The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[broncofan]

Okay, now you got me thinking your some sort of hard boiled, noir PI like Easy Rawlins.
That would be so cool. I would give anything to be a PI (with clients).

I just want to emphasize, I think (I hope) when I make snooty comments about guns I am targeting the fetishization of guns...the magical thinking, the sub-culture. Not hunting or even target shooting, but feeling as though the gun is an appendage, that you cannot go anywhere without it and it takes precedence over most things in your life. Nobody is going to admit that it takes precedence over most things in their life, but they do indirectly by how they discuss guns as a public health issue.

Yeah Trish, it probably isn't a collective action problem because the boon to individual safety of having a gun is illusory in all but exceptional cases. As you indicate, it's the feelings of power, control and invulnerability that seduces.

[Odelay]

I think gun ownership is a paradigmatic collective action problem. You have ten people in a room and nobody is armed, everyone is safe. You introduce one gun and nine people feel unsafe. The next person to arm themselves feels much more secure, until everyone has a gun. Now you have ten people and ten guns. Is that room more or less safe than the room with ten people and zero guns?

I love game theory. But in this scenario, as applied to Americans, 7 out of 10 without guns would have no fear (that's the amount of non-gun ownership), while the other 3 would each average 3 guns apiece (per capita gun rate is 90%). Methinks the 3 who are stockpiling guns in the room, have a wee bit more fear than the other 7.

[fred41]

Okay, now you got me thinking your some sort of hard boiled, noir PI like Easy Rawlins.

Sorry...nothing even remotely so romantic as that....:D

[trish]

Less than a handful of Ebola cases discovered on U.S. soil and we already have an Ebola Czar. Why not just have the Surgeon General take charge? Oh, that’s right...we don’t a Surgeon General because Obama’s nominee (Dr. Vivek Murthy) can’t get Congressional approval. Why? Because Dr. Murthy suggested there might be greater controls on the ownership of a device that kills more than 30000 American citizens a year. So now we have an Ebola Czar and no Surgeon General because the right wing is afraid of anything that goes bump in the night. Afraid...AFRAID! They need guns, czars and travel restrictions. oooooOOOOooooOOOOOoooooo be afraid...Halloween is around the corner.

[martin48]

Go on, surprise your neighbors - dress up in this costume



Less than a handful of Ebola cases discovered on U.S. soil and we already have an Ebola Czar. Why not just have the Surgeon General take charge? Oh, that’s right...we don’t a Surgeon General because Obama’s nominee (Dr. Vivek Murthy) can’t get Congressional approval. Why? Because Dr. Murthy suggested there might be greater controls on the ownership of a device that kills more than 30000 American citizens a year. So now we have an Ebola Czar and no Surgeon General because the right wing is afraid of anything that goes bump in the night. Afraid...AFRAID! They need guns, czars and travel restrictions. oooooOOOOooooOOOOOoooooo be afraid...Halloween is around the corner.

[Ben]

Canada Attacked - The Gun Law Role & The ‘Terrorism' Question:

Canada Attacked - The Gun Law Role & The ‘Terrorism' Question - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6uk3xpmC1U&list=UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ)

[Ben]

Chrissy Teigen Not Apologizing for Tweeting About Ottawa Shooting: ''It's Been Awhile Since I Pissed a Ton of People Off'':

http://ca.eonline.com/news/591256/chrissy-teigen-not-apologizing-for-tweeting-about-ottawa-shooting-it-s-been-awhile-since-i-pissed-a-ton-of-people-off

Rosie O'Donnell on Chrissy Teigen: "Brilliant" To Tie Canada Terror Attack To Gun Violence in America:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/10/23/rosie_odonnell_brilliant_to_tie_canada_terror_atta ck_to_gun_violence_in_america.html

[martin48]

Noticed this thread started in May 2012, so when does this fast approaching ban start?

[trish]

Fast but far away...

[buttslinger]

I'm telling you, if the Democratic Party could become the Party of Guns, we could get the fucking businessmen profiteers out of the picture and finally get some sane regulations. Freedom has a price. Morons + Freedom = Headlines

I expect to see Hillary packing heat. Don't fuck with us, World.

[martin48]

Several Parsecs?


Fast but far away...

[trish]

When Prosecutors Align on Guns
http://nyti.ms/1vdaYyJ

[Prospero]

some telling statistics to quote the next time some jackass from the NRA says americans need guns to protect against crime....

[yodajazz]

Here in my city police killed a 12 year old, with a toy (soft air) gun, three days ago. I guess he was too young to have 2nd amendment rights. And too old to be playing with toys. That awkward age, they say sometimes.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/24/cleveland-shot-boy/19471925/

[trish]

Mother killed with her own gun wielded by her two year old toddler. Will the inanity never end?

http://nyti.ms/1Hfx37T

[trish]

Yet again negligence by competent, trained gun handlers who respect their weapon leads to shooting:

Police Chief of the Peachtree City Police took his gun to bed and shot his wife. I can only imagine the excuse: Oops! Sorry honey I thought it was my cock, not my Glock. You can't tell me gun fetishists don't get the two confused on a regular basis. It's the whole point of sleeping with your "weapon".

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/02/oh-my-god-the-police-chief-said-how-the-hell-did-this-happen/#more-21976

http://gawker.com/ga-police-chief-i-accidentally-shot-my-wife-while-she-1677143702

[fred41]

Yet again negligence by competent, trained gun handlers who respect their weapon leads to shooting:

Police Chief of the Peachtree City Police took his gun to bed and shot his wife. I can only imagine the excuse: Oops! Sorry honey I thought it was my cock, not my Glock. You can't tell me gun fetishists don't get the two confused on a regular basis. It's the whole point of sleeping with your "weapon".

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/02/oh-my-god-the-police-chief-said-how-the-hell-did-this-happen/#more-21976

http://gawker.com/ga-police-chief-i-accidentally-shot-my-wife-while-she-1677143702

Too many weird questions on this one...
I have huge doubts this was entirely "accidental". Though we may never find out for sure. He may have been drinking ...considering it was New Years...but still. Maybe he did it on purpose then got the 'guiltys' and called.
They were divorced for 15 or so years while he was married to a female Rabbi...too much weirdness...
Nope, not buying it.

[trish]

"Accidental" shouldn't even be on the table, for any of these sorts of shooting. At the very least it's negligence. But time and time again, a father shoots his daughter, a son shoots his sister, a mother shoots her baby, a toddler shoots his mother, a teenager shoots his foot off... and these are deemed by the authorities as tragic accidents and no one is charged with a damn thing. If someone is shot, at the very least, the owner of the firearm should be charged with criminal negligence (unless of course they're dead).

[trish]

http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/07/gun-deaths-top-motor-vehicle-deaths-rising-number-states

Gun deaths lead auto-accident deaths in ten States and will soon overtake it in others. If only our founding fathers had the foresight to append the universal right to drive to the bill of rights, gun nuts wouldn't have to face this embarrassing statistic.

[trish]

C'mon dreamon, enter the conversation...don't just thumbs down people from a distance like a cowardly sniper with a big scope on his little gun. You're really thumbs-downing the reporting of a FACT?:Gun deaths top motor-vehicle deaths in a rising number of states

(http://www.minnpost.com/second-opini...-number-states (http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/07/gun-deaths-top-motor-vehicle-deaths-rising-number-states)).

[dreamon]

How many times have you shot a gun?

[trish]

How many times have you shot a gun?
Never more than two shots per minute. So if you have a semiautomatic you've got me beat. Now let's see. You thumbed down my post http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showpost.php?p=1567023&postcount=1269 (the one reporting a report reporting a report asserting
Gun deaths top motor-vehicle deaths in a rising number of states ) because you suspect I lack the gun-handling credentials for making such a post? Perhaps it would be more relevant to ask for the credentials of the statisticians who completed the study. But yeah, I've shot, disassembled, cleaned and reassembled a few guns in my youth... http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showpost.php?p=1159928&postcount=391

Can you calculate rate of entropic increase were a 50 grain .22 caliber long to strike a stationary soft target at 1000 ft/sec?

[trish]

Why don't all guns have external safeties? Who's keeping smart guns off the market?

http://nyti.ms/1Cl1vtY

[trish]

Another two year old kills himself with a firearm. This time in Florida. His father left him in the car for a moment to do an errand and the boy pulls his a gun out of the glove compartment and ... you know the rest. ( http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-year-old-fatally-shoots-self-fathers-gun-florida-n290981 )

As usual there are no charges brought against anyone. Evidently Florida is very liberal in thinking a two year has the right to commit suicide in the privacy of his parent’s car. Some say the parents are suffering enough, there’s no need to punish them more.

It’s not about punishment, it’s about personal responsibility and criminal negligence. If it’s not criminally negligent to leave a loaded gun within reach of a two year old, then these horrid incidents will continue to happen.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/31/woman-accidentally-shot-and-killed-by-2-year-old-in-walmart/

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/11-Year-Old-Girl-Shot-Killed-Inside-Home-254033111.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/utah-boy-2-shot-and-killed-by-3-year-old-sister/

http://www.ryot.org/5-year-old-boy-shoots-2-year-old-sister-in-kentucky-with-gun-his-parents-gave-him-as-a-present/150785

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/20/us/missouri-boy-shoots-baby-brother/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/30/woman-shot-with-own-gun/21062089/

[fred41]

Another two year old kills himself with a firearm. This time in Florida. His father left him in the car for a moment to do an errand and the boy pulls his a gun out of the glove compartment and ... you know the rest. ( http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-year-old-fatally-shoots-self-fathers-gun-florida-n290981 )

As usual there are no charges brought against anyone. Evidently Florida is very liberal in thinking a two year has the right to commit suicide in the privacy of his parent’s car. Some say the parents are suffering enough, there’s no need to punish them more.

It’s not about punishment, it’s about personal responsibility and criminal negligence. If it’s not criminally negligent to leave a loaded gun within reach of a two year old, then these horrid incidents will continue to happen.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/31/woman-accidentally-shot-and-killed-by-2-year-old-in-walmart/

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/11-Year-Old-Girl-Shot-Killed-Inside-Home-254033111.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/utah-boy-2-shot-and-killed-by-3-year-old-sister/

http://www.ryot.org/5-year-old-boy-shoots-2-year-old-sister-in-kentucky-with-gun-his-parents-gave-him-as-a-present/150785

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/20/us/missouri-boy-shoots-baby-brother/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/30/woman-shot-with-own-gun/21062089/

It's clear that someone doesn't respect a firearm when they can 'forget' where they left it (honestly, it's the same when someone claims they forgot a weapon in their luggage). Carelessly throwing a loaded firearm in a glove box of a car is ineptitude of a certain level...but forgetting you left it there, especially with a child in the car...that means you don't consider a firearm a dangerous tool to be respected.
People that don't safeguard their weapons shouldn't have guns in any state, regardless of how one feels about the second amendment.

[Odelay]

"They've suffered enough already."

That's a good one. I think when they defrocked a few of those pedophile Catholic priests they said the same thing in order to avoid prison sentences.

[Dahlia Babe Ailhad]

Hi everygun,

I saw this online and thought you might like to read it.
There are additional links within the text of the original article in the link below.

Babe,
xoxo

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/12/have_gun_want_to_travel.html

"Have Gun, Want To Travel

Do other countries have a constitutional right to bear arms?

By Brian Palmer
December 14, 2010, 4:09 PM

The United Arab Emirates dropped all charges Monday against an American soldier arrested for traveling with gun accessories. It's illegal for foreigners to carry firearms or other weapons paraphernalia into the country without a special permit. Do any foreign states guarantee the right to keep and bear arms like we do in the United States?

Yes. Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala all enshrine the right to pack heat in their constitutions. Guatemala's Article 38 is the only one that's as broad as our Second Amendment (it guarantees "the right of possession of arms for personal use"). Article 10 of the Mexican constitution and Article 268-1 of Haiti's constitution limit the right to the confines of the home and allow the government to pass laws significantly restricting ownership. Mexicans, for example, are supposed to get a permit, renewable every year, from the military, and all firearms must be registered. (The law is widely ignored. Only 4,300 licenses have been issued for Mexico's 105 million people.) Handguns must be .380 caliber or less, shotguns can't be greater than 12 gauge, and rifles must be .30 caliber or smaller.

A constitutional provision doesn't necessarily guarantee easy access to firearms or a country full of gun enthusiasts. While the United States has 90 guns per 100 people—the highest ownership rate in the world—Mexico has just 15, placing it 22nd among the 59 countries for which data is available.

If you're looking to commune with other gun owners abroad, you might consider traveling to Switzerland, where there are 46 guns per 100 people. The Swiss national legislature could, theoretically, ban gun ownership tomorrow since there's no constitutional guarantee. For now, however, the famously neutral government not only permits gun ownership, but also issues an automatic rifle to every male when he becomes eligible for military service at age 20. Female volunteers are also armed. On Sundays, tourists can see the Swiss head to firing ranges on trains and buses with their rifles resting on their shoulders. The country hosts the world's largest rifle shooting competition in the world every five years. Gun ownership laws have tightened up on handguns and non-military weapons in the last 10 years, but it's still reasonably easy to get a handgun permit.

If you find rifles too tame, you could try Yemen, the second-most heavily armed country in the world with 61 guns per 100 people. (Many observers think that estimate is far too low, and that Yemenis own more weapons than even Americans.) Yemeni tribesmen are known to maintain arsenals of machine guns and hand grenades. The country requires weapons sellers to keep detailed records of their transactions and the buyers' identities, but the laws are completely ignored. Urbanites are supposed to have licenses for their guns (tribal areas have different laws), and the government occasionally goes on enforcement sweeps, but arrests are generally rare even in Sana'a, the capital city.

East Asia is the most restrictive region for gun enthusiasts. Private gun ownership is illegal in Singapore, and Japanese citizens can only get their hands on a shotgun after taking classes and passing written and marksmanship tests. The European state of Luxembourg is also very anti-gun. There's a complete ban there, and the country donated a sculpture of a revolver with its barrel tied in a knot to the United Nations in 1988.

For the most part, countries that permit their citizens to own firearms also allow tourists to bring them in. But don't just box up your flintlock and toss it in with your other luggage. All countries require you to get a permit in advance, and you usually have to get an acknowledgement of legal ownership from your home country. If you skip this step, penalties can be steep. In Mexico, for example, foreigners caught with unlicensed firearms or ammo can spend up to 30 years in prison."

[trish]

MODS, how come some anonymous cowards are allowed to thumbs down you without leaving their handles? I thinking it's probably the same cowardly little boys who have to carry their guns with them wherever they go. The same little cowards who can't handle the truth or construct an counter-argument on their own. Stick your sore thumbs up your asses, little boys.

[trish]

Seems Dreamon has something to say, but he's being a bit shy...can only manage a red thumb. Come on sweetie. We're listening.

[martin48]

These iPods should be banned!



A three-year-old American boy has shot his mother and father with the same bullet after pulling a gun from her handbag, police say.
The incident took place in a motel room on Saturday afternoon in Albuquerque in the state of New Mexico.
The toddler was apparently reaching for an iPod.






http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31082294

[trish]

These iPods should be banned!



A three-year-old American boy has shot his mother and father with the same bullet after pulling a gun from her handbag, police say.
The incident took place in a motel room on Saturday afternoon in Albuquerque in the state of New Mexico.
The toddler was apparently reaching for an iPod.






http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31082294Yeah, and every iPod should come with an electronic lock, so that only the owner can type in the combination and use the device. Every parent should set up and use this function. If the kid had known he wouldn't be able to use the iPod he wouldn't have reached for it. The mother was clearly negligent.

[martin48]

I do support open-carry policy for iPods, then you know who to mug.





Yeah, and every iPod should come with an electronic lock, so that only the owner can type in the combination and use the device. Every parent should set up and use this function. If the kid had known he wouldn't be able to use the iPod he wouldn't have reached for it. The mother was clearly negligent.

[trish]

I do support open-carry policy for iPods, then you know who to mug.
Actually, that's a good case against concealed carry of iPods.

http://abc13.com/news/investigators-worry-area-gun-stores-being-targeted/482329/

http://www.bnd.com/2015/01/20/3619335/rural-king-burglarized-in-swansea.html

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hot-guns-fueling-crime-us-study/story?id=18318610

[martin48]

You've lost me but then I think you lose most of us here ;)

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/12/exploding-ipod-dies-gruesome-death/

[trish]

You've lost me but then I think you lose most of us here :wink:If you conceal your iPod, your everyday hard working mugger won't know who to mug.

In a parallel story: In the U.S. guns have become such a desirable fetish item, that gun sellers and people who are known to have guns on their person are primary targets for thieves.



http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/12/exploding-ipod-dies-gruesome-death/Hmmm wonder if that's built in obsolescence?

[martin48]

Ah, as Mae West would have said "Is that an ipod in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me"

[trish]

Three year old shoots and wounds mother. "Police said the toddler somehow got a hold of the gun ..." Many guns today have no external safeties. The excuse is that when defending yourself from a bad guy with a gun, it takes precious time to undo the safety and fire the weapon. So many people who carry their weapons with them use no external safety and keep a round in the chamber. Manufacturers say modern firearms have "internal safeties"; i.e. triggers that toddlers can't pull and recessed firing pins that won't discharge the round in the chamber if the gun is dropped or otherwise suffers a physical shock. The police officer (Capt. Dale Engle) looking into this particular case in Florida disagrees: "Engle also added that is is a "myth" that a small child is not strong enough to pull the trigger of a gun."

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/3-Year-Old-Son-Shoots-Mother-in-Davie-Police-290545451.html

[yodajazz]

This toddler shot both his parents, with one shot! I say, this is a future president of the NRA. Anyway, this is an argument against having a gun to protect one's family.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/3-year-old-shoots-dad-pregnant-mom-albuquerque-motel-room-n297841

[trish]

The thing that can stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun.

[martin48]

Yeap, let's see more of this. These are good kids, ready to take out the baddies in their neighbourhood.

[trish]

Please send your dollars to the family above (in Martin's post). They're obviously short one firearm.

[trish]

Thanks to ALEC and the NRA, concealed carry laws have swept the nation over the last decade passing on the premise that concealed carry in the public square will save lives. You know, the Good-Guy-With-A-Gun argument, right? Also for years now, thanks to the Gordian knot binding Congress to the NRA, States no longer have to report data on gun related injuries and deaths (deliberate or accidental) to the CDC or any central health agency. Clearly guns are good for your health, there’s no need to prove it scientifically. So by culling newspaper articles since 2007 the Violence Policy Center has shown

“that in research involving 722 deaths in 544 concealed-carry shootings in 36 states and the District of Columbia, only 16 cases were eventually ruled lawful self-defense — even though this has been a major gun rights selling point for the new laws.”

http://nyti.ms/1EXu1Xa


.

