Guns don't kill people ....

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

How much you want to bet the person he wanted to shoot was a bully?

Nothing has changed. Except that we all now have access to big guns. So what was once solved by a fist or a thrown egg is now solved by assault weapons and large clips.

People do kill people - when armed with weapons whose only purpose is to kill lots of people.

Bullying is being addressed in most locations. Long ago when bullying was ignored, people were not dying. And kids were not armed with high powered weapons. We need those weapons to defend ourselves - even from bullies. Big guns have solved bully problems.

Give everyone a gun and bullying will end. More guns mean more safety. Anyone who can read a soundbyte knows that is true.

[footfootfoot]

All the bullies in my school experience from grade school through high school were pretty much out in the open with their activities and well known to the teachers, including the bully teachers.

And I went to good schools.

School was a huge FAIL when I was a kid.

[henry quirk]

'nuff said

[Spexxvet]

A question for all the anti-gun control folks.

How do you propose we minimize gun related crime, especially mass shootings?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

A question for all the anti-gun control folks.

How do you propose we minimize gun related crime, especially mass shootings?

Is this thing on?

[Adak]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

A question for all the anti-gun control folks.

How do you propose we minimize gun related crime, especially mass shootings?

One thing that would help, is to work on welfare and military assignments, so fathers could be around their boys (especially), as they are growing up.

Absent fathers have a terrible impact on boys - not on every boy, but on many boys. With all of our military dads being assigned repeatedly overseas, and many welfare programs forcing welfare families to kick the dad out, so they're eligible, it's a disaster.

Go back and check out how many of these mass killers had dads around when they were growing up.

[IamSam]

My Dad taught me how to do push-ups when he was home between tours of duty. Oh, and that I had to "police" my room. He didn't seem to be very excited about flashing around any of his military issue weapons, tho. I was quite disappointed at the time, but I got over it when I discovered super soakers.

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

All the bullies in my school experience from grade school through high school were pretty much out in the open with their activities and well known to the teachers, including the bully teachers.

And I went to good schools.

School was a huge FAIL when I was a kid.

I went to schools on Army bases until the 8th grade. The teachers there were pretty strict and the bullies confined themselves to bullying after school. A couple of "big kids" (third graders) terrorized me a time or two when I was a first grader walking home from school. It never occurred to me to tell a teacher, but I did tell my Mom.

The next day she was waiting for me outside the school grounds and she put the fear of dog into those two little monsters - name, rank, and serial number and just one more time and your father's commanding officer will be hearing about this! You go, Mom!

Needless to say, those two never bothered me again.

Adult intervention can make a big difference if the adults know what's going on, but kids can be pretty crafty.

[Clodfobble]

Kids can be crafty, but that's not the kind of bully that wears a kid down enough to make them bring a gun--that only happens over years of abuse. My bully once raised her leg up and kicked the shit out of my ribs, in class, right in front of the teacher, and the teacher did nothing.

If I had only known I could fight back, things would have been different. Adult intervention is critical, and that includes teaching kids that they don't have to put up with being bullied, a message that was lacking when I was a kid. I'm glad your mom stood up for you. If she hadn't, what would you have done?

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Kids can be crafty, but that's not the kind of bully that wears a kid down enough to make them bring a gun--that only happens over years of abuse. My bully once raised her leg up and kicked the shit out of my ribs, in class, right in front of the teacher, and the teacher did nothing.

If I had only known I could fight back, things would have been different. Adult intervention is critical, and that includes teaching kids that they don't have to put up with being bullied, a message that was lacking when I was a kid. I'm glad your mom stood up for you. If she hadn't, what would you have done?

That sucks Clod. And I'm glad teachers and kids have become more aware of the problem and how to deal with it than everyone was back in the day when we were in school.

My parents were mistrustful of regular schools after sending me to schools on army bases for grades K thru 7. When we bought a house off base and I would have had to attend a regular public school, they baulked at the idea and sent me to a private school run by the Luthern Church instead.

I'd have been better off with the gang bangers my parents imagined infesting civilian schools. The culture shock was awful. I went from attending class with a group of my fellow vagabonds to being in a classroom with a group of kids who'd gone to school together since the first grade. And if being the new kid wasn't bad enough, I'd hadn't been raised Luthern. As a matter of fact, I was already an agnostic by the ripe old age of 13.

That pack of 8th grade fundamentalists made my life miserable in every way they could think of. I used to cry myself to sleep. The teachers not only knew about it and didn't intervene, they actually joined in. One time another kid asked me if I was "saved" during lunch-break in the school cafeteria. I hated that little bitch who asked and I had no trouble telling her the truth which was "Hell, no!"

Naturally word spread like wild-fire among the shocked faithful and I was called into the office of the pastor who treated us 8th graders to an hour's worth of fundamentalist brain washing each day. That man told me that I was going to hell. He damned me to eternal flames at age 13. I was pretty stunned for a few days. Then I decided that if the Lutherns were right, a bunch of unbaptized babies were going to hell with me and SOMEONE needed to take care of those poor children since god wouldn't.

