The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[hippifried]

A gun is not a penis.

Oh. Is that why the discharge never cums out white & creamy?

[trish]

Yeah, and it's never a happy ending.

[Dave32111]

Yup, never happens.

According to IronMountainDailyNews.com, Two young men, aged 17 and 18, thought they would have an easy time robbing a gas station that was closed for the night.

The two men broke into the Michigan gas station just after 4am.

They did not realize that the owner was in the store at the time.

The owner, an Iraq War vet, approached the suspects, kicked one to the floor and then retrieved an AR-15 style rifle he keeps in his office.

The owner leveled the rifle at the suspects, and one of them removed his mask to plead with the owner not to shoot them.

The suspects then fled the store, but the owner recognized the suspect who removed his mask and was able to identify him to police, resulting in the capture of both suspects a short time later.

Both suspects were charged with breaking and entering.

[trish]

Link from a reputable source please

[trish]

Just since yesterday:

In Minnesota a Washington County Sheriff was accidentally shot in the head by a hunter who thought the Sheriff was a turkey.

In Kentucky a five year old boy shot and killed his two year old sister while playing with a .22 rifle. That’s right, a five year old boy shot and killed his two year old sister while playing with a .22 rifle. The rifle was his! It was a gift. “It’s a Crickett...The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun.” County Coroner Gary White said, “Just one of those crazy accidents.”

In Alaska a five year old girl was shot and killed by her eight year old brother who was playing with a Ruger 10/22. Alaska State Trooper’s spokeperson, Megan Peters said, “There’s no easy answer to it, and obviously no one thinks it’s going to happen. It’s a very good opportunity to realize how much can go wrong in a very short time.”

California gang member accidentally shot himself in the ankle.

A fourteen year old was “trying to clear a malfunction of a .380 caliber semi-automatic handgun when his hand moved in front of the muzzle of the weapon and the gun went off.”

Sixty-six year old Minnesota firearms instructor shot his own finger while holding a .38 Special handgun in its holster.

An Alabama woman standing in a doorway holding her newborn baby was killed by a stray bullet when a disagreement down the street escalated into gunfire.

http://accidentalgunshots.tumblr.com/

Guns are designed for killing. Why would you give one to a five year old? Why would they make guns for children? How can anyone think shit like this isn't "going to happen" when the evidence says it will? A gun in the home is more likely to be used in the suicide of a family member, or involved in a accidental death or injury, than to used in protection.

[thombergeron]

Kelly Ayotte’s popularity plunges after ‘no’ vote on background checks (http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/25/kelly-ayottes-approval-drops-after-no-vote-on-background-checks/)

Sen. Jeff Flake: "Nothing like waking up to a poll saying you're the nation's least popular senator." (https://www.facebook.com/JeffFlake1/posts/10151637620116419)

Senators facing backlash over Background checks vote (Opens PDF)
(http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_BackgroundChecks_429.pdf)

[notdrunk]

Guns are designed for killing. Why would you give one to a five year old? Why would they make guns for children? How can anyone think shit like this isn't "going to happen" when the evidence says it will? A gun in the home is more likely to be used in the suicide of a family member, or involved in a accidental death or injury, than to used in protection.

It is a country/non-urban thing. It isn't a new thing too. It has been going on for decades. You train them young for hunting game animal or having bonding moments. Rifles in .22 LR are popular to teach young kids about firearms because those rifiles lack strong recoil.

http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/586588/2-Alger-teens-arrested-for-attempted-B-E.html?nav=5001

[trish]

I hunted with my father too, having grown up in rural Pennsylvania...but I wasn't given a .22 when I was five fucking years old and I never used a gun made for a child. If killing becomes an early bonding activity, won't we be raising a bunch of kids who conflate bonding and killing? Doesn't that sound perverse, if not dangerous?

[notdrunk]

I hunted with my father too, having grown up in rural Pennsylvania...but I wasn't given a .22 when I was five fucking years old and I never used a gun made for a child. If killing becomes an early bonding activity, won't we be raising a bunch of kids who conflate bonding and killing? Doesn't that sound perverse, if not dangerous?

Not really. The vast majority of those kids aren't going to become homicidal maniacs and suicidal people. It has been going on before you were born. Some parents teach them younger than others about firearms.

[trish]

So you're okay with giving a .22 to a five year old and you're not drunk!

[fred41]

So you're okay with giving a .22 to a five year old and you're not drunk!

If a father's okay with giving a five year old a loaded rifle...he should trust the kid with a straight edge too so he can give Daddy a close shave.

[yosi]

So you're okay with giving a .22 to a five year old and you're not drunk!

he's not drunk , just a moron :dancing:

[trish]

Kelly Ayotte’s popularity plunges after ‘no’ vote on background checks (http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/25/kelly-ayottes-approval-drops-after-no-vote-on-background-checks/)

Sen. Jeff Flake: "Nothing like waking up to a poll saying you're the nation's least popular senator." (https://www.facebook.com/JeffFlake1/posts/10151637620116419)

Senators facing backlash over Background checks vote (Opens PDF)
(http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_BackgroundChecks_429.pdf)thanks for the links. This issue is not going away. Americans generally understand that reasonable gun control is not, by any stretch of a sane imagination, in conflict with the Second Amendment. We understand that the life of a child trumps any asshole's claim to free and easy access to deadly firearms. Americans are largely agreed that reasonable, if minimal, restrictions include background checks in all venues (including gunshows) and limits on magazine capacities. As politicians awaken to this consensus of the general public the gun lobby will slowly lose its grip on the machinations of power. The NRA will still have money but the negative public opinion will lessen their capacity to bribe our politicians. The most important thing is to get out there and vote the Gun Lobby out of influence. Keep this issue in mind when you go to the polling booth.

[notdrunk]

he's not drunk , just a moron :dancing:

How original! It called proper parental guidance.

[trish]

No responsible parent would put a loaded .22 rifle in the hands of a five year old child with or without supervision. As Fred pointed out, you wouldn't submit to being shaved by a five year old with a straight razor.
It's not a question of whether yosi was being creative or original in his diagnosis of your condition. He was correct...you're a moron.

When applying to purchase a gun you should be asked, "Are you intending to put this firearm in the hands of a five year old child?" An affirmative answer should be enough to disqualify you from buying the weapon.

[trish]

Just since yesterday:

Sheriff’s Deputy is accidentally shot by a Texas homeowner, when he was mistaken for an intruder.

Another Deputy Sheriff was accidentally shot in Pennsylvania by a fellow officer. Both were conducting a raid on a barber shop in Darby Borough.

An Iowa policeman was showing off his weapon to a friend when the weapon discharged and would the friend in the hand.

In Baldwinsville, NY a man drew a gun and threatened to kill himself. His sister attempted to pull the gun away and it accidentally went off shooting her brother in the head.

An Ohio man accidentally shot himself and was too embarrassed to reveal to the police the circumstances of the incident.

In Virgina a hunter was shot and killed when he was mistaken for a turkey.

Florida man confessed to accidentally shooting and paralyzing a man while drunk.

In Auburn, Washington a nine year old girl was shot in the leg by her seven year old brother playing with a .22 rifle.

Another man in Arizona was mistaken for a turkey and shot by his brother.

http://accidentalgunshots.tumblr.com/

[notdrunk]

No responsible parent would put a loaded .22 rifle in the hands of a five year old child with or without supervision. As Fred pointed out, you wouldn't submit to being shaved by a five year old with a straight razor.
It's not a question of whether yosi was being creative or original in his diagnosis of your condition. He was correct...you're a moron.

When applying to purchase a gun you should be asked, "Are you intending to put this firearm in the hands of a five year old child?" An affirmative answer should be enough to disqualify you from buying the weapon.

You have more control dealing with a 5 year old with a .22 than a 5 year old with a straight razor. For starters, with a .22 rifle under supervision, you know what will be down range before telling them to fire. With a straight edge razor, you need delicate control. Apples and oranges comparison. You're the moron for comparing the two.

[trish]

Obviously you have little experience with five year old boys. You even know which direction IS downrange. Five year old boys are easily distracted, don't always do what they're told, impulsive and often defiant of authority. You're a moron to suggest it's safe to give a loaded weapon to a five year old child.

[notdrunk]

Obviously you have little experience with five year old boys. You even know which direction IS downrange. Five year old boys are easily distracted, don't always do what they're told, impulsive and often defiant of authority. You're a moron to suggest it's safe to give a loaded weapon to a five year old child.

With proper training and guidance, it is safe. You can search Youtube and find a lot of videos of it done the right way with various 5 year old kids.

[trish]

Yeah, you can find all sorts of asinine things on the Internet.

[hippifried]

Adults have to be in control of weapons. The quickest way to give up control of anything to a 5 year old is to transfer ownership. They don't know or understand shit, & the only thing they care about, in regards to their new toy (& it is a toy in their mind), is "it's MINE". I learned to shoot at 5, but I didn't own the guns. 5 year olds aren't reasonable, & these child sized rifles are being marketed as toys. Hell, so are the rest of the guns that are marketed to the so called grownups.

[BluegrassCat]

Colbert sums up it. The people who would rather see children die than fill out some paperwork are truly damaged.

Background Check Backlash - The Colbert Report - 2013-01-05 - Video Clip | Comedy Central (http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425987/may-01-2013/background-check-backlash)

[Willie Escalade]

I put this on my Instagram...

[Ben]

I'm pro gun. But this is too nutty for me.
Parents shouldn't be giving their kids guns. Vodka? Yes. Of course. Cigarettes? Of course... ha ha ha! Kidding.
But, of course, this is parental responsibility...

Shocking: 'I Nearly Shot My Kid Sister' says Child Gun Promoter:

Shocking: 'I Nearly Shot My Kid Sister' says Child Gun Promoter - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEugJBEn2yY)

[robertlouis]

Quite. We seem to be able to do it in the UK too.

[Prospero]

I see the NRA annual convention is underway in Houston. I had an unseemly fantasy. That someone would lock the doors of the convention hall and open up on the gathered gun enthusiasts and stout defenders of the right to bear arms i with a machine gun. Of course the gun would not be the thing teaching these fools a fatal lesson.

[Ben]

Quite. We seem to be able to do it in the UK too.

Apparently Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S. Robert, the U.K. doesn't really have a gun culture... or does it?
And, too, Canada is more of a social democratic country. I mean, they've free universal health care. Not health insurance. But care.
Americans don't believe in a gift economy.... One of the core reasons for American gun culture could be fear. I don't know.
I'm not a gun owner. But I do support the right to own a gun.
I mean, why are there fewer homicides [per capita] in Canada than America? I don't know.... Does public policy have a part to play in it? Again, Canada is more socially democratic.... Canada, of course, doesn't veer to the left like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, &, well, Cuba -- ha ha! :)

More guns in Canada now, but fewer owners: RCMP...

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/23/more-guns-in-canada-this-year-but-fewer-owners-rcmp/

[Ben]

At NRA convention, both sides of gun debate

Many attending the Texas event say they want to support 2nd Amendment rights they see as endangered. Outside, protesters read the names of those slain by guns.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nra-convention-20130504,0,791179.story

[Prospero]

...............

[lixx]

I don't see why people need to own guns, it's not needed in modern society. Guns exist to kill and injure people, so yeah, killing and maiming brings utiliity!!

[Willie Escalade]

Think about this for a minute.

[martin48]

All over - now you can print your own gun in the comfort of your own home
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22421185

[Ben]

Just Say No to Gun Registration!

Just Say No to Gun Registration! - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R8gH98Wf4s)

[Ben]

Think about this for a minute.

NRA: Put a Gun in Every Kids' Room! - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akrz0jnWViQ)

[Ben]

Thom Hartmann debates Rob Pincus:

Hartmann Vs. Rob Pincus: Keeping Guns in Kids' Rooms? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8oc9efjsU)

[robertlouis]

This seems to cover it....

[Ben]

Guns Should be Treated Like Cars!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7oTI_vCfoY

[robertlouis]

I guess this illustrates all of Trish's posts about gun "accidents"....

[trish]

I skipped a few days, but here’s what happened over that last two days, May 13th and 14th.

In Alaska, a man accidentally discharged a firearm wounding himself and a bystander.

In Georgia a 19 year-old was “playing” with a gun an accidentally shot his brother.

In Arizona a three year old child shot himself in the face and died.

In New York the police accidentally shot a bi-polar schizophrenic they were trying to calm down.

A fourteen year old kid in New Mexico accidentally shot his friend while playing with a pistol.

An Aurora Colorado school employee accidentally shot a student.

In Florida a four year old child accidentally shot an eleven year old.

In West Virginia and thirteen year old boy was shot.

A Tennessee man accidentally shot his 13-month-old daughter in the chest while taking apart his handgun inside the appartment where they lived.

A Wisconsin man shot himself in the neck.

An Iowa man shot himself while unloading his 9mm at a shooting range.

An accidental weapon discharge in a car killed a fifteen year old in Texas.

A gun in the pocket of a Florida accidentally discharged in a bowling alley.

A sixteen year old Alaskan shot himself in the leg while drinking with friends.

http://accidentalgunshots.tumblr.com/

Not to worry though. We’re safe. The NRA got our backs in case we need to start an armed insurrection against our tyrannical government.

[Prospero]

.............

[Ben]

A bit of light relief -- love this show:

Little Britain USA: America's Love for Guns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8UgOvJVol8

[Ben]

At least five killed in California shooting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UjF9lzZBM

[Ben]

Rapper Ice T on US gun control (20July12):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GwIbyp4xBU

[Ben]

Love George Carlin...

George Carlin on the NRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPDuYXGAuBw

[Ben]

How To Survive Being Shot Point Blank In The Chest - Dr. Good - Ep 7. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjs3eg1lqgs)

[Ben]

What Makes Florida the 'Gunshine' State:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/watch-what-makes-florida_b_3636678.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

[onetluv]

I skipped a few days, but here’s what happened over that last two days, May 13th and 14th.

In Alaska, a man accidentally discharged a firearm wounding himself and a bystander.

In Georgia a 19 year-old was “playing” with a gun an accidentally shot his brother.

In Arizona a three year old child shot himself in the face and died.

In New York the police accidentally shot a bi-polar schizophrenic they were trying to calm down.

A fourteen year old kid in New Mexico accidentally shot his friend while playing with a pistol.

An Aurora Colorado school employee accidentally shot a student.

In Florida a four year old child accidentally shot an eleven year old.

In West Virginia and thirteen year old boy was shot.

A Tennessee man accidentally shot his 13-month-old daughter in the chest while taking apart his handgun inside the appartment where they lived.

A Wisconsin man shot himself in the neck.

An Iowa man shot himself while unloading his 9mm at a shooting range.

An accidental weapon discharge in a car killed a fifteen year old in Texas.

A gun in the pocket of a Florida accidentally discharged in a bowling alley.

A sixteen year old Alaskan shot himself in the leg while drinking with friends.

http://accidentalgunshots.tumblr.com/

Not to worry though. We’re safe. The NRA got our backs in case we need to start an armed insurrection against our tyrannical government.

did you by any chance bother to look up how many of those guns were stolen?or not supposed to be in possession of the user in the first place?or did you look up how many people in that same time frame protected themselves,their loved ones,or their home with a firearm which WAS legal for them to possess?

[trish]

...how many people in that same time frame protected themselves...With a gun? That's a good one! A real knee slapper. Any more jokes? :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Look the gun you think is protecting you right now isn't. It's merely a security blanket. A very dangerous one. Rather than actually being used for protection it is more likely someone in your family will use it to commit suicide, or to be involved in an accident resulting in injury or death. Oh, and just to cover the bases, if you think it's going to be used to fend off the government in the protection of liberty, then you're living in a fantasy world.

[onetluv]

With a gun? That's a good one! A real knee slapper. Any more jokes? :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Look the gun you think is protecting you right now isn't. It's merely a security blanket. A very dangerous one. Rather than actually being used for protection it is more likely someone in your family will use it to commit suicide, or to be involved in an accident resulting in injury or death. Oh, and just to cover the bases, if you think it's going to be used to fend off the government in the protection of liberty, then you're living in a fantasy world.

slap your knees all u want..i can care less.if youre denying that people defend themselves every day in this country with LEGALLY OWNED firearms than YOU are the one living in a fantasy world where you think every gun and every gun owner is an evil person.the media refuses to put these stories in the news the majority of the time.have you seen how banning guns has worked out for countries like brazil and mexico where innocent people have no way to protect themselves?what the hell is a baseball bat or a kitchen knife going to do against a bad guy that has a gun that he obtained ILLEGALY!!!there needs to be tougher laws against thugs who are caught packing guns illegally and doing drive bys and robberies.instead of a slap on the wrist and send them right back out on the streets to get another gun ILLEGALLY and commit more crimes.but does the media ever acknowledge that need?nope.instead they think going after people who go through the proper procedures to obtain a gun legally to protect themselves from those very criminals is somehow going to reduce gun violence.

[trish]

the media refuses to put these stories in the news the majority of the time...because they can never be verified or corroborated;i.e. they don't happen all that often.

you think every gun and every gun owner is an evil personkinda arguing against a straw man aren't you? Link to a post where I said that. I'm a hunter myself. I own a Remington thirty 'aught six, a single twelve gauge shotgun and a twenty two caliber rifle. Guess what? I'm not evil.


you seen how banning guns has worked out for countries likeEngland and the rest of Europe have quite reasonable gun laws. But I'm not asking for a ban. Link to a post where I'm asking to ban guns. A few reasonable regulations and a lot more self-restraint yes...banning all guns, repealing the 2nd Amendment, no.

The unarmed thug who brakes into your house (if that ever happens in anything other than one of your fantasies) is going to take that gun away from you and shoot your family. But more likely, no one will brake into your house, but someone in your family will accidentally shoot someone else while cleaning it.

[bimale69]

With a gun? That's a good one! A real knee slapper. Any more jokes? :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Look the gun you think is protecting you right now isn't. It's merely a security blanket. A very dangerous one. Rather than actually being used for protection it is more likely someone in your family will use it to commit suicide, or to be involved in an accident resulting in injury or death. Oh, and just to cover the bases, if you think it's going to be used to fend off the government in the protection of liberty, then you're living in a fantasy world.

I hear all these "teapublicans" everyday spewing this crap about how they are gonna face down the "tyrannical" feds.......I mean gimme a break....and army of bubbas are gonna hold out against all the tanks,fighters,missiles, bombs, and troops that the u.s. government has?

It really sickens me when we have these mass shootings, especially the school in ct. we have innocent kids , not even 5 or 6, too young to learn how much life can suck yet, gunned down by a sick piece of shit whose mommy kept giving him weapons that were made legal by Fucktard W. Bush and his buddies allowing the assault weapons ban to expire, and all the yahoos can do is scream about how they need those guns for deer hunting and to "fight the NWO"?

I say ban the fucking assault weapons off the streets..that shit was made for cops and military personnel trained to use them.....not for bubba gump to play out his dimwitted fantasy of an all white, heterosexual, bible thumping America. As for the "new world order"..... bring it on, because the USA will never lead again as long as the stupid rednecks keep trying to drag it back into some bullshit 50's era morality based on a made-up paranoia about "commies".

[onetluv]

...because they can never be verified or corroborated;i.e. they don't happen all that often.
kinda arguing against a straw man aren't you? Link to a post where I said that. I'm a hunter myself. I own a Remington thirty 'aught six, a single twelve gauge shotgun and a twenty two caliber rifle. Guess what? I'm not evil.

England and the rest of Europe have quite reasonable gun laws. But I'm not asking for a ban. Link to a post where I'm asking to ban guns. A few reasonable regulations and a lot more self-restraint yes...banning all guns, repealing the 2nd Amendment, no.

The unarmed thug who brakes into your house (if that ever happens in anything other than one of your fantasies) is going to take that gun away from you and shoot your family. But more likely, no one will brake into your house, but someone in your family will accidentally shoot someone else while cleaning it.

so if you are a legal gun owner then what is with the posts about all these accidents and shootings happening?what is your point or what are you trying to prove?are you pro gun or anti gun because now you just sound confused.and im not saying that to be a dick but I am really just curious now because at least before I thought I was talking to an anti gun person.what is your straight forward view on guns then?and the percentage of accidental shootings is actually extremely low when you think about the 100's of MILLIONS of guns legally owned in America.and like I said,you are not taking into account how many of these shootings and accidental shootings are occurring with illegally owned weapons.and each time a weapon is stored improperly where someone other than the rightful owner can reach it then in some states that is a crime,and in others it should become law that makes it a crime.no pro gun person agrees with dumbasses who store weapons improperly or dumbasses who clean their weapons without first making sure they are unloaded and second always keeping the weapon pointed in a safe directions wether it is loaded or unloaded.

[broncofan]

so if you are a legal gun owner then what is with the posts about all these accidents and shootings happening?what is your point or what are you trying to prove?are you pro gun or anti gun because now you just sound confused.
Careful. She might end up saying something nuanced.

[paulclifford]

>>>Careful. She might end up saying something nuanced.

Nuanced is one thing. Accurate is another.

Guns save far more lives in the US than they take. All statistics show this. What the statistics cannot show, unfortunately, is the number of lives that are saved by merely showing or pointing a gun at a potential attacker, without actually ever firing. These sorts of incidences are not recorded officially as "gun use", but they save lives just as surely as if the gun were fired.

Regarding private gun ownership as protection from government tyranny:

All modern government tyrannies that we know of — on the left and the right — first gained traction in their cultures by banning individual gun ownership. Here's a synopsis:

1. Ottoman Turkey - 1915-1917 - Targeted Armenian Christians - ~1.5 million victims - Imposed gun control laws (permits, government list of owners, eventual ban on private possession).

2. Soviet Union - 1929-1945 - Targeted Political Opponents and Farming Communities (i.e., the "Kulaks" who didn't want to be forced onto collective farms by Stalin) - ~20 million victims - Imposed gun control laws (permits, government list of owners, eventual ban on private possession).

3. Nazi Germany & Nazi Occupied Europe - 1933-1945 - Targeted Political Opponents, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Gays, Freemasons - ~20 million victims - Imposed gun control (registration & licensing; government list of owners; eventual ban on private ownership).

4. People's Republic of China - 1949-1976 - Targeted political opponents; rural population - ~ 30 million (some say as high as 70 million) victims - Implemented outright ban on private ownership.

5. Guatamela - 150,000 Mayan Indians (Gun ban by government).
6. Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) - 2 million political enemies of the state - (Strict gun control by government)
7. Uganda - 300,000 Christians and political enemies of the state - (Strict gun licensing and control by government).
8. Rwanda - The Tutsi people - 800,000 - (Strict gun licensing and control by government).

Obviously, then, even if some believe it's fantasy that individuals with guns act as a firewall against government tyranny, history shows that governments intending on becoming tyrannical certainly believe it — which is the reason they have all imposed strict laws on individual gun ownership, or enforced outright bans.

[trish]

Careful what you mean by "gain traction." Tyrannies more often have gained traction long before they had enough power to impose traffic laws or any other kind of restrictions. They first appeal to bigotry, racism and nationalism. When the government is flying these flags, then you can be alarmed; but not when some representatives simply want to limit magazine capacity or plug a loophole. But if you want to dream of the apocalypse and saving the liberty of the nation with your little stash of legally or illegally acquired arms, be my guest; just don't expect the rest of us to participate in your sick dream. Firearm and ammunition sales are way up in this country, but gun ownership itself is falling. Fewer than thirty percent of households now owns guns (that's down from 50% in 1980). When it's the blustery bigots who are stockpiling guns and screaming about government tyranny, maybe it is time to be alarmed. Maybe it's time we take a look at our gun regulations and strengthen them. When those same blustery bigots with their penis boosters shoot first and ask questions later, maybe its time we start repealing our stand-your-ground-laws.

