A thoughtful viewpoint from an Australian........ gun nuts won't be (2025 Update)

Not true when I made mine. In fact it got titled as a half ton pickup truck that had virtually zero restrictions at the time. (Maryland) It started life as a 58 Beetle but it was titled as a 74 Poty Truck. No I did not have to meet any of the 74 rules, including the seat belt ignition interlock. It was never inspected at all. I just took in a picture and they gave me a VIN plate that I screwed on.

It all depends on the state. In NC a handgun can be carried out in the open most anywhere but schools and government buildings and banks.

You could sling a AR-15 or shotgun over your sholder and walk down main street. It does have to be in plain sight.

Other states make you almost take it apart and have it locked in the trunk of your car.

There was some proof of a crime. He had threatened to kill some people. They could have put him under a bond and he would have had to surrender any guns he had and would not be able to buy one legally.

There were several other laws he had broken he could have been charged with and needed that same type of bond.

It was a clear case the police did not do their job. Just too many law breakers and not enough police.

We also have electric vehicles that are not much more than big golf cars allowed on the streets of some towns here in NJ. They are limited to towns where the speed limit is 35 or less. Think it's 35, might be 25. Not a lot of them, but I do see some here and there at the shore.

You talk about my reading comprehension? I said you can't BUILD a piece of crap, unsafe car, no air bags, no seat belts. And before you jump on that from some other angle, the discussion was in the context of vehicles on the ROAD.

On that point you are correct, my mistake.

No, I'm not. The discussion on cars was about cars on the ROAD. That is the context of what I replied to.

Then the context of guns should only be the ones you can carry in public.

Then you have to talk about guns that are legal to carry on the street and that is a pretty extensive background check in most states. (fingerprints, photo ID, abusive fees, regular renewals and a local LEO sign off, pretty much what you want)

I would think guns are like drugs. If you have the right connections and money , you can get most anything. Certain drugs are totally illegal and there are 'tons' of them around.

I have bought several guns from strangers over the years. Another one or two from friends that wanted money or wanted to try something else.

Snowden and Manning embarrassed the government. The Walkers aided the Soviets.

My feelings too. They could just as easy use a knife or run over people with a car if they go nuts. Just saw where some woman ran over a Latino girl just because she was one.

Seems the laws are sort of backwards. I see where the age to do that vapeing ( electronic smoking) age was raised to 21.

Seems that the younger people are too stupid to make that decision or to take a drink , but are able to vote at 18. I can see where the voting age should be 18 as that is where you could be drafted into the military when the draft was active. YOu should be able to vote if you are going to have to fight for something the government wants. Maybe the government should have raised the draft age to 21. However the government wants people that are not old enough to do much thinking for their seleves to be the ground pounders.

Ames, Hanssen, the list goes on and then there are those that we didn't hear about or haven't caught yet. They all passed very comprehensive background checks. Trader seems to think that his ONE example is a panacea. Most of these shooters were squeaky clean until they snapped, at least as far as any background check was going to reveal. All of this assumes they were not willing to just buy a gun off the street or steal it anyway.

That was precisely why the voting age was lowered along with the drinking age, for a while, until the prohibitionists raised it back up to 21. We had far too many combat vets coming home from Vietnam, who couldn't buy a drink or vote.

I knew about the voting age, but never knew the drinking age was ever lowered. In NC where I live back in the late 1960's it was 18 to drink beer, not sure about wine,and 21 for the 'hard' stuff. Later it was raised to 21 for all.

DC was 18 for beer and wine too, pretty much since prohibition but in the Vietnam era other states were lowering the age. Nancy Reagan and the MADD women made all of that go away. Now if you are 18, alcohol, MDMA and fentanyl are all the same thing.

Is this America, or Nazi Germany? We have millions of people who are mentally ill or have a record of bad behavior and your solution is to euthanize them or lock them up? Do you even realize what you're saying? The vast majority of them do not become mass murderers. I don't know that the rate of violent crime among the mentally ill is any higher that that of the general population. They are living in society, functioning, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea for them to be buying guns. Someone has the mental capacity of a ten year old. Your idea is to exterminate them or lock them up for life, rather than simply have a permit process, so they can't buy a gun. My God, what is wrong with you?

And sad too, because previously I have had discussions with you where you acknowledged that you were OK with a reasonable permit process before one can go buy a gun. Now, instead you want euthanasia? WTF?

They could just as easy use a knife or run over people

But an AR-15 is infinitely more practical and deadly. Can you find us any that have killed 50 people with a knife or car?

When I was growing up in New York State you could drink at 18 and vote at 21. It didn't affect me by the time they swapped the ages but I figured it was a bad deal. Let me see... Would I rather go out and have a few beers tonight or vote for some turkey next year who isn't going to do what he promised to do anyway? I've got to think about that for a while.

There was one problem with the drinking age. Kids would come over from Vermont where the age was 21, get hammered, and kill themselves on the mountain roads going home.

The Maryland and Virginia kids all went to DC. I had a fake ID when I was 16 and I went to school in DC so I could slip out for a beer if I didn't have a class. A bud draft was a quarter at the little bar at the end of the alley behind the school.

Of guns? Easy. Mandatory 5 year jail for anyone that sells a gun without informing the police beforehand, so they can do a background check on both buyer and seller. People would thing once (not twice) before selling a gun for