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I would ask any gun nut just one question: would they feel comfortable approaching the parents of the children who were just killed and explain to them why they have a "right" to own guns. The truth is that none of them would, which says it all.
I'm aghast listening to these people on TV justifying, desperately, their need for guns. I know they believe their words, and that's what scares me. The shooter's mother felt a need for her guns. Didn't that work out well?
I'm aghast listening to these people on TV justifying, desperately, their need for guns. I know they believe their words, and that's what scares me. The shooter's mother felt a need for her guns. Didn't that work out well?
I know a lot of people that agree with you but feel that nothing can be done. They feel that The NRA is too powerful and there are too many guns out there to do anything about it. Personally I am fed up with the gun tooting mentality of some in this country and it is time to address it. I do not have children but I want to help create a less violent country for them when I do. There will always be mentally ill people out there who will try to kill, but lets not make it as easy for them as we possibly can. There is a petition I just signed with over 115,000 votes in just two days asking Congress for more gun control. Everyone that feels the same should sign it and donate to the Brady Campaign.
Maybe not hundreds of millions, but hundreds of thousands of guns were surrendered in a national gun "Buy Back" after Port Arthur.
My FIL at the time was a good old country boy (gun ownership is common in rural areas due to critters) and had a couple of illegal shotguns tucked away.
Of course he was all "they aren't getting MY guns" until his mates at the barber told him how much they received for their sacrificed guns.
It wasn't $10 or $20, it was hundreds of dollars per weapon.
Once my anti-government, anti-buyback FIL reaklised just how much cold hard cash he could make, he surrendered them all and crowed about how much he got paid.
Yes it cost the Government a lot...but so did the Port Arthur massacre, in sheer loss of life, emergency services costs, the investigation, the trial, and so on.
Every so often the Police will stage another Gun Amnesty, for people to surrender illegal weapons without punishment. Even in my small state, every amnesty brings in hundreds of surrendered guns.
It can be done.
I am more interested in total homicides - since death is more meaningful to me than how it was accomplished. The total homicide rate in Australia has been declining over time, just as it has in the United States. The gun buyback program doesn't appear to have changed the rate of reduction in homicides. The % of homicides caused by guns is declining slightly over time but the decline began in 1971, well before the gun buyback program.
It seems to me that republicans and math/science/logic don't mix very well
Posts like this do nothing to advance this discussion. Our President regularly during the campaign touted his job creation numbers, which of course were not from the beginning of this first time, but based on the "bottom" of employment. Very deceptive, and completely intentional. Or do you want to allow someone to assert Democrats don't understand math/science/logic either?
One of the problems is our mistreatment of blacks for over three and a half centuries has resulted in a very high homicide rate among that demographic group.
Actually, the failed decades-long "war on poverty" and an over-abundance of artificial financial support via various welfare entitlement programs has done a greatdeal of damage to the Black demographic, ensuring that a high percentage are trapped in poverty for generations.
Look at what has happened to the percentage of births to unwed mothers by race since the war on poverty and lucrative welfare benefits were instituted in 1964: http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/fa...5-FF-chart.jpg
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, National Center for Health Statistics, 2011.
I'll also add 5 more... the FAILED "war on poverty."
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