EconomistDon wrote:
OK, so you are not as dumb as you look. BUT, the fact remains that "guns don't k**l people, people k**l people". If guns k**led people, nobody would get out of gun shows alive. So let's focus on people who k**l people and how to stop them. You will NEVER take their guns out of their hands, no matter what you do with gun control.
I reiterate, I do not want to "take their guns out of their hands." The 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct to our Republic. This what I would like to see and I am open to adjustments.
-Mandatory safety classes on the proper use and storage of weapons, a 2 hour course run by the local police department with an augmented compensation by the Federal government. Over 7,000 children are hospitalized or k**led due to gun violence every year, according to a new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics. An additional 3,000 children die from gun injuries before making it to the hospital, bringing the total number of injured or k**led adolescents to 10,000 each year. (Don't believe me, google it.)
Laws enacted to punish those who do not follow Safety guidelines.
-Universal background checks by the States going to a National database that will f**g questionable permits by each state, and not a federal repository. This needs to be sufficiently funded by each state and supplemented by the Federal government to ensure these checks are thorough. Those responsible for these checks will be held accountable if not reasonably thorough. This includes a mandatory two week waiting period to get a license.
-All guns to require licensing and background checks: no gun show or hand-me-down loopholes.
-Mandatory training in marksmanship every four years, again by local authorities.
-No weapon permits to those on the no fly list, criminal records, restraint orders, serious mental disturbance, or members of groups deemed a threat to domestic tranquility.
The possibility for abuse by the Federal government is huge in my suggestions. For those who believe we have a 2nd Amendment to protect us from abuse or attack by the Federal Government, my suggestions are probably treasonous, in a way. Case in point: The Whiskey R*******n of 1791. (The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but American whiskey was by far the country's most popular distilled beverage in the 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures into whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.
Throughout Western Pennsylvania counties, protesters used violence and intimidation to prevent federal officials from collecting the tax. Resistance came to a climax in July 1794, when a U.S. marshal arrived in western Pennsylvania to serve writs to distillers who had not paid the excise. The alarm was raised, and more than 500 armed men attacked the fortified home of tax inspector General John Neville. Washington responded by sending peace commissioners to western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels, while at the same time calling on governors to send a m*****a force to enforce the tax. Washington himself rode at the head of an army to suppress the insurgency, with 13,000 m*****amen provided by the governors of Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The rebels all went home before the arrival of the army, and there was no confrontation. About 20 men were arrested, but all were later acquitted or pardoned. Most distillers in nearby Kentucky were found to be all but impossible to tax—in the next six years, over 175 distillers from Kentucky were convicted of violating the tax law.[3] Numerous examples of resistance are recorded in court documents and newspaper accounts.[4]
The Whiskey R*******n demonstrated that the new national government had the will and ability to suppress violent resistance to its laws, though the whiskey excise remained difficult to collect. The events contributed to the formation of political parties in the United States, a process already underway. The whiskey tax was repealed in the early 1800s during the Jefferson administration.)