Quite possibly... they got a lot of things RIGHT in their revision of the Constitution.
Oh, and before the revisionist history trolls start knee-jerking about slavery, please read the article - in particular, the quote from Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, the CSA was in many ways doing the right thing. Unfortunately, it was doing it for the wrong reasons.
Any laws that the constitution allows the congress to make overrule the states. Frivolous power-grabbing does not.
Where does the Constitution allow for the FCC? Is the FCC unconstitutional? How about the Air Force? The national highway system, HUD, CDC, CIA, FBI, the Marine Core, FEMA and social security are not in the Constitution, yet, there they are. Can we have the courts rule all these things out of existence? You want the quick answers?
It doesn't, it's highly debatable, yes, debatable, no, yes, yes, yes, yes (it's the marine corps), yes, arguably not. The courts could rule on the constitutionality of the things the feds shouldn't be doing, but they won't because the status quo is too deeply entrenched.
OK, let me try it another way: If congress is only allowed to make laws that are specifically, (read: already) spelled out in the Constitution, why do we even have a congress at all? Seems like don't really have much purpose.
You clearly have no idea how this works. Seriously, this is high school level government class stuff. The US Constitution delegates certain powers to the congress, and the congress may pass laws in execution of those powers. Much of the bullcrap the feds do is shoehorned in via absurd logic under "regulating interstate commerce".
it reminds me of a similar project on the island of Samos in the 6th century BC. They dug an aqueduct through a mountain over a km long. They dug it from both ends, though from what I read of it, nobody knows for sure how they managed to synchronize their digging.
Need i remind everyone about that nasty mars something mission? You know, the one in which a fairly stupid thing, like forgetting to convert to the metric system and back, caused the destruction of a very expensive project. You would think with all that money they would have thought about a silly thing like what the numbers represent as far as metric vs american goes. Anyways, thats the only expensive project i can almost recall off the top of my head, but my point is still valid:
Often, its the simplest/obvious details that come back to bite you in the ass, you know, the ones that someone should have thought of, that everyone ignored or passed off or simply dident think of, and all because it was so obvious that it wasent worth their time at the moment, someone else surely already thought of it, or simply passed off. A failure to convert from one system of measure to another is a small error easily lost in the in a sea of correct numbers. The fact that it turned out to be an error of critical importance has to do with the fact that shooting several hundred pounds of delicate machinery from one moving object to another and having it land safely is an extremely difficult operation (to say the least). A tunnel under the Bering Strait is very much not like launching a space probe.
I understand that many people here on slashdot have nothing in the way of engineering education, but your line of reasoning transcends engineering ignorance into pure lack of common fucking sense. It's a god damned hole in the ground, you moron. There are no subtle kinks to overlook. You point your digging machine at the ground and press the fucking "go" button. Honestly, can you even come up with a scenario that fits your flights of fancy about "overlooking the obvious"? IT'S A FUCKING TUNNEL!
Do shut your idiot pie-hole. Your taking up valuable breathable air.
Considering how corrupt the federal government has become over the past few decades Ah, people with no sense of history, unable to see beyond (or before) their own lifetimes. The federal government has been "corrupt" in the sense of usurping states' powers since the early- to mid-1800's.
Time is four-dimensional, so there are 7 dimensions! So sayeth the TimeCube! Come on, you idiot mods! If ever there was an appropriate time to bring up timecube.com, this is it. Is it that it's the first post? Use your brain and actually critically examine the content of a post before modding, please. This isn't a GNAA troll, he didn't once say "frist post", "fust poost", or "frost piss" anywhere in the message body, and the TimeCube guy is a fairly old and well known example of what happens when you let a billion people put whatever they like on the internet.
Sorry but I think you're the one who is wrong. In crimes of passion the person is rarely thinking "I want to kill that person" for any extended period (murder may not even be their intention) just take a look at the Sara Easton case as an example, the accused wasn't even trying to hit anybody, he was only trying to scare the group. The citation of a single outlier case does not validate your argument.
Where on Earth did you get the impression that it was your right to carry a gun everywhere you go? The US COnstitution?
