The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Outpost Cafe => Topic started by: Denis on December 14, 2012, 03:10:26 PM
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You have my deepest sympathies and utmost condolences on your terrible loss.
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News has hit over this side of the pond too... terrible... condolences sent...
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Terrible events - sick minds - IMO a parent should not outlive their children.
All those people, family and their friends have my sincere sympathy.
Watch now for a very vigorous discussion about gun control and increased security measures at schools.
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Serious discussion of gun control will only happen when someone makes it into Congress and shoots a bunch of politicians.
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Serious discussion of gun control will only happen when someone makes it into Congress and shoots a bunch of politicians.
You may well be right, but the President addressed the nation today and made some comments which indicate it's about to come up with some emphasis.
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Serious discussion of gun control will only happen when someone makes it into Congress and shoots a bunch of politicians.
... and not even then...
The demise of the 2nd amendment would involve the dismantling of your constitution...
And that just ain't gonna happen...
I presume that Dave will want this to be kept apolitical and we should all respect the dead...
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Agreed. Other observations can wait.
I'm saddened by the sick people out there...but I certainly know they're out there.
What matters most is the parents and families...they are hurting more than I can imagine!
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Sorry, I didn't really mean to make it political.
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this makes me so sad...and it's getting worse, not better.
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Terrible news.
Makes my stomach turn.
Obama's speech was very emotional.
Hope things are (finally) going to change...
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I can't imagine anything worse than this. It was breaking as I was getting ready to head to the office. What needs to change is people. All that other stuff won't matter if the people behind these thoughts don't change.
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Gun control legislation is a non-starter. Even reinstating the assault weapons ban is a non-starter and would have done nothing to prevent a crime committed with handguns legally owned by the perpetrator's mother.
One of the networks had a "mental health expert" blathering about how "this is the face of mental illness." Bullshit. It was an unspeakably evil act done by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
This is a terrible tragedy for the families and friends of the victims and for the town. It is NOT a "great national tragedy," and the news coverage trying to make it so is just encouraging the next evil bastard to kill even more innocent people. I said the same thing after the Aurora shootings, where we saw people with no connection to the victims make themselves part of a spectacle of public grief. Yet people have learned nothing, and the media even more so.
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Gun control legislation is a non-starter. Even reinstating the assault weapons ban is a non-starter and would have done nothing to prevent a crime committed with handguns legally owned by the perpetrator's mother.
One of the networks had a "mental health expert" blathering about how "this is the face of mental illness." Bullshit. It was an unspeakably evil act done by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
This is a terrible tragedy for the families and friends of the victims and for the town. It is NOT a "great national tragedy," and the news coverage trying to make it so is just encouraging the next evil bastard to kill even more innocent people. I said the same thing after the Aurora shootings, where we saw people with no connection to the victims make themselves part of a spectacle of public grief. Yet people have learned nothing, and the media even more so.
I couldn't agree more. If the media would stop revealing names and publishing photos, these evil, heartless people would remain unknown, despite their crimes. No fame. Years ago, WGN TV made it publicly known that anyone storming the field at Wrigley Field during a Cubs game would NEVER be seen on camera or TV, and they stuck to it. People stopped trying to get their 15 seconds of fame after that.
People who have to manufacture their own fame in the worst way thinkable should remain nameless and faceless.
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I can't imagine. My thoughts and prayers to those killed and who survive. Gunning down innocent kids............................. I can't fathom this.
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You Americans amuse me to death. Keep on telling yourself your mantra of staying passive about all this: How it's single incidents, how people kill people not guns, how the press writes it up, how criminals always get guns (funny thing is: they generally don't waste their bullets on kids), how more death penalty will deter these people, but sensible gun laws won't. And how you are a young frontier-influenced country where things like that take place, you're only a little under 240 years old, surely things like that are meant to happen then. Also it's an Amendment. And people for tougher gun laws are likely for more gay marriage too, so we all know where this is coming from.
Until a few months from now when it happens again, you drape the coffins in the flag and NOTHING happens in the aftermath.
This has nothing to do with party politics and everything with common sense and human experience. That laissez-faire libertarian view that nothing can and/or should be done is as coherent as legalizing crystal meth. That won't kill responsible users either and the criminals already get it anyhow ...
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^ ^ ^
Yeah, you're right, Uwe. It's all the guns' fault. I guess that explains why Chicago, with a concealed carry ban, has 3 1/2 times the murder rate of Minneapolis and St. Paul, where concealed carry is legal. Or why Washington D.C.'s murder rate has dropped to a 50-year low (http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/11/dc-more-legal-guns-far-fewer-murders-des) since the Supreme Court overturned its complete handgun ban.
Of course, correlation isn't necessarily causation, but that applies to your conclusions too.
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About a week after I started junior high (7th grade) there was a mass killing at an elementary school a few miles away. Three adults and three kids died, other kids were maimed. What kind of easily available gun did the killer use? None. He set off a bomb in a suitcase. I found an article about it, published on the 50th anniversary of the bombing: “We had no psychologists,” he said, “no counseling, no lawsuits.” (http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/heights-news/article/Survivor-recalls-1959-Houston-school-blast-that-1732461.php) It was big news locally, of course. There was some national news coverage. But nothing even remotely like the wall-to-wall media circuses that we see now. There was no "grief counseling" for people with no remote connection to the event, no candlelight vigils, etc. It was a tragedy, and somehow the living went on without people 1500 miles away being interviewed by local yokel reporters about how they feel and local stations offering online chats with psychiatrists.
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This is pure evil, and I can't fathom it. I will suspend myself from commenting on gun control. It is for another time, and I feel both sides have already been opened up enough.
But I do feel, having dealt with it personally several times, that there is a greater issue with mental illness that gets overlooked and lost. Too many families when confronted with an unstable personality tend to deal with it in ways that the need for treatment gets put off. They are ashamed how others would think of their family member, fear for the loved one's safety in treatment, hope it will go away, figure it won't be that bad, that the things they see or hear were just aberrent behaviors. Many times the parent starts behaving irrationally in response. The thought often is if it were bad, then someone would notice it, and they are already being "seen" by someone. From what I am reading, there were loads of signals, and the firearms were owned to protect the mom from the child. People with issues of rage and violence typically don't use firearms, but anyone who works in law enforcement knows that the volume of cases involving blunt and edged weapons and chemical attacks is pretty dense. That stuff never makes the news. Every state has some level of protective service. CALL them. Charles Whitman tried to tell people himself.
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Gun control legislation is a non-starter. Even reinstating the assault weapons ban is a non-starter and would have done nothing to prevent a crime committed with handguns legally owned by the perpetrator's mother.
One of the networks had a "mental health expert" blathering about how "this is the face of mental illness." Bullshit. It was an unspeakably evil act done by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
This is a terrible tragedy for the families and friends of the victims and for the town. It is NOT a "great national tragedy," and the news coverage trying to make it so is just encouraging the next evil bastard to kill even more innocent people. I said the same thing after the Aurora shootings, where we saw people with no connection to the victims make themselves part of a spectacle of public grief. Yet people have learned nothing, and the media even more so.
I see this pretty much the same as you :sad: There are a whole lot of sick, evil SOBs out there and every time something like this happens it seems to mean that another month or so down the road there is another sick, evil SOB who is going to try to top it. I shudder to think what the next one is going to be and I find little comfort in KNOWING the news coverage will take it up a notch too :sad:.
Rick
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Apples and oranges, Dave, apples and oranges. We're not talking about homicide rates in urban centers, household violence in trailer parks, not about gang wars, not about organized crime, not the Uma Bomber or armed robbery and theft. All the above are relatively insulated against gun control, I agree.
Our scenario is "nutcase doesn't lke Mondays and proceeds to massacre a few people wantonly chosen by him or just unlucky enough to be around". Mostly, those people don't build explosive booby traps in the solitude of their home for months on end nor do they book flights to Syria to buy derelict Sturmgewehre because gun trade has ended in the US. They grab the gun in close proximity or buy it at the gun shop around the corner. Tougher gun laws won't prevent all these tragedies but wouldn't they even be justified if they prevented just one? Philosophical, not political question.
And Dave, for a man as smart as you, it pains me to see you taking up the populist "blame the media!"-argument. Based on that argument, we should ban all literature and films on the Holocaust, caterpillar Auschwitz into the ground and just pretend it never happened, life goes on after all except for a couple of unlucky jews. Otherwise we risk repetiton genocides. Evil goes away if you just ignore it.
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The media definately has a place here in reporting what has happened and the world has a need to know. It just gets WAY out of control and gets so over covered, and again , the end is result is the nutcase that feels obligated to go for the new nutcase record a month down the road and do something even worse.
Rick
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Sorry, I didn't really mean to make it political.
As you can see, an apology was not necessary... :-\
A weapon of any kind, from the pen to the nuclear, once released from the (Pandora's) box, is in the public domain from whence it will remain... all we can do is try and protect the innocent, and the only innocents here are the children... every single one of us knows right from wrong and the only difference here is the choices we make...
We all have opinions, some stronger than others, but lets keep this a place for even-keeled discussions and remember this thread for the reasons Denis started it: to offer simple condolences to those who have suffered most...
Good grief... common sense... and from me of all people... ;)
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Why does a person even need a gun?
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In certain societies, in certain environments, where hunting for survival is required, I can fully understand the need for one... a darn site more efficient than a knife or a spear...
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Why does a person even need a gun?
If the bad guy has one, and rest assured he does, then I should have one also, and rest assured I do.
A big part of the problem is that the law abiding citizen with a concealed carry permit is regulated on where he can carry his gun. Schools and most movie theaters are no carry zones, so the law abiding citizen taking his kids to school or going to a show leaves his gun at home while the bad guy shows up and massacres dozens of people knowing the law abiding people will be unarmed.
I would love to see extensive media coverage on a bad guy walking in to a school or movie theater with an assualt rifle and a soccer mom or a 75 year old woman pulling a Glock out of her purse and empty a 15 shot clip into the bad guy. This media coverage may actually stop the next bad guy.
Rick
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I have to "target" and agree with Gary's comment about the notariety of these sub-species. Apparently that is what motivates them to perform such an acts of evil.
Secondly, Dave an I are about the same age so cranking back to when I was 10 (1960) the population in the US has nearly doubled from about 165 to 330 Million people. Don't have any idea how that impacts the situation but it seems plausible that the larger the sample the more mutants are created. That is all.
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Tragedies like this will keep happening, probably increasingly, until the mindset dealing with them changes. Recycling old ideas which obviously don't work seems pointless.
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Why does a person even need a gun?
Americans need guns so they can revolt against a tyrannical government. Remember the Founding Fathers were revolutionaries and they formed our government in a manner to attempt to limit the opportunity for a tyrant to gain power, but the final preventative is the liberty of the citizens to arm themselves and revolt if necessary.
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This is a terrible tragedy for the families and friends of the victims and for the town. It is NOT a "great national tragedy," and the news coverage trying to make it so is just encouraging the next evil bastard to kill even more innocent people. I said the same thing after the Aurora shootings, where we saw people with no connection to the victims make themselves part of a spectacle of public grief. Yet people have learned nothing, and the media even more so.
Dave has it right. While this is a great tragedy, it is not a national tragedy. I will not obey the presidential order to fly the flag at half staff.
And that is all I will say about it because any more would be seen as political discussion.
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Americans need guns so they can revolt against a tyrannical government. Remember the Founding Fathers were revolutionaries and they formed our government in a manner to attempt to limit the opportunity for a tyrant to gain power, but the final preventative is the liberty of the citizens to arm themselves and revolt if necessary.
Yeah, right, tell that to the Connecticut parents. Their children have died as collateral damage so you can continue to revolt against tyrants. No doubt a small price to pay. No, that ain't political, it is collective insanity.
Regards from Old Europe (and how Hitler would have been prevented if German households had been better armed in 1933, simple as that)
Uwe
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If the bad guy has one, and rest assured he does, then I should have one also, and rest assured I do.
Rick
You sound like Iran.
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there is no easy answer to this gun issue uwe. i don't think your stereotypical view of this country helps you much either.
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Americans need guns so they can revolt against a tyrannical government. Remember the Founding Fathers were revolutionaries and they formed our government in a manner to attempt to limit the opportunity for a tyrant to gain power, but the final preventative is the liberty of the citizens to arm themselves and revolt if necessary.
This is the one and only reason I do not support any attempt to ban assualt rifles. I agree that the average person has no real need for an assualt rifle, but when and if the time comes to take the government back, I would sure like to have something with a little longer range and a couple of hundred round clips in my hands. Yeah, it may sound a little fanatical to some , but it is foolish to rule it out. Watch the world news and don't think it can't happen here. We've got the right and no good will come from giving it up.
Rick
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You sound like Iran.
I suppose the difference is in ones' definition of "good guy" and "bad guy".
Rick
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Yeah, right, tell that to the Connecticut parents. Their children have died as collateral damage so you can continue to revolt against tyrants. No doubt a small price to pay. No, that ain't political, it is collective insanity.
Regards from Old Europe (and how Hitler would have been prevented if German households had been better armed in 1933, simple as that)
Uwe
That's true, if the Weimar Republic could have found a way to arm the citizenry better, Hitler would have never come into power. Life would have been great. Instead, we got World War II. Oh, yeah, Hitler used the system already in place to gain power and it would have been irrelevant how many people had guns. Never mind.
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We all have opinions, some stronger than others, but lets keep this a place for even-keeled discussions and remember this thread for the reasons Denis started it: to offer simple condolences to those who have suffered most...
Good grief... common sense... and from me of all people... ;)
Looks like your common sense fell on deaf ears, too many preferring to trawl over & over old, old ground.
Started with the very best of intentions without a doubt, but hijacked as though it was an event from the distant past. Shameful, & more shameful that those involved haven't the good grace to recognise that.
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there is no easy answer to this gun issue uwe. i don't think your stereotypical view of this country helps you much either.
Sigh, Nofi, for everything I criticize about the US there are 10 things I appreciate, accept or even adore about your good country. Don't forget that I spent my adolescent years largely with Americans and enjoyed their company and outlook on life. That doesn't make me have to like Hanoi's Christmas bombing - not back then and not now.
Admittedly, your collective views about gun control aren't among what I like about your country either. You guys act as if the Connecticut incident was a car accident that cannot reasonably lead to cars and indicidual traffic being abolished on US roads. To me that is a perverse view.
No, there aren't easy answers to the gun issue, but you guys simply avoid formulating even the attempt of an answer (complex or simple) for fear of the alleged "political dimension" of it. And tell you what: The answer doesn't lie in the Second Amendment of your otherwise in many ways commendable Constitution either. I don't believe your much lauded fathers of the Constitution had mass assassinations of kids on a schoolyard as a by-prodict to be tolerated in mind when they adopted that Amendment. I also don't believe that the next revolution in the US will be won with guns - buy a large computer server if you want to be prepared.
Let's agree to disagree. You are free to continue pretending that the one has nothing to do with the other. Just spare me that crap with the media being to blame. To bring it down to your level of archaic argument: Neither newspapers, television, radio nor the internet killed those kids, bullets from a gun did. A gun that would have been much more difficult to obtain in many other parts of the world where by coincidence schoolyard shootings are more rare.
Uwe
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I suppose the difference is in ones' definition of "good guy" and "bad guy".
Rick
We are not stereotyping here, are we? Ask an Israeli mother who lost her daughter in a terrorist attack on a bus, a Palestinian mother who lost her son to an Israeli attack and an Iranian half-orphan whose father was a nuclear physicist and you'll get different answers to your simple question I believe.
Now do get the "moral relativism"-clout out, quick!
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Oh my goodness. What a heated discussion.
I have just one simple question:
why would anyone need to have a gun?
Think about it before you answer it.
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And Dave, for a man as smart as you, it pains me to see you taking up the populist "blame the media!"-argument. Based on that argument, we should ban all literature and films on the Holocaust, caterpillar Auschwitz into the ground and just pretend it never happened, life goes on after all except for a couple of unlucky jews. Otherwise we risk repetiton genocides. Evil goes away if you just ignore it.
The media is partly responsible, and you're naive if you think otherwise. It's a symbiotic relationship. The media doesn't create crazies, but the coverage encourages the next one. And our society in general has become part of it. I'm trying to avoid coverage as much as I can yet I've already seen vigils being held at locations far from the crime scene by people who have no connection to the victims or the town. We're conditioned to think we can't cope anymore without leeching onto the grief of others. Apparently we even need schmexperts* to tell us how to talk to our children about this. A lot of people just eat this psychobabble up, which just perpetuates the cycle.
* thanks to Robert Ringer for this term
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We are not stereotyping here, are we? Ask an Israeli mother who lost her daughter in a terrorist attack on a bus, a Palestinian mother who lost her son to an Israeli attack and an Iranian half-orphan whose father was a nuclear physicist and you'll get different answers to your simple question I believe.
Now do get the "moral relativism"-clout out, quick!
I'm not sterotyping anything. I'm saying it depends on ones' definition of "bad guy" and "good guy". I asked no question, simple or otherwise. I made a statement.
Rick
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This is the one and only reason I do not support any attempt to ban assualt rifles. I agree that the average person has no real need for an assualt rifle, but when and if the time comes to take the government back, I would sure like to have something with a little longer range and a couple of hundred round clips in my hands. Yeah, it may sound a little fanatical to some , but it is foolish to rule it out. Watch the world news and don't think it can't happen here. We've got the right and no good will come from giving it up.
Rick
^ ^ ^ This.
And if there ever were a serious attempt to ban guns here, there would be armed insurrection.
I don't think most Europeans will understand this, though. Chalk it up to cultural differences.
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But the issue, Rick, is that more violent deaths are caused by people believing to do right than among people believing to do wrong.
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But the issue, Rick, is that more violent deaths are caused by people believing to do right than among people believing to do wrong.
If a guy walking in to an elementary school or a movie theater with an assualt rifle and a couple hundred rounds and drops 30 people because he believes he is doing something right and I whip out my pistol and shoot him because I think I'm doing something right, that would give us 31 dead people in the name of what was right. I'm thinking at least one of us was in the wrong. You decide .
Rick
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^ ^ ^ This.
And if there ever were a serious attempt to ban guns here, there would be armed insurrection.
I don't think most Europeans will understand this, though. Chalk it up to cultural differences.
Experience. Nothing like two world wars to ravage up your countries to gain a slightly different perspective on the charm of weapons in anybody's hands. Your collective memory of the Civil War has paled and since then the lucky geography of your country has spared you a similar expereince.
Who says that guns need to be banned? How unelegant and conspicious. I'd start with outlawing ammunition, after all the Consituiton says nothing about the right to bear ammunition and we should interpret it on word for word basis only to stay true to its fathers wishes and intentions. Crippling taxes for anything but the meekest handguns sound like a good idea too. Mandatory psychological tests for gunowners every 12 months. Give me the number of the Justice Department, I'm sure I'd come up with a couple of effective ideas pronto. A whole arsenal of Big Government directionism, make no mistake.
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It's insane to try to regulate human behavior by regulating inanimate objects.
China was hit by a spate of knife and cleaver attacks that targeted school children in 2010.
A number of measures were introduced at the time, including increased security at schools across the country and a regulation requiring people to register with their national ID cards when buying large knives (quoted from CNN)
And yet it happens again http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html)
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Mandatory psychological tests for gunowners every 12 months.
In this case the guns owner was one of the victims. The shooter didn't own a gun.
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If a guy walking in to an elementary school or a movie theater with an assualt rifle and a couple hundred rounds and drops 30 people because he believes he is doing something right and I whip out my pistol and shoot him because I think I'm doing something right, that would give us 31 dead people in the name of what was right. I'm thinking at least one of us was in the wrong. You decide .
Rick
Fine, if you are a (even Federal!) policman doing your duty there, Rick. But tell me, how often do you patrol the neighborhood schools with your pistol to fend off potential assault rifle shootists? Once or twice a year? In alternation with your buddies from the "Let's protect our schools from assault gun insurgents"-vigilante? I believe your argument stands on an abstract level only. Give me one example of a schoolyard massacre preventend by a good guy (as you undoubtely are, noo sarcasm from me on that) handgun owner? Oh, you mean if we arm all school children and train them in rifle ranges then this would not have happened? :rolleyes:
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In this case the guns owner was one of the victims. The shooter didn't own a gun.
Uhum. Which means if no gun had been around to be purloined they would both be still alive and thirty other people too unless, of course, the non-gun-owning shootist would have painstakingly built a gun by himself in the privacy of his home?
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What really repulses me is seeing politicians who support gun control using this tragedy as an excuse to start agitating for more laws. Jesus, give it a rest. They're entitled to their views, of course, but to exploit a tragedy before the victims names are even released... not that I worry about it. Gun control is dead politically and gun bans have been ruled unconstitutional.
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From nbcnews.com:
Under Connecticut law, people under 21 are prohibited from purchasing or carrying handguns. Adam Lanza was 20.
The nonprofit Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence ranks gun control laws in Connecticut and neighboring states New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts as the most stringent in the nation, after California.
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What really repulses me is seeing politicians who support gun control using this tragedy as an excuse to start agitating for more laws. Jesus, give it a rest. They're entitled to their views, of course, but to exploit a tragedy before the victims names are even released... not that I worry about it. Gun control is dead politically and gun bans have been ruled unconstitutional.
(http://www.redensarten.net/Bilder/kopfsand.jpg)
Let's not fall into hasty actionism, good grief! I forgot how a cross-party alliance has been diligently working on a non-intrusive solution for this for decades. There will be more schoolyard shootings to come, let's not rush things. Personally, I believe the gun control lobby staged the whole thing in Connecticut, it wouldn't be beyond them in their Big Government drive to render Americans help- and defenseless against collectivist oppression in the future.
If a child gets run over before a school because someone abided with the speed limit, but was still too fast and then the mayor advocates the further reduction of that speed limit he is "using this tragedy as an excuse to start agitating for more laws".
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
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It's not going to change, Uwe. Insult all you want.
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I dearly love everyone here and have high tolerance for most everything, but your views on this drive me mad.
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As I mentioned earlier, there is no example of an armed citizen (good guy) shooting a bad guy in a school zone or movie theater because these are no carry zones and the law abiding good guy citizen abides by the law, and is unarmed. I do not patrol the streets looking for bad guys and I do not wear a super hero costume and fight crime and evil doers in the metropolis. I am a regular American guy with the right to bear arms and I'm usually armed with a 38 or a Glock 19 along with my CPL and I have no issues about using either one to defend myself or loved ones.