[hippifried]

This isn't about guns. It's never really been about guns. They're inanimate objects. A mindless hunk of steel. The problem is all the stupid that surrounds them. It's the stupid that makes them dangerous. The object is to separate the gun from the stupid. Legality of ownership is completely irrelevant because you can't legislate stupid away. But the legal system is the only tool we have to try & create the separation. If somebody thinks they have a better idea, then let's see it. So far, all you gun-tough wannabes have done is whine. If y'all're that scared to want to surround yourselves with useless toys, go find a rock to hide under. All this perpetual paranoid sniveling is just annoying.

[trish]

http://nyti.ms/1aSFRjR

[martin48]

http://nyti.ms/1aSFRjR

I'm sure the NRA can explain them all

[Silcc69]

I'm sure the NRA can explain them all

If the tenants had guns then they could've shot him :D

[robertlouis]

>>>Careful. She might end up saying something nuanced.

Nuanced is one thing. Accurate is another.

Guns save far more lives in the US than they take. All statistics show this. What the statistics cannot show, unfortunately, is the number of lives that are saved by merely showing or pointing a gun at a potential attacker, without actually ever firing. These sorts of incidences are not recorded officially as "gun use", but they save lives just as surely as if the gun were fired.

Regarding private gun ownership as protection from government tyranny:

All modern government tyrannies that we know of — on the left and the right — first gained traction in their cultures by banning individual gun ownership. Here's a synopsis:

1. Ottoman Turkey - 1915-1917 - Targeted Armenian Christians - ~1.5 million victims - Imposed gun control laws (permits, government list of owners, eventual ban on private possession).

2. Soviet Union - 1929-1945 - Targeted Political Opponents and Farming Communities (i.e., the "Kulaks" who didn't want to be forced onto collective farms by Stalin) - ~20 million victims - Imposed gun control laws (permits, government list of owners, eventual ban on private possession).

3. Nazi Germany & Nazi Occupied Europe - 1933-1945 - Targeted Political Opponents, Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Gays, Freemasons - ~20 million victims - Imposed gun control (registration & licensing; government list of owners; eventual ban on private ownership).

4. People's Republic of China - 1949-1976 - Targeted political opponents; rural population - ~ 30 million (some say as high as 70 million) victims - Implemented outright ban on private ownership.

5. Guatamela - 150,000 Mayan Indians (Gun ban by government).
6. Cambodia (Khmer Rouge) - 2 million political enemies of the state - (Strict gun control by government)
7. Uganda - 300,000 Christians and political enemies of the state - (Strict gun licensing and control by government).
8. Rwanda - The Tutsi people - 800,000 - (Strict gun licensing and control by government).

Obviously, then, even if some believe it's fantasy that individuals with guns act as a firewall against government tyranny, history shows that governments intending on becoming tyrannical certainly believe it — which is the reason they have all imposed strict laws on individual gun ownership, or enforced outright bans.



Where would you place the UK in that context, Paul? Genuine question. We have some of the most draconian and tight firearms laws in the world alongside one of the lowest rates of gun deaths, whether you look at in terms of actual numbers or per head of population.

I know that wasn't the point you were making, but I'd certainly like to hear your view.

[robertlouis]

I said more or less the same thing a few months back, I know, but here goes again.


Eight months and 560 posts since this thread started on the premise that those nasty Dems were going to take all your guns away.

So what do we have? Any hope that a tragedy as horrifying as Sandy Hook might finally see the start of a civilised and cool debate in the US about putting sensible controls on the availability and use of firearms has been drowned by the hawks in the NRA and a lily-livered congress.

It's enough to make you weep.

[Prospero]

The title of this thread stands as a constant rebuke to America's inability to tackle this weeping sore in their body politic. I'm with RL in the desire to weep. (And of course I'll probably draw down the hatred of those here who tell me to shut up and fix my own country. Actually it is the world that is broken not just any one part of it... but that is another bigger story)

[broncofan]

I would not be surprised to learn that PaulClifford is not a historian of the atrocities he listed but rather found these examples in one or two places as prepared talking points. This is significant because the list doesn't distinguish between those countries that used gun control measures in a sensible way to protect their citizens and those that did so to make their citizens defenseless. If, for instance, there are countries that passed gun control measures without then building torture chambers, these counterexamples would be useful points of discussion.

I am sure most of the regimes you listed limited individual rights in every imaginable way, from speech, to contract, to allowing the passage of laws that were facially discriminatory. In a completely free society, people would be able to own anything they want no matter how deadly. But we have a body of law that says that even fundamental rights can be curtailed for compelling reasons. So we have child labor laws, work safety laws, restrictions on the sale of illegal narcotics, licensing requirements to practice medicine.

As an example, if we did not distinguish between the curtailment of speech through laws that are subject matter neutral and those that are a prior restraint of only that speech criticizing the government, we would not be discussing the first amendment in a sensible way. Likewise, we should be able to distinguish between laws providing for the registration of deadly implements and wholesale confiscation of every type of weapon. The former allows us to police and discourage illegal behavior. The latter violates the second amendment.

Gun control laws are not a means of making our citizenry defenseless so they can be killed but rather part of a necessary compromise. Individual freedoms must always be balanced with public safety. Slippery slope arguments that compare registration of deadly weapons with genocide only make the pro-gun movement seem more detached from reality. I acknowledge that eliminating our bill of rights altogether would facilitate tyranny, but interpreting these rights so broadly that they are practically borderless precludes responsible governance.

[broncofan]

Why is it that Republicans are willing to sacrifice civil liberties such as the 4th amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure when it comes to issues of national security, but not allow reasonable limits on the use of guns when it comes to public safety?

Terrorism is a very real threat and I supported some of the compromises made regarding the 4th amendment. Not all, but some. For instance, when FISA courts were created to allow for an accelerated process for authorities to get warrants for wiretaps, there was an initial compromise.

The compromise was that there would be a wall between national security operations and eventual criminal prosecution by the federal government. It turned out that this wall was breached and the abbreviated process for receiving wiretaps could be used not just to prevent imminent attacks but also to prosecute individuals. I think it was later ruled that this did not offend the 4th amendment.

But I don't remember Republicans being nearly as concerned about flexibility when it came to this civil right. Or about the possible erosion of first amendment freedom of speech and association protections that are implicated by material support statutes. These are statutes that literally prohibit certain types of speech and advocacy to designated terror organizations. They have not been ruled facially unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court said that their application in some circumstances could violate the first amendment.

Yet, all we hear when the government wants to place some limits on gun ownership is overblown rhetoric about tyranny and comparisons to Nazi Germany. Is the right to bear arms the most important civil right? All other civil rights should yield to extenuating circumstances except the right to own guns apparently. Don't touch that one or 1776 will rise again.

[paulclifford]

>>>Where would you place the UK in that context . . .?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.
By JAMES SLACK
UPDATED: 18:14 EST, 2 July 2009

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.

In the decade following the party's election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million - or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.

It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.

It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

[end excerpt]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Regarding the above article from the DailyMail, see this:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/24/blog-posting/social-media-post-says-uk-has-far-higher-violent-c/

A critique of the 2009 DailyMail article, worth reading. Essentially, it says that the great discrepancy between the UK and US figures has to do with how the phrase "violent crime" is interpreted by the various official agencies tasked with compiling the data. Still, when the politifact writers compiled their own data by looking only at what they believed were "apples in the UK" and "apples in the US", they again found that the UK has over twice the rate of violent crime per 100,000 citizens as does the US: 775 per 100K vs 383 per 100K.

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZTyCD2n6HAQ#at=182
Gun Ban in Britain caused 40% Increase in Gun Crimes

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6nf1OgV449g
Mandatory Gun Ownership and Training: Why Switzerland Has the Lowest Crime Rate in the World

And finally, see:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

This last is the FBI website for crime statistics in the US. If you look at the 6th column from the left — "Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Rate" — you'll see that the percentage rate (percentage per 100,000 citizens nationwide) goes from 9.3% in 1992 to 4.7% in 2011 (latest figures I can find); in other words, the murder rate per 100,000 citizens has decreased by about 50% in about 2 decades . . . while legal gun ownership in that same period has dramatically increased. See:

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states

Legal gun ownership has increased in the US by about 70 million since the 1990s.

An increase in legal gun ownership in the US (including an increase in legal carry-and-conceal permits in many states) strongly correlates with a sharp decline in murders nationwide.

Conversely, according to the first YouTube video linked above, as well as many articles online, the decrease in legal gun ownership in the UK strongly correlates with a sharp increase in gun-related crimes including murder.

[paulclifford]

>>>For instance, when FISA courts were created to allow for an accelerated process for authorities to get warrants for wiretaps, there was an initial compromise.

The FISA court itself was set up by a Democratic president (Jimmy Carter) and a Democratic administration:

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was introduced on May 18, 1977, by Senator Ted Kennedy and was signed into law by President Carter in 1978. The bill was cosponsored by nine Senators: Birch Bayh, James O. Eastland, Jake Garn, Walter Huddleston, Daniel Inouye, Charles Mathias, John L. McClellan, Gaylord Nelson, and Strom Thurmond.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Only two of the 9 co-sponsoring senators were GOP: Jake Garn and Charles Mathias.

[broncofan]

I have no problem with the use of FISA courts even though they involve ex parte proceedings to get warrants. It's the way the information obtained from them has been used. They were originally thought not to offend the 4th amendment mainly because the warrants were to gather intelligence about the activities of an agent of a foreign power. This information would then be used for national security purposes.

I think it was not until the passage of the Patriot Act that gathering intelligence information went from having to be the "primary purpose" of the surveillance to a mere significant purpose. This was a significant change (I can explain below if need be) and was part of the bill called the Patriot Act signed into law by GW Bush.

My point is that Republicans have been much less concerned about these civil liberties threats than they have the second amendment issue. I think it was GW Bush for a while who believed that he could even circumvent the FISA courts in certain circumstances based on his inherent authority as the executive. As though an abbreviated process that almost never denied a warrant was not sufficient.

[paulclifford]

>>>If, for instance, there are countries that passed gun control measures without then building torture chambers, these counterexamples would be useful points of discussion.

My genocide list was in response to trish's previous post regarding the "fantasy" that individual ownership of guns can act as a firewall against a government becoming tyrannical. Clearly, the governments of the countries I cited didn't think it was fantasy, or they wouldn't have implemented strict controls or outright bans.

I certainly never suggested that IF a government implements strict regulations (or even an outright ban), THEN it would necessarily become tyrannical. It's the reverse: IF a government is tending toward tyranny, THEN it will necessarily implement strict gun controls or an outright ban.

The statistics in the US clearly show that the cities with the strictest gun control (e.g., Chicago, Washington DC) have the highest violent crime; while those with the least control — including the legal language " . . . WILL issue . . ." (instead of "MAY issue") in its laws pertaining to conceal-and-carry permit requests by gun owners, have the least gun-related crime.

Gun controls obviously only apply to the law-abiding. Those who are criminally minded will break the law anyway and acquire guns irrespective of what laws are in place.

The statistics internal to the US appear to be mirrored in statistics internationally, at least in the EU: e.g., as the UK tightened its gun control laws, violent gun-related crime increased; obviously because it made it more difficult for the law-abiding to acquire guns to protect themselves, while doing nothing to prevent those who would break the law anyway from acquiring them.

[broncofan]

The unstated alternative in my previous post is that if intelligence information is not being used for national security purposes such as to prevent an imminent attack, it is being used to assist in future criminal prosecutions. More stringent process should be required for a search that is undergone to gather evidence in preparation for eventual prosecution than what is generally just called intelligence gathering.

The reason the wording changed from requiring intelligence gathering activities to be a primary purpose to a significant purpose is this. If intelligence gathering only has to be a significant purpose, then the primary purpose of the search could be to gather evidence for eventual trial. The use of the FISA courts could then be an end run around normal criminal procedure with intelligence gathering activities being used only as an underlying pretext.

[Prospero]

Always a bit puzzled by those who join what is, in essence, a forum about the beauty and sexual allure of transgendered girls and other subjects around their lives, and yet only ever post in the politics forum. Wonder about their agendas.

[broncofan]

>>>

The statistics in the US clearly show that the cities with the strictest gun control (e.g., Chicago, Washington DC) have the highest violent crime; while those with the least control — including the legal language " . . . WILL issue . . ." (instead of "MAY issue") in its laws pertaining to conceal-and-carry permit requests by gun owners, have the least gun-related crime.


Which is cause and which is effect? Are you sure gun control laws were not passed as a response to high levels of violent crime?

[paulclifford]

>>>and was part of the bill called the Patriot Act signed into law by GW Bush

And re-signed into law by Barack Hussein Obama (Democratic), as well as by congress — with a Democratic majority in the senate.

Democrats are no great supporters of the 4th Amendment.

Thomas Menino, Democratic mayor of Boston, had no problem violating the 4th Amendment rights of Bostonians during the police manhunt of the marathon bombers several months ago.

And if I remember correctly, the only person to filibuster the senate until he got an answer from Eric Holder regarding whether or not drone strikes on American citizens on US soil was considered within the the just powers of the president and the DoJ, was a Republican — ideologically a libertarian — i.e., Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky. I haven't heard a peep of protest about infringement of privacy from drones by Democrats.

[broncofan]

With the Boston Manhunt, I would not be surprised if they were using the special needs exception to the fourth amendment warrant clause. But I suppose that is my point. In certain contingencies, both parties recognize that compromises need to be made. It helps that the 4th amendment has the word unreasonable built into it which allows for a certain amount of flexibility in its application.

You say that the Democrats have not been friends of the 4th amendment. I don't doubt that as I haven't read anything that looks at the issue from a partisan perspective. Nor am I saying Republicans are necessarily worse offenders. My point is that there were plenty of excesses under the Bush administration that continued under Obama.

But if anything it was organizations like the ACLU warning about tyranny and about the erosion of civil liberties. But the rhetoric from the GOP then was not anything like the echo chamber we hear now.

[paulclifford]

>>>Are you sure gun control laws were not passed as a response to high levels of violent crime?

???

Why would hamstringing law-abiding citizens from owning firearms reduce violent crime?

Obviously — like most government regulation — gun control laws have the exact opposite effect from the one intended.

If the gun-control lobby were really interested in reducing violent crime, they wouldn't be so interested in making it more difficult for those who don't commit crimes to acquire firearms.

[broncofan]

>>>

Why would hamstringing law-abiding citizens from owning firearms reduce violent crime?

.
Law-abiding citizens don't telegraph that they are going to commit a future crime with a firearm. Probably because they don't know they will lose it one day when driving in their car or when arguing with their spouse.

In fact, every felon had a period in his or her life when they were not a felon.

[paulclifford]

>>>there were plenty of excesses under the Bush administration that continued under Obama

That's why many have claimed that the Obama administration is better understood as the 3rd term of the Bush administration . . . except with lots of ex-Clinton administration people in office, and with a similar kind of "out-of-touch" mentality as the 2nd Nixon administration.

The main difference appears to be that Nixon didn't need a teleprompter.

[paulclifford]

>>>Law-abiding citizens don't telegraph that they are going to commit a future crime with a firearm.

Neither do habitual criminals, and neither did the nut-jobs who illegally obtained firearms anyway before they committed mass atrocities.

Not sure what your point is. It appears to be, "Since even a law-abiding citizen might, possibly, some day, suffer from road-rage and discharge his Glock that he carried legally in his glove-compartment, let's make it real difficult for all law-abiding citizens to obtain legal permits to buy a gun."

OK. Let's do the same to law-abiding citizens regarding car ownership (they might lose it one day and intentionally drive it through a storefront window); let's do the same regarding the purchase of knives (including cutlery, of course), which is already being discussed seriously in the UK; let's do the same regarding rope, string, yarn, and dental floss (could be used as a garrote); and let's especially do the same for baseball bats — because according to FBI data, the #1 weapon of choice in the US for murdering someone is a bat.

By all means, let us do everything we can to prevent law-abiding citizens from committing violent crimes. This way, the only people who will actually have access to guns, knives, cars, garottes, and baseball bats will be the non-law-abiding citizens. And when the violent crime rate soars, we can look for a suitable scapegoat: George W. Bush, perhaps, or maybe even Global Warming.

[broncofan]

A baseball bat has more than one use. Some objects are dangerous not by design but because the features that make them useful in one hobby make them dangerous in another. I am not saying we should turn our lives upside down in order to get rid of every conceivable risk. Let's start by trying to minimize the risks associated with articles designed to kill and with a great potential to do so.

And if you want to blame George Bush for any problems I'm on board.

[trish]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

[broncofan]

List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

Trish's statistics show that the United Kingdom has a much lower death rate with guns. Your objection might be that because fewer guns are available, people in the UK must just be committing murders in other ways. So, this demonstrates, unless I read the numbers incorrectly that they also have a lower homicide rate.

So, they have fewer deaths per capita with guns. AND fewer homicides per capita.

[broncofan]

Let's combine PaulClifford's post on the last page and the statistics we have here. He said that the UK has a very high violent crime rate. Trish's article shows the UK has relatively few gun deaths per capita. I showed, they also have about one quarter the homicide rate of the U.S.

So if we accept PaulClifford's statistics then maybe the message is this.

In a country where a lot of violent crime is committed, the relative dearth of available weapons means that fewer of those violent acts will result in a homicide.

Edit: PC's post is now two pages back, and Trish's one.

[broncofan]

So, again PaulClifford. A higher violent crime rate than the U.S and yet the U.S has a homicide rate four times greater? How do you interpret that?

Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide.

[trish]

Note the proximity of Chicago to Wisconsin and Indiana. Even Iowa's only a 120 minute drive. Most definitely the gun laws in Chicago are a reaction to violent gun crime, not the cause. This is not to say that guns are the cause of Chicago's violent crime (we can blame a whole range of social factors for that), but firearms do contribute to making crime more deadly. They also contribute to accidental deaths and increased suicides. Again, suicides aren't caused by firearms, but a readily available firearm increases the risk of suicide.

[95racer]

"Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide"


Oh, I get it. It's a much nicer type of violent crim. WTF?!?!

[95racer]

My new favorite sign at a gun show:

[trish]

The conservative republicans for decades have built up the U.S. military, refused to cut its budget one iota, forced it to accept planes and ships it doesn't even want and then says that civilians need the right to carry weapons without restraint or regulation of any kind, 'cause we might have to fight our own military to maintain our liberty (presumably to carry lethal weapons into playgrounds and bars). Firearms manufacturers are playing you for the idiots you are. Talk about stupid!

[broncofan]

"Edit: If you disagree with the inference in my last post, let me know. Violent crime committed without guns are less likely to lead to homicide"


Oh, I get it. It's a much nicer type of violent crim. WTF?!?!
I don't know how much clearer it could be. If they don't have guns at their disposal but they still commit a violent crime, including forcible rape, burglary, assault, it is less likely to result in a death.

The criminals are absolutely not nicer. The crimes are less likely to result in someone dying.

[paulclifford]

>>>Trish's statistics show that the United Kingdom has a much lower death rate with guns.

Which by itself proves nothing.

Let's see: The UK has a lower gun homicide rate than does the US; the UK also has more fog than the US; and in the UK they drive on the left side of the road, not the right. THEREFORE, we conclude, that the reason the UK has a lower gun homicide rate than does the US is because 1) it has more fog, and 2) its drivers drive on the left, not the right.

Prove me wrong.

This is what happens when you simply cite "raw" data.

The actual facts are these:

Even in the 19th century (when crime statistics were first starting to be compiled by many countries), when neither the UK nor the US had any constraints on gun acquisition and ownership, the UK still had a lower rate of gun homicide (as well as a lower rate of all homicides) than the US. The reason? Because cultures and peoples differ, and English culture was simply never as violent as American culture. Period. Therefore, to claim that the UK has strict gun control and that it also has a lower rate of gun-related homicides than does the US, is irrelevant: the UK always had a lower rate of gun-related homicides — indeed, it always had a lower rate of all homicides — than the US, with or without gun controls and handgun bans. Since this was always the case, it cannot be attributed to some recent bit of legislation. The reasons are cultural, historical, and demographic.

The relevant question is not whether gun controls and handgun bans in the UK make it a less violent place than the US (because, as just explained, even in the absence of all controls and bans, the UK was always less violent than the US). The relevant question is whether or not gun controls and handgun bans in the UK, instituted in 1996, have made the UK safer for its own inhabitants than it was before the 1996 ban.

And the answer is "no". The UK is, in fact, more violent and more dangerous — including gun homicides — after 1996 than it was before 1996. In fact, there has been about a 40% rise in violent crime overall in the UK, including a rise in gun-related crimes.

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323777204578195470446855466.html

December 26, 2012

Joyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.

"Within a decade of the handgun ban [NB: in 1998, as a response to a 1996 school massacre in Dunblane, Scotland] and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself."

Joyce Lee Malcolm
author of "Guns and Violence: The English Experience"
Harvard University Press

See:

Guns and Violence: The English Experience: Joyce Lee Malcolm: 9780674016088: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41bkFf4BXFL.@@AMEPARAM@@41bkFf4BXFL (http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Violence-The-English-Experience/dp/0674016084)

One reader review of the above-listed book from 2002:

"Americans I know tend to think of Britain as a peaceful, crimefree place. My British friends tend to think of America as a crime-ridden Hell. Statistical data published in the last couple of years, amusingly, reveals that they're both one hundred eighty degrees wrong. This book explores what happened on the British side of the pond.

Historically, of course, Britain has had low crime rates. One aspect of the story that Malcolm traces is the evolution of gun ownership (stimulated by invention and ever cheaper gun prices and restricted, over the course of the 20th century, by ever harsher government regulation)and the relationship of gun ownership to crime. The skinny is this: Britain had low crime rates as long as it had high levels of private gun ownership. As the state has made private ownership illegal, crime has skyrocketed.

Another strand Malcolm illuminates is the changing nature of British law enforcement. Britain only acquired policemen in the modern sense in the middle of the nineteenth century, under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel (hence the nickname "Bobbies"). Prior to that time, the general public was expected to -- and did -- assist in the apprehension of lawbreakers. The general public was, of course, armed to the teeth. And (see above) Britain had low crime rates.

But since the introduction of professional police, the British government has increasingly tried to grant itself a complete monopoly on the use of force. Not only has it progressively made private gun ownership illegal (no one here can own pistols anymore, and it's pretty difficult to get a permit to own a rifle, even for sport), it has also eroded, almost into nonexistence, the traditional British right to self-defense."

However, there's something else, probably more disturbing, since it touches on the very essence of Big Government, whether in the UK or the US:

I mentioned in a previous post on Britain's NHS, that the UK health bureaucracy regularly lies in its published statistics regarding things like waiting times for medical care; recent newspaper articles mention that this had been going on for some time in Scotland, in order to make things less embarrassing for the government, which could brag that it was "improving" the NHS (in fact, patients on waiting lists simply disappeared! They were redefined as "unavailable for appointments", and voila! there are suddenly fewer people waiting for medical care). Guess what? Same thing has been going on for some time with UK police departments and their reporting of crime statistics. Below are some links you can look at, but the essence is this: for a long time, UK police (and the bureaucracies above them) have been seriously under-reporting crime — including violent crime with various kinds of weapons including guns — for the purpose of making it seem that "the police are doing a fine job of controlling crime!" Additionally — shockingly and sadly — many people in the UK are actually afraid to report a violent crime to the police for fear of reprisal by criminals; something which, again, would contribute to serious under-reporting of the actual crime rate.

See:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6736505/Police-force-tricks-to-fiddle-crime-figures.html

Police force 'tricks' to 'fiddle' crime figures

Police forces are using a series of tricks to manipulate crime figures to give a false picture of their performance, a former senior detective has revealed.

The techniques – dubbed "gaming" – are used to create the illusion that fewer crimes are being committed and that a bigger proportion are being solved.

Rodger Patrick, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, claimed that the methods are tacitly approved of by senior officers, police watchdogs and the Home Office.

The claims will reignite the debate about the validity of crime statistics after recent figures suggested that crime fell four per cent in the second quarter of this year, and following the admission by a police watchdog that some forces are failing to record violent crime properly.