Yes, if everyone was armed, it would make things a whole lot worse. Many, many, many more people would die every year, and you'd be a fool to argue with that. Ah yes, we must accept your arguments or be a fool. Astounding logic.
As the grandparent suggested, can you imagine what would happen if someone opened fire at a school, prompting more people to pull out their weapons, and suddenly nobody knows exactly who the original shooter was? Everyone would be so scared that they'd probably immediately shoot whoever aimed their weapon in his direction, or whoever fired off a shot for any reason. There would be chaos. A man bursts in the door and starts firing. Student A draws his weapon and fires back. Are you seriously suggesting that Students B, C, and D (also armed) wouldn't notice the man on a shooting rampage, and would start firing on Student A? You're an idiot.
Guns are too powerful to be used safely for self defense. And yet somehow they are, on a daily basis, without mayhem ensuing.
I realize it's difficult to stop a crazed shooter when nobody has an equal weapon, but I'm absolutely positive that of everyone was armed, the collateral damage in most cases would far exceed the rampage were it left unimpeded. Yeah, your self assurance of that conclusion, reached within the confines of your own mind using nothing but your own imagination , fed by a lifetime of unrealistic portrayal of gunfights in TV and movies, is nothing short of breathtaking. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You can't even show me a single crime committed by a civilian with a permit to carry a concealed weapon. By your reasoning, those people should be blowing their stack and shooting their neighbors all the time.
Minor disputes at a bar would result in someone dying, where now they just swing a few punches and sleep it off. A friend of mine's brother was killed at a bar by a guy who threw a punch at his head.
There would be chaos, without a doubt in the world, and that seems to be exactly what you want, all in the name of "self defense." I don't know anyone* who's been shot or has shot someone, and I know a number of people with concealed carry permits. Your view of reality is entirely made up. Come back when you have some hard facts to back your imagined ramblings.
* barring, of course, the 2 years I spent in afghanistan, but being in the Armyduring wartime this is to be expected.
No, but a 3rd person (like a cop) can pass by and who is he going to aim to? They guy with the gun? Or the "black" or the "middle eastern" looking guy? American trend is to stereotype people, that could be a big mess. You're kidding, right? Cops almost never show up in time to witness any crime. The coldm hard, fact of the matter is that police are entirely a reactive force, who generally show up with a yellow sheet to cover the body, and a clipboard to take statements. You don't construct policy to conform to the 1-in-100,000 incidents case where the cops show up at the scene of a shooting in progress.
Reading your previous posts I can't see if you are or not against gun control. Definitely against, but resigned to the fact that some restrictions (background checks) are inevitable, and probably net positive (so far).
I'm almost sure you have a gun at home though. Indeed. All the better to stave off tyranny! (heh)
But as you said in your parent post, this is not a matter of being mad, buying a gun and go shoot everyone. That means something is wrong and that it's really complicated to find out "right people" who can carry a gun. Well, more to the point, you can't tell the "right people" from the "wrong people" much of the time. Creating restrictive laws that cast a wide net and end up barring many (and sometimes all) of the "right people" in an attempt to exclude all the "wrong people" are counterproductive. as has been noted time and time again, the "wrong people" are exactly the sort that don't obey laws.
A gun gives a person a lot of power, and there are many that don't know what to do with power. True as far as it goes. With great power comes great responsibility. As I noted in a previous post, we can't use out magic rainbow powers to turn all guns into butterflies and live happily ever after. All we can reasonably do is hold people responsible for their actions. All this nonsense about "assault weapons", and "saturday night specials"*, and localized municipal handgun bans is a lot of worthless ex post facto grandstanding. There is no "stemming the tide", as it's NOT a tide, but rather a gently flowing stream of firearms that's been filling a GIANT SEA of private gun ownership for 200 years.
* attempts to ban "saturday night specials" have always struck me as telling. The main objection to these seems to be that they're inexpensive, and sold in the inner city. Apparently they think only the wealthy white suburban and rural folk should own firearms. (watsa' matta', politicians? Too many armed poor "colored folks" make you nervous?)
