Watch her rise....

[Heartstrings]

[ProudLib72]

1. Hey Heartstrings! Great meme!

[Heartstrings]

3. Thanks!

I so love Emma!

[treestar]

2. Very good!

Some perspective on the situations.

[guillaumeb]

4. But..................self defense.

And...…………...heavy hand of the state.

And...…..that movie Red Dawn.

And ……………..freedom.

[Ohiogal]

5. Well said, Heartstrings!

[oasis]

6. Telling it like it is!

[maxsolomon]

7. She still thinks that facts matter

Power is what matters.

[appal_jack]

8. This quote unfortunately displays profound ignorance.

Last edited Tue Feb 5, 2019, 09:24 PM - Edit history (2)

All respect due to Emma for her strength as a survivor.

And of course, complete agreement that the manufactured "emergency" of immigration at the southern border does not warrant a stupid wall, plus the further erosion of civil liberties along the whole perimeter of the USA that will surely accompany it (Constitutional rights are already grossly and illegally violated along this 100-mile-wide ribbon, thousands of miles long, where the majority of the US population happens to reside in the name of "border security" ).

But the whole point of Constitutional Rights (the Right to Keep and Bear Arms very much included) is that we don't muck with them as a knee jerk response to a problem.

Do we need to address gun violence, and violent crime overall for that matter?

Yes.

Do we need to further limit the Second Amendment rights of peaceable citizens, when 20,000+ gun laws already on the books have proven insufficient?

No!

The concrete steps to reduce violent crime are in the arenas of economic opportunity, progressive taxation, a social safety net, accessible healthcare both mental and physical, educational opportunity, classroom size, teacher pay, smart policing, criminal justice reform, and environmental protection. Further gun control is not even in the top ten most important responses to school shootings.

-app

[PeeJ52]

9. 20,000 gun laws? Really? Could you list them for me?

or is this a Fox News fact?

[BamaRefugee]

11. There are so many laws to punish employers who hire "illegals" that there is NO NEED for a wall,just

START ARRESTING THE EMPLOYERS, but do you ever see that happening?
Hell no, those folks are HUGE contributors to the Rethuglicans.

[appal_jack]

12. Works for me. nt

[tclambert]

27. The fine is as low as $250.

That's IF the feds even try to enforce that part against the employers. And who wants to make a federal case over $250?

[BamaRefugee]

29. So the Dems RAISE THE RATES! And lock them in. Millionaires doing the perp walk every night on TV

will be a great deterrent.

[tclambert]

30. That's why I keep bringing up the ridiculously low fines,

In the hope that somebody will raise them.If the fine were $1,000,000 the problem of illegal immigration would vanish overnight.

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. But no one REALLY wants to fix the illegal immigration "problem"

Least of all Republicans. Over half of our agricultural workers are undocumented, and large numbers work in construction, hotels and restaurants too. Just like immigrants have for generations, they do the shitty, low paying, often seasonal jobs that American citizens don't want to do.

[BamaRefugee]

37. Exactly. And Roe v Wade is a never ending cash cow for the Rethugs, why would they end it?

[whopis01]

13. Check your facts before accusing others of profound ignorance.

The "20,000+ gun laws" tidbit is BS that the NRA keeps repeating. It wasn't true when it was first said decades ago, and it isn't true now. You aren't going to convince many people here by pushing NRA propaganda.

There are roughly 300 gun laws in the US. This includes federal and state laws.

Many of the state laws are actually very similar or duplicated laws from state to state. Each state has between 1 and 13 laws regulating guns.

[appal_jack]

18. OK, I am open to correction on the exact number of gun laws.

This reputable source does indeed point out that the "20,000 gun law" claim (originally by Rep. John Dingell, in 1965) was not deeply referenced, and is likely outdated besides due to more modern state-level pre-emptions):
https://www.quora.com/Just-how-many-gun-laws-are-there-on-the-books-already-in-the-United-States-including-local-state-and-federal-This-guy-says-20-000-Is-that-at-least-in-the-ballpark

(John Dingell was a Democrat from Michigan, by the way...)

On the other hand, with ~3,000 counties in the USA, fifty states, voluminous federal regulation, abundant court decisions with precedential power of law within certain jurisdictions, and approximately 36,000 municipal and town governments out there, I would challenge my challengers to come-up with a more precise number for the moment. Is it illegal to discharge a firearm in the majority of those municipalities? Because that could be 20,000+ laws right there...

Clearly, "300 gun laws" is even less correct than "20,000 gun laws."

And none of this alters the text of the Second Amendment that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," nor the fact that our nation's laws are only valid to the extent that they pass Constitutional muster.

