aurora henry pratt shooting lawsuit illinois state police
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
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According to Illinois gun control advocates, doing something about massive and pervasive failures in the state’s gun control laws means enacting more, bigger and increasingly restrictive gun control laws.

Failure to ensure compliance over so many years has resulted in a now-daunting backlog that would require a coordinated, costly effort to fix. A bill pending in Springfield proposes an increase in cardholder fees to fund a task force aimed at following up on revocations. The legislation also would require fingerprinting to obtain a FOID card, a mandate sponsors say greatly improves the likelihood of finding an applicant’s criminal background but opponents say is unconstitutional.

It faces strong opposition from gun rights advocates, who look at any change to current laws as an attack on the Second Amendment. Opponents of the bill promised legal challenges to the legislation should it pass because, they argue, the increased fee structure impedes the constitutional right to own guns.

Longtime gun rights lobbyist Todd Vandermyde said he believes revocations should be enforced, but it’s unfair to make law-abiding FOID cardholders pay for it.

“If this is a public safety measure foisted upon gun owners, then the state should pay for it,” he said.

Annie Sweeney, Stacy St. Clair, Cecilia Reyes and Sarah Freishtat in More than 34,000 Illinoisans have lost their right to own a gun. Nearly 80% may still be armed.

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81 COMMENTS

    • it’s a ridiculous scenario, anyway…having to get the state’s permission to exercise a constitutional right…do they even know this is an aberration?…do they even care?….

  1. It’s like Socialism: it would work if only the right people (“top men”) were in charge and it was implemented properly.

    Blah, blah, blah, blah…..

    Here in NH, the Dem-controlled Senate just passed 3 bills that are solutions looking for problems. Ideologues don’t got nothin’ else.

  2. “Why is the Answer to Gun Control Failures Always More Gun Control Laws?” Because voters get exactly what they vote for. Because elected lawmakers must be “seen doing something”…if they want to be re-elected. “Successfully” fixing the stated problem is not a factor. As we all know, appearances have become more important than actual substance. Make voters “feel” good right now vs. fixing the problem is critical to their image.

    • And it’s always about the children. Every tax increase, every right lost, every new restriction…”if it saves one child”. Another feel-good law. If you’re 18 y/o, you’re LEGAL….period. Drink, smoke, get a credit card, rent a car. Otherwise change it back to 21 since 30 is the new 13, and they’re still living in the parents’ basement.

      • Most of the Leaders in the gun control movement have NO children. To them children are a “tool” to be used to get what they want. A disarmed civilian population.

  3. Gun control works, it’s just never been done right.
    So we’re going to keep trying until we get it right.
    And every attempt is just Commie Sense.
    We can all get together and agree on Commie Sense approaches to solving the Gun Violence Epidemic, can’t we?

  4. The answer is always more gun control because the laws did not fail. The point is control, and they got more of that. And the laws do nothing about “violence” or whatever other excuse. So, the problem still needs solving, with more control.

    Wash, rinse, repeat.

    • JB: Beat me to it. The laws are completely successful — at controlling and harassing the law abiding. Confusion, inconsistency, unenforceability, lack of malum in se crime control are all features not bugs.

      • Kind of you. It seems I am in good company on this one.

        I’m gonna borrow that entanglements list. Nice.

    • It is insanity but it’s not crazy. Think psychopath vs schizophrenia both are generally considered insane but one is a lot more focused on their goals with a lot less regard for how their goals harm others. All of these laws limit your liberty even if only a little. And unless something major happens each needs to be removed on it’s own using a lot of resources. How many votes/lawsuits/campaigns can we afford to get our rights back and how easily can they increase infringement from silly laws already there.

      • Psychopath (or sociopath, or anti-social personality) is “sane” as in oriented, rational, and in control. They have different goals, and a different payoff function.

        Schizophrenic n similar isn’t dealing with the same realiry as the rest of us; has broken interpretation, and is internally disorganized. They often have the same goals, morals, and payoff functions as most people.

        Psychopatb iis rationally, often competently trying to do something off. Other is flailing at doing as most people would.

        Seems like a metaphor for politics .

  5. Because if you have an unreasoning fear reaction to something you do not understand and are disinclined to comprehend, you reach for a symbol, something your emotions can latch onto as an obvious quick and easy solution from your unthinking point of view. It looks that way to you because you do not want to deal with the complexity of the problem. You are desperate, you are awash in what you believe to be righteous moral outrage that anything so simple to you has opposition to your point of view.

    The Prohibition laws against alcohol that ignored human behavior. In some parts of the country the remnants and damage of these laws continue. State Liquor Stores? About 200 “Dry Counties” still in the USA?

    The attempts to ban abortion, ignoring the complex causes and the multiple solutions in favor of Prohibition and Absolutism. Ignoring and spending no money to solve the myriad difficulties that bring it about.

    Hoplophobia, focusing on inanimate objects while ignoring that Human Behavior is at the root, is the source of all Human Violence and Crime.

    The worst of it is the partisan engines of stupidity represented by our two major political parties. They exist today to rope people into purity tests, where you are either one of them or the enemy. You are one of them if you promote their platform, their collectivist ideologies. Which by definition means you cannot vary on any position, you must be a Good Party Member.

