Blocking Scalise Testimony Shows Democrats' True Colors

[One Bad Pig]

Your comment about "island countries" leaves me scratching my head as to whether you think the massive cross-border illegal smuggling of guns from Mexico (presumably not from Canada?) would somehow become a thing if the US increased gun regulations... that seems rather unlikely. I would tend to think that to the extent that any illegal gun market were to thrive that the guns would be more likely made in Texas rather than smuggled in from Mexico. And trying to smuggle drugs in inside various other objects is one thing... trying to bring in millions of guns secretly disguised as something else is giving my imagination some rather improbable pictures of crazily shaped cargo packed with guns and would seem rather unlikely in general. There are certainly plenty of countries in the world - e.g. in Europe - that have plenty of land borders but which choose to regulate guns and do it successfully. Being an island vs not (is Australia an 'island' btw by whatever definition is relevant to you here?) would seem to have little to do with it.

Hamas manages to smuggle rockets into Gaza, across a rather more heavily fortified border than the US (where in many places one can simply walk across - hence the desire for a border barrier). Smugglers apparently have much better imaginations than you do.

[Sparko]

It's kinda soothing to hear you patiently explain how my country (and Roy's) as it is now, can't possibly exist.

Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them. Guns are an integral part of American history. There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.

You seem to think that if only you explain your logic clearly enough, that Roy and I will come around to your point of view - and be convinced that our entire life experiences of living in our countries are false and realize that countries can't possibly be the way we've experienced them, and that it would just never work to have a country like our ones.

I don't think any of us are under the delusion that logic will change your minds about anything.

[Cow Poke]

Yes, but your arguments about "if law X was passed, Y would happen" are fact-checkable because there are other countries in the world who have passed law X and not had Y happen.

The US is unique in a number of respects, and we saw what happened in prohibition. Tell me - how did prohibition work in your little hamlet?

Your foolish and willful ignorance of the rest of the world results in you making arguments about US political policy that are false and dumb.

And your envy and jealousy of the US is quite entertaining -- but, please, stay home.

[Cow Poke]

Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them. Guns are an integral part of American history. There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.

Well, yeah, but other that, his country is exactly like ours regarding guns.

I don't think any of us are under the delusion that logic will change your minds about anything.

He's special.

[Starlight]

Your countries never had as many guns as the USA or a constitutional right to them.

Gun ownership remains pretty pervasive in rural areas here, and going back a few decades to before the country had urbanized so much and before modern gun laws were brought in, gun ownership was pretty sky-high here. People had a legal right own guns (which is loosely equivalent to the US's constitutional right to them given we don't have a written constitution).

Guns are an integral part of American history.

When my country was being settled one of the first things that happened was that the natives bought muskets off the Europeans and then the natives promptly genocided each others' tribes using the muskets. That was kinda an integral part of our history, especially because it then led the surviving natives to be quite welcoming of European immigrant governance and peace-keeping in order to stop them killing each other.

There are already so many black market guns out there, they could never get them off the street by passing some legislation.

It wasn't a problem in Australia. They just did a compulsory buy-back and it worked fine...

Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted.

[Starlight]

The US is unique in a number of respects

Sure, large prison population, doesn't provide paid maternal leave, doesn't use the metric system, etc.

Tell me - how did prohibition work in your little hamlet?

I know you like to try and wind me up by mocking my country's size, but I'm left wondering if you actually are deluding yourself about our alleged small size. We have the population of an average sized US state, and twice the land area of an average sized US state (although much of it is uninhabitable mountainous terrain). My country is quite long and narrow, and is about the length of the US Eastern Seaboard. Are US states "little hamlets" in your mind? Are two average US states put together tiny?

Anyway, to answer your question, we never had national prohibition, but in those regions where it was enacted locally it was generally not considered to be particularly effective in achieving the policy goals (though neither did it have the serious negative consequences that the occurred in the US as a result of prohibition).

