I agree with weirddave and MaxTorque. Very small children can and should be taught that guns, like stoves and poisons, are dangerous. Older kids should learn how to handle guns safely. Parents who do not own guns should bear in mind that their children’s friends’ parents may be gun owners. In the US, guns are something any child may come in contact with.
A ban on some or all guns would IMHO work about as well as Prohibition did earlier in this century, or about as well as the “war on drugs” is working now.
S & R are my absolute favorite handgun manufacturer to start with, so to show them how much I appreciate their stance, I’m going to go out and buy at least two S & R products this week, a whole buncha ammo, and then I’m going to the range and shoot until my arms ache and I reek of powder residue.
My first handgun purchase was a S&W 686, and my first rifle was a Bushmaster Shorty.
One win and one loss by my count. I happily steered him to a Ruger 89 9mm two days ago for his first purchase. It would have been a S&W, but I have him on board with the S&W outrage.
We went to 3 gun shops before we bought, two said they had not sold even one S&W since the agreement, and the other said they had only sold two.
I have shelved my S&W forever, and will soon be buying a Ruger revolver to replace it’s place at the range. Then I will be buying a Beretta instead of the S&W .40 pistol I was looking at. I am not only impressed with their products, but also with how they resisted Maryland’s attempts at bribing them to get on board the smart gun line of thinking.
I predict S&W will be bankrupt in 2 years at the longest.
Ok ,if there is one thing I learned it’s that guns are not going to be taken out of the hands of the public soon.
The NRA is too well organised and committed for that to happen.
So this then leaves only one realistic alternative. You may say it is training and responsability and ,yes ,that might reduce the toll, but, the real issue is how can we keep the felon from laying his hands on guns.
You seem to have laws that disqualify gun
ownership from certain individuals,you even have laws that make it an offence to attempt to register,I have been assured that many have illegally attempted to register and have been identified and yet rarely is anything done about those persons.(certain things were put to me by a pro-gun SDMB poster)
If you have these laws then why are they not enforced?If a disqualified person has a gun or can be proved to have used/handled a gun illegally why are these people prosecuted to the full extent?
If I am mistaken please enlighten me.Guns in the hands of the public is completely outside my experience and it is all too easy for me to make certain assumptions.
To be honest,I look around at the folk I know, and I’m VERY glad guns are not freely obtainable.
If you keep asking well thought out obvious questions like that, you will get yourself labelled as a pro-gun conservative card carrying NRA member. (and someone might even call you a republican drone)
Don’t you understand that we need more laws? It is for the children!!!
If 5 laws don’t work, then lets try 10. If that doesn’t work, let’s try 30!!!
Of course, anyone who has an excuse for their criminal behavior should be given a second, third, and fourth chance to live their lives. I mean, a broken home can really lead you to make some mistakes like murder, rape and robbery.
Thought I’d note that my university newspaper today printed the letter I wrote them in response to an editorial cartoon. The cartoon basically said, “What’s the difference between the #2 killer of children today” (picture of handgun) “and the #2 killer of children in the 1950s?” (picture of cells under a microscope) “No one ever claimed a constitutional right to have influenza.”
Here’s the letter I wrote in response:
Dear editors:
I find myself in an odd position: feeling the need to respond to an editorial cartoon. Ordinarily, I’d consider a cartoon mere satire and give it little thought. Ben Sargent’s cartoon comparing guns and influenza, however, contains a false assertion that must be corrected.
Guns are emphatically NOT the “No. 2 killer of children today,” by a long shot. The National Safety Council keeps track of accidental deaths for all age brackets. According to their 1998 statistics (at http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/99008.htm),,) firearms rank eighth out of ten categories as a cause of accidental death for children under fourteen. Only poisonings, when subdivided into separate categories for solid/liquid and gaseous sources, cause fewer deaths; together, poisonings claim more lives than firearms, dropping guns to last place on the list. Causing more unintentional deaths than firearms are automobiles, fires, drowning, and suffocation by an ingested object. Even falls claim more childrens’ lives annually than accidental shootings! Sargent’s assertion, at least as to accidental deaths, is unfounded.
