I recently got into a week long debate on FB with a Canadian and a leftist woman from La. It started off with the usual arguments such as: "Why does anyone need: 'assault' weapons, hi-cap mags etc. etc." The Canadian disappeared when I asked him "Why does anyone need a car that does 0-60 in under 5 seconds and goes way over 100 mph." See, he owns and races a late model Porsche.
The woman didn't quit so easily though. She continued the argument saying that the NRA was just a bunch of lobbyists and didn't care about safety and wanted every nut and his brother to own guns. She thought that an "Australian Buy-Back" program was a good idea and that we needed to severely lower the number of guns in circulation. She also believed that registration followed by banning and confiscation would drastically diminish gun violence and held onto the "fact" that you are more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. She like to call all my points "strawman arguments" but yet posted "studies" that openly admitted there was no correlation between gun control and crime control. She even argued against civilian carry saying that during an active shooter incident, a person-armed or not- should do nothing and let the police handle the situation. She kind of relented when she said Cop-retired or off duty and Military-off duty or retired could respond.
Finally (somehow) I got her to admit that new laws wouldn't be effective in controlling the number of illegal guns or the crime rate and would only take guns away from the law abiding. She did say that she thought that a ("normal") person could carry a gun if they wanted, but that they should never use it. With every counterpoint that I made, I used my 24 years on the job in a large city ghetto to back up certain points, that wasn't "fact" she said, just one man's personal experiences, anecdotal stories. Then I asked her what ideas she had for fixing the problem. Her ideas were training and more training, universal background checks, closing the gun show "loop holes" and licensing for buyers and sellers.
I explained to her how licensing each firearm would A) Be very difficult B) Be dangerously close to registration, which would most likely be the beginning of banning and confiscation and C) Not do a thing to reduce crime.
SOMEHOW, in the end I was able to get her to agree that if first time gun buyers were to take an NRA-approved safety course before buying a gun that would meet her "demands" of more safety training. I got her to agree that a first timer could do 1 of 2 things when buying a gun. #1 Take the NRA safety course, then take the certificate of completion to the gun shop and buy your gun or #2 Go to the gun shop and pick out your gun. Go take the safety course and return with the certificate of completion and pick up your gun ... you could also say that this is a "Cooling Off" period which should make some of them happy. (I based this on Ohio's requirement that first-time hunters take a Hunter's Safety Course before they can get a hunting license) I figured this would be the lesser of the evils.
So did I do OK or did I blow it? I know that many of you don't want any kind of restriction on gun buying, but I was curious what it would take to "turn" an anti that appeared to be sitting on the fence.
The woman didn't quit so easily though. She continued the argument saying that the NRA was just a bunch of lobbyists and didn't care about safety and wanted every nut and his brother to own guns. She thought that an "Australian Buy-Back" program was a good idea and that we needed to severely lower the number of guns in circulation. She also believed that registration followed by banning and confiscation would drastically diminish gun violence and held onto the "fact" that you are more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. She like to call all my points "strawman arguments" but yet posted "studies" that openly admitted there was no correlation between gun control and crime control. She even argued against civilian carry saying that during an active shooter incident, a person-armed or not- should do nothing and let the police handle the situation. She kind of relented when she said Cop-retired or off duty and Military-off duty or retired could respond.
Finally (somehow) I got her to admit that new laws wouldn't be effective in controlling the number of illegal guns or the crime rate and would only take guns away from the law abiding. She did say that she thought that a ("normal") person could carry a gun if they wanted, but that they should never use it. With every counterpoint that I made, I used my 24 years on the job in a large city ghetto to back up certain points, that wasn't "fact" she said, just one man's personal experiences, anecdotal stories. Then I asked her what ideas she had for fixing the problem. Her ideas were training and more training, universal background checks, closing the gun show "loop holes" and licensing for buyers and sellers.
I explained to her how licensing each firearm would A) Be very difficult B) Be dangerously close to registration, which would most likely be the beginning of banning and confiscation and C) Not do a thing to reduce crime.
SOMEHOW, in the end I was able to get her to agree that if first time gun buyers were to take an NRA-approved safety course before buying a gun that would meet her "demands" of more safety training. I got her to agree that a first timer could do 1 of 2 things when buying a gun. #1 Take the NRA safety course, then take the certificate of completion to the gun shop and buy your gun or #2 Go to the gun shop and pick out your gun. Go take the safety course and return with the certificate of completion and pick up your gun ... you could also say that this is a "Cooling Off" period which should make some of them happy. (I based this on Ohio's requirement that first-time hunters take a Hunter's Safety Course before they can get a hunting license) I figured this would be the lesser of the evils.
So did I do OK or did I blow it? I know that many of you don't want any kind of restriction on gun buying, but I was curious what it would take to "turn" an anti that appeared to be sitting on the fence.
