Guns and 6 year olds..... (in response to Jab1)

Great Debates
61

Maybe you need to learn how to read? Or do I need to post the MANY times that a gun has FACTUALLY stopped a person from being severely injured or killed?

Hell, read a couple of posts up. A 9 yr old boy, a man and woman were kept from being killed by a gun.

Maybe, maybe not. Fact. The kid knew enough about firearms to properly load the weapon. Fact. The weapon was apparently in the possession of the child for some time (since I suspect it was he who stole it months earlier) certainly long enough for him to have disabled the child lock and bring it to school ready to go.

Can you read? See my post above.

I hope somebody you love is never brutally murdered before your eyes and you sit helplessly unable to do anything.

I hope somebody you love is never forceably abducted and raped and tortured for hours before being murdered, and that you never have to wonder if maybe just maybe if they were armed they could have saved themselves (you might actually try educating yourself with some facts about violent crime and criminals).

Thanks for the lovely sentiment of hoping my child is murdered. We can see where the morals are in this debate.

Again, can you read? You might try it sometime. Speaking only for myself, on this and other threads I have stated that this is a great tragedy and it pulls at the heartstrings. However, most proposed gun control would not have made any difference, and a broad ban of guns causes a considerable amount of harm. I love how you anti-gun “bastards” so casually dismiss the lives of so many people.

62

Glitch, a SIX, not NINE, year old child brough a gun to school and killed another SIX year old girl. You suspect that:

  1. He had the gun for a while.
  2. He loaded it properly himself.
  3. Therefore he probably could have removed any child safety lock.
  4. He probably stole it HIMSELF!?!?
    Remember that old saying about “assuming”?
    You’ve just proven it.
63

Look Glitch, that kid was able to get his hands on a gun. That never should have happened, EVER! WANNA ARGUE THAT ONE?

Oh yes, the old, “Well, if in this case, if the guy didn’t have a gun…he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself…” Yeah, there’s a great argument. This happens about as frequently as a blue moon. Guess I just don’t hear about them?! I hear a lot about kids bringing guns to school, and no kid should have a gun. They needed to be locked up, with locks on the trigger, and if that is not the case the offender should suffer a felony charge.

Patrick Ashley

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ -Edmund Burke

64

Slythe:

Well, lets see, from what I know about the case, the gun was owned by his father but was reported stolen months earlier.

What seems more likely?

a) somebody stole the gun and then gave it to the kid and it just happened to be the gun his father owned?
b) the kid took it himself?

This assumes that the gun was in fact his father’s which is what I understand at this time. If it is otherwise, than of course I don’t think the kid went out a robbed a gun store by himself. So, it could be just a big fluke.

Has the question of where the kid got the gun been answered yet?

Again, what I have heard to date is that the kid loaded the gun and then aimed and fired it. If this is mistaken than I have heard mistakenly or it has been reported mistakenly. But assuming it is true, then yes I would say the kid managed to load the gun himself.

If I am correct that he took the gun from his father months earlier a child safety lock would not, in this case, have done much good. This isn’t to say that child safety locks are bad, just I suspect in this shooting wouldn’t have had any affect.

Yes, these are assumptions, but they are not made entirely out of the blue. I wasn’t there so I can’t prove that anything is 100% certain, but I am capable of drawing some possible conclusions based on what I have heard about the case so far. If you don’t agree with me feel free to show me where I have either made an error or was operating from incorrect facts of the case.

Patrick: Maybe it is because you aren’t looking hard enough. It does not happen once in a blue moon. Estimates range from 700,000 to 3,600,000, although the commonly accepted number is 2,500,000 (see “Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control” & “Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America” by Gary Kleck (Univerity of Florida, for the Dept. of Justice)). But wait I forgot you don’t care about stats. You just want to put forth an unsupported emotional rant, which is at its core incorrect since anybody who knows anything about me (let alone actually reading my posts) would know I am hardly a heartless bastard amongst your other errors. Feel free to continue, but don’t expect anybody to take you seriously.

65

What would have worked in this situation? How could this child’s life have been spared?