* * * * * * * * * *

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/police-fail-to-report-14m-crimes-710742.html

Police fail to report 1.4m crimes

TUESDAY 01 AUGUST 2000

An estimated 1.4m crimes are going unrecorded by the police every year partly because officers bend the rules to exaggerate their success, government inspectors have discovered.

Police officers have been found grossly to misrepresent and massage crime statistics to improve their detection rates while downplaying the number of offences committed.

* * * * * * * * * *

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3222063/Gun-crime-60pc-higher-than-official-figures.html

Gun crime 60pc higher than official figures

The true level of gun crime is far higher than the Government admits in official statistics, it can be revealed.

By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent 11:58AM BST 18 Oct 2008

Figures to be published by the Home Office this week will massively understate the scale of the problem.

Data provided to The Sunday Telegraph by nearly every police force in England and Wales, under freedom of information laws, show that the number of firearms incidents dealt with by officers annually is 60 per cent higher than figures stated by the Home Office.

Last year 5,600 firearms offences were excluded from the official figures. It means that, whereas the Home Office said there were only 9,800 offences in 2007/8, the real total was around 15,400. The latest quarterly figures, due to be released on Thursday, will again exclude a significant number of incidents.
The explanation for the gulf is that the Government figures only include cases where guns are fired, used to "pistol whip" victims, or brandished as a threat.

Thousands of offences including gun-smuggling and illegal possession of a firearm - which normally carries a minimum five-year jail sentence - are omitted from the Home Office's headline count, raising questions about the reliability of Government crime data.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "These alarming new figures not only highlight the appalling state of gun crime in this country, but also remind us just how poor the Government's statistics actually are.
"Crime statistics must also be compiled and published independent of the Home Office, and crime mapping rolled out so that people can have confidence in what they are being told about the state of crime in this country."

* * * * * * * * * *

http://web.archive.org/web/20080706191657/http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2710596.ece

Government figures 'missing' two million violent crimes

By David Barrett, PA Home Affairs Correspondent
Tuesday, 26 June 2007

An extra two million violent crimes a year are committed in Britain than previously thought because of a bizarre distortion in the Government's flagship crime figures, it was claimed yesterday.

A former Home Office research expert said that across all types of crime, three million offences a year are excluded from the British Crime Survey (BCS).

The poll caps the number of times a victim can be targeted by an offender at five incidents a year.

If anyone interviewed for the survey says they have been targeted more than five times a year, the sixth incident and beyond are not included in the BCS.

The authors of a report by think-tank Civitas said the five-crimes limit is "truly bizarre" and "misleading".

Professor Graham Farrell of Loughborough University and the former acting head of the Home Office's Police Research Group, Professor Ken Pease, calculated that if the cap is ignored, the overall number of BCS crimes is more than 14 million rather than the current 11 million a year estimate.

Violent crime is 82 per cent higher at 4.4 million offences compared with 2.4 million in the BCS, the survey claims, including a 156 per cent rise in "acquaintance violence" from 817,000 incidents to 2.1 million.

Domestic violence is 140 per cent higher, up from 357,000 incidents a year to 857,000, the authors said, while there are nearly three million common assaults a year rather than the 1.5 million estimated by the BCS, a rise of 98 per cent.

Burglary is 20 per cent higher than currently estimated, at 877,000 a year, and vandalism is 24 per cent higher, the report calculated.

Robbery is 7 per cent up on the official estimates, or an extra 22,000 crimes bringing the yearly total to 333,000.

"If the people who say they suffered 10 incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate," the authors said.

"It is truly bizarre that the victimisation survey, based as it is on the assumption that people will by and large tell the truth about what happened to them, ... suddenly withdraws its trust in their honesty when what they are told does not chime with their own experience.

"Yet the reality is that some people are very frequently victimised, and that frequent victimisation is what they suffer rather than being an invention or exaggeration."

The cap of five crimes for repeat victims has operated ever since the inception of the BCS in 1981.

Ministers claim the survey - which now polls 40,000 people a year about their experiences of crime, is the most reliable indicator of crime levels,

The authors said: "The unwillingness to believe the facts of chronic victimisation means that crime control, police training and criminal justice action are now substantially misdirected."

In particular, the system means that the most vulnerable people in society may not be getting the police protection they require from repeat offenders, the report said.

* * * * * * * * * *

http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prCivRevJun07.php

British Crime Survey omits three million crimes

Violent crime increases by 82% when all crimes are counted

The public are being misled about the true volume of crime by the British Crime Survey which omits three million crimes, according to a report published today by independent think-tank Civitas.

The report, ‘Crime in England and Wales: More Violence and More Chronic Victims’, is written by Graham Farrell, professor of criminology at Loughborough University, and Ken Pease, visiting professor at Loughborough and former acting head of the Police Research Group at the Home Office.

It reveals that, ever since its inception in 1981, the British Crime Survey (BCS) has omitted many crimes committed against people who have been repeat victims. If people are victimised in the same way by the same perpetrators more than five times in a year, the number of crimes is put down as five. The justification for this was ‘to avoid extreme cases distorting the rates’, but, as Farrell and Pease point out, ‘if the people who say they suffered ten incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate’.

By recalculating the figures without the arbitrary cap of five crimes, Farrell and Pease have revealed that there are over three million crimes omitted from the BCS:

In its most recent published sweep, BCS estimated an annual total of some 6.8 million ‘household’ crimes (covering burglary; theft in a dwelling; other household theft; thefts of and from vehicles; bicycle theft; and vandalism to household property and vehicles). It estimated some 4.1 million ‘personal’ crimes (which covers assault, sexual offences, robbery, theft from the person, and other personal theft). Our re-analysis reveals that, if we believe what the respondents tell us, there would be 7.8 million household offences and 6.3 million personal crimes. Thus, removing the arbitrary five offence limit, over three million extra offences come to light… Household crime is increased by 15% and personal crime by a staggering 52%. As the sum of personal and household crimes, total crime would have been understated by 29%.

The increase in the number of crimes is not evenly spread across all types of crime. For example, theft of vehicles is not increased at all, but levels of vandalism are almost a quarter more than reported, and there are 20 per cent more burglaries. Violent crime of all types increases by 83 per cent. Violence perpetrated by an acquaintance increases by 156 per cent and domestic violence by 140 per cent. As Farrell and Pease say, ‘these are not minor differences’.

Not just a quibble about numbers – the police have been encouraged to neglect the protection of repeat victims

Farrell and Pease believe that ‘crime control, police training and criminal justice action are now substantially misdirected’. In particular police attention has been diverted from protection of some of the most vulnerable people in society. Separate incidents may be dismissed as trivial but if each one is an episode in a long-running feud or vendetta the consequences have sometimes been fatal. For example, on 12 January 2006, a house in Wythenshawe, Manchester, had petrol poured through its letterbox and ignited. The two adults in the home, Mr and Mrs Cochrane, died, and their daughter Lucy was burned. It emerged that a hostile family, the Connors, were responsible:

‘The 18-month feud began after schoolgirl Natalie Connor developed an obsessive hatred of her classmate because of an apparent slight. The dispute between the two families, in which Natalie falsely claimed she had been bullied by Lucy, came to a head when Michael bought two litres of petrol and poured it through the Cochranes' letterbox. A heavy drinker, he was goaded by his wife, who plied him with alcohol before the attack early on January 12 this year. Five days earlier, Mrs Cochrane discovered what appeared to be a flammable liquid on her front door and found that someone had tried to uproot a tree from the garden. She called the police but no sample of the liquid was taken. Connor and his wife were convicted last week on two counts of murder. Their daughter was found guilty of manslaughter and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to Lucy. Alistair Webster QC, prosecuting, had told the jury during the six-week trial that Natalie had developed an obsessive enmity towards her classmate that eventually led to her and her mother inciting Connor to start the fire.’ (Guardian, 21 December 2006)

They could have mentioned the case of Peter Woodhams, the young father from East London who was shot dead despite pleading for police protection from a gang of youths who had already slashed his face after he complained about them throwing stones at his car. In May this year, the Independent Police Complaints Commission found that the police had failed him.

* * * * * * * * * *

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6157944.stm
Last Updated: Friday, 17 November 2006, 17:55 GMT

Crime statistics 'need overhaul'

Former home secretary Charles Clarke commissioned the report

The way crime statistics are produced needs a "radical overhaul", a Home Office review has concluded.

The report says the current system misses out significant groups of victims and some definitions of crime are "confusing and misleading".

It urges a "shift in emphasis" in the way figures for England and Wales are presented with greater focus given to local rather than national statistics.

The figures come from the British Crime Survey and recorded crime data.

The independent review, commissioned by former home secretary Charles Clarke, says recorded crime data - police crime figures - ignore the 60% of offences that go unreported.

Yet the British Crime Survey, which sets out to measure the extent and nature of crimes the public have experienced in the last year by surveying 50,000 adults, also misses some offences.

[broncofan]

Just two pages back, you posted an article that said that Britain has a higher rate of violent crime than the U.S. Now you are saying they are inherently less violent.

More violent crime

Lower homicide rate

Lower gun death rate

The argument that they are less prone to violence seems somewhat foreclosed by the fact that they have more violent crime.

What you are referring to is the fact that correlation does not equal causation, which you might have mentioned in some of your previous posts when it was inconvenient for you.

[paulclifford]

>>>Just two pages back, you posted an article that said that Britain has a higher rate of violent crime than the U.S. Now you are saying they are inherently less violent.

You can have a higher *rate* than the US, but lower total numbers in absolute terms; it depends on how you want to look at the data. If you adjust for population size (US is more than 5x larger), and adjust for differences in definition of crime categories, it certainly is true that the UK has a higher crime rate than that of the US. My point is: so what. The important point you're trying to make, but have not proven, is that gun bans and gun control are responsible for making the UK "less violent" than the US. Wrong. The UK was already "less violent" than the US with or without gun bans and gun control, even going as far back as the 19th century. That's apples and oranges. You have to compare crime rates *within the UK* before the gan ban, to crime rates *within the UK* after the gun ban. Now you're comparing apples to apples. That will show whether or not gun bans and gun control made people safer in the UK.

I've provided lots of data indicating that guns bans in the UK have had the opposite effect of the one intended: they have increased crime rates (including violent crime with guns) in the UK, not reduced them.

[broncofan]

You have provided a lot of data and it's commendable. But you can run into the same problems with time series data that you do comparing different cultures. The only way to be sure you are isolating the effects of gun legislation would be a more sophisticated analysis, perhaps using regression analysis to find out exactly how much each variable contributes to homicide rates. With time series data, you still have changes in law enforcement effort, social changes, economic changes, demographic changes such as average age of the population. These can also contribute to changes in murder rates over time.

[paulclifford]

>>>The argument that they are less prone to violence seems somewhat foreclosed by the fact that they have more violent crime.

Wow! I'm not sure I can explain this any more clearly than I have already done. Once more, and that's it:

>>>The argument that they are less prone to violence . .

Less prone to violence than whom??? Answer: Less prone to violence than the US? Possibly true. This first sentence of yours compares the UK to the US.

>>>they have more violent crime. . .

More violent crime than whom? Answer: More violent crime THAN THEY, THE UK, HAD BEFORE THEIR GUN BAN. This second sentence of yours is no longer comparing the UK to the US, but is comparing the UK to the UK at two different points in time.

[broncofan]

"they again found that the UK has over twice the rate of violent crime per 100,000 citizens as does the US: 775 per 100K vs 383 per 100K."

No, I took this from the article you posted on page 57. It says UK has more violent crime per capita than US

[broncofan]

"For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: "violence against the person, with injury," "most serious sexual crime," and "robbery." This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people"

This was comparing similar violent crimes in the U.S and U.K. The discrepancy was wider but apparently the crimes were not the same so they adjusted the data. Did you read the article you posted?

[broncofan]

"More violent crime THAN THEY, THE UK, HAD BEFORE THEIR GUN BAN. This second sentence of yours is no longer comparing the UK to the US, but is comparing the UK to the UK at two different points in time"

The only thing that matters are rates. So throw out the stuff about absolute numbers on the last page, because quite frankly, we should only be discussing violent crime rate if we are discussing proneness towards violence. My second sentence was saying that the UK is no less violent than the U.S, as they have a higher VIOLENT CRIME RATE.

[broncofan]

>>>The argument that they are less prone to violence seems somewhat foreclosed by the fact that they have more violent crime.
.
I see what threw you. Since I was only talking about comparisons between the U.S and the U.K and why they are more apt than you think, I was only ever discussing rates. I did say more violent crime, but I assumed that you would understand this to mean more violent crime per capita, since I was comparing two countries of very different sizes.

So again, to summarize:
U.S has higher homicide rate. U.S has higher rate of gun deaths. But U.K has higher rate of violent crime.:)

[trish]

...So again, to summarize:
U.S has higher homicide rate. U.S has higher rate of gun deaths. But U.K has higher rate of violent crime.:) Good set of posts, bronofan. Summary: If you value your life, it's much better to live in the U.K. Less chance of being killed plus a civilized heath care system. Guns may not be the cause of crime, but they do increase the chance of death or injury during the commission of a crime, whether you're the perp, the victim or a bystander. If you or others around you are carrying guns, your risk of death and injury is increased. If there is a gun in your home the risk of accidental death, injury and suicide are increased.

[broncofan]

the risk of accidental death, injury and suicide are increased.
This is another dimension I didn't even address (thankfully you have), but every bit as significant. Anyone who has ever known someone who has committed suicide knows it can be an impulsive act; not always but can be. Unimaginably tragic in all scenarios.

[Stavros]

The actual facts are these:

Even in the 19th century (when crime statistics were first starting to be compiled by many countries), when neither the UK nor the US had any constraints on gun acquisition and ownership, the UK still had a lower rate of gun homicide (as well as a lower rate of all homicides) than the US. The reason? Because cultures and peoples differ, and English culture was simply never as violent as American culture. Period. Therefore, to claim that the UK has strict gun control and that it also has a lower rate of gun-related homicides than does the US, is irrelevant: the UK always had a lower rate of gun-related homicides — indeed, it always had a lower rate of all homicides — than the US, with or without gun controls and handgun bans. Since this was always the case, it cannot be attributed to some recent bit of legislation. The reasons are cultural, historical, and demographic.

The relevant question is not whether gun controls and handgun bans in the UK make it a less violent place than the US (because, as just explained, even in the absence of all controls and bans, the UK was always less violent than the US). The relevant question is whether or not gun controls and handgun bans in the UK, instituted in 1996, have made the UK safer for its own inhabitants than it was before the 1996 ban.

And the answer is "no". The UK is, in fact, more violent and more dangerous — including gun homicides — after 1996 than it was before 1996. In fact, there has been about a 40% rise in violent crime overall in the UK, including a rise in gun-related crimes.



For someone who deals in 'facts' it is a pity you don't check them before exposing yourself to ridicule, eg:
Even in the 19th century (when crime statistics were first starting to be compiled by many countries), when neither the UK nor the US had any constraints on gun acquisition and ownership
--The Vagrancy Act 1824 -brought in as a consequence of men who had returned from the European (Napoleonic) Wars with weapons gave the police to power to arrest any person with any gun, pistol, hanger [dagger], cutlass, bludgeon or other offensive weapon ... with intent to commit a felonious act.
--The Night Poaching Act of 1828, again in 1844 and the Game Act of 1862 were all designed to prevent the use of firearms in illegal hunting, ie hunting without a licence.
---The Gun Licence Act 1870 was introduced to prevent people from carrying firearms outside their homes without a licence.

A survey of crime statistics in Europe from the 13th Century to the 20th century establishes an ever decreasing record of homicide; it has nothing to do with gun control being present or absent, and everything to do with the changes that have taken place to society -the drift from rural to urban life, the changing nature of work; above all, the increasing powers of the state and its control of the means of violence. You can throw in to the mix a general decline in the consumption of alcohol, superior surveillance in public places -and believe it or not, welfare, which by providing a safety net for some people removes an incentive to crime.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/postgraduate/ma_studies/mamodules/hi971/topics/interpersonal/long-term-historical-trends-of-violent-crime.pdf

Thus:
The UK is, in fact, more violent and more dangerous — including gun homicides — after 1996 than it was before 1996. In fact, there has been about a 40% rise in violent crime overall in the UK, including a rise in gun-related crimes
Is not based on reliable evidence, which shows that violent crime is at its lowest level for 30 years -and this is from the Daily Mail which one would expect to take a more hysterical approach to the subject:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313942/UK-Peace-Index-Rate-murders-violent-crime-falling-faster-Western-Europe.html

[broncofan]

Thank you Stavros for doing the fact-checking. The lesson is that anything PaulClifford says that is counter to intuition and un-cited is likely to be false.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/feb/07/crime-statistics-england-wales-violent-sexual-offences

Here is a link to a Guardian article that has information that correlates with the Daily Mail link. I think it's based on the same report.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

This is an article listed by the CDC on the number of homicides in the U.S and the method of killing. Over 11,000 out of approximately 16,000 murders per year are committed with guns in the United States. In the U.K, deaths caused by firearms are something like the 5th or 6th most common method of committing homicide. The other causes of death are strangulation, kicking and hitting, sharp objects, blunt objects etc.

It didn't occur to me how inefficient all these other methods of killing are until you actually see the other options spelled out. Would all 11,000 people who were killed by guns in the United States have been killed with one of these other methods if not by firearm? What about the individuals who were killed at some range?

And if a lower availability of firearms is not the cause of the U.K having a significantly smaller proportion of homicides committed with firearms, what is? Are Brits much better at strangulation? One would have to be a fool to look at these statistics, and not attribute the lower homicide rate in the U.K to the lower availability of firearms. According to a rough calculation firearm deaths are the cause of over 68% of U.S homicides. Are we to assume that if you lower this number, it just re-distributes homicides by method with no net change in total number? It stretches credulity.

[broncofan]

BTW, I forgot to mention in my last post that death by firearm comprised about 7.7% of total homicides in Britain, compared with 68% in the U.S. If we are not going to attribute this to lower availability of guns, we must believe that Brits just prefer less efficient means of committing murder. And if we do recognize that gun control leads to less firearm deaths, but do not believe this would result in less total homicide, we must believe that there would be a perfect displacement of firearm deaths for other methods. How can you believe that?

[martin48]

Our national healthcare system (free at point of delivery) will not last much longer! We are racing, blindfolded, into a US system of wealthy-insured and sod-'em parts of society.




Good set of posts, bronofan. Summary: If you value your life, it's much better to live in the U.K. Less chance of being killed plus a civilized heath care system. Guns may not be the cause of crime, but they do increase the chance of death or injury during the commission of a crime, whether you're the perp, the victim or a bystander. If you or others around you are carrying guns, your risk of death and injury is increased. If there is a gun in your home the risk of accidental death, injury and suicide are increased.

[trish]

Ah, how the entrepreneurial sirens of the reefs do beckon the greedy.

[Stavros]

Thank you Stavros for doing the fact-checking. The lesson is that anything PaulClifford says that is counter to intuition and un-cited is likely to be false.

In the U.K, deaths caused by firearms are something like the 5th or 6th most common method of committing homicide. The other causes of death are strangulation, kicking and hitting, sharp objects, blunt objects etc.

It didn't occur to me how inefficient all these other methods of killing are until you actually see the other options spelled out. Would all 11,000 people who were killed by guns in the United States have been killed with one of these other methods if not by firearm? What about the individuals who were killed at some range?

And if a lower availability of firearms is not the cause of the U.K having a significantly smaller proportion of homicides committed with firearms, what is? Are Brits much better at strangulation? One would have to be a fool to look at these statistics, and not attribute the lower homicide rate in the U.K to the lower availability of firearms. According to a rough calculation firearm deaths are the cause of over 68% of U.S homicides. Are we to assume that if you lower this number, it just re-distributes homicides by method with no net change in total number? It stretches credulity.

I think that raw data on crime gives a general picture, as it is meant to do, but that when you drill down into the figures you often find, in the UK as in other countries, a high proportion of violent crime is committed between professional criminals, or in people engaged in criminal acts, of which drug dealing is possibly the most lethal. Other than that, crimes committed in the heat of the moment must count for a lot, particularly in domestic situations, where a knife or blunt object is a common weapon. Gang violence, which has been a problem in inner cities, also tends to be knife related in the UK. I have no way of knowing if more people would be killed by guns if they were easier to obtain than they are; it is assumed that this would be the case but having said that, criminals who need a gun don't seem to have a problem getting hold of one and some of the deranged men who have gone berserk and murdered their own families usually had a licence.

[broncofan]

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2009/oct/05/us-homicide-rates

Everything you said makes sense Stavros. I am wondering though if in the U.S we have one expanded category of murder, one that usually is completed with firearm; that being situations between strangers (males with egos) that escalate into a shooting because one or both men are carrying.

Though we have a substantial number of drug related deaths they are a fairly modest percent overall (about 500/9000- apparently 5000 homicides are of causes unknown). And again, fewer than half of our homicides are committed in the course of felonies(2000/9000). I would guess that both of these categories are larger percentages of total homicides in Britain. There is of course a strong likelihood that many of the homicides whose cause is unknown are committed by career criminals, which is why authorities only have a body and cannot trace the origin.

It is possible that this category, other arguments, which comprises a fairly large percentage of homicides involves a lot of impulsive shootings just based on the sheer number of carriers of weapons and the potential for explosive situations. But these numbers and inferences are equivocal. As you say the numbers can only give a general picture.

*BTW these are 2008 numbers, but this was what I found;.

[Ben in LA]

This story popped up on my Facebook feed. Self-defense?

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/child-3-critical-after-being-shot-in-gwinnett/nZTsr/

[martin48]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130908/NEWS/309080061/Iowa-grants-permits-blind-residents-carry-guns-public

Comment no needed!

[robertlouis]

Yet another mass shooting, this time at a naval yard in DC. Ho hum. As the old song has it, "When will they ever learn?"


http://http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/washington-navy-yard-shooting_n_3934027.html

[trish]

Perhaps we should arm all U.S. Naval officers. Oh wait! We already do that. :(

[Prospero]

Terrorism? Sounds like it....

[notdrunk]

Perhaps we should arm all U.S. Naval officers. Oh wait! We already do that. :(

There is a policy about not being armed on base. Plus, apparently, the shooter used Biden's favorite gun and got the other firearms from shooting the security/police.

[trish]

There is a policy about not being armed on base. Plus, apparently, the shooter used Biden's favorite gun and got the other firearms from shooting the security/police.Doesn't your last sentence contradict your first? Ergo, arming the security...bad idea.

[notdrunk]

Doesn't your last sentence contradict your first? Ergo, arming the security...bad idea.

No, the last sentence doesn't contradict the first sentence. A Clinton-era policy allows only military police and civilian police to carry firearms anytime on a military base unless there is a credible and specific threat in the area. There should be armed security at military bases because they are high profile targets. For example, back in the 1970s and 1980s, the Red Army Faction in Germany had a habit to attack American military bases in Germany. Also, there was the Fort Hood shooting caused by that Islamic terrorist.

[trish]

Sure it does. The base security was armed. The policy wasn't that nobody on base could be armed, but rather some people should not be armed and others should be armed. The irony is that the NRA recommends that schools hire armed security teams and yet we see that (if your account is correct) arming the security, even on a military base, was a bad idea.

[Stavros]

A man with anger management issues and a record of incompetence has access to weapons of human destruction, and uses them -sadly not the first case, and it won't be the last either.

[bobvela]

Sure it does. The base security was armed. The policy wasn't that nobody on base could be armed, but rather some people should not be armed and others should be armed.

God you are thick headed, increasingly so as the facts once again demonstrate you do not know what you are talking about.

It's almost like you get off on dancing on the graves of the dead (who are not even buried yet) while spouting your ignorance.

Domestic military bases (foreign ones have their own rules depending on the situation), just like public schools, airports (beyond the screeners), court houses, prisons, federal buildings, etc... are all gun free zones by law for all those who are not explicitly granted the right to carry within (which is usually restricted to police & (some) security personal.