Bad guys are always going to have guns and they are targeting places where the good guys aren't allowed to carry. This is not coincidence. Bad guys have guns. I'm a regular guy (good guy , I like to think) , I have a gun too. I think that's fair.
Rick
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if the time comes to take the government back
What is that all about?
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I don't have great recommendations, because relative to this specific incident, I have no solutions and given US law and history, I don't think there is one. The firearms were legally purchased and registered - by the mother, who the shooter killed, and then essentially stole the firearms.
According to today's reports he actually broke into the school to carry out his evil thoughts...so security short of police on full time guard at every school door plus locked, barred gates and classrooms in schools (an impossibility based on political, budget and logistical reasons) there was no way to prevent his entering.
Where is the remedy? Confiscation of firearms is not only politically impossible (and something I would not support), it's also logistically impossible. There are millions of firearms in this country, probably more of them old enough to be unregistered than those which are registered. In fact, about 10 of them are in my basement...I think there might be federal paperwork on 2 firearms I own.
It is logistically impossible to disarm the US citizenry because of the number held in private hands, and they would not agree to an attempt. You will never - and I repeat, never - disarm the US population. Can't be done. And as long as there are firearms held by the public, there will be a source of firearms for those who wish to steal them or acquire them illegally.
It is also true (IMO) that many crimes and injuries are committed by people using firearms either stolen or acquired privately with no registration. One could require registration of private sales (although I think that even that might be political suicide for elected representatives making the attempt), but those with evil intent can ignore the law and keep stealing or buying them off the records. As I noted, there is an immense pool of available weapons that only require theft or illegal purchase.
And note: the fact that the firearms in Connecticut were registered made no difference, nor did it make a difference in the Columbine school killings. Registration is NOT the answer, because the act of registering a firearms only makes it traceable after the event takes place. And it is not clear yet, but it sounds like all the shooting was done with two good quality semi-auto handguns, and that the Bushmaster .223 rifle the shooter had was unused because it was left in his car. Banning "assault rifles" (a vague term with no possible accurate definition) isn't the answer either, at least in this case. Banning large magazines isn't either, because as this example showed, they aren't even used in many cases.
Perhaps the way to MITIGATE (not prevent) such events is an effort to prevent anyone who has any record of criminal behavior, mental illness, or perhaps even some types of mental challenges (the shooter evidently had autism) from legally purchasing a firearm. It won't entirely prevent crimes or shootings, but it might reduce the number of mentally ill and antisocial people who own firearms - slightly. That might in turn somewhat reduce the number of shootings by people with mental illness - but not by those motivated by more common criminal motives such as drugs or gang activity.
I am attempting not to make a political argument, but a logistical one.
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What is that all about?
Z.O.G.!!! It exists. :o
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I don't have great recommendations, because relative to this specific incident, I have no solutions and given US law and history, I don't think there is one. The firearms were legally purchased and registered - by the mother, who the shooter killed, and then essentially stole the firearms.
According to today's reports he actually broke into the school to carry out his evil thoughts...so security short of police on full time guard at every school door plus locked, barred gates and classrooms in schools (an impossibility based on political, budget and logistical reasons) there was no way to prevent his entering.
Where is the remedy? Confiscation of firearms is not only politically impossible (and something I would not support), it's also logistically impossible. There are millions of firearms in this country, probably more of them old enough to be unregistered than those which are registered. In fact, about 10 of them are in my basement...I think there might be federal paperwork on 2 firearms I own.
It is logistically impossible to disarm the US citizenry because of the number held in private hands, and they would not agree to an attempt. You will never - and I repeat, never - disarm the US population. Can't be done. And as long as there are firearms held by the public, there will be a source of firearms for those who wish to steal them or acquire them illegally.
It is also true (IMO) that many crimes and injuries are committed by people using firearms either stolen or acquired privately with no registration. One could require registration of private sales (although I think that even that might be political suicide for elected representatives making the attempt), but those with evil intent can ignore the law and keep stealing or buying them off the records. As I noted, there is an immense pool of available weapons that only require theft or illegal purchase.
And note: the fact that the firearms in Connecticut were registered made no difference, nor did it make a difference in the Columbine school killings. Registration is NOT the answer, because the act of registering a firearms only makes it traceable after the event takes place. And it is not clear yet, but it sounds like all the shooting was done with two good quality semi-auto handguns, and that the Bushmaster .223 rifle the shooter had was unused because it was left in his car. Banning "assault rifles" (a vague term with no possible accurate definition) isn't the answer either, at least in this case. Banning large magazines isn't either, because as this example showed, they aren't even used in many cases.
Perhaps the way to MITIGATE (not prevent) such events is an effort to prevent anyone who has any record of criminal behavior, mental illness, or perhaps even some types of mental challenges (the shooter evidently had autism) from legally purchasing a firearm. It won't entirely prevent crimes or shootings, but it might reduce the number of mentally ill and antisocial people who own firearms - slightly. That might in turn somewhat reduce the number of shootings by people with mental illness - but not by those motivated by more common criminal motives such as drugs or gang activity.
I am attempting not to make a political argument, but a logistical one.
No, you are advocating that politics surrender before the facts. Southern slaveholders would have never agreed to the liberation of their slaves either, you should have just let them be.
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No, you are advocating that politics surrender before the facts. Southern slaveholders would have never agreed to the liberation of their slaves either, you should have just let them be.
Consider what it took to make that change happen. IMO it would not be worth killing a million or more people in a civil war to save some thousands from firearms crimes. And if you know Americans, you can understand that there would indeed be armed resistance - and possibly states seceding - over such an attempt. No kidding.
Politics often surrender for the facts...but the US is in an unusual position because of its history of firearms ownership and the laws which overlay that ownership. I am trying to state the situation and examine the logistics around it.
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So for my own understanding, some folks here on this forum and other parts of the US actually think they need automatic weapons to revolt against a potential hostile US government?
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So for my own understanding, some folks here on this forum and other parts of the US actually think they need automatic weapons to revolt against a potential hostile US government?
I don't think that personally. I can't make a case for ownership of fully automatic weapons by civilians under any circumstances. But even that's not a clear position, because many semi-automatic firearms can easily be made to function in fully automatic mode.
There are plenty of people who think that black gummint helicopters are constantly hovering just over the horizon, and that there are listening devices in their box of cornflakes. They're freakin' nuts, but there are many of them.
There are also many who have sincere doubts about the direction of the government - if you've followed news, you know that citizens in some states actually have submitted a petition to secede from the US (probably because they think the current administration is the antichrist).
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/14/white-house-secede-petitions-reach-660000-signatures-50-state-participation/
Personally (political view here) I think those who want to secede are showing the worst kind of ANTI-patriotism, as I think they should show faith in their country by working within the system instead of trying to escape from it. I doubt they would agree with my opinion, as their views seem to be so polarized that listening to reason isn't part of their behavior.
Put those and other indicators together with the wording of the second amendment make the comment about automatic firearms a true statement. Quote: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
To many people, the security of a free state not only includes freedom from outside elements, but from those in our own government, which they do not trust. Put that together with the second amendment, and they have a nice excuse for protecting any intrusion on firearms ownership of any kind at any time.
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So for my own understanding, some folks here on this forum and other parts of the US actually think they need automatic weapons to revolt against a potential hostile US government?
Yes, definately. There are militia groups ready right now.
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Yes, definately. There are militia groups ready right now.
That is simply insane. I do think I saw some kind of show that outlined this...like some kind of weekend warriors.....but these 'militias' seemed more like a bunch of fat bellied, long bearded hillbillies that didn't like any kind of rules.
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(http://www.infekt.ch/updown/images/Obelix_spinnen.jpg)
Sorry, coming from a country that has seen how it was to be taken hostage by a government at one point,
(http://einestages.spiegel.de/hund-images/2008/03/19/5/c507b6a43f6789797ffaf33d61efb976_image_document_large_featured_borderless.jpg)
and barely survived the consequences, I can only laugh about your conspiracy fears. You have no f***ing idea what you are talking about, no f***ing idea.
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That is simply insane. I do think I saw some kind of show that outlined this...like some kind of weekend warriors.....but these 'militias' seemed more like a bunch of fat bellied, long bearded hillbillies that didn't like any kind of rules.
FTR, I'd be quite OK if the right to bare arms was a couple of cannons:
(http://cdn.the-beautiful-ones.com/large/christina_hendricks/christina_hendricks.c9b2451f75e4480ed20390830ff93f9d.jpg)
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I can only laugh about your conspiracy fears. You have no f***ing idea what you are talking about, no f***ing idea.
Uwe, I can't express how much I DON'T want those groups to gain any more power.
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Now I'm against bum control too.
(http://www.f1online.de/premid/002007000/2007070.jpg)
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I have to agree here. Those kinds of groups (including the Nazi's) don't generally consist of people who are high achievers in life.
I stay away from guns, won't have one around.
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i don't see these militia groups as any kind of threat. we have some here in the south running around the woods playing soldier. their politics are usually far right wing and non attainable. if they want a revolution let them try, against the entire usa military. this would come to be known as the 'five minute war'. from what i have seen and read they often line up with the arayan nation folks politically. not good.
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Well, I leave for a few hours, and everyone is busy here.
1. I agree with Dave on the media issue, and I've felt that way for a long time. The media doesn't make villains out of these people, they make them martyrs, celebrities and anti-heroes. When a train hit a school bus near my house in Illinois, the media was all over the high school, paying students $10 to cry on camera. The local school administration and police told the news crews that they were no longer allowed near the school for reporting.
2. An armed militia will unlikely ever be able to take over or take back a government. Those sorts of changes require leaders and management. Disgruntled people only make noise. Even in the Civil War here, the soldiers were not the thinkers, only the labor sent out to follow the orders of those who had the real vision.
3. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Hitler was originally VOTED into power, correct? He came along and restored hope to a dejected Germany. He also started out exploiting existing sentiment, like anti-Semitism, and fanned the flames of a willing public, to the tune of his own belief and design. The problem came after he got in the driver's seat, and decided to tell the country how it was going to be, and people weren't happy with that.
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Well, I leave for a few hours, and everyone is busy here.
1. I agree with Dave on the media issue, and I've felt that way for a long time. The media doesn't make villains out of these people, they make them martyrs, celebrities and anti-heroes. When a train hit a school bus near my house in Illinois, the media was all over the high school, paying students $10 to cry on camera. The local school administration and police told the news crews that they were no longer allowed near the school for reporting.
2. An armed militia will unlikely ever be able to take over or take back a government. Those sorts of changes require leaders and management. Disgruntled people only make noise. Even in the Civil War here, the soldiers were not the thinkers, only the labor sent out to follow the orders of those who had the real vision.
3. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Hitler was originally VOTED into power, correct? He came along and restored hope to a dejected Germany. He also started out exploiting existing sentiment, like anti-Semitism, and fanned the flames of a willing public, to the tune of his own belief and design. The problem came after he got in the driver's seat, and decided to tell the country how it was going to be, and people weren't happy with that.
Yes, on point 3, that is what I was saying in my earlier post. Hitler used the system which already existed to gain power, then reshaped it to make it a dictatorship. How many guns the people had was never an issue. Even if they had been armed to the teeth, it would have made no difference considering the actual military they would have been facing.
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Now I'm against bum control too.
(http://www.f1online.de/premid/002007000/2007070.jpg)
If this wouldn't change people's minds on bum control, nothing will.
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Given the original premise of this thread and the specific request of it's author on it's relevance; the last page especially of it is nothing short of disgusting.
Ideally it should be reported to a moderator .............. but wait.......... :rolleyes:
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Given the original premise of this thread and the specific request of it's author on it's relevance; the last page especially of it is nothing short of disgusting.
Ideally it should be reported to a moderator .............. but wait.......... :rolleyes:
People deal with tragedies in completely different ways. Some resort to a form of humor if they think that will do any good. It may not fit your personality type, but it may fit that of others. However, when I find something somewhere on a message board that I strongly object to, I just leave. I've done it a number of times through the years and it can be effective.
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I'm sure everyone here knows of a board somewhere that would never have made it 5 pages without moderator intervention and deletion. We've been able to disagree pretty strongly here without all the worst things that could come out in a discussion like this.
And, I also seem to recall that Hitler opposed bum control, and that his photo collection of Eva was proof of that. :popcorn:
Let us now enter the realm of the love that shall not be named, version 1.
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This is a nice place, please let's not mess it up.
Rick
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...
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this is just beyond anything one can imagine. I live about 20 miles from Newtown. about 8 guys that have worked for me over the last years live in that town. haven't reached all of them yet. My middle daughter is a camp counseler during the summer and one of the kids was in her troupe. Played a gig last night and a couple that always comes and sees us was missing. turns out they lost a daughter. Another friend there went to school with the principal that got killed. rumor is the father worked for GE capital which was my employer up till friday as i got laid off a few weeks ago.
All i can say is you see these horrors on TV but think never..... this is a tough one
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this is just beyond anything one can imagine. I live about 20 miles from Newtown. about 8 guys that have worked for me over the last years live in that town. haven't reached all of them yet. My middle daughter is a camp counseler during the summer and one of the kids was in her troupe. Played a gig last night and a couple that always comes and sees us was missing. turns out they lost a daughter. Another friend there went to school with the principal that got killed. rumor is the father worked for GE capital which was my employer up till friday as i got laid off a few weeks ago.
All i can say is you see these horrors on TV but think never..... this is a tough one
It has to be difficult to live in that area right now. If I understand the area, it's not a large urban area. When CNN commented today that people still didn't know who the victims were, I doubted that very seriously. I would guess, as you indicate, that everyone that lives there knows who died. These are people who live in the same neighborhoods. I know that when the train hit the school bus in my area, it was all one neighborhood. You have families and next door neighbors that all share this tragedy from yesterday forward.
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7 mass shootings this year so far. Blaming the media is BS, it only reflects our culture from (not very) left to far right. If you don't like it, turn it off. Blame the parents of the shooters, including the dead mom who didn't keep her guns locked where her lunatic kid couldn't get them.
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Okay, I've removed a bunch of personal attacks that were completely unwarranted.
If you don't like the content of the thread, then don't participate -- it's that simple.
There are no "nazi apologists" on this board. Don't make the mistake of claiming that again.
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7 mass shootings this year so far. Blaming the media is BS, it only reflects our culture from (not very) left to far right. If you don't like it, turn it off. Blame the parents of the shooters, including the dead mom who didn't keep her guns locked where her lunatic kid couldn't get them.
All I've heard is bashing the media for exploiting this tragedy, nothing about the NRA and gun makers working 24/7 and spending tons of money to make sure the status quo prevails.
The media is not to blame for the issue, but I do feel they provide an unnecessary amount of attention to the individuals who perpetrate these acts. The media makes them famous, and that was my point (and I believe Dave's, as well). If the individuals who do these mass shootings are not given priority content in the news, especially over the victims, then they don't get their 15 minutes. It's only one piece of this puzzle.
And, I agree about the parents being the first place to start. If I saw correctly, the mother had the guns to protect herself FROM her son. There was definitely something wrong at home for some time.
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The media is not to blame for the issue, but I do feel they provide an unnecessary amount of attention to the individuals who perpetrate these acts. The media makes them famous, and that was my point (and I believe Dave's, as well). If the individuals who do these mass shootings are not given priority content in the news, especially over the victims, then they don't get their 15 minutes. It's only one piece of this puzzle.
And, I agree about the parents being the first place to start. If I saw correctly, the mother had the guns to protect herself FROM her son. There was definitely something wrong at home for some time.
Right. The media doesn't cause anything, it's mostly just a reflection of society. If people weren't obsessed with these killers and with attaching themselves to the misfortunes of the victims, the media wouldn't be covering it. But the way the media covers it just makes the next deranged loser know he will get attention.
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I have close ties to media through my college - and I really regret the effects of the race to be first and to get every bit of drivel related to a new story. There are darn few journalists left in the world - the ones with judgment and both the ability and willingness to get to the bottom of a story. Most of them are reporters with good hair and a remote truck that the news director wants to be used every night.
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The media is not to blame for the issue, but I do feel they provide an unnecessary amount of attention to the individuals who perpetrate these acts. The media makes them famous, and that was my point (and I believe Dave's, as well). If the individuals who do these mass shootings are not given priority content in the news, especially over the victims, then they don't get their 15 minutes. It's only one piece of this puzzle.
And, I agree about the parents being the first place to start. If I saw correctly, the mother had the guns to protect herself FROM her son. There was definitely something wrong at home for some time.
What happened to personal responsibility? I don't do what the media tells me and raised my kids the same way. Too many stupid parents not parenting, letting corporations do it (including the media but not limited to it)
If the mother bought guns to protect herself from her son she should have had him put away as a danger to her or himself.
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Those of us who have been here a while know an attempt to defuse a tense topic when we see it. This is a pretty open and honest place, and we all generally get along. This is the first topic of this nature that I can recall being allowed to continue. There are reasons why we stick to basses, guns, trains and Blackmore.
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If the mother bought guns to protect herself from her son she should have had him put away as a danger to her or himself.
Absolutely.
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I get the media references in the sense that it's not the message....but more specifically the sensationalist approach to the delivery of the message. News was news till things like CNN came along...
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We don't really know what happened yet with the mother and her guns. On the evening news they're now saying she was a sport shooter who had guns because she feared civil unrest if the economy collapsed. For all we know, the guns could have been locked up. It's just speculation at this point.
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Wow. It took six pages before the obligatory Blackmore mention.
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I think I have the answer to all our problems...
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rKhPb-Ogmm4/UBxSSXyHhtI/AAAAAAAAJ_c/ZhG7uLoqxQ4/s1600/gort-klaatu.jpg)
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Himmler, did I miss something while I was out for dinner? Seems like one can't leave you guys alone without something happening. Was I now a Nazi - that stands for No Ass Zone Infringer I believe - apologist or not? Goose stepping is good for your buttocks cheeks by the way.
I don't know what der große Stu said about others, but to the extent he called me a Nazi apologist: Schwamm drüber as we say in the Reic ..., in Germany wollte ich sagen. This thread was heated because it meant something to people and it works in everyone in a different way. I know that I can lash out badly with my tongue or my writing/typing hand. I'd appreciate it if others who felt insulted give it a good night's sleep. He's a Slade fan, there is not too many left of them!!!! Dave, please reconsider as well.
This thread did/does show that we all care about something like that happening. That is good. We also had a pretty decent discussion about something that goes to the core of your values, liebe Amerikaner, I understand that and think you held up well against my caustic remarks.
It's good to know that we can discuss about something other than Ritchie Backmore once in a while.
Over and out.
Uwe
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I think I have the answer to all our problems...
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rKhPb-Ogmm4/UBxSSXyHhtI/AAAAAAAAJ_c/ZhG7uLoqxQ4/s1600/gort-klaatu.jpg)
Didn't he say something like "gork barrara nektu"? I thought that was a good, flexible concept.
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Translates as, "Don't forget the batteries..." ;D
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this is just beyond anything one can imagine. I live about 20 miles from Newtown. about 8 guys that have worked for me over the last years live in that town. haven't reached all of them yet. My middle daughter is a camp counseler during the summer and one of the kids was in her troupe. Played a gig last night and a couple that always comes and sees us was missing. turns out they lost a daughter. Another friend there went to school with the principal that got killed. rumor is the father worked for GE capital which was my employer up till friday as i got laid off a few weeks ago.
All i can say is you see these horrors on TV but think never..... this is a tough one
My sympathies, that must have hit home with you in the truest sense of the word. I'd be shattered if it happened to me or people close to me. Can make you lose faith with things but it really shouldn't.
Uwe
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klaatu barada nikto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaxSxEqKtA
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I saw the German-dubbed version!!!
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this is just beyond anything one can imagine. I live about 20 miles from Newtown. about 8 guys that have worked for me over the last years live in that town. haven't reached all of them yet. My middle daughter is a camp counseler during the summer and one of the kids was in her troupe. Played a gig last night and a couple that always comes and sees us was missing. turns out they lost a daughter. Another friend there went to school with the principal that got killed. rumor is the father worked for GE capital which was my employer up till friday as i got laid off a few weeks ago.
All i can say is you see these horrors on TV but think never..... this is a tough one
Sorry to hear about the job, and this tragedy happening in your neck of the woods.
I can't even fathom what those families and community are going thru. I have two boys in elementary, and would be lost without them.
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A lot of people will say that having a handgun at home is for protection. Around this time 2 years ago a fine musician named Bill Maddox lost his life with his own handgun. An intruder (crazed neighbor) broke into his home early in the morning and during the struggle (with Maddox and the intruder) Bill's wife came up with the gun and shot at the intruder. He proceeded to take the gun from her and kill her husband with it. Both men died from their wounds. Had the gun not been introduced Mr. Maddox would probably still be with us today.
I nearly choked up today when I saw this photo in the paper today. The look of fear on the girl in the blue shirt.
(http://i46.tinypic.com/ta36ad.jpg)
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Himmler, did I miss something while I was out for dinner? Seems like one can't leave you guys alone without something happening. Was I now a Nazi - that stands for No Ass Zone Infringer I believe - apologist or not? Goose stepping is good for your buttocks cheeks by the way.
I don't know what der große Stu said about others, but to the extent he called me a Nazi apologist: Schwamm drüber as we say in the Reic ..., in Germany wollte ich sagen. This thread was heated because it meant something to people and it works in everyone in a different way. I know that I can lash out badly with my tongue or my writing/typing hand. I'd appreciate it if others who felt insulted give it a good night's sleep. He's a Slade fan, there is not too many left of them!!!! Dave, please reconsider as well.
This thread did/does show that we all care about something like that happening. That is good. We also had a pretty decent discussion about something that goes to the core of your values, liebe Amerikaner, I understand that and think you held up well against my caustic remarks.
It's good to know that we can discuss about something other than Ritchie Backmore once in a while.
Over and out.
