an observer) of the Nazi laws translated by the Library of Congress. Four months later, the act was passed into law.
It is chilling to read as the verbiage and terminology is almost identical! All that is missing are the aspects whereby specific ethnic and political groups were banned from firearms ownership, mainly Jews and other 'politically unreliable' types.

And if THAT doesn't alarm you, find a copy of "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross - if you can. They go for $200+, but you can download it as a pdf. It was all but banned in Canada and I had to search like hell to find a copy. Ross was stopped at the border and copies he had for a book tour were confiscated by YOUR people, not ours. Think it has something to say they don't want you to know?

This book will change the way you regard your elected officials, the FBI, BATF and other police agencies. You will better understand that recent "Fast & Furious" brouhaha over the guns that were supplied to Mexican drug lords.

[Bugscuffle]

O.K. you didn't like the idea. So your idea is to arm school personnel and have the kids in the middle of a gunfight between two forces, the attacker(s) and the teachers, neither of which are trained shooters? And you think MY idea was unsound? Some of you people must be living in a Tea Party state of mind. I didn't say that confiscating the unregistered or guns registered to the wrong people would instantly resolve the situation. It would eventually REDUCE the number of unwanted guns and criminals while not changing the number of guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. The police don't need to confiscate all of the guns immediately. As it becomes known that just having a gun that is not registered to you will get you a one year mandatory sentence and the second offense will get you three years mandatory and the third conviction makes you a habitual criminal and you go to prison forever and ever amen will be enough to REDUCE the number of unwanted guns and criminals in the country. It probably will not affect the maniacs that do school shootings or theater shootings, but it will for sure affect the gang bangers that kill THOUSANDS of Americans every year (30 per day on the average) as the results of gang wars, drive-by shootings, revenge killings, etc. We are killing ourselves faster than Alkida and the Talliban combined. Now this is not the ONLY solution, but it could be one part of the solution. No, you folks are so paranoid about "SOMEONE" taking away your gun rights that you can't realize that this proposition does NOT affect your gun possession or rights at all. It only affects the criminal's possession. I do agree with you that the registration measures noted before were NOT successful. The reason that they were not successful is that the authorities put one or two "token" criminals away for the unregistered guns and then let the rest of the violators skate. If there is a mandatory sentence involved, the criminals and the guns would be gone out of the criminal hands and the legal guns would still be in the safe. As to your cousin that borrowed your rifle to go deer hunting, nothing would happen to him if you accompanied him/her. If you didn't, he/she would go to prison. It is a small price to pay to save that many lives.

Bugscuffle, you just flat out don't get it do you? How in the H----E------double L are the police going to go confiscate unregistered guns in the hands of criminals if they don't know they have them? They aren't going to know until they get caught doing a crime. They would already be arresting criminals with them if they knew they have them. Anybody that doesn't check out is already getting them illegally.

And no it's not better the others have done, if it's not a good solution then it's no solution at all. That's why right minded folks don't just start spouting off with crazy ideas like you are demanding they do.

GOOD GRIEF CHARLIE BROWN!!!!!!!

[Bugscuffle]

P.J. - why is a Canadian trying to tell us how to do things in the U.S.A? If your system has failed, and I can see that it has by the restrictions that you are under, then fix it, but don't try to advise us of how we should do things. Clean up your own doorstep first.

[Cliff Fendley]

O.K. you didn't like the idea. So your idea is to arm school personnel and have the kids in the middle of a gunfight between two forces, the attacker(s) and the teachers, neither of which are trained shooters? And you think MY idea was unsound? Some of you people must be living in a Tea Party state of mind. I didn't say that confiscating the unregistered or guns registered to the wrong people would instantly resolve the situation. It would eventually REDUCE the number of unwanted guns and criminals while not changing the number of guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. The police don't need to confiscate all of the guns immediately. As it becomes known that just having a gun that is not registered to you will get you a one year mandatory sentence and the second offense will get you three years mandatory and the third conviction makes you a habitual criminal and you go to prison forever and ever amen will be enough to REDUCE the number of unwanted guns and criminals in the country. It probably will not affect the maniacs that do school shootings or theater shootings, but it will for sure affect the gang bangers that kill THOUSANDS of Americans every year (30 per day on the average) as the results of gang wars, drive-by shootings, revenge killings, etc. We are killing ourselves faster than Alkida and the Talliban combined. Now this is not the ONLY solution, but it could be one part of the solution. No, you folks are so paranoid about "SOMEONE" taking away your gun rights that you can't realize that this proposition does NOT affect your gun possession or rights at all. It only affects the criminal's possession. I do agree with you that the registration measures noted before were NOT successful. The reason that they were not successful is that the authorities put one or two "token" criminals away for the unregistered guns and then let the rest of the violators skate. If there is a mandatory sentence involved, the criminals and the guns would be gone out of the criminal hands and the legal guns would still be in the safe. As to your cousin that borrowed your rifle to go deer hunting, nothing would happen to him if you accompanied him/her. If you didn't, he/she would go to prison. It is a small price to pay to save that many lives.

Good Grief!!! I can't talk to you anymore. First of all I'm not saying arm the school personel at all. I'm the one who said you can't go and do that because they are teachers. Yes if a teacher is a CCW holder they should be able to carry at the school just as I should be able to when I visit.

Secondly..... And I'm repeating myself here because you just don't get it. Your idea will not over time lessen the number of firearms in the criminals hands any more that the current laws in place.

