The mother of a child who, fortunately, was not among those that were killed in the Texas school massacre, made this comment as she dropped her daughter off at daycare. IMO, it sums up even more than the school shooting.
“We live in this fucked up world.”
I’m going to add something here about this recent shooting, even though I know some readers are going to disagree with me. While the knee-jerk reaction is to ban ALL guns, this will NOT stop the crazies because “underground” guns will always be available. Moreover, there are simply too many respectable gun owners that will fight tooth and nail against such action.
What, in my opinion, is needed are gun control measures similar to what Japan has in place. Owning a gun there is a lengthy process of background checks, drug and mental tests, as well as formal instruction. Four other countries (Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and China) also have demanding measures in place, but Japan’s seem to be the strictest.
Such measures would allow legitimate gun owners to purchase guns, but (hopefully) would weed out the crazies.
Unfortunately, the bottom line in any kind of gun control discussion in this country will always be determined by “politics.” Case in point:
Via The Guardian.com: Republicans have been, in the same breath, mourning yesterday’s losses while encouraging more guns.
Ted Cruz, (the US senator from Texas ) said just a few hours after the school attack that the best way to keep kids safe was to have armed law enforcement present on campus.
Addendum: The Associated Press is reporting that the rifles and ammunition that were used in yesterday’s shooting were purchased by the shooter legally. The shooter bought an AR-style rifle from a federally licensed gun dealer in the Uvalde area on May 17. The next day, he purchased 375 rounds of ammunition.
Nan's Notebook 
Red flag laws, background checks, and insurance.
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Make a bullet $300 each.
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Might work. It would certainly delight the companies that make those bullets!!
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Of course, the VERY BEST thing you guys could do is start publishing the photos of dead children, all shot up. Put up billboards with their little bodies split open, face’s missing, brains hanging out, limbs shot off.
We did that with drunk driving car crashes, and it worked to change behaviour.
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I’m quite sure this will never happen in the states. However, if such images could be transmitted directly to the individuals who are anti-gun control …
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Eh, I think a responsible system is enough. All these recent shootings, and veteran homicide or suicides from my orbit were all avoidable with a responsible system.
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Of course! But at this point, one wonders if a “responsible system” will ever come to pass. We keep trying. But so far …
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600.
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Oh, and offer a free “thought ‘n prayer” with the purchase of every three bullets from the religious leader of your choice. Yeah, that’ll work. 🙂
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That’s the spirit! In fact, every bullet is sold individually… in an auction… which is held once a year… in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Just read this — Lawmakers are floating the idea of introducing red flag laws as a means of bolstering gun control.
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The gun control debate ended with Sandy Hook. If you did nothing then, you’ll do nothing now.
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John,
I’ve been intentionally avoiding the mass social-media coverage and even more gargantuan and endless Opines from social-media users because there is NOTHING ever said from all sides that hasn’t already been said 300-times in umpteen different variations SINCE Columbine H.S. (April 1999), TWENTY-THREE YEARS later, and honestly… here in Texas since Charles Whitman up inside the University of Texas Tower in August 1966, almost FIFTY-SIX YEARS later!!!
Nothing has really changed in 56-years in Texas (or the USA) in any significant way to protect ordinary sane citizens/victims or students (1st- thru 12th-graders even), CHILDREN(!), from our own 2nd Amendment! So…
It begs the very simple question: If we, as a supposedly humane, pro-life society, haven’t learned or done anything to change, deter, or stop the slaughter of innocents in 56-YEARS, then we can never legitimately claim to be a ‘humane, pro-life (life is sacred?), truly free nation of peace-loving Americans,’ much less truly caring for other Americans and their public-safety. Period.
Hence, the REAL definition of that national sociopolitical condition is…
Sheer complicity, detachment, and gross ignorance and negligence. Am I wrong in reading 56- or 23- or even 5-years of repeated evidence and repeated rhetoric in response?
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What HAS changed, especially in Texas, is just how super easy it is for all the wrong people to obtain weapons of mass slaughter & destruction of life! SMH 🤦♂️ 💔
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Nan, This subject is so heart wrenching! And I am troubled by your post and the comments that only see the situation through the lens of politics.
I think even atheists can comprehend that what happen in Uvalde, Texas makes cries out to the human spirit an makes it weep bitterly. And therein lies the understanding and the solution to the problem.
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You know, you’re a real a-hole. You think “even atheists can comprehend?” Do you think because you’re a Christian you have some corner on the market of human feelings? I assure you, you don’t not. The difference is we atheists would have done something about this by now; we would have changed the gun laws so that at the very least mentally ill persons could get within 100 miles of any gun, let alone an assault rifle!
Have you looked at the voting record of your pious compatriots in the Religious Right at all? They are colluding with the Republicans and are as guilty of these crimes as the person that pulled the trigger. You can vote for whomever you like but you must be accountable for their record and the GOP have single-handedly held up even the most minor of gun law reforms. They have the blood of these murdered children on their hands and so do the fundamentalist Christians that support them.
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Indeed, It’s a fucked up world.
A fucked up world full of fucked up religions led by men so fucked up that they believe only they are capable of being fully human. They, who demand that women bring to term pregnacies from rape and/or incest call themselves arbiters of moral behavior. Institutions that practice pedophilia accuse their detractors of the same.
“only see the situation through the lens of politics”
We connect politics and religion because they are wed. We lay these murders at the feer of Christian ministers who deny that Democrats cannot be Christians as well as at the feet of politicians who incorporate biblical law into their legislation. Perhaps you didn’t notice the Christian representation at the insurrection party on 01/06/.
“I think even atheists can comprehend that what happen in Uvalde, Texas makes cries out to the human spirit an makes it weep bitterly. And therein lies the understanding and the solution to the problem.”
I reject your ignorant hate-filled sop.
Only a misguided, uninformed Christian free of any connection to reality, among all the world’s religions, would make such a comment. I don’t know if only Christians embrace the idea that people who do not agree with them are incapable of normal human emotions. Why didn’t you throw in LGBTQ+, and all other religions which you deny are legitimate? And what about those left-handed women? By your ‘classic’ logic, without being servants of your god, we should not be able to love. Our procreation would be just some rutting in the dark to satisfy animal instincts. The growing world population gives the lie to that feeble argument.
We’ve all heard the same refrain when a liar says that all bad things, like this, happen because of sin in the world. We also hear that those devil Democrats stole the election. “We must turn to God,”
But wait. Democrats outsmarted God, so if I want to follow after intelligence …
For one point, if we stole the election from right under God’s nose, then your God is not very alert.
For another point, “if it is not the will of God, it will not happen.” “The calamities that come on the world is because God is punishing mankind because of non-belief and whatever other offense the preacher might throw in.” (Any bible thumper will tell you I’m right.) Calamity and disaster are God’s will, therefore, it was God’s will that this slaughter took place. The only weapons of your God, who cannot outsmart Democrats, are Hate and Fear.
If the Almighty God would change tactics and do away with those two weapons, stop all the plagues and wars He uses to force people into His loving arms, maybe people could have the option of love for choosing Him from among all the other gods of men. It seems love would logically be a better alternative than those others, But, I guess He is old and set in His ways.
But wait. Atheists can’t comprehend such thoughts and emotions.
Never mind.
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Cagjr,
All well said. Bravo. And if I may humbly add…
Who (supposedly) created this “Fucked Up World” (in SoM’s cranium) in the beginning? Who then let a demonic Satan take over his (supposedly) perfect creation? And WHO hasn’t done anything to correct, or to visibly tangibly rectify His own Fuck-ups over the (supposedly) last 6-millenia of His perfect(?) Creation here (in the minds of Creationists)!?
Seems to me that’s ONE “Fucked Up, Grossly Imperfect Creator.” 😉
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Seems to me, as usual, you have asked and already have the answers to these questions. For SOM’s benefit, I will repeat my confession that I, too, had a hand in that dark world, aka, The Light of The World. It is only through ignorance that religion can continue its grip on society.
Only education will enable people to overcome this evil, and the church knows it, therefore their continuous effort to put education in the hands of the church. Imagine that outcome!
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Once again, VERY well said Cagjr. 👏🏻
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That’s the number one reason I rejected Christianity. The sheer evil incompetent nature of their god.
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BINGO!
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You are truly a blatant cynic~!
Good.
I like that.
We cynics are too few and far between; most innocents live the classic lives of quiet desperation because of the stranglehold of the Godly. And ‘cynic’ is in fact just another word for ‘someone whose faulty vision sees reality for what it really is’ — and an atheist is better thought of as “someone with no invisible means of support” … no?
As for you pointing out that responsibility is at the feet of the Omnipotent — that thought won’t win you many hearts in an insane world. True though. At the risk of confusing the religious; omnipotent means nothing more than omni-responsible; so all the evils of this universe are God’s … (by all I mean ALL … otherwise those omnis in the definition of God are meaningless.)
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You’re right, Nan. I disagree with “While the knee-jerk reaction is to ban ALL guns…” I’ve not heard that except from the right. Thus leading to stoking of the fire wrongly.
Could we enforce the laws we have? Could we make it harder to buy a gun than to get a library card (or to vote)? Could we keep guns away from people NONE OF US want to have them? (Technically we do that now with convicted felons.) Could we stop the lie that “we” want to ban (or take away) ALL private guns? Could we have a little common sense?
The only way we have that might help is by law. Thus, only with political change will things be done. But here in Texas any such change is hopeless. It’s frustrating. Some on the left are contemplating gun ownership to protect themselves from their fellow citizens.
Rampant gun ownership (I own none, but hold expert ratings with the M-1 carbine, the M-16 rifle, and the .38 pistol) is not the problem. Even the gun owners admit that people are the problem, either by neglectful and dangerous care/ownership, mental illness, or murderous behavior. Maybe we can keep them from having guns?
I would favor some limits on assault weapons, but as I said: Texas.
I do agree that we live in this crazy world. A place that it is not as safe as we wish it was, and that we are a long way from a solution. But if we cannot stop the lies, if we will not admit the problem, more people are going to die by gunfire.