Uwe
I don't know much of what was said because I haven't been online for hours. But the last time I checked, I was the one being attacked, not you. So, if I was called a Nazi, it wouldn't be a surprise. I would, however, like to say a few things. Obviously, not everyone liked the pic you posted. Since I don't look at porn on the Internet or watch it on TV, it did at least get my attention for a moment. If nothing else, it got my mind off the horror of this tragedy for a second. I agree with those who are saying the media is talking about this way too much. People are talking about it everywhere. I just had relatives over and it was one of the main things they wanted to talk about. Plus, they wanted to watch the coverage on TV. It's non-stop coverage now. My point is I'm living in a place where this is THE thing everyone is thinking about and being horrified by. So, if someone comes along and says my participation in a thread isn't being respectful, that's a value judgment based on very incomplete information. I am being very respectful and essentially still in shock over this event. I'm sorry, though, if my behavior doesn't meet up with the high standards of anyone who takes it upon himself to be my judge.
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That naked bum was a pun on the gun everyone. It meant no disrespect to the slaughtered children and adults who weren't killed by a shapely bare female ass IIRC. BTW, if young Adam L. would have had access to more female bums and less manly guns, maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have gone on his shooting spree. People with an intact sex life generally don't murder children. And if a pic of a female tanga clad (or unclad!) butt is porn than the beaches of Catholic Brazil are full of porn stars and prostitutes (go tell that to their brothers, gringos!) since the eighties, meine lieben amerikanischen puritanischen und englischen sex-denying Freunde, fall to your knees and repent if you pleeze!!! Thank God, the Pilgrims didn't land everywhere, one savage sex beach thus de-Mayflowered was quite enough.
Back to the sad topic: It is here all over in the papers too. What do we do now, lock away all slightly autistic nerd kids pre-emptively? That is actually a question on my mind not an agitating statement.
And Dave, I have to disagree: It is a national tragedy, more so than a Challenger crash because a young guy barely out oh his teens with a disturbed mind did it, not a defunct fuel tank. It would (and should) be in any state on earth not ravaged by a civil war where massacres like that might be common place.
Bis bald, my next posting will be from NYC!
Uwe
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I saw the German-dubbed version!!!
In that case... vergessen sie nicht, die batterien...
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A tragedy is a tragedy and it is really not up to us to define whether it is local or national or whatever. The scope of a tragedy will be defined by the people that it affects regardless of how we choose to label it. Call it what you wish, it really doesn't matter because the popularity of this type of thing assures us that another tragic event such as this will likely happen in your town or somewhere nearby in your lifetime . Sharing the sorrow and grief is OK , whether it is with the people in your town, your country or the whole freakin' world. A tragedy is a tragedy and the boundaries will define themselves.
I just caught the morning news and found out why so few of the victims wound up at the hospital. Most of the people were shot multiple times, including one first grader who was shot eleven times!!!!! HOW COULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING??!! This thing goes way beyond my limit of comprehension.
Rick
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I nearly choked up today when I saw this photo in the paper today. The look of fear on the girl in the blue shirt.
(http://i46.tinypic.com/ta36ad.jpg)
My own opinions on the gun control issue will remain unmentioned in this thread.
This photograph at once broke my heart and made me proud of the adults in the photograph doing what adults should do: try to protect the children and keep them safe.
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That naked bum was a pun on the gun everyone. It meant no disrespect to the slaughtered children and adults who weren't killed by a shapely bare female ass IIRC. BTW, if young Adam L. would have had access to more female bums and less manly guns, maybe, just maybe he wouldn't have gone on his shooting spree. People with an intact sex life generally don't murder children. And if a pic of a female tanga clad (or unclad!) butt is porn than the beaches of Catholic Brazil are full of porn stars and prostitutes (go tell that to their brothers, gringos!) since the eighties, meine lieben amerikanischen puritanischen und englischen sex-denying Freunde, fall to your knees and repent if you pleeze!!! Thank God, the Pilgrims didn't land everywhere, one savage sex beach thus de-Mayflowered was quite enough.
Back to the sad topic: It is here all over in the papers too. What do we do now, lock away all slightly autistic nerd kids pre-emptively? That is actually a question on my mind not an agitating statement.
And Dave, I have to disagree: It is a national tragedy, more so than a Challenger crash because a young guy barely out oh his teens with a disturbed mind did it, not a defunct fuel tank. It would (and should) be in any state on earth not ravaged by a civil war where massacres like that might be common place.
Bis bald, my next posting will be from NYC!
Uwe
I didn't mean to say the pic was porn. I was just saying it got my attention because I don't normally see anything like that on the Internet. Obviously, it didn't bother me and I fully understood it was a pun. I also agree that people who have healthy sex lives are much less likely to go on a killing spree. I also agree that the U.S. is too prudish, although the topic is really something more serious, of course. I also agree that this is not only a national tragedy, but an international tragedy as well. The enormity of what happened is incomprehensible. Later, I will be able to absorb some of the details like those found in this article. At the moment, though, I cannot even bring myself to do it. It is too sad and heartbreaking. Each person deals with something like this in his own way. My way is to deal with it gradually as much as possible. Otherwise, I tend to be totally overwhelmed with the sadness of it. My problem is being too empathetic, not the reverse. This relates to personality types which I have mentioned in earlier posts. Mine is INFP which is the most emotional of the 16 types and also a type easily offended and likely to take things personally. It's something which can be positive or negative, depending on many things.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/connecticut-shooting-victims_n_2308463.html
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Now apparently the ghouls at Westboro Baptist plan to picket the funerals.
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Now apparently the ghouls at Westboro Baptist plan to picket the funerals.
Yep, time for the religious wingnuts to grab their time in the media spotlight. While we're banning guns can we ban organized religion as well?
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i really wish something could be done with these lunatics. where is the Punisher when you need him.
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Yep, time for the religious wingnuts to grab their time in the media spotlight. While we're banning guns can we ban organized religion as well?
Organized religion has caused way more death than handguns, assualt rifles and atomic bombs combined.
Rick
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I heard a statistic this morning that on black Friday some 283,000 guns were sold in the USA.
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i really wish something could be done with these lunatics. where is the Punisher when you need him.
I had a post on FB come through that was supposed to be all their home phone numbers. If the information is correct, it looks like Westboro is embedded in Shawnee County law enforcement and legal work. The people at Westboro are NOT representative of all Christians. We take offense at their stance and actions as much as non-believers.
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I had a post on FB come through that was supposed to be all their home phone numbers. If the information is correct, it looks like Westboro is embedded in Shawnee County law enforcement and legal work. The people at Westboro are NOT representative of all Christians. We take offense at their stance and actions as much as non-believers.
Thank you for posting this. A statement like this is very valuable. Recently, I bought a book written by a Christian who posed as someone else to get some insight on some things. It's really quite a long, complicated (although important) story. He found a way to personally meet with some of the people at Westboro and was treated like total crap. These people are fanatics, they are despicable and it's really sad that there are people out there who believe that Westboro represents the Christian community.
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Westboro Baptist isn't so much a church as it is a group of con artists, mostly related to each other, who protest hoping they can sue someone for violating their civil rights. I doubt there are many people out there who consider them to be representative of anyone other than themselves.
They count on the restraint of decent people not to attack them. One of these days, though, they might find themselves victims of a lynch mob. If they really protest at the funerals of innocent children, this just might push some upstanding citizens over the edge.
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Westboro Baptist isn't so much a church as it is a group of con artists, mostly related to each other, who protest hoping they can sue someone for violating their civil rights. I doubt there are many people out there who consider them to be representative of anyone other than themselves.
They count on the restraint of decent people not to attack them. One of these days, though, they might find themselves victims of a lynch mob. If they really protest at the funerals of innocent children, this just might push some upstanding citizens over the edge.
They were blocked at an attempted protect of military personnel in Byron, IL recently. A good friend of mine lost her nephew, who was part of the 3/5 Marines, and he was from Byron. There were enough locals to let them know they weren't welcome and also not allowed near the funerals.
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From the comments below the article in the Examiner, there's already a Facebook group planning for a human barricade against them.
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If they have the balls to show up in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if even law enforcement found ways to keep them far, far away...legal or not. This is a situation in which people like the Westboro idiots would be well advised to stay far away.
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Australia introduced quite draconian gun laws in 1996 following the Port Arthur massacre (which involved one shooter and two semi-auto assault rifles, for a body count of 36). In the 16 years since then, there has not been a SINGLE mass shooting in Australia. So, it can work.
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From the comments below the article in the Examiner, there's already a Facebook group planning for a human barricade against them.
Good! Block the stupid bastard sons and daughters of hypocrisy.
I would be there if I weren't 1500 miles away.
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How many deaths has Westboro Baptist caused? Where does it say in the Constitution you have the right not to be offended?
It's a short stretch from banning legal albeit wacko shenanigans to limiting other forms of protest. I'd like to see the First Amendment given the same deference that the Second receives.
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How many deaths has Westboro Baptist caused? Where does it say in the Constitution you have the right not to be offended?
It's a short stretch from banning legal albeit wacko shenanigans to limiting other forms of protest. I'd like to see the First Amendment given the same deference that the Second receives.
I agree 100%. It's legal for them to demonstrate; they took one of the cases against them all the way to the Supreme Court and won. It's also legal for others to form a chain in between them and mourners.
Fred Phelps (the minister and founder of Westboro Baptist) is a disbarred lawyer. The law firm he founded in Topeka has five attorneys -- all of them Phelps family members and members of the church. You illegally disrupt their protest, they sue and win and collect attorneys' fees under a civil rights statute. That's what they're counting on. And if you sue them for defamation, they defend and you lose on First Amendment grounds.
It's a con, whether or not they actually believe their supposed theology.
They don't always come when they say they will; I hope they don't this time. They have been threatened with physical harm over their protests at military funerals. In those cases the deceased were not well known outside of family and friends. In this case, you have child (and adult) victims of a mass murderer, everything is widely known and feelings are running strong. If they really do protest in Newtown, they may provoke violence.
BTW, they blame Carrie Underwood (http://www.examiner.com/article/connecticut-school-shooting-westboro-baptist-church-blames-carrie-underwood) for the Newtown murders because "she pimped fag marriage."
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How many deaths has Westboro Baptist caused? Where does it say in the Constitution you have the right not to be offended?
It's a short stretch from banning legal albeit wacko shenanigans to limiting other forms of protest. I'd like to see the First Amendment given the same deference that the Second receives.
I am in mind of the fact that the first amendment may guarantee freedom of speech, but it doesn't specify where that speech needs to take place. I'd designate a spot for the Westboro demonstration a few miles away from the event they're protesting, and make darn sure they confined their demonstration to that spot. Preferably the middle of a field with no one within earshot. I'd love to see a city council pass an ordinance specifying that they can designate the location of the demonstration. It works for college campuses.
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I am in mind of the fact that the first amendment may guarantee freedom of speech, but it doesn't specify where that speech needs to take place. I'd designate a spot for the Westboro demonstration a few miles away from the event they're protesting, and make darn sure they confined their demonstration to that spot. Preferably the middle of a field with no one within earshot. I'd love to see a city council pass an ordinance specifying that they can designate the location of the demonstration. It works for college campuses.
They can only do so much. Some cities have passed ordinances designating a certain number of feet away, but forcing them out of earshot would probably result in yet another lawsuit lost by a city and its taxpayers.
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They can only do so much. Some cities have passed ordinances designating a certain number of feet away, but forcing them out of earshot would probably result in yet another lawsuit lost by a city and its taxpayers.
The city officials in Newtown might welcome that as an alternative to having the Westboro group close enough to be heard.
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... Organized religion has caused way more death than handguns, assualt rifles and atomic bombs combined...
The only word I disagree with I have struck through - every other word is historically correct and strongly agreed...
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I am in mind of the fact that the first amendment may guarantee freedom of speech, but it doesn't specify where that speech needs to take place. I'd designate a spot for the Westboro demonstration a few miles away from the event they're protesting, and make darn sure they confined their demonstration to that spot. Preferably the middle of a field with no one within earshot. I'd love to see a city council pass an ordinance specifying that they can designate the location of the demonstration. It works for college campuses.
Perhaps we could do the same with gun owners. Force them to live on some island where only gun owners are allowed. After all the second amendment doesn't say anything about WHERE you have the right to carry a gun legally.
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Westboro Baptist isn't so much a church as it is a group of con artists, mostly related to each other, who protest hoping they can sue someone for violating their civil rights. I doubt there are many people out there who consider them to be representative of anyone other than themselves.
They count on the restraint of decent people not to attack them. One of these days, though, they might find themselves victims of a lynch mob. If they really protest at the funerals of innocent children, this just might push some upstanding citizens over the edge.
They were recently in Dearborn , MI (largest mideastern population outside the mideast) to protest for the Christian students in Dearborn schools who were supposedly experiencing acts of discrimination by Muslim students. It really wasn't happening, or at least to no great extent. All the citys' resources were tied up. More police vehicles , police and bomb squad gear than I ever knew they had. It was pretty much a nonevent. This is an area where the Christian and Muslim population has lived together since the 60s without a whole lot of problems. The general view of the population was "who is this shmuck outsider coming in here and telling us how to live . F you and the horse you rode in on". My hat is off to Dearborn :).
Rick
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Perhaps we could do the same with gun owners. Force them to live on some island where only gun owners are allowed. After all the second amendment doesn't say anything about WHERE you have the right to carry a gun legally.
Point well made, Carlo. But too subtle ;)
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Perhaps we could do the same with gun owners. Force them to live on some island where only gun owners are allowed. After all the second amendment doesn't say anything about WHERE you have the right to carry a gun legally.
Or, we could vote to determine whether the gun owners or the gun controllers were the majority.The majority would get to stay here and the minority would have to go to that island. At this point, I think the gun owners might be staying. In any event, gun owners could kill one another with guns and the gun controllers would have to kill one another with rocks and clubs, and they would. Make no mistake, it's the technology that has evolved, not mankind ;).
Rick
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the N.R.A. has gone silent and removed its facebook page. i thought these guys would welcome a dust up to push their agenda. i guess not. cowards.
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the N.R.A. has gone silent and removed its facebook page. i thought these guys would welcome a dust up to push their agenda. i guess not. cowards.
What could they possibly say?
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Or, we could vote to determine whether the gun owners or the gun controllers were the majority.The majority would get to stay here and the minority would have to go to that island. At this point, I think the gun owners might be staying. In any event, gun owners could kill one another with guns and the gun controllers would have to kill one another with rocks and clubs, and they would. Make no mistake, it's the technology that has evolved, not mankind ;).
Rick
People who claim they own guns because BAD people own guns might have to figure out where they preferred to be.
A mass murder event by a rock, club or even knife armed individual seems fairly unlikely.
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You know, with all of this debate, has anyone asked the obvious question?
--- Why would a woman with an unstable son have multiple weapons in the house? ---
You know, the Mayans may be right this week, for all the wrong reasons. :rolleyes:
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Perhaps we could do the same with gun owners. Force them to live on some island where only gun owners are allowed.
They already do - it's called "North America" :-)
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People who claim they own guns because BAD people own guns might have to figure out where they preferred to be.
A mass murder event by a rock, club or even knife armed individual seems fairly unlikely.
If there were to be some place that really had no guns, I would be happy to be there :)
Mass murder by bombs is pretty popular these days. People do bad things to one another. Take away one means and they will find another.
Being one of those people who claim they own a gun because bad people own guns, well let's just say unpleasant experience brought me to that decision. I don't hunt. I could not kill an animal in anything but self defense. I love animals, they have never done anything to harm me and I would not kill one for all the money in the world in anything but a self defense situation. People HAVE done bad things to me but I still wouldn't kill one of them in anything but a self defense situation either. If someone doesn't like guns , they have nothing to fear from me, I don't want to hurt anyone. I am capable and will defend myself and my loved ones if need be, and that is all.
Rick
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDhUFVjRMiE
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A burglar broke into a Quaker's home, figuring it to be an easy mark. It was the middle of the night, but the burglar still woke up the gentleman living there. He came down the stairs, with a shotgun in hand. He looked at the burglar calmly, and stated quietly, "Brother, I would do thee no harm, but thou standest where I am about to shoot."
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the N.R.A. has gone silent and removed its facebook page. i thought these guys would welcome a dust up to push their agenda. i guess not. cowards.
What could they possibly say?
The NRA Facebook page is a fan page, not a forum to debate gun laws. It was attacked by mobs of lunatics calling the NRA a "terrorist organization" and calling for the Second Amendment to be suspended.
I disagree with some of the NRA's agenda, but there's a time and a place for everything.
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You know, with all of this debate, has anyone asked the obvious question?
--- Why would a woman with an unstable son have multiple weapons in the house? ---
You know, the Mayans may be right this week, for all the wrong reasons. :rolleyes:
The only person responsible for this was Adam Lanza.
Still, it's a fair question. She was a member of a card playing club with a number of other women. They rotated hosting but always skipped her house; they played cards with her for years yet none of them had ever been inside the house. She never talked about the son and some didn't know she had one. She must have had serious problems with him to hide him like that. There were relatives who knew she had some kind of long term problem with him and that he was on medication. And yet she kept multiple weapons in the house including at least one assault rifle. Does make you wonder.
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You know, with all of this debate, has anyone asked the obvious question?
--- Why would a woman with an unstable son have multiple weapons in the house? ---
You know, the Mayans may be right this week, for all the wrong reasons. :rolleyes:
For all the regurgitation of the standard statements on both sides, I'm actually hearing a decent amount of talk of dealing with the actual problem: people who have issues, regardless of the availability of firearms. Mental illness of any sort is still swept under the rug here. Lots of health insurance policies offer weak coverage when it comes to that and it really needs to be brought out in the open.
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For all the regurgitation of the standard statements on both sides, I'm actually hearing a decent amount of talk of dealing with the actual problem: people who have issues, regardless of the availability of firearms. Mental illness of any sort is still swept under the rug here. Lots of health insurance policies offer weak coverage when it comes to that and it really needs to be brought out in the open.
Thank you for saying that. As a society we need to accept some responsibility for helping people with severe mental illness. There are effective, evidence-based treatments for even the most severe mental illnesses. And in the long run they cost less than frequent hospitalizations, nursing homes or ER visits. Sadly, private insurance generally does not pay for these treatments and most state public mental health systems are funded through Medicaid and have experienced dwindling dollars over the last several years.
I'm not saying a better mental health system will prevent all shootings. However, mental illness is a public health issue and as a society we need to deal with it.
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Agreed. As a society we need to take some collective action and responsibility and address mental health.
It's really easy, and understandable, to say "ah, screw that guy with lung cancer, he's been smoking since he was 10 and knew it would cause cancer." That was HIS choice.
Being mentally ill is not a choice. It happens and it is not the person's fault if he has some sort of mental illness. For the good of the our friends and neighbors we can't sit around and wait until a mentally ill person does something horrible before acting.
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How do you do that when the person is hidden away by his mother?
We know now that there were red flags in the case of the Aurora killer that maybe could have been acted on in time because they were known by people he interacted with. Whatever red flags there might have been about Adam Lanza seem to have been carefully kept away from anyone else. That's not to say his parents knew he might be dangerous. But the mother made it a point to keep him away from anyone who might have noticed something.
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How do you do that when the person is hidden away by his mother?
We know now that there were red flags in the case of the Aurora killer that maybe could have been acted on in time because they were known by people he interacted with. Whatever red flags there might have been about Adam Lanza seem to have been carefully kept away from anyone else. That's not to say his parents knew he might be dangerous. But the mother made it a point to keep him away from anyone who might have noticed something.
OK...here goes. My mother spent a lifetime of wrestling with mental illness. She just never fit in. From the time I was about 6 until I was 13, she was in the hospital four separate times, each for 6 months. They called it a "nervous breakdown" back then. My brother and I were not allowed to visit her in the hospital. It just wasn't done. Nobody outside the family, that I knew of, had any idea of this. We went to school just like everyone else. I got my first taste of public awareness and embarassment at 13, the last time she was put away. The music teacher at my school was a member of our church, and I think they knew about my mother. He came up and asked me how she was doing in class. I'm sure he meant well, but I was mortified.
My mother wasn't violent, but she could turn vicious in a second. She also picked her moments. I don't think she planned them, but if that door was open a crack, she went for it. My father left her alone with my daughter for less than a minute at church, and my mother decided to tell her that her mother was going to hell because she went to bars. My mother was classified as a paranoid, schizophrenic, manic depressive. My dad once told me that she is written up in a college textbook - "when the rules don't make sense".
I guess my point is this - mental illiness does not mean a person has no control. In some cases, like my mother, she had more self control than a lot of people. My father had to be with her in public at all times. He was very aware that her behaviou could change suddenly and was prepared at all times for that. My dad did have two guns in the house. My greatgrandfathers shotgun, with no ammo, and a police .38, and I don't recall where the ammo was for that. He may not have had it accessible.
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It's a good reminder that some of us only meet people with mental problems on rare occasion - others must live with them every day, and for a lifetime. As you point out, in some cases that means constant attention and (in a kind way) surveillance. I can't imagine how draining that must have been for your dad.
This is certainly not a problem with easy solutions - or any real solution. Mitigation may be the most realistic goal.
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What If Nothing or Nobody is to Blame for Adam Lanza? Guns, Video Games, Autism or Authorities
by Ron Fournier, Editorial Director, National Journal
Updated: December 17, 2012 | 6:47 p.m.
December 17, 2012 | 6:22 a.m.
What if there is nobody or nothing to blame for Adam Lanza's heinous acts? Other than Lanza, of course.
What if school security and the school psychiatrist kept an eye on Lanza since his freshman year? The Wall Street Journal has a compelling narrative about the red flags addressed.
What if he had a form of autism that has little or no link to violent behavior? Lanza may have had Asperger's syndrome but, even so, that is not a cause.
(RELATED: How To Make Sense of America's Confusing Patchwork of Gun Control Laws)
What if it's too simple to lay the massacre at the feet of the gun lobby? Reader Larry Kelly tweets that shaming Aspies "makes about as much sense at stigmatizing the NRA. Pick an enemy ... any enemy. Let outrage and fear rule."
What if Lanza wasn't provoked by video games? David Axelrod, a close friend an adviser of President Obama, tweeted last night: "In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot 'em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game."
When I asked whether he was laying groundwork for a White House initiative, Axelrod said no: "Just one man's observation." A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said today that Axelrod was not a stalking horse for Obama on this issue.
What if Lanza's mother did everything she could, short of keeping her guns out her adult son's reach? What if he wasn't bullied?
