Awesome read! It deserves its own thread if you'd like to start it.Originally Posted by CattyWampus
Awesome read! It deserves its own thread if you'd like to start it.
Cool as a rule, but sometimes bad is bad.
Yes, it's a bit of a rant.
All we are missing from the left's frenzy to score anti gun political points is some internet rabble on HuffPo blaming Sarah Palin's bulls-eye advertisements. I've already been asked to ban "semi automatic rifles" in Bozeman. Yeah, the guy left the rifle in the car, so how is it relevant? Stifle your urge to hate the Constitution. Express sympathy and sorrow, and community. call on your deity you have one, and... then shut up.
PS, the sniper in the water tower in Texas happened before the hommasekshuls got so uppity, so, right wing frenzy, you take a deep breath too. The second amendment is just one of many individual rights governments are supposed to protect.
There is no policy discussion to be found regarding evil and insanity. There is only sorrow, sympathy, community, our commonalities as humans bringing us together. We should not be emphasizing our differences and picking fights at every sorrow.
It seems that my suggestion was completely ignored. Must have been a bad suggestion. Badinage, you keep asking others to offer ideas and enter into discussion on how to go forward with preventing such events in the future, yet you are unwilling to offer any ideas of your own, and it is obvious you have given this matter much thought. Why is that?
seeya
dan
I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.
We seek to make sense of the senseless and policy to punish the many for the evils of a few. All those attempts do is make it all worse.
Wrong again
Guns are not the problem. Society and the evil in it is. There is no instrument that I know of that harms someone without another human being using it. Anyone who wants to do evil acts will find a tool to do them, whether its a gun, bomb, car, knife, or brick. I'm afraid we will never rid ourselves of the evil that leads to such deeds.
I am all for gun laws to prevent the wrong folks from being able to purchase a gun. But get rid of law abiding citizens rights to own a gun to protect themselves and it puts us at the mercy of the folks that just committed the evil we just saw.
There is no need for me continuing unless I'm able to improve.
Knute Rockne
Sir, I will second this man's statement that you, do not let your emotions overtake you, very often.
On this board, it can be a challenge.
Kudos to you, Mr. Cartwright.
One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
I think there are plenty of ideas in that article to stimulate reasonable discussion. Thanks for the link.
seeya
dan
I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.
High cap magazine ban is one of the few proposals I respect in that it's an attempt to address a particular problem without overly limiting gun ownership or self protection.
However, I still reject it as a good overall policy for these basic reasons:
1) Effectiveness, it simply won't prevent future incidents like this one
2) That lack of effectiveness will be used to justify further measures rather than the re-evaluation we need of how to address the issue
3) it detracts from things that might actually help, and frames the discussion in terms of control instead of things like regulatory reform.
4) There is still a component of the need to possess guns that is a defense against the power of the government, and this proposal could be seen as limiting that ability. Further it gets us into the "not needed for hunting" thinking which is dangerous for gun rights but for all rights in general.
Effectiveness is obviously the major problem. It simply wont work. Here's why:
1) As Catty Wampus said, the high cap magazines aren't really important in these situations. These guys may often use them but they could be just as effective with 10 round magazines. Moreso in fact as in Aurora the guy got a 100 round drum mag for an AR-15, which is notorious for jamming. IMO had he worked on using standard straight mags he'd have gotten off a lot more rounds.
The SKS comes with a built in 10 round mag and you can reload it with stripper clips about as fast as changing mags. People get focuses on the appearance of the big magazines b/c they are used in AKs but those are full auto weapons that will spray a lot more ammo.
That doesn't even include just having more guns. It also doesn't include just using a shotgun.
It's cold as hell, but in truth someone could kill just as many as were killed in Connecticut with 10 round magazines or with shotguns or even tube fed rifles that hold 6-7 rounds.
It simply won't prevent the next outrage even if no one had access to them.
2) Really "banning" them is nearly impossible.
There are millions of these magazines in circulation. Maybe 10s of millions. Banning the selling of new ones is pointless. Utterly useless at preventing their use by the next lunatic.
The latest proposal I've seen is to ban their sale, even between individuals. Good luck enforcing that one.
So the only other option to actually "ban" them is to round them up. Think a ban on sales is useless, try rounding up millions of magazines without any record of who owns what.
So a "ban on high cap magazines" doesn't even exist in the currently proposed forms nor is any other form going to be politically or logistically feasible. Theyr'e calling for something that doesn't exist nor can really exist. You're implementing a law that is wholly meaningless in its effect.
Next is what happens when this law is completely ineffective and another tragedy happens, whether with high cap mags or not:
It will justify the next stage of "common sense" gun control. Then it will be "banning" assault rifles. Of course they wont' round them up, so inevitably with millions of them in circulation there will be another incident using them. Then the call will be to round them up. Or the lunatic will use pistols and the call will be to ban some form of those.
