[August]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Not one step back! The line must be drawn here, here and no further! Seriously though, I'm not entirely certain that the moral ground favours such rigid defence, but I guess that is how things are in America and is probably why nothing has gotten done in the States for the past five to six years and why the government seems to be one argument away from another shutdown.

Again you distort what myself and others have told you. Legal gun owners have been stepping back for decades and suddenly to you we're being unreasonable because we don't want to continue stepping back forever until the RKBA is completely gone.

When Toyota cars were found to have sticking accelerators leading to accidents, did Toyota shrug and say that there was nothing that could be done about it. Nope, they recalled them and fixed it.

I guarantee you that if Glock or Ruger found a sticky trigger they would recall and fix it without a law forcing them to do it.

Besides, the next level of car technology might well dramatically reduce vehicle accidents, driverless cars. The Google car has only crashed twice in the time it has been in testing and both times a human was controlling it. When the computer controls it, it has dramatically greater reflexes and situational awareness than a human. It will be interesting when such technology becomes widespread to see how much traffic fatalities reduce.

Heh wouldn't another name for a driverless firearm be "body guard"?

Subsidize the reduction of price of these safes

Good luck with that, they won't even subsidize $5 trigger locks let alone a $200 handgun safe. FWIW a safe with similar unlocking mechanism that is big enough for a shotgun would have been a thousand bucks or more. I guess if they can't take the right away maybe they can just price it out of reach of all but the elite rich would be the idea.

Well, to be fair, this thread is entitled "Gun Control thread (merged many)" not "Vehicle safety thread (merged hardly any)" or "Drug abuse thread (merged zero)". So logic dictates that I would talk about morally acceptable solutions in regards to firearms...in a firearms thread.

You're right although I don't see you post in those type of threads with even close to the frequency and urgency that you do in this one Based on that it seems like you care a lot more about the 100 than the 650. I'm sure that's not how you really feel but the way I see it it does put your comments about acceptable collateral damage into a certain ironic perspective.

If there was a greater drive in the US to improve gun safety rather than this stonewall defence to try and stop any further drives to improve gun safety because it might stop people from enjoying their bits of metal as freely as they do, then we might not be having this conversation.

Really man this isn't about gun safety it's about control over the people. If it were actually about safety then the anti's would abandon their efforts to close this fictitious gun show loop hole and start looking at ways to protect their so called gun free zones and to actually find ways to discourage these monsters from acting in the first place.

Get serious about those things and you might find gun rights supporters more willing to compromise but as long as they continue to try and fix something that would not have prevented these well publicized mass killings but conveniently does include a universal registration scheme which has been long perceived to be the final step before confiscation it's awful hard to trust their motives.

Well, has anyone tried enforcing proper gun storage and safety? Has anyone tried enforcing the average gun owner to have the same sort of training and safety conscious attitude to a firearm as they should?

You get that training when you apply for a concealed carry permit or when you apply for a hunting license. Activities that take you out in public, just like automobiles by the way. But enforcing it though? Your little unarmed council worker is not going to be able walk though the Hood demanding to see everyone's gun safe. This would get ugly quickly.

FWIW you used to get that kind of training in public schools too but the anti's eventually scuppered that idea.

Have people tried improving access to mental health?

Those efforts usually get blocked by the patient privacy advocate lobby. And I guess with good reason seeing how the administration has already tried to take away the gun rights of millions of veterans and seniors for the flimsiest of reasons with no regard for actual risk.