-app

[whopis01]

33. 42 states have preemption laws preventing local gun laws

Only California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey and New York generally allow local officials to pass firearm laws.

So, no, your assumptions about the number of laws is wrong once again.

Regarding the 2nd amendment, since there are already gun laws on the books (regardless of the number), isn’t that already treated as a rather flexible amendment?

[appal_jack]

35. The facts remain.

Last edited Mon Feb 4, 2019, 12:16 AM - Edit history (1)

On-Edit: The link I pasted below is getting gummed-up in DU's HTML editor. It is lawcenter DOT giffords DOT org/gun-laws/state-law/50-state-summaries/preemption-state-by-state/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stated above that there could easily be 20,000+ municipal laws on the DISCHARGE of firearms within city limits.

Looking at the Giffords Center clearinghouse on state laws:

fords.org/gun-laws/state-law/50-state-summaries/preemption-state-by-state/

I see that MOST (if not all - I don't plan to comb through all 50) states have exceptions to their preemption laws, and regulations about where and how firearms may be discharged within city limits are pretty routine in what I'd read.

Looking at my home state of NC, there are exceptions to preemption galore:

North Carolina provides for several exceptions to its preemption law:

Cities and counties may enact non-discriminatory regulations or prohibitions of firearms sales at a location if there is a “lawful, general, similar regulation or prohibition of commercial activities” at the location.
1

Cities and counties may enact general zoning plans that prohibit commercial activity within a fixed distance of a school or other educational institution without a special use permit issued for a commercial activity found not to pose a danger to the public health and safety of those attending that school or institution.
2

Cities and counties may regulate or prohibit possession of firearms in, or on the grounds or in the parking areas of, publicly owned buildings, public parks, or recreation areas.
3

A local government may adopt an ordinance to prohibit, by posting, the carrying of a concealed handgun on a municipal and county playground, athletic field, swimming pool, or athletic facility, although a concealed handgun permittee may still secure a handgun within the trunk, glove box, or other enclosed compartment or area of a locked vehicle. Local governments are expressly prohibited from enacting other ordinances, rules, or regulations concerning legally carrying a concealed handgun.
4

Cities and counties may regulate the transportation, carrying, and possession of firearms by their employees in the course of that employment.
5

Cities and counties continue to have emergency powers as specified by statute (though North Carolina generally prevents cities and counties from enacting prohibitions or restrictions on lawfully possessed firearms or ammunition during states of emergency).
6

Cities and counties may regulate or prohibit the discharge of firearms at any time or place, except when lawfully used to take animals (counties only), in defense of person or property, or when pursuant to lawful directions of law enforcement officers.
7

Cities and counties may regulate the display of firearms on public roads, sidewalks, alleys or other public property.
8

Cities and counties may regulate or prohibit the sale, possession or use of pellet guns.
9

So that's nine categories of exceptions available to every incorporated town and city in NC. That's a lot of potential laws.

Let's just review where we are at, now whopis01:

-You mischaracterized my paraphrasing of former Democratic Representative John Dingell as NRA bs propaganda.

-You cited a figure for gun laws across the country that is off by at least one, and probably two orders of magnitude.
&
-You doubled-down on an erroneous interpretation of state preemption laws, without citing a single source.

0 for 3.


-app

[Persondem]

38. And none of those mean a damn thing when you can buy whatever gun at a gunshow or

in a person to person transaction on the internet.

They matter even less when it's a violent felon or mentally unstable person getting the gun.

and John Dingell had a 100% rating from the NRA so there is a very good chance that he was spewing their BS.

https://votesmart.org/interest-group/1034/rating/8788?p=1&of=#.XFe6LM17mUk

[whopis01]

39. Ok. Here you go

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-nras-fuzzy-decades-old-claim-of-20000-gun-laws/2013/02/04/4a7892c0-6f23-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_blog.html?utm_term=.e4ef11fc781b

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/how-many-gun-laws-are-there-study-disputes-20000-number


But this is really all just a distraction from the actual issue, isn’t it?

Let’s assume that there are 20,000 laws.

A young woman who is a survivor of a mass shorting at a high school calls for gun control and your response is to say that she displays “profound ignorance”. You justify this by referring to there being 20,000+ gun laws.

Note that she didn’t call for more gun laws. She called for gun control. Those aren’t the same thing.

If there are existing laws that aren’t being enforced, then enforcing them is more gun control.

If people are breaking existing laws, then increasing the effort to stop them doing so is more gun control.

If someone with access to guns is talking about shooting up a school then reporting this to law enforcement is gun control.

If the FBI is not following established protocol when tips about potential mass shooters are reported to them, then fixing that problem is gun control. ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/19/how-fbi-handled-two-tips-related-nikolas-cruz/352142002/ )

Gun control is a very broad topic and does not simply mean more laws or additional violations of the second amendment.

