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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
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And you should keep being mean. Being mean is how people learn some things are unacceptable.
No paperwork. No background check. No regulations. No restrictions.
Congratulations, you center-right bastard.
But I guess that's just the problem. There's really no far left position on gun control, but there's one hell of a far right. That leaves guys we're used to thinking of as big time lefties, in this case Goldy, advocating reasonable, centrist positions. And a habitual centrist like Nancy, in her effort to hunker down at the political mid-point between Goldy and the NRA, winds up defending grade-A nutjobs against a guy she would probably agree with if she ever bothered to look up his policy proposals.
Balls.
Because you know what? She is right. You can not claim to want rational debate when your side is practicing politics as divisive as those on the other side. Once it devolves into carthartic name calling, it no longer matters who is right, and guess what wins?
The status quo. The gun culture. Do you really expect to win votes by calling those who do not agree with you murderous lunatics and nutbags (even if they may very well be nutbags)?
most.
because:
they think widespread dispersal of guns in usa is not a cause of our levels of gun violence. what? how mental is that?
they refuse to look at experience of japan, england, australia -- places that have achived decent safety levels, without descending into tyranny.
they tell us guns make us safe, yet we have 280 million all over, and ahem, no, we're not safe. not compared to england.
they continaully say they need one for home defense, yet fail to explain how it is of use if locked up in the gun safe, while if it's ready and available on the nightstand, in case of an intruder, it's also available to be stolen by your kid, your kid's druggy friend, or the intruder.
they continually harp on whether you know the difference between this detail or that one about guns; like do I need to know about wall st. derivatives to know wall st. fucked up, and requires regulation?
they get angry if you call them nuts, claiming that the nra doesn't speak for them, yet there is no gun owner group with say one million members ploughing money into congressional races to fight for closing the gun show loophole or a new ban on assault weapons.
they continually claim they can't see why having "legal" guns, produces "illegally used" guns; they say things like "but that kid lanza STOLE the guns, so therefore no gun laws will work!" when this is crazy -- they work rather well in canada, england, japan etc.
they claim having guns deters crime then whine if you publish the addresses of those with gun permits.
then you have assholes like 5280 making fun of the issue braggin about flamethrowers, etc.
look, there are some who are not nuts. and I refer to police who got special permission to have guns in england, the hunter in canada who gladly agreed to license their hunting rifle with whatever super tight licensing rules they got there, and the few in america who are actively pressing for reform. but the average joe who owns a glock, a sig and a bushmaster at home is as fucking nutty as ms. lanza, incapable of telling when the teenager in the home or the ex who returns in a drunken rage will take the fucking arsenal and misuse it.
their core belief that guns are helpful, is just fucking nuts. canada is not descending into tyranny. nor is england. and in toronto you can walk all around in the middle of the night in a way you just can't in the south bronx. and no, there was nobody shooting at firefighters in australia in the last few days either. we put 280 million guns out there all over and the gun owners can't see this creates incredibly high risks and rates of gun death by criminals and crazies and the average joe who gets suicidal or drunk. This is NUTS.
their final argument: do you expect to get us to support reform, if you call us nuts?
YEs, I do. I believe in the long run being frank and honest and truthful and sometimes emotional and putting blame where it exists works. Slave owners were immoral. Gun owners create and foster the gun culture. smokers needed to be told stop fucking smoking, you're raising my health care premium rate! gun owners, you need to change and become ashamed of your past idiocy telling us all that all these guns would make us safe -- they're clearly not, and it's nuts to deny it. Cut it the fuck out, you nuts.
It's annoying, but there isn't much to do about it as this isn't a format that fosters much meaningful discussion on the topic. Many on the left treat guns like many on the right treat abortion. It's easy to talk about taking rights away from other people when you don't think of them as legitimate.
There were almost 8,600 gun murders in the U.S. in 2011 and more than 31,000 gun deaths total. Clearly, real change needs to happen and hardcore gun owners are going to have to compromise. Gun control advocates--who are unsurprisingly proving themselves more reasonable that many gun lovers--realize that the solution to gun violence isn't simple and isn't 100 per cent about restricting guns. But get real--increased ownership restrictions are part of the fix.