What if there is nobody or nothing to blame? Would that make this inexplicable horror unbearable?
What if we didn't rush to judgement? What if we didn't waste our thoughts, prayers and actions on assigning blame for the sake of mere recrimination? What if we calmly and ruthlessly learned whatever lessons we can from the massacre -- and prevented the next one?
What if it wasn't one thing, but everything, that set off Lanza?
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What if it wasn't one thing, but everything, that set off Lanza?
It's a legitimate question, and my answer to that question is, "In that case we should throw up our hands and just concede that this sort of thing will continue to happen because there's simply nothing we can do."
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No, but there is no simple answer. It is a complex problem.
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No, but there is no simple answer. It is a complex problem.
Exactly. And you know what?
Some people are crazy. Some people will go crazy. Some people are simply evil.
Some of them will hurt others. Some will try to hurt as many as they can. If they don't have guns, they will make bombs. Or commit arson. Or something.
The great American impulse is to fix things.
I'm not sure whether this can be fixed.
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What if Lanza wasn't provoked by video games? David Axelrod, a close friend an adviser of President Obama, tweeted last night: "In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot 'em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game."
I do think children are exposed to too much graphic violence in games, movies, television and even music.
And there is no fix. We can only hope that the pendelum of public opinion swings back to peace and decency.
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It's very interesting that assault weapon violence has been addressed in both Australia and the UK and positive results have been achieved...of course there has to be the will to change things.
Why do Americans think we are "special" and if we can't find an answer there must not be one? I have the feeling most people not American on this forum have difficulty understanding what exactly our problem is.
On a side note: the governor of Michigan now has to decide whether to sign or veto a bill passed last week to allow concealed carry in Michigan schools. It's already legal to carry a visible holstered or slung gun at school but apparently that wasn't considered enough of a deterrent.
From The Economist yesterday:
The gun control that works: no guns
Dec 15th 2012, 4:56 by Lexington
I HESITATE to offer thoughts about the school shooting in Connecticut that has seen 20 children and seven adults murdered and the gunman also dead. Your correspondent has been in the rural Midwest researching a column and heard the news on the car radio. Along with a sense of gloom, I found I mostly wanted to see my own, elementary-school-age children back home in Washington, DC, and had little desire to listen to pundits of any stripe: hence my reluctance to weigh in now.
To be fair, on NPR, the liberal columnist E.J. Dionne had sensible things to say about President Barack Obama’s statement on the killings, and how it was probably significant when the president seemed to suggest that he was minded to take action on gun control, and never mind the politics. On the same show the moderate conservative columnist, David Brooks, expressed sensible caution about assuming that stricter gun controls could have stopped this particular shooting.
Switching to red-blooded conservative talk radio, I found two hosts offering a “move along, nothing to see here” defence of the status quo. One suggested that listeners should not torment themselves trying to understand “craziness”, though it would, the pair agreed, be understandable if some parents were tempted to remove their children from public education and homeschool them.
To that debate, all I can offer is the perspective of someone who has lived and worked in different corners of the world, with different gun laws.
Here is my small thought. It is quite possible, perhaps probable, that stricter gun laws of the sort that Mr Obama may or may not be planning, would not have stopped the horrible killings of this morning. But that is a separate question from whether it is a good idea to allow private individuals to own guns. And that, really, is what I think I understand by gun control. Once you have guns in circulation, in significant numbers, I suspect that specific controls on things like automatic weapons or large magazines can have only marginal effects. Once lots of other people have guns, it becomes rational for you to want your own too.
The first time that I was posted to Washington, DC some years ago, the capital and suburbs endured a frightening few days at the hands of a pair of snipers, who took to killing people at random from a shooting position they had established in the boot of a car. I remember meeting a couple of White House correspondents from American papers, and hearing one say: but the strange thing is that Maryland (where most of the killings were taking place) has really strict gun laws. And I remember thinking: from the British perspective, those aren’t strict gun laws. Strict laws involve having no guns.
After a couple of horrible mass shootings in Britain, handguns and automatic weapons have been effectively banned. It is possible to own shotguns, and rifles if you can demonstrate to the police that you have a good reason to own one, such as target shooting at a gun club, or deer stalking, say. The firearms-ownership rules are onerous, involving hours of paperwork. You must provide a referee who has to answer nosy questions about the applicant's mental state, home life (including family or domestic tensions) and their attitude towards guns. In addition to criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants’ family doctors and ask about any histories of alcohol or drug abuse or personality disorders.
Vitally, it is also very hard to get hold of ammunition. Just before leaving Britain in the summer, I had lunch with a member of parliament whose constituency is plagued with gang violence and drug gangs. She told me of a shooting, and how it had not led to a death, because the gang had had to make its own bullets, which did not work well, and how this was very common, according to her local police commander. Even hardened criminals willing to pay for a handgun in Britain are often getting only an illegally modified starter’s pistol turned into a single-shot weapon.
And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008.
I would also say, to stick my neck out a bit further, that I find many of the arguments advanced for private gun ownership in America a bit unconvincing, and tinged with a blend of excessive self-confidence and faulty risk perception.
I am willing to believe that some householders, in some cases, have defended their families from attack because they have been armed. But I also imagine that lots of ordinary adults, if woken in the night by an armed intruder, lack the skill to wake, find their weapon, keep hold of their weapon, use it correctly and avoid shooting the wrong person. And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain—no guns in homes at all, or almost none—is on balance safer.
As for the National Rifle Association bumper stickers arguing that only an armed citizenry can prevent tyranny, I wonder if that isn’t a form of narcissism, involving the belief that lone, heroic individuals will have the ability to identify tyranny as it descends, recognise it for what it is, and fight back. There is also the small matter that I don’t think America is remotely close to becoming a tyranny, and to suggest that it is is both irrational and a bit offensive to people who actually do live under tyrannical rule.
Nor is it the case that the British are relaxed about being subjects of a monarch, or are less fussed about freedoms. A conservative law professor was recently quoted in the papers saying he did not want to live in a country where the police were armed and the citizens not. I fear in Britain, at least, native gun-distrust goes even deeper than that: the British don’t even like their police to be armed (though more of them are than in the past).
But here is the thing. The American gun debate takes place in America, not Britain or Japan. And banning all guns is not about to happen (and good luck collecting all 300m guns currently in circulation, should such a law be passed). It would also not be democratic. I personally dislike guns. I think the private ownership of guns is a tragic mistake. But a majority of Americans disagree with me, some of them very strongly. And at a certain point, when very large majorities disagree with you, a bit of deference is in order.
So in short I am not sure that tinkering with gun control will stop horrible massacres like today’s. And I am pretty sure that the sort of gun control that would work—banning all guns—is not going to happen. So I have a feeling that even a more courageous debate than has been heard for some time, with Mr Obama proposing gun-control laws that would have been unthinkable in his first term, will not change very much at all. Hence the gloom.
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^^^^^
Great post Carlo.
It's sad that most Americans are appalled at the number of Americans who were killed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet more Americans are shot in the USA every year by Americans than were killed in a single year of any of those conflicts - and nothing is done to stop it.
The second amendment was an enabler for an armed militia to defend America, back in a time when there was no effective organised American military force. That reason is no longer valid in 2012.
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And, yes, people kill, not guns, but if guns are readily available then when mentally ill people snap and they can lay their hands on a firearm very easily, then that's always a disaster waiting to happen. If the only weapon the person can lay their hands on is a knife, baseball bat, hammer, or tire iron, then they may still cause injury or death, but they're not going to rack up a body count of the magnitude that results from a mass shooting. And there is a far better chance of unarmed bystanders overpowering and disarming a crazy with a knife/bat/hammer/tire iron than there would be of someone with a holstered handgun taking on the crazy who has a semi-auto assault rifle.
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+1 to what Carlo and Mark said.
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I've never owned a gun, for various reasons. The first thing I realized about having one was this - in order for it to be an effective defense weapon, it would have to be easily accessed and loaded. That makes for problems when you have children in the house. There's really no middle ground.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. It was good for me to hear I'm not alone. Thanks.
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Carlo, Mark and the columnist are assuming that correlation equals causation.
Ask the relatives of the 69 shooting victims of Anders Breivik how comforted they are by Norway's strict gun laws. Ask the relatives of the victims of the Jokela and Kauhajoki school shootings (18 total, not including the gunmen who committed suicide) how they feel about Finland's strict gun laws.
And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008.
Highly misleading, because firearm crimes were extremely low in England and Wales long before handguns were essentially banned there.
Our society is violent, much more so than the UK, Australia and the rest of the European-oriented world. Murder rates and mass killings have not gone up since the assault weapons ban expired, and there's no evidence that they would go down if it were reinstated. A complete ban on handguns would lower the rate, but there's absolutely no chance of that ever happening so long as there's a United States of America with a constitutional government; and even then, I don't think it would help much. The violent elements of society would just kill each other with long guns.
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Dave, Australian culture is pretty much the same as the US, only we have less religion, less melted cheese, and more sarcasm. Our TV shows, video games, and movies are the same, we watch the same news coverage, our kids take the same drugs, we have organised crime, we killed the natives when we arrived, we like to hunt varmints and native fauna, we like to drink beer. I've been to the US, was married to an American, have worked for an American company, and have many American friends. We are closer culturally than you may imagine. Gun control can work.
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Dave, Australian culture is pretty much the same as the US, only we have less religion, less melted cheese, and more sarcasm. Our TV shows, video games, and movies are the same, we watch the same news coverage, our kids take the same drugs, we have organised crime, we killed the natives when we arrived, we like to hunt varmints and native fauna, we like to drink beer. I've been to the US, was married to an American, have worked for an American company, and have many American friends. We are closer culturally than you may imagine. Gun control can work.
I wish you were right. But I think Dave understands the inherent violent nature of American society all too well. I haven't been to Australia. (Did have extensive personal contact with an Australian once.) I have been to Europe a number of times and always feel safer there. We have some strong points, but being non-violent isn't an American strong point. And I think like Dave is pointing out--never will be. Just the American South is incredibly violent. I'm not knocking the South, being a Southerner myself. I'm just stating the facts.
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I do think children are exposed to too much graphic violence in games, movies, television and even music.
And there is no fix. We can only hope that the pendelum of public opinion swings back to peace and decency.
I agree. Oddly, alot of the people who are all for clamping down on guns are just fine with violence in movies, video games, etc. It's been said that art imitates life. I believe it's the other way around.
I don't own a gun, and have never fired one - but I support the right to keep and bear arms.
The USA is obviously a very big country with lots of people. It's easy for someone with the smorgasbord of issues that Adam Lanza had to "disappear" or fall through the cracks in the system. In a smaller, less populated country, he may have been outed sooner. The latest reports are stating that his mother, feeling she was out of options, had started the legal process of having him committed.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/
He was aware of it, and the suspicion is that this was the trigger. How it ties to the school itself is still unclear. Apparently, he had the presence of mind to destroy his computer - even to the point of damaging the hard drive in such a way as to make data impossible to retrieve. Point is, if you take the guns out of the equation, a guy with that kind of baggage, motive and intellect (one high school friend referred to him as a genius) is going to find a way to unleash hell. Unless you get lucky and stumble onto his plan, the only way to stop him is with swift deadly force. If my kids were in that school, I wouldn't care whether he was dropped by the cops, a well - armed janitor or a visiting parent with a carry permit.
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if you take the guns out of the equation, a guy with that kind of baggage, motive and intellect (one high school friend referred to him as a genius) is going to find a way to unleash hell.
Maybe, but it will never be as easy as picking up a semi-auto rifle that his mum left unsecured, and blasting away with it. The convenience factor of urban residents keeping assault rifles and handguns in their homes for mentally ill people to use when they're having a bad day is the issue. In most countries, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you give them the bird, or worst case, you pull over and have a fist fight. But in the US, you might get shot. That's the difference - access to weapons that can kill with ease and can kill multiple people quickly is the difference between the US and most other nations regarding gun policy.
Yes, the bad guys will always have guns, but in most countries the bad guys most often use their guns on other bad guys, not on school children or cinema patrons.
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Maybe, but it will never be as easy as picking up a semi-auto rifle that his mum left unsecured, and blasting away with it. The convenience factor of urban residents keeping assault rifles and handguns in their homes for mentally ill people to use when they're having a bad day is the issue. In most countries, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you give them the bird, or worst case, you pull over and have a fist fight. But in the US, you might get shot. That's the difference - access to weapons that can kill with ease and can kill multiple people quickly is the difference between the US and most other nations regarding gun policy.
Yes, the bad guys will always have guns, but in most countries the bad guys most often use their guns on other bad guys, not on school children or cinema patrons.
No question that his mother exercised the ultimate in poor judgement in teaching a kid with huge problems to shoot. According to what I've read thus far, she kept her guns properly secured and was otherwise very responsible about their use and care.
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Mark, go back before the weapons laws in Australia and look at the historic homicide rates for, say, 50 years, then compare it to the corresponding US rates. You'll find the US rates have always been at least four times as high. We have a lot in common, but the US has always had a lot more violent crime.
Another assault weapons ban here might help lower the number of mass shootings (although the ban that expired in 2004 did not). It's not going to transform American society.
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Just the American South is incredibly violent. I'm not knocking the South, being a Southerner myself. I'm just stating the facts.
Why is it the south that is always violent, racist, F'd up? Is East L.A. less violent than the south? What about Washington DC? They have a gun ban and the body count due to guns is tremendous. What about Chicago? Multiple generations of enlightened leadership and their murder rate is one of the worst in nation. Remember, this deranged monster that killed these innocent kids was most certainly from the north.
One thing I heard, on NPR of all places, is that this type of violence has steadily declined and that it was apparent that the assault gun ban did nothing to reduce the incidence of this type of violence in society.
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Mark, go back before the weapons laws in Australia and look at the historic homicide rates for, say, 50 years, then compare it to the corresponding US rates. You'll find the US rates have always been at least four times as high. We have a lot in common, but the US has always had a lot more violent crime.
Another assault weapons ban here might help lower the number of mass shootings (although the ban that expired in 2004 did not). It's not going to transform American society.
Access to handguns and semi auto rifles has always been restricted in Australia. However, prior to 1996, as the holder of a shooter's licence, I could legally own a semi auto rifle, and as many rifles of any calibre I liked - I owned an SKS for shits and giggles target shooting, and I had other rifles that were properly suited to genuine hunting purposes in the woods and pastures near where I lived at the time. Handguns have always been restricted here - to law enforcement, permitted security officers, and licenced target shooting club members.
After Port Arthur in 1996, the changes that were made were -
1. Ban all semi auto centrefire rifles. Semi auto rimfire rifles were still permitted for licensed shooters who are primary producers, for vermin control.
2. Ban all bolt or lever action centrefire rifles with a magazine capactity greater than 3 rounds (I think 3 is the number, this is off the top of my head)
3. Restrict ownership of shotguns, and rimfire rifles and centrefire rifles that meet 2. above to licenced shooters who are either members of a registered target shooting club, or primary producers who can demonstrate a need, for vermin control.
When you look at that 50 years of history you mentioned, there were 13 cases of mass shootings in Australia prior to 1996, and NONE since 1996. These days, most shootings in Australia seem to be bad guys shooting bad guys, which doesn't really bother the average citizen.
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I read the article from The Economist and I'm not moved.
I understand why the author feels as he does, and from his point of view it probably makes sense. But he doesn't know the US.
Friends, there are millions and millions of firearms held privately in the US. There is NO WAY to disarm the US public. The culture here is different from other countries, and a big percentage of the US population is not going to give up firearms no matter what the law is. It can't be done. An attempt would indeed create armed resistance from numerous groups, and many more people would simply stash their firearms away along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They might otherwise be "law abiding" people, but the culture of gun ownership is too deeply ingrained. I'm inclined that way myself.
Moreover, even making an attempt at complete disarmament would require repealing the Second Amendment, which I honestly think is impossible.
Gun laws can be modified, and I suspect they will be. But disarming the US public is not going to happen. That's not an emotional argument, it's a simple one based on an understanding of how pervasive and culturally imbedded firearms ownership is.
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Gun laws can be modified, and I suspect they will be.
Let's hope common sense prevails, and it doesn't take another 31 school shootings (the number since Columbine) before action is taken.
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Let's hope common sense prevails, and it doesn't take another 31 school shootings (the number since Columbine) before action is taken.
Absolutely! Even a number of staunch conservatives and the NRA are saying they're ready to talk about appropriate actions. They have never said such things before.
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Why is it the south that is always violent, racist, F'd up? Is East L.A. less violent than the south? What about Washington DC? They have a gun ban and the body count due to guns is tremendous. What about Chicago? Multiple generations of enlightened leadership and their murder rate is one of the worst in nation. Remember, this deranged monster that killed these innocent kids was most certainly from the north.
One thing I heard, on NPR of all places, is that this type of violence has steadily declined and that it was apparent that the assault gun ban did nothing to reduce the incidence of this type of violence in society.
I repeat, I'm a Southerner. I didn't say anything about anything else concerning the South except its history of violence. I didn't say other parts of the country weren't also violent. However, the South does have a unique background which can't be ignored. I haven't read the full version of "Southern Honor," but I have read the abridged version of Bertram-Wyatt Brown's book called "Honor and Violence in the Old South." This is quite a good book and provides a lot of insight into violence and the South. This only tells part of the story of course, and delves deep into the past. But the only way to understand the New South is to first understand the Old South.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Honor_and_Violence_in_the_Old_South.html?id=PSU1xWLfk7wC
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Most of the mass shootings which have occurred in the US were carried out with semi-automatic handguns, not assault-type rifles. Limiting the sales of assault rifles will probably help but there are far more semi-auto pistols in the US.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
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See here, one step from catastrophe.
http://news.yahoo.com/utah-boy-charged-bringing-gun-school-cites-fears-023430546.html
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After a quick search for FBI survaillence van, this was a top result.
http://gawker.com/5832665/do-not-name-your-wifi-network-fbi-surveillance-van
A 17 year old was arrested for attempting to blow up his high school. This was "a guy who was at that moment scheming about how to one-up the Columbine massacre."
The real problem is not guns.
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The real problem is not guns.
I agree with you. Guns, like anything else, are tools used to accomplish a goal. Brutal yes, but tools. The real problem is the underlying cause and a secondary one is to keep those tools out of certain hands.
It's entirely possible that if Lanza had not used a gun he might of ended up using a bomb.
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It's everything. Guns, culture and society. The great American experiment is decaying from within and we want simple-minded explanations and solutions to the mess we've created.
Comparing Austrailia to the US is like comparing citizens from New York City to Texans. Apples to oranges.
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It's everything. ... we want simple-minded explanations and solutions to the mess we've created.
Yea, that's a problem. Complex problems seldom require simple solutions.
I think one of our big problems is that John Q. Public are more interested in what their favorite sports team is doing than in what their senators and congressmen are doing. Until beset with a tragedy anyway.
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It's everything. Guns, culture and society. The great American experiment is decaying from within and we want simple-minded explanations and solutions to the mess we've created.
Comparing Austrailia to the US is like comparing citizens from New York City to Texans. Apples to oranges.
I agree, we're on the downside with no simple solutions.
...Hey, I've been to Sydney and I've been to Woolongong, they're 50 miles apart. Sydney is like Los Angeles, Woolongong reminded me of Alexandria, Louisiana. Basically, lots of rednecks without the churches.
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A perfect example of how f***ed up the American mentality is how we approach sex and nudity.
A huge portion of American citizens are aghast when there's nudity on TV (like when Janet Jackson suffered a "wardrobe malfunction" during the Superbowl. There were apologies, fines, etc over it. This was an issue lasting MONTHS!
Yet, a few days ago, a photographer takes a photo of a man 2 seconds away from getting run over by a subway and it makes the cover of a magazine. Rather than help, he took a photo. It's hardly discussed anymore.
Boobs are not allowed on tv but you sit there and watch murder after murder after murder, rape after rape after rape, abuse after abuse after abuse.
This is a serious "WTF?" issue for me.
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Yea, that's a problem. Complex problems seldom require simple solutions.
I think one of our big problems is that John Q. Public are more interested in what their favorite sports team is doing than in what their senators and congressmen are doing. Until beset with a tragedy anyway.
In my carreer I dealt with numerous foriegn nationals from just about every country that you can think of, and they were always amazed how Americans would pick up a newspaper and go straight to the sports page , totally disregarding whatever was on the front page.
Rick
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It was a given that certain politicians would immediately start grandstanding the gun control issue. The response is predictable: carry permit applications here in the metro area have doubled to tripled in the past few days, depending on which county; and Minnesota is a "shall issue" state, the county must issue the permit if the requirements are met.
That alone should tell anybody looking in from overseas how deep rooted the feelings are on both sides of this issue. No one is seriously suggesting banning the sale of handguns, the US Supreme Court has already ruled handgun bans unconstitutional, yet handgun and ammo sales are going through the roof.... again.
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Anyway, back to the mental health issue: we can make counseling more easily available and accessible, but there's no practical way to force a person who has no criminal record and no documented history of behavioral problems into counseling. And if seeking help for emotional problems will enable authorities to keep someone from owning a weapon, you can bet that the person will avoid getting help.
From Anders Breivik in Norway to the Accent Signage shooter in Minneapolis, most of these killers had a clean, stable background which allowed them to own weapons legally. They carefully planned their killings. Nothing they did would have allowed anyone to lock them up in advance. I don't see any way around this.
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People who really need help, very often probably have no idea they need help. If they keep to themselves, not that many other people will figure it out, either.
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People who really need help, very often probably have no idea they need help. If they keep to themselves, not that many other people will figure it out, either.
That's the really sad and challenging part of it. People who want to do harm can do it with a van full of fertilizer and ammonia.
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Most of the mass shootings which have occurred in the US were carried out with semi-automatic handguns, not assault-type rifles. Limiting the sales of assault rifles will probably help but there are far more semi-auto pistols in the US.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
Yes, ban those too.
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Yes, ban those too.
No chance of that even being seriously considered.
The 1994-2004 assault weapons ban may be reinstated; that would be an accomplishment, and it doesn't even ban most semi-automatic rifles, just the scary looking ones with pistol grips.
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I haven't shot a rifle since I got back from Vietnam. I only own one because a friend of mine needed money and wanted to sell his M1 carbine. But all this talk of bans makes me want to buy one of those scary looking rifles with a pistol grip.