So yes... some people, a limited # on the base would have been armed... just like how a limited # of people are officially charged with being armed in your town... the police. In neither case can either group guarantee a nut isn't going to do harm, let alone shoot a cop or guard, take their weapon and move on with more mayhem (as it appears happened here).


The irony is that the NRA recommends that schools hire armed security teams and yet we see that (if your account is correct) arming the security, even on a military base, was a bad idea.

No, the irony here is that we've had another mass shooting in a federally controlled gun-free zone, and that anti-gun bigots like you will demand (yet again) that the federal government further attempt to control firearms for the masses across 50 states when they have once again demonstrated their inability to control their use on federally run and very secure facilities.

Besides, unlike on such a domestic base, beyond normal law enforcement, in the civilian population there at least exists the prospect of an armed civilian who may be at the right place & the right time to act... which oddly happens far more than you'd think.

Rather than getting off on this event... why not wait for the facts to come in and see how the system failed... rather than continue to make up facts and jump to conclusions?

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=bobvela;1392061]



No, the irony here is that we've had another mass shooting in a federally controlled gun-free zone, and that anti-gun bigots like you will demand (yet again) that the federal government further attempt to control firearms for the masses across 50 states when they have once again demonstrated their inability to control their use on federally run and very secure facilities.

/QUOTE]

Bobvela -maybe the issue here is not to try and 'control firearms for the masses across 50 states' but to take guns away from people who have shown they ought not to have them, because they are on medication, have a record of violence, uncontrollable rage etc -if this man had been deprived of his weapons following earlier incidents, he may still have been able to get hold of weapons illegaly, but it would at least have been harder for him to do so. Otherwise you are not going to stop these incidents from happening again, even if people in the location -shop, school, mall, cinema, are armed. Aren't most of the people who have committed these crimes shown to be nutters?

[trish]

God you are thick headed, increasingly so as the facts once again demonstrate you do not know what you are talking about.

It's almost like you get off on dancing on the graves of the dead (who are not even buried yet) while spouting your ignorance.Thank you for your thoughtful invective.

Nevertheless, what I said was true: the base security was armed.
Yet people were killed (twelve at present count)
and if notdrunk's version of what went down is true two of the assailant's weapons were taken from security guards (though I haven't heard this last bit reported as yet).

I have no problem with the military having armed security on their bases. I do think it's expensive and unwise for public schools to employ armed security teams. This incident should invite us to question the efficacy an armed security as well.

No, the government will never be able to control crazed men out for vengeance for some imagined grievance. But we can make it more difficult for these guys to arm themselves.

[notdrunk]

Thank you for your thoughtful invective.

Nevertheless, what I said was true: the base security was armed.
Yet people were killed (twelve at present count)
and if notdrunk's version of what went down is true two of the assailant's weapons were taken from security guards (though I haven't heard this last bit reported as yet).

I have no problem with the military having armed security on their bases. I do think it's expensive and unwise for public schools to employ armed security teams. This incident should invite us to question the efficacy an armed security as well.

No, the government will never be able to control crazed men out for vengeance for some imagined grievance. But we can make it more difficult for these guys to arm themselves.

CNN says that the police recovered a shotgun and two handguns. Sources told CNN that the handguns might be from security guards. The rifle being found is incorrect.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/17/us/navy-yard-shooting-main/index.html

On a side note, many schools already have an armed presence on their campuses but they are school resource officers.

[trish]

Thanks for the update.

[thombergeron]

A Clinton-era policy allows only military police and civilian police to carry firearms anytime on a military base unless there is a credible and specific threat in the area. There should be armed security at military bases because they are high profile targets.

I was active duty in 1992 when DoD Directive 5210.56 was issued, i.e., prior to the Clinton Administration.

5210.56 authorizes military and civilian law enforcement to carry loaded firearms at DoD facilities; not just police, but also investigative agencies such as the Naval Investigative Command and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, both of which maintain personnel at the Washington Navy Yard. Also security, both military and civilian. Also intelligence personnel, of which there are many at the Navy Yard, particularly in Building 197 where the shootings took place.

Also, ANY PERSONNEL DEMONSTRATING A NEED TO CARRY A FIREARM FOR PERSONAL PROTECTION.


No, the irony here is that we've had another mass shooting in a federally controlled gun-free zone, and that anti-gun bigots like you will demand (yet again) that the federal government further attempt to control firearms for the masses across 50 states when they have once again demonstrated their inability to control their use on federally run and very secure facilities.

It’s simply bizarre that an allegedly thinking person would attempt to characterize a U.S. military base as a “gun-free zone.” Anyone who has ever been within sight of a DoD facility knows this is nonsense. The very first thing you will encounter is armed personnel. Indeed, it appears that the first fatality yesterday morning was an armed security guard. There are MANY DoD personnel authorized to carry firearms on base. But I guess in the latest mouthbreather version of reality, any facility in which less than 100% of personnel are packing is a “gun-free zone.”

And yet, less than 24 hours later, the gun nuts are out in force, fronting the plainly absurd notion that this never would have happened if Clinton hadn’t disarmed the military.

So really, Bob, who’s dancing on graves here? Who’s misrepresenting the facts in a ham-handed attempt to score political points?

[Ben]

Chris Rock on BULLET control... and how a bullet should cost $5,000 -- :)

Chris Rock on Gun Control - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuX-nFmL0II)

[Ben]

Author and radio host Thom Hartmann:

More Guns Means More killings - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHVlIZ0eV1k)

[fred41]

It's almost like you get off on dancing on the graves of the dead (who are not even buried yet) while spouting your ignorance.


Statements like this are bullshit Bob. Bullshit.
I've read Trish's opinions in this section for a long time now. She's never written anything to give credence to this type of claim. Never.

It wasn't right.

[Ben]

Trauma Surgeon Dr. Janis Orlowski to Piers Morgan: 'We Can't Have One Mass Shooting After Another'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUAxLmjqoMw

[notdrunk]

So really, Bob, who’s dancing on graves here? Who’s misrepresenting the facts in a ham-handed attempt to score political points?

Oops, Bush instead of Clinton. Meh, I was 99.9% right. No point of CAPS because you do know that I had underlined "anytime" and mentioned specific threats (which includes personal).

Both sides are using people's deaths for political purposes...From Good 'o Brady:



In recent years we've experienced mass shootings in a supermarket parking lot, an army base, a movie theater, a temple, shopping malls, universities, high schools, elementary schools, and now a naval facility, and after every one the corporate gun lobby's friends in Congress obstructed the will of the American people and stood in the way of sensible solutions to gun violence. Americans deserve better than this.

While it is too early to know what policies might have prevented this latest tragedy, we do know that policies that present a real opportunity to save lives sit stalled in Congress, policies that could prevent many of the dozens of deaths that result every day from gun violence. As long as our leaders in Congress ignore the will of the people and do not listen to those voices, we will hold them accountable. We hope Congress will listen to the voice of the people and take up legislation that will create a safer America."

But, it is only the "gun nuts" that are doing it!

[broncofan]

Oops, Bush instead of Clinton. Meh, I was 99.9% right. No point of CAPS because you do know that I had underlined "anytime" and mentioned specific threats (which includes personal).

Yeah, if only we got to determine the manner in which people correct us when we get the facts wrong:). What a wonderful world that would be.

I'm waiting for more information to come out about the shooter. As Stavros said, whatever your views on the legality of owning assault rifles generally, better background checks are essential.

[trish]

I was active duty in 1992 when DoD Directive 5210.56 was issued, i.e., prior to the Clinton Administration.

5210.56 authorizes military and civilian law enforcement to carry loaded firearms at DoD facilities; not just police, but also investigative agencies such as the Naval Investigative Command and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, both of which maintain personnel at the Washington Navy Yard. Also security, both military and civilian. Also intelligence personnel, of which there are many at the Navy Yard, particularly in Building 197 where the shootings took place.

Also, ANY PERSONNEL DEMONSTRATING A NEED TO CARRY A FIREARM FOR PERSONAL PROTECTION.



It’s simply bizarre that an allegedly thinking person would attempt to characterize a U.S. military base as a “gun-free zone.” Anyone who has ever been within sight of a DoD facility knows this is nonsense. The very first thing you will encounter is armed personnel. Indeed, it appears that the first fatality yesterday morning was an armed security guard. There are MANY DoD personnel authorized to carry firearms on base. But I guess in the latest mouthbreather version of reality, any facility in which less than 100% of personnel are packing is a “gun-free zone.”

And yet, less than 24 hours later, the gun nuts are out in force, fronting the plainly absurd notion that this never would have happened if Clinton hadn’t disarmed the military.

So really, Bob, who’s dancing on graves here? Who’s misrepresenting the facts in a ham-handed attempt to score political points?Great post. Worth repeating.
And thank you Fred. Good to have an antidote to some of the poison people spit at you around here.

A pair of internationally known researcher (Wodarz and Komarova) who specialize in epidemiological-mathematical modeling, have recently proposed a preliminary set of mathematical models of the dependence of gun violence on the availability of firearms in the U.S. You can download in PDF form at the link below, or just read it online there.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0071606

It got a favorable review in Nature (which is how I came across it).
It's a fair and interesting analysis with some surprising (to me) twists. The preliminary conclusions though are not surprising: given the current state of affairs, tighter controls on the availability of firearms in the U.S. will reduce gun related homicides. The paper says nothing about gun related accidental deaths and suicides .

[thombergeron]

Oops, Bush instead of Clinton. Meh, I was 99.9% right. No point of CAPS because you do know that I had underlined "anytime" and mentioned specific threats (which includes personal).

You’ll forgive my impatience with your inexactitude, but my work is in health science, where being 99.9% right means somebody died.

But moreover…


A Clinton-era policy allows only military police and civilian police to carry firearms anytime on a military base unless there is a credible and specific threat in the area.

This is not 0.1% untrue. Stating that “only” police have blanket authority to carry on base renders your statement entirely untrue. As I pointed out by referring directly to the policy document, numerous categories of DoD personnel are authorized to carry on base and ANY personnel can make a personal-protection appeal.

But really, the issue is not that you, personally, are incorrect. It’s that you are participating in a large-scale organized effort to misinform the public. You and your mouthbreather buddy bobvela didn’t come up with the “Clinton-era policy makes military bases gun-free zones” argument on your own. You got your cut-and-paste orders from various right-wing dittohead sources like this

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/17/When-Military-gun-free

and this

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3067936/posts

and this

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/brenner-brief/2013/sep/17/gun-control-debate-sen-feinstein-does-not-want-hav/

and this

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/16/flashback-us-military-bases-are-gun-free-zones-because-democrats-decreed-them-to-be/

and this

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/09/18/time-to-end-clinton-era-gun-free-military-base-order-83587

and this

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/clinton-era-gun-law-responsible-mass-carnage-us-naval-yard/#.UjnmxWSiccg

The gun lobby is trying desperately to get out in front of this since it directly disproves Wayne LaPierre’s ridiculous assertion that “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In both the Navy Yard on Monday and in Ft. Hood in 2009, the unavoidable truth is that the good guy with a gun got shot. Indeed, the only way to avoid that truth is by lying or deluding yourself into thinking that there are no armed personnel on U.S. military bases. Because Clinton.


Both sides are using people's deaths for political purposes...From Good 'o Brady

I’m afraid I have no idea who “Good 'o Brady” is, and you haven’t linked to a source. I do note, however, that the two paragraphs you’ve quoted contain no misstatements of fact, in stark contrast to gun nuts’ current line of argument, which is based, in its entirety, on falsehoods.

[broncofan]

I am not sure who good o' Brady is either. I hope he's not implying that the guy who has exploited gun tragedies is James Brady, the former Reagan press secretary who was shot in the head and left paralyzed by Hinckley.

Shouldn't someone who was shot by a maniac with a firearm and left paralyzed be allowed to speak with passion and candor about gun policy without being accused of exploiting tragedies? He was after all the bona fide victim of one. But of course, that would be assuming he's talking about James Brady, and he might not be.

[broncofan]

I'm sorry. I love the phrase anti-gun bigots. Bigots against firearms? The same guy who without any trace of irony calls the due process of George Zimmerman a public lynching believes that firearms are the victims of bigotry.

Tell us more Vela. Are people who want to ban smoking in public places anti-nicotine bigots? Are diabetics glucosophobes? Sorry to resort to mockery, but you Right-wingnuts are really good at developing phrases that are laughable on their face, self-discrediting, and a good filter for anyone with any semblance of intelligence.

And you guys should probably re-consider accusing James Brady (or his organization) of dancing on graves when he's a paraplegic. It sounds almost as bad as referring to the fair trial of a man who shot an African-American teen as a lynching.

[thombergeron]

And you guys should probably re-consider accusing James Brady (or his organization) of dancing on graves when he's a paraplegic. It sounds almost as bad as referring to the fair trial of a man who shot an African-American teen as a lynching.

Oh, good call. I was distracted by the "o'" and didn't pay attention to the "Brady" part. notdrunk was indeed quoting from a statement issued Monday by Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/?q=brady-campaign-mourns-victims-of-mass-shooting-at-navy-yard

But again, nothing factually incorrect in Gross's plea for common-sense gun regulations that are favored by a majority of the American people.

On the other hand, the assertion that U.S.military bases are "gun-free zones" because of Bill Clinton and the Democrats is a lie intended only to misinform and distract.

[notdrunk]

You’ll forgive my impatience with your inexactitude, but my work is in health science, where being 99.9% right means somebody died.

But moreover…



This is not 0.1% untrue. Stating that “only” police have blanket authority to carry on base renders your statement entirely untrue. As I pointed out by referring directly to the policy document, numerous categories of DoD personnel are authorized to carry on base and ANY personnel can make a personal-protection appeal.

But really, the issue is not that you, personally, are incorrect. It’s that you are participating in a large-scale organized effort to misinform the public. You and your mouthbreather buddy bobvela didn’t come up with the “Clinton-era policy makes military bases gun-free zones” argument on your own. You got your cut-and-paste orders from various right-wing dittohead sources like this

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/17/When-Military-gun-free

and this

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3067936/posts

and this

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/brenner-brief/2013/sep/17/gun-control-debate-sen-feinstein-does-not-want-hav/

and this

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/16/flashback-us-military-bases-are-gun-free-zones-because-democrats-decreed-them-to-be/

and this

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/09/18/time-to-end-clinton-era-gun-free-military-base-order-83587

and this

http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/clinton-era-gun-law-responsible-mass-carnage-us-naval-yard/#.UjnmxWSiccg

The gun lobby is trying desperately to get out in front of this since it directly disproves Wayne LaPierre’s ridiculous assertion that “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In both the Navy Yard on Monday and in Ft. Hood in 2009, the unavoidable truth is that the good guy with a gun got shot. Indeed, the only way to avoid that truth is by lying or deluding yourself into thinking that there are no armed personnel on U.S. military bases. Because Clinton.



I’m afraid I have no idea who “Good 'o Brady” is, and you haven’t linked to a source. I do note, however, that the two paragraphs you’ve quoted contain no misstatements of fact, in stark contrast to gun nuts’ current line of argument, which is based, in its entirety, on falsehoods.

Again, my post mentions anytime. And, I mentioned an exemption. Furthermore, I never said they were no armed military personnel on military bases in my posts. DoD policy on carrying firearms is to limit and control the carrying of firearms by military personnel.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a272176.pdf

And, no I sourced the "Clinton-era" from a site that was unpolitical.

http://www.ehow.com/list_6770093_military-base-firearm-laws.html

I got it from another site too but I can't find the link anymore.

Anyway, they (i.e., Brady Campaign) are using the deaths to push their agenda like the NRA. You just happen to more likely to agree with their ideas for laws.

[broncofan]

If you had the directive, it says on it the date of issuance, 1992. This should have clued you in to the fact that Clinton wasn't President since he was inaugurated in 1993.

It is really silly to be parsing this language. Right wing nutjobs frequently make the argument that if more people were carrying weapons, such atrocities would either be deterred or headed off in the earliest stages by heroes like you and Bobvela.

Certainly there was a high enough density of gun possession that this could have been a decent test case for this hare-brained proposition.

If a guy walks into a school, will every member of the faculty have a gun? Will the students have guns? I'm not sure how many people need to be strapping before you guys are convinced that the solution to gun violence is not more people who cannot read department of defense directives carrying guns.

Why was it even necessary to mention the President who issued the directive? Oh yes, to scapegoat him. Surely you mentioned Clinton for a reason. Now you know it was issued by his predecessor. Whatever conclusion you were driving at when you gratuitously mentioned Clinton you can still make with respect to Bush, can't you? Have at it hoss.

[broncofan]

And, no I sourced the "Clinton-era" from a site that was unpolitical.

I got it from another site too but I can't find the link anymore

Are you sure it wasn't the Huffington Post?

[thombergeron]

Anyway, they (i.e., Brady Campaign) are using the deaths to push their agenda like the NRA. You just happen to more likely to agree with their ideas for laws.

I think the specific point that I made was that there is a difference between stating one's policy preference and lying. Kind of speaks volumes that you are still unable to comprehend the distinction.

[thombergeron]

It is really silly to be parsing this language. Right wing nutjobs frequently make the argument that if more people were carrying weapons, such atrocities would either be deterred or headed off in the earliest stages by heroes like you and Bobvela.

Certainly there was a high enough density of gun possession that this could have been a decent test case for this hare-brained proposition.

If a guy walks into a school, will every member of the faculty have a gun? Will the students have guns? I'm not sure how many people need to be strapping before you guys are convinced that the solution to gun violence is not more people who cannot read department of defense directives carrying guns.

Thank you for making this point. You're absolutely right. The gun nuts are desperately trying to muddy the waters because they don't want a test case of the proposition that more guns equals less gun violence. And they don’t want a test case because this has already been tested and shown to be absurd.

At Ft. Hood in 2009, armed base police officers responded within 2-3 minutes. The first officer to encounter Nidal Hassan was Kimberly Munley. Hassan shot her three times, kicked her service weapon away, and continued his assault.

On August 24, 2012, Jeffrey Johnson shot and killed a former co-worker on 33rd Avenue in New York City. Two NYPD officers responded. When Johnson raised his weapon, the officers fired a total of 16 rounds, killing Johnson and injuring 9 bystanders. Johnson himself did not fire his weapon during the confrontation police. All of the casualties resulted from police fire.

On Monday, at the Washington Navy Yard, armed police officers were on scene within two minutes, and confronted Aaron Alexis fewer than seven minutes after the first shots were fired. Alexis continued to hold officers at bay for at least another 30 minutes.

Putting down an armed opponent is no small feat. Firefights are chaotic and messy. Bullets fly everywhere. The only people who think that bad guys with guns are easily stopped by good guys with guns are people who have never been shot at.


Besides, unlike on such a domestic base, beyond normal law enforcement, in the civilian population there at least exists the prospect of an armed civilian who may be at the right place & the right time to act... which oddly happens far more than you'd think.

Actually, this virtually never happens. I’m willing to bet that you can’t come up with a single unambiguous case of an armed civilian stopping an armed assailant.

[notdrunk]

I think the specific point that I made was that there is a difference between stating one's policy preference and lying. Kind of speaks volumes that you are still unable to comprehend the distinction.

Lying? Nope. The security at the Navy Yard was lacking. It has come out that only one security guard was able to respond to the shooting. The other six were stuck manning the gates. The fact is a "good guy" aka a police officer did ultimately stop him.

The LaPierre quote is from a speech calling for putting school resource officers (i.e., police officers) in all of the schools in this country to deter future mass shooters. Not just one police officer but multiple officers in a school. Or, at least train and certify individuals to become armed security guards in schools. Or, train and certify select teachers and staff to be armed.

Lofty goal but he wasn't pushing an idea that everybody should just be given a gun. Additionally, if a shooter is focused on an armed individual, it gives a chance for others to escape the madness.



Actually, this virtually never happens. I’m willing to bet that you can’t come up with a single unambiguous case of an armed civilian stopping an armed assailant.

http://fox6now.com/2013/04/11/dierre-cotton-to-be-sentenced-monday-for-aldi-robbery/

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Mom-is-stabbed-outside-school-dad-is-arrested-3821108.php

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/71-Year-Old-Man-Shoots-Would-Be-Robbers-at-Ocala-Internet-Cafe-Authorities-162941656.html

http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/news/25765866_1_andrew-wurst-john-gillette-science-teacher

Yes, there have been instances in which armed civilians stopped armed criminals and a mass shooter.

[trish]

It has come out that only one security guard was able to respond to the shooting.Lovely turn of phrase, "It has come out that..."

That one guard must have had three firearms. The two confiscated by the intruder from security and the one he kept to shoot the intruder with, after thirty minutes of exchanging gunfire.

[thombergeron]

Lying? Nope. The security at the Navy Yard was lacking. It has come out that only one security guard was able to respond to the shooting. The other six were stuck manning the gates. The fact is a "good guy" aka a police officer did ultimately stop him.

The first person Aaron Alexis shot was armed with a handgun. DC and park police officers were on scene within 2 minutes. SWAT entered Building 197 within 7 minutes. Aaron Alexis was not "stopped" for another 30 minutes. Is it your contention that the American public needs to be prepared to endure 30-minute firefights in populated areas in order to be "safe"?


The LaPierre quote is from a speech calling for putting school resource officers (i.e., police officers) in all of the schools in this country to deter future mass shooters. Not just one police officer but multiple officers in a school. Or, at least train and certify individuals to become armed security guards in schools. Or, train and certify select teachers and staff to be armed.

Lofty goal but he wasn't pushing an idea that everybody should just be given a gun. Additionally, if a shooter is focused on an armed individual, it gives a chance for others to escape the madness.


That's fine. But you, bobvela, and hordes of other mouthbreathers didn't even wait for the gunfire to die down before blaming Bill Clinton for turning military bases into "gun-free zones." Which is just a blatant lie.



http://fox6now.com/2013/04/11/dierre-cotton-to-be-sentenced-monday-for-aldi-robbery/

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Mom-is-stabbed-outside-school-dad-is-arrested-3821108.php

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/71-Year-Old-Man-Shoots-Would-Be-Robbers-at-Ocala-Internet-Cafe-Authorities-162941656.html

http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/news/25765866_1_andrew-wurst-john-gillette-science-teacher

Yes, there have been instances in which armed civilians stopped armed criminals and a mass shooter.

Is Andrew Wurst supposed to be the "mass shooter"? Andrew Wurst shot all four people he set out to shoot, ran out of ammunition, and left the scene. In what sense was he "stopped"?

The assailant in San Antonio was armed with a knife, and went ahead and stabbed the person he intended to stab. He was arrested, but again, not stopped.

The other two were robberies, so again, I'm not clear how they're relevant to the issue at hand. In the United States in 2013, if someone wants to obtain a firearm and shoot 1, 2, or 20 people, there's really nothing to stop them from doing that.

[bobvela]

I go away for a few days and clear schizophrenic folks like thombergeron start projecting other peoples views on to me (emphasis mine):


And yet, less than 24 hours later, the gun nuts are out in force, fronting the plainly absurd notion that this never would have happened if Clinton hadn’t disarmed the military.

So really, Bob, who’s dancing on graves here? Who’s misrepresenting the facts in a ham-handed attempt to score political points?


You and your mouthbreather buddy bobvela didn’t come up with the “Clinton-era policy makes military bases gun-free zones” argument on your own. You got your cut-and-paste orders from various right-wing dittohead sources like this


That's fine. But you, bobvela, and hordes of other mouthbreathers didn't even wait for the gunfire to die down before blaming Bill Clinton for turning military bases into "gun-free zones." Which is just a blatant lie.

Thanks for letting me live rent free in your head for so long... or would you like to cite where I blamed Clinton for making military bases gun free zones? Also, do not make the mistake of thinking that because a place is a 'gun free zone' that no one can carry there. Your average K-12 school is a 'gun free zone' and yet your average local police officer doesn't think twice when carrying there... so clearly, a limited # of people are able to carry there.


