Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 people, mostly children, have been killed in a shooting spree at an elementary school in Connecticut. I have no idea what could motivate a man to gun down 3rd graders, but I do know it’s past time to put rational gun control laws in place.
Give it an hour, some idiot will propose arming all the 7 year olds instead.
You’ll have to point me to the comments calling for banning of all guns, because I haven’t seen any. Please note: Gun control =/= banning of all guns.
Your hyperbole is noted.
Your sexism is also noted.
It’s fascinating how you all are completely incapable of rationally responding and resort to using invective, particularly when you are backed into a corner.
Clearly, England’s more restrictive gun control laws were not able to prevent that case.
jinxmchue,
I argued with Eris, I’m not going to go over the same damn things with you. If someone else wants to, kudos to them. Honestly, you’re not worth the effort. She was disgusting, but at least able to show some level of coherency (at least before she admitted she wants to be able to defend herself when US army comes a-knocking.).
Duh, boys and girls. Because no law can prevent all tragedies we should have no more gun control whatsoever because decreasing deaths isn’t good enough. It’s all or nothing.
I see a lot of comments from people on your side saying things like “If only the children had been armed.” Comment #4 about babies is particularly amusing. I guess hyperbole is okay when YOUR side and ONLY your side uses it. Hypocrites.
Exactly Josh! Seat belt laws won’t solve all tragic motor vehicle accidents, and people will die even though they were buckled in! So we shouldn’t have them.
jinxmchue,
There are over 30,000 gun deaths per year in the USA. That’s getting on for 100 a day. You can compare the rate per 100,000 population of the USA with other countries here. Among rich countries, the USA comes top, by a considerable margin. I bet you’re proud. (It’s worth noting that the second place among rich countries is held by Switzerland, often cited by gun-nuts as refuting the connection between high gun ownership and gun deaths.)
It would be too much to hope that jinxmchue is able to recognize sarcasm.
cite:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/gvunintentional
but if those aren’t evenly distributed among *each day* and *every city* in America, they don’t count because
statisticshyperskepticism.Lots of interesting reading here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics
Do you even know what hypocritical means? Why in the holy fuck is it hypocritical for people who want less guns to criticize the position that more armed people would solve the problem?
Oh joy! We have a Fox Parrot by the name of jinxmchue here. Do you also want to pull out the Huckabee argument?
AFAIK Switzerland has better gun control than the US as well. All legal gun owners are registered, regularly inspected and trained. They’re supposed to be Switzerland’s army, after all.
I don’t watch or even have Fox News (or anything else on the “vast wasteland” — I prefer to read) and don’t care for Huckabee, but thanks for assuming again, though. You people seem to love to do that. I guess when you have no actual legitimate arguments to make, you go with what you’re best at.
@Vaiyt
Also when they sell ammunition at firing ranges every bullet must be expended at that visit to the range.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if people who barge in indignation acknowledged a couple of hundred comments made before their appearance?
It’s hypocritical because neither side knows what would have actually prevented this tragedy.
You raise an interesting point. If even the stringent controls placed on firearm ownership in the UK are unable to completely prevent massacres involving legally held firearms, then surely the only way to COMPLETELY prevent such massacres is to completely ban all civilian ownership of firearms!
Sounds good to me.
Derrick Bird’s rampage was the first mass shooting in the UK involving legally-held firearms since the Dunblane massacre. It took Bird a total of two hours to kill 12 members of the public whilst he was driving at random through villages in a sleepy, rural county in northern England. Had his rampage taken place in one of the big cities further south or west, like Newcastle, Manchester or Liverpool – places where violence involving illegal firearms is commonplace and thus the resources to tackle such crimes are readily available – it would’ve been over much more quickly and with far less loss of life. Not to mention the failure in licensing enforcement that came out in the aftermath of Bird’s shooting spree – turns out Bird had been seeking treatment for various mental health issues, and either nobody had bothered to tell the authorities, or the authorities hadn’t bothered to act on the information.
This is all very different to the situation in Newtown, and I don’t doubt that as more details emerge from the police investigation the differences will only become more apparent to anyone willing to see them.
It’s a pity your argument is so full of holes, because I would quite like to have used it to advocate a complete ban on firearms.
Nope, I’m pretty sure that the wannabe murderer not having a bunch of loaded weapons would have prevented him from murdering 27 people with weapons he wouldn’t have.
Can we make an educated guess on what might or might not help in the future based on the history of such events and the research done on guns?
Hypocrisy: You still don’t know what it means.
Chigau, thanks for the link at 508. This is what it says about the US:
“The United States has about five percent of the total world population but residents of the United States own about 42 percent of all the world’s civilian-owned firearms. The homicide rate by firearm is 200 to 800 percent higher in the US than in other advanced countries such as England, France, Australia, and Japan where firearms are more tightly controlled by law.”
There you have it – the statistics prove beyond doubt that gun control is effective at reducing gun related violence in the long term. I also wonder if, tragically, the mother who was murdered kept guns in the house to protect herself. The article goes on to say that studies of domestic violence have shown that gun ownership increases the risk of crimes of passion and other domestic disputes ending in a fatal injury, so the personal safety/ self-defense argument from the gun lobby is also bullshit.
@503:
I haven’t seen the commenter @4 in the past, so I am not sure xe qualifies as ‘you people’ (someone will correct me if I’m wrong). More important, can you not see the inherent sarcasm in hir comment? It’s poking fun at the ridiculous right wing response “oh, there was a tragic shooting? Let’s arm people with guns.” Arming more people with guns to minimize a shooting spree is as nonsensical as giving a baby a gun.
How on Earth did you take that seriously?
So what? You claimed that:
I pointed out that:
You then gave an example of another massacre carried out using guns. Which proves that you’re a fuckwit, since, clearly, guns were available.
Damn! You were blowing a pitch perfect dog whistle!
We all hear that battle cry after every time there is a mass shooting.
Now is not the time to talk about gun control!
Every fucking time!
So sorry that I confused your well reasoned retort with a well worn NRA trope.
.
jinxmchue, please go away and compare the frequency of firearm massacres in the USA with their frequency in any other country in the world that enjoys a comparable level of political stability and rule of law. Feel free to compare the numbers of multiple killings and the overall level of gun crime as well; feel free to correct for population size.
A situation like this has happened, afaik, once in the UK. Once is too many, obviously, and gun controls were tightened up right afterwards.
How many massacres like this have happened in the USA?
Don’t bother to come back.
coincidentally, Huckabee is getting mentioned quite a lot today, even Zazzle has a tshirt for it:
http://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/picture-42.png?w=460
here are some good responses to Huckabee’s (and Fischer’s) idiotic notion that the shooting happened because public schools aren’t promoting their god:
-You know who else public schools don’t allow on campus? Rampaging gunmen.
-So, the reason child rapes occur in the Catholic Church is because… ? God must not be allowed there either.
– So, the reason mass murders happen IN CHURCHES, is because? reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting
uh huh.
so… the same exact thing happening in China at nearly the same time, under the same circumstance, the only difference being guy has a knife instead of a gun.
tell me… how many dead in that one?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248054/China-stabbing-22-children-elderly-woman-stabbed-outside-primary-school-Chinese-knifeman.html
opposablethumbs,
No, it has happened more than once in the UK, and once since the gun laws were tightened – not nearly enough, in my opinion, and in the case jinxmchue referred to, the law had not been enforced.
upthread, someone posted a link to the statistics from Australia showing a 33% decrease in gun-related homicides over the 7 year period since they toughened their gun laws.
so, while there of course is never any way to know with 100% certainty, there IS A FUCKTON OF EVIDENCE to support what PROBABLY could have limited the chances of this happening.
get your recent news from books do you?
no?
well then, you must be reading newspapers.
…and that differs from TV media… HOW?
fuckwit.
here in NZ, we average around 2 per MONTH.
Nick Gotts, yes, you are right. I was thinking of Dunblane as the only time a school has been attacked but it would have been better to stick to the more general point and just compare gun killings overall.
Your link pretty much sums it up.
Apparently some people think “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas ” is an instruction manual. Excuse me while I go throw up.
Me @ 308;
and then we get jinxmchue @ 482;
Sometimes I hate being right.
Banning or severely restriting ammunition could be a good way to start controlling guns and gun violence. You can’t do much with an unloaded gun. Also unlike guns which may last for decades if not a century, AFAIK (not 100 % sure), ammunition (especially smokeless powder and primers) will weaken and become unreliable or unusable with time. So the ammo hoarders’ precious cartridges would become a pile of lead and brass smelling like mouse pee and behaving erratically when shot.
mouse pee?
I think I found a flaw in your plan.
Nakkustoppeli:
You are aware that there’s a large number of gun…fans who make their own ammo, right?
Don’t we?
Do you really think allowing teachers to bring guns to classrooms full of kids would be safer than the alternative?
Gregory Greenwood, that is not a case of being right. That is a case of seeing this happen after every fucking mass shooting.
I can remember some people were making that argument back in 1999 when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Nathaniel_SmithBenjamin Smith was on his shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana, that if people were armed, they would be able to fire back. I am sure it goes back even farther but that was the first time it truly struck me as being an asinine argument.
Forgot to close the tag again.
From an article in the NYT about the shooting: “Officials said the killing spree began early on Friday at the house where Mr. Lanza had lived with his mother. There, he shot her in the face, making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, leaving her dead after taking three guns that apparently belonged to her, he climbed into her car for the short drive to the school.” (Emphasis added.)
Owning guns sure didn’t make Nancy Lanza any safer.
My father did.
It would seem that the tools for casting slugs would fall under the same scrutiny of the ammo itself.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar @ 538;
Fair point – anticipating how gun nuts will try to spin mass shootings is not exactly difficult. They are nothing if not predictable.
good point.
Janine:
Which wouldn’t be remotely realistic. Molds and casts can be easily carved from a number of materials, etc. A large black market would emerge for both hand-made and commercial ammo, along with the stuff needed to make your own. You can get away with surprisingly little in order to make your own.
While I don’t have any real problem with restricting the amount of ammo one is allowed to horde, I think it’s still closing the gate after the horse is gone.
#432 — Thanks StevoR.
Michael Moore expressed this sentiment wrt to the overall issue of gun regulation in the US, back in “Bowling for Columbine”, IIRC.
that was quite a while ago.
I often wonder if it is indeed too late now; that too many generations now take gun ownership not as just a right, but more like they seem privileged in every sense of the word; they’ve grown up with the idea that guns in the house are normal and proper, and no branch of government has really given them any cause to ever think differently.
It really will be like trying to reverse Christian religious privilege in the US.
I think we have to think about putting down the horse, instead of trying to get it back in the barn.
…er, to poorly mix an analogy and all.
:P
IOW, not only has the horse left the gate wrt to gun control, but it’s run off into the crowd….
Ichthyic:
Pretty much. It would have be part of a sweeping change which would force ‘merica to join the rest of the civilised world. I doubt I’ll be around for that one.
Ichtyic,
Apparently, nitrocellulose decomposition products can smell like urine.
Rey Fox,
I’d imagine ammo failing or going off a few seconds after pulling the trigger would be somewhat less useful.
Caine,
I’m aware that reloading cartridges is done and making (at least black powder) powder is doable but what about primers?
I’m not saying my “cunning plan” is perfect but there would be some effect. The point (which I didn’t state clearly) is that after introduction of severe restrictions on gun ownership or total ban there would be a lot of illegal guns (especially if there is no gun registry), which would be technically usable for decades, however the cartridges have a shorter “shelf life”, so restrictions on them could make guns less useful as instruments of violence.
Nakkustoppeli:
People make their own ammunition all the time in this country, from the ground up. Do it yourself bullets of all kinds. You might want to read up on it, it’s really not difficult to do. I can tell you it’s a hell of a lot easier making bullets than it is forging a sword.
And of course, now that I think about it, if guns would be banned, then of course ammo would also be banned. I need to upgrade my brain.
Litigious Bastard
The new ‘nym is an improvement.
Ichthyic wrote
It really will be like trying to reverse Christian religious privilege in the US.
Exactly right, I’m afraid. Not until the last bible-thumper is shot with the last gun will there be a chance of reversing the current sad state of affairs.
Gee, what a lovely sentiment.
Idiot.
I think it was supposed to be a joke?
^^ah, there’s my sharky!
finally, been waiting for that to work for a long time.
heh, I’m already not.
:)
Ichthyic:
In that sense, I wish. However, being 55, I doubt I’ll be alive to see that great of a change.
Love the shark, sniny!
Oh man now the gun nuts on a rightwing site are saying that cares are more dangerous
gotta love the logic
cars are dangerous too, so guns for everyone!!!
OK, let’s look at cars.
How well regulated are cars, exactly?
ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE THAN GUNS.
yes, please, NRA fuckwits, please please go on using the analogy to cars to try and “support” your “freedoms”.
pretty please?
“People make their own ammunition all the time in this country, from the ground up.”
I think you’ll find that almost no one does that, if you are talking about pistol, shotgun or rifle cartridges.
