Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Tennessee Wants to Loosen Its Draconian Gun Laws


The Tennessean reports how they want to be more like Arizona.

Their wish list includes opening all parks in the state to handguns and making it easier to carry guns into school and workplace parking lots. Advocates also plan to test the water for legislation modeled after a law passed in Arizona in 2010 that would make a handgun carry permit optional, in what would be the broadest change to Tennessee’s gun laws in nearly 20 years.
I suppose wanting to emulate Arizona says it all. Or, perhaps we learn everything we need to about Tennessee by the simple fact that they consider their own gun control too strict and in need of a loosening.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

14 comments:

  1. This says to me that my former state is doing a good job and that I need to get Arkansas to catch up.

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  2. Yeah, maybe they can be the gun violence capital of the world, not just the US.

    The US can soon have more gun crime than Somalia or Afghanistan!

    Yeah, that's the right direction.

    For morons like greg.

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  3. Laci The Dog:

    Tennessee has to do SOMETHING! Arizona is out in front of them by .6 of a murder/nonnegligent homicide/100,000. They're both pikers compared to Loozyana where the rate is 11.2/100,000.

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  4. Laci the Dog,

    Things that I see on the map that your link gives:

    1. Virginia and California are in the same category, despite radically different gun laws.

    2. Vermont and Illinois are in the same category, despite radically different gun laws.

    3. West Virginia and New York are in the same category, despite radically different gun laws.

    What conclusion do I draw from this? The differences in gun laws between the several states have little to no effect on violent crime.

    Vermont's gun laws have always allowed concealed carry without a permit. Virginia and West Virginia have better numbers per 100,000 than their similarly colored states. The trend line on the bar graph is downward, and the percent change in murders is down in almost every state.

    The numbers don't support your position. That being the case, I have to wonder why you keep citing them.

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  5. Oh Baby...I just cannot wait for the reality to hit here...remember the Barber who accidentally got shot in the ass in a bar by one of his clients just hours after Ohio passed it's loosened restrictons on carrying firearms in saloons.
    But lets face it, the real reality is like drunken idiots driving with suspended licenses. No body knows how widespread the problem really is until it's way too late.

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  6. Greg likes to compare apples to oranges. What good is it comparing the states when it is easy to cross state lines to buy guns. Compare this country to a European country with no guns. You lose every time.

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  7. Gun laws will never be loose enough until I can legally marry my 30.06.

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  8. "Compare this country to a European country with no guns. You lose every time."
    We don't live in Europe. We live in America where gun ownership is enshrined in the constitution. The desire to ban gun ownership is no different than the desire to ban abortions, taking away constitutional rights is a weak minded cowardly position.

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  9. Anonymous,

    Since when does Anonymous agree with gun control people? Anyway, you don't want me to compare apples to oranges, but you want me to compare America to Europe? The only comparison that I care about there is that we have a recognized right to firearms here, and many Europeans don't.

    But address what I said. The states mentioned with the loose (read, good) gun laws have similar rates of crime to those with strict (read, bad) laws. You can say that the states with strict laws get guns imported from the looser states, but why aren't the states with looser laws experiencing much higher rates of crime? In the latter states, a criminal doesn't have to work as hard to get a gun that he isn't supposed to have. If gun control in this country had any chance of reducing crime, there should be a higher rate of crime in every state with loose gun laws.

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  10. France has guns, but really tight restrictions on gun ownership and use. I know, work with and actually have friends who are French "gun nuts" who buy gun magazines like they were porno. It's interesting to see what you have to really go through to possess a gun here. You have to go through an education course and be registered at the prefecture and of course the type of firearm you can legally own is very restricted by licensing. That said, most of my neighbors own guns and hunt.
    But assault weapons? Now that's porno...and there is a very low incidence of gun related crime here. The big national crime news story here today is about some kids who got a hold of some Kalichnikovs and used them to try to knock over a frozen food store outside of Marseille. They killed an employee and one of the would be gangsters got killed in the botched crime. But how did the Kalichnikovs get into France? They were smuggled by tourists who bought them in Eastern Europe. That's how unregistered guns get into the hands of criminals here. Low grade smuggling. That's how guns go from state to state in America, but the "smuggling" is on an industrial scale and it's how the middle man arms dealers make a buck...they have to put food on their family as George Jr. so aptly put it.
    What would be an item buried in the American news if it happened there, is the big story here. That's the reality of living in a society with real restrictions on the trafficking of firearms and real controls on who owns them and who can buy them. When a gun crime happens here, it is national news!

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  11. ckerst said a couple magic words. He said "ban," which is really funny because nobody else is talking about banning anything. We want strict gun control laws especially with regards to who can qualify to safely own guns. That's not banning.

    The other magic word was "enshrined." One of our anonymous commenters wants to marry his rifle, a joke I'm sure, but one which indicates the intimate fetish-like "relationship" you guys often have with weapons (inanimate objects, as you like to remind us when it suits). "Enshrined" carries with it connotations of religious fanaticism. Images of kowtowing in reverential adoration to the inanimate talisman spring to mind.

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  12. Mikeb302000,

    Strict controls or outright bans, the purpose is the same: limit access to guns to only approved people. By the way, the Anonymous poster who wants to marry his .30-'06 is probably on your side, since he was making a parody of people on my side. While we're on the subject, I don't see my guns as magical objects, nor do I regard them as a fetish. The word "enshrined" has been used with regard to the First Amendment rights as well, and for the same reason.

    Microdot,

    The kind of smuggling that you describe is exactly what would happen here if the kind of gun control advocated here were to become law. Of course, we already have a good supply to work with.

    On the subject of language, what exactly is an assault weapon and what is a Kalichnikov?

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  13. Greg Camp:

    Perhaps you ARE too dense to notice that "anonymous" is a "name" use by a number of commenters on this blog and others. A few of them are obviously people who said that they would NEVER comment here again--they are, of course, liars.

    This:

    "Strict controls or outright bans, the purpose is the same: limit access to guns to only approved people."

    Makes me think that you would set no limits, none, on anyone who wants to own a gun. So you're okay with stone killers, KKKrazzeepants radicals and wifebeaters to haz teh gunz and, lest we forget, blind people. Hey, Ray Charles used one in the "Blue Broters" and it worked out just fine.

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  14. Democommie,

    I've already given my position on allowing criminals to have guns. I've told you that they should be banned. The kind of enforcement mechanisms that your side proposes are too extreme a solution, though. Again, with the blind, I don't care if a blind person owns a gun or not. It's none of anyone's business, unless the person in question misuses it.

    Also again, unless you can show that I or anyone else here have made a statement that we know to be false, I have to wonder how you feel justified in calling us liars. Just because you disagree doesn't mean that we're telling lies. You're not the arbiter of truth, and may the gods help us if you ever are.

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