11 Things Harder to Get Than Guns: Abortion, Drugs & More by Lauren Streib Dec 17, 2012 4:45 AM EST Want an abortion in Missouri? It’ll be tougher than buying a gun. What about selling lemonade in Iowa? You'll need to jump through more hoops than if you wanted to sell your piece. The Daily Beast lines up the laws side by side. ...
I find it funny that people want to focus on guns being the issue here and not the mental health of the attackers. They also ignore the fact that the Chinese have been killing their elementary school kids with knives for the past few years.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I'm not talking about you specifically. It's all over the internet now. People are just ignoring the fact that when crazy wants to kill, crazy finds a way to kill.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I brought up the gun stuff after the media started getting blamed.
I think the media does share some responsibility for some of these occurrences. After the Batman or Wisconsin shootings, psychologists publicly stated that constant news coverage of these events could encourage other mentally fucked people to copy the acts. I just went to Yahoo!'s home page and saw at least nine articles on the shooting. NINE. If that doesn't encourage some fucknut seeking attention and notoriety, I don't know what will.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I brought up the gun stuff after the media started getting blamed.
I think the media does share some responsibility for some of these occurrences. After the Batman or Wisconsin shootings, psychologists publicly stated that constant news coverage of these events could encourage other mentally fucked people to copy the acts. I just went to Yahoo!'s home page and saw at least nine articles on the shooting. NINE. If that doesn't encourage some fucknut seeking attention and notoriety, I don't know what will.
It was a GA story, so I don't think it counts as continuity anymore.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I should have kept up the old in joke, otherwise Pariah might think that I was referencing his James Bond slash fiction 'Goldfingered'.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
I think this guy's Mom is more to blame than the guns.
Either she didn't safeguard her firearms from a member of her household with a history of mental illness, or (and this is just a wild speculation on my part) she bought her mentally ill son guns in her name.
It was disclosed today that his mother was trying to bond with her visibly disturbed son by sharing her gun enthusiasm with him. Obviously an ill-fated choice of ways to bond with him.
I'm not talking about you specifically. It's all over the internet now. People are just ignoring the fact that when crazy wants to kill, crazy finds a way to kill.
When crazy has easy access to high powered assault weapons they can kill a lot faster though. This is the price we pay for lame gun control laws.
That's crazy's mother's fault. Gun laws on the books don't allow the mentally ill to purchase a low caliber .22, much less an assault rifle. Again, this looks like we need to spend as much time talking about how we treat the mentally ill as we do gun laws.
You comment also ignores the knife killings in China or even the gun attacks in Europe where guns laws are a lot more strict.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
If he had been armed with a knife the body count would have probably been much less. The kids and teachers didn't get to face a knife or even just a regular gun. We're probably not going to agree on this but I don't see a valid reason for allowing these rapid fire weapons.
I'm not talking about you specifically. It's all over the internet now. People are just ignoring the fact that when crazy wants to kill, crazy finds a way to kill.
When crazy has easy access to high powered assault weapons...
The Bushmaster .223 is not particularly high powered. In fact, it's banned for deer hunting in many states on the grounds that it’s too weak (i.e., it won't take down a deer quickly). It's basically a small game rifle.
People need to understand the difference between full auto and semiautomatic.
The versions of this gun that the military actually uses are able to fire fully automatically, meaning that when the shooter holds down the trigger, the gun sprays a continuous stream of bullets. This high fire rate makes the military version of gun hard to control. So the weapons use smaller bullets to reduce recoil. The use of smaller bullets doesn't really impact the military use, because the whole point is to "spray" a target.
But the "assault weapopns" that are widely available for civilian use are not fully automatic. These features have been removed. As a result, you are left with is a gun that was designed as a machine gun, and still looks like a machine gun, but functions like an ordinary, and often low-powered, rifle. Basically, a "kewl" looking hunting rifle for small game.
Yes. It's still a gun. Yes, a gun can still shoot a person. But if the left is being honest when they say they don't want to ban hunting rifles, then they wouldn't ban this one.
Furthermore, since deer rifles (including all the semi-automatic ones) are typically more powerful than the Bushmaster and similar "assault weapons," you can’t ban more powerful guns without banning many deer rifles, something most of the gun grabbers swear they don’t want to do.
I really don't see what the point is about semi-automatic weapons. You apparently think it is a machine gun. It is not.
I can see banning machine guns.
But I think this incident is just an excuse along the lines of Rahm Emmanuel's call to "Not let a crisis go to waste", enabling a major liberal push for gun control. When again, that was never the real issue. As I said 10 years ago, Americans have had guns in their homes for over 200 years, and we never saw the prevalence of violent incidents until recently. Guns are not the problem, but something in the culture that has changed.
And I see that "something" as the removal of prayer and any mention of God in our schools, along with its replacement by a very cynical popular culture that scorns any adherence to a moral standard. Any post-Christian message of morality is sporadic and confused at best. The lack of community, and the moral standards that accompany it, breed violence as one manifestation of that. Guns or no guns.
Guns are not the problem, but something in the culture that has changed.
...or, as I mentioned before, we stopped properly addressing the needs of the mentally ill.