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...just the scary looking ones with pistol grips.
The ones my pawn shop owner buddy refer to as "black guns" because of their finish. It's an ominous nickname.
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I haven't shot a rifle since I got back from Vietnam. I only own one because a friend of mine needed money and wanted to sell his M1 carbine. But all this talk of bans makes me want to buy one of those scary looking rifles with a pistol grip.
One day I will own an M1 carbine!
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The thing I like best is mine was made by IBM!
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The thing I like best is mine was made by IBM!
Nice! A friend has one of the rare ones made by Rockola, the jukebox company.
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Nice! A friend has one of the rare ones made by Rockola, the jukebox company.
Technology marches on: Gun components made by 3D printer. Added bonuses: invisible to metal detectors and no waiting period!
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Technology marches on: Gun components made by 3D printer. Added bonuses: invisible to metal detectors and no waiting period!
The more stuff like this comes to be, the more I think that "The Terminator" movies seem like fact... When will the machines become self-aware?
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Edith and I have been in the US since Sunday and in between watching Mary Poppins, The Nutcracker, The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and - tomorrow - Aida we follow the current discussion pretty closely.
Few random observations:
- When was the last time that someone needed to fire 100 shots and more a minute to fend off a thief/robber in his house? Are thiefs and robbers assaulting in brigade strength the norm in the US? And why is it that whenever something like this happens none of the many overarmed NRA vigilantes is around to stop the computer game-induced mass killing with a good shot of his/hers?
- "If the government has them, the Second Amendment sure gives me the right to have them too." Interesting concept, especially if applied to aircraft carriers, chemical weapons, tanks, drones and nuclear bombs. No harm will be done if these are in the hands of law-abiding citizens (and these have children free of Asperger's Syndrome). And anyway: The nuclear bombs didn't kill the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people did. Or computer games if the NRA is to be believed by its measured, coherent and empathetic press statement of today. Such intellectual might present there, gun-lobbying and IQ must be interrelated somehow. Computer games killed the children in Sandy Hook, what a lucid observation. Try doing it by hand or with a computer mouse though rather than a military weapon. Some work.
- After a similar incident with an assault gun in Scotland in the nineties, British Parliament there (all parties, Scots and English alike) was quick to ban such weapons in the UK. The UK has approx 35 gun deaths a year, the US around 11.000, now the former colony does encompass a larger area with more people - you do the ratio math - and might also be populated by better marksmen and -women, but if you Americans are so uncontrollably aggressive and good shots too boot shouldn't you all be disarmed for safety reasons and British rule reinstated? Less people died of guns on a bad day at the height of the Northern Ireland conflict than die in the US on a good day in peaceful times.
- Why is it more difficult to buy and keep a poisonous rattlesnake in the US than to buy an assault gun? Killing thirty school children with rattlesnake venom would certainly take some logistic effort especially during December in the North. Those animals do like it warm to be quick on the draw.
- Why do you require a driver's license, but no gun-user one? Why do cars need to be registered and insured, but guns need not?
- I hope Bloomberg and Biden bring some sense to this. Keep your handguns, sporting and hunting rifles if you must, but semi-automatics and assault guns ("cosmetics only"-assault guns as one NRA official called them) are a perversion of the Second Amendment. That didn't say anything about cannons at the time either.
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Uwe, in response:
Maybe there are a few extremists who think the Second Amendment means weapon ownership should be unlimited, but it's not a viewpoint you'll hear in the upcoming debate.
Again, using the UK as an example is misleading. Gun violence in the UK was always very low compared to the US. The weapons ban may prevent another Dunblane, but it didn't reduce the rate of gun deaths. And as usual in most places, most of the weapons used in gun violence are illegal.
There will probably be enough support to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004, even though that didn't reduce gun deaths and didn't prevent Columbine. It's not reasonable politically to expect more than that at this time. Politicians have a strong survival instinct.
Napoleon Bloomberg wants a police state with a disarmed citizenry. Thank God he has almost no influence outside of NYC. OTOH I expect the NRA to lose influence as a result of their response to this.
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Guns are merely an efficient and impersonal method of killing. You don't have to even be near the victim, and if a gun is easy to obtain, all the better. So, that's the argument as I see it. We're still dealing with people as the real problem. The discussion of gun control seems to center around making it difficult for people with malicious intent to get one. Professional criminals are always going to find a way to get them; it's their living. For the guy that wants to punish his neighbor, or the hateful individual looking for fame or punishing random people, they will still find a way to take action, but if they are faced with actual contact or having to confront someone who can fight back, there's a level of deterrent in removing guns as an option.
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That is the whole point. Criminals don't pose a threat like Lanza did or if you will: they use guns for specific reasons with specific people, they don't waste bullets on school yards and risk a life or death sentence (unlike Lanza, most of them don't want to kill themselves but prefer going to jail and getting out of it again).
Lanza wasn't a gangsta in the hood (I wish he had been, those kids would still be alive), if his mother wouldn't have had those guns, no shop would have sold them legally then I would have imagined it to be quite a task for him to meet with members from the Columbian drug cartel to purchase an assault gun much more expensively illegally - they don't take gold cards there you know. And if he had answered truthfully to their question: "Whaddaya want weeze gun, gringo?" I'm not sure they would have even sold it to him, shooting children with assault guns is not high on their manlihood agenda.
Pointing out the lower homicide rate in the UK is one thing, insinuating that it has nothing to do with gun prevalence is a stretch, Dave, about as coherent as saying that teenage pregnancies in Ireland have nothing to do with the pill being easily available or not. Fact is: There have been no more Dunblanes since then and British schools are not protected by gun-toting security. Computer games are popular there too and they share in large parts a common heritage and common values with you. How can you be so sure, it has nothing to do with guns? If semi-automatics and assault guns had been banned for good in the seventies for private use do you still think that young Adam could have done the same thing with a Kalashnikov od a Gatlin gun he would have built himself? The lengths you guys go to to disconnect gun prevalence from tragedies like this is amazing. All I can say is that my 18 year old son would have had real issues getting an assault gun in Frankfurt or Berlin (where he now lives) legally or illegally.
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Gun violence is up (in London) and is mostly drugs related and one section of the community... We even have a specialist force (Trident) trying to bring it under control, and failing...
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I recently heard the number (can't recall the source) that there are 90 firearms per 100 people in the US.
That's not an installed base of firearms that is going to go away.
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45% of Minnesota households have guns. No idea how that works out in terms of guns per person. This is a big hunting state, there's an official governor's deer hunting opener and pheasant hunting opener. Our current governor is a pheasant hunter.
In any case, there will be formidable opposition to any change. If it happens it would only be after a brutal fight. And that would be for minimal changes. That's why I said it's pointless to debate a ban on all semi-automatic weapons. It's a non-starter at this time.
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I recently heard he number (can't recall the source) that there are 90 firearms per 100 people in the US.
That's not an installed base of firearms that is going to go away.
So I guess we just give up and follow the NRA's advice.
How about this crazy idea? Turn in your guns or take personal eye for an eye responsibility for each one. Someone steals your gun and commits a crime with it, you go to jail. He kills somebody with it, you die. 20 people? You and 19 of your relatives. You can have your gun if you treat it like your life, period.
Sound extreme? No more extreme to me than being forced to live in an ever escalating gun society, which is ALWAYS the answer from the NRA.
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I can't see many politicians following the NRA's latest advice, yet you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to turn public schools into armed camps.
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I can't see many politicians following the NRA's latest advice, yet you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to turn public schools into armed camps.
I'm quite sure a majority of the population of Florida is not in favor of 'Stand your Ground', guns in bars, guns in privately owned employee parking lots, concealed carry in schools etc. that have been pushed thru by legislators happy to take NRA money. Perhaps we see a start to limiting their lunacy.
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i went to a couple guns stores today and it was telling. save for a few .22s all the long guns were gone and a good third of handguns. most pistol ammunition had vanished as well. it's a wonder what a little paranoia will do for sales.
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I can't see many politicians following the NRA's latest advice, yet you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to turn public schools into armed camps.
Funny you mention that. I have a couple of friends who have pretty much nonstop posted on Facebook photo after photo after photo with added comments like "If the President can be defended with guns, why can't you?", blah blah blah. At the same time they are calling the US a police state.
Although I understand the thought process behind having a cop at every school (and many do anyway) it seems a slippery slope to some degree.
Personally, I think the NRA and that asshole, Wayne LaPierre, missed a great opportunity for the NRA to partially bridge the gap between their hardcore members/supporters and those who are for more stringent gun control.
That graphic going around now which reads, "Put A Teacher In Every Gun Store", is pretty on point in more ways than one.
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... UK ... Ireland ... share in large parts a common heritage and common values with you.
There is one big difference though. In America the vast majority is descended from people had the gumption to leave their homeland in search of a better life. Maybe they are a little more aggressive than those who stayed behind.
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There is one big difference though. In America the vast majority is descended from people had the gumption to leave their homeland in search of a better life. Maybe they are a little more aggressive than those who stayed behind.
Hmm, that's an interesting theory and it makes much sense.
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Europe tends to be a more homogenous society...including ethnic backgrounds, education levels, socioeconomic levels.
America has a more heterogeneous society, including more disparity in educational levels and socioeconomic levels.
I think that's why American society is more violent.
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True on one hand, but when Europe goes ballistic it tends to cause the death of millions.
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hasn't occurred for a few years...but my daughter visited the balkans a couple years ago, and she said it felt like it was about to go up in smoke...
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Maybe because we went ballistic once, it taught us a lesson or two. Nothing like losing two World Wars and having laid your country to waste to realize that being well-armed - the Third Reich certainly wasn't underarmed - isn't always the key to a healthy future. We do alright without too much private gun ownership, no guns for my son to steal in my cupboard, to buy on the black market, at a gun show or at a legal gun store.
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Maybe because we went ballistic once, it taught us a lesson or two. Nothing like losing two World Wars and having laid your country to waste to realize that being well-armed - the Third Reich certainly wasn't underarmed - isn't always the key to a healthy future. We do alright without too much private gun ownership, no guns for my son to steal in my cupboard, to buy on the black market, at a gun show or at a legal gun store.
I've always said that the Japanese never truly ended WWII. They just found a much more effective approach to taking over the USA - just buy it.
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I've always said that the Japanese never truly ended WWII. They just found a much more effective approach to taking over the USA - just buy it.
I think some Japanese companies regret that now. Sony has had heavy losses for several years and Panasonic and Sharp are in worse shape.
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hasn't occurred for a few years...but my daughter visited the balkans a couple years ago, and she said it felt like it was about to go up in smoke...
Another trouble spot. You have to figure that if the Germans had trouble with the Balkans, then it has trouble in it's blood.
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I'd say that our former rule there wasn't the most benign, we did terrible things, but the region has had issues ever since the Osmanic Empire went down. In hindsight, the turn of the century decision of the Western Powers to work towards the fall of the Osmanic Empire (with regional nationalism doing the rest) has created more problems than it hoped to solve.
Never cheer too loudly when your opponent falls as Russia's retreat from Afghanistan has proven as well.
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Last Balkan flareup was directly related to religious beliefs, big surprise.
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Yes, and they were not murdering each other under Communist rule either - Tito for all his corruption and cracking down on dissidents saw to it that Serbs would not be smashing the heads of muslim infants against concrete walls or vice versa, they should build him statues all over in former Yugoslavia for that.
Democracy doesn't automatically make people's lives safer.
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Democracy doesn't automatically make people's lives safer.
True!
And socialism doesn't make their lives better. Or safer (I gather that over time, Stalin was a much greater mass murderer than Hitler.)
You can pick your "ism" and find things it doesn't do.
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I'm sure you hear all different stories, but she says the Serbs are pretty frightening, and that they will gobble up the region as soon as they get a chance, (if they ever get one).
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True!
And socialism doesn't make their lives better. Or safer (I gather that over time, Stalin was a much greater mass murderer than Hitler.)
You can pick your "ism" and find things it doesn't do.
I wasn't advocating non-democracy! But Tito, certainly no democrat, wasn't Stalin. And probably more a Titoist than any other "...ist". But he has my respect for preventing in his years that hatred flared up like it did after he died.
Stalin or Hitler? ??? When Sturmgewehr comes to Kalashnikov, I prefer Stalin. For the simple reason that more Germans survived under Stalin than Russians under Hitler. Easy math: 2/3 of Russian POWs died in German captivity, but only 1/3 of German POWs in Russian captivity - and that after we had raided, marauded and scorched their country for no other reason than that crappy "Lebensraum" nutcase idea.
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Difficult math to stomach, isn't it??
The history that the human race has inflicted on itself gives one pause.
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"Difficult math to stomach, isn't it??"
It sure is, but there are different shades of evil as well not just of good.
And I'm eternally thankful to Uncle Joe that he busted Hitler's ass. Someone had to, it was high time.
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By the end of the 16th century Christian Europeans had slaughtered 60 million Indians in North and South America.
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Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?
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Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?
Yep.
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Bugger... that's me done for...
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I guess we can excuse anything that we believe in, even murder, because we believe someone else did it better. Mass murder is mass murder, I don't give a shit who did it or how many, and I love to see you guys acting like the numbers somehow make one instabce better or worse or more rational than the other. Geez, moral relativism knows no lows! It's all morally reprehensible, but I'm some how wrong or stupid because someone, using data from the 16th century census and body count almanac to show how 60 million murders is worse than 40 million, or 30 or 50. Since it's all about the numbers, I'll stay out of this since it's gotten way over my head.
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Likewise, Bill. Murder is murder, regardless of the supposed justification.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30sjtuXcvOE&sns=fb Its all a lie no so called assualt rifles, he used all hand guns he had one rifle in the car but did not use it ( he tried to buy another rifle but could not because of CT gun laws ) the police found four hand guns not two in the school. I find it amazing that people want to change the constitution, some people need to walk among the war dead in a veterans cemetery those men & women fought & died so we can enjoy our freedom. If anyone thinks that more gun control is the answer they are sadly mistaken.
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Thanks, Tony.
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Obama's inadvertant new stimulus policy.
Many firearm dealers and manufacturers say that Obama's comments since the Newtown school shooting are driving demand.
James Zimmerman of SelwayArmory.com, a website that sells guns, ammunition and knives, says that sales really took off on Dec. 19 after President Barack Obama held a White House press conference announcing that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a team tasked with coming up with "concrete proposals" to curb gun violence.
http://news.yahoo.com/fearful-ban-frenzied-buyers-swarm-gun-stores-225130224--finance.html
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I wasn't advocating non-democracy! But Tito, certainly no democrat, wasn't Stalin. And probably more a Titoist than any other "...ist". But he has my respect for preventing in his years that hatred flared up like it did after he died.
Stalin or Hitler? ??? When Sturmgewehr comes to Kalashnikov, I prefer Stalin. For the simple reason that more Germans survived under Stalin than Russians under Hitler. Easy math: 2/3 of Russian POWs died in German captivity, but only 1/3 of German POWs in Russian captivity - and that after we had raided, marauded and scorched their country for no other reason than that crappy "Lebensraum" nutcase idea.
About 110,000 Germans surrendered at Stalingrad and less than 6000 returned home in 1955 when the Russians released the last of the POWs. That's a pretty poor survival rate. I did read recently that around 40,000 of those died in a typhus epidemic.
No love lost between the Germans and the Russians at that time, in any case.
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I am convinced of one thing: there will never be world peace. Period. It's like playing Whac-A-Mole.
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The Stalingrad surrenderers had been malnutritioned for months, hence the huge death rate, they couldn't cope with the extreme cold as they were marched off. Once in the camps, survival rates improved.
Uncle Joe offered prior to Stalingrad reciprocal Geneva Convention treatment for Russian and German POWs - Hitler turned it down because he feared higher surrender rates of the German Army.
In German concentration camps there were hidden shooting ranges just for Russian POWs to be executed (even Russian generals were executed there)- nothing of the sort existed in Russian camps.
There was a German Army order - the Kommisar-Befehl - to single out all politcal soldiers from captured Russian units and shoot them at once. Again, nothing of the sort existed on the Russian side.
My grandfather was a POW in Russia for five years. He survived. If I may quote: "We had nothing to eat and those poor sods had nothing to eat. I was laways hungry, but I wasn't beaten once."
To put things into perspective: You had a way better chance surviving as an allied soldier in Japanese captivity than you had as a Russian in German captivity.
And finally: We started it. We breached a non-aggression pact and attacked Russia without any threat from their side. And right from the start German plans were to starve half of the Russian population to death. We would not even let Leningrad surrender, it was decided to starve the city out over a period of months and years.
There WAS a difference.
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I'm fascinated by the resistance of German soldiers to orders from Hitler or direct commanding officers. Sadly, little is written about it. I know that during 1939-1945, around 20,000 German soldiers were executed for desertion but it's difficult to find many details. One of the SS units at one of the concentration camps revolted and again, little is to be found on the internet about it.
I did find, through a series of links a photograph of a bunch of civilians AND a German soldier being lined up to be shot. The German was being shot because he refused to go along with executing the civilians.
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(http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff133/muzikman7/534312_10151179981475773_2010833823_n_zps866cbaae.jpg)
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Oh, the irony...
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Obama's inadvertant new stimulus policy.
Many firearm dealers and manufacturers say that Obama's comments since the Newtown school shooting are driving demand.
James Zimmerman of SelwayArmory.com, a website that sells guns, ammunition and knives, says that sales really took off on Dec. 19 after President Barack Obama held a White House press conference announcing that Vice President Joe Biden would lead a team tasked with coming up with "concrete proposals" to curb gun violence.
http://news.yahoo.com/fearful-ban-frenzied-buyers-swarm-gun-stores-225130224--finance.html
Definitely happening here. Obama spoke, sales went through the roof right way. From a store a couple miles from me: "The craze is on," he said. "It's a feeding frenzy." (http://fridley.patch.com/articles/feeding-frenzy-for-guns-and-ammunition-at-trail-s-end-in-fridley) And that was before Christmas, it's gone up even more since then.
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Definitely happening here. Obama spoke, sales went through the roof right way. From a store a couple miles from me: "The craze is on," he said. "It's a feeding frenzy." (http://fridley.patch.com/articles/feeding-frenzy-for-guns-and-ammunition-at-trail-s-end-in-fridley) And that was before Christmas, it's gone up even more since then.
How many are first time buyers vs. current owners who are stocking up for whatever they think is going to happen next?
I guess it's as good a way as any to boost the consumer driven economy...maybe Gibson can reissue the little known 12 gauge 'Victory' bass.
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Heathens don't count, didn't you know that?
I appreciate the way you state that so ironically. Of course, that's the justification that has been used by every group that wants an excuse to position another group as unworthy and irrelevant, so they can be disposed of. In religious terms, it was used to justify all kinds of brutality. It's also used in politics, and frankly, it seems to me that it's the underlying assumption behind many arguments.
Part two.....
There is a nearly Pavlovian response to firearms killings in the US, and it's in full force right now. People who are hard-core Second Amendment types (and those who just became convinced they should own a firearm) immediately become afraid that "the Gummint" will try to take away their firearms, so they go out and buy them in huge quantity.
Right now in Colorado, sales have reached such volumes that the time required to perform a firearms background check (required before purchase from a commercial entity) has gone from an average of 23 minutes (normal) to more than 10 hours. The law enforcement unit doing the checks is working 18 hour days and can't keep up with the wave of firearms purchases.
This really says something about the way that a sizeable segment of the public views firearms.
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I appreciate the way you state that so ironically. Of course, that's the justification that has been used by every group that wants an excuse to position another group as unworthy and irrelevant, so they can be disposed of. In religious terms, it was used to justify all kinds of brutality. It's also used in politics, and frankly, it seems to me that it's the underlying assumption behind many arguments.
For instance those about the heathens on Talk Bass. ;)
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I destill from the more recent posts that Obama should not be allowed to discuss gun control because that drives gun sales up? And this coming from people who think they should be more or less unrestricted. Don't drown in your own crocodile's tears, guys.
Whenever ANY administration wishes to tackle an issue by introducing new regulations, people react that way and try to hoard whatever they believe to need before the new regime takes hold. Tax advisors, attorneys, subsidies specialists make a living out of these pre-legislative-change-surges, always have, always will. Now some people here obviously wish to draw from that effect that government should give up announcing, steering and implementing new policies at all. That is tantamount to surrendering a government's role and duty to effect change where necessary to "keeping everything as it is, no matter how bad". "Don't rock the boat" non-politics that is. You guys should spend some time in Afghanistan to relish the lack of a strong central government first hand and enjoy the politcal wisdom of various assorted warlords (whose local power is ironically based on weapons that are more or less freely available to them). I've lived in Africa, I know all about weakish central governments and how they can cripple a country's development.
And I always thought the Union had won the Civil War, not the Confederacy. In essence though a lot of the contributors here argue for a "Confederacy of American States".
Everybody has their own defining collective historic experiences I guess. For you guys the Boston Tea Party seems to have been only yesterday and you are still battling the King, whether he has his throne in London or Washington, for me it's the fact that a German nation only got its act together late in the 19th century.
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observing the goings on at local gun stores i see a lot of newbies, young and old. i see sales people explaining to people who have probavly never owned a handgun the ins and outs of their new sig sauer or berreta pistol. these guns are expensive and complicated for a new gun owner.imo this is asking for trouble. that's why i don't shoot at indoor ranges, i'm afraid of the people next to me.
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I spend a bit of time at a nice local range and over the last year or so I have been amazed at how many women, both young and old, are spending time and money there. Friday night seems to be a popular date night at the range too.
Rick
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I destill from the more recent posts that Obama should not be allowed to discuss gun control because that drives gun sales up? And this coming from people who think they should be more or less unrestricted. Don't drown in your own crocodile's tears, guys.
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Not at all, just an observation about what happens when he speaks about it. He's the salesman of the year for the gun industry. It started when he was elected to his first term, because of his "clinging to their guns and religion" comment during that campaign. Now it's in hyperdrive, helped also by a coordinated agenda-driven media campaign.
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I destill from the more recent posts that Obama should not be allowed to discuss gun control because that drives gun sales up? And this coming from people who think they should be more or less unrestricted. Don't drown in your own crocodile's tears, guys.