Why can’t the NRA put some of its $$$ to work going to schools and telling children what to do when they see a gun? a rifle?

Waiting to teach gun handling until the teen or adult wants to own a gun or hunt or shoot a neighbor’s dog - it’s kind of late.

Going into a pre-school and straight up through HS and discussing guns and what to do about them, can’t hurt. There certainly are enough NRA members to spread around for this task.

Where do guns and rifles belong?
What do you do when you see one?
Hear others talking about them?
Is there one in your house?
Ask you parents if it is loaded and where it is located…

NRA can affort a circular to give to every parent on the day of talk describing safe storage and what was discussed in school and so on.

Teaching children to stay away from gun and protect themselves in risky situations might be a whole lot easier than trying to teach the adults to store the guns securely.

Well, fire away!

Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley

66

Addedum

Patrick:

I agree, and if you could bother to actually read what I am posting you would see that. Why is reading my posts such a difficult concept for you to grasp? Strange.

67

Just to get the facts straight I went and read the latest findings on this case. Several items are different than what I had originally read about this story.

  1. The kid stole the gun from his uncle who lived with them from under a pile of blankets the night before and not months before. This suggests to me then, that a child trigger lock would certainly have helped in this case, which is all the more proof why there should be child trigger locks.

  2. The gun was loaded with three bullets when the kid went to school. Although not stated this indicates to me that the kid probably loaded the gun. Why would the uncle have only three bullets in the gun? It seems more likely he would have kept it either unloaded or fully loaded as most people do. So, I maintain that the kid probably loaded the gun himself. The reports indicate that the uncle showed the kid the gun, and even where it was. It seems likely the kid saw his uncle load it, and learnt from that.

Again, the uncle was highly negligent in his conduct and such an irresponsible, and obviously poorly trained, individual should not have had a gun in the first place.

This does not mean that a firearm does not play a vital role in the a citizen’s self defense or in the reduction in crime, as demonstrated in numerous police and independent studies.

So, I always, the answer to the gun issue is that there are some controls that make sense, IMO. But to try to take guns away from everybody is wrong, and costs innocent lives.

68

Patrick: with all due respect, by posting with a lot of emotion but very little thought (not to mention failing to read the posts you’re taking issue with) you’re hurting your own cause, not helping it.

69

pashley wrote:

Patrick, have you ever fired a gun, say on an indoor shooting range at a paper target? Have you so much as touched a gun in your life? I sense you may be projecting some of your insecurities onto guns and their owners.

70

Damn. Glitch, I think we actually agree on this. How the #@$&! did that happen?! :slight_smile:

71

Of course, we probably disagree on what specific controls should be instituted, but we can duke that out later.

72

Firefly:

I would love to hear what controls you think are sensible. My view can be summed up very easily.

#1) If it keeps guns out of the hands of morons, then it is a good thing.

#2) Prosecute the fucking (excuse my french) hell people who sell guns illegally.

#3) If it prevents accidental discharge, then it is a good thing, as long as it isn’t the law that such a device must be on the weapon at all times. My rule (and any self defense experts rule) is: If you are not in control of the gun, the gun must be locked up (preferably) and unloaded. However, some gun control advocates wrongly, IMO, want locks on guns when the lawful owner is in control of the weapon. This is very very bad, from a self defense perspective.

#4) Mandatory training from qualified instructors (like me, for example) who care. Yes, this is difficult, but I believe it is possible.

73

Since I haven’t been spending all of Friday evening and Saturday morning and afternoon debating gun control online, I’m running a little behind here.

Back on the first page, MaxTorque said:

And then he simply said that more suicides happened in households without guns than in households with them. Since he didn’t say how many of each kind of household there was, that means absolutely zip. (If there were equal numbers of each kind of household, then he’s right. But if there were substantially more gun-free households, then he’s wrong. We don’t know.)

So those suicide stats aren’t meaningless yet. Max, can you fill us in on the household numbers?

Arjuna’s idea of a proper experimental study of the effect of guns on suicide rates would be great in theory, but impractical in reality. Science doesn’t always consist of controlled, double-blind experiments; astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology and many other sciences have to work from what historical data is available. Same here.

