General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums
Good Saturday morning to you. Busy? No, it's Saturday. Okay, let's have a conversation.
About fucking gun control.
I'm cool (not thrilled, but understanding) that people can own guns. The NRA has fought every effort, though, tooth and nail, of the slightest semblance of anything other than out-and-out permissions. You may not necessarily need a gun permit. Even if you do, usually you don't need to have your guns registered. I have to register my frickin' vehicle! Why don't guns at least get that limitation? (and yes, I know unregistered guns weren't the issue in this particular event, but they have been in others, and it doesn't strike me as an onerous limitation). This is just an example of fighting restrictions for no obvious reason.
Assault weapons, there's no need for these things outside of highly-licensed and trained security companies. The average person doesn't need an assault weapon. The only purpose to an assault weapon is to kill, and not kill cleanly. You don't go deer hunting with an assault weapon if you're hunting for food (and really, that's the only reason you should be hunting). They're just for killing people.
There is no theory of defense along the lines of thre shootings would not have happened if more citizens were armed. Really? You want to be in a movie theatre or elementary school where every fucker is armed? The killer is likely already resigned to dying. The only difference is that a LOT more people end up dead in a mass cross-shootout when everyone is armed and shooting bullets.
There is no theory of defense about "if you're properly trained". Or almost not. Yes, if you can become highly trained and licensed, chances are that you can be responsible for a gun. And assuming you practice regularly to keep your skills up. But this doesn't happen. Being highly trained and licensed is perhaps what everyone should be, but that's not the case. Any asshole can walk up - particularly at a gun show - and buy a gun. There's nothing stopping them unless they've already committed some egregious event.
When my son recently got his driver's license, he had to do two months of classes (16 to 20 hours?) of Driver's Ed, plus 10 or so hours driving with an instructor, plus 40 hours (30 + 10 at night) of driving with a licensed driver (read: parent), and then pass both a written test and a driving test. And even THEN, his driving is restricted in certain ways until he's 18. It's a great arrangement and keeps our roads and highways safer. Can you imagine implementing something like that for guns?
I know that won't keep the crazies totally away from guns, and as a general rule I consider anyone who engages in mass shootings as generally crazy (more incentive for an early-intervention mental health initiative), and anyone who engages in "emotional" (limited participant) shootings as using a gun as a weapon of convenience.
We can certainly minimize the gun as a weapon of convenience by limiting the proliferation of guns, and we can minimize the crazies by a better vetting/training/testing process.
Would people like Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza and James Holmes still have tried to hurt people if they didn't have guns? Most likely. Would they have been able to get guns if the barriers to entry were set high (training, classes, tests)? Hopefully not, and that would have saved lives.
Training, classes, and tests don't ensure ultimate safety, but they raise the barrier to entry quite a bit.
Let's start talking about that.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Maineman
(854 posts)Computer games are used to teach math and other subjects. Videos are used to illustrate how to do math and other skills. Children learn how to do math from watching videos and playing computer games. Are we to believe that violent computer games, videos, and movies do not teach violence? Are we to believe that children decide to learn math from computer games, but turn off learning when the game involves shooting people? Are we to believe that children and young adults with mental health problems make this type of distinction? In other words, are we fools and idots? Will we continue to brainlessly accept the marketing spin of video and computer game profiteers when they assure us that violent games and videos do not affect behavior?
Oh, you say the people involved have a right to earn a living? Our Constitution is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not life, liberty, and the pursuit of money. Violence training materials are certainly as big a public nuisance as organized crime. Stop violence education now!
Possession of movies, videos, and computer games that teach, illustrate, or depict gun violence should be banned. Possession of such should be totally illegal including existing products. In 1933, and for forty years thereafter, personal possession of gold was banned, and citizens were required to trade it in, especially gold coins. We can certainly do the same with violence training materials.
nightscanner59
(802 posts)I wrote my local representative about making an appeal to the entertainment industry to produce videogames and movies that do not escalate our culture of violence. Certainly there would be some creative avenues for both entertainment options that get us off the violence track. I've seen how these kids (and immature adults) playing shoot-em-up mercenary video games become desensitized to violence in the real world.
Mario brothers, PAC MAN and the like were fun, creative, artful, challenging without producing visceral violence-desensitization. Where did this get off track onto all the mercenary crap?
If our president were to take the lead, make a public announcement to call for creativity to produce problem solving challenge games rather than those that constantly reinforce "The one with the gun is IN control" of the situation...