You are an excellent provacateur! (Pro'lly goes with the profession.)
I was just saying that for every action, there is a reaction. This as true in politics as in physics.
The reaction is not always what we want to observe, but that's another issue.
Obama is a bit of a special case, because many of the extreme Conservatives seem to think that he's Karl Marx and the Antichrist bundled together. And many of them were sure from the day he was nominated that the first thing he would do is confiscate all guns. Of course, the NRA and militia groups did their best to feed this frenzy.
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The local hardware store (aka local internet gun seller-don't know if they sell much hardware anymore) stokes the anti-Obama feeling by posting the most outrageous comments on their sign out front. Good for business.
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The local hardware store (aka local internet gun seller-don't know if they sell much hardware anymore) stokes the anti-Obama feeling by posting the most outrageous comments on their sign out front. Good for business.
That's pretty much true with any gun store. Just based on personal observation, every one of them has stoked the fire by assuming that Obama's agenda includes confiscation.
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That's pretty much true with any gun store. Just based on personal observation, every one of them has stoked the fire by assuming that Obama's agenda includes confiscation.
I wonder how much of the extended unemployment compensation given away by Obamacommie to the 47% has been spent on ammunition by illegal beaners who smuggled their American made firearms back into the US. I think I saw a segment on FOX while I was drunk on Jameson's.
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I wonder how much of the extended unemployment compensation given away by Obamacommie to the 47% has been spent on ammunition by illegal beaners who smuggled their American made firearms back into the US. I think I saw a segment on FOX while I was drunk on Jameson's.
I'm not surprised if it was on Fox. You may want to look up some definitions of "ad hominem"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
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I'm not surprised if it was on Fox. You may want to look up some definitions of "ad hominem"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Well aware of the meaning of ad hominem, learned it in 9th grade Latin class...along with quite a bit from Mad Magazine and other satirical pursuits. Any personal attack was as intended as the last two slurs on the President before Dave locked the other gun thread. He can lock or strike this but I wanted my say. Sorry if my sense of humor offends. Why should Micks get to be the only ones who can slur Blacks and Mexicans? I'm part both, I gotta right.
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I think the Connecticut situation is kind of a "societal" thread, not just a gun thread. There are many pieces in this whole issue, but to me the most problematic issue is that firearms are definitely going to remain available to people in the US. I increasingly feel that focusing on the firearm is the easiest thing to do, but not the most helpful.
The people involved are the most challenging problem. When people lose it or decide to start plotting mass murder, there's no nutso yardstick we can hold up to people, nor is there a handy nutball detector we can walk them through. But the mental health network in the US needs to be strengthened, and people need to be more willing to talk about others they know who are voicing weird and destructive sentiments.
It won't hurt to limit the size of magazines in semi-auto weapons, but to me the type/design of weapon is not that material. Maybe the AR-15 style attracts nuts - OK, if so, how do we deal with the fact that it's one of the most popular firearms in the US?
There are no easy answers, and IMO there are absolutely NO solutions. The best we can strive for is mitigation.
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The problem is, and I have no solution...
I grew up in a working class family...education was highly valued...the only way to increase one's lot in life is to become highly educated and work hard. Period.
My parents apparently transferred that to me. Not becoming educated was not an option. Hopefully I reciprocated the favor to my children. So far so good...I have been blessed so far.
If you weren't blessed with parents that gave you the tools to be a success in life, you can't make the correct decisions. Period.
Some people can be a success on their own intuition...they are rare.
Sorry for the rambling here, but...a gun is a tool for certain things...for hunting, for law enforcement...a huge amount of people that don't possess the tools to be a success in life in even the most minimal sense are buying them. They won't take care of them....won't keep them locked up. Hell they won't even clean their own kitchen or cut their own grass, let alone responsibly taking care of a gun. This is a problem.
It's Sunday, yes I've had a few beers...be kind.
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Sorry for the rambling here, but...a gun is a tool for certain things...for hunting, for law enforcement...a huge amount of people that don't possess the tools to be a success in life in even the most minimal sense are buying them. They won't take care of them....won't keep them locked up. Hell they won't even clean their own kitchen or cut their own grass, let alone responsibly taking care of a gun. This is a problem.
Patman, I think you are quite right. There are far too many irresponsible gun owners, and too many who still think life is a western movie.
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Sorry for the rambling here, but...a gun is a tool for certain things...for hunting, for law enforcement...a huge amount of people that don't possess the tools to be a success in life in even the most minimal sense are buying them. They won't take care of them....won't keep them locked up. Hell they won't even clean their own kitchen or cut their own grass, let alone responsibly taking care of a gun. This is a problem.
The great thing about the relatively free society we have is that you don't need to justify your purchases or prove that you need them for specific purposes.
Some people are irresponsible and this is a problem, but it's one we are willing to accept. In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff, what a country!
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"Maybe the AR-15 style attracts nuts - OK, if so, how do we deal with the fact that it's one of the most popular firearms in the US?"
Making a pink fin of it mandatory as well as the caption "my owner is gay", perhaps? Second Amendment says nothing about the color of the arms borne by the militia.
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"Maybe the AR-15 style attracts nuts - OK, if so, how do we deal with the fact that it's one of the most popular firearms in the US?"
Making a pink fin of it mandatory as well as the caption "my owner is gay", perhaps? Second Amendment says nothing about the color of the arms borne by the militia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol5Dfs7jqFI
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they already make pink guns aimed at (no pun) the female market.
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"Maybe the AR-15 style attracts nuts - OK, if so, how do we deal with the fact that it's one of the most popular firearms in the US?"
Making a pink fin of it mandatory as well as the caption "my owner is gay", perhaps? Second Amendment says nothing about the color of the arms borne by the militia.
Hey, Elvis was quite fond of charcoal and pink. I ain't giving up any of my God given color choices to a bunch of fag gun nuts. ;)
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Elvis was quite fond of jelly doughnuts and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Napoleon Bloomberg would have him arrested.
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Elvis was quite fond of jelly doughnuts and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Napoleon Bloomberg would have him arrested.
I'm talking about thin, pre jumpsuit and most major drugs Elvis...unfried organic peanut butter and banana with honey sammiches are a major part of my diet. What are you implying?
According to the Supreme Court billionaires, especially elected ones, have the right to all the free speech they can buy.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ooa98FHuaU0
I've steered clear of this discussion for a number of reasons, but one thing that especially irks me is when comparisons are made between the U.S. and other places, as if the U.S. is one monolithic community with no differences between Rochester, NY, Chicago, IL, Sissonville, WV, and Provo, UT. This is not to downplay the shooting that inspired this thread, but context matters in every discussion regarding violent crime and guns. I think this video provides it in an evenhanded fashion.
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I sure learned a lot.
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I found that piece very interesting.
Rick
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Interesting video indeed.
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Thanks, George. Make no mistake about it, though, it's not a matter of the media failing to examine this. As I said before, the post-Newtown coverage is agenda-driven propaganda. It's a disinformation campaign.
When he talks about tackling the problem in specific pockets of violence, he falls short by not mentioning the most obvious cause: drug-related violence caused by the ruinous war on drugs.
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But Sandy Hook wasn't about drug violence which tends to be bad and mean in any country on earth. It's just not the same thing. If you are unfortunate enough to have to live in a drug community or are a drug dealer yourself, you run a higher risk of falling victim to violence. That is not solely a US problem. But unless I'm mistaken, Sandy Hook is neither a drug traffic hot spot nor were those children drug peddlers nor Herr Lanza a crystal meth addict on a rage.
The media bashing is crap. It is an attempt by people too reluctant to state something as radical and currently non-pc as "dead school children once in a while is the price you have to pay for an unadulterated free use of guns under the Second Amendment" to obscure the issues. If Sandy Hook wasn't reason enough for an outcry by the press about US gun regulation practice today, I don't know what is/should have been. It sure interested the media in other countries as well who could care less about the US' domestic policies and are not pushing any anti-libertarian agenda there. Europe already has sharp gun control and no sizable group against it. And if something like Sandy Hook happened, you can be sure that what restricted gun ownership there is would be curbed even further.
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Astounding. There's so much to learn.
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Europe already has sharp gun control and no sizable group against it. And if something like Sandy Hook happened, you can be sure that what restricted gun ownership there is would be curbed even further.
Did the public acceptance to strict gun laws in European countries change after the murder of the 77 Norwegians or after Breivik was sentenced to 99.5 days per victim?
That's called 'serving up a fat one', Uwe. ;)
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But Sandy Hook wasn't about drug violence ....
I was specifically responding to a specific point made by the man who made the video. I wasn't talking about Sandy Hook at all.
I won't engage with you on the rest of what you said since it's all been said before earlier in this thread.
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Happiness is the longing for repetition.
Milan Kundera
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at this point in our nation's history i would venture to say that the 'gun problem' is unsolvable. over the past decades i have not heard one idea that may work in the long term. citizens of the usa will simply not give up their guns, legal or not under any circumstances. just my opinion so i won't rehash all the ideas that have come before. i would call this one of those 'you had to be raised here issues' to fully grasp what this is all about.
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at this point in our nation's history i would venture to say that the 'gun problem' is unsolvable. over the past decades i have not heard one idea that may work in the long term. citizens of the usa will simply not give up their guns, legal or not under any circumstances. just my opinion so i won't rehash all the ideas that have come before. i would call this one of those 'you had to be raised here issues' to fully grasp what this is all about.
Right on target.
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Agreed to both. Of course, that doesn't mean that each interest group won't want to paste their favorite solution over the problem and declare victory.
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I think it would be more helpful to state what might be possible to curb gun violence...or should we just agree with Uwe:
"dead school children once in a while is the price you have to pay for an unadulterated free use of guns under the Second Amendment"
The NRA certainly thinks they have a solution. I'm glad other "interest groups" are being heard in addition to the one issue gun lobby whose solution is always more guns everywhere with no restrictions.
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While looking at articles adout Ted Kaczynski (the unabomber) and how he was involved in the CIA LSD experments in the Sixties I stumbled on this article saying there are a lot of kids in America taking antidepressants like Prozac and Ritalin, and that 6% became psychotic in a recent test.
http://www.counterpunch.org/1999/07/15/ted-k-the-cia-lsd/
Wondering how often antidepressants are prescrided for children, I googled "antidepressants for children" and got some startling results:
http://arizona.newszap.com/csp/mediapool/public/dt.main.ce.Home.cls?name=fTopicPage&fTopicPageId=3652&skip=32346
http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/Stories/2012/Dec18/AntiDepressants.html
"A study done by Cardiff University in Wales concluded that, “… school shootings are almost always carried out by children who are taking antidepressants."
It seems to me that here in America many think all life's problems can be solved by taking the right pills. Does that mentality exist in the non-American countries that do not have these mass shootings?
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"A study done by Cardiff University in Wales concluded that, “… school shootings are almost always carried out by children who are taking antidepressants."
It seems to me that here in America many think all life's problems can be solved by taking the right pills. Does that mentality exist in the non-American countries that do not have these mass shootings?
Americans do indeed have a "take a pill to fix it" mentality. We also do a crappy job of providing actual mental health therapy to those who need it.
But I'd have to know a lot more about the study by Cardiff University to place any faith in the statement cited. There are tons of ways in which that comment could be inaccurate, misquoted, taken out of context or based on a study which is irrelevant to the US.
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I've found the reaction to the NRA suggestion very interesting. None of the sturm und drang it's engendered was anywhere to be seen when Bill Clinton suggested the same thing a year after Columbine. The main complaint then was the cost, but certainly not the idea that "more guns" in schools would be a bad or dangerous thing. I'm not advocating either way, I just think it's interesting that the messenger seems to be far more the deciding factor in how people are reacting to this type of policy.
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Average salary for an assistant principal in NY schools is $97,000 plus benefits. The bloated bureauracy in NY schools is astounding. Armed security could be had for a lot less.
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The conundrum of gun control is that guns can be effective in the hands of law-abiding citizens. I see both sides of the arguments.
LOGANVILLE, Ga. — A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.
The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.
But the man eventually found the family.
"The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he's staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver," Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh.
The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.
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...
The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved.
..."you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?"
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..."you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?"
I guess a crowbar can make you feel pretty invincible. Duh.
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IMO the changing demographic of the United States makes gun control a can't lose issue for the Democrats. Women, the young and immigrants are their base as shown by the recent election. Most of them believe the gun laws can and should be changed as opposed to the GOP's base of old white men and the religious right who don't.
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IMO the changing demographic of the United States makes gun control a can't lose issue for the Democrats. Women, the young and immigrants are their base as shown by the recent election. Most of them believe the gun laws can and should be changed as opposed to the GOP's base of old white men and the religious right who don't.
I don't think so. There's a large contingent of young ex-military people who are against gun law changes regardless of political party. And I don't think for a minute that being in a minority group makes one more receptive to a change in gun laws. I just saw a poll that claimed to show the majority of Americans have a favorable opinion of the NRA. It's not just the GOP's base.
Reinstating the expired assault weapons ban will be a brutal fight. If the administration tries to do more, IMHO it would be disastrous for the Democratic party.
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I support regulation and control within the confines of the 2nd. amendment. The new demographics are what they are, and many individuals in those groups are easily manipulated by soundbites and mass media buffoonery.
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media. - Noam Chomsky
All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. - Marshall McLuhan
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I support regulation and control within the confines of the 2nd. amendment. The new demographics are what they are, and many individuals in those groups are easily manipulated by soundbites and mass media buffoonery.
I agree, Bill. The pivotal question (as you obviously anticipated when you wrote) is defining "...the confines of the 2nd. amendment." That's the sticking point, especially when connected to the words "regulation and control."
I think there is room and political will for change given the situation; I don't think it will be radical change.
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I agree, Bill. The pivotal question (as you obviously anticipated when you wrote) is defining "...the confines of the 2nd. amendment." That's the sticking point, especially when connected to the words "regulation and control."
I think there is room and political will for change given the situation; I don't think it will be radical change.
I never believed in total unfettered access to all forms of weapons by all manner of citizens. Somewhere along the line, we need some common sense. The genie is out of the bottle and we can only control her, not stuff her back in.
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I don't think so. There's a large contingent of young ex-military people who are against gun law changes regardless of political party. And I don't think for a minute that being in a minority group makes one more receptive to a change in gun laws. I just saw a poll that claimed to show the majority of Americans have a favorable opinion of the NRA. It's not just the GOP's base.
Reinstating the expired assault weapons ban will be a brutal fight. If the administration tries to do more, IMHO it would be disastrous for the Democratic party.
Seems there's lot of stereotypes to pass around. I'm an old white guy and I'm not a republican! If minorities actually knew/understood the history of the Democratic party and how it's only changed in the last 4 -5 decades, they run away from it as fast as they could. The use of media in redefining the Democratic party from the party of Jim Crow and voting against the Civil Rights laws of the 60's, to champions of minorities (and their issues) is an colossal example of the media creating artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. It's been the most successful PR campaign, without underlying substance, in the history of our country.
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If I can find it later, I'll post a small discussion on the wording and context of the second amendment. It starts with the premise of a trained militia, over the individual, and there have been decisions about the distinction of the two over the years.
As for personal history, I've never owned a gun, and don't intend to do so. I did want my great-grandfather's .410 shotgun, but that was for a different reason. I had considered getting a handgun when my kids were little, with the intent of home protection, but I decided that it was a bad idea. The only useful gun is a loaded gun, and within easy reach. That means that it would have to be easy accessed by anyone, including my kids. I saw more harm than good in that scenario.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ooa98FHuaU0
I've steered clear of this discussion for a number of reasons, but one thing that especially irks me is when comparisons are made between the U.S. and other places, as if the U.S. is one monolithic community with no differences between Rochester, NY, Chicago, IL, Sissonville, WV, and Provo, UT. This is not to downplay the shooting that inspired this thread, but context matters in every discussion regarding violent crime and guns. I think this video provides it in an evenhanded fashion.
But George, that vid is totally pointless as long as he doesn't show that "violent crime" in the US and the UK means one and the same thing and that data is collated in a similar way by authorities both sides of the Atlantic. For all we know from this vid, the Brits might have more drunken fist fights in pubs. That has nothing to do with guns being available or not, but it doesn't make the US more peaceful than the UK.
Decrease of violent crime in the US is no surprise either: It decreases in any mature economy anywhere in the world. Violent crime is archaic and often displaced by other forms of crime: Who needs to hit someone over the head to get his wallet if he can access his victim's bank account with his computer at home? Fraud, online theft and embezzlement are the crimes of the future in sophisticated economies, not robbery and murder.
Nor is the insight that violent crime houses in pockets especially noteworthy. So it has to do with education and living standards? Gosh!!! And you are more likely to catch a bullet if you live in a crack house or on the border between two rivaling drug gangs or in an abusive household? Such lucid perception!
The murders of the school children in Sandy Hook were not drug- or poverty-driven, they did not take place in a hot spot, they were not caused by domestic violence, in fact they were not a classic crime (that has some kind of motivation behind it which sane people can comprehend) at all, but the act of a madman/disturbed person. Now the question is whether you believe that he could have knifed or handgunned down as many children in as little a time without his mom's legal Bushmaster. Contacts of young Lanza to international arms dealers have so far not been conclusively asserted, rather he did the convenient thing and took mother's little (security and general relaxation) helper. The further question is how difficult do you want to make it for the next guy emulating him and whether Ms Lanza's right to fun and self-defense as well as to playing a little militia on the side justifies the heightened accessability of her weapons to someone on the verge like her son. All this has nothing to do with violent crime rates in the US or anywhere else, but only with your priorities and how far you want to go to make tragedies like this if not impossible then a least more seldom and less severe in the future.
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Seems there's lot of stereotypes to pass around. I'm an old white guy and I'm not a republican! If minorities actually knew/understood the history of the Democratic party and how it's only changed in the last 4 -5 decades, they run away from it as fast as they could. The use of media in redefining the Democratic party from the party of Jim Crow and voting against the Civil Rights laws of the 60's, to champions of minorities (and their issues) is an colossal example of the media creating artificial perceptions and arbitrary values. It's been the most successful PR campaign, without underlying substance, in the history of our country.
I'm an old semi white guy of no party, that doesn't keep me from being aware of who voted how in 2008 and 2012, those numbers are fact. The Dems did change course in the 60s/70s, in response many Southerners switched party affiliation and the GOP took over the South. IMO blaming change of view on media bias shows contempt for the intelligence of people with whom you disagree.
There's certainly room within the constitution to allow some degree of gun control. My point is that the American demographic is changing, like it or not, to one that prefers some degree of gun control, at least those most likely to vote Democratic in the future. That's why it would make sense to heed their base, just as the GOP does theirs.
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I agree with you Carlo, for the most part. However, you only need to look at our nation's academic performance compared to other countries and see that we are not nearly as bright nor intelligent. It's not contempt, it's reality. I won't say anymore about it since this is supposed to be about gun control! I got carried away.
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There's no question in my mind that a ban on all semiautomatics would be constitutional, it's just not going to happen politically.
Overall handgun bans have been ruled unconstitutional. There's no point debating whether the language in the 2nd was intended to mean gun ownership only in the context of a militia, since the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.
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I agree with you Carlo, for the most part. However, you only need to look at our nation's academic performance compared to other countries and see that we are not nearly as bright nor intelligent. It's not contempt, it's reality. I won't say anymore about it since this is supposed to be about gun control! I got carried away.
It's not that other countries have smarter kids, it's that they work harder and have parents with higher expectations for them. "We're Number One" is heard so often that many believe that's all it takes to stay on top.
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Hard work has its rewards. We're losing.
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Uwe, there was no Bushmaster involved in the killings at Sandy Hook. The police removed the rifle from the trunk of his car. He used two handguns in his spree and killed himself in the school (so he couldn't have put it back in the trunk).
How are the gun laws in Norway? Did they stop Anders Behring Breivik?
The video I posted had to do (for the purposes of this thread) with what I mentioned, which was my commenting on the idea that America (and Americans as a whole) are more violent than comparable populations elsewhere in the world. They are not. Far more people were killed last year (in America and elsewhere) by any of the following than by "assault rifles" (or any other rifle): Baseball bats, knives, fists, gravity, cars, hammers... Should we ban them, too?
Gun control laws don't do much to stop criminals who are determined to use them (guns). I find it odd and strange that the same people who lament the failure of the drug war by calling for their widespread legalization will, in the same breath, call for more gun control thinking that such laws will stop gun crime and shooting sprees. If laws don't stop drugs from being grown/created, marketed, and consumed, how exactly will they rid the United States of the millions of guns (and ammunition) that already exist in the black market here?
In addition, Americans (for the most part) have the right to own guns for their own protection and for the protection of their families. From the very beginning it was understood that this protection also included the ability to rise up against a tyrannical government*. Those who enshrined that right in our Constitution had recently done exactly that. The 2nd amendment is not about hunting deer or shooting skeet. I understand that the possibility of that actually happening is right around nil, but the threat remains and is a good deterrent to those in government (at any level) who view our Constitution as a deterrent. I'm fully aware that there may come a time when Americans vote to amend that right, though I believe we're screwed if we do. In the meantime, repeated pleas to rid the world of guns will do nothing to stop the next Sandy Hook, nor the ones that follow. That is not to excuse or make light of killing, contrary to glib comments stating otherwise. Believing that wide scale gun bans are not the answer to these tragedies does not make those who feel that way any less humane or loving toward their fellow man.
*I grant that some people believe this right involves organized militias, but theirs is far from the only view. Besides, we all know how the U.S. government feels about anything resembling a militia these days.
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How are the gun laws in Norway? Did they stop Anders Behring Breivik?
The gun laws are strict, but it was obviously a very rare incident. How many school shootings have there been in the US since Columbine? 31?
Far more people were killed last year (in America and elsewhere) by any of the following than by "assault rifles" (or any other rifle): Baseball bats, knives, fists, gravity, cars, hammers... Should we ban them, too?
When's the last time someone killed 10 or 20 people in 15 minutes with a baseball bat, knife, fists, hammers? That's the real issue - the ease of fast, mass killing that large magazine firearms (whether handgun or longarm) can create. I can't remember seeing a news headline along the lines of "crazed killer massacres 27 people with Louisville Slugger".