    Republicans, Democrats, all the same in this regard. By their behaviors and loyalty to Party they are less citizens of the Republic and more Citizens of the Party.

  6. It amazes me how some folks want more restrictions and harsher penalties while simultaneously seeking more lenient sentencing and early release.

    • Its easy:
      More lenient sentencing and early release for real criminals.
      More restrictions and harsher penalties for ideological enemies (decent folks convicted of breaking their made up crimes).

  7. We PotG need to re-set our thinking; this is a necessary step from time to time as the world we live in is always changing.

    We remain stuck in our thinking that the courts were never going to enforce the 2A. That was true pre-Trump and would have remained so under her Highness Hillery. But, miracles happen. Trump is in the White House and we have two new justices on SCOTUS.

    Little we note the Caetano 2A decision. It was UNANIMOUS. SCOTUS decided it without granting oral arguments or entertaining written briefs. We pay no attention to it because it was a stun-gun case; nevertheless, it was a 2A case.

    We aren’t paying as much attention as we should to New York State Rifle and Pistol Assn v New York City. The matter at issue concerns only holders of premises permits in New York City and their inability to take their handguns outside the city. Nevertheless, this is an opportunity for SCOTUS to female-canine-slap the lower courts on their 2A jurisprudence. The ruling is a foregone conclusion; no one doubts this in either camp. What remains the interesting open question is the Court’s reasoning in coming to the obvious conclusion.

    The gun controllers hope that the reasoning will be so narrow as to have little-to-no effect outside of laws so tightly strung as NYC’s ordinance. Gun rights advocates hope that the reasoning will be extensive; perhaps as far as prescribing “strict scrutiny” for all gun laws. A more likely outcome is somewhere in-between these two hoped-for extreems.

    Trump is filling vacancies on Circuit and District courts at an unprecedented rate. The times, they are changing. And we are still stuck thinking that the courts will never enforce the 2A.

    We need to keep 2 things in mind.
    – First, legislative bodies pass laws that make behavior un-lawful.
    – Second, courts overturn laws that they find un-Constitutional.
    If we want a new law we should think first about our state legislatures or Congress. If we want to strike-down an existing law we should think first about the courts. This is not to say that the courts don’t “make” law; they do sometimes. Yet, the laws that they “make” are typically done by striking down legislative law as un-Constitutional. It’s also not to say that legislatures never repeal or relax an old law; they do. But, we are bucking the institutional forces when we try to work our ends with a means in the wrong branch of government.

    If we want to make progress we need to strike NOW in the RIGHT PLACE.

    Now that the courts are turning toward enforcing the 2A with Trump appointed judges we need to fill the court dockets with cases that will be entertained favorably when they finally work their way up to SCOTUS.

    The courts are the place to strive to have un-Constitutional laws struck down. It’s hard for gun-controllers to buy judges. If the judges are inclined to go one way or the other they will go that way; however, the price of buying a judge soars as one moves up the ranks from a justice-of-the-peace toward a Circuit Court judgeship. Once on SCOTUS, even Bloomberg is out of his price point.

    Legislators will always be available to the highest bidder at competitive prices. We don’t even bother to discipline our Federal Senators on gun rights; why should we hope to get a majority of both chambers to repeal laws when they are being bought off by deeper pockets than ours?

    Finally, we need to understand how SCOTUS works. It’s mills grind slowly; but they grind exceedingly fine. SCOTUS grants cert to only a couple percent of the cases appealed to it. So, explain to me how an indigent homeless mother – Jamie Caetano – got cert on a 2A case? Just how did that happen? And, how did she get a UNANIMOUS decision on a 2A case? Just what is it that got the 4 liberal justices to UPHOLD the 2A?

    Our problem is that we PotG are not the slightest bit curious about why Jamie Caetano got her 2A case to SCOTUS and walked away with a unanimous FAVORABLE decision. Nor are we curious why NYSR&PA got cert for a law affecting just a few hundred NYC dwellers that sequesters their handguns within city limits.

    Why do we NOT CARE how these cases got cert? If we understood how SCOTUS might have found them interesting wouldn’t we have better guidance on finding new cases to pursue and cases to support financially?

    Gun-rights lawyers at the appellate level aren’t cheap. If we penny-pinchers want to make progress defending the 2A we have to be prepared to fund cases that are promising rather than cases that over-reach and will never get cert from the Supremes.

    • “Nor are we curious why NYSR&PA got cert for a law affecting just a few hundred NYC dwellers that sequesters their handguns within city limits.”

      I don’t know about you, but I damn sure am curious as to why the NY Pistol case was granted cert..

      I really want to believe Thomas & Co. are sick and tired of the 2A being disrespected as a core Civil Right.

      Thomas in particular I have to believe was infuriated by the need to re-address the 2A with the McDonald decision. The naked contempt Leftist courts displayed I hope was a wake-up call he intends to deal with.

      The Leftists intend to bury the 2A with shit-tons of bullshit gun laws. If we don’t win big on that one, the only recourse we will have is to split this country. Nicely if possible, or ‘to the mattresses’ if we must…

  8. Pratt Co. is in Aurora Illinois.
    Aurora Colorado had another famous mass shooting.
    There is correlation there.
    I say we ban the name Aurora.

