I disagree that Rick’s characterization is accurate because I don’t believe Rick (or anyone else) can read minds. If he had written “…and I think it was deliberate and done to make it look as tho CNN had scripted his son’s questions at the gun control forum”, I wouldn’t have batted an eye and maybe even would have agreed with his conclusion.
But he didn’t do that, instead choosing to mischaracterize what was in the article.
And then you backed him up on that.
Why would you both feel the need to do that, when it wasn’t necessary at all?
To be fair, so far this doesn’t sound like a “school shooting” so much as a “shooting that took place at a school”. Just a domestic murder, not a rampage.
A distinction without a lot of difference, but still, a difference.
Thirty pieces of silver is quite heavy. It is difficult to move quickly with that much weight.
A statement with no visible means of support, or indeed, any basis in fact whatsoever. Bravo, sir, for the week’s most vacuous repetition of a baseless claim made by gun industry representatives and the National Rifle Association.
Most of this research—and there have been several dozen peer-reviewed studies—punctures the idea that guns stop violence. In a 2015 study using data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Also in 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.
As you might imagine I’m unconvinced. Facts may be facts but they don’t always take all pertinent information into account or tell the whole truth. I’ll elaborate later.
Not so much facts, alternative or otherwise, but questions.
First of all, I note that in the part you quote a tad of verbal legerdemain. We’re talking about gun deaths, and mostly within the context of murder as opposed to suicide or intra-family killings. Yet your link subtly shifts the focus to gun ‘assaults’. What does this mean? Killings? Shootings that don’t result in death? Using a gun to threaten someone? What? Surely you can see that this not only artificially widens the scope of gun offenses but treats them all as equal offenses. It also fails to take into account how many similar assaults would have taken place anyway but with different weapons. I would imagine if a guy wants to kill his wife or his teen-age son wants to kill him that the absence of a gun in the house wouldn’t make any difference.
Then we have the fact stated that more gun ‘assaults’ occur in states with more weapons. What do you suppose the reason for this is? Could it be possible that those states with more guns are also states where people are at greater risk of a criminal confrontation than in other states? And if correct, does it not make sense that there would therefore be more shootings as a consequence of their having defended themselves? And is it not also possible that the reason there are more guns in those states is because they have larger populations? I don’t know, but the part you quoted says nothing about per capita gun possession or ownership.
And then we have the statement that people with access to guns in the home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered. What occurs to me is that perhaps a large percentage of them or their family members are engaged in activities that put them at greater risk of being shot (i.e., drug/sex trafficking, gang affiliation, etc.). It also occurs to me that they may very well have snuck suicides in and included them in their grab bag of ‘murders’.
So all in all, we have a few facts that portray gun possession (as contrasted to legal ownership) in a negative light, but very little information to assess how harmful vs. how beneficial legal gun ownership actually is, and/or the ratio of justifiable shootings vs those that are unjustified or just plain unlawful.
My own belief is that when you take away suicides and deliberate family shootings, (neither of which should be of concern to society in evaluating whether people should be allowed or deprived of the ability to use guns to defend themselves) and justifiable shootings committed by the police or by private citizens in self-defense, the number of actual killings that occur which society should be concerned about are relatively few, and certainly not enough to warrant taking away from people the most inexpensive and effective method that exists for protecting themselves and their families from dangerous or life-threatening criminal activity.
If you weren’t so old you would realize that people have already identified and labeled your tactic as “just asking questions” or “JAQing off.” You give the game away when you label it for us up front.
Killing your family is murder, you demented, depraved fuck.
Her claim is that should have been enough indication of mental illness to get the authorities’ attention.
Now compare and contrast to those posters on this very board insisting on their protected right to own an AR-15, with all the imaginary reasons they provide to support it.
A five paragraph rambling essay on your “beliefs” and questions is not any kind of equivalence to dozens of peer-reviewed studies or data from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Firearms And Crime Statistics. C-. Please try harder.
And for the record, I don’t advocate confiscating or banning firearms as a general measure nor deny that in the habpnds of a well-trained, emotionally stable person that a gun can be used for legitimate self-defense, sporting, or hunting purpose. I do, however, think we could and should be doing far more to keep firearms out of the hands of emotionally unstable adults, unsupervised minor children, and generally hold gun owners accountable for assuring that their firearms are secure from misuse, as well as eliminting loopholes that make firearms easily accessible without account and accessories which make firearms functionally more dangerous (e.g. “bump stocks”) or emotional instability.
I say this as a lifelong firearm owner and former tactical shooting instructor who recognizes that of gun owners themsevles do not advocate for responsible oversight and prevention of firearms-related violence they’ll have only themselves to blame when that right is heavily restricted or eliminated completely. Part of being a mature adult person and moral leader is taking responsibility for not only yourself but modeling responsible behavior and demanding accountability of those around you, which is a rule of ‘polite society’ that the NRA and its supplicants seems to have overlooked in their zealous advocacy for the firearms industry.