It is easy to cast bullets. Making brass cartridge casing, other than by machining them out of solid brass, is virtually impossible for someone without some very large machinery. A few people will modify cases – “necking down” is a moderately common operation. Making primers is vastly beyond the capability of just about everyone. You can buy empty brass, bullets, primers and powder off the shelf. Reloading with those materials certainly is pretty popular.
~~~
“if you grew up with …” (or words to that effect)
I did grow up with guns, lots of guns, in the house. Guns that would NEVER be loaded in the house, under any circumstances. Guns kept put carefully away, out of sight. Guns that were NEVER pointed at a person. After he retired (and I was out on my own) my dad got fairly heavily into collecting certain makes of shotguns. Most of them he never fired, but he enjoyed and was very good at gunsmithing.
A few years ago he and I were driving in Washington or Oregon, and he noticed one of the signs informing what volunteer group was doing cleanup on that section of highway. It was the NRA. I didn’t hear exactly what his comment was, but it was very clearly contemptuous. But we’re Canadian.
Even as the paranoia of dementia set in and dad had delusions of people entering his house to cause mischief, his response was not to keep a loaded gun behind the door, but to decide it was time to get rid of all his guns.
My brother, at one time, owned some handguns. Handgun laws are extremely strict in Canada, and have been for many many decades. Even transporting one in your car requires that you go directly from home to a range. Stop for a coffee and a doughnut and you could find yourself arrested. About the only way you can get a carry permit in Canada is if you are at risk of being eaten on the job. Yet, somehow, my gun nut brother managed to deal perfectly well with those laws, and never once whined about lack of freedom.
the rightwingers are also comparing this tragedy to the incident in china where a knife wielding man injured 22 children
and they are saying ‘look, knives are just as dangerous!!!!!!!!!!’
but they are leaving out the part , or rather, oblivious to the part where,
in china, 22 INJURED
in newtown, 26 DEAD
Ugh, I’ve just been on the NRA site for the first time, and my god what a bunch of paranoid psychopaths. There are stories celebrating the ‘heroes’ Oliver North and Sarah Palin, how they thwarted treaties that restrict the global arms trade, oh and many charming anecdotes about how people with concealed guns ‘protected’ their families by firing at youths that they felt threatened by. Their youth outreach program also sickens me. Fuck the NRA.
someone on a liberal blog made this astute observation:
[meta]
re tomh @554:
This may not be in the best of taste, but it’s not idiotic &mash; it’s a topical sardonic riff on Diderot’s famous* similar sentiment (“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”).
—
* Or infamous, depending on one’s stance.
thanks John; that was tickling my brain and I couldn’t quite recall what it was that made it sound so familiar.
Litigious bastard:
A good improvement on the nym.
****
Ichthyic:
Is that a Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, or Megashark…er…shark?
I wonder how bad a creationist gun rights site would look. Or is that what the NRA site is?
You mean there isn’t already an Answers in Gunesis site? I’m shocked.
According to wikipedia, the NRA is often criticised by even more right-leaning gun organizations and libertarians who take a stricter view of the Second Amendment. So yeah, can the libertarians now kindly fuck off out of the atheist movement, you’re embarrasing us all.
And in other minor gun-news today,:
Gunman on the fifth floor of St Vincent’s Hospital (Birmingham, AL) shot and injured three before being killed by a police officer responding.
And two people were killed in Las Vegas at the Excaliber Hotel, the female victim at the concierge desk then the shooter who killed himself.
And four people were shot and wounded in Oakland (no other details at the moment).
And for the good news, a teenager in Bartlesville did NOT manage to kill any of his fellow students as he was arrested before he was able to take his guns to school.
Trigger warning – images of little children with firearms
Video
Lyrics:
Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books
Maybe it’s the bullets, maybe it’s the real crooks
Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents
Maybe it’s the colors everybody’s wearin
Maybe it’s the President, maybe it’s the last one
Maybe it’s the one before that, what he done
Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers
Maybe it’s the tattooed children in the bleachers
Maybe it’s the Bible, maybe it’s the lack
Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack
Maybe it’s the hairdos, maybe it’s the TV
Maybe it’s the cigarettes, maybe it’s the family
Maybe it’s the fast food, maybe it’s the news
Maybe it’s divorce, maybe it’s abuse
Maybe it’s the lawyers, maybe it’s the prisons
Maybe it’s the Senators, maybe it’s the system
Maybe it’s the fathers, maybe it’s the sons
Maybe it’s the sisters, maybe it’s the moms
Maybe it’s the radio, maybe it’s road rage
Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
Maybe it’s the army, maybe it’s the liquor
Maybe it’s the papers, maybe the militia
Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the ads
Maybe it’s the sports fans, maybe it’s a fad
Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it’s the internet
Maybe it’s the lottery, maybe it’s the immigrants
Maybe it’s taxes, big business
Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it’s the communists, maybe it’s the Catholics
Maybe it’s the hippies, maybe it’s the addicts
Maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the sex
Maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s the banks
Maybe it’s the clearcut, maybe it’s the ozone
Maybe it’s the chemicals, maybe it’s the car phones
Maybe it’s the fertilizer, maybe it’s the nose rings
Maybe it’s the end, but I know one thing.
If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.
October 1, 1997
Crap.
Didn’t get the video link in there.
Should be http://realneo.us/content/if-it-were-me-id-take-away-guns-cheryl-wheeler-song-and-lyrics-violance-media-0
Just saw something on Canadian news: the killer’s mother has been described as a “survivalist”. Not sure what, if any, significance there is to that, other than she probably held the “they’re not getting my …, gotta get me some gunz”.
Haven’t we run across something akin to that up-thread somewhere?
[OT]
evilDoug, I’ve actually met a couple of survivalists IRL, and in both cases I got the strong feeling that they were wishing for that happy day that civilisation would collapse and they would be vindicated and come into their glory.
Names of those killed have been confirmed and released.
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/NATL-Names-of-Newtown-School-Shooting-Victims-Released-183648811.html
:( :(
*lights 27 candles*
@joed
As a US military service member, I hope you can see this, because I’m doing it as hard as I can. *flips joed the bird*
it’s this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichthyic/2863577741/
Standard female Carcharadon carcharias, about 5m long.
Well, maybe you can see your way clear to lighting 28 candles.
26 victims at the school, plus mom Nancy Lanza – plus the shooter Adam Lanza – certainly not another victim, but still a body snuffed out by gun violence.
Poor sad families. I was horrified to read the list and hear myself thinking “at least none of them have the same last names, so probably no families have lost two children at once”. Oh if there were any way to make the burden lighter!
Tune into John Heage on Sunday morning any week.
Yes, I agree, hotshoe.
Miscounted.
I wish that I had miscounted in the other direction.
Survivalists? Every single gun nut forum I’ve ever seen has a hugely popular section devoted to paranoid conspiracy anti-government “Red Dawn” fantasizing about one or another “end of the world as we know it” scenario. And those fantasies are the only way to explain their desire for more and more destructive weapons, higher and higher capacity magazines, and unlimited stockpiles of ammunition.
They can say sporting and hunting and target shooting and self-defense all day and late into the night, but they are fucking lying. What they mean is that they plan on killing a whole lot of people at the very moment that they believe they can get away with it, or when they decide it is necessary, or when they think they don’t have anything left to lose. They all of them WANT to commit violence, on a massive scale. Some of them have a higher trigger threshold than others, but the desire is the same.
Whatever bullshit rationalization they give for why they need more than a basic low-tech weapon with a small amount of ammo and why they oppose reasonable government regulation, the reality is that they are dreaming of mass murder.
Shit. I need to go away from the computer now. I knew it already, and I guess the age shouldn’t matter, but I work in a school with kids just this age, and it does matter to me. Seeing all those sixes and sevens. Of course, the adults, too, but fuck.
Fuck!
And of course… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3M3aL8fCa4
“It’s the Atheists’ fault!”
I’m also disturbed by seemingly innocuous claims like those of a Newtown clergyman:
I’ve written more about this type of (dangerous) false consolation here.
I was horrified to read the list and hear myself thinking “at least none of them have the same last names, so probably no families have lost two children at once”.
The children killed were all first graders. So unless there were twins in the same class, they probably won’t be from the same family.
About the only way you can get a carry permit in Canada is if you are at risk of being eaten on the job.
I love Canada.
That’s quite a knee-jerk right there. You could have objected in any number of ways, including that other tragedies and atrocities don’t make other tragedies and atrocities any less tragic or atrocious. But you decided to make your objection into an issue of personal offense due to personal identity/affiliation. So, do you actually deny that the U.S. military has caused a large number of civilian casualties, including children, such that your personal offense is due to the misperception that it is false? Or do your loyalties trump such petty concerns as worrying about the “collateral damage” that the United States has caused?
I’m a gun owner. I don’t hunt, but I enjoy recreational shooting. Specifically, shooting coke / beer cans, paper targets, old fence posts, or w/e I can see a bullet hit from w/e distance I’m shooting from. I’m not violent. I don’t want to go shoot anybody. I’m not power tripping. I’m not compensating for my penis size. I don’t think I’m “more manly” b/c I have guns. It’s just fun. Shooting a gun feels the same as shooting a basketball to me. I feel a surge, a rush when I hit the target. I take pride in my ability, or at least smile at the lucky shot and try to do it twice.
When I was 14 we had a foreign exchange student live my family for a year. She was from The Netherlands. I had a paintball gun, and I’ll never forget how she wouldn’t even touch it, much less fire it. This thing hardly looked like a real gun, and only used air power to throw a ball full of non-toxic paint at people. Yet she would have nothing to do with it. That level of fear or repulsion from guns stuck with me and I see a lot of it here. I just don’t get it. I grew up with guns, everybody I know owns them, and yet I don’t feel surrounded by insanity. My roommate has a .44 mag (the “Dirty Harry” gun) and I sleep fine every night.
If, by now, anyone is wondering what the hell my point is, it is I don’t want to lose something I enjoy doing b/c of a small number of nuts. I cock a skeptical eyebrow at all the people who don’t use guns being so quick to give up that right. It’s always easy to get rid of rights (and all the messiness they bring) when one doesn’t exercise them.
I know the US has 11000 gun murders a year. That’s a HUGE number. How many are from rampages with assault rifles, though? 100? Are so many of my fellow liberals willing to take away by force the thousands of assault rifle from thousands of law abiding citizens to save 100 lives? 10,000, sure, but 100? A lot of common good would be done if we did away with the also US-Peculiar 4th amendment. You’ve nothing to hide right?
Most of the murders are from cheap hand guns used in inner city crime. This problem is largely a problem of poor black men in cities who feel they have to join gangs to protect themselves from other gangs, and to be involved in drug traffic b/c that is the only way to make money. I don’t judge them b/c they are largely right. They have been failed and written off as failures by the society around them. Canada, alternatively, does not have a massive underclass of poor people who look different, have a different culture, have a history of abject slavery, and whose very humanity is look upon with indifference by their fellow citizens. Here are the stats: http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/?mg=inert-wsj#view=all
1/3 of killers are black (with another 1/3 unknown) and approx. half of all murder victims are black. Blacks are approx 1/8th of the total population. If we want to stop gun murders in this country, the best way to do it is to focus on the festering societal problems our (the US) country has.
Sorry if I rambled, these are sort of all my jumbled thoughts on the issue. I look forward to what this community (one I respect deeply) has to say as I continue to read the other posts on this topic across this site.
cotton wrote:
Are so many of my fellow liberals willing to take away by force the thousands of assault rifle from thousands of law abiding citizens to save 100 lives? 10,000, sure, but 100?
This reminds me of the argument the mayor of Lake City, FL, made, after local faith-healing deaths. He said, “It may be necessary for some babies to die to maintain our religious freedoms. It may be the price we have to pay; everything has a price.” In the same way, you’re perfectly willing to have hundreds of children die to maintain your freedom to shoot at beer cans with an assault rifle. Children always pay the price to maintain their elders’ precious freedoms.
Yeah, those of us freaked by people honestly weighing their “right” to play with deadly weapons as more important than the deaths those weapons cause are the weird ones. *eyeroll*
Besides, why focus only on deaths from mass shootings?
Gun control would also lower the numbers of idiots accidentally shooting themselves or worse – others, kids getting hold of unsecured weapons, assholes shooting their wives or girlfriends in rage, etc.
cotton: before trusting reported *crime* stats, as opposed to say cause of death stats, consider the established bias in the criminal justice system towards disproportionately investigating and charging blacks with crimes. Plenty of gun deaths aren’t considered or charged as crimes thus don’t show up in crime stats. You even alluded to this:
But not the only number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/gvunintentional
tomh said:
A Mississippi lawmaker basically said the same thing, about women dying from lack of access to abortion.
“Women may die but eh, we are doing the *moral* thing” he said (and I paraphrase).
Couple more articles of personal experience that may as well go here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/zingularity/2012/12/16/guntimes-at-redneck-high/
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/phoenixandolivebranch/2012/12/columbine-martyrs-and-growing-up-nra-at-the-end-of-the-world/
Shorter cotton:
“I like shooting, so it’s OK if 100 people a year die in mass shootings.”