    • And let’s not forget the cruiser which gave the signal to attack on Winter Palace in Bolshevik revolution! ABPOPA!

  9. The answer is simple, they want slaves, not armed free men. Anyone supporting gun control supports slavery. The left has been insane every since armed free men took away their slaves. Now that the black community is leaving the plantation, they are importing a new slave class, illegals.

  10. “Why is the Answer to Gun Control Failures Always More Gun Control Laws?”

    What’s the saying about Crazy !

  11. GUN CONTROL… Has nothing to do with mass shootings, nothing to do with public safety !
    It’s all about “CONTROL” of We the People…period.

    • No, not it. Gun Control is mainly about frightened people grasping for simplistic, feel good answers to a problem they do not want to face up to. After many years and political battles it takes on a life of its own, where the causes of human violence no longer matter, gun control has evolved into its own political cause.

      • @George & enuf: I thought about both your comments and I think you are both right; but, about different “gun controllers”. Moreover, I think that there may be value in carving-up the actors into more groups still.

        First, nothing happens in Congress or a state legislature without quite a lot of money behind it. We would all be hard-pressed to see some issue rise to public consciousness without organized advocacy by some lobbying group working both Capital Hill and the voters. The money comes from the likes of Bloomberg, Joyce Foundation, Soros and the fat cats upon whom they call to also contribute at a clip of $ 1 million a pop. These guys have their own private guards; they are probably mostly concerned with keeping the rabble disarmed so that they can carry on directing the nation toward their idea of Utopia. These are the “smart money”.

        Second, the “rabble”. Some of us are gun owners. We are either rights advocates or heirs of grandpa’s gun; or somewhere inbetween. The rest of us are non-gun owners who either are familiar with gun owners or don’t have gun-owning friends. Gun owners don’t organize well; we are rugged individualists who will vote for what we see are our interests (corn, cattle, industry or whatever). The non-gun-owning rabble are easily swayed on any topic.

        Third, are the elected politicians. They will pursue any constituency; they just want to win. Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Rights-politicians defend the 2A because they know their constituents will not tolerate their doing otherwise. Most politicians would rather avoid any issue that is apt to lose as many votes as it might pick-up.

        That leaves us with politicians who think it safe to pander to gun-control voters. We can safely prescind from examining any heart-felt beliefs these guys hold about the role of guns in civilian hands. We might just as well suppose that they think their constituents SHOULD be armed; nevertheless, they will pander to the fears their constituents are gullible enough to hold about guns.

        The Democrat Party – now all Progressive – is very good at holding their constituents to march in lock-step supporting EVERY individual “plank” in their platform. Let’s think about these planks as falling into two categories: money; and, moral.

        On the money issues we should expect Democrat rabble to be locked-in. More free stuff is a hard argument to beat. Free housing. Free education. Free healthcare. Free food. Free electricity, gasoline, heatingoil, . . .

        On the moral issues, perhaps these sentiments are not so firmly held. Is abortion a money or moral issue? If it’s FREE abortions, then it’s money. But, if it’s abortion in the 10’th or 9’th month of pregnancy it’s a moral issue. It’s still a moral issue in the 8’th or 7’th. Will “captive” Democrat voters budge from the abortion plank?

        Here, we are concerned with guns. Clearly, we aren’t talking about a money issue. PotG aren’t advocating that the National Guard distribute free .22 rifles to 18 year olds. Nor are we really talking about the fees for gun permits with respect to a Democrat voter who is not YET thinking about buying a gun. So, by process of elimination, we must be talking about a moral plank in the Democrat platform.

        Is it moral to dis-arm Democrat voters while Republican voters WILL REMAIN armed? Do Democrat voters really believe that Congress or state legislatures will SUCCEED in dis-arming “Old Fat White Guys”? Do Democrat voters really believe that the criminals in their precincts will be disarmed? Just who – if anyone – is going to get disarmed? It’s going to be these Democrat voters themselves; and, their neighbors that they see going to the polls on election days.

        The gun-control plank in the Democrat platform is a lie! Gun control will either NOT happen AT ALL; or, it will happen to peaceable law-abiding Democrat voters. And while governments are spending tax dollars on gun control, these dollars are NOT being spent on getting at the root causes of minority youth crime or suicide by any means.

        Nothing is going to alter the views of the big money in gun-control. No argument will influence politicians. The only audience worth addressing is the captive Democrat voter. Why do YOU, Mr./Mrs. Smith, want to be dis-armed at great expense when YOU are not part of the problem? Why do YOU want money spent on dis-arming YOU when that money could be spent on the root causes of crime and suicide? What’s the moral issue at stake? Guns? Or, premature death?

        • Interesting breakdown of motivations. Thanks for doing that.

          About the unarmed progressive/Dimwitocrat/leftist populace….

          Those people believe they are “normal”, reasonable individuals, and they see no possible need to be armed. Thus, no other “normal”, reasonable individual would “need” a firearm, for anything. This makes gun owners “other”. “Other” is a threat to imagined tranquility of a civilized populace.

