I'm new here on Calguns and have a question about gun control.

[5.6mm_Gw_Pat_90]

Good evening/late night all. I've been lurking on Calguns for quite a while, and I thought I'd join the community.

First, a little bit about myself. I'm eighteen years old and have only recently developed my own political standing. I live in San Francisco. My interest in firearms has peaked around four months ago and I have since done some vigorous study concerning federal and state gun laws in my spare time. My knowledge about the firearm itself is rather above average for someone who has never even seen one in person. I've lived in an anti-gun family all my life, but my attraction to guns doesn't seem to bother them much.

Now on to the important stuff. Lately, I've been getting a considerable amount of flak regarding gun control and mental health. I understand that I'm just venting some built-up frustration, but I feel Calguns would understand to at least a certain point.

The issue in question was the age old "Guns don't kill people. People kill people" argument. In my belief, this is only partly true. A gun does not kill, unless of course you bash someone's skull in with it which doesn't tend to happen often. Where people kill people, it is only natural that there would be someone willing to take another man's life. However, the gun is a tool used in the act of killing, which is essentially no different than any other item. I do believe that there should be a good amount of gun control, as a gun is still a dangerous item, whether used correctly or incorrectly. Moreover, there are some people who actually should not be anywhere near a gun as their reckless antics may cause harm to those around them. I am, however, against additional gun control. You know, registration, microstamping, ammo tax, the whole shebang.

Long story short, I was involved in a discussion about how a mentally unsettled person has complete access to firearms. I responded by stating that more and less gun control would end horribly and we need to focus less on a tool and rather turn our attention to mental health. The responses were typical. "That makes no sense." "But you can buy any gun without a background check." "People will sell guns to anybody." I cringed. They had no idea how it worked. Additionally, they noted that mental health has absolutely no relation to gun violence. When I tried to refer them to background checks, they said it wasn't relevant. I couldn't be more pissed.

It seemed like they wanted to alienate anyone who wasn't mentally healthy. That was as if they were willing to let anyone who clearly needs help to simply rot in the dirt.

So, my question is to the Calguns community. When dealing with both gun control and mental health issues, is it not important to consider a fair control on gun sales (existing background checks) and making it an issue that our mental health system is not working?

I would also love some criticism. If I'm wrong in any way, I would love to hear why and what is correct.

[Tincon]

Obviously providing more and better mental health treatment is good. But a background check can't tell if you are crazy or want to kill people, it can only tell if you have been adjudicated mentally incompetent, which is pretty rare.

[5.6mm_Gw_Pat_90]

Obviously providing more and better mental health treatment is good. But a background check can't tell if you are crazy or want to kill people, it can only tell if you have been adjudicated mentally incompetent, which is pretty rare.

There's the rub. I can't think of any surefire way to tell if anyone will commit a crime. This is the exact argument I've been bashed with.

[kens]

I feel that even if they do screen for mental health in a "background check" they are violating your medical privacy. Ask the person who says this, if this has to be done, then if they ever have mental health problems, even a checkup, that this will be reported to the government, and if they are comfortable knowing that other people know they have a problem? Therapists would have to disclose mental health issues as well when you think about it, and not necessarily for only the people they suspect - but likely everyone. It's a big brother situation - and it won't solve the issue that people say it will.

Also, not to mention the barrier it will create when someone has anxiety (for example) - are they going to go check them selves out by a professional knowing they may lose their guns cause of it? No. It'll only exacerbate the mental health issue in many people who go untreated and without help.

[tonelar]

You're point that a gun kills someone when used to bash someone's skull bothers me. In that example; the gun remains just a tool.

[The Gleam]

And a 3800 pound weapon sits in the driveway of nearly every home in America. Licensed, registered, training or not, it would take nothing for a mentally deranged person to mow down a group of kids waiting to enter a school, or standing in line at a bus-stop.

Yet, we ensure that 16 year-olds get proper driver's license training and impose on them that car-ownership is a responsibility, to be safe, to act prudently, to drive within the lines, and do your best to not intentionally run over people. But what is the difference when at any moment, a kid of 17 could easily plow into a crowd of people, or pin them to a wall?

But why is that not done as frequently as kids might do so with firearms?

Because society has kept cars and car-ownership or stewardship as commonplace, ubiquitous, and not seen in such a light that a car is a dangerous weapon (but can be). People are not given the sense that cars are taboo items that empower them over others, in that they can be used in nefarious ways.

