Mr. Trump, a rally? Why Waco?
In regards to a political rally held by Donald Trump at the Waco, TX airport on Saturday, March 25th.
For those who do not remember:
"Between February 28 and April 19, 1993, federal agents, the U.S. military and Texas law enforcement laid siege to the compound of the Branch Davidians, a Christian sect led by cult figure Koresh, located 13 miles from Waco."
"The tragedy was a landmark in the rise of the so-called "militia" movement – a loose collective of far-right armed groups that grew significantly in popularity throughout the mid-1990s and early 2000s."
"And the Waco "massacre" as it is often called, has endured as a deep source of hatred and distrust of the federal government among far-right extremists. Indeed, Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people, had driven to the Waco siege two years earlier where he distributed pro-gun and anti-government literature. A few years later, an upstart Austin talk show host in his 20s led a group of volunteers to rebuild the chapel on the site. His name was Alex Jones."
The Trump team explanation goes like this:
"It is pointed out that Texas is an important state for the Republican primaries, and noted that of the major cities in Texas, almost all lean Democratic – except Waco and Forth Worth. The choice of the central Texas city of 140,000 residents could be simply a safe bet for the Trump campaign to ensure a large, enthusiastic pro-Trump crowd, he said."
It is centrally located between major Texas metropolises of Houston, Dallas-Ft Worth, San Antonio and Houston, helping to ramp up crowd numbers.
"Waco is hugely symbolic on the far right," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred – Christian nationalist skepticism of the government – and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things."
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The former President wishes to launch his new campaign from a dark shadow. His choice of this Waco considering its history and the message that he is likely to give regarding "deep State", his current legal wrangle in New York, etc, on this anniversary has to be more than just coincidence.
Is this the sort of persona that YOU would have as your fearless leader?Good question --- Why WACO? I my view he may have wanted to do a pulse check on his base in that area of Texas. “If there was a big empty space on Saturday, that certainly would give him some concerns.
I think his strategy will be to start reuniting his very loyal base and go full steam ahead. He may be firing up that fire where it will burn the hottest and longest.I hear you, Sharlee.
The question is does Trump choose to be the leader of the American people or that of a loathsome cult?
Are his supporters among those that sympathize with actions of David Koresh and Timothy McVey?
Waco and the events associated with that city are not positive. Considering how big Texas is, could he have not found another place to kick off his rally?
We can see who he is trying to attract, will that play well with the mainstream?My gut tells me he is reaching out to any and all to vote for him in the Primary In my view, he certainly is aware he has far-right followers that are in no way on the same wavelength as RINO or up-the-middle conservative Republicans. he is taking no names, it's all about numbers. He has always stated he has all American's backs. I don't think he will change that sentiment.
I honestly don't know how it will play with the mainstream. Too many variables right now. Many in the mainstream are all worked up about inflation, and a variety of other issues. So, will they look the other way, and say hey we need all the votes we can muster or will some get on the high horse and say 'never Trump" due to his choice of where he kicked off his first rally?
I can answer for myself --- I am voting republican no matter who runs. I want the pendulum to swing back, and see if we can't break the cycle
of one problem after another.
I think the country is in trouble, and beginning to really falter. Will change help --- probably not. However, maybe...
IMO, it was to tell his followers once again - I got all American's backs.
He has offered a voice to so many that did not have a voice before. I don't think he will back away from his theory that there are "good people" in all types of groups. I really think he looks at people as individuals, and most likely has all of his life."I can answer for myself --- I am voting republican no matter who runs. I want the pendulum to swing back, and see if we can't break the cycle
of one problem after another."
There’s no serious agenda on the Republican side. They are on the march with sweeping laws targeting abortion (now the abortion bill being threatened), LGBTQ people and the teaching of race in schools. They want parents to sue teachers and dictate the speech of corporations. You want more culture wars? Most of us out her ARE concerned with inflation, the economy, immigration and children continually being killed at schools. I'm SICK with Republicans continually opposing gun safety efforts. I've heard enough already about the dangers of drag shows and books. Today's Republican Party has lost its way and yes the government does not function optimally. You need 2 legitimate parties who come to the table in good faith for that to happen . Today's Republicans do little more than pander. They aren't partners in government. They are nothing more than a party based on grievance.Thanks for your comment. I am a staunch Republican and a very conservative individual. So, I am pretty much on board with the Republican agenda. I feel the country is on a fast track to destruction, due to a lack of values, and morals. So much of what you mentioned distressed you in regard to my party, I am fully on board with it.
To share what distresses me -- I am appalled at the current president, as well as his administration. I am an American, and not looking to be a socialist, with the government dictating to me.
I see one party as being forthright, honest, and fighting to safeguard the Constitution and the way of life I cherish. I see the other party as destructionists.
You mentioned the school shooting, I myself would not have gone there in light of how Biden was so inappropriate in regard to the shooting.
Hopefully, you watched Biden come out yesterday, a very somber day in our nation after three 9-year-olds were shot by a proclaimed transgender person. --- and say with a confused look on his face --
"My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband. I eat Jeni’s ice cream — chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream. By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs. You think I’m kidding? I’m not,"
So, what is the Democratic party offering? Better yet what have they done to the country?
A confused shell of a man... with an agenda that is well on its way to ruining America. The Democrats have nothing to offer, in my view, nothing but destruction. As evident by the mess the country is presently in.Well stated Shar. Biden makes me physically ill and the pass he consistently receives simply because he is a Democrat and is not Trump, is infuriating!! This latest school massacre wherein 3 nine year old children were killed has hit me hard. I have a 9 year old granddaughter!
Biden rambles on about Dr. Biden and ice cream and how he is there for the ice cream and then almost, incidentally, the latest massacre gets mentioned......it is just sickening to me.
As far as this topic Cred, why not Waco?
Why not something positive for the area to be remembered for, such as a Presidential rally?
Why the heck not?
I also completely understand the attention being given to U.S. citizens who have had their civil rights violated. Let's not forget them, they didn't all do damage or harm. Only a few did that.AB I also have a beautiful 9-year-old baby grandson. He will always be my baby. I will share I was at his birth, and there is no feeling like holding your own baby's baby. This shooting hit me hard too.
Biden's demeanor was, in my view, sickening, he put a knot in my stomach. Coming out to the podium with more or less a comedy skit.
I think you know I feel he is a very confused man and a pure disgrace to America. This man needs to be impeached due to his poor state of mind.What does Biden's demeanor or comment have anything to do with Congress not getting together to address this issue?? The Republican Party proudly wear little AR-15 pins on their lapels. Poses with their guns for Christmas cards. The same guns that killed these children.
'Biden on Tuesday told CNN's MJ Lee, "I can't do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably."
"I have done the full extent of my executive authority -- to do on my own, anything about guns ...The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it's a crazy idea. They're against that. And so I think the Congress could be passing an assault weapon ban," he added.
Here's the statement that cuts to the chase ....
Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett (R) said there’s no way to “fix” gun violence, after the Nashville shooting.
“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” Burchett told reporters. “And we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals.” Burchett also said he doesn’t see “any real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence, other than to “mess things up.”
“I don’t think you’re gonna stop the gun violence,”
Really? This man does not belong in government at any level.
Biden said we owe these families more than thoughts and prayers. We owe them ACTION. Couldn't agree more. Who's going to act?.Just sharing my personal feelings with AB. I don't care how Biden mopped up his ridiculous address. We saw the real Biden yesterday, that's the guy I came to know well due to his antics for the past 50 years. Good old Uncle Joe.
Ok so he should have opened the Women's Small Business Summit with the Nashville school shooting? and he's absolutely incompetent because he didn't? It doesn't and never will excuse Republican opposition to gun safety laws.
The Republican rep from Tennessee was asked how he deals with the fear of his kids being harmed at school....he responded that he home schools. WOWYes, it was breaking news a couple of hours old, the police had already given a press conference. Yes, I expected the president to address the shooting, actually, he should have given a separate statement before attending his political commitment.
Yes, I feel he was inappropriate, and yes this latest issue can be added to his long list that, in my view, makes him incompetent to be president.
I would think homeschooling would be one good option. It would seem we have little to no way to stop the mentally ill from committing crimes at this point. Perhaps this is an issue that needs addressing before taking American citizens the right to own a gun.
Do you know how many Americans own guns, and are responsible gun owners?He did address it. Maybe not in the way you individually thought he should but he did. Seems like nitpicking. No one said that ALL guns should be taken from owners. That's your assumption. But this woman had documented emotional problems she was under care for and was allowed to buy SEVEN firearms. The Tennessee rep. thinks we can do nothing. Really?!?!
But I disagree. Come on already. That state has absolutely NO safety laws.
You're focusing on Biden's statement at a small business conference when Republicans do nothing to work on a solution because they are taking NRA lobby money.
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing"
. Redirect to: Edmund Burke"When good men do nothing"
I don't t know how "good" these men are though...
And Americans should abandon schools for homeschool because politicians refuse to make schools and other public areas safe for citizens??? nah
If more guns were the answer then Tennessee would be the safest place on earth .
Politicians were elected to act not blow off useless rhetoric. Since Sandy Hook, Connecticut has enacted gun safety legislation and HAS reduced such violence by nearly 50%
Biden also said this today, and once again he offered statements that were not factual in any respect.
"Based on the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms are not the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 to 17 – motor vehicles are. (Elijah Nouvelage / Bloomberg via Getty Images / File)"
"Biden makes multiple false Second Amendment claims in wake of Nashville Covenant School tragedy - President claims machine guns are illegal, leading cause of death for children is firearms
"President Joe Biden responded to Monday's fatal school shootings in Nashville, Tennessee, during a stop in North Carolina on Tuesday, spreading misinformation about the Second Amendment in the wake of tragedy.
The president made a scheduled stop in Durham, North Carolina, to speak about his economic agenda and the advancement of semiconductors. But before he got to the meat of his speech Tuesday, the president addressed the tragedy that occurred at a private Christian school in Nashville, the Covenant School, on Monday.
Six victims were shot and killed when 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a transgender woman and former student of the school, entered the building with two "assault-type rifles" and a handgun before opening fire.
After killing three 9-year-old students and three adults, Metropolitan Nashville Police officers killed Hale at the scene.
Biden told the crowd in Durham on Tuesday that Monday’s incident was the families’ "worst nightmare."
Biden said he lost a child to an accident and another to cancer, noting that there was nothing like losing a child, especially when taken in a senseless and heartbreaking act.
"They should be with us … as a nation, we owe these families more than our prayers. We owe them action," the president said. "You know, we have to do more to stop this gun violence that is ripping communities apart, ripping apart the soul of this nation. Protect our children so they learn how to read and write instead of duck and covering in a classroom."
The president, who describes himself as a "Second Amendment guy," said the weapons used on Monday were "weapons of war" and that the right to bear arms is not absolute.
"You’re not allowed to go out and own an automatic weapon. You’re not allowed to own a machine gun. You’re not allowed to own a flamethrower," Biden said. "You’re not allowed to own so many other things. Why in God’s name do we allow these weapons of war on our streets and in our public schools?"
In the U.S., it is not illegal to own a flamethrower nor is it illegal to own a machine gun.
To own a machine gun, or fully automatic weapon, a person must not be considered a "prohibited person," must be at least 21 years old, a legal resident of the U.S., eligible to purchase a firearm, pass an 8-10-month background check and pay a one-time $200 transfer tax to obtain a stamp.
Biden has previously said that the Second Amendment also banned the ownership of cannons when it was passed in 1791, but that, too, has been debunked.
He continued making claims about firearms, especially when it comes to the death of children.
"This is hard to believe," he said. "I never thought when I started my public life that guns would be the No. 1 killer of children in America. Guns. No. 1. It’s sick and overwhelming; a majority of gun owners agree we have to do something."
Based on the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms are not the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 17 – motor vehicles are.