Actually, I think the 3-14 days often has more to due with paperwork processing time than cooling-off. Not anymore. The background check goes through in a matter of hours now. Here in California, I had a background check to work for the local school district that went through in 48 hours--- and that involved submitting fingerprints to absolutely verify identity, which gun "background checks" don't do. No, you can generally call the state DOJ and, while you're still on the phone with them, they can enter your SSN into their computer and read you off your complete state and FBI criminal record. There's no paperwork to process for the yea/nay part. We have computers, but they pretend these things still require a clerk to fumble through file cabinets. In the last 30 years, California has gone from 5 days, to 10 days, to now 15 days, all while the process for actually checking backgrounds has gotten shorter, to the point where it's now essentially instantaneous.
I can cite some stats (see Table 1). Looks like firearms homicide rates for the US are way higher than for most other western countries. Granted this is partially a societal issue, but I bet the high availability of guns also has a lot to do with it. No, you'd lose that bet. Availability of guns has little to do with it. As even that blowhard Michael Moore has noted, Canada has similar firearms availability, yet nowhere near the homicide rate. It's entirely societal. The US is a sexually repressed nation raised on TV shows like 24 and action movies like [anything with Schwarzenegger]. Anything fun (like drugs) is villified, and we work ourselves harder than anyone but perhaps the Japanese. Lacking any sort of reasonable safety valve, people tend to explode more often.
Who are the "good guys"? Everyone gets angry at some point in time, and some people get angry enough to shoot someone. If everyone had a gun, there could be a potential deadly outcome for every emotional outburst. Bollocks. Where does this idiotic notion that the only thing keeping a pissed off person from killing is the lack of a convenient weapon come from? Being "angry enough to shoot someone" is the same as being "angry enough to bash in someone's skull with a [paperweight/beer mug/golf club/etc]". There's nothing magic about a gun that makes people forget it's a deadly weapon. In fact, pop culture has essentially permanently established that GUN == DEATH. Murderous hotheads are murderous hotheads whether they have a gun handy or not.
Now, perhaps you are the sort of person who, when they get angry, would shoot someone if a gun was handy. If that's the case, you need some fucking help. One day you're gong to run someone off the road in your car, once you realize that it can be as deadly as any gun.
Imagine everyone opening fire in self-defence and no one knowing who the gunman actually was How could they not know? He's the guy who kicked open the door and started shooting. Are you seriously suggesting that Student A might return fire, and then Student B, somehow not having noticed the gunman when he came in shooting, opens fire on Student A? Gimme a break.
(sounds like the US Army in Iraq today!) How so? I spent 6 years on active duty, two of those in Afghanistan, and not once did anyone ever get confused and start shooting at the guy next to him because he didn't notice that the rest of us were shooting at the guys on the other side of the valley.
Where you've got a lot of people carrying guns, it's been known to happen. What, they start randomly firing?
There's a difference between defending yourself and carrying around a lethal weapon that has no other purpose than to kill. There is? What is it?
I'm sure that if you carried around Anthrax, or had some fertiliser packed into your car then some serious questions would be asked as to what on Earth you were doing. However, you've got a far greater chance of killing with a lethal weapon like a gun. The issue there is control. Anthrax and bombs are indiscriminate. They are not in any reasonable sense usable defensively. Firearms are completely controllable. Your exaggerated analogy is idiotic.
No, I never said that only cops should be allowed to carry guns. But the people who do should be certified as able (both physically and mentally) to handle a gun before they go into a store and buy one.
If someone is unable to behave when they have a gun in their hands, I'd rather sacrifice their personal defense than jeopardize mine.
Physical certification requirements? My 80 year old grandmother can fire a shotgun as well as anyone else, and she uses a walker.
As for being "certified mentally", exactly what does that entail? A "passing grade" (whatever that might be) on the MMPI2? No history of schizophrenia? That's an easy one. How about a history of depression? Do you refuse a gun to a woman who took Zoloft for 6 months after her mother died ten years ago? Psychology isn't an empirical science like physics. There isn't a set of secret pschiatrist's questions that will suss out the secretly insane or the sane-now-but-totally-nuts-in-three-years. We already filter for felons and certified nutcases anyway. There's no way to do any more without it turning into a situation where a bureaucrat with an agenda can dole out gun permits according to his whims and fancies.