[dreamon]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/24/chicago-crime-rate-drops-as-concealed-carry-gun-pe/?page=all


An 86-year-old Illinois man with a concealed carry permit fired his weapon at an armed robbery suspect fleeing police last month, stopping the man in his tracks and allowing the police to make an arrest.
Law enforcement authorities described the man as “a model citizen” who “helped others avoid being victims” at an AT&T store outside Chicago (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/chicago/) where he witnessed the holdup. The man, whose identity was withheld from the press, prevented others from entering the store during the theft.
Police said the robber harassed customers and pistol-whipped one.
Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/chicago/) has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low.
“It isn’t any coincidence crime rates started to go down when concealed carry was permitted. Just the idea that the criminals don’t know who’s armed and who isn’t has a deterrence effect,” said Richard Pearson (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/richard-pearson/), executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. “The police department hasn’t changed a single tactic — they haven’t announced a shift in policy or of course — and yet you have these incredible numbers.”
As of July 29 the state had 83,183 applications for concealed carry and had issued 68,549 licenses. By the end of the year, Mr. Pearson (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/richard-pearson/) estimates, 100,000 Illinois citizens will be packing. When Illinois began processing requests in January, gun training and shooting classes — which are required for the application — were filling up before the rifle association was able to schedule them, Mr. Pearson (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/richard-pearson/) said.
“The temperature would be 40 below, and you’d have these guys out on the range, having to crack off the ice from their guns to see the target,” Mr. Pearson (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/richard-pearson/) said. “But they’d do it, because they were that passionate about getting their license.”
The demand has slowed this summer, but Mr. Pearson (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/richard-pearson/) expects the state to issue about 300,000 concealed carry permits when all is said and done.
Illinois became the 50th state in the nation to issue concealed weapons permits. An individual permit costs about $600 and requires at least 16 hours of classes.
The Chicago Police Department has credited better police work as a reason for the lower crime rates this year. Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy noted the confiscation of more than 1,300 illegal guns in the first three months of the year, better police training and “intelligent policing strategies.”
The Chicago Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.
However, the impact of concealed carry can’t be dismissed. Instead of creating more crimes, which many gun control advocates warn, increased concealed carry rates have coincided with lower rates of crime.
A July study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans have permits to carry concealed weapons, a 147 percent increase from 4.5 million seven years ago. Meanwhile, homicide and other violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.
“There’s a lot of academic research that’s been done on this, and if you look at the peer-reviewed studies, the bottom line is a large majority find a benefit of concealed carry on crime rates — and, at worst, there’s no cost,” said John Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center based in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. “You can deter criminals with longer prison sentences and penalties, but arming people with the right to defend themselves with a gun is also a deterrence.”
Within Illinois, Cook County, which encompasses Chicago (http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/chicago/), has the state’s largest number of concealed carry applications, with 28,552 requests, according to the county’s website. Accounting for population, however, less than 1 percent are carrying.
Mason County has the top per-capita rate in Illinois, with 14 percent of its residents holding concealed carry licenses, followed by Shelby County, with 9 percent.
“When I talk to folks that are supporters of concealed carry here, a lot of them want to get their permits so they can keep a gun in the car just so they have it when they travel to bigger towns and cities,” said Shelby County Sheriff Michael Miller.
Shelby County is in southwestern Illinois, about an hour and 45 minutes driving time from St. Louis. Its crime rate is low, and the majority of charges are domestic-related, Sheriff Miller said. He doesn’t anticipate concealed carry to change the statistics much.
“These are folks who just want to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Sheriff Miller said. “Luckily, we don’t have a gang problem or any serious violent crime. Our types are just rednecks that like to hunt and fish.”
Mason County Sheriff Paul Gann said it’s too early to tell whether an increased carry rate will have an influence on crime rates.
“What I can tell you is we haven’t seen a spike in crime,” said Mr. Gann. “We haven’t seen a spike in anything that’s gun-related — brandishing a firearm, shootings, robberies, nothing. These are law-abiding individuals.”
From a national perspective, Florida has the most active concealed carry permits, at nearly 1.3 million. Texas is second, with just over 708,000. Hawaii, at 183, has the fewest of states whose data were available.
At 300,000 concealed carry licenses, Illinois would compare with Virginia, which has 363,274, and Alabama, with 379,917.

[trish]

Criminologists attribute the drop in crime rates to four major factors:

"– Long prison sentences, which have lengthened on average since sentencing reform initiatives in many states in the 1990s, have kept more criminals behind bars, albeit at a significant cost to state budgets.
– Improved community policing strategies are sending cops to places where crime is more likely to occur, as a prevention method. Technologies like video surveillance and acoustic sensors, which can hear gunshots before residents report a crime, are improving police response, too.
– A changing drug market has plunged the cost of heroin near historic lows, reducing crime associated with the drug trade. Pollack added that the end of the crack epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s has also contributed to a decline in drug-related violence.
– And an aging population is less likely to commit crimes. The fastest growing segment of the population is seniors, an age at which far fewer crimes are committed.
"

Mmmm, I don't see where it says concealed carry. God damn you science.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/01/02/in-major-cities-murder-rates-drop-precipitously/

.

[trish]

A Republican precinct delegate in Michigan and a member of a Christian Motorcycle Association and administrator for the Road to Life Church fatally shot herself through the eye last month while adjusting her bra holster. Her obit says she was "on FIRE for the LORD." In spite of serving two terms in the Navy's military police, in the end, her respect for firearms and the safety of those around her left something to be desired. Her case proves that even extensive training cannot make public carry safe.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/michigan-republican-official-fatally-shoots-self-in-eye-while-adjusting-gun-in-her-bra-holster/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/18/woman-kills-self-adjusting-bra-holster/23640143/

[AshlynCreamher]

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/244599dbb2ab992744eddef200305a3444d1fd67/c=175-0-2826-1993&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2015/02/18/USATODAY/USATODAY/635598813445787854-NRA0504-001.jpg

That looks extremely uncomfortable

[trish]

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/244599dbb2ab992744eddef200305a3444d1fd67/c=175-0-2826-1993&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2015/02/18/USATODAY/USATODAY/635598813445787854-NRA0504-001.jpg

That looks extremely uncomfortableGives you great lift though :)

[Jericho]

Jeez, that's the last time i go for 2nd base! :hide-1:

[Jericho]

Jeez, that's the last time i go for 2nd base! :hide-1:


Of all the places that do not need a sidearm, a bra is right up there near the feckin top!
Thank you, America...You've ruined tits for me...Hope I can do the same for you someday! :frustrated



(I don't normally quote myself...but it's been bugging me)!

[AshlynCreamher]

Thank you, America...You've ruined tits for me...


http://powervrouwen.blog.nl/files/2014/11/austin-powers-fembots.gif
...And Frau Farbissina

[trish]

She had two forty fives pointed straight at me...and also a gun.
[QUOTE=AshlynCreamher;1580719]http://powervrouwen.blog.nl/files/2014/11/austin-powers-fembots.gif

[Ben]

Lady Gaga... :)

[Ben]

Gotta love them boob guns -- :)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtIF1WBjFg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odtIF1WBjFg)

[AshlynCreamher]

Gotta love them boob guns -- :)



:dead:

[dreamon]

Admitting That Gun Control Doesn't Work, DC Mayor Calls For More Gun Control

http://downtrend.com/71superb/admitting-that-gun-control-doesnt-work-dc-mayor-calls-for-more-gun-control



The great thing about arguing gun control with leftist ninnies is that you don’t have to argue at all; they talk themselves into a corner leaving us pro-2A types free to sit back and laugh. Yesterday at a Navy Yard shooting memorial Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray made an impassioned speech (http://dcist.com/2014/09/gray_calls_for_tougher_gun_laws_at.php) about the need for more gun control, all the while providing proof that tough gun laws do nothing to reduce crime.
“Residents of our city lost friends and neighbors; they lost mothers and fathers; they lost colleagues and they lost fellow church members,” said Gray.
But how can this be? Washington DC has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Until recently, handguns were completely banned and the carrying of firearms was prohibited. If gun control laws work, wouldn’t DC be the safest place in the country?
“Our country is drowning in a sea of guns,” continued Gray stealing his material from President Obama.
DC should be an island oasis of safety in this sea of guns because of all the restriction placed on law-abiding citizens, right? Not so fast, Gray brought up the murder of a 14-year old on the streets of DC.
“Senseless gun violence like this is an all-too fact of life here in the District of Columbia and in the nation’s big cities. But it’s a fact of life that we need to stop accepting,” Gray said, continuing, “Why is it that these tragic occurrences never seem to move us any closer to ensure that guns don’t get in the hands of criminals or people who are mentally unstable?”
Wait a second, is he saying that all of DC’s unconstitutional anti-gun laws don’t keep firearms out of the hands of criminals? How’s that for a complete lack of self-awareness?
To hell with the fact that DC’s gun control laws have failed to create a safe city, Gray wants even more restrictions because they are bound to work eventually. He’s even calling for a “holistic” approach to gun control, but doesn’t explain what that is. I am assuming it involves granola, crystals, and yoga.

Unfortunately for the good Mayor, some pesky activist judges have forced the his city to fall into compliance with the 2nd Amendment by saying handgun bans and denying citizens their right to self-defense are unconstitutional. To this, Gray says:
“Those laws are tough laws, and the laws of others are now under attack by Second Amendment advocates who believe in putting the rights of gun owners before community safety.”
To be fair, denying people their 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms hasn’t proven to be a great community safety insurance policy in places like DC and Chicago where guns are severely restricted and the bodies keep piling up.
Gray finishes off his rant with a revised version of the Navy Yard shooting:
“Guns are not the answer, ladies and gentlemen. Guns would not have saved the victims of the Navy Yard.”
From Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Navy_Yard_shooting)

Eventually, Alexis jumped out from one of the desks and fired at DeSantis from approximately five feet away, shooting him once in his tactical vest, and the three officers returned fire. DeSantis was uninjured by the gunshot. At 9:25 a.m., Alexis was fatally shot in the head by DeSantis during the gunfight, and his death was later confirmed at 11:50 a.m. [my emphasis]
Guns in the hands of the good guys definitely stopped Aaron Alexis from claiming more victims in his rampage, so it’s not hard to imagine that guns in the hands of office workers could have saved some or all of the 12 victims that day. It’s just too bad the Navy Yard was a “gun-free zone” in the city of DC that, at the time, banned all civilians from concealed carry and a right to self-defense.

[dreamon]

Here's What Happened to Crime in Chicago after Illinois Finally Passed Concealed Carry Law

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/04/gun-control-advocates-who-say-more-guns-equal-more-crime-might-not-want-to-read-this/


On July 9, 2013, a bill to recognize Illinois gun owners’ right to carry concealed firearms was passed by both chambers of the state Legislature. Illinois became the last state in the nation to allow public possession of concealed guns.

Gun control advocates warned that high-crime areas, like Chicago, would only see more violence if residents were allowed to carry guns in public.
In reality, the opposite may be happening.
On Tuesday, the Chicago Police Department announced that the city experienced its lowest murder rate since 1958 (http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local/chicago_news&id=9487263) in the first quarter of 2014. There were 6 fewer murders than the same timeframe in 2013 — a 9 percent drop — and 55 fewer murders than 2012, police said.
Further, there were reportedly 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims (http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local/chicago_news&id=9487263) compared to last year. There have also been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims compared to the first quarter in 2012.
All crime is down 25 percent from 2013 and police say they have confiscated over 1,300 illegal guns in the last three months.
Now, it’s entirely too soon to conclude that the concealed carry law is partly responsible for Chicago’s across-the-board drop in the crime. However, it is not unreasonable to conclude the drop in crime may undercut gun control advocates’ argument that more guns equal more crime.
It should also be noted that the first concealed carry permits were issued in late February (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/illinois-officials-send-out-state-s-first-concealed-carry-gun/article_44579164-2693-534a-a66d-04e1cda57089.html), so the decrease in crime can’t yet be attributed to more people carrying guns.
The more telling statistics will be revealed as 2014 marches on. Still, as always, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation.
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called the drop in crime a “trend.” He attributed the drop to the “talent level of individuals” on the police force, “intelligent policing strategies” and other programs. He did not mention the concealed carry law.



Independent Journal Review’s Mike Miller (http://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/126664-coincidence-illinois-enacts-concealed-carry-law-chicago-murder-rate-plummets-immediately/) outlines some of the research that has been conducted on the issue:

Gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard made the famous argument in “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Firearms” that: “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect in a county, murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by 5 and 7 percent.” More guns mean less crime.
Gary Kleck, PhD., also a gun crime expert, found that the crime deterrence effect of firearms possession is significant: sophisticated statistics suggest three to four crimes are stopped by a handgun than are committed in the United States every year.
Detroit, a longtime progressive city plagued by violent crime, is currently taking an armed stand against criminals. The city’s police chief, James Craig, has advised “fed up” residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/07/watch-detroit-police-chief-goes-all-common-sense-on-guns-puts-thugs-on-notice/) if they feel their life is in danger.
He said criminals should be afraid to break into homes or commit other crimes because it could be the last thing they ever do. Craig also pointed out, “you’re not always going to have time to dial 911.”
As TheBlaze reported last month (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/27/residents-in-this-longtime-liberal-city-are-making-the-case-for-the-second-amendment-criminals-are-leaving-them-no-choice/), the number of fatal self-defense shootings are on the rise in Detroit. There had already been 10 fatal self-defense shootings in the city as of March 27, while there were only 15 in all of 2013.
Time will tell if criminals in Detroit will get the message and think twice before breaking the law. One thing is undeniable, as Craig says, “a lot of good Detroiters are fed up.”
This story has been updated to note that the first concealed carry permits in Illinois were issued in late February.

[trish]

Criminologists attribute the drop in crime rates to four major factors:

"– Long prison sentences, which have lengthened on average since sentencing reform initiatives in many states in the 1990s, have kept more criminals behind bars, albeit at a significant cost to state budgets.
– Improved community policing strategies are sending cops to places where crime is more likely to occur, as a prevention method. Technologies like video surveillance and acoustic sensors, which can hear gunshots before residents report a crime, are improving police response, too.
– A changing drug market has plunged the cost of heroin near historic lows, reducing crime associated with the drug trade. Pollack added that the end of the crack epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s has also contributed to a decline in drug-related violence.
– And an aging population is less likely to commit crimes. The fastest growing segment of the population is seniors, an age at which far fewer crimes are committed.
"

Mmmm, I don't see where it says concealed carry. God damn you science.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...precipitously/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/01/02/in-major-cities-murder-rates-drop-precipitously/)

[dreamon]

Criminologists attribute the drop in crime rates to four major factors:

"– Long prison sentences, which have lengthened on average since sentencing reform initiatives in many states in the 1990s, have kept more criminals behind bars, albeit at a significant cost to state budgets.
– Improved community policing strategies are sending cops to places where crime is more likely to occur, as a prevention method. Technologies like video surveillance and acoustic sensors, which can hear gunshots before residents report a crime, are improving police response, too.
– A changing drug market has plunged the cost of heroin near historic lows, reducing crime associated with the drug trade. Pollack added that the end of the crack epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s has also contributed to a decline in drug-related violence.
– And an aging population is less likely to commit crimes. The fastest growing segment of the population is seniors, an age at which far fewer crimes are committed.
"

Mmmm, I don't see where it says concealed carry. God damn you science.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...precipitously/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/01/02/in-major-cities-murder-rates-drop-precipitously/)

Oh, the Washington Post had an editorial on the matter? That must be gospel. What is Maddow's opinion on it? We should just ignore the facts if the Washington Post is involved!

[trish]

Oh, the Washington Post had an editorial on the matter? That must be gospel. ...I believe if you read the piece you will find it reports on statistics gathered by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, as well as statistics gathered by the cities of Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Austin, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Memphis, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Jose, Detroit, Phoenix, Chicago, Kansas City, Camden, Columbus and others as well as the research of a number of experts criminologists including Harold Pollack (co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab) and James Alan Fox (professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University.


What is Maddow's opinion on it? Don't know, don't care. What? Are you stereotyping me?


We should just ignore the facts if the Washington Post is involved!By facts you mean statistics gathered by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, as well as statistics gathered by the cities of Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Austin, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Memphis, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Jose, Detroit, Phoenix, Chicago, Kansas City, Camden, Columbus and others as well as the research of a number of experts criminologists including Harold Pollack (co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab) and James Alan Fox (professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University.

[trish]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971344/Shocking-moment-mother-pulls-GUN-female-student-14-fighting-teen-daughter-boy-Texas-park.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/three-year-old-shoots-self-texas-n314501

Nothing shocking here. Just the logical consequences of U.S. gun culture. Move along.

[thombergeron]

To state the blindingly obvious yet again, a society with more guns has more gun violence:

Right-to-carry gun laws linked to increase in violent crime, Stanford research shows (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/november/donohue-guns-study-111414.html)

[thombergeron]

Independent Journal Review’s Mike Miller outlines some of the research that has been conducted on the issue:

"some" is good way of putting it. You can always tell when someone gets 100% of their information from the gun lobby. The only "research" they're aware of is from Kleck, Lott, and Mustard.

To review, Kleck's entire academic contribution to the gun control debate was based on data that are now over 20 years old. His conclusions were completely disproven in the late 1990s.

John Lott's most significant contributions to the gun control debate were published between 1997 and 2002. He has spent much of the last decade destroying his own reputation. He has been unable to answer charges that he falsified data in his 1997 study. In the late 2000s, a series of papers and commentaries from Lott's fellow economists demonstrated that Lott's econometric models could not address the causal issues he was examining. In 2004, even Gary Kleck expressed skepticism at Lott's results. John Lott does not currently hold an academic appointment at any university or research institution.

David Mustard has not published any gun violence research at all in over 10 years.

Someone who is actually interested in an evidence-based discussion of gun violence would be familiar with names like Hemenway, Wintermute, Rivara, Ayers, Donohue.

That person would be familiar with Gary Slutkin's Cure Violence project in Chicago and its role in reducing violence there. Its hilarious, but entirely expected, that The Blaze credits this drop in gun violence to a concealed-carry law that hadn't taken effect yet, and doesn't even mention the clear success of Slutkin's community-based model in reducing gun violence in Chicago over the last decade.

Someone interested in the latest scientific findings on gun violence would know Daniel Webster's work and his analysis of SafeStreets in Baltimore. Webster has a paper coming out shortly showing that Missouri's 2007 repeal of a handgun "permit-to-purchase" law has led to a significant increase in firearm homicides in that state.

So, it looks like you have about a ton of reading to do before you can knowledgeably contribute to any discussion of gun violence in the US. Let us know how you do with that.