Firearm deaths listed under the CDC’s data category "Unintentional Injury," shows that out of 4,552 deaths of children between the ages of 1 and 17, motor vehicles accounted for 2,159 of those deaths. Drownings accounted for 753, poisoning accounted for 502, suffocation accounted for 212, fires accounted for 204, transport accounted for 152 and firearms accounted for 120.
Under the "Homicide" category, firearms accounted for 1,366 deaths, and when added up with firearm deaths considered unintentional, the total number of deaths by firearm for children between 1 and 17 years of age is 1,518 – 641 less than motor vehicle deaths of the same age bracket."
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-makes-mult … 55784.html
He has repeatedly made some of the same claims even though being fact-checked numerous times he continues to make them
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden- … act-checks
Biden should not be speaking to the American public period. Many people listen to his words and take them to be true. He is much of the time not accurate in any respect on any given subject.
He adds to the problem of misinformation spreading.
A does left media.
I have heard the blurb about guns being the number one killer of children over and over in the past two days. I feel this is a big problem, it amounts to propaganda and is poisoning the minds of some American citizens.The CDC publishes data on the leading causes of death among different demographic groups, providing the most reliable data. In 2020, the leading cause of death among children ages one through 18 involved a firearm.
In their report about gun violence, "A Year in Review: 2020 Gun Deaths in the U.S.," researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions analyzed CDC data from 2020 and found that gun violence was the leading cause of death among children, teens, and young adults under age 25. Firearms were also the leading cause of death for children and teens ages 1 to 19.
Researchers at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Leigh Wedenoja and Jaclyn Schildkraut, used CDC data, and found that if "children" are defined as people 19 and under, as they said the CDC tends to do, then firearm deaths exceed traffic deaths.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/po … 529783001/
https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/od/ … e-July2022
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
I'm not seeing the misinformation?
And machine guns? As a private citizen (without an FFL) you can only buy an OLD machine gun (over 35 years old), it’ll likely cost north of $15,000, and you’ll have to wait around a year for the transfer via the ATF. And only if your state law does not ban that the firearm.
Gee I wonder if some of thrse shootings may have been averted if the AR-15 was as HEAVILY regulated as the machine gun...now that's what people should be considering rather than nitpicking a speech. Maybe the fox network is going a little of the "look here, not there" seems like some would rather fight about meaningless details than ACTUALLY SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Coincidentally, the House leader McCarthy has made NO statement whatever on the shooting. He ignored the question from reporters.Interesting. I was just reading where drugs are killing more young people than traffic accidents or firearms. Fentanyl, in particular, is the culprit, it is flooding across our {wide open due to politics alone} southern border and it is poison for young people!
Guess, per usual, it depends on what you are reading.I read the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the CDC and research from the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University.
And you're reading?
Regardless of which takes the number one spot I think our Congress should be working on solutions rather than throughing up their hands and saying there is nothing we can do.
I think the article I posted is very factual, and the context is very clear. I will stick with the stats from the CDC, and the breakdown they used.
" Gee I wonder if some of thrse shootings may have been averted if the AR-15 was as HEAVILY regulated as the machine gun...now that's what people should be considering rather than nitpicking a speech. "
Do you feel handguns don't kill human beings? If you don't, you don't know much about guns.
In regard to nitpicking, this president continuously makes confusing ridiculous statements. He is inappropriate much of the time. His words matter, many are under the impression he is being truthful, and take his blabbering as truth. In my view, Yes, certainly many can see the state he is in, but those that don't spread his crazy words. I am very much for impeaching Biden due to his poor cognitive state, and inability to do the job of being president of the US.
I think Congress needs to address this man's failing mental status.Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children, according to recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Please offer a link to CDC that can verify that statement.
Your link is very much complicated, breaking down the morality rate by many variables. I will stick with the research and stats Fox supplied in the article. The CDC has in no respect backed that gun violence is the number one killer of children.
It appears they are being very diligent by breaking gun deaths down into many groups.
There are many issues to consider on this subject.
"The figures between adults and children and firearms are almost an inverted image of each other. For adults, 65% of gun related deaths are attributed to suicide, while 30% are homicides and about 2% come from accidental discharges, Carter said. For children, 65% of firearm deaths are homicides and 35% are categorized as suicide, he said.
And though mass shootings, which have drastically increased over the past 30 years, are clearly part of the problem, the vast majority of kids are killed by guns in smaller, day-to-day incidents.
"Most commonly what makes the news is these horrific mass shootings, but they are a small aspect of the overall problem," Carter said. "The smallest portion are the mass shootings. ... it's these daily deaths that are occurring making up the totality of what we are seeing." https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/10943649 … n-childrenThe numbers are the numbers
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datar … D8D39A442CPlease look at the variables, and the way children's deaths are categorized by the CDC. It is complicated, but the article I have provided gives facts on the stats.
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-makes-mult … 55784.html
"Based on the latest available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms are not the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 17 – motor vehicles are.
So, we can agree to disagree, I am sticking with the guy that put in the time to do the research. I always try to keep facts before the media hype.
Firearm deaths listed under the CDC’s data category "Unintentional Injury," shows that out of 4,552 deaths of children between the ages of 1 and 17, motor vehicles accounted for 2,159 of those deaths. Drownings accounted for 753, poisoning accounted for 502, suffocation accounted for 212, fires accounted for 204, transport accounted for 152 and firearms accounted for 120.
Under the "Homicide" category, firearms accounted for 1,366 deaths, and when added up with firearm deaths considered unintentional, the total number of deaths by firearm for children between 1 and 17 years of age is 1,518 – 641 less than motor vehicle deaths of the same age bracket"
As I said it took some time to check out these stats, but the stats the journalist used are actually all visible in the very link you provided.
In my view, the media has been basically dishonest by not pointing out what this journalist did in his article. He took the time to go through all the variables, and stats, and prove the point. he did not join in and spread misinformation.https://everytownresearch.org/graph/fir … and-teens/
They reported CDC stats and provided the link to the CDC page. Firearm deaths at 4,733 and motor vehicles at 4, 048.these are the numbers on the CDC site for 2021
Also in May 2022, an analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), stated that Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) mortality data in 2020, showed firearm-related injuries had become the leading cause of death among 1 to 19-year-olds.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news … 9c2f7486d3
"Do you feel handguns don't kill human beings? If you don't, you don't know much about guns."
Maybe there can be some common sense regulation? Red flag laws at the very least? The mother of the Nashville shooter stated that she didn't want guns in her daughters possession due to the mental health condition she was being treated for. The mother had no recourse though due to Tennessee having no such law. Maybe this shooting could have been prevented. Doesn't matter the type of firearm used. When do the rights of gun owners start to infringe on the 9th amendment rights of the rest of us? The rights of other can't supercede or trample rights of others.
Grandbabies are the best, you are so right, there is no other feeling like holding your baby's baby!!
I think due to Biden's endless screw-ups and falling short on all things...in all situations, the need to come up with new things to put the spotlight back on Trump, keeps the left hopping! Maybe they'll grow weary eventually!
Well, AB,
Ice Cream did not kill the school children, rightwing advocacy and indifference toward responsible availability of guns is the far greater culprit.
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You can pick Hiroshima as a place to gather to promote the proliferation of nuclear bombs. Who would do that?
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Are you actually speaking about Koresh and McVey and the significance that Waco has meant to both of them, and of the stain in the national memory?
To that I say, Helter-Skelter.....No Cred, it's not the guns, the guns have been here from the get-go; otherwise we wouldn't be here, well maybe we would, but not as free men and women, in a land of endless opportunities!!
We broke our Covenant with God, we've turned our backs to God....we've made a mockery of Life and of God's glorious design.
Dumbing down the masses with "what is a woman crap", "men can have babies crap", have a drag queen do storytime for toddlers crap"......
We aren't doing ourselves any favors whatsoever, just falling further and further away from God and into the abyss.I guess, that is OK, to each, his or her own, if you actually buy the stuff you speak about.....
You mean the truth? Yes I believe in the truth.
Make that, the way, the truth & the life.
Or maybe we shouldn't sell guns to those who are under care for emotional disorders as was the Nashville shooter? She was still able to legally buy seven firearms.
"To share what distresses me -- I am appalled at the current president, as well as his administration. I am an American, and not looking to be a socialist, with the government dictating to me."
I don't see the current administration as "dictating" at all . Although the Republican Party has become increasingly authoritarian and extreme in recent years, and it doesn’t seem likely to moderate that in the foreseeable future. Despite performing SO poorly in the 2022 midterms after running many candidates the public saw as too extreme, the Republicans have decided to elevate and empower far-right lawmakers like representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.
In Florida, books have been removed from school shelves as DeSantis tries to reshape the public education system in his own image. Republican lawmakers around the US have passed abortion bans that put pregnant women’s lives in danger. The rights of transgender people are under attack throughout the country.
Nearly half of Republicans say they would prefer “strong, unelected leaders” over “weak elected ones,” according to a Axios-Ipsos poll, and around 55 percent of Republicans say defending the “traditional” way of life by FORCE may soon become necessary. About 61 percent of Republicans don’t believe the results of the 2020 presidential election. This is NOT Democracy. We're supposed to be about freedom and rights for all of America's people, not just a select few.
"Republicans continually opposing gun safety efforts"
Gun control or gun safety?
Do you own a gun?I do not and never will own a gun. I don't feel the need but that's just me. But yes, I absolutely need to see some gun safety measures put forward in this country. Will they change anything? I don't know but I do know that we need to try SOMETHING before more children are killed at school. I do see that studies show a majority of gun owners support specific gun safety policies. We can and need to do better this this as a country. The United States has a gun violence epidemic, and it's not one shared by our peers.
"I do not and never will own a gun."
When I hear people say this, I'm amazed they think they know about guns. I've owned guns for as long as I can remember. I regularly go to the range and practice shooting.
Guns are not the problem. People are the problem. Guns are not able to do anything without a person using it. They are an inanimate object with no ability to harm anyone unless someone uses it to harm another person.
Every time there is a shooting people on the left want to punish law abiding gun owners.
Guess what? Criminals don't care about gun laws. You outlaw the guns and only the outlaws will have guns. I'm sure criminals don't have their firearms registered, go to gun safety classes, learn about the laws concerning the use of firearms in their state. I bet they don't take this step as part of gun ownership.
Does the United States have an epidemic of gun violence. Yes. Is the solution to punish gun owners who obey the laws? No. IF you ban a particular firearm does that mean it will never be used in the commission of a crime? NO. Police regularly confiscate illegal firearms.
I think the radical approach would be for every responsible adult to own a firearm. Go through the training and go to a gun range. Have the weapon with them at all times. If someone tries a mass shooting, more than one person should be able to pull their weapon and fire at the person to end the threat.
It may not be a solution people like, but it is one that hasn't been tried yet.I know enough to understand that gun isn't a good fit for me and I think that realization is most likely a good thing.
Something as simple as a red flag law may have prevented the Nashville shooting. The shooter was under care for emotions problems yet she owned 7 guns. Her own mother didn't want her to have access to guns yet had no recourse. If you're not mentally stable maybe your guns should be kept from you until you are.
Like I said, I don't think more guns are the solution. If that were the case then Tennessee would be one of the safest places on earth.
On the other side of the scale, we can look at the states with the lowest percentage of gun owners. Massachusetts and New Jersey have the lowest gun ownership rate of 14.7%, followed by Rhode Island, with 14.8%, and Hawaii, with 14.9%. New York is the only other state with gun ownership less than 20% at 19.9%. Both Massachusetts and New Jersey have some of the strictest gun ownership laws in the United States. Obtaining a permit or license required to even purchase a gun in these states can take weeks and is relatively rigorous. However, Massachusetts also consistently has one of the lowest gun fatality rates in the United States. Coincidence?
