i hate it when people say this (“just get out then”). Guess what. i was born here too and my voice and opinion count just as much. I am anti-gun because i consider the lives of my friends, family, and fellow citizens more important tham your precious toys.
The you can quote where I call them “layabouts”, right?
No laws only apply to people who abide by them.
As you know.
Okay, so you implied it with the comment about “plenty of time” when, in fact, firefighters are generally occupied. You know, what with training to fight fires.
I think that there is an unusually high percentage of the US population that is whipped up into a hyper-paranoid state through the News and Internet because they self-select into a group of people who are exposed to almost a continuous stream of talk about how ‘we must take our country back’, ‘the US is being taken over by socialism’, ‘our rights will be handed over to the UN’…
Without this sort of element (the 15-20% of the population who are soaking it up and the publishers that are looking for clicks and enjoying their notoriety) I believe that things like an elected Sheriff declaring the need for the budget to protect from invading UN forces would have been laughed from public service and only made headlines as a bat-sh*t crazy loon who is now in the care of professionals.
Instead, the man still holds his job and people openly applauded his bravery in declaring that he fully intended to stand up to his imaginary invading forces.
I was awakened around 2 am by the sound of gunfire outside. Our neighborhood is bordered on two sides by slummy apartment complexes and is adjacent a small vacant wooded lot; we’re accustomed to the odd pistol crack early in the morning—sometimes followed eventually by police sirens—but this time the firing went on for a good ten minutes including the brief pauses to reload. Someone anxious to try out his new gift, I gathered, who couldn’t wait for the firing range (ha!) or at least until they were away from a densely populated area.
Although the continuous noise was annoying and made me worry about stray bullets coming through our bedroom window, in a way I was comforted to know that it was obviously someone doing some ersatz target shooting, unlike the isolated rat-tat-tats that sound like (and from subsequent news reports, often turn out to be) the sound of someone being shot to death nearby.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
My Christmas wish is for you to admit you didn’t think before you posted this.
The man beat his grandmother to death with a hammer. He shouldn’t have had access to any weapon, not just firearms: he should have been locked up until the day he died, unless the balance of evidence somehow shifted in his favour.
Criminals, sociopaths and psychotics already have all the guns they need. More guns literally couldn’t make things any worse- maybe it really is worth a try. You never hear of any of these shooters deciding to shoot up a police station; probably because they might get one, two or maybe if they’re lucky three cops before being turned into swiss cheese. Maybe if it wasn’t a given that any random crowd of people are probably helpless fish in a barrel, these cowards wouldn’t decide to go people hunting.
Pshaw. It takes “very little time” at a range every week to turn any random person into a cooly deadly marksman. That NRA training is so effective that, with almost no effort, an average person will be able to neutralize a threat in a crowded mall, church service, grade school, or active fire. And anyway, firefighting mostly invloves cooking chili and playing with the Dalmatian. And the average fire truck has plenty of room for equipment unrelated to firefighting. Why, when I was a firefighter, I often used to look around the vehicles and wonder, “Why are there so many empty compartments on this truck? All this unused space could be filled with equipment we might need to put out a fire or provide life saving care. Or, guns.”
Illegal gun factories thrive in the Philippines.
We shouldn’t think we can stop a behavior by eliminating enabling objects.
Around here, whenever a firetruck rolls on an emergency, there’s always a police car slightly ahead of or closely behind it. I wonder if that wasn’t the case here?
No, you (incorrectly) inferred it from what I said. Perhaps you could find a linguist who could explain what the difference between those two words is. 
But it’s not really central to my disagreement with the OP anyway, so if you want to debate it, open a GD thread. I outlined my disagreement in detail above.
Head shots to all bad guys every time.
I hear Mr. Spengler’s favorite rapper is Jay Zzzzz…
The town in question had a volunteer force. Same as my town. Police are always dispatched to fire calls. For one, with a volunteer force we always get there long before they do. And also for crowd and traffic control. I am not sure what happened in tgis particular case. But I’m not sure where you got the idea that police are not routinely sent on fire calls.
Like everyone you are entitled to your opinion. The constitution disagrees. Get a 2/3 majority and you can get that changed.
I know you want to fool the civilians but come on. Full time firefighters spend most of their 24 hour shifts eating, sleeping or working out. Volunteers of course have their full time jobs. No fire department spends all its down time training for fires. It’s nice for my image to have everyone think that all police are doing ninja training some we can take on 5 guys like Jack Reacher. But we know that’s bullshit too.
Well, he’s defending the concept for some odd reason. For fun, though, let’s take a gander at the daily “routine” for firefighters in Napa.
Quaint. So tell me, are you wondering why your snide and obviously incorrect comment about the firefighter’s available time got the reaction it did?
You know, there are places where the firefighters and the police are the same folks. I used to live in such a place, a small city in California called Marina. Here’s the thing: the persons assigned a shift as firefighters were not also assigned a shift at the very same time as armed police officers. Gee, did you ever wonder why that just might be a good idea that the folks actively engaged as firefighters at the moment not have weapons?
The snideness of my remark is something that you and some others have inferred. Perhaps you think I look at firefighters as lazy “layabouts” with too much time on their hands. I’m sure some people think that. I happen to have several friends who are firefighters, and I have a lot of respect for them. But they also tell me that one challenge they have is to make sure they don’t become “layabouts”. We want firefighters to have lots of time spent not fighting fires so they can be ready to do so when needed. They need to be kept busy, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be 100% training to fight fires.
I already brought this up about Sunnyvale, above. I’ve known a Sunnyvale firefighter/policeman for about 15 years, so I’m quite familiar with this. And guess what? All those firefighters are trained with weapons.
My first reaction to this story was to be sorry for the families who lost two brave people who were volunteer firefighters. And to be furious that some asshole seems to have lured them into a trap to kill them. An asshole who, I learned just now, served time in prison for killing his grandmother. An asshole who could not legally purchase the guns he used because of his criminal record.
The OP of this thread is nothing but: Blah, blah, blah, GUNS, blah blah blah. Sorry I didn’t have the knee-jerk reaction to see the word “guns” and fall in line with the outrage. I read the OP and thought it was a bunch of nonsense, and I explained why.
Well there was the Fort Hood shooting (in an area where the soldiers were unarmed). There’ve been protracted shoot outs with police officers too.
As for personal responsibility: can it be operationalised so that we can measure it and determine those deficient in it? Can it be taught? Would having personal responsibility prevent someone from hiring or firing based on attractiveness?
That would be because guns are NOT the problem and never have been. People wanting to kill other people is the problem, and in today’s society, that’s compounded with a desire to see themselves all over the media.