Posted: 5/4/2009 7:58:48 AM EDT
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I know most of my questions will look so weird to you all. It's just because i'm from the other side of dze wordl. And some things about the US firearms dimension still let me amazed or confused. Ok, let's start by this one: -how is anybody entitled to shoot and make videos of himself right in the middle of the desert? is it really allowed by law - ( or not forbidden ) to just pick up your rifle, drive somehwere not too crowded, load and aim at a random piece of paper and have fun? What's the law on this, or the standard by wich you choose "ok, i can have some fun here"? Thanks for your patience /dumb question #1 |
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I know most of my questions will look so weird to you all. It's just because i'm from the other side of dze wordl. And some things about the US firearms dimension still let me amazed or confused. Ok, let's start by this one: -how is anybody entitled to shoot and make videos of himself right in the middle of the desert? is it really allowed by law - ( or not forbidden ) to just pick up your rifle, drive somehwere not too crowded, load and aim at a random piece of paper and have fun? What's the law on this, or the standard by wich you choose "ok, i can have some fun here"? Thanks for your patience /dumb question #1 It varies from region to region but as long as you are far enough away from a dwelling that is not yours and not shooting towards it, you should be good to go. It is part of our country's Constitution, that is how we're "entitled". My SO and I went out to his brothers yesterday and shot at targets while we were about 100 feet from the road. We were shooting away from the road and the closest house was his so we were all set.  Lots of fun!
Pardon my ignorance but what are the gun laws like in Italy? Can you not arm yourselves for personal protection and hunting? |
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In lots of places its illegal to shoot within a certain distance (about 100 m) of someone's house and within some city limits. It all depends on the state and city laws.
Besides what I mentioned you can for the most part go shooting anywhere with a good backstop. |
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Salve GLADIO.
It's a big country and there are plenty of places where there are no structures and no people for hundreds of miles around. Some of this country is so vast and uninhabited that even if it wasn't legal, there wouldn't be anyone around to see you do it. Take a look at the West, Midwest and Southwest U.S. on Google Maps sometime. California, Montana, and New Mexico are each bigger than all of Italy. Texas is bigger than two Italy's. Alaska is almost five Italy's, most of it unpopulated. Outside the cities and towns there's a whole lot of nothing in between. Not everyone lives in an area like this. I have to drive an hour to a range in a state park to shoot. |
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Quoted: It varies from region to region but as long as you are far enough away from a dwelling that is not yours and not shooting towards it, you should be good to go. It is part of our country's Constitution, that is how we're "entitled". My SO and I went out to his brothers yesterday and shot at targets while we were about 100 feet from the road. We were shooting away from the road and the closest house was his so we were all set. Lots of fun! Pardon my ignorance but what are the gun laws like in Italy? Can you not arm yourselves for personal protection and hunting? Cool answer, thanks. I can see the 2A ( as you call it ) broadly defending your right to actually carry firearms. In Italy, self defence is a matter being disputed quite a lot, lately - due to some episodes hitting the evening news. -we don't need firearms for self defence, mainly - Outlaws being quite mild and fearful do often try to play it smart rather than play it rough. Say you'll hardly hear about home invasions, but you'd rather find your house empty as you go out for dinner. Theyr're smart, they can wait. And avoid using violence and facing an opponent. You may have heard about pickpockets targeting tourists: that's the way here. Nobody will point a gun or knife at you. You simply hop on the bus/subway/whatever, get off and MAGIC, your wallet simply isn't there anymore. it takes some real skillks. We're starting to have serious violence uprising though, since thousands from the balkans and east europe came in; Romanian and Bulgarian drug traffickers, burglars, and bad guys in general CAN be a tougher problem. This people can be more prone to violence than our domestic BG. Still, being ex-monarchy, an ex-totalitarian state, and having a "very present" government, the issue of wheter you have a costitutional right to use force yourself has been debated. You may get to have a CCW in Italy, and many have, it's not harder than in the State of NY or Illinois - but you must show some real reasons for having the need of it ( you're a politician, a jeweler, or you deal with great piles o' cash ) so, most of us simply ask for a "sporting license". Wich will allow you to TRANSPORT your firearms, unloaded, locked and with ammo in a separate place, to whenever you want - not at a stadium, though. And you just CAN'T go shooting wherever you please. Well, it's not forbidden, but.. our firearms licenses are, opposed as yours, concessions instead of granted. And being concessions they're subject to being revoked - for no particular reason, just because the local LEO had a bad day or you're not doing good IN HIS OWN MIND. Since nobody of us has too many time to waste paying visits to judges and commissions to have its firearm permit back, we stick to our ghettos ranges and that's all. THERE COMES NOOB QUESTION #2 machine guns. 2A grants you the right to own firearms. period. it doesen't specify wich kind. How did the USA and NRA end up having machine guns "restricted'? isn't it somehow uncostitutional? what does block anyone from further restricting self-loading handguns too, on this same basis? Again thanks for your help... |
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It varies from region to region but as long as you are far enough away from a dwelling that is not yours and not shooting towards it, you should be good to go. It is part of our country's Constitution, that is how we're "entitled". My SO and I went out to his brothers yesterday and shot at targets while we were about 100 feet from the road. We were shooting away from the road and the closest house was his so we were all set. Lots of fun!