Arsehole.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/12/westboro-to-picket-sandy-hook.html
No.Fucking.Shame
Some photos and family statements about the victims:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/newtown-connecticut-school-shooting-victims/story?id=17984685
Well, if several tens of thousands of people have to die each years for my fun, then so be it.
Cotton:
Please go unjumble your thoughts and return with a more ethical stance on gun ownership.
Remember these points: you are not part of a well trained militia and your right to FUN is overridden by the right to life.
****
Trying to be calm here but cotton’s load of horseshit pisses me off. How does one develop a moral core that feels it’s more important to retain a trivial ‘right’ than it is to do everything in our power to stop gun violence?
http://news.yahoo.com/ind-man-47-guns-arrested-school-threat-164928349.html
good thing copycat child-killing nuts can get lots of guns, right?
FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!
Why in fuck’s name would you need an assault rifle to shoot Coke cans?
cotton @ 591;
Consider what you are saying here – you are placing your enjoyment of firearm based recreation above the lives of other people. You talk about the deaths of a hundred people a year in rampage shootings as if it is nothing, a minor inconvenience that cannot be allowed to stand in the way of your hobby. And that leaves aside the fact that every victim of gun crime is a victim because of the easy availability of guns in the US – the deaths of every victim in the entire 11000 figure you quoted can be traced back directly to the out of control gun culture in the US.
Can you imagine how this sounds when someone else reads it? It goes beyond being merely selfish into the realms of dehumanising the victims of gun crime, since you seem to consider their lives less important that your entertainment. That is why people are reacting so negatively toward you.
Also;
Before making such blanket statements, you really should stop to consider the epidemic levels of systemic racism within the US justice system that are certainly skewing these statistics.
Change ‘my right to have fun with guns’
to ‘my right to have fun with dangerous and deadly chemicals’
Fuck I’m crying.
You know, I have those fotos. The pictures of my children, the oldest one being not much younger than those kids, smiling those smiles, thinking those thoughts, being excited about the holidays, and now those kids are gone.
If somebody murdered my kids, I’d probably kill myself because how can you go on after that.
But I’m glad to see that there are more rational people around than me who know that it’s well worth their desire for guns….
Because freedom.
Sorry, Giliell. *offers anklehugs*
—
What I don’t get is why would YOU (generic ‘you’) need YOUR OWN assault rifle to shoot cans. If having it as a hobby is so danged important, have thick-walled gun ranges where you can rent and shoot big-ass guns under expert supervision, like laser tag and paintball and go-kart facilities. (And if that concept seems unpalatable because MY VERY OWN GUN then it’s not the hobby that’s really your issue, is it?)
If somebody murdered my kids, I’d probably kill myself because how can you go on after that.
You’d find it in you to go on for the surviving child. I don’t see how it’s possible either, but I know you would.
Pteryxx @ 609;
The way the NRA tells it, such an arrangement would lead instantly to the spontaneous combustion of the Constitution, the fall of democracy in the US*, and the commencement of the invasion of the Lizard People from Alpha Centauri who will seize control of the now defenceless planet** and promtly outlaw guns ownership and all other ‘manly pursuits’, burn all the religious texts, and make heterosexual sex punishable by death***, all while herding humanity into processing camps where we will rendered down into LizardCorp Brand Homo Sapiens ape-burgers, the latest fast food craze to hit the galatic hyperspace ways…
Sadly, the actual NRA position doesn’t make much more sense than the above.
———————————————————————————————————————-
* And thus, naturally, everywhere else in the world, because without Uncle Sam guaranteeing freedom every other nation on the planet will inevitably descend into cannabalistic murder orgies, amiright?
** Because a species technologically capable of interstellar flight naturally has no answer to weapons that throw small pieces of lead at moderate velocities…
*** Because the evil space lizards are bound to be ‘militant homosexuals’, what with being evil and all, and would rather maintain the numbers of their newly aquired bipedal meat herd with unnatural lab based cloning and *gasp* same sex parentage. Because they are evil, and as every good far right wingnut knows science = evil, and same sex parentage makes teh baby jeebus cry.
A comment at Charles Pierce’s blog at Esquire, which I probably shouldn’t repost verbatim here without permission, but I somehow doubt either Mr. Pierce or Mr. Weldon will mind:
@Cotton, 593:
So, why not just play basketball then?
Pteryxx
Thanks, but not your fault.
I’ve been very glad that I had a very busy weekend so I didn’t get into this too much because damn, that’s close to home (there have been two horrible school shootings in Germany in the last 15 years, so it’s not like it couldn’t happen here*)
dianne
Yes, if one of them survived, probably.
But oh hell, I want to hug, hug, hug them.
And still we’ll part for many years to come and all three of us will enter schools.
You should be safe in schools.
+++
*After the first one they changed gun laws. No more semi-automatics. After the second one they convicted the father of the shooter, too. He hadn’t followed the laws and his weapons and ammunition could be accessed by his son.
FREEZE PEACH!!
Is this a trick question? You’re really willing to kill 100 people so a bunch of other people can (at best) get a thrill out of shooting coke cans?
Well I don’t actually own an assault rifle, they are a bit out of my price range. Admittedly, though, I would probably enjoy shooting one. Why? For the same reason my buddy Chuck, an amateur racer when he was younger, tends to like Camaros and Mustangs more than SUV’s.
Only one poster addressed the source of the 11,000 gun murders a year in the US and they correctly pointed out that blacks are disproportionately focused on by the police. This is true, but I don’t think that argument, true as it is, is enough to deflect the brunt of my own. If the posters here want to stop gun violence and not just pick on one of their favorite targets (older, white, often southern / rural, gun owning, commonly conservative, men) then the focus should be on inner city gun violence. Why is there so much focus on the cause of 100 deaths (nutjobs in body armor and assault rifles) and not the the other 10,900?
With exquisite timing, Sikivu has something we need to hear:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics/2012/12/16/nice-white-boys-next-door-and-mass-murder/
Cotton, do you go for the rebound after you shoot a gun?
Shorter cotton again:
“I still like shooting, so it’s still OK 100 people a year die in mass shootings. I don’t understand why 100 deaths is a problem to you people.”
Because the movement to decriminalize drugs is not about lowering incidents of violence.
Also, funny thing, when interviewed after shootings in the inner city, many witnesses will say the same thing; that there is too many guns.
Jimmy Blue:
More cotton-“black people areresponsible for more gun related deaths so you people should focus on them”. Nothing racist in that line of thinking.
****
Cotton: many of us condemn ALL gun violence. We also do not limit our focus to JUST gun related deaths. Or haven’t you heard of gun related injuries?
I should probably stop holding my breath waiting for you to realize how horrific it is to value owning a gun over human lives.
Another telling thing about cotton– hir first post was a defense of gun ownership in a thread where many people expressed sorrow and grief. Following a tragedy like this, the most important thing to do is defend gun ownership???
How about some damn empathy for the family and friends who lost their loved ones? How can someone care so little for the lives of others?
Alcohol kills people. Driving kills people. Driving will texting kills 600 people. Autoerotic asphyxiation kills 600 every year. Falling out of bed? 450. Vending machines slay 13. Dogs kill 34 every year in the US. Lets ban all of them. I mean, do you think we should allow dogs just b/c we ENJOY them? but people die!!! All so you can cuddle with your pooch!
In a country of 300 million people, and with as many problems as we have, do I think 100 people a year is a highly worrying number? No.
It also isn’t racist to point out where crime is. I’m not blaming black people or saying it is a result of a “violent race.” This country has failed them. My point here is clear. The US built that 12,000 figure from its greed, inhumanity, and indifference that have created an underclass of people who have no reasonable path to a successful life and know it. It is not hard to see how that untenable situation leads to violence.
Er, you tell me. You’re the one focusing on them.
Shorter cotton:
“People die from other stuff too and every death is absolutely equivalent no matter what the circumstances are. Therefore 100 deaths every year from mass shootings alone is fine with me, as long as I get to shoot coke cans. Why are you people so worried about 100 people dying again?”
Cars are totally like guns. Have no use but to kill. In fact, both were designed specifically for killing. Right?
Some one is a dishonest and rather stupid shit.
Because freedom.
Oh right. I forgot about that for five seconds.
cotton: None of those things you just listed are designed to kill. Guns are designed to kill. Regardless of what inanimate targets you personally use them on, guns are designed to kill. Or at least maim.
Cotton,
OK, you like shooting. I get that. Hell, my wife likes shooting. She shoots a .38 black powder muzzle loader. It takes her about 1-2 minutes between shots. She has a blast shooting that thing, and I really don’t worry much that someone will steal it and gun down a kindergarten class.
So, here’s the thing. Yes, folks get killed by drivers who are texting–so they’ve banned texting while driving in most states. Yes, folks are killed by dogs–and now, the morons have banned pitbulls in several municipalities. If you like shooting, maybe it is time to take responsibility and figure out ways where you can still have fun and we don’t have to worry quite as much every time we send our kids off to school.
Maybe we could ban assault-type rifles. Maybe we could ban high capacity clips. Maybe we could have harsher penalties for gun owners who don’t take care of their damned guns (e.g. trigger locks, gun safes…). Because ultimately, I think if you go up against the moms of America, they’re gonna kick your pasty white, redneck ass.
Cotton, I want you to find one instance of a person committing an act of autoerotic asphyxiation that ends up killing twenty children, you know, one where principals and teachers are sacrificing themselves to the man committing autoerotic asphyxiation in order to try to protect children.
Because of the NRA, the CDC cannot even do research on gun injuries and gun safety.
Because guns are all about fun and fighting off government tyranny.
who vote for Romney?
yeah, not so much worried about you clowns any more.
Cotton, because the manufacturers of firearms would not play into playing the “man card”.
Ok, I tried the civility.
COTTON:
You are a fuckwit.
You actually equated deaths caused by vending machines to deaths caused by guns? That’s a level of stupid I’m accustomed to from creobots.
Why the hell are you so dismissive of the lives lost to gun violence? Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, friends, lovers…REAL PEOPLE have lost their lives…their families have lost loved ones…you are a callous, insensitive idiot who cares more about a fucking gun than a human life. It’s like you cannot see past the numbers to the lives that have been snuffed out or devastated by this out of control gun culture.
@609: Word.
indeed.
and both of those are heavily regulated.
call me when they put a speed limit on bullets.
Janine,
The article is fine, but parts made me laugh (not the funny kind):
While research in US should be done, and I understand the intention of the author, it is not true that the question is (almost) impossible to answer. If only US would realize that there exists all this world outside of US, a large part of which takes gun control seriously, the answers would be quite obvious .
Guns can be dangerous?! No shit.
(Sorry for nitpicking.)
sounds like you’re one of the 47% that voted for Mittens…
[X-posted from the Thunderdome, since this seems like the place where that discussion is going on]
I’m just going to leave this here because I’m incoherent with disgust and rage. A conservative friend of mine on facebook, in a discussion about gun policy, explicitly states that, while uncontrolled gun ownership will lead to both mass murders like the Sandy Hook massacre and the obscene murder and suicide rate in the United States, he values the right to own guns more than the utility of banning or controlling them. He states, correctly, that conservatism and liberalism are inherently at odds because of our respective conflicting values.*
I just can’t believe that anyone would say, out loud, that repeated incidents of dead schoolchildren are an acceptable trade off for the “right” to own machines designed solely for killing people without restriction. And this is not an ignorant yokel, he’s both a life-long urbanite and one of the most rawly intelligent people I’ve ever met.
*This is a paraphrase because the friend who started the discussion by posting the “wait until they’re buried” gambit and asked for people to justify their insensitive discussing gun control cowardly deleted the post after I pointed out that silence is as useful as praying.
Cotton:
You have disturbingly casual disdain towards the 11,000 people who are killed each year in the United States by gun violence, and your ‘argument’ against gun control is either disingenuous or willfully ignorant. 20 children between the ages of 5 and 7 have just been murdered, and all you can fucking talk about is your ‘right’ to own guns.
Claims about the safety of owning firearms ought to be resolved by factual evidence, not irrelevant anecdotes. You and your family are more likely to be killed or injured with guns in the house, so you should feel less safe.
Again, why the fuck do you think you have a right to own guns without a system that diligently controls their use and availability? Please explain why your negative liberty to be free from gub’mint control is more important than other people’s right not to live in a society that is scarred by out of control gun violence.
Only 100 people are killed by assault rifles each year? Good grief. So unless 10,000 people are killed by assault rifles then we have no reason for wanting them banned. You’re one sick fuck.
Gun violence disproportionately affects poor black and minority communities. What’s your point? All this demonstrates is that we should control handguns as well as a matter of urgency, it does not give you carte blanche to own any kind of lethal weapons that you want to get your hand on.
Beatrice, the article is specifically about how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was defunded from studying gun violence.
And this would be funny if it were not so deadly but the NRA and the rest of the right wingers in the US actively ignore the rest of the world, about how lack of access to weapons leads to a reduction of fire arms death.
While this is a minor point, we had one gun nut make the argument that a person murdered over twenty in a school in China with a knife when in truth, they were injured. This is typical.
