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  1. #1
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    Default Happiness is a warm gun

    Two stories from the US this week offer a confusing profile of the state of the nation's guns, a topic that tends to make us shake our heads in disbelief in the UK. One concerns the concealed carry law, the other the actual decline in sales of guns sending Remington to the wall. On the one hand it seems to me that a policy that claims to be about 'freedom' (what happened to rights?) offers disturbed men the opportunity to take it away from people, usually their closest 'loved-ones', while the decline of gun ownership raises the image of a dwindling cohort of madmen bunkered down in their cabins waiting for the apocalypse.

    If gun ownership is the foundation of terrorism, should the NRA now be classified a terrorist organization?

    Thus, on the one hand the President declared a few days ago

    The eight year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end.


    He was referring to the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act 2017 which would remove the restrictions States impose on citizens walking around with concealed weapons. The policy that has been promoted by the NRA has been opposed by those States that ban concealed carry, indeed New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill said the proposal was 'insanity' adding

    “Right now, we have a good idea of who’s carrying guns. If this law passes, all bets are off. Anybody can come into New York City from any state and carry a weapon.”

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8207536.html

    Another analysis offers a different perspective by arguing that as most homicides caused by guns are domestic incidents, repealing the law enables the most common perpetrators of crime to gain even easier access to guns than they did before:

    Here’s how this act could be devastating for victims of domestic abuse: if someone with a history of domestic abuse is denied a gun after a background check in one state, he or she could simply go to another state that does not require background checks at the point of purchase or permits for concealed carry, purchase a gun, and carry it across state lines.

    in addition-
    there is plenty of research to indicate that the best predictor of future violence is past violence. In addition, research has shown that when there are firearms in the home of someone with a history of domestic abuse, the potential for homicide increases by 500%.
    https://qz.com/1144247/the-concealed...stic-violence/

    Meanwhile, gun maker Remington has filed for bankruptcy, with a background in the industry of falling gun sales. Robert Spitzer, a Professor in New York State with a special interest in guns is quoted thus:

    “Gun ownership has been declining since the 1970s and there are now fewer gun owners than ever,” said Spitzer. Fewer people are hunting, younger people are less interested in gun ownership and the gun industry has had little success in its attempts to appeal to women and minorities.

    The US has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world with 88 guns for every 100 people. But just 3% of the population owns an average of 17 guns each, with an estimated 7.7 million super-owners in possession of 140 guns apiece.
    The surge of gun purchases under Obama was largely driven by sales to existing gun owners. Sales spiked on Obama’s re-election and after his calls for new laws in the wake of tragedies like the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mp-slump-sales


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  2. #2
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act is without question a terrifying measure, as it would take away from the states the ability to determine how to protect their citizens. The same states' rights/federalism arguments that Republicans have been making for years would be asserted against it in a constitutional challenge if this law were passed. It is also a hypocrisy because the law would be passed under Congress' ability to "regulate commerce" which Conservative jurists have for decades argued (wrongly) should be invoked only for purely commercial reasons and not as a means of achieving broader policy goals. For instance, a commercial type of regulation might set price controls or quotas or in some way regulate competition. The Supreme Court has ruled that a law passed under the commerce clause only needs to involve an issue that substantially affects interstate commerce, so this would not be a problem except under the interpretation of the commerce clause they've made for several decades. This would be a law that interferes with the central activities of the states, which is to protect the health, welfare, and safety of their citizens and so the concerns about what is left exclusively to the states would be reasonable.

    It is not just the self-serving hypocrisy of their support for the law that is the problem but also that it creates a terrifying situation. As for gun manufacturers going out of business....I suppose that's a good thing. They are protected in ways that other companies are not and nothing in the second amendment says that Congress has to provide protections to make their racket profitable. It's a very sad situation.


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  3. #3
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post

    Here’s how this act could be devastating for victims of domestic abuse: if someone with a history of domestic abuse is denied a gun after a background check in one state, he or she could simply go to another state that does not require background checks at the point of purchase or permits for concealed carry, purchase a gun, and carry it across state lines.

    in addition-
    there is plenty of research to indicate that the best predictor of future violence is past violence. In addition, research has shown that when there are firearms in the home of someone with a history of domestic abuse, the potential for homicide increases by 500%.
    https://qz.com/1144247/the-concealed...stic-violence/
    Banning people who have engaged in domestic violence of any kind from owning weapons is the surest way to regulate gun ownership in a way that's both constitutional and effective. Given that regulation of guns has taken place at the state level and there are not very many safeguards federally, such a law would basically wipe out what few protections exist and make every state as unsafe as the worst regulators. I have not paid attention but I wonder what kind of support this bill has among the Republican base.