I really don't think a dose of Jesus is going to stop a crazy person.
Well... in the cases of Adam Lanza, James Holmes, and Jared Loughner, I have to agree with you. While they may have espoused some level political or religious awareness, the full-on crazy there just over-rode any other possible causes. In these cases, I would agree. That either my right-wing moral/religious considerations, or the left-wing call for gun control, are both equally irrelevant to a case where mental illness is the clear motive.
In general though, among tens of millions of other saner people who commit crimes, I think the vaccuum of moral guidance, the attempt to ban Christian principles from our schools and public institutions, the outright contempt for them, results in a decline of ethics, and with it more crime.
Two weeks ago I saw John Stossel on an O'Reilly segment about religious faith. And Stossel surprisingly said he's an atheist, and said he wished he could believe in God, because religious people are statistically healthier, happier, live longer, and have a greater sense of purpose in their lives. I thought it interesting that while not being a believer, he could see that aspect of religious faith.
I really don't think a dose of Jesus is going to stop a crazy person.
Usually the opposite happens with religion.
I think whether religion, alcohol, drugs, sex, or even reading comics, or other passions or pleasures, anything that becomes an obsession, that is good in moderation, can become something bad.
Guns are not the problem, but something in the culture that has changed.
...or, as I mentioned before, we stopped properly addressing the needs of the mentally ill.
I really don't think a dose of Jesus is going to stop a crazy person.
Thomas Jefferson--a deist--would disagree with you. Or at least tell you that your scope is too narrow. By the time someone turns crazy, it's probably too late to "stop" them. But sound philosophy tends to curb, as well as deter, dysfunctional behavior. And that has been one of the primary strengths of American culture up till now.
I'm not talking about you specifically. It's all over the internet now. People are just ignoring the fact that when crazy wants to kill, crazy finds a way to kill.
When crazy has easy access to high powered assault weapons...
The Bushmaster .223 is not particularly high powered. In fact, it's banned for deer hunting in many states on the grounds that it’s too weak (i.e., it won't take down a deer quickly). It's basically a small game rifle.
People need to understand the difference between full auto and semiautomatic.
The versions of this gun that the military actually uses are able to fire fully automatically, meaning that when the shooter holds down the trigger, the gun sprays a continuous stream of bullets. This high fire rate makes the military version of gun hard to control. So the weapons use smaller bullets to reduce recoil. The use of smaller bullets doesn't really impact the military use, because the whole point is to "spray" a target.
But the "assault weapopns" that are widely available for civilian use are not fully automatic. These features have been removed. As a result, you are left with is a gun that was designed as a machine gun, and still looks like a machine gun, but functions like an ordinary, and often low-powered, rifle. Basically, a "kewl" looking hunting rifle for small game.
Yes. It's still a gun. Yes, a gun can still shoot a person. But if the left is being honest when they say they don't want to ban hunting rifles, then they wouldn't ban this one.
Furthermore, since deer rifles (including all the semi-automatic ones) are typically more powerful than the Bushmaster and similar "assault weapons," you can’t ban more powerful guns without banning many deer rifles, something most of the gun grabbers swear they don’t want to do.
"gun grabbers"?
Isn't one of the issues with these assualt weapons is that you can shoot more before having to reload?
You brought up the concept that these guns were 'high powered'. I was pointing out that wasn't really the case.
This is part of the problem with gun control arguments. As with any law, the proponents need to understand what they are trying to regulate. The public does as well.
If someone says "we only want regulate 'high powered' guns". It can easily turn out they have, in fact, (knowingly or otherwise) banned hunting rifles.
Guns involve technonology. People trying to regulate a technology should try to understand it first.
So you do recognize the differences between guns right? I'm asking because you left out the whole part of being able to shoot more before having to reload.
The term 'assault weapons' is one created by the anti-gun lobby. There's no real definition to it. Politicians and anti-activists can make it mean whatever they decide it means. Any gun they pretty much hate, they slap that label to it.
The gun Crazy McCrazystein used wouldn't have been banned by the old '94 federal law and met the CT's own law that was based on the expired fed one. As a matter of fact, rifles, of any kind, account for about 3% of homicides. That's less than knives and blunt objects.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Nice to see JLA come back for the holidays to hand out his cheap heat stocking stuffers.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Utah Boy Brings Gun to School, Cites Newtown Fears
Quote:
Authorities say a Utah sixth-grader caught with a gun at school told administrators he brought the weapon to defend himself in case of an attack similar to the mass shooting last week in Newtown, Conn.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that two classmates at West Kearns Elementary School reported the gun to a teacher toward the end of the school day Monday.
Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley says the teacher "immediately apprehended the student," and police responded shortly after.
Horsley tells KSL-TV that an unloaded gun and ammunition were found in the 11-year-old's backpack. Authorities have not released the child's name.
Horsley says school police are investing reports that the boy pointed the gun at another child's head. He says such accounts haven't been confirmed.
Authorities say no one was injured.
That kid was just exercising his 2nd Amendment right. He's part of the Utah state militia or something.
Signed,
Pariah and G-man.
Yeah well, if it weren't a gun, it would have been a knife, so I don't see what the problem is.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."