Nepenthe,
Unfortunately, we got people stating opinions like that here too. Cotton being the current one. I imagine you are even more upset to hear something like that coming from a friend.
Janine,
Sorry for picking on the insignificant parts of the article.
The amount of power NRA has is certainly scary.
I’m just going to let that sink in, because my head is still hurting from the idea that having fun shooting beer cans is worth dead people.
*Citation needed.
Yes, why don’t we take away all of the guns? Finally, you have an idea a decent, sensible person would have!
Wait, no, you mean cracking down black and brown people**, not guns. Fuck, you’re still a clueless shithead.
**Simply saying “society has failed them” does not suggest you want anything other than to make them the problem and make things even worse for them.
seems like, especially in the US, opinions have now been upgraded to “values”.
maybe first thing, we should downgrade those back to opinions, so when we see those that really have no merit whatsoever we don’t get chided for making fun of them?
@Ichthyic
Eh, I dunno.
He values “freedom”, which means essentially no government and unbridled capitalism. I value human beings and reducing suffering. And this leads us to logic to our opinions “Dead children okay because freedom” and “Dead children not okay because suffering bad”
exactly, but one opinion has merit, and the other does not.
one is easily supportable, even within a specific worldview, the other is nothing but selfish chaos.
so it actually does work.
again, cotton’s opinion:
should we upgrade that to a “value”?
no, I think we should be perfectly comfortable laughing at it as an opinion.
Alcohol is controlled and regulated.
Driving is controlled and regulated.
Driving while texting is illegal.
There are standards, controls, and regulations pertaining to the construction of beds and bed components.
There are controls and regulations pertaining to the construction of vending machines, and the manner in which they must be installed and operated, to prevent things like tipping over and injuring and killing people.
Dogs are controlled and regulated.
Thank you, Cotton, for demonstrated unequivocably, through analogy, that gun control and regulation is a GOOD IDEA.
Thank you very much.
(And if reasonable controls and regulations could reduce gun violence deaths from 10 000 to 500? I would take that.)
And what the fuck is wrong with allowing single-shot guns only and confining them to secure, licensed gun-clubs anyway? You can refine your exquisite target-shooting skills all you want (I’ve done this a lot, and loved it) and you can shoot all the targets and tin cans you want – just don’t wander around the streets with automatics and semi-automatics in your car or about your person.
I honestly can’t believe people would put not just their fun but a mere detail of their fun ahead of people’s lives. If you want to shoot, do it in a bloody gun club where someone with proper safety training is there to make sure idiots don’t fuck around with tools designed specifically to kill.
You’ve made that accusation twice Icthyic. It shows you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Pointing out failings of the US society towards our fellow black citizens is not, I assure you, a key concern of most Romney demographics.
Your earlier post that said you “don’t much care for them” shows that you share one of those Romney demographic traits I can’t stand: The desire to subjugate and defeat your political opponents. They must not only lose, they must be crushed. I admit I had my schadenfreude (Nov 6th was circled on my calendar at work as “Obama reelection day” and Nov 7th as “Gloat day”, as my fellow coworkers here in rural Mississippi tended to lean politically from me quite far). Having said that, I got it out of my system in about two weeks.
Some others said my comparisons were silly. Cars are necessary but guns are not. How are pets necessary? How is alcohol? Ask some of the victims of spouse / child abuse whose parents always reeked if they think the fun of alcohol has no darker side. Why don’t we ban cars that go over 80 mph? What POSSIBLE purpose do they have except reckless fun?
Fun can sometimes be reckless. Sports from high school up to the Olympics cannot be justified outside of fun. Neither can bungee jumping or parachute diving. Theme parks with their high flying rides kill a few every year and they have NO purpose but fun. How about Big Macs and fries? Is there any justification for that many calories (over 1k w/o drink) intended for one meal and one person? Of course not.
There has to be a balance. Am I willing to have a state that forcibly strips law abiding gun owners who have never done anything wrong of their property, much of which is cherished and handed down through generations, in order to save 100 people a year? No.
I want gun murders in the US to be far lower. For this to happen, this country must focus on why such a large portion of a minority feels that violence is inescapable in their communities. This isn’t as fun or easy as saying “let’s show those old white Romney voting men who runs this country!!!” This is the harder choice. It is where most of those 12,000 (up from 11,000 as research tells me) murders are. I am not selfish, or uncaring, or indifferent for saying lets focus our efforts on gun murders where 99% (11,900/12000) of those murders are.
I can’t help but believe that those who want to focus on the 0.8% of US gun murders have a self serving agenda of crushing a common political opponent instead of genuinely improving the situation.
Fine. Let’s control ammunition instead, then. It can be sold and used only at shooting ranges for certain types of guns. For the limited number of types of guns approved for hunting, they can be sold in limited amounts with hunting licenses, the remainder turned back in for a partial refund after hunting season, and anyone caught with their own ammo (bought or homemade) outside of those restrictions gets, oh, a 10k or so fine. That way you can keep all the guns you want.
Seen on twitter: We can carry concealed handguns, but not openly carry axes. Why?
Sorry for dropping my anecdote here without reading the thread first; I wouldn’t have if I’d realized that assholes have been saying the same shit over and over.
Shorter cotton:
“I’m not the problem, you guys are, because everything I point out is exactly like the gun violence and gun control issues you’ve been talking about. How can you not see the similarities between owning a poodle and owning an AK-47? It’s just 100 deaths, what’s the problem?”
no, but assuming that there is an entire underclass that has given up, is. Should I quote what you said again?
“don’t much care for them”
while I don’t, I never said that.
do you feel crushed yet?
we don’t need to. see, there’s this thing called “speed limits”…
you said that shooting a gun was like shooting a basketball. Anyone ever die from shooting a basketball?
again, I ask you: if these two things are the SAME in your mind, why not just choose to shoot a basketball?
ooops, you might recall, or hell, not… that high calorie foods have indeed been regulated (soda size in NY for example)?
so, we can talk about that, but not guns?
yeah, that makes sense.
you wanna help, cotton?
here’s a tip:
you should NOT post comments to the interwebs about this topic.
that actually would help.
Hunting rifles should really have three shots, minimum two, before one has to reload, in order to limit the suffering of a wounded animal (deer can move surprisingly fast with, for example, a broken leg). Plus, it’s probably safer to be able to take one’s prey within range of one’s stand than to have to wander after it for a couple of miles and be in range of other hunters. But I agree with the sentiment.
carlie #656
That sounds like a very sensible plan.
The ‘cold, dead hands’ thing wouldn’t work as well with ‘bullets’.
Your reckless fun is worth more than other people’s lives?
Do you literally vomit when you spew this shit, or do you manage to hold your lunch in somehow?
Like having reasonable regulations and bans on guns?
What does “law-abiding” have to do with it? Is there never a first time someone commits a crime, or is it exactly the fucking opposite because there’s always a first time?
You just said you don’t give a fuck, because you like “reckless fun” and ramble your way through tons of fucking absurd analogies.
How about where 100% of gun murders are? Do you know where that is? Places with guns. That’s where gun murders happen.
This is such a blatant fucking lie.
this got fubared:
no, but assuming that there is an entire underclass that has given up, is. Should I quote what you said again?
“don’t much care for them”
while I don’t, I never said that.
this is referring to two separate quotes.
should look like this:
no, but assuming that there is an entire underclass that has given up, is. Should I quote what you said again?
while I don’t, I never said that (which was in reference to romneyites, and was not intended as the response to the open ended question above it) .
btw… the answer to the open ended question of what cotton actually said is this:
Amphiox: You have me dead to rights till the end: If gun control could get the problem from 10000 to 500, then its a success. But assault rifles are not 9500. They are less than 100.
I’m all for regulations. I have zero issue with making gun ownership a bit more arduous. It should be illegal to leave guns and ammo in the open and easy to access. Owners should be responsible for what their guns do, with very few and clear exceptions. If someone who is not licensed to own a gun has access to one, their actions should fall upon the one with access who was negligent. Also, anyone who wants to own a gun should have to go through some basic checks. Do they have a criminal record? A history of violence / anger issues? Those are some basics but as a gun owner I wouldn’t mind jumping through some hoops and losing a day or two if it would save lives.
The fact is there are a LOT of people who enjoy assault rifles and the overwhelming majority never do anything to anyone. They don’t understand why they are viewed with such scorn. They aren’t hurting anybody. According to the NRA 2.5 million AR pattern rifles have been sold in the US since 1986. How many have been used to murder? Vanishingly few.
Why is there no outcry here when another black man is gunned down in New Orleans, St. Louis, or Baltimore (1,2, and 3 on the murder / non-negligent manslaughter rankings respectively)? Take Sandy Hook and multiply by over 100. This is where the murders are! . When that young man grabs an automatic pistol, this is not the beginning of a problem. The problem began LONG before he grabbed a gun and shoots someone or gets shot himself. This is the tragic end of the failure in our society to care about all the people who make it up.
Again, I think many of you just don’t like gun owners. They are everything many of ya’ll are not and don’t like. They tend to be more racist, homophobic, anti-women, and they vote red. They are often the loudest and vitriolic in their disagreements with many liberals (a group I consider myself in, if ya’ll don’t rescind my card). Many of ya’ll don’t like them, and while I don’t doubt the care and concern shown for other human beings (my rough definition of a liberal) I think many of you are too quick to lay the blame at the feet of people ya’ll just can’t stand.
just think cotton:
if you weren’t a gun owner, you wouldn’t have to jump though those hoops.
see?
so much easier being a basketball owner.
People want to focus on this because it just happened. And people want to focus on it because 28 people were killed by guns.
28.
People.
Died.
There are often other threads about other gun killings here. You imply that no one disagreeing with you cares about this. You are wrong. You are using other situations to minimise what actually happened.
Why focus on the 11,000 homicides and not the 18,000 or so suicides (plus a few hundred deaths from firearm accidents)? Oh right, because homicides are *crimes* and *crimes* can be blamed on that black minority and their culture. Well, one-third of the crimes anyway. Even by the WSJ stats you cited they’re not “most of”, liar. Here’s what you said at #593:
Speaking of those 18,000:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/chart-homicide-suicide-weapons-newtown
And while you’re pontificating about how “this country” has to focus on those people’s communities, recall that I cited Sikivu above (bolds mine):
Fancy that. Those brown people, who also are part of this country, care more about changing their culture than you do.
cotton’s actual quote from #655:
This is a prima facie evidence of oxymoronism at work, or cognitive dissonance. Either way, one unthinking fuckwitted idjit. Such contradictory statements are telling.
Sorry, misreadthe quoted material in #668. funny how gun nuts claim they are for more regulations, like you can’t buy a gun unless you behave with proper range safety controls at all times…OOPS, that’s correct, concealed carry is their RIGHT….So they can carry weapons with ammo in it in public, against all safety protocols…
This is of no fucking importance to the parents of dead children.
Their children are dead. Dead is forever. They do not get to see them grow up. They will live the rest of their lives as parents who children died. Every birthday, every christmas they will wonder what could have been. They will not “get over” this, and your casual reference to people being negligent over their murders is fucking insulting.
Icythic: Yes we have speed limits. We also have laws against shooting people. The entire point of control point is that those laws are not enough, we need to ban the guns before they are used to break said law. So…why not ban cars that go over 80 mph? You need a new argument.
Am I crushed yet? No, but not for want of trying.
Do any die from basketball? No, not w/o an underlying condition. Football though…lot of concussions I’m hearing about. We should probably ban it.
Lastly, I’ve never said nor implied that black people in this country have just given up. They haven’t. Many of them realize that the best way to make money given their situation is to sell drugs (a dangerous and violent industry). The fact that this is true is our failing as a country. I don’t blame them anymore than I blame poor women who resort to prostitution. They are all choosing the best of the shitty options they have.
consciousness razor: I get my 100, admittedly, from my ass. Fair enough. So to statistics. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/us-mass-shootings-2012/
I count 86. I was close. Of those, I count 43 that involved rifles (assault or otherwise).
The consequence of someone playing football is not going end up with 20 murdered children.
You are a horrible person.
Let’s hope.
What if we just controlled the ammunition?
Pterryx: I admit, I care more about homicide than suicide. Again, a young person putting their hands on a gun and pointing at their own head is the end of a problem, not the beginning. I also would be in favor of gun control keeping guns far away from young people who are prone to emotional swings. I don’t agree with guns just being “loose”. My dad did, and I played with guns as a kid. I’m lucky as hell I didn’t blow my head off or the heads of my friends. Lastly, the gun control many proposed here (lever / bolt guns, low capacity mags, etc etc) would do no good b/c at point blank range, even the most “nerfed” gun is still just as lethal.
The fuckwit still doesn’t understand that gun violence is the problem, not just gun deaths.
Nor has he shown an ounce of empathy for the families devastated by this tragedy.
Chigau: Well assault rifles are really just rifles with accessories. Take a hunting rifle, add a bigger magazine and a pistol grip (faster target acquisition) and you have an assault rifle. They fire the same bullets.
http://molot.biz/product-e/vepr223-pioner.jpg
The difference between that and an AR15 (beyond cosmetics) is a pistol grip.
