So will other states issue guns to a foetus?

Is a sonogram valid as photo ID?

Or has the NRA shot themselves in the foot on this one?

.... if gun manufacturers have tested their products for baby dribble, personally I wouldn't want to wrestle a dribble covered gun from the tot (probably have bits of food stuck to it as well... I think I'd rather be shot).

The famed gangster Bubba "Baby-Face" Ludwig?

Who the f**k calls a child "Bubba"??

Hey, lets consider here. The law does not discriminate on sex, height, weigth, or age.

The kid has no priors!! (we don't count making a mess in his diapers !)

The kid has shown no evil intents on using his gun.

If the kid ever did anything wrong, he would be hard pressed to make a "clean" get-a-way!! ( OK, that one was fun. :-) )

later,

en

1) Grandpaw bought the gun. Not Bubba

2) Father & Bubba live in Chicago.

In Chicago, you have to register the fire arm and pay a "tax" or registration fee each year. Also anyone with a Chicago drivers license can not purchase a handgun. (Thanks Mayor Dailey I feel so much better now that only criminals can have guns)

Also forget about BB guns or Air Rifles. They're a no no.

3) While the Washington DC anti-gun law was overturned, only the City of Chicago has the strongest anti-gun laws in the States.

It would be more of a story if they didn't issue him a FOID card since there are no restrictions on age.

Perhaps Bubba could now go and mow down all his antagonists in the play ground and get away with it.

Who calls a child Bubba? A redneck perhaps? Someone short on imagination? Or every stereotypical midwest American. (if such a beast exists)

Gun laws, good game. Permits. . . Perfect. Bans? Hell no. When you pass a law banning guns, only the peopl abiding by the laws are affected.

In most other states, there is no requirement to register guns with the government-I made arrangements over the Internet to buy a pistol in a McDonald's parking lot, and that was perfectly legal.

There is also a practical reason for Baby Bubba to have the gun registered immediately--When states ban specific types of guns, they usually exempt guns you already own. With Baby Bubba already on record as owning the gun, it's more likely he will be able to keep it once he's old enough.

This is in the USA, remember. You folk across the pond are totally safe from us unless you ask for our help or try to retake the colonies...

Illinois and Massachusetts are two states out of 50 that requires an ID card for firearms owners. Someone buying a gun for the kid in say, Texas or Florida, would never make the news. And the father chose to make this news, he may find non-comfort in the situation now, with photos of himself and the kid now gone global...

I can assure you that the Illinois State Police ran a full background check on this child before the issue of the IL Firearm Owner's ID card. The kid is clean. ;-)

What causes me real heartburn here is the way the father kept referring to his boy as "Bubba" in the first article. That's an association that the gun owners in my state would really like to avoid.

A Loyal Reg Reader,

Mike Weisman,

1st Vice President,

Illinois State Rifle Association

I read elsewhere that the child was given the nickname "bubba" after all this was started...

Issuing permits to babies? I'm confused about how this can be possible if Illinois really did have "tough gun laws". Obviously they don't. Like the rest of the USA, firearms are very poorly regulated.

As for Mike Weisman's "...unless you ask for our help..", do we really need to remind him that Great Britain was never invaded, although *we* did help Europe in a *TIMELY* manner to oppose the Nazis - something the USA FAILED to do.

Here are some facts, ten years after they put a bit of effort in, ignored the gun-nuts, and (almost) unified Australia's gun laws so a bit of common-sense applied:

1. "In NSW, the number of guns in the hands of registered owners has

risen in the past six years.".

- So, *more* legal owners, contrary to the **** who wrote above "When you pass a law banning guns, only the peopl abiding by the laws are affected."

2. "Earlier this month, the Australian Institute of Criminology

reported the rate of gun theft had dropped by 70 per cent since

stricter gun laws were introduced."

- So, *less* knobhead gun-owners letting crims steal their weapons, because one part of the new laws concerned the safe storage of weapons.

3. "The risk of dying by gunshot halved over the past 10 years," said

Philip Alpers, adjunct associate professor at the University of

Sydney's School of Public Health.

4. "The fact that overall violent deaths have fallen since 1996 ...

strongly suggests there has not been substantial method substitution,"

the report says.

5. "...there were 0.27 firearm-related homicides per 100,000

Australians - about one-fifteenth of the US rate."

6. "The authors slam an earlier report....by Jeanine Baker from the

Sporting Shooters' Association of Australia and Samara McPhedran from

the Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting, exploited less than a

third of the available annual data and used "very dubious" statistical

methodology, they say."