          “Other” are not the gangers, street thugs, criminals. This collection is just not taken seriously because “normal” people do not go where “bad” people do their business. Consequently, the criminal element is never considered when advancing gun controls. The reason is simple: “normal” people live and work among the populace that at least looks “normal” (which automatically includes gun owners, even though they are “other”). Herein lies the threat: you never know when a “normal” looking gun carrier will decide to release anger into a crowd of “normals”, shooting everyone in sight.

          The answer is quite logical: disarm (or tightly restrict unto uselessness) gun “normal” gun owners (who are highly law-abiding), and you remove the threat of “normal” people being killed in “normal” places. Logic? If “normal” looking people cannot have guns to kill me with, there is no threat of attack by someone wielding a gun. And…..and….because “normal”, “reasonable” people are not natural born killers, “normals” will not attack me with any other weapon, either. Peace and safety will reign.

          Now for the armed citizen counter argument: One never knows when some bad person (ganger, thug, terrorist) will leak out of their natural habitat, and attack you with some sort of weapon. Being unarmed renders you helpless against such attacks.

          Ok, so far so good…..but,

          There is a thing called “the will to not believe (“see”). The theory now transitions to, “If I don’t put myself in dangerous circumstances (being where “bad” people live and roam), and follow the laws, nothing bad can happen to me. So, if the people in “good” places obey the law, and don’t have guns, an armed attack on me is so unlikely as to not consume even a single brain cell contemplating an imaginary event.

          Requiring a person to give up beliefs is almost impossible. For a person to abandon a belief, that person must be willing to abandon their self-image, to admit they lied to themselves, and acted accordingly. To abandon a belief is to admit to being a fraud, or deluded beyond hope. To be a nebbish, a non-person, a nudnik, a schlemiel.

        • The concept of normalization is certainly valid, you see it within POTG too.

          Avoid stupid people and places and… well then why do you own a gun? Because some part of you knows that sometimes stupid people find you. But you rarely hear people say that because it would be admitting a hole in their own logic and/or they simply haven’t thought it through.

          The rest of your logic, while logical, is lost on most people. They simply don’t see it that way.

          For some it’s guns = bad all the time and bad things are things to be done away with. The root reason they think this way is rather immaterial unless you’re trying to change the way they think and… well advertising.

          However, there’s a fairly large part of the Leftist cohort that really doesn’t see it that way. They see gun control as a political tool to punish their adversaries. These people live live in a zero-sum game. I’ve said before they have a political view of the world that’s akin to mercantilism, and I think that applies here.

          If you have a right or some level of power that, by definition in these people’s view, means someone else doesn’t have that power. You have that power for historical reasons and you don’t deserve it. Things must be made equal so you must be taken down a few pegs so that others can rise up. Even if you’re not actively oppressing people you’re still using your ill-gotten powers to oppress them in other manners. Enforced equality is the watchword here.

          Maybe you didn’t create the imbalance but you’re part of the problem and the way to rectify that problem is to take the power that you have. In this case that power need not be redistributed because your “lack of previous power” means that the “oppression” it created is gone and that levels the playing field by itself.

          For some people gun control is neo-anti-colonialism on a personal level. Your comeuppance for the sins of the father so to speak.

        • This is a Second Amendment website, not a crackpot anti-vaccine website. Go away and stop attracting flies.

        • Bullshit succinctly covers it, little more needs saying. How about you tell us about all the “failed vaccines”?

          Your initial statement contained nothing of fact or merit, no evidence, no argument, merely an unsupported assertion, based on unstated premises.

          Thus bullshit is all the response it deserved. From those who make extraordinary claims it is reasonable to demand extraordinary proofs. When you proffer the former and offer none of the latter, bullshit is a succinct and accurate response. You cannot demand a detailed objection to an unsupported claim, the burden is on you.

    • Why are you here? This is a gun blog, not an anti-vaxer board. Go play somewhere else. No one wants to listen to you here. You add nothing to the discussion.

  12. Why is the Answer to Gun Control Failures Always More Gun Control Laws?

    Answer:
    (1) It feels good.
    (2) The only reason it did not work on previous attempts is because there was not enough of it.

    There actually is a tiny bit of logic to the second justification. Think of someone making a simple foot bridge across a seven-foot wide stream. The builder starts with an 8-foot long popsicle stick. Of course it breaks. Recognizing that a single popsicle stick is too weak, the builder glues two popsicle sticks together, which of course break as well. Again, realizing that two popsicle sticks were too weak, the builder keeps doubling the number of popsicle sticks glued together in a trial-and-error fashion knowing that, eventually, there will be enough popsicle sticks to hold his/her weight without breaking. Thus, the gun-control proponent figures the same thing will apply to gun control — thinking that it will eventually work when laws are “strong” enough.

    • Good point. And in many cases it does apply. If there are enough laws governing motor vehicle manufacture and traffic then we can (and did) reduce deaths on highways to a substantial extent.

      Yet, it doesn’t apply everywhere. No matter how many popcycle sticks you have you can’t build a bridge to span San Francisco’s Golden Gate. Somewhere the laws of physics and the capacity of mechanical engineering designs will collide.

      Now, where are we with the gun issue?

      No matter how many laws are passed, how do we sustain gun control laws in the face of a SCOTUS if it intends to uphold the 2A? In the next few years we will discover how much of an obstacle five old men might become.