Actually, this virtually never happens. I’m willing to bet that you can’t come up with a single unambiguous case of an armed civilian stopping an armed assailant.

Really? Not a single case? Oh right... you add the needless measure of 'unambiguous' because you will demand a rather impossible level of proof and poo poo any case I provide... shucks for you, this is a topic I've followed for many years.

Does a 'former police officer' count as an armed civilian? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/us/12brfs-GUNMANKILLED_BRF.html?fta=y&pagewanted=print&_r=1&


The gunman who killed four people in two church-related attacks on Sunday committed suicide after being shot “multiple times” by a volunteer security guard at a church in Colorado Springs, the El Paso County coroner said.

No? Then we've got a principal in Mississippi: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136736,00.html


Luke Woodham walked into Pearl High's commons, an enclosure created by the school's buildings. He then took a .30-.30 rifle from beneath his blue trench coat and opened fire, wounding seven schoolmates and killing two
...
He was subdued by assistant principal Joel Myrick, who pulled a .45-cal. pistol from his car and ordered the gunman to the ground.

A bar patron: http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/three-dead-shooting-winnemucca-bar


Winnemucca Police Chief Bob Davidson said a man entered Players Bar and Grill and fatally shot two members of a rival family before he was shot and killed by a patron.
...
The patron was in possession of a valid concealed-weapons permit issued by the Washoe County sheriff's office, Davidson said.

A guy visiting a local mall with a friend and the friend's baby: http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html


The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.

"As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said.

Meli took cover inside a nearby store. He never pulled the trigger. He stands by that decision.

Or a dance hall owner: http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/news/25765866_1_andrew-wurst-john-gillette-science-teacher


Yesterday, Andrew Wurst, 14, was charged with fatally shooting John Gillette, 48, a science teacher at James Parker Middle School, as Gillette was chaperoning a prom for Wurst and his eighth-grade class at Nick's Place.
...
Wurst shot and wounded two students and another teacher, police said, then fled from the hall. None of the three was seriously injured.

As the 240 youngsters and teachers ran for cover - some diving into a closet for protection, singing and praying to stay calm - hall owner James Strand grabbed a shotgun and followed Wurst out the door, police said. Strand caught up with Wurst, who lives in nearby McKean, and held him until authorities arrived.

Ending a mass shooting doesn't always involve the police arresting or killing the subject, but come in several different ways:

1. Shooter is killed or subdued by armed response (Navy Yard)
2. Shooter gives up on attack and gives up to armed response (shithead #2 in Boston bombing)
3. Shooter thinks they've done enough and doesn't want to be taken alive without immediate threat to themselves (VT Tech)
4. Shooter offs themselves rather than be taken alive after a perceived immediate threat to themselves (Calacumus Town Center shooting)

There are countless examples of each, and I cited 5 above, would you like me to cite more? Or would you like to admit that you were wrong?

[bobvela]

Bobvela -maybe the issue here is not to try and 'control firearms for the masses across 50 states' but to take guns away from people who have shown they ought not to have them, because they are on medication, have a record of violence, uncontrollable rage etc

I wish it was that easy... and while many of my posts here can be seen in a sarcastic and/or confrontational way... I mean the following in the most serious way... how do you want to implement such a system?

I doubt you will find many firearm owners, NRA members or leaders who think that every single nut should have the right to a firearm... the issue is about how to we choose or legislate who can and who cannot legally own?

What constitutes 'have shown they ought not to have them'? Who decides that? Is there a process for determination? What of a process for appeal in case of error?

Which medications are on the prohibited list? What happens when the medication taker ceases them because they are no longer needed? What if the medication no longer has the negative effects on the taker due to the length of time it is taken?

When it comes to 'record of violence, uncontrollable rage etc'... what kind of record? Police report? Arrest? Conviction? How many such 'record's?


I was thinking this week... that under such a potential line of thinking... one could make an argument to prohibit just about any transsexual (MTF of FTM) from legally owning a firearm.

Transsexualism (under several different names) is considered a 'mental disorder' by the DSMV-IV: http://www.genderpsychology.org/transsexual/dsm_iv.html

Often those suffering from this 'mental disorder' will pursue medications in the form of hormones to help offset or correct this disorder in some way.

Such medications (hormones) are very powerful drugs which can drastically effect brain chemistry. Estrogen can cause massive mood swings, while testosterone can lead to strong feelings of aggression.

It is also said that transgendered persons have a higher than average rate of suicide, http://www.lauras-playground.com/transsexual_transgender_suicide_memorial%20.htm, further suggesting a link to a mental disorder (suicide not generally being a rational response to adversity), and if someone is so susceptible to showing such a blatant disregard for their own life... viewing someone else's life with such a disregard is not far from the realm of possibility (ie murder-suicide).

Note... I am not supportive of any such policy based on the above, nor even the ideas mentioned in the immediate section above, it is simply a thought experiment based on available data which can be used to paint a given picture.



-if this man had been deprived of his weapons following earlier incidents, he may still have been able to get hold of weapons illegaly, but it would at least have been harder for him to do so.

Ideally yes, only he passed a background check just a few days before for the single shotgun he purchased and began the attack with, the rest it seems he took from the body(s) of those he killed.


Otherwise you are not going to stop these incidents from happening again, even if people in the location -shop, school, mall, cinema, are armed.

Short of a giant super magnet in space, which is somehow set only to "gun"... you can never fully prevent such acts... at least with a firearm.


Aren't most of the people who have committed these crimes shown to be nutters?

With limited exception yes... the only recent one being that of Anders Behring Breivik (2011 Norway attacks) who it disturbs me to say sounds rather rational in his views, even though I disagree with his actions & motives.

It's easy to say after the fact "clearly so and so was a nutter"... though not all nutters are violent, let alone to this level, and sorting those who are from those who are not is an absolutely herculean task that even the ACLU I think would have a problem with, consider this... While Fox News has focused more on the 'security clearance' angle than the gun angle with regards to the Navy Yard shooting, there is an interesting thing to consider... I have a Concealed Pistol License which enables me to legally carry in 27 states, with my non-resident Utah Concealed Firearms Permit that # expands to 33. While the state I live in only requires a periodic check every 5 years to make sure I'm on the up and up, Utah CFP carriers have their record hit about every 90 days to look for anything that doesn't seem right. The federal government does not automatically do such a routine check for security clearances, nor do they do so for firearms (in the latter case because the ATF & FBI are prohibited from maintaining a list of those who have undergone background checks as a result of an ATF form 4473 for more than a couple of days).

As a first step... shall we start with a master federal database of all firearm owners (which would require outright registration) so that those who are flagged with sufficient issues & known to be owning a firearm can be disarmed?

To expand a bit, while it may seem like a simple task to simply have a large database of those under indictment or information in any court for a felony, ever been convicted of a felony, are fugitives from justice, is an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug or any other controlled substance, has been mentally adjudicated mentally defective, dishonorably discharged from the military, subject to a court order against harassment, stalking or threatening a their child, intimate partner or a child of such a partner, been convicted of domestic violence, renounced US citizenship, is illegally in the US (all items taken from a 4473)... how well can you trust this data?

I come from an extensive IT background and can talk at length about dirty data... it exists everywhere, triply so when you are accepting data from multiple disparate sources which may not have the same quality controls or schema as you and that you do not have the resources to validate every entry in to.

Turn it around... we have a no fly list that will occasionally flag a US Senator as being barred from flying, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-224_162-610466.html, we have a congress that wants to require photo id to vote (with the fear that some voters will be disenfranchised because they cannot afford an id or cannot prove their identity to get an id)... we also have a federal government which is less than two weeks away from rolling out the Health Insurance Marketplace as part of Obamacare, and despite several years of lead time, are having massive issues with preparedness & security.

I'd mentioned the ACLU earlier... and While not generally a friend of the second amendment, I could only imagine that the degree of data collection & non-adjudicated data processing & cateorigization would upset even them as once you have a database that contains those who should not be allowed to own a firearm (and so should be checked from time to time to make sure they've not illegally acquired one) would easily be turned to other purposes that they would be staunch opponents of.

Again I say, like many, I do not want nuts who are going to commit acts of violence to own firearms... the issue is preventing them and only them from such acts and not affecting the larger population... something we cannot do reasonably without getting into a degree of profiling that most would find offensive, because that degree of profiling would not just logically apply to firearm ownership but a multitude of other aspects of life.

[Stavros]

I wish it was that easy... and while many of my posts here can be seen in a sarcastic and/or confrontational way... I mean the following in the most serious way... how do you want to implement such a system?

I doubt you will find many firearm owners, NRA members or leaders who think that every single nut should have the right to a firearm... the issue is about how to we choose or legislate who can and who cannot legally own?

What constitutes 'have shown they ought not to have them'? Who decides that? Is there a process for determination? What of a process for appeal in case of error?

Which medications are on the prohibited list? What happens when the medication taker ceases them because they are no longer needed? What if the medication no longer has the negative effects on the taker due to the length of time it is taken?

When it comes to 'record of violence, uncontrollable rage etc'... what kind of record? Police report? Arrest? Conviction? How many such 'record's?


I was thinking this week... that under such a potential line of thinking... one could make an argument to prohibit just about any transsexual (MTF of FTM) from legally owning a firearm.

Transsexualism (under several different names) is considered a 'mental disorder' by the DSMV-IV: http://www.genderpsychology.org/transsexual/dsm_iv.html

Often those suffering from this 'mental disorder' will pursue medications in the form of hormones to help offset or correct this disorder in some way.

Such medications (hormones) are very powerful drugs which can drastically effect brain chemistry. Estrogen can cause massive mood swings, while testosterone can lead to strong feelings of aggression.

It is also said that transgendered persons have a higher than average rate of suicide, http://www.lauras-playground.com/transsexual_transgender_suicide_memorial%20.htm, further suggesting a link to a mental disorder (suicide not generally being a rational response to adversity), and if someone is so susceptible to showing such a blatant disregard for their own life... viewing someone else's life with such a disregard is not far from the realm of possibility (ie murder-suicide).

Note... I am not supportive of any such policy based on the above, nor even the ideas mentioned in the immediate section above, it is simply a thought experiment based on available data which can be used to paint a given picture.




Ideally yes, only he passed a background check just a few days before for the single shotgun he purchased and began the attack with, the rest it seems he took from the body(s) of those he killed.



Short of a giant super magnet in space, which is somehow set only to "gun"... you can never fully prevent such acts... at least with a firearm.



With limited exception yes... the only recent one being that of Anders Behring Breivik (2011 Norway attacks) who it disturbs me to say sounds rather rational in his views, even though I disagree with his actions & motives.

It's easy to say after the fact "clearly so and so was a nutter"... though not all nutters are violent, let alone to this level, and sorting those who are from those who are not is an absolutely herculean task that even the ACLU I think would have a problem with, consider this... While Fox News has focused more on the 'security clearance' angle than the gun angle with regards to the Navy Yard shooting, there is an interesting thing to consider... I have a Concealed Pistol License which enables me to legally carry in 27 states, with my non-resident Utah Concealed Firearms Permit that # expands to 33. While the state I live in only requires a periodic check every 5 years to make sure I'm on the up and up, Utah CFP carriers have their record hit about every 90 days to look for anything that doesn't seem right. The federal government does not automatically do such a routine check for security clearances, nor do they do so for firearms (in the latter case because the ATF & FBI are prohibited from maintaining a list of those who have undergone background checks as a result of an ATF form 4473 for more than a couple of days).

As a first step... shall we start with a master federal database of all firearm owners (which would require outright registration) so that those who are flagged with sufficient issues & known to be owning a firearm can be disarmed?

To expand a bit, while it may seem like a simple task to simply have a large database of those under indictment or information in any court for a felony, ever been convicted of a felony, are fugitives from justice, is an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug or any other controlled substance, has been mentally adjudicated mentally defective, dishonorably discharged from the military, subject to a court order against harassment, stalking or threatening a their child, intimate partner or a child of such a partner, been convicted of domestic violence, renounced US citizenship, is illegally in the US (all items taken from a 4473)... how well can you trust this data?

I come from an extensive IT background and can talk at length about dirty data... it exists everywhere, triply so when you are accepting data from multiple disparate sources which may not have the same quality controls or schema as you and that you do not have the resources to validate every entry in to.

Turn it around... we have a no fly list that will occasionally flag a US Senator as being barred from flying, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-224_162-610466.html, we have a congress that wants to require photo id to vote (with the fear that some voters will be disenfranchised because they cannot afford an id or cannot prove their identity to get an id)... we also have a federal government which is less than two weeks away from rolling out the Health Insurance Marketplace as part of Obamacare, and despite several years of lead time, are having massive issues with preparedness & security.

I'd mentioned the ACLU earlier... and While not generally a friend of the second amendment, I could only imagine that the degree of data collection & non-adjudicated data processing & cateorigization would upset even them as once you have a database that contains those who should not be allowed to own a firearm (and so should be checked from time to time to make sure they've not illegally acquired one) would easily be turned to other purposes that they would be staunch opponents of.

Again I say, like many, I do not want nuts who are going to commit acts of violence to own firearms... the issue is preventing them and only them from such acts and not affecting the larger population... something we cannot do reasonably without getting into a degree of profiling that most would find offensive, because that degree of profiling would not just logically apply to firearm ownership but a multitude of other aspects of life.

You have given an extensive reply to my queries, but it leaves me with a sense of despair about the situation because you are suggesting that in practical terms nothing short of a comprehensive ban on the ownership of weapons would make a difference. Even with tight controls, I assume it would be possible to sell firearms to someone in 2013 who has no history of mental illness or criminal activity but who, a year later, has experienced a breakdown and thinks the world is against him and uses those arms purchased when 'normal' to go ape in a mall, a school, a subway train, or the US Congress.

Not sure about the classification of gender dysmorphia as a 'mental illness' as many/most transexuals believe they are completely normal and that is is their body that is the cause of their unhappiness.
It seems to me that we -because these problems of men going mad with guns does happen in the UK as well- need a cultural shift away from the use of guns as solutions to problems, or the view that guns are an essential personal accessory, like a mobile phone or a handbag. And, indeed, that killing people is a solution. In age of violent video games, forensic or lurid cop and murder shows on tv and in film, and of course the real thing in news reports, I fear that cultural shift is a long way away, though we can do it within ourselves.

I don't know if this chart has been seen in the USA but it offers an interactive map of gun violence in the USA -doesn't work on an iPad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10320691/US-crime-murders-and-manslaughters-by-state.html

[trish]

To get a background check and then buy a gun in the U.S. takes under five minutes. What kind of background check is that? Currently, any information gathered during a background check must be destroyed within twenty four hours. It cannot be shared with any government agency or law enforcement. There is no electronic record available to law enforcement of who bought what gun. When investigating a crime, agents must track the gun to the manufacturer, hope to find out from the manufacturer which group of stores might have been sent that gun, and then question individual store managers and clerks in hopes that they might have a record or a memory of who bought that firearm. The NRA pretends to be anti-crime, but this sort of obstruction to criminal investigations exists only because of NRA lobbyists.

Who should decide who shouldn’t have guns? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course. We don’t need a message from God or orders from SkyNet; we decide. If you’re legally blind Iowa, the Legislature and Governor have granted you the right to carry. Sweet, right? There is simply no danger that any regulation is going to be so sweeping as to curtail the intented freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. The only additional regulatory measures that have been seriously proposed are those in the bill recently voted down (in April 2013) not long after the Sandy Hook tragedy where 27 people were killed, most of them primary school children. That modest proposal (voted down by 41 Republicans and 5 Democrats) would have limited the capacity of magazines and expanded background checks at gunshows and elsewhere.

[bobvela]

You have given an extensive reply to my queries, but it leaves me with a sense of despair about the situation because you are suggesting that in practical terms nothing short of a comprehensive ban on the ownership of weapons would make a difference.

Even an outright ban would be ineffective as building a firearm is trivial in the form of a zip gun, and with a little machining experience a far more complicated & deadly weapon can be built in the garage... but this still assumes that an outright ban did still collect all firearms (hence the giant super magnet in space) and people were left only to build their own. Even in nations that have high bars limiting personal ownership, illegal guns can often be found.


Even with tight controls, I assume it would be possible to sell firearms to someone in 2013 who has no history of mental illness or criminal activity but who, a year later, has experienced a breakdown and thinks the world is against him and uses those arms purchased when 'normal' to go ape in a mall, a school, a subway train, or the US Congress.

Again, which mental illnesses do you want to put on the prohibited list? More so, are you prepared to have a federal database not just of firearms and who their owners are, but the entire mental health history of all US persons whether they own a firearm today or not (just in case they opt to purchase one in future)?

When one seeks help for mental issues, they are struggling with something and looking for a way try to get better, should they automatically fear that they will end up on a federal mental health watch list that could haunt them for the rest of their lives?

We do have a limited system today where those who adjudicated as mentally deficient are prohibited from ownership, however a whole slew of privacy laws prevent a massive database of them... and those are just those who have a court order to that effect.


Not sure about the classification of gender dysmorphia as a 'mental illness' as many/most transexuals believe they are completely normal and that is is their body that is the cause of their unhappiness.

I am simply playing devils advocate with that analogy, you do not have to accept it, just consider how easy it is to lump it in with other mental illnesses the suffers of you wish to prohibit from lawful firearm ownership.


It seems to me that we -because these problems of men going mad with guns does happen in the UK as well- need a cultural shift away from the use of guns as solutions to problems, or the view that guns are an essential personal accessory, like a mobile phone or a handbag.

But they do happen in the UK, just not as frequently admittedly: Hungerford massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre)
Monkseaton shootings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkseaton_shootings)
Dunblane school massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre)
Cumbria shootings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings)

More so, you focus on the culture of the firearm vs the cultural in general. While we share a common language and legal system, Brits & Americans are quite different culturally. Here in the US there are about as many firearms as there are persons... yet the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of them are never used to harm other people.

To repeat an old line "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my guns"


And, indeed, that killing people is a solution. In age of violent video games, forensic or lurid cop and murder shows on tv and in film, and of course the real thing in news reports, I fear that cultural shift is a long way away, though we can do it within ourselves.

There we agree. I too am saddened to see the degree which in many forms violence is seen as an acceptable or normal outcome, but another part is that of poor parenting in many cases where children are not taught healthy ways to deal with adversity or stresses.

At the end of the day the gun is just a tool, without it, someone who is keen on doing evil will find another tool, be it a blunt object, a sharp object or even an flammable or explosive one.


I don't know if this chart has been seen in the USA but it offers an interactive map of gun violence in the USA -doesn't work on an iPad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10320691/US-crime-murders-and-manslaughters-by-state.html

Charts like that don't work well at the state level, instead digging into the city & even block levels are telling.

While there is certainly a great deal of gun violence in this country, the distribution is not equal between or within states, instead are often contained in very specific areas, like certain parts of the war zone that is called Chicago, and then with largely random blips elsewhere across the larger map.

[bobvela]

To get a background check and then buy a gun in the U.S. takes under five minutes. What kind of background check is that?

Um, an instant one? Hence the name 'National Instant Criminal Background Check System' (NICS)?


Currently, any information gathered during a background check must be destroyed within twenty four hours. It cannot be shared with any government agency or law enforcement. There is no electronic record available to law enforcement of who bought what gun.

You realize that is by design right? It was one of the conditions of the pro-gun lobby agreeing to the mandatory background checks at FFLs.


When investigating a crime, agents must track the gun to the manufacturer, hope to find out from the manufacturer which group of stores might have been sent that gun, and then question individual store managers and clerks in hopes that they might have a record or a memory of who bought that firearm.

Again, are you actually this ignorant or are you just pretending? Because what you said above is a big ole whopper of a lie.

As a type 7 or 10 FFL, the manufacturer knows EXACTLY which distributor or store a given firearm was sold to.

As a type 9 FFL, the distributor or store knows EXACTLY which customer purchased which gun and on which day.

The form 4473 that the buyer fills out as part of the background check MUST be retained (physically, not digitally) by the FFL for at least 20 years, while the manufacturer or importer must permanently keep records of their transfers... both of which must be available to the BATFE or other law enforcement on request.

In the case of used guns you do not necessarily have such a clean path from A to B to C... however FFL record keeping requirements do not discriminate between new & used guns and sales information can still be found with some searching.


The NRA pretends to be anti-crime, but this sort of obstruction to criminal investigations exists only because of NRA lobbyists.

At last check... the ACLU is against the FBI doing undercover operations in Mosques. Does this mean we can label them as not actually being anti-crime because they are obstructing tools which are useful in criminal investigations in the name of privacy?


Who should decide who shouldn’t have guns? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.

Always fun when an ignorant liberal not thinking through their arguments... now to play a typical Trish card and play the part of a parrot:


Who should decide who should be able to marry? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.
Who should decide who should be able to vote? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.
Who should decide who should be able to own slaves? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.


I'm sorry to hear/see that you think that fundamental rights are subject to the whim of the voters. Clearly then you agree with the voters in most states which have prohibited same-sex marriage.


There is simply no danger that any regulation is going to be so sweeping as to curtail the intented freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.

Liar. Absolutely false. Or would you like provide a time machine with which we can see that a law/regulation that is passed today is never altered or made unduly restrictive in the future... after all, no law has ever been ratcheted up in the history of this nation, no abuses of freedoms at all, never.


The only additional regulatory measures that have been seriously proposed are those in the bill recently voted down (in April 2013) not long after the Sandy Hook tragedy where 27 people were killed, most of them primary school children.

Do note how you failed to cite the specific bil, as well as ignored all of the other measures seriously proposed (and in some cases passed see CO & NY) in different states.


That modest proposal (voted down by 41 Republicans and 5 Democrats) would have limited the capacity of magazines and expanded background checks at gunshows and elsewhere.

You keep pointing to these so called 'modest' proposals and yet fail to even suggest how they would stop ANYTHING. The Navy Yard shooter legally bought his shotgun (clearly taking advice from Joe Biden) after a background check from an FFL, while you seek to expand laws which would not have prevented this or most other shootings in the name of making yourself feel good and attempting to create a false sense of security.

[broncofan]

Always fun when an ignorant liberal not thinking through their arguments... now to play a typical Trish card and play the part of a parrot:


Who should decide who should be able to marry? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.
Who should decide who should be able to vote? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.
Who should decide who should be able to own slaves? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.

I'm sorry to hear/see that you think that fundamental rights are subject to the whim of the voters. Clearly then you agree with the voters in most states which have prohibited same-sex marriage.



Liar. Absolutely false. Or would you like provide a time machine with which we can see that a law/regulation that is passed today is never altered or made unduly restrictive in the future... after all, no law has ever been ratcheted up in the history of this nation, no abuses of freedoms at all, never.


The Supreme Court has not recognized that there is a fundamental right to same-sex marriage under the 14th amendment due process analysis. They have said that the federal government should not super-impose its own definition on the states when it struck down portions of DOMA.

The passage of the 13th amendment meant that there did not have to be any due process analysis for slavery under the 14th amendment. I imagine a simple due process analysis would come to the same conclusion you seem to regarding slavery, that it's both a violation of due process and equal protection.

This last paragraph beginning with the sentence liar is also illogical. You are saying that a law should not be passed in the present because in the future there is a risk that more restrictive laws will be passed by the legislature. Or that because of the risk of abuse in the enforcement of the law, it should not be passed. Clearly there shouldn't be work safety laws because the Department of Labor might enforce them in such a way that shuts down all business.

If you are saying that placing some restrictions on the sale of guns in order to curtail gun violence is unconstitutional shouldn't you be citing District of Columbia v. heller or McDonald v. City of Chicago?

Heller makes clear that permissible restrictions include those to "prohibit...the possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill" and "laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms".