[martin48]

Charleston shooting - still haven't got rid of those guns yet, I see

[yodajazz]

I still say it's not about whether guns are legal or not, its the individual deciding the risks internally of keeping a gun in your home. If someone were to invade your home, you a number of things you could use in your defense. When I was robbed on the the street, if I had had a weapon, it would have immediately raised the stakes, since he got the jump on me. I'm not sure that his gun was real. Anyway, here's story this month, of a gun for protection brings death into a home.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/charges-ohio-mom-year-shot-killed-31830760

Here's another toddler gun death in my state, from April:

http://time.com/3818931/shooting-ohio-three-year-old-unattended-gun/

[fred41]

To be fair, there are gun defense stories out there...here are just two examples from June of this year (there are more):
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/2015/06/15/one-man-dead-after-two-breadbox-robberies/71238548/

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2015/06/08/woman-shoots-carjacking-suspect-detroits-west-side/28675567/

[trish]

http://nyti.ms/1Psx77v

Laws, regulations and enforcement are necessitated by the fact that there will be assholes.

[Ben in LA]

Still waiting for that gun ban...2016 is almost here...

[trish]

Twenty primary school children are slaughtered and thanks to Republican foot-dragging, Congress does nothing: apparently the freedom to carry death in a holster, trumps the sanctity of life.

[martin48]

Virginia TV journalists shot: Suspect confirmed dead
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34068541

[Ben in LA]

They'll come out of the woodwork eventually...

[Stavros]

Virginia TV journalists shot: Suspect confirmed dead


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34068541

From what we now know about Bryce Williams, what he needed most was advice and help; what he needed least was a gun.

[martin48]

From what we now know about Bryce Williams, what he needed most was advice and help; what he needed least was a gun.

Good, if sorry, summary of where you are with gun control


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/27/virginia-shooting-gun-control-obstacles-remain

[yodajazz]

In the last two weeks here, a five year old boy, and a three year old, were killed in drive-by shootings. The city is in a deep mood, right about now.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/09/family_announces_funeral_arran.html

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/09/family_announces_funeral_arran.html

[artist1413]

Maybe I won't be popular for this, but people getting shot is not the fault of guns. I blame people growing up in broken families, apathy for education and respect for the comminity, bad parenting, the glorification of a life of crime, drugs, and the constant victim mentality that is rampant in most urban areas now. All of this is a recipe for high crime rates and unfortunately, innocent people will get hurt. It is sad because the killer(s) will probably get away with it. Why? Because there is a rule in urban environments unless the police are shooting you. The rule is SNITCHES GET STITCHES.

[trish]

Guns Don't Kill People, Bullets Do.
___this ad funded by Gun's Without Bullets.

[buttslinger]

There is a problem with telling slack jawed rednecks and hopped up gangbangers they are wrong: they don't care what you think. They actually think they have opinions and can pursue happiness as they see fit. You can't tell people they have to lock up their guns because they might hurt someone, and then say people can abort lives because that's the mother's business. Sometimes 49% of the people aren't wrong, they see things differently than the 51%. Sometimes the mother sees the transsexual in the family a lot more dangerous than her five gun totin' brothers.
Before you can eliminate Cops with guns and Armymen with bombs you have to eliminate Thieves with guns and ISIS. There are entire black neighborhoods that will not cooperate with the police because they believe that the cops represent a society that has abandoned them. Transsexuals who get jobs doing porn or prostituting themselves say it is the only way they can make it in a society that has no room for them.
Of course you can dictate from high moral ground, but you can't legislate from on high. If the People want to kill fetuses and murderers and terrorists and each other in the pursuit of a more perfect union then you can't bypass the will of the people to make them all move forward. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
In other words, if the Democrats try to tell half the country they're stupid, they will lose half the country. Not wise.

[yodajazz]

I guess this passes for good news in Cleveland. A 10 year old, who was a passenger in a car, was shot, but unlike the 3 year old earlier this week, he will live. However, he will have to live with seeing the person next to him, the car's driver killed before his eyes.

On the subject of abortion. I am against it in principle. However I also understand that i should not have the write to dictate my will, into someone else's life, especially since I have never carried a fetus inside of me. I had a practical experience once. I was visiting a woman, who had three young children, who was pregnant. She was yelling at the kids in what I viewed as a harsh manner. Meanwhile, she had a phone call and appeared to be arguing with the caller, who she said was the children's father. She did mention that she planned on terminating her pregnancy. I did feel the I was in no position to tell her how to conduct her life. I would have seen her perhaps, one more time, and that was it. So who are we to tell someone else, how to live their life. I see so many people complain about the public having to support children.

[AshlynCreamher]

PROTECTING OUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights)

Donald J. Trump on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/second-amendment-rights)

Interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals and not law abiding citizens

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.

[trish]

Interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals and not law abiding citizens Isn't this a tautology? It's also the case that all accidental shootings involving guns involve accidental interactions between people and guns.

Gun ownership is not a God given right nor a natural right, as guns are a relatively recent invention definitely post- dating God and the evolution of terrestrial primates. Indeed it is the second amendment that creates the (rather outdated) right to bare arms for the purposes of maintaining State militias.

[buttslinger]

I just saw on MEET THE PRESS a Reporter saying that as far as abortion goes, the Republicans are going to "die on that hill" which means I think that although abortion is really a terrible thing, even most Republicans feel deep down they don't want to raise a million kids that their own Mothers don't even want. Being a GOOD PERSON is hard fucking work. The Republicans are only talking up this issue now because Hillary IS pro-choice incarnate, and they want to throw bloody fetuses on her pants suit.
Back to guns, nobody is going to argue that they do bad things, but just like booze, and drugs, and laziness and greed, people like their vices. The War on Drugs was a dismal failure. Even if gun laws close loopholes and outlaw 100 round banana clips, murder rates will still soar in Chicago.
Cigarettes ....I used to smoke 'em, but I'm glad they've been quietly taxed and litigated out of fashion. I think it will be easier to litigate sugary foods out of existence than guns. But that can only happen with a Democratic Congress and Presidency. You have to choose your battles. You have to have them won before they're even fought. It has to be carried out under the public's radar. And gun control in the USA is a losing fight. These Yanks be crazy, Bro.

[trish]

If the status of the Second Amendment is fait accompli then why does the NRA feel the need to spend so much time, money and effort on the issue? There are a lot of things that won't be changing anytime soon (e.g. tax exemption for Churches), but public opinion on guns is definitely in flux. It used to be that nearly 50% of households had a hunter who owned a rifle or two. That number is way down. There are more firearms in the U.S. today than ever before, their ownership is concentrated to way fewer households.

[buttslinger]

I don't have the facts and figures on whether or not gun ownership is good or bad for the American way of life. But I'm sure TEAM OBAMA has.
The reason the ONE PERCENT is the ONE PERCENT is because they were the most motivated players on the free trade field. They used every advantage they had. They made it happen. If the ANTI-NRA folks want to have their way, they're going to have to get off their asses and make it happen. If the Indians want to change the name of the Washington Redskins, let them take their casino money and buy the team.
Free Speech=Talk is Cheap.

[trish]

The reason the ONE PERCENT is the ONE PERCENT is because they were the most motivated players on the free trade field. They used every advantage they had. and they had every inheritable advantage (which doesn't necessarily entail they were the most motivated, or had the best ideas or are in any measurable way the most deserving).

[AshlynCreamher]

Isn't this a tautology? It's also the case that all accidental shootings involving guns involve accidental interactions between people and guns.


It's like all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and cars

Should we start banning cars?

[trish]

No, but we should of course regulate them. Make laws about who can drive them. Make people take periodic tests. Renew their licenses. Outlaw cars that a dangerous. Make people wear safety belts. Hire police to closely monitor their use on the public highways. Fine people who speed, drive recklessly, etc. We should do this not because all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and cars (because that would be true even if there were zero motor accidents). We should do it because there are an inordinate number of motor accidents every year that can be prevented by the appropriate regulation.

Still, why do you think its so interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals? Isn't the number 100%? Isn't it just a tautology? Surely the relevant fact here is that there are a hell of a lot of gun crimes committed every year and a hell of a lot of accidental shootings and a hell of a lot of suicides committed with guns...all of which can be minimized with the appropriate regulation.

[martin48]

It's like all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and cars

Should we start banning cars?

We should ban concealed cars. Someone can suddenly pull a car out and drive it at you

[Ben in LA]

No, but we should of course regulate them. Make laws about who can drive them. Make people take periodic tests. Renew their licenses. Outlaw cars that a dangerous. Make people wear safety belts. Hire police to closely monitor their use on the public highways. Fine people who speed, drive recklessly, etc. We should do this not because all accidental deaths with cars involve accidental interactions between people and cars (because that would be true even if there were zero motor accidents). We should do it because there are an inordinate number of motor accidents every year that can be prevented by the appropriate regulation.

Still, why do you think its so interesting that 99.9% of all gun crimes are committed by criminals? Isn't the number 100%? Isn't it just a tautology? Surely the relevant fact here is that there are a hell of a lot of gun crimes committed every year and a hell of a lot of accidental shootings and a hell of a lot of suicides committed with guns...all of which can be minimized with the appropriate regulation.
..........

[buttslinger]

The solution is realizing there is no solution. There are millions of Americans who have absolutely no business owning a gun, or driving a car, or having children. Add booze to that equation, and try and litigate that mess. A perfect society would have to begin with taking away people's money and freedom.

[trish]

Of course there's no perfect society where all accidents are prevented all crimes are subverted. If that's the problem of course there's no solution. But that's the problem you continue to pose. More practical people seek ways to optimize our current practices to mitigate and minimize undesired outcomes. There are scores of solutions. We brought traffic deaths down over the past decade or two. We can easily do the same with gun deaths.

[buttslinger]

Just make sure you're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. Today's cars drive like sewing machines, it cost me 800 bucks to change the starter! That may be safer than a V-8 and 75mph speed limits, but it's also testicle shrinking. If you castrated all the men, the world would be a safer place.

“Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.” -Bob Barker

[trish]

Why would I rob Peter to pay Paul? If I'm unscrupulous enough to rob Peter, I'm surely going to find a way to short change Paul as well. Maybe I'll cut the balls off both those bastards and run away with Mary.

[martin48]

Rare picture of Peter and Mary together

[buttslinger]

Why would I rob Peter to pay Paul? If I'm unscrupulous enough to rob Peter, I'm surely going to find a way to short change Paul as well. Maybe I'll cut the balls off both those bastards and run away with Mary.

Jeez, could you please get serious for one second? You and Ashlyn are exactly alike. You scream for Bernie and Donald but you will eventually vote for Hillary and Jeb like everybody else. Abortion is murder and illegal immigrants are illegal. That is true for Obama, and it was true with both Bushes. And Reagan. Big fish eat little fish, and we here at PORN.COM are all little fish. We scream that a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk cost four bucks each, but we buy them just like everybody else. I have no solution for this that will actually work. So I remain a loser with my baloney sandwich and glass of milk and porn. Eating the cake they give me.......polishing my .357.......

[buttslinger]

Rare picture of Peter and Mary together

And you, Martin......mocking Christ on the cross........God.....

[martin48]

And you, Martin......mocking Christ on the cross........God.....

Certainly not

[buttslinger]

Certainly not

We forgive you....

[Jericho]

I saw what you did there! :dead:

[buttslinger]

Let me slip out of my skin tight leopard print buttslinger pants and say that there is a reason the politics/religion section is down here in the basement, it's funny to me that people who are so concerned about people being blown away with guns trivialize abortion, and vice versa. And it's not ALL GOOD up in the porno section either, everyone I've known in the Adult Entertainment business have disastrous family values, lots of problems there. While I believe every problem is finite and solvable, the only logical solution to life is death, that's the beauty of GOD.

[trish]

Who TRIVIALIZED abortion? I may not think aborting a blastosphere is murder, but that doesn't mean I think that the decision to carry or not to carry to term is a trivial one. Don't you think the one-size-fits-all approach trivializes the issue? No allowance for the stage of morphogenic development, no allowance for the health of the woman, or the rights of the woman, no tolerance even for birth control devices or drugs that would prevent implantation! Nothing but abstinence. All abortions at any stage of development is likened to sucking the brains out of a baby. The It's-All-Murder approach does nothing but trivialize a complex issue and all for political purposes. Give me break!

[buttslinger]

Most abortions don't take place because of rape or incest, most of them happen because some chick gets knocked up and doesn't want some kid cramping her style for the next eighteen years. All those pregnancies were preventable, very preventable. They even have morning after pills now, too much hassle. Maybe instead of murder charges those girls should get misdemeanor fines. Like over-parking in an unauthorized zone.
My point is this is a very murky zone, it is not clearly anything. If you're going to go to the trouble of digging it out and throwing it in the trash, don't call it a blastosphere, like it's a kidney stone or something.

[trish]

If you're going to call it anything, call it what it is; when is still just a few hundred cells along, it's a blastosphere...not a person, not a baby, not soul, not a even fetus. Instead of trivializing the issue, let's make some distinctions between phases of development and as well as practical, safe and effective modes of contraception vs impractical or ineffective modes.

The war against Planned Parenthood is a war against planned parenthood. What the right wanted all along is not just to end abortion, but contraception. Children are not blessings, they're to be used as punishments levied against women and girls who who think sex can be more than just for procreation.

http://nyti.ms/1KrEqrQ

[martin48]

A few thoughts on the right of women to have abortions

The foetus is not necessarily a 'person' with the right to live
a collection of human cells does not have the right to live just because it is of the human species otherwise amputating a limb would be murder

a collection of human cells only has the right to live by virtue of certain facts. These are either:
it has reached a particular stage of development that makes it a moral 'person'
it possesses certain properties that make it a moral 'person'

It is not always wrong to end the life of an innocent person
there are many cases where we have to choose which of two innocent people will live and which will die:
conjoined twins, where the operation to separate them may cause one twin to die
any case of a woman who had to abandon one of her children to save the other

'Potential human beings' don't have rights
only "actual" human beings have rights

The pregnant woman has moral rights too
under some circumstances these may override the foetus's right to live
these moral rights include:
the right to ownership of her own body
the right to decide her own future
the right to take decisions without intervention by others

the pregnant woman has the right to life - where not aborting the foetus would put the mother's life or health in danger she has the moral right to abort the foetus

Morality is never easy – but do we leave some choices to individuals?

[broncofan]

That's a really great post on the issue. There is of course great disagreement over when the collection of cells attains the status of personhood. Assuming it's at some point prior to birth, then the latter part of your post kicks in. What right does a pregnant woman have to get an abortion after the fetus has crossed the threshold of personhood and there is not a serious threat to the mother's health? I think the personal autonomy of a woman is enough to justify the abortion even without a threat to her safety, and even after the fetus is a moral person. This is a position a lot of people would probably be uncomfortable with and so if they support abortion rights at that point they would be more likely to claim the fetus does not achieve personhood until after viability. Of course I do not know when a fetus becomes a moral person..perhaps when the fetus is aware of its existence...

The interesting thing about the cases of conjoined twins is that in the cases I've read about the twins will not survive without surgery. So it is a choice of either both twins dying, or the "parasitic" twin being excised to save the dominant twin. I wonder if courts would decide that personal autonomy would permit one twin to force a surgery if it meant the other would die but they would otherwise survive and live a compromised existence with one twin essentially stealing nutrition and vital functions from the other for their natural life? Probably not. We are much more comfortable with the calculus here when we end up with a net savings and we can defend the action on utilitarian grounds rather than personal autonomy.

[buttslinger]

Even if a fetus is not human, or women have rights, can Trish and Martin at least admit that an abortion occurs because of an error, a mistake, a boo boo, ??????? That there a no such thing as being "a little pregnant???" Step up to the plate, admit abortions are, if not illegal, at least BAD!! Jesus!
I am pro-choice, but I don't think all the millions of pro-lifers are wrong, they have a different point of view, they have different priorities than me. I don't even believe life has a beginning or end, I believe notions do, acts do.
I notice the Pope just talked about climate change and illegal aliens, but he didn't talk about abortions or pedophilia. I think maybe that Pope has an agenda!
If the blastopheres get a good lawyer and a sentimental judge they become human beings. And abortions become murder.
You cum shooting transsexual heathens need to put a clothes pin on those reproductive organs of yours and let the righteous family types judge what is right. You stick to your pornography and orgies where you belong. Do the world a big favor and get sterilized! Stay away from the children!!!!!!

[trish]

Did I anywhere suggest that women who don't want to get pregnant deliberately get pregnant? If a woman is contemplating an abortion it may be because in a moment of abandon she had unprotected sex. This is the more likely scenario for young girls who are taught or forced into circumstances where abstinence is their only mode of birth control. Outside the Bible Belt most sexually active young girls wishing to avoid pregnancy are on the pill, use an iud or condoms. One can forget to take the pill. Condoms leak, sometimes tear, and in moments of abandon the couple may fail to use them. An iud can involve other risks and discomforts and so are less frequently used.

but no, not everything that is the result of a mistake is bad. An abortion may be in some circumstances exactly the right choice for a woman. It depends on the woman and her circumstances.

Yes the strident pro lifers who want to get rid of the right of a woman to choose and make effective birth control illegal have a perspective, an immoral perspective. They are simply wrong. I'm open to negotiate lot's of middle ground. But those who say it's all murder simply want to force their religious views on others. And that's wrong. It's a matter of wanting to control what others do. It's power tripping. If they don't want to use birth control or have an abortion they are free to live by the tenants of their religion. No one's forcing them to have abortions or to use the pill. But other women too should be allowed to decide according to their conscious. The choice is always a hard one. Too often people make the mistake ( and I think this may include you) that women who do choose to abort do it without conscience, without thought and without regard for the moral consequences. You are wrong. Rare is the woman who ever takes this choice lightly.

Many think abortion is a religious matter and having one is in defiance of the religious prohibition against the taking of a life. But to make this argument work they update the religious doctrine to declare life begins at conception. They then want to see this religious injunction made into law. Ironic that most these people are against the heavy hand of the law interfering in their other affairs. No legislator can enact a law for these reasons and remain consistent with the Constitution.

As for your characterization of the transgendered as whores and pornograhers, and your opinion that we should not be expressing ours: go fuck yourself. ;)

[buttslinger]

.....As for your characterization of the transgendered as whores and pornograhers, and your opinion that we should not be expressing ours: go fuck yourself. ;)

Hey Trishikins, how about expressing your real life photo on here?????
I notice the MOTHERS of the World have exercised their pro choice right to not even visit this site. And kids under 18 has exercised their zero-rights to not visit here. I'm kind of glad I don't have any bastards out there running around, but I'm not going to give my DNA to Ancestory.com either. Better safe than sorry.

You don't have to be a religious nut to hope the woman you marry doesn't start fucking everything in pants, or hope your daughter doesn't start exercising her constitutional rights to an abortion every six months.

