Our system is plain insanity. Make ALL guns EXTREMELY hard to get, close all gun stores, take shooting out of our public lands etc.

Sick of guns and gun people.

Because of the way Japan classifies crimes, most of the US mass murders using guns would not be "murders". In Japan, a multiple victim killing in which the killer takes his own life would list all of the deaths as suicides.
* I'm not seeing the police in Japan as less abusive of freedom and rights than US law enforcement.

re: "Make ALL guns EXTREMELY hard to get..." Maybe new guns at least for the law abiding folks but considering that there over 600 million guns in private hands in the world and that over 300 million are here in the US, I'd say that genie is long since escaped from the bottle and gave birth to 100 million other genies that now live in about one household in three.
* Unrealistic

re: "...close all gun stores..." The licensed legal ones would be an uphill battle if 2/3 of Congress and the 3/4 of the states were in favor. Now, today, I'd say that's impossible.
* Unrealistic

re: "...take shooting out of our public lands..." No more hunting. No Fudd guns. Bows and arrow...
* Utopian pipe dream

Many improvements in the attainable can be made while a congressional majority exists. I think many of the over-controlling wishes would be counterproductive.

The ultra violent people that love guns, want guns, shoot guns and make this place total gun infested land. I would love to see a virus that eats gunpowder so all the gun assholes would be up shits creek.

as you would most likely get your head cracked for ANY sign of non-compliance. Some here think the police have a bad rep here in the US, well, go against the grain with a JP and see what happens. Especially if you're a foreigner. Their jail "cells" are nothing to write home about, either. Not from personal experience, mind you, but had a friend spend a few weeks in one in Okinawa. Meals aren't exactly "filling", either. We have a LOT better system here, actually have rights that the Japanese don't, so don't go down the wishing well, unless you KNOW what's at the bottom...

However, s/he doesn't like guns, doesn't like dogs...
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142708885#post34

I don't like violence. Guns and dogs are two of the most violent things in my environment. End of story.

Democrats here are great people but it will never be the case where someone agrees with me on everything. It can be frustrating. From your replies:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1172210032#post1
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1172210032#post3

...I inferred that you had no interest in discussing any actual measures related to the topic in my thread. Don't be offended. Many, maybe most people, have "hot button" issues that they react to with an emotional response. Your two replies led me to the conclusion that you didn't really want to have the discussion that I was looking for and I decided not to continue triggering your replies. Your freedom to feel as you do doesn't require my approval. Me accepting your freedom and ideas doesn't mean I won't find them frustrating.

Have a great day.

I'll take the company of a dog over that of most humans any day.

Hopefully the SCOTUS will strike completely down the 1934 and 1968 gun control laws and legalize Constitutional Carry everywhere; ideally allow or even require the government to sell surplus rifles, handguns and ammo to us citizens and restart marksmanship classes in the schools!

dogs and guns are good; people who don't love them, not so much.

I lived in Japan for 8 years. It's a wonderful country in many ways, but the authoritarianism runs deep, very deep. Gun control in Japan goes back to the shogunate and was used to keep the peasantry down. Swords were also tightly controlled, and one of the attractions to military service in the run-up to WWII was that it was the only way a peasant could ever have the chance to wield a weapon.

No, it's not the kind of model I'd like to emulate.

unlike us they don't have mass shootings on a regular basis.

Our brand of freedom is rapidly becoming an extreme liability. Luckily the founders left us a way out - we can snip out the problematic 2a as easily as it was scribbled in.

We simply can't have this level of gun violence.

The reason they don't have mass killings has nothing to do with the availability of guns. It has to do with a mono-racial, nationalistic, communally-minded, and shame-based culture. It's for the same reasons that my neighbors would knock on my door to let me know if I put my trash out in the wrong kind of bag. It for the same reasons that families of people who are sent to prison -- unless they're yakuza -- will often disown and disavow the them: "I have no son." It's for the same reasons that corporate executives who are caught in malfeasance will often commit suicide.

This is not to say that Japanese citizens don't occasionally go off the rails. The Aum Shinrikyo cult in the 1990s committed a poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 13 and sickened more than 5,800. The cult had purchased numerous military weapons from rogue elements in the former Soviet Union and were attempting to purchase uranium to construct their own nuclear weapons. They actively recruited advanced students in the sciences, using a combination of psychedelic drugs and sexual favors to seduce them into joining. They launched the Tokyo attack prematurely, after attracting police attention for one of their attempts to test their chemical weapons in a Tokyo suburb. It's chilling to think what they could have achieved if they had had more time to plan and prepare.

