Reactions mixed to painted gun ban

[beevul]

Reactions mixed to painted gun ban
BY MATTHEW CHAYES | [e-mail]
March 27, 2008


A gun is a gun - whether it's colored bright red or conventional black, gun enthusiasts say.

Stanley Greenberg, a manager of T&T Tactical in New Hyde Park, said the ban Nassau authorities are proposing on brightly colored handguns would in no way reduce the caution police need to exercise when confronting someone brandishing what could be a weapon.

"It's a waste," Greenberg said of the proposal, adding that criminals can paint toy guns dark to appear real and vice versa. "If a gun gets pointed at a cop, the cop doesn't know if it's an airgun or a toy," Greenberg said. "All they see is a gun."

But Michael Britt, owner of Michael Britt Firearms in Mineola, said he is sympathetic to the county's efforts because brightly colored weapons can be "confusing" to officers.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lideal275627316mar27,0,3403144.story?track=rss

I still am not convinced that this is a problem.

[flor de jasmim]

1. The solution is "simple"

Ban ALL handguns, water pistols, cap pistols, paint pistols (paint "guns" for painting walls still OK), and anything that attracts kids of any age (!) to that type of violence.

Let the gun enthusiasts have a full-length hunting rifle--no cut-offs allowed.
No more movies with hand-gun violence.
No more ads with hand-guns.
No manufacturing of hand-guns even for the export market in the US
No importation of hand-guns allowed

This is my *modest* proposal! I know it won't pass, but we have to rethink our "relationship" with weapons. Every week there are stories in the news of children and adolescents killing each other or themselves, either intentionally or by accident. THIS IS NOT AN ACCIDENT, but a natural effect given the prevalence of guns in our society.

Oh, and no more tasers in schools!!!

[beevul]

2. Errmmm...

"Every week there are stories in the news of children and adolescents killing each other or themselves, either intentionally or by accident.THIS IS NOT AN ACCIDENT, but a natural effect given the prevalence of guns in our society."


The accidents aren't accidents? Umm..LOL, ok.


As for the rest, youd alleviate a great deal more by ending the war on some drugs than by banning "all things handgun".

[MaryCeleste]

4. Perhaps it is you who is "simple"

What you are advocating is the UK style ban...which is clearly the wrong way to go

[SteveM]

7. More-better prohibitionism?

"A new report from the National Safety Council indicates that accidental firearms-related fatalities remain at record lows, and accidents involving youths continue to decline significantly.

"Firearms-related fatalities fell 40 percent between 1995 and 2005, the greatest decrease in percentage of all measured types of accident fatalities in the U.S.

"All this occurred at a time when American gun ownership is at a record high -- more than 290 million guns owned and 47.8 million households having at least one firearm." -- Outdoor Life, May 2007, p. 12.

Your "modest" proposal relies on massive, wide-ranging prohibitions which require rethinking our 'relationship' with the entire society, esp. since we both know how prohibition works. "Rethink" alcohol, abortion, gay sex, drugs, tobacco, etc.

I am not sure how "letting" hunters have full-length rifles is related to prohibiting "cut-offs." I usually wear full-length pants in brush country.

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. I remember as a kid in the 50's having a "Have Gun Will Travel" gun-belt.

.
.
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They were real-looking 45's with fake bullets in the gun-belt as well

The guns were only cap-guns - and we played "cops and robbers" all the time.

I can't imagine walking around with anything looking like that now, with all our paranoia

We used to ride bicycles with no helmets(Horrors!) - and take peanut butter and jam sammiches to school.

We are SO much safer now.

[krispos42]

5. It's been turned into a moral panic issue

It gets talked about so much, people start taking hard-core sides on the issue, and now it's gotten to the point that anti-gun people want ignorance-based, abstinance-based education about guns to their kids, some to the point of hysteria. And you know that when parents get all hysterical about something it makes kids really really curious about them.

Owning guns is increasingly seen by some as some form of mental illness and work hard to marginalize those that do.

[iverglas]

8. I'm wondering what your points are

I can't imagine walking around with anything looking like that now, with all our paranoia

I can't imagine a kid back in the 50s when I was a kid walking around with a real handgun. Unfortunately, I can imagine that happening now, particularly in the US where this issue is actually an issue. Maybe that's because I'm paranoid, and not because I recognize reality.

We used to ride bicycles with no helmets(Horrors!)

Me too! and I had a couple of horrific falls from bicycles when I was young. Luckily, not on my head, and not as a result of being struck by a car, so here I am typing away at DU rather than six feet under or lying in a bed unaware of my surroundings and being fed through a tube ...

Mind you, an elbow pad would have spared me having a chip broken off my humerus bone when I fell off a tricycle (not to mention the embarrassment), and all the weeks of pain and torturous physiotherapy that followed, and all the pain it has caused me on countless occasions in the decades since then ...

And of course a little attention to safe playground equipment design might have spared me the broken femur I suffered two or three years later, and the three months I spent in hospital, attached to a bed, isolated from family and friends and subjected to emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of the same sort of people who ran residential schools for First Nations children ...

But hell. Fuck the other kids who might not have been so lucky, and fuck the nanny state that thinks something might be done to spare other kids what happened to me.

I'm only mildly sensitive to peanuts; peanut butter just made me gag, and I seem to have grown out of even that, so my life was never threatened by my schoolmates' lunches. Not like the daughter of a friend of mine, who has narrowly escaped death on several occasions after being in the vicinity of someone's peanut butter sandwiches.

We are SO much safer now.

Some of us are. And some of us actually like it that way.

[bossy22]

6. got to love my county

im surprised they didnt interview the store i work out- Colisium Gun Traders

[iverglas]

9. you work there?

(hard to tell what you actually said there)

... and you can't spell it??

http://www.coliseumguns.com/

[bossy22]

10. sorry

long plane flight made me drowsy- thats why i spelled it wrong...i do work there on a part time basis when im home from college

[L1A1Rocker]

11. It's really a non-issue.