I actually wonder how many transsexuals out there aren't whores and pornographers. Because all the ones I see are. I guess the ones I don't see are leading quiet peaceful lives. Abiding the Law. Maybe some of them are religious......... Those FOOLS!!!!!!

[trish]

You don't have to be a religious nut to hope the woman you marry doesn't start fucking everything in pants, or hope your daughter doesn't start exercising her constitutional rights to an abortion every six months.

Both of these are pretty much mythological creatures whose existence is promulgated respectively by producers of porn (in the case of promiscuously cuckolding wives) and the producers of right wing talking points (in the case of girls who regularly use abortion for birth control). So if not a religious nut, what kind of nut is it who worries his wife and daughter will manifest myth?

[broncofan]

If the blastopheres get a good lawyer and a sentimental judge they become human beings.
Martin's post discusses this doesn't it? It's an interesting question to figure out when someone attains personhood status. Someone can have personhood status but so depend on another's bodily functions that the other person in some circumstances should be able to cut the cord (ie. conjoined twins). There's also a famous and elaborate hypothetical involving life support machines that is an "even if" argument in favor of robust abortion rights. I am not going to look for it.

Anyhow, I think as a matter of policy there is nothing wrong with reasonable regulations requiring a woman to get an abortion within a certain period of time. If a woman can get an abortion before the fetus reaches any reasonable threshold of personhood status then it's unnecessary to argue that even in such circumstances a person's autonomy overrides the interests of someone dependent upon the use of their bodily functions for survival. But I don't think there should be any restrictions in the case of a genuine health threat to the mother, which is essentially a choice question, since the mother might otherwise die during childbirth.

[buttslinger]

What part of the word ABORTION don't you understand? You are aborting a life. It is located in the WOMB.
Of course they don't attain personhood if you go in there and cut them out. That's the whole point.
Hey, listen, parents are saps. Kids are a pain in the ass, have you ever been on a plane with one?
God, please kill me, right?

[Stavros]

A few thoughts on the right of women to have abortions

The foetus is not necessarily a 'person' with the right to live
a collection of human cells does not have the right to live just because it is of the human species otherwise amputating a limb would be murder

a collection of human cells only has the right to live by virtue of certain facts. These are either:
it has reached a particular stage of development that makes it a moral 'person'
it possesses certain properties that make it a moral 'person'

It is not always wrong to end the life of an innocent person
there are many cases where we have to choose which of two innocent people will live and which will die:
conjoined twins, where the operation to separate them may cause one twin to die
any case of a woman who had to abandon one of her children to save the other

'Potential human beings' don't have rights
only "actual" human beings have rights

The pregnant woman has moral rights too
under some circumstances these may override the foetus's right to live
these moral rights include:
the right to ownership of her own body
the right to decide her own future
the right to take decisions without intervention by others

the pregnant woman has the right to life - where not aborting the foetus would put the mother's life or health in danger she has the moral right to abort the foetus

Morality is never easy – but do we leave some choices to individuals?

The weakness of this argument lies in its inability to decide what the moral core of the argument on abortion actually is, or indeed if there is one. Life is sacred, life is not sacred. It is wrong to take life, sometimes it is right.

As opponents of abortion have argued, mostly but not always from the perspective of their Christianity, 'life begins with conception' and clearly, from a scientific point of view, this is irrefutable for as long as those cells continue to develop into the human being that ultimately emerges from the womb.

If the same people take the position that it is morally wrong to terminate that life through an abortion because it is morally wrong to take life, the moral problem does not limit itself to the foetus, but to all of life, whether it is the tomato flourishing on the vine, a lamb grazing in a meadow, or the mosquito buzzing around your bed. The absolute nature of the judgement can only become practical for those who take the 'life is sacred' position if they then create a separate set of moral judgements -which they may claim are derived from God- for humans, animals, plant life and so on, and this indeed is how the development of human societies incorporated a multitude of dietary rules in order to take advantage of the food and drink that sustain life, even though eating animal flesh is not an essential need to sustain life; but it remains the case that Jews and Muslims say a prayer of forgiveness for the soul of the animal they are about to kill and eat.

A second moral dilemma for those opposed to abortion, moves on from the basic claim about the 'sanctity of life' to address those who for some reason -like the conjoined siamese twins- are in a perilous situation in which their lives are painfully insecure for reasons of nature; or who have suffered such grievous injuries that medicine and surgery offer no hope that life can be sustained. Yet even here some Christians (and Jehova's Witnesses) have argued that it is wrong to interfere because only God can make that decision so that the conjoined twins must be fed for as long as they can be until they die, and that the person severely injured must also be left to die, and if the doctors can mitigate the pain all the better, and because, crucially, it is not the business of medical personnel to occasion death, but to prevent it.

The third dilemma emerges with the contradiction between the 'sanctity of life' argument if the same people who advocate it support the death penalty and the use of military force in war; while a fourth, which is perhaps the most moral of them all, relates to the quality of life and whether or not the same Christians or Muslims (for example) who believe in loving communities, take care of an unwanted child born to a woman refused an abortion.

For those who take the moral argument for abortion as addressed in Martin's post, but who do not do so from a religious perspective, the right to take life can easily lose a narrow right as something essential at the time, to become a relative matter of choice, be it suicide, euthanasia, or war, so that this argument has no moral value at all, unable as it is to hold on to a secure concept of what the moral position on life should be, collapsing into a relativist -valid here, not valid there status which, for example, justifies a war against the Russians in 1853 but not in 2015. This might be pragmatic politics, but is it morality? Hans Morgenthau argued in his book Politics Among Nations that morality had/has no place in international relations.

There is an alternative way of looking at this, and that is to focus more closely on the law, where in the case of abortion, as also hinted at in Martin's and later in Trish's posts, the right of an individual is taken to be the primary interest. This shifts the moral argument from a general, sometimes vaguely stated theme about life, to an actually living person with legal rights, giving the moral content of the law a more secure foundation.

What has been clear from what some Republican candidates think from their Christian perspective, although I believe they may have changed their opinion, was revealed in the case of the girl in Paraguay who was (allegedly, as not proven in a court of law) raped by her step-father and who as a result became pregnant, but was denied an abortion. The baby was delivered by caesarian section when she was 11, presumably because a natural birth might have killed her. There are some difficult issues here -to begin with can a 10 year old decide if she wants an abortion or not? Second, because a 10 year old is not legally old enough to be regarded as an independent person, either her family/guardian or the state must make decisions for her and in this case her mother applied for an abortion which was turned down because in most cases abortion is illegal in Paraguay unless a life is threatened, which it was decided was not the case here. More worrying for Paraguay is the claim that at least 2 girls under the age of 16 give birth every day in Paraguay, though their precise ages may not be known but some may be much younger than 16.

If a focus on the right of the individual is the primary interest, this does not in fact remove the vexing problem of 'the taking of life' as quite clearly, unless it is dead, there is a foetus in the womb. Moreover, my own experience having known three women who had an abortion, one a close friend, is that the decision is not taken lightly, it can haunt the woman concerned for years after and is in every way a most disagreeable experience.

The fundamental problem that thus remains is that an abortion terminates life, but making abortion illegal takes away the right of an individual woman to make a decision about her own life as a free person, indeed, it takes away her freedom.

The sad fact of the matter is that abortion has been part of human society since earliest times, that infanticide has also been and in some parts of the world, still is a common occurrence (I am thinking of China), most commonly of all when the baby is born female. A pragmatic approach is to argue that if a woman has so completely rejected her pregnancy that she is determined to end it, she will find a way so that making abortion illegal just makes it harder for a woman to obtain one.

As a pacifist I am opposed to the taking of life on principle, be it abortion or war, but I cannot prevent either from taking place and only in my Utopia are all children born to loving parents, and thus I take the view that the law must guarantee the liberty of the individual, that in these cases we cannot grant legal recognition to a foetus but we can to the woman carrying it.

Ultimately it is she who must live with the consequences of her decision, whether it is relief or regret.

[trish]

Buttslinger:
What part of the word ABORTION don't you understand?To abort is to call off before it's too late: as in NASA called off the mission due to inclement weather. It seems the real issue lies not in the meaning of the word "abort" but a number of questions of the form "What claim does a fertilized egg have on the woman who harbors it?" Or "What claim does a blastosphere have on the woman who harbors it?" "What claim does a two month old embryo have on the woman who harbors it?" Etc. The fact that a sperm, an egg, a fertilized egg, a blastosphere, an embryo are living cells or living tissue does not mean each is "a life." Most intelligent people (except for the strident anti-choice crowed) contend that a living tissue is not "a life" deserving of rights until it attains a modicum of autonomy. To confuse "living" with "a life" is to bias the issue.

Bronco:
There's also a famous and elaborate hypothetical involving life support machines that is an "even if" argument in favor of robust abortion rights. I am not going to look for it. Perhaps you're thinking of this article first published by philosopher Judith Thomson in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1971 http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

[fred41]

Anyhow, I think as a matter of policy there is nothing wrong with reasonable regulations requiring a woman to get an abortion within a certain period of time. If a woman can get an abortion before the fetus reaches any reasonable threshold of personhood status then it's unnecessary to argue that even in such circumstances a person's autonomy overrides the interests of someone dependent upon the use of their bodily functions for survival. But I don't think there should be any restrictions in the case of a genuine health threat to the mother, which is essentially a choice question, since the mother might otherwise die during childbirth.

Yup, pretty much my feelings too.
Do I want anyone aborting a, ready to go, real life cabbage patch kid...no. Unless I'm wrong, I don't think that's what we're talking about. YES...even that cabbage patch kid might have to go in very rare cases - such as the mother's life being in danger...but other than that, we're usually talking about the "2001:A Space Odyssey" type fetus.
...and in that case scrape away if you have to.
Look, it's usually the best thing for everyone...and I'm sure most people don't make the decision easily, but I've seen FAR too many cases where the decision was made to keep the child and it turned out a cluster fuck for everyone, including the village that had to raise the child.

If you really think there are folks that use abortions as birth control, then do you really want people that use them as such raising children???!!.where's the benefit to that for anyone?. Where's the benefit to 'babies raising babies'?
Are the people clamoring to save those unborn lives offering to adopt and raise those precious lives? I think not, for the most part.

Some of the biggest mistakes in life revolve around sex. It's an overpowering force of hormones and drive. People often risk HIV and other diseases under that mind set...and sometimes wind up dying because of it. Does anyone really want a woman to be legally bound to a decision made under that type of influence?!
I don't.

[fred41]

Anecdotal alert: My ex told me she had an abortion early in our dating days..and it still haunts her to this day. She still realizes it was the right decision at the time (and I totally agree), but she described the the incident and her feelings before and after and there is no way in hell that was an easy decision. I'm not saying it's like that for everyone, but still....

Plenty of women already feel they are murdering a human being when they have an abortion, but they know that it's the right decision to make and are willing to live with that godawful feeling for the rest of their lives.
They don't need for a law or for the screaming masses to , yet again, tell them it's MURDER!.
They have a burden...let's not make it heavier.
I'll never have to make that final decision.
I'm not gonna shove one down someone's else's throat.

[broncofan]

Yup, pretty much my feelings too.
Do I want anyone aborting a, ready to go, real life cabbage patch kid...no. Unless I'm wrong, I don't think that's what we're talking about. YES...even that cabbage patch kid might have to go in very rare cases - such as the mother's life being in danger...but other than that, we're usually talking about the "2001:A Space Odyssey" type fetus.
...and in that case scrape away if you have to.
Look, it's usually the best thing for everyone...and I'm sure most people don't make the decision easily, but I've seen FAR too many cases where the decision was made to keep the child and it turned out a cluster fuck for everyone, including the village that had to raise the child.

I actually had you in mind when I wrote this because I remember you discussing the issue and saying sarcastically something like there were some that believe a child is not a person until kindergarten (I can't remember the exact tongue in cheek remark but you were talking about the most extreme views of pro-lifers and pro-choicers). But if we can find some agreeable definition then the fetus has rights counterbalancing the rights of the mother.

I said in my first post that I actually believe a mother's right to control her body could trump the interest of the unborn even without an emergency and even after the fetus is a moral person (I wouldn't expect anyone to agree and it's a philosophical belief I'm not sure I would endorse in practice).

But as a policy matter I think it's a good idea to have restrictions because there is no need to wait until your are doing harm to a person. Why not require those who are getting abortions to get them before they might do harm to a conscious being? I am assuming there's a significant enough time window that the tough case can be avoided altogether and the mother can make an informed choice.

I think life is extremely valuable, but I think those who make arguments in favor of the sanctity of life end up treating the dividing line between life and death as the only one with significance. Let's say you have two people. One is young, happy, and healthy. He suffers horrible burns and will live the next fifty years disfigured and in agony. Now let's say there is another person who is unhappy, enfeebled, and has a short life expectancy. He dies. Which is a greater loss? I don't think reductions in quality of life are qualitatively different from loss of life. Only sometimes different in value. But this is only a utilitarian calculation. I think individual rights sometimes trump that. Could you force someone to give their kidney to save a life? If life is sacred and can't be balanced against other interests then how can someone refuse to provide something that doesn't kill them for the sake of saving a stranger's life?

[broncofan]

Bronco: Perhaps you're thinking of this article first published by philosopher Judith Thomson in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1971 http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
That is it. Thanks! And I never actually read it…someone brought it up once in a discussion class. I should take a look.

[fred41]

I actually had you in mind when I wrote this because I remember you discussing the issue and saying sarcastically something like there were some that believe a child is not a person until kindergarten (I can't remember the exact tongue in cheek remark but you were talking about the most extreme views of pro-lifers and pro-choicers). But if we can find some agreeable definition then the fetus has rights counterbalancing the rights of the mother.


Wow, someone not only reads, but actually remembers some of my gibberish. Totally cool. :)
Thank you Bronc.
I actually change my views based on new information...and I always try to admit when I (recognize) was wrong. I don't think my views on abortion have changed much...maybe some of the wording I've used...
been Pro choice (don't like the term , versus Pro-LIFE - like you can't appreciate a living being but recognize a life/death choice has to be made...but meh) my whole life...regardless of political or religious persuasion at the time.

Next time you're in NYC P.M. me.

[broncofan]

Wow, someone not only reads, but actually remembers some of my gibberish. Totally cool.

Next time you're in NYC P.M. me.
Will do. Whether I ever meet other posters on this site, I've given you all personhood status in my head:)

[Loud Love]

My friend's older brother was target shooting at his country home, and he shot himself in the leg with an old Army .45...With the safety on.It was a bad wound and he had to crawl all the way back to the house. The cop who came with the ambulance accidentally shot the gun in the house, again, with the safety on.

I am too lazy to look up the data, but I'd take a wild guess that the US has so many shootings is because the US has so many guns.

The Romans used to say the people will never interfere in politics as long as they have bread and circuses. Guns are an illusion of power.

This sounds highly unlikely if you refer to the the Colt 1911 and not the Colt 1873. With an Ordinance Department required thumb safety, grip safety and the required pulling of the trigger to fire said arm, these are either the most incompetent and uneducated folks to ever pickup a firearm or not a factual claim. Many of you are living up to your WCA claim.

[buttslinger]

Listen, I'm surprised 100% of the people here aren't Pro-Abortion. Just please don't go all Hippocratic on me, ninety percent of abortions happen because a kid would mess up Mom's plans.

[buttslinger]

This sounds highly unlikely if you refer to the the Colt 1911 and not the Colt 1873. With an Ordinance Department required thumb safety, grip safety and the required pulling of the trigger to fire said arm, these are either the most incompetent and uneducated folks to ever pickup a firearm or not a factual claim. Many of you are living up to your WCA claim.
What?

[Loud Love]

The gun supporting people here have still not answered the question about why they WANT to own these weapons.

To try not to be a victim of criminals using guns against us. We do have a right to protect ourselves , families and properties. IMO, a very stupid question.

[Loud Love]

within 3-4 months it will all be forgetten about and gun sales/ammo etc will be back to normal service in the usa .... then when the next mass shooting happens it will boot off again and the cycle will repeat itself ..

Getting americans to stop owning guns would be like getting the english to stop drinking tea .. never going to happen ..

my view anyway :)

I love you Libby!

[hippifried]

What?
"What?" What?
I thought this was a gun threat too.

[broncofan]

off topic;

[trish]

Listen, I'm surprised 100% of the people here aren't Pro-Abortion. Just please don't go all Hippocratic on me, ninety percent of abortions happen because a kid would mess up Mom's plans.
Duh! It is almost always the case that the women's decision will take into account her individual plans, her current and likely future circumstances and how well prepared she is to take on the responsibilities of motherhood. While she is yet not a mother, she may or may not decide to become one. Who are you to tell her she's being immoral to consider exactly these factors?

You claim that you're pro-choice. Time to tell us the reasoning that lands you on that side of the fence.

[trish]

Hi hippiefried!!! Long time, no see. Kisses.

[hippifried]

Hi hippiefried!!! Long time, no see. Kisses.
Love you too, Sweetheart.

[trish]

So Loud Love, I see that so far you've gone all the back to 2013 in order to downthumb twenty odd items I wrote. And no rebuttals offered. Really? That's rather like shooting a girl in the back.

[broncofan]

So Loud Love, I see that so far you've gone all the back to 2013 in order to downthumb twenty odd items I wrote. And no rebuttals offered. Really? That's rather like shooting a girl in the back.
Twenty odd items!! That's crazy…get your point across with one or two like he did to me. Dating back to January of 2013. I was a different person in 2013…back in 2013 I wasn't a member of the NRA, I didn't own twenty five firearms, ten pairs of camouflage pants, and I had never shot a moose from a helicopter (or a motorboat; ask me how I did that).

As for shooting you in the back, maybe he thought you walked across his lawn or were somewhere near his boundary lines. But someone who down votes twenty votes without responding to a single one of them is unlikely to be the type to overreact:)

[broncofan]

I love you Libby!
What exactly about that post do you find affirming as an American? She compared her country's love of tea, a warm flavorful slightly caffeinated beverage with our love of deadly weapons. Just prior to that she predicted a cycle of mass shootings followed by periods of collective ignorance about the history of mass shootings and their causes. Perhaps a description, probably not intended an insult, but far from a compliment.

[buttslinger]

Many of you are living up to your WCA claim.

1)What is a WCA claim?
2) If you pull the trigger with the safety on and it fires, that means the gun is broken and that was the point.

[Loud Love]

It was a topic of interest so I started at the beginning. I started on the last the page and it turned out to be a bitch match about abortion at the time. I didn't get too far into the thread, so will have to pick it back up latter. I am simply not in agreement with many of you on this topic. Several posts so far that I disliked are simple in disagreement so no rebutal was given, not to mention older posts. It's not like we're going to change each other's minds on the topic and I do have better things to do than pointlessly bitching back and forth.