Keep it up, Goldy!
Fuck that. If the American right has taught us anything it's that even the most intemperate shit you can say never costs you a seat at the table. In fact the opposite is true -- delusional right-wingers vomiting up eliminationist hate speech have only made the more-polite-but-still-objectively-insane right wingers seem more palatable by comparison.
What we need is to shift the terms of the debate so that the totally reasonable and successful equilibria reached in other developed countries become the sensible, boring middle ground that they really are, "melt down all your guns to make flowers" becomes the liberal position, and "my right to keep a private arsenal in my rec room trumps the rights of 20 children to live" gets you laughed off to some anarchic Russian oil republic where you belong, to say nothing of "Armed guards in schools! Good guys with guns give me a throbbing erection! etc."
You're onto something there. A rebranding of the 'gun control' movement would be helpful. Something which ma and pa would find difficult to say 'no' to.
For example: 'pro life' is a good brand. Without reading further into it, why who could dare say they are 'anti life'.
'Gun rights'... sounds like standing up for the constitution, our founders, mom, baseball, and apple pie. Who would be against 'rights'? Rights=freedom=USA! USA! USA!
'Gun control'... sounds scary, regulatory, and intrusive.
Sloggers, find the new brand.
LOL! Funniest post yet! (You win).
It's not gun opponents who cloud the issues, it's responsible gun owners who are happy to let the NRA carry the heavy water for them as long as it means they can continue to avoid real talk about the subject.
Please.... (Please, please, please!)
Your job is to reinforce my point of view and you are not allowed to deviate from that any time.
As far as abusing your position of authority, you may not be cognizant of the fact that by posting strings of words that together form ideas or opinions, on the Internet or on pieces of dried out cellulose pulp, you are subjugating those who happen to stumble upon and decipher those words. You have a responsibility to those whose minds you have enslaved and who now look up to you as the ultimate 42.
Okay, Lets start by looking at gun laws, gun ownership rates and gun violence in Switzerland and Mexico.
Having concerns does not make one a “Concern Troll” and neither does emailing you privately about them. Nancy wasn’t rude, or abusive, judging from the excerpts you’ve relayed to us; she just wanted to talk to you. She reached out to you in good faith and you fisked her, using some pretty cheap rhetorical tricks (most notably implying that she doesn’t care about the victims of Sandy Hook) and held her up for derision and the amusement of Slog. And to what end exactly?
It’s that kind of asshole behavior she’s objecting to, and as Theodore @ 11 also points out, is, in point of fact, counterproductive to your stated goals.
Being a dick on Slog may be nice for your ego Goldy, but to coin a phrase, way to shoot yourself in the foot dude.
"Sorry we can't come over to dinner." etc.
Then the gun folks hang out with gun folks until they kill each other off. Remember that the 300 million privately owned guns are held by only 60 million people. They average 5 guns a head. Eventually they will use them on one another. It is just too dangerous to even be around them.
But basically, make the militia accountable for the actions of its members. This will cover the 'mental illness' issue people bring up and allow people to own their guns as the founding fathers envisioned it.
Also, a well regulated militia could be a great back up to emergency response.
Devastating!
How about if we look at ALL the comparable countries and then you try to argue there isn't a trend with the US (most guns per capita! gun crime levels comparable to third-world countries!) as an extreme outlier.
I'd support mandatory training programs. The gun owners I know already go heavy in for paramilitary style training. Many (most?) of them are already ex-military. (You would consider them paranoid, but they believe they must be prepared to defend themselves, and the country, against a tyrannical government and know that owning a gun is not enough when the government they may need to stand against has the best trained military in the world).
Looking at Switzerland (where almost everyone has both a gun and military training but gun violence is almost non-existent), it makes me wonder if gun safety shouldn’t be a mandatory course in high school (most high schools used to have shooting ranges back when nearly all young men went through ROTC), regardless of the students intent to own a gun. While it may have little or no impact on mass shooting incidents, it would certainly drive down accidental shooting numbers (which would be a significant plus).