On the flip side, Tennessee’s gun laws are weak and its gun death rate is high.What a shame the overall crime rates in New Jersey, New York, etc. are some of the highest in the nation. All of these are states people are leaving. Could that be a coincidence? Every day, people are able to be saved from criminals with a firearm. The media does not show you that side of the topic.
"Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts
People using guns in self-defense overwhelmingly don’t even lead to a criminal being killed or wounded, one crime watcher says
Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.
"Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves," Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who "behave passively" and are "about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself."
As crimes skyrocketed in major cities since 2020, instances of women using guns to protect themselves and stop crimes have repeatedly played out.
Lott said that, in a typical year, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories, but he added "that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news."
Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/americans-gu … rimes-data
I don't know why someone would want to take away another person's ability to defend themselves against a criminal intent on doing them harm.It is a shame that we have to take on a Dodge City mentality to live in what I would have liked to think are more enlightened times.
What is it about America that makes it crimes, violence and the worship of the firearm unique? A philosophical question.
No where on the planet is there a society that is obsessed with the glut of firearms and the cowboy attitude associated with it than the USA.
I thought that the Australians may have had a similar history, but no, their attitudes regarding this makes them mere amateurs.All I can say is the only thing that stops a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. I have had such an experience.
It changes you.I can see your point, it is just that the Clint Eastwood persona of always being able to instantly prepare oneself in the face of any such threat is a fantasy, it is just Hollywood. From what and which direction will the threat come from next time?
After a break in on my downtown Denver duplex some 30 years ago, I came just that close to purchasing a gun, just a "small gun", but one big enough to leave an adequate size hole in the next burglar. I did not do it because of the atmosphere of fear and dread and the anticipation of how I would actually confront a wayward adolescent trying to steal my transistorized television set? I was obsessed with how I was going to deal with the confrontation. This was all before doorbell cameras and a large home defense industry.
Yes, I was in the Right if I had to bust a cap or two into 14-15 year old kids caught in my house as I could not really afford the risk that their intentions were not beyond that of theft. These kids were part of Hispanic gangs. They are part of extended families in the community. What would be the result of having to shoot such a kid; key my car, break a window, little pieces of retribution leading to larger ones for which I had no way to possibly prepare?
Fortunately, a series of pay increases in my profession moved me from apprentice to journeyman and I was able to move to a less crime infested area.
Violence is contagious and you are right about one thing, "it changes you"."Violence is contagious and you are right about one thing, "it changes you"."
You're right, and it doesn't matter if it is a mass shooter in your school or having your home or car broken into. It doesn't matter if it's just being mugged on the street or if your neighbor was raped. Violence changes you...and our society sits back and says "Well, we have to get those fake assault rifles that scare me so bad and all the violence will end!".I get tired of the response of a gun event to punish lawful gun owners. Punish people who obey the laws. Criminals won't be deterred one little bit.
The left seems to still believe that a piece of iron somehow instantly changes the neural activity in a persons brain, making them become violent.
Why else attack one thing that can be found in a small minority of violent crimes and let everything else go in the attempt to stop violence?The neural activity and the violence inherent in many people is a given, it is just that "piece of iron" that makes it certain that the inevitable conflict always has to prove lethal.
"I was able to move to a less crime infested area."
What about the people who aren't able to leave?
I grew up in a bad part of a big city. I experienced and saw many things I wish I had not.
As soon as possible, my family moved away, but there were a lot of good people who did not have that option.
What should they do to survive?What do they do? they live in fear for the day that they have to confront a potential shooter for which they may well not be ideally prepared. It does tend to have an effect on the quality of life.
So, we return to the rightwing bromide that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with one."it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with one"
Do you see any other way?
Are you suggesting people give up their right to self defense?No, I don't want people to give their right to self defense. It is the Dodge City mentality of conservatives that advocate for the gun as the solution each time and every time.
A siege mentality exists here that cannot be found in any other developed nation. I wonder why that is?
I don't think that anyone is advocating that the government round up people's guns. I think that most Americans agree that we need stronger gun safety laws.
Courts across the country have reaffirmed that gun safety laws are constitutional and not in conflict with Second Amendment rights.
Ultimately, The NRA’s false narrative that the Second Amendment is absolute and unlimited is dishonest and dangerous. The right to bear arms never outweighs the right to live. We know that more guns means more violence.
The Supreme Court clarified an individual’s right to have a handgun in the home for self-defense, but denied that the Second Amendment provides an unlimited license to bring weapons into all corners of American society. In fact, Justice Scalia explicitly noted that the Second Amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”"The Supreme Court clarified an individual’s right to have a handgun in the home for self-defense, but denied that the Second Amendment provides an unlimited license to bring weapons into all corners of American society. In fact, Justice Scalia explicitly noted that the Second Amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
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You have opened a hornets nest and figuratively touched the eye of God. Rightwingers that believe that the Second Amendment is absolute and there are many in this forum, will come after you with clubs and pitchforks.No, they will come with statistical support. Using national and global statistics compiled by both sides and studied for decades they will come with non-emotional reasoning. The presentation may be emotional but the supporting data isn't.
GAUnderstood, I forget that you grew up in a gun friendly environment.
But, don't you agree with the late Antonin Scalia clarification about the fact that the Second Amendment is not absolute, as is the case for the Girst Amendment?With not being absolute meaning the Right can be regulated I do agree.
GA
I'll go a step further. I sort of look at the issue in the following way.
The discussion about gun rights and mass murder focuses on the Second Amendment, but the Bill of Rights guarantees protections for all of us. The Ninth Amendment is of particular importance:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The Ninth Amendment refers to the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” George Mason, an author of the Constitution, described these unalienable rights as, “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Do we actually possess these rights when we cannot send our children to school and expect them to return alive?
The Second Amendment cannot eclipse our other natural, God-given rights."Rightwingers that believe that the Second Amendment is absolute"
That's why it is almost always impossible to legally purchase a true "assault rifle", right? Because the 2nd is absolute and ALL guns, and ALL accessories, are open to ownership.
"I don't think that anyone is advocating that the government round up people's guns."
Actually, some of our congressmen are trying for just that and have made it exceedingly clear that they won't stop until the population is disarmed.
"I think that most Americans agree that we need stronger gun safety laws."
Most thinking Americans understand that we have enough laws on the books...if we would (or could) only enforce them. We don't need any more.
"Courts across the country have reaffirmed that gun safety laws are constitutional and not in conflict with Second Amendment rights.
Courts across the land have determined that many "gun safety laws" are unconstitutional. Such as you can't have a handgun in the city - several cities have tried that and all have failed.
"Ultimately, The NRA’s false narrative that the Second Amendment is absolute and unlimited is dishonest and dangerous."
In truth, the NRA, and conservatives, understand that the 2nd amendment is not unlimited. Buying a true "assault rifle", for instance, has been very, very difficult and almost always illegal for a long time.
"The right to bear arms never outweighs the right to live."
Explain that to the person confronted by an armed shooter. That they don't have the right to have the right to protect themselves because someone else is frightened at the sight of a gun.
So pretty much everything you have said here is false to fact.
"I can answer for myself --- I am voting republican no matter who runs. I want the pendulum to swing back, and see if we can't break the cycle Of one problem after the other"
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Well, Sharlee, it is like I said. Trump knows that his supporters will back him no matter what, as the only Republican choice facing the Democrats. He can get as ridiculous as he pleases with no effect on those voters.
I can only hope that his challengers can take the wind out of his sails and that those on the fence politically can see the madness underlying Trump's choices and behavior.And I have always said I want the current Democratic party out of Washington. I would rather have DeSantis run, however, I do not feel Trump will back away. I think Trump had a good agenda, and did a good job while he was in office. Much of his behavior comes from him being so vilified and hounded, it is surprising he is still standing. He is a fighter, and I don't see him dropping the fight. In my view, he seems to be on a mission. I mean why in the world would he not just go into the sunset?
I think if he runs we will have turmoil like never before in America. He has unearthed a lot of corruption, and many are just saying --- no more we are done.What corruption, that can be verified by unbiased sources has he uncovered?
Plus,
Trump opens campaign rally with song featuring Jan. 6 defendants
Former President Trump started off his first official 2024 campaign rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas, with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a group of inmates that are incarcerated for their role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The song, called “Justice For All,” features the defendants, who call themselves the “J6 Choir,” singing a version of the national anthem and includes Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over the track. Trump stood with his hand over his heart as the song played and as images from the Capitol riot, in which Trump supporters stormed the complex to overturn the 2020 election, played on a screen.
Well, if there was any doubt...
Well, IB, there isn't any doubt now.
I did not know that he would double down on his error as you described. I would have to say that his being as mad as a hatter outweighs what I would have considered just stupidity on his part.
Instead of supporting the best of America and her people, he promotes the worse. He is supremely confident that his followers would be more than happy to follow him down any rabbit hole of his choosing.
Trump is completely unrepentant about January 6th and any role that he played in its regard.
I don't expect to hear much about this beyond crickets. The rightwing bull sh*t artists will ply their trade as always. But, I would like to see them "spin" their way out of this one.
Chapter and verse from the standard fascist playbook?
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Monday called it “insane” for former President Trump to kick off his first official 2024 rally with a national anthem sung by incarcerated Jan. 6 rioters and footage featuring the insurrection.
“Instead, the president of the United States, the former president of the United States, opened up with Jan. 6 video, which is insane. He should be running from that period. I don’t care his point of view. That is not a good thing for him,” Kilmeade said.I confess to you Island Bites, that man is insane. And to think that he walked into this with both eyes open.
He can't be that dumb and obvious, or can he? He must have a trick up his sleeve, we just haven't figured it out yet.
I think that Trump believes that most of the GOP votes will come from those that pinch their noses yet will pull the lever for him to spite Democrats. Under those circumstances, he can be as "mad" as he pleases.
What do we get from his rally? The same mumbo-jumbo that he has been spouting about over the last 2 years."What do we get from his rally? The same mumbo-jumbo that he has been spouting about over the last 2 years."
I think it was all Trump, but now it a Trump on steroids.Doesn't anybody ever get tired of hearing it all of the time?
I think he has so many unheard Americans a voice. He speaks about all that concerns many in society. The bread and butter issue that plagues many poor, and middle-class citizens. His politics is in a way unique, he is unfiltered, and many like that about him.
So are people tired of the same old thing? Unfortunately, he has so much more to talk about, and stats to offer. He has fodder in regard to Biden's demeanor and foreign failures. He can ask --- what are you paying for eggs? He has a lot of ammunition this time around. Plus, a Trump rally is to some "the greatest show in town". He is a good showman. he even has an opening song now... A song that really gets his audience feeling patriotic. One thing Trump's supporters all have in common, they are patriotic.Actually seems like all he does is talk about himself and how he's a victim. Other than that he insults others and offers little to nothing in actual agenda. He is a grievance farmer. He offers nothing but fear-based, apocalyptic visions of the country. he's actually quite negative about America. I think a lot of us are exhausted with his complaining, chaos, lying and negativity.
Thanks for sharing your view. We all have one.
Fox News contributor and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) blasted former President Trump on Tuesday, saying that he was “absolutely horrific” during his interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity.
“I watched that and I thought, ‘Where is Donald Trump?'” Chaffetz said on “Fox and Friends,” adding, “I voted for Donald Trump twice. I have defended him countless times. I thought he was horrific. I think that was the worst interview I’ve seen the president do.”
Chaffetz further criticized Trump for “whining,” “playing the victim card” and complaining that someone he endorsed, like DeSantis, may be running against him in the GOP primary in 2024.
“I thought he was absolutely horrific,” he said. “He’s a former president of the United States. Act like it. He didn’t in that interview.”
Apparently, only ultra rightwingers, white nationalists and blind or ignorant MAGAs want him.
What does Trump know about bread and butter? He has been a privileged plutocrat all of his life? How can anyone think that someone like him can have empathy for anyone?