      No matter how many bills are introduced in Congress or the 50 state legislatures, how many will get passed? Congress has no power to enforce its will on states that will defy Federal laws. See sanctuary cities or marijuana-legal states. There are 42 right-to-carry states; how many of these will stand-up and defy Congressional gun-control laws? Just as pot crosses state lines so can (and do) guns.

      Guns are a simple artifact. Each decade it becomes easier for a craftsman with average skill and modest tooling to make a serviceable gun. Let’s leave suicides aside for a moment. A criminal needs just one shot to kill a rival or rob an unarmed victim. Clandestine gun smiths in cottage industry can keep the criminal market well-supplied.

      Smuggling. If drugs can be smuggled across America’s land and sea boarders then so can guns manufactured throughout the world.

      Japan and Singapore can enforce their gun laws because they DO enforce their gun control laws. You go to prison for a long time in Japan; you get hanged in Singapore. Will America imprison or execute its citizens for violating gun control laws.

      We have 400 million guns in this country. They will rust before they are confiscated. Gun owners will continue to commit suicide with guns; how to enforce the laws against gun possession or suicide? By definition, the defendant will not appear in court.

      The “reasonable” and “common sense” gun control laws proposed will not put a dent in the number of lawfully held guns in America. The more gun laws passed the more guns we will buy. The stock will grow faster, not slower. And so, the stock of guns available to be stolen will grow faster, not slower.

      “Reasonable” and “common sense” gun control laws will disarm only those too poor to be willing or able to overcome the cost and inconvenience barriers. To make any dent in the gun inventory new gun control laws will have to be UN-reasonable and defy “common sense”. These will run into overwhelming resistance in the voting booth and the courts.

      • When it comes to creating laws to address a situation, prevention is a byproduct. There will always be a number who will “obey” (as in not transgress) a law. For the most part, these are people the law doesn’t touch (non-gun owners will not defy a law requiring gun regisration). Then there is the demographic who fear the consequences of violating a law (vehicle owners who never fail to register their vehicle, or let insurance lapse). Then we have the demo for who law is no barrier. For this segment, law authorized punishment for violations (as it does for the deterred persons who sometimes do violate the law, however inadvertently).

        Ultimately, law can be a guide, a deterrent, a punishment. Law only “prevents” crime in the group for whom the law is inconsequential (does not apply), and the group for whom fear of consequence provides a deterrent. So, if gun control laws deter law-abiding people from owning or using guns, how can such laws be considered ineffective?

        The idea that a law is useless if it is not 100% effective is disingenuous. POTG proudly proclaim that gun controls do not stop (prevent) determined criminals from committing crime. Sounds great, except….can anyone think of a law that was/is 100% preventative? If 100% prevention is a requirement for a law to exist, which laws would stand? Murder is “illegal”, yet thousands happen each year. Logic: laws do not prevent murder, thus such laws are ineffective and useless.

        POTG are daily diverted from reality by focus on how “gun laws” do not stop crime. It is not crime, or even the criminal, that is the target of “gun laws”. This leaves us beating expired equines. If “gun laws” can be claimed to have reduced “gun crime” by a single digit, “gun laws” work (“…if it saves only one”). If gun laws are believed to make “normal” places safer, gun law works. If a single mass shooting happens, it is proof that stronger (coming closer to complete gun bans) are needed (“if it saves only one”).

        Beliefs are strong with humans, reason and logic not so much.

        • “The idea that a law is useless if it is not 100% effective is disingenuous.”

          This is heavily dependent on the desired outcome of the law, which varies.

          Some laws, like the prohibition on murder which you mention, are known to not be 100% effective in prevention but they don’t exist for prevention. Murder, really, is rather rare in the grand scheme of things. People are generally wired to avoid killing other people. That’s exactly why we recoil in horror at things like the holocaust, which is a different kettle of fish in many regards.

          A prohibition on run-of-the-mill murder is designed to give us a tool to deal with the outliers who would commit the act regardless of stigma against it. The law allows us to remove them from the general population for the benefit of that population. The efficacy desired is this removal of the person post-crime rather than prevention of the crime. The person has proved themselves to be, in some way, dangerous in an unacceptable way for society to tolerate, at least at this time. So they must be removed from society for some period of time.

          For the sake of brevity here I’m going to skip right along to the subset of laws under discussion where gun control laws fall.

          There is a subset of laws that serve no particular public good for a variety of reasons but mostly these laws are problematic not because of what they seek but because the real world outcome is that they make things worse. Some simply create a lucrative black market that wouldn’t otherwise exist and therefore create crime within the law that was made and within the scope of other laws too because there’s no legal remedy if you’re wronged in a black market so extra-judicial remedies are sought. You see this in the drug trade. There are also the secondary crimes created by this black market where scarcity has been imposed by law rather than supply. Again, drugs or booze under Prohibition are good examples.

          Gun control however is a subset of this subset. Not only does it create an enhanced black market which spawns secondary, tertiary and problems even further removed but it also, by definition, punishes a group of people who have harmed no one. Like all malum prohibitum laws it has issues but this type of law also creates whole classes of not just otherwise law abiding people who become criminals but does so in a manner that effects people who have a genuine need for the object the law controls.