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Bill, the argument that ‘guns don’t kill people – people kill people’ is ludicrous. I suppose one could argue that, even in the hands of the worst types of people, guns are still not the problem. It’s the bullets which do the damage. Or one could argue that nuclear weapons don’t kill people either. It is not a useful argument. I salute you for personally choosing not to own a gun, but I wonder why you mention your ‘expert ratings’ on several pieces of equipment specifically designed to end the lives of other human beings. Is this really something to boast about?
Your suggestion of keeping guns away from [who] ‘NONE OF US want to have them’ is commendable too. But it infers another group of people who WE DO want to have them. Who are these people, may I ask, other than professional police officers, the military and security guards – and even those people only when on duty?
Banning virtually all guns is not a knee jerk reaction. I honestly don’t see the idea of taking away all private guns as lacking in common sense – I would think the opposite.
Your great country was built upon dreams. Many of those dreams were derided and ridiculed by others fearful of tinkering with the Status Quo. But many of those dreams, through belief over time, have eventually come true.
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Thank you, Richmond.
I am not a pacifist.
Guns are dangerous, but if you plan to remove them all, good luck. But that seems “ludicrous” to me.
My point was (and yes I am proud of my marksmanship skills) that I am familiar with guns and their proper and appropriate use.
I do not own any guns, not to please you or to seek your approval, but because I don’t need one or want the responsibility.
I do not need your approval nor your salute. I had all of that I needed.
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Goodness, sorry. I was not intending to create offence. I was simply trying to open debate. Of course you don’t need my approval (who does??), and you are correct – anyone planning to remove all guns will need more than just luck. Nor was I belittling your skills – it just seemed an odd time to mention them.
May I ask then, respectfully, what you consider to be ‘the proper and appropriate use of guns’?
Would you concede that restricting what might be considered as ‘proper and appropriate use’ might help to limit inappropriate use and hence tragic consequences?
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I agree. I saw your comments as condescending and patronizing, and to a degree, insulting. Also, I consider talk of taking all guns as counterproductive as it provides support for those who harbor such fear.
Most of my gun experience involves my military career. Your nuclear weapon comparison was apples and oranges for me. Bombs (weapons) do not start wars. People do.
I did own guns once but sold them because I was moving to an overseas location where they were prohibited. Additionally, it was because I had concluded, due to a near accident, that they were a danger I could not always control. To this day, over 50 years later, I do not want that responsibility.
You ask me for “proper and appropriate use of guns?” Good grief, Richmond. Shall I write you a book? Hunting, sport, collecting, military (but even then, murder happens); maybe suicide when better and safer options are unavailable. Self-protection may be legitimate, but who knows? People can be paranoid, and guns make that paranoia dangerous (thus a red flag). Many people are considering gun ownership to protect themselves from other gun owners who seem insane.
“Common sense” gun laws would be good. A manufacturing ban on assault weapons (AR-15, etc.) would not do much at this point, although the latest perpetrator might have had problems with acquisition. But any attempt to limit gun ownership in the USA is wasted effort. In Texas, Oklahoma, and other red states, we have seen laws passed to expand and ease gun ownership up to and including unlicensed and untrained open carry. It’s insane!
The only thing any American citizen can do about any of this today is to vote Democrat. But not all politicians within that party are willing to pass gun-restricting laws. So that will not happen.
It is out of control, and I hate it. The problem is people. Not inanimate objects. It is very disconcerting, embarrassing, and troublesome to me. I do not see your last question as realistic. Murder is illegal. That stops few.
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That’s fair enough. And I apologise if it came across that way. This is an emotive issue. People, certainly, are a problem, and getting rid of people would solve not only this problem, but lots of others, but seems a little counterproductive from a human perspective. So we have to decide if the world is a safer place when people have guns or when they don’t. Looking around the planet I think the answer is fairly obvious. Your own experience would seem to confirm it – a danger that cannot always be controlled.
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I here and now nominate Richmond Road to travel the world and remove everyone’s weapons. (sorry, just kidding).
It is all very ugly. I wish you could just remove all the bad stuff.
These issues are reality, and it sucks.
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I’m on it.
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Good. Cuz you’re wearing me down. 🙂
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I’ll go back to my corner.
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But I’ll stick with my nuclear weapon analogy. True, bombs don’t start wars, people do. The same can be said of guns.
But, you see, I have this fascination with nuclear weapons. Ballistic missiles in general, in fact. Rocket launchers, hand grenades … all that sort of stuff. And I want to become a collector. Now, I know that they are really, really dangerous (that’s part of the fascination, I suppose) but I’m a very reliable chap. I’ll pass any police check you put in front of me. And I promise to keep them locked away tightly. And I’ll make absolutely sure that I keep them away from the kiddies.
It will be a small private collection. 3 or 4 nukes max.
Is that OK?
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Sure enough.
You can even learn to build your own on the internet. All you need is the nuclear material.
If you need help, just call me. I am a retired US Air Force B-52 bombardier and Nuclear Weapons Officer/Instructor. Now you can complain about that.
I waved when I did that flyover in Darwin, NT back when (about 40 years ago). 🙂
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Ha ha! No, no complaints. My father was a highly decorated WWII bomber pilot, but he never talked about it much. I questioned him about it one day, thinking it may be rude asking people about experiences that they might have found disturbing.
“ No!” he said, “Not at all. I loved every minute of it! I was sad when it ended!”
So I’m not about to complain about your former career.
I’ll keep you up to speed on progress with the bomb collection. But I might need your expert advise on some of the more complicated stuff. I’m assuming that the red button is the one to be careful of.
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🙂
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I didn’t finish. I don’t promote the phrase about guns. Don’t recall saying it. Normal law abiding citizens have the right to own guns. It is our law. But things have gotten out of hand.
Our great country was built on more than what you say. But that is not the point.
Anyway…. have a nice day. 🙂
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Your great country was, indeed built on many things, and continues to positively inspire others from all over the planet. I hope I did not seem to be suggesting otherwise.
And yes, I understand that private gun ownership is legal in your country (ours too, but far more restrictively). The question at hand, I would have thought, is whether that law is actually serving you well and whether a change of law might be worth thinking about.
We did actually change our gun laws here. The sky didn’t cave in. 99% of people didn’t even notice.
But here’s the thing …. Mass shootings in Australia from 1981-1996 =12 (before the change in law) in America 1981-1996 =24. From 1996-2013 (after the change in law) Australia =0. America=50.
I know that statistics like these can be highly misleading. But surely it’s worth some serious thought.
Here’s another one …. a bit more confronting, perhaps …. in Mexico in 2022 there have been 8 school shootings. In South Africa 6. These are alarming numbers. The number in Australia is zero (but we are not immune). The number in America is 288.
So, with all due respect – I understand that you have gun laws, but I don’t really care what they say. Because they don’t work. They need to be changed and changed drastically.
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Ok, Richmond. But this is obvious. We have a problem. Come on over here and solve it. I will be eternally grateful. For the record:
The latest nut job was in a classroom with children for 40 minutes while well-armed cops tried to figure out what to do. So much of armed guards helping much.
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Yes. Armed guards at a school. Great plan. Dealing with the symptom and not the cause. As for coming over there and solving the problem ….. I have been there maybe 100 times and love the place, but I don’t profess to be in any position to solve the problem other than to point out that systems in other countries seem to work a lot better. Cultural, historical and political barriers are daunting, to be sure, but not insurmountable. It’s another country, but not another planet.
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This article may interest/amuse you, Bill.
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/world-news/aus-enjoys-another-peaceful-day-under-oppressive-gun-control-regime/
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Interesting. I’ve not seen or heard the phrase “god given gun rights” before reading that. It is a (US) constitutional right and even that is subject to contextual interpretation. For the record, automatic weapons are not legal.
Yay Aussies. Boo Yanks. 🙂
You need to understand that I am hearing this drum beat all day, every day. We are talking and talking, getting nowhere and nothing is done. Again. Just words. The deniers are out already claiming all sorts of nonsense, none of it true.
What you folks down-under do is your business. If you think the solution here is to take away the guns. Fine. That is not reality. It will not happen. But you have my blessing.
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Assault weapons should be off limits to everyone but the military. They are made for mass killing, who the hell needs assault rifles unless the Intent is to do a lot of killing.
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I agree. But so what? That is not going to happen. But a key point—-
Military assault weapons, when not restrained by treaty or international law, are often fully automatic, of large bore, and high capacity ammunition feed (clips). Civilian guns are semiautomatic. I’m not sure of clip capacity, but there have been efforts to limit that. I think it failed to reach 60 senate votes.
“Should be.” Right. Will be? Not a chance.
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So what? I don’t need your technical weapons info. There’s 50 Republican Senators that don’t give a Damn about women’s rights or dead children. It makes me want to vomit.
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They did not put themselves there.
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they were elected by the radical right conservative Qanon’ , white supremist Christian redneck Con man Trump loving Ass holes that have crawled out of the woodwork in Texas, Florida, etc.
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🙂
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I wouldn’t give up all hope, certainly not in regard to women’s rights, anyway. We just had an election here and, much to the amazement of the losing Conservative party, it turns out that alienating 50% of the voting public is not a good campaign ploy. If they could have discounted all the women’s votes (and why not? I mean … what would women know? They’re just women) they would have won by a mile. It turns out people are concerned about destroying the planet too. Who would have thought?
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Bill, as a fellow Texan (8th-generation), I hear and deeply FEEL your words of hopelessness, anger, despair, and incessant endless frustration. It has all literally aged me (living in this god dayum EFFED-UP state!) 15 more years for the vast majority of my 59-yrs of life. You summed it all up exceptionally well and with pin-point accuracy: TEXAS.
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Thanks, Professor.
Eighth gen? Wow. That must go back a ways.
I’m not even native (but married one). Like the song says, I can checkout any time I like, I just can never leave. 🙂
I’ve been reading a lot of Larry McMurtry (In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas; Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond; etc.). The mystique of this state is amazing. His take is interesting in my opinion. 🙂
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If McMurtry and Benjamin are 5th- to 9th-generation Texans, then I’m SURE they know very well the “mystique of [Texas],” especially incorporating the native Tejanos (of old Mexico & Spain) as well as the numerous indigenous tribal people here going back a millenia or so. 🙂 Those are all too often stories (intentionally) overlooked, ignored in Texas’ white-washed (if you will) recently rewritten histories (the Texas 1836 Project) of Tejas/Tayasha.