Gun control laws don't do much to stop criminals who are determined to use them (guns). I find it odd and strange that the same people who lament the failure of the drug war by calling for their widespread legalization will, in the same breath, call for more gun control thinking that such laws will stop gun crime and shooting sprees.
In countries with strict gun control where only the bad guys have guns, as far as I can see it is extremely rare for people who are not members of rival drug gangs or criminals to be shot. In Australia, the bad guys have guns, but they only ever seem to use those guns on other bad guys. And, if they use them on the police, the police can shoot back. There has not been a single mass shooting in Australia since semi-automatic rifles and magazines with a greater capacity of 3 rounds were banned in 1996. Yes, the drug dealers still shoot each other, but they don't walk into post offices, schools or factories and shoot up innocent people just because they've had a bad day or didn't take their meds.
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I have no problems with banning automatic rifles or magazine with more than 10 rounds. Maybe 3 rounds is even better, I don't know. I've never felt the need for large clips and would even be happy with a bolt action. Very simple, less to break or jam. But there has to be a compromise somewhere in there. Fewer rounds in mass killing situations makes sense to me. The problem also seems to be multiple guns in these instances.
Just because a semi-automatic rifle looks like an assault rifle doesn't make it an assault rifle. The media and politicians, as usual, manipulate the ignorant among us with the misuse of these terms and pictures of the offending weapons. According to my understanding, an assault rifle is an automatic weapon with large clips of 30 or more rounds. Nothing of the sort was involved in recent shootings. My Ruger 22 is a garden variety rifle, but it is semi-automatic and has 10 round clips. It just doesn't look like a Bushmaster. I'm sure the media would label it an assault rifle based on features, if nothing else.
I think George has a lot of valid points. The entire 2nd. amendent and its ramifications is a uniquely American phenomenon and we'll have to deal with it. What works in other countries is fair as a comparison, but in the end, the cultures, traditions and laws are still significantly different. We have to find our solutions, not someone else's. As Churchill said: We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.
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you can buy 30 round mags for your 10/22. :)
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you can buy 30 round mags for your 10/22. :)
Never tried or needed 'em. It's confusing with the pre-ban, post-ban regs.
Anyway, after 20 pages of posts, I think we've flogged this topic into a coma. I'm heading down to the shop and expose my fingers to dangerous machinery. Peace.
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Uwe, there was no Bushmaster involved in the killings at Sandy Hook. The police removed the rifle from the trunk of his car. He used two handguns in his spree and killed himself in the school (so he couldn't have put it back in the trunk).
Huh?
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/18/us/connecticut-lanza-guns/index.html
"(CNN) -- Adam Lanza brought three weapons inside Sandy Hook Elementary school on December 14 and left a fourth in his car, police said. Those weapons were a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and two handguns -- a Glock 10 mm and a Sig Sauer 9 mm.
In the car he left a shotgun, about which police have offered no details. Lanza used one of the handguns to take his own life, although police haven't said whether the gun was the Glock or the Sig Sauer.
In fact many details remain unknown about the weapons Lanza used that day to kill 20 children, his own mother, six other adults and then himself. Here's what is known so far:
Bushmaster AR-15 rifle:
The primary weapon used in the attack was a "Bushmaster AR-15 assault-type weapon," said Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance. The rifle is a Bushmaster version of a widely made AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16 rifle used by the U.S. military. The original M-16 patent ran out years ago, and now the AR-15 is manufactured by several gunmakers. Unlike the military version, the AR-15 is a semiautomatic, firing one bullet per squeeze of the trigger. But like the M-16, ammunition is loaded through a magazine. In the school shooting, police say Lanza's rifle used numerous 30-round magazines.
An AR-15 is usually capable of firing a rate of 45 rounds per minute in semiautomatic mode.
Police didn't offer details about the specific model of the rifle Lanza used. A typical Bushmaster rifle, such as the M4 model, comes with a 30-round magazine but can use magazines of various capacities from five to 40 rounds. An M4 weighs about 6 ½ pounds and retails for about $1,300."
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The gun laws are strict, but it was obviously a very rare incident. How many school shootings have there been in the US since Columbine? 31?
When's the last time someone killed 10 or 20 people in 15 minutes with a baseball bat, knife, fists, hammers? That's the real issue - the ease of fast, mass killing that large magazine firearms (whether handgun or longarm) can create. I can't remember seeing a news headline along the lines of "crazed killer massacres 27 people with Louisville Slugger".
In countries with strict gun control where only the bad guys have guns, as far as I can see it is extremely rare for people who are not members of rival drug gangs or criminals to be shot. In Australia, the bad guys have guns, but they only ever seem to use those guns on other bad guys. And, if they use them on the police, the police can shoot back. There has not been a single mass shooting in Australia since semi-automatic rifles and magazines with a greater capacity of 3 rounds were banned in 1996. Yes, the drug dealers still shoot each other, but they don't walk into post offices, schools or factories and shoot up innocent people just because they've had a bad day or didn't take their meds.
What Mark says, my sentiments exactly.
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While there may be exceptions...a gun in the home is statistically much more likely to be the means of an unintended death or suicide of a loved one than provide protection to the home's occupants.
In this way it makes as much sense to go to the casino to try and earn a living. Probabilities are against you.
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No matter what CNN and the other presstitutes say now, the official story put out by the state police was that pistols were discovered with Lanza's body. The Bushmaster was in the car. The story now being repeated by the press is false. Of course he could have used a single shot pistol or rifle and still killed as many in almost as short a time in a gun-free zone.
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While there may be exceptions...a gun in the home is statistically much more likely to be the means of an unintended death or suicide of a loved one than provide protection to the home's occupants.
In this way it makes as much sense to go to the casino to try and earn a living. Probabilities are against you.
Agreed. And a few of us have voiced the opinion that it's not the weapons that are at issue, but the ease in which they can be used to kill. People who kill, or intend to use weapons in their chosen life will more likely have identified and specific targets. It's the random people that we should fear the most. And I don't object to making it difficult, personal, and physical for the random act of killing to take place. I think the surge of gun sales to inexperienced owners and those who might never have considered owning a gun until recently will eventually resurface in an occasional news story.
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What Mark says, my sentiments exactly.
Fair enough, but the posts above explain fairly clearly that the US is a different society with a different set of laws and constitutional rights. There is no willingness to move to a status similar to that overseas.
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The posts above explain fairly clearly that the US is a different society with a different set of laws and constitutional rights.
The US may be different, but that doesn't mean things can't be improved - look at US banking regulations, for example. They were close to world's worst practice, not best practice.
I don't understand why Americans are happy to facilitate Americans killing Americans rapidly and in large quantities? More Americans are killed by Americans in America by guns than are killed by terrorists, yet the "war on terror" gets top billing. I just can't fathom that.
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The US may be different, but that doesn't mean things can't be improved - look at US banking regulations, for example. They were close to world's worst practice, not best practice.
Banking regulations were revised to accommodate the banks, not to actually solve the problems discovered after 2008. Unfortunately there has been no real structural change in banking oversight.
I agree that things can be improved, but improvement does not mean radical change. My assertion is that radical change is not possible given the constitution and the societal conditions and beliefs in the US. Incremental change may be possible.
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Egads, banking now? Geez. We can't do anything right.
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No matter what CNN and the other presstitutes say now, the official story put out by the state police was that pistols were discovered with Lanza's body. The Bushmaster was in the car. The story now being repeated by the press is false. Of course he could have used a single shot pistol or rifle and still killed as many in almost as short a time in a gun-free zone.
Dave, be reasonable and un-conspirationist for once! It might fit into your current worldview of the media being to blame for anything, but no reputable media left or right backs your assertion that the Bushmaster was not used. You're beginning to sound like the guys who believe that the moon landing was a hoax.
If your Sandy Hook assertion were even remotely true, the Bushmaster manufacturer would have long sent out cease and desist orders to people/media claiming the untruth and smearing its innocent product. Nor would the private equity investor behind them - Cerberus - be selling its stake. Double-nor would the NRA just stand there doing nothing while a story about an assault weapon is being fabricated. "The official story" went out while the policemen themselves were still shaken by what had happened. No surviving eye witness has testified that he used hand guns. That at least one hand gun would be close to his body is inevitable given that he shot himself with it (and kept the other one as a spare, he had no intention of going to jail). And I won't even go into why young Lanza should have kept the Bushmaster and its cartridges in the trunk while murdering with the hand guns.
You seem to be the only person not only doubting, but categorically ruling out that the Bushmaster was used while the rest of the world assumes and reports otherwise. Think about it. You have zilch evidence except an initial hurried report while people were still cleaning up the site and it is generally you here who demands scientific proof and frowns at revisionism.
I understand that the police reports are still under a 90 day seal (as the judge ordered in December), let's wait and see.
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Dave, be reasonable and un-conspirationist for once! It might fit into your current worldview of the media being to blame for anything, but no reputable media left or right backs your assertion that the Bushmaster was not used. You're beginning to sound like the guys who believe that the moon landing was a hoax.
If your Sandy Hook assertion were even remotely true, the Bushmaster manufacturer would have long sent out cease and desist orders to people/media claiming the untruth and smearing its innocent product. Nor would the private equity investor behind them - Cerberus - be selling its stake. Double-nor would the NRA just stand there doing nothing while a story about an assault weapon is being fabricated. "The official story" went out while the policemen themselves were still shaken by what had happened. No surviving eye witness has testified that he used hand guns. That at least one hand gun would be close to his body is inevitable given that he shot himself with it (and kept the other one as a spare, he had no intention of going to jail). And I won't even go into why young Lanza should have kept the Bushmaster and its cartridges in the trunk while murdering with the hand guns.
You seem to be the only person not only doubting, but categorically ruling out that the Bushmaster was used while the rest of the world assumes and reports otherwise. Think about it. You have zilch evidence except an initial hurried report while people were still cleaning up the site and it is generally you here who demands scientific proof and frowns at revisionism.
I understand that the police reports are still under a 90 day seal (as the judge ordered in December), let's wait and see.
You live in a sheltered world if you think that I'm the only one categorically rejecting it.
Bushmaster's sales are through the roof. They don't need to do anything.
It's understandable that there are conflicting reports at first when something like this happens. But when apparent inconsistencies are not resolved and an "official" story emerges along with a instant, constant drumbeat by the major media for gun control, you have to start questioning why the inconsistencies disappear down the memory hole. The state police have certain things under seal, but that would not stop the media from raising concerns if they were interested in discovering what really happened rather than pushing an agenda.
For example, a man in camouflage pants was marched out of the woods by police, in front of eyewitnesses. One eyewitness said, on camera, that the man said "I didn't do it." How would he know what had just happened? Who was he and why was he in the woods which were part of school property? The eyewitness said, "he's right over there in the front seat of that police car" yet apparently no camera ever focused on him, and no one explained why he would be in the front seat and not the back. There could be a reasonable explanation for all this, but when the incident is officially disappeared, it makes one suspect that there's more to the story, like possibly more than one shooter.
How did the shooter get in? We heard he was buzzed in, then we heard he shot his way in. The latter is more believable, yet with all the photos and news coverage, we have no photos of the point of entry. And while the 911 calls came in as soon as he started shooting people, no one heard the commotion when he shot is way in. That's more than odd.
What about "Robbie Parker" -- that father who gave the emotional statement about the death of his daughter? No need to link here, but you can find video of him leading up to the statement. He's laughing and joking with the other people on the set, then when they get ready for him, he smiles and says "read the card?" then changes his face and voice into expressions of grief. If your six-year-old daughter had just been shot to pieces, would any of you be yukking it up off camera? Was he really a parent of a victim, or a hired actor?
There's more but I'm about done with the subject. I don't have answers, only questions. Whatever the answers are, they are being suppressed. And the longer they are suppressed, the more likely it is that the official version of events is untrue in a significant way.
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+1 Dave. Anyone who thinks we have the correct info on this just doesn't understand the colossal incompetence of the US media.
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I'm bored now. :sad:
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Ok, I rest my case, you guys need guns. Lots and lots more of them. You have a tyrannical government that staged Sandy Hook with actors to take your Second Amendment toys away. Rise up against it now before it is too late! :-\
I have no idea how I would react if my son was shot, whether I would cry, scream, still be able to laugh about something in one second and be totally dejected in another. Herr Parker might have been on an anti-depressant for all we know. I would probably need one too if my children were hurt or killed.
You guys hole up so much in your conspiracy paranoia that your perception of reality becomes warped. A person laughing or smiling for a few seconds because he might have been absent-minded for a moment or because his mind is battling to displace a reality to hard to bear, is now evidence for a gigantic cover-up. Aren't you getting carried away in your "government and the media manipulate us"-angst?
Culturally/anthropologically, I really wonder where this angst comes from. What absolutley horrible, forever confidence-shattering experience have you had with one of your governments in the last 200 years to warrant this conspiracy craze bordering on the psychotic? Like all countries you've had good and not so good governments, they have sometimes lied to you and done criminal things but you've never had an Adolf Hitler, a Josef Stalin or an Idi Amin. You got lucky so far.
I rate David Westheimer as a sane and intelligent as well as a rational man. But here he writes about actors crying on TV on the pay-roll of dark forces committed to some even darker agenda. :o
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some day i will explain in great detail what its like to a german citizen. :rolleyes:
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You guys
Respectfully Uwe, this is part of the problem with ever discussing anything having to do with America with non Americans attempting to "educate" us. Which one of 311,591,917 Americans is "you guys?" A few of us? All of us? Isn't that an awfully broad brush?
This is a topic on which you and I are never going to agree. I'm OK with that and I don't much mind it being insinuated that I'm either a nut or uncaring for holding to the views I have because I'm secure in why I hold them, but righteous indignation toward Americans by non Americans is one of the reasons we tend to disregard much of what you guys have to say when you lecture us. You go on about how young our country is as if you can call us whippersnappers in comparison to the wisdom non Americans have bestowed on them at birth by virtue of the advanced age of settlement in their own country. It doesn't work that way. The funny thing about that is that most of your countries have gone through any number of revolutions or changes in governmental systems while we've been organized (for better or worse) under the same governing document since 1787. It's one which we put a lot of stock in, even when we argue amongst ourselves over what it actually means and says. Either way, it's ours.
Please don't mistake our federal government's ham fisted attempts at dictating world affairs with individual Americans' views on the subject (that's one of the reasons so many of us have so much disdain for them). Most of us don't really care what the laws are in Germany (unless or until they threaten us or our allies in some way). Other than discussing 70 year old history, have you seen one thread in this forum where an American has chastised you over German law or called on those laws to be changed? I haven't. But somehow our non American friends have no problem stepping in to tell us how we're doing it wrong on everything from guns and cars to the types of wrenches we use. That wouldn't nearly be so bad except that we are then lectured even further when we don't immediately agree with your view. Let's be friends over the many things we have in common and agree to disagree on the few we don't. Especially when (other than the wrenches) those points of disagreement will never impact each others' lives in any demonstrable way.
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+ 1 George and Dave.
21 pages of posts and "us Americans" are still enigmas. The American culture and psyche will only change from within over a significant period of time. All of the well-meaning urging to be like/adopt another culture, country, worldview, laws or government just doesn't have a significant impact in the short term. We're working on our cultural/societal decay in our own way and in our own good time.
Uwe, many of your thoughts/feelings aren't without merit, but you truly don't understand the influence the US media has over our ill-educated, uncurious citizens. It's a national disgrace. If they used the internet for exploring critical issues of the day rather than Facebooking, Tweeting, following celebrities and displaying their meaningless narcissistic existence via social media, we'd be much better off as a country and a culture. Not all media activity, technology and progress moves a society forward.
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Geez. We can't do anything right.
That's a bit harsh - other than banking regulations, gun laws, beer brewing and cheese making, Americans do ok.
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The solution is liability insurance. Just like cars. There is a risk that a gun will be misused (just like a car). Make gun owners buy insurance (Ohio requires car insurance-why not gun insurance). Underwriters will do the rest. They will figure out what the probablity of a certain model gun being misused is, and what the expected damages are from an instance of misuse. They will have to examine age, educational level, credit score (if you're not responsible enough to pay bills I don't want you with a gun). They will need to examine all people in a given household. They will actively promote gun safety.
They will be able to determine who is a good risk and who is not. People who are not good risks may find insurance expensive. Let the market set the price. You still have the right to own a gun, but you have to responsibly indemnify society against its potential misuse.
There is good beer here...just not from any of the large brewers...
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The insurance thing is actually one way to go about it.
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Lieber George (that nice and most American of names): You have already in your posting given the answer why I criticize certain aspects of America (among the many great things America stand for and can be proud of), yet you don't return the favor for Germany: You simply don't give a shit. Not because you are ignorant or an uneducated man - the opposite is patently true -, but because Germany plays little role in your life. That is a perfectly sensible stance for an American (no irony or arrogance from me).
I, on the other hand, do give a shit about the US. It's one hell of an important country. To me and billions of people on earth. Still the most important one actually. An economic, cultural, military, political, natural resources and even moral giant. Moral giant not because you are saints and not because you never ill-advisedly waterboard people, but because even when the US does evil, bad, silly or wrong things (as any nation sometimes does, tell me, we've done our outsize share!), you still carry with you that image of the Statue of Liberty the French gave to you. It's your eternal shadow. Your comparatively short history says nothing about your manifold importance in the world. (Although I sometimes wonder whether your scepticism of government - a sociological necessity in my view, I never believed in anarcho-syndicalism as a way forward - has its roots in the fact that you have little experience of how debilitating the absence of if not great, then at least decent government can be.) "You guys" (here I use the term indeed for all Americans as they are important to the world as a collective, in the previous post I meant those of you that share the conspiracy fears) burp and the world has quakes, that is how important you are. And while you sometimes want to isolate yourself from the world, the world won't let you go.
The US still is for a large part of mankind the big brother (not in an Orwellian sense, but in the original sense of an elder sibling) that is secretly or openly admired. You are right, George, your system has by and large worked over the last 200 years (and I sincerely wish that it continues to work for you at least another 200 years, I would hate a world without an important America). There is lot in it worthy of emulation. But it goes with the admiration one has for the big brother that the fact that he is only human (and occasionally does silly, wrong or even bad and evil things) inevitably sometimes disappoints. The world would like America to be perfect. It isn't, nothing is, but the desire to have the US as that unversal role model, flawless, fearless, athletic, yet gentle and thoughtful, but with that can-do attitude please, is not anti-Americanism. It's a longing for hope and an immaculate future, quasi-religious even.
Ironically, "you" (= all Americans again) are often admired for things that mean relatively little to many of you, the fact that you have a black President for instance. If Obama ran in Germany he would have 90% of the popular vote according to a recent survey, he - for better or worse - represents the better "unugly" America many of us still crave for in their hearts. He is universally popular with German conservatives, liberal-conservatives, ecological "greens" and socialdemocrats, I guess we appreciate his thoughtfulness where you register a lack of emotion (we're done with emotional, charismatic leaders , let me tell you ...). Many of you might shake their head at this because you feel he is dismantling the American Dream, but to the world at large he embodies the American Dream.
Anyway, back to the topic, "you guys" are too important to be ignored and so likable (and with a long row of positive historic achievements) that "we" sometimes despair if we see - from our view - something going awfully wrong in your wonderful country. Shot American school children are nothing to gloat about, believe me. And the fact that "you" then don't even consider "ok, let's try to do without this over-abundance and -availability of guns for a while and see what impact it has", but retreat in your "Second-Amendment-tyrannical government-we are all constantly being lied to and reality is only one big conspiracy"-neurosis shell ... well, that is sometimes - lovable as you are - hard to stomach.
Ever thought that the world (ignoring Usama and his cronies) not so much hates or looks down on you, but simply very much cares for the good things you have done and your positive ideals? :o That doesn't make the world always right and America always wrong, but here in the LBO is a good place to discuss it given the astounding variety and quality of intellects and backgrounds.
That said, your non-metric system is still crap :P, but I will always salute you and your ancestors for getting rid of Hitler! :-* :-* :-*
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The metric system is for sissies.
You humble me Uwe with your kind words about my homeland. Thanks for sharing your feelings. I wish the 20 something generation had as much character and self-reliance as my father's. I'd be a lot more optimistic.
The media is still corrupt, but maybe we can find a way around that somehow.
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Edited (because the message was badly out of place anyway...)
Uwe, that is an extremely thoughtful and incisive post. Thank you.
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Shot American school children are nothing to gloat about, believe me. And the fact that "you" then don't even consider "ok, let's try to do without this over-abundance and -availability of guns for a while and see what impact it has", but retreat in your "Second-Amendment-tyrannical government-we are all constantly being lied to and reality is only one big conspiracy"-neurosis shell ... well, that is sometimes - lovable as you are - hard to stomach.
Uwe, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. That said, I hope I can get you to understand that your view of my (our) thinking, as evidenced by the statement above, is not even close to what my thinking is on the matter. I absolutely abhor that these deaths occurred, as well as those that have happened elsewhere in mall shootings, theater, etc. As I abhor the greater number of deaths inflicted by my own government in Waco, or the even greater number of deaths facilitated by my government via their gun running operation in the American Southwest. That most of the dead from that adventure are Mexican Nationals doesn't lessen the tragedy one iota (though our national media seems to feel otherwise). The difference is that I don't blame firearms for any of those deaths. Firearms are tools. In the hands of well trained citizens they stop more shootings and other crimes every single day, including mass shooting sprees but most don't hear about those because they don't fit the settled agenda, therefore our national media ignore such events.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
I fully support an effort to address these issues in a thoughtful and substantive way, I just don't believe that goal is served by additional firearms restrictions (the so called "assault weapons ban instituted during the Clinton administration didn't stop such violence). Besides the 2nd amendment issues to be considered, such actions would do nothing to prevent future gun violence. Let's have that conversation, but let's talk about the kind of people who are doing these things and what leads them to do so, and not focus with such a ridiculous single-minded obsession on the tools they choose like some totem seeking cargo cult.
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The governors of New York and Connecticut have been making strong statements regarding gun control. No matter the particulars it's obvious they believe there is support in their states for stronger laws...or at the very least have calculated it is an issue that appeals to their bases. Cuomo has aspirations to national office, he's making statements that no smart pol would without very carefully figuring where the votes are now or will be down the line.
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Let the firearms owners bear the costs of their "tools". Right now society-at-large is bearing the cost of irresponsible gun ownership. That cost should be paid by the pool of gun owners.