Banning a certain weapon does little to change a person's mentality, which is where the real problem lies. Just search for knife assaults in China and other countries, both communist and not, where the deranged always finds an alternative weapon.

[Loud Love]

I was refering to your borderline which was not called for and written in haste.

Then two safeties were broken is my claim. Just sounds unlikely.

[Stavros]

It was a topic of interest so I started at the beginning. I started on the last the page and it turned out to be a bitch match about abortion at the time. I didn't get too far into the thread, so will have to pick it back up latter. I am simply not in agreement with many of you on this topic. Several posts so far that I disliked are simple in disagreement so no rebutal was given, not to mention older posts. It's not like we're going to change each other's minds on the topic and I do have better things to do than pointlessly bitching back and forth.

Banning a certain weapon does little to change a person's mentality, which is where the real problem lies. Just search for knife assaults in China and other countries, both communist and not, where the deranged always finds an alternative weapon.

Setting aside the abortion debate, I think a point worth making is that guns make killing easier, be it deliberate or accidental, and that more people can be killed in one incident by pulling a trigger than by knives. Moreover, the gun distances the killer from the victim and to that extent removes the emotional impact of the crime. I suspect that if US policemen did not carry guns, probably most of the victims of police shootings -regardless of the colour of their skin- would have been apprehended by other means. Character undoubtedly plays a part, as does spur of the moment rage in an otherwise calm person, but without the gun the death may not be predictable, and it is not just the ease with which guns are available in the USA, but their variety and also additional weapons -does an American really need to take a hand-grenade to Walmart, and pack a Kalashnikov in the back seat of his -or her- car? It is not as if the USA is convulsed in civil war.

[broncofan]

It was a topic of interest so I started at the beginning. I started on the last the page and it turned out to be a bitch match about abortion at the time. I didn't get too far into the thread, so will have to pick it back up latter. I am simply not in agreement with many of you on this topic. Several posts so far that I disliked are simple in disagreement so no rebutal was given, not to mention older posts. It's not like we're going to change each other's minds on the topic and I do have better things to do than pointlessly bitching back and forth.

Banning a certain weapon does little to change a person's mentality, which is where the real problem lies. Just search for knife assaults in China and other countries, both communist and not, where the deranged always finds an alternative weapon.
Better things to do than respond, but not better than to read pages worth of posts that are several years old and then give a negative vote for twenty of them belonging to one person.

As has been written dozens of times in this thread (and you will probably eventually encounter in your excursion through it), when you have a weapon that is very efficient at killing, you are more likely to achieve your aim when you attempt killing. It is also much easier to kill someone without putting much thought into it, just by pulling the trigger because someone has enraged you. I understand that some people want a gun for self-defense in their homes, but the belief that every day presents a unique challenge to your ability to defend your family and this special and paranoid attachment to weapons, is tough to understand. Gun control measures are intended to prevent certain types of weapons from getting into the hands of felons and people with very serious mental illness. Why is that such a bad thing?

[trish]

The very day 20 primary school children and six adults were murdered by a single gunman at the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut, a knife wielding lunatic stabbed 23 three primary school children at a school in Chenpeng Village in China. None of the latter died.

[martin48]

Don't really know we got on to abortion (but I must be more careful in putting down my thoughts as it excites some people). I suppose abortion makes a nice change to talking about all the bastards (who should have been aborted) with their love of weapons.

Do we think we will change people's minds? - well, maybe not yours but some people.

Intentional homicides
China - 10.02 per million
USA - 42.01 per million

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/China/United-States/Crime

Facts are always useful




It was a topic of interest so I started at the beginning. I started on the last the page and it turned out to be a bitch match about abortion at the time. I didn't get too far into the thread, so will have to pick it back up latter. I am simply not in agreement with many of you on this topic. Several posts so far that I disliked are simple in disagreement so no rebutal was given, not to mention older posts. It's not like we're going to change each other's minds on the topic and I do have better things to do than pointlessly bitching back and forth.

Banning a certain weapon does little to change a person's mentality, which is where the real problem lies. Just search for knife assaults in China and other countries, both communist and not, where the deranged always finds an alternative weapon.

[buttslinger]

You claim that you're pro-choice. Time to tell us the reasoning that lands you on that side of the fence.

Didn't mean to ignore you, one of my other groups of imaginary friends tanked to the new York football giants, bummed me out.
I brought up abortion to hopefully remind people that while guns kill people, abortions kill people too, although of course they're not really people yet, Lots of people who get killed intentionally by guns are killed justly. Of course it would be good if people didn't shoot people, it would be good if people didn't have abortions either. Speaking as an American rather than a Democrat or Republican, when you attack NRA members about their guns, they tend to clench them more tightly. When you attack people for being pro-choice, they scream that personal rights take precedent over a threatening blastosphere, that's pretty much in the neighborhood of the gun nuts that insist personal rights take precedent over blacks killing blacks in Chicago hoods.
Playing with guns is dangerous, but putting your dick in people's holes is dangerous too. A guy in a dress lecturing gun crazies goes nowhere. But it's good for laughs.

[trish]

I brought up abortion to hopefully remind people that while guns kill people, abortions kill people too, although of course they're not really people


it would be good if people didn't have abortions either.I don't think I would want to make such a blanket statement which effectively second guesses every woman who does choose to have an abortion and judges her decision as not good. I would rather amend your statement to something like: 'it would be good if women didn't sometimes have to have an abortion."


When you attack people for being pro-choice, they scream that personal rights take precedent over a threatening blastosphere, that's pretty much in the neighborhood of the gun nuts that insist personal rights take precedent over blacks killing blacks in Chicago hoods.Only if the pro-choice person insisted abortions should be legal regardless of the stage of development (which is similar to the pro-life person claiming all abortions are murder and end a life: they aren't and they don't). I wish you would stop putting me in that category. I want to see abortions appropriately regulated. I don't advocate a blanket ban of all gun. I just want to see more appropriate regulation.

Throughout this discussion you've given a lot of solace to the pro-life stance, but you have yet to answer my question and tell us why you are instead, as you say, pro-choice. How about a post where you give all the positive arguments for your claimed position?

[buttslinger]

Throughout this discussion you've given a lot of solace to the pro-life stance, but you have yet to answer my question and tell us why you are instead, as you say, pro-choice. How about a post where you give all the positive arguments for your claimed position?

Unlike you and Stavros I'm not here to write my college thesis, I'm here for amusement mainly. I hunt and peck at a snail's pace, and yes, I care more about Trish's bullheaded insistence that she's right about everything more than trying to solve all the world's problems. When you're young with the world in your young eyes, it's good to be idealist, and believe you can change the world, when you're old you realize it's mainly vanity. I'll take an hour and post my pro-life beliefs when you take 60 seconds and post your real photograph, Trish. Let's get real and face our fears.

[trish]

I hardly think Stavros is here to write his college thesis, I know I'm not. You many be pecking with two fingers, the evidence of your output is that you're not working at snail's pace and you're probably not too hard pressed to type a few more lines. Suffice it to say you just rather not expose yourself. Neither do I.

I am sorry you believe I think I know everything. However many times you've called me on this I have always capitulated and clarified my views and attempted to indicate what sorts of evidence would force me to revise them. But it never seemed to take.

In any case: the rest of this thread is now devoted to The-FAST-Approaching-Gun-Ban. So carry on.

[buttslinger]

...the rest of this thread is now devoted to The-FAST-Approaching-Gun-Ban. So carry on.

I can google a fantastic gun editorial, copy, paste, misspell a few words, but that says a lot more about me than gun control. The medium is the message, the writer is the story. When most people write stuff here it says more about them than the topic. You can write all the gun laws you want, the USA is still not that far away from the wild wild west, nothings going to change that except time. Every society has it's own psychology, and a handgun reeks psychology. It is more than the sum of it's parts, it's the owner.

[trish]

I can google a fantastic gun editorial, copy, paste, misspell a few words, but that says a lot more about me than gun control. The medium is the message, the writer is the story. When most people write stuff here it says more about them than the topic.Speak for yourself.
You can write all the gun laws you wantApparently not.
the USA is still not that far away from the wild wild west,This is just a myth many are encouraged to buy into; a myth perpetrated by the gun community to justify carry.
nothings going to change that except time.They were saying that about gay marriage just a few years ago. The NRA doesn't feel so complacent, given that it spends so much time, money and effort lobbying congress. The fact that this is a issue indicates a kind of instability.
Every society has it's own psychology, and a handgun reeks psychology. It is more than the sum of it's parts, it's the owner.Probably we agree on this one, if you mean something like: the bond the between the owner and his gun is greater than the justifications he gives for gun ownership.

[broncofan]

I can google a fantastic gun editorial, copy, paste, misspell a few words, but that says a lot more about me than gun control. The medium is the message, the writer is the story. When most people write stuff here it says more about them than the topic.
I know this is a general statement and not meant for anyone in particular..but I haven't noticed any plagiarism or copying from anyone. You look at the core posters on this forum and they all have a writing style that becomes familiar and are expressing their thoughts (supported by facts from external sources or memory). I disagree with you…if you decide to take their posts to signify something about them rather than to listen to what they are saying, you are letting personal ego get in the way of the issues being discussed.

[buttslinger]

I'm probably letting my personal boredom get in the way of things discussed, how many naked tranny photos can I look at????
A transsexual forum is actually a pretty lonely road ....on the interstates of public opinion, gays are still fags and blacks are still niggers.
I guess it's great that you guys have such a good rapport, but I found out on previous sites that facebook friends are imaginary friends, and getting too closely involved leads nowhere. Nobody here is honest enough to even say who they really are.
I probably am just suffering a Redskins hangover, but most people in the USA don't see guns as the problem, they see transsexuals and Mexicans as the problem, and in the USA, majority rules. White people don't want to trade their problems for the problems of gays and Mexicans. People embrace their own weaknesses and problems, they love them. They love guns. Gee, if only they could learn to love sucking cock everything would be so wonderful............I may be a cynic, but you gotta be something, I guess.

[trish]

Was Clark Kent fundamentally dishonest for not revealing his true identity? (This is on topic, 'cause Superman never needed a gun).

[Loud Love]

I was in a bad mood and a bit of an ass last night. My apologies but there is always misinformation popped off as truth when it may only be a half truth or blatantly incorrect, I mistakenly do it myself sometimes. I know huge amounts of data is hard to keep straight from memory but I would like to provide a couple of highly informative links to check out.

Well they aren't loading so I'll just give you the sources.

Factcheck.org/Gun Rhetoric vs Gun Facts.
There is a huge amount of info here from many different sources like The Brady Campaign, Harvard and many more. I don't think anyone can dispute what they present. While firearm deaths and injuries went down during the assault weapons ban from 94'-04', they continue to go down after the sunset with the highest ever record of gun ownership/sales.

This is a pdf I found from The Justice Department published in May 2013 so if you care to search for it, it should be easy to find.
"Firearm Violence, 1993-2011 by The Bureau of Justice Statistics.gov".
Just skim the charts. They support both sides of the arguement but the declines are real.

A total prohibition of firearms would only benifit the crimnals that are using them to harming people. Our Alcohol Prohibition is a good example. The mafia grew exponentially and proved that laws will be broken regardless of consequence. No matter what you make illegal, whether it be theft, drugs, murder or(dare I say) prostitution, if there is a demand there will be a market. While accidents are always tragic, there are usually a party showing carelessness in not securing them or handling them improperly.

[Loud Love]

Alot of us safely use and enjoy them.

[buttslinger]

Was Clark Kent fundamentally dishonest for not revealing his true identity?

Are you hinting you're Superman, that's why you can't reveal your true identity?

[buttslinger]

I was in a bad mood and a bit of an ass last night.

I can relate

[hippifried]

A total prohibition of firearms would only benifit the crimnals that are using them to harming people. Our Alcohol Prohibition is a good example. The mafia grew exponentially and proved that laws will be broken regardless of consequence. No matter what you make illegal, whether it be theft, drugs, murder or(dare I say) prostitution, if there is a demand there will be a market. While accidents are always tragic, there are usually a party showing carelessness in not securing them or handling them improperly.
So... Just who, exactly, is advocating "a total prohibition of firearms"? Got a name? I mean really... With this kind of hyperbole, from any side of any topic, the only ones who pay attention to any point made are the glassy eyed Kool Aid drinkers from whatever side the spouter happens to be on. It isn't conducive to civil discussion. Just sayin'...

[yodajazz]

So... Just who, exactly, is advocating "a total prohibition of firearms"? Got a name? I mean really... With this kind of hyperbole, from any side of any topic, the only ones who pay attention to any point made are the glassy eyed Kool Aid drinkers from whatever side the spouter happens to be on. It isn't conducive to civil discussion. Just sayin'...

You just don't realize, that requiring automobile registration, is the first step of plan, to take away our motor vehicles. Obama is coming for your Toyota, Hippifried!

[hippifried]

He can have it. It's over 20 years old, and has been broke down for the last three months.

[buttslinger]

Some kid dressed only in a swim suit totaled my new car, my Honda is 20 years old and drives fantastic, except for one rattle. Alcohol would be great fodder for a thread on civil discipline.
While a Republican Congress and nine conservative Supreme Court Judges would probably overturn Roe V Wade, I doubt nine liberal Supreme Court Judges would take away an American's right to bear arms, they would certainly regulate them more, but I have a hunch that even then you would see high murder rates in the USA. YEEEEE-HAWWWWW!

[trish]

I doubt nine liberal Supreme Court Judges would take away an American's right to bear armsI should hope not. The right to bear arms is certainly a Constitution right which the Supreme Court is sworn to uphold. But the Second Amendment is notoriously brief and the interpretations of it many and varied, leaving open a multitude of regulatory options, many of which have been found in the past to be Constitutional and many which this or future Supreme Courts could find Constitutional.

BTW: Bummer about your Honda. Did this just happen?

[buttslinger]

Bummer about your Honda. Did this just happen?

Naw,The car I drive now is the family hand-me-down, I probably need a new practical car, but I've been watching tv shows about restoring old classics, hmmmm.
Many Republicans view guns and abortion and politics from a 1950s view, when all the blacks, and druggies, and homos all lived in one neighborhood, all the problem children were contained. Post-War Americans got married, had kids, that was it. Glory Days.
Guns are an issue that have gotten more complicated, just like everything is a lot more complicated than the 50s, when a white guy delivered milk and butter to your house, even doctors made housecalls.
It is great that blacks and gays can come out of the shadows, but the facts are this is a shadow site, I don't think I have ever uttered the word "transsexual" with my family, friends, or coworkers. It never even comes up.
Gun control is an issue for the future, but whenever the subject comes up, it's swirled around like fingerpaint, and then forgotten. Most gun fatalities happen in the ghetto, or Inbred, W Va, so it's like that old bad part of town that you accept as inevitable.

Renault: Major Strasser has been shot. [pause] Round up the usual suspects.

[trish]

Gun control is an issue for the future,Guns are already controlled to some extent. It is a topic already much discussed. It is an issue we are facing now.

Interesting that you mentioned alcohol in your previous post. Prohibition has been repealed. This doesn't mean we now have a Constitutional right to drink alcohol; we do not. Yet, with relatively few common sense restrictions and regulations we buy, sell and drink a plethora of alcoholic beverages. A Constitutional right to drink alcohol (albeit unnecessary) wouldn't negate the common sense reasoning now in place that regulates the industry. The fact that the right to bear arms is a Constitutional one, similarly doesn't negate the common sense reasoning behind gun regulation.

[buttslinger]

Interesting that you mentioned alcohol in your previous post. .

I am not sure there are gun stores in poor black neighborhoods, but there's a liquor store on every block. Booze plays a large part in gun incidents, car accidents, broken families, liver disease. Judgement.
But it's my drug of choice when I'm out skirt chasing.
They say when you have 6 drinks you reverse evolution 10,000 years. Let's party like it's 7999BC.

[hippifried]

Pawnshop are also gun stores. You also see "title loan" joints on every corner, in lieu of any kind of banking establishment. There's convenient stores instead of supermarkets. Butt don't worry if you can't afford to drive, it'll only cost $20, 30, 40, 50, depending where you are, for a round trip to go shopping.
...& the beat goes on...

[Loud Love]

So... Just who, exactly, is advocating "a total prohibition of firearms"? Got a name? I mean really... With this kind of hyperbole, from any side of any topic, the only ones who pay attention to any point made are the glassy eyed Kool Aid drinkers from whatever side the spouter happens to be on. It isn't conducive to civil discussion. Just sayin'...

Any and every socialist politician. Too many to name. They prefer the baby steps approach but if you refuse to read between the lines you are fooling yourself. The strictest of countries started this decades ago. Many are almost there. China only allows a citizen, excuse me Ward, to own a pellet rifle with a caliber no larger than .177. Last I heard, that is in jeopardy.

[Loud Love]

Setting aside the abortion debate, I think a point worth making is that guns make killing easier, be it deliberate or accidental, and that more people can be killed in one incident by pulling a trigger than by knives. Moreover, the gun distances the killer from the victim and to that extent removes the emotional impact of the crime. I suspect that if US policemen did not carry guns, probably most of the victims of police shootings -regardless of the colour of their skin- would have been apprehended by other means. Character undoubtedly plays a part, as does spur of the moment rage in an otherwise calm person, but without the gun the death may not be predictable, and it is not just the ease with which guns are available in the USA, but their variety and also additional weapons -does an American really need to take a hand-grenade to Walmart, and pack a Kalashnikov in the back seat of his -or her- car? It is not as if the USA is convulsed in civil war.

In theory having the police unarmed sounds appealing but we need to remember who uses firearms to harm people. It's the criminals. We are currently experiencing a rash of policemen being murdered by these criminals. If they were not armed we would only have the criminals taking over. We are convulsed in crime by gang warfare and an ever growing corruption of our youth to join such a culture.
Just move to Chicago for a month. I think you would rethink your stance.

[trish]

We have about two socialist politicians, so if even everyone one of them was advocating the total prohibition of firearms (and they aren't) by baby steps, they wouldn't be able to achieve their agenda before the Sun went nova.

Even if they succeeded in repealing the Second Amendment (and NO ONE is advocating even that) it wouldn't put an end to the legal ownership of firearms. (We have no Constitutional right to alcoholic beverages but they're still legal and we drink plenty of them).

So how do we read between your lines here? Are we to surmise that you're against all forms of firearm regulation and control and is the basis for your position 'socialists in China took away everybody's guns'? Because if that's it, it's already been refuted.

If we start allowing people to carry .177 caliber guns around, soon they'll be shooting each other eyes out. Eventually that won't be enough mayhem for them and soon they'll be clamoring to carry fully automatic Kalashnikovs. Slippery slope arguments go in both directions...because they're fallacies not arguments.

