Hu, I couldn't agree more. As someone who has lost friends because of drunk drivers, this is a national epidemic. It's also completely senseless and 100% preventable. The proposal are common sense, and there really is no legimitate ground other than thick headed stubborness to disgree.
Oh **** Hu! You better watch your step...you made sense...others on here don't like posters who make a valid and completely legitimate argument.
Why don't we eliminate speeding. Let's make cars that don't go any faster than 25 mph, all of those deaths or at least 99% of them were going faster than 25 mph and I would guess 90% of them were speeding. Eliminate drunk driving and speeding and the death total in a car is just about eradicated.
Breathalyzers as a mandatory part of every ignition system! 25 mph speed limits! It's for the children.
Maybe while doctors are asking patients about how many guns they own, they can also query them about their drinking and driving habits. Or better yet, Obama should just mandate that Government Motors put car breathalyzers on each model.
To be honest, I began my idea for the post to push back on the gun measures and the way Mr. Obama decided to handle it by exercising power from the executive branch of office. I already knew about the drunk driving statistics, but as I looked into it for this post I realized it is truly a serious matter and always has been, so it's not to be used as political tit-for-tat. Still the point is that gun ownership is misused politically while other major causes of unnecessary and tragic loss of life never garners the kind of emotional attention that gun rights/ownership/use does. What is taking place now in the 'going after guns' is tragically foolish in light of our nation's drinking and driving habits. More tragic loss of life there by far than in 'mass shootings.' But not early as presentable to bring people to their knees. They just happen here and there from community to community, day after day, week after week, but leave broken hearts and shattered lives just as much as by random insane firing of bullets by the deranged few. A right to own a firearm within the 1934 Firearms Law is no different than today's right to alcohol following the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition. Many measures make sense to curb insane gun violence that has nothing to do with denying the legal right to own certain firearms. Gun regulations I would have little problem with: 1. Semi-automatic center-fire firearms to be purchased from an FFL with background check, and sold person-to-person by FFL to FFL. Since the buyer has to pick up at the FFL, there's your background check there. 2. No restrictions on owning semi-automatic firearms regards right to ownership anymore than granddad's semi-auto hunting shotgun. 3. It makes no more sense to regulate magazines that to regulate how many bottles of whiskey you can purchase at a time. I think far more interest should be on enforcing safe driving regards both drunkenness, and all forms of negligent driving, to be enforce with extremely serious penalties that cannot so easily be gotten off by a shifty lawyer. Far more interset there than on gun ownership. Background checks is a very easy path to take. Any firearm can be as easily shipped to an FFL as to a person. I think the fee for the check is $25, or something like that. Would that not get in the way of undesirables? But then we live with an administration that scoffs at having an ID to vote yet wants a thorough background for owning a firearm. How about this. To vote you are required to show a proper photo ID that can only be gotten with a background check. Will the Obama Administration go along with that angle? Make the right to vote no different than the right to bear arms. Make it the same qualifications for both. And that's the real rub. It's a matter of dual standards for the most basic rights under the Constitution. I'll not even mind my taxes going to government-sponsored issuance of the qualifications to vote. Make it a free government paid-for background check that comes with registration card with photo, and show that to the FFL for an additional up-to-date application for a firearm. I have no problem with that.
Few things... First of all the gun control initiatives Obama is pushing is in no way a ban. They are proposed regulations on the type of guns and how they are sold. Similarly, alcohol, like all things in our society that are potentially dangerous, is regulated. Drinking ages...no drinking and driving...only sold at certain times...bars close...dram shop laws...harsh penalty for repeated dwi offenders....controls over types of products allowed to be sold and marketing of such products (they banned those high caffeine malt liquor drinks for example). This is also true for cars, which are subject to heavy regulations. Guns, which are arguably as dangerous, have arguably lax regulations. A discussion about how to better the regulations in light of the rash of general gun violence and an veritable epidemic of mass shootings seems entire reasonable in light of what is taking place. Also, I'll probably get blasted for this, but if we're talking about the value of AR-15s to society compared to the value of Alcohol, I think most people would consider alcohol to be much more valuable. As far as I can see, apart from target practice, AR15s and similar guns have little utility. There are far better weapons for both hunting and self defense. I think feeling safe in school or at a movie theater, far outweighs the enjoyment of a handful of people in being able to shoot an AR15 style gun or use high capacity magazines at a range. I see a whole lot of social utility in alcohol. It's been part of human culture through most of recorded history. It is an intoxicating drug, and like guns, if used irresponsibly, can lead to serious harm. Does the risk of that harm outweigh the value of a center of many many people's social lives? I don't think so, and the OP's argument breaks down there. The utility of cars themselves is much much greater also, which is why no one's talking about banning cars. Of course, again, no ones' talking about banning guns either....they're talking about common sense regulation that would cut down on the number of people injured as a result of them each year. The same sorts of safety and use regulation, which has been employed for alcohol and cars. Where am I wrong? If I'm missing hte value of AR15s and high capacity magazines, please enlighten me. I'm a pretty avid hunter. I don't have much experience with hand guns and would probably never want a gun for self denfese, but I do not see how an AR15 could play that role? I don't buy the whole government tyrrany thing. That probably made sense in 1776, but I do not think an AR15 is going to do anyone much good if the **** really hit the fan and social order deteriorated to that degree. The government has professional soldiers, modern aircract, dfrones, sophisticated spy equipment, etc etc. Not a lot going to protect you if those resources were seized by a party that meant ill to U.S. citizens. So the only place it really makes sense is if just society completely tumbled into anarchy....and we were in a new wild west sort of place. If that were to occur, I'd rather be dead, but assuming I'm alive, I'd feel much better if assault weapons weren't out there.
