Guns don't kill people ....

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

... Jesus christ it's unbearable. The world should end. ...

People who can even think like this should be banned for life from ever owning a gun.

[Spexxvet]

You know what? I don't give a shit about guns or knives or bats. I want these types of killings to stop. I want violence to stop. How do we do that?

[Ibby]

[Big Sarge]

I have been greatly disturbed by this incident because they were children and Addie is 5 yoa. The only thing we can do now is believe these innocent lambs are in a better place. At least that is what I keep telling myself......

Gun control probably would not have prevented this. Take away all the guns and then you'll start seeing SVIEDs (suicide vests) or SVBIEDs (suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device). If a nut job plans on killing a bunch of people, there are a lot better options than a gun. You can do a lot of damage by driving a car or a large truck through a crowd. Should we ban all vehicles because they kill more people than guns every year?

Mental illness is the key. We must do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others. In my state, they have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals. One last shout from my soap box, I truly feel that violence on TV, graphic video games, etc. have desensitized the younger generations.

Now I will prepare to be stoned for my thoughts.

[ZenGum]

Last Friday there was a similar incident in China - an effed up individual attacked children at an elementary school.

He didn't have a gun, so he used a knife.

22 children were "slashed" but as far as I can tell, none were killed.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-1...-china/4428958

[Aliantha]

Such a tragedy. I woke up to this news today and still have been trying to process it. It's almost inconceivable, except it's not.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Mental illness is the key. We must do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others. In my state, they have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals. s.

I heartily agree with you there Sarge. Mental health centers/crisis centers are a fucking joke in my state. They are staffed by the most burned out, underpaid, overworked zombies you'd ever care to see. Working with the mentally ill takes a toll on a person and burn out is about five years---similar to ED workers. Add slashed budgets, stale salaries, working thru lunch, holding your bladder b/c you MUST admit one more person before you go; and hostile, over burdened workers who cannot support you emotionally, an indifferent or even evil management "team" (there's usually 5 "managers" and 1 RN for every 7 patients) and insurance co. who don't want to pay a single dollar for mental health care in this country...yeah, a LOT of somebodies slip thru the cracks. All these shooters gave clues to what they were going to do or thinking of doing. Everybody always says the same thing: I thought he was kidding. I was taught that if someone says they are going to kill themselves or another you take them VERY seriously.

I hadn't heard he'd killed one of his brothers..? He has a bro named Ryan who's been constantly interrogated since the shooting but that's all I've heard on the sibling front.

boy had mommy issues------that's pretty clear. I've also heard that he was 20 and then 24. I hope to get some good information today. It's all been so speculative. And those babies who were killed-----IIRC, they are still lying where they were shot as they process the scene. I cannot begin to imagine that.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

The only thing we can do now is believe these innocent lambs are in a better place.

No it's not. We can

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

In my state, they

Tell it like it is: The REPUBLICANS

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Now I will prepare to be stoned for my thoughts.

Pass the doobie.

Seriously, what are you willing to sacrifice to ensure that this doesn't happen to Addie?

[richlevy]

I guess one question is 'What is the gun designed for?'. Someone with a bolt action rifle is not going to be able to quickly kill two dozen people. What is really needed for hunting, target shooting, home defense? Who uses a 30 round clip to hunt deer?

One problem is the lethality of weapons. If someone wanted to build and own a low yield nuclear device, then told their neighbors that it was perfectly safe and protected by the second amendment, the response would be obvious. Because the lethality of the device directly impacted those neighbors, including the threat of it's misuse. By the same token, a concealed knife or openly worn sword is also lethal, but limited in their ability to inflict mass damage. A semi-automatic firearm, however, is capable of inflicting great harm, even assuming the assailant could be overpowered.

A lot of arguments about the Constitution revolve around the intent of the founding fathers. The personal weapon technology of the time was the flintlock rifle and pistol. Imagine any of the recent mass shootings being committed by someone armed with a flintlock.

Our founding fathers did not have to consider 20th century weapon technology when they considered the 2nd amendment, other than to imply the intent being a well regulated militia. This presumes weapons training and weeding out of unsuitable candidates. Show them a clip of the fire rate of a semiautomatic pistol and those requirements would have been a lot tighter and more explicit.