But the stealing vote stuff is getting old, and he has yet to prove it. He comes across as a sore loser on steroids. Kari Lake of Arizona thinks that she can play the same game with its state's voters. She is in for quite a surprise.
Trump voters are authoritarian and fundamentally fearful of change, but like a sunrise is coming all the same. How do you stop a ticking clock short of breaking it?This is a hard one to answer. I did not say he had the same bread-and-butter issues as many of his supporters. I said he speaks and addresses bread-and-butter issues, he speaks about the issues, and he even offers solutions to some of those issues. He reaches those that have clearly been ignored and helps them at beat feel he hears them.
I think he should let go of the 2020 election and move into the here and now.
I don't agree that Trump voter fear change. I think they opted for a change with Trump. There has never been a candidate like Trump. He offered change and transparency. He did bring many changes and always seemed to be working hard to bring about change. I could make a good size list of changes he initiated. Some worked, some not so much.
And I think you are part right when you say some Trump voters are authoritarians, and do fear changing things they find touch on their values or morals. We both know most conservatives do not want Government in their personal lives and dislike anyone impinging on their rights. So, I think as of late this comes off as them being fearful of change.
I think everything but a clock has been thrown at Trump. He still continues to move forward.
Most of the people in jail because of the January 6 incident have had their civil rights severely violated.
Hours and hours of video was withheld from defense attorneys. Videos that could have changed the outcome of the trials.
At the very least, all of the guilty convictions should be vacated and each one given a new trial with an ability to use the new video footage in their defense.
Since this isn't being done, at this point, they are political prisoners. They are being persecuted because of their political beliefs.
They are in jail only because the democrats wanted them there. If not, they would have provided the video evidence to the defense attorneys for the trials.
This is a huge injustice.I wouldnt say most, the act of attacking the Capital building is such that they all need to spend time in jail for at a minimum for disorderly conduct.
They are in jail because any one who does what they did have no other appropriate place, regardless of your political preference.
If you ask me, the book that was thrown at them was not large enough and the perforations in the net too wide to collect many others of those that are just as guilty.Cred,
Even the 9/11 hijackers got due process.
I thought you would be upset by someone having their civil rights trampled by the government.
This is a fact. All of those convictions should be eliminated and they should be given new trials with all of the evidence.
It is against the law for a prosecutor to withhold evidence. It's called the Brady Law.
The Brady Rule Entitles Criminal Defendants to All “Material” and “Exculpatory” Evidence
Established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963, the Brady Rule is intended to help ensure that criminal defendants receive a fair trial. Under this rule, prosecutors have an obligation to disclose all “exculpatory” evidence that is “material” to a defendant’s case.
As the Legal Information Institute (LII) explains, under the Brady Rule, prosecutors must disclose, “any evidence favorable to the accused–evidence that goes towards negating a defendant’s guilt, that would reduce a defendant’s potential sentence, or evidence going to the credibility of a witness.” While criminal defendants have the right to take discovery, they do not have to request exculpatory evidence for the Brady Rule to apply. As the LII goes on to state, “the Supreme Court has eliminated the requirement for a defendant to have requested favorable information.” Prosecutors’ duty to disclose material and exculpatory evidence is not triggered by a defendant’s request, but simply by the evidence’s existence."I thought you would be upset by someone having their civil rights trampled by the government."
I would and I am.
If these were cases where evidence pointing to the innocence of those sentenced in the more serious charges is being withheld, I would take issue.
Video evidence is hard to dispute, but it may not in of itself be infallible.
I am the first to complain about Kangeroo courts and such. The Brady Act is in existence to protect defendants.
I don't know enough about how the video evidence against the rioters was gathered and how what has been withheld would contradict the findings of prosecutors to comment with any authority.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I would be troubled if in fact many of those sentenced were railroaded.
How do you separate individual members of a mob of 2,000 between those that are just trespassing/disorderly conduct verses those guilty of more serious crimes of assualt against law officers, theft, destruction of public property, etc. Are we all to be intimidated and let them all off as if nothing had happened?
“January 6 was one of the worst days in American history. Everybody’s entitled to due process,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham , adding that “if you’re trying to suggest that those who were involved in January the 6th are some kind of hero? No.”
“There will be no effort on my part to whitewash January 6,” he added.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., pushed back on those who have downplayed Jan. 6. “I still maintain that anybody that breached the walls, came through windows and doors — some of them may have been caught up in the moment, most of them probably deserve to be accountable to the courts and the criminal justice system,” he told reporters Monday.
“There’s been a narrative out there that there were people walking these hallways that were peaceful tourists,” Tillis said. “They were illegally present.I still say they are entitled to due process and have their civil rights.
ALL people charged with ANY crime are entitled to due process and have their civil rights.
The prosecutors should NOT have withheld evidence.
Because evidence was withheld, their convictions should be set aside and they should be given new trials with the new evidence. The prosecutors involved should be charged with prosecutorial misconduct.
The Justice Department has amassed so much video evidence that it would take almost nine months, running 24 hours a day, to screen it all: 16,925 individual closed-circuit videos running a combined 4,800 hours, and 1,600 more hours of video taken by police officers' body-worn cameras, according to an Oct. 22 court filing. Defense lawyers were given instructions for accessing that video database on Oct. 18.
Weird how there's an injustice where defense attorneys were given instructions on how to access the evidence that you claim has been withheld. That according to actual court filings.The Reuters article you cite does not mention sources used for the article. It doesn't even attribute "unnamed sources." There is no way to know who made those claims she put in the article.
There is no specific mention of the Capital security footage. This is what was released by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to Tucker Carlson.
"House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office said on Tuesday that lawyers for defendants facing charges in the January 6, 2021, insurrection will be granted access to US Capitol security footage as the top House Republican has faced scrutiny for allowing Fox News host Tucker Carlson to view the video before widely releasing it.
The House Administration's subcommittee on oversight "is making accommodations to schedule time for any attorney representing a defendant," McCarthy spokesman Mark Bednar told CNN.
Republicans defended the move as a way to ensure due process for the defendants.
"Everyone accused of a crime in this country deserves due process, which includes access to evidence which may be used to prove their guilt or innocence. It is our intention to make available any relevant videos and documents on a case-by-case basis as requested by attorney's representing defendants," Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the subcommittee chairman, said in a statement.
The access for defendants accused in the January 6 Capitol attack has already come up in court. Joseph McBride, an attorney for several Capitol riot defendants, told CNN Tuesday that McCarthy's office granted him access to 41,000 hours of Capitol security footage from that day, and he has filed in court to seek a delay in one defendant's trial."
https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/mc … efendants/Oh brother. The defense lawyers were given access to the video that was listed. Kevin McCarthy just gaslit you by making you think he was doing something new, when in reality, the defense attorneys already had that access but it was their own failings, as they admit, to have the manpower to comb through it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/0 … e-00086031
'Prosecutors noted that “limited” clips aired by Carlson were nearly all included in the initial troves of footage provided to defense attorneys, which includes nearly all of the footage inside and outside the Capitol from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Jan. 6.'"were nearly all included"
Makes you wonder what ones were not included.
If this is true, then I congratulates the House Speaker, and the Republican Party. And every accuse should gave a fair defence, and a fair trial. Is that not entrenched in the United States Constitution?
"Most of the people in jail because of the January 6 incident have had their civil rights severely violated."
Do you have any sources for this conclusion?Even I agree with the right to a speedy trial that exists in our laws.
Kathleen, try to find the story about what happened to a former Dem, the founder of the walkaway campaign, just one example among many.
"The founder of a pro-Trump social media campaign that encouraged longtime Democrats to leave their party has been charged in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
A federal charging document dated Jan. 20 charged Brandon Straka, originator of the “Walk Away” campaign, with disorderly conduct, knowingly entering and remaining on restricted grounds and impeding police during civil disorder." - The Hill
"Brandon Straka, a gay Trump supporter who launched the #WalkAway social media campaign encouraging voters to leave the Democratic Party, has been arrested in connection with the assault on the U.S. Capitol this month.
Straka was arrested Monday in Nebraska, where he grew up, and was charged with impeding law enforcement officers during civil disorder, knowingly entering restricted grounds and engaging in disorderly conduct with intent to disturb a hearing before Congress, NBC New York reported."
"CNN
—
A pro-Trump organizer and social media influencer who spoke at a Washington, DC, rally the day before the US Capitol attack was sentenced to three years of probation on Monday.
Brandon Straka, a self-described “former liberal” who founded the #WalkAway campaign to encourage people to leave the Democratic Party, admitted to recording himself telling the mob to “go go go” as they reached the Capitol and telling rioters who were wrestling a shield away from a US Capitol Police officer to “take it, take it.”
He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on Capitol in October. Straka will have to pay a $5,000 fine, the maximum fine allowed, and an additional $500 for the damage done to the Capitol building by the mob."
OK. I think I missed your segway. ???
A will, a way!!
I wish we could see into the minds of horrible, evil people to know their thoughts and intentions, in order to prevent harm from finding the most innocent and pure on earth, ever again!!"Firearms have been the leading cause of death for US children and teens since 2020, representing 19% of all deaths for children 18 years and younger in 2021."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/health/u … SoajodjMfwWhen I was in the 4th grade (1963-64) living on board USMC Nebo base we had maybe 2 or 3 times a year a nuclear bomb drill. We had to duck under our desks and cover our heads.
Advance to about 2021 and schools have active shooter drills. I know my niece a 5th-grade teacher can attest to that as we discussed it. And, as well,l the teaching staff has their own training drills coordinated with law enforcement also doing training.
And, I saw today, on TMZ TV show an entrepreneur is marketing a collapsible wall to use with an active shooter for classrooms.
https://www.tmz.com/2023/03/28/kevin-th … -shooting/
That is nearing sixty years of the thought of the greatest threat to our children. Does that have any significance? I don't know but gives me pause. No matter if children's deaths are ranked #1 because of guns, there is a problem with as much of a magnitude as a nuclear bomb falling out of the sky.Readmikenow: That is your experience - and I'm sorry. For three nine-year-olds this week and countless others recently, their experience was the last thing they ever saw was a gun pointed at them.
No one is saying absolutely no guns. No one needs an assault weapon unless you are in the military or law enforcement. Can we not start with that reasonable statement or do more children need to be murdered first?I would like to start with the fact these deaths were the fault of the person pulling the trigger and not the guns.
Don't act like passing laws that punish responsible gun owners can prevent shootings. They don't and that's a fact.
If they did Chicago, New York City, and Baltimore and other democrat run cities would be the safest places, as they have the strictest gun laws.
Yet, the shootings in the cities where they have the strictest laws are places where the have high rates of gun violence.
How do you explain this?
Let's start there.
There we go again on the assault weapon. So, tell me what is an assault weapon? What is an assault-style weapon?
Here is your golden opportunity to impress me with your knowledge of guns.
Too many times liberals just want to pass laws to punish responsible gun owners because it makes them feel good. It never changes anything but for a period of time they have the false illusion they've done something.
It's time liberals get in touch with reality."I would like to start with the fact these deaths were the fault of the person pulling the trigger and not the guns."
Yes, agree on this point BUT we are hearing that the shooters mother had concern for the mental health of her daughter who was being treated for an emotional disorder. The Mother believed that her daughter should not possess firearms due to her condition. Tennessee has no red flag law so therefore no action or enforcement could be taken. It makes me wonder that had such a law been on the books that this shooting may have been averted. Seems like a great place to start
Obviously it won't stop every tragic situation but it sure would be worth it to prevent some. This doesn't punish responsible gun owners in any way.
According to Pew Research...
In 2020, the states with the highest rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (28.6 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (26.3), Wyoming (25.9), Missouri (23.9) and Alabama (23.6). The states with the lowest rates included New York (5.3), Rhode Island (5.1), New Jersey (5.0), Massachusetts (3.7) and Hawaii (3.4).