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Uwe, I appreciate your thoughtful reply. That said, I hope I can get you to understand that your view of my (our) thinking, as evidenced by the statement above, is not even close to what my thinking is on the matter. I absolutely abhor that these deaths occurred, as well as those that have happened elsewhere in mall shootings, theater, etc. As I abhor the greater number of deaths inflicted by my own government in Waco, or the even greater number of deaths facilitated by my government via their gun running operation in the American Southwest. That most of the dead from that adventure are Mexican Nationals doesn't lessen the tragedy one iota (though our national media seems to feel otherwise). The difference is that I don't blame firearms for any of those deaths. Firearms are tools. In the hands of well trained citizens they stop more shootings and other crimes every single day, including mass shooting sprees but most don't hear about those because they don't fit the settled agenda, therefore our national media ignore such events.
http://www.kgw.com/news/Clackamas-man-armed-confronts-mall-shooter-183593571.html
I fully support an effort to address these issues in a thoughtful and substantive way, I just don't believe that goal is served by additional firearms restrictions (the so called "assault weapons ban instituted during the Clinton administration didn't stop such violence). Besides the 2nd amendment issues to be considered, such actions would do nothing to prevent future gun violence. Let's have that conversation, but let's talk about the kind of people who are doing these things and what leads them to do so, and not focus with such a ridiculous single-minded obsession on the tools they choose like some totem seeking cargo cult.
The guns, what kind and how freely available they are, are certainly not the only issue, granted, but your argument enshrines them in having nothing to do with it at all. That is a bold statement and I believe it is driven by political dogma only: You abhor government intervention (way too much Ayn Rand, George, I told you you should have read something decent once in a while as a young man :mrgreen: ) and your instinct is to deny its usefulness in almost any domestic situation. It's a puristic viewpoint, but that is George Carlston for you, smart but dogmatic. ;) But would that conviction in you have survived if one of your children had lain in Sandy Hook?
"Firearms are tools."
But they are tools to kill, George. Animals or humans. That is their primary historic purpose, the sporting thing came only later. And you seem to have less concerns about regulating the disposal of waste oil into a river than about regulating these tools. You're sure that that is what the fathers of your (in most other aspects: positively iconic) Constitution had in mind? The English King is no longer threatening you.
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Well, since some folks don't want to recognize American reasons for bearing arms, maybe someone from "out of town" will help clarify. BTW, Uwe, I admire your tenacity and thoughfulness, but you really are becoming the proverbial "broken record."
Americans never give up your guns
28.12.2012 12:15; Pravda
By Stanislav Mishin
These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions.
This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.
Various armies, such as the Poles, during the CMYTA (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.
This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington's clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.
Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.
Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.
To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere....but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.
While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.
For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.
The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?
No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.
So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.
Stanislav Mishin
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Herr Doctor, be careful who you cite, academic quality this ain't and totally beneath the very good stuff you write yourself (and which I always enjoy reading), it is a pamphlet by a Russian nationalist nutcase revisionist. One sentence can invalidate a whole piece of work and give the agenda away:
"This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar."
:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: Ah so, I remember clearly the Russian referendum before the freedom-loving Tsar took the wise decision to enter WW I. All was well before that little Battleship Potemkin incident too. Or the Tsar's peaceful and benign exchange of political ideas with striking workers in St. Petersburg 1905.
(http://www.bidviews.com/howardki/p905bloosun.jpg)
Next week in revisionism class: Why Reza Pahlavi, Augusto Pinochet and Fulgencio Batista were good democrats too. And how prevalence of guns is a sound democracy indicator.
(http://cdn4.spiegel.de/images/image-442377-panoV9-vkdd.jpg)
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I couldn't resist! No matter how I searched, I just couldn't find a citation from a German writer telling us to keep our guns! ;D Say, why didn't the Germans invade Switzerland in 1940? Don't answer, just kidding!
Seriously, just give us, i.e. progressives, a few more decades and the US won't look any different than any contmeporary European country. Speaking of revisionism, have you read Howard Zinn's book? It rivals the Russian piece in it's audacity and bias.
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BTW...the media may be corrupt but...every American should be thankful for their relatively free media...Whenever there is a serious problem in government, someone in the media finds out, and rats on it. Think Watergate. Far more than side-arms, a free media functions to keep us free. God bless the media.
Same with the rest of the world. When atrocities are "outed" by the media, they eventually get, if not corrected, then better. Think Yugoslavia. Think George Clooney in Africa.
Before the days of free media, no one would have known about "ethnic cleansing"...certainly Darfur would have been totally unknown.
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BTW...the media may be corrupt but...every American should be thankful for their relatively free media...Whenever there is a serious problem in government, someone in the media finds out, and rats on it. Think Watergate. Far more than side-arms, a free media functions to keep us free. God bless the media.
Same with the rest of the world. When atrocities are "outed" by the media, they eventually get, if not corrected, then better. Think Yugoslavia. Think George Clooney in Africa.
Before the days of free media, no one would have known about "ethnic cleansing"...certainly Darfur would have been totally unknown.
Right on, Patman. We really do enjoy a free, open media. I think the internet has opened up an entire new world of freedom and access to information, and often, truth. The US media, however, is also free to be biased, so consumer beware and always read/check multiple sources if you really want to know the closest thing to the truth. In the end, logic, credibility and credulity are key to discerning what's what.
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I watch usually a little NBC, BBC(UK) NHK(Japan) and DW(German) news our local PBS station carries all of these-not the NBC of course...not a religious watcher, but different points of view tend to make a larger rather than smaller worldview. My opinion...yours may vary.
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I agree, I watch and read multiple sources. Of course I have my own biases, but I prefer multiple inputs. I try not to be a Kool-Aid drinker.
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Invasion of Switzerland was seriously considered, even imminent: "Operation Tannenbaum", the military plan was already in place. The Swiss even knew it and were expecting it. It was scheduled for 1940 and slated for a few days at the most, strategic cities, wham bam, thank you man!
Four reasons why it was aborted (it was close):
- Switzerland was strategically unimportant as regards its geography. Who wants to transport things through the alps at a time when they didn't even have today's tunnels?
- It was around the time where Hitler hoped to goad Churchill into a truce, he didn't want to appear too grabby. As if. :mrgreen:
- A neutral country, even in the worst of wars, is handy for all kinds of hedging your bets (the Nazis had assets there, it is also where they dumped there counterfeit Dollars which by the end of the war had reached amazing quality good enough to dupe Swiss bankers) and secret diplomacy missions. You need some place where you can talk. Hitler met Wallenberg in Switzerland as 1944 to "sell" (repulsive, ain't it?) Jews from the concentration camps to the Swedish Red Cross.
- The Swiss largely cooperated (and bought fine weapons from us paying with convertible currency!). There is a nasty saying in Switzerland: "From 1939-45, the good Swiss worked six days a week for the Deutsche Reich to then go to church on Sunday and pray for Allied victory." :mrgreen: Less funny: Zyklon B, the gas used in Auschwitz and other places of despair, had components produced in Switzerland, the maker was a German-Swiss joint venture.
So it wasn't the guns. In 1940, the French Army was both larger and better equipped than the German one and they had, they thought, their invincible Maginot Line. But they had crappy strategy and tactics (plus a wavering belief in their political position) so the Blitzkrieg blasted through their country straight into Paris.
Take Denmark on the other hand. It surrendered without a shot in 1940 in exchange for mainly two guarantees while its army was disarmed: Let us keep our democracy internally (and so it came that Denmark was the only Nazi occupied country that had democratic elections during the war and, ironically, a left-wing government won!) and "hands off our Jewish population". Initially, the Nazis even held their word. Up to 1944. Then the raids began. But the Danish police refused to cooperate. The Royal family began wearing yellow Jewish stars in solidarity. As did many of the Christian population. Danish police helped Danish Jews make it into Sweden. The Nazis, flabbergasted and dumbfounded, called a halt to the operation, the Danish Jews were saved.
Now why did in that one case non-violent civil resistance work actually against the Nazi beasts? Answer: A semblance of joint values. Had the same thing happened in Poland or Russa, the Nazis would have cracked down draconically as they were used to. But in their perverted minds, the valiant Dutch might have been ill-led democrats and pussyfooting holders of Jewish "pets", but one thing they were not: Untermenschen. They were - no two ways about it - fellow "Aryans". And you can't shoot fellow Aryans like you can shoot Russian and Polish peasants. Perverse, I know.
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Let the firearms owners bear the costs of their "tools". Right now society-at-large is bearing the cost of irresponsible gun ownership. That cost should be paid by the pool of gun owners.
Firearms owners have always been legally liable for their use. The typical law-abiding gun owner is a homeowner who already carries liability insurance.
But by all means, let's go with your pool idea. I'm sure the ghetto thugs with unregistered guns -- you know, the criminals who actually cause 98% of the damage to society at large with their guns -- will be happy to join and pay their fair share of premiums.
And while we're at on board with your pool idea, let's have society at large replenish that pool to reimburse gun owners for every legitimate defensive use of a gun. After all, even the anti-gun Brady Center once admitted that there were 108,000 defensive uses a year, and other surveys put the number much higher. Compare that to the number of gun homicides.
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See, liebe Amerikaner, that is one experience we have over you: Life without a free press. From 1933-45. Don't try this at your home please.
Media is neither good nor bad, it is a force of nature and often random. If you believe in chaos theories, of course, it all balances out in the end. But absence of a free (or even anarchic) media is hell.
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"And while we're at on board with your pool idea, let's have society at large replenish that pool to reimburse gun owners for every legitimate defensive use of a gun. After all, even the ant-gun Brady Center once admitted that there were 108,000 defensive uses a year, and other surveys put the number much higher. Compare that to the number of gun homicides."
Not sure whether the costs of a bullet spent in a true self-defense act would actually matter much in comparion to what a jury would award to the parents of the Sandy Hook victims, Dave. Careful with those apples and oranges crates! :mrgreen:
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Not sure whether the costs of a bullet spent in a true self-defense act would actually matter much in comparion to what a jury would award to the parents of the Sandy Hook victims.
Not the cost of a bullet, but the benefit to society. After all, if an armed robbery or homicide's overall cost to society is to be calculated, there's a corresponding benefit when these crimes are prevented.
I find the whole "cost to society" angle one of the most pernicious excuses to limit or destroy freedoms that this country has ever seen.
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Problem is...the crazies never have jobs, and can never be responsible for the damage they cause. Just like car owners...the tab for an auto accident with injuries is easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars--the tab for a gun accident is high. Most people can't pay. That's when you insure, and spread the risk over a large area.
And just like with autos, you will have uninsured drivers.
The drug dealer probably doesn't have auto insurance either.
All I'm asking for people to be economically responsible and belly up to the bar to pay for their own decisions. The market would weed out some of the crazies, that's all.
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Problem is...the crazies never have jobs, and can never be responsible for the damage they cause. Just like car owners...the tab for an auto accident with injuries is easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars--the tab for a gun accident is high. Most people can't pay. That's when you insure, and spread the risk over a large area.
And just like with autos, you will have uninsured drivers.
The drug dealer probably doesn't have auto insurance either.
All I'm asking for people to be economically responsible and belly up to the bar to pay for their own decisions.
By making the ones who don't cause the damage pay for the ones that do.
The responsible folks already are insured.
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Ian Hunter wants to chip in too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAHPHfXu6C8
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I'm now in favor of banning totem poles (http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1005525/14/Minn-man-pleads-guilty-in-totem-pole-killing).
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Sounds just like you, old grumpy interventionist big government funspoiler. What's wrong now all of the sudden with shapely Indians and poles?
(http://idlebrain.com/movie/photogallery/archana15/images/archana117.jpg)
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I'm now in favor of banning totem poles (http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1005525/14/Minn-man-pleads-guilty-in-totem-pole-killing).
Already outlawed in NY! So are assault hammers (the black ones, not the cammo ones) and jawbones of asses. ;D
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Invasion of Switzerland was seriously considered, even imminent: "Operation Tannenbaum", the military plan was already in place. The Swiss even knew it and were expecting it. It was scheduled for 1940 and slated for a few days at the most, strategic cities, wham bam, thank you man!
Four reasons why it was aborted (it was close):
- Switzerland was strategically unimportant as regards its geography. Who wants to transport things through the alps at a time when they didn't even have today's tunnels?
- It was around the time where Hitler hoped to goad Churchill into a truce, he didn't want to appear too grabby. As if. :mrgreen:
- A neutral country, even in the worst of wars, is handy for all kinds of hedging your bets (the Nazis had assets there, it is also where they dumped there counterfeit Dollars which by the end of the war had reached amazing quality good enough to dupe Swiss bankers) and secret diplomacy missions. You need some place where you can talk. Hitler met Wallenberg in Switzerland as 1944 to "sell" (repulsive, ain't it?) Jews from the concentration camps to the Swedish Red Cross.
- The Swiss largely cooperated (and bought fine weapons from us paying with convertible currency!). There is a nasty saying in Switzerland: "From 1939-45, the good Swiss worked six days a week for the Deutsche Reich to then go to church on Sunday and pray for Allied victory." :mrgreen: Less funny: Zyklon B, the gas used in Auschwitz and other places of despair, had components produced in Switzerland, the maker was a German-Swiss joint venture.
So it wasn't the guns. In 1940, the French Army was both larger and better equipped than the German one and they had, they thought, their invincible Maginot Line. But they had crappy strategy and tactics (plus a wavering belief in their political position) so the Blitzkrieg blasted through their country straight into Paris.
Take Denmark on the other hand. It surrendered without a shot in 1940 in exchange for mainly two guarantees while its army was disarmed: Let us keep our democracy internally (and so it came that Denmark was the only Nazi occupied country that had democratic elections during the war and, ironically, a left-wing government won!) and "hands off our Jewish population". Initially, the Nazis even held their word. Up to 1944. Then the raids began. But the Danish police refused to cooperate. The Royal family began wearing yellow Jewish stars in solidarity. As did many of the Christian population. Danish police helped Danish Jews make it into Sweden. The Nazis, flabbergasted and dumbfounded, called a halt to the operation, the Danish Jews were saved.
Now why did in that one case non-violent civil resistance work actually against the Nazi beasts? Answer: A semblance of joint values. Had the same thing happened in Poland or Russa, the Nazis would have cracked down draconically as they were used to. But in their perverted minds, the valiant Dutch might have been ill-led democrats and pussyfooting holders of Jewish "pets", but one thing they were not: Untermenschen. They were - no two ways about it - fellow "Aryans". And you can't shoot fellow Aryans like you can shoot Russian and Polish peasants. Perverse, I know.
I told you not to answer!!!!!!!!!!!! Although I did like the Danish history lesson. Something to be admired for sure.
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If responsible folk are insured already, then requiring insurance either makes EVERYONE responsible, or it takes guns out of the hands of those not responsible enough to insure.
Obviously drug dealers are not included here.
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By making the ones who don't cause the damage pay for the ones that do.
The responsible folks already are insured.
That's why we have "no fault" insurance in NY. We don't want the irresponsibile to be singled out (might lose self-esteem) for not particpating in our overbearing insurance system.
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And while we're at on board with your pool idea, let's have society at large replenish that pool to reimburse gun owners for every legitimate defensive use of a gun. After all, even the anti-gun Brady Center once admitted that there were 108,000 defensive uses a year, and other surveys put the number much higher. Compare that to the number of gun homicides.
+1
BTW.........this happens everyday, but it will never make the national news and a lot of folks here don't want to admit that guns can be effective in the hands of law-abiding citizens. How can we ignore this fact?
Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio, January 8, 2013
A man was shielding his infant son when he shot another man who had just robbed him Monday night on the Hilltop, police say.
Kelby Smith, 34, had just gotten out of his car in his brother’s driveway on Crescent Drive about 8:45 p.m. when a man with a pistol approached him and demanded money, police said.
Smith was carrying his 2-month-old son in a car seat at the time. He knelt down in front of his son to shield him as the robber held the gun to Smith’s head, police said.
While Smith was handing over a small amount of cash, he pulled his gun out of a holster, said detective Brian Boesch of the Columbus police robbery squad. Smith is a concealed-carry permit holder, Boesch said.
The robber fled, police said, but then pointed his gun back at Smith as he ran.
“When I pulled my pistol he took off running and I shot and it hit him,” Smith later told a 911 dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked Smith how he knew the man had been shot.
“Cause when I shot he started crying and he fell to the ground,” Smith told the dispatcher.
A short time later, a man matching the description of the robber came into Mount Carmel West hospital with a gunshot wound. He was taken to surgery and is under police guard tonight.
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(15 posts have intervened since I was motivated to start writing this...sheesh...)
As perhaps the token media-guy here, I want to argue with the "corrupt media" concept. For the last 2-3 decades many people, especially conservatives, have been endlessly replaying an assertion that commercial media in the US are radically liberal and corrupt. I disagree with both assertions.
First, I agree that most of those whom I have met in electronic media circles tend to run a bit left of center. (This of course omits the radical conservatives who dominate talk radio, and the rightist tendency of the Fox network.) Not radically left of center, but a bit. And since I have that perception, I tend to watch news and consider whether I see evidence of it. Of course, I'm not an unbiased observer since I share the position of being a little bit on the left. I see enough indication in the questions asked and the assumptions made that I think my perception is reinforced. However, since broadcast operations are still compelled to "operate in the public interest, convenience and necessity," there are limits on what they can do in news coverage and I think those limits are generally respected.
However, my observation is that the most important negative influence on electronic media is the incessant push to be immediate and sensational. Don Henley got that right when he sang: "Give them dirty laundry." I think the constant push to have the first and most sensational report is a big reason that electronic media are perceived as corrupt. I strongly believe that most broadcast operations are not corrupt, and that the reporters and their supervisors are striving for ratings, not outcomes that are prop-ted by political or commercial bribery. But in the process, common sense (sending the new truck out at 10 PM to shoot a darkened courthouse while a reporter does a standup in front) and taste are often sacrificed.
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Speaking of revisionism, have you read Howard Zinn's book? It rivals the Russian piece in it's audacity and bias.
I assume you're referring to 'A People's History Of The United States'. I have and what you call bias I call truth.8) Audacious, definitely.
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I assume you're referring to 'A People's History Of The United States'. I have and what you call bias I call truth.8) Audacious, definitely.
Truth in terms of many of things that occurred, but certainly not exclusive to the US as a country and society. Remember, relativists, all governments and societies throughout time have committed the same crimes against humanity for the very same reasons. The only important question to relativists is "Who did it most or best?" It's not the crime itself, it's who did the most that really matters. The problem with the book is the US is hardly alone. Otherwise, an interesting compendium and catalog of our national misdeeds from COlumbus forward. That being said, I don't want to enter into a debate about the relative evilness of one explorer, country or government over another. In my mind, they all have sinned big time at one time or another. That's all I need to know.
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Not sure how shooting a fleeing robber made Mr. Smith's son safer. The money doesn't count. Stuff is just stuff.
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Not sure how shooting a fleeing robber made Mr. Smith's son safer. The money doesn't count. Stuff is just stuff.
The deterrent is most effective when the effect is permanent. Once a thief steals something using a gun, IMO that thief is eligible for permanent retirement...which prevents repetition of the theft.
What is important in this case is not the theft - because stuff is just stuff - it's that deadly force was used to steal the stuff. IMO use of deadly force makes the user immediately eligible to be responded to with deadly force.
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Not sure how shooting a fleeing robber made Mr. Smith's son safer. The money doesn't count. Stuff is just stuff.
The story noted that the robber turned and pointed the gun at him again as he ran away. The story implies it was then he shot him. That's how the story reads, in a linear fashion. If it were me, I wouldn't give him a second opporuntity either.
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The story noted that the robber turned and pointed the gun at him again as he ran away. The story implies it was then he shot him. That's how the story reads, in a linear fashion. If it were me, I wouldn't give him a second opporuntity either.
Nor me. Use a gun for theft and if you end up dead, you're only getting what you asked for.
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Nor me. Use a gun for theft and if you end up dead, you're only getting what you asked for.
“No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
? Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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I think we're losing sight of the central issue. If the central issue is to protect next generation, I'm not sure pulling out gun (possibly to invite return fire--at the very least it introduces an element of uncertainty into the situation) was increasing the safety of his child. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand.
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I think we're losing sight of the central issue. If the central issue is to protect next generation, I'm not sure pulling out gun (possibly to invite return fire--at the very least it introduces an element of uncertainty into the situation) was increasing the safety of his child. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand.
I think you've forgotten the sequence.
Thief pulls gun; conducts theft
Thief starts to leave;
Thief turns and points gun at victim AGAIN - possibly (even presumably) to kill victim.
At that point, thief is presumably intent on murder and is fully eligible to have account canceled.
If he doesn't turn and point the firearm again, then the threat has gone away and no action is appropriate. But if he points it a second time, deadly force is fully appropriate.
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Help me out on this: Who again was self-defending himself against whom in Sandy Hook?
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Help me out on this: Who again was self-defending himself against whom in Sandy Hook?
Isn't a pain in the butt when a gun can be used for multiple purposes? We'll never resolve this to everyone's satisfaction.
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if it was easy, it would have been done already.
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Legislative effort never is. It's the journey, forget about the destination.
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if it was easy, it would have been done already.
Amen.
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Sinning again and again doesn't absolve you from the need to pray though! :mrgreen:
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Firearms owners have always been legally liable for their use. The typical law-abiding gun owner is a homeowner who already carries liability insurance.
But, in the case of Sandy Hook, the law-abiding gun-owning homeowner is dead too (the shooters mother).
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News of an incident in California is just filtering through here... no fatalaties but a wounding of a teacher...
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But, in the case of Sandy Hook, the law-abiding gun-owning homeowner is dead too (the shooters mother).
Her liability insurance didn't end with her death. When the inevitable lawsuits hit, you can bet that her insurer will pay the policy limits and the rest will come out of her estate until there's nothing left.
News of an incident in California is just filtering through here... no fatalaties but a wounding of a teacher...
With a 12 gauge shotgun, not anything that would be affected by any proposed changes in gun laws.
Isn't a pain in the butt when a gun can be used for multiple purposes? We'll never resolve this to everyone's satisfaction.
No, we won't.
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Sinning again and again doesn't absolve you from the need to pray though! :mrgreen:
Amen, amen.