Would you the keys to the family car to a 16 year on a Friday night without any driving lesson at all, and tell that kid - here, sure, take it for a spin; no, you would make sure that kid knew how to use it, was safe with it, and you would, as a parent, teach them how to drive.

(And before someone chimes, no, the politics is st aside, and in this case the car vs. firearm issue is not married with the right vs. privilege aspect; this is about outlook and connotation of each on a personal level.)

But parents don't do that anymore with guns as once was commonplace, imbibing gun-safety into their kids as earlier generations had. We have fallen victim to mindless politics and nanny-state mentalities that want to blame inanimate objects for the ill-filled actions of people, a guilt-trip that we didn't purge ourselves of temptation in advance by removing some element, just so some other miscreant would neither have such a chance to do harm - so the most unnatural reaction is taken - distilling guns and responsible gun ownership out of the commonplace and denying ourselves the positive attributes of something by genuflecting in fear to the lowest rungs in our communities.

Since the wish-to-be-coddled by government heir of lemmings began demonizing and vilifying firearms, stigmatizing hunting, taking gun-literature off grocery-store shelves, extracting firearms from the home in that they are no longer just a tool around the house no different that father's chain-saw, machete, axe, or lawn-mower that came with rules, in that liberal parents have impressed upon kids that guns are bad, bad, bad, that we no longer teach young kids about gun safety and not to point guns at anyone but keep them in the dark, don't let them have toy guns, don't let them have squirt guns, don't let them play cops-and-robbers or cowboys-and-indians, don't let them have BB guns, remove firearms from being pedestrian and common-place and installing a taboo factor to guns in their impressionable minds.... yet still keep a gun in the home "hidden" away from them?

Any mother of a toddler knows that if you tell said toddler "now I'm going to put these cookies in this jar, on this top-shelf, but they are oh-so delicious - hmmmmm - can you smell those succulent chocolate chips? - but NO! you are not allowed to have them" the FIRST thing the kid will do at some point when mom is not looking, is climb on top of the counter to get at the cookies on the top shelf, even if it means he might fall and crack his skull open.

Well, the FIRST thing a kid is going to do when parents aren't looking is get into the cookie jar and eat every damned cookie until he pukes.

So it goes with guns. And then this perverse attraction to the taboo carries into later teen-age years and so on, and is merely compounded when a kid or young-adult has a wayward and fragile mind. No longer is it just taboo, but it becomes a source of self-empowerment, a tool for controlling others at will.

Gun Control, gun bans, and restrictions actually have the OPPOSITE and unintended effect of making guns more attractive, more of a commodity, and more taboo. There isn't a gun ban passed, that hasn't also simultaneously increased sales well beyond and often 100-fold over what sales normally would have been if they had just left well enough alone. Tell people they can't have something, and they'll chomp at the bit for it, to bust open the cookie jar and engorge.

For the past 20 years, an hindered generation of parents have sought to create a world for their children where guns don't exist at all. And we've seen how well that works with drugs. Instead of addressing the situation, it creates a perverse taboo for these kids; call guns evil, and an evil mind will assume that is a tool of their trade. You wouldn't give the keys to the family car to a 16 year old kid, to take out on a Friday night, without teaching him how to drive, nor would you reinforce a concept upon him that cars are evil and can be used to mow down a line of children waiting at a bus stop.

Parents; that is the problem. Parents that DON'T discuss the "Golden Rule", responsibility, respect for others, and teaching their kids that the power of a gun does not empower them.

Guns in the home used to be no more an issue than also having a blender, a toaster, a chainsaw, or a shovel. The 3800 pound weapon in the driveway is a commonality so mush so that kids don't see it as a weapon. But by reinforcing that guns are evil and ONLY good for killing people, that is the ONLY way kids will then see guns! It's the reinforced context stupid! (Not the guns, Bill).

The situation has been made worse by taking gun literature off the shelves at grocery stores, removing the topic of gun ownership from the average family home, taking gun ownership or hunting off the table as a normal past-time, so much so, that it has taken the lessons of responsible ownership and safe-handling off the table as a topic as well.

It's not the guns, it's not the video games, it's not the movies, not even porn. It's the fearful, anxiety-filled lowest-common denominator that has somehow in it's minority become the norm to which the majority must bow and cater due to some politician's cause-celeb.

The have carved firearms out of being a commonality in life, yet glorified firearms in ways that impress upon people (especially kids) that guns empower them, all while not teaching simple respect for others. And when parents take up that credo, and do the same for their kids, the ideology does not pass muster; it doesn't work in a tangible, real world.