Perhaps, though, Sargent meant to include intentional deaths in his statement. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 1998 (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_98/98crime/98cius07.pdf), 1231 children age 16 and under were homicide victims in 1998. Of those, 473, or 39%, were killed with a firearm (of the 473 homicides, 352 were age 13 to 16). Adding this to the NSC’s statistics (110 accidental firearm deaths), even without categorizing the remaining 758 homicides, firearms deaths rise to equal those of fires and ‘pedestrian’ deaths (children killed while crossing the street). Motor vehicle accidents and drownings, even when adding both firearm homicides and accidental firearm deaths together, distantly outrank firearms as “child-killers.”
Finally, since Sargent felt compelled to compare guns to influenza, we should consider deaths from disease. According to the Center for Disease Control, 2.5 times as many children (ages 1-14) died from “malignant neoplasms” in 1995 (the most recent year for which I could find statistics) as died from firearms in 1998. Disease still kills far more children than firearms; it just doesn’t generate as much publicity.
Why do we not see mass public protests against swimming pools? Why has no one organized a Million Mom March to encourage the proper use of child safety seats in cars? The answer is simple: guns are a more divisive topic, and thus better press. Sadly, the desire for sensationalism has replaced the genuine concern for children’s safety.
Comments?
Freedom: thanks for the link, that board just got bookmarked! I had a early-model P-89 and thought it was so-so (but I was comparing it to my venerable and beloved M1911A1!).
CasDave:
Yes Dave; it’s called the Gun Control Act of 1968. While the NRA didn’t object to the disqualifiers (which includes Felons, anyone with a prior conviction as a Felon, Substance Abusers, anyone having been Dishonorably Discharged from the military and anyone who has renounced their citizenship), the GCA '68 also put an end to mail-order guns and the shipment of firearms through the U.S. Postal Service.
It also put an end (through sticky and vaguely threatening wording) to private ownership and transfers (sales) of fully-automatic weaponry, in spite of the fact that no legally-obtained properly registerd fully-automatic weapon had ever been used in the commission of a crime!
That’s the million-dollar question that Comrade-Premier Bill won’t even address, except to lie (he claims prosecutions are up) in the face of fact and figures from his top law-enforcement agency [FBI] and the Justice Dept. showing an incredible 44% drop in the rate of prosecutions since he took office.
A very good summary of this prosecution issue can be found at:
If the link doesn’t work, go here: NRA Institute For Legislative Action, go to “Research and Information” and scroll down to the “Prosecution Is Prevention” article.
I know I’m sending you to what many consider to be a biased source, but I find it relevant and telling that the NRA cites and credits their research with links and/or addresse to the agencies that provides their facts and figures.
Like I said before, DON’T take our word on it; look it up for yourself! It’s all there: the lies, the betrayal, the hypocrisy of the Clinton Administration and the Media in their one-sided attacks of guns and gun-owners.
MaxTorque: Wow! I’d be interested in knowing if they run your letter, or even respond in any fashion. Keep us posted.
Well, that letter was printed in Friday’s edition of my university’s newspaper. The editor told me that Ben Sargent (the political cartoonist who drew the original cartoon) is syndicated out of the Austin American Statesman and offered to forward my letter to them as well. I gave him the go-ahead, so we’ll see if it gets reprinted in Austin.
tracer: I carried a .5 Browning at age 19, and that hurt pretty bad as well.
OK, the debate is getting interesting. As far as I can tell, everyone’s agreed that the tricky bit is keeping criminals from carrying guns of any type. If you can achieve that, the entire debate concerning magazine sizes and weapon types and flash suppressors becomes a moot point. Even at this distance (across the Atlantic) it looks like political posturing: catering to a bunch of special-interest people, looking good in the papers and creating a sh.tload of bureaucratic overhead, while not getting even near the core problem.
