Aside from the point that it takes more than fueling tanks to win a war against your own people... what makes you think the guys in the tank are going to be fighting on behalf of the politicians?
Have you ever actually talked to an enlisted man, let alone ask what he would do if ordered to fire on his fellow Americans? Obviously not.
Many, many people complained to the school that not only was Cho a danger, but he had outwardly and blatantly stated his intention to murder his fellow students. The school administrators didn't listen, didn't care, and we see what resulted.
Adam Lanza was no different - many people, prior to the incident, pointed out to his mother and authority figures that the kid was unhinged and needed professional help. And, just like with Cho, no one who mattered listened.
We already have PLENTY of regulation in place. If anything, we should reexamine what works and what doesn't, and rewrite policies as necessary. We SHOULD strengthen the requirements for background checks. We SHOULD require all firearms sales in public places to involve background checks. We SHOULD determine a way to further incorporate mental health checks into the background checks, but here is where we must be careful as it will be too tempting for anti-gun people to say "ADHD is a mental illness". We SHOULD have stricter laws and stronger prosecution of firearms violations. But what we should NOT do is infringe upon the rights of millions of people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and own a firearm simply because they live in a bad part of town, must travel alone at night, or even if they just think that a pistol is the best form of personal protection. Carrying a gun is not paranoia; it's preparedness.
Perfectly stated. As a firearm enthusiast, I fully support the measures you've recommended, as they are, truly, common sense.
Which, of course, means they'll be completely ignored by the political class, as doing the right thing is secondary to doing what they think might get them re-elected.
I remember during Katrina, criminals with badges illegally confiscated peoples' weapons that stayed in the city and were needing them to defend themselves from looters and other criminals.
FTFY.
A thief is a thief, no matter what bits of shiny he pins to his shirt.
Ok, in 2010, there were 30,814 firearm related deaths, of those, 19,392 are considered suicide. If someone wants to play around with the numbers, here is the link, provided by the Centers for Disease Control.
Your figures don't match up with the figures I got from that link (31,672 firearms deaths), which contradict other figures offered by the CDC, including their own "top ten causes of death" list.
Kinda shitty statistic system, considering they can't even keep them straight internally...
According to FBI statistics, there were 12,664 homicides in 2011 (a steady decrease over the past several years), 8,583 of which were "firearms related..." interesting side note, there were 1,587 murders with "firearms, type not stated;" more than rifles, shotguns, and "other" guns combined...
WTF? If it's not a pistol, shotgun, rifle, or 'other' type of gun... are people going around killing each other with cannons?
Since the main part of the current gun debate is regarding rifles, I feel it's important to point out that knives [1,694 murders], blunt instruments [496], and body parts (i.e., hands, feet, foreheads) [728], murdered more people in 2011 than rifles [323] did.
BTW, yes, you read that right - more people used their fists and feet to murder, than clubs and bats. Crazy, I know.
What the...? Then we learned and put impenetrable doors between the cockpit and the cabin. Box cutters won't work anymore. Next straw man please?
Read as:
... Then we learned that banning boxcutters wasn't the solution: the solution was to fix the situation so that you couldn't take over a plane, regardless of what weapon you happen to have in your hand
Now, just replace "boxcutters" with "guns," and "take over a plane" with "infiltrate a school/courtroom/etc..."
I dunno', ask the Iraqis and Afghan militants how they're faring and in what shape our troops are returning. What moron would invade this country with so many armed citizens? They'd have to glass it. Yes, the armed populace poses a threat to our Govt should they get pissed enough and lets not forget that citizens are also driving all of those fancy weapons too. I hope it never ever comes to that though but the threat does have some teeth.
A side point all the "dur, the military would bulldoze youse and yer guns" crowd miss - the US government is funded by taxation.
How are you supposed to fund a war against your own taxpayers?
How about recognising that your constitution was not written by God and brought down from the mountain by Moses. Nor is it a universal truth of the physical world discovered by mathematicians or scientists.
What it is is a bunch of rules that a few men in the 1780s thought were good ideas. Written for the experience that they had of the world in the 1780s. (The American Revolution, the emergence from being a colony, primitive policing, and no standing army.)
Times change. Smart people adapt, ignorant people cling on to the past.
OK, so if you don't like the Constitution's current iteration, there's a legal process to amend it. in fact, that process is the only legal way to alter a right enshrined in the Constitution.