According to the existing precedent, the American people through their legislatures should be able to decide who gets to own guns. There is no Constitutional conflict with placing qualifications on the commercial sale of arms as Heller and McDonald make clear. BTW, it wasn't until McDonald that the 2nd amendment was even considered incorporated into the 14th amendment due process analysis.

[trish]

You realize that is by design right?Yes, designed by the NRA.

Again, are you actually this ignorant or are you just pretending? Because what you said above is a big ole whopper of a lie.Thanks again for your thoughtful invective, but it's not a lie to claim "When investigating a crime, agents must track the gun to the manufacturer, hope to find out from the manufacturer which group of stores might have been sent that gun, and then question individual store managers and clerks in hopes that they might have a record or a memory of who bought that firearm."


The form 4473 that the buyer fills out as part of the background check MUST be retained (physically, not digitally) by the FFL for at least 20 yearsExactly. To track down any information about a gun's record of ownership the investigator has to wade through boxes and boxes of paper. An electronic data base is by law unavailable.

At last check... the ACLU is against the FBI doing undercover operations in Mosques. Does this mean we can label them as not actually being anti-crime...Unlike the NRA, the ACLU doesn't claim that it's actions manifestly makes life tough for criminals. The ACLU supports Miranda rights, it presses for due process, and yes the free practice of religion. But how one chooses to characterize the ACLU is a side issue; i.e. a distraction.

Who should decide who should be able to marry? The American people through their State and Federal legislatures of course.Who else is there to decide? It's people who make all the decisions, guided by past practices, law, precedent etc. Yes, sometimes we make the wrong decisions. That's why no decision is ever set in stone.

Liar.Really? We were discussing who right now (not five hundred years in the future) has the right to say who should and who shouldn't be allowed to have guns. I pointed out that blind people in Iowa can now carry. In that context I concluded, "There is simply no danger that any regulation is going to be so sweeping as to curtail the intented freedom guaranteed by the Constitution." Your response is, "Liar." Once again, our laws are human laws. They are constantly in flux. That's why there are legislatures and amendment procedures. Suppose I jump into a time machine and discover that five hundred years in the future blind people will be able to "see" using implanted quantum sensory technology. Does that mean we can't prevent them from carrying a concealed firearm in the present day?


You keep pointing to these so called 'modest' proposals and yet fail to even suggest how they would stop ANYTHING. They obviously will make it harder to legally acquire firearms. Otherwise, why are they so vociferously opposed? One might make less modest proposals, but why bother when gun-radicals won't even agree to the gentlest suggestions.

[Stavros]

Even an outright ban would be ineffective as building a firearm is trivial in the form of a zip gun, and with a little machining experience a far more complicated & deadly weapon can be built in the garage... but this still assumes that an outright ban did still collect all firearms (hence the giant super magnet in space) and people were left only to build their own. Even in nations that have high bars limiting personal ownership, illegal guns can often be found.

Again, which mental illnesses do you want to put on the prohibited list? More so, are you prepared to have a federal database not just of firearms and who their owners are, but the entire mental health history of all US persons whether they own a firearm today or not (just in case they opt to purchase one in future)?

When one seeks help for mental issues, they are struggling with something and looking for a way try to get better, should they automatically fear that they will end up on a federal mental health watch list that could haunt them for the rest of their lives?

We do have a limited system today where those who adjudicated as mentally deficient are prohibited from ownership, however a whole slew of privacy laws prevent a massive database of them... and those are just those who have a court order to that effect.

I am simply playing devils advocate with that analogy, you do not have to accept it, just consider how easy it is to lump it in with other mental illnesses the suffers of you wish to prohibit from lawful firearm ownership.

More so, you focus on the culture of the firearm vs the cultural in general. While we share a common language and legal system, Brits & Americans are quite different culturally. Here in the US there are about as many firearms as there are persons... yet the vast vast vast vast vast vast vast majority of them are never used to harm other people.

To repeat an old line "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my guns"

There we agree. I too am saddened to see the degree which in many forms violence is seen as an acceptable or normal outcome, but another part is that of poor parenting in many cases where children are not taught healthy ways to deal with adversity or stresses.

At the end of the day the gun is just a tool, without it, someone who is keen on doing evil will find another tool, be it a blunt object, a sharp object or even an flammable or explosive one.

Charts like that don't work well at the state level, instead digging into the city & even block levels are telling.

While there is certainly a great deal of gun violence in this country, the distribution is not equal between or within states, instead are often contained in very specific areas, like certain parts of the war zone that is called Chicago, and then with largely random blips elsewhere across the larger map.

Reading your reply does not lighten my sense of despair, because it seems to me that you take it as an immutable fact that Americans have a Right to own firearms and that no law will prevent someone who wants a gun from getting one. You place an awesome weight on the judgement of salesmen whose interest is primarily, perhaps solely in making a profit, rather than public safety. And you also can't deal with the 'reality' that there are bad people out there who want to, and will continue to kill. But your refusal to introduce any kind of limiting mechanism because of a violation of 'rights' or because it creates layers of regulation and government which soak up tax dollars and are a restriction on freedom offers a green light to all the wackos out there who can't tell the difference between Grand Theft Auto and Grand Central Station.

Even if you think Americans have an inalienable constitutional right to own firearms, clearly none of them have a right to use them to threaten or injure or kill, and if you see 'gun ownership' as a public health issue, then yes, an individual must accept that his or her privacy is not absolutely protected from the law -just as checks (I hope) are made on people who want to adopt children, to ensure that they meet a set of reasonable requirements and are not adopting a child who is going to sleep in a metal box in the basement and be fed dog biscuits. Absolute freedom does not exist, and ought not to exist, because individuals for all their quirks, are part of a social network they can't get out of, unless they live alone in a cave or on a desert island -it's part of the bargain which means if you live in society, you abide by the rules society makes, and as you indicate, most Americans, most of the time never use their firearms to threaten, kill or injure others, because most people most of the time feel secure in a society protected by the rule of law.

So it isn't just cultural attitudes towards violence it is also a deep acculturation to the values associated with the rule of law in general. You might object to specific laws, but the rule of law as an organising principle in society has been fundamental to social peace for a very long time, and where it is absent, or is abused, social conflict often erupts and let's be honest, for all the bluster of Alex Jones, the USA does not resemble the USSR, North Korea or present-day Syria.

If you are taking the libertarian argument then you are faced with the dilemma of enabling acts as a commitment to freedom which have the potential to deprive others of that same freedom. I find it hard to believe that the USA cannot develop legal and social mechanisms that will lead to fewer people being allowed to own firearms, because it has happened in your past before, such as the origin of restrictive legislation which was passed after the Civil War when there was a panic over the volume of arms (allegedly) being used by 'free slaves' (ie Black Americans) to (allegedly) rob and kill -in those days it was simple enough -if a person is Black, they don't get sold a gun; yet what was couched in the language of crime, was more likely a fear of retribution for past wrongs rather than an actual crime spree by newly free Americans. The same problems of post-war gun-related crime erupted in the UK after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, and particularly after the Second World War -for a society supposedly not used to guns, there was an 'epidemic' of gun-related crime in the UK in 1946 climaxing in the Craig-Bentley murder trial of 1953 when a policeman was shot dead and one of the accused hanged as a result (although the hanged man, Derek Bentley did not actually fire the weapon).

If you look at the history of the NRA, you will find that they consistently supported the creation of laws to limit the availability of firearms, and that it is only since the 1980s that they have become such an aggressive opponent of controlling laws, and I feel much of that has more to do with a 'libertarian' or 'anti-Big government' agenda, than it has to do with firearms as such. It seems to me that much of this debate gets skewed because of the confusion of two different agendas. Meanwhile, the guns go off, and lives are wasted. You really can do better than this.

[maddygirl]

School shooting after school shooting, but you still need guns? Yeah, makes sense.

[thombergeron]

Also, do not make the mistake of thinking that because a place is a 'gun free zone' that no one can carry there. Your average K-12 school is a 'gun free zone' and yet your average local police officer doesn't think twice when carrying there... so clearly, a limited # of people are able to carry there.

Perhaps the core of the problem is that you are using English in a non-standard way. You seem to be saying that a “gun-free zone” will nonetheless still feature numerous individuals armed with guns. From where I’m sitting, this definition renders the term “gun-free” meaningless.


Does a 'former police officer' count as an armed civilian? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/us/12brfs-GUNMANKILLED_BRF.html?fta=y&pagewanted=print&_r=1&

No? Then we've got a principal in Mississippi: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,136736,00.html

A bar patron: http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/three-dead-shooting-winnemucca-bar

A guy visiting a local mall with a friend and the friend's baby: http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html

Or a dance hall owner: http://articles.philly.com/1998-04-26/news/25765866_1_andrew-wurst-john-gillette-science-teacher

Again, it appears that you and I are using standard English vocabulary in completely different ways. In each of the cases you’ve cited here, numerous innocent people were killed by a gunman. If an assailant sets out to shoot a victim to death, and then does shoot that victim to death, I would not say that the assailant was “stopped.”

Matthew Murray shot four people to death in two different locations over the course of 12 hours before being “stopped,” ultimately by his own hand.

Luke Woodham stabbed his mother to death before driving to his high school with a .30-.30 rifle and shooting nine children, two of whom died. Do you think that those girls’ parents would agree that Woodham was “stopped”?

Ernesto Villagomez shot four people in that bar in Winnemucca, killing both of his intended victims, before he was “stopped” by an active-duty Marine.

Jacob Tyler Roberts killed two people and wounded a third in Clackamas Town Center before his rifle jammed. Concealed carry permit holder Nick Meli fired no rounds, but claims that the mere sight of his .40 pistol was enough to convince Roberts to turn and run down a corridor, descend a flight of stairs, clear the jam in his rifle, and then kill himself in a completely different part of the mall.

And as I pointed out in my post one page back, Andrew Wurst shot the four people that he set out to shoot, killing one, before he ran out of ammunition and left the scene. The dance hall owner, armed with a shotgun, followed and detained Wurst, but since Wurst was 14 years old at the time, it is unclear to where he might have escaped had he not been detained by an armed citizen. The only thing that “stopped” Wurst was that he was finished.


Ending a mass shooting doesn't always involve the police arresting or killing the subject, but come in several different ways:

1. Shooter is killed or subdued by armed response (Navy Yard)
2. Shooter gives up on attack and gives up to armed response (shithead #2 in Boston bombing)
3. Shooter thinks they've done enough and doesn't want to be taken alive without immediate threat to themselves (VT Tech)
4. Shooter offs themselves rather than be taken alive after a perceived immediate threat to themselves (Calacumus Town Center shooting)

There are countless examples of each, and I cited 5 above, would you like me to cite more? Or would you like to admit that you were wrong?

Ahhh… I see. So we’re not as concerned with preventing gun deaths as we are with making certain that episodes of gun violence at least end with the death of the shooter, as well. It’s fine to have armed maniacs in our midst, so long as they’re always put down after doing their worst. Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17, but then he shot himself, so problem solved!

I have to admit that I was prepared for all 5 of your examples, since gun nuts refer to them constantly. Your buddy notdrunk brought up Andrew Wurst a page or two ago. So by all means, offer up some more of your “countless examples.” But it seems as though if there were, indeed, “countless examples,” these same five wouldn’t keep coming up, and you wouldn’t have to include incidents that took place 15 and 16 years ago.

Better cut-and-paste please…

[broncofan]

Perhaps the core of the problem is that you are using English in a non-standard way. You seem to be saying that a “gun-free zone” will nonetheless still feature numerous individuals armed with guns. From where I’m sitting, this definition renders the term “gun-free” meaningless.
…
It is literally a zone where not every individual present can carry a gun, so to them it's now a gun-free zone. In their little gun fetish fantasy world they have become completely divorced from the literal meaning of phrases they use. But who was the first Republican dunce who decided that a limit to something is an absolute restriction? Well, actually that's what most of their arguments seem to boil down to.

Bobvela says he's put a lot of thought into the right to bear arms. What about other fundamental rights? Have you thought about the freedom of speech and how preposterous it would be if a free speech advocate argued that speech could never be regulated no matter what interest was being protected? I don't want to get into a discussion about the nuances of 1st amendment law but I assure you state governments can and do regulate speech.

And would any sane person argue that regulating guns is less compelling an interest for states than regulating speech? Having a fundamental right does NOT mean limits can never be placed on it. The different levels of scrutiny applied by the courts are determined by the countervailing interests the states have in that sort of regulation. For Republicans, the only fundamental right that is sacrosanct is the right to bear arms.

But is Bobvela the Republican everyman? Arguing that maps of the states don't take into account the sort of stratification we see from one neighborhood to the next. That large multi-cultural urban centers are war-zones. That wanting to place sensible limits on gun ownership is as much a violation of fundamental rights as the ownership of people. Is this the Republican party? In a nutshell, yes.

[broncofan]

But of course Bobvela is not being completely serious when he argues that those with gender dysphoria may be precluded from owning guns.

If limits are placed on gun ownership based on psychiatric diagnosis don't you think that they would be a little bit more closely tailored to the symptoms of the disorder and whether it pre-disposed an individual to violence?

Having gender dysphoria means that a person has a dissonance between their assigned gender and their experienced gender. Why would the legislature see fit to consider this relevant?

Would a background check for particular psychiatric disorders require all psychiatric disorders to be disqualifying? The obvious answer is no. Perhaps certain neurotic disorders will be considered completely irrelevant to gun ownership. But maybe the government does want to preclude a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks someone is reading his thoughts from carrying around a weapon.

So what does Bobvela's argument boil down to? More slippery slope nonsense. A total and utter red herring.

[broncofan]

And let me just point out that even though the Supreme Court has ruled that gun ownership can be restricted based on psychiatric illness, if state legislatures used this as a green light for invidious discrimination against anyone who's ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition it probably would not pass Constitutional muster. I didn't read anything but a summary of Heller, but let's assume the Court applied strict scrutiny. In order for the Court to say that the right to bear arms can be excepted in the case of mental illness the state laws would have to be necessary to achieve a compelling state interest. The types of mental illnesses that could be considered disqualifying would be subsumed within this analysis.

Edit: my point is that the Constitutional analysis actually depends on how necessary the restriction is to improve public safety. This is one of the reasons the public policy and constitutional arguments run together. If gun control does not improve public safety, it probably could not be constitutional. This also forecloses any possibility of an arbitrary regulation, because insofar as it is random and unlikely to be effective (like restricting transsexuals from owning guns), it would probably be unconstitutional.

[notdrunk]

The first person Aaron Alexis shot was armed with a handgun. DC and park police officers were on scene within 2 minutes. SWAT entered Building 197 within 7 minutes. Aaron Alexis was not "stopped" for another 30 minutes. Is it your contention that the American public needs to be prepared to endure 30-minute firefights in populated areas in order to be "safe"?




That's fine. But you, bobvela, and hordes of other mouthbreathers didn't even wait for the gunfire to die down before blaming Bill Clinton for turning military bases into "gun-free zones." Which is just a blatant lie.


Is Andrew Wurst supposed to be the "mass shooter"? Andrew Wurst shot all four people he set out to shoot, ran out of ammunition, and left the scene. In what sense was he "stopped"?

The assailant in San Antonio was armed with a knife, and went ahead and stabbed the person he intended to stab. He was arrested, but again, not stopped.

The other two were robberies, so again, I'm not clear how they're relevant to the issue at hand. In the United States in 2013, if someone wants to obtain a firearm and shoot 1, 2, or 20 people, there's really nothing to stop them from doing that.

We don't know if he shot the security guard first. That hasn't come out. He probably didn't shoot the security guard first. It wasn't a two minute response time. Additionally, police have to clear rooms and floors.

The military base reply was in reply to one of Trish's post:


Perhaps we should arm all U.S. Naval officers. Oh wait! We already do that. :(

Your post said:



Actually, this virtually never happens. I’m willing to bet that you can’t come up with a single unambiguous case of an armed civilian stopping an armed assailant.

I gave you examples of armed civilians stopping armed assailants. Don't try to adjust the goal posts. It is relevant because it shows that armed civilians have stopped "bad" people before. We don't live in the world of the Minority Report. Therefore, it is ridiculous to ask for examples of armed individuals "stopping" armed assailants using your definition of "stopping." The armed individual has to know at the exact time and moment when an assailant is going to strike. As you know, that is impossible. An armed individual can't just pull out their gun because somebody is sweating and shaking. Additionally, the states have various laws on concealed carrying.

[yodajazz]

We don't know if he shot the security guard first. That hasn't come out. He probably didn't shoot the security guard first. It wasn't a two minute response time. Additionally, police have to clear rooms and floors.

The military base reply was in reply to one of Trish's post:



Your post said:



I gave you examples of armed civilians stopping armed assailants. Don't try to adjust the goal posts. It is relevant because it shows that armed civilians have stopped "bad" people before. We don't live in the world of the Minority Report. Therefore, it is ridiculous to ask for examples of armed individuals "stopping" armed assailants using your definition of "stopping." The armed individual has to know at the exact time and moment when an assailant is going to strike. As you know, that is impossible. An armed individual can't just pull out their gun because somebody is sweating and shaking. Additionally, the states have various laws on concealed carrying.

The government is not about to ban all civilian guns. It's not even possible at this point. What I would like, is just to see a greater amount of the public, convinced that these weapons are not practical for them to own. Yes you can site examples of of someone stopping an armed person with a gun. However, it is more statistically probable that a person would use that same weapon to kill a spouse, or commit suicide, etc. When I was a young man someone borrowed $50, and never repaid me. I let it go for a while, but when other things turned bad for me at the time, I decided it was a point of honor that the person had taken advantage of me. I got one of my father's guns, and went looking for him. I caught up with him eventually, but decided it wasn't worth it. OK, so theoretically I could find an instance to protect someone, but that is remote compared to times I have been very angry. I would like to believe that I would not use a gun, if it was available to me, but I don't take that chance. For example, I have been in a ltr for a long, long time. We have had many serious disagreements over the years. Plus, she has had her own issues, and we have younger relatives that visit occasionally. Some are young men, who look at those gangster rap video, as a definition of manhood. They are young, and have to define for themselves, what it means to be a man in today's world, just like we did.

To be honest, my father used a gun, and shot someone who was attempting to rob him. But He was a grocery store owner, in a poor neighborhood, and he was over 70. So I'm not saying all guns are bad.

[Wanderer1]

Americans: Do you think your criminals will listen?

[trish]

Americans: Do you think your criminals will listen?Hey, let's make murder legal. While we're at it, let's make it easier to murder. Let's manufacture and sell everything one might need to murder as many people as one possibly wish to murder. Make it all legal. Why? Because the murderers won't listen anyway!!!

[trish]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/opinion/nocera-shrugging-off-the-shooting.html?smid=pl-share

[martin48]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/opinion/nocera-shrugging-off-the-shooting.html?smid=pl-share


A small voice, I'm afraid

[Silcc69]

We have another one.

http://nypost.com/2013/09/25/man-on-the-run-after-shooting-two-near-long-island-mall/

So how long before the next shooting?

[Ben]

Piers Morgan Battles S.E. Cupp, Van Jones Over Guns for the Blind: 'You've Gone Stark Raving Mad!'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY6hGGJwApE

[robertlouis]

As I tend to point out every three months, this thread is called The FAST Approaching Gun Ban.

So far, almost twelve months, god only knows how many multiple shootings, to say nothing of the daily toll of gun deaths, whether deliberate or by accident, and what has actually happened to curtail the bloody tide?

Not a single fucking thing. And the gun advocates here and elsewhere continue to react hysterically as if all their guns are somehow going to be taken away and they'll have to find another penis substitute.

Get a grip, get real. Your ownership of guns is even less under threat than it was before. Just look at the past year.

Carry on killing. :pissed::pissed::pissed::pissed:

[volkov2006]

If you go by the FBI mass shooting rates of more than 4 or more killed in one instance I believe the number of mass shootings this year to be about 6.

Although if you change that to 4 or more wounded not killed in one instance that number jumps to around 250 around the time of the Navy yard shooting.

Also from December 8 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed since then till March 22, 2013 at least 1,057,000. I have also heard that since then the number of killed in this country by guns out weighs the number of US soldiers killed in all foreign wars combined. I personally think that something must be done.

I understand that the number of people killed by cars, cigarettes, cancer, and other non weapons is much higher. Although none of these were designed as weapons. Cigarettes causes cancer but not everyone who smokes dies because of it, same can be said of cancer, cars, and other items that have high death rates. Guns were designed for one purpose killing, whether for war or for hunting that is what they are for nothing else.

People are so scared that if we restrict certain weapon types that no one will be able to own a gun, but I believe that around the 1930's the US banned the sale and ownership of automatic weapons, specifically machine guns. Has that stopped anyone from owning a gun. After the shooting of Regan and Brady we started to have background checks did that stop people from owning guns, yes some, the ones that could not pass those tests. If you can't pass a drivers test you do not get a drivers license and not legally drive a car, why should that be different for a deadly weapon.

Also for the people that don't like having gun registries because they think that is what the government needs to take your guns away, and the NRA cried bloody murder over it. Well guess what the NRA has a gun registry and was using it and adding to it at the same time they were opposing a national registry. Also we all have to register our cars and trucks here in the US and when we sell them we have to sign over the registry and that gets sent to the government so if it is used to commit a crime they know who to look for or at least start looking, yet for guns we should just be able to sell them to who ever and if they are used in a crime well I guess we can not use the gun evidence to do an investigation.

Since December 14, 2012 there have been 8,789 gun related deaths reported on TV. According to a CDC study roughly 25,679 have died since 12/14/12. In the last war Iraq/Afghanistan there was less than 6,000 US soldiers killed in combat. Please someone explain how in a country that prides itself on being civilized how can the domestic gun death rate be 25,679 to 6,000. Are people in the US just homicidal or what?

[notdrunk]

Since December 14, 2012 there have been 8,789 gun related deaths reported on TV. According to a CDC study roughly 25,679 have died since 12/14/12. In the last war Iraq/Afghanistan there was less than 6,000 US soldiers killed in combat. Please someone explain how in a country that prides itself on being civilized how can the domestic gun death rate be 25,679 to 6,000. Are people in the US just homicidal or what?

It is a touchy subject. For example, a white person is more likely to kill himself/herself with a firearm than being murdered by another individual using a firearm. A black person is more likely to be killed by somebody using a firearm than commit suicide using a firearm. According to the CDC, from 2008 to 2010, the firearm homicide rate for blacks age 10 to 24 was 48.4 per 100,000. During the same time period, the firearm homicide rate for whites age 10 to 24 was 2.4 per 100,000. In 2007, the homicide rate for white males was 3.7 per 100,000. And, the homicide rates for black males and hispanic males? 41.1 per 100,000 and 12.1 per 100,000.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6001a14.htm

So, the attitude of NIMBY develops when it comes to firearm: Gun-related crime tends to plague the minority communities. So, why should the majority be punished because the actions of some in minority communities are causing negative attitudes towards firearms? Most members of the NRA and other pro-gun groups are apart of the majority. So, NIMBY.

[hippifried]

Yeah, real touchy. So I suppose if it wasn't for all that extra pigmentation, we wouldn't be having schools & theaters shot up... But wait a sec. isn't it a bunch of white guys who've been doing that kinda crap? Well, except for the military bases. If memory serves, I think this is the first by a black dude. Hmmmm... Must be something wrong with the stats. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation on the klan blogs somewhere, if anybody wanted to waste the time looking.

[robertlouis]

And the underlying message is, as long as it's only blacks shooting each other, why the hell should we care? SMH.

[trish]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/children-and-guns-the-hidden-toll.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0&smid=pl-share

[notdrunk]

Yeah, real touchy. So I suppose if it wasn't for all that extra pigmentation, we wouldn't be having schools & theaters shot up... But wait a sec. isn't it a bunch of white guys who've been doing that kinda crap? Well, except for the military bases. If memory serves, I think this is the first by a black dude. Hmmmm... Must be something wrong with the stats. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation on the klan blogs somewhere, if anybody wanted to waste the time looking.