Let's teach children that the unhinged one with the gun is the one OUT of control... blowing it!!!
Stonepounder
(4,033 posts)for violence in computer games. Computer games are rated, just like movies. However, just like movies, the rating system just doesn't work. I love computer games and have since they were only text based and ran under MS-DOS. I can spend hours shooting down Orcs and Dragons, or building up my city and raiding the next one over. I also love movies where things blow up and the good guys beat the living daylights out of the bad guys. I also abhor guns and will not own one or knowingly allow one in my house. My wife hates spiders, so when she sees one in the house she calls me, I scoop up the spider and carry it outside. I hate to kill anything.
And there is the rub. I know the difference between make-believe and reality. But watching my 8-year-old grandson play Far Cry or Call of Duty, or seeing him watch gory Zombie movies, or slasher flicks, bothers me. But as those of you who are grandparents know, there is only so far you can go trying to tell your kids how to raise their kids.
I agree with you that there is way too much violence depicted on television, in the movies, and in video games. But I am not at all convinced that getting rid of it all is the answer. Why should I, as an adult have to forgo my video games and my adventure movies so that my grandson is protected?
I can choose to smoke or drink, my grandson can't legally make these choices for another 10-13 years. Why should it be different for movies, TV, or computer games?
Just saying.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Training isn't the problem. So...the shooter will be BETTER at killing the masses?
But there's a difference between owning a gun and driving a car. Guns are for protection sometimes...and may never be used. Guns are for hobbies...gun collecting, hunting, skeet shooting. They are not used out on the streets legally, and are not used daily, weekly, and for most, not even monthly.
Driving a car is something that people of all ages do out on the streets on a daily basis. Driving around a lethal weapon. The govt also wants to know who you are so that they can track you down if you are involved in an accident (driver's license). It's also more complicated to drive, given all the street signs, rules of the road, parking skills, than to shoot a gun. Shooting a gun properly is actually fairly easy. the last time I went to a shooting range, which was many years ago, I was surprised that I was pretty good. I hit the paper man figure wherever I intended to. That was probably from my years of playing foosball and tennis! Safety training would be helpful, but then I would forget it, since I haven't shot my gun in many years.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)[link:
|Whovian
(2,866 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)
reformist2
(9,841 posts)Edweird
(8,570 posts)They are not equivalent.
mrchips
(97 posts)The USSC was assaninely wrong on reading the second amendment. The shooter in Newtown was not a member of any "well-regulated militia." The fact is that citizens should not have weapons, willy-nilly. The mother who died, a kindergarten teacher, should not have had the four weapons found at the scene. Since the USSC has been so incredibly stupid, and are just as responsible for the slaughter of twenty five year old children we now need a constitutional amendment to get rid of the f-ing guns. The NRA and all those boneheads who support it can go to hell. Want to hunt? Use a sling shot or bow and arrow.
Edweird
(8,570 posts)What you believe the militia be has no bearing whatsoever on the truth.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)Would you care to entertain that notion?
mrchips
(97 posts)And you don't know what is in my mind, so I suggest you stop now before you get your intellectually deficient clock cleaned. The militia was the means by which each state was allowed to provide a defense of its sovereignty in the event a federal government or any foreign power attempted to invade or try to suppress the people of that state. The "well-regulated militia" was deemed by the writers of the bill of rights to be necessary for the defens of the people in those states to defend the citizens of that state. That is the truth. If you can't handle it I suggest you go find another sand box to play in.
Edweird
(8,570 posts)How sad for you.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)The rest of us are sick & tired of your shit.
Edweird
(8,570 posts)Edweird
(8,570 posts)xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)Quit calling people names, you ass.
mrchips
(97 posts)George Washington had already won the war. The Constitution was already signed and the nation was established BEFORE the Bill of Rights was written. Read a book before you start calling people names, twit.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)oldbanjo
(690 posts)in this country are only required to protect the people that they arrest. You have a right to protect yourself.....
mrchips
(97 posts)Your concept of who the police are "required" to protect is antithetical to reality. However, let me address your underlying point. In the event all weapons were eventually banned, the gun related homicides would go down, the medical costs, incarceration costs and a substantial number of related costs would go way down. In addition, in those countries like England and Japan, the murder rates are substantially lower, as are other gun-related crimes. Those societies are safer.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)
nevergiveup
(4,762 posts)Guns, like automobiles need to be regulated as either in the hands of dangerous people can injure or kill the innocent. In my opinion the poster's analogy is a good one.