Good luck with that... unless you're not an American. In that case, mind your own fucking business.
Can you explain to me where in the 2nd amendment it guarantees the right to have more than just 1 bullet in a magazine?
That's sort of the point, the 2nd amendment does not guarantee you the right to any number of bullets in a firearm, in fact it doesn't even say anything about firearms.
Knowing who has large supplies of firearms with large capacity magazines would seem like it might help in that endeavor.
Except that those with "large supplies," whatever that's supposed to mean, aren't the people who go on killing sprees. So, basically, what you're saying here is, we need to keep an eye on those who need an eye kept on them the least.
Did it stop Adam Lanza? No, because he just took his illegally.
What should have stopped Adam Lanza is his mother not being able to buy the weapons in the first place.
No, what should have stopped Adam Lanza is the same thing that should have stopped Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech - recognition of his condition by authority figures, and appropriate action taken therein.
BOTH were completely avoidable events, had those in power taken the complaints received seriously.
Word of advice: If you think the government should restrict every single thing that might cause you harm, you probably shouldn't be leaving the house to begin with.
Oh, wait, the house could fall in and kill you... guess yer fucked.
Hey, man, could you try to make it a little more obvious that you intend to dictate the discussion, rather than take part in it? Maybe throw in an ad hominem or two?
The point is that firearms are largely unregulated,
Bull-fucking-shit; the thousands upon thousands* federal, state, and local regulations contradict your claim.
* Doesn't seem like anyone can come up with an exact number (scary thought), but it's generally accepted that there are somewhere between 9,000 and 20,000 gun control laws in effect in the US.
it's easy to legally buy firearms without a background check.
Excluding private sellers... Where? From whom?
P.S. if you're implying that there's something wrong with my father handing his prized deer rifle down to me without giving me a background check, you can go fuck yourself, Chief.
Whereas with explosives, there are specific licensing requirements and the supply of the components is tracked and monitored much more closely.
Since when did the government start tracking bleach and ammonia purchases? FYI, the shit under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous to society than the gun sitting on my hip.
Yes, one can make ones own explosives, but a lot of those folks just blow themselves up as making them outside of industrial facilities with specific safety equipment is very risky.
Point? Where in the Constitution does it state the our rights are allowed to be curtailed if they become "too easy" to obtain?
That word doesn't mean what you think it means; "reasonable" is a purely subjective term, and thus what's reasonable to one person may be outright insane to another. Therefore, making laws based on "what's reasonable" makes about as much sense as laws based on popular opinion (i.e., none whatsoever)
...like background checks
OK, they already do background checks. What's not reasonable about the current process? What changes to the current process are you referring to as "reasonable?" "Like background checks" doesn't tell me shit about what you intend, and seems intentionally vague - thus, an unreasonable proposition by itself.
limited magazine size to no more than 10 rounds
Again, what's reasonable about that, or rather, what's unreasonable about larger magazines? Can you provide research that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that infringing the right of the citizens in this manner will have a measurably positive effect on society? What about the military and law enforcement, will they be held to the 10 round standard as well? As the recent episode with Chris Dorner taught us, even the venerable LEOs can be capable of going on killing rampages, so wouldn't it stand to reason their magazine capacity be curtailed as well? Again, your suggestion is far too vague in scope to be considered within "reasonable" spec.
Just because you're an idiot...
Attempts at marginalization via childish insults do nothing to assist your efforts, and in fact retard them. Keep that in mind.
doesn't make it any less reasonable to introduce moderate gun regulations.
Define "moderate regulations." Specifically.
the Australians banned people from owning guns privately who didn't have a reason, self defense wasn't an acceptable reason, and they haven't had a single mass murder in all those years.
Funny, you must get your news from somewhere other than, you know, news sources:
In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent)
And that's not even mentioning the other issues Aussies have had to deal with since the gun ban:
- In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
- Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent since the ban was enacted.
So yea, less "mass killings," but shitloads more rape, robbery, and assault. Doesn't seem like that one belongs in the "win" column, now does it?
The reality here is that doing nothing because criminals would just break the law is a really, really stupid policy.
Perhaps... but equally-if-not-more stupid is the idea that we must place further restrictions on the Constitutional rights of citizens because a certain subset of those citizens who are ignorant pussies, scared of their own shadows, scream "OMG, Something(TM) must be done!" Bonus points if you shrill some nonsense about doing it "For The Children(TM)."