[Loud Love]

Better things to do than respond, but not better than to read pages worth of posts that are several years old and then give a negative vote for twenty of them belonging to one person.

As has been written dozens of times in this thread (and you will probably eventually encounter in your excursion through it), when you have a weapon that is very efficient at killing, you are more likely to achieve your aim when you attempt killing. It is also much easier to kill someone without putting much thought into it, just by pulling the trigger because someone has enraged you. I understand that some people want a gun for self-defense in their homes, but the belief that every day presents a unique challenge to your ability to defend your family and this special and paranoid attachment to weapons, is tough to understand. Gun control measures are intended to prevent certain types of weapons from getting into the hands of felons and people with very serious mental illness. Why is that such a bad thing?

I am making an assumption but think that most people with views similar to yours and many others here on this thread may be from large metro areas where you have different experiences from someone like myself. Living in a rural location as I do, there are more reason for me to possess and carry my firearm on a daily basis. In a metro area I believe that most people may have a negative opinion of firearms perhaps by only seeing the day to day police shootings, driveby shootings and armed robberies, whether if only on the nightly news or in person.
Where I live there are the same issues you face that may put you in danger with the added element wildlife with feral dog packs, being a huge problem often carrying rabies and even criminals farming pot. Sometimes on your own land! Been there. So I don't consider it paranoia but comforting.
By the way, our government is truely failing on screening for mild or severe mental illnesses at the time of gun purchases. They should be more responsible in this area especially.

[Loud Love]

The very day 20 primary school children and six adults were murdered by a single gunman at the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut, a knife wielding lunatic stabbed 23 three primary school children at a school in Chenpeng Village in China. None of the latter died.

My mistake but still tragic and proof that the deranged could use anything to achieve their goal. Sadly, any high school chem student could make enough gas to poison an auditorium full of people and there's an every growing number of sites training kids on homemade IED's. It's truely sad but the method used to cause mass casualty won't stop with firearms for people determined to do harm.

[Loud Love]

Don't really know we got on to abortion (but I must be more careful in putting down my thoughts as it excites some people). I suppose abortion makes a nice change to talking about all the bastards (who should have been aborted) with their love of weapons.

Do we think we will change people's minds? - well, maybe not yours but some people.

Intentional homicides
China - 10.02 per million
USA - 42.01 per million

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/China/United-States/Crime

Facts are always useful


You should enlighten us on GB's mass murders since the ban of handguns. Oh wait, that couldn't be possible.

[trish]

Where I live there are the same issues you face that may put you in danger with the added element wildlife with feral dog packs, being a huge problem often carrying rabies and even criminals farming pot. Sometimes on your own land! Been there. So I don't consider it paranoia but comforting.

I live in a small college town in the Midwest, surrounded by corn and soybean as far as the eye can see. I’m a birder so I take hikes into the wilds quite often. I encounter packs of wild dogs and coyotes all the time, also an occasional water moccasin. Yet I never felt the need to carry anything but my binoculars.

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. My father’s favorite bonding activity was hunting. So I’ve carried and used a single barrel, single shot shotgun, a single shot .22 and I killed my first and only deer with a .30-06 that had a five shell built in clip. I don’t hunt anymore, but I’m not against the practice. Together my Dad and I bagged plenty of rabbits and pheasants, and as a favor to the farmer’s who allowed us to hunt their land we put away a number ground-hogs. We never once looked at each other and said, “What we really need is a semi-automatic weapon with a high capacity clip.”

I surprised a couple of people tending a rather unusual field once when I was out birding. I gave a knowing smile and said, “Hello. I’m just birding. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” They gave me a knowing smile back and were happy to see me on my way.

BTW, did you know that in 2014 in South Carolina there were only three reports of dogs carrying rabies? One in Greenwood county, one in Lancaster County and one in Spartanburg. ( http://www.scdhec.gov/Health/docs/rabies_2014_positive.pdf )

[trish]

My mistake but still tragic and proof that the deranged could use anything to achieve their goal.If his goal was to murder twenty three children he actually (and thankfully) failed...'cause he only had a knife.

[Loud Love]

Speak for yourself. Apparently not.This is just a myth many are encouraged to buy into; a myth perpetrated by the gun community to justify carry.
The NRA doesn't feel so complacent, given that it spends so much time, money and effort lobbying congress.
Probably we agree on this one, if you mean something like: the bond the between the owner and his gun is greater than the justifications he gives for gun ownership.

This seems to me to be a skewd narrow minded view. While I was a member of the NRA years ago, I could't support them feeding my contributions to the government. If the representatives we elect require bribes to choose to fight for the constituents' causes then we have a mob and not a government.(The NRA even asked me to leave my property to them when I die! uncool)

We are all here on this site due to a common interest. We are missing an opportunity to shed our intolerance of opinions that may differ from that of others to become a stronger community. Looking back, it's ironic that we need to preach tolorence to each other.

[Loud Love]

We have about two socialist politicians, so if even everyone one of them was advocating the total prohibition of firearms (and they aren't) by baby steps, they wouldn't be able to achieve their agenda before the Sun went nova.

Even if they succeeded in repealing the Second Amendment (and NO ONE is advocating even that) it wouldn't put an end to the legal ownership of firearms. (We have no Constitutional right to alcoholic beverages but they're still legal and we drink plenty of them).

So how do we read between your lines here? Are we to surmise that you're against all forms of firearm regulation and control and is the basis for your position 'socialists in China took away everybody's guns'? Because if that's it, it's already been refuted.

If we start allowing people to carry .177 caliber guns around, soon they'll be shooting each other eyes out. Eventually that won't be enough mayhem for them and soon they'll be clamoring to carry fully automatic Kalashnikovs. Slippery slope arguments go in both directions...because they're fallacies not arguments.

Just too idiotic to respond to. You obviously just love to bitch.

[Loud Love]

I live in a small college town in the Midwest, surrounded by corn and soybean as far as the eye can see. I’m a birder so I take hikes into the wilds quite often. I encounter packs of wild dogs and coyotes all the time, also an occasional water moccasin. Yet I never felt the need to carry anything but my binoculars.

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. My father’s favorite bonding activity was hunting. So I’ve carried and used a single barrel, single shot shotgun, a single shot .22 and I killed my first and only deer with a .30-06 that had a five shell built in clip. I don’t hunt anymore, but I’m not against the practice. Together my Dad and I bagged plenty of rabbits and pheasants, and as a favor to the farmer’s who allowed us to hunt their land we put away a number ground-hogs. We never once looked at each other and said, “What we really need is a semi-automatic weapon with a high capacity clip.”

I surprised a couple of people tending a rather unusual field once when I was out birding. I gave a knowing smile and said, “Hello. I’m just birding. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” They gave me a knowing smile back and were happy to see me on my way.

BTW, did you know that in 2014 in South Carolina there were only three reports of dogs carrying rabies? One in Greenwood county, one in Lancaster County and one in Spartanburg. ( http://www.scdhec.gov/Health/docs/rabies_2014_positive.pdf )

I live in one of those neighboring counties but again, not worth repling to. I have anwsered the responses that I care to and can spend my time better elsewhere.

[Loud Love]

If his goal was to murder twenty three children he actually (and thankfully) failed...'cause he only had a knife.

It was 22 and 1 adult. I provided you information that you obviously refused to read so go fuck yourself. I'm done with thread.

[broncofan]

We are all here on this site due to a common interest. We are missing an opportunity to shed our intolerance of opinions that may differ from that of others to become a stronger community. Looking back, it's ironic that we need to preach tolorence to each other.
Disagreeing with someone is not viewpoint intolerance. It's only intolerant if you are so angry that someone has a different opinion that you decide to be uncivil when they have not been.

[broncofan]

It was 22 and 1 adult. I provided you information that you obviously refused to read so go fuck yourself. I'm done with thread.
Okay. You've made your choice. I hope that goes for the extra-curricular activities with your thumbs too:).

[broncofan]

Just as a post-script, if your hope is that people are going to believe that a group of socialist politicians are trying to achieve a complete ban on all guns, it's literally mission impossible. The constitution does not allow such broad laws, there is little chance of the second amendment being repealed, and so no way that regulation is the beginning of a slippery slope. Trish addressed these points one by one, but you're not getting much agreement because you're not operating in reality. It is possible to argue gun policy or the public health consequences of widespread gun ownership, but your belief that somehow legislators are looking to pass a law that would immediately be declared unconstitutional makes no sense at all.

[hippifried]

Any and every socialist politician. Too many to name. They prefer the baby steps approach but if you refuse to read between the lines you are fooling yourself. The strictest of countries started this decades ago. Many are almost there. China only allows a citizen, excuse me Ward, to own a pellet rifle with a caliber no larger than .177. Last I heard, that is in jeopardy.

You don't have a single clue as to what you're talking about. you're just repeating piecemeal talking points and you probably don't even know where you put th you're just repeating piecemeal talking points and you probably don't even know where you picked them up.
Too many to name, huh... Well just rattle off a half dozen. That should't be too hard, unless you can't count that high (or you don't know what a dozen is). Okay, five then. Wouldn't want you to get confused by trying to use a second hand.

Oh by the way... This isn't China. They're a separate nation, on the other side of the globe, that's been ruled by nothing but repressive regimes for the last 5,000 years.

So let's see... You have no factual basis for your rantings. Nothing but hyperbolic plagerized opinions that you probably don't understand, & irrelevancies. You should run for office as a tea party flunky.

[hippifried]

Shit!!
I need to stop trying to use dictation, & turn off corrective typing programs. I think my one finger typing is actually faster, since I don't need to rewrite the whole post in editing.

[Stavros]

In theory having the police unarmed sounds appealing but we need to remember who uses firearms to harm people. It's the criminals. We are currently experiencing a rash of policemen being murdered by these criminals. If they were not armed we would only have the criminals taking over. We are convulsed in crime by gang warfare and an ever growing corruption of our youth to join such a culture.
Just move to Chicago for a month. I think you would rethink your stance.

There is nothing superior about the UK compared to the USA on this issue.
Our regular policeman are not armed but may carry tasers, and we do have armed police units who can be called to a scene and who have, in fact, been involved in controversial cases where people have been killed, most notably in recent times, Mark Duggan. There have also been shocking incidents of 'family annihilation' where a man has used a shotgun to murder his entire family, and then himself, in one case a man who had been licensed to own a weapon which was then taken away from him when he fell out with his wife and was considered mentally unfit -but at a later date returned to him, shortly after committing the crime (near Leicester). Criminals -in or out of gangs- either own guns or lease them to each other for crimes as they cannot get a permit, something increasingly hard since the massacres at Hungerford and Dunblane but not impossible.

The biggest difference may be that there is no gun culture in the UK at the scale you have in the USA, so that the idea of owning a gun in the UK is something unusual, and seems to be limited to farmers and sports enthusiasts, and the whole issue of 'the right to bear arms' has never been a political issue here as it has been in the USA where, our perception from here, is that it is relatively easy to buy a gun. I wouldn't even know how or where to buy a gun in the UK.

The danger with this thread is that we end up repeating ourselves, I am not sure what new there is to say on this topic. Except to say the obvious, that there are ways of resolving differences in a divided society, using armed force is not one of them. It creates more problems than it solves.

[buttslinger]

I'm pretty sure Maine is a lot closer to Britain than Texas, culture does matter.
If everybody here started gobbling estrogen pills, it wouldn't take long until we were all obsessing about our feelings, calling friends on the phone just to talk, and looking at sports and the three stooges as stupid.
If everyone here lived in South Carolina, I guarantee you that the conversation would center around Obama trying to take our taxes to fund welfare mother's drug addictions, fund abortions, and come into our houses to take our guns.
If there was a bill before congress to ban 50 round banana clips, I'd be shaming LoudLove into defending military ordinance to hunt deer.
If there were a bill before congress to ban abortions, I'd be challenging AshlynCreamher to adopt 6 unwanted black babies.
At this time, I would like to extend my hand to Ashlyn and Loudy into the Democratic Party, where they really belong, and offer you full Medical, Retirement, and a fair salary. Just because every picture of your relatives shows them holding rifles or standing in front of church is no reason to empower billion dollar fatcats who use your money to keep you in the dark.
Half the country is pro life and pro gun. this is a fact. Giving voters God, Guts, and Guns costs taxpayers nothing. Giving taxpayers Medicare costs a lot of money. So Democrats have to understand that they support meddling in other people's wallets. Just like Republicans want to meddle in other people's wombs. I like to err on the side of the individual's rights, maybe because I'm a sick individual, maybe because real progress happens one individual at a time, I dunno. Over on the NRA site, they laugh at this site as a bunch of fruits who ran to the front of the line when God was handing out the gay genes, hey, they could be right. Squeezing off a few rounds from your Beretta might be better than squeezing off a few rounds of jizz onto your computer monitor. Different strokes for different strokes.
Defeating Republicans in November is important to me, but winning over Republican voters is the real prize, that's the real battle. The real battle isn't culture, it's money. Culture will follow. People in Wyoming don't buy little gizmos to convert AK-47s into full auto killing machines. People in Chicago do. If you use culture as your argument ...you will lose.

[broncofan]

I've noticed a certain pattern of moral relativism in your posts Buttslinger. Every post seems to be along the lines of, "well you may oppose bigotry, but in South Carolina they would call you a welfare queen...." or "you may think that the gun lobby is out of control but the gun lobby thinks you're a fruit..."

Just because people's views can be affected by their life circumstances does not mean every view is equally defensible. I could literally hear you in the 1930s say something along the lines of, "well you may think the Roma are perfectly decent people, but if you were from Leipzig you would think they were subhuman parasites."

The fact that some people hold a viewpoint does not validate the viewpoint. I believe there's a difference between a person harboring mindless hatred of homosexuals and African-Americans and the desire for gun regulation. But perhaps everything is so pointlessly subjective that we should give every opinion, no matter how detached from facts and reason, equal standing?

[buttslinger]

My point is if you lived in Georgia your handle would be Falconfan, and if your father and mother were racists, you'd probably be a racist too. A million flies eating shit CAN'T be wrong!!!
If there's an election on, I'll be a Democrat, but between elections, I call on Democrats to live their life fully and work on their own game.
Specifically this thread is about banana clips and gun show loopholes. And even if those laws are enacted, the Nazis will still would have killed millions of Jews and our little talks would not change one thing. Pouring tons of explosives on Krauts and Japs should always be your last option. Even if gun laws are enacted, gangbangers will still be gangbangin. Gangbangers are not perfectly decent people. Here in the USA we don't gas them, we give them jobs at McDonalds or send them to jail.
Just because people's viewpoint is wrong.....says who? Please send SteveGrooby a hundred dollar check to support our Shemales and their valiant effort to fight for social injustice. Stand on a stump and preach the benefits of jerking off in front of your computer. Gun Nuts are more DIFFERENT than WRONG. Guys in Wyoming agree that guns used in crimes or school massacres are wrong. Everybody does, probably even the criminals and psychos. So who are we arguing with?

What flies in the biker gang clubhouse is a lot different than what flies in the Church across the street. Which one does Hung Angels endorse?

As far as my posts, I have gone back and read some of them and I have no fucking idea what I was saying, I claim to be AN ARTIST and use my words as figurines in a painting. Depending on my particular mood at that moment. I reach. I'll even go after Trish if things are boring. I've driven drunk and dated whores and stolen money from my job. So technically, yeah, I'm wrong, I belong in jail!!!!

[broncofan]

I have no real problem with your posts so don't take it personally. If both of my parents were klan members, MAYBE I would be a racist. There's certainly a greater chance. But that does not make the viewpoint more palatable. It would explain its origin, but does not mean we should not as a society come to an agreement that racism should be discouraged because it undermines important values.

The failure of regulation to get rid of every problem is not an argument against it (you do actually make this argument unfortunately). Regulation would only be a bad idea if it caused more harm than good.

I would argue gun nuts are more wrong than different. If their obsession with guns and their paranoia about the country descending into civil war causes them to block policies that could have positive public health consequences, they're wrong. It does not matter to me that their accent is different, that they eat certain foods, or whether they come from a long line of gun nuts. These would explain how they became gun nuts but would not mitigate the damage their views do or justify their position.

[broncofan]

My point is if you lived in Georgia your handle would be Falconfan!
So then you probably assume I'm from Colorado:)?

[buttslinger]

So then you probably assume I'm from Colorado:)?

You probably bought your car at John Elway Chevrolet! HOMER!

[buttslinger]

I would argue gun nuts are more wrong than different. If their obsession with guns and their paranoia about the country descending into civil war causes them to block policies that could have positive public health consequences, they're wrong. It does not matter to me that their accent is different, that they eat certain foods, or whether they come from a long line of gun nuts. These would explain how they became gun nuts but would not mitigate the damage their views do or justify their position.

The majority of pro-lifers don't think doctors should be jailed for murder, and I'm guessing you don't think gun nuts are wrong enough to be swept up in FBI dragnets.
Most people who resort to gun violence are guys who are up against the wall in the worst way. Not a bunch or redneck gun collectors.
Would you hire a ni**er that would carjack people? That kid who shot up the Sandy Hook School killed his Mom to get the key to the locked up guns. She probably didn't want him doped up in some overpriced mental institution. What's the solution for people hanging on to their last thread? These are real problems. Regulate them away? When I lived in a bad neighborhood some black kids broke in and stole my .22 revolver!!

[broncofan]

Obviously, I don't think the people I call gun nuts should be locked up. In fact, if there were regulation they would not be adversely affected imo. As you say, many people who resort to gun violence are up against a wall in the worst way. If they have a history of violence or a history of psychoses, maybe you should not own guns. If not, maybe there should be waiting periods for purchasing guns anyway. It's not going to fix the problem of gun violence, but it may reduce the murder and suicide rates.

I've joked around about guns. I had a friend who loved them and would go target shooting and hunting (is this anecdote the equivalent of I have a black friend?). If he had ever asked me to shoot targets or whatever I probably would have tried it. My snobbery doesn't run that deep. I can understand it becoming a hobby in the same way anything can become a hobby. I can understand people wanting basic protection for their families. I can't understand the paranoia that comes with thinking the government is coming for all the weapons because they want to ban the most dangerous kinds or keep them out of the hands of the most dangerous people. So there is a limit to my metropolitan liberal snobbery; I try to reserve it for unhinged excess.

[trish]

It’s unclear whether Nancy Lanza had her guns locked up. Some reports say she didn’t, others claim she did. She was shot with her own Bushwacker which supports the theory that she didn’t, or if she did she wasn’t shot for the key.

She lived with her deeply disturbed son who was being treated for a neurological disorder with accompanying psychological issues. Yet she chose to keep an arsenal of high caliber, semi-automatic weapons in that very home. She paid the ultimate price for that error in judgment as did twenty children and six other adults. For the latter I would not have sentenced her to death, but I would’ve considered giving her some time in jail.

