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I was talking about the specific people in that article. They had been convicted of violent crimes, got their rights restored (which is insane in and of itself) then went on to commit more violent crimes. If you are okay with that, then you probably aren't mentally sound which means you aren't fit to own a gun.
Seems your beef in those cases is with the expunging of violent (as opposed to nonviolent) felonies, which I do agree is crazy, rather than anything to do with gun laws. It's one thing to expunge a decades-old nonviolent felony (like kiting checks) if the person has been law-abiding since, quite another to expunge a violent felony.
So the problem with the current spree of mass shootings is the terrorists or crazy people are choosing weapons built for combat, large magazines, intimidating, their objective is to do as much damage as they can as quickly as possible.
I think if the AR platform became unavailable, terrorists would just switch to "regular hunting" rifles and/or shotguns. I do wonder, though, if some of the violent nutcases (especially the younger ones) are specifically drawn to the AR platform because of its "cool" military look; if they had to choose between the bubblegum pink Hello Kitty AR-15 and the baby blue My Little Pony AR-15, would they pick up either?
So, the thing I always find interesting is that gun "advocates" never like any of the ideas presented to prevent gun violence and mass shootings, but they NEVER offer any suggestions to fix the problem. And yes, we have a problem. Over 30,000 people are killed by guns in the US every year. It's insane! So give a solution. A solid solution backed up before statistical evidence. Also, I would like to see a country where the citizens have easy access to various types of guns, ownership is high and gun violence rates are low.
Gun violence is not a pressing social problem in the US. Over 21,000 of those deaths are suicides. That is people exercising the only true inalienable right. No government or religion has ever managed to remove that right. Guns account for less than half of US suicides, over 41,000 per year. Over 1000 gun deaths are cops killing people; in most cases it's just another case of "suicide by cop." If you list only actual homicides you have a death rate of 2.5/100,000, which falls just below tuberculosis (2.75) and just above malaria (2.23) as a cause of death in the US.
The media has blown it all out of proportion. Reporters like nothing more than an warm pool of blood to dance around in. The problem is not the Second Amendment, it's the First Amendment. If we could ban all news glorification of shooters, the problem would retreat back to obscurity.
Korean americans store owners used firearms to protect their shops. Many shops were torched by looters. Property loss undoubtedly would have been greater had they all left the area as lapd advised. So gun rights folks love this story. These Koreans, btw, did just fine w legal weaponry.
Notable though...the only Korean American death was friendly fire between 2 groups who mistook each other for looters. A security guard for one of the stores was also a likely casualty of friendly fire......
If people want to be part of the militia...join the national guard.
I enjoy hunting...but all people who support private ownership of guns need to realize the problem of easy access.
That NRA opposes research on gun violence makes me change my opinion of them instantly.
Last edited by bornincali; 12-07-2015 at 12:21 PM..
We got here by politicians being paid handsomely by the NRA to ensure that gun manufacturers made the maximum amount of profit possible. Every time a gun is sold, a politician gets a little vig in his or her Christmas stocking.
That those guns are used to kill people is of no relevance in the decision to continue legislation which ensures a constant flow of new hardware.
When will it stop?
I am guessing when we get a stadium slaughter....10,000 folks gunned down on live TV on a Sunday afternoon, or as one of the National Newspaper proffered over the weekend, when a mass shooter shows up in the senate or congress and knocks off a few dozen politicians.
THEN we will get sincere focus on the issues.
Until then? We get more of the daily killings and benign reaction from the people who are in a position to deal with the problem. For now, they are well paid and could care less that a few Americans lose their lives every day from a gunman (crazy or otherwise).
I think we argue about the "type" of weapons too much. Most reasonable people would agree that automatic weapons should remain rare and expensive - you can do a ton of damage with one of those - although I would even be okay with relaxing the restrictions on automatic weapons if we attached training requirements, registration and licensing for acquiring them, but I would also like to do that for all firearms.
Other than that, if crazy people or terrorists were going around stabbing people with knives or clubbing people with baseball bats in schools, churches, workplaces I would consider it just as much of a problem.
Arguing about "assault weapon" this or that is like doctors arguing about a cancer patient's fever and prescribing Tylenol. The cancer is the real problem. The violence in these people's hearts and minds is the real problem, the guns are just the outward manifestation of it. Take away the guns and you've still got a problem. Granted, the guns make them MUCH more deadly.
If gun owners are so "law abiding" - why are they so afraid of gun regulations? Would they not abide by them? I own a weapon and I'd be MORE than happy to register it. I don't fear anyone coming and taking it from me except thieves or burglars while I'm out of the house. If the local sheriff or a state trooper tries to take it, the county or whatever jurisdiction will be hearing from my lawyer.
The 2nd amendment is also protected by the others. Why do gun owners have so little faith in our due process? If someone from a local, state or federal government tried to take your weapon without due cause - that's not only violating the 2nd amendment but also the 4th as well as your property rights in Article I. You have a 6th amendment right to a trial. We have a PROCESS OF LAW and a RESPECT for that process that defines and protects our freedoms.