In theory, noone should be worried about law-abiding citizens deciding to collect bazookas, if that tickles their fancy.
And ExTank, I agree that the laws concerning using firearms while committing a crime should be used to the fullest extent. Unfortunately, I have my doubts that this would be a very efficient deterrent - criminals don’t commit a crime expecting to be caught, and the net effect would probably mainly be to keep them of the streets for a longer time (although that may, of course, be a good idea in itself).
Ok, controversial viewpoint: I think the US law-abiding gun-owners are going to have to accept the registration idea sooner or later. This might sound ominous, but it can be argued (indeed, it has) that owning a firearm is a responsibility on par with owning a car - and I suppose these are regulated pretty thoroughly. And if you resist every bit of the way, you are running the risk of ending up with a much stricter set of rules than those you could have otherwise bargained for. From what I’ve seen in those threads, gun ownership is a deep-rooted american tradition, and I think fears of sudden confiscation is perhaps a bit unrealistic. But if a police officer were allowed to check a gun permit when he spotted an armed civilian, it might make gun possession somewhat unattractive for criminals. And that would be the point of the exercise, right ?
And yes, lawmaking by litigation is undemocratic.
Norman
PS: Did I mention the “Western Europe” method: Have no guns around. Works pretty well for us, but it’s probably not suited for export.
I’ve held off responding to your question because this article ticked me off severely (I actually used harsher language, but this is The Debates, not The Pit, so I’ll [try to] be nice).
[rant]
“It’s Beginning” refers to the active targeting of children who are already members of the “Gun Culture”. This is a concerted attack by teachers and school administrators on 12 year-old Derek Loutzenheiser, who is, by all accounts, a model student; in fact, he’s so smart that he’s being considered for accelerated advancement ahead of his peers.
This is the very beginning of Thought Control, ala “Thought Crimes” of Orwell’s 1984. Children will be indoctrinated from kindergarten on that all guns are evil, all violence is bad, all guns should be banned, etc, etc.
I haven’t opposed such things as educating kids about the perils and pitfalls of smoking, drinking, drugs, sexual promiscuity, gangs and violence (although I will defend any kids right to defend themselves from harrassment and bullying); now it seems that it’s come 'round full-circle and is biting me on the ass!
It seems that the liberal gun-grabbers have comandeered a socially usefull tool and have warped it to their own ends, and have begun targeting good, decent kids for their own political ends. This just reinforces my own claim (espoused long before the NRA picked it up and ran with it!) that gun-grabbers are the worst, the absolute lowest, most egregiously deceitful craven cowards on the face of this Nation!
Not only do they gleefully wallow in the blood of the victims of violence and dance on their still-warm corpses, waving them around for one-and-all to see and be horrified into misguided action, they now have begun to single out and attack the living for their political views, cultural background and upbringing.
But these gutless wonders are too scared to confront an adult, one capable of defending themselves from the verbal attacks and character assassinations of others.
No, they are perfectly content to gang up on, harrass and bully a child, frightening and intimidating him into compliance with their political will.
That they were caught red-handed and put into check by “The Evil Gun Lobby” is fortuitous only; who knows how many others may get caught in this trap and not have the knowledge that they have the right to fight this pusillanimous affront to Ordered Liberty and Freedom.
And even if they have the knowledge, might they all have the resources? Is Liberty only for those who can afford lengthy litigation?
Because with the reckless lawsuits against the gun industry (and the newest attack: anti-trust investigations), it seems clear that this administration, and their liberal cronies, are content to set the jewel of Liberty on the highest shelf, taking it from anyone and everyone everywhere who doesn’t believe as they do, unless they have the unlimited financial resources of a Central Government to fight, for a protracted period of time in a Federal Court, to secure these fundamental Rights.
They are ours! By Birth! Bought-and-paid-for-in-BLOOD, IN-FUCKING-ALIENABLE!