Pardon my ignorance but what are the gun laws like in Italy? Can you not arm yourselves for personal protection and hunting? THERE COMES NOOB QUESTION #2 machine guns. 2A grants you the right to own firearms. period. it doesen't specify wich kind. How did the USA and NRA end up having machine guns "restricted'? isn't it somehow uncostitutional? what does block anyone from further restricting self-loading handguns too, on this same basis? Again thanks for your help... I'm sure others will chime in to give you a better answer.......but.... IIRC, By a voice vote in the dead of night...... |
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THERE COMES NOOB QUESTION #2 machine guns. 2A grants you the right to own firearms. period. it doesen't specify wich kind. How did the USA and NRA end up having machine guns "restricted'? isn't it somehow uncostitutional? what does block anyone from further restricting self-loading handguns too, on this same basis? Again thanks for your help... Many of us would argue that it is. The problem is there is a segment of the population that sees the tool the BG uses as the problem rather than the BG him/herself.  They would prefer that we weren't allowed to excercise our second amendment rights as some screwed up way of lowering criminal activity.
We see this as the most screwed up application of non-logic you can imagine. Somehow my not carrying a gun makes me safer from rapists and other thugs. . .  I personally don't get that.
But this same segment of the populations see our Constitution as what they call a "living document" basically meaning that it is open to their own interpretation.  I personally think this segment of the population would be much happier in France and they should move their, quickly.
As to the particulars of how the ban went down someone else with more knowledge from that time will be along, I'm sure. 
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THERE COMES NOOB QUESTION #2 machine guns. 2A grants you the right to own firearms. period. it doesen't specify wich kind. How did the USA and NRA end up having machine guns "restricted'? isn't it somehow uncostitutional? what does block anyone from further restricting self-loading handguns too, on this same basis? Again thanks for your help... per the 2nd amendment, machine guns were not restricted. nothing was restricted. you could own anything. then there was too much organized crime in the early 1900's, and law enforcement had a hard time dealing with them when they had machine guns. so it was decided that anything full automatic should be registered so the police would know who had one. you had to get a permit and pay a 200$ fee. that law was passed in 1934. you can own a full automatic gun in a lot of states, some states won't let you. it's not a federal law, it's individual states that decide. in 1986 there was another law passed that does not allow any more manufacture of full automatic guns, or their import. so now they are few and very expensive, that was almost as bad as making them illegal. what blocks them from doing the same thing with self-loading (semi-automatic) handguns on the same basis? nothing is blocking them. they can do the same thing again with handguns what they did to full automatic rifles. so many politicians have to agree to get a law passed, they would not all agree on doing that with handguns. that's why it doesn't happen. but they could if they all agreed to, like they did in 1934 and 1986. a lot of people think both of those laws are against the constitution. but, they are there. |
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I'll try to answer your question about machine guns as best as I can.