A university is NO place for guns weather they be concealed for defense or otherwise. PERIOD I agree with your platitude.
Now that it's clear that platitudes have no effect on the way the real life works, how do you suggest we stop nutcases who don't follow the rules? Stand up and shout "that's against the rules!" when they come in to shoot us? Build a wall around campus and force students to wait in long DHS-airport-security-style lines to get in each morning to attend class? Use our magic rainbow powers to change all the guns in the world into butterflies?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that...
I do agree, the gun control in the US is really relaxed. You find stores selling this kind of supplies like car dealers, all around the place. This should be centralized to important cities in the states, and be severely controlled. The more the thinks spread the harder to contempt. Thus, if you want to maintain a good control, don't let the weapons leave important supplies centers to small wooden houses over a highway. Your English is atrocious, but I think I understand what you're suggesting. It won't work. There are already 200 million + guns in private hands in the US. Controlling the sale of them now is not going to make the ones already sold go away. Furthermore, you talk a lot about "control", but never say what you mean by that. So say we follow your plan and guns are only available for purchase at special federal gun stores, like the way they sell booze in Canada. How does this stop a guy like this from flipping out a year after he bought his pistols?
Hunters should be aware that THIS is an important matter and stop whining about there freedom of getting weapons at the corner shop. Such a quaint European notion of firearm ownership. Despite the asinine policy of the BATF and it's "legitimate sporting purposes" nonsense, the right to bear arms in the US has never been about sport or hunting. It's always been about the ultimate power of self direction remaining in the hands of the people. Oh sure, you can argue all day about how an armed populace has no chance against the US Army (as an Army veteran, I can say that most of the Army would not be on the government's side at that point) but that is entirely irrelevant. Rights do not go away simply because the exercise thereof might be a lost cause.
That's the most dangerous policy I think the US have locally and I hope it's soon to be modified. No wonder you can even find rifles on e-bay. eBay hasn't allowed the auction of firearms since early 1999, genius. And even when they did, the transfer of ownership had to be made through a federally licensed firearms dealer local to the buyer, with all the same paperwork and checking involved in just buying a firearm "at the corner shop". You argue from complete ignorance.
+3 insigthful? Swedes armed to the teeth more than americans..? Jesus, mods, get of that cheap crack. He means Switzerland. A common, if idiotic, error. Let's hear it for geography education in the US!
I think that "serious" psychological analysis should be mandatory before some could bring/buy weapons. You're asking for something that doesn't exist. What would be considered criteria for denying access to firearms? Just the real creepy stuff, like schizophrenia? Or only a history of depression? There is no detectable "seed of insanity". What about people who are fine now but then go nuts later? How do you screen out those? Psychology is not an empirical science like physics. There is no established sane/insane, go/no-go, green light/red light dichotomy in psychology. Your suggestion cannot be implemented with any appreciable degree of success. Sorry.
I was reading some info about crime stats and one interestign thing: Victims of crimes who possessed guns/weapons during the incident had a good chance (40%) of having their own weapon used against them. That's the first time I've ever heard that stat, and I've seen most of them. It's extremely vague. Was this victims who were carrying firearms and were disarmed? People coming home and surprising burglars who'd found their shotgun under the bed? I'd sure like to see the details. Have any citations or links for it?
NO GUNS - NO DEATHS its as simple as that True as far as it goes. There are, however, 200 million plus guns out there in private hands in the US. Nothing short of a magic wand will make your "NO GUNS" fantasy a reality.
If everyone had guns, or at least everyone thought everyone had guns I bet things like this would rarely happen. People would be less likely to go on shooting sprees if they thought everyone was packin'. Nice modding, you trolls. The above is not "flamebait", it's an observation of fact. You should see Kabul, Afghanistan. Everyone walks around with an AK-47, yet nobody gets shot. People are extremely polite.
