The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[trish]

Many suicides are accidents too, in the sense that if a gun hadn't been handy, the victim may have survived his or her darkest hour without dire happenstance. Too often the weapon used belonged not to the victim, but to a family member who bought it to protect the family.

[Fancy fancy]

The only gun you need in life is your cock. Never has a truer word been spoken.

[trish]

And no matter how big or how small your cock, we all shoot the same caliber sperm (about 3 microns in diameter, if I correctly recall).

[Fancy fancy]

Every time I go to the toilet Trish, I need to order a crane

[trish]

Or you could hang a picture of Lilly Langtree over the urinal, drop your pants and wait for an erection. The problem there is you have to learn to piss through an erection, not an easily acquired skill.

[redsweater]

You don't think there's maybe a better way to do that? Really? A peptalk? Advocating for a more equitable economy so people in poverty don't feel completely hopeless?

Ok. Let's get rid of all the guns. A buyback is by far the cheapest and fastest way and they've been so successful that we can assume all 200 million guns will be turned in. The average offer is $300/gun, so to prevent all these suicides and accidents, we only need 60 billion dollars. No one will complain about this, no other countries will attempt to capitalize on the new black market opportunity, and no one will try to hasten the completion of a fully 3d printed weapon.

$60 billion buys a lot of cancer research.

Sorry for being caustic.

[trish]

No need to get rid of all guns. But if your gun was used in the commission of a crime, in a suicide, in an accident let's have some liability. Assign some liability to owner, manufacturers and distributors. From this point on let's make guns harder to acquire. Let's have background checks. If you want to bring a gun into a home let's make it the law that more than one adult living there give it the okay. There's a lot one can do for a lot less than 60 billion dollars.

It strikes me as bit silly to prioritize problems by size and tackle them only in that order. A lot money and a lot of time has already gone into cancer research. There are no organizations opposed to cancer research.

We can also investigate the cosmic background microwave radiation (which costs a lot less money and won't save any lives). We can do it while we research cancer.

Just one of the unique things about the problem of gun injuries and gun deaths, is there actually is a national organization devoted to doing nothing about it, indeed devoted to obstructing all progress. The NRA has even gotten Washington to prevent the CDC from conducting any further research into gun injuries and gun deaths.

[fivekatz]

No need to get rid of all guns. But if your gun was used in the commission of a crime, in a suicide, in an accident let's have some liability. Assign some liability to owner, manufacturers and distributors. From this point on let's make guns harder to acquire. Let's have background checks. If you want to bring a gun into a home let's make it the law that more than one adult living there give it the okay. There's a lot one can do for a lot less than 60 billion dollars.

It strikes me as bit silly to prioritize problems by size and tackle them only in that order. A lot money and a lot of time has already gone into cancer research. There are no organizations opposed to cancer research.

We can also investigate the cosmic background microwave radiation (which costs a lot less money and won't save any lives). We can do it while we research cancer.

Just one of the unique things about the problem of gun injuries and gun deaths, is there actually is a national organization devoted to doing nothing about it, indeed devoted to obstructing all progress. The NRA has even gotten Washington to prevent the CDC from conducting any further research into gun injuries and gun deaths.

While I don't know if I agree with every point made here, a lot of this post rings true to me.

The NRAs obstruction and power is enormous and the fact that they stand against universal background checks and closing the gun show loophole are examples of how entrenched they are in maintaining the status quo.

Right off the bat there needs to be some kind of buffer to the prolifiration of guns and a good place to start is with gun show sales and universal background checks and registration. Convicted felons should not be allowed to either maintain ownership or buy new guns.

The database argument IMHO is so lame and just made to incite fear in people. Everyone who has a car has that car registered and drivers license. Now free travel is a basic right but responsible ownership and insurance is required. I can not see why the same basic guidelines aren't good for fire arms. And if people are worried about national database it is a bit late as the Patriot Act has consolidated data and poses a far greater threat to freedom than sensible gun safety regulations or the idea that Obama is going to drop a drone attack on some Tea Party member while they are having their morning coffee and doughnut.

As for assault weapons, they IMHO should be so highly regulated and expensive to buy, register and insure that they will become a rarity in the future.

The idea of buying back all the fire arms in the US isn't terribly viable, given the number is estimated to be between 200 - 300 million. But NRAs idea that the best answer to fire arm violence is to have more people carry weapons while appealing to gun manufactures is not the answer IMHO.

While guns can't and should not be abolished the time has come for the US to comprehend that virtual unfettered ownership is a bad idea. Internet privacy and a whole host of issues threaten freedom more than gun safety does.

Chris Rock did a great skit about how bullets should cost $5,000 a piece. In this skit he talks about two guys having an argument in a bar and one yelling to other "I'd blow your motherfing brains out if I could afford it MF!" Sort of makes sense to me.

[buttslinger]

I'm sure the Founding Fathers imagined that if a man could be freed from oppression, he could then envision a straight line to God and His Kingdom, and the only task at hand would be to keep one eye on the foggy trap of DESIRE.
Well, it seems that the definition of Freedom requires Lawbooks, aisles of them, libraries of them.

A few years back there was a shooting in a High School near me, I don't recall the details, but that night the school auditorium was packed with outraged citizens and news cameras. In the course of the discussion, the Principle SCHOOLED the Parents, when he calmly stated he had not seen ONE of their faces at the weekly PTA meetings, in fact no-one at all attended them.

"There Is No Security on this Earth. Only Opportunity.” Douglas MacArthur

Any time you change the World to make it a saner place, somebody gets sore. You have to choose your battles. The World is a risky place. That's why there is a Cop with a Gun standing behind every Judge I've ever seen.

[hippifried]

[quote=trish;1302067]

We can also investigate the cosmic background microwave radiation (which costs a lot less money and won't save any lives).

So if I can just get to the cosmos, I can heat up this frozen burrito?

All necessary regulations are just common sense. The NRA used to be all about common sense because their agenda was gun safety. Then Wayne laPierre came along & weaseled his way into complete control of the organization. Now the NRA is nothing more than another fringe group, making up conspiracy theories & lobbying to remove the laws that they used to argue were enough to sanely regulate guns. There's so much stupid flowing out of the NRA these days, one would think the general public should be hip to it by now. That doesn't seem to be the case.

Perhaps the discussion should be directed toward blind following of winged philosophies. Basic common sense seems to have no place in most discussion that can be politicized in any way. This is an attitudinal problem.