Edweird
(8,570 posts)However, the reality of the situation is that the 2nd amendment is very real and nothing like that exists for any type of personal vehicle. The analogy is demonstrably false.
mrchips
(97 posts)Even in the second amendment you find the phrase "we'll-regulated." Guns were expected to be regulated as part of the amendment. Only a moron thinks that weaponry was not intended to have some regulations involved.
Edweird
(8,570 posts)
riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)I passed. And got firearms license but not for handguns. The OPP have check you out and you have have a good reason to have one.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)Carmen2429
(2 posts)We can never win when we don't vote on simple polls like the gun nuts do. Here is a good example. Poll is from ABC http://abcnews.go.com/
Now follow a "Firemission thread" on a gun board and how they changed the vote count. They were behind and they flipped it ASAP.
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1402347_Fire_mission_ABC_news.html&page=1
mrchips
(97 posts)According to the idiots who think there is something sacred about the false interpretation of the second amendment, anyone could obtain a nuclear weapon, capable of blowing up an entire city. The amendment doesn't say 'guns". It says arms. There is no end to this lunacy, except to amend the constitution.
xtraxritical
(3,576 posts)should keep them under lock and key only for national emergencies.
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)I am devastated over the shooting. I have a 4-year-old that will start kindergarten next year and a 6-year-old in first grade.
I've been pro-gun all my life. Shooting for me is a family tradition that goes back at least 4 generations that we know about. I was raised to shoot from the age of 8. Hunting, target shooting, and competitive shooting, it has been my biggest, longest-lasting hobby over the last 30 years.
We have to do something. We can no longer accept the deaths of 20 children as merely the acceptable collateral damage of gun ownership in this country. We have danced on the edge of a knife blade for decades and we have finally slipped and cut ourselves.
Assault weapons, there's no need for these things outside of highly-licensed and trained security companies. The average person doesn't need an assault weapon. The only purpose to an assault weapon is to kill, and not kill cleanly. You don't go deer hunting with an assault weapon if you're hunting for food (and really, that's the only reason you should be hunting). They're just for killing people.
There are a couple of problems here that I do not know how to remedy. The first of which is that the second amendment is about weapons of war. These are the kinds of weapons the people are supposed to own so that they can kill people who threaten the security of free states.
I understand this is abhorrent to consider. But it is a fact. Whether you believe that it is possible for the American people to fulfill this role anymore is irrelevant. It is in our Constitution, and has been confirmed by the Supreme Court to convey an individual right that the States must respect. Reversing this is going to be tremendously difficult. It is likely going to require a Constitutional amendment. I'm skeptical that this can be achieved even with 20 dead children.
Another point I'd like to raise is that you can hunt with such weapons. The AR platform specifically is often called the "legos" of firearms because you can pull the upper assembly off of the gun and drop a new one on and instantly change the kind of bullet the rifle shoots, adjusting it to make it appropriate for whatever game you are hunting.
There is no theory of defense along the lines of thre shootings would not have happened if more citizens were armed. Really? You want to be in a movie theatre or elementary school where every fucker is armed? The killer is likely already resigned to dying. The only difference is that a LOT more people end up dead in a mass cross-shootout when everyone is armed and shooting bullets.
I am torn on this issue, at least in schools. I don't think we pay teachers enough for the responsibility of being teachers, let alone to expect them to be effectively police deputies. I also worry about a teacher leaving a gun unsecured and it being found by children.
But we need to consider something here. Almost universally, these shootings stop when the police show up. Why? Because the criminal knows that the "game" is over at that point. They are about to be apprehended by overwhelming force they cannot resist. And so they kill themselves.
Yes, the people in the first classroom probably have no chance, even if there was an armed person in there. If you are sitting at your desk, or bent over helping someone, you're doomed. That shooter is going to come in and do exactly what this guy did - mow down everyone in the room.
But what about the next classroom over? Or the next one after that?
It's just luck that this guy stopped after two classrooms. All the rest of the potential victims were cowering, defenseless, waiting for the end, however it might come.
That bothers me. I wish wish wish that there was someone who could stand up to people like this and stop them!.
If we don't want to arm teachers, and like I said, I'm not sure that's a good idea, what are our options?
Schools seem to be a very convenient target of choice for mass shooters. Lots of people to shoot and no one to stop them. One idea is to put a police officer in every school. This is going to be very expensive.
Another is to render our schools into fortresses. The principal of Sandy Hook had just installed equipment to lock the school down after 9:30am where you have to be buzzed in. The shooter, however, may have gotten in before the doors locked.