Maybe you shouldn't say anything until you know where he got his gun. If he bought it at K-Mart at 7AM and was shooting people at 7:30 AM, that might be a pretty strong indication that the problem here wasn't the availability of guns to the other students, the problem was the availability of guns to the assailant. Doubtful that this guy bought the guns for the massacre. His effectiveness with them indicates he probably had them for quite a while, and practiced shooting fairly frequently.
Seriously though, people bring up this bizarre "man gets angry, buys a gun, shoots people, all in the same day" scenario quite frequently, but I have yet to hear of a single incident where anyone has actually done that. Most shootings are committed by people who already have guns, and have usually had them for quite a while. Face it, the time it takes to go buy a gun is usually long enough to cool off any normal "hothead". If the law considers a couple hours ample time to "cool off" when making the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder, then why do some people think it should take 3-14 DAYS (varies from state to state) to "cool off" when trying to buy a firearm? It's absurd.
Some standards are holding up just fine. My 60 year telephone still works in any north american phone outlet.
Bullshit.
60 years ago very few phones used plugs, rather they were hard wired into the wall. Those that did use plugs used a four pronged connector. The modren RJ-11 jack didn't even exist 60 years ago, it was introduced in the 70's. RJ-11 is a connector standard. The underlying phone standard is unchanged. Your argument makes as much sense as claiming my old external fax modem doesn't use a serial cable because it needs an adapter to convert its DB-25 to the DE-9 serial port on my server. No, the basics of POTS have not changed since the 1870's.
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Oh, and before the revisionist history trolls start knee-jerking about slavery, please read the article - in particular, the quote from Abraham Lincoln.
Indeed, the CSA was in many ways doing the right thing. Unfortunately, it was doing it for the wrong reasons.
Where does the Constitution allow for the FCC? Is the FCC unconstitutional? How about the Air Force? The national highway system, HUD, CDC, CIA, FBI, the Marine Core, FEMA and social security are not in the Constitution, yet, there they are. Can we have the courts rule all these things out of existence? You want the quick answers?
It doesn't, it's highly debatable, yes, debatable, no, yes, yes, yes, yes (it's the marine corps), yes, arguably not. The courts could rule on the constitutionality of the things the feds shouldn't be doing, but they won't because the status quo is too deeply entrenched.
OK, let me try it another way: If congress is only allowed to make laws that are specifically, (read: already) spelled out in the Constitution, why do we even have a congress at all? Seems like don't really have much purpose.
You clearly have no idea how this works. Seriously, this is high school level government class stuff. The US Constitution delegates certain powers to the congress, and the congress may pass laws in execution of those powers. Much of the bullcrap the feds do is shoehorned in via absurd logic under "regulating interstate commerce".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupalinian_aqueduct Why don't you try your scroll wheel and read the whole Wikipedia article. It explains exactly how they did it.
Often, its the simplest/obvious details that come back to bite you in the ass, you know, the ones that someone should have thought of, that everyone ignored or passed off or simply dident think of, and all because it was so obvious that it wasent worth their time at the moment, someone else surely already thought of it, or simply passed off. A failure to convert from one system of measure to another is a small error easily lost in the in a sea of correct numbers. The fact that it turned out to be an error of critical importance has to do with the fact that shooting several hundred pounds of delicate machinery from one moving object to another and having it land safely is an extremely difficult operation (to say the least). A tunnel under the Bering Strait is very much not like launching a space probe.
I understand that many people here on slashdot have nothing in the way of engineering education, but your line of reasoning transcends engineering ignorance into pure lack of common fucking sense. It's a god damned hole in the ground, you moron. There are no subtle kinks to overlook. You point your digging machine at the ground and press the fucking "go" button. Honestly, can you even come up with a scenario that fits your flights of fancy about "overlooking the obvious"? IT'S A FUCKING TUNNEL!
Do shut your idiot pie-hole. Your taking up valuable breathable air.
Yes, if everyone was armed, it would make things a whole lot worse. Many, many, many more people would die every year, and you'd be a fool to argue with that. Ah yes, we must accept your arguments or be a fool. Astounding logic.
