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You have not data to back *anything* you say, you don't use logic or the scientific method to validate or refute anything I have said and you certainly haven't offered anything constructive or valuable in response to my logical attempts to frame the argument. You sir, win one internet. I am done here.
Jul 21, 2012 10:29am Gun Deaths: A Familiar American Experience
The National Rifle Association is quick to associate more guns with less crime, saying that since the early ’90s, when many states relaxed their weapon laws, violent crime has dropped 70 percent. Despite the rampages on campuses and military bases, as well as the hail of gang bullets in Chicago that has killed over 200 so far this year, the national murder rate is at a 47-year-low. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a non-profit organization, points out that Americans still kill each other with guns at a level that is staggering compared to the rest of humanity.
A study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that the gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.
You should spend more time with your kids and grandkids and less time B/S's about things you know nothing about. You have made a mess of my thread. Looks like your posting just to rank up or you are just that bored. All this coming from someone that probably voted for the terminator lol just let it go.
Because we disagree-you are giving me advice about spending more time with my family. Thank you, I spend a lot of time with my my family, support them financially, employ them, and provide emotional support for a special needs child while you oil your gun barrels or whatever it is you guys do.
From the gov't point of view on this topic it will follow Rahm (dead fish/ballerina) Emanual's words.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before".
Now congress can pass all the laws it wants regarding gun control but to what end? Oh yeah criminals will follow the law(s)? LOL!
All it imposes on are law abiding citizens who want to have guns.
IMO nothing will change until the certainty and severity of the punishment for the crime is absolute.
Criminals with their attorneys know how to game the system and make a mockery of the law.
15 years on death row is not a deterrent.
A scenario:
Crime (murder), a trial, found guilty, one appeal, lose it and then capitol punishment within 6 to 12 months = a true deterrent.
Crimes with a gun (robbery, assault or violence w/o murder) should be an absolute 25 year sentence.
Criminals count on playing and milking he system so the concerns for consequences very minimal.
Liberal judges who release criminals that recommit crimes should be held liable. If a doctor is held liable for a bad professional decision then the same should apply to judges.
Before all exceptions begin, I understand. The truly mentally ill (very few cases, most are just diabolical and evil), self defense or crimes of passion would fall into separate categories. The above reference addresses the murder of the innocent.
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FORGED IN A FIRE LIT LONG AGO, STAND NEXT TO ME, YOU'LL NEVER STAND ALONE. FIRST IN, LAST OUT. YOU DON'T ALWAYS KNOW WHERE YOU STAND, TILL YOU KNOW THAT YOU WON'T RUN AWAY. YOU HAVE ENEMIES? GOOD. THAT MEANS YOU'VE STOOD UP FOR SOMETHING, SOMETIME IN YOUR LIFE. W. CHURCHILL SOCIALISM IS A PHILOSOPHY OF FAILURE, THE CREED OF IGNORANCE, AND THE GOSPEL OF ENVY, ITS INHERENT VIRTUE IS THE EQUAL SHARING OF MISERY. W.CHURCHILL A wise and frugal gov't, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good gov't. Thomas Jefferson ...
All it imposes on are law abiding citizens who want to have guns.
This piece of crap Holmes was pretty law-abiding in the way he went about arming himself. So what's your point?
Quote:
Originally Posted by M5Ranger
Crime (murder), a trial, found guilty, one appeal, lose it and then capitol punishment within 6 to 12 months = a true deterrent.
It's been proven time and time again that the death penalty is not a deterrent. Crimes of passion are not premeditated, so death penalty does not count as a deterrent there. Even in the premeditated cases, the desire to have someone dead clouds the view of the death penalty. Professional crime counts on the chance that A) they won't get caught and B) they'll beat the justice system. But I digress, the death penalty is for an entirely different thread.
Quote:
Liberal judges who release criminals that recommit crimes should be held liable. If a doctor is held liable for a bad professional decision then the same should apply to judges.
You keep putting yourself in a smaller and smaller box. Liberal and conservative politicians: Do you think that all liberal politicians are scum and conservative ones are flawless angels? If you think so, you're crazy. If you don't, then why do you keep singling out liberals every chance you get? Like no conservative judges ever let a criminal slip? Please.
I don't know, I guess I have more of a problem with a fellow Citizen being killed than I do with the actual method of their death. The basis of this whole argument is just crazy. Just because people are killed with a firearm their deaths are more wrong and suddenly there should be more laws?
There are already a lot of laws on the books: Title 18, U.S. Code, §§ 921-929 and Title 26, U.S. Code, §§ 5801-5872 to name a few. The sad thing is, I am sure most of you probably don’t even know how to find this information or how it even specifically pertains to this discussion. I would much like to present them here but quite frankly these sections are vast. I would like to specifically mention Title 18, U.S. Code, § 101, however, as useful primer for your further education.