Consider the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on homicides involving firearms. California, a state with notoriously strict gun control laws, has a firearm homicide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 people. On the other hand, gun-friendly Mississippi’s firearm homicide rate is nearly three times that, 10.2 per 100,000 people.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 … n-the-u-s/
Gun owners rights need to be balanced with the rights of the rest of us.Thank you for sharing the pew research.
Now, is it gun laws or gun ownership that decreases gun violence?
"In California, where just over 28% of households had at least one gun in 2016, there was a rate of more than four people murdered per 100,000 population and nearly three gun murders per 100,000 population in 2019."
https://www.foxnews.com/us/states-highe … -data-showI really do think that it is regulation or law that can reduce gun violence. Common sense regulation. It's something that research shows even gun owners support. We need to keep guns out of the hands of, for lack of a better term, unbalanced people. Whether it's red flag laws, enhanced background checks or longer waiting periods I think it's something the majority of Americans agree with. Mental health issues are a large factor here but I feel that area will be a lot more difficult to address . In the mean time, we need to make sure that guns aren't ending up on the hands of distressed people. Now we also have a huge issue with illegally purchased guns that needs to be addressed. A state with strict gun laws is brought down by the neighboring state with lax laws. What do we do when my state has common sense precautions but I can subvert them by crossing the border? Maybe we all need to be on the same page?
Statistics show that gun ownership decreases gun violence.
"Common sense regulation"
What is that exactly? I have a real issue with people who don't have guns or have never even fired guns making regulations about guns. As far as I am concerned, unless you know guns, you lack any sense about them.
"we need to make sure that guns aren't ending up on the hands of distressed people"
I agree.
How do you do this without punishing responsible gun owners? Who determines who is and who is not distressed? Psychologists? In a town not far from where I live a man got into an argument with his neighbor about his lawn. The neighbor was a psychologist, contacted the local police and said the man was a threat. The local police came and confiscated the man's antique gun collection and all his other guns. After a huge lawsuit, the guns were returned to the one person who had them confiscated. The psychologist paid financially for this.
There was another incident where my cousin lives. People have had their guns taken by local police because their neighbors didn't feel comfortable living near a Republican who legally owned a gun. That was a lawsuit for the books.
There are many examples of people wanting to use red flag laws the wrong way to confiscate someone's lawfully owned weapons. It's not a simple thing to determine if someone is stressed or a danger. It is quite complicated to not infringe on a person's rights.
"What do we do when my state has common sense precautions but I can subvert them by crossing the border?"
Are you in Illinois? I hear this from people in Illinois who make Indiana the cause for all their gun problems.
You do realize this is something that can happen in all 50 states? Any state can have a person move weapons into another state. I suppose some states just handle it better than others.Licensing laws are supported by over 75% of Americans and have been shown to reduce gun violence in states that enact them, including my home state of New Jersey.
If you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to buy and possess a gun.
We can expand background checks and closing glaring loopholes in our background check system. Red flag laws are a no-brainer. We have plenty of competent professionals who can and are able to make the determination if someone is a risk to themselves or others. If we look at the shooters involved in the most recent mass shooting we can see that those individuals had very clear red flags. The mother of the Tennessee shooter had no where to go with her concerns. No mechanism in that state to address it.
Also, why should 18-year-olds be able to buy weapons of this lethality and ammunition in the quantity that many of this shooters have purchased?
Finally maybe we need to consider bringing back the ban on assault weapons. The data shows an almost immediate and steep rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
I refuse to believe that changing our laws won't reduce gun violence and make these tragedies less likely from reoccurring in the future.
I absolutely abhor the attitudes of elected figures throwing up their hands saying there's nothing the most powerful nation in the world can do.
This is a uniquely American problem. No other country that is similarly situated, that has an economy like ours as a country, even close to what we have, no other country has this problem. And any kind of change or reform or action is being blocked by one side.
After each mass shooting, we have those politicians that distract from the real issue & point to mental health. We're no worse in mental health rates than any other nation. 90% of the country want background checks & 85% want red-flag laws. Inaction is not an option.
The problem? A narrative has been perpetuated. This narrative hinges on fear and the need to defend oneself and loved ones from unknown but ever-present threats through whatever means necessary and without regard to the rights of others.
As humans we have a fundamental right to life. The children I'm Nashville had the right to attend school without being killed. That right was circumvented because we thought it more important that the shooters right to own guns was more important.
Gun violence is a violation of the fundamental right to life. I feel States should therefore have an obligation to fight actual or foreseeable threats to life and should therefore take measures to protect people from gun violence.
I feel a backlash coming in the country. I feel many are growing tired of what they see as gun rights superceding the basic right to life.Who gives humans the fundamental right to life? 18-year-olds are considered adults, do you think the age of adulthood should be raised for guns? Or for drinking alcohol?
GAI feel that we have a right to life . The Declaration speaks to this. the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are based on the idea that all people have certain fundamental rights that governments are created to protect. My argument is that the rights of people to be free of gun violence is not secondary to the rights of people to bear arms. One does not supersede the other.
Now is there a basis in our constitution for this belief? Maybe but I'm certainly not a constitutional scholar just someone who is tired of having gun owners rights take precedence . Is life not an "unalienable" right?
I don't believe the label "adulthood" means anything as far as regulating the age of gun ownership. If solid research shows us that bumping up the age can reduce some gun violence numbers then certainly raise the age. None of this is that hard. The inaction though is sickening. Very proud of the thousands amassing this morning at the Tennessee capitol to protest. People have had enough already.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/c … 053945007/I understand what you mean, it's a common perspective, like; 'feel', 'deserve', 'believe,' but it's a moral one. And they are hard to support.
GAIn my mind gun violence leads to a violation of the most fundamental human right , the right to life. States have an obligation to fight this threat to life and should therefore take measures to protect people from gun violence. Makes sense to me. The rights of gun owners must be balanced with the rights of the rest of us to simply live. Alternately, Some say that gun violence is a public health crisis and should be treated as so. It worked to reduce the death rate from car crashes. All I know is that inaction is not an option.
Not only do we have Republicans lawmakers throwing up their hands in defeat, we have states like Tennessee moving in the wrong direction.
The same day of the shooting , a federal judge signed off on a state settlement allowing people as young as 18 to carry a handgun without a permit. This doesn't make sense.And I say there is no such thing as a fundamental Right. Other than 'everybody knows' or 'everybody says' you can not prove there is a fundamental right beyond the ones bestowed by some authority.
If that authority can't be named, and agreed to be a proper authority, then it can't be a real thing.
This counter-argument is the foundation for arguments that always lead to the same bottom line, one that the only 'other' regulation that would reduce gun violence is a ban on all guns. It just skips the middle parts because experience refutes them.
GANo such thing as a fundamental right?? I believe that our country was founded on some fundamental principles in terms of rights..
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This country is built upon a philosophical foundation one of which is Inalienable Rights: Rights which belong to humans by nature and can only be justly abridged through due process. These are life, liberty, and property.Explain to the man behind bars that he has an "inalienable" right to liberty. Explain to the death row inmate he has an "inalienable" right to life. As GA says, these things are only rights when given by an authority guaranteeing them, and that guarantee can disappear in a heartbeat. Just as the right to bear arms is fast disappearing in this country and has already done so in many others.
Inalienable rights do not include property, just the pursuit of happiness.Okay, so 'we' (Americans that selected the leaders that did what you say) are the authority for inalienable fundamental rights? Or is it 'our' creator that gives them to us? Or is it nature that gives them out? You have credited all three with providing them.
You are talking about beliefs and you are using those same beliefs to support a call for more gun laws, even though decades of effort have shown a lack of gun laws isn't the problem.
GAThe inalienable rights are woven into our history. Part of the declaration, they informed the Bill of Rights and influenced the constitution. The founders seemed to believe they were given by the creator. Yes, I believe gun rights are stepping on those rights. They are taking precedence. They are infinging on my right to life.
As far as decades of effort failing, you'll have to back that one up . I do know that the assault ban's expiration was met with a steep increase in gun violence.For context, you and I don't have a history of discussing this issue. Most of the folks here (in this forum) have been in these 'gun control' discussions for years. A decade for a few of us. The emotional vs reasoned aspects of both sides of the gun debate has been presented, over and over. My experience is that they always end up at the same place, no matter which path was taken to get there.
My responses are just looking for any common ground to start from. For instance, an easy start might be with the 'assault rifle' ban. That's a hotly argued one. I say the semi-automatic rifles that were deemed 'assault rifles' were banned based solely on their cosmetic appearance. Power (caliber), and firing rate are the same as comparable 'normal looking' hunting rifles that were not banned. Most likely, you have seen those comparisons in past discussions?
Do you disagree with that description of the 1994 ban criteria?
As a note, Wilderness has expressed a different view of what the pre and post-ban statistics say, relative to the degree of effectiveness.
GAI don't believe that many, if any, legitimate hunters would us an AR-15 to hunt. There would not be much to harvest. It's actually not recommend for deer or elk. It's a gun to potentially pick off small varmint. It does seem to be the gun of choice for mass shooters. I think hunters have many options.
The ban in 94 included the sale, transfer, manufacturing and importation of: All semiautomatic rifles that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one military feature: pistol grip; forward grip; folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; barrel shroud; or threaded barrel.
Yes, I do agree with this. And wilderness has not backed up his view with any research.I've heard counterclaims that AR-15-type 'assault' rifles are very popular hunting rifles. The deer & elk part are mostly true. The most common 'assault' rifle caliber is too small for elk (the larger caliber equivalent to "typical' deer rifles is not an uncommon choice), but does meet the bottom range for deer. It is a very popular deer rifle.
Your "not much to harvest" thought sounds like you are talking about a rapid-fire scenario chewing up the meat. If so, that doesn't work because the 'assault' rifle doesn't shoot any faster than a typical 30.06 deer rifle.
If it refers to the ballistic illustrations of the internal explosive damage done by an 'assault' rifle bullet, that doesn't work either. There are equally credible video illustrations showing a deer-hunting 30.06 doing nearly identical internal damage. Side-by-side ballistic gel comparisons can be seen with a few clicks on youtube. So the horror of the damage shown by anti-assault weapons folks is purposeful propaganda. Considering that for balance, media presentations (the ones I have seen) compare the AR-15 to a 9mm handgun. If that wasn't a purposeful misrepresentation they would have used another long rifle as a comparison and shown those side-by-side ballistic gel illustrations. Propaganda is the right word.
Well yeah, grenade and rocket launchers were part of the criteria. I'd bet against that being a common reason for making the list of banned weapons. The actual list of 'assault' weapons included more than just particular weapons, there were a lot of manufacturers banned entirely. And from the list of specific 'assault' rifles banned, I don't remember ones with grenade and rocket launchers catching my notice. If you do look at the list you will see that the specific rifle bans were almost entirely for cosmetics: " pistol grip; forward grip; folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; " and I would add barrel shrouds?
What did you mean by 'not much to harvest?
GA
You are mistaken; there are two "fundamental" rights, guaranteed by nature itself.
The first is to take or do whatever you have the ability and power to take or do. You may jump off a cliff if you wish, although you may wish you hadn't. You may murder your neighbor, although you may wish you hadn't.
The second is to die one day.I think I'm speaking more the the inalienable rights that the country was founded upon.
1 out of two ain't good. I covered your first Right' in a previous comment that the true Rights we have are those that we can individually hold. Same - same.
Your second isn't a Right, it's a fact. For now. When we reach the point where death will be a choice . . . maybe.
GA
Are 18 year old people American citizens? What rights do you have that they, as common American citizens, do not...and how do you justify taking those rights away from them?
Addressing this "right to life" concept; we have thousands of things that kill people, that we KNOW kills people, and we do not take them away. We could end all car deaths tomorrow by simply reducing the speed limit (enforced by the car, not the fear of a cop) to 20MPH...but we don't. Why not?