The more inconvenient it is to commit the crime, the more opportunities there are for law enforcement to discover the plot and the more likely it is that the plot will just crumble on it's own.
A better argument for the dissolution of the First Amendment, I have not heard.
Countries with strict gun control laws have fewer gun deaths than those who don't.
... but not less violence, nor less deaths in general. Japan, for example, has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, as well as one of the highest suicide rates. According to recorded statistics, if we assume accuracy, the US is well below the global average homicide rate of 7.6 per 100,000 people, at 4.8. One thing I noted from the aforementioned chart, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between presence/absence of strict gun laws and homicide rates.
Citing "less gun deaths" in countries with strict gun laws is like citing "low auto-accident rates" in Nambia - complete non sequitur.
I want fewer gun deaths.
That's a silly thing to want - what about bank robbers who shoot it out with the cops? Do you think the cops shouldn't be allowed to shoot back? Because, realize it or not, that's what you mean when you say, "I want fewer gun deaths."
Personally, I'd be happy with fewer intentional homicides, regardless of the method.
I don't give a shit about your right[s]
Aaand we come to the crux of the issue, and why nobody with a lick of sense gives a fuck what you gun grabbers have to say.
Slashdot Mirror
At least normal billboards don't fall on my head when they malfunction. Cool swarm behavior though.
Unless you're in an Alabama airport.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/us/alabama-airport-display-collapse/index.html?iref=allsearch
Here's hoping "... unless you're in Alabama" becomes the next big meme!
Then deal. Or, make your own news aggregation website.
Jesus, the sense of entitlement some people have...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
Mass murder and stealing to feed your family are not even remotely similar, asshole.
Aside from the point that it takes more than fueling tanks to win a war against your own people... what makes you think the guys in the tank are going to be fighting on behalf of the politicians?
Have you ever actually talked to an enlisted man, let alone ask what he would do if ordered to fire on his fellow Americans? Obviously not.
Don't be obtuse.
Many, many people complained to the school that not only was Cho a danger, but he had outwardly and blatantly stated his intention to murder his fellow students. The school administrators didn't listen, didn't care, and we see what resulted.
Adam Lanza was no different - many people, prior to the incident, pointed out to his mother and authority figures that the kid was unhinged and needed professional help. And, just like with Cho, no one who mattered listened.
Of course, after reading some of your other posts, I could be completely misinterpreting your premise...
After outlawing guns, did they see a decrease in gun-related deaths? I suspect they did.
What the fuck does that matter? Their violent crime rate increased.
The fact that you think reducing "gun deaths" is more important than reducing violent crime makes your true agenda shine like a beacon.
We already have PLENTY of regulation in place. If anything, we should reexamine what works and what doesn't, and rewrite policies as necessary. We SHOULD strengthen the requirements for background checks. We SHOULD require all firearms sales in public places to involve background checks. We SHOULD determine a way to further incorporate mental health checks into the background checks, but here is where we must be careful as it will be too tempting for anti-gun people to say "ADHD is a mental illness". We SHOULD have stricter laws and stronger prosecution of firearms violations. But what we should NOT do is infringe upon the rights of millions of people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and own a firearm simply because they live in a bad part of town, must travel alone at night, or even if they just think that a pistol is the best form of personal protection. Carrying a gun is not paranoia; it's preparedness.
Perfectly stated. As a firearm enthusiast, I fully support the measures you've recommended, as they are, truly, common sense.
Which, of course, means they'll be completely ignored by the political class, as doing the right thing is secondary to doing what they think might get them re-elected.
Shame, that.
I remember during Katrina, criminals with badges illegally confiscated peoples' weapons that stayed in the city and were needing them to defend themselves from looters and other criminals.
FTFY.
A thief is a thief, no matter what bits of shiny he pins to his shirt.
Nowadays, they bring in a SWAT team if a kid uses a cellphone that is the wrong shape.
Check out the new Motorola Glock, powered by Android.
Ok, in 2010, there were 30,814 firearm related deaths, of those, 19,392 are considered suicide. If someone wants to play around with the numbers, here is the link, provided by the Centers for Disease Control.
Your figures don't match up with the figures I got from that link (31,672 firearms deaths), which contradict other figures offered by the CDC, including their own "top ten causes of death" list.
Kinda shitty statistic system, considering they can't even keep them straight internally...