[Carnivore]

First thing that needs to change is peoples perception of the law. It isn't for prevention but to set up presidency to prosecute those that break laws. Gun control is and always has been a measure of prevention for what a person MIGHT do when the law is set up to punish people for what they actually do. This is the biggest issue.

Denying an individual a firearm based on what they might do is not in anyway stopping or preventing a future killer anymore then a background check can vet a person as clear of any malice toward others. It is all feel good measures to please the ignorant or unintelligent so they can sleep better at night and back through votes the person that started the garbage legislation to begin with.

If a person owning a gun would make them a killer the way that some people think, then no one would ever be killed with anything other then a gun. As a fact 3 times more people are murdered, beaten to death with anther persons empty hands and feet then are murdered with assault weapons. Clear proof that the person is the killer not a person with a gun of just the gun it's self.

getting the mindless drones that think guns are the issue away from that feeling is the biggest challenge. Trying to explain that to those that just will not hear the truth is the second.

[5.6mm_Gw_Pat_90]

You're point that a gun kills someone when used to bash someone's skull bothers me. In that example; the gun remains just a tool.

I do tend to think things very literally. I barely ever use metaphors.

...

I couldn't have said it better myself. You could even write a book. And I can relate to this. My mother had declined my request to purchase an airsoft gun when I was younger simply because she saw guns as a means to destruction. She believed that if I had any contact with guns, I would automatically become a criminal. Now, I don't blame her. I'm her son and she's worried about me and I respect her decision. When I turned 18, she still refused to me buying a rifle. I understand but I just wish I could show her that it's not such a bad thing. I even want her to have her own gun since she's getting older and I won't be around to keep her safe.

[The Gleam]

So, my question is to the Calguns community. When dealing with both gun control and mental health issues, is it not important to consider a fair control on gun sales (existing background checks) and making it an issue that our mental health system is not working?

If it were that simple... but every call for expanding background checks has been symbiotic to other machinations presented by gun-control zealots, akin to registration about attaching limits, making lists, regulation, logging, tabulating, keeping records, deeming people unfit merely because of military background, generalization (such as ALL bi-polar people are dangerous, without even knowing what it means to be bi-polar) and expanding what is considered "mental-health" by those that would use such profiling for political or material gain, corralling, and cordoning people away from 2nd Amendment rights. You have a bad temper? You talk out of turn? No gun for you.

You have an IRS that has used audits as a tool for power (these recent developments are nothing new - individual IRS representatives have been found guilty of using audits against others, even neighbors, out of personal vendettas or gain for decades).

You have the TSA that has developed "a list" of names, often kept secret as to who is on it, and they use that list on a whim, indiscriminately.

You have BATF that have repeatedly overstepped their authority and harassed, coerced, and intimated people for... fun?

There are EPA and DCF officials ruining the lives of others by making unfounded accusations about people or corporations merely on a whim, if not to justify the existence of their jobs, filing false reports and doing serious collateral damage, then for some other gain of acceptance from their superiors or peer administrators. It's sick.

But, all this aside; prior to the Brady Bill, prior to NICS background checks, we didn't have a fraction of the frequency of domestic US problems of active shooters and rampant disregard for mass-taking of life with firearms as we do now; so why do you think increased permeating background checks would do anything to help or discourage active shooters in any way more than they have already failed?

No; it's just a thinly veiled disguise to monitoring, regulating, registration, and confiscation - "because we didn't like what you said in your blog - that seemed kind of threatening to us... we think you MIGHT do this or that with one... and so on."

[5.6mm_Gw_Pat_90]

...

I've always wondered what gain is there to doing that. Absolutely nothing, it seems. I'm young, so I haven't exactly learned everything that I need to be completely independent, yet even I find this appalling. Honestly, I feel insignificant. As if I were a plaything toyed with for another's enjoyment.