Our guns do NOT protect our freedom. No group of armed civilians can defeat an army. They can stand up to an army and fight an insurgency, eventually causing the army to give up after years of frustration, but they will not DEFEAT a trained, equipped and supplied army. Armed civilians against the government is not freedom - it's a CIVIL WAR - that's what's going on in Syria right now.
It's as if people lose their minds on the gun issue. Any discussion of guns always equals idiotic Nazi talk.
Last edited by redguard57; 12-07-2015 at 12:19 PM..
I would support a volunteer corps of those who have served(armed forces, leos, etc.) being able to carry...while wearing some sort of uniform. The normal civilian stopping a shooting is a myth.
Other than that, if crazy people or terrorists were going around stabbing people with knives or clubbing people with baseball bats in schools, churches, workplaces I would consider it just as much of a problem.
Or setting off bombs (which is what they do in places where they have a hard time getting guns).
The Second is catching all the flack at the moment, but I do think that if we look at the problem soberly the First is just as implicated. Not only in the way the news media endlessly broadcasts these tragedies to boost their ratings, in the process giving the nutcases the notoriety they crave so badly, but in the way it makes it possible for violent organizations like ISIS to recruit so easily, and in the way dissemination of "dangerous" information is facilitated. Once you had to be a pretty decent chemist and tinkerer to make a working home-made bombs; now anyone can find step-by-step instructions on the internet which even the most dim-witted can follow.
The rights guaranteed by both amendments can be used in destructive ways. How do we find the balance between restricting each too much and not restricting each enough? That's the thorny question we need to grapple with.
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Arguing about "assault weapon" this or that is like doctors arguing about a cancer patient's fever and prescribing Tylenol. The cancer is the real problem. The violence in these people's hearts and minds is the real problem, the guns are just the outward manifestation of it.
Exactly. Why do some societies create a disproportionate number of angry, alienated, and socially isolated young people (mostly male), while others do not? That's a question worth investigating further. The Japanese, for instance, have a low murder rate overall; I doubt that would change if we gave them all belt-fed machine guns with all the ammo they cared to shoot. They're into killing themselves (Japan has a pretty high suicide rate, despite being essentially gun free), but they just aren't that interested in killing each other. Why not? We could probably learn a lot if we seriously studied low violence societies, focusing both on how they socialize their kids and how they treat the mentally unstable.
Debunking the bebunker.... We'll start with number two.
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Myth #2: Guns don't kill people—people kill people.
Fact-check: People with more guns tend to kill more people—with guns. The states with the highest gun ownership rates have a gun murder rate 114% higher than those with the lowest gun ownership rates. Also, gun death rates tend to be higher in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Gun death rates are generally lower in states with restrictions such as assault-weapons bans or safe-storage requirements. Update: A recent study looking at 30 years of homicide data in all 50 states found that for every one percent increase in a state's gun ownership rate, there is a nearly one percent increase in its firearm homicide rate.
Both of the studies they are citing for this are manipulating the data for such things like crime rate and race. In other words if you live in a white neighborhood that has a high rate of gun ownership and no crime that's simply not fair so we'll jack up the rate in your area to make it appear you have more murders.
For example they are listing Wyoming with what looks like 18 gun deaths per 100K. The murder rate in Wyoming is among the lowest in the country well below the 5 per 100k average.
Last edited by thecoalman; 12-07-2015 at 12:45 PM..
If gun owners are so "law abiding" - why are they so afraid of gun regulations?
They are not afraid of individual regulations, they are afraid of regulatory creep. And they are right to be: every time we have a tragedy (and I don't just mean a gun-related one), the reflexive cry of the American people is "We must DO SOMETHING so this will never happen again!" Contrast that to the reaction of the Norwegians in the aftermath of Breivak's rampage; they said instead "The level of regulation we currently have is good enough, especially since there's no reason to believe that increasing it would have stopped this maniac."
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The 2nd amendment is also protected by the others. Why do gun owners have so little faith in our due process? If someone from a local, state or federal government tried to take your weapon without due cause - that's not only violating the 2nd amendment but also the 4th as well as your property rights in Article I. You have a 6th amendment right to a trial. We have a PROCESS OF LAW and a RESPECT for that process that defines and protects our freedoms.
Correction: We USED to have due process of law. We don't any more; we've been steadily eroding it at least since 9/11, if not before then. Look at all the people who are now gung-ho for using the terrorist watch list to restrict the right to own firearms (despite the fact that no due process is involved in getting a name on that list), or who think Snowden's revelation of the degree the NSA is wiretapping Americans' phones and reading Americans' emails without obtaining a warrant is no big deal. "ANYTHING is OK if it will keep me and my family safe!" seems to be the way the typical American now thinks, even if that "anything" involves running the Constitution through a shredder. They just don't seem to appreciate how dangerous that is.
Last edited by Aredhel; 12-07-2015 at 12:55 PM..
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