Guns and freedom

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


The reasons can generally be lumped under "waste of time and money" and "potential for abuse"

In the first category, it's a waste because the marking characteristics of barrels change with excessive wear (put 5000 rounds of FMJ through a rifle barrel in a fairly short period of time, and you have different markings). Some times of ammo (some hollow points, Glaser safety slugs and wadcutters) fragment so badly ballistic markings are unrecoverable. Also, good ol' .22 long rifle tends to be very hard to trace. It's also easy as hell to damage the surface of the lands and grooves within the barrel.

On the abuse side, I think there's been enough reversals of DP convictions, police scandals, crime lab scandals, etc., where overzealous cops, prosecutors or lab technicians have already reached a conclusion as to who is guilty. Most criminal defendants don't have access to defense experts and independent labs, so giving police and prosecutors a tool that points to a name and a particular weapon type is a little too powerful. Just take a dumb as a rock jury, claim that there's a higher probability ballistic match than there really is (who's gonna know, and hell, we all know the ******* is guilty?), and point out that iron-clad "fingerprint" that Billy Bob bought a weapon just like this. (let's gloss over we can't prove he didn't sell it a couple years ago like he claims and we can't tie him to the crime scene )

While some people might fire 5000 rounds with their gun over a period of years I'm willing to bet that most don't, so the ballistic fingerprinting would still be useful. I also expect that the markings made by deliberately scratching the inside of the barrel would be pretty obvious.

With regards to potential abuse, in theory the police could do this anytime they wanted. Heck, they could send cops out into the woods right now, find someone who uses a weapon similar to that used by the DC sniper, arrest the guy, fire off some rounds, then put them in the evidence bags as substitutes for the ones they collected at the scenes of the shooting. Wham Bam Thank You Mam, instant conviction!

If Billy Bob buys a weapon and ballistic fingerprinting is required it would behoove us all to institute registration similar to that used by the DMV. When Billy Bob sells his gun there will be a record of it.

If it was Billy Bobs van that the sniper was using, and Billy Bob sold it without bothering to change the registration, then some witness manages to copy the license plate number you can be sure that a swat team would be at his house within minutes.

None of your objections hold any real validity.

[Alexander's Horse]

Its nice to live in a country where you are pretty much free of the threat of gun violence.

I tend to think of freedom as freedom from guns. I'd like us to get back to a point where the police did not need to carry side arms.

Now I've used weapons of all kinds from pistols to shoulder fired anti tank weapons. I like guns and its partly because of my deep respect for them and the safety aspects that were drilled into me that I don't see any reason why Joe Paluka should be able to keep any weapon he likes in his home without any restriction.

Oh and btw, gun control doesn't mean no guns. The laws we have here prohibit hand guns, semi automatic and automatic weapons. Licenced Citizens are allowed to have hunting rifles and shotguns, as many as they like. There are also exemptions for collectors, gun clubs and security guards with a special permit. People who can't get licences are people with a criminal record and the mentally ill.

2 weekends ago I saw a guy with a huge wild boar dead on the back of his truck with his pig dogs, big black muther with big tusks. Hunting seems to go on as usual since the laws came in.

[David Floyd]

I tend to think of freedom as freedom from guns.

That's doublespeak. You're free from freedom?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by David Floyd


That's doublespeak. You're free from freedom?

Its not double speak - I don't see the United States as a very free country at all mainly because of the threat of gun violence you have there, which is a threat to every citizen.

[Sikander]

I think that there is some validity in an armed populace being a check on the abuse of power by the government. Sure a group of ragtag militiamen aren't going to be able to hold a coherent line in a battle with a large enough group of modern troops. Nonetheless having a gun constitutes a significant increase in power for an individual who is willing to put his life on the line to defend his country from an occupying power, whether it is an internal power or not. As Gepap has said, it will not be one individual who makes a difference, but large numbers banded together who will.

How would an out of control U.S. federal government be thwarted from excersizing power from the barrel of a cannon? Well for starters, the federal government is huge. Any resistance movement is going to have people inside the government itself. This is going to sap the strength of that government as skilled people either leave it to stand overtly with the "rebels", act as agents for the rebel cause, or simply refuse to do their "duty" to the dictatorial government leaders to some extent.

A modern military is vulnerable to attacks upon it's lines of communication. In a civil war which is not regionalized those lines of communications are all around us. It would be almost impossible to protect them, even with the awesome power that the U.S. military has. Let's suppose that the government could field 20 divisions fairly quickly. That means that each division has to be able to cover 2.5 states. Consider that some states are huge (Texas is about the same size as France, Alaska is twice that size), some are very populous with huge urban areas like California. How could a brigade hold down a whole state, even with some degree of cooperation from a portion of the populace? Not very effectively.