I guess you forgot about people like Colin Ferguson, Omar Thornton, Hastings Wise, and others. According to Mother Jones (a secret klan site), from 1982 to now, there have been 11 mass shootings in which the perpetrator is black compared to 44 mass shootings in which the perpetrator is white. How many mass shootings since 1982? 67 mass shootings. There should be more white mass shooters than black mass shooters because majority of this country is white. The vast majority of murders in this country aren't caused by mass shooters. Gun-related homicide and crime tends to plague some communities more so than others. So, individuals that are from communities that aren't plagued by gun-related homicide and crime develop a NIMBY attitude when it comes to firearms.


And the underlying message is, as long as it's only blacks shooting each other, why the hell should we care? SMH.

Wrong. A firearm is simply a tool. Why do some individuals belonging to one group are inclined to use a firearm for nefarious reasons more so than other individuals? Is it environment, heredity, or a combination of both?

[trish]

A firearm is a tool designed for killing. It shouldn't be surprising to find that they tend to be used for that purpose. Environment? Yes, guns are a part of the American environment. Not surprisingly Americans get shot and killed more than their counterparts in civilized Western nations. Heredity? Beyond the hereditary fact that we have an opposable thumb that allows us to both grasp the handgrip and pull the trigger, it's doubtful gun violence and gun accidents have a particularly hereditary explanation unique to Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share

[notdrunk]

A firearm is a tool designed for killing. It shouldn't be surprising to find that they tend to be used for that purpose. Environment? Yes, guns are a part of the American environment. Not surprisingly Americans get shot and killed more than their counterparts in civilized Western nations. Heredity? Beyond the hereditary fact that we have an opposable thumb that allows us to both grasp the handgrip and pull the trigger, it's doubtful gun violence and gun accidents have a particularly hereditary explanation unique to Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share

There are over 300 million firearms in this country. There are almost enough firearms in this country to give almost every single person a gun in this country. Yet, compared to other times in our history, we aren't in a violent time.

Lets escape the fact that those other civilized Western nations are a lot more homogeneous and have different histories (including gun crimes). It is an apple and oranges comparison.

[trish]

There are almost enough firearms in this country to give almost every single person a gun in this country.Yet over the approximately the last two decades the number of U.S. households with a gun is down from 50% to 30%. More guns, but in the hands of fewer people. Collectors and stockpilers.


we aren't in a violent time. Are you forgetting 20 first and second graders and 6 adults were killed in a school shooting just this year? Are you forgetting Gabrielle Giffords? The children in the article I linked above? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share )How many people have to be severely injured, disabled or die of gunshot wounds before you call it a violent time?

There is a big difference between the U.S. and other civilized Western nations. They don't have an NRA (and organization of Nuts, Racists and Assholes).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fJFuZpYWr-k

[notdrunk]

Yet over the approximately the last two decades the number of U.S. households with a gun is down from 50% to 30%. More guns, but in the hands of fewer people. Collectors and stockpilers.

Are you forgetting 20 first and second graders and 6 adults were killed in a school shooting just this year? Are you forgetting Gabrielle Giffords? The children in the article I linked above? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share )How many people have to be severely injured, disabled or die of gunshot wounds before you call it a violent time?

There is a big difference between the U.S. and other civilized Western nations. They don't have an NRA (and organization of Nuts, Racists and Assholes).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fJFuZpYWr-k

From the mid-80s to the mid-90s, United States averaged over 20,000 murders a year. The peak year was in 1991 with 24,700 murders. In 2012, there were 14,827 murders in the United States. Our murder rate for 2012 was the lowest since 1962. What was going on in the 80s and 90s? The illegal drug trade was in full force. I don't think the drop in legal (keep word) ownership affected our homicide number to the point of causing a massive drop in numbers.

Even countries that have strict gun control experience homicides. For example, the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/historical-crime-data

If you notice, the UK historically had low homicide numbers even before that country introduced strict gun control.

[trish]

What was going on in the 80s and 90s? The illegal drug trade was in full force.And household gun ownership was at 50% compared to today's 30%.
I don't think the drop in legal (keep word) ownership affected our homicide number to the point of causing a massive drop in numbers. It would be inconvenient for you to think that.

[trish]

Nevertheless, you can't say we in the U.S. don't live in violent times in the same year 20 first and second graders are gunned down and the NRA doesn't blink an eye. Homicide are down over the past couple of decades (but we still have ten times as many homicides as comparable nations). Firearm accidents and suicides are up. A gun in your home (or the home of relative or the home of your child's friend) increases the probability that someone in your family will die of a gunshot wound.

[martin48]

Even countries that have strict gun control experience homicides. For example, the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/historical-crime-data

If you notice, the UK historically had low homicide numbers even before that country introduced strict gun control.

Your view on the UK is very simplistic. There is general public consensus against ownership of handguns, which is enforced under strict legislation. Guns for sport are more readily accepted, but are controlled by a strict licensing regime. This regime was strengthened after the Dunblane Massacre (A former boy-scout leader, Thomas Hamilton, shot dead 16 young children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School before turning the gun on himself). Strangely we seem to take notice of mass killings sprees in the UK!

The combined impact and subsequent public outcry motivated the Conservative government at the time to amend the existing legislation on gun ownership. The Firearms Amendment of 1997 completely banned handguns from private ownership.

Despite the handguns ban imposed under the 1997 Firearms Amendment, research carried out following the implementation of the Act saw a 40 per cent increase in the number of gun crime incidents in the UK.
While the number of homicides from gun crime remained largely static for over a decade, 2007 proved a decisive year for this issue. A wave of gang related incidents were committed by teenagers against other teenagers, with some high profile cases ending in fatalities. London, Manchester and Nottingham were most notably affected.


In August 2007, these attacks culminated in the murder of an 11-year-old Liverpool schoolboy, Rhys Jones, hit whilst playing football outside his local pub. Following a lengthy police investigation and a trial lasting over two months, an 18 year old youth, Sean Mercer, a member of the 'Croxteth crew' gang, was convicted in December 2008 of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The then prime minister, Gordon Brown, came under constant pressure to resolve the issues driving these murders. Following mass killings in Cumbria in June, 2010, the Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that two weapons had been recovered by police, a shotgun and a .22 rifle, and that the gunman, Derrick Bird, had held a shotgun licence since 1995 and a firearms licence (for the .22 rifle) since 2007.
Ms May pledged that when the police had completed their investigations, the Government would lead a debate on the country's gun laws, engaging with "all interested parties" and allowing MPs to contribute to the debate.


Firearms offences are geographically concentrated in London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
At the same time young people are disproportionately the victims of gun crime: 15 to 29-year-olds comprise 20 per cent of the population but were victims in 45 per cent of firearms offences in 2010/11.


Concerns also continued to increase about the use of illegal firearms by street gangs and organised criminals. In February 2012, the Home Secretary launched a consultation on strengthening the law in this area, in particular whether the penalty should be increased for illegal importation of firearms and also whether there was a need for a new offence of possession of illegal firearms with intent to supply.
The consultation was set to run for 12 weeks and sought the views of the public, the police, the CPS, victims groups, the judiciary, and voluntary organisations.
In its response to the consultation published in October 2012, the Government stated that it was clear there was “strong support for taking a tougher stance on control of prohibited firearms.”
It had been decided, therefore, to increase the maximum penalty for illegal importation of firearms to life imprisonment and to create a new offence of 'possession with intent to supply' The changes would be implemented as soon as a legislative opportunity arose.

In summary – the rare mass killings are carried out loneers with legally held shotguns and other sporting rifles. Killings using handguns are among young gangs in a limited number of inner cities. There is some pressure from a very small minority that restrictions on handguns should be relaxed.

[broncofan]

Why do some individuals belonging to one group are inclined to use a firearm for nefarious reasons more so than other individuals? Is it environment, heredity, or a combination of both?
I highly doubt it's heredity. Why is it that so many of these NRA supporters are not only brain-dead when it comes to policy but brain-dead when it comes to American history too? The treatment of African-Americans in this country hasn't exactly been standard has it?

But now it's the minorities who through some pre-disposition to violence are responsible for taking your guns away? What about Bloomberg and his campaign for gun control? He's a Jew you know. Why don't you throw a little blame his way? Clearly Mexican-Americans must be partly to blame for this campaign to take your guns away (I haven't thought of a reason yet but I'm sure we can invent one). And women? You know they're slightly more than half the population now.

And how many times have we heard this comment about homogeneous countries being less violent? I'm sure he's not talking about countries where everyone dresses the same way, but rather racially homogenous countries. I'm sorry to tell you that you live in a pluralistic country. We have people from many backgrounds practicing many different religions. It doesn't account for the gun violence. A lot of the violence can be attributed to people without much brains or ability owning firearms. That's you.

Unable to understand precedent from Supreme Court cases on their favorite civil right, unable to read the dates on documents they post, but steadfast in their dislike of people different from them. Pathetic.

[broncofan]

Lets escape the fact that those other civilized Western nations are a lot more homogeneous and have different histories (including gun crimes). It is an apple and oranges comparison.
Hilarious! Apples and oranges!!! How fruity. Reminds me of that scene in the movie Lone Star (IMDB 7.5) where the bartender says he just doesn't like his cinnamon and sugar in the same jar.

"If you mixed your drinks as badly as you mix your metaphors you'd be out of business"

"Hey I'm as liberal as the next guy"

"If the next guy's a redneck"

[notdrunk]

Nevertheless, you can't say we in the U.S. don't live in violent times in the same year 20 first and second graders are gunned down and the NRA doesn't blink an eye. Homicide are down over the past couple of decades (but we still have ten times as many homicides as comparable nations). Firearm accidents and suicides are up. A gun in your home (or the home of relative or the home of your child's friend) increases the probability that someone in your family will die of a gunshot wound.

Yes, I am stating that. It is hard to grasp the realization that the 1980s and 1990s were a lot violent compared to now. A couple of incidents don't decide the year. But, it is alright to knee-jerk to an incident because it is shocking. The NRA did blink an eye but their solution wasn't acceptable to you (apparently).



Your view on the UK is very simplistic.

Nope. My point was stop comparing the United States to other countries. Even before the introduction of strict gun control, murders caused by firearms was extremely low compared to the United States.



I highly doubt it's heredity. Why is it that so many of these NRA supporters are not only brain-dead when it comes to policy but brain-dead when it comes to American history too? The treatment of African-Americans in this country hasn't exactly been standard has it?

Oh please. Thanks for injecting emotion and innuendo! So, I will just dance..:dancing:

[trish]

It is hard to grasp the realization that the 1980s and 1990s were a lot violent compared to now.And yet now if very violent. Why else to you think you need a gun to protect yourself? Why else are you stockpiling? Oh, that's right, patriot...for the coming revolution!


A couple of incidents don't decide the year.Twenty first and second graders lying dead in pools of their own blood I should think counts as more than a couple of incidents. There are people shot, injured, permanently maimed or killed by gunfire in the U.S. every day.

Not to mention the children who die from firearm accidents (which I notice you persistently and deliberately not mentioned... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share .


My point was stop comparing the United States to other countries.That's not a point, you're just asking us wear blinders. Don't look across the Atlantic where things are better. We're oranges and they're apples.

We're just people on both sides of the pond. Arizona isn't more diverse London, nor Connecticut more diverse Paris. The only difference is we have a problem with guns (because the NRA and their zombies cockblock all attempts to regulate them) and they don't.

[trish]

In 2009, NRA lobbyists got a legislation to allow Carry in National Parks added onto the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. It was signed into law by President Obama. A three year old girl from Idaho was the first child to have died as a consequence of this law.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-09/news/sns-rt-us-usa-yellowstone-childdeath-20130907_1_yellowstone-national-park-yellowstone-lake-park-spokesman-al-nash

Dying from a gunshot is a violent way to go. We in the U.S. live in violent times. Our intentional gun-related homicide rate in 2010 was 2.97 per 100000 persons. The CDC doesn't have more recent statistics because NRA lobbyists pressed the passage of laws that forbid the CDC from researching gun violence in the U.S. We can only presume the NRA is afraid of the truth. The NRA also backed legislation to exempt firearms from product protection laws. If one child dies because of a faulty crib design, the crib is taken off the market. If 20 first and second graders, or a child in Yellowstone or any of the children mentioned in http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share , nothing happens. Even blind people have the right to concealed carry some places in the U.S. You can't make this shit up! Thank you NRA.

The 2012 intentional homicide rate in England was 0.07 per 100 000 persons. But golly-gee England and the U.S. are apples and oranges. You can't compare them. Sure you can. Here's how. If you visit England the chances that you'll die of an intentionally fired gunshot wound is 0.07 out of 100 000. In the U.S. your chances of getting killed by an intentionally fired bullet is 42 times higher. ( http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list )

Just because our homicide rate went down a bit over the last couple of decades doesn't mean guns aren't a problem. People (including children) are injured, maimed or killed everyday in the U.S. by firearms. Gun accidents are a tangible problem as are suicides by gun.

Yet we have gun enthusiasts claiming simultaneously the U.S. is not violent, guns aren't a problem and we need to carry guns on our persons at all times (even in National Parks, on playgrounds and in schools) because we have to protect ourselves from violent persons carrying guns. See the problem?

Don't take your gun to town, son, leave your gun at home. Put a trigger lock on it, and lock in a cabinet. Better yet, just get rid of thing, it only increases the chance that you or a family member will be killed by it.

Johnny Cash - Dont Take Your Guns To Town - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMMp_llzBT4)

[volkov2006]

Don't forget that the NRA also lobbied to allow people on the terrorist watch list the right to purchase and own a gun whether that person should have been on the list or not is another thing. But if we are in 'a war on terror' why would we want to allow our so called 'enemies' the right to own a firearm?

Also Mr. La Pierre said that at Sandy Hook there should have been a good guy with a gun, then at the Navy Yard he said there were not enough good guys with guns. Mr. La Pierre's answers for all of these gun deaths is the same more guns, but that always comes after someone dies, why cant we prevent the shooting? What is his answer to that? Not to mention that the Navy Yard shooter killed at least one security guard and took his weapon, was he not a good guy? So would Mr. La Pierre what to go to his family and tell them he is a criminal and had he been a better person he could have stopped the shooter?

Let us also not forget that there was an armed guard at Columbine and that did not stop anything. I have also heard of stories from schools that do have armed guards about how they sometimes forget to lock the safes, or they just forget it in the restroom or wherever.

People say that we should not compare the US with other countries, until we do. We compare ourselves with them all the time by saying that we have more 'freedoms' then other countries, but lets just leave out the bad stuff shall we. Because in 'Merica WERE #1, except in education, healthcare, freedom of the press, and other things that are either rights every person should have regardless of race, gender, or nationality, or things people say is our "'Merican 'freedom'".

How many more have to die before we do something to prevent it from happening again? If Sandy Hook is not it then I don't want to know what it will take to stop the killing.

We as a country say we defeated the Nazis because they were killing millions, we invaded Iraq because they were killing their own people and we almost went to war with Syria because they are killing their own people. Who is going to intervene to stop us from killing each other. I understand that those situations were done by the government against the people, but in this country the NRA has bought the government so they are just as much killing us a we are ourselves.

[notdrunk]

In 2009, NRA lobbyists got a legislation to allow Carry in National Parks added onto the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. It was signed into law by President Obama. A three year old girl from Idaho was the first child to have died as a consequence of this law.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-09/news/sns-rt-us-usa-yellowstone-childdeath-20130907_1_yellowstone-national-park-yellowstone-lake-park-spokesman-al-nash

Dying from a gunshot is a violent way to go. We in the U.S. live in violent times. Our intentional gun-related homicide rate in 2010 was 2.97 per 100000 persons. The CDC doesn't have more recent statistics because NRA lobbyists pressed the passage of laws that forbid the CDC from researching gun violence in the U.S. We can only presume the NRA is afraid of the truth. The NRA also backed legislation to exempt firearms from product protection laws. If one child dies because of a faulty crib design, the crib is taken off the market. If 20 first and second graders, or a child in Yellowstone or any of the children mentioned in http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us...&smid=pl-share , nothing happens. Even blind people have the right to concealed carry some places in the U.S. You can't make this shit up! Thank you NRA.

The 2012 intentional homicide rate in England was 0.07 per 100 000 persons. But golly-gee England and the U.S. are apples and oranges. You can't compare them. Sure you can. Here's how. If you visit England the chances that you'll die of an intentionally fired gunshot wound is 0.07 out of 100 000. In the U.S. your chances of getting killed by an intentionally fired bullet is 42 times higher. ( http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list )

Just because our homicide rate went down a bit over the last couple of decades doesn't mean guns aren't a problem. People (including children) are injured, maimed or killed everyday in the U.S. by firearms. Gun accidents are a tangible problem as are suicides by gun.

Yet we have gun enthusiasts claiming simultaneously the U.S. is not violent, guns aren't a problem and we need to carry guns on our persons at all times (even in National Parks, on playgrounds and in schools) because we have to protect ourselves from violent persons carrying guns. See the problem?

Don't take your gun to town, son, leave your gun at home. Put a trigger lock on it, and lock in a cabinet. Better yet, just get rid of thing, it only increases the chance that you or a family member will be killed by it.

Johnny Cash - Dont Take Your Guns To Town - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMMp_llzBT4)

Our homicide rate didn't drop by a bit. In the last two decades, our rate has dropped by more than 50%. You ever though why suicides have gone up in the last decade? But, it is the gun fault!

You mentioned that our gun-related homicide rate in 2010 was 2.97 per 100000 persons. You do realize that you are in fraction territory with that rate? You are more likely to get a STD than be murdered by a firearm in 2010. I guess if you are worried about that fraction of a percent, you don't step outside and live in a bubble.

By the way, you do know the story of Carey McWilliams? I got the feeling that you have no clue. He got his first CCW license in 2001. Currently, he has two CCW licenses (one for Utah and another for North Dakota). He can carry in other states too because of reciprocity.

I forgot to mention that Carey is legally blind. But But, Iowa is giving licenses to blind people. Keep up with the times. It has been going on for more than a decade.

[trish]

I guess if you are worried about that fraction of a percent, you don't step outside and live in a bubble. Your point is that 20 school children is only 0.02% of 100 000 persons. It's perfectly safe out there. So why do you insist on concealed carry? Is it because of all the other idiots who are secretly carrying too? We have 42 times the intended gun homicides that England has, 42 X.


Iowa is giving licenses to blind people.Keep up with the times. It has been going on for more than a decade. And that's a good thing?! You can't make this shit up!

[notdrunk]

Your point is that 20 school children is only 0.02% of 100 000 persons. It's perfectly safe out there. So why do you insist on concealed carry? Is it because of all the other idiots who are secretly carrying too? We have 42 times the intended gun homicides that England has, 42 X.

And that's a good thing?! You can't make this shit up!

Concealed carry is a right that can be exercised. Some people exercise the right but most don't exercise the right. Then again, most people don't exercise all their rights. 42X..the horror. I can't wait until you push for the United States to mimic Great Britain's transportation ways. Road fatalities in the US is 12.3 per 100,000 vs. Great Britain's road fatalities is 2.75 per 100,000. Less personal car usage with more public transportation and walking!!!!! It is for the children..of course.

Some blurb about Iowa and the world is coming to the end. However, the practice has been going on for more than a decade without much fan fair. Oh, I forgot that gun control is a popular subject now. Next, you are going to tell me that a man has walked on the moon before!!!!! :yayo:

[trish]

It is for the childrenIndeed it is. Twenty first and second graders lying dead in pools of their own blood. Shot to death. Thank you NRA. 20 is only 0.02% of 100 000. Tell that to the parents, brothers and sisters of the dead.

[Ben]

When did our Country Become Dirty Harry? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKpulRjXsy0)

[yodajazz]

Our homicide rate didn't drop by a bit. In the last two decades, our rate has dropped by more than 50%. You ever though why suicides have gone up in the last decade? But, it is the gun fault!

You mentioned that our gun-related homicide rate in 2010 was 2.97 per 100000 persons. You do realize that you are in fraction territory with that rate? You are more likely to get a STD than be murdered by a firearm in 2010. I guess if you are worried about that fraction of a percent, you don't step outside and live in a bubble.

By the way, you do know the story of Carey McWilliams? I got the feeling that you have no clue. He got his first CCW license in 2001. Currently, he has two CCW licenses (one for Utah and another for North Dakota). He can carry in other states too because of reciprocity.

I forgot to mention that Carey is legally blind. But But, Iowa is giving licenses to blind people. Keep up with the times. It has been going on for more than a decade.
I don't think those are comparable stats. I mean, how people engage in sex with another person, during a given year? I'm attaching a poster, that was probably posted here before. The thinks listed here make better comparisons.

[trish]

Two killed and two injured in a Nevada school shooting today. The shooter (a student) turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Of course it wasn't the gun's fault. It had every right to be there.

[Silcc69]

Two killed and two injured in a Nevada school shooting today. The shooter (a student) turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. Of course it wasn't the gun's fault. It had every right to be there.

Over/Under for the next big shooting?

[trish]

While the LA police were giving a demonstration at an elementary school a child pulls the trigger on AK-15 that was mounted on one of their motorcycles. Three children suffered shrapnel injuries. The weapon had several fail-safes that all seemed to have failed. Police are puzzled and have removed the mounted AK-15's from their other cycles until they figure out what went wrong. If only teachers had guns, this might have been prevented.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/children-treated-police-gun-discharges-20662317

[Prospero]

what fast approaching gun ban? Time and speed are very flexible concepts.

[Ben in LA]

Then we have this. Thankfully major damage was averted...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/24/vancouver-washington-11-year-old-arrested/3176435/

[notdrunk]

While the LA police were giving a demonstration at an elementary school a child pulls the trigger on AK-15 that was mounted on one of their motorcycles. Three children suffered shrapnel injuries. The weapon had several fail-safes that all seemed to have failed. Police are puzzled and have removed the mounted AK-15's from their other cycles until they figure out what went wrong. If only teachers had guns, this might have been prevented.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/children-treated-police-gun-discharges-20662317

Didn't you get the memo? Law enforcement officers are the only ones professional enough to handle a firearm..:dancing:

What is a safety switch? I can guarantee that the officer didn't have the safety on. He probably thought he was being super awesome with the rifle having a round in the chamber with the safety off.

[trish]

No, you can't. The safety may not have been functioning. But what the fuck is anyone doing bringing loaded AR-15's to a public school in the first place?!

[Stavros]

Maybe every school should have its own Tank. America, it's time. No, not a fish tank.

[Prospero]

What about flamethrowers?

[yodajazz]

They are retiring most of these. Why not place them on school properties, to insure safety? No middle school-er could to stand up to their big guns.

[thombergeron]

Didn't you get the memo? Law enforcement officers are the only ones professional enough to handle a firearm..:dancing:

Riiiight. Because responsible, law-abiding civilian gun owners never experience accidental discharges (http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/13_arizonans_killed_in_acciden.php).

It appears you've missed the point again.

[yodajazz]

Riiiight. Because responsible, law-abiding civilian gun owners never experience accidental discharges (http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/13_arizonans_killed_in_acciden.php).

It appears you've missed the point again.

I think he was being sarcastic. Changing the subject, with all the firearms in private hands, do you think a foreign army could come here and take over? The answer is no. So why do we need the world's largest government arsenal? The answer seems to be to exert power over other nations. And that power benefits large money interests, more than anyone else. It has very little to do with defense. But lots of people did not consider this, when the case for invading Iraq was put out.

[buttslinger]

I recently changed my Homeowner's Policy,.... A loaded shotgun by your bed, and an Attack Dog might do well to protect you from Intruders, but they also increase your annual Insurance Payment.

[broncofan]

I recently changed my Homeowner's Policy,.... A loaded shotgun by your bed, and an Attack Dog might do well to protect you from Intruders, but they also increase your annual Insurance Payment.
LOL. Interesting to hear. Insurance companies, whatever one may think of them, tend not to be stupid. You mean they don't think your gun and dog will stave off a potential arsonist? Clearly their actuaries have not spoken to Lapierre.

