I don't know much about psychological exams in the US, but based on the ones I took at uni (they paid people £5 per test to be guinea pigs) it's not exactly difficult to know what the right answers should be. Is the US experience different?

I also find the entire concept of owning guns as weapons mind boggling.

I would too if I lived in a place where nobody else owned guns.

Chaqa, I like how you conveniently ignore that the government could have prevented the terrorist from acquiring his arsenal in the first place.

We use them for a number of things. Hunting, self-defense, target shooting, collectibles, competition. I did sporting clays in high school and my buddy does competitive tactical shooting. My cousin is a cop. My neighbors hunt.

None of us has murdered anyone.

It is *not* a civilian right to own lethal weapons which have no practical function other than to hurt and kill. Most of the world knows this.

Do you know what is a legitimate right? Safety. Do you know what infringes upon this right? Monthly mass shootings because civilians own and have legal access to guns that they then use to kill other civilians.

The social contract indicates that the government must keep the population secure. By allowing all this gun violence to occur the government is failing in this duty.

I'm not ignoring it. I've addressed it several times. I will not support denying someone's rights without due process, even if that person could potentially be a terrorist or a criminal. Until they have been convicted of a crime, they have the same rights as everyone else does.

All right, then let's close Guantanamo and hold the 9/11 trials in NYC, shall we Mr. Holder?

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Unless you only consider militia members people, then it is clear that it IS a civilian right to own a gun.

You say most of the world knows this. I don't care if the rest of the world does one thing. An old adage is "your friends are all jumping off a bridge..."

It's just like the free speech debate. Our rights are protection from the government, not from other people. You cannot punish one person for the actions of another.

I'm very much against Guantanamo. It is a travesty and one of the biggest stains on our nation.

It's not like the free speech debate because speech isn't often deadly, and where speech does present a potentially grave threat, it IS banned.

Keep fucking rifles, not semi-automatic murdering machines.

Such as yelling fire in a movie theater? That is not an argument I've heard before. I'm going to think about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions

Here are some exceptions to the Constitution of the United States of America, Chaqa, fully endorsed by our Supreme Court, one of the only pieces of our pathetic government that encourages action and problem solving over inaction and silence.

"Keep fucking rifles, not semi-automatic murdering machines."

My rifles are semi-automatic. I've yet to murder anyone.

And to be honest, most gun violence is with handguns anyway. No one is bringing up a thread like this for the hundreds killed in Chicago every year. Why? Why is the debate about the gun and not the terrorist?

It's one of those issues I guess. People have their views and it's not likely to change.

The words "imminent and lawless" from Brandenburg v. Ohio come to mind when electing not to distribute a gun license or sell a gun to someone. It is the exact same philosophy.

That's another issue, Chaqa, one that the city of Chicago has consistently failed to address. The comparison isn't in how the people died but in how little the overseeing actors in the government are doing about it.

The Supreme Court has also time and time again upheld the 2nd Amendment, bo.

But bo, Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the country. Why do they then have the highest (or close to it) gun violence in the country?

Because Chicago has a culture problem that they exacerbate through seemingly ancient neighborhood and class divides. The city, like the state, doesn't have the money or the energy to do anything about it. Chicago's issues are far deeper and far complex than the gun laws.

The Supreme Court should absolutely uphold the 2nd Amendment, just as they have time and time again upheld the 1st Amendment. Do you think that Brandenburg v. Ohio is the only SCOTUS case ever regarding free speech? Do you think that the infrastructure surrounding free speech and free press is crumbling because of the restrictions laid out by Brandenburg v. Ohio? Can you foresee a situation in which you, a good, law-abiding citizen, will ever feel the effects of Brandenburg v. Ohio? I would bet that the answer to all of those questions is no.

I agree with you, bo. However, the concern that I have is where the line is drawn. Let's say a law was passed restricting who could buy a semi-auto rifle. A few years from now, someone was able to get one and killed some people. Outrage happens. Now there are cries for tighter restrictions, and claims that we just need to be reasonable. And so on and so on.