If you asked someone on the JCS to hold a country a size and population equivalent to the U.S., and where 35% of the population were hostile and armed with firearms and homemade weapons like bombs he would blanche at the thought. The government might be able to retain some semblence of power, but it would never have half the power that the current government has.

All this said, it would be difficult for the rebel alliance to succeed on military terms as well. Though they could keep the military from wiping them out, they are not going to be able to push any but an extremely weakened government force from power. The key for them is to fight militarily only as part of a political strategy. By making the enemy's attempt to use force expensive as well as ineffectual they sieze both the moral and utilitarian high ground.

Even today in a much calmer environment than the one imagined above, guns are protecting our freedoms by making every calculation of those who prosecute the drug war much more expensive. Have you ever seen how many people the police bring to bear just to serve one warrant on a suspected meth lab etc.? It's huge. And these guys don't simply spend the day on this, many times they spend a lot of time briefing and rehearsing, (as well as months investigating and reconning). All because of the small chance that someone might start shooting at the police when they come smashing through the door. While very few police officers die in the line of duty through violent resistance, the effect of those few who do resist violently is felt constantly in the conduct of police operations, specifically in operations concerning the drug war.

While lacking the popularity that anti-government groups tend to have amongst portions of the polulace, and completely lacking the the sort of backing one might expect from a full scale insurrection, these illegal drug producers and dealers have nonetheless managed to fight the government to a standstill. They are still in business. Meanwhile public support for the drug war has fallen precipitously, to the extent that it is only the influence of the police unions and the religious right that the whole criminalization approach (to what should rightly be one of our most important public health issues) to illegal drugs hasn't been thrown out entirely.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse

Its not double speak - I don't see the United States as a very free country at all mainly because of the threat of gun violence you have there, which is a threat to every citizen.

Take a stats class sometime Horsie. If you feel that you aren't free because of the tiny chance that you (white middle aged Aussie tourist simply going about his business) will be accosted or assaulted by gun wielding persons, then you should be terrified every time you or your wife fires up the engine of your car.

(Feel free to insert the obligatory woman driver joke here)

[Alexander's Horse]

You should take a stats class - the chances of peaceful citizens getting caught up in gun violence are astronomically higher in the United States than any other Western country. So are the chances of an accidental shooting or use of guns in domestic violence. If you have a gun in your home the most likely person to get shot is a person living in the home.

I'd like to keep a rifle because I like the outdoors but I don't trust anyone in my house to be safe with it. Curious little boys, crazed Mrs Horse, who knows?

How can you be as free as others when you have this threat hanging over your head? There are parts of just about every US city where people are just afraid to go. Other Western countries aren't like that. They have their slums and crime areas but gun violence is pretty rare if not unheard of. That's peace, that's real personal freedom.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
You should take a stats class - the chances of peaceful citizens getting caught up in gun violence are astronomically higher in the United States than any other Western country.

Which means that they are still tiny.

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
How can you be as free as others when you have this threat hanging over your head? There are parts of just about every US city where people are just afraid to go. Other Western countries aren't like that. They have their slums and crime areas but gun violence is pretty rare if not unheard of. That's peace, that's real personal freedom.

By this logic, people in the middle ages were much freer than anyone today, as there was no chance of gun violence then. I can see where violence in general can be called an impediment to freedom, but why single out gun violence? I'd rather be shot than stabbed or set upon by a mod in Indonesia or South Africa. Why the fixation on the exact mode of violence rather than the general problem of violence?

[Alexander's Horse]

Because citizens in other Western countries do not have to put up with the daily threat of gun violence that you do.

A minority exercise their "right" to own firearms and the rest of the community is held to ransom and live in fear. I don't know why you put up with it. Its nuts. Its not freedom at all to live in fear or under threat.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
While some people might fire 5000 rounds with their gun over a period of years I'm willing to bet that most don't, so the ballistic fingerprinting would still be useful. I also expect that the markings made by deliberately scratching the inside of the barrel would be pretty obvious.

You missed the part about the hollow points and wadcutter ammo. As for scratching the inside of the barrel, I was thinking more of polishing with a bore brush.

Then again, a lot of semi-auto sidearms have easily changeable barrels - the Beretta 92F / M9 does, Sig-Sauer has models with interchangeable calibers.

Let's clarify the context, though - this sudden talk of ballistic fingerprinting came up as a result of the current ******* sniper - a crime spree with little evidence but ballistics. Most homicides don't come close to that category - there's eyewitnesses, shooter and victim know each other, a crime of passion where there's tons of evidence, etc. Often, ballistics doesn't even become an issue at trial. So fingerprinting for those cases is meaningless.