To say that there have been some ups and downs in the level of gun homicides over 25 years doesn’t negate what I said. Obviously, not all things have been equal over that period. Numbers of men in the ‘optimal’ years for criminal activity varied. Number of people in prison varied. The effects of various wars on crime, drugs, etc. varied. Prosperity came, went, and returned a couple of times.

None of that changes the fact that, while one person may change his/her behavior in a particular way (for instance, getting around to locking their guns away from their kids) by taking personal responsibility, it’s about as unlikely as 100 straight ‘heads’ with an honest coin to expect 100 unconnected people to do that at the same time, unless some large-scale force is acting on all of them.

True. I was demonstrating that the ‘individual responsibility’ approach to gun safety is inapplicable. That’s pretty much all I’m arguing, right now. I believe that law-abiding citizens should be allowed to own rifles appropriate for hunting, and handguns appropriate for self-defense at short range. I’m not for taking such guns away from people.

74

I would add shotguns to that list at the end of your post, RTF. In many ways, a cylinder-choke 12-gauge is a better weapon for home defense than a handgun is, and shotguns are basically useless at long ranges.

75

Here is the link tho the lady who had her family killed when she left her gun in her car.
http://home1.gte.net/bforeman/suzan.htm

This lady is now in the Texas House of Representatives and works towards pro-gun legislation.

Reresentative Suzanna Gratia Hupp
http://www.house.state.tx.us/house/dist54/dist54.htm

76

Let’s see…

The kid lived in a crack house with stolen weapons all around him.

Yeah, I think the crack dealer who was using that stolen pistol would have used a trigger lock.

Since these weapons were stolen, it is easy to point to at least two break-ins that happened previous to this shooting. Had someone been home, these guns might have been the only thing that saved their lives.

Had the law abiding homeowner locked up his guns, stored the ammo seperately and put a trigger lock on it, they would have been defenseless. In addittion a crack dealer could break the trigger lock off fairly easy given 5 minutes to work on it.

Unless something new has come out, I think he got the gun from where the crack dealer he was living with kept it.

Do you think anyone here supports a 6 year old living in a house with armed crack dealers? When you come up with legislation that will control crack dealers, I will be ready to compromise.

77

Funny you should ask that question. The NRA has done just that. They even try to get it taught in schools. However your liberal teachers union always fights it and it rarely gets used.
http://www.nrahq.org/safety/eddie/index.shtml

78

They tried to introduce the Eddie Eagle course here in Oregon. Of course, the pro-NRA Republicans here tried to pass a law stating that the Eddie Eagle program would:

  1. Be manditory and
  2. Be the ONLY gun safety course taught in schools.

When other legislators objected, The NRA smear campaign got hot and heavy, I’ll tell you.

79

My personal opinion is that guns are easier to demonize when people are not educated about them.

Just like racism, we consider it ignorance. It is easy to hate something that is strange and foreign to you.

There is an effort out there to make guns seem evil. Part of this is people thinking that guns are inherently evil and dangerous. If we allowed people to be taught about guns and de-mystified them, it would not be so easy to make them out to be the cause of all our problems.

And what is this whole Anti-NRA thing all about anyway?

The NRA is not 4 rich guys who harrass congress and want criminals to own guns. They are an organization that represents several million Americans. It is not just money, but VOTES that the NRA can deliver.

Votes = People’s will.

People use the phrase “card carrying NRA member” as if you have been coerced involuntarily into some secret agent with horrible intentions. The fact is that if you are an NRA member, then that is what the NRA is.

It is ordinary people who respect the rule of law. It is ordinary people who respect our Constitution. It is ordinary people who respect civil liberties.

The really funny thing is, that the NRA isn’t even the most conservative Gun rights advocacy group out there. I guess the NRA wouldn’t be as easy to paint as uncompromisingly evil if the media let people know that there were other signifigant groups out there who think the NRA is betraying the 2nd Amendment.

Check out the Gun owners of America and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

80

Just another random item on the NRA to dispel the EVIL NRA myth.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20000303_2254.html