Someone (I think it was Jab1) asked in another thread why we in The Evil Gun Lobby feel constrained by that moldy old piece of paper, The Constitution, and its first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights; they asked why we thought that the pinnacle of social and political thinking happened over 200 years ago; why we thought a bunch of Dead White Guys were any smarter, wiser or better educated about The Great Issues with which we wrest today.
After all, they didn’t have electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, telephones, the internet, automobiles, highways, fully-automatic weaponry, Watergate, Cold Wars, Nuclear Weaponry, Just Do It, Got Milk?, MTV, Must See TV, and so on; how much could a bunch of 200 year old Dead White Guys know without all of those fundamental “social” and “political” advances? :rolleyes:
Consider: with no “age of information”, they had to think carefully and plan ahead, for the contigencies that they plan for today may well have changed drastically by the time their instructions reach their destination.
Consider: many of them, being landed gentry, had to simultaneously be agronomists, cartographers, architects, lawyers, engineers, doctors, veterinarians and businessmen. Many were also artist of one sort or another, or philosophers of social and/or political issues.
Just how many people in today’s world of specialization could even begin to match their diversity of education and experience?
What is it about all of these technological marvels that we’ve created in the past 200 years that makes us smarter, or wiser in the ways of humanity and politics, than these well-rounded products of the Rennaisance?
In my opinion: nothing at all. All of these tecno-wonders, while certainly having a social impact of one degree or another, have not changed the fundamental size or shape of the human brain, or its capacities for reason or emotion.
We are certainly no smarter, arguably less wiser, and in most ways less educated, than these 200 year-old Dead White Guys.
And now that Derek Loutzenheiser’s been singled out from the herd, I wonder if he’s still being considered for accelerated schooling? Is he, or his views, politically acceptable for preferential treatment?
All because one teacher asked for an opinion, and received one he wasn’t expecting and didn’t approve of.
Which just proves once again the old saw:
[/rant]
And just to punctuate my feelings on the broader issue this topic confronts:
In parting, I’ll remind you all of some of what I feel are the greater thoughts of our Dead White Guys:
And for Derek:
[quote]
“If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
I’ve held off responding to your question because this article ticked me off severely (I actually used harsher language, but this is The Debates, not The Pit, so I’ll [try to] be nice).
[rant]
“It’s Beginning” refers to the active targeting of children who are already members of the “Gun Culture”. This is a concerted attack by teachers and school administrators on 12 year-old Derek Loutzenheiser, who is, by all accounts, a model student; in fact, he’s so smart that he’s being considered for accelerated advancement ahead of his peers.
This is the very beginning of Thought Control, ala “Thought Crimes” of Orwell’s 1984. Children will be indoctrinated from kindergarten on that all guns are evil, all violence is bad, all guns should be banned, etc, etc.
I haven’t opposed such things as educating kids about the perils and pitfalls of smoking, drinking, drugs, sexual promiscuity, gangs and violence (although I will defend any kids right to defend themselves from harrassment and bullying); now it seems that it’s come 'round full-circle and is biting me on the ass!
It seems that the liberal gun-grabbers have comandeered a socially usefull tool and have warped it to their own ends, and have begun targeting good, decent kids for their own political ends. This just reinforces my own claim (espoused long before the NRA picked it up and ran with it!) that gun-grabbers are the worst, the absolute lowest, most egregiously deceitful craven cowards on the face of this Nation!
Not only do they gleefully wallow in the blood of the victims of violence and dance on their still-warm corpses, waving them around for one-and-all to see and be horrified into misguided action, they now have begun to single out and attack the living for their political views, cultural background and upbringing.
But these gutless wonders are too scared to confront an adult, one capable of defending themselves from the verbal attacks and character assassinations of others.
No, they are perfectly content to gang up on, harrass and bully a child, frightening and intimidating him into silence or compliance with their political will.
That they were caught red-handed and put into check by “The Evil Gun Lobby” is fortuitous only; who knows how many others may get caught in this trap and not have the knowledge that they have the right to fight this pusillanimous affront to Ordered Liberty and Freedom.