Your analogy between prohibition and gun control seems rather silly since internationally prohibition has generally proven to be an unsuccessful political policy and gun control has generally proven itself to be a successful policy. Your apparent gut belief that the one policy should have similar outcomes to the other seems to just rely on your feelings and completely ignore the facts which are an empirical reality.

I do, personally, think that illegal drugs should be analogized to prohibition. But beyond my gut feeling that they are similar things - alcohol after all is simply one potentially illegal consumable consciousness-affecting drug among many - that would have similar policy outcomes, there is the empirical realities that the War on Drugs has been incredibly unsuccessful and seems to have destabilized South America to boot, and countries that have legalized drugs (The Netherlands, Portugal, and quite a few with marijuana) seem to have found legalization a perfectly successful policy.

All evidence we have appears to show that gun regulation does not result in the same outcomes as regulation of alcohol and other drugs has. We could dwell on "why is a lethal weapon not analogous to an enjoyable consumable substance?"... but the lack of similarity between them seems rather self-evident to me.

your envy and jealousy of the US

[Sparko]

Gun ownership remains pretty pervasive in rural areas here, and going back a few decades to before the country had urbanized so much and before modern gun laws were brought in, gun ownership was pretty sky-high here. People had a legal right own guns (which is loosely equivalent to the US's constitutional right to them given we don't have a written constitution).

When my country was being settled one of the first things that happened was that the natives bought muskets off the Europeans and then the natives promptly genocided each others' tribes using the muskets. That was kinda an integral part of our history, especially because it then led the surviving natives to be quite welcoming of European immigrant governance and peace-keeping in order to stop them killing each other.

It wasn't a problem in Australia. They just did a compulsory buy-back and it worked fine...

Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted.

Again, you are showing a lack of understanding of our culture. Most Americans would never voluntarily give up their guns and if they were made illegal, they would hide them and there would end up being a huge black market in guns. In most buy back programs over here, people usually give up broken and trashed guns to get some money, or an old widow will give up her husband's guns, and I have even heard that some of the police departments will later sell off the guns to make money!

[Cow Poke]

Sure, large prison population, doesn't provide paid maternal leave, doesn't use the metric system, etc.

• The large prison population is in part the penalty of the sins we committed with respect to slavery, and we're still paying for that.
• Trump is working on the family leave thing, so hold what ya got!
• I was SO AGAINST the metric system when I was a kid, but having worked both in medical and science fields, and being forced to use the metric system, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised how much easier it was to convert units of measure just by sliding a decimal point back and forth.
• Next?

I know you like to try and wind me up by mocking my country's size,

And, obviously it worked, cause here you are with your defense....

but I'm left wondering if you actually are deluding yourself about our alleged small size. We have the population of an average sized US state, and twice the land area of an average sized US state (although much of it is uninhabitable mountainous terrain). My country is quite long and narrow, and is about the length of the US Eastern Seaboard. Are US states "little hamlets" in your mind? Are two average US states put together tiny?

You have, from everything I have seen, a very BEAUTIFUL country, and who can complain about a country that produces women like XENA THE WARRIOR PRINCESS?

Fact is, however, I leave your country to run its own affairs, and I don't try to meddle.

Anyway, to answer your question, we never had national prohibition,

Yeah, I know, I looked it up.

but in those regions where it was enacted locally it was generally not considered to be particularly effective in achieving the policy goals (though neither did it have the serious negative consequences that the occurred in the US as a result of prohibition).

Texas has "dry counties" which, though not aggressively enforced, simply mean that you can go to the next county over and buy as much booze as you want. I imagine "enacting it locally" in your country would have pretty much the same effect.

Your analogy between prohibition and gun control seems rather silly since internationally prohibition has generally proven to be an unsuccessful political policy

Yes! And it failed miserably, because Americans gots to hasta have their booze.

and gun control has generally proven itself to be a successful policy.

Well, then, problem SOLVED!!!!

If it's such a successful policy, why are guns so easy to obtain? Because our current 'gun control' situation is NOWHERE NEAR what prohibition was.
And, the point is, that if the liberals had their way, we'd have something more like prohibition, THEN you would see what a mell of a hess gun control really was.