Do I want to see the FBI sweep the homes of psychiatric patients checking them for arsenals. Number one: because as of this date, such arsenals are legal. Number two: I don’t think it’s the most efficient way to prevent future shootings.

Of course nothing will stop shootings from happening in the future. No amount of legislation can solve everybody’s problems or make the world as safe as a children’s ball pit. But as Bronco already indicated, appropriate regulation can bring the number of gun accidents, suicides and deliberate shootings down. That’s the whole idea behind laws of all kind. Right? No one believes that laws will eliminate all crime, prevent all accidents or protect all innocents from all harm: but we do believe that well designed laws appropriately enforced will reduce crime, reduce accidents and often protect citizens from harm or at least mitigate the harm done.

[buttslinger]

Let's spin this wheel around to it's logical conclusion and then set it on fire. I can't remember the comic's name, and I'm repeating myself, but "Democrats like to be right, Republicans like to win"
As a Democrat I think saner laws address problems better than shotguns over the hearth or poison gas in the showers, but the way I see it, neither Republicans, Democrats, or Nazis are going to fix the world's problems. The world is fucked. The other guy is always wrong. I may not be right but I'm never wrong. Preachy? Goddam right.
If you see the world as a whole you have to see past the differences in it. There's more to wisdom than morality. And yes, I see the irony here that I am claiming I know more than you two. That I am claiming I know more than you know-it-alls.
We're all going to leave this world one way or another. Looks like the only way I'm going to get out of this thread is to admit you guys are right about everything. You believe me, right?

[trish]

I said it was unclear. I told you what I want. And I agreed with you that nothing will stop all crime. Did I say I was absolutely, without a doubt right? No. So what is it about what we say that strikes you as so outrageously unassailable?

[broncofan]

And yes, I see the irony here that I am claiming I know more than you two. That I am claiming I know more than you know-it-alls.
We're all going to leave this world one way or another. Looks like the only way I'm going to get out of this thread is to admit you guys are right about everything. You believe me, right?
:) You could just take a hiatus without saying anything. Your presence is appreciated but nobody is demanding you remain until we find common ground.

I don't doubt that you're a knowledgeable man but what is it you're recommending we do? Not have the opinions we do and in a contest of ideas not present the ideas we hold as correct? I highly doubt that the reason Democrats have lost elections is because they believe they're right....we have no more of the market on self-righteousness than the righties.

[broncofan]

So what is it about what we say that strikes you as so outrageously unassailable?
Well put question. I think that we state a view, which implies we think we're right, and also implies that we think any view we haven't stated is probably wrong. But isn't that a pre-requisite for any discussion? I could say, "I believe a, but b, c, and d are just as likely to be right." But that would really mean I didn't believe anything and couldn't commit to saying anything.

[broncofan]

:) You could just take a hiatus without saying anything.
I wasn't actually recommending you take a hiatus! Where have you gone? I did buy my truck from John Elway. See, I can be agreeable.

[trish]

BTW (for the three or four people who will ever read this) the answer to the question "Do I want to see the FBI sweep the homes of psychiatric patients checking them for arsenals?" in post #1436 was supposed to be "NO." The numbered statements afterward are the reasons why "No" is the answer.

[fred41]

BTW (for the three or four people who will ever read this) the answer to the question "Do I want to see the FBI sweep the homes of psychiatric patients checking them for arsenals?" in post #1436 was supposed to be "NO." The numbered statements afterward are the reasons why "No" is the answer.

I'm sorry it's too late. Based on the original answer - phone calls have been made causing a chain reaction of events that are impossible to stop. I'm afraid you ogled your last tufted titmouse toots...you're coming with us.

[buttslinger]

I was actually banned this whole month for making racist comments up in the porn section.
That's why I was lying low down here.
Let me put it this way: if you judge all people as self serving scum, you're probably half right.

[buttslinger]

Let me put an end to this throbbing boner of a discussion, you guys have worn me down (and out)...
My point....AGAIN....
Yes yes yes, send in the lawyers to tweak the gun code, and some nutcases in basements won't be able to sell their 50 round pistol clips on the internet and at gun shows. That is easy, and would do some good.
Just like the NRA, the American Car Making Empire resisted seat belts, because it would cost them money per each car. It has saved countless lives, and set a tone for car safety. Simply by enacting a simple law. And even if some people still break the law and don't click up, and even if the police don't really enforce it, it is a good thing.
My point, AGAIN, is that locking up a few guys for making banana clips in their garage is a drop in the bucket.
If you want to lay awake all night anguishing about something, try the tax code. That's how they got Capone.
We already have all the laws you need, but being in debt trillions of dollars means we can't enforce them.
The Government is broken because the Government is broke.
First things first, you guys are giving me a headache. I guess what goes around comes around. If you give the people freedom, build lots of jails.

[broncofan]

The example of seatbelts is a very useful one. Gun control and reforming the tax code are not mutually exclusive! We have significant debt but also very good credit. I disagree that we lack funding to enforce our laws....

[buttslinger]

I saw an interview with Clint Eastwood wincing about his time as the Mayor of Malibu,.....he said when he was the Director of a big budget Motion Picture, he would tell people to jump, and they would say "how high?"
But when he was Mayor and told people what to do, his phone lines and office was packed with people who wanted to explain to him how wrong he was, better options, dangers, possible legal actions, and concerns.
So when I say "what we oughta do" here, I pretend that I am here on a special mission from the Starship Enterprise, going back in time to save the world, with a stern warning not to disrupt the space time continuum.
I have to consider that outlawing banana clips because some psycho shoots up a movie theatre probably means incarcerating a lot of trailer trash teen yahoos who have their banana clip toys hidden in their closet, next to their porn mags.
Whatever you decide, you're fucked either way, so you have to decide which course fucks the entire population the least. Whatever you do, when it comes to gun control, half the people are going to be disenchanted. You are going to be the arbiter of a Civil War, and you better make sure you don't have a personal agenda, be prepared to be nailed to the cross.
Even though we are at a stalemate with gun control and abortion, that may be better than one side winning. You can basically do anything you wanna do in the States, be a surfer bum or a CEO. That kind od chaos is good.
Economically, it's good to be a growing reckless teenager rather than an old wise fogie. Maybe being in debt trillions of dollars is a smart move, financially. I'm not really sure if it's better to be a transsexual escort who gets paid a grand to go to dinner, or the guy who can afford to pay a transsexual escort a grand to go to dinner. My World is Gen Tso's carryout.
I'm going to presume that the status quo is fucked, as usual, and take comfort in the fact that everything I'm writing here means nothing. That's a good thing.
I hope when I'm on Death Row it's for killing a tranny whore, not for blowing away a 7-11 clerk. I've heard a lot of those death row guys are voracious readers, and finally have the time to read some really epic books. You'd have to put a gun to my head to do that now.

[trish]

Every American claims to love freedom above all else. Yet, taking away someone's freedom is the only punishment American's can ever seem to come up with for dealing with even the most petty criminal activity. Should we pass a law against banana clips, how 'bout we give those banana clip owning trailer boys some community service? It's not like there isn't a town in the U.S. that couldn't use some pothole fillin' and some garbage cleanup. As for those dealers who make a living selling illegal arms illegally, fine their asses. They were makin' money, now take it. Of course, if they can be linked to more serious crime (like they sold arms to a psycho who went out and killed someone), then you can talk jail. But mostly save the jail time for the asshats who shoot, maim and kill.


I hope when I'm on Death Row it's for killing a tranny whore, not for blowing away a 7-11 clerk.Because whoring is against the law, or 7-11's are just awesome stores?

What DOES that 't' stand for?

[buttslinger]

That thievin' whore stole my wallet, Your Honor, it was a crime of passion.
My friend's friend did a stretch for owning a machine gun, you might as well say he did a stretch for being an idiot, the only person he would ever kill is himself by accident, or his girlfriend Sue, and that would be no great loss to society, trust me.
Guns really are safer than cars in the hands of somebody with their shit together, take your car out on the streets and you put your life in the hands of some drunk.
My main man Obama said EVERYBODY should get out there on the weekend and clean those rivers and pick up beercans off the median. I think that's what the T stands for.

[trish]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officers-respond-report-shooting-umpqua-community-college-n437051

[Ben in LA]

Yup...another one. Plus another one WILL happen before this year is over. BANK ON IT.

[trish]

Oregon has concealed carry. What happened to all those good guys with guns who are supposed to stop this sort of thing?

Just a few days a ago and man’s car was being hijacked by, of course, a bad guy who, of course, was unarmed. Two armed good guys, of course shooting it up, came to the rescue. Trouble was, they shot the carjacking victim, of course accidentally, in the head. Since they collected their shell casings and skedaddled the nature of the accident remains unclear: was the victim mistaken for a jacker? was he shot by a stray bullet, or did the good guys just get carried away? So much for the good-guys-with-guns theory.

http://www.khou.com/story/news/2015/09/27/one-man-injured-after-carjacking-shooting-at-gas-station/72923278/

If you gotta carry, please carry it out in the open so we can see your prized toy, laugh at your paranoia and avoid your company.

[buttslinger]

M' Main Man B H Obama showed perfect timing to alert the masses to the danger of guns lying around,
Democrats alone will not solve the gun problem, you need both parties to get on board with this.
This isn't a gun problem, it's an American problem, and Americans are going to have to point the finger at ourselves to solve it. Not point fingers at Republicans.

[trish]

Right on, the Democrats are on board with that. But pointing at ourselves won't do the trick. The republicans need to get on board too.

[hippifried]

If the President's name was O'Bama, he might be able to turn a few Repulicans. Butt alas: We all know that he's a Muslim from Kenya who wants to disarm all the "right thinking" consealed patriots so he can give the country to ISIS, & the nuclear arsenal to Iran.

[Gillian]

I get that American's as a whole don't like their Governments curtailing their personal freedoms. I get that you don't like "Big Government". I simply don't get how it's right for ordinary citizens to own automatic weapons (wtf!). Isn't the reference to the constitution and its right to bear arms fallacious as it ascribes that right to organised militia and not Joe Public? You have managed to alter your constitution in the past - your managed to sort out the Three-Fifths issue - so why can't you see common sense and do the same with gun control?

[trish]

You got us all wrong. Actually we like big government. We encourage government to get involved in women’s reproductive decisions. We’re disappointed when the government doesn’t stand between a gay man and his domestic partner. We hate when the government doesn’t fix the pothole in front of our house. We petition the government to prevent Mosques from establishing themselves too close to the site of the 9/11 memorial, or too close to Kentucky. Half the Republican party is so geriatric they’re on medicare. The other half is so diabetic they’re on disability. And they love it. They demand on big signs: “Keep Your Government Mits Off My Medicare.” We like when FedEx hands our packages off the the Post Office so we don’t have to be home to sign for them when they’re delivered by the government. (Also if FedEx had to come to our podunk towns in the middle of nowhere to deliver our packages, they just wouldn’t do it). We want the government to put pot smokers, meth-heads, heroine addicts and other junkies in jail. We love the tax loopholes and protections government provides billionaires, ‘cause any day, now anyone of us could win the lottery. We want the government to build more jails. Our towns compete for them. We want the government to build a giant wall on our southern border (and perhaps mine the coasts - I really don’t know what we’ll do about the coasts). We want the government to bomb the shit out of Iran, smack Putin, oust Assad. There ain’t no end to what we want the government to do for us.

What we hate is the Constitution. We don’t want atheists expressing their beliefs in the public square, especially at Christmas. We want the government to endorse Christian values for no other reason than they’re Christian values. We have no problem with the use of government bodies and investigatory commissions to persecute individuals for political gain. We interpret the shit out the Second Amendment because we don’t like the strong suggestion there that gun ownership is not a individual right. We hate the protections provided to minorities provided by the 14th Amendment. We hate Birthright Citizenship as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. We’re talking about getting rid of that - somehow.

What we really love is shoot-’em-ups, good guys puttin’ away bad guys and toys that promise we can all be heros but in the end can only deliver bullets.

[Gillian]

Take a bow. That was excellent ... :D


(Gloomy and dispiriting, but excellent)

[buttslinger]

Republicans have a name for a fully automatic AR-15 owner: Uncle Kenny
Karl Rove has a name for a gun nut and Evangelist: voter
The GOP has a name for AK-47 totin' inner city gangbangers: Democrats
Americans have a name for Nuclear superiority: World Peace

[martin48]

Well, God Bless (delete) Help America

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/02/mass-shootings-america-gun-violence

[Stavros]

An interesting overview of how the killers got their guns in mass shooting over recent years, which suggests that if US legislators are too timid to tackle gun ownership (one wonders if they care about the killings anyway), they can at least tighten up and in some cases extend the laws and regulations to prevent people from purchasing weapons in the first place. It can be done, though as the article shows it also requires existing laws and regulations to be applied more carefully so that individuals who are clearly in need of help do not express their need for it through violence.

The article intro says it all:
Criminal histories and documented mental health problems did not prevent at least eight of the gunmen in 14 recent mass shootings from obtaining their weapons, after federal background checks led to approval of the purchases of the guns used
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html?rref=world&hp&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=U.S.&action=click&region=FixedRight&pgtype=Multimedia

[broncofan]

I think that whatever can be done consistent with the 2nd amendment should be done. Better background checks, limits on gun ownership by those with criminal records and serious mental health problems. These are things that will have some benefit.

I also think that if we did not have a second amendment, extremely tight controls on weapon ownership would greatly reduce these kinds of crimes. There would still be an underground market but people would simply not have them around when they snap. The most effective prevention against all of these gun deaths would just be a severe reduction in the number of available weapons. This would mean that over time having guns and using them would not be part of our culture or mindset.

Of course democrats will say they want to work within the parameters of the second amendment as it is currently interpreted because expressing a desire to go further plays into the paranoia of those who think we want to take their guns away. There is no we ....but as an outlier view, I actually wish we could take their guns away and replace them with something useful. Mind you this is not me expressing the secret desire of democrats who want to confiscate all of the guns....just my own personal view that severely restricting ownership would have positive social consequences.

[buttslinger]

Fed up and bored Americans on their sofas sense that even if gun violence were reduced to zero, we would still be faced by the national debt, crime, corruption, poverty, the middle east, terrorism, unemployment, etc etc etc etc etc....................

While mental patients with guns are hard to get a handle on, the number of gun dealers who arm the criminal element is actually a pretty small percentage, and you can tackle problems like that, simply take away their licenses. Gun show loopholes and weak background checks can be changed. Let the NRA defend recklessness.

But pointing the finger at the NRA is pretty much the status quo, we've had Democratic Presidents with both houses of congress that have achieved practically nothing to change the gun culture mentality, and I don't think we ever will.

The Last Thing the first Black President wants to appear as is Black, and the last thing the first Woman President wants to appear as is a Woman. Trump has gotten attention because ha APPEARS to be a candidate that can shakes things up, I think you might find Hillary a bigger egomaniac than Trump, in the future bored Americans might actually want her to slow down and go back in the kitchen when she gets steam shooting out of her vagina throwing her weight around in national and world affairs. Unlike Jeb who wants to put people to sleep, Hillary wants to wake them up. She is back on her heels right now, this is Trump time, but she has this thing all mapped out, and the last thing you are going to see for eight years is the housewife who sits quietly on the sofa. Lord help us all. Hillary will scare lots of people.

[trish]

Whoever said tighter firearm regulation will cure the national debt, corruption, poverty, the Middle East and unemployment? (though it can be expected to have an effect on crime and domestic terrorism).


While mental patients with guns are hard to get a handle on, the number of gun dealers who arm the criminal element is actually a pretty small percentage, and you can tackle problems like that, simply take away their licenses. Gun show loopholes and weak background checks can be changed. Let the NRA defend recklessness. Agreed. Most of the psychotic gunman of the past couple of decades obtained their guns legally. However few of them there were (or however few the dealers who sold them their guns) you only have to reflect that each of these psychos murdered in the neighborhood of ten or more people to realize that had we taken the trouble to keep a few dealers from selling them lethal weapons we would have saved at least ten times that many lives.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0


pointing the finger at the NRA is pretty much the status quo, we've had Democratic Presidents with both houses of congress that have achieved practically nothing to change the gun culture mentality,...Also agree. But probably not with the intended meaning. The gun lobby (of which the NRA is a major player) is largely responsible for the Congressional impasse, not the gun culture. In survey after survey Americans generally favor tighter gun regulation. But gerrymandering renders the opinion of most American’s nearly mute, when monied special interests fill the campaign coffers.


...and I don't think we ever will.You keep saying this but never offer any support for your expectation. So I keep saying: if it’s so in the bag, why does the NRA continue to spend almost all its resources lobbying Congress and marketing its opinion? Why has the number of gun owning households dropped from 50% to 30% over the last half century? Why do most people say they favor tighter gun laws? Gun culture, gun scmulture (okay that didn’t work). Culture, after all, is volatile. Once upon a time everybody smoked. Once upon a time, everybody was appalled by the very existence of gays. Once upon a time nobody used their seat-belts.

The gun culture isn’t even a real thing, it’s a fabrication. Yes, we always loved our cowboy movies and our cop and robber shows even before the repeal of the assault weapons ban in 2005, but no one would’ve said in 1950 that we have a gun culture. Rory Rogers never killed a single bad guy on his show. The gun culture came into existence when the Culture Wars were fabricated by political spin-masters who are in the business of convincing you that your civic duty should be a simple as matching a candidate to your lifestyle choice. Do you drive a truck? Listen to country music? Own a shotgun? The Democrats are gonna put their pinko emissions control on that truck, censor your tunes and take away your shotgun. It’s all claptrap.


I think you might find Hillary a bigger egomaniac than Trump,Here you’re either nuts or just making shit up. I would admit that it takes an egomaniac to even consider running for president of the U.S., but no one is a bigger egomaniac than Trump.


Hillary will scare lots of people.That goes without saying. We live in a nation where some people claim they’re afraid to leave the house in broad daylight without carrying a concealed firearm. What the name Hillary Clinton will do is polarize people. The reason I voted for Obama instead of Clinton way back when was I thought she polarized the electorate. Not so much Hillary herself, but all the politically inspired ‘investigations’ of the Clintons from Whitewater, the alleged murder of Vince Foster, the Monica Lewinsky blow job scandal and the resulting impeachment. Now add to that the email non-scandal, the Benghazi tragedy and the dynasty factor. Her campaign, if it flies at all, will encounter a lot of drag. Still, none of those negatives are real criticisms of her...they are entirely political fabrications aimed at her candidacy.