Tony: If it matters, I teared up reading the story as the news broke. I have a great deal of empathy, and I’m very sorry it happened. It pains me greatly as I process the unthinkably tragic effects of that day. However, as the owner of this blog said, saying that “now is not the time to talk about it” is bullshit. Well, OK lets talk about it.
More evidence you are a horrible person.
What if getting bullets was much more difficult?
Would that spoil the gun-owning fun?
No we don’t. We could ban cars that go over 80 mph. I don’t give a shit. The fact that we don’t right now says nothing at all. Like all of your stupid bullshit, cars are completely fucking irrelevant.
Those teachers and kids who just died? They didn’t get concussions, asshole.
Besides, sports are fucking regulated in all sorts of ways, and the whole fucking point of football isn’t killing shit, for fuck’s fucking sake.
I don’t give a fuck. Every fucking gun in the fucking country, no matter which fucking person owns it, should be regulated much more heavily. Some kinds of guns should be banned outright. That would be a start.
Says somebody who didn’t grow up without a father because of a young person’s momentary desperation while having a gun close at hand.
Thanks. Glad to know that was the end of my family’s problems.
Right… those poor, poor urban black people. *looks at stats* *looks at OP* Oh wait.
To Caerie: That isn’t what I meant. I do not think that a problem was tidily wrapped up after your father (I presume) killed himself. It was the tragic finale of his problems, problems that had clearly been mounting long before that day. It was also the beginning of other problems, including the effects on those close to him. Your father should have had access to help, maybe even someone to bring it to him. I’m sorry he didn’t. Also, as a decent person, I wouldn’t go seeking those whose lives have been marked by gun violence to argue with. I don’t argue my pro-drugs / alcohol stance around those who have had their own lives marked by drug abuse for the same reason. I might be wrong, I might be right, but I would definitely be an asshole. The internet makes that exercise more difficult, and I’m sorry for any pain my words have caused you.
I’ve tried to approach this the “right way” but limited that to trying not to be a smart ass. I really hope I didn’t write something flippant or uncaring that mocks the pain you’ve encountered.
I really like how you’re wielding the menace of scary Black and Hispanic men with as a political talking point, as if Black and Hispanic communities were monolithic masses of human garbage just waiting for you to come in and save them from themselves, conveniently allowing you to ignore the myriad “accidental shootings” and murders committed by White people.
And by “like” I mean “am nauseated by”.
When I lived on the South Side of Chicago, this is what I looked at while waiting for the bus. It’s hard to keep one’s children safe when there’s no way to stem the flow of legally obtained weapons used in murders.
and we have laws about running people over with cars.
so the fuck what?
I give up, you’re just an idiot.
I can haz bunny videos plz?
no, you didn’t imply you, you OUTRIGHT SAID IT, which is why I quoted you.
you’re pathetic.
ROFLMAO
don’t be a parent.
ever.
Well then, you have two options.
1. Stay inside and unplug your internet and try not to talk to anyone you don’t know really well already.
2. Shut the fuck up.
I have no strong opinions on which you choose.
Although they didn’t use guns, and they weren’t all that young, I have lost two brothers-in-law to suicide in the past year.
So you can go fuck yourself. That was a horrible thing to say.
Ichthyic, bunny videos aren’t really my style, but here is a baby penguin being tickled.
Wife and I feel much safer without a gun in the house. Always have.
If we had had a handgun, or any firearm, in the house when I decided to end my life about fifteen years ago, I’d be dead. Luckily, I got my stomach pumped and spent two weeks in a hospital. And survived. And have learned to live.
So, am I a problem that would have been over? Or am I alive because Wife and I do not want a gun in the house?
You clearly have.
I dont understand how you can claim to be a “decent” person with “a great deal of empathy” and manage to write such hurtful things yet appear to be unaware that you did.
Ichthyic:
Confusing the bloggers you are. PZs thread this is. He does banhammer. Chris does bunninnation.
And once they’re dead, no more problem? Gah… Leaving aside what a horribly callous and shit thing you just said *cough* more of those troubled young people stay alive when guns aren’t around. Basically, guns contribute roughly as much to the suicide rate as *actually being suicidal* does.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/risk/index.html
(pardon the attempted formatting here:)
I’ll make this as simple as I can. A disproportionate number of black people commit a large number of gun murders. This is as much an opinion as 2+2=4. Yes, it is very commonly used by racists to argue that black people are just violent by nature. While this is a VERY bad conclusion, it does not erase the need for an explanation that is NOT really really bad. I think its is something along the lines of: Being poor in the US sucks. Being black in the US sucks. Being poor and black in the US really sucks. What is yours? Whatever it is, solve that and you solve a LOT of gun murders.
In regards to cars: We have laws that say people cannot speed. Yet they do, and they die and kill others. A lot. Every day. We have laws that say people cannot shoot others. Yet they do, every day. If your argument is that we should ban guns b/c the laws are not helping, you have to also ban fast cars for the same reason or at least justify why not. Otherwise your argument has a hole.
Well that’s too fucking bad, since you did.
Being poor and Black in the UK or Canada really sucks too, so I think your conclusion is slightly suspect.
Cotton:
Please stop talking. That hole gets deeper. You’re talking to some people who are poor and/or POCs. Take your pity and shove it.
Pteryx, read my above post to Caerie. I did not mean that.
Instead of talking about the true center of my argument, that assault rifles kill VERY few people, there seems to be a lot of effort to stick “racist” or “callous” to me. That would have the unintended (I’m sure) consequence of making my opinions easy to dismiss or even have banned. I must be a villainous evil cretin. It is simply impossible to NOT be and simply disagree on gun control.
Brass tacks, 12000 people are killed by guns every year. Approx 1% are rampage shootings. Half of those involve assault rifles. Tell me, why the focus on assault weapons? You would have to show that non-rampage shootings have a lot of assault rifles involved. I don’t think they do. Do you have evidence otherwise?
Well Sparky, you’re the one who rolled in molasses and then started saying callous, racist shit. You’re the one who’s made virtually all of the effort.
I’m sure the parents staring at wrapped Christmas presents they’ll never be able to give their children now are greatly comforted by hearing of your tears.
I will grant you a little more charity in interpretation and assume that what you meant was that a young person using a gun is the culmination of a lifetime of bad things happening to them, not that you meant the problem is over once they commit suicide. And yes, from that vantage point we have to do more to help people through their lifetimes, which is what a lot of us are talking about in other ways on other threads. But it ALSO helps to eliminate the proximal issue, which is access to easy ways to express anger violently against self and others.
For the last time: we are concerned with firearms period. Gun (more accurately ‘firearm’) violence across the country. It is rampant. In the inner city. In the suburbs. Black. White. Hispanic. Gun violence affects all races. You keep trying to twist the conversation in your preferred direction.
Would I be happy with a ban on all guns (for civilians)? Yes.
Realistically, I will have to settle for stricter gun laws.
FFS it is easier to get a gun in some areas of the US than it is for a woman to get an abortion!!
cotton:
Are assault rifles hunting rifles? Are they made for target shooting? Or are assault rifles designed to kill people? What do you suppose the ‘assault’ means in the term assault rifle if not to be used in a military assault to kill, or otherwise remove from the field, other human beings.
damn, that is one happy penguin.
Complete fucking dishonesty.
This is concealing the point that most gun murders are not committed by black people. Meanwhile, most murders are committed with guns. So when you have a problem with murder, especially those which involve guns and not especially those which involve black people, then DO NOT FUCKING TREAT BLACK PEOPLE AS IF THEY WERE THE PROBLEM.
Tony, that’s a bit fair. A lot of people focus on assault weapons, so I did too. You don’t and so I can see the apparent dodge.
If there were no guns (or super low numbers) then yah, that would put a big dent in gun murders. But how do you do actually implement that? Civil liberties take a hit. If you say it is worth it, at least you are willing to bite the bullet (so to speak) and I can’t even accuse you of being inconsistent, much less wrong. A lot of people enjoy owning guns, it is a way of life for them, and they were handed down through generations, but that’s just too damn bad. Ok.
BTW, would you also be in favor of a national public register of all who had AIDS? With forced testing every few years for all citizens? In the time it takes to put on a condom a quick click on an app and you could see if your potential partner had AIDS and when they were last tested. There would be a HUGE increase in the number of people that knew their HIV status, and we would save lives as well as a lot of money on AIDS treatment. Helluva bullet to bite though.
What the fuck?
You are an arsehole.
cotton, your guns – excuse me, your HOBBY – is not your bodily autonomy.
Fuck you. Just shut the fuck up and leave. Do not come back, unless someone finds a cure for chronic shitheadedness.
What the fuck? I don’t even have words.
I do not consider owning a gun to be a fundamental right of all humans. It is not essential. Food. Water. Shelter. Those are essential. The costs of gun ownership FAR exceeds any pleasure they grant people. Yes, I believe with the situation as it is in this country, I have no problem making them illegal. If things were different…if people didn’t commit suicide with guns…if homicides weren’t so frequent…if tragedies like 18 dead children and 9 adults didn’t occur, then sure let every person who wants a gun be able to have one. But gun possession is a luxury that is killing people.
Cotton:
There is a huge difference between violating personal autonomy by forcing people to register their status and eliminating a non essential luxury.
That comment was the last straw. I have nothing left to say to you. I am disgusted that you would make such a comparison.
…It really is a penis substitute. Damn, and here I thought that was just a stereotype.
Obviously you’re ignoring my suggestion about ammunition control. Ok.
You know what there is a national register for? People who use schedule IV controlled substances. Because that shit is heavily regulated. Why? Because those chemicals are so dangerous to people who use them. Do you favor eliminating all laws and regulations for everything that can cause damage to people? If not, why do you personally draw the line at guns?
Facts not in evidence.
Please don’t fuck off; it would make me sad for you to experience pleasure right now. Just go away.
Worst fucking analogy / comparison ever.
Please go lock yourself in a closet and think about what you’ve said.
I am over-tired but that AIDS remark makes me want to send an alert.
Opinions?
chigau – I can’t tell yet if that was malice or just abject stupidity. A few more comments ought to clear it up. So, cotton, let’s play a quick game of “one of these things is not like the others”. Do you have any comprehension as to why the analogies you’re using are inappropriate?
I went to play Set, myself.
The people who have been telling me to fuck off for the last few hours have suddenly have fainted. This precludes them from presenting a consistent view on saving human lives vs. the rights of citizens and where they “draw the line”. Damn.
Well, to Carlie: What specifically do you have in mind? The devil is in the details.
Also I do NOT think there should be a registry for users of Schedule IV drugs. The drug war is one of the worst examples of government legislation ever. I do think the government should offer help to those who are trapped in drug abuse while leaving alone those that use it w/o suffering addiction. The specifics of that assistance should be planned with compassion as the guiding principle, not disgust.
Chigau
No
chigau:
Well, cotton has hit the trifecta: US blacks, those suffering with mental illness, and those who have AIDs. Impressive. And (in my useless opinion) worthy of an alert.
Thanks, Cotton, for showing that no argument is too vile for a gun nut to use. Now go cuddle your penis substitutes and feel you’ve done your bit to make murdering children easier to commit.
Well, in the meantime, why don’t we put some real control on all the guns flowing through these underserved communities and at least make sure that fewer people die in gun violence while we address the bigger problems in the system? Maybe make it so that there aren’t so many suicides and accidental gun deaths and domestic shootings as well? (note how I haven’t even mentioned spree shootings outside these parentheses) Oh right, because then you wouldn’t be able to empty a cartridge into a Coke can.
It’s right up there, #656.
Just to make it easier:
Well the racism accusations won’t go away so lets talk about it.
I don’t blame any of those groups for anything. I pointed out that they are in terrible positions, relative to the mainstream. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Please, in all seriousness, tell me what the explanation is? Maybe you don’t know and you think I don’t either, fair enough.
I live in the south and I see every day the effects of indifference (the son of outright racism) in the populace around me. Whites send their children to the private schools, that way they don’t have to care about the failing public ones. Whites flee from the inner cities so they don’t have to care about those that can’t afford to flee with them. Whites go to churches that are full of other white people so they don’t have to feel uncomfortable at how their problems are petty when seen in relief compared the problems of their fellow black citizens. They don’t make black friends and they tell their children to avoid befriending them lest they be forced to socialize or be ostracized by white society. I didn’t read about this, it is how I was raised in rural Mississippi and the world I grew up in. I think, to sum up, this has REALLY bad effects on people. It corrodes the souls of whites, and it impoverishes blacks. One leads to callous indifference, the other a trapped life.
I’ve been trying to undo that legacy in my own heart since I became an older teenager and first saw beyond the bubble that I grew up in. I have worked and continue to work on this. The same is true for homophobia and women. I thought, to put it charitably, less than progressive for many years of my life. Fixing these things is difficult and dealing with regrets is hard. If you were raised more progressively, I hope you appreciate it. It has been as painful as it was necessary for my development as a human being and I take accusations of victim-blaming and hatred very seriously.
I wrote this a bit more emotionally than everything else, sorry if it rambles / doesn’t read easy.