During and prior to Governor Ann Richards (1991–1995) this state wasn’t ANYTHING like it is today and since 1995, obviously. And honestly Bill, most Texans today are NOT the nutcases we see on TV, social-media, in magazines, etc., or in our (very Red) State Congress, the Governor’s house and Lt. Governor’s house. And very sadly, since 1995, most of our GOP politicians running the state are no more than 1st- to 3rd-, maybe a handful of 4th-generation Texans. IOW, Texas has been invaded, so to speak, by businessmen & politicians from the traditional Deep South and the Conservative Midwest, Northeast, and now even the West. It’s a freakin’ infestation I tell ya, and has been since the early 1990’s! 😉
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I believe Benjamin was a German. But he wrote and essay about storytellers. That was the theme of the book.
I’ve lived in Texas (on and off) for about 40 of my 75 years. I was a big fan of Ann R.
I agree with all you said. 🙂
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Why not start by banning the manufacture of all projectile weapons. There are already more gums in Ametica than there are people. What need is there for more?
I have no idea how long it takes to manufacture a gun or rifle or AK-47, but surely even the army already has enough. More guns does nothing for anyone. If this goes on, there will soon be more guns than people in the world, if that is not already true. And the majority of those guns are owned by Americans! How does that make any sense?
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Such an action would never happen in the U.S. because the GUN MANUFACTURERS would never allow it. And THEY support the politicians.
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Stranger things have hapoened. What it takes is finding the right action to make it happen. IF we never look for the right action because we already gave up, no one will ever find it. I believe a way not only can be found, BUT MUST BE FOUND!
Don’t be the barrier. BE THE CURE!
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I’m with rawgod on this one. It CAN happen. Influence is what has allowed it to happen in the first place and influence is what can it unhappen. We are still living, technically at least, in democracies. If every eligible voter made a vow to cast their vote to any party that promised to ban private gun ownership then the rules would change at the next election, and more likely well before then.
Now, of course, nobody expects 100% of people to feel like that. Not even (astonishingly to me) 50%. 30% would do it. But even that, I admit, is a big ask. But we should never stop asking. Believe it or not, gun manufacturers do not rule the country. You do.
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Hello Rawgod. I heard something today that I find very interesting. The number of guns in the US has greatly increased, but the number of people who own guns has not. So it seems that a small number of people own a lot of firearms and ammo in the US. Makes me wonder. Hugs
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I wish that number were small, Scottie, but it is not. Not a majority, but still a VERY LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE OWN AN EVEN GREATER NUMBER OF GUNS AND OTHER PROJECTILE WEAPONS! As long as a particular political party is willing to sell their very soul for power, it makes it hard to change those numbers. THEREFORE, the key is to destroy that political party. Wipe it right off the political map! You have the numbers to do that. MAKE IT HAPPEN!
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Hi Scottie. I heard another thing, probably from the same source: there are more guns in America than people.
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Hello Nan. I agree mostly with your assessment as you know because we have discussed this. The only thing I would say differently is while I don’t want a total ban on guns and don’t think such things work, I would like some restriction on guns with some aspects. I don’t care about the name of the firearm; I care about its abilities with a normal user. So to be practical what restrictions on gun abilities would be acceptable. Things that make shooting and killing a lot of people in a short period of time. Let’s face it if you need large clip magazines with 15 to 30 bullets and near automatic fire to successfully hunt an animal (including humans) or enjoy sport shooting you really need to get much better at it. So lower clip amounts, make it so it takes more time to reload, slow down the refire rate. Now I am not a gun expert nor even interested in firearms and there is a lot of differences between long barrel guns and pistols, so I will defer to those who know much more about their construction. My point is simply we don’t need to take away all guns, and I at least don’t want to do that.
As to the politics Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz both called for more guns as a solution to the guns killing people issue. Paxton claimed shooters won’t follow gun or murder laws so why have them and instead he promoted the idea that teachers should be armed and ready to kill. Let me mention this guy is pushing to ban all access of women to abortion including access to the medical abortion pills, but don’t think that laws against or restricting things stops the people from doing them. WTF??? Ted Cruz wants to turn schools into prisons. Really he wants more armed police in the schools but in cases where schools had armed officers shootings still happened and people still died. And the great governor of Texas wants schools with only one access or exit. Well that would be a nice shooting gallery if the shooter got to the door first and it would make fire drills an all day affair.
Plus none of these things address the idea that in the US even going to the grocery store you could be shot. The situation has bec0ome that nowhere in the US are people safe, because the right wing media and right wing politicians want everyone armed. The courts recently said making people wait until they are 21 to buy a fire arm is illegal as it interferes with their rights. Hugs
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Hi Scotties. I think that we are more or less on the same page with this. Somewhere within the same paragraph, anyway. But I don’t really understand it when you (and a lot of others) say ‘I don’t want a total ban on guns’.
My question is …. why not?
If the answer is because it’s not possible, then fair enough. But that doesn’t you don’t ‘want’ it, but rather that you are acknowledging the great difficulties in achieving it. Everybody (well … not quite everybody) would like to see nuclear weapons removed from the planet but none of us have really figured out how to do that, so we have lots of workarounds that we hope will prevent Armageddon. So far so good. But it’s not what we ‘want’.
If you are worried about people’s sporting enjoyment being infringed then yes, that would be a sad side effect. But not a tragic one. And what we are trying to prevent is unimaginable tragedy.
If you think people need them for self protection then I would strongly disagree. The person with hands held high in the air is far less likely to get shot than the one shuffling for the gun in her handbag. If there is a gun in the house the person most likely to be shot is someone living in that house.
So yes. I do want a total ban on privately owned guns. I understand the difficulties. I don’t expect it to happen next week. But I still want it.
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I happen to live with someone who enjoys and appreciates guns and (for whatever reason) simply likes having a collection of various handguns, rifles, and shotguns. He especially enjoys target shooting and has considered entering competition. All his guns are kept in a gun safe. For him, gun ownership is like a hobby. And there are thousands of others just like him.
It pretty much goes without saying that he is adamantly against the removal of all guns. From his perspective, HE is not the problem and never will be.
The problem we’re facing are the individuals who see guns as a weapon. And then the question becomes … how do you recognize and sort out these people? Background checks undoubtedly sort out some of them … but as we’ve (sadly) experienced, not enough of them.
And then we come up against politicians that feel MORE guns in MORE people’s hands is the answer!
At this point, all I can do is agree with the lady’s comment at the beginning of this post.
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I do understand that, and I think most gun owners are probably very responsible and trustworthy. But the fact remains that lots of guns do end up in the wrong hands. So whilst the surrender of all weapons would be a great impost on a lot of people who pose no danger to society themselves it is a bit more important than ‘for whatever reason’.
The very idea of a ‘gun culture’ is bizarre to just about every person on the planet not living in the USA, so you have to understand that for us the collection of deadly weapons, particularly those designed specifically to kill human beings, comes across as bizarre.
I honestly am not meaning to be disrespectful or rude, I dare say that if I was brought up in the USA I would feel the same. But I wasn’t and I was hoping that a foreign perspective might shed some light on things – helpful or not.
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I think many of us DO recognize the gun culture in the U.S. is far different from other countries. But it’s important to recognize that this culture has been growing and festering for many years, so to “find a cure” is definitely not going to come overnight. Especially when there are politicians that fight us every step of the way!
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I confess. I own weapons: two shotguns, a 30/06, a .22 rifle, and a .357 Colt Revolver. You don’t have to be a white supremacist or a Christian to own firearms. My first weapon ever was a Daisy cal.BB. Red Ryder. I don’t have it now. /s
I’m not afraid someone would come after them. (They would never get by the dogs.) I do think we need regulation. We regulate just about everything, and in most cases it is necessary. This idea in some minds that the 2nd is tied us all running to the mantle, grabbing our muskets to fend off the Russians, Aliens, or whoever is coming next. Do we still need our personal small arms in the day of nuclear (nueclar) bombs? Maybe, Shit happens. But I hope none of us need to be told when it would be appropriate. Damn, what a thought that is. People who own weapons and do not know when it is appropriate to use them? Those are the people we need to keep separate from firearms.
You’ve had a whiz-bang conversation, Nan. Good work, and a pat on the back.
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Hello Richmond Road. I don’t want a total ban because I don’t think it is necessary to achieve the goal and it interferes with the idea that the gun / firearm is a tool. The goal is to stop the mass shootings of humans and people being afraid of being shot in public spaces in the US. The goal is to stop the hunting of humans with a weapon designed to kill large numbers of people quickly. That is why the argument that people can kill with a knife also doesn’t work, the answer is not so many so quickly.
As Nan mentioned there are people who enjoy the hobby of guns. I myself have owned guns in the past and I use to go to the military gun ranges / gun clubs with friends and make a day of it having fun target / skeet shooting. But more importantly in a lot of the rural areas of the US and there are still a lot of the country that have more land than people, the gun is not a status symbol / bragging right, but it is simply a tool. Most farms and country homes when I was growing up had several kinds for different jobs. I do not want to take that away any more than I think we should take shovels away from people. Hugs
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Yes, but most people, world wide, seem to manage just fine without those tools. If shovels provided a simple means of killing human beings I’d be all for banning them too.
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Hello Richmond Road. I disagree with you. People all over the world had and most countries still have firearms of some types. They may have more restrictions and have more controls, but they have guns. They may not have publicly available near military grade weapons, but they have guns of some types. Also shovels can be used to kill people, almost anything can, but as I said it is the number of people killed in the short span of time from a larger distance is what makes near military style guns the problem. There is not a use for a functional AR-15 gun in the hands of the public other than to kill a lot of people quickly. But there are needs for shot guns or long range rifles on farms. There is no harm in hobby shooting with normal firearms.
You asked me why I did not want to ban all firearms, and I explained my reasons. Some firearms have uses and not all firearms are equal. The way firearms are viewed is not equal. For most owners of guns a firearm is a tool with a specific use which should be stored properly, but far too many people have gotten the idea that the firearm is equal to their manhood and their freedom. How it is that I don’t understand but they do have that feeling.