Your apparent gut belief that the one policy should have similar outcomes to the other seems to just rely on your feelings and completely ignore the facts which are an empirical reality.

I know America and Americans better than you do, Star - I live here. And, Texans. Just TRY to set up a policy like prohibition in Texas where we can't have guns in a similar manner as prohibition did to booze.

I do, personally, think that illegal drugs should be analogized to prohibition.

The problem there is the same with guns and booze -- we have a major problem on the DEMAND side of the "Supply and Demand". I think we have learned our lesson with prohibition about trying to control the SUPPLY side when the DEMAND side simply increased. I wish we would learn the same thing about "the drug war". And, perhaps you hadn't thought through the problem that if we took a more "prohibition" attitude toward drugs, the FIRST problem you complained about in your little screed - the prison population - would expand exponentially. Good thinking!!!!

But beyond my gut feeling that they are similar things - alcohol after all is simply one potentially illegal consumable consciousness-affecting drug among many - that would have similar policy outcomes,

Prohibition was a failure.

there is the empirical realities that the War on Drugs has been incredibly unsuccessful and seems to have destabilized South America to boot, and countries that have legalized drugs (The Netherlands, Portugal, and quite a few with marijuana) seem to have found legalization a perfectly successful policy.

Because, like prohibition, the problem is the DEMAND.

All evidence we have appears to show that gun regulation does not result in the same outcomes as regulation of alcohol and other drugs has.

Because, so far, we haven't been STUPID enough to try a "prohibition" approach.

We could dwell on "why is a lethal weapon not analogous to an enjoyable consumable substance?"... but the lack of similarity between them seems rather self-evident to me.

What IS similar is the DEMAND. Try focusing on that aspect for a bit.

[Cow Poke]

Again, you are showing a lack of understanding of our culture. Most Americans would never voluntarily give up their guns and if they were made illegal, they would hide them and there would end up being a huge black market in guns. In most buy back programs over here, people usually give up broken and trashed guns to get some money, or an old widow will give up her husband's guns, and I have even heard that some of the police departments will later sell off the guns to make money!

In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.

[Sparko]

In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.

And that is the voluntary buyback programs. Can you imagine if they tried to implement a compulsory buyback program like Starlight was talking about?

[Cow Poke]

And that is the voluntary buyback programs. Can you imagine if they tried to implement a compulsory buyback program like Starlight was talking about?

In an episode of Blue Bloods, they dealt with the thorny problem of the gun buyback program, where a police officer overseeing the program happened to notice a particularly unique handgun being turned in that was used in a number of murders. She sneaked (snuck?) a cellphone picture of the guy turning it in, and it turned out to be....

Well, it turned out to be quite a conundrum involving the whole family - the Police Commissioner Dad, the police officer and detective sons, the daughter ADA, etc.... (But what episode of Blue Bloods doesn't?)

[rogue06]

In many jurisdictions, the gun "buy back" program has been such a dismal failure, even causing people to break into homes and STEAL guns to "sell back". And the rules of the "buy back" are such that there can be no criminal prosecution of persons "selling back" guns, because a fundamental principle of the program is absolute amnesty.

Locally, we had a guy "sell back" a gun that was rather unique, and it didn't take a genius to know that it was the very gun that was taken from a break-in at a city councilman's home. The gun was easily worth over $1500, and the doper who "sold it back" got $100 for it. (I happen to know that some strings were pulled to keep that gun out of the "destroy these" pile for which all "bought back" guns are destined) The program is a "make liberals feel good" program of no real impact on 'gun control'.

[Sparko]

The gun buy-back conducted in New Albany, Indiana in 2012 was declared a success by city officials although they noted that over half the firearms they got were old hunting rifles which as police Maj. Keith Whitlow noted "aren't the problem."

Yeah I noticed in Starlight's photo, while the guy is holding an AR-15, there doesn't seem to be any in that pile he is standing on, or handguns. Just old hunting rifles and shotguns.

also looking at the URL it seems to be a stock photo image from Getty