Last time I checked, most people don’t go to the AIDS Show™ to buy their AIDS without needing to get a background check, you stupid fucking asshole. You know why? Because you’ve completely lost touch with fucking reality.
[OT]
Pteryxx, you play Set!? Ever want to have a match via interwebs? No one I know will play Set with me and it is sadness-making.
Yes, tell us more about the poor soulless blacks. But do that after you learn how to do math and stop lying about what the statistics are.
The poor soulless blacks with their culture of violence, who overwhelmingly support gun control.
chigau: he is an insensitive, unthinking, callous, self absorbed asshole. I don’t think that is quite alert worthy, but I wouldn’t shed a tear if he were kicked out either. Oh and he is dense to think people have no argument when we’ve been arguing that gun ownership never trumps human life. Shoot, I forgot he’s also fuckwitted enough to compare violating personal autonomy (an actual fundamental human right) with taking away his toys (not a fundamental right).
You should write an an autobiography.
And maybe someone could make a movie out of it.
Well I do have to go. I’ll come back tomorrow to see if I got banned or if there is anything left to say. I’ll answer Carlie before I do.
There is a LOT of ammo out there right now. Still, I guess it would eventually run out / corrode after 50 years.
You also realize that would financially crush people (like bankrupt them) if they kept a 10 round magazine that they forgot about. They’d have to prove it was an accident, I guess. Still, eventually you’d get your wish. Its VERY restrictive though (the only way to do it successfully) and so my response is the same as the one to Tony. You basically really piss a lot of people off and take away something very important to them for the good of all.
I read cotton’s #726 as sincere.
But that is so far outside my personal experience, I cannot grok it.
I won’t alert at this time (despite that AIDS stupidity).
[I just know I will run afoul of cross-posting and late-refresh]
I don’t mind pissing a lot of people off, and how is ammunition “very important to them”? Just for a little perspective, here’s another story out of Newton: Six year old was the sole survivor of her class because she played dead.
Let me be very clear: I am more than happy to piss off every single person in this country by telling them no, they can’t have every dangerous toy they want to have, if it would keep one child from having to play dead in a classroom, covered with her classmates’ blood, and then live with that for the rest of her life.
chigau:
I read it as sincere too. Not sure why. I may pop back in tomorrow to try talking with him again. Still pissed at most of the shit he said.
Me?
I second EVERYTHING carlie said @735.
While “my fun is more important than dead children” is indeed disgusting, it’s also not even relevant. Sensible gun control does not actually stop people having “fun with guns”.
Not long ago I went to a local gun range and fired a muzzle loading flintlock, in company with a bunch of re-enactors in hand-made 18th century uniforms. It was fun. I think the other people there from the various gun clubs – safely practicing target shooting, whether in costume or not – were also having fun. Gun control means that guns are registered, and background checks are required, and there are safety regulations, and not every possible type of gun is available to everyone.
But you see, it’s like football. That six year old signed up for it at the beginning of the season. She and all the other victims knew they were putting themselves at risk by deciding to be alive in this fucking country with shitheads like cotton. Yet they take that risk, because it’s “fun.”
From carlie’s link
Divine intervention however failed every other dead child and their family.
Sorry for the derail but this shit makes me burn with rage.
carlie:
From your link:
God’s grace?
I cannot say fuck you to this pastor enough.
Now I am over-tired and tipsy and I actually want to damage everyone who says that this one person survived by the grace™ of god™.
Regarding the news story that carlie linked to at #735.
God could not stop the murder of children but took the effort to save one. Of course, the pastor is not going to stop to figure out the flaw in his thinking.
I guess it is too mysterious.
I am afraid we atheists are too touchy.
Of course the dead children get to flitter off to heaven where they can hang out with their dead grandmother they never met in their short life.
Yeah, that part really bothered me too.
First off, anyone who has ammo lying around they don’t know about isn’t responsible enough to have guns in the first place.
Second, there’s no way we’d ever have enough law enforcement to make it a primary offense with house by house searches, nor would that be very effective – what it would do is remove the majority of ammunition from circulation, and would help create a cultural shift whereby people stockpiling guns and ammo and shooting it off in the woods for fun are thought of as dangerous lawbreaking assholes rather than thinking of them as Patrick Swayze in Red Dawn.
Seriously, under religious teachings, do humans get any credit for the things we do?
A simple answer, Tony.
No.
Another thoughtful essay from Phoenix and Olive Branch: Guns are said to be an equalizer, but are they really?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/phoenixandolivebranch/2012/12/guns-an-equalizer/
In Australian news, via the national broadcaster: Obama flags gun law reform at Newtown vigil.
I’m trying very hard to imagine a situation in which I would have a “10 round magazine” for a deadly weapon lying around so casually that I would forget that I had it. I can’t quite do it.
But then, our problem is that we’ve got a lot of assholes like cotton living in this country who have that little respect for dangerous weapons.
My privilege as a chemist might come across here, but I think this is silly. I made thermite and explosive powders when I was 10-11 range. I’ve made smokeless powder of a quality reasonable enough to reload ammunition and I’ve reloaded ammunition. Machining a brass casing is relatively easy. I’ve never made primer though, so I don’t know how difficult that is, but I doubt it is much more complicate than lead styphnate. While more complicated than smokeless powders, anybody smart enough to moonshine could probably figure it out. Basic point: ammunition is not that hard to make. Trying to control ammunition begs analogy to trying to control opiates.
So if you try and control ammunition, how much control? No person can have more than 30 rounds? That’s still enough to cause a massacre. No person can have more than 5 rounds? That’s crazy restrictive, especially in the more rural regions where hunting is important and the law is actually far away. Are you going to require people in rural Montana to pay to using shooting ranges to practice their aim rather than plinking on their own land? Do you make people return their casings? What if somebody went hunting and lost a casing, what do you charge them with?
Guns are easier to control because they are big and complicated. I have relatively good machining skills and it would probably be a major project for me to machine a revolver, much less a self-loading receiver. I’d need specialized tools and specialized stock metal. The tools necessary to machine a firearm are also relatively easy to regulate because they are big and expensive. So while ammunition control sounds like a nice idea, and it makes a damn good comedy routine, it doesn’t seem like functional policy to me.
The most cogent response to the unspeakable pieces of shit who think the proper response to firearms murders is to arm more people is the one seen in the Daily Mash.
yup, most definitely.
repacking casings is easy; you can buy the kits. making your OWN powder and stuff?
no.
…but I did that when I was like 14! The components can be bought at a combination of the hardware store, grocery store, and home and garden store! You don’t even need beakers and flasks. Hell, it was easier to make smokeless powder than it was to properly distill ethanol… which I never did outside the lab because that would be illegal.
YOU did that.
…and then got into chemistry, right?
hell man, I was doing research on fish when I was a teenager too, and then became a marine biologist.
strangely, I don’t expect to find most of the general populace keen on know what the difference between euryhaline and stenohaline is.
I’ve met a lot of people who repack cartridges, and even then they consider it going “above and beyond” for their “hobby”, but I can only recall ONE person who ever even attempted to make their own, and they never did it again.
I think you overestimate how many would bother, frankly, even if it WAS hard to get ammo.
This, I believe, is very important.
If someone already has a gun pointed at you, your chances of drawing your own weapon and shooting back before you’re shot yourself are vanishingly small. Who is more likely to draw first? The criminals, the violent and the paranoid. If Colt made men equal, then the more murderous among us are more equal than the rest.
In a case where two people have guns, they are likely to escalate conflict, rather than defuse it. It’s simple: one person waves a gun to show they can defend themselves. The other person, imbued with the same mentality, does the same because they’re getting a gun waved at them. Then it goes down to who feels more justified to respond with lethal force to a threat of lethal force.
There are people who distill moonshine rather than pay liquor tax, and that’s pretty tough to do correctly. A lot of people do it poorly two, and then they go blind which is funny in a morbid kind of way (hint: discard the first fraction, it’s methanol). And that’s to avoid paying a few percent tax.
In order to make ammunition restrictions worthwhile in terms of preventing massacres they’d need to be fairly draconian. As in nobody can have more than 5-10 rounds of ammo. With this country’s spirit and that kind of restriction, homebrew ammo would become a thing. And if you let people have more rounds than that, like 20-100 rounds the restriction becomes pointless. A lot of death is contained in 20 rounds.
I’m still a bigger fan of restricting who can have firearms than restricting what kind of firearm they can have. And besides which SCOTUS has said that while the government has an interest and power to regulate firearms, it is beyond the power of the government to regulate handguns out of existence (See the D.C. handgun case). Hell, they decided on 10th amendment grounds that forcing the states to require background checks to purchase firearms is beyond the power of the federal government. Unless the 2nd amendment is amended away or this supreme court flat out reverses their record, firearm ownership is a explicitly protected right.
I still think the best thing we can do is require a training program, like for motor vehicles, in order to own firearms that includes a psychiatric analysis and background check. Along with that, require periodic updates to maintain the license just like with motor vehicles. As a compromise the government should be compelled to grant licenses to any and all persons who pass the requirements, just like with motor vehicles. That way the law as written is a clear regulation of the militia and could be argued to fall well within the powers granted to the federal government by the second amendment, thus avoiding the 10th amendment challenge.
And I can’t believe I made the two-too-to typo. I feel like a 4-year old… scratch that 4-year olds are smarter.
dobbshead has a point, though.
If ammo was heavily restricted, a black market would be inevitable.
I’m still so angry about what’s happened, and now the news that one six-year-old survived by pretending to be dead is too horrible for words. I also think the fact that Penn Jillette (rabid libertarian) is being given pride of place on Richard Dawkin’s website at the moment is disgraceful. For anyone who’s still not clear on the issue, Think Progress has posted some excellent articles about gun control in the last few days.
Well it sucks to be a fan of someone for years and be called an asshole. It must be really nice to be able to surround ones self with those that agree within the 95% range, instead of the mere 90%. Then again I’m not a liberal b/c I like to be patted on the head.
To respond to PZ: I know exactly where every one of my bullets are. A lot of people don’t b/c they don’t view guns with repulsion. They grew up with them. The idea of using them violently and with murderous intent doesn’t cross their minds. To them, shocking though it may be, misplacing bullets would be like misplacing tennis balls. Dumb, naive, and dangerous? Sure, but do you really want to bankrupt what would inevitably be hundreds of families b/c of a dumb mistake?
Cotton, your love of guns makes you such an iconoclast.
I have no idea why bankruptcy is supposed to enter the picture. Is it because there would be a fine if people broke the law?
Most people would take that as a sign they might want to critically examine what they’ve been saying.
…but NOT ICONOCLAST COTTON!
no sirree bob!
Cotton’s literally gonna stick to his guns!
Phhht.
The dump mistake is thinking that gun “protect”. They are offensive weapons that kill people, mostly those they don’t intend to kill. Think about that before your next bout of ignorant sloganism….
Meh, I don’t see much point posting when I agree with everyone. Who here likes universal healthcare and wished for a single payer system?
I argue b/c it’s one of the best ways I know to promote growth. I have ideas but if I don’t test them out beyond my own head, then it will get quite stagnant up there. Often I just find people around me to argue with but this is one of the rarer cases where most of the people around me agree with me. Maybe I should spend more time here agreeing with all the stuff I agree with in order to build up some cred.
It is a bit weak to spend so much time trying to psychoanalyze me. I never meant that a suicide (gun or otherwise) “tidies” up the messy problem of a depressed human being, but I was accused of it. I never blamed ANY group for the problems and (unfair) challenges they face, yet I was accused of racism and homophobia. Now I’m some pathetic egotist who needs to be admired as an iconoclast. I, brave thinker, am the only one who can fight against the tide of groupthink!
Also, don’t think I’m not critically examining what I’ve said. I honestly can’t justify high capacity magazines. I’m skeptical if making them illegal would actually work, but morally I can’t back them. They are the one firearms “upgrade” that makes mass killings so much easier and they have such little value beyond their purpose. If that last bit is confusing, many people (including myself) see art, history, and science in fire arms. Nobody views magazines beyond their practical purpose of holding bullets.
Cotton, the few posts I’ve read of yours are reasonably written. I don’t think you deserve the scorn people are heaping on you. I actually agree with you about the art of firearm design. I see something elegant and beautiful int the simplicity with which many of the technical problems facing firearms were solved. The self loading design of the M1911, early as it was in the history of firearms, is really cool. I kind of want one. I’d also like a Ruger Mini 14 and an Springfield for their historic roles and target practice. But I live in NYC, so firearm ownership is impractical.
There are even strong historical arguments that firearms had a strong role in democratization in European cultures, and it definitely had a strong role in many revolutions. There is some merit in the concern that remove the power to control lethal force from the people will enable those same people to be more easily oppressed should the tide of power shift to the more fascist among us. But this is an argument that the current context will change for the worse in the future and that we will be better off if we are armed. While I have some sympathy for this argument, I’ve never seen it really well fleshed out and it wouldn’t be too hard to address in a rational gun control scheme.