PLEASE READ THIS VERY SLOOOOOOOOW AND CAAAREEEFUUUULLLY!!!!!!!!!A criminal is not going to register a gun, what in your liberal mind makes you think a criminal is going to abide by the law and register their gun? They are already not supposed to have it now if they have committed any felony or other crime that prevents gun ownership.

Have you ever filled out a 4473 and read the questions a person answers you buy a gun in America?

Face it, your idea is stupid as any other gun laws because you are expecting a criminal to follow the law. I'm sorry but only a very shallow mind can believe that.

Honestly, I don't think most of the gun control freaks in congress now actually think gun control will help. It's been tried and proven it doesn't work and most of these people are not that dumb or they wouldn't have gotten where they are. Make no mistake about it, it's about getting the guns and gaining more control. Saving ourselves from one another is just an excuse to do it.

[Stu Kettle]

Bugs, we already have laws against criminals and maniacs carrying weapons.  We also have laws against murder.  Apparently making it against the law won't stop it from happening.  Also, an innocent person going to prison is a huge price to pay for something that won't really save any lives.

[Cliff Fendley]

Besides our prisons are full now which is why a lot of people are roaming the streets that shouldn't be.

Yeah right, a law that can make an honest citizen a felon sure makes a lot of sense

[Cliff Fendley]

Joec, A gunshot inside an airplane cabin will not bring a plane down or make it explode and suck people out or any of the other stuff you see in the movies. If it does poke a hole in the plane its just going to be loosing some pressure.

[Bugscuffle]

Bugs, we already have laws against criminals and maniacs carrying weapons.  We also have laws against murder.  Apparently making it against the law won't stop it from happening.  Also, an innocent person going to prison is a huge price to pay for something that won't really save any lives.

We do NOT have a federal law with mandatory sentencing that says that it is unlawful to be in possession of a gun that is not registered to you. If there were a law that states that you may not be in possession of a gun that is not registered to YOU, then you would be a criminal by definition if you are in possession of that gun and you would NOT be an innocent person, YOU WOULD BE A CRIMINAL. Today if a police officer comes across a gun in the course of an investigation, even if he is absolutely sure that the gun is not registered to anyone in that premises or if nobody claims it, he cannot confiscate the gun or in any way prevent access to that gun by anyone. He has no recourse; he must just leave it there. Some cities and states have very strict gun laws, others do not. In the cities and states that do not, there is no or very little mandatory sentencing of people found to be unlawfully in possession of firearms.

[Cliff Fendley]

We do NOT have a federal law with mandatory sentencing that says that it is unlawful to be in possession of a gun that is not registered to you. If there were a law that states that you may not be in possession of a gun that is not registered to YOU, then you would be a criminal by definition if you are in possession of that gun and you would NOT be an innocent person, YOU WOULD BE A CRIMINAL. Today if a police officer comes across a gun in the course of an investigation, even if he is absolutely sure that the gun is not registered to anyone in that premises or if nobody claims it, he cannot confiscate the gun or in any way prevent access to that gun by anyone. He has no recourse; he must just leave it there. Some cities and states have very strict gun laws, others do not. In the cities and states that do not, there is no or very little mandatory sentencing of people found to be unlawfully in possession of firearms.

So a guy breaks in my place of business with a gun and I sub do him with my own weapon and take his. I call 911 and when the police come they arrest ME because I am in possession of a gun not registered to me and it is mandatory that I do jail time.

[Bugscuffle]

Besides our prisons are full now which is why a lot of people are roaming the streets that shouldn't be.

Yeah right, a law that can make an honest citizen a felon sure makes a lot of sense

The law will not make honest citizens into criminals. It will designate which are the honest citizens and which are the criminals. If you are an "honest citizen" why are you carrying that unregistered gun?

[PJ Hardtack]

Scugbuffle

So what does a Canadian have to say about 'gun control' laws that might be of interest to Americans? The same things that a Brit, Aussie or Kiwi might have to say - THEY DON'T WORK!
We tried all of the things you've suggested and they only succeeded in affecting the law-abiding without impacting the criminal element and reducing violent gun crime.

And we are taking care of things here. We succeeded in having our long gun registry aborted, remember? Millions of 'paper criminals' who refused to comply are no longer so. It was supposed to be a tool for cops, but (a) criminals didn't register their guns and (b) any cop who would rely on what a computer has to say about guns in a household is too stupid to have the job.

We are currently working on other issues as well. But, the sad fact is that our left wing nuts work hand in hand with yours, and anything that happens on your side of the line has an impact here. Our fight goes on, yours is just beginning.

If we suffer a break in and lose guns, WE are facing charges for 'unsafe storage' despite the fact that your house was broken into and your guns were locked up. If we use a gun against one of these creeps, WE are facing charges much more severe than the perpetrator. Our guns are supposed to be locked up separate from ammunition, rendering the entire country a "Gun Free Zone". Do you think that criminals don't know this?

As expected, your lame duck President is going to ensure his lasting legacy by enacting a ban on 'assault rifles' and hi-cap magazines. The saviour of American society! The toe is in the door. What guns are next?

Do us all a favour and read the publications I've recommended and get back to us. Of course, if your mind is made up, don't let the facts get in the way of your opinion.

Trying to have an intelligent discussion with you brings to mind this adage:

"Never argue with a fool. It makes it difficult for observers to differentiate."