We could end the carnage fro
We could stop all plane deaths by making THAT illegal, but we don't. Why not?
There are thousands of ways to die, and thousands of ways to kill, but we don't stop them. For the vast majority of them we don't even TRY. You want to end the carnage of homicides? Find out why we are so violent and address THAT.Your claim that we do not try to prevent death from any of the thousands of ways to die is not based in fact.
Why do we have speed limits? Why do you have to wear a seatbelt? Why do cars need inspections? Why do you need a license to operate? Why do planes get regular inspection? Why do pilots need rigorous training? Why are explosive highly monitored?
The government and most normal humans understand that with many things that can cause harm, you should require training and certify those that use them to have the adequate preparation to handle them well.
Except so many on the right think that just being able to go in and buy a gun is all that is needed to guarantee that it will be safely used. You wouldn't let a blind person drive a car, so don't let someone who is mentally unstable own a gun. It's justified by thinking of the common good in a society.
Require background checks that include criminal and mental health records. Require training where professionals can determine if the person is capable both physically and emotionally to handle the responsibility of a gun. Everyone talks about responsible gun owners - well, we should be weeding out the irresponsible ones, but currently, the processes to determine which ones those are do not exist in many areas of the country."Your claim that we do not try to prevent death from any of the thousands of ways to die is not based in fact."
And yet we COULD prevent those car and plane deaths. We try to limit them to something we are willing to live with, but not to end them although we could. That was the point; we KNOW how to stop car deaths but refuse to do so.
You may be willing to accept the political (and yes your "professional" IS a political appointee) decision on your sanity; I'm not. Most definitely I am not, for most Democrats will conclude I am not sane. I AM happy with background checks...as long as they are quick and free to the prospective gun owner. After all, it isn't that owner that is asking for protection via a background check; let those that want it pay for it.
I would love to weed out irresponsible gun owners. Problem is that no psychiatrist will tell us they can determine who will kill in the future and who will not. So much for a mental health record.Sure we could, by removing those things from our society. However, to say that we do not even try to stop the deaths from those things was not correct. As I noted, the government does try many things.
And part of the background check could be to ask if the potential owner is or has ever received psychiatric care. Again, with so many things that have the ability to take lives, people with emotional issues or physical limitations should be excluded from them. It's common sense.
And like I noted, requiring training should be a no-brainer. One, it'll create jobs. And second, allowing professionals in the field to screen for those that may not possess the emotional maturity for gun ownership could save lives.
You have to pass a test given by someone who determines you have the ability to safely drive or to fly an aircraft. You need to be licensed for both. Requiring it for gun ownership will save lives.
Again, your focusing on removal and I am not. The rights of gun owners need to be balanced with the rights of the rest of us. Meaning my life and my right to that life shouldn't be put at risk because we can't impose some stricter safety laws to keep guns out of the hands of those who would misuse them.
I agree with finding the root causes of violence and addressing it. I think It's a 2 pronged approach along with better safety measures. But currently the point of purchase of a gun is the point we can go further in trying to assess this person suitably for a firearm. And right now it seems like some are slipping through. Plane deaths? I think those were reduced by safety measures. Car accidents? Seat belt laws.
I'm just looking for some common sense from our government on this issue.
Your argument applies equally well to ownership of cars, knives, baseball bats, hammers, poisons of all kinds, explosives such as propane, etc.
Problem is not the gun; it is the person pulling the trigger and experience shows us, all over the world, that removing guns does NOT reduce the death toll from insane people wishing to kill.
But it is easy to deny rights to young people, for they have no political power to maintain their rights. It is also easy to frighten people so badly that they will take rights from others (but never themselves) in the hopes of ending their fear.
I fully agree that inaction is sickening, but that's all we have. Partially because those folks afraid of a chunk of iron refuse to consider anything but that iron as the cause of the body count. You want action, push for some solid research on just why Americans are so violent and THEN talk about actions. Quit with the proven false assumption that if we can just get the guns away from the people they will not kill anymore.
The reality is that there was a time in America when assault weapons were banned - and dealths went down. " these deaths were the fault of the person pulling the trigger and not the guns." is the lamest statement ever made - and continues to be made - about gun deaths. WE'RE TALKING ABOUT CHILDREN! THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN AMERICA FOR CHILDREN IS GUN VIOLENCE. What do you proposed we do to stop that? Coincidentally, assault weapons are the most popular guns sold in this country today. Connect the dots.
Statistics from all over the world show no correlation between the number of guns in a society and the homicide rate.
When Australia took all those dreaded "assault weapons" from their population the homicide rate continued on the same slow slide it had been on for years. No change.
There are more murders from bludgeoning (think baseball bat) than there are from all rifles combined, including the fake "assault rifles" we have been trained to fear. There are more murders from personal weapons (hands and feet) than all long guns combined. There are more than twice as many murders from cutting tools (knives) than all long guns combined.
We only concern ourselves with gun violence rather than finding a solution for the violence in our culture.
Connect the dots.
"these deaths were the fault of the person pulling the trigger and not the guns." Is that really as far as your thinking takes you?
That is right.
I refuse to believe that guns are possessed by evil spirits that cause them to take control of a person and force them to shoot people against their will. I don't believe that pouring holy water or performing an exorcism on firearms will make any difference. Anti-gun people are free to try this but I would question any positive results.
I believe a person is responsible for what they do with a gun and that firearms are not possessed by evil spirts that make people do things against their will.
I stand by this belief.Do you have the same belief of explosives? If it's not the gun, it shouldn't be the stick of dynamite either. And yet, the explosives industry has major regulations and limitations on who can acquire those materials.
You are correct. And when their is a Constitutional right to bear explosives we can have this discussion. I don't think there is much of a market for self defense explosives.
So you recognize that government can have the responsibility to restrict deadly tools such as explosives, but that guns get a pass simply due to the historical determination that Americans wanted states to be able to form their own army in the event that the federal government attacked them with federal government's standing armies. That the gun laws that covered single-shot weaponry should apply to the more advanced weaponry of today.
I believe in the Second Amendment, just in a more regulated form such as the automobile industry, but not so limited as the explosive industry. As Colton has noted, people are using their Second Amendment rights to infringe on other people's inalienable rights to life and liberty. We need a better balance."I believe in the Second Amendment, just in a more regulated form such as the automobile industry...?"
Problem is that that "more regulated form" quickly becomes "You can only have a BB gun, nothing more deadly". It may or may not be that in your mind, but ask yourself how many times we see the question "Why do you need <fill in the blank for type of gun>", as if any answer is acceptable to the one asking.Problem is that that "more regulated form" quickly becomes "You can only have a BB gun, nothing more deadly".
Really? If someone is trained and qualified to operate a car, do we tall them that they can only own a honda but not a mustang? They can say, sorry, you don't have the eyesight to safely operate a car.
And I'm just fine with experts in the field making a determination that those who are not qualified, to own anything more than a BB gun. That's pretty much the point.Let that car become a military weapon in the eyes of the populace, let the majority of people not have one to take, and see what happens to the rest.
Experts in the field? You mean like the "Experts" that have defined what an "assault rifle" is? That's laughable. Besides, those same experts have already told us they cannot identify which people are likely to murder and thus should not be allowed to buy a gun.Again, it's not about prediction. It's about a determination at the point of sale if the individual has issues that should preclude gun ownership.
And the gun industry has no laws or limitations? You've got to be kidding!
(On a side note, does diesel fuel and fertilizer and fertilizer also have those same limitations? Do we do a background check on anyone wanting to fill their tank or buy some fertilizer?Did I say that the gun industry has no laws or limitations? Or did you twist words again in that post to mean something not said or meant? Typical ridiculousness.
Fertilizer absolutely does. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has multiple statutory authorities under which it regulates ammonium nitrate for security purposes. In general, DHS authorities fall into two categories: securing facilities containing ammonium nitrate and tracking the transfer of ammonium nitrate.
And if there started to be a wave of mass arsons using diesel fuel, I bet that the government would see a need to start tracking who was buying diesel.Can I buy fertilizer at Home Depot or any of a dozen local home improvement stores? At any of a dozen local gardening stores? Do I need a background check at any of them? Do I need a mental exam before purchasing?
Really rather irrelevant though - the point is that there are thousands of ways to kill, from a simple match (no mental exam to purchase) to a Boeing 737 (no mental exam to purchase). And not all of them are as difficult to use as that Boeing - some are as simple as the match. Many are far more deadly than a simple rifle, too, regardless of how many times the left denies that.
Govt. tracking; we already have a "wave" of arsons using gasoline as an accelerant, yet no tracking at all. I don't think your assumption has any truth at all in it.And do your Home Depot fertilizers have ammonium nitrate which is the active component in explosives? Or do you simply think all fertilizers can be used to make explosives?
And let's use your Boeing 737 example. You don't think there are training and tests that need to be passed to operate one? That's really what I've been on here proposing. Require training and testing to weed out some who may not be qualified or deemed mentally insufficient by the experts in the field to own and operate guns.
The stance that because it's written in the Constitution means that it can never be restricted is just not in any way the truth. People have their voting rights taken away. There are limits to free speech.
And as for deaths, 20,000 murders and 25,000 suicides by gun in 2020 compared to around 500 arson deaths. In terms of which wave needs the more immediate attention, I'll stick with a simple ask for training to combat the first one."Require training and testing to weed out some who may not be qualified or deemed mentally insufficient by the experts in the field to own and operate guns. "
All the safety training in the world will not train a killer not to kill. It is thus useless for that purpose.
Mental health professionals tell us they cannot determine who will kill and thus should not have a gun. Again, mental testing is thus useless for that purpose.
And yet you continue to demand it happen, presumably at the cost of the gun owner even though for your perceived benefit, not theirs. We must now pay to exercise our constitutional rights? What's next - pay to vote?
Not much concerned, in the gun debate, about suicide by gun. That another person might use a gun for suicide does NOT affect my right to own a gun. As always, you set aside the little concept that without guns killers will use another tool...like matches, as they did in Australia. When the guns were taken arson rose to the point there were more deaths from that than there had been from guns.
Understand, once and for all, that killers denied their weapon of choice will still kill. You have not removed that desire from them along with the gun; the gun does not worm into their brain and create the thoughts of death and mayhem. Those are already there and taking away the gun, particularly taking it from someone else, will not change the mind of a killer.And yet, we test people to use cars and many are deemed unqualified to gain a license to drive because they lack the necessary skills or are deemed dangerous when they use a car. I disagree that training and testing will not weed out some that should not possess guns and will save lives.
Killers may well wish to kill. However, I just don't believe that we should make it so simple for killers to be in possession of the means to kill so many at once without at least trying to put up roadblocks to save people's lives. There's the difference between us. You think that killers should be free to stock up on their weapons of choice and have at it. We disagree on that.Yep. Pure safety training eliminates an awful lot of car deaths. Do you think any, even a single one, of deaths eliminated as a result of training were going to happen because the driver was a homicidal maniac wishing to kill?
I have never had a mental exam to determine my fitness for exercising the privilege (as opposed to the Constitutional right) of driving. Have you? Then can you further expound on just how and why they are denied the privilege? Because they are blind? Because they have exhibited, multiple times, that they will drive drunk? How does that relate to guns, except that a convicted felon cannot own one either (whether he killed with it or not).
"You think that killers should be free to stock up on their weapons of choice and have at it. We disagree on that."
An exceedingly stupid thing to say and I do not believe for a minute that you are stupid enough to believe it. What I have said, over and over, is that you cannot find the killers...until they have killed or exhibited some form of action that gives a really solid reason to think they will kill. Stockpiling weapons, perhaps, and then making public threats. Stockpiling and stalking maybe, coupled with threats.