And because of their misunderstanding of the tool they do not respect it so don’t store it correctly nor use it properly. Instead of banning the tool, I want it regulated as to where it can be used. There is no need to take your gun and 150 rounds to subway to order a sandwich. In the average life of a person in the US you simply do not need to carry a gun around all the time. Just as you don’t take a farm tractor on an interstate highway or carry a shovel everywhere you go. We have learned to control things that are dangerous in the US with the exception of guns. We can learn to control them also. Hugs
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Have you ever tried to kill someone with a shovel? It’s harder than it looks!
But yes, you’re right – in the average life of a person anywhere in the world you don’t need to carry a shovel around everywhere you go. Or a gun. I wonder if your country has more shovels than guns….. it might be close.
What I am saying is that banning all guns WOULD work very well, but I don’t expect it to happen anywhere, and America least of all. So I see it as an unachievable ideal – and one should always strive for ideals.
Now … apparently there are more guns in America than people. How many of those people actually NEED a gun (I’m not talking about those who would just like one)? Maybe 1%? 2%? 3% tops, I would think. How about we compromise and get rid of 90% of the guns? That would mean that there’s legally about 3 or 4 times the amount actually needed. How about 80%? That would mean you were left with about double per capita of what we have here, where both farmers and people going to pick up a Big Mac seem to be coping OK.
Reasonable?
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Scottie, you wrote: In the average life of a person in the US you simply do not need to carry a gun around all the time.
At its core, I agree with you. But the way things are going in this country, it’s gotten to the point where no one knows for sure if they will return home from grocery shopping — and that’s why some folk DO (discreetly … I’m not referring to those idiots who sling an AR-15 over their shoulder everywhere they go!) carry a gun. PLEASE understand that I’m not defending these individuals because I can see a LOT of disadvantages with this thinking. But to some, they see it as self-protection.
Of course, what is so WRONG about all this comes right back to the core issue that’s being discussed in this blog post.
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Hello Nan. This response is long but covers a lot, I hope you will read it. Thanks.
I do understand what you are saying. It is a discussion Ron and I have had. There is the fear that there are gun nuts carrying guns now everywhere we go it seems. We both carried weapons when we were young for work reasons. We both feel we could be responsible, get the required training, keep up with it, store the weapons correctly as we have a bolted down home safe. But we decided against it. First in an active shooter situation carrying a gun or having it out makes you a target from both the bad guys and the responding police officers who have to figure out the shooters doing the crime from the bystanders with guns. But Nan the real reason is we have health issues we did not have when we were young. We both have shakes and tremors in our hands that sometimes are very little but sometimes much worse, I walk with a cane and my balance is not good with sometimes my legs giving out. We realized that in an active fire situation our accuracy will not be as good as it needs to be to make sure we hit the target and not a bystander.
Nan I have posted often enough of people who carry guns thinking they will be the good person with a gun, that they will be the John Wayne / Rambo hero of every bad situation. Yet in every situation that happens those people become not only a danger to everyone else, but they also violate every principle of legal use of a gun. In an active shooter situation many things happen in the body, adrenaline surges, the heart rate surges, simply put the extreme fear causes the mind to play tricks on a person and the body to not act properly. Even without someone shooting at you as has been mentioned here most often a gun bought to protect the home ends up killing someone in the home. Most people are simply not as good in a crisis as they imagine they are, and the movie heroes are pretend / scripted not real life.
The myth that the NRA tries to push, and the Republicans echo, is everyone would be safer if everyone carried. But that simply is wrong. Think of the everyday interactions that cause anger and conflict. Someone cuts in line, someone hits a car with a shopping cart, someone takes the parking spot you are waiting for, someone disrespects you, someone gets road rage, the boss really pisses you off, the customer gets in your face for their mistake you did not make. Everything causes anger and frustration. Look at the angry response of the anti-mask people at being required to wear masks in stores. They threatened minimum wage store workers. They trashed store displays. They went in gangs to cause trouble. Now imagine all of them armed and everyone they got into the face with was armed. My Cats, the carnage every day would be worse than anything we would see in a hellish dystopian movie like Mad Max.
But that is the world the Republicans and greed of the gun manufacturers are driving us too. But one thing to think about. These very people in charge who are pushing the idea of 2nd amendment being a supreme right, of no gun controls at all for the public, of arming teachers and more guns in schools, where do these people not allow guns? Around them! The NRA bans guns at its conventions. Guns are banned for the public in the US capital and government buildings. Those press conferences of Greg Abbott, no guns allowed. Those politicians and people are afraid they will be shot by people with the very guns they demand everyone be able to carry else in public to threaten you and the public with.
They don’t care because they think it won’t hit them as you said before. They have private security and government security paid for by the state / taxpayer. You don’t. The people don’t, so they will just have to be afraid that the politicians will use the issue for more votes, more guns will flood the public areas, more adults and more kids will die while the elites rake in the donor money and the guns profits continue. I just read that guns and ammo sales soared after the recent shootings as people try to protect themselves. That used to be the government’s job. Not anymore it seems. Hugs
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I read it ALL! And it was a very good comment. You said a lot of things that many of us fail to consider. Especially the part (at least for me) that these loud-mouthed politicians are protected 24-7!
It’s just too bad that such sane thinking often gets buried when discussing emotional and problematic topics.
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Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children in the US and have been since 2020. The time to do something about this is long past. Every time I hear about another of these horrific incidents I think that this will be the the tipping point where people will decide that the cynical, greedy bastards in state legislatures and in congress will be thrown out of office and replaced by people who actually care about the people they are supposed to represent. And every time I think that, it seems I am wrong. Makes me want to weep. It really does.
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We all weep. That part about getting rid of the greedy bastards? Good. That happens at the polls.
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America is an ugly country under the rule of a power hungry greedy Republican congress who recently voted against a gun regulation bill, everyone of them. As long as the NRA fills their coffers with blood money they will lie and cheat for them. Weaponizing the US population is more important than women’s rights and children’s lives. These bastards don’t have a child in public school. They spit in our face with their empty “prayers” and bully Democrat’s to not politicize the killings which is just what they are doing. Every GOP congressmen is on the payroll of the NRA, they will soon gather at an NRA “meeting”. They have the blood of children on there hands.
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I woke up this morning and thought about the murder of Raymond Floyd. I thought that a murder committed on live television would be a landmark event, revisited on each anniversary. But we have so many sanctioned killings now that no one event stands out from one week to the next. Society is overwhelmed by the continuous flow of atrocities initiated by capitalists, rogue theists, and grifter politicians that we are tempted to conclude that the NRA, the Church, and the GOP are right, that nothing can be done. Because that is what they all want us to believe. Do not cry out to God.He/She/It is on their side.
See Nick Anderson’s Cartoon for today, The Groomers. Succinct.
https://www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2022/05/26
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HoH,
I hear you deeply and agree & empathize with all you’ve said here (as an 8th-generation Texan too). After at LEAST 56-years and Charles Whitman, the 1966 Tower-shooter on the UT campus, the slaughter of innocents has NOT been reduced or stopped by “MORE GUNS and their access more easily obtained (in Texas)“! No, and again NO!
It is obviously much, much worse now. Just ask the parents of those Uvalde victims, their families, and then go back at least 56-years and ask the some 311,000+ to 500,000 estimated (by mental health professionals) living, affected, survivors of school and church massacres in this country… and their immediate family-members. 😢
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“ VALDE, Texas (AP) — Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s rampage killed 19 children and two teachers, witnesses said Wednesday, as investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
“Go in there! Go in there!” nearby women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who saw the scene from outside his house, across the street from Robb Elementary School in the close-knit town of Uvalde. Carranza said the officers did not go “
Cowards let those kids die. Fly your flag.
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Yep, and whatever is concluded that WAS NOT done to save those 9 thru 11-yr old lives, the fact will ALWAYS remain that a newly 18-yr old boy (with severe mental-illness) was able to EASILY purchase TWO AR-15 assault rifles and 375-rounds of ammunition (high-capacity magazines) and WALK into an unlocked back door of a Texas elementary school, then into a doubled-classroom (two teachers) and tell all those little children and two teachers…
“It’s time to die“ and then opened-fire on all 19 little kids… a 2nd- or 3rd-grader boy inside that classroom later testified.
I’m not a trained ex-military, velcroed-up, tactical combat veteran like many in our law-enforcement or SWAT teams, etc., but even I know, in an emergency Do-or-Die-NOW situation like that… just three (armed?) men MUST and CAN bum-rush the gunman—taking fire of course—in order to STOP the slaughter of MORE innocent, youthful lives! It’s a NO BRAINER for me. It HAS to be done, immediately when you have at least three volunteering to do so.
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Those people pleaded to get to the children but were held back By Texas Cowboys who should have been in the school engaging the killer. Now They are trying to distract and postpone but they will have to answer for their cowardice and so will the state of Texas.
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I really hope their accountability WILL be held up HoH, I really do. But knowing Texas (pseudo) politics, I have my doubts. Sad to say but too many “Good Ole Boys” (of one demographic) in positions of power and control here. And yes, they most definitely WILL deflect, divert, and drag it out until Americans and Texans soon forget… AGAIN, just as we (and the news media) have done with Ukraine, Zelensky, and Putin.
Then next month when this level of psychotic carnage happens once again somewhere in the U.S., we’ll all be fed the exact same generic responses, reactions, “government talking,” thoughts & prayers, it’s a “mental-illness problem”—that of course NEVER gets publicly fully addressed (by the real professionals!) or funded by the SAME political party’s rhetoric!—while MORE weapons of mass carnage will keep being sold or stolen or DIY’d in garages and put in hands of all the wrong people. Repeat, ad infinitum ad nauseum. 😔
Yet HoH, I still do hold glimmers of hope that HALF of voting, civically-engaged decent Americans wake-up and FORCE our (supposedly) representative state-federal governments to act and ACT ASAP… instead of sitting on couches at home complicit and/or self-absorbed in their own tiny work-social bubbles IGNORING what’s decaying around them! I see this happening and have seen it happened in Texas for well over 20-25 years, especially all throughout rural Texas’ small towns and 5,000-acre ranches.
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When I read about this horrific event the article pointed out that this was ‘the worst school shooting since….’ and it occurs to me that Americans might not realise how foreign that sentence sounds to virtually everyone else on the planet. To most of us is sounds no different to saying, ‘the biggest interstellar war since …’ or ‘the worst collision with another planet since ….’ We understand, theoretically, that these events might occur – but they never actually do. The reason they don’t is because the odds of all the factors requiring such an event to occur to come together is incredibly small. Not so in the USA.