As the grandparent suggested, can you imagine what would happen if someone opened fire at a school, prompting more people to pull out their weapons, and suddenly nobody knows exactly who the original shooter was? Everyone would be so scared that they'd probably immediately shoot whoever aimed their weapon in his direction, or whoever fired off a shot for any reason. There would be chaos. A man bursts in the door and starts firing. Student A draws his weapon and fires back. Are you seriously suggesting that Students B, C, and D (also armed) wouldn't notice the man on a shooting rampage, and would start firing on Student A? You're an idiot.
Guns are too powerful to be used safely for self defense. And yet somehow they are, on a daily basis, without mayhem ensuing.
I realize it's difficult to stop a crazed shooter when nobody has an equal weapon, but I'm absolutely positive that of everyone was armed, the collateral damage in most cases would far exceed the rampage were it left unimpeded. Yeah, your self assurance of that conclusion, reached within the confines of your own mind using nothing but your own imagination , fed by a lifetime of unrealistic portrayal of gunfights in TV and movies, is nothing short of breathtaking. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You can't even show me a single crime committed by a civilian with a permit to carry a concealed weapon. By your reasoning, those people should be blowing their stack and shooting their neighbors all the time.
Minor disputes at a bar would result in someone dying, where now they just swing a few punches and sleep it off. A friend of mine's brother was killed at a bar by a guy who threw a punch at his head.
There would be chaos, without a doubt in the world, and that seems to be exactly what you want, all in the name of "self defense." I don't know anyone* who's been shot or has shot someone, and I know a number of people with concealed carry permits. Your view of reality is entirely made up. Come back when you have some hard facts to back your imagined ramblings.
* barring, of course, the 2 years I spent in afghanistan, but being in the Armyduring wartime this is to be expected.
Reading your previous posts I can't see if you are or not against gun control. Definitely against, but resigned to the fact that some restrictions (background checks) are inevitable, and probably net positive (so far).
I'm almost sure you have a gun at home though. Indeed. All the better to stave off tyranny! (heh)
But as you said in your parent post, this is not a matter of being mad, buying a gun and go shoot everyone. That means something is wrong and that it's really complicated to find out "right people" who can carry a gun. Well, more to the point, you can't tell the "right people" from the "wrong people" much of the time. Creating restrictive laws that cast a wide net and end up barring many (and sometimes all) of the "right people" in an attempt to exclude all the "wrong people" are counterproductive. as has been noted time and time again, the "wrong people" are exactly the sort that don't obey laws.
A gun gives a person a lot of power, and there are many that don't know what to do with power. True as far as it goes. With great power comes great responsibility. As I noted in a previous post, we can't use out magic rainbow powers to turn all guns into butterflies and live happily ever after. All we can reasonably do is hold people responsible for their actions. All this nonsense about "assault weapons", and "saturday night specials"*, and localized municipal handgun bans is a lot of worthless ex post facto grandstanding. There is no "stemming the tide", as it's NOT a tide, but rather a gently flowing stream of firearms that's been filling a GIANT SEA of private gun ownership for 200 years.
* attempts to ban "saturday night specials" have always struck me as telling. The main objection to these seems to be that they're inexpensive, and sold in the inner city. Apparently they think only the wealthy white suburban and rural folk should own firearms. (watsa' matta', politicians? Too many armed poor "colored folks" make you nervous?)
Now, perhaps you are the sort of person who, when they get angry, would shoot someone if a gun was handy. If that's the case, you need some fucking help. One day you're gong to run someone off the road in your car, once you realize that it can be as deadly as any gun.
(sounds like the US Army in Iraq today!) How so? I spent 6 years on active duty, two of those in Afghanistan, and not once did anyone ever get confused and start shooting at the guy next to him because he didn't notice that the rest of us were shooting at the guys on the other side of the valley.
Where you've got a lot of people carrying guns, it's been known to happen. What, they start randomly firing?
There's a difference between defending yourself and carrying around a lethal weapon that has no other purpose than to kill. There is? What is it?
I'm sure that if you carried around Anthrax, or had some fertiliser packed into your car then some serious questions would be asked as to what on Earth you were doing. However, you've got a far greater chance of killing with a lethal weapon like a gun. The issue there is control. Anthrax and bombs are indiscriminate. They are not in any reasonable sense usable defensively. Firearms are completely controllable. Your exaggerated analogy is idiotic.