Termites? Use a glock
Flooding? a .45
Roving arsonists? a Desert Eagle.

[notdrunk]

Riiiight. Because responsible, law-abiding civilian gun owners never experience accidental discharges (http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/13_arizonans_killed_in_acciden.php).

It appears you've missed the point again.

Please try again.


No, you can't. The safety may not have been functioning. But what the fuck is anyone doing bringing loaded AR-15's to a public school in the first place?!

If the safety isn't working, the fault is with the officer for not checking if he has a defective rifle. Sort of like an officer carrying a firearm on his hip? Most police vehicles have a shotgun or an ar in the trunk. The motorbike was the vehicle for the officer.


What about flamethrowers?

Legal in some states and illegal in other states. There is no federal law criminalizing the possession of a flamethrower.

[trish]

You yourself assumed the safety was working. You offered your guarantee :D

[martin48]

While the LA police were giving a demonstration at an elementary school a child pulls the trigger on AK-15 that was mounted on one of their motorcycles. Three children suffered shrapnel injuries. The weapon had several fail-safes that all seemed to have failed. Police are puzzled and have removed the mounted AK-15's from their other cycles until they figure out what went wrong. If only teachers had guns, this might have been prevented.


It's rather unfair if we don't issue guns to the kids as well. Teachers can be a threat to kids. So let everyone be armed (concealed of course, and no limit on the firepower) - let half the country want to hark back to some golden age of capturing the West, lynching, racial hatred (don't forget commies, and anyone else with different views), put God in there some where (well, my God and not yours!), a belief that we can screw the Earth and all its resources - let 'em fight it out. Please just let the rest of us get on with our lives and our civilization.

Just a thought

[martin48]

Or build these. It seems to be what you want. "Fast Approaching" - no way. Each generation will grow up in a society that believes guns and their use is normal.

[thombergeron]

Please try again.

OK. Please do try to make an effort at comprehension this time.

Firearms are dangerous. Whether the weapon is in the hands of a trained law-enforcement professional, or a toddler, or a highly experienced civilian enthusiast, or a deeply disturbed adolescent.

As we've seen from this regrettable story in LA, the countless other stories of accidental discharges, the steady drumbeat of active-shooter stories, the decimation of two generations of African-American men, and now this timely data showing that U.S. hospitals admit 7,500 children for gunshot wounds every year (http://www.nbcnews.com/health/terrible-tally-500-children-dead-gunshots-every-year-7-500-8C11469222), being in close proximity to a firearm increases the likelihood that you will be injured or killed.

Again, and to the chagrin of the NRA's marketing campaign, it does not matter who is holding the firearm. Being near a firearm makes it more likely that you will be injured or killed by a firearm. It is simply an epidemiological fact. Arthur Kellerman been demonstrating this fact for 20 years now, for anyone wishing to have an evidence-based discussion.

Interesting that you completely blew by buttslingers point regarding his homeowners insurance. Insurance companies have no interest in spin, they just want to maximize profits. Actuarial tables are completely non-partisan. Insurers are simply looking at clear data showing showing that the presence of a firearm increases the likelihood that they will have to pay out a policy.

Because firearms are dangerous. Period.

[trish]

Here's a link to Dr. Kellermans 1993 study

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506

and (in blue) a brief snippet therefrom...(boldface italics are mine)...

During the study period, 1860 homicides occurred in the three counties, 444 of them (23.9 percent) in the home of the victim. After excluding 24 cases for various reasons, we interviewed proxy respondents for 93 percent of the victims. Controls were identified for 99 percent of these, yielding 388 matched pairs. As compared with the controls, the victims more often lived alone or rented their residence. Also, case households more commonly contained an illicit-drug user, a person with prior arrests, or someone who had been hit or hurt in a fight in the home. After controlling for these characteristics, we found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio, 2.7; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.6 to 4.4). Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.



Conclusions

The use of illicit drugs and a history of physical fights in the home are important risk factors for homicide in the home. Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

[Stavros]

Do any of you gun owners have a pair of these? For the gun, I mean...


http://images.dangerousminds.net/uploads/images/gunnutz222obrgbr.jpg

http://images.dangerousminds.net/uploads/images/gunnutz444oin2o4fn42.jpg

[trish]

http://www.newser.com/story/176812/teen-shot-by-neighbor-while-tping-principals-yard.html

[notdrunk]

OK. Please do try to make an effort at comprehension this time.

Firearms are dangerous. Whether the weapon is in the hands of a trained law-enforcement professional, or a toddler, or a highly experienced civilian enthusiast, or a deeply disturbed adolescent.

As we've seen from this regrettable story in LA, the countless other stories of accidental discharges, the steady drumbeat of active-shooter stories, the decimation of two generations of African-American men, and now this timely data showing that U.S. hospitals admit 7,500 children for gunshot wounds every year (http://www.nbcnews.com/health/terrible-tally-500-children-dead-gunshots-every-year-7-500-8C11469222), being in close proximity to a firearm increases the likelihood that you will be injured or killed.

Again, and to the chagrin of the NRA's marketing campaign, it does not matter who is holding the firearm. Being near a firearm makes it more likely that you will be injured or killed by a firearm. It is simply an epidemiological fact. Arthur Kellerman been demonstrating this fact for 20 years now, for anyone wishing to have an evidence-based discussion.

Interesting that you completely blew by buttslingers point regarding his homeowners insurance. Insurance companies have no interest in spin, they just want to maximize profits. Actuarial tables are completely non-partisan. Insurers are simply looking at clear data showing showing that the presence of a firearm increases the likelihood that they will have to pay out a policy.

Because firearms are dangerous. Period.

Where did I say firearms aren't dangerous? Your comprehension and lack of firearm history is lacking. Have you ever watched the video of the BAFTE agent shooting himself in the leg after claiming that he was the only professional one to handle a firearm? It was a very popular video for years. My comment was a quip. Ultimately, in the AR-15 discharge case, it was the officer fault for the gun to discharge.

[thombergeron]

Where did I say firearms aren't dangerous?

Well, you've been arguing for several weeks now that the answer to gun violence is more guns. If you're finally ready to acknowledge that firearms are dangerous regardless of who wields them, then you've rendered your prior argument nonsensical. The way to reduce violence is to commit more acts of violence?


Your comprehension and lack of firearm history is lacking.

LOL

[trish]

Meanwhile the violence continues as a shooter kills a TSA worker at LAX and injures others

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/01/21277650-gunman-opens-fire-at-lax-killing-tsa-worker-and-wounding-others?lite

[notdrunk]

Well, you've been arguing for several weeks now that the answer to gun violence is more guns. If you're finally ready to acknowledge that firearms are dangerous regardless of who wields them, then you've rendered your prior argument nonsensical. The way to reduce violence is to commit more acts of violence?


What are you talking about you? I have never claimed that they aren't dangerous. I have called them a tool but I haven't said they aren't dangerous. Your whole post is nonsensical. I haven't called for mandatory firearm ownership to combat gun violence. I have favored responsible ownership of firearms for lawful purposes. For example, self-defense from bodily harm or hunting. :confused:

[trish]

I have favored responsible ownership of firearms for lawful purposes.So you favored legislation that attempted to limit the sale of firearms to only responsible buyers? You favored legislation that sought to require background checks and eliminate loopholes? Or have you spoken against laws that encourage responsible gun ownership? :shrug

[Odelay]

So you favored legislation that attempted to limit the sale of firearms to only responsible buyers? You favored legislation that sought to require background checks and eliminate loopholes? Or have you spoken against laws that encourage responsible gun ownership? :shrug
+ Legislation requiring trigger locks when not in use? Legislation requiring guns be locked in safes when not in use? These always seemed like reasonable laws that every proponent of responsible gun ownership would be behind.

[Ben in LA]

So while browsing Twitter this evening, this happened in New Jersey. SMDH...

http://rt.com/usa/new-jersey-mall-shooting-218/

[trish]

At 2:30 in the morning nineteen year old Renisha McBride (who worked at Ford Motor Company) needed help. Her car was in a ditch and her cell phone battery was dead. So she walked up onto the porch of the nearest house and knocked on the door. No answer. Giving up, she turned to leave when a load of buckshot blasted through her head and killed her on the spot. A neighbor, speaking for the shooter said he was scared and that he thought the girl was going to break in.

Apparently some American’s believe the castle doctrine gives them a double O license to indiscriminately kill (or discriminately depending on your definition). I’m sure the shooter thinks of himself as a responsible gun owner. If this quiveringly fearful, responsible gun owner had only thought to call 911. After all, that’s all Renisha wanted. Before you’re allowed to own a gun, you should first prove you own a functioning brain.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/06/black-detroit-woman-shot-to-death-while-seeking-help-after-car-crash-in-white-neighborhood/

[broncofan]

^^^So awful. Heartbreaking, awful, senseless, stupid, and obscene. Unless more facts come to light (I don't expect them to, but we are all obviously held to drawing conclusions only from what we read), that has to be murder. Shooting someone seeking help after phone and car trouble?

Thank you for sharing that Trish.

[yodajazz]

At 2:30 in the morning nineteen year old Renisha McBride (who worked at Ford Motor Company) needed help. Her car was in a ditch and her cell phone battery was dead. So she walked up onto the porch of the nearest house and knocked on the door. No answer. Giving up, she turned to leave when a load of buckshot blasted through her head and killed her on the spot. A neighbor, speaking for the shooter said he was scared and that he thought the girl was going to break in.

Apparently some American’s believe the castle doctrine gives them a double O license to indiscriminately kill (or discriminately depending on your definition). I’m sure the shooter thinks of himself as a responsible gun owner. If this quiveringly fearful, responsible gun owner had only thought to call 911. After all, that’s all Renisha wanted. Before you’re allowed to own a gun, you should first prove you own a functioning brain.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/06/black-detroit-woman-shot-to-death-while-seeking-help-after-car-crash-in-white-neighborhood/

I saw this article online, and immediately thought about posting it here. To me, at this moment, it's about people living in a spirit of fear. There is a well known Bible passage which reads; "God did not give us the spirit of fear, but of a sound mind." In this case, a sound mind would have been to consider possibilities, before using deadly force. I can't help but reflect on how Jesus, used the the example of helping a stranger, under stress, as the example of a godly person, in his story of the 'Good Samaritan'. Than there is "love thy neighbor, as thyself". We have been sold this bill of goods called fear. It is not a good thing.

[trish]

Thank you, broncofan and yosi, for your thoughts.

This story resonated with me in two ways. I’ve been that girl with a busted ride and I am thankful to the family pulled aside and came to my rescue. But I’ve also been on the other side of fence. When I got my first faculty post I rented an old but very nice house on what some regarded to be a bit of a seedy street. One night I woke to a banging at my front door. Did I grab my handy five pound cast iron skillet (my personal weapon of choice)? No. I peeked through the blinds and then opened the door to a bleary eyed drunk who slurred, “Where’s ssa sa sa party?” I responded, “No party here, and besides you’ve had enough.” After a few exchanges I managed to find out that he was a student, found out what dorm he lived in and offered him a ride. Was I scared? Damn right I was scared. I ran to kitchen, selected my largest aluminum kettle and made him sit with it between his knees all the way to the dorm. I was never so frightened that some fucking asshole, who I don’t even know, was going to toss his burritos all over the interior of my ride.

These days, pounding on someone’s door at night is an unforgivable offense punishable with extreme prejudice. Interesting word, “prejudice.”

[broncofan]

Another good point. I might be scared of someone knocking on my door late at night. I might not want to open the door to them and help them. I would never think I had the right to kill them or that they had done anything deserving of even the slightest bit of violence towards them. Did he ask who it was?

It is so far below any normal standard of human behavior to shoot someone looking for help and knocking at your front door. It is clearly a sickness. Spite towards other people and a disdain for civilized behavior causes someone to make a mistake like this.

Some mistakes are the result of having a certain culpable attitude.

[beatmaker]

Soooooooooooo....


With all the crazy'ness in the world goin on....


What do all the firearm owners in on the forum think YOUR president will do about arms in January???


I tried to get as many 18 rnd 9mm & 14 rnd .45ACP mags I could find before the ban takes place.....and there WILL be one!


But....EVERYWHERE I go...All "Hi-Cap" Mags & Rifles are gone!!!!!!



I couldnt even get one!!!!!


Unreal.......


Gun shops are chaging almost $200 for ONE used 30 rnd magazine....


Its all about the money I guess!!!!!


No one said anything when the IRS ( Internel Revenue Service ) bought 1,000,000 rounds of 9mm!


WTF does the IRS need with a million rounds of 9mm!
Damn...They got all the money....now they want all the ammo too ?!....


SOMETHING is going down.....WAKE THE FUCK up people!!!!

Share your thoughts!


Eve,


xoxo

Really TS Evelyn Summers,

You refer to President Barack Obama as YOUR president, as in not yours. Who's your President then? Since you live in Las Vegas, Nevada, which last time I checked was part of the United States. In addition, your senior Senator Harry Reid is the US Senate majority leader, making him along with U.S House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, part of President Obama's core team. I'm assuming you voted for that nutjob Sharon Angle, if you referring to President Obama as "YOUR" president. I didnt care for George Bush and think he did some funny business in Florida and Ohio to put him over the hump in the 2000 & 2004 elections (the precursor to the current GOP voting disenfranchisement tactics). However, at the end of the day, he was "MY" President for 8 years and I have to respect that.

I expected these paranoid comments in 2008, but this man has been in office for 5 years and people are still talking about him taking guns, raising taxes on regular, hard working, instituting socialism, being from Kenya etc. I find it funny that when Bush and Cheney were trampling on your private liberties, instituting Medicare Part D and mailing tax distribution checks up to $600, overreaching tax cuts from the upper tax bracket, that resulted in zero job growth, the conservatives didnt say anything (except the Ron Paul Libertarian crowd). Now they're whining about the NSA, runaway spending and Chinese indebtness, really! The Republicans love to beat up President Jimmy Carter, but he actually created more jobs and cut more debt, than President George W Bush Jr. Google it. He did have taxes too high, I was a small child at the time though. I feel the Obama administration has been a continuation of the same privacy abuses, I can admit that. He knows if something happens on his watch, the right-wing will eviscerate him as Mr. Liberal Pinko and his legacy will be forever smeared. One of President Obama's weaknesses and he's starting to break this bad habit, is allowing GOP criticism and pundits, to move him off his square with fear tactics and misinformation campaigns. When critics of Bush/Cheney questioned their policies, you were chastised and accused of supporting the terrorists (shaming tactics). I voted for Obama, as Romney was a puppet for the 1%. Well at least he is one, unlike these wannabees John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

Listen, does President Obama want sensible gun control? YES! However, this disarming Americans nonsense is standard Tea Party propaganda. Why someone has to own a stockpile of assault rifles and crates of bullets. This has nothing to do with the 2nd amendment. A missile launcher is an arm, should I be able to buy one on the open market. What about an actual missile then? The Constitution has to have some reasonable interpretation. Michael Moore touched on the deep seated pathology of what drives these gun addicts, in "Bowling For Columbine".

I'm a Black man, so I'm a harsh critic of government, even the Obama administration and trust no adminstration. The FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C still has J Edgar Hoover's name on it. A man who was a out and out racist and who was hellbent on squashing Blacks leaders and progress like a bug. If he had the same track record against Jewish leaders and civil rights groups like the JDL (I'll admit he was an anti-Semite too), the name would have been changed decades ago. At the end of the day, the international banking elite, really run the show here and abroad. They control the Federal Reserve and print money (fiat currency) and set interest rates, at their own behest. They also keep many countries of color in economic peonage, thru the IMF (read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins).

TS Evelyn Summers, I see your a Black transgendered woman, by your pictures. I'm not one to say all Blacks need to be monoliths and support Barack Obama, because he's Black. However, this contempt and need to distance yourself from him, by calling him "YOUR" President, is extremely pathological. It reminds me of an incident last weekend, where me and my friend were discussing some business plans in a Manhattan Starbucks and this attractive Black woman was sitting with some nerdy, short, chubby White guy. She was giving us these dirty looks the whole time. It was some Aunt Esther from "Sanford and Son" shyt. Like us sitting at the table next to her, was psychologically unsettling. The Willie Lynch syndrome at its finest. I read your interest and it's all this materialistic $$$ bullshyt literally. When I read your remark about President Obama and then these shallow interests, I thought of the Negro Bed Wench "Sheeba" from the movie Django. The one who was Calvin Candy's mistress (Sadly these Judases really existed and they got what was rightfully coming to them, when insurrections did occur). There was a scene from Django, when Sheeba was at the bar getting some champagne and Django walks up to the bar next to her. She literally gave him a look of sheer disgust and walked off with her champagne, like she was that chick. Interesting, how a White dude like Tarantino, put that scene into the movie. However, he has dated numerous Black women and has probably picked up on this mindset, from a few. Sadly, some White guys thrive off this "Ghetto Gagger" mindset, that is starting to become more and more pervasive.

I'm sure "Scandal" is one of your favorite shows. Most Black women who think like you, eat that nonsense up. You can call President Obama "YOUR" president if you'd like, but that brown doesn't rub off missy and you will never be completely accepted by the dominant society, no matter how much you pander. As soon as Black Republicans Colin Powell and Michael Steele exhibited some independent thought, they were vilified and even called racist names on many Conservative blogs and message boards. Secretary Powell was booed at the Republican convention, for admonishing his party on their lack of racial inclusiveness. Nothing has changed, they cant even pass a no-brainer like immigration reform, which I have some issues with myself. They'd rather win statewide and national elections, by rigging and gerrymandering elections. Why an African-American would support a party engaged in almost RICO like behavior, as far as widespread, systematic voter rights abuses and "stop and frisk" programs in beyond me. It reaks of Stockholm Syndrome.

[Stavros]

I read this article in the New York Review of Books recently, and was struck by this passage:

As has been widely noted, especially since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, our mental health care system is in disarray. The asylums where people with serious disorders could once receive care were mostly closed down by the end of the Reagan era—probably for good reason, in many cases, but with no better alternative created to replace them. In 1955, public psychiatric hospitals had beds for 558,239 severely mentally ill patients. Had that number increased in proportion to the growth of the national population, it would have reached 885,000 by 1994. Instead, by 1994, the nation’s public psychiatric hospitals had only 71,619 beds, while general hospitals, community mental health centers, and private psychiatric hospitals had perhaps another 70,000 between them for patients with severe mental illness.

I wonder what the relationship is between gun violence -particularly men going berserk in cinemas, schools and malls, and mental illness -I suspect most of the perpetrators have been treated or needed help.

Note the article is about an analysis of sexual victimization in prisons: juveniles in adult prisons, and juveniles in juvenile facilities, where most of the abuse takes place and is mostly caused by prison staff. Fascinating, if depressing reading.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/24/shame-our-prisons-new-evidence/?page=2

[trish]

This from Stavros' link above

[notdrunk]

So you favored legislation that attempted to limit the sale of firearms to only responsible buyers? You favored legislation that sought to require background checks and eliminate loopholes? Or have you spoken against laws that encourage responsible gun ownership? :shrug

Enforce current federal laws and let the states decide if they want to expand their own gun laws.

[broncofan]

As if gun sales in one state can't affect the safety of citizens in another state. The entire reason Congress can regulate interstate commerce is because travel throughout this country is unencumbered. This goes for goods and people, who travel across state lines freely. By having fifty different regulations regarding product safety, you end up having a race to the bottom for standards. Those with the loosest standards will have the greatest sales and people will travel from one state to another to avoid useful regulations that would block their ownership of weapons.

[notdrunk]

As if gun sales in one state can't affect the safety of citizens in another state. The entire reason Congress can regulate interstate commerce is because travel throughout this country is unencumbered. This goes for goods and people, who travel across state lines freely. By having fifty different regulations regarding product safety, you end up having a race to the bottom for standards. Those with the loosest standards will have the greatest sales and people will travel from one state to another to avoid useful regulations that would block their ownership of weapons.

With the current state of Congress? Not going to happen.

[robertlouis]

I spotted elsewhere that a number of gun groups are planning demonstrations on the anniversary of Sandy Hook.

I give up. There is no hope, none at all. How sick can you be?

[thombergeron]

With the current state of Congress? Not going to happen.

Hey! We agree on something! I, for one, am pleased to have reached this point with you in this discussion.

But as Gabby Giffords wrote recently, "if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s."

Gun control is not going away. We will have an effective federal gun control regime. It is in our national interest to promote public health, and that's what gun control is.

I live in a very safe district, so you won't be surprised where my political donations will be going next year.

[trish]

Existing law has been allowed to expire and has been gutted at every turn. Yes, we should enforce the existing law. But we should also restore and strengthen it to make sure only responsible citizens can buy guys. Under current law, individuals on the terrorist watch list and scum like this guy -> http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/nov/12/idaho-rep-mark-patterson-can-carry-gun-without/ can legally buy and carry firearms.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1584782

[Stavros]

Craig Cobb on patrol in Leith, North Dakota, keepin' it safe from crime....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-supremacist-craig-cobb-arrested-after-patrolling-north-dakota-town-with-a-shotgun-8948711.html




http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02739/leith-cobb-patrol_2739662b.jpg

[Ben in LA]

Craig Cobb on patrol in Leith, North Dakota, keepin' it safe from crime....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-supremacist-craig-cobb-arrested-after-patrolling-north-dakota-town-with-a-shotgun-8948711.html




http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02739/leith-cobb-patrol_2739662b.jpg
I thought he was a Negro?

[trish]

I'm sure he's a responsible gun owner.

[martin48]

They all are. NRA says so

[muh_muh]

I'm sure he's a responsible gun owner.

at least 86% of him according to the nra

[broncofan]

Knowing these types I have a feeling he's also a responsible rocket launcher and grenade owner. All important first line defenses against burglars.

[broncofan]

I just noticed the swastika painted on the door behind Craig Cobb in that picture. Cobb better find out who vandalized that building with a swastika since he's on patrol for criminals. That way he can shake his hand and get pointers on how to paint them himself.

[yosi]

at least 86% of him according to the nra

be very afraid of the remaining 14%.........

[trish]

Don't worry. He'll only empty 14% of his 30 round magazine into you. That's only 4 direct hits and a graze. If you're lucky you can survive that. Are ya feelin' lucky?

[yodajazz]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/25/mississippi-woman-struck-by-bullet-shell-after-man-ignores-no-guns-sign-at-church/

In this case the woman was only hit by the ejected shell casing as the bullet lodged into the floor. I assume the man would be defined as a responsible gun owner since he has special 'extended' permit.

[trish]

Whaddya mean "No Guns in Church!!" That's just unChristian.

[martin48]

Whaddya mean "No Guns in Church!!" That's just unChristian.


Sure would

[yodajazz]

Sure would

Actually there was a time when Jesus said something like, "Sell your cloak, and buy you a sword." However one has to understand the context. Basically, according to scripture he knew that soldiers would be coming for him that night to take him away and eventually be executed. My analysis is that it showed his human side, fear of facing death. He even acknowledged when he said it that, he had told them otherwise, before that. I think he also feared that the soldiers coming for him would harm his disciples. Once, a militant Christian quoted that passage to me, but I knew that he didn't have the the overall view of Christ's real message.

[danthepoetman]

....

[danthepoetman]

A conservative Jesus?
:)

[trish]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/who-needs-a-gun/?smid=pl-share

Who needs a gun? It's not about your right to possess one, its about the cost and risks versus the improbable utility of ownership.

[robertlouis]

Another school shooting in Colorado, and on the day before the Sandy Hook anniversary. Great.

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25375064

[Silcc69]

Ah good ole yahoo and there comments.

http://news.yahoo.com/reports-shooting-at-high-school-near-denver-201843048.html?bcmt=comments-postbox

[dderek123]

http://i.imgur.com/EGqqQR9.gif