The problem is that these type of the arguments, for OR against additional firearm laws, become so emotional people. That is understandable, I suppose. For some people death is a very hard thing to deal with, violence even more so. For others, the very idea that people around them could have a firearm scares them. The logic behind this attitude baffles me, but I suspect it has to do with a basic difference in worldviews. Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on “the authorities” for protection. Whenever I see one of those “Gun-free Zone” signs, especially outside of a school, I wonder who exactly they are directed at.
Of course, you can hardly have a discussion like this without images and thoughts of the murders at Viriginia Tech entering your mind. What happened at Virginia Tech was tragic, but the most tragic thing is that school policy forbade the victims the right to defend themselves. If just one responsible, adult student or school employee on campus had been allowed a firearm, this tragedy might have been largely avoided, and the killer’s spree halted before going as far as it did. Would it have been stopped altogether? Not for sure, but it would have made a difference.
I take what I said above back. The event itself was not tragic. No, what was even MORE tragic was that Virginia citizens asked their legislators to change the university’s “concealed carry” policy to exempt people 21 years of age or older (of course we don’t want our children to have guns) who have passed background checks and taken training classes. This is what a lot additional gun control advocates say they want; training and background checks to ensure suitability for firearm ownership, right? Surprise, surprise, on the day that the bill came up for discussion, these people who claim they are working for the safety of students and faculty lobbied against House Bill 1572. An administrator subsequently praised the legislature for blocking the measure.
In fact, House Bill 1572 didn’t even get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. Campus officials went on and on about how the defeat of the new law was going to “improve safety.” Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated and went as far as to say: “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
How appreciative do you suppose that campus community was the day after?
Of course, I don't blame any one in particular, liberals, conservatives, politicians, administrators. It goes far beyond that.
It starts with how the media portrays these type of events and how specifically the issue of additional firearm laws are proffered. Usually, the rally cry from these advocates of additional firearm control includes the word child or children.
Everyone seems willing to call them adults when they want an abortion, and adults when they want to have consensual sex, adults when it comes to driving cars, drinking, joining the military, getting married, but when something like this happens, ESPECIALLY when a gun is involved they suddenly morph into children.
You simply can’t have it both ways. Either they are adults because they can make decisions on their own or they are children that need to be told what to do. Either they are adults that can take care of themselves or they are children that need taken care of.
Unfortunately, we live in an infantile culture where those twenty-something year olds that would be regarded as adults by any other society in the history of our planet are treated and often coddled as “children.” It is deeply damaging to our country to portray fit, fully formed adults as children who need to be protected. We should be raising them to understand that there will be moments in life when you need to protect yourself and, in a “horrible” world, there may come moments when you have to choose between protecting yourself or others and death.
Standing by idly unarmed or not, while a criminal assaults you with a weapon is the single most suicidal thing that you can do. By charging the criminal you at least have a chance of surviving and, even if you don’t survive, your charge and death will create a diversion for others to follow up on. That would be hoping for too much from the bulk of society. It simply easier to push a personal agenda and it feels even better if you can get some additional legislation out of it.
I can just about bet that not a single person in any of these tragic events ever thought beforehand what they would do in that situation and they paid for it with their lives.
In a saner world our children would be taught to protect themselves and to not be afraid to try to protect others. In a saner world we would have had far less casualties because our children would have had the guts to do SOMETHING, because someone may have a had a gun to defend themselves and others with.
To do NOTHING, that is cowardly. To think that the passing of a few feel-good laws, to do something for the sake of nothing, will make a difference. THAT is cowardly.
It’s the hard, harsh, painful truth and I am sorry it is true but I am not sorry for saying it.
The children didn’t fail each other and they didn’t fail themselves just the same as the murderers didn't fail themselves. We fail the victims and perpetrators every day that we insist that an inanimate object somehow garners more responsibility for the situation than the actual person. What is worse is that we keep repeating this terrible ballet over and over and over again and then we wonder why we don't see the changes we want and deserve.
We willingly put on this pseudo-utopian reality where you are not have to be held accountable for your actions or decisions, that there is no danger because the authorities, the government, are here to protect you and they will always be there when you need them.
In my mind it is absolutely irresponsible for parents to allow their children to go into the world totally incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death, let alone seemingly incapable of acknowledging that those threats exist. What feeble mindset the parent who would condone such views from their children. How sad. How utterly pathetic. Most of us have done all that we felt we could do, yet the minds of our youths are still poisoned with this platitude of passivity in the face of danger, pacifism in the face of war and acceptance of rules and regulations that prohibit the proper and responsible practice of self-defense.
But what about our children, I can hear some of you asking.