          As such it’s not like a malum prohibitum law against a narcotic with no value other than getting high, while that law is problematic in many ways it doesn’t prohibit people from getting things they may well actually need. Further, these laws do not seek to remove or punish those who have transgressed but rather seek to prevent them from transgressing in the first place by assuming that all who possess [Item X] will transgress the rights of others. Not only is this foolish since the weapon is between your ears but it’s ethically problematic because people might actually need that item to survive.

          What I’m saying here is that when it comes to laws a lot of this is a strawman argument because the intent of the law (prevention vs post-infraction remedy) has to be tailored to the item and behavior in question before we can start to talk about theoretical efficacy in what the law is supposed to accomplish. Once we have those two pieces then it becomes a question of what the real-world (or foreseeable real-world) consequences of the law are in practice.

          Gun control falls down on all fronts. It’s not really designed in a way that it can prevent what it claims to be preventing because the proposed laws are poorly tailored for that purpose. They also have directly observable real-world consequences that are quite negative for the already law-abiding citizens who probably wouldn’t have abused the item in the first place. They also create a black-market spawning other issues. We know this because we have seen it.

          That leads us back to the original question of intent: What’s the intent of the law since we KNOW it cannot do what it proposes to do since it only targets those who wouldn’t have been a problem without the law and we KNOW it creates a host of other problems?

          Much of this has to do with human nature. When we fight biology we’re going to lose. Laws meant to prevent already have some issues but that doesn’t mean they’re intrinsically “bad”. However, laws meant to prevent an action which also are in direct conflict with biology are going to, at absolute best, create more problems than they solve and that’s if they solve the problem in the first place which they are unlikely to do. Ergo, they’re a fool’s errand from the jump.

          When you hear “there ought to be a law” it’s not necessarily an incorrect statement. However whether or not it’s correct depends on a host of factors we have to weigh fairly carefully, so when you hear that statement it’s time to start asking a lot of questions. Unfortunately that’s not something most people do.

        • Created a very robust reply, but the robot check appeared at the moment I closed the browser after send. Just not up for doing it again. However,

          When we argue about effectiveness of law, about adverse consequences, we are fighting on ground selected by gun-grabbers: utility, need.

        • The anti bot scripts are somewhat annoying.

          I don’t propose to argue with the antis on gun control based on need or virtue or intent, that was general background on how laws are *supposed* to be crafted.

          My point was simply that the intent and therefore the application of the law varies. As such a grabber who says that arguments against gun control boil down to “Why is murder against the law since it doesn’t stop murder?” is ignorant, stupid or deflecting from the actual argument because a law against murder isn’t meant to prevent murder. “Gun control” OTOH, is ostensibly to prevent “gun violence” and murder.

          That argument holds no water if you look at the root design of the two laws. One is “designed to prevent” where the other is not. Therefore the comparison is false.

          If you want to get all formal in terms of logic and debate: The grabber argument of “Why have any laws!?” is a false equivalence used to create a false dilemma that leads to a whole lotta bullshit and other fallacies that I’m not even going to think about typing out here.

        • Gun control laws have proven effective in both prevention and reduction. NFA and FOPA effectively reduced the number of machine guns held by the public, and effectively reduced to near zero the number of gangland, drive-by shootings using machine guns. Prevention worked.

          However, intent, result and precision of wording of gun control laws are all irrelevant; they constitute infringements on an enumerated prohibition of government regulation and control of firearms of the people. The gun-grabbers want us bogged down in arguments of “need”, “effectiveness”, “utility”, “fairness”, blah blah blah. We should avoid the bait. About the only statistical stance we should take is that hundreds of millions of legally obtained guns by “the people” does not have an accompanying rise in the number of crimes and deaths from use/misuse of firearms.

          The effectiveness or intent of gun laws is irrelevant, and we should be asking which of a person’s enumerated and unenumerated rights is that person willing to sacrifice so that an insignificant number of other people are not damaged, or offended. How about making all non-prescription drugs illegal, because thousands of non-users are harmed each year? More are harmed through use and misuse of drugs than by use/misuse of firearms, so why not support making all non-prescription drug use illegal?

          We need to keep moving the goal posts, and run the gun-grabbers ragged with their own words used against them.

  13. To people that promote support and pass gun control laws they are very successful not failures. Gun control laws do exactly as intended. They demonize, hinder, dissuade and outright criminalize otherwise law abiding citizens who have committed no/nor are inclined to commit any crimes. Gun control fanatics are an insidious evil bunch of tyrants which, the second amendments only intention was to empower freedom loving law abiding citizens a lethal defense against…

  14. I hate ILLinois…this BS is what dumbocrat scum do. What’s worse is there are some 2000000 FOID holder’s. VOTE idiot’s. They’re making marijuana legal too. Got a pot card? No gun for you. Gotta’ 100mph speeding ticket on I-80??? Ditto. All I can do is move east a mile(where I got nearly all my guns)😩

  15. With very few exceptions, everything is a result of the style or price. I’ve written numerous times on why they don’t fix mental health. They don’t because it’s a financial bottomless pit. All they will ever do is throw some money crumb at the problem and sit back and exclaim “see, we’re doing something”
    Making laws is easy, making laws that actually work is quite another.
    Case in point, the Seattle tax law that was supposed to bring in big revenue from a $25 tax for every firearm and five cents for every round of ammo sold. Only problem, it failed as designed and failed bad.
    Crime and gun crimes could be fixed but it involves locking people up which means more prisons, more guards etc. In other words, big big money. The gang and MS-13 problem could be solved in short order also but we as a society NEVER do what is necessary.
    We as a society HISTORICALLY blunder at fixing societal problems but a fix would be pretty simple. You lock up offenders for a LONG LONG time and others are just plain dead. Sounds extreme huh, but it comes down to the style or the price. They won’t round up every MS-13 gang member and line them up against a wall because…that’s not our style. They won’t lock people up for a long LONG time because it’s too expensive.