That just describes Tuesdays in this country. It's all about the availability of guns. Psychos are found the world over. That's why gun hobbyists are so upset. They know their hobby is making it easy for the psychos to commit these horrific massacres again and again, and they know we won't/can't put up with it for very much longer.

I guess you missed my point. It's social control that prevents massacres, not limiting access to hardware. Where there's a will, there's a way.

We simply can't have massacres on a daily basis - no country will put up with that forever. Why would we?

In the first place, you're talking about massive social, cultural, and economic change. Frankly, I don't think we're even moving in the right direction. For example, I'm afraid that we're in for a period of increased political violence similar to what Germany experienced in the years of the Weimar Republic. I think that a heavy-handed approach to disarming the American public at this time would only serve to exacerbate it. Furthermore, I have several Democratic friends who have recently chosen to buy their first firearm, and I completely understand why.

We don't have massacres on a daily basis. We have murders daily, yes, and we have massacres far too frequently. But the vast majority of our murders don't occur in the large-scale slaughters that garner all the media attention. They occur in the steady drip, drip, drip of violent crime and domestic violence that has been with us for generations and won't go away just because Congress passes an assault weapons ban.

I own firearms: rifles, pistols, shotguns. I use them recreationally. I doubt that I will ever "need" them, and I certainly hope I never do. But I'm glad they're there. I have never understood the logic by which I'm expected to give them up because other people do bad things with them.

for the good of society. The baddies are ruining it for you.

Your hobby literally has a death toll attached to it and we can't have that now can we.

It's a right, the fundamental human right to self-defense. And my ownership and use of firearms has nothing to do with criminal misuse; look elsewhere for your "death toll." Do you drink alcohol? If so, can we hold you responsible for the ongoing slaughter on the highways? Do you use recreational drugs? What's the death toll wrought by the cartels? Do you see how that works?

If there were no guns, no one would be shot. That is a meaningless truism and an unattainable goal. It's the logic of the prison and the asylum, where everyone is presumed to be a danger, and rights are abrogated accordingly. Again, that's not a society I want to live in. And even if there were no guns, there would still be criminal violence, and yes, mass casualties.

Let's do the real work of establishing a just society. Until then, your casual dismissal of rights that don't interest you is nothing more than a self-serving attempt to put a band-aid on a gaping wound. It underestimates the problem and misplaces the blame. And we can't have that now, can we.

It can be whisked away with the stroke of a pen as easily as they scribbled it in in the first place. If something starts becoming an extreme liability i.e. a mass shooting every day, nations take action.

People used to have a long-ago right to take whatever strong pain killers they wanted. You could go into a store and walk out with a bottle of heroin. Then there started to be a death toll associated with overdoses and the country rightly took action.

There were howls of protest from the people who were being responsible and just relaxing every now and then with a little here and there that their rights were being trampled. Gun people remind me of that.

We'll look back at this time of unrestricted guns the same way we look at drug stores selling heroin over the counter.

Sure it is.
That's why it's called the Right to keep and bear arms.
The amendment is a protection. The Right exists with or without the amendment.

So like I said, it can whisked away in a heartbeat. In fact it will be. We'll look back at this era as a golden age of guns, and how awesome it was. Not.

It's a fundamental human right. The Bill of Rights was created intentionally to recognize those rights that the Founders thought should be inviolable.

Likewise gun hobbyists will have to get their gear from some skanky dealer in a bad part of town, out of the trunk of his car. It will also be more expensive and send you to jail if you get caught. Just a few votes is all it will take. The tide is turning, you can feel it with each new mass shooting.

... about how successful the War on Drugs has been. I like fairy tales.

It is a list (not complete, as per the 10th,) of rights humans have that are NOT to be taken away by government. A list, basically of what the gov't CAN'T do. They were added after drafting the Constitution, as many states did not want the new federal government to become what they had just fought a war to get rid of. Most states refused to ratify the Constitution without these amendments. And, if you wonder why the 2d was added, the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired over the government confiscating arms and ammo (powder, shot, etc.). So, perhaps you can fathom why, some people get a little upset when there are individuals/gov't officials who call for banning guns/ammo. "Been there, done that."

They are used to kill many times more people "accidentally" than firearms are used intentionally.

I don't advocate removing pretty much anything from the public.