Some of those are already in place. I know that; I was just saying what I did and did not support.
Background checks are not currently mandatory, at least not on used purchases from individual to individual. You can sell your neighbor a gun without having him get a background check.
I know more policing takes more money. We'd have to fund it either through tax increases or through diverting money from the military (both situations where we're using uniformed government officials to protect the populace). For the price of two dozen F-35 Lightning IIs, we can put an officer full-time in every single school in the nation.
I apologize if I offended you, sir. It was not intended.
I will try to clarify what I inartfully said:
The POSITION that you endorsed is unjust and all things bad, for the reason that it punishes innocent people for crimes committed by someone else. Punishing Bob for the crimes of Larry is not just intolerable, but is an abdication of our entire legal system. I object strongly to your POSITION.
I don't believe that is true in California. Undoubtably laws vary between the States (having moved back and forth between Ariz and Calif a few times I can attest that they are different), but I know that about 10 years ago you couldn't willy-nilly (legally) sell a gun to your neighbor in California. I was involved in a person-to-person sale about 10 years ago, and looked up the laws at the time.
You are using the word 'punish' in a rather peculiar way. To deny someone the legal right to own something isn't 'punishing' them. There are many examples of things which it is illegal for the private citizen to possess, usualy on the grounds of safety, but it isn't considered a punishment.
There's no conviction to a principal in his argument either.
The big meanie is punishing responsible children, just because some little tyke might misuse their nuclear missiles. I mean, he won't even let them have machine guns! Not nice at all.
I can't respect those centrist people, why can't they just pick a side of an argument and stick to it?
An analogy would be having a speed limit in force on a particular road. Is it 'punishing' the good drivers who might reasonably be able to exceed the speed limit safely, that they are prohibited from doing so simply because there are bad drivers who would be more likely to have an accident at higher speeds?
It is a punishment, for the reason that "yesterday" you could buy it, but today you can't, and the reason for that change occurring was that the day before yesterday Larry had one in his pants pocket when he committed a crime. So we unwind the chain: Larry committed a crime. He had this "widget" in his pocket. Congressman says, "Oooh, Larry bad! We must remove all widgets!" Now Bob can't buy the widget.
So yes, literally Bob is punished for Larry's crime. That's uncool.
I thought about the speed limit analogy myself a long time ago. It doesn't quite fit, because there is some speed beyond which it is unsafe to drive, period. Likewise, it is never ever safe to drive a car while drunk. We could spend an hour or two deciding upon the arbitrary cut-off points for both speed and blood-alcohol level, but the point is that there is a limit beyond which nobody can safely drive around other people. You can't say the same about clip size. Clips of 5, 10, 30, 50, and 100 all operate identically all the time.
Speed limits vary depending on the location. No speed is inherently unsafe if you take it out of context.
If there are too many accidents on a particular stretch of road, the speed limit may be reduced from (say) thirty mph to twenty. Are the drivers who use that road then being 'punished'? No, of course they aren't.
And 1+1 is 2, unless we're counting in binary. For each context, there is a limit. It might even vary by day and time. You can't say the same about clip size.
No, they don't. A fully loaded clip of 5 rounds will cease to load ammunition into to the weapon once the five rounds are gone. A fully loaded clip of ten rounds will continue to load ammunition after the 1st five rounds are gone. And so on and so on. They are similar but not identical.