BartCop's most recent rants - drew-gets-serious-about-guns.htm

Subject: getting serious about guns

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I'm not anti-gun. I'm anti crazy people with guns.
Guns don't kill people, crazy people with guns kill people.

The first step to stopping mass shootings is to require a license for gun ownership,
and the first condition for licensing must be passing a psych exam similar to whatever
the military uses to keep crazy servicemen from getting access to nukes.
Then a background check, both mental and criminal. Then a safety course.
Then proof that the weapons will be securely stored when not in use.

Our Conservative friends are always going on about Personal Responsibility. Fine.
Let's say that if a gun owner sells his gun to someone who uses it in a crime, or is
negligent enough to let a criminal steal it, that person shall be charged as an accessory
to whatever crime the gun is used to commit.

Let's also say that in order to legally possess a gun, someone should have to show a
legitimate need. Hunting is OK. But all a hunter needs is a shotgun, and/or a bolt-action
rifle that can shoot three rounds. If you need more than three shots to take down a deer,
you're doing it wrong. Then there are people who want a gun for personal protection. OK.
Home defense, there's nothing like a pump-action shotgun. The sound alone of racking a
round into a twelve-gauge should be enough to put some pucker factor into any burglar.
See the first paragraph for licensing requirements. Then there's concealed carry.
Again, legitimate need, but with stricter standards. Taxi Drivers, bodyguards, anybody in
a dangerous profession, OK. See the first paragraph again. If someone is being stalked
or threatened, waive the waiting period and give them a police bodyguard while they're
taking the safety training, but make sure that they have to prove the need, with stiff
penalties for false claims of need.

All these new regs will need enforcement or they're useless, so let's slap a stiff tax
on new gun sales, with half the new revenue going to pay for that enforcement,
with the other half going to a crime victims' compensation fund. Ditto ammo sales.

Gun collectors: Collections should be limited to a number of five or ten functional weapons.
Nobody needs any more than that. If someone wants a few hundred guns, fine--so long as
the firing pins are removed, and a metal rod welded into the barrel.

Back to the first half of the first paragraph....crazy people need treatment, not weapons.
We need a real healthcare program in this country, not a corporate-friendly law that
compels us to buy for-profit insurance. Crazy people tend to have trouble getting the kind
of work that provides insurance or the money to buy it, after all. With the exception, that is,
of the kind of high-functioning sociopaths that are commonly found at the top levels of
governments and corporations. We need some tests to weed those fuckers out, too.
But that's a whole 'nuther rant.

Well, I doubt much of anyone will ever even read the above, let alone understand,
or, Koresh forbid, act on any of it. That would just be common sense.

Be well, man.

DrewFromCT

ps--I almost forgot. The other big requirement for owning a gun: Membership in a
"Well Regulated Militia". The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, after all.

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