Yes, what about them. A firearm is an inanimate object made up of a few pounds of steel and/or plastic. That is fact. It is my belief that it is worse for a child to be taught that an inanimate object is inherently bad and can make people do bad things than ANY object could EVER be.
Any attempts at gun control by these people will be infinitesimally less effective than the mere promotion of the existence and fortitude of personal responsibility, accountability for actions, and training.
The expectation of, or ardent wish for, this responsibility and accountability is obviously not shared by these advocates of additional firearm control. No, instead these people, mostly talking-heads, politicians or administrators whose careers and promotions rely on making us “sick,” and then finding some ridiculous, complicated and expensive “cure” insist that somehow the “evil” gun caused the person to do what they did.
So what is the answer, what is their cure?
Make firearm ownership more difficult. For whom exactly?
They will never admit it, but these advocates for additional firearm control want nothing less than to take all firearms away from every Citizen. That is the ONLY way that their delusion works for everyone. Don't let them fool and placate you with fancy talk of compromise and understanding. They want nothing of it; all they want is your lawfully owned firearm smashed to pieces or burned to crisp and melted down.
I do care about you, Citizens. Lest you think otherwise, I have a few "common sense" proposals for you.
Many people have been lulled into a false sense of security by their avalanche transceiver, and consequently been killed in avalanches. Here are some “common sense” avalanche transceiver control laws for our protection.
We should protect Citizens from this very real danger by enacting "beacon control" laws, so that only trained professionals, such as ski patrol, are allowed to own or use an avalanche beacon. After all, the only way to ensure absolute safety is to not ski in potential avalanche terrain.
The first step is for all Citizens to register their beacons with the government, and for all buyers of beacons to undergo "background checks" against their medical records, to make sure that no one known to engage in risky injury-causing behaviors gets their hands on an avalanche beacon.
The next step is to require a "cooling-off period" of seven days between purchase of an avalanche beacon and its delivery. Allowing people to just walk into a sporting goods store, buy a beacon, and immediately take it with them simply enables unplanned trips into avalanche terrain, and other rash decisions that lead to injuries and death. There is no reason for any legitimate beacon buyer to need an avalanche beacon right away.
The next step is to pass laws restricting the battery capacity of beacons, so that they cannot be operated for too long without running out of power. This simply tempts people to stay in avalanche terrain for too long. Professionals, of course, can own beacons with unrestricted battery capacity.
I believe that drunk driving and traffic fatalities are a very serious issue facing us today and I have seen the horrors and personally experienced the aftermath of drunk driving. We NEED to pass some “common sense” vehicle control laws for our protection and to safeguard our children.
The first step is for everyone to turn his or her cars into a repository. There, a majority of the vehicles will be dismantled, destroyed or recycled (Hey, look we are helping the environment AND reducing our carbon footprint at the same time!). Some of the vehicles will be retained strictly for government use. Only trained professionals, like police officers, firefighters and other emergency and service workers should be allowed to own and operate vehicles. Clearly if “regular” people are not allowed to own vehicles then drinking and driving will completely cease to be a problem.
Professionals or others who we deem deserving to own and operate a vehicle will have to undergo a “background check” against their medical and psychological records to make sure that they are not inclined to excessive or reckless alcohol consumption.
Because there are other people who we determine should have vehicles we will limit the fuel tank capacity of vehicles to that which is absolutely required for their area of responsibility. There is no reason for anyone except appropriate professionals to have access to massive and dangerous amounts of fuel. This will also prevent “regular” people from tearing about the country if they were to have access to all that fuel. In addition to fuel volume limits, we will put speed inhibitors on these “regular” people’s cars to limit the risk to the public.
We will also limit to 2.5 gallons the size of spare fuel containers. There will also be a purchase limit of two containers per year and there will be a five-day waiting period before you can actually take custody of the container and in no case can any one family or person have more than four spare fuel containers in their ownership. This is so that people who are determined to drive long distances after drinking alcohol or to recklessly use fuel realize that they should not and choose instead to stay at home. Besides there is no logical reason why anyone would need immediate access to more than two high-capacity fuel containers or an additional five gallons of extra fuel a year.
The containers will be registered by serial number to the purchaser so that any crime that is committed with them is immediately traceable to the purchaser and instead of actually having to investigate the crime we can easily assume since they bought the container years ago they clearly must be the perpetrator of the crime. These laws will make it easier for law enforcement to fight crime and make us safer.
Extreme you say. Perhaps but really no different than the advocates of additional firearm control want to do with firearms and cars and fuel are not even guaranteed BY THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.
I don't want to paint myself in a corner and say that I am a one-issue voter but it is hard for me to get behind ANY presumptive elected official who would violate the Bill of Rights of the Constitution that myself and many others have sworn to defend against any foreign or domestic enemy.