[fred41]

....... Once upon a time everybody smoked. Once upon a time, everybody was appalled by the very existence of gays. Once upon a time nobody used their seat-belts.
Change happens by generation whether people like it or not. Often it seems at a snails pace...but that's on a personal level, not a historical level. Sometimes people don't think things will change because most folks feel they are level headed, common sense type, individuals who must (surely in their own minds) represent all other level headed, common sense type folks - also known as the "average person." Kooks don't usually think they're kooks...lol. So often delusional people think they are posting prose instead of bull shit.
But generations change...people form social contacts with other people that previous generations sometimes never came into contact with...except for maybe during wartime (some white men never really had social contact with black men until they had to share a trench and cover each others butts on the battlefield...nothing's an eye opener quite like that)...
...and it's going to happen faster and faster because of the internet.
Sure, the internet can sometimes be even more polarizing: Hateful people can find other hateful people across the globe and fuel each others hatreds at an ever more combustible level...but it can also educate people that would never have had scales removed from their eyes any other way.
So, often people don't think other people can change because they themselves can't change...or continue to live in an area stuck in time (small towns can be like that) and are therefore somewhat blinded to the very changes going on around them.
Hell, I've changed..and so have some of my family, friends and coworkers.


On the Hillary Clinton thing...I don't think the Hillary of today is the same Hillary that faced President Obama,...and that Hillary wasn't the same before becoming a Senator...who wasn't the same person who came in as the President's wife. I believe she is now just a mired, establishment politician.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, unlike other folks ...people like that are often the safest to elect...but I don't agree that the scandals weren't scandals. They were probably dragged on too long - that's the political bullshit part , but I feel they were legitimately brought up. The email scandal probably has more to do with a bit of obtuseness then criminality, but that says something also. There's a reason Bernie Sanders is doing so well.
I probably should have saved that for another thread...but I don't work like that...lol

[trish]

Indeed change happens.
(I'll mostly refrain from answering the Hlllary comments here so as not to derail the thread again...except to say that Hillary's use of her email was legal and standard operating procedure in Washington until halfway through her time in office; and that her email was secure whereas it was the State Department emails that China successfully hacked. Perhaps another thread. I do like Sanders. Wish I knew which had a better chance of winning the Presidency. )

[buttslinger]

You guys can talk guns here but nothing will be done in DC til Hillary is prez, WORD.
Trump is going to drop out of the race when his ratings go down, he's an egomaniac, sure, but he's a businessman and he'll go on to something else. Hillary has had her fingernails dug into a fixation of being President for, what,....24 years?
Roy Rogers was the singing Cowboy, he makes a nice roast beef sandwich. Maybe he never killed anybody, but all the bad guys on his show carried guns.
The plot of EVERY TV show or movie revolves around some kind of conflict, be it the NFL, or a soap opera, or a war movie.
People struggle with traffic, their job, bills,.....but I've never seen a shoot-out in my life.
I read about the statistics ....I believe them. So that must mean there is some kind of gun culture here. Somekind of something.

If less households own guns and more people are in favor of gun control, who is shooting people? The NRA? Congress?
I suppose living in a flock or sheep is better than living in a pack of wolves,
I'm old enough to remember Woodstock. And Altamont.
People change, yes. But nothing will really change gun violence stats until you actually start removing guns. And nobody is talking about that out loud.
IN MY OPINION, guns and abortion will be a hot button issue for a long time.

[trish]

Gene Autry was the singing cowboy, geez and you claim to be an old guy.

Every narrative in every literary form revolves around conflict...even musical forms progress to a climax with harmonic tension and resolve to the tonic. But the NRA wasn't always about the Second Amendment, personal security and guns weren't always a lifestyle choice and a hidden accessory that you carried on your person everywhere you went. The gun-culture is an overlay that political spin doctors invented to suck the apolictical into their fold.


If less households own guns and more people are in favor of gun control, who is shooting people?So you're disputing that fewer households own guns now than in the fifties? Look it up. Who's shooting people? Assholes who shouldn't have guns obviously. You opined in your last post that these people were few in number. If you're changing your mind, perhaps I should just take my leave and let you argue with yourself.


People change, yes. But nothing will really change gun violence stats until you actually start removing guns. And nobody is talking about that out loud.Except the police in those cities which have buy-back programs. But look how you've changed the goal posts here. You opined the gun-culture is real and people won't change, and now you say people do change, but gun violence stats won't. I'm of the opinion that if people's attitudes towards guns change significantly, the rest will eventually follow. The very fact that this is a hot button issue means that it's a volatile issue; i.e. unsettled. It could go on like this for another decade or it could change overnight.

[martin48]

Pinched from somewhere on the Web.

[buttslinger]

I do admit the statistics are scary, I halfway expect to step over a bullet riddled body on my way to my driveway.
The only truly effective way to get our stats to Canadian levels would be to outlaw all guns, and I would not be opposed to this, I would gladly turn in my gun if it saved one kid's life. HOWEVER, I would also not be opposed to making machine guns legal. When in Rome,........
I know a few guys that have had gun collections, they were all legal, some for hunting, some for target shooting, some for collecting. I've known many more people who used cocaine, back in the day, half of them were girls who freaked when they got speeding tickets. Guilty of using narcotics!!!
How come Trish grades my posts like my 10th grade teacher grading my English paper?
I do not understand how a Nation can be so violence crazy, but coils in fear in the back of a jet while four guys with box cutters fly the plane into buildings. I am concerned that a small number of criminals and crazies dictate policy.
There are all kinds of truth. Truths. I can swing with all of them. Like was said long ago "I don't fight with the World, The World fights with Me"
If Congress enacts new gun laws, I think that would be great. But I absolutely don't believe it would effect the number of school shootings. In fact I guarantee it won't. The Laws aren't the problem. The People are.
After Columbine the teachers dissolved my niece's Shakespeare club.

[trish]

I do admit the statistics are scary, I halfway expect to step over a bullet riddled body on my way to my driveway.So just what is the probability of finding a bullet riddled cadaver on your way to your driveway? Does halfway means the odds are 50-50? Surely things aren’t that scary! Maybe you should move.


The only truly effective way to get our stats to Canadian levels would be to outlaw all guns, and I would not be opposed to this, I would gladly turn in my gun if it saved one kid's life.Yet Canada hasn’t outlawed all guns. Perhaps what we need is set of reasonable gun laws and a few mounted police to enforce them. The media spun fiberglass veneer we call the gun culture is less to blame than the lack of law and the unwillingness of a majority of the current majority (think Hastert rule) to make any laws; because that half doesn’t even believe in the right of the people to govern themselves through legislative bodies. It’s the fabricated culture that encourages the legislative bottleneck, but it’s the bottleneck that allows these horrid incidents to occur month after month at the rate they do.


I would also not be opposed to making machine guns legal. When in Rome,........But machine guns are outlawed in this country; i.e. in our home. So how does the when-in-Rome rule apply?


I know a few guys that have had gun collections, they were all legal, some for hunting, some for target shooting, some for collecting. I've known many more people who used cocaine, back in the day, half of them were girls who freaked when they got speeding tickets. Guilty of using narcotics!!!?? This paragraph is irrelevant. Remove it from the final draft.


How come Trish grades my posts like my 10th grade teacher grading my English paper?Also irrelevant. Leave it out.


I do not understand how a Nation can be so violence crazy, but coils in fear in the back of a jet while four guys with box cutters fly the plane into buildings. I am concerned that a small number of criminals and crazies dictate policy.To be fair, up until 9-11 when planes were hijacked, they were flown to locations outside the country where the hijackers could escape the clutches of the law. 9-11 was just about the first time hijacked planes were used as ordinance. Once the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 figured that out, it was the virtual end of all airline hijacking.
As far as being violence crazy, I think you’re just buying into the media spin. We Americans do, however, have some difficulty distinguishing between fact and fiction. We seem to think that guns will make us more secure, rev up our testosterone levels and buy us the opportunity to prove we’re heroes, when in fact they make us less secure, involve us in serious accidents and demonstrate what an asshat an armed citizen can be.


I am concerned that a small number of criminals and crazies dictate policy.They and the TSA have certainly have made flying miserable. The airlines, cramming in more and more and tinier and tinier seats, don’t help either: not to mention their habit of overbooking. They can take a reservation, but they don’t seem to know how to keep one.


There are all kinds of truth. Truths. I can swing with all of them.Yes there are the statements that accurately depict the observable facts; and then there are the exclamatory assertions of Carly Fiorina. A handy rule of thumb that may help is: If two statements are in direct logical contradiction, at least one of them is not true.


If Congress enacts new gun laws, I think that would be great. But I absolutely don't believe it would effect the number of school shootings. In fact I guarantee it won't.Not sure what a guarantee means in this context: do we get our money back if you’re wrong? Or should we just be happy with the lives that are saved by the regulations that you absolutely guaranteed would not to diminish the murder rate of students by armed mass killers?


Laws aren't the problem.The lack of appropriate regulation is.


After Columbine the teachers dissolved my niece's Shakespeare club.From context, I’m assuming the reason it was discontinued was somehow connected to that particular shooting. On the face of it, that sounds pretty stupid. On second thought, your final line is pretty irrelevant to the general flow of your essay. Leave it out of the final draft.

[martin48]

This wouldn't have happened if the 8 year old had been armed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34450841

[Ben in LA]

Why are NRA conventions usually held in "gun-free zones"?

[buttslinger]

If you are really committed to changing whatever it is we're talking about, promise a bunch of little black teens 72 buckets of KFC if they shoot up some white churches with machine guns. Two kids per church armed to the teeth with exotic illegal weapons from the street and internet. Instead of confederate flags they wear gang colors. And O. J. masks. Aim for a REALLY high body count. Don't worry about the death aspect, the white people will go to heaven, and the black kids will be rock stars in jail.
After the fifth or sixth massacre, white folks will be screaming for tighter regulations. CHANGE

It's not that Americans don't get outraged about senseless killings, it's just that the body counts aren't BIG enough yet.

It's like when the scary Nazi Doctor dug into fresh nerves in Dustin Hoffman's teeth.........
"Is it safe?"
"Is it safe?"

[Stavros]

Why are NRA conventions usually held in "gun-free zones"?

To protect the neighbourhood cats?

[hippifried]

"I am concerned that a small number of criminals and crazies dictate policy."


Despite Trish's sidestep about the aggravation of air travel, this sentence, at the end of a ranting paragraph by buttinger, is the most poignant statement in this entire conversation.

This isn't really about guns, or individual incidences at all. It's about the constant attempt, by the "infotainment" industry to "terrorize" the nation so it can sell more snakeoil. "Wag the dog". "I'm mad as hell & I'm not going to take it anymore!" Just sayin'...

[broncofan]

How come Trish grades my posts like my 10th grade English teacher grading my English paper?

Also irrelevant. Leave it out.
I don't know what was the most poignant statement but this was the funniest sequence.:tongue:

[broncofan]

English teachers are the best at destroying self-confidence. Just as a throw-away anecdote, I once had an English teacher tell me to "scrap the first page, it goes nowhere slowly." For my next assignment I wanted to write an essay on why it's better to go nowhere slowly than quickly because it shows one lacks the aptitude for going nowhere. But she told me to scrap the idea it was irrelevant. Her intuition was generally very good.

[yodajazz]

just a little update on my city. Last week a 6 month old baby girl was shot and killed. She was in the car with her mother and grandmother at 5:30 in the afternoon. Speculation is the tho shooter had the wrong car. So in the last month a 5 year old, and 3 year old, and now a 6 month have been killed, presumably by gang violence here.

[trish]

Is there no hope for these old industrial towns that were once our pride? Sad, sad news.

[yodajazz]

Is there no hope for these old industrial towns that were once our pride? Sad, sad news.Here's one in this past month, I left out. A ten year old was shot in the chest. He was riding in the car next to his father who was killed, by shooter just walking up to the car at a traffic light. What kind of person will he grow up to be?

[buttslinger]

I think if you connect the dots between the apparent inability of the Democrats to effectively limit the number of guns, the flagrant politicalization of the NRA, and the lack of regulation of violent kid's video games, you might ask yourself if it's possible the U. S. Government actually wants a shotgun in every house. Maybe they know things we don't.

[Fyusian]

Americans and guns, I've never understood their obsession but more bizarre is their inability to recognize that there is a problem in America. Other countries that don't have guns have less crime especially less murder and murder sprees are rare, in America there's like what? Several mass shootings a year by a psycho and gun nut but apparently there's still some justification for having less gun control? America needs gun control. That much is obvious.

I'm just glad I live in a country where I would really get to defend myself. Here in England, even though there are those who illegal acquire firearms still, gun crimes are far rarer and the worst you'd get is someone pulling a knife on you and with that I know how to defend myself.

Someone pulls a gun out on you though and even if you've got a gun yourself, you're dead. All it takes is one bullet and unlike with a knife, you have no chance to dodge or even react to defend yourself unless the shooter is hesitant to shoot you and you're standing right next to them to disarm them.

[Ben in LA]

Two more shootings happened recently in Houston and Arizona and I'm like...

882810

[buttslinger]

I'm not a numbers guy, I'm bewildered by all the stats, but if I had to guess I would say gun statistics are tied into the American notion that anybody can buy a lottery ticket and win 50 million, or step up to a slot machine in Vegas and beat all the odds. Truth is, the House always wins and THE ONE PERCENT have the game fixed.
I don't event know what it means that the I% own half of everything, or half the possessions, or what, I really don't know, but I think it means they own everything that's up for grabs, and the 50% of wealth that the 99% "others" own are just SLAVE ACCESORIES like a roof over your head, a car to drive to work, food, clothes, and a week at the beach so you don't revolt.
In America guns mean FREEDOM, even if 99 out of 100 people are prisoners of their damn job. You don't see gun violence with people that have fruitful careers and happy families, you see gun violence in trailer parks and ghettoes. Statistically these are the same people that drink and smoke and buy lottery tickets. Dreamers.

[broncofan]

Woman fires gun at shoplifter fleeing a home depot. The shooter hung around and cooperated with the police apparently, which I think is irrelevant. She should be in jail.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015/10/06/cpl-holder-opens-fire-shoplifter-home-depot/73468588/

[hippifried]

Some people are just too stupid to have guns.

[broncofan]

Some people are just too stupid to have guns.
This is the truth and a truth about people generally. If people were universally smart and responsible and sensible and cool-headed, our current gun laws would make perfect sense.

[hippifried]

If people were universally smart and responsible and sensible and cool-headed, our current gun laws would make perfect sense.

Well... Not really.
If that were the case, why would anyone feel a need to be armed in the first place?

[broncofan]

Well... Not really.
If that were the case, why would anyone feel a need to be armed in the first place?
Target shooting. Hunting. As antiques commemorating a more violent time. I dunno, but there would be no reason to restrict their ownership, except to protect children. Typically the status quo is that something is allowed unless there is a reason for restrictions. The reasons we have are based on people being difficult to trust with devices that kill.

[hippifried]

If people were universally smart, responsible, sensible, & cool headed, I have to wonder if instruments of violence would have ever been invented.

[yodajazz]

http://news.yahoo.com/man-shoots-wife-dead-mistaking-210000920.html Anyone can make a mistake. Why are people always so skeptical?

[buttslinger]

Just the Facts, M'aam.

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlGWzAaR03Q

[trish]

Joe tells us the number of people killed in car accidents was about 55 000 that year. That puts the date of the show circa 1973. The population of the U.S. was just over 200 000 000. Now we have over 300 000 000 people and the number of car deaths is down to 33 000. Thank the law for safety belts. The world's not perfect. According to Joe, people aren't perfect. Joe's point is that's why we have laws, and police who enforce them. Joe tells of the long lines of men who during the Great Depression to queued to apply for a single job. For that reason it's difficult to understand why someone would've labeled this episode "Joe Friday schools Occupy Wall Street." Relating it to this thread: one would have to say, Joe's speech ultimately supports the regulation of firearms and the three "hippies" are more the laissez faire, let everyone have them types.

All in all, a fine piece of propaganda...even though I agree with it.

[buttslinger]

The problem with the facts is both sides can use them to make their point. This being a Liberal hangout, people's minds are made up already, the most fascinating thing to me is that gun control is a 50/50 issue, which makes it a fantastic debate.
Methinks the more ye speaks on the issue, the more you speak about yourself than the issue, you get tired and worn down, that's a plus for the status quo, the gun nuts.
I think giving the conservatives guns, and the liberals abortion is a pretty good deal.
Before I get jumped on, let me remind all you guys that being involved with a "tranny porn site" is probably a major thorn in the sides of the thousands and thousands of open or closeted people who are transitioned or transitioning and DON'T want to be looked at as a porn star or prostitute. Do you? Trying to get through this crappy life with just a shred of dignity is a liberal ideal, in my mind, and you'll have to admit the majority of dudes on this site consider transsexuals "shemale sex objects" with tits up in the air and meaty schlongs hanging down twixt creamy thighs. That's not real good for the transsexual applying for a job at some company in her small town.
I think my point to the LIBS here, is that it's better to err on the side of self expression and learning, the hard way, if that's what it takes. How can you claim to champion the rights of transsexuals when you yourself view them on porno sites? The majority of women look at guys who look at porn as jerk-offs. Education of conservatives starts with education of liberals. In deed as well as word.
I guess my point is before you trash some dude for his "unnatural" love of a machine gun, check out your "unnatural" sexual preoccupation of chicks with dicks. Glands are funny. If you ask some guy to give up his gun you might have to give up your porn. For the kids!!!

[trish]

I think giving the conservatives guns, and the liberals abortion is a pretty good deal.Conservative already have guns and liberals, at present, already have abortion. Nobody wants to take away the right to own firearms (that fear is being spread by the gun lobby and has no basis in reality). Conservative DO want to take away a woman's right to abortion (that fear is very real). I think a pretty good deal is for both sides to agree to both and pass reasonable regulations on both. Maybe if birth control regulations were less constrictive, there'd be fewer unwanted pregnancies.

Amy Schumer has a nice video-> http://www.scarymommy.com/amy-schumer-birth-control-sketch/

[hippifried]

In the entire various runs of Jack Webb's Dragnet franchise (1949 - 2004), I don't believe Joe Friday ever fired or even drew his weapon.

[buttslinger]

If you want to keep abortion legal, keep a Democratic President and lock up the Supreme Court for a few decades.
I just threw that Joe Friday thing in for a laugh. I'm not sure he went near gun control or abortion, he had to keep his audience.
That's the exact reason you don't want to put your dress and 6 inch heels on and scream against insane macho gun laws in your shrillest highest voice.
Because you want to choose your battles and keep the president a Democrat. And a Supreme Court Liberal. Which it ain't now.
Let the Republicans scream abortion and lock up the Women's vote.

[trish]

In the case of these boards, shrill has definitely been in the ear of the beholder.

[trish]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/number-of-households-with-guns-on-the-decline-study-shows/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/