This thought bouyed me up considerably and when my Dad came home after a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam, I convinced him to let me go to the local public high school where I found a group of fellow nerds to hang out with and was spared further bullying. I can easily imagine a teenage boy being pushed over the edge and doing bad to those kids at my old junior high.

[zippyt]

In the news paper today ,

Hunting buddy by zippyt, on Flickr

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Adak

And do you sir, have ANY evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, showing that unarmed, defenseless people, are safe from violence?

snip

Me.

I'm unarmed. I'm "defenseless" (by your tortured definition). I'm safe from violence. I'm not invisible, I'm not in hiding or in an undisclosed location. I'm not a sheep or a sheeple. This is FACTUAL, anecdotal, empirical, verifiable, first person evidence.

Will this turn your ridiculous argument? I believe it won't. Perhaps you are thinking of how to be safe from some hypothetical threat of violence. Well, in that* case, no, I'm not safe. But hey, I'm thinking of a different hypothetical threat of violence. Yeah, I'm safe from that one.

* There is ALWAYS some hypothetical threat that can be conjured up in your imagination or mine that could be prevented by having a firearm. It is equally likely that a different imaginary situation can be thought up where no firearm is needed. Just as it's equally possible to think up some situation where the firearm is present but inadequate. What. The. Hell. Ever. A far better, more rational, helpful, useful exercise of our intelligence is to think about where firearms *are* a good idea (protip, the answer is NOT everywhere at all times).

[Adak]

Originally Posted by BigV

Me.

I'm unarmed. I'm "defenseless" (by your tortured definition). I'm safe from violence. I'm not invisible, I'm not in hiding or in an undisclosed location. I'm not a sheep or a sheeple. This is FACTUAL, anecdotal, empirical, verifiable, first person evidence.

Will this turn your ridiculous argument? I believe it won't. Perhaps you are thinking of how to be safe from some hypothetical threat of violence. Well, in that* case, no, I'm not safe. But hey, I'm thinking of a different hypothetical threat of violence. Yeah, I'm safe from that one.

* There is ALWAYS some hypothetical threat that can be conjured up in your imagination or mine that could be prevented by having a firearm. It is equally likely that a different imaginary situation can be thought up where no firearm is needed. Just as it's equally possible to think up some situation where the firearm is present but inadequate. What. The. Hell. Ever. A far better, more rational, helpful, useful exercise of our intelligence is to think about where firearms *are* a good idea (protip, the answer is NOT everywhere at all times).

You are ONE person - not "people". Your experience is the fruit of people who fought WITH GUNS, to give you a better (and yes, a safer), place to live.

Would we even HAVE a country, if we had no guns, and simply asked King George VI, "would you please leave us alone?".

How about those Kurds in Iraq? They had almost no guns, and when they displeased Saddam Hussein, he had their whole town killed with poison gas.

What about the Israeli's? Would they be alive today if it wasn't for their guns? Didn't they live without guns before the Holocaust? How did that work out, pray tell?

How about those 8,000 or so men and boys in Srebrenica? They had no guns. The Dutch army was there under UN auspices to protect them, remember? The Serbs just had too many guns, so they stood down, and surrendered.

The Serbs then demanded the Dutch uniforms to embarrass them, and took the men and boys from the city, into the forest - and killed every one of them.

Or go back a few years to an earlier massacre - same place (roughly), but this time it was of the Serbs, not the Bosniaks, who were slaughtered: Javor and Korita massacre's, 1941.

How about the Armenians in the early 1900's? They were pretty well unarmed. So the Turks slaughtered them by the tens of thousands.

How about the American Indian? Tomahawks, knives, and bows and arrows, were no match for guns. Did it work out well for them?

How about the Aztecs? Cortez just killed them off, lickety split - because he had guns and metal swords, and the Aztecs didn't. About the same, for the Inca's. No guns, you die.

Rosicrucians? Knights Templar? Jews in the UK, in the 1600's? All slaughtered or driven out.

You could fill up an entire encyclopedia with all the different groups that have been massacred because they didn't have guns (or have enough guns, or know how to use them well, etc.).

We didn't outlaw airplanes after 9/11 -- and we don't outlaw spoons, knives and forks, because of the obesity problem. That would be stupid.

Same with guns. Guns allowed us to be free, in the first place.

To be people - not sheeple.

You've simply been lucky, but disarming is a very dangerous decision.

Looking back and using history as a guide, it's been a fatal decision or circumstance, for millions.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Adak

You are ONE person - not "people". Your experience is the fruit of people who fought WITH GUNS, to give you a better (and yes, a safer), place to live.

Would we even HAVE a country, if we had no guns, and simply asked King George VI, "would you please leave us alone?".
.

I'm no great fan of counterfactual history, but judging by the political landscape of Britain at the time, and the direction of travel in public discourse, I'd say possibly, but maybe half a century later. It maybe that there was always going to be some element of fighting, but the Napoleonic wars may well have blunted Britain's appetite for armed conflict, as well as heightened already apparent popular unease at her treatment of the American colonies.

I don't know how much of the British side of that whole period you get taught over there. There was a good deal of popular support for the American colonists amongst the British public.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Maybe that's why George brought in Hessian mercenaries.