According to FBI statistics, there were 12,664 homicides in 2011 (a steady decrease over the past several years), 8,583 of which were "firearms related..." interesting side note, there were 1,587 murders with "firearms, type not stated;" more than rifles, shotguns, and "other" guns combined...
WTF? If it's not a pistol, shotgun, rifle, or 'other' type of gun... are people going around killing each other with cannons?
Since the main part of the current gun debate is regarding rifles, I feel it's important to point out that knives [1,694 murders], blunt instruments [496], and body parts (i.e., hands, feet, foreheads) [728], murdered more people in 2011 than rifles [323] did.
BTW, yes, you read that right - more people used their fists and feet to murder, than clubs and bats. Crazy, I know.
What the...? Then we learned and put impenetrable doors between the cockpit and the cabin. Box cutters won't work anymore. Next straw man please?
Read as:
... Then we learned that banning boxcutters wasn't the solution: the solution was to fix the situation so that you couldn't take over a plane, regardless of what weapon you happen to have in your hand
Now, just replace "boxcutters" with "guns," and "take over a plane" with "infiltrate a school/courtroom/etc..."
I dunno', ask the Iraqis and Afghan militants how they're faring and in what shape our troops are returning. What moron would invade this country with so many armed citizens? They'd have to glass it. Yes, the armed populace poses a threat to our Govt should they get pissed enough and lets not forget that citizens are also driving all of those fancy weapons too. I hope it never ever comes to that though but the threat does have some teeth.
A side point all the "dur, the military would bulldoze youse and yer guns" crowd miss - the US government is funded by taxation.
How are you supposed to fund a war against your own taxpayers?
How about recognising that your constitution was not written by God and brought down from the mountain by Moses. Nor is it a universal truth of the physical world discovered by mathematicians or scientists.
What it is is a bunch of rules that a few men in the 1780s thought were good ideas. Written for the experience that they had of the world in the 1780s. (The American Revolution, the emergence from being a colony, primitive policing, and no standing army.)
Times change. Smart people adapt, ignorant people cling on to the past.
OK, so if you don't like the Constitution's current iteration, there's a legal process to amend it. in fact, that process is the only legal way to alter a right enshrined in the Constitution.
Good luck with that... unless you're not an American. In that case, mind your own fucking business.
Can you explain to me where in the 2nd amendment it guarantees the right to have more than just 1 bullet in a magazine?
That's sort of the point, the 2nd amendment does not guarantee you the right to any number of bullets in a firearm, in fact it doesn't even say anything about firearms.
What part of "Shall not be Infringed" do you need explained?
The government has a clear interest in preventing its citizens from being murdered.
Yea, it's called "Income Protection." other than that, the police and SCOTUS beg to differ.
Knowing who has large supplies of firearms with large capacity magazines would seem like it might help in that endeavor.
Except that those with "large supplies," whatever that's supposed to mean, aren't the people who go on killing sprees. So, basically, what you're saying here is, we need to keep an eye on those who need an eye kept on them the least.
Smart use of resources... /Sarc
Did it stop Adam Lanza? No, because he just took his illegally.
What should have stopped Adam Lanza is his mother not being able to buy the weapons in the first place.
No, what should have stopped Adam Lanza is the same thing that should have stopped Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech - recognition of his condition by authority figures, and appropriate action taken therein.
BOTH were completely avoidable events, had those in power taken the complaints received seriously.
Word of advice: If you think the government should restrict every single thing that might cause you harm, you probably shouldn't be leaving the house to begin with.
Oh, wait, the house could fall in and kill you... guess yer fucked.
Countries with strict gun laws have few gun crimes.
But not fewer crimes - after outlawing guns, Australia saw a 26% increase in rapes alone.
Personally, I'd rather see a shot-dead rapist, than a loved one get raped. What about you?
In other words, you don't actually care...
Hey, man, could you try to make it a little more obvious that you intend to dictate the discussion, rather than take part in it? Maybe throw in an ad hominem or two?
The point is that firearms are largely unregulated,
Bull-fucking-shit; the thousands upon thousands* federal, state, and local regulations contradict your claim.
* Doesn't seem like anyone can come up with an exact number (scary thought), but it's generally accepted that there are somewhere between 9,000 and 20,000 gun control laws in effect in the US.
it's easy to legally buy firearms without a background check.
Excluding private sellers... Where? From whom?