Really, at the end of the day, I suppose it just hard for me to blame an inanimate object for the actions of a living person. Then, we all have our opinions, right?
Ya know something, I read some commentary by a former resident of the Soviet Union, where gun laws were extreme-they just weren't allowed when he was living there and death by gun was virtually non-existent. (not saying there is paradise to be found there but strict laws do yield results.) Claiming that there is nothing that can be done to lessen violent deaths from guns is myopic, in my opinion. We lead the civilized world in violent gun death and for what? It isn't cowardly to want to reduce these incidents like Colorado because they are just going to continue to escalate. Someday soon, some person on this board will be grievously affected by some coot who was able to purchase a couple thousand rounds of ammo and magazines designed only to wreak havoc. Perhaps some law-abiding person packing at the local McDonald's or Movie Theater will get a chance to squeeze off a round in defense of the public-but it had better be a good one while the schizo or nutjob is spraying 50-60 rounds. I prefer to reduce the availability of arsenals like the kook in Colorado, with assualt rifles and take my chances with a kook with a handgun anyday.
First magazines are designed to hold ammunition not wreak havoc. They are utterly useless without a firearm. The idea that a specific magazine is somehow more "dangerous" than another is utterly simplistic. Almost as simplistic as the supposition that "assault weapons" are more dangerous than other "less evil" firearms.
I never claimed that "nothing could be done" to lessen "violent deaths" caused by firearms nor did I argue that nothing SHOULD be done. Surely there is nothing cowardly about wanting to reduce "violent death."
I take issue with the use of the word "violent" while talking about death by firearm. EVERY death caused by a firearm is VIOLENT and we DO NOT "lead the world in violent gun death." I believe your confusion comes from the descriptor "violent." I am sure the numbers that you are looking at separate deaths caused by war or conflict (as a single example) or suicide (another example) and only count those that the data preparer deemed "violent" thereby skewing the data to suit their own opinions and ultimate conclusions. If you have raw data that proves otherwise, show it, but I bet anything you find will be appropriately groomed, prepared and conditioned to support such a conclusion.
I have a problem with ANY death and I am confused as to why a segment of the population chooses to solely hone in on firearms and their illegal use. It is not a problem that people are showing concern for their illegal use; as Citizens we should all be concerned, but why is there such fervor surrounding firearms? I suppose the real problem with people that think like you is that you cannot imagine any other purpose for firearms except to maim, injure or kill.
I am not going to argue that point. Firearms are certainly well suited to maim, injure or kill; that is what they were designed for, after all. To single out a few that look scary and conclude they are somehow more apt for this purpose is downright laughable.
The combination of a few handguns, a shotgun and a box-fed semi-automatic rifle do not constitute an arsenal. "Arsenal" is another key word or tricky phrase like children, violent or "assault weapon" that is used to describe these tragic events and their aftermath. It is an appeal to the emotional side of a misguided argument. It is conveniently and routinely ignored that there are millions of firearms, including those mean-looking "assault weapons" that get so much attention after these tragic events, and millions of law-abiding Citizens EVERYDAY that are not overcome by the evilness contained in these scary firearms and go on a murder rampage.
How do you know that there are not already fellow Citizens in this forum that have been "grievously affected" by these evil guns that you speak of? You assume that we all who are "grievously affected" will feel the same way as you do? Truth be told, I have been more grievously affected by drunk driving and the misuse of motor vehicles and yet I am not calling for the outlaw of "scary" or "fast" cars or insisting on the prohibition of alcohol.
Instead of displaying personal fortitude and taking an interest in the defense of yourself, your family and acquaintances and the Country and her Citizenry you instead sit on your hands and whimper about the need for more laws, more control, more government. You look to others to do what you do not have the stomach for and then have the gall to criticize and chastise and characterize those that do as crazed gun fanatics who would like nothing more than to "squeeze off a round" all in an attempt to marginalize them.
We will "compromise" and you may get your evil firearms outlawed. But it won't have the desired affect and you will insist on further "compromise" and have more evil firearms taken from Citizen's hands. This will continue to occur until you get your wish and law-abiding Citizens will be denied lawful ownership of any firearm.
That is the only way that your policy will have the desired affect and I am sorry, I will never concede.
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a) there will always be a nutbag looking for notariety with a gun or whatever works,
b) there will always be goofballs that think there is no difference between hunting weapons and military grade weapons,
c) there is too much violence on earth, and too much money being made by those that benefit from the sale of small, and big arms...
d) from the point of view of any alien visitor from space - our personal greed and violence at the expense of fellow humans is disgusting - - we are still in the stone age...
that said - when I get back to the USA I'll get a small 380 & a concealed permit - I'll have it under my pants above the ankle for that rainy day when someone wants to get stupid anywhere near me...
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