Why don't we just ban cars, no not all cars, just those little yuppie cars, most especially those little Obama battery cars. They just aren't safe, not nearly enough metal around you when you pull out in front of me while I'm drinking in my pickup truck. In which case, you're going to die, and I'm going to be given a DWI even though it was your fault. Not only your fault because you pulled out in front of me, but your fault for driving an unsafe car to begin with. It like taking a knife to a gun fight. It may save you a lot of money, but it's going to get you killed. Lazy liberals need to take responsibility for what they drive, and quit blaming others who just happen to have had a couple of beers, but were still smart enough to drive something with some protection around them. You give me three beers and put in on a driving course, and being on all challengers, yuppie cars and all.
I think Hu Fan has something. Honestly, if we all engaged in efforts to build common ground and put common-sense rules in place, maybe efforts to reduce gun violence would make more headway. While the drunken driving problem is hardly solved, we've made tremendous progress over the last 40 years. As Hu has pointed out, the country has made dramatic strides in cutting back on drunken driving and its negative consequences. Important changes in laws, regulation and the minds and hearts of people made the difference. Much of the work has come in cultural attitudes. Sadly enough I remember as a child in the 1960s watching middle-aged men help a friend too drunk to walk into his pickup -- so he could drive home. That wouldn't happen today, at least not with the people with whom I spend time. I remember being a student at UT in 1980 when Austin bars would have 2 for 1 happy hours and insist that one patron accept both drinks at the same time. At 20, I sure as hell wasn't going to let a frozen margarita get warm on me. The TABC doesn't allow that any more and the beverage industry is completely cool with it. Nobody's screaming about rights to serve or be served. Ronald Reagan played a key role in the fight against drunken driving, but withholding federal highway money from any state that didn't raise the drinking age to 21. Gov. William P. Clements, as conservative as Rick Perry but about twice as smart, signed the law making it illegal to drink alcohol while driving. I had, up to that point been one of those who liked to pop a top on the way home from work, on my way to the lake or an outing with friends. I thought about it carefully when the law changed and I quit drinking while driving and didn't miss it a bit. I hadn't ever drank to the point of intoxication while driving but I could see the sense behind prohibiting drinking while driving because of its impact on folks less responsible than me -- and I guess, based on the studies, even a single beer had a negative impact on my driving skills. Somehow common sense has left the gun debate and folks confuse talk about sensible regulation as the same as "taking away all our guns" and "completely trashing the U.S. Constitution.' I'm afraid if we had a National Alcohol Association as strident, unreasonable and powerful as the NRA, we'd chop off the regulatory powers of the TABC and other state equivalents as much as we've allowed Congress to do the ATF. We'd prohibit checkpoints and limit the agencies to once a year visits to the less than 1 percent of establishments that sold booze to 57 percent of those involved in drunk driving vehicular homicides.
If you stop people from drinking (which prohibition will not do) you would stop the money train from DWI tickets. But treating someone driving drunk that causes an accident the same as a murder or assault in any intentional form with even more swift and guaranteed punishment would certainly help.
Neither guns nor cars kill people. A gun has never killed a person and neither has a car. A person driving a car or a person using a gun has. Since this is true, neither cars or guns are deadlier than the other.
Good lord We have been down the restriction of alcohol before. If kids were taught early that drinking alcohol can be an enjoyable thing, when done responsibly, we probably wouldn't have all these deaths. The only thing you'll do with raising the drinking age is jam the courts.