- Geddit? The gun-loons lied.

7. In the 10 years up to 1996 and the new gun laws, there were 13 gun massacres.

In the 10 years following 1996 and the new gun laws, there were ZERO gun massacres.

1. Its not worthwhile to go thru the licencing hassles for just one gun.

2. Locking anything up in a big metal box bolted to both the floor and wall will reduce its chance of being stolen. "Knobheaded" banks do the same with cash.

3 & 4 Most crime has been on a downward trend over that period of time, if you dig thru the www.abs.gov.au data you'll see quite clearly that knives have been substituted.

5. Thank goodness they were beaten to death with a nice baseball bat instead of being shot by a nasty gun. The homicide rate in the US is about 5.5/100,000 in australia its about 4.5/100,000 (again from fbi.gov and abs.gov.au)

6. Great personal attack. Stylish and convincing.

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Trobe_University_shooting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting.

How much worse would these have been if people "had just given the attacker what he wanted" instead of fighting back?

Check the dates on the next list. All after the new gun laws.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/24/1079939699655.html

Lawmakers try to protect civilisation but can never anticipate every possibility (present and future). So someone, usually a lawyer, will find a loophole.

I favour fewer written laws and more of that rare commodity, "common sense" that empowers people to make sensible decisions .

The NRA tries to dance out of this one by jumping into the "give them both barrels before they do any more damage" but wonderfully neglects to add that IF there were even vague attempts at real gun control, shooting jags would drop considerably. Then they cry about other weapons. HELLO: guns are used for killing only; baseball bats are used for sports, knives cooking. People who have wanted to use weapons have made them from bed struts, records, soda cans, etc. but there have never been mass beatings by gangs with pillowcases full of cans or 10,000 deaths a year from lemon zesters.

I'm getting fed up with this constant Yank-bashing. They are our friends, after all (and although Blighty was never invaded, don't forget that this was a real fear for a long time - dear Winnie himself acknowledged that in his "we shall fight them on the beaches" speech - if we were invaded, then he hoped that "...in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old". I have to say many of we Brits find the easy availabilty of such a variety of guns to be very dangerous, though.

"NRA Are All Gun Happy Idiots" seems a little bit of a sweeping generalisation, especially given the previous post from the very rational-sounding Mike Weisman. My Grandfather here in Blighty owned a number of rifles, which he kept securely locked in a box that was bolted to the ground. He only ever used them at a proper shooting club and never did any harm to anyone. He still had them taken off of him when the law changed, though. But would I allow anyone to buy shotguns, handguns etc etc? No.

Freedom to chose how we want to live our lives is something that most Americans take for granted, and most EU citizens find is our greatest flaw. We are allowed to choose whether we would like to carry a gun for self defense or just to look like John Wayne. It really doesn't matter, why we have the gun; 'cause everyone is allowed to make their decision. And what matters is that we are allowed to make the choice. Criminals will get the guns no matter what we make illegal; we can't even stop a herd of humans and cocaine, how are we going to stop a gun?

One of the main arguments for allowing the people to remain armed is too allow every man woman and child to protect himself, not just from each other but from our Government. You EU'ers out there think that the US gov. is out of control and makes bad policy choices. And then you call for the common law abiding citizen to give his only defense to the same people that you rant about on these comments. If you think about it, governments are always in a state of flux and they need to be changed periodically because like a diaper they get filled with $h!t.

And as for quoting the rates of death by gun; the EU and the US are fundamentally different when it comes to how we approach personal freedoms and therefore weapon laws. But that is why I haven't applied to work in France, and I don't see a lot of the 5 million French Muslim's applying for US visas. We are allowed to make that choice. And I will be damned if I am going to allow GW and his clan to decide what I can do with my personal freedom...

You can spew context-free statistics all you want, but you only make yourself look like a complete moron. Take your point [5], for example:

US population = 301,869,748

<http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html>

Aus population= 20,826,190 <http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a900154b63?OpenDocument>

simple math --> 301869748 / 20826190 = 14.4947178529

and there's your "1/15th" gun violence rate. They are the same per capita rate.

Of course this rate could be skewed by some small population of insane gun massacre-prone population that slipped through the cracks of Aus.' s wondrous legal protections... but, wait... you said there haven't been any of those? hmm.