[appal_jack]

46. See post #45 below for answers. nt

[Devil Child]

17. Damn good post! +1

[justgamma]

19. I think the second amendment

was talking about musket guns. I have no problem with people having the right to have all of them they want.

[appal_jack]

20. Get back to me by quill pen, and we can talk.

Are you posting onto DU from a Gutenberg press?

-app

[SpankMe]

26. "Gun control" and the second amendment aren't mutually exclusive. n/t

[dchill]

36. As written, the 2nd Amendment IS gun control.

[Martin Eden]

28. You oppose universal background checks, registration, and licensing ...

... even though those measures would very likely pass Constitutional muster.

Sure, those laws already exist in one form or another -- but they are far from universal in both the legal statues, funding, and enforcement.

If there are indeed 20,000 laws (which might be possible, given the large number of city, county, state, and federal units of government) then that is a very good reason for overhauling our gun laws to make them uniform and fully funded for enforcement throughout the United States.

Guns are transported across borders all too easily. Chicago has strict laws, but the Indiana border is a sieve.

Pure obstructionism against any effort at gun law reform may eventually have the opposite effect. People will finally get so fed up at the needless carnage and the deaths of their children that this issue will rise to the top of the list and we'll have a Supreme Court that actually ascribes literal meaning to the first part of the 2nd Amendment which predicates the second part.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,

[LanternWaste]

44. Odd... you're seeing things in the OP that don't exist, and arguing against them.

"Do we need to address gun violence, and violent crime overall for that matter?"
That was the only point, en toto of the OP.

Everything else you argued against was not present. There were no knee jerk reactions. There were no specific calls to add more laws to the books.

Simply pointing out a problem and the only knee jerk reaction I perceive is, well... yours.

[appal_jack]

45. Or, I could be reading & paying attention...

This OP does not exist in a vacuum. Emma Gonzalez has in fact specifically called for particular new gun laws. See, for example:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/emma-gonzalez-parkland-gun-control-cover

There, Emma writes,

We need to digitize gun-sales records, mandate universal background checks, close gun-show loopholes and straw-man purchases, ban high-capacity magazines, and push for a comprehensive assault weapons ban with an extensive buyback system.

It would also benefit us to redefine what assault weapons are so that when we call for a ban against them, it’s clear that we aren’t trying to ban all guns. No one needs to use an assault weapon to protect themselves while walking home at night. No one should be allowed to use an AR-15...

Let's dissect this quote a bit, shall we?

-"We need to digitize gun-sales records" - Classic first step in national registration, which historically (Australia, Canada, etc.) has often been followed by confiscation or heavy-handed "buybacks" at the least.

-"mandate universal background checks," - Sounds good, but basically means national registration if said background check is tied to a particular firearms purchase.

-"close gun-show loopholes and straw-man purchases, " - Straw purchases are already prohibited by Federal law, so that is literally a straw man. And while gun control activists love to make hay about the "gun show loophole," all it boils down to is a legal sale of private property between two individuals who are meeting up of their own accord. While this surely is at times an avenue by which criminals obtain firearms, it is a small problem compared to thefts of firearms, etc.

-"ban high-capacity magazines," - In the gun control world, this generally means standard-capacity magazines of >10 rounds. Yet, I see no evidence that this would eliminate mass shootings. In fact, there is peer-reviewed science that says exactly the opposite:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1525107116674926

Let's just put the whole abstract here for study:

Do bans on large-capacity magazines (LCMs) for semiautomatic firearms have significant potential for reducing the number of deaths and injuries in mass shootings? The most common rationale for an effect of LCM use is that they allow mass killers to fire many rounds without reloading. LCMs are known to have been used in less than one third of 1% of mass shootings. News accounts of 23 shootings in which more than six people were killed or wounded and LCMs were known to have been used, occurring in the United States in 1994–2013, were examined. There was only one incident in which the shooter may have been stopped by bystander intervention when he tried to reload. In all of these 23 incidents, the shooter possessed either multiple guns or multiple magazines, meaning that the shooter, even if denied LCMs, could have continued firing without significant interruption by either switching loaded guns or changing smaller loaded magazines with only a 2- to 4-seconds delay for each magazine change. Finally, the data indicate that mass shooters maintain such slow rates of fire that the time needed to reload would not increase the time between shots and thus the time available for prospective victims to escape.

So what will Emma call for when >10 round magazine bans fail to stop mass shootings? Would a five-round magazine capacity (pushing American firearms owners back to mid-nineteenth century technology) suffice? Does she plan for the same limits to apply to police officers? If not, why not? Regardless, as I said above, the solution to these problems lies outside the gun control arena, not in arbitrary limits on the Second Amendment.