In the 1930s this country was in a serious economic depression, and alcohol was banned. A lot of people turned to commiting crimes to keep food on their family's table. Some of them made alcohol and sold it, and this was a big operation for mafias. One of the more famous mobsters was Al Capone. Other people robbed banks, and some of those people became very well known, like John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. You can google these people to see more of what they did. Well prior to 1936 you could buy a Thompson Machine Gun in a store, just like you would buy milk or eggs  . A lot of these criminals did use machine guns while commiting their crimes.
So, a new law was approved in 1936 that made machine guns and silencers and short barrel shotguns (shotguns with barrel length under 18 inches) harder to buy. You had to obtain a "tax stamp" from the US Treasury Department in order to legally buy these items. The law is known here as the 1936 National Firearms Act (NFA). Part of the trick was that the tax stamp cost $200, which, back then was a lot of money, and another part of the trick was that the Treasury Department could deny your request for a tax stamp for whatever reason. This law remained until 1968 when it was updated. I am not sure of everything that the 1968 Gun Control Act (GCA) changed, but I do know that it changed the status of a Short Barrel Rifle to a barrel length of 16 inches where it was 18 inches before, and also added new laws regarding the sale of firearms (people had to be a licensed dealer to sell for profit mainly although this might not be entirely correct). Now during this whole time until 1986, machine guns could be newly manufactured and sold to whoever had a tax stamp for one. You could even modify existing firearms like the semi-automatic AR-15 into a fully-automatic one, as long as you had the tax stamp. Also a new branch of the government was created between 1968 and 1986 called the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). They basically took over the job the Treasury Department had for issuing tax stamps to firearms classified under the NFA, and also took over for collecting taxes from alcohol and tobacco sales and manufacture. In 1986 a new law was being written that would partially update the GCA. It was called the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA), and was generally a good thing for firearm owners. Well right before it passed, a part was added to it that essentially banned the manufacture of new machine guns for sale to the public. Companies can still invent and manufacture machine guns, but they can only sell them to the US Military, US Law Enforcement, or foreign markets. We can still buy machine guns, and the ATF still issues tax stamps for them, but because there are only several hundred thousand at most on record, those are the only machine guns we can own. Because there are not many of them, and a lot of people want them, they get very expensive. An M16 in 1986 before the "ban" cost about $700, and now, the same one costs nearly $20,000. Other rare machine guns like captured Nazi machine guns can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and probably $1,000,000. Plus the laws I have described are nation wide, and individual State and Local may be more strict. There are quite a few States that have outlawed ownership of all or some of NFA classified items, like California, and New York. But some states don't forbid ownership as long as you comply with the federal laws like Texas and Florida. ETA: I'm sorry, I messed up some dates. The National Firearm Act was passed in 1934, not 1936. |
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for the record, the NFA was passed as a "tax" because a ban would have been overturned by the courts immediately. it was thought that the NFA tax scheme would also be found unconstitutional, but it would take years to work its' way through the courts as part of the tax code and, by then, the gang activity would be under control and it wouldn't matter that the law was overturned. unfortunately, no real legal challenges came in the early days and, after over 7 decades, the NFA has become a legal and cultural "norm". 
for the record though, i shot my fullsized Uzi submachine gun in my backyard last night. the only person to interfere with my shooting was my neighbor, who dropped by to bullshit and run a couple mags. 
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Quoted: for the record, the NFA was passed as a "tax" because a ban would have been overturned by the courts immediately. it was thought that the NFA tax scheme would also be found unconstitutional, but it would take years to work its' way through the courts as part of the tax code and, by then, the gang activity would be under control and it wouldn't matter that the law was overturned. unfortunately, no real legal challenges came in the early days and, after over 7 decades, the NFA has become a legal and cultural "norm". for the record though, i shot my fullsized Uzi submachine gun in my backyard last night. the only person to interfere with my shooting was my neighbor, who dropped by to bullshit and run a couple mags. Lots of info here folks, thanks so much for clearing me up. can i become your neighbor too? will cook for bullets. |
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Lots of info here folks, thanks so much for clearing me up. can i become your neighbor too? will cook for bullets. Are you a rich hot Italian chick who loves to cook and give blow jobs? not yes not depends definitely not 2/5...folks, I think we have a match! |
You'll do fine here.