Find an accurate method of identifying killers and you will instantly have me on your side (as long as the gun buyer is not responsible for the cost of your program). To simply flail around in the dark, repeating what has been tried over and over with zero results, all while taking away constitutional rights, and I will forever fight it.Honestly, with the resistance to even try common sense guns laws like red flag laws or to make training mandatory and testing a requirement, ideas that were implemented in other fields to operate dangerous equipment, it does seem that the right does not care about the carnage, even when it includes children in schools. The idea of a good guy with a gun might work from time to time, but Parkland, Buffalo, and Uvalde each showed that it's not the answer to mass shootings
In terms of training, there is a very real notion of the term gun culture that is taught from an early age to many. Mike has mentioned this and I have personally experienced it from my own family of gun aficionados. For those that do not get it ingrained from family, there needs to be a source when there is a purchase of a gun.So "Red Flag" laws are "common sense" and very useful. In my experience "common sense" nearly always results in a conclusion that aligns with what is desired, not what is best. But will you list possible problems with red flag laws, along with a likely result and the likelihood of it happening? Put some real thought into thinking up abusive scenarios and try hard to come up with reasons NOT to have such laws. Have you considered those at all, or just decided it sounds great without research or thought into possible abuse?
You then believe that a child growing up in a "gun culture" family will never become a crazed killer? That sounds like a great reason to require every home to have a few guns around, and use them periodically.
Or is the belief that the child will become a safe gun handler, wither he intentionally kills someone or not?'You then believe that a child growing up in a "gun culture" family will never become a crazed killer?' Is that what I said? Another really stupid twisting of words to arrive at a conclusion never intended. When you get like this, it's not even worth the time to continue the conversation.
?? Why else would you promote the "gun culture" of a family with guns as a solution for gun violence? The point was that I did not understand why your comment there has any relevance at all. It was not intended to be taken at face value, rather to point out how silly the comment was coming across and that I obviously did not understand what you were trying to say.
'...I obviously did not understand what you were trying to say.'
You rarely do and then just proceed to make up your own version of events that leans all the way to the extreme to claim something like an absolute such as 'never.'
That's when I know it's time to bow out. When you just start creating your own realities based on nothing that someone else has said or meant.
Did you grow up in a family with a culture of guns?Yes, we hunted for the large majority of our meat. I started carrying a rifle on the hunt somewhere around 14 years old.
I assume you do not wish to expound or explain what you were trying to say with the comment about a family gun culture and how it applies to the violence we see today. That's fine - it can head for file 13.
The benefits of red flag laws outweigh the cons.
I believe that people who get upset about these sometimes have this image of an anonymous phone call resulting in firearms being seized and not given back. Which I agree is upsetting, it just does not relate to ANY actual red flag laws.
For example, every red flag law incorporates the standard due process protections for temporary deprivations. Basically, the law enforcement agency needs to convince a judge via some relatively high standard of proof that the alleged threat actually exists, and the subject of the order is guaranteed a formal, adversarial hearing, with the burden on the government, within a relatively short time frame.
These laws also really limit the set of people who can initiate the procedure, often just to members of the household or law enforcement. They also require something like a sworn affidavit from the person initiating, meaning that a dishonest use of the process would carry the penalty of perjury.
a gun owner who may be a danger to others is may suffer a minor inconvenience but it's worth it to potentially save the lives of others .
It appears that may have been the case in Nashville as the shooters mother expressed grave concern.They may not really be the answer.
"On July 4, 2022, 8 people were killed and 29 wounded in a mass shooting at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. The shooter, Robert Crimo III (21), was arrested. He would have easily slipped past a federal red flag law, because he did easily slip past Illinois’ red flag law. Similar to the federal bill, Illinois’ red flag law allows judges to issue firearms restraining orders to high-risk individuals when their family members or law enforcement request it.
“As the Highland Park shooting shows, merely having a red flag law on the books does not guarantee that it will be adequately used,” admitted PolitiFact.
On May 14, 2022, 10 people were killed and 3 were wounded at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The shooter, Payton S. Gendron (18), was arrested. New York has a red flag law, which failed to prevent the shooting despite plenty of red flags.
The New York red flag law allows school administrators, in addition to law enforcement and family members, to request an extreme risk protection order. Gendron’s parents apparently had no idea what he was up to. Despite the warning signs, police and school officials also failed to act.
The complete failure of New York’s red flag law to stop the shooting frustrated its supporters. “It was designed exactly for this circumstance,” a gun-safety advocate told NBC news.
On May 26, 2021, 10 people were killed in a Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail facility in San Jose, California. The shooter, Samuel James Cassidy (57), was killed on the scene. California has a red flag law, which failed to prevent the shooting.
In the runup to the shooting, Cassidy was making racist comments at work, he was openly disgruntled, and he even told coworkers that he had guns and explosives. Still, no one did anything, although they could have. California’s red flag law is even broader than New York’s law. In addition to law enforcement, family, and school officials, in California, co-workers can turn someone in.
On April 15, 2021, 9 people were killed and 7 were wounded at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. The shooter, Brandon Scott Hole (19), was arrested. Indiana has a red flag law, which should have prevented the shooting.
Hole’s mother reported to the police in 2020 that he was suicidal, and the police took away the family shotgun as a precaution. They never asked for it back, and so the police closed the case. They could have filed a petition to have Hold flagged, but didn’t. Hole was able to later legally purchase the assault rifle he used in the shooting.
On March 22, 2021, 10 people were killed and 1 was wounded at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. The shooter, Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa (21), was arrested. Colorado has a red flag law, which should have prevented the shooting.
His brother described him as paranoid, anti-social, and having a bad temper. Al-Issa had two court cases in recent years, one for assault after beating up a classmate and another for criminal mischief. He once even yelled out in school that he was going to “kill everybody.” His sister-in-law said she say Al-Issa playing with something that looked like a machinegun a couple of days before the shooting. He was also on the FBI’s radar because of his association with someone else they were investigating."
The list goes on an on....And I'm certain that I could rebutt with instances in which this law has averted a violent outcome. States that have red flag laws may not do a good enough job in educating citizens that they are there and how to use it. I think it's time to let go of the attitude that absolutely nothing can work and focus more on what can. I can't relate to the fatalistic attitudes of those who are supporting absolute gun rights over the implementation of reasonable measures that will at the very least save some lives.
Sometimes I feel that the guns rights lobby is flat out telling me that absolutely nothing related to safety measure will work so why bother? Give up before seriously trying.
Republicans want to lay all the blame on mental health but seem to have no appetite to address that issue either. So where does that leave us? Just accepting the violence?Just in California over a three year period, 58 mass shooting cases averted....
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlin … gs/2022/06
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/28/5/465
...But yeah, they're not 100% effective so the right doesn't think those 58 mass shootings could have been averted in one state, over just three years.Thank you for the links. I had a hunch these laws were helping.
Interesting article, even though it assumes that the threats would have been carried out without the red flag laws and is therefore "proving" that red flag laws work. A completely unproven assumption, especially as NONE those making the threats went on to kill anyone at all, using any method. Considering how easy it is to get an illegal gun I would have to conclude they had no real intention of carrying out their threats, not when not a single one did.
Or at least the article doesn't mention such an event - it is quite possible that ALL of them did but it is not reported.Or that when confronted with their threats and exposed, just putting up one single roadblock may have been enough to quash the threats. The study did note that there was only one person who died by suicide in the three years after they were reported - and that one died, from injuries incurred while being served, a few days after.
Either way, the claim that these laws are not working or that there is no data to support them is just plain false.Again, not interested in suicides.
Yes, it may have been enough. But IMO it would not be, not for an entire group of insane killers on the rampage. Not a doctor, but that just seems way to far out of what I see as a killer on the warpath and looking to kill someone, anyone. Might as well have had a nice talk with them and hope they don't kill any more.
"Sometimes I feel that the guns rights lobby is flat out telling me that absolutely nothing related to safety measure will work so why bother?"
Well, all the data and statistics indicate that gun control laws, right up to and including outright ban on all guns, will not significantly reduce the death toll. Only the number of bodies with bullet holes and even that is not nearly what you would promote as a good result, a good payment for taking people's rights away.
In view of that, what else have you considered and would accept in an effort to reduce the violence?"Well, all the data and statistics indicate that gun control laws, right up to and including outright ban on all guns, will not significantly reduce the death toll. "
This is not true though. Do you have stats on gun safety policy that has failed? I have quite a lot that show otherwiseYou cannot show any correlation at all between gun ownership rates and homicide rates. If you think different, have at it: for every pair of countries you show that "prove" fewer guns = fewer homicides I will provide two more that show the opposite.
Here is a list of homicide rates, from the UN, if you wish to make a try at it. https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-intentional … de-victims
(No, gun safety laws have not "failed"...because a "failure" would indicate that taking guns = more murders. That has not happened, so no "failure".
But neither has it "succeeded". because that would mean the opposite and THAT has not happened either. Not over time and not statistically significant.)Can you show that gun ownership rates reduce homicides or gun violence rates? I would assume then that those areas with the highest gun ownership rates have the lowest violence rates. I'm asking you to prove your position with some legitimate research studies
Whenever anyone else here proves otherwise , you discredit it without any credible support of your position. More guns equals more safety? Less violence? If that's your claim them what supports it?
"Where there are more guns there is more homicide (literature review)
Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the U.S., where there are more guns, both men and women are at a higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.'
Just Harvard chiming in . I won't flood the post with more of the same. Unless you need more, the post could get VERY long.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/fire … and-death/"Can you show that gun ownership rates reduce homicides or gun violence rates? I would assume then that those areas with the highest gun ownership rates have the lowest violence rates. I'm asking you to prove your position with some legitimate research studies"
I will again make the same statement: "You cannot show any correlation at all between gun ownership rates and homicide rates." Notice that without correlation there can be no causation: gun ownership rates have zero effect, either positive or negative, on homicide rates. Even without causality, without correlation one cannot be predicted from the other.
You on the other hand have consistently maintained that if we just limit ownership (gun ownership rates fall) then the death toll will fall. Again, no correlation = no causation and your statement cannot be accurate. It may be true in some cases, but it is also false in some; were it actually true it would always (or very nearly always) be true.
I will concede that lower gun ownership may (or may not) give rise to a lower gun homicide rate...but that is useful only if you don't how high the body count is as long as there are no bullet holes in them. Personally I reject that concept.
Your link makes the statement that more guns (in high income nations) = more homicides. I would have to see the raw data to believe that; when I collected such data myself I did not find it to be true. Instead, as I say, there is no correlation.
If you're truly interested I wrote it up, with data and sources, and it is on my profile carousel. Not only that, the work was done some years ago, so I re-did it with more current data and found the same thing.I don't think I'm maintaining a position of limiting gun ownership other than potentially considering an assault weapons ban. My primary position really is that we need gun safety measures in this country. We need to better address gun violence in this country.
OK, so a ban on only those fake "assault guns" - all others can remain in use.
You do know that there are more murders committed with bludgeons (baseball bat, hammer, etc.) than all rifles combined, include those falsely labeled as "assault"? Same for hands and feet - more murders from those than all rifles combined.
Given that do you really think that a crazy killer denied an "assault rifle" will drop the idea of killing someone?
We don't need to address gun violence; we need to figure out why our society is so violent and address that. Taking away the preferred tool does not stop anyone but those few that kill in a rare, temporary fit of rage or despair - something that describes none of the mass murderers and precious few of other killers.
That is the assumed benefit, yes. The "pro" of the various laws labeled red flag.
What are the cons? I did ask for an honest assessment of the cons, not the pros. Perhaps this quote about NY red flag laws could give a starting point:
"Under the law, police officers, school administrators, district attorneys, family members or household members can request a hearing with a judge and present their evidence."
This is NOT just "members of the household or law enforcement" and it has been expanded to health care personnel as well (your family doctor, applying a bandaid to a nail puncture in your foot would qualify). What could possibly be the cons here?
