Wednesday, October 29, 2008

What's wrong with this situation?

8-year old boy goes to gun fair.
8-year old gets to fire an Uzi at a pumpkin
Uzi recoil jerks the gun upwards
8-year old shoots self in the head and dies

http://news.smh.com.au/world/police-ponder-charges-in-boys-gun-death-20081029-5b4t.html

3 comments:

MolaviisFromm said...

I think that America needs radical action in the area of gun regulations.
Americans are far far more dangerous to each other than the any foreign freedom fighters are.
OK if we for the sake of unity agree that the US constitution guarantees citizens the right to have fire arms, it does not guarantee what kind. I think to make America safe all existing types of rifle and pistol Ammunition should be outlawed except for military use and .22 caliber. Then a few new types of ammunition should be introduced.
This will have the effect of making all current fire arms obsolete as soon as current stocks of ammunition run out. That way the Police will not have to take anytype of action to remove firearms from the population. Then all citizens over the age of 18 would be allowed to keep one double barreled shotgun in their home and one single shot rifle of .22 cal or the new .264 or 322 or .416 caliber. Every person who wants to hunt has to belong to a hunting club. Such members could own bolt action rifles of the above calibers with a (built in) magazine capacity of 5 rounds. These rifles must be stored at the club under high security regulations meeting the standards of Teutonic (German) law. Law enforcement personell (?) can be armed with semi-automatic weapons which may be brought home while not on duty. Only military personel will have access to fully automatic weapons. Many pump action and semi automatic shotguns will remain in private hands. The Police will not go looking for them but if they should find them while conducting a lawful search they should be taken. To encourage people to turn in their multi shot shotguns the government should offer to buy them but only for a limited time. In areas with low population density the rule about maintaining hunting rifles in a central club location can be relaxed and the local police could grant exemptions. Of course some people will try to meet the demand for old types of ammo such as .357 and .45 and 9mm but these people should be prosecuted. I forgot to mention that the new pistol calibers should be 9.33 and 7.85 and maybe 11 mm. Pistols should only be allowed to sportsman (guns kept at the range) and people in rural areas and people such as security guards who have a need for a pistol.

Dismal Soyanz said...

I have a lot of sympathy for your viewpoint molaviisfromm. Limiting ammunition type so that illicit weapons have no readily available source of ammo sounds good but it may just spawn a black market for illegal ammo.

MolaviisFromm said...

Yes I suspect that it would spawn a market for illegal ammo. But I find that kind of interesting. Who would likely try to meet such demand and would in fact be the primary users of such illegal ammo. I think that it would be the drug gangs. If they have to divert some of their resources to make illegal ammo they will have fewer resources for maintaining and developing their drug trade. Of course that assumes that their is a fixed number of people and resources that can be put in to these illegal activities. But even if they could increase their inputs they are going to have to compete for those inputs from the legal sector of the economy creating at least a short term squeeze on profits. Now since I do not have any first hand expirience with the drug trade I really can not say how elastic the price of drugs is. What I mean by that is if the price of drugs goes up by 20% will demand stay the same or go down by 5% or 10% or 25%.
In any case I would be willing to bet that it is much easier to develope countermeasures to black market ammo manufacturing that it is to develope countermeasures for the growing of marijuana, or opium, or coca.