Trump supports efforts to improve gun background checks

[Josh]

The gun control lobby refuses to see eye to eye with gun rights advocates on this. They want to pass laws to basically make it very difficult to legally own firearms without a big risk of accidentally becoming a criminal.

Most notable is that virtually all of the gun control lobby wants to make person to person sales illegal. In every country that’s done this, it eventually led to wholesale confiscation, like in the UK and in Australia.

The gun control lobby wants person-to-person sales to use a national system that invokes the same background checks needed for other gun sales. If you don't have that, then there's really no way to keep anyone from buying weapons, no matter what their criminal history or mental health status, because someone with no restrictions can buy the gun and sell it to them. That's really quite different from making person-to-person sales illegal.

The gun control lobby needs to figure out how to make right wing America plus a sizeable fraction of left wing America trust them.

Actually, polls consistently show that a sizeable majority of Americans wants universal background checks. Most Americans are sold on this.

And our country should not be governed by competing lobbies, it should be governed by cooperative adults working together to solve our important problems, seeking common ground.

Boot,

If you aren’t willing to take a step back and consider why so many Americans don’t want the government requiring you to register with the government for person to person sales, you aren’t going to ever get anywhere with getting what you want.

Does the idea make sense to you that a lot of Americans don’t want the government to have a detailed list of who has a gun and who they bought it from?

[Josh]

Request: could we please avoid discussing how much we love or hate individual politicians or lobbies in this thread? It gets old when that becomes a big part of so many threads, and it makes it a lot harder to discuss the topic of each thread.

I'm much more interested in discussing what might be politically feasible today, given the people who are currently in power.

Are you interested in discussing how to have more freedom of gun rights or are you only interested in discussing how to get away with passing laws to take more and more gun rights away?

[Josh]

And our country should not be governed by competing lobbies, it should be governed by cooperative adults working together to solve our important problems, seeking common ground.

A lot of Americans feel like unless they support the NRA, they will eventually lose their gun rights like what happened in the UK and in Australia. This is not an unfounded fear.

The average gun-owning America doesn’t have much influence. I think they are also “cooperative adults”. The question is if anyone wants to hear their concerns and work on making sure guns aren’t confiscated like they have been in California and NY state, or if your only agenda is to eventually get full blown confiscation.

A lot of Americans believe the latter scenario is likely, and until you are willing to resolve that problem, you aren’t going to get anywhere with your fact-driven and poll-supported agenda.

[Bootstrap]

Actually, polls consistently show that a sizeable majority of Americans wants universal background checks. Most Americans are sold on this.

And our country should not be governed by competing lobbies, it should be governed by cooperative adults working together to solve our important problems, seeking common ground.

Boot,

If you aren’t willing to take a step back and consider why so many Americans don’t want the government requiring you to register with the government for person to person sales, you aren’t going to ever get anywhere with getting what you want.

Josh, you have taken to speaking for the majority of Americans without demonstrating that this is what the majority actually want. I don't think either of us gets to speak for the majority of Americans.

When I look at polls, more than 80% support universal background checks:

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[Bootstrap]

Does the idea make sense to you that a lot of Americans don’t want the government to have a detailed list of who has a gun and who they bought it from?

I don't know what percent of Americans feel that way, I suspect it's a lot fewer than you might think. But perhaps it would be better if we each expressed our own concerns.

I am more worried about criminals and mentally ill people with guns than I am about the government knowing who has a gun. I would also rather make it really easy to know what gun a bullet was fired from and who it belonged to when a gun is used in a crime. I take it you are more afraid of the government having this kind of list?

I think we do have to choose between the two - if the government does not know who has a gun or who is buying a gun, it cannot keep guns out of anybody's hands, even if the law says they should not be able to have a gun because they are too dangerous.

[Bootstrap]

The average gun-owning America doesn’t have much influence. I think they are also “cooperative adults”. The question is if anyone wants to hear their concerns and work on making sure guns aren’t confiscated like they have been in California and NY state, or if your only agenda is to eventually get full blown confiscation.

