Never happen. They and their allies are completely amoral, and have zero concern for the slaughter caused by their gun fetish. They aren’t going to try to solve the problem because they don’t regard people being killed as a problem. They care about guns, and only guns; everyone and everything else is expendable.
That would be Evil Socialism and is unacceptable in America.
Other than the last part (which I’m afraid I’d need some practical details for) I don’t think these would have a significant impact. I know a few people have mentioned mandatory gun safety classes to receive a permit and the like, but gun safety isn’t a major issue in the US. There are only about 600 accidental deaths per year due to firearms. By way of comparison, more people are killed per year by swimming pools or by slipping and falling on the floor. Given how many households contain guns, it’s an amazingly low number.
Mortars, too. Can’t really aim them for shit for the most part, and mortars aren’t the most surgical of weapons to begin with, but they fire enough of the suckers to get on the good side of statistics once in a while.
I’m not sure about Afghanistan (much less Afghanistan back in the Cold War), but rebels/insurgents in Lybia, Syria, Egypt, Mali… are also extremely fond of technicals - get a beat-up 4x4 Toyota truck, mount something large and deadly on the flatbed - be it an old anti-aircraft gun, an APC turret, a rusty rocket pod yanked off a helicopter, a recoilless rifle… plumbing pipe fed with dodgy UXOs… - party time.
Most of that stuff is nicked from abandoned military bases, tank graveyards, wreckage of past wars and the like, none of which are all that common in the rural US.
I have opened a thread in GQ listing weapons for private use, that serve the stated pro-gun purposes. They are perfectly servicable for the defence of self and property. They are, however, almost impossibly to abuse by people who want to commit crimes or go on killing sprees.
I am curious how gun enthusiasts will respond to this viable alternative. My sad guess is that they will ignore it, because “it just feels good to hold a fire arm”.
This is like saying if you have a fire extinguisher in your home, you have a morbid fear of fire.
I subscribe to my police department’s online crime reports for my neighborhood. Within a five block radius of my house* a burglary or car theft takes place almost every week, and an assault or robbery on the street once a month on average. There’s a difference between “fear” and “cognizance of danger”.
*And my neighborhood is the “safe” one compared to much of the Northside!
I heartily endorse this.
One of the best ways is for the media to quit drooling and wanking over it for days and days ad nauseam. Part of the attraction of doing it is the “going out in a burst of glory”, so to speak. If that glory is not there, part of the attraction is not there, either.
Of course, that would require the media to act in a responsible manner and turn away from the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality, and that ain’t gonna happen.
Of course. The media should ignore stories involving 20 children being ripped apart over the course of two minutes because it makes the poor, poor gun owners look bad.
Not really. Owning a fire extinguisher doesn’t create a risk as significant as the one it is designed to deal with.
That’s unfair. He didn’t say anything about making gun owners look bad, and a number of psychologists have made the same point.
No, just don’t glorify the killer as some sort of supervillian Terminator.
I think this is troubling. I think there is an argument to be made that one ought NOT base public policy on responses to “unusual” - tho dramatic - occurrances.
Heck, 9/11 was monstrous as all hell. But I, for one, would prefer living today in a society that had said, “That’s all you’ve got?”, levelled whatever Al Quaida and supporters we could identify in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and gotten on our merry way.
Increased government intrusions post 9/11 were a large factor in my conversion from anti- to pro- private gun ownership. I would be extremely disheartened if we as a society willingly cast of yet mor liberties in a desire to be more “safe”.
As someone said, 20-50 shootings a year are insignificant, and a poor basis for major policy changes.
I thought we were talking about the psychology of gun owners, not the utility or dysutility of guns.
Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I agree with the second part of that quote, though not the first.
I suspect that this will not be a realistic option. Although a different technology, commercial, high resolution printers cannot be used to counterfeit currency today. Similar technology will be developed to prohibit 3D printing of weapons or patented/copyrighted/proprietary designs.
Think of something like a computer virus scanner that checks 3D design files for prohibited patterns. It won’t be the gun control lobby fighting this, it will be every manufacturer with a product that could be pirated. Of course, when we get to 3D scanners or matter replicators, all bets are off…
You can have my matter replicator when you pry it from my cold, dead, digitally-reconstructed hands.
Glorified? I’m seriously baffled by that statement. I have no idea where you get that this asshole - or any of these assholes - are being glorified.
I haven’t really watched the coverage of this incident because… well, because I really don’t find it interesting, or something. However, the Aurora movie theater guy was definitely presented as some sort of unstoppable badass.
No he was presented as a guy with a gun in combat gear killing people. I would venture to bet you could find no media outlet that ran the article, “Unstoppable Bad-ass Kills 12.”
I couldn’t think of a better word, I did not mean that anyone was praising him. More like “giving him notoriety”, “making him larger than life”.
Then again, what would you like? For the news to report, “20 children were killed today - by no one in particular, and in no particular way. Now here’s Chet with the weather.”
If the shit he did is notable and larger than life - and I’d say massacring 20 little kids with several rifle shots a piece is pretty fucking notable - why is reporting it as notable and larger than life wrong? Those are the facts of the story.