Dear Connecticut...

[uwe]

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.

[nofi]

there is no easy answer to this gun issue uwe. i don't think your stereotypical view of this country helps you much either.

[rahock]

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

[rahock]

You sound like Iran.

I suppose the difference is in ones' definition of "good guy" and "bad guy".
Rick

[westen44]

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. 

[Big_Stu]

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.

[uwe]

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

[uwe]

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!

[Basvarken]

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.

[Dave W]

....

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

[rahock]

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

[Dave W]

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.

[uwe]

But the issue, Rick, is that more violent deaths are caused by people believing to do right than among people believing to do wrong.

[rahock]

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

[uwe]

^ ^ ^ 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.