That all being said, gun control in the modern context has a really strong argument: lots of people die using firearms and we don’t seem to get much by having them right now. I get frustrated by the lack of knowledge display in some gun control legislation. For example, the assault weapon ban did a lot to ban scary looking black guns, but repackage the same receiver and magazine in a wood finish and bam it’s legal! Things like the Brady act are better in concept, if not execution (by this I mean that the fed can’t force states to do background checks ::facepalm::).
I want 1) background checks, 2) psychiatric evaluation, 3) firearm training required for firearm ownership. Permits should then be given without arbitrary withholding (like they do in New York). A national gun registry would also be nice, but baby steps. Also, we should increase civil and criminal penalties for negligent discharges and mandate immediate reporting of all lost and stolen firearms (but don’t penalize losing a firearm unless clear black-market trading is happening, reporting is more important). If you need to be trained to to own a firearm there should be consequences for screwing it up.
am I the only one that read most of cotton’s post in the voice of the Skeksis chamberlain?
Asshole, read the whole thread. This has been discussed already and IT ISN’T ENOUGH. It wouldn’t do a fucking thing to help.
This specifically was brought up when the fact the shooter got the guns from his mother came up.
Fucking A.
Oh, hello there. Nice to meet you too! Did it ever occur to you that I did read the thread? You may have noticed, that when I have had time to post, that the other proposals are so well and beyond constitutional that there is no way they are anything more than grandstanding. Gun bans are just that, granstanding.
I’d rather have real reforms that take real steps, even if they are small. There is a culture shift that needs to happen. That starts with licensing and a gun registry.
But no, I’m an asshole. Fuck you.
and genocides.
and imperialism.
not based on your post.
Gee, not one citation to the academic literature to back up anything you said. Prima facie evidence for lack of critical examination. You avoid anything that might show your slogans are wrong…
You’re almost there. Once you acknowledge your position has no basis in reality versus slogans/presuppositions, then you might show lack of asshole posting.
And they made the trains run on time.
You come to a thread about a school shooting massacre and mentally masturbate about guns.
You are an asshole.
The debate over gun control laws will be irrelevant in the near future when kids can download CAD files and make a gun at home on a 3D printer while their parents are at work.
And I went on to make a case for gun control. It’s nice to cherry pick. A person can both find beauty in an object and be horrified by its use.
The only position you can possibly mean is that banning guns in unconstitutional, otherwise you’d be talking about either a personal opinion (guns have aesthetic qualities) or an idea that mostly matches the culture here (gun control is good and this tragedy should be used to advance gun control). If I missed something, please be specific.
The supreme court has found that the 2nd amendment contains within it a right to firearm ownership (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)). This also made it beyond the power of government to force firearms to be kept disassembled and locked. This is the current supreme court, not the supreme court a few hundred years ago. Attempting to do similar bans in the United States is an exercise in futility.
Furthermore, the section of the Brady act that requires states to run background checks was also struck down by the supreme court of the US (Mack and Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)). This means any regulation that is passed on firearms cannot compel the states in the same manner as the Brady act and expect to survive.
I’m horrified by this insane massacre and I want to see some sort of gun control legislation happen, but I don’t want it to be some showboat legislation that just gets struck down. With nearly half of the US population owning firearms, I don’t expect a second amendment alteration to pass either senate or house. Or even if it is, I doubt the states would ratify it.
And I also remember the sheer number of people who are killed by firearms here each year. Even if we say that the 60% or so that use firearms to commit suicide would have managed anyway, that still leaves roughly 15,000 people killed (source earlier in this thread, find it yourself). Many of those deaths are opportunistic crimes of passion and, although I have no data, I’d be willing to bet that many firearm owners are casual owners. If a small barrier were put before them, like a firearm safety course and a licensing exam, would not bother owning a firearm. If that is true, even a small barrier would reduce the rate of gun ownership.
Maybe the sick fuck who killed all those kids would not have had easy access to a gun because his mother wouldn’t have bothered to get one. Maybe he’d have done like Breivik and killed a bunch of people anyway.
But what do I know? I find guns aesthetically pleasing so I must be a horrible person.
What an iconoclast you are, defending guns in America. Go you, I guess.
If they hate guns – WHY DON’T FUCKING GET RID OF THEM? Misplaced bullet problem solved! POOF!
…
Hey, you fucking heartless piece of shit asshole, point your sexual organs away from us when masturbating over guns. This is a thread about people who were shot. Don’t you have a shred of shame?
Please lecture us on the beauty of racial eugenics.
Nice strawman and Godwin, two for one.
Cherry picking? I will quote your entire paragraph I was referring to.
This is not you qualifying that you are interested in guns. This is you gushing over them. If you cannot see how this can be considered inappropriate in a post specifically about children getting murdered with guns then you are an asshole.
2 paragraphs telling us how wonderful guns are and 2 paragraphs about gun control. Tell me how misunderstood you are.
The post suggests that some idiot will propose arming all 7 year olds.
You win – You suggest that if there was more gun control this guy could have killed more people. Again – you are an asshole.
Please refer to where someone has called you a horrible person for finding guns aesthetically pleasing.
Asshole.
Hey Dobbs, I long ago decided not to answer some of the wild crap here. I’m sure Koshka’s low bar for assholism means its pretty tough for him to get out of the bed in the morning and face a daily commute. In a thread specifically about gun control we are raving assholes for talking about gun control.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I don’t mind a very high bar to owning a gun in the first place, and a very high level of responsibility in keeping one. There is no point to having the first part if after a person is trusted with firearm ownership they allow access to those that have not cleared that bar.
A ban on the manufacture (or even ownership) of 30 round mags might help in the future. There are so many of them out there, though, I don’t see that taking effect for a while.
A key problem bugging me is that gun owners and liberals are, generally speaking, VERY different groups that have little in common. So, its pretty easy to dismiss their points of view. It’s not like they will be burning bridges they care about. There are a LOT of good people out there who just enjoy owning guns and shooting them who do not have some fundamental flaw.
From a public health standpoint, if at that point regulations have already reduced the appeal of guns and their prevalence in, say American culture, then that eventuality is moot.
Consider smoking bans in public places. They have myriad intents, but they correlate with reductions of smoking uptake in younger generations. Of course, they operated in conjunction with advertising bans and increased prices (at least here in Canada). Behaviors are interrelated. Access and interest both influence.
There aren’t ‘magic bullet’ interventions: there are a variety of interventions that target various components of the population. To insist on complete efficacy from any one intervention displays a poor understanding of the forces that influence populations and absolutist thinking at its worst.
There are a lot of good people out there who also happen to be Christian, or Catholic, and some of them are so enamored of their religion that they’re blinded to the abuses it propagates. However, nobody picks up their religiosity and blows holes in another person with it.
Your critical reading skills could use some work, asshat. I was suggesting that crazy fucktards will do crazy fucktard shit, gun control be damned. That’s not an argument against gun control.
That has to be true, given the stats in this thread alone. There are a lot of guns in the US, most of them aren’t used badly. This tragedy is a perfect opportunity to get those gun owners to embrace gun control. What reasonable person thinks their right to own guns is worth thousands of people getting shot? (Well a few, apparently But this this shit? I mean, those and god damn children!)
The regulations on gun ownership are coming. I just want them to 1) work and 2) survive the inevitable court challenges. The reflexive hatred of anybody to expresses a minutia interest in guns is silly. The call to ban firearms is worse: it won’t survive the courts and will waste the mandate to fix the problem. It’s stupid.
Fixed.
cotton,
Yes people everywhere are acting like assholes. I try to call them out when I can. Pharyngula has encouraged me to do this. I act like an asshole sometimes and people should feel free to call me out. It has happened here and it gave me the shits at first but then I stopped and though about it. Then I apologised.
Tell me, do you think it is appropriate to gush all over guns like dobbshead did on a post about people being murdered by guns? Here it is again. Please excuse my ‘cherry picking’.
You will notice that this wank was instigated by your
I did not take exception to your comment. Dobbshead however is way over the top on a post about PEOPLE BEING MURDERED WITH GUNS.
I can understand people finding guns interesting but how hard is to understand that this post is about PEOPLE BEING MURDERED WITH GUNS.
You’re an asshole.
What you said was
Why mention Breivik? If you wanted to suggest that “crazy fucktards will do crazy fucktard shit, gun control be damned” then maybe you should have said that. Your critical writing skills could use some work.
Also I not the mental health slur and call you an asshole once again. There is another thread dealing with assholes targeting people with mental health problems with regards to this tragedy. This is probably where you should post this garbage.
You are an asshole because you masturbated over your guns on a thread about people getting murdered by guns.
I am an asshole because …..(please fill in)
You see how it works?
I mentioned Breivik because he went out of his way to obtain firearms through legal channels in countries that are otherwise relatively restrictive of firearms, and then used them to kill a lot of people. The point is that the best policies can’t stop every catastrophic event, but they can alter frequency.
“Crazy fucktards”Mental health slur doesn’t cover that subtlety which is necessary when trying to discus appropriate policy. If you weren’t in such a rush to show me what an asshole I am you might have realized that.Asshole.
Cotton:
You and dobbs are assholes because you are both talking about your appreciation and/or love of guns in the face of this tragedy.
Imagine if one of the parents of the slain children were in this thread. Think of how they-not YOU-would feel hearing talk about how lovely guns are. That’s massively insensitive at best. I prefer asshole.
As for the comments you are avoiding/ignoring–
Your reactions have been based-understandably-on your personal bias. That doesn’t change the fact that attempting to deflect focus from firearm violence to gunfights in the inner cities with their primarily black and brown people is a racist perspective. Think outside your privilege. Gun violence is very real. It is very out of control. And it is not restricted to any particular race.
Fixed
You’re an asshole because of shit like that.
Dobbshead:
Please don’t use ableist terms like fucktards. They are slurs against the mentally disabled and are not welcome here. Note the use of insults such as:
Asshat
Fuckwit
Douchebag
None of those is a slur against any group and are acceptable here.
Asshole.
I’d hope they’d read a little better than many of the people in this thread. I was putting forward a reason why somebody who likes guns should support gun control. There is nothing disrespectful about that in the least.
You see, that’s why I actually started talking to Cotton because he did the opposite of that and then got himself stuck in a rhetorical hole. Well, he said it really poorly, but he was trying! And he got jumped on for it.
So what, do you want people to try and rhetorically work out their thinking, maybe come around to your perspective? Do you want people who like guns to feel comfortable vocally supporting gun control? Or do you want to yell at people?
I understand the yelling, it’s hard to make sense of shooting 20 children.
You’re right, I hadn’t thought of that about that term. I won’t use it anymore.
Semi-off-topic, why is fuckwit ok?
dobbshead:
With new gun control laws, there’d be new laws for the Supreme Court to interpret — which is what they do, because laws can change and they do not write those laws. Old decisions about what is or isn’t “Constitutional” could thus be overturned. So there’s no reason to assume everything deemed “Constitutional” now will just have to stay that way. Right now, it would be very hard to ban guns for political reasons (because we have dumbasses like you and cotton); but that is not a legal or Constitutional issue, just a cultural one.
It’s never been a medical diagnosis. “Retardation” was, and people still associate the term with anyone who has cognitive or learning disabilities.
Being irrational or spewing ignorant, bigoted nonsense is not at all the same thing and should be discouraged (in the same way it would make no sense to discourage someone from having a disability).
No matter how much has passed, no matter what (s)he’s said since, no matter how much (s)he tries to dress up their opinion, cotton still supported his right to own a gun with, and I paraphrase for brevity:
“I like shooting and want to keep doing it, so what if 100 people a year die in mass shootings so I have the right to this hobby.”
It’s all there in their first post, just said in a more rambling wordy way intended to sound reasonable and clever. Cut through everything else and that is still the central premise of their argument.
That’s what makes them an arsehole, everything that came after was just polishing a turd with more shit.
[meta]
So, is one allowed to walk down the street in America carrying a loaded crossbow?
Quick replies before work:
Koshka: First I was the worst person here, and now you appeal to my reason so that I may see dobbs is truly an asshole.
Tony: I would not say things like that to someone who had been in this tragedy. So…what? Just b/c I would be polite and not do something purposefully insensitive doesn’t mean my opinions are wrong. When I visited my aging grandfather in the nursing home I never went around tearing down old people’s religion b/c it would be a dick move. That doesn’t mean my atheistic standpoint was/is wrong. I’m also not writing this under some general reading area like facebook or a personal blog. This has all been written on a thread about gun control, on a blog known to be unwelcome to the faint of heart.
To some degree what you are saying is true. The supreme court reversed its position on separate, but equal being constitutional (Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)). It took over 50 years for the supreme court to overturn that decision. I think it is important to note that these were different courts, as in there were totally different judges on the bench.
District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) pretty much just happened. If laws are written that raise the same constitutional issues as that case, they’ll get struck down and not move through appellate court because the jurisprudence is against them. I also doubt that this court would be willing to revisit their arguments. It would be like passing a law that requires school prayer: it’d just get struck down and ignored by the courts.
I’m not saying that it is a good thing, I’m just saying that is how it works.