And I disagree with you Nan. Banning all guns WOULD prevent further instances. Sure, guns would exist on the underground and criminals would get their hands on them …. but not confused and disgruntled school children, not drunken husbands with a grudge, not your average tough kid on the street.
But banning guns altogether seems a lofty aim. So we need to establish just who is a ‘responsible gun owner’. I mean, who the fuck really needs a gun??? The only viable argument here is for farmers, although even that is questionable. Almost nobody needs a gun.
And the NRA …. who the fuck are these people???? What are they on about???
In the USA you have ‘gun shows’ …. does anyone realise how bizarre that concept sound to most of us? Travelling salesmen who have got out of the vacuum cleaner business and now flog deadly weapons to Mr and Mrs Ordinary whilst they’re sipping on a sofa and eating a hot dog. It’s crazy.
And don’t blab on about the constitution. Change it. It’s already an amendment. Amend it again. Any idiot would realise that the founding fathers could have had no concept as to how what the misreading of their original words would lead to.
Have a look at television, have a look at movies. What percentage of them contain guns? How often is the subtle message pushed forward that guns are good? That guns sort right from wrong? It all dates back to the Westerns we watched as kids. The hero with a six shooter who shot the villian (or sometimes an indigenous person with a rifle) galloping by on a horse 50 metres away? It was buiishit. It never happened. It’s still bullshit.
As I say …. virtually nobody needs a gun. If owning a gun is somehow a constitutional right then so, surely, is owning a fleet of fully armed F15s or a silo of intracontinental missiles. And so it should be, because if maintaining a free state really becomes a necessity then it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the ‘well regulated militia’ of good ole boys riding into town on pickup trucks carrying guns.
Here’s an idea. Figure out just who these ‘responsible gun owners are’, make sure they are suitably trained and licensed. Give everybody else a chance to hand back in their guns. Buy them back, in fact.
After that, anybody carrying a gun (a devise that’s only real purpose is to kill, let me remind you) should be treated as though guilty of attempted murder.
I think the number of ‘school shootings’ might start to dwindle after that.
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I won’t deny that you make some excellent points; however, in this country, banning guns simply will not happen. The ONLY way it could come to pass is if we were to (somehow!) get an entirely different group of politicians.
But above and beyond the banning guns idea, there ARE responsible gun-owners who use them for target shooting, collecting (mostly old guns), and yes, for hunting deer, birds, etc. (Personally I have my own reservations about the last one, but it is a legitimate activity.)
Buying back guns has been proposed in the past but has never gone anywhere. Others have commented that if the price were high enough, it might work. But again, it would have to be a political action and, well, the $$$$ from the NRA is just toooo appealing.
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Yeah, I know. But one should never say never. And there is actually a way to get an entirely different bunch of politicians.
And I know, also, that there are many responsible gun owners with (sort of) legitimate reasons for owning weapons. Probably the vast majority of them are ‘responsible’ (I would argue that the only truly ‘responsible’ thing would be to not own a deadly weapon) and yes, this might spoil all their fun with shooting at bits of paper and slaughtering animals for sport). Sorry.
I assure you, also, that were I to be entrusted with a few nuclear weapons (I’m a bit of a collector, you see) I could be absolutely trusted with them. I have no criminal history, no record of wanton violence, no (thus far diagnosed) mental illness and am blessed with intelligence only marginally below average. I’m quite a good guy.
Are you happy for me to have a few H-bombs in the back shed? I’m willing to pay top dollar.
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RR,
I was just joking (but then I actually WASN’T) with a couple of friends here in Kerrville, TX, that…
It is much much easier for a 16-18 yr old to obtain an assault rifle or weapon of mass carnage in Texas than it is to obtain your Driver’s License (or required identification) in order to vote, state-wide or federally, inside Texas.
My friends laughed with stunned faces, but then they realized I was not joking in the least. 🤦♂️ SMH
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Alarming indeed! And people point out that, regardless of restrictions, criminals will still get their hands on guns. Which is true, though probably not as many of them. But criminals aren’t the problem. Criminals use guns as a coercive tool to run their businesses – they don’t really have much interest in killing innocent citizens on mass just for the sake of it.
Mind you …. those driver’s licence tests can be pretty tough ….
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We will NEVER ban firearms in this country, but we sure as hell can do a better job regulating them. Some firearms — assault weapons come to mind — and high capacity magazines should be banned. Male brains are still developing into their twenties. It makes sense, then, to up the age for firearm purchase to 21 or 25. We could limit the bulk purchase of ammo. Put an end to the gun show/private sale loophole. So many things we could do, yet nothing happens. Here in Ohio, Republicans did away with concealed carry permits — welcome to the Wild West — and are considering numerous bills to lessen restrictions on gun ownership.
As I thought about the young children who were murdered, I thought of my thirteen grandchildren, many of whom are the ages of the children killed. My emotions range from weeping to rage to despair. What has become of this nation of ours? 😢😢
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Bruce, thank you visiting and chiming in. And yes, I agree. There are MANY things we COULD do, but … don’t. I really think the only way we’ll get past this is when one of these events “hits home.” But even then, there are those who most likely would just dig their heels in even deeper and demand that guns are the answer, not the problem.
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Hello Nan & Bruce & all. The idea that the wild west was awash with guns is a movie / TV fantasy to show the good guys always won over big odds. But the truth is that the west was not that wild and was very gun controlled. Many large towns with their own law enforcement had rules on carrying guns in the town, often flat out prohibiting it. Plus guns and ammo were expensive and thought of as tools, not the way we think of them today as relatively easy to get status symbols. People did not waste ammo back then. Remember it was not a 10 minute drive to the nearest suppliers, they had a long journey to stores or they had to wait for mail order. It frustrates me the idea of the wild gun touting west of people always carrying guns and shooting them off all the time because it is not true. But movies and TV shows have convinced generations that it is the way the US was founded. Hugs
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I use the phrase in a colloquial sense to portray the libertarian, every man for himself, mentality that drives much pro-gun thinking. I didn’t use the phrase in a strict historical sense. That said, my brother was the Marshall of Tombstone for ten years. Arizona is an open carry state. He would tell you that dealing with armed residents and tourists was very much like the wild Wild West portrayed on TV. He actually had people challenge him to a gunfight. Not cool.
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Hello Bruce. I understand. And the story about your brother shows just how dangerous the idea of everyone in the public carrying a gun really can be. A Mad Max movie hellscape. Hugs
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You’re absolutely right, Scottie. The “Wild West” was almost a complete invention first by the pulp magazines of the late 19th century, which was then continued by movie companies, radio, then television. A lot of communities out west had complete bans on firearms inside of the city limits. Gun fights? They basically didn’t happen. The image of two men ‘slapping leather’ in a gun fight was an invention of the pulp magazines and movies in the early 20th century
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What has become of this nation of ours is that we have been taken unawares. Society is the victim of the insidious plot of the cabal of political power, church, and capitalism. James Madison said awhile back that ‘crisis is the working environment of the tyrant,’ Something like that. But in today’s society, no one can claim ignorance of the events we see unfold. We know it is members of that cabal who work against any positive action to aid, protect, or educate us. Upholding the constitution has been transformed into an idea of socialism, as though a level playing field was a crime or a sin, or both. We have seen Christianity turned into an arm of government that can exclude whoever it wishes. We have seen capitalism buy up all access to equality: they own our politicians, our justices, and our religious (read Christian, as it is the only acceptable religion.) leaders. Our constitution calls for progressive legislation, but Progressive politics has been made anathema. Unless we can change the course in the next election we can look at Russia today and see where we are going headlong.
We may be discouraged but we are not doomed.
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Saw this today, but he’s a democrat, so it won’t matter.
“Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate—why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority—if your answer is that as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?…What are we doing? What are we doing?…Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this?…I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely….Spare me the bulls— about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness, because we don’t—we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different…This only happens in this country and nowhere else…Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue.”
-Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) on the floor of the Senate 5/24/22
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I saw this video — and the passion. But unfortunately, the “other side” simply cannot relate. For them, the “freedom” of the “Second Amendment” is what people should honor — even though we all know they have totally “reworked” its original purpose.
What is mind-boggling is the people who were directly affected by these horrible mass shootings -in TEXAS!- continue to believe the political position that we need MORE guns in MORE places!!!
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John made the most salient comment
Sandy Hook was the line in the sand.
If any genuine moves are made to curtail gun ownership as in Japan then I could quite easily envisage some sort of mini civil war erupting.
Gun control?It won’t happen.
Moving on…
Whose kiddy will be the next to die in agun massacre.
Place your bets …
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Actually Ark, my good Friend, Sandy Hook was merely the middle, if I may be so brashly insensitive (unintentionally). Columbine H.S. (April 1999) was the oft quoted start and wake-up call, BUT it’s even worse still sir, in Texas especially. Case & point, Aug. 1966, Austin, Texas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
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Ah, yes. So many deaths; one tends to blur into an other after a while.
A cultural feature of the US landscape.
I wonder if such stats will eventually be part of every school prospectus?
“We are proud to be one of the hundred schools in America that have never experienced a mass shooting. Your child is almost guaranteed not to be slaughtered.”
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That dystopian image Ark is disturbingly and insanely close to being a reality! And I know you know, as well as the rest of the non-American world that…
The United States is the ONE and ONLY nation in the world right now—and has been for a decade or three—with this insane rising, orbital-ranking statistic of monthly (bi-weekly?) mass killings by Carte Blanche overabundant assault weapons or high-capacity weapons (in EVERYONES hands!) that almost equals our mass incarceration rates and overcrowded for-profit private prisons!!!
Then, to top that “proud” fact off… oh yeah, we are far and away the WEALTHIEST country on the entire planet! But you wouldn’t know it if you lived here… cuz only less-than 10% of our population owns this country’s GDP and legislation that governs it all. HAH!!!
America’s newest young adults today often ignorantly ask me: Who is Abraham Lincoln and what did he address at Getty’s Burgers? Think I’m kidding Ark?
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Abraham Lincoln designed a car,
didn’t he?
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Could you do me a favor and define an assault weapon?