The formation of citizen militias with well-defined gun safety courses would be an excellent idea. I would totally support membership in an upstanding citizen militia as a requirement for gun ownership.
what a job! what a country. what an internet.
Guns are a touchy subject for me. I don't own one, doubt I ever will. I have friends who and I've shot a few with them. I have no problem with responsible gun owners. But as I said, it's a sore subject for me. By the time I graduated from high school. I lost 3 friends to guns. When I went to college and started meeting people from elsewhere, I realized that most people didn't have to go to funerals for their best friend because they got killed by a gun. It seems to be a lot of gun owners live in their bubble (we all do), it's helpful to remind people of that bubble.
I don't think Fnarf's comments help. But I think Goldy and a lot of others have offered suggestions that wouldn't ban guns just acknowledge how powerful and dangerous they are.
Just as you in a different thread want women to feel safe from rape, I hope other high schoolers don't have to bury their friends. High school sucks enough.
Problem solved. What's next? I hear cancer is still an issue. Slog?
sounds like we may agree on on more than I thought. Sorry for assuming otherwise.
Factual.
@49 The facts and the truth are not necessarily the same thing. One can lie with facts. I think the obligation goes a bit further, which is to provide the facts within a truthful context, even if that context is simply being honest about my own biased perspective on the facts.
>>...treating gun ownership along
the lines of how we treat being a private pilot, with that level of regulation, might be useful
<<
I had the same thought the other day. A system which includes a lot of apprenticeship time and peer evaluation. A system where you have to earn the privilege to move onto more dangerous equipment. A system where you can't be succesful until you demonstrate full-priority concern for the safety and well-being of others.
"Nancy wasn’t rude, or abusive, judging from the excerpts you’ve relayed to us; she just wanted to talk to you. She reached out to you in good faith and you fisked her, using some pretty cheap rhetorical tricks (most notably implying that she doesn’t care about the victims of Sandy Hook) and held her up for derision and the amusement of Slog."
Unfortunately, that is about par for the course here.
Look at all the articles posted by The Stranger that refer to people who disagree with them as "nuts" or imply that they are not "sensible".
Then compare that to the number of articles that promote SPECIFIC changes to our existing gun laws.
You'll find that the "nuts" articles are posted dozens of times more than articles with specific suggestions.
In fact, Goldy had to be goaded into writing that one article where he proposed vague changes.
I’m back - I’m a glutton for punishment :)
I’m also a gun nut based on the spectrum as defined here – I safely own, enjoy, and practice with my guns regularly, and have since I started with my dad and uncles 30+ years ago.
I’ve been accused of being an NRA sock puppet and/or stooge on here – I’m not sure how to disprove this, and I’m not sure it matters to anyone, so I’ll just say that I really am a boring suburban douchebag with a family and a professional job (and all my teeth) who does all of the above, and there are millions of people like me, whether you know them or not.
I would gladly represent the topic of responsible gun ownership in a public forum or honest discussion, if it were on offer.
To cut to the chase, would it be possible for people here to agree that a) we’re all looking to minimize gun and other violence, b) full gun confiscation isn’t going to happen politically or practically in the United States and c) doing nothing is stupid and counterproductive (and is where we’re headed if there’s no common ground)?
If no, then never mind, and it probably goes the way of prior political battles.
If yes, here’s what I (and I think a lot of other boring douchebag gun owners) could probably get to:
True enforcement of existing gun laws, harsher penalties for breaking them
Harsher sentencing and followthrough on violent people, period
Creation of a background check program for secondary market gun sales
Mandatory safe storage requirements
Begin drug policy reform to start draining money and violence from the criminal economy
Would that be a starting point for you guys?
You just did here, I applaud you.
But @54 why can't you offer a specific idea? Why avoid adding your input?
"a) we’re all looking to minimize gun and other violence, "
"b) full gun confiscation isn’t going to happen politically or practically in the United States and "
"c) doing nothing is stupid and counterproductive (and is where we’re headed if there’s no common ground)?"
"If no, then never mind, and it probably goes the way of prior political battles."
The problem is that if you allow for "b" then there will always be some number of shootings.
