Understatement of the year.
I missed this. I don’t disagree.
But I’m not proposing that Congress do anything. Rather, I am proposing that it is possible to sincerely believe in “states’ rights” and also sincerely believe that the states do not have the right to deny what you believe the Constitution explicitly guarantees. The OP apparently disagrees, here:
If you are, for example, a Californian who believes that the state of California is making it unduly difficult to exercise what you believe to be your Second Amendment rights, it is entirely proper to turn to the federal government in the form of the federal courts for relief. And it is not necessarily hypocritical for you to do so and yet hold that the federal government should not be involved in, say, regulating medical marijuana.
what I actually said…the words I used…the context…you know, *the meaning * was
Which seems to me to be perfectly clear.
If you don’t want to risk misunderstanding or seek to mislead others try reading and quoting what I actually do say.
The problem with this argument of course is that many conservatives will choose “give everyone a stick” and feel it’s the sensible solution.
Since the OP is addressing Trump’s idea of saving school children, I’m not sure any new gun laws will help for a very long time. This country is awash with firearms, the genie is out of the bottle. Gun laws won’t stop disturbed people from getting them and using them.
While I own guns and feel safer with one in my home, I do think we need better gun laws. I have no problem with much tighter regulations much along the lines of the OP but I doubt it will stop lone nuts from aquiring a gun and killing schoolchildren.
Sorry, I think we’ve circled right round on that train of thought and I can’t reconstruct the chain of thinking. Perhaps we’ll leave that there.
I think once the greater safety of autonomous vehicles becomes apparent we will see insurance companies restrict behaviour through the means of higher premiums. That in turn could drive (ha!) people to change what, how and when they drive. In the future if you choose to manually drive on the motorways when autonomous mode is safer you will be on the hook for massive damages in the event of a crash or massive premiums beforehand. You may be required to take greater in-depth training etc.
There is no doubt that vehicle deaths are about 3x higher than gun homicides but both are certainly high enough to warrant attention and concern. As it stands there is, has been and will continue to be a push towards understanding the reasons behind road death and greater road safety. Air bags, seat belts, fender heights, lights, tread depths, emissions, road surfaces, junction designs, signage etc. etc. Have there been any equivalent moves towards firearm safety? Is there even any attempt to consider it?
I don’t think anyone will truly know until it is tried. I suggest that mandatory training, licensing, insurance and security measures for all guns owned would have a cooling effect on the numbers, types and usage of guns and, possibly more importantly, send a societal and cultural message.
You should not be overly frightened of either. The risks remain low for both. However, society does itself no favours if it ignores the opportunities for reducing avoidable deaths. Even worse if it stops the question even being asked.
I guess my ignorance has been demonstrated in this thread. Which makes it all the more remarkable that my plan is much smarter than Trump’s. I hope rational Americans seize on Trump’s obvious stupidity to educate the American public on how utterly he (and by extension all those who support him) are.
Wow! Many Americans spend a significant portion of their lives in automobiles or even on dangerous motorcycles. Yet they kill only thrice as many as guns? That statistic should sober up gun enthusiasts. If we all spent several hours per day fondling our weapons and firing at things that would be one thing, but we don’t.
I’ve not fired a non-toy gun since my father took me practicing many decades ago. I’ve never seen a gun brandished in anger. I spent decades in California but the only guy I knew who carried a gun was the bridge player we laughed at for his “surrogate penis.” Yet guns kill fully one-third as many as traffic??? Wow!
just to be clear, because facts are important, those approximate figures compare all road deaths with just the homicides by firearms, which I think is an important distinction.
The most recent figures I can find show 37kfatalities on the roads for 2016.
For firearms deaths there seems to be some around 10.5 per 100k of population (as of 2012), so around 34k in total. Almost exactly the same as road deaths. That contains suicides as well so the actual number of homicides is 3.6 per 100k so 11.7k in total. So yes, just under a third.
Right. Gun accidents are only like 500-1000, depending on the year. So that’s why we have so much effort to reduce accidental harm to self and others with vehicles, but not firearms. That’s why we license driving.
That is an absolute gem, beyond parody.
Not at all. The point of licensing is to reduce accidents.