Switzerland allows honorably discharged veterans to retain carry permits for weapons. You don't see many mass murders in Switzerland. Of course American culture is considered to be too violent by most industrialized nations.

[piercehawkeye45]

This may ruffle some feathers but if gun policy is going to be discussed, I think it is extremely important that we look at the issue from multiple perspectives. It does the country harm if the narrative is controlled by people who only look at the issue as black in white.

The truth is, a gun saturated population can prevent crime and murder along with increasing crime and murder at the same time. It largely depends on the decisions made by the person holding the weapon, which varies greatly culture to culture, person to person, and even at different times with the same person.

Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote an article in the Atlantic about how we need more gun regulation while not preventing responsible gun owners from possessing guns. I don't agree with everything but the pragmatic viewpoint is refreshing. Here is his response to the massacre in Newton along with a link to the article.

The massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, has caused many people, including people at the White House, to say that this is not the day to talk about gun policy. This day is obviously for mourning the dead, but I don't understand why we shouldn't talk about the conditions that lead to these sorts of shootings. I wrote about this issue in the current issue of The Atlantic (you can read the story here), and I want to quickly make a few points drawn from that longer article.

1) This is a gun country. We are saturated with guns. There are as many as 300 million guns in circulation today (the majority owned legally, but many not) and more than 4 million new guns come onto the market each year. To talk about eradicating guns, especially given what the Supreme Court has said about the individual right to gun-ownership, is futile.

2) There are, however, some gun control laws that could be strengthened. The so-called gun-show loophole (which is not a loophole at all -- 40 percent of all guns sold in America legally are sold without benefit of a federal background check) should be closed. Background checks are no panacea -- many of our country's recent mass-shooters had no previous criminal records, and had not been previously adjudicated mentally ill -- but they would certainly stop some people from buying weapons.

3) We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons. This is crucially important, but very difficult, because it would require the cooperation of the medical community -- of psychiatrists, therapists, school counselors and the like -- and the privacy issues (among other issues) are enormous. But: It has to be made more difficult for sociopaths, psychopaths and the otherwise violently mentally-ill (who, in total, make up a small portion of the mentally ill population) to buy weapons.

4) People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read The Atlantic article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don't know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.

5) All of this is tragic. As I wrote in The Atlantic, Canada, which has a low-rate of gun ownership and strict gun laws, seems like a pretty nice place sometimes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...sacres/266300/


Full article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ontrol/309161/

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

snip... we need more gun regulation while minimizing the ability of responsible gun owners to possess guns. snip

Was that a typo?

[piercehawkeye45]

Yes. Yes it was. Thank you.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I would have overlooked a normal typo but that one had a big impact on what you were trying to say.

[Big Sarge]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Seriously, what are you willing to sacrifice to ensure that this doesn't happen to Addie?

Our Constitutional Rights are sacred. Think how many have fought and died for these rights. I'm willing to keep our right to bear arms, even if it did endanger my precious angel. We need to start putting our country and constitution first. To be a free country, you often have to pay a price

[Stormieweather]

I think gun ownership should be more difficult to achieve. Not impossible, except for automatic/semi-automatic weapons, just more carefully controlled. I think a permit and complete background checks should be required of all permit holders. It should be revoked in the event of domestic violence, mental illness, or any felony crime. If accused of a crime, all guns should be confiscated, to be returned if found not guilty/charges dropped. It should be required that all weapons be secured and accessible only to the permit holder(s).

If you fuck up, you lose your guns.

We lose our jobs, cars, drivers licenses, children and spouses for fucking up, we should also lose our guns.

And mental illness should be an automatic block to owning a weapon. Sorry if that feels too harsh, but shit..you can't be a police officer or judge or teacher or daycare provider if you have a documented mental illness, and you should not be allowed contact with a gun either.

The permit should be required to be renewed periodically, and another full background check (including mental health records) should be done. A registry of all licensed gun owners and the weapons registered to them would be kept. Longer sentences for illegally possessing a weapon should occur.

I say this as a gun owner, and one whose (adult) son has a concealed permit and is an active enthusiast. I have nothing against guns, but they are too easy to get and their possession is too unregulated. We pay less attention to guns than we do to cars!!

f you are a responsible adult, you should have no problem obtaining a permit and retaining it any more than you would a driver's license.