And because of that, there will always be people who will use it for either "political battles" or grief porn.
The question is "how many gun-related deaths are 'okay' in your personal opinion in regards to which gun-laws".
And that answer will vary for each person.
OK - I'll see your reasonable start and raise you mandatory licensing: You need to prove you have the skill and ability and training to get a license and then use that license to purchase a gun.
I would add registration, but the licensing step is much more safety related and should quell the concerns of those who think the government will target and confiscate weapons if they know where the weapons are located.
'Grief porn'? Really, dude, that's a pretty callous point of view. If you want a specific number of acceptable gun deaths in the US, to me it'd be along the average of other first world countries and not an outlier.
It's astroturfing, pure and simple. Notice that no one concern trolls conservatives to be nicer and more "reasonable". Liberals are the only ones who are told to play nice, no matter how vicious and vindictive conservatives are.
But, indeed, I see you are willing to have some increased regulation. Unfortunately, "gun rights" advocates in legislature are not proposing any of those things - gun sanity advocates are proposing them and being shot down. On the other hand, we already have harsher sentences for crimes committed with guns, but it remains the only area of violent crime that stands out from the overall reduction in violent crime over the last 15 or more years.
So, I'm not seeing any reason politically or practically not to keep challenging the ideas of gun expansion advocates like you as essentially nuts. Absent advocacy approaching Goldy's rather restrained level of emotion, nothing will change. If the NRA and their gun nut flying monkeys aren't afraid that there will be even stronger restrictions, they will never agree to any of your proposals except the ones that increase the strength and depth of the police state - stronger punishments. But stronger punishments wouldn't have stopped the Sandy Hook shooter's survivalist gun nut mother from having all those weapons available to the shooter - only someone challenging the sanity of her having them in the context of that family. We have a whole society treating talking about weapons as if we were talking about religion, but religion can't accidentally kill a little kid visiting a home or be sold privately and used to shoot up a bunch of random people. Guns are a health hazard we are asked to treat as an abstract philosophical question.
Enough.
We regulate mercury and explosives and medication and consumer goods and fruit and vegetables and construction and so many, many other things that are potential "health hazards" and yet we pause at regulating guns? Disconnect, me thinks.
"if course there will be some number of shootings."
And there will be people who will call for MORE laws based upon their claim that at least one of those shootings should not have happened.
"... reduce the harm caused by such a problem."
And even if there is only one shooting per year, there will be calls for more laws to "reduce the harm caused by such a problem."
But all you're really doing is claiming that X laws are not (in your opinion) sufficient and we should have X+1 laws.
X+1 becomes the new normal and the next shooting results in calls for X+2 laws (or you are being a gun nut who is unreasonably opposing reasonable gun laws).
Repeat.
I think the choice whether or not to own a gun is a personal one and it’s none of my business if other normal *responsible* people choose to do so, just like if they choose to get married, drink booze, use drugs, have kids, enjoy (legal) porn, hike Everest, etc.. With all of these things there are laws, rules, norms and consequences.
I was honestly trying to put something forward that stood a chance of beginning to address the cancer that is *violent people with guns*. If you define the tumor as the entire 50-60-whatever million people who enjoy shooting and enjoy hanging out with other like minded people, all I’m suggesting based on past experience is that nothing substantive will happen.
I could absolutely be wrong, it’s one guys opinion, but I think there are more like me.
Of course the reality is that gun laws have move steadily in the x-1 direction for 30 years but it is never enough for you gun advocates, which is why we call you nuts - you have no sense of limits under your current ideology.
If the game we're playing is "let's choose the acceptable # of gun deaths to trade off against the acceptable amount of regulation," then judging by the rest of the world we're nowhere near the sweet spot.
What percentage of America do you think agrees with the statement "I value Nancy Lanza's right to her crazy, suicidal arsenal more than I value the lives of 20 children?" I'm all for having that vote.
Let's call it "gun security." Right-wingers love "security," right? We can get those fabled "security moms" in on this.
