To expand on my previous comment–it’s hard to justify banning hunting arms entirely, especially given the current state of both parties opinions on welfare compared with the relative cost of hunted meat when you inherited pappy’s deer rifle or whatever.
But even limiting hunting arms to people with valid hunting licenses (as most of Europe appears to do) doesn’t really stop someone who is bound and determined to cause a massacre.
Which means at some point we either have to discuss a total ban (which I think is both a non-starter AND not possibly effectual given geographic and sociological considerations) or we have to start addressing causes rather than methods of violence to a greater extent than we’re currently prepared to.
Sadly, it seems like that is also a non-starter in this country of late.
While the massacres are the most high profile and emotive events they will always be the least preventable. You can’t stop someone from driving their car down a crowded sidewalk as well if they’re determined to wreak havoc and are unconcerned with the consequences to themselves.
But, continuing the car analogy, there are things that can be done. If we let people drive cars as readily as we let them have guns, chaos and death would be rife. Instead, we require people to demonstrate that they can responsibly use this giant speeding chunk of metal. So while we can’t stop the massacres, gun licensing and registration combined with better education would likely reduce the number of small incidents of the kind that we’ve seen throughout this thread. Teach people to use, store and keep track of their weapons properly and you’ll see gun deaths go down - not to zero, not even close, but even fewer deaths is a distinct benefit.
A pity some see this as a precursor to a mad gubmint grab for all guns everywhere, but for some people (on both sides, admittedly) there’s just no middle ground.
(And decent mental health care would be good too, but that’s a whole other issue.)
He wasn’t even viciously assaulted with a piece of popcorn first. Harder to rule it a DGU that way.
Speaking of which, if they were as common as our psychopathic friend **Damuri **asserts, it shouldn’t be so hard to find one or two every day for him to link to. Or even one or two a week. Or any at all.
This is, I think, the result of an overly permissive gun culture.
Used to be, you were justified in shooting an intruder into your home. The line when I was growing up used to be that if you shot someone on your doorstep, to make sure you drag the body inside before you called the cops.
But now in so many places, the ‘castle doctrine’ has been expanded to cover all of your outside property as well. See someone cut through your yard? Just shoot 'em.
And since this guy apparently thought the shed was his, and because intent is so big in the workings of the law, he’ll probably get off, I expect.
And on top of that, in many states SYG has expanded the legal use of guns to anywhere you happen to be, if you have reason to feel threatened.
It’s a permissive culture. Used to be you were supposed to keep it in your house, but now they think it’s OK to do it out of doors, and out in the streets - and have passed laws to force the consequences of that permissiveness on the rest of us.
Exactly. I respect those who are willing to fight, and die if necessary, for their rights and freedoms.
The gun crowd expects other people to die for their freedoms and their (alleged) Second Amendment rights.
Every time someone dies in another shooting, the NRA should send their survivors a nice card thanking the deceased for making the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of gun rights.
No, I’ve pretty well demonstrated I know exactly what I’m talking about - I’ve also demonstrated that you’re just a damn stupid and willfully ignorant extremist, that’s the real reason you are unable to accept the facts of what I’ve said. Extremists like you can’t handle facts contrary to your invalid beliefs. You’re the one who has thoroughly abused the word “routine” by claiming you can use it to describe results that actually deviating from the real routine - the real routine being that simple gun safety rules keep guns safe around people 99.9999% of the time.
You are just a willfully ignorant anti-gun extremist whose claims I have factually shown to be absolute shit, and you just keep going with it pretending otherwise. That just adds “pathetic” to the list of adjectives that describe you.
There were facts in there somewhere, Monster104? Was there any comprehension of the actual meaning of deviance? If so, I missed that too. BTW, have you identified the statistical definition of routinely, yet?
At least the fact that the media correctly reported the weapon as a shotgun disproves **Bricker’**s assertion in another thread that the liberal media demonizes semiautomatic weapons at every opportunity. (No, I can’t be arsed to look up the thread).
The only other thing that I could add is that so much of right wing/gun culture is intertwined with this idea that the world is against them and everything is scary, which leads to more of these rage-filled incidences of violence in my opinion. Frankly, you could just as easily ban Rush and Fox and reduce mass murder as much as with a gun ban.
As one of the folks that have been branded a gun psychopath by some of the hoplophobes on this board, I also agree with Gyrate.
I also agree that the fringe elements of gun culture is somewhat paranoid (but I suspect a lot of that paranoia is temporary and will evaporate as soon as we get a white dude in the white house) but I don’t see a lot of mass murders coming from one side of the political spectrum, they almost all seem to have a few screws loose.
I think one side of the political spectrum has probably committed more assassinations than the other (JFK, RFK, MLK, Sadat, Rabin, Gandhi, etc.) but I see no evidence that they are significantly more prone to commit mass murder.
The common thread among mass murderers seems to be that they tend to be males and they tend to be crazy. Many of the mass murderers we have seen in recent years don’t really strike me as gun nuts. They frequently purchase their gun several days or weeks before the crime and
I think you should stop claiming people who think differently than you are racists. You’ve made statements to this effect many times before and then as now, it’s stupid. It’s along the same line of thinking as those who say gun owners are compensating for small dicks. It’s a stupid statement and people who advance these types of statements are stupid. Stop being stupid.
I am only half joking. Gun ownership is concentrated in places like Texas and the South East. These are the places that seemed to flip out when a black guy got elected president. I don’t think there is anything about being pro-gun that makes you racist but are you under the impression that the incidence of racists is no higher among gun owners (nationally) than the general population (nationally)?
There is a difference between claiming something for which you have no evidence (gun owners are compensating for small dicks) and claiming something that has been true in my experience and for which I can provide a plausible theory (gun ownership coincidentally is high in places that also have more than their share of racists).
ETA: but if it bothers you or you think I’m implying that you might be a raicst, then I’ll stop bringing it up. I only bring it up when people point out the spike in hysteria among gun owners since obama was elected.
If it weren’t for the loud subset of gun nuts who are quite openly, vocally racist about the muslim kenyan sand-nigger in the White House…
Let’s face it. Not all gun enthusiasts are anti-Obama (me, for one). Not all gun enthusiasts are crazy, untrained, or racist lunatics.
But enough of them are that it’s a noticeable pattern (especially as gun stores are having their sixth annual “get 'em before Obama takes 'em” sales at this point).
You know what else is stupid? Conflating being against Obama’s policies and being a racist. It’s cheap pandering to pretend that any opposituon has a foundation in racism. It is intellectually lazy and stupid. Obama is anti guns. Saying so is not racist. Clinton was anti gun too. Biden is anti gun. It has nothing to do with race.
If a single poster exhibited the characteristics you describe then it would be open season on that person. But to choose to focus on the fringe margins of a group and act as if that is representative is stupid.
And saying Obama, Clinton, Biden et al are “anti gun” is equally stupid and simplistic. They are anti-gun-violence, and they wish to do something about it. Not a one of them ever pushed for complete gun bans.