Every time we make a concession, it pushes things further.

We can't determine where the line is drawn unless people are willing to sit down and draw it. There is currently a political machine called the NRA that funnels only god knows how much money into preventing smart gun legislation (which, ironically, is the exact kind of legislation they were founded to help form) and preventing any gun legislation at all. They fear a slippery slope. The problem with that theory is that the only reason they fear a slippery slope is because their inaction in the face of violence turns dissenters more extreme. Had they been able to accomplish preemptive, smart gun legislation in the past, we would be able to approach this matter on a much more case-by-case basis, thereby preventing some sort of slippery slope, than we are now.

Every political overreaction is met with an opposite political overreaction, but be honest with yourself - how much of a slippery slope do you think there is? "Banning guns" is talking about overturning the Constitution. Good luck with that. That will never happen in this nation under any circumstance. What can happen is moderate, dynamic, and modern laws that fit our moderate, dynamic, and modern society. In this instance, a productive round table discussion has the potential to save thousands of lives a year.

I've already said I'm fine with background checks. That's moderate and dynamic, if opened to the public. I don't support a mental health / sanity check, because there's always room for error. Same for saying someone associated with a hate group shouldn't own a gun.

As for "preventing any gun legislation at all", maybe if the legislation that is written up wasn't such garbage, there'd be more to talk about. Look at the Assault Weapons Ban. It bans guns with folding stocks, flash suppressors, etc... things that are not functionally making a weapon any deadlier. Uninformed legislation that has done nothing but allow the media to make regular rifles into "scary assault weapons".

So everyone here is OK with background checks. I'd be OK with a psych evaluation by a medical professional of your choosing. I'd also be OK with some required training, like for hunting licenses.

Of course people that write up legislation should know what the legislation they're proposing is about. That's a no-brainer. Rep. King's bill in New York is just about as dumb as it gets. That doesn't mean that an organization like the NRA shouldn't do its due diligence in bringing these lawmakers up to speed, promoting their agenda rationally and with the knowledge that they won't always win, just as other interest groups do. Instead, they spend their time and money inflaming their target audience with articles like this one, which only brings about further polarization.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20160610/barack-obama-wants-to-unilaterally-strip-your-gun-rights

Read that headline and tell me that that sounds like an organization that's ready to come to the table and talk things over. It reads like a propaganda document. (Yes, I know there's an actual article as well; I read it.)

Both sides are guilty. The NRA, though, is ridiculous. This isn't their purpose or what they were founded on. This is the promotion of misunderstanding and leads people on the left, who are more often the ones that don't understand this issue than those on the right, to not take them seriously. The problem then exacerbates itself.

My point with the action-reaction analogy is that the more extreme gun violence gets, the more resistance there is to taking action from one lobby and the more anxiety there is surrounding said inaction from the other lobby. Rather than a tug-of-war where everyone pulls and eventually someone gets a little more tug than someone else, it's like a tug-of-war where the rope already broke and each side is just running away with their side of the rope thinking that they're winning, but they're actually just dragging along a broken rope.

Requiring training is fine I guess, but considering how upset people get by things as simple as requiring a valid ID for voting, I'm willing to bet it would be controversial.

"'I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL Web sites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.'

That’s right, thanks to NRA, our allies in Congress, and the basic precepts of the U.S. Constitution and liberal democracy, President Barack Obama cannot unilaterally pick and choose whose constitutional rights are to be respected. Would-be autocrats are still required to actually establish an individual’s danger or guilt before stripping them of their fundamental rights."

Seems the headline is referring to the fact that he wants a gun equivalent of a do-not-fly list. Lack of due process, once again.

People complain about having to show a government-issued ID to vote in an election organized by the government and for the government?

And as I said earlier, the do-not-fly list is awful as well.

Yup. Here in Pennsylvania, Republicans were "blasted" (media buzzword) for passing voter ID laws. Somehow, this is racist.