We already see this happening. The Illinois Governor wants to ban all "semi automatic" guns. Depending on your definition that's the vast majority of all guns in the country from 22 plinkers to carry guns to shotguns and rifles for hunting and sporting and even including revolvers within the "one round for one trigger pull" definition.
So we'll "ban" the mags, that will fail, and that failure will be used to lobby for the next and more restrictive round of laws. It will never end as none of these laws will stop these things, and we'll be right back at this point but one step deeper into gun ownership restrictions.
3) It diverts from the need to politically push for things that will in fact help.
I laid it out elsewhere but there are things that can potentially help. Many of those things involve something counter intuitive to the gun control crowd: HELPING dealers instead of constraining them.
Dealers have to meet strict record keeping requirements and they have to run background checks. Private sales do not. Wouldn't we rather help dealers expand their percentage of gun transactions? It would only help to catch some of these guys who might get through otherwise (mostly criminals and not lunatics, but it still reduces gun violence).
There are a bunch of other things, but what we need first is "common sense regulatory reform" and not common sense gun control. B/c those things really can get done and really do help and really are common sense.
Work WITH the NSSF and NRA and the dealers, not against them.
Seriously, you know who in the world MOST wants to stop these things? Gun owners. We cringe like you cannot believe when these things happen. We'd love to stop them. \
4) The biggest reason the Founders put in the 2nd Amendment was to prevent governments from having enough force of arms to enforce a tyranny. If we're all armed they have a problem.
The mag ban is framed in terms of "no hunting purpose", and that is the most dangerous thinking of all. The 2nd Amendment wasn't in place so we could hunt, it was for 3 reasons
a) To stand against tyranny of the state
b) to let us defend ourselves
c) as a natural part of the basic pursuit of happiness and liberty. You don't ban anything anyone wants without strong justification.
Even going down the road of banning high cap mags b/c "they aren't needed" is very very dangerous. If you get into that mode of thinking then when the ban fails you can keep on justifying more and more restrictions without having to consider that there is a right to bear arms that has nothing to do with hunting.
The most dangerous thinking of all is "well we have to try something". Restricting people's rights and choices on such a basis is incredibly dangerous and goes against the fundamental founding of the nation's principles. There must be more than even speculative evidence to restrict the rights of the People, much less the "well there's none but maybe it'll be help" justification.
This was exactly the ruling of the 7th Circuit this past week ruling the Illinois conceal carry ban unconstitutional. The decision was rooted in the basis that you cannot restrict People's rights with some basis that it actually is necessary or improves the public safety. It cannot be "well it makes sense to me."
So "common sense" isn't a justification for this action. It must be based in some kind of proof of an improvement in public safety, and there isn't one.
So I respect the attempt, I really do, but when we analyze the proposal it simply fails on too many levels to make sense or to be the right policy. It sounds good, but when we look at what it will do both good and bad and how people will respond and generate the real outcomes (laws don't happen in vacuums, people adapt and it's what's left after that adaptation that really is the measure of the law) it fails to be good policy.
This. Took me 2,000 words to say that. lol.
I also want to say I hope you stay in the discussion. Good discussion can happen on this topic if we all are respectful and considered in our posts and you have generated some good discussion.
I've read the links and your 2000 word treatisein repsonse to my suggestion. As I said initially, it's a very complicated issue and I'm no expert. Somewhere between a musket in every cabin and an AK-47 in every home is a level of gun rights/gun control that might make it more difficult for these mentally ill (potential) killers to try to top this most recent killer. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue(s), I'm afraid that if the NRA and it's supporters don't want to come to the table and participate in the conversation, the "other side" will begin to build momentum for something more drastic...and as I said intially I'm somewhere in the middle. I've taken my 17 year-old daughter over to my brother's in the past 6 weeks to shoot, both a pistol and a 22. I'm not in favor of taking guns away but something has to change and Friday's events have changed a lot of attitudes.
Here's one mother's story about her mentally ill son that may shed some light on what happened in Connecticut.
http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.c...kable.html?m=1
Cool as a rule, but sometimes bad is bad.
School adviser: Gunman a loner who felt no pain
http://news.yahoo.com/school-adviser...1QKj4A0YfQtDMD
Cool as a rule, but sometimes bad is bad.
A broader perspective:
http://townhall.com/columnists/rache...-guns-n1467549
Cool as a rule, but sometimes bad is bad.
What's "chilling", but "affirming of what I always suspected" is the "if our government were only more like China" sentiment so freely expressed on Facebook and by the HuffPo meme repeaters these last two days ("see, look at the knife attack, no kids died"). Take away the Bill of Rights, control what the media covers and the ability of the populace to defend themselves, and those who've longingly lauded China's totalitarian socialism/communism will be halfway towards their goals. Freedom does have it's costs; freedom allows failure, it allows people to make evil choices. But repressing the rights of all to cure the evil of a few is exactly the opposite of our American ideal.