No, I never said that only cops should be allowed to carry guns. But the people who do should be certified as able (both physically and mentally) to handle a gun before they go into a store and buy one.
If someone is unable to behave when they have a gun in their hands, I'd rather sacrifice their personal defense than jeopardize mine.
Physical certification requirements? My 80 year old grandmother can fire a shotgun as well as anyone else, and she uses a walker.As for being "certified mentally", exactly what does that entail? A "passing grade" (whatever that might be) on the MMPI2? No history of schizophrenia? That's an easy one. How about a history of depression? Do you refuse a gun to a woman who took Zoloft for 6 months after her mother died ten years ago? Psychology isn't an empirical science like physics. There isn't a set of secret pschiatrist's questions that will suss out the secretly insane or the sane-now-but-totally-nuts-in-three-years. We already filter for felons and certified nutcases anyway. There's no way to do any more without it turning into a situation where a bureaucrat with an agenda can dole out gun permits according to his whims and fancies.
Now that it's clear that platitudes have no effect on the way the real life works, how do you suggest we stop nutcases who don't follow the rules? Stand up and shout "that's against the rules!" when they come in to shoot us? Build a wall around campus and force students to wait in long DHS-airport-security-style lines to get in each morning to attend class? Use our magic rainbow powers to change all the guns in the world into butterflies?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that...
Hunters should be aware that THIS is an important matter and stop whining about there freedom of getting weapons at the corner shop. Such a quaint European notion of firearm ownership. Despite the asinine policy of the BATF and it's "legitimate sporting purposes" nonsense, the right to bear arms in the US has never been about sport or hunting. It's always been about the ultimate power of self direction remaining in the hands of the people. Oh sure, you can argue all day about how an armed populace has no chance against the US Army (as an Army veteran, I can say that most of the Army would not be on the government's side at that point) but that is entirely irrelevant. Rights do not go away simply because the exercise thereof might be a lost cause.
That's the most dangerous policy I think the US have locally and I hope it's soon to be modified. No wonder you can even find rifles on e-bay. eBay hasn't allowed the auction of firearms since early 1999, genius. And even when they did, the transfer of ownership had to be made through a federally licensed firearms dealer local to the buyer, with all the same paperwork and checking involved in just buying a firearm "at the corner shop". You argue from complete ignorance.
You're asking for something that doesn't exist. What would be considered criteria for denying access to firearms? Just the real creepy stuff, like schizophrenia? Or only a history of depression? There is no detectable "seed of insanity". What about people who are fine now but then go nuts later? How do you screen out those? Psychology is not an empirical science like physics. There is no established sane/insane, go/no-go, green light/red light dichotomy in psychology. Your suggestion cannot be implemented with any appreciable degree of success. Sorry.
Obviously, it's all of OUR fault, for being so irritating.
Doubtful that this guy bought the guns for the massacre. His effectiveness with them indicates he probably had them for quite a while, and practiced shooting fairly frequently.
Seriously though, people bring up this bizarre "man gets angry, buys a gun, shoots people, all in the same day" scenario quite frequently, but I have yet to hear of a single incident where anyone has actually done that. Most shootings are committed by people who already have guns, and have usually had them for quite a while. Face it, the time it takes to go buy a gun is usually long enough to cool off any normal "hothead". If the law considers a couple hours ample time to "cool off" when making the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder, then why do some people think it should take 3-14 DAYS (varies from state to state) to "cool off" when trying to buy a firearm? It's absurd.
Bullshit.
60 years ago very few phones used plugs, rather they were hard wired into the wall. Those that did use plugs used a four pronged connector. The modren RJ-11 jack didn't even exist 60 years ago, it was introduced in the 70's.
RJ-11 is a connector standard. The underlying phone standard is unchanged. Your argument makes as much sense as claiming my old external fax modem doesn't use a serial cable because it needs an adapter to convert its DB-25 to the DE-9 serial port on my server. No, the basics of POTS have not changed since the 1870's.