Shootings (Homestead: felon, law, activity)

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

Switzerland's gun ownership rate approaches 100%. I don't have their murder statistics close at hand, but I don't hear much about it. The Nazis were afraid to invade Switzerland.

Universities are usually "gun-free" zones. There was one school shooting, in either Western VA or West Va, which took place at a school which wasn't a gun-free zone. I think the shooter hit 2 people before getting blown away by a student with a permit to carry.

Like I said before, I don't own a gun and most of my beliefs would fall into the "liberal" category, but it's the whole anti-2nd Amendment stance (among other nanny-state b.s.) which keeps me from being "a" liberal.

You can label it liberal if you want. I hate labels myself. They tend to diminish and tell half the story. If you knew all my political stances you probably wouldn't call me a liberal. I'm very hard on some things. What I really dislike, and I hope you know I'm not putting you in this category, are chicken hawks. Guys who come off tough out of fear. You'd have to know more about my background to understand why. But just suffice it to say that I was raised by a father who came a round and a half away from fighting for the middleweight championship of the world with a bum right hand and outside of the ring he was the gentlest guy you ever want to meet. I don't say this too brag or to puff out my chest. 'Cause the point I'm trying to make is that most of the violence we see on the streets, whether by a gun or not, comes from fear. Gangs included. Most these guys don't have the stones to go it unarmed or unaffiliated, I've seen it up close, and the reformed ones, the ones paralyzed from the waste down or doing big time are the ones that come to Christ; but after it's too late.

When I was growing up, you could be a jerk-off, as I was at times, and live on the outside to tell about it. You got a chance to **** up! Not so true anymore; too many times it's one strike and your out, either off the streets or just offed. I maintain it's the proliferation of guns; not at the root of it, but without so many guns alotta innocent people would not have had their lives stolen from them and their families, and alotta kids who were jerk-offs wouldn't have had the wherewithal to ruin their own lives in a second.

[creepsinc]

I would never presume to call anyone "a liberal"...I hate labels too.

I thought it was never too late to "come to christ"....I wouldn't know, I walked away when I was 12.

Edit---sorry, that was unnecessarily catty...I'm still recovering, so sometimes I react to religious expressions without thinking it through first.

[aveojohn]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

''

Let's not get bogged down in semantics. I'm all for STRICT gun laws, like the one in my hometown of Richmond, VA. You get caught with an illegal handgun, you go to prison for 5 years. No more, no less. It worked wonders on the murder rate.

Do you have any stats to back that up? Murder rate before and murder rate after.I seriously doubt real criminals give a s##t about gun laws.

[aveojohn]

Originally Posted by ExPit

Just read in today's Post Gazette of another shooting in Pittsburgh. Well, Mckees Rocks, but close enough, inside a restaurant at 1am this morning.

No one died in this one, but four people were injured and no suspects were arrested.

So easy to fire a gun. The results are impersonal, you don't even have to touch anyone. Your actions are disconnected from the results.

I can stand on the far side of a shopping mall parking lot, set an arbitrary target in my sites, squeeze a state of the art, form fitting trigger and one second later...

My point is it's too easy. It doesn't take any effort. There is no risk to my own physical well-being. It doesn't even take the guts it would to come up from behind someone with a knife and...

There you'd have to get up close, albeit from behind, make actual physical contact, feel the shudder, hear the groan, the scream...

Ok, I don't want to be sensational, but I'm just trying to make a point, and I can't pretend to have the answer, but does no one on this board agree that America has a gun problem? I used to have the statistics, but unless I remember it totally different from what it is, there is no country anywhere that compares to the U.S. in per capita gun violence.

Nobody wants to talk about guns? On a thread that's devoted to shootings?

You're right,on the other hand if I would have been there with my gun,I doubt he would have gotten off a second round.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by aveojohn

You're right,on the other hand if I would have been there with my gun,I doubt he would have gotten of a second round.

Man, I hope the way I'm taking that is not the way it was meant. And I don't expect everyone to be able to defend themselves with their hands the way a professional fighter can; I was just trying to make the point that often guys who are overly aggressive and violent, bullies, are usually coming from fear. I've known gun owners who weren't that way, and probably you aren't, but too many times I think people are too quick to use guns, and the same people in the same circumstances wouldn't even use a knife or another up-close weapon, let alone their hands.

I've seen alot of violence, as many of us have these days, and I am really a softie, especially when it comes to kids and young adults. I try to hold onto my faith in human nature, regardless of all the indications around me that tell me it's a lost cause.

"I believe in," as Bugsy Segal reputedly said, "second chances," but when a gun is used second chances are often lost.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

I would never presume to call anyone "a liberal"...I hate labels too.

I thought it was never too late to "come to christ"....I wouldn't know, I walked away when I was 12.

No, not as long as you're breathing it's not too late to come to Christ (to see the error of your ways), but how much of a leap is it for us to think that these guys wish it would have happened for them a bit sooner?

[desibhar]

Don't mean to start a fight, but the 2nd Amendment does not protect an individual right to own a firearm. The Supreme Court decision was just plain wrong, and was an example of the Supreme Court rewriting the "plain meaning" of the constitution, prior case law, and legislative history.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by desibhar

Don't mean to start a fight, but the 2nd Amendment does not protect an individual right to own a firearm. The Supreme Court decision was just plain wrong, and was an example of the Supreme Court rewriting the "plain meaning" of the constitution, prior case law, and legislative history.

Would you elaborate on that? I really want to know.

[creepsinc]

Ok, people are talking about jesus and how "wrong" the 2nd Amendment is (apparently, it only reserves the right for militias to hold guns, ie. the government ie the entity the Constitution protects us FROM). I'm moving on.


P.S. Richmond's murder stats are easy enough to find online.

[ExPit]

Originally Posted by creepsinc

Ok, people are talking about jesus and how "wrong" the 2nd Amendment is (apparently, it only reserves the right for militias to hold guns, ie. the government ie the entity the Constitution protects us FROM). I'm moving on.


P.S. Richmond's murder stats are easy enough to find online.

You know I wasn't talking about Jesus, and for someone who I've heard acknowledge the power of the corporate/federal government complex, how shocked would you be to find out that what keeps the steady stream of newly manufactured firearms flowing into our streets has alot less to do with the 2nd Amendment than it does the NRA and other gun lobbyists?