"Have you found his best friend? Have you found a friend?" Novia asked. "You're not going to. He was a loner."
If you look at my post on this thread on the premy board I specifically said what will come out is just like the hold SNL skit on the shooting of Buckwheat, where when asked everyone will say "he was a quiet boy, a loner." Then they ask "do you think he shot Buckwheat"? "Oh yes, that's all he ever talked about was killing Buckwheat."
This kid was mentally ill and was apparently never treated, but we have to restrict the rights of all Americans rather than try to deal with mental illness in this country?
Winner winner chicken dinner!
You read that? Man, I didn't and I wrote it. lol.I've read the links and your 2000 word treatise
I think your statement goes to my main frustration, and the frustration of the NRA and other groups. That whole discussion will focus on how to limit the ability of the mentally ill to do damage, as if a) that's going to make it OK, and b) we should start there rather than asking why the mentally ill who are capable of this walk among us.
That's the "slippery slope" I talk about. We ban high cap mags and somehow collect them all and the next incident only kills 10 children using "hunting purpose" guns. Do we then turn our focus to how a diagnosed mentally ill person wasn't seen as a threat or do we call for limiting guns again? We all know which will happen.
Heck I can prove it. Today on Fox I caught 10 minutes of a show that happened to be on when I turned on the TV, and it was talking about banning ALL semi-auto weapons, showing pictures of the Glock and Sig he apparently used, saying they were designed for military use. No they weren't, I carry a semi-auto made by a company that has never sold to the military.
So they're already calling for a level of overkill beyond all scope or reason. That's what terrifies the NRA and keeps them from wanting to compromise at all. They know this will be death by 1,000 cuts, each such incident adding another restriction b/c the last restriction won't stop the next tragedy. It's b/c they know it won't work and what will result when it fails that keeps them from wanting to bend.
This boy was troubled for YEARS. His mother had to be repeatedly called to school to address the situation. At least one adviser knew he was a risk to himself and others and was assigned specifically to watch him. It was known he didn't feel physical or psychological pain, and our national discussion today on the talk shows centers on which guns he chose? Really?
As I posted elsewhere, we're talking about a person so cold, so ill, he could stand there one after another and kill 20 children, with blood and screaming and a scene that would make you or I puke all around him, and we're hoping to limit his options so as to keep him from killing 20 kids to maybe only 10?
Given the response time, which was as quick as the police could get there, fwiw he'd have had time to kill all those kids with far less firepower. He could have killed a LOT more kids but clearly was targeting his mother's class.
So NO restriction including banning all semi-auto weapons was going to prevent those kids from dying, but that's still a better discussion than saying we need to forget his choice of method and focus on why a person capable of such things was allowed to wander among us for years?
We want to be safe, OK, let's be safe. Allow the 10s of millions who rely on guns for self defense to continue to defend themselves, and when "loners" who show no psychological pain show up in our school system their threat is taken seriously and their individual rights are questioned versus those of the 10s of millions who are no threat to anyone.
We can even tie that to guns. Allow the system to rule people a threat without huge hurdles and then they wont' pass the background check to buy a gun from a dealer. That's a reform the NRA and gun owners would support in a heartbeat: restricting gun access to the people who specifically shouldn't have access without just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Last edited by CitizenBBN; 12-16-2012 at 12:36 PM.
I want to hit that one again. Federal law prevents those adjudicated as mentally incompetent from buying or owning a firearm.
that law exists.
This kid was troubled for years, was mentally ill with a long history of issues at school, but he was never deemed "incompetent" in order to prevent him from owning a firearm. Nor does the ATF investigate people who commit a felony by lying when they try to buy one.
Here's a scenario that would have worked and not limited everyone's rights:
1) this young man is ruled some status of incompetent or mentally ill.
2) that level is legally a disqualification to own a firearm and hopefully a host of other things like holding jobs in and around children, etc.
3) When he goes to buy a gun he's turned down.
4) If he does try to buy one at a store he'd have lied on the form for it to get to the background check point. If he fails that the ATF/FBI know immediately he 99% likely committed a felony, and a person deemed mentally ill -- with his name,, address, social sec number, everything you need - is trying to buy a gun.
So now we not only limit him legally from owning a gun, we have a fair chance of identifying that he's become a GRAVE threat as he's trying to arm himself and we have a felony to prosecute to get him out of society.
Which is more likely to stop the next lunatic? A system that tries to identify and track them, esp. their actions to arm themselves with ANY firearm or one that just wholesale tries to limit what any person can buy in a store in hopes it slows him down?