P.S. if you're implying that there's something wrong with my father handing his prized deer rifle down to me without giving me a background check, you can go fuck yourself, Chief.
Whereas with explosives, there are specific licensing requirements and the supply of the components is tracked and monitored much more closely.
Since when did the government start tracking bleach and ammonia purchases? FYI, the shit under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous to society than the gun sitting on my hip.
Yes, one can make ones own explosives, but a lot of those folks just blow themselves up as making them outside of industrial facilities with specific safety equipment is very risky.
Point? Where in the Constitution does it state the our rights are allowed to be curtailed if they become "too easy" to obtain?
And if we took reasonable precautions
That word doesn't mean what you think it means; "reasonable" is a purely subjective term, and thus what's reasonable to one person may be outright insane to another. Therefore, making laws based on "what's reasonable" makes about as much sense as laws based on popular opinion (i.e., none whatsoever)
...like background checks
OK, they already do background checks. What's not reasonable about the current process? What changes to the current process are you referring to as "reasonable?" "Like background checks" doesn't tell me shit about what you intend, and seems intentionally vague - thus, an unreasonable proposition by itself.
limited magazine size to no more than 10 rounds
Again, what's reasonable about that, or rather, what's unreasonable about larger magazines? Can you provide research that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that infringing the right of the citizens in this manner will have a measurably positive effect on society? What about the military and law enforcement, will they be held to the 10 round standard as well? As the recent episode with Chris Dorner taught us, even the venerable LEOs can be capable of going on killing rampages, so wouldn't it stand to reason their magazine capacity be curtailed as well? Again, your suggestion is far too vague in scope to be considered within "reasonable" spec.
Just because you're an idiot...
Attempts at marginalization via childish insults do nothing to assist your efforts, and in fact retard them. Keep that in mind.
doesn't make it any less reasonable to introduce moderate gun regulations.
Define "moderate regulations." Specifically.
the Australians banned people from owning guns privately who didn't have a reason, self defense wasn't an acceptable reason, and they haven't had a single mass murder in all those years.
Funny, you must get your news from somewhere other than, you know, news sources:
In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent)
And that's not even mentioning the other issues Aussies have had to deal with since the gun ban:
- In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
- Rape cases increased 29.9 percent.
- Some dickhead broke into a girls house and strapped a (turned out to be fake) bomb around her neck.
- Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent since the ban was enacted.
So yea, less "mass killings," but shitloads more rape, robbery, and assault. Doesn't seem like that one belongs in the "win" column, now does it?
The reality here is that doing nothing because criminals would just break the law is a really, really stupid policy.
Perhaps... but equally-if-not-more stupid is the idea that we must place further restrictions on the Constitutional rights of citizens because a certain subset of those citizens who are ignorant pussies, scared of their own shadows, scream "OMG, Something(TM) must be done!" Bonus points if you shrill some nonsense about doing it "For The Children(TM)."
The more inconvenient it is to commit the crime, the more opportunities there are for law enforcement to discover the plot and the more likely it is that the plot will just crumble on it's own.
A better argument for the dissolution of the First Amendment, I have not heard.
It's probably pretty easy when they aren't shooting back and simply cowering under their desks like good little victims.
FTFY.
And now I'm sad :(
Countries with strict gun control laws have fewer gun deaths than those who don't.
... but not less violence, nor less deaths in general. Japan, for example, has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, as well as one of the highest suicide rates. According to recorded statistics, if we assume accuracy, the US is well below the global average homicide rate of 7.6 per 100,000 people, at 4.8. One thing I noted from the aforementioned chart, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between presence/absence of strict gun laws and homicide rates.
Citing "less gun deaths" in countries with strict gun laws is like citing "low auto-accident rates" in Nambia - complete non sequitur.
I want fewer gun deaths.
That's a silly thing to want - what about bank robbers who shoot it out with the cops? Do you think the cops shouldn't be allowed to shoot back? Because, realize it or not, that's what you mean when you say, "I want fewer gun deaths."
Personally, I'd be happy with fewer intentional homicides, regardless of the method.
I don't give a shit about your right[s]
Aaand we come to the crux of the issue, and why nobody with a lick of sense gives a fuck what you gun grabbers have to say.
Given that at least half of the homicides involving guns are the gun owner killing himself...
For ridiculously absurd definitions of the word, "homicide..."
Killing oneself != homicide. Also, [citation needed].