And even if they have the knowledge, might they all have the resources? Is Liberty only for those who can afford lengthy litigation?
Because with the reckless lawsuits against the gun industry (and the newest attack: anti-trust investigations), it seems clear that this administration, and their liberal cronies, are content to set the jewel of Liberty on the highest shelf, taking it from anyone and everyone everywhere who doesn’t believe as they do, unless they have the unlimited financial resources of the Federal Government to fight, for a protracted period of time in a Federal Court, to secure these fundamental Rights.
They are ours! By Birth! Bought-and-paid-for-in-BLOOD, IN-FUCKING-ALIENABLE!
Someone (I think it was Jab1) asked in another thread why we in The Evil Gun Lobby feel constrained by that moldy old piece of paper, The Constitution, and its first ten amendments, The Bill of Rights; they asked why we thought that the pinnacle of social and political thinking happened over 200 years ago; why we thought a bunch of Dead White Guys were any smarter, wiser or better educated about The Great Issues with which we wrest today.
After all, they didn’t have electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, telephones, the internet, automobiles, highways, fully-automatic weaponry, Watergate, Cold Wars, Nuclear Weaponry, Just Do It, Got Milk?, MTV, Must See TV, and so on; how much could a bunch of 200 year old Dead White Guys know without all of those fundamental “social” and “political” advances? :rolleyes:
Consider: with no “age of information”, they had to think carefully and plan ahead, for the contigencies that they plan for today may well have changed drastically by the time their instructions reach their destination.
Consider: many of them, being landed gentry, had to simultaneously be agronomists, cartographers, architects, lawyers, engineers, doctors, veterinarians and businessmen. Many were also artist of one sort or another, or philosophers of social and/or political issues.
Just how many people in today’s world of specialization could even begin to match their diversity of education and experience?
What is it about all of these technological marvels that we’ve created in the past 200 years that makes us smarter, or wiser in the ways of humanity and politics, than these well-rounded products of the Rennaisance?
In my opinion: nothing at all. All of these tecno-wonders, while certainly having a social impact of one degree or another, have not changed the fundamental size or shape of the human brain, or its capacities for reason or emotion.
We are certainly no smarter, arguably less wiser, and in most ways less educated, than these 200 year-old Dead White Guys.
And now that Derek Loutzenheiser’s been singled out from the herd, I wonder if he’s still being considered for accelerated schooling? Is he, or his views, politically acceptable for preferential treatment?
All because one teacher asked for an opinion, and received one he wasn’t expecting and didn’t approve of.
Which just proves once again the old saw:
[/rant]
And just to punctuate my feelings on the broader issue this topic confronts:
In parting, I’ll remind you all of some of what I feel are the greater thoughts of our Dead White Guys:
And for Derek:
[quote]
“If all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
Okay, first off apologies for the double post (I didn’t mean to do it, the Reply Button just went off. I didn’t touch it, honest!)
Freedom: If SingleDad has read the article about Derek,I wonder if his reply to me might be similar to his reply to you over in the kindergarten (Zero-Tolerance) thread.
Am I (are we?) in extremis here? Are we being alarmist, making much ado about nothing? Do you think the Loutzenheisers feel that it’s “nothing”? Their child, a good kid, is being singled out and targetd for “special” treatment because of his personal and political beliefs (and yes, I do believe that a 12 year-old can have an informed opinion on complex issues).
This very well may be an isolated incident; I would like to think so, and certainly hope so.
But I am also following this with keen interest, for I also the what may be the beginning of an alarming trend: political indoctrination and social engineering through the school system.
I believe that politics (other than basic civics instruction), like religion, have no place in the classroom; and that our children should not be targeted (favorably or adversely) for their political viewpoints.
I’m still waiting to hear from Binelli, Beretta, Cimmaron, Dan Wesson, Casull, H & K, Henry, Ithaca, Sharps, Winchester, Sprinfield Arms, Para Ordnance, Thompson, Marlin, Mossberg, Savage, Sig Sauer and Weatherby.