The concern that people with concealed weapons might cause confusion as to the shooter is may be valid, but it has never materialized that way yet. There never seems to be any confusion who the bad guy is.
And I tell you what, if I could, I think if I was in a mass shooting situation I'd be willing to take some confusion with a chance of someone stopping the shooter.
You want to be in a movie theatre or elementary school where every fucker is armed?
Not every fucker.
I'm assuming you would have no problem with armed police officers in movie theaters or elementary schools. Police officers are not magical beings - they are just people.
What about CCW permit holders that are equally trained as police officers? What if CCW permit holders had to go through training that effectively made them deputies?
When my son recently got his driver's license, he had to do two months of classes (16 to 20 hours?) of Driver's Ed, plus 10 or so hours driving with an instructor, plus 40 hours (30 + 10 at night) of driving with a licensed driver (read: parent), and then pass both a written test and a driving test. And even THEN, his driving is restricted in certain ways until he's 18. It's a great arrangement and keeps our roads and highways safer. Can you imagine implementing something like that for guns?
I'm not sure what this will realistically accomplish. Firstly, the only reason you have to get training and a license to drive a car is if you want to drive it on public roads. If you want to drive on private property, you don't need any paperwork. The vast majority of firearms are kept on private property. If you want to go use them on state land (I shoot at a state shooting range) then you must buy a hunting license and pay a fee, and if you were born after like 1977 you have to have taken a hunter safety course.
I did not have to, but I took the hunter safety course in Boy Scouts. I passed with a score of 100%. I could have taken it in my sleep. My father had drilled the rules of gun safety into me from about age 7. The test was about as hard as testing me on how to breathe. Maybe this is beneficial to people without prior exposure to guns, I don't know.
Also being trained in gun safety, as you note, is probably not going to do much to stop lunatics with guns.
Training, classes, and tests don't ensure ultimate safety, but they raise the barrier to entry quite a bit.
But what is the goal here? Is the goal to try and implement things that make it harder for crazy people to commit crimes with guns, or to raise the barrier to entry to just dissuade gun ownership in general? I can support the former. I'm not hot on the latter.
Thus ends my half-hearted defense of guns this morning. Onto solutions.
I didn't sleep much last night. I woke up at about 2:30 and lay there contemplating this and how we can fix it.
INSANE PEOPLE
One of the primary concerns here is how do we keep insane people from getting their hands on firearms?.
The first problem that I want to know the answer to is this: CAN MODERN PSYCHOLOGY EVEN IDENTIFY SUCH INSANE PEOPLE??
For example, if we wanted to, could we have a psychological profiling completed before being allowed to own guns that would actually do anything? Can psychiatrists accurately identify dangerous people? I don't know that they can.
If they can? Maybe we should have a psychological screening prior to owning guns?
Some problems that have been raised about this is
1) How do you get a psychologist to commit to clearing someone to own a gun? What if they are wrong and someone they approve to own a gun goes on a shooting spree? Will they be sued into oblivion?
2) What happens if you have known psychologists who are known to be gun-friendly and usually give passing grades? Will such psychologists be seeked out for an easy pass?
Here's another idea: Maybe we need to start respecting mental health medical privacy a little less. Maybe we need to expand the list of things that will get you disqualified in the NICS system to own guns. Diagnosed as Autistic? You're in NICS. Taking certain drugs for mental conditions? You're in NICS.
See, today, the only way you get in NICS is through a court of law. For mental disqualification, you have to be adjudicated mentally incompetent, or you have to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution.
That's it. Those are the only two ways you can bounce a NICS check for mental issues.
Maybe we need to rethink this. This is going to raise a lot of privacy issues and also a lot of due process issues. And you also have to worry about the unintended consequences of people not seeking out mental health help for fear of losing their right to keep and bear arms.
But I'm thinking right now that we need to keep a much, much tighter watch for people in our society with mental health problems.
Of course it goes without saying that this means better access to mental health care in general. People with mental health issues, particularly bad ones, are likely to not be employed or poorly employed and thus unlikely to have insurance or the money to pay for mental health care. This is a huge problem. We need to guard against many of the abuses that resulted in the "deinstitutionalization" movement years ago but we desperately need free, real mental health care in this country. And we need to track who is using it.
GUN SAFES
By all current accounts, the Sandy Hook shooter stole his mother's guns. I don't know if they were in safe or not.
But I think that it should be a law that all firearms must be stored in some minimally-approved safe, such as California does. Such safes are inexpensive (mine holds 14 guns and was $150) and at least provides some measure of protection against unauthorized access.