Oh come on, that's like me saying your only agenda is to overthrow the American government so rival warlords can rule with their weapons. Let's not imagine extreme agendas and project them onto each other, let's discuss the topic and assume that you and I and anybody else can speak for ourselves and say what we would like to see.

I would like to see a system where it is much harder for people to get guns if they are not legally allowed to own guns because of felony convictions or mental illness. Do you agree? Earlier, it sounded like you thought strengthening the background check system was a viable approach.

[Josh]

Does the idea make sense to you that a lot of Americans don’t want the government to have a detailed list of who has a gun and who they bought it from?

I don't know what percent of Americans feel that way, I suspect it's a lot fewer than you might think. But perhaps it would be better if we each expressed our own concerns.

I am more worried about criminals and mentally ill people with guns than I am about the government knowing who has a gun. I would also rather make it really easy to know what gun a bullet was fired from and who it belonged to when a gun is used in a crime. I take it you are more afraid of the government having this kind of list?

I’m not personally afraid of governments.

I’m trying to express the point of view of people who support the NRA, which is a point of view you I don’t think you understand very well. Repeating over and over that some poll supports universal government tracking of firearm sales won’t help you understand better the majority of Americans in red states who like having gun rights.

I think we do have to choose between the two - if the government does not know who has a gun or who is buying a gun, it cannot keep guns out of anybody's hands, even if the law says they should not be able to have a gun because they are too dangerous.

There’s a third alternative you haven’t considered: severely restricting legal gun ownership will empower criminals to be most of the people who have guns, which is exactly the situation in places like Australia or California. Concern about that is what keeps legal, law-abiding gun owners eagerly supporting the NRA and reflexively opposing any further gun regulation.

[Josh]

The average gun-owning America doesn’t have much influence. I think they are also “cooperative adults”. The question is if anyone wants to hear their concerns and work on making sure guns aren’t confiscated like they have been in California and NY state, or if your only agenda is to eventually get full blown confiscation.

Oh come on, that's like me saying your only agenda is to overthrow the American government so rival warlords can rule with their weapons. Let's not imagine extreme agendas and project them onto each other, let's discuss the topic and assume that you and I and anybody else can speak for ourselves and say what we would like to see.

I would like to see a system where it is much harder for people to get guns if they are not legally allowed to own guns because of felony convictions or mental illness. Do you agree? Earlier, it sounded like you thought strengthening the background check system was a viable approach.

There’s really no way to do that without basically making guns illegal or very difficult for private citizens to own. What if a crazy person breaks into a gun owner’s house and steals guns?

What if the person buys guns on the black market?

How is gun control working in Brazil? They have severe gun control laws, yet more violence than in America.

In the case of this recent shooting, exisiting laws were being ignored. The FBI was notified by multiple people this person was dangerous yet declined to do anything. I don’t see how more laws will help.

[mike]

Private ownership of guns is part of the American constitution. This will not likely change, no matter who is in power. And as long as there are guns, there will be murders with guns, including mass murders and school shootings. Because people have evil hearts. Even expanded databases for background checks, and many other solutions being offered, will not eliminate the problem.

The world has no other solution for violence than more violence. And so, I expect that eventually school security will become something similar to airport security.

[temporal1]

Private ownership of guns is part of the American constitution. This will not likely change, no matter who is in power. And as long as there are guns, there will be murders with guns, including mass murders and school shootings. Because people have evil hearts. Even expanded databases for background checks, and many other solutions being offered, will not eliminate the problem.

The world has no other solution for violence than more violence.
And so, I expect that eventually school security will become something similar to airport security.

recently, i’ve thought, government schools, why would they be any different than any other government entity? .. some state universities have long had their own police departments. private schools, maybe moreso?

once young children/teens step away from their gun-free school zones, they step right into their communities - with armed security.

when the entitled perceive they are under potential threat, they do not wait on Congress to hire armed security.

it appears more+more it will happen.

once in place, it will be “just another day.”
most guns will never be fired in the line of duty.