After all your ATF can’t.
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Hi PaulGray,
As I mentioned over on your blog, I’m glad I went over there first before responding to you here. 🙂 Now to your question and peculiar, attached innuendo at the end of it.
If you haven’t already answered your own question in the last 3-4 hours since posting this, most all military veterans can explain (in detail) the “technical” specs and differences between an assault weapon and an assault rifle. But as I’ve learned over 5-decades with my own close military friends and family members who have served, several in multiple combat tours, being in Texas—a state and Texans who to no end LOVE TO THE HILT their personal arsenals of all types of weapons, vehicles, and artillery even if they’re not ex-military!—most of my life (8th-generation, my son is 9th), high-techy military lingo and talk usually makes no sense to the general public. Therefore, like my own father had to do with me, his civilian friends, etc, ex-mils have to dumb in down, so to speak, in order for non-veterans, non-military citizens to have a general idea. Unfortunately, some/much detailed specs & accuracy get lost or are sacrificed due to naivety. Hence, the constant (inaccurate?) confusion when it comes to the minutia… that honestly the civilian public don’t necessarily have to know. Call it a necessary ignorance; we can’t all know everything about everything. There are too many time and mental constraints on every single human’s life and pursuits. Hence, you must defer to the true experts in specific fields.
All that said PaulGray, here’s one (of many) pared-down definition or differentiation of AW versus AR:
An assault rifle is a rapid-fire, magazine-fed rifle designed for military use. It is a shoulder-fired weapon that allows the shooter to select between semi-automatic (requiring you pull the trigger for each shot), fully automatic (hold the trigger and the gun continuously fires) or three-shot-burst modes.
Technically, there is no such thing as an assault weapon. What’s called an assault weapon (or sometimes an assault rifle) in reports on gun violence is a semi-automatic rifle that looks similar to the assault rifles used by the military. An AR-15 rifle, like one that has been used in many mass shootings over the decades, is an example of this type of weapon.
Now things begin to get a lot more TECHNICAL and into military lingos and weapons lingo.
Okay, so f it is not an automatic weapon, how does a shooter fire so many shots and kill so many innocent lives so fast? Answer:
Semi-automatic rifles can accommodate high-capacity magazines – compartments that hold cartridges. That allows the shooter to fire off dozens of rounds in a very short period of time. A Sig Sauer and an AR-15 magazine generally holds 20–30 rounds! There are magazines that can hold a lot more that many gun-fanatics can easily find, purchase, steal, or have them made in a home garage.*
The point here in this contrasting comparison is that diverting or burying the real, actual HUMANE perception and understanding of mass shootings and their high casualty rates in techy minutia MILITARY specs misses the national crisis all together… at the expense of the victims, their families, and the lifelong PTSD trauma/scars they will have to cope with for the rest of their lives—just like our military combat veterans do when they return to “normal(?)” civilian life.
Now I want to speak in general terms to a general audience, not personally directed at you PaulGray. Please understand that; thank you.
On another very related point at this juncture, the 2nd Amendment was written in 1791… when muskets fired one shot-of-ball then took 1.5 to 2-mins to reload… BY A WELL-TRAINED soldier in the field! 2nd Amendment muskets and inaccurate musket-balls are not even in the same GALAXY of specs and rates-of-fire! But all intelligent, reasonable 21st-century people know this; it’s a no-brainer, right? 😉
NO! It’s not… as we’ve seen over the last 4-5 decades and the problem is much much worse today than even 3-years ago, much less ten. 🙄🤦♂️
But having gone first to your blog PaulGray and reading your About Me page and 2-3 blog-posts, I would’ve thought you already KNEW all this… being a military veteran, yes? This begs the question, WHY did you bother to ask a question you (perhaps?) already know the answer to? Were you hoping I would indulge you so you can share your own personal opinions and thoughts? 😉
Btw, genuine deep gratitude for your military service sir. As I mentioned over on your blog, I come from families (maternal & paternal) PACKED with many active, retired, deployed, etc, etc, military men and women. I know more than the average civilian Joe just what you guys/gals volunteer to put yourselves through, so thank you… truly. ❤️
Okay, back over to you PaulGray! 🙂
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* – Source: https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/assault-weapon-vs-assault-rifle-what-is-difference/ERZB7FLQ4F6CTFHZ6SYBBCHERA/
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PT Warning … TOO LONG!!!
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Haha… yeah, thought you might slap me upside my head or shoulder Ma’am. 😉 Apologies. 🙏
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From a commenter on the WPO, which I thought was spot on.
“But this is exactly who we are. We are the place with more guns than people, where tens of thousands are murdered every year, and where arguments over parking spaces end in death. We’re the place where much of the gun legislation that passes ensures that almost anyone can take guns almost anywhere. We’re the place where candidates for office show their cultural bona fides by popping off rounds in campaign ads.
We’re not England or France or Canada or Denmark or Japan or Portugal or any other country. In those places, parents send their kids to school worried that they might catch a cold, or struggle with math problems, or face bullying. They don’t worry that someone will come into their child’s classroom with a weapon of war and tear their little bodies apart.”
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His last point about the children … maybe this is what anti-gun advocates need to start focusing on … the VERY REAL chance that after dropping a child off at school, that parent may never see the child alive again.
Certainly there are shootings happening at other places, but the emotional ties that parents have with their children might — just MIGHT– have an effect and get this country moving into establishing some sensible gun laws.
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Doubt it ..
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A position I’m sure the antichoice evangelicals as well as pro-choice progressives and can get behind for guns is pretty straight forward and put forward by Nev Schulman:
“How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion—mandatory 48-hour waiting period, parental permission, a note from a doctor proving he understands what he’s about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence…Let’s close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.”
See how easy compromise can be?
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I like it.
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Mmm, excellent points Tildeb. 👍🏻
I’ve made a few verbal similarities(?), contrasts(?)… to Pro-lifer’s here in rural Texas who are at the same time applauding Oklahoma’s newest abortion law(s). It’s like all the deep, blood-red states all want to ONE-UP each other on this growing Roe v Wade bandwagon. 🙄😒
Needless to say I got a lot of abrasive looks and mumbles afterwards.
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I think we need to change how we talk about this.
On Tuesday, 19 children died in the practice of child sacrifice on the altar of gun worship.
The constitution (first amendment) is says that there shall not be an established religion. But clearly gun worship has become an established religion, and child sacrifice is part of that religion.
It is well past time to disestablish the religion of gun worship.
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HEAR HEAR Neil! 👏🏻
All the vast statistics over the last 50-75 years of massacres in the USA show that “more and more weapons, in more and more hands of ordinary(?) citizens does NOT promote or solicit increased peace and non-violence.
And should I even mention the insane nightmare for legitimate, licensed law-enforcement first arriving at a chaotic mass shooting scene TRYING to determine Friend or Foe… IF everyone on scene was “Armed Citizen Security or Quasi-Police”!!!? Those are merely half-second decisions they are forced to make! And the MORE they must make those multiple half-second decisions, lasting what(?)… perhaps 2-5 minutes or even over 1-hour (cuz the real gunman is barricaded up)… how many more innocent lives are lost because law-enforcement spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME determining Friend or Foe?
What a diabolically, maddening, insane waste of valuable life-giving time lost for law-enforcement when figuratively EVERYBODY is legally “Armed Citizen Security or Quasi-Police”!!! 🤦♂️
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You are right, Nan, and of course, you knew that. We will ban guns just as we have banned all religions. Har-de-effin-har!
Guns, bombs, sticks, or any other weapon do not kill people. They are the weapons people create and choose to kill ‘other’ people. Prayers do not prevail, because there is no substance to them. Prayers only soothe the mind of the individuals making them.
I know you have read every post and I suspect you have come to the conclusion that the comments represent the reason we cannot move from top dead center. Ignorance, defeatism, and acceptance of the Right’s explanation that nothing can be done. They have shown us the belly of the beast. We now know beyond doubt, their agenda: the end of democracy. We know which party in the main is working to save it, and us, from oblivion. We do not have to accept their argument.
“Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.”
We know we live in a fucked up world, but we need to realize this didn’t happen in 2016, and we are not going to turn it around in 2022. We, liberal-minded people of all stripes, are going to have to practice democracy. Not the ‘democracy’ of our past, but the democracy that does not have exceptions and carve-outs for particular groups or individuals. We have to collectively get started up the hill with that damn rock. Step by tedious step. Unlike Sisyphus, we are not doomed to go it alone. I don’t believe in those more ancient gods, either. I do believe in humanity. I do believe that if we can resist reaching for the extremes we can do it.
I remember an incident on the bridge as we were caught in a storm and the Officer of the watch checked the compass and asked the helmsman, “What the hell are you doing 51 degrees off course, sailor!” He responded, “Coming back from 53 degrees off course, Sir.” At least that’s the way my Division Officer told it to me, as I was on the throttles in the engine room, s few rpm of the required speed. But we got to Naples on time by correcting course and speed. (I don’t know if Mr. Bartel was jerking me around or not.)
Now, if we are going to right the ship of state, it will be by degrees. Progress will come if we are determined.
You are covered up with editorials, huh? You asked for it. I hope we have delivered. Thanx.
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Look up Nick Anderson on Patreon and see The Groomers. If you like.
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(Nan, a Release of Liability Disclaimer here for my own ill-timed satire of Texas’ recently proud Wild Wild West rebel mentality here and apology if my humor isn’t taken correctly in the right mindset…see my above comments)
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Hey! Who all is going to the NRA Convention & Rally tomorrow in Houston, Texas!? Come one, come ALL you weapons-of-mass-carnage Lovers! Bring all your AR-15’s, your High-capacity (180-rounds) magazines and hold ’em HIGH in both arms with your 10-gal Cowboy hats on and boots with sparkly spurs glitterin’ so we can all shoot ’em off in the air at the George Brown Convention Center while screaming and waving Confederate flags that say:
“You Can Take My AR-15 Over My Dead Body & Those In Uvalde!!!”
And then scream in the same breath:
“This Is My 1791 Second Amendment Right with Muskets & One Musket-ball Every 2-2.5 Minute Reloads!!! Yeppers, Only In Texas, the Greatest State in the Union!!!”