Now, lets switch over to more cold-blooded crimes. Someone has to be killed for insurance money, it has to look like a random robbery. A gang hit. A calculating serial killer. In other words, a professional or semi-pro. Someone who plans, prepares, and has no intention of getting caught. You can pretty much bet these types of people look to interfering with the evidence and have plans to cover their tracks. So you spend millions of dollars compiling a ballistics database on every new weapon sold and everyone who voluntarily brings in their weapons, and you still have tens of millions of weapons which are unknown, and all it takes is a little selectivity or a little preparation by your perp to beat the whole thing and flush your database right down the drain.

With regards to potential abuse, in theory the police could do this anytime they wanted. Heck, they could send cops out into the woods right now, find someone who uses a weapon similar to that used by the DC sniper, arrest the guy, fire off some rounds, then put them in the evidence bags as substitutes for the ones they collected at the scenes of the shooting. Wham Bam Thank You Mam, instant conviction!

Only the LAPD has cops who'll go to that much effort to conspire to **** over a suspect. I'm talking about more subtle, legal abuse - the scenario where a criminalist is checking a round against a database, and is given a suspect's name to check his ballistic database entry. Lots of fuming cops saying how they know it's this *******, but the ballistics is their only hard evidence they can take to court, because some liberal asswipe defense lawyer will rake over the semi-blind old lady's eyewitness description. I'm talking about an atmosphere of wanting to see a match to a specific individual, and the fact that people tend to subconsciouly see what they want to see.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
I'd like to keep a rifle because I like the outdoors but I don't trust anyone in my house to be safe with it. Curious little boys, crazed Mrs Horse, who knows?

Get a bolt action, and keep the bolt with you. Or a trigger lock and you keep the keys with you at all times. If you're not concerned with insta-plinking burglars, there's no problem at all in storing a weapon in total safety.

Hell, do the trigger lock, then put in in a locked case. Even if someone goes nuts, it'll take 'em so long to find all the keys and unlock the thing that they'll have cooled down by then.

[Capt Dizle]

Bottom line on guns is simple. If the people can't have them, they have no freedom. Taking guns away from the people is just grounds for revolution. And just grounds to hang the tyrants that took the guns.

[korn469]

Because citizens in other Western countries do not have to put up with the daily threat of gun violence that you do.

A minority exercise their "right" to own firearms and the rest of the community is held to ransom and live in fear. I don't know why you put up with it. Its nuts. Its not freedom at all to live in fear or under threat.

horsie

i live in the southwestern part of Virginia (yes one of the states where the sniper is) and in this state there is a strong tradition of gun ownership. our congressional representative is named Rick Boucher, he's a democrat and fairly liberal, but even the NRA endorsed him and gave him either an A or an A+ ranking in the last congressional election...in virginia in general, and southwest virginia in particular it's political suicide to be against gun ownership, and there is a reason for that

contrary to what you say, in this part of the state a majority of citizens owns some type of firearm. hunting season is a big deal, (not as interesting to the masses as watching nascar drivers bore people to death at Bristol but i digress) and while murders are fairly rare most people in this area don't live in fear of crime, much less fear of gun violence. because of the geography and demographics of my region, there is no guarantee that the police will be able to speedily respond to a breaking and entering (which is a fairly rare occurance), and to most people having a 12 ga shotgun in the house is much more comforting

just recently they found a couple dumped in a lake close to here, i think they may have found another body today but i'm not sure, though these people were cut up, they may have been shot first but nobody is blaming this crime on guns. the couple lived in georgia and these murders are linked to another murder in georgia, the police think the murder was covering his tracks by brutally killing the witnesses...although this has disturbed our fairly peaceful little corner of the world, most people around here still don't lock their doors or fear crime

i read a quote in the paper about a teacher from northern virginia, and the teacher said even with the sniper the chances of being shot was insignificant, and he's right, a person is still way more likely to die in their cars than by murder, much less random gun violence

i guess we value hardy individualism slightly more in this part of the world

[Dr Strangelove]

I thought that the couple were found in Tennessee?

[Kontiki]

This debate is somewhat pointless. The bottom line is that guns do not equal freedom. Look at Iraq, Afghanistan, or any one of dozens of other countries around the world where nearly everyone is armed and tell me how much freedom the guns are guaranteeing.

On the flip side, if the US government suddenly said "as of this moment, all guns are illegal. Hand them over or you will be sent to prison", I'd be pretty concerned. Such a massive about face is never reassuring.

As for restrictions on gun ownership, I can't see how anyone could possibly be against some form or another.

Personally, I don't see any need for any civilian to have a gun, and would love to see a system where it was illegal to own one and nearly impossible to get one. At the same time, rounding up guns that are already out there, especially when the illegal acquistion of one is so damn easy, is just not practical.