Despite the never-ending stream of new ways to get yourself prematurely killed, it is currently much safer to go out in public than at any time in history in all but a very few obvious exceptions like Syria, for example. This is what they do when kids attend schoool - they go out in public. “Real” safety and security is an illusion existing on a spectrum from holed up in a bomb shelter (pretty secure) to walking point on a U.S. Army patrol somewhere in the Stan (good chance of getting killed). Everywhere in between you are more or less likely to be killed by either some accidental or intentional act of violence, random or otherwise. That’s just life. Or death, for the unlucky.
Although something very similar happens multiple times every weekend across the country, I can’t remember the last time a drunk driver ran head-on into a family of four killing every occupant in the crash, followed by media-fanned outrage demanding tighter driving control or banning vehicles. That is because almost everyone uses cars and they are not feared as weapons of mass murder, notwithstanding their growing popularity amongst extremist terror operators. Terrorists have recognized how dangerous an easily accessible a rental truck can be to a large group of pedestrians, compared to the difficulty and risk of oganizing and deploying conventional weapons for a terror attack.
This discussion needs to be about security and mental health, nothing else. Nothng changes until that is recognized and addressed. People who do not understand this will continue being disappointed about the situation. It is a totally irrational fear considering how small a danger guns actually are compared to the many other ways you can get killed while out in public. All we need is media hype to keep the chorus of scared sheep at peak crescendo, which accomplishes exactly nothing for the cause. It only creates an inordinate level of confusion and partisan bickering, clouding the real issue(s).
Unlike suicide by vehicle (a not un-common phenomenon), suicide by firearm (excluding the murder-suicide combo) doesn’t typically take other innocents with it.
So, the 33,000 deaths by firearms that aren’t officially designated as accidents are fine? not a problem? just guns doing what they are supposed to do? Not something to worry about? Presumably if we could eliminate those 500-1000 accidents and increase the number of purposeful deaths that would be a good thing?
I guess by your logic the 17 deaths in Florida (that’s last week’s shooting) and the 50+ in Vegas were not accidents?
Nobody has called those deaths fine or not a problem. We license drivers to prevent accidents. To get that license I need to show that I can operate a vehicle and that I am familiar with traffic laws. If I want to operate that vehicle with murderous or suicidal intent, that license does diddly. Likewise with a firearm. You are looking at all firearm deaths and applying a regulatory instrument that addresses a very small subset that isn’t even a major cause of accidental death and injury. At the expense of paying attention to actual risks.
Most people do not realize they are far more likely to die at the hands of a healthcare professional, than from a firearm discharge - from a purely risk analysis standpoint.
The regulation would not be primarily aimed at reducing accidental death (though it would…the lives of hundreds of people are not to be sniffed at). My reasons for wanting regulations in place would be to reduce the number of guns overall. It would become so expensive and difficult to own and carry guns that fewer people would do it. When something is being used for it’s intended purpose and killing tens of thousands of people a year then stronger regulation seems sensible.
Cars are inherently utilitarian and incidentally dangerous, Guns have far greater inherent danger, indeed their whole utility is to cause damage and death, why you would regulate the former more than the latter seems bizarre.
How heavily regulated is the healthcare industry?
“Gee, I’m sorry your teenager died in a mass school shooting. But that’s life.” Say that to a grieving parent and count the number of teeth you get to keep. It ain’t going to wash with the other students there, either.
Classic conservative position, though. “It doesn’t impact my life, so why should I care?”
Deliberately missing the point that cars have actual utility. Unless you’re living in a shack in the Adirondacks, you don’t need a gun.
Funny how that’s the position that the NRA always takes. Let’s just forget about those lethal weapons. Let’s talk about something else instead.
Cite away how common that phenomenon really is.
I am only personally aware of two people I knew (one a close friend), so I have no legitimate cite for that, in this context.
The fact it happens at all is probably of equal relevance to the fact that mass murder in our schools happens at all, from a statistical standpoint.
Oddly enough, I don’t know or know of anyone who’s committed suicide by car. Out of curiosity, how exactly do you even know that it was suicide?
Yet you have no statistics. Uh, OK…
911 transcripts of the phone calls immediately prior to and during the crash were pretty convincing on the old HS acquaintance example. The good friend example was not so easy, but the circumstances and a general consensus among family and friends was as conclusive as that one was ever going to get.
Nope. You win.