Is it just me or does anyone else see the glaring, antichronistic, and horribly flawed logic by ardent Pro-Gunners and Carte Blanche gun-sellers to Carte Blanche buyers in Carte Blanche Texas?
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PT!! Have you not read that weapons are BANNED at this banquet of gun-lovers? I guess the organizers wanted to be sure none of the folks that want MORE and MORE guns put in the hands of the public would be protected from … other gun-lovers. 😖
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Haha! 😄 Actually, what I read and heard was that only when FORMER Prez tRumpelstiltskin was present and speaking that ALL forms of weapons were banned. BUT… that when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz were present and speaking, weapons WERE allowed… to show “solidarity & gun-lovin” for Texas! Woot woot!
(in his best Texas Yosemite Sam impersonation…)
“Consider yourself as lucky you rassa-frassin’ fur-bearin’ critter cuz you a gettin’ another chance from me to draw mize AR-15 guns my pistol-packin’ Granny gots me!” 🤠 (spits tobaccey into spitoon then unloads all 375-rounds into the big blue Texas sky!!!!!)
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Yes, it appears you may be correct based on some other sources I came across. But the one I first saw said they were banned … period. In any case, as usual, they’re talking out both sides of their mouth. Surprise! Surprise!
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Gun and knife crime is on the increase in the UK.
Worst thing about it is nearly all the weapons found are illegal.
But, do knife and gun laws work?
If you are a law abiding citizen probably.
Until you get taken out by one.
If you are a criminal or terrorist?
Have you stopped laughing yet?
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Paul,
To expand upon a few points I made elsewhere (on an alt-right blog that shut my comments down when I shared links to facts showing them up), the UK’s current murder rate is 1.2 per 100,000 people, of which, 0.5 involve knives. Knife crime is certainly a problem, but compared to US gun crime? The US murder rate is currently 5 per 100,000 people, and that’s with guns *only*. Guns make up 80% of US murders. Therefore, we can see that we are statistically far more likely to be murdered with a gun in the US, than murdered with a knife in the UK.
That’s before we even get into the subject of mass shootings.
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Statistics again? What is it about people that they believe official statistics.
Who gathers them, who interprets them, who decides what to release?
Statistics are like weather reports, at best a guess, at worse political BS.
Politics love them as they can prove whatever they want. If they don’t they simply change the parameters.
Anytime you want to walk with me round some of our less salubrious cities and townships, you let me know. Only bring your statistics with you as I know the rabid would love to read them as they are mugging you.
Bottom line here? People die, people get maimed, or injured.
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You can dismiss them all you want, but you haven’t actually demonstrated they are incorrect. They don’t exist in a vacuum – there are all sorts of ways in which data gets collected. If we are to judge the state of crime based on our personal experiences, I will draw entirely different conclusions to you, as will each and every single person out there. How would *you* propose we assess the seriousness and frequency of different types of crime, and thus assign appropriate resources to dealing with them?
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Oh go away, people like you justify what you want how you want. Blindly believing authorities, but have you spoken to victims families? Do you know of anyone personally who had a loss? Have YOU lost someone. Did my friends wife deserve a knife in the stomach because all she had was small change.
Go away.
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How about *you* justify your notions? If we are to cast doubt upon every piece of information to come our way, what’s next? Shall we let personal experience determine the age of the universe, or whether or not the earth is flat? F
Shall we assume that what happened in Texas was all a performance, for the benefit of a narrative?
Like I said, if you’re pouring scorn on the recorded information, it’s up to you to demonstrate that information is false. And for the record, yes, I *do* know people who’ve suffered because of knife crime. They suffered a terrible loss, and I don’t pretend it’s not a serious issue. However, that doesn’t alter the facts – we are a lot safer here, than in the US. I don’t know about you, but if we had loads of guns on our streets and in our society, I think that would make things a lot more dangerous, don’t you?
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WARNING: This blog is not a platform to simply argue differences in opinion. You have both stated your positions. Any further comments that are primarily argumentative will be deleted. References to sources that validate your personal position on this issue are always welcome.
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Should we all move to New Zealand?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/27/jacinda-ardern-wows-harvard-with-new-zealands-lesson-on-gun-control-and-democracy
Video of speech here.
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I fully support the banning of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. The buy back program in NZ is worth serious consideration. But this speech?
If one is going to promote a video of a speech by such a person as a leader of a government perhaps worthy of emulation, then I think it’s it’s only fair to look at what she’s saying in that speech and then see if that’s what her government under her direction is actually trying to do. You know: is it coherent? Her argument is that tribalism leads to social problems like mass shootings.
Arden says she’s against tribalism, Whew. But she then directs her government to foster tribalism by insisting that Mātauranga Māori is science and then implementing sweeping reforms throughout education to impose this false equivalency on everyone. She intentionally insulates this tribal move from any and all criticism of it by claiming such criticism is hate speech. How handy! She says a strong democracy must include a trust in institutions, experts, and government and then has her government do exactly the opposite by implementing a policy that tears down of the foundations of science and vilifies those who support science… in the name of supporting the right kind of tribalism! So she’s not against it. She’s against the wrong kind of tribalism. She’s for trust in experts unless they disagree with the right kind of tribalism. She trusts institutions enough to overhaul it to implement the right kind of tribalism.
This raises an important question: What is the wrong kind of tribalism? Well, the wrong kind if the kind that turns fiction into facts and facts into fiction.
She says that a blind faith in democracy ignores what happens when facts are turned into fiction and fiction turned into fact, yet that is EXACTLY what turning Mātauranga Māori into science is: turning its various creationism claims and mythical explanations into being equivalent to scientific facts. Changing the curriculum. Firing those who disagree. Then teaching the wrong kind of tribalism in the science classroom. That’s the right kind.
She tells Harvard students that that a strong democracy relies on debate and dialogue that even the oldest regimes seek to control, but that the youngest can seek to liberate them. Sounds good! Go forth and liberate! One might think she’s advocating for free speech. But no. Quite the opposite; her government is actively and by policy stifling ANY dialogue and urging disbarment for such experts that is critical about turning the wrong kind of tribal fiction into scientific fact!
She tells the students that social media is neither good nor bad but a tool – yet insists it is very bad media if it adheres to the kind of speech permitted by the First Amendment that she assumes to ‘causing’ the mosque shooting. So then she flips yet again and tries to use the latter to justify some unspecified brand of social-media censorship! Liberate by censoring! Bomb the village to save it.
I don’t know if she’s enthralled by the sound of her own voice but I suspect she doesn’t listen to herself or hear the hypocrisy and dishonesty she’s saying out loud. This is not a leader to emulate if one thinks coherence and what’s true matters.
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Of course you (and anyone) is free to express your opinion about this individual and/or her comments, but I personally did not derive the same impression as you from her speech. If I had, I most likely would not have posted it. Further, apparently the Harvard University faculty and students found it enlightening or they would not have given her a standing ovation and an an honorary doctorate of law degree.
In any event, I hope you will be willing to agree to disagree and not write another lengthy comment. 🙂
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Of course: she’s playing to her audience and her audience is not critical.
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Over the last three or so decades, whenever I’d hear of parents mourning their child’s untimely and needless violent death, I would add some element(s) to a fictional account titled IN ALL DUE FAIRNESS [connected to the URL link below], which was originally penned in the early 1990s. I would find bewildering then inconceivable the commonly held theistic notion that God would/will enable one praying couple’s child to be spared a brutal death while allowing another praying couple’s child to painfully perish.
https://fgsjrscifi.wordpress.com/2022/03/08/in-all-due-fairness/
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I have observed a miracle. Not a miracle shrouded in secrecy or ignorance, but a miracle on national TV. Not with one or two subjects, but the majority of the Texas GOP and law enforcement: Men without spines, walking.
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And yet so many, if not most, Republican Big-Gun-Industry apologists consider/call themselves Christian! Jesus must be spinning in heaven knowing what un-Christ-like conduct is erroneously connected to his teachings.
They tend to believe in a similarly-natured Creator; thus they’ve effectively created God’s nature in their own fallible and often-enough angry, vengeful image — especially the part insisting via publicized protest pickets that God hates this or that group of people. Often being the most vocal, they make very bad examples of Christ’s fundamental message, especially to the young and impressionable.
Some ‘Christians’, being vocally very angry and callously cruel, make bad examples of Jesus’s fundamental message of compassion and charity, especially to the young and impressionable.
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Who exactly is advocating total and absolute ban on guns? Where has that ever been tried out? The gun laws everywhere where laws matter anyway only limit completely the access to guns from obviously and testably insane and seriously disturbed people. If one likes shooting, one can go to a gun range and hire a gun to shoot in a safe environment. The rest of us need to have a reasonable reason for owning a gun, like a membership in a hunting club and a test passed for safe and humane skills to use it, or a collector of antique weapons, or a membership in a well organized government sanctioned militia of reservists and such. If somebody argues against gun control, that “they are going to take away our guns”, what that someone is actually saying is that they are indeed mentally lacking to a degree, that they should not be allowed to own a firearm. Because they have associated themselves with people, who have an actual clinical mental condition and/or no sane reason to own a gun, and/or revealed a level of idiocy, that renders them unable to handle the inevitable responsibility to carry a gun.
To me, US problem with guns seems to be a cultural reaction to a poorly trained and underpaid police force and ultimately a society with immence and extremely rigid division of wealth into classes and races, that as a result festers with misstrust to the police, all sorts of crime and misstrust to the government, rather than any silly interpretation of the constitution. That is just an excuse.
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Yes, we do.
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Nan, I say this with the utmost respect, however, in countries run by dictatorships where government decides who gets the guns, being the rulers, the military and the police, that is a recipe for oppression. Your posts about guns are laced with emotional appeal, not grounded in facts.
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I have a great idea! Why don’t you take away the “emotional appeal” and explain these “facts” to the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and grandparents and aunts and uncles and good friends who have lost loved ones at mass shootings?
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Nan, unless and until all guns are removed from a country by law, which would be Unconstitutional in the USA without an Amendment, good luck rounding up all law-abiding gun owners for internment camps. They will not go quietly to the modern day gulags.
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Get real, rag! I’m quite sure no one has advanced the idea of “rounding up all law-abiding gun owners for internment camps.” This is a typical OVER-exaggeration made by those who support a certain political party.