A true test of the efficacy of Australia's gun laws would involve comparing the per capita *gun owner* violence rate. This would probably make the gun violence rate for Australia *tower* over the US rate, in a proportional sense. This does not mean, however, that Australia is a more "gun-violent" society.

Rather, this makes sense when you consider that many "gun deaths" are actually suicides not Virgina Tech massacres, and gun ownership is correlative but not causative in cases of suicide (i.e. gun owners are not more likely to kill themselves, but those who kill themselves are more likely to use a gun if they own one.)

As with any large scale collection of data, almost anything can "fall through the cracks." I saw a news article of a Canadian registering his caulking gun as a firearm. Guns aren't a danger any more than an automobile when in competent, responsible hands (civilians and gov't agencies alike). There are legitimate uses for a firearm as a sporting instrument, protection, and gathering food. Unfortunately there is misuse as well, but that is the will of the shooter, not the presence of the instrument.

"-Geddit? The gun-loons lied."

Or maybe, just maybe - the anti-gun loons lied.

Ever think of that?

Oh, and as for quoting Mr Alpers as a believeable source of information, he has extensive links with Australia's anti-gun lobby and a history of making grand statements that turn out to be completely incorrect.

How fortunate that you conveniently overlooked that part!

I thought that the US constitution only allowed civiliians to bear arms in a time of emergency. Since most parts of the USA are not in a State of Emergency, guns are not permitted to be borne by civilians in those areas.

By the logic expounded by the gun lobby, it would be reasonable to fit ship which travel through certain parts of the Indian Ocean, where piracy is rife, with perhaps 4" guns (18" RADAR-controlled guns would be a bit excessive, but a 4" gun could make a reall mess of a boatload of men with AKs). (not necessarily a bad idea, not that I come to think of it, excet that then the pirates could easily use them too).

OTOH, if I were allowed to keep a gun (my residency contract explicitly forbids them, along with fireworks and "weapons of any sort", I might get one, if I could afford it. One might come in handy, and the running costs are negligible (ony govt. charges & a little maintenance)

On the whole, I am not against gun ownership, simply against stupid or insanely lax rules. A pistol, shotgun, or bolt-action rifle is oene thing, an M60 quite another.

Whatever the case may be, if you have strong gun laws in place (like in most of Western Europe) the criminals will have to go abroad to get guns. Living in Holland has brought that point across very well: the police search any and all eastern european and cars from further abroad within 10 km of the border if there's even the smallest suspicion. Consequence: 'only' 2 school shooting in our entire post war history, 1 fatality. And that for a country that endorses drugs and prostitution. It's so much safer when you know that if you get into a spat with the guy sitting next to you in the train you can fight it out like men and not have your kneecap blasted off because he 'had a bad day and didn't get his cocaine'.

For all of you who doubt it:

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/nl-netherlands/cri-crime

We don't have guns. The criminals don't have guns. Everybody happy.

That's pretty simple language.

CG, the Netherlands has so much less crime largely because there are so many fewer things illegal. It's the proliferation of laws that creates criminals, not the ownership of guns. Most of the "gun crime" in the U.S. is drug-related crime that happens to have guns used as a tool of the crime.

Holland also doesn't have the amount of unsettled woodland that the U.S. has, and hunting for food and sport probably is not an established custom there. The United States is still a very rural country with small pockets of dense population. I'm also pretty sure your police have weapons, don't they? Those weapons are used to defend themselves and the public. Would you trust a timely police response if you live half an hour by car from the nearest town? Is there anywhere in Holland that's half an hour away from a town?

The United States imprisons the highest percentage of its population of any Western nation. Our political parties pass laws as much for party agendas as for the betterment of the country or the world for the citizens of the United States. The sheer number of laws and regulations in the U.S. makes it nearly impossible not to break some law at some point, and the Congresscritters, along with their state and local counterparts, seem to know only how to pass new ones and not amend or repeal old ones. ( At least here noone I've heard about has gone to lockup for having a marketing dummy in his living room. That's just stupid. )

I know it's a radical idea, but the right to bear arms in the United States was written into the Constitution to provide for the defense of the people from a hostile domestic government, not just from invasions and criminals. It's kind of hard to defend against the world's most technologically advanced war machines with shotguns and rifles, but the courts have decided that bombs, warplanes (with the weapons still functional anyway), rocket launchers, etc. are exempt from the protections of the 2nd Amendment. OTOH, as Iraq has proven, capturing an area and subduing it are two very different things. The right to have shotguns, rifles, etc. might just come in handy if there's ever another U.S. civil war.