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    Last edited by broncofan; 02-14-2018 at 07:17 PM.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    Given that regulation of guns has taken place at the state level and there are not very many safeguards federally, such a law would basically wipe out what few protections exist and make every state as unsafe as the worst regulators.
    I probably should have thought of this all up front and put it in one post, but just one afterthought. The reason liberals have argued Congress should be able to pass similarly non-commercial laws under the commerce clause is that a broad scheme may be necessary to organize a particular marketplace rather than subject people to a confusing array of state laws with irreconcilable inconsistencies. The use of federal legislation in such areas makes sense when you are avoiding a "race to the bottom" in which states are incentivized to deregulate because it benefits their local economies to do so. The benefits of a uniform scheme are less compelling when the regulatory framework is less developed and the law interferes with common sense protections imposed by states.

    Often when the federal government passes laws that affect commerce, like employee protections and anti-discrimination laws, states are permitted to offer protections that expand those offered federally. For instance, some states have supplemented the civil rights act protections in title vii with laws protecting against sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. This would be a case where the federal government would be passing a law that supersedes protections at the state level and nullifies them. It is not so much a scheme as a ban on a particular type of regulation....


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  5. #5

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by broncofan View Post
    The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act is without question a terrifying measure, as it would take away from the states the ability to determine how to protect their citizens. The same states' rights/federalism arguments that Republicans have been making for years would be asserted against it in a constitutional challenge if this law were passed. It is also a hypocrisy because the law would be passed under Congress' ability to "regulate commerce" which Conservative jurists have for decades argued (wrongly) should be invoked only for purely commercial reasons and not as a means of achieving broader policy goals. For instance, a commercial type of regulation might set price controls or quotas or in some way regulate competition. The Supreme Court has ruled that a law passed under the commerce clause only needs to involve an issue that substantially affects interstate commerce, so this would not be a problem except under the interpretation of the commerce clause they've made for several decades. This would be a law that interferes with the central activities of the states, which is to protect the health, welfare, and safety of their citizens and so the concerns about what is left exclusively to the states would be reasonable.
    Again this is where my lack of knowledge abut the law benefits from your insight, but again raises questions about this peculiar way you have of importing into one law a clause that is or should be related to another law. I understand to some extent the inter-state commerce issue, I don't know how it worked during prohibition, but I assume there are issues with a state X that sells Marijuana legally that is illegal in the neighbouring state. It would I assume be harder to police than firearms if someone purchasing weapons must be registered in some way but if you have a situation where anyone can buy any amount of weapons over time and then travel to another state concealing those weapons then I guess it makes mass murder that much easier for someone determined enough to do it.

    I think Sandy Hook was a defining moment, if your Congress could not be bothered to take action then, few are surprised that nothing will be the result of Parkland, and what could be more perverse than the news of another mass shooting, wherever it is, whoever the victims are, being greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and the dismissive 'that's what Americans do', as if you had paralysis of the brain and are utterly incapable of finding a solution to what looks more like an epidemic. I don't know if the Democrat victory in a supposedly safe Republican seat in Florida yesterday means that party if it gains power will make a real effort to change the status quo, the record does not look promising; neither does the future of your schools where it seems you prefer to spend over $45 million putting armed policemen in them rather than dealing with the cause of gun crime. To cap it all, all the evidence so far suggests people who knew Cruz expected him to go crazy and knew of his obsession with guns.


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  7. #7
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Stavros, your timing is prophetic
    God, Guts, and Guns is a monkeygrip credo that apparently no amount of depression can loosen, the gun issue is a hot potato that feeds the Republicans, and burns the Democrats. The Freedom of Guns and Religion the Republicans offer really is free, The Quality Schools, Social Security, and Medicare the Democrats offer costs a ton of money. There are so many different and difficult ways to say "this is all politics" that it gets lost that a few simple unpartisan regulations really could fix days like yesterday. But we all know Trump hates regulations. Adding Insult to Injury. There seems to be no Intelligent solution, there seems to be no Heartfelt Solution, which might be worse.