    • I want to find something to disagree with but mostly because I prefer to be an optimist. Unfortunately your points are well presented and supported. In short, damnit.

    • The Seattle ordinance succeeded exactly as intended. The purpose of the law was to force the gun stores out of town,. It worked, as everyone drove over to Tacoma to avoid the taxes. One shop left immediately. I don’t know of the other survived.

      The whole point of additional fees, particularly fees that force gun owners to pay for the bad behavior of criminals, like the FOID fee increase in Illinois and a (recently failed) attempt in California to add an excise tax (like Seattle) to the sale of every firearm, increased CCW fees, bullet taxes, etc., is to discourage law abiding citizens from buying and shooting guns. These folks are completely convinced that fewer guns will result in less crime, and fewer homicides. That they have no evidence to support the theory has not dissuaded them from this common sense conclusion.

      • “That they have no evidence to support the theory has not dissuaded them from this common sense conclusion.”

        What they have is proof that more needs to be done.

        Consider: The proper counter to bad speech is more good speech. Thus, when doing the right thing is not achieving desired results, more of the right thing must be applied.

  16. The goal is to bring-down the system. Read about Cloward-Piven (Wikipedia is good enough), the two Columbia University Professors who annunciated the strategy for overwhelming our Democratic Republic with burdensome and costly regulations.

  17. One might argue that Progressivism is a mental illness. Under this ideology, results don’t matter at all. It’s all about “feeling” like one is “doing something”. Even when that “something” causes more of the problem it is seeking to solve, they will always double down. Look at how eliminating discipline in Florida schools so violent kids could “feel better about themselves” eventually led to a mass shooting at a school. In fact, most mass shooters could be classified as having a “progressive ideology”.

    • “One might argue that Progressivism is a mental illness. Under this ideology, results don’t matter at all. It’s all about “feeling” like one is “doing something”. Even when that “something” causes more of the problem it is seeking to solve, they will always double down.”

      This applies to the useful fools of the left, the true believer followers.

      It does not apply to the people at the top. They have a clear vision of what they are doing and why. That vision is to overthrow the Constitution and implement a communist (by some other name) dictatorship.

  18. Because we all have got this weird concept in our heads that those we elect to office need to “do something” about anything we find unpleasant… Seriously when was the last time a law was passed that resolved and actual issue, 1960 something? Ever since then we’ve been on this path to make the illegal even more super extra illegaler FOR TEH CHITRENZ!!!!1111QWA! Personally I think 90% of the legislation we’ve passed in the last 30 years has been useless, it never really makes anything new illegal and it just tacks on another charge that a DA will happily barter away to keep their conviction stats up.

    They also can’t seize even more power off of a successful law so every failure is really a feature not a bug. While law X may prevent future murders there’s far more power to be gained passing laws A-W and Y-Z.

  19. The answer to the failure of acheiving the Fascist/Socialist/Communist Utopia is more of it… They don’t believe anything else.

    • “The answer to the failure of acheiving the Fascist/Socialist/Communist Utopia is more of it… They don’t believe anything else.”

      The same people who believe socialism fails because the right people haven’t been in charge also believe that when chains don’t stop action, it’s because the right amount of chain has yet to be used.

        • Usually, the left makes policy without thinking things through and rues their decisions too late. My theory is: if this kicks in is to energize the ‘red’ voters in _every_ state, and fully expect them to vote at least ten times.

          Oh, and if everyone in California will go support and vote for Calexit, that would just seal it… looking at you, jwm.

        • “When the electoral college is gutted…”

          The founders worked under the theory of “enlightened self-interest”. That is, “be careful what you wish for”, because someone else can use it against you. Companion to that was the idea that the States would be so jealous of their sovereign rights, a coordinated effort to subvert those rights would not be successful. (Let’s not quibble over whether unenumerated rights are rights of the State, or rights of the people. (9th and 10th amendments say it is both).

          To fully grasp the context, one must understand that because States identified themselves as near-nations, the actual surrender of sovereignty was restricted to the delegated powers contained in the words of the constitution. All other sovereignty was retained, and unavailable to the central government. One might think “Not one inch more” as the overall principle of States (and “the people” of the States).

          From this context one understands that the States were demographically different, in that some States had more economic and political power (House of Representatives) than others. With the natural disparity, and the determination to prevent democracy from being the governing principal, the founders created a counterweight to the disparity in establishing the Electoral College.