I’m going to try to explain how this proposal sounds to a gun nut (i.e., the majority of responsible, legal gun owners who you all hopefully would choose to work with), and why I think it’ll poison a *first* step:
If you buy my premise that violent people with guns are the tumor to be excised (at least as step 1 – not saying that there aren’t steps 2 through x or that you all can’t advocate for eliminating guns over 20-50 years, it’s a free country and it’s your right), what you need to do is target the tumor and minimize having the radiation hitting the much larger body of people like me, because it’s the latter that provokes the barriers going up and indignation to start – whether you like or agree with that, that’s the way it feels.
Proposals like licensing, as well as registration, arbitrary rules on purely cosmetic features of particular firearms, etc., hit the majority of people like me who are fully within the law and take our sport and interests very seriously, while 100% missing the tumor. You’re presuming that we don’t already get trained, practice safety, and act responsibly, which I can tell you just isn’t the case – visit a range and see how many seconds it takes to get corrected if you do something unsafe. But by definition, criminals who don’t follow laws are not going to participate in any of the above.
So we’re left in a spot where there’s a blast of law X, which in practice changes absolutely nothing around actual violence, treats several tens of millions of people like criminals, and then when it accomplishes nothing, starts another cycle.
What if we tried step one that I proposed and then look at violent crime statistics over time to see if we can move the needle aggressively downward, starting now?
"you keep arguing slippery slope, ..."
And another person who uses a term that they do not understand to describe something that does not match that term.
This bodes well for the rest of your post (sarcasm alert).
"so let's repeat: EVERY OTHER first world country has stricter gun laws than the US. EVERY ONE has fewer guns per capita."
And aside from examples such as Switzerland which show that gun-ownership does not equate to gun-violence, all you are doing is saying that those countries do not have an equivalent of our 2nd Amendment.
Therefore, you are either
a. in favor of repealing the 2nd Amendment and then implementing an Amendment for nation-wide gun control
or
b. okay with X deaths/shootings with a certain level of gun-laws. Which is is purely personal opinion.
So either come out an say that you want to repeal the 2nd Amendment or stop claiming that your personal OPINION is anything other your personal opinion and worth as little as anyone else's personal opinion.
Without a 100% ban there will be a next shooting.
And there will ALWAYS be someone who will argue for X+1 laws after it.
It's grief porn.
"crazy"
"suicidal"
"arsenal"
And further examples of my point.
This isn't about discussing the subject.
This is about your belief that your opinion is more than just your opinion and attempting to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you.
Actually, I don't give a shit about you and your pals who enjoy hanging out firing eachother's guns and talking about tactical body armor. You are right. This group probably can't be changed, so they will have to be worked around. There are many many regulations that can be put in place already considered constitutional that could be a in a comprehensive honest gun safety package (not "gun safety" as in "has a lot of practice" like the Sandy Hook shooter.) Please don't threaten us with what your reaction might be. You will only realize OUR paranoid fears.
There either is or isn't a majority to support comprehensive gun safety regulation. It is possible that there are too many otherwise reasonable people who you can convince that they are under threat from dangerous people of color if YOU don't have your guns. But maybe we can get them to have second thoughts on that belief if information from other sources is not blocked by the NRA and their supporters.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/christia…
Of course it's an opinion, you simpleton! We're arguing about public policy here. There's no such thing as an objectively correct policy. But it doesn't follow that all opinions are equally valid -- some opinions are supported by mounds of evidence from all the countries that have had success with stricter gun regulation. Other opinions -- like "any additional gun regulation will always lead to calls for even more gun regulation until something terrible happens!" -- are not supported by any evidence at all, just your paranoid fantasies.
If the majority of Americans agree with the opinion that "more gun regulation in exchange for less gun violence would be a good trade-off," then we can ban your silly gun the same way we can ban knives on airplanes despite your God-given constitushnal' right to bear arms.
Also, let me respond in advance for you: "But SWITZERLAND!!!" Next you will prove that sugar can't possibly contribute to diabetes because Usain Bolt likes Cocoa Puffs.
"otherwise reasonable people"
"dangerous people of color"
"twisted ideological smoke screen"
"fear of random violence"
"your paranoid belief"
"firing eachother's guns"
"talking about tactical body armor"
This isn't about discussing the subject.