Anyway, onward with Emma's quote...

-"and push for a comprehensive assault weapons ban with an extensive buyback system." - This translates as confiscation. A ban with a "grandfather" clause is a ban with a 1-generation delay (sorry, no dice), and an "extensive" (does she mean "mandatory"?) "buyback system" does not read like she plans to offer citizens a choice. Well, she can pound sand. As an individual, she is a survivor who deserves to tell her story. But once she enters the policy arena and calls to deny Americans' their Constitutional rights, she becomes an opponent with bad ideas, nothing more.

I could go on, but the fact is that she is proposing a ban on the most popular centerfire long rifle sold in the USA today and its close mechanical cousins ("No one should be allowed to use an AR-15" ). These rifles happen to be used in less than 0.5% of all firearms-caused murders across the nation.

This is not moderate.

This is not "common sense."

This is, in fact, "ignorant" of the popular will and Second Amendment jurisprudence about the enumeration of this right explicitly protecting firearms "in common use."

So again, I will say that Emma Gonzalez is saying ignorant things that, as policy proposals, will not keep Americans safer, no matter how fervently she and her anti-2A allies wish it to be so. Pursuing these proposals will alienate rural and Second-Amendment-supporting citizens from the Democratic Party, and help to keep at least the Senate under Republican control for the foreseeable future. If you're comfortable with that, bully for you. But I'd like to see a country governed by leaders that respect the whole Bill of Rights WHILE ALSO addressing violent crime in strategic and effective manners.

This is not "knee jerk" on my part in the slightest, thank you very much.

-app

[lunamagica]

10. Well said, Emma

[LakeArenal]

14. This is interesting.

[NurseJackie]

15. I like this. Great on-point messaging that's easy to understand.

She seems much more refined and polished than David Hogg.

[Sucha NastyWoman]

16. I so hope this

Is our future

[zentrum]

21. Natural Leader.

[erronis]

22. Great post. And how many of the killers in those 325+ mass shootings were not US citizens?

Should we possibly erect walls/borders around every wingnut that likes to own weapons? Or maybe put them all into a detention camp in some desert with plenty of guns and ammo. Liquor and drugs. Let them figure out right and wrong.

[pecosbob]

23. Up against the world

[EffieBlack]

24. I sure love me some her!

[ffr]

25. MSD Strong!

[whathehell]

31. Excellent point...

[lilactime]

32. K&R!

[Honeycombe8]

40. Great message. nt

[calimary]

41. If we already have so many excessive suffocating gun laws, then how do the massacres keep happening?

How do so many gun-related murders and other crimes keep happening if we already have more than enough gun control laws?

How does America repeatedly lead the world in gun violence, year after year, if we already have too many gun control laws cramping the style of the all-you-want gun advocates?

How much needless bloodshed is okay for the sake of the freedom-freedom of gun enthusiasts?

Should we just leave it to those good ol’ thoughts ‘n’ prayers to fix the problem?

Admittedly, I’m biased. Biased in the extreme. I lost two friends to gun violence - a murder/suicide stemming directly from an argument between them that turned unnecessarily fatal simply because there was a nice little handy-dandy gun in the house.

If we abandon all those annoying gun controls, does that mean I can get my friends back then? And all those grieving mothers, year after year after year, who have to bury their babies thanks to reckless wanton gun violence - how ‘bout them? Would that give them back their dead children? Answer me that. Get us back the precious loved ones who were so rudely, recklessly, and UNNECCESSARILY lost to gun violence and I’ll be glad to listen, all day, to all the lofty freedom-freedom arguments about the importance of anybody having any free and unrestricted amounts of any damn guns they want. Deal?

Oh, sorry, thoughts ‘n’ prayers...




Just asking.

If it were up to me, and it were possible (which, I freely concede, it isn’t), I’d settle this once and for all. Abolish the damned 2nd Amendment and make ALL the guns EVERYWHERE in the world - EVERY LAST MISERABLE DETESTABLE ONE OF THEM - disappear off the face of the earth.

They don’t come any more anti-gun than me.

[EX500rider]

47. "How does America repeatedly lead the world in gun violence, year after year"

What year was that? About 90 countries have a higher homicide rate then the US, some as many as 15x's worse, I doubt they are all stabbed to death.

[smirkymonkey]

42. K&R

[Adrahil]

43. That young woman needs to run for office some day! NT

[llmart]

48. Amazing young woman who is going to do good things for this country.

I hope I'm around to see her as she takes on a larger and larger role in fighting for major gun control changes.

You go girl!!! You are destined for great things.