The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[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.

[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.