This is about your belief that your opinion is more than just your opinion and attempting to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you.
Funny...
Replace "gun" with "abortion" and "gun nut" with "pro choicer" and "2nd Amendment" with "Roe v. Wade" and you could have pulled that statement from a pro life rally's stump speech.
Mad Libs are fun!
"simpleton!"
"paranoid fantasies"
"silly gun"
"God-given constitushnal' right"
Again, this isn't about discussing the subject.
This is about your belief that your opinion is more than just your opinion and attempting to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you.
And so it continues. The same as it always does.
I've been around a lot of gun owners just as I've described here. The one's I've spent more time with are people I have otherwise had great respect for and liked, but the gun fetish trumps everything else for them. By pointing it out here, I hope to invite others to see this fetishism for what it is in their family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances when they exhibit its symptoms. It ain't about hunting. Most of the time we keep quiet because we don't want to rock the boat, but we don't have to leave them to be the only people making rules the way they have the past 30 years in our society to the extreme degree they have and that they hope for more of.
I think you should read #80 and replace "gun" with "car" and appropriate other substitutions.
"I don't think you're giving people enough credit to be pragmatic to avoid a situation like that."
I do not think it is about being "pragmatic" as much as realizing that applying the same logic may result in THEM not having a car.
Which is different from the situation with guns in that the argument is about OTHER people (even if they are law-abiding) being regulated. Because of the fallacy that fewer guns held by fewer law-abiding people means less gun-related violence.
Which brings it back to either:
a. in favor of repealing the 2nd Amendment and then implementing an Amendment for nation-wide gun control
or
b. okay with X deaths/shootings with a certain level of gun-laws. Which is a purely personal opinion.
See #82.
As long as you keep making assertions that aren't based on evidence, I'm going to keep calling you paranoid/irrational/dim-witted. For instance, repeatedly citing Switzerland as a model for the US: you're either intentionally trying to trick people with a comparison you know is bogus, or you're dimwitted enough to believe it's apt. Which one is it?
The US has the most permissive gun laws of any G20 country, and only Brazil and Mexico beat us on gun violence. It's not opinion but common sense that a move away from permissiveness would shift the US closer to the better outcomes enjoyed by those other 17 countries, and that nothing disastrous would happen as a result because it hasn't in any of the 19 countries that have tried it. The part that's my OPINION is that given the above, stricter regulation would be a good idea rather than a bad idea. I come to that opinion because I value the lives of children more highly than I value the gun-boners of paranoid weirdoes like you.
You are entitled to draw your own conclusion, but when you start saying that we can't possibly add one more gun law because creeping fascism and Switzerland, then you're just being a nutter.
(B) ok with X deaths given a certain level of gun laws Y.
The US currently has a very, very high X and a very, very low Y. I believe there is majority support for lowering X by raising Y. That's my personal opinion. I find people who believe the opposite, given our current extremely high X and extremely low Y, pretty revolting. That is also a personal opinion.
Are we all in agreement about the meaning of "opinion" yet?
I don't understand why you think the 2nd would have to be removed to do any form of gun control.
"For instance, repeatedly citing Switzerland as a model for the US ..."
And now you're beating a straw man.
The point about Switzerland is to show that gun-ownership does not equate to gun-violence.
"paranoid"
"irrational"
"dim-witted"
Again, this isn't about discussing the subject.
This is about your belief that your opinion is more than just your opinion and attempting to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you.
Even when you have to resort to beating straw men.
And so it continues. The same as it always does.
Violence for people like me has fallen dramatically and continues to do so, we're not getting shot and killed, or raped or robbed or assaulted at nearly the rate our parents did. We're living in increasingly safer bubbles. We're also not interested in stupid shit like tactical body armor, FYI.
Pick your statistical source, but it's fair to say that the majority of actual homicide victims in this country are dominated by young people, often minorities, who are in shitty situations where crime is much more common. In looking at the evidence, I believe that the war on drugs and what it has done to communities all over the country is a dominant factor (adding in poor education and opportunities, and a host of other factors).