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  8. #8
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Quote Originally Posted by buttslinger View Post
    Stavros, your timing is prophetic
    God, Guts, and Guns is a monkeygrip credo that apparently no amount of depression can loosen, the gun issue is a hot potato that feeds the Republicans, and burns the Democrats. The Freedom of Guns and Religion the Republicans offer really is free, The Quality Schools, Social Security, and Medicare the Democrats offer costs a ton of money. There are so many different and difficult ways to say "this is all politics" that it gets lost that a few simple unpartisan regulations really could fix days like yesterday. But we all know Trump hates regulations. Adding Insult to Injury. There seems to be no Intelligent solution, there seems to be no Heartfelt Solution, which might be worse.
    There is nothing prophetic about this, as it is becoming routine, and it is only a matter of time before another mass shooting takes place. As for The Freedom of Guns and Religion the Republicans offer really is free that is not only not true, you wonder where did this 19 year old get the money from to buy weapons and enough ammunition to start a war? Claims that he is linked to a white supremacist group called Republic of Florida and that he trained with them doesn't prove he was supported by them, or he was depressed after the death of mother and breaking up with a girlfriend, and so on. He may or may not tell the truth in court.

    The same hypocrite President who talks about mental health issues rather than guns blames the victims tweeting

    So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!

    And yet he has done more than any recent President to attack mental health services:

    the president has rolled back a rule that would have made it more difficult for the severely mentally ill to obtain firearms; made it easier for fugitives to purchase guns; and proposed $12 million in cuts to America’s background check system. He has also tried to slash $625 million from federal mental health programs, and $1 trillion from Medicaid, one of the top sources of health insurance for the mentally ill in the United States.
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...eport-him.html

    The USA is disoriented, going round in circles as it tries to avoid the obvious: Cruz and all the other murderers would not have been able to kill so many had they been armed with a bow and arrow. But mention Guns and the country squeals. Perhaps the fact is that the US has become a country of cowards who refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their support for gun ownership, and looks the other way when the victims rack up, week after week, month after month. And no sign of leadership on this issue. The problem is that the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to find a rational solution.


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  9. #9
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    Stavros, did I miss your Solution in your op-ed????
    I think the problem is there's a particular brand of loser who knows the American Dream doesn't include him, and it just takes a bad day, moment, week or year to push him over the edge. In my grade his name was Riffy, he was always stoned, and after a big fight with his Mom one afternoon, he died in a shoot-out with the Police. I was friends with twins in my elementary school, but by high school they became "hoods" and we never really talked much. While skipping school one day, Charles killed himself playing Russian Roulette with his Dad's gun. Years later I would talk with his brother, but high school was a high pressure environment. My Job never gave me three hours of homework.
    To be totally honest, but without giving anybody ideas, I'm surprised some troubled soul with some smarts and a whopping Imagination hasn't pulled off a terrorist event that kills hundreds of thousands. Like YodaJazz was eluding to on another post, everybody has a kind of moral gyroscope that limits their kills to a kind of Justice in their own minds. The Columbine kids were bullied, I remember. If a solution to gun violence is found, I would think it would have to be a roundabout solution, like taxes, black people with concealed weapon permits, an end to gerrymandering, or a Russian Scandal so huge the entire Country gets revolted and leans left for a generation. I remember when everybody in the USA smoked cigarettes, how suicidal is that?
    Here Stavros, Dylan, Elvis, and Warhol, three of your favorite artists......n'est pas? Like I explained to you before, The USA is #1 because of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We're Killers, Man, Remember Lexington and Concord?


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  10. #10
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    Default Re: Happiness is a warm gun

    I wonder if our gun problem has gotten so out of control that simple gun control won't have the effect here that limiting availability of weapons has everywhere else. There is no bright line separation between the law and culture. Guns have been a part of our culture and so has paranoia about limiting access to them. As a result, we have so many millions of guns out there and so many people who are gun obsessives, posing with guns, taking them into fields and shooting things with them, imagining they are shooting people and doing something heroic.

    Of course we should take whatever measures we can to eliminate gun violence, and that will have some effect, but in other countries I think you not only don't have so many guns on the street, you don't have people fetishizing guns in quite the same way. For every Nicholas Cruz who kills you have at least 50 people who pose with their guns in creepy ways and the guns play an inordinate role in their lives already.

    That said, we can see that Congress has not responded at all to these crises like they would any other public health crisis. They did not ban bump stocks after Vegas, when the only purpose of bump stocks (which I had never heard of and has now become part of the American lexicon) is to make semi-automatic guns fire like an automatic. They do stuff like try to pass laws making silencers legal, which I lost track of. There's the law Stavros brought up in the first post, which really is directed towards allowing people to carry weapons like they can in their home state anywhere they go, because this is the biggest priority. And of course there is the Ar-15 which seems to be used in nearly every one of these crises and which people seem unconcerned about. Maybe they think, "well what's the difference between 17 dead and 7 dead if they just had a handgun." Well, ten people! Ten people! Or whatever the difference would be if he had a different weapon and not a war machine. If there's no purpose to own such a thing except to murder, then nobody but the military should have it, but that's just obvious.


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