Cotton:
This blog may be many things, but it is not a place that is insensitive to tragedy. As I’ve said, you are so focused on guns=good that your insensitivity permeates almost everything you write. I have seen precious little empathy from you. You seem to hold firearms to be more important than human life. For a second I thought I had the wrong opinion of you, but until such time as you realize that guns are an unimportant “right”, and should never even be compared the value of human life, I don’t think my opinion of you is wrong.
The heck with your gaslighting. HAVING a heart isn’t being ‘faint of heart’, though I’m not surprised you conflate them after going on about how much gun owners appreciate and care about their guns. People appreciated and cared about the children that died in Newtown, too, along with the 32,000 other actual living people that died by gun this past year. It’s entirely reasonable to value lives above inanimate objects. But you only mentioned *victims* to try and demonstrate how concerned and empathetic (and non-racist) you want us to think you are. Looks like your sympathies lie with the poor unloved little killing tools.
How do you think you know that? We have no way of knowing how many are used to shoot animals simply for fun, to shoot them in ways that risk injury resulting in prolonged suffering, as explicit or implicit threats against people, andor to bolster toxic masculinities. That’s not even counting the ones exported to kill people abroad (where do you think the Mexican drug gangs get their guns?), the ones stored in unsafe ways, or the general effect of gun-worship on American culture.
[citation needed]
You were accused of writing that because you wrote it.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/the_answer_is_not_more_guns/
cite: http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/6/4/263.full
There are a LOT of good people out there who just enjoy owning guns and shooting them
Ok, so let’s take it as a given for the moment that one can enjoy shooting guns without being completely antisocial. Why do you have to own the gun? And if you must own the gun, for whatever reason, why do you have to keep it on your person or in your dwelling? If the gun is for sport, why not keep it at a registered gun club* where you will have access to it any time you want to go shoot a target or go hunting or whatever it is you want to do? Why keep the guns at home where a person intent on mass murder can get them, shoot you, and take off for a school shooting with them?
*Current regulations on gun clubs and how they store guns are almost certainly ridiculously weak, but that could be fixed relatively easily. Maybe require the guns to be stored in a double locked cabinet where only an employee has the combination to one lock and only the owner of the particular gun has the other or something.
If one wants to engage in target shooting, why not use an air rifle ? Both air rifle and air pistol are Olympic disciplines. and there is far less hassle with transporting your weapons for competitions.
from Amanda Marcotte: why not restrict gun *advertising* ?
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/its_not_the_guns_its_the_culture/
Dick’s Sporting goods has suspended all gun and ammunition sales near Newtown, CT and suspended the sale of ‘modern sporting rifles’ nationwide. It is unclear if the national part will be permanent or not. They specify, the press release, that it is ‘during this time of national mourning.’
From USA Today:
Additionally,
From The Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
By the by, if anyone sees an extra ‘in’ roaming around, can you point it my #813 in this thread? Kthx.
Using the numbers in this thread for ballpark math: there are about 300 million guns in the U.S., about half of all households have guns. So lets say about 150 million people in the US have access to guns. There are about 30,000 deaths due to firearms, some 50,000 accidental injuries. Lets round it to an even 100,000 cases of people screwing up with guns. In a given year, less than 0.1% of all people with access to firearms in the United States screw up using them by these metrics. Even if we assume that there are an order of magnitude more close calls, that still leaves 99% of owners in the clear.
This is NOT an argument against gun control, nor against the problem the gun culture poses. It is a statement of the magnitude of the problem as has been given in this thread.
dobbshead:
What about the guy threatening his neighbor with a gun? Or guns used to terrorize a rape victim? Or guns used in crimes in which none were injured? Or someone shooting a neighbor’s dog because it won’t shut up? Or all the other crimes and misdemeanors in which firearms are used in which no one is killed or injured by the firearm?
dobbshead@815,
Typical gun-nut dishonesty. According to this source, there are over 200,000 non-fatal gun injuries per year in the USA – not a difficult figure to find. Moreover, you can “screw up” with a gun without killing or injuring someone – you can use it to rob someone, or to intimidate an innocent person, you can behave in a way that risks killing or injuring someone, you can cause unnecessary death or suffering to non-human animals, you can behave in a way that could allow someone else to get hold of your gun and misuse it.
Or you can leave your guns lying around the house (as a commentator here proudly admitted he does) and have it stolen. In which case it is hard to see how you then do not bare some responsibility for what then is done with the gun.
Since most gun owners keep their guns for many decades or even grow up with them for a lifetime, I doubt that the *annual* statistics are all that useful when claiming a percentage of gun *owners* are the good and responsible kind. Say 100,000 screw-ups per year, over say ten years? That’s a million. Thirty years? 3 million, and now we’re up to 1% of all gun owners, using vastly oversimplified statistics.
I recall reading that since about 1968 over one million Americans have lost their lives as the result of accidental or intentional firearm use.
Can you imagine the outcry if the number of deaths on American roads was that high ?
Matt:
Apparently many people think owning a gun is an inalienable right following “…the pursuit of happiness.”. When you have the right to own your own personal killing machine, why settle for anything less? Blecch!
Not counted, not because they don’t count but because they weren’t mentioned in the sources in this thread. They are also really hard to count. If you have a good source, I’d be interested.
Except not: if anything those numbers are a call to action as Pteryxx (#819) points out correctly. Gun deaths roughly equal motor vehicle death, and a gun has no purpose other than killing. I was not attempting to be dishonest, I was even rounding in all cases to make guns a larger problem than the numbers say. I even pointed out what the number would be if we assume an order of magnitude under-reporting. In terms of injuries, I was using this source:
“But the number who are reported with non-fatal injuries from firearms through hospital emergency departments in 2009 was about 58,000 people.”
NPR: Guns 101
It’s not peer reviewed, but I have no reason to distrust the numbers given in the interview. I said 50k + 30k –> 100k ‘screw ups’, again rounding in favor of under-reporting.
I’d also like to point out, according to the sources quoted so far, that there has been a 70% reduction in annual reported injuries due to firearms from 1994 to 2009. That’s more than a little significant.
I like this source you posted, Pteryxx. Do you know of an more general studies though? It would be ‘nice’ to have numbers for how many people are threatened by firearms each year that doesn’t vary by an order of magnitude.
More gun-nut dishonesty. First, injuries that do not result in emergency hospital admissions are still injuries. Second, there are all the other categories of “screw-ups” I identified, which you again ignore completely.
I’d be happy with that, in the form of fitting a governor to every vehicle that will not permit it to exceed the speed limit. Should be technically feasible soon, if it’s not now.
Where ‘like’ means ‘cherry-pick a limitation while ignoring the rest of the discussion’.
Supporting research from the same core:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use/index.html
for instance:
If you want better research I suggest you start by telling the NRA to quit suppressing it:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/the_nras_war_on_gun_science/
No, where like means I like the study and think the discussion is interesting. I think the number of of people threatened by guns, but not injured, is an important number to know and I’d like to have a study done on a sample size large enough to be representative. This study warrants further research, and I was just wondering if you happened to know of any follow-up studies.
Pteryxx:
Also of interest in this discussion:
Hey Tony, you inquire as to my empathy.
Maybe you’re right, I should show that. If I really believe in my skeptical gun control position I shouldn’t be afraid that empathy would reflect poorly upon on.
I needed to say something about this as it was happening, as I read about it on the internet. So I texted my Mom. I said what was obvious: it was unthinkable. Of course it was unthinkable, no shit, right? But I had to say something b/c it was just too awful to READ about and sit there doing my job.
I can’t imagine how devastated those people are. For the rest of their lives will they be able to even look at each other w/o immediately going back to that day? Immediately to that first phone call that told them something was wrong. Then they get it. The tone of voice or the facial twitch of the police officer. His eyes just a little too unblinking and wide.
I think about the first responders who had to go into a school room filled with dead children. An absolute nightmare beyond any horror movie scene. I would have to leave, and I guess many will. They will leave and tell noone or almost noone in order to reduce the burden of every day having to be “one of those poor parents” looked upon by their neighbors with pity and guilty thanks that it “wasn’t my kid”.
So yeah, I agree with everyone here, it was unthinkably awful. It is beyond the most awful things I can imagine.
So awful you put your right to shoot shit ahead of their lives.
Empathy – you’re doing it wrong.
Then why are you defending a cause of the problem? That isn’t empathy, it is the problem.
Option 1: Debate gun control. Response: You showed no empathy for the victims!
Option 2: Show empathy for victims. Response: And yet you still put your little guns ahead that suffering!
That is literally not caring to talk about it. It’s one thing to have an opinion or agenda, another to simply dismiss the very value of talking about something. If you are “past” this debate or “so over it” well…bye.
Also, I don’t think guns are the root of the problem. I think that a young boy / man desiring to shoot up a school is a problem. That’s the problem to solve. This should not be solved, at least knee jerk, by liberals trading in other people’s rights in order to ensure the crazy can’t exercise them either.
I think a perfect analogy would be fast cars. Assault rifles are the least practical and most lethal of guns. Fast cars are the least practical and most lethal of autos. Shouldn’t we then, by the same logic many want to ban assault rifles, ban fast cars? They serve no purpose except fun. A 400+ horsepower Mustang GT that goes twice the legal speed limit anywhere in this country is CLEARLY superfluous. If I told you I really like fast cars, how many of you would view me as a reckless, penis compensating, selfish, asshole? Probably not as many as do for the very similar desire to shoot guns.
Gee, without the guns, wounds but no deaths in China. With the guns in the US, many children dead. Where is your brain? It isn’t working beyond spouting slogans. We know that. Why can’t you acknowledge that?
Would you like to start debating gun control? If so, unplug your ears, stop whining and don’t change the subject. Gun control actually has to be on the table in order to debate it, not just whatever fucking bullshit you want to ramble about.
Are you doing so in yet another thread about large numbers of people being mowed down by a Porsche driver, because that’s a thing that happens with some regularity?
I would.
an acquaintance on Facebook showed me this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
interesting things to try:
sort it by country, and compare the US to China.
sort it by weapon, and figure the average deaths associated
sort it by weapon, and check out the “additional notes” field.
Sort it by the number killed or injured, and firearms also get sorted to the top of the list.
What an odd coincidence that most of those using firearms also committed suicide, instead of being arrested or shot. It’s almost as if they could efficiently kill however many they wanted, before any law enforcement could arrive to stop them.
Explain how that is acceptable, cotton. Because FREEDOM or BIG MACS or whatever you have left.
Whoops, I misread this
Didn’t mean to be redundant. But for people like cotton, maybe we do have to say it twice.
Is it? Here’s an analogy without any possible Nazi connotations so you don’t have the Godwin gag reflex.
I come into a thread about the victims of the Chinese knife guy and start waxing poetic about makes and models of knives, the sharpness of their edges, how their serrated sides are elegantly machine-tooled to cut through bones with ease, how comfortable are their grips for quick swiping action etc.
At the very least, I’ll be a giant asshole. Which is, coincidentally, exactly what I think you are.
Cotton:
It’s nice to see some empathy. Given how you’ve been so pro gun throughout the thread-vigorously-it doesn’t come across as genuine as you may have intended. If you’d only posted two “guns are fun” comments and then displayed some sorrow or grief, it might be different. Likewise, if you had not made massively stupid comparisons between firearms and vending machines/sports cars/beds things might be dfferent. But not only did you make the latter comparisons, you expressed your joy of guns repeatedly and it wasn’t til recently that you showed any empathy. Can you see how empty it is…especially when you are STILL making stupid comparisons?
If you’re going to compare guns with anything please use something that WAS CREATED TO KILL PEOPLE WITH. Cars were not created to murder. Guns were.
Slate article about gun safety technologies, such as smart triggers that only respond to the owner, and visible indicators that show whether a gun is loaded or not; also, the reason none of these have been implemented for consumers:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/12/smart_guns_we_have_the_technology_to_make_safer_guns_too_bad_gunmakers_don.single.html
I disagree, I think that’s a poor analogy because even a fast car has the primary legitimate use of getting from one point to another. A better analogy would be owning a predator species. For example, a lot of people like to own dogs. Dogs are predators, especially the larger working breeds, and can be really vicious: certain breeds are clearly meant to kill and intimidate. In the modern context there isn’t much use for these dogs beyond people enjoy having them.
The most important thing about this analogy is how dogs differ from firearms: they don’t kill 30,000 people in this country a year. If they did then people’s right to own what property they please would be limited. Some jurisdictions already try and limit ownership of certain breeds of dogs because of the perceived danger, why are guns different (other than that they are in the constitution, that’s a different argument)?
On the flip side, if guns were only used in a few cases per year to hurt or kill people then recreational ownership would be sufficient to maintain the right to gun ownership. But that’s not the world we live in, we live in a world where roughly 100 people are shot every day on average and mass shootings are not rare. Increased gun responsibility is completely reasonable and you should vocally advocate for it.
I did that and I’m an asshole!
dobbshead:
I think you are being obtuse. At comment 794, I stated that you and cotton were assholes for talking about your love of guns in the face of this tragedy.
The comments I made about lacking empath were 804 & 831. Both were explicitly directed at cotton. Not you.
Which is precisely what every murderer does (bar the actually, provably legally insane ones).
(emphasis mine)