[TeddyBallgame]

I think it's simple

Laws only affect the law abiding, and, to continually penalize the law abiding citizen for the actions of the non law abiding (i.e. the criminal) is fickle minded...felons don't buy their guns legally, they don't register their guns, so, where do more gun control laws hit the hardest? The law abiding gun owner
Most of us here have a good understanding of the real agenda that we are fighting against...it's an eventual banning of all guns, dry up the supply...that's what all these laws are aimed at eventually doing

The government needs to stop penalizing US, for the behavior of the criminal element that we have...what they need to do FIRST, is start enforcing the laws already on the books with vigor...offenders are no longer afraid of going to jail...right now, DOING THE TIME IS WORTH DOING THE CRIME, because soft sentencing, overcrowding and budgetary concerns just puts many of them right back out on the street after a minimal amount of time

Its just easier to throw out these "feel good" laws and make everyone think this is what is needed to solve an unsolvable problem...yes, I said its unsolvable, because, until there is technology that exist which can predict the future movements and thoughts of people, there will always be unstable individuals who commit acts against society

Be it now, 2013, or back to the days of the cavemen, who would use rocks to bash in the head of an adversary, if someone is intent on taking the life of another human being, they will use ANY means available...when we understand better that there is always going to be a percentage of people born with bad wiring, people capable of committing heinous acts, maybe then, people's eyes will open as to the real problem with a criminal society, and, what is necessary to deal with it

Taking guns away from the people using and enjoying them in a law abiding fashion will have zero affect on lowering crime

[Raystonn]

Anyone dangerous enough to be denied a firearm, is dangerous enough to be kept away from the rest of society. Such a person should be in jail. If you are walking free without hurting anyone, adding a firearm will not suddenly make you decide to harm.

A background check is used to decide if you are dangerous. Ask yourself why, upon finding someone to be a danger, they aren't put in jail instead of merely being denied a firearm. Certainly it is not acceptable for a dangerous person to use a knife, or a car, instead of a firearm. Such a person who is free can always find a way to cause harm. The answer is to restrict the freedom of the dangerous person by placing him or her in prison, not to try to regulate which tools a dangerous person can use.

If someone is dangerous, they belong in prison without access to any tools.
If someone is not dangerous, they should be free to use any tool they like, including firearms.

[LuvLRBs]

I do tend to think things very literally. I barely ever use metaphors.



I couldn't have said it better myself. You could even write a book. And I can relate to this. My mother had declined my request to purchase an airsoft gun when I was younger simply because she saw guns as a means to destruction. She believed that if I had any contact with guns, I would automatically become a criminal. Now, I don't blame her. I'm her son and she's worried about me and I respect her decision. When I turned 18, she still refused to me buying a rifle. I understand but I just wish I could show her that it's not such a bad thing. I even want her to have her own gun since she's getting older and I won't be around to keep her safe.

You can't force someone to like guns. Is she a single parent? Things are tough for her if she is. She has no personal experience with firearms and she doesn't want to do something that she finds frightening. You need to respect her, you will be on your own soon enough.

Here's what you can do.go to your local gun shop and find out if there are any youth programs in your area. Go as an observer and meet and talk to others your age. Learn what you can and perhaps you can find a mentor willing to let you shoot his or her guns. Then bring your Mom into this less threatening situation where she can meet these people and understand gun owners aren't monsters. Ask if she would be OK with your just learning in that kind of controlled situation where you are not bringing something that scares her home.

She may have an environment where her friends and neighbors hate guns. You need to be sensitive to how difficult it would be for her to act in what might be seen as an abnormal or irresponsible way. Better to take her out of her environment to a gun friendly one than to impose a firearm into a liberal setting.

Make your goal one of making her comfortable with guns, and of your learning to handle and shoot them. Don't make your goal to force her to buy one and bring it home. That may come naturally or not, but if it doesn't at least by the time you are 21 you will be well trained.

[Ford8N]

Anyone dangerous enough to be denied a firearm, is dangerous enough to be kept away from the rest of society. Such a person should be in jail. If you are walking free without hurting anyone, adding a firearm will not suddenly make you decide to harm.

A background check is used to decide if you are dangerous. Ask yourself why, upon finding someone to be a danger, they aren't put in jail instead of merely being denied a firearm. Certainly it is not acceptable for a dangerous person to use a knife, or a car, instead of a firearm. Such a person who is free can always find a way to cause harm. The answer is to restrict the freedom of the dangerous person by placing him or her in prison, not to try to regulate which tools a dangerous person can use.

If someone is dangerous, they belong in prison without access to any tools.
If someone is not dangerous, they should be free to use any tool they like, including firearms.

I agree 100%. But our society is ruled by wimps who live in a bubble and are scared to solve the crime problem. So this is the result. AND IT WILL NEVER CHANGE.

[arrix]

Take away "gun" from "gun control" and that's what it is really all about. Pure control of the masses by the elitists. Once you are disarmed, you are a sheep. And there are powerful rich interests trying to convince you to give up your freedom for the illusion of security.