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Standard modern right wing extremist tactic — Accuse opposition of something outlandish (like socialism, or already-built gulags just waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Jones from western Alabama), and force interlocutor to blow energy putting out the giant flaming straw man.
Ignore the stupidity and stay fixed on the subject. The only reason modern right wing extremists use this tactic is because they have no coherent argument to offer. They have nothing, just bullshit.
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Maybe too much hot sauce has affected the neurotransmitters. Just throwing that out there…
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Ragnarsbhut, what do you mean by dictatorship and how is that even remotely relevant? Do you imply, that the main reason for a US citizen to buy a gun is a political motive to keep their government from turning into a dictatorship? Finland, Norway and Britain are by no means dictatorships and all of them have a long history of gun control. There are plenty of guns in these countries, they just regulate them so that the responsibility of owning one is met.
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Rautakyy, in case you did not get the memo, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you know the series Star Wars, there was an actor named IanvMcDiarmid who played Palpatine/Sidious who was evil incarnate despite the benevolent persona he had on public display in the prequels.
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Ragnar, this is a bogeyman argument. ‘We must stay armed so we can resist dictators/invasion’. How many mass shootings must there be, how many children must die, before that argument wears thin?
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Ben Berwick, if you want to live in a country where the government has all the guns, Cuba, to name one example, awaits you.
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Japan is another. Japan is one of the most peaceful nations on earth. Sweden is another example of strong gun control. Sweden has one of the highest standard of living in the world.
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Ben Berwick, try dividing time between the most crime ridden cities in a blue state and that in a red state and tell me the difference.
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Ragnar, you have not addressed my point RE Japan and Sweden. Guns are virtually absent from both societies and both societies are a lot safer than the USA. However, to address your change of subject to US States, it might surprise you to learn that the States with the biggest gun problems, are the ones with the slackest gun control measures.
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Ben Berwick, the countries you mention may not have any guns and no gun deaths by default, but in countries where the government has all of the guns, e.g. Iran and Syria, that means that the citizens are defenseless.
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Who said anything about a government having all the guns? Moreover, those who discuss SENSIBLE gun control measurements are not talking about removing ALL guns. You need to get past your biases and do more reading of actual news instead of right-wing websites.
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There will be armed police in Japan and Sweden, so by default their government agencies have weapons. There is no reason to assume the absence of guns in civilian hands automatically leads to dictatorship. We have been over this sort of ground before Ragnar. I am imploring you to look at *all* the evidence. There is a reason the USA has the highest murder rate among the top 35 developed nations of the world. As I have mentioned before, the US murder rate with guns *only* exceeds the total combined rates of several other countries. The problem is that a deadly weapon has become a cultural icon, and in the name of the imaginary dictator, the fictional bogeyman, more children have died from guns in 2022 than from any other cause.
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Ben Berwick, Columbine? Virginia Tech? Pulse Nightclub? Movie theater shootings? They all have this in common: Gun-free zones but still multiple gun deaths happened there.
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rag … this is the last comment of yours that I’m approving on this particular post. You have added NOTHING of substance to the discussion and instead continue to reference and repeat the talking points of gun ownership zealots. If, in future comments, you can offer something besides rhetoric, I will reconsider.
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Ragnar, you are once again switching topics, and we have been over this sort of thing before. Why do you suppose that mass shootings are virtually absent in other countries? The entirety of Japan is a gun-free zone. There are few guns in the UK or France. There are robust gun control laws in Germany, Australia and Canada. These laws work. Now, once again, I ask you to please consider this.
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Ben Berwick, probably because all guns are removed?
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No, all guns are NOT removed! If you had followed the link in my post, you would gain some education instead of pushing propaganda and false information. Here it is to make it easy for you: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/5-countries-with-strict-gun-control-laws.html
Added note: if you continue to push politically-biased information, your comments will be deleted.
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Not all guns have been removed, but if they had, you would have just argued, perhaps unknowingly, that an absence of guns generally makes a situation safer, and that countries do not automatically become dictatorships if guns are absent.
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Evidently, at least one more. 😢😢🤬🤬
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Hahaha! Ragnarsbhut, seriously? Star Wars? Is that fantasy film your concept of dictatorship? Perhaps that explains your fantastic take on how individual gun owners are the reason the US military is not used to set up a dictatorship? If that however were the case and some political leader could convince the military from the highest ranks to the rank and file, marines, navy, army, airforce, navy and national guard alike to act against democracy – say by lies, that said politician did not lose an election, when they actually did – how long do you honestly think any insurrection by random civillians weilding their AR-15’s would last?
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Just a brief comment. One of the arguments that you-know-who up there made promoting guns implied that people need firearms in order to basically be able to overthrow their own government. Frankly the people who make that claim have seen Red Dawn too many times. Either that or they’ve been eating those funny mushrooms they found growing in the backyard.
Think for a moment of just how silly that argument actually is. You’re standing there with your little pop guns, your Glocks or some cheap semi-automatic rifle thinking you and your friends are going to be able to intimidate the entire government. The government, on the other hand, has tens of thousands of highly trained combat soldiers, equipped with tanks, artillery, helicopter gunships, laser guided bombs, cruise missiles, armed drones, etc. To think that you and your little friends with their pop guns who can be taken out in one shot by a guy sitting in an office at a computer controlling a drone can overthrow the government isn’t just silly, it’s insane.
one more point – the 2nd amendment was never about owning a gun being some kind of “sacred right” or some other nonsense. It was about defending the country. It was about the states forming state controlled militias to be able to fight off the British. The US didn’t have an official standing army at the time, or at least not much of one. It had to depend on state militias to form the core of its defense against attack from the outside.
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I’m quite sure the average gun nut has absolutely NO knowledge of the information you shared in your last paragraph. The NRA and its supporters/proponents have done their job well. 😠
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Then there’s the completely ignored “well regulated” part of the amendment. The regulations on base for firearms and sidearms are far more strict than those in the average gun owner’s care.
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yep, they always ignore that “well regulated militia” part, don’t they? They, like most christians (and indeed virtually all religious persons) only tend to remember those parts of their sacred texts that support their personal views and ignore or try to rationalize away those parts that they don’t like.
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I wasn’t going all the way to ‘militia’ because that’s obviously not related to individual gun ownership except in this specific case: to form up a militia. What I was pointing out is that even the ‘well regulated’ part has just disappeared entirely from the ownership issue as a right. It seems to me that rather than cherry picking one part of a right, one must assemble the entire right, in that owners to exercise this right must not only be part of a militia using that particular weapon but regulated accordingly to its proper use and storage and handling and discharging. That’s what this ‘right’ entails. In other words, you can’t use just one part and claim this is the right but then blatantly discard the rest and pretend it’s not wrapped up with what defines the ‘right’.
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In other words, you can’t use just one part and claim this is the right …
Oh but you can! At least that’s what the “any and all” gun supporters believe!
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Apparently. That’s the problem with a right that is whole sentence long!
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Come on, Tildeb… Do you have any idea how expensive Indian Ink was back in the 1700’s!
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Agreed indeed! 2nd Amendment Radical Goon Nonsense (TARGN) has never been about being in a militia or being able to be in one. That is a baloney excuse for feeding their addiction to phallic power sensations of guns. How did the saying go in boot camp? That distinction between weapon (“piece”) and phallus? Pointing alternately to each … “This is my piece, this is my gun. This is for killing, this is for fun.” Well, gun radicals can’t tell the difference. It’s all for fun, lust for power, self-gratification, and often hatred. It’s a psychiatric epidemic.
I say this as a gun owner who supports strong regulation — ahem, a “well-regulated” gun community — of guns, gun owners, gun users, gun dealers and gun manufacturers. This includes reform of the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act to stop it from funneling gun sales taxes to gun culture advocacy that includes encouraging children to become gun users and advocates.
For example, ongoing annual grants from the Act fund the 4-H shooting program in my state, as well as similar programs in other states, and grants fund the construction, expansion and renovation of public and private shooting ranges in almost all states, among other gun advocacy measures.
We Yanks are a gun culture. This radical status won’t change without radical effort. The currently predominant incentive is body count. It’s not high enough yet. Maybe 100 children splattered per month would do it.
This may seem way off Nan’s topic, “What would you do …” but it seems inevitable for the dialog to move in the direction of prevention as well as preparation for incident reaction/response. In fact, better prevention is a response.
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Nan, hunting and sport or for personal defense and home defense are scenarios where I have no problem with guns. What I have a problem with is the hypocrisy of politicians who talk about regulating gun ownership who then fall back on Secret Service protection. If a politician has no desire to be around guns, let that politician be out in the open and see what happens.
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Ragnarsbhut, what do you think is going to happen? Some gun nut right wing extremist is going to shoot that politician with their assault weapon they legally aquired from the local supermarket, or what? Where is the hypocricy in wanting and stepping into public light by politically acting for a society where people would not have to feel so fearfull, that they needed to buy guns for personal protection? In such a society that people are so scared that they buy guns to protect their homes, acting to remove the reason for that fear by restricting gun ownership from felons, juveniles, mentally disabled and just any moron wanting to own an assault rifle based on the ridiculous concept, that they could hold in check the US military, if it were used against it’s own people, is bravery – secret service protection, or not. Besides, the secret service is not that efficient in providing their service, as obviously even US presidents have been shot.
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I’m all for gun, gun owner and gun user REGULATION like what you describe in Japan, etc. It should be at least comparable to the way we regulate cars, car owners and car users, in terms of safety, education, training, registration, licensing, ownership transfers, etc. The Second Amendment is not excluded from rational regulation any more than the First Amendment is. Yelling fire in a theater and all that. Free Speech doesn’t mean you should be allowed to abusively cuss out and threaten your kid’s teacher for giving them a low grade. Constitutional rights are not absolute. They are subject to common sense regulation. Heck, try to have a parade (Right to Assemble) without a permit.
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Good points! But unfortunately, the advocates of FREEEEEDOM are against anything that imperils THEIR “personal rights.” The hell with everyone else.
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Yeah. Funny, though … facing continual risk of threat by gun toting knuckleheads doesn’t feel like freedom. These days, just talking like this can get us hate mail, death threats, swinging noose GIFs, etc. I applaud your courage, a fundamental root of freedom.
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