You could assemble your majority, be wildly successful and melt down 99% of the guns in the country, essentially adopt the Norwegian gun control model wholesale, and I don't think it would change the above. There would still be a pool of 2.5 million weapons available, and the means and reasons for desperate people in fucked situations to get their hands on them and shoot each other in order to traffic cocaine, weed, and other stuff to people like my neighbors, or yours, who live in the bubbles.
There is, however, a subset of people in this group, and within society at large, who have a propensity to violence. If you're poor and desperate, and steal things or transport a duffel bag of cocaine in order to live, I honestly feel like you're redeemable and worth a second or third or whatever shot. If you're one of the violent ones, though, from whatever part of society, I honestly feel like you should be separated from the rest of us. It's a small group but it is ruinous. That is the only area where I personally am a law-and-order person, I think our imprisonment rates otherwise are disgusting and a huge waste of money and people.
And to circle back to Sandy Hook, the root of this discussion, please rewind a bit to the Norway model above. At a glance the Norwegian gun control model sounds like a nearly perfect representation of what Goldy proposed at the beginning of all this. But a piece of shit named Anders Breivik, operating within that framework, killed 77 people in 2011 using a combination of legally-purchased and permitted guns and a homemade fertilizer bomb. My point is, none of the above will address a madman who is determined to be the most famous person in the world, all you can do to stop that guy is to meet violence with violence - it's why cops carry guns (semiautomatic ones, including AR-15s), as a last resort
And to touch a nerve, I truly wish there had been some trained, responsible people on that island who had access to properly stored AR-15s who could have saved some of those kids. No doubt it wouldn't have been all of them, but I shoot with grandmothers and 19 year olds who would have put holes in his head or gone down trying.
That's not a straw man, it's you being either stupid or mendacious. I'm still waiting to here which.
I concur 100%!
They are issued government owned ammunition, which must be kept sealed. They are prohibited from transporting these government owned guns in a loaded state.
Subtract these military owned and regulated weapons from the numbers, and Switzerland has a much lower gun ownership rate, and very tight gun regulations.
But this is a very big topic, and one area of tragic consequence is the death of family and friends through accidental discharge or impulsive act or simply a negligent act by an uninformed gun owner. Sure, you have the necessary training, and I have a scouting merit badge from my NRA membership days as a teenager and am well versed in gun safety, but many many frightened people just pick up a handgun, look over a few books, and drop it in a drawer, only to be retrieved by a curious child or cuckold husband and someone is dead.
Your shooting clubs and organizations should be able to issue original gun licenses en mass, effectively grandfathering in you and your responsible friends, but the depressed citizen looking for a quick suicide route or the frightened lady who was just assaulted and thinks a gun will magically save her the next time will have to slow down just a touch and get some actual training before handing them such a powerful tool.
Like me, I suspect you don't feel nearly as touched when an angry and violent young black man kills a young Hispanic man during a turf war with an oft-traded stolen gun as you do when a five year old stumbles upon mommy's pistol in her nightstand and kills his sister. Why not accept just a little bit of additional regulation - "hey, prove to me you have the skill and training to own this gun before I sell it to you" - in an effort to reduce this kind of gun violence?
Actually, you dolt, Switzerland’s GDP per capita is less than the US’s by most measurements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou…
@97: I don't know what to say. If you feel threatened by me you have a warped view of the world. I grew up around guns, used them with my dad to have enough to eat (along with five lb blocks of government cheese) for a lot of shit years in northern New England, and have met and made a lot of friends in the gun nut community. You obviously don't know those people, and by demonizing the lot of us you're going to get absolutely nowhere on this topic. It's not a threat, it's reality.
"I understood the first time around what you were trying to say by citing Switzerland."
No. I'm pretty sure that you did not understand it.
"It remains a bogus comparison ..."
And that shows that you did not understand it because it was not a comparison.
It was a counter-example showing that gun-ownership does not equate to gun-violence.
"dolt"
"stupid"
"mendacious"
Again, this isn't about discussing the subject.
This is about your belief that your opinion is more than just your opinion and attempting to denigrate anyone who disagrees with you.
And so it continues. The same as it always does.