How many friendships have you had to end

[Always Right]

47. All ideas are welcome

I support your idea for national healthcare for the mentally ill in theory though I'd like to see some specifics of what you envision. Are we talking free room, board and treatment at national sanitariums?

What you called a loophole, I'd call a system failure as the situations I described were not excluded from the law or a work around, rather, it was a government employee failing to do their job.

It may seem like I've thrown up my hands but I don't know how you can get the police or military to do their job by passing new laws as the military is already required by law to report dishonorable discharges. Who pays the severe fine or gets thrown in jail for that? What about when police fail to go in to protect kids? Throw the deputies in jail for failing to act? Do that and see who still wants to be a deputy.

Non-gun enthusiasts are welcome to contribute to the conversation provided that they are open to facts and not blinded by emotions. For example, you said that the rules should be different for one's local. What happens when someone moves from a rural location to an urban location? Do they then have to re-qualify to keep their legally possessed property?

I see psych exams as a back door gun ban because all it will take is one doctor to get sued after he passes someone who then commits a gun crime. Then no more doctors are going to sign off on anyone unless they are rich and/or politically connected. That is essentially what happened with the National Firearms Act where the local chief law enforcement officer was required to sign the form stating they know of no local laws that would be violated. That was put in place because there were no computer databases of laws back then. Didn't take long til the cops just refused to sign then nobody but the connected got their forms signed.

Also, who decides what the psych criteria is to own a gun as plenty on this board think anyone who wants to own a gun is crazy.

How does a safety course prevent school shootings?

How does a personal reference help? Presumably the references will be given by the gun purchaser and I can't see how they would provide names of people who would say bad things. Just like on a resume, nobody lists references they know will say bad things.

As for "assault weapons", that is the buzz word of the day to attempt to demonize some particular subset of guns. However it is being misapplied to semi auto look a like guns that resemble full auto military assault weapons.

These so called assault weapons you feel should be subject to heavy regulation are only cosmetically different than other semi auto guns. That is why when there was an assault weapon ban (AWB) from 1994 to 2004, it was totally ineffective. That Because the ban attempted to differentiate between the banned guns and non-banned guns so being cosmetically different, it listed the "bad" cosmetic features. It didn't take long for the bad cosmetic features to be removed and so the guns were unbanned.

For example, the AWB prohibited bayonet lugs (a metal notch to attach a bayonet), threaded muzzles, flash hiders, telescoping stocks, so the guns had their bayonet lugs removed, the muzzles were left unthreaded, flash hiders were replaced with muzzle brakes and the telescoping stocks were made to no longer telescope and left in the fixed position. Essentially the gun was exactly the same and used the same ammo. The AWB did nothing.

Last comment on the AR-15. It uses the .223 Remington or the Nato 5.56 mm cartridge, which are about the lowest power rifle cartridges presently in production. In fact, I can only think of two or three less powerful cartridges while there are over 100 more powerful ones so every time I see an AR-15 called High Powered it is a lie. In fact, it is why the AR-15 was never really used for hunting as it is so much less powerful than traditional hunting guns. Note: There are some companies making a new type of ammo called 300 blackout that can be used in an AR-15 but that requires changing out some essential parts of the gun and the gun is in fact becoming popular for hunting animals no larger than hogs.

I would hope that any new regulations you put in place would equally be applied to the police and military as well since we they would also have access to guns.

Anyway, we are in agreement on healthcare for the mentally ill and that the present system failed us and that prohibited people need to be flagged, what we differ on is that I don't think additional obstacles need to be put in place to ownership that are not somehow directly designed to block criminal and crazies from getting weapons.