I think it should be a law that everyone who owns a gun must keep them locked up. There are now safes that provide for near-instant access to both handguns and long guns so the argument that "I might need my gun in a hurry" no longer carry much weight.
And I think there should be stiff penalties if a gun ends up being used in a crime and it is found that it was not secured.
UNIVERSAL LICENSING
Today, anyone can buy a gun. Let me restate that: ANYONE CAN BUY A GUN.
NICS only covers commercial sales. In just about every city and town in America you can open your local newspaper classified ads and look in the Sporting Goods section and you can find private individuals selling guns to anyone with cash. No background check is required. In fact private citizens cannot even access NICS. Yes, a private seller could arrange with a private buyer to meet up at a gun store and only complete the sale upon completion of a NICS check, but since this will add $50 or more to the price of the sale no one does this. (FFLs charge money to do NICS checks. I have a local one who does it for $25 but most stores in town charge $50-$75).
My proposal is similar to what Illinois currently does, except I would make the system opt-out rather than opt-in.
Every person who applies for a state-issued ID or driver's license is automatically run through NICS and will be issued an FOID unless they opt out.
Then, when you conduct a private firearm sale, the seller must keep a record of the sale for 10 years. In Illinois, failure to do so is a misdemeanor. We could increase the penalties if it is found that a failure to record has resulted in death or injury. Sellers are motivated to comply because if you sell to someone without a valid FOID that means they have a disqualifying past and are likely to be up to no good with it and the gun will end up traced to the last legitimate owner.
Perhaps we could make it so that the FOID does not become valid until stamped by a certified trainer, also.
Perhaps we could make it so that the FOID does not become valid until stamped by a mental health professional.
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)leadership in D.C. needs to take a stand... show the American people which side is not willing to negotiate on controlling weapons, between the cut all benefits and don't touch my guns stands the GOP is on a death spiral, soon we will have more a smaller and more moderate right.... Now is the time to knock this out of the park....
humbled_opinion
(4,423 posts)Stop someone from stealing their parents firearms and using them in a senseless way? How will making it harder to legally purchase a firearm stop someone from breaking into a house and stealing a firearm or buying one on the blackmarket? No you and I truly know that the only answer is to end the sale of firearms to the general public. Get the firearms out of the hands of people and you don't have senseless tragedy, I stand a much better chance of survival defending from a knife attack you cannot outrun a gun...
tblue37
(65,409 posts)removed even the most reasonable restrictions, including the one that said that blindness was a reason to reject someone's application for a concealed carry permit!
marble falls
(57,112 posts)own it and the 30 round clips and full metal jackets if I want to. I am cool with you not owning one. If the Kochs and all those rightwingers who came close to taking over had or will succeed in the future, you might want to have one, too. We are not out of the woods yet and they are bent on creating a huge prison/slave factory system and I might not want to go just because Scalia, Roberts, Thomas say the Bill of Rights no longer apply to me, or Boehner, McConnell, Bachman, Kantor write the laws that codify it.
It ain't the guns, its the right wing wing hot air conspiracy addicts and the lack of mental heath treatment due to no taxes because of teabillie/Conservative/Corporate/Wealthiest 5% feel no need to fund any health treatment for anyone - especially the mentally afflicted.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)Nice phrase that.
They are not human beings they are a special class "the crazies".
I think, that, right there is something we should talk about. This willingness of society to throw people away. Being discarded is enough to drive most people crazy.
Look at what many of the shooters seem to have in common.
1. no love life
2. no friends
3. no job
So society, or the world, tells them
1. We don't love you
2. we don't even like you
3. we don't need you
You are unloveable, unlikeable, and generally useless.
Well, that is certainly one hell of a shitstorm to have thrown at you. Unless you have a good solid anchor you are gonna go drifting.
Many people in that situation just commit suicide. Thousands of them in an average year. Klebold and Lanza also killed themselves. If they had only killed themselves, we would never even know their names.
But they chose not to go quietly into that dark night. They chose to strike back. They said to themselves. You laugh at me every day. You call me names and push me around and belittle me. You ignore me as you go about your happy lives. Well, surprise motherfuckers, the empire strikes back! How do you like me now? Not so insignificant now, am I? Not so weak and worthless now, am I? Not any more. Now I have the power. Now everyone knows who I am. Now I am the most important person in the country and everybody is talking about me.
I died young, but by god, I went down in a blaze of glory.
