I don’t wish to say this in Kricket’s thread, so I’ll say it here.
You went and posted this:
Unless I’m reading you completely wrong, you’ve just painted me, and people like me, with responsibility for the despicable, horrid, tragic crime in the linked thread.
Explain yourself, if you can. Show me that wasn’t the thrust of your statement, and I’ll appologise. I don’t think you can, and I don’t wish to hijack Kricket’s thread, so here we are. If that was, as I suspect, your intent, then Fuck you.
Well, it seems to me that the “murderous Yahoos, armed to the teeth and intent on mayhem” referred to the perpetrators of the drive-by shooting. OTOH, “the misinformed and firearms- obsessed” does seem to refer to gun owners in general, but we’ll have to wqit for SG to explain.
I think we can all agree that guns are too readily available in the US, leading to such tragic incidents. Certainly, we should work harder at both preserving Second Amendment rights for responsible citizens AND keeping weapons out of the hands of scum who kill children.
What we can agree on, I think, is that criminals are all too freely roaming in the US, leading to such tragic acts of craven, cold-blooded murder. Certainly we should work harder at preserving the Second Amendment rights of all law abiding citizens and removing the scum who kill children from our society, period.
I don’t know, I think Tranquilis has a right to be peeved about this. I read that as implying that people who feel the citizenry should be allowed to be armed are misinformed and obsessed with guns, and that they are prone to destructive violence. Hell, I don’t even own a gun, probably never will, and I think that Spavined Gelding is the one being kneejerk, not Tranquilis.
Your conclusion does not follow your thesis, gobear. Despite a massive proliferation of guns, and especially handguns, over the past twenty years (give or take), the murder rate of children shows no corresponding increase. Therefore, I cannot agree with you.
OK, I’ve read your stuff. Which one of you want’s to argue that these murderous Yahoos were advancing their sacred, God given, Second Amendment Rights when they sprayed a backyard barbeque with gunfire? If there is a right to go armed there is an equal right to go armed with intent to do mayhem. This is a hideous thing, it should not be allowed to happen, but it cannot be stopped as long as firearms are freely available to any Yahoo that wants one. Somebody tell me that this would have happened if the Yahoos were reduced to drive-by rock throwing. Somebody tell me that things would be better if the little girl’s family had returned fire. This sort of thing is going to go on as long as this country continues its love affair with guns. How many kids have to be butchered before our friends understand that we do not now have the power to keep fire arms out of the hands of the irresponsible and the criminal while preserving firearms to the law abiding and respectable? Sooner or later we will have to make good drivers and bad drivers observe the same speed limit, and we will have to institute at least fire arms registration and licensing of handguns if we are going to prevent these horrors.
Yes, there would be fewer shootings if no one had guns. We (in the U.S.) can’t do that. We could arm everybody, make it illegal to be in public while unarmed, and try to turn massacres into general gunfights, on the grounds that no one but an idiot breaks a Mexican standoff the hard way, but people have shown themselves to be such idiots that the only thing we can do is rant, and hopre for kevlar denim in Gap.
And there you go. He was charged with being armed with intent. Ergo, the earlier statement that having the right to go armed means having the right to go armed with intent for mayhem has now been proven false.
The United States has numerous laws against murder, armed robbery, assault, etc.
It’s obvious upon even the most brief review of what you have written that you are so blinded by your ideology re: firearms, that you are unable to reason.
There is a big difference between what you say here and the implied hostility towards “gun rights” people in the quoted bit in the OP. I’m sure that a great many people who support individuals’ right to bear arms also support registration and licensing. You are doing yourself and them a disservice by assuming the two are mutually exclusive.
Isn’t going to happen. Guns are too easy to get and/or make. It isn’t even theoretically possible to completely eliminate guns. Great Britain has tried to do that and has failed miserably.
No shit.
I wouldn’t go that far. I would advocate making it easier for the average person (no felonies, no history of mental problems) to carry concealed weapons, however, after taking a few training classes
Only a congenital idiot or an incurable sadist would advocate that. Stop being stupid. If people were generally armed, very few would be moronic enough to try and commit a violent crime. Those who did would be killed by trained civilians who take an active interest in their own safety. Simple as that.
No. Wrong. Bzzzt, you’ve just lost the door prize: A clue. What we can do is get more of the general public armed and able to defend them and those around them. If criminals thought that the average person was carrying and trained, criminals would think twice before strafing people. After all, can your car outrun a .45 Magnum bullet? Not unless it can outpace an aircraft.
Am I hostile? Of course I’m hostile. A child has just been murdered. Murdered by some jackass who thought it was appropriate to indiscriminately fire into a backyard party. Am I hostile toward gun owners? Of course not. Gun owners generally didn’t kill this little girl. An idiot with a gun did. I am hostile toward people who insist (and in my judgement falsely insist) that the Constitution, or some natural right or God knows what else prevents the law enforcement authorities from taking what seems to me a very modist step toward preventing this sort of outrage.
In terms of going armed and going armed with intent, and a level of name calling that seems more than a little out of line even in this board, the only way you or anyone else can tell what I might be going to do with a gun is what I say I’m going to do or what I in fact do. Until I make manifest my intent to do something unlawful with a gun, there is no way for you to tell whether I am a so called responsible bearer of arms or a murderous Yahoo. That isn’t good enough. Some sense of decency and respect for civil order compels reasonable minds to the conclusion that there must be an acceptable method of regulating gun use. Until we do, we will continue rage at each other over the corpses of our children.
Did anyone see a middle just get thrown out the window there? How about some emotions blatantly appealed to? Can anyone say non sequitur?
You, Spavined Gelding, have the logical skills of a baboon.
You have a few false assumptions:
[ul]
[li]That minimally restricted guns will always lead to innocents being killed.[/li][li]That having stringent gun regulation would prevent innocents from being killed, or at least reduce the instance of those crimes.[/li][/ul]
You cannot see that there is a middle ground here: Widespread gun ownership without rampant homicide. That middle ground is where the US stands.
It is not where Great Britain stands, however. In 1996-1997, 162,000 registered pistols and revolvers, the total number of registered handguns, were turned in to police. Today, the number of handguns in the hands of criminals is officially reckoned to be at three million. The Center for Defence Studies at King’s College looked at gun crime and concluded criminal use of handguns increased 40 percent in the two years after the mass handgun confiscation. All of my facts are from the January 2002 issue of ‘America’s 1st Freedom.’
So, tell me again how strict gun laws prevent gun crime?
First, murdered children are an emotional issue. That does not mean that there is not a rational answer to the issue. Registration of firearms strikes me as a rational response. Not banning. Not confiscation. Registration. It surely is not the ultimate answer but it is a rational step.
Second, an armed populace with every idiot armed and ready to pull leather at the slightest provocation is a prescription for chaos. Just as soon as that happens the motto at every fender bender, for every imagined insult, will become “I’ll die before I back down.”
Third, as long as the irrationally attached to fire arms control the political debate, with the help of the economically attached to fire arms, there will be no change and we will continue to see a resort to gun play in our towns and villages. Maybe things are different in Montana. Maybe not. Maybe,Derleth, you should sit down for a moment and think about what you have posted today.
Forth, the confiscation of handguns in the UK doesn’t have much to do with our problem. Our criminals and our idiots appear to already be about as well armed as could be. I can’t imagine that registration would cause more of them to go get a gun.