          Often overlooked is the underlying idea that in order to make the Electoral College effective, it would consist of representatives of the people not already in federal office (Congressmen and Senators). “The people” were presented with a means to mitigate any errors attributable to Congressmen and Senators who strayed from the intent of the voters who sent them to D.C.

          Further context illuminates the setting of the founding in that the only political parties of any note were the Federalists, and Anti-Federalists. Yet, these are only labels to identify the major divide concerning how much power the central committee would be granted; not actual parties as we know them today. As such, the concept of States colluding to subvert the constitution was almost unimaginable. Thus, the voters of the States would elect electoral representatives different from House and Senate, and different in perspective from other States; stasis if you will.

          Yet, the founders did recognize that the seeds of destruction of the nation existed within the very compact designed to create a successful nation. One idea of military service to the nation sort of encapsulates that conundrum: The military will stand to the wall and defend the nation against all comers, even while the nation destroys itself from within; it is not the mission of the military to save the nation from itself.

          Remember, Franklin understood quite clearly the truth of the compact of States: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

  20. Nunn v Georgia 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243 (1846) is a Georgia Supreme Court ruling

    “‘The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.’
    The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free state.
    Our opinion is, that any law, State of Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I and his two wicked sons and successors, reestablished by revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonist, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Caharta!”

    Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said;
    “In Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125 (1998), in the course of analyzing the meaning of “carries a firearm” in a federal criminal statute, JUSTICE GINSBURG wrote that “[s]urely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment . . . indicate[s]: ‘wear, bear, or carry . . . upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose . . . of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.’” Id., at 143 (dissenting opinion)”

    I keep hearing that we must keep guns out of the hands of criminals. That is backwards. If someone is thought to be dangerous, do not try to change the weapon that they might use. Remove them to a place where they can be helped and controlled away from any weapons. You do not keep cars away from drunks, you keep drunks away from cars. Keep putting the criminals in jail when they perform criminal acts. That keeps their hands away from guns. Adding more fees and permits to legally have firearms does nothing to the criminal having firearms.

  21. Because “How do we cut down on criminals furthering their crimes with guns?” was never the question.

    Folks who grew up in the Eastern Bloc seem to get this in a way most Americans never will.

    • Except for the liberal Lithuanians living here. They’re democrats. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the media makes them the “cool kids”. They want to sit at the cool kids’ table at lunch, right? The Republicans are the stupid, missing-a-front-tooth people.

  22. A politician with a law
    never stops a bad guy with a gun.
    The politician’s law only controls the good guys,
    which is the politician’s actual agenda.
    Today, one has more to fear from a politician with a law than a bad guy with a gun.
    One can shoot the bad guy. Sadly, not the politicians.
    Our Founding Fathers would already have been finished shooting a second time.
    Freedom was never won, only lost, at the ballot box.
    Freedom is only won or protected by force.
    Lock, Load, Fire, Repeat

  23. There are two groups of gun control advocates who always want more gun control laws because their previous laws didn’t work.

    The first group are the intellectual perverts who worship at the altar of Karl Marx. In this lot, we find lots of self-styled ‘intellectuals’ and the modern version of the Mensheviks.

    Whenever any component of marxism/communism fails, these morons tell us “Well, it wasn’t true marxism. It wasn’t implemented correctly. The right people weren’t in charge.”

    We’ve been hearing this greasy evasion and dissembling since the 1930’s, when the communist state started sending people off to the gulags, slaughtering people wholesale and starving people by the millions. The greasy dissembling we hear? “Oh, there were excesses.”

    The second group who keep doubling down on gun control are emotional women. This group want a solution to assuage their emotional turmoil when the press manipulates them following a shooting incident. The trouble is, women, in the large majority, never think through the consequences of their policy actions. This was first seen in the first national political agenda of women, Prohibition. It’s been pretty much the case in every national-level agenda since then. Look at the reaction to the “#MeToo” agenda. Lots of women made unfounded accusations, with which the majority of women were a-OK. As a result, men in high-level corporate jobs are adopting the Pence Rule, or they’re no longer mentoring women, or they’re finding ways to no longer even hire women.

    All completely predictable from a distance – but these results come as a surprise to most women – just as the national crime wave during Prohibition did.

    Same deal with gun control I’ve debate women on this subject who keep calling for another law, and yet another, and another, and another. In the end, I show them that the stats on “gun homicides” won’t change by more than a statistical blip – because criminals don’t obey laws. I remember asking one female advocate of ever more strict laws in California in the 1990’s: “Why should a criminal obey your law?” She replied that she would advocate for some super-strict penalty. I replied “OK, is that going to be more strict than the penalty for murder? If not, then what additional deterrent will your law have that the law against murder doesn’t already?”

    You would have thought I lobotomized her on the spot. She had no reply. You could see that she hadn’t thought any of this through – ever.

    So when their first law doesn’t work because they don’t understand that laws are just words on paper, they propose another law. And then another. And then another.

  24. “Why is the Answer to Gun Control Failures Always More Gun Control Laws?”

    For the same reason the answer to failures of socialism is always more socialism: craven stupidity and infantile malice.

    • …..”your right to own a gun threatens me”….that is where they’re coming from…we don’t need lengthy posts to state the obvious…that it is a philosophical difference that needs to be challenged at every level….

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