Yes there are things we can do, there are discussions we can have, but let's walk through the process and have a discussion focused on what we can do to stop lunatics, not what we can do to have lunatics kill 10 people instead of 20.
Seriously, I know I'm rambling, but can anyone explain to me why the reaction is "let's limit these dangerous guns" instead of "let's limit these dangerous people"? Why we focus on the symptoms instead of the disease?
When you have a Supreme Court justice say if she were founding the nation today she wouldn't look to the Constitution as a guide, you know your "suspicions" are cold hard facts.
A lot of people don't trust liberty. It can't be defined, controlled, planned. If you think you know what is best for others that's the last structure you want for a nation. You want one where you can make them do what is best for themselves whether they agree or not b/c you know you're right and they just don't understand what is best for them.
Here is one of the biggest problems as I see it with what you said about the NRA coming to the table. They ahve come to the table in the past. But they know as do many of hte members that those on the left will not meet half way on anything, even though they will propose that it won't happen, they are democrats I remind you, and what they do is pretend they will meet at the half way point...taxes and cuts...but then screw you once you give in. IF the pendulum would stop at the half way point, fine, but it wont. The NRA knows it and so they fight for every point they want and even some they could give up.
Again I say, what does high mags have to do with the guy who slashed 21 kids in China this week, the young man in Pearl who purposely ran over a black man with his truck to kill him, the Ok city bombing and fertilizer, the boxcutters and 9-11.
The vast majority of people who use high mags are those who enjoy shooting for pleasure. So we take away their freedom to hopefully stop a nutcase which in reality won't stop him.
The left has DONE NOTHING about Fast and Furious and putting high capacity assault weapons in the hands of CRIMINALS but want more gun laws that will not stop nutcases. They do NOTHING to help the mental cases out there, cutting funding at state levels, because Govs must balance their budgets and with the Feds and the democrats demanding more to be spent on medicaid and foodstamps, those that are in need of being helped go w/o the resources that the states need.
So the democrats want to spend more on medicaid...in Miss they propose raising the number here to 1/3 of our population...foodstamps, illegals but neglect those that desparately need help. That is your Democrat party and the ultra liberals.
I've read the links and your 2000 word treatise
I think this statement is the tell-all of this particular incident. The young man was known to have mental problems, yet the Mother stocked the house with 4 weapons and ammo. I have absolutely NO problem with ANY person wanting to own, or carry, a weapon. I think alot of times it is more preventive of chaos than people want to believe. I am very much in favor of a person's right to bear arms, and as soon as this happened, I turned right to my wife and said, 'This is going to bring the gun control people out of the woodwork." But why in God's name did THIS woman think it was good idea to own them? Gun ownership comes with a responsibility, and clearly this wasn't very responsible on her part.
[B
The article in today's Courier Journal here in Louisville stated that the young man had a somewhat fascination with realistic killing type video games. The investigators said after piecing together the events that took place, that he did what he did with precision, meaning there weren't alot of wasted shots. When asked if the children would have suffered, the answer was, "If so, not for long." Every person was shot at least twice. What was this woman thinking by having weapons in her home with this young man around? A gun control law shouldn't have had to keep her from owning a gun, common sense should have.
"It's a mere moment in a man's life between an All-Star Game and an Old-Timers Game." - Vin Scully
lfbj --- I hadn't read up today but you mean she OWNED these guns with a mentally ill son? Were they just left laying around, not even in a locked safe to which he didn't have the combination?
My God, why are we having a discussion about which guns/mags should be legal when she was arming a lunatic?
Again, pass a law that says those adjudicated mentally ill can't have a gun in the home. They already can't own one, but I'm fine with that law, or that they must be locked and the person not have any direct access. Something.
That would get NRA support b/c it would actually help.
Instead of "common sense gun control", how about some just plain common sense? No, we'd rather see what he could have done if she'd only had pump shotguns on hand. Jeez.
According to the reports i have seen in the newspapers and on the TV, she legally purchased and registered all the guns in her name. So he only had to go into the next room for his weapon of choice, which as it turned out, was all of them.
"It's a mere moment in a man's life between an All-Star Game and an Old-Timers Game." - Vin Scully
Thanks. Jeez.
You've spend years dealing with a deeply troubled son, the prototypical lunatic shooter (white, middle class, loner, psychological disconnect with emotional pain and the pain of others) since the US was founded, and you buy guns he can directly access.
If this pans out as it is currently reported we had TWO lunatics in this mess, one of which was teaching those kids on a daily basis.
Yes. No law could prevent what happened, absent one that removes all guns from citizens.
She owned the guns, he didn't.
They were registered to her, not him.
In effect, this was like a criminal stealing guns to use in a crime. I know this is a slightly different thing, but I think the analogy works.
Sent using Forum Runner. All typos excused.
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