I am not a person who is unfamiliar with guns. I have lived for 50 years with a West Point educated, Bronze Star recipient, Infantry/Airborne/Ranger/Pathfinder/XXX (for those who know what goes there) owner of multiple guns who hunts and shoots for sport. You can be familiar with guns and still want children not to be slaughtered in their schools because anyone can buy an assault weapon.
The blood of these innocents is on the hands of those who think/speak/act as you have represented here. There are no two ways about it and I'm done being objective on this subject. We all should be done so our children will stop dying.Yea, this makes sense to me, from a West Point graduate.
I'm not the graduate. My husband is. And, believe me, he would not want me speaking for him on political issues. We rarely agree.
But with his resume that I just shared, of the two dozen guns he owns, how many do you think are assault weapons? Zero. And he is among the few in this country who have actually been trained to use them at the expert level. Today every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he should own one, and probably does."he would not want me speaking for him on political issues. We rarely agree."
"of the two dozen guns he owns"
"he is among the few in this country who have actually been trained to use them at the expert level."
This speaks volumes. Your attitude and everything you say now makes perfect sense.Great. Please contact my husband. He'd be interested to know how someone finally came to that conclusion. After 50 years, he still enjoys the challenge of trying to figure me out. Hope your mate enjoys you too.
No, the blood is on the hands of the vile individual making the decision to pick up and place a weapon in their repulsive, evil-doing hands in order to intentionally do harm to any one, including children, who happen to be in their warpath.
Most of these vile individuals get taken out and are currently burning, but the ones who survive after committing evil acts should be executed in front of the world, almost instantly!!
Maybe with some actual consequences to their actions and some follow through justice for those who have absolutely no respect for anyone or anything, certainly no regard for life...things will begin to change for the better!
Maybe focusing on the right things instead of trans issues and feelings Rule and proper pronouns please and forgetting the definition of words and allowing for the manipulation of a child's body or allowing for a perfectly, fully-developed baby to be killed and ripped from their mother's womb....we will begin to look less ignorant and get our crap together, in order to protect our children!!! We have to FIRST give a damn about them, in order to PROTECT them!!!
Feeding them to the wolves, as has been happening, only strengthens, encourages and fattens.....the wolves!!!I agree with your depiction of these people but at what point are we most likely to uncover people with sinister motives? If someone doesn't catch it early on then the best point is at the point of sale for a firearm they intend to use to harm others. There's no reason it should be so easy to obtain a gun. Some of our states, including Tennessee are actually making it easier and quicker to get your hands on a guns. Parents are highly worried to send their kids to school. A politician's answer when asked of how he deals with that anxiety answers "we homeschool" well that's not a solution. I want solutions.
"If someone doesn't catch it early on then the best point is at the point of sale for a firearm they intend to use to harm others."
Thank you. For God's sake, thank you. No we can't ferret out evil, but when it presents itself we can do something to slow it down - if we will.
Better to be subjective, spewing tears while refusing to acknowledge the problem, rather than objectively reason our way to a solution that might work. Right?
So we go after the preferred tool of the insane that wish to kill, pretending that if they cannot get that tool their violent desires will not be expressed. It isn't working in the US, it isn't working anywhere in the world...so we keep on doing it rather than addressing the root of the problem.
Makes sense? Not to me.People with guns kill people and they do it more efficiently than people without guns. The U.S. gun homicide rate is 26x higher than that of other high-income countries.
If more guns everywhere made us safer, America would be the safest country on earth. Instead, we again have a gun homicide rate 26x that of other high-income countries.
Other countries do better. We should be able to figure out how to do better.
Currently the next mass shooting is being planned and one thing is certain, that individual will be able to easily obtain the means to carry it out.26 times more than Japan. Wow. Why dont you compare US gun violence to society like Brazil, where the national socialists took away the rights of the common citizens to own guns. (Not the criminals, of course.) Why not compare violence to Venezuela, where the socialists took away the guns? Caracas, their largest city, is now the most dangerous place on earth. Why not compare it to Mexico, a country that has strict gun laws and a terrible murder rate?
I believe reaserchers compare apples to apples. Other wise your results are skewed. The idea is to compare America to similar countries. Of course There are countries with higher rates of firearm deaths than the U.S., though comparing gun violence among peer countries helps to control for other factors.
Taking a global view, the six countries with the highest age-adjusted rates of firearm homicides are:
El Salvador
Venezuela
Guatemala
Colombia
Honduras
Brazil
I would not call these peer countries to the U.S. I believe drug cartels fuel the violence in those countries much more so than would in AmericaYou compare an ethnically homogeneous country like Japan a peer to the US, but not one with racial and cultural diversity?
And, you do not think that the drug cartels/drug culture is responisble for so much crime and violence in the US?I'm not the one doing the research. I believe that the researchers make comparisons in some of these studies with nations that are similarly high-income. You would have to look at the methodology of any study .
Do drugs have an impact on violence here? Of course.
For every pair of countries you can list, showing that a low rate of gun ownership = a low homicide rate, I can give two more, using your examples, that show the opposite.
There is NO correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates.
"People with guns kill people and they do it more efficiently than people without guns."
Really? Which is more efficient, a single car bomb or 100 bullets (of which 98 miss the target)? Which is more efficient, a single envelope or 100 bullets? Which is more efficient, a single match or 100 bullets?
I could go on forever, but you get the point. Guns are neither the easiest, quickest nor most efficient means of murdering people. BUT...it is politically expedient to limit our efforts to violating the 2nd amendment. Partly because politicians have spread such lies about "assault weapons" but there are other reasons as well.Twice you have made a comment here that relies 100% on the idea that without a gun killers will not kill. Or perhaps that if a corpse does not have a bullet hole then it doesn't matter that it is dead.
There can hardly be more ridiculous concepts.I'm talking about doing better, reducing gun violence not taking away every gun in the country. Never made that argument. Just presenting facts that similar countries as ours have less gun violence.
I never made the assumption that without a gun these people wouldn't kill. We make it plenty easy for them though. I think I'm just tired of the gun owners rights superceding the rights of the rest of us. I have a right to life and so did the children in Nashville but because we won't act to keep guns out of the hands of certain individuals (by red flag laws, enhanced background checks, permits, waiting periods and so on) the rest of us live with the prospect of being injured or killed by one of these people who shouldn't have had a gun. Will they find another way to kill? Of course some will but then we address that as well. I, in no way believe we can eradicate our society of gun violence
or violence completely. but I find it pathetic that we don't try to make improvements especially with our peer countries as examples.Yes, other countries have less GUN violence. They also have far less violence in general. Without guns there will be less GUN violence but that says nothing about violence, and murder, in all it's forms.
What does that say about the comparison? To me it says guns aren't the problem - they are only a tool for the insane to use. Given that there are many, many other tools, some far more deadly, putting all our efforts to removing guns, one after another, from one person after another, isn't going to help. The number of corpses with bullet holes may go down, but the total murders will not fall appreciably. We will have paid a price that is far to high for once again assuaging our conscience that "well, we tried, doing the same thing that didn't work before!".Before you get on your usual tack, please see page 11 of the linked report. Can you still tell me that being stabbed with Sterling silver pickle forks has the same lethality as firearms? Note the preferred method of one to dispatch another from this world.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdfI'm going to try to stick with what is supported in research rather than make my own assumptions.
In the years after the assault weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from mass shootings fell, and the increase in the annual number of incidents slowed down. The 1994-2004 period saw lower average annual rates of both mass shootings and deaths resulting from such incidents than before the ban’s inception.
From 2004 onward:
The data shows an almost immediate and steep rise in mass shooting deaths in the years after the assault weapons ban expired in 2004.
What's shocking to me is that so many in this country are ok with turning a blind eye to this issue. Just because you can't solve the entire issue of ALL forms of violence doesn't mean we should give up entirely on doing what we can to make a more safe society.
Why do we lock our doors at night? Someone determined to break into your house will find a way. So why use locks?
To slow them down and possibly prevent them from doing the harm they intend. Anyone who thinks reasonable gun controls won't make a difference, then stop locking your doors at night. Same principle.
And you don't have to imagine if a ban on assault weapons will make a difference. We had one. It worked. A republican president put a stop to it.
At the time the second amendment was written it gave you the right to a crossbow and single-shot rifle. Oh, yes, and a cannon if you have one.
I an outsider...and I'm still listening to the argumentum ad hominem.
First I am a supporter of the 2nd Amendment, own four shotguns - 12, 20, 28 gauge, and a .410 bore for skeet shooting, but support reasonable gun laws. Also, all four of them are registered on USMC base Camp Pendleton, which is required to bring them on board base where I shoot skeet at times.
That said, in my view, much about gun violence is that that is propagated by the media using sensationalizing strategies to obtain viewership or online views. By that, I don't mean the rise in mass shootings/murders doesn't justify it not being brought to public attention, but it voids the fact that mass shootings/murders are a small percentage of gun deaths. That along with assault rifles being the main culprit has always been the case is false - 74.6% are with a handgun. But, most days of the week the local news has a situation where there is gun violence in metro San Diego and the county, so it is prominent.
Mass Shooting Factsheet by the Rockefeller Institute of Government
https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass- … -factsheet
Gun Violence Archive for 2023
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
I do think at this time, reasonable gun laws on the books and some to be added like red flag laws are both justified and prudent. With red flag laws, an interesting and informative article I discovered and read is; [i]Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories[/url] offers much to consider. Perhaps such information will lead to further study of the whys of mass shootings to prevent them.
A paragraph from it states:
"Interviews . . .
The research team cautioned that the qualitative data, from five interviews, did not lend themselves to generalization, because each individual’s story is unique. There was no single profile of a person who engaged in a mass shooting, but the interviewed mass shooters shared the following traits:
Early childhood trauma and exposure to violence.
An identifiable grievance or crisis point.
Validation of beliefs — finding inspiration in past shootings by others.
The means to carry out an attack.
(Note; The validation of belief part . . . is it because there are growing number of mass shootings itself a cause for furthering its rise? If not on TV all over the place would it decline?)
The article link follows and was by the National Institute of Justice
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/pub … -shootings"We have a Right to Life", Amen and hear, hear, on that, we are in agreement.
"My argument is that the rights of people to be free of gun violence is not secondary to the rights of people to bear arms."
I think this is relative to "the Right to Life" debate.
One could also argue that a baby's Right to Life "is not secondary" to an adult's so-called right, to abort them.
I believe that the day we decided, here in America, that it was justifiable to take "the Right to Life" away from the most innocent {a baby}, all while giving pass after pass after pass to the most guilty criminals, a nail was put in our coffin.
It has caught up with us and we are now suffering the consequences.
An interesting Chart shows gun deaths over the past 7 years. Please visit the link to see 2023 Gun violence stats... Look like this year many records will be broken. Just three months in and we see 10,229 deaths that have been attributed to Gun violence.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
So Why? Does this point to more of a serious societal problem than a gun problem?
It would seem to me we have more than a gun problem, but a problem where some individuals will pick up a gun and have no problem killing another human being.Increasingly lax laws on gun ownership and safety? Also, the last few years have shown states rolling back and weakening gun safety laws. Tennessee is a perfect example. Some states are actively making it easier and quicker to obtain a gun.
Offering an article to read at your leisure is; The Mind of the Mass Murderer . . . Understanding the motivations won't be enough to prevent the crimes ."
It appeared in Psychology Today, May 30, 2014. So, one may recognize it has been studied and from such studies, the cause for Red Flag laws has scholastic support from experts that the public does not know or refuses to recognize.
One paragraph about mass murderers reads;
"Aggrieved and entitled, he longs for power and revenge to obliterate what he cannot have. Since satisfaction is unobtainable lawfully and realistically, the mass murderer is reduced to violent fantasy and pseudo-power. He creates and enacts an odious screenplay of grandiose and public retribution. Like the child who upends the checkerboard when he does not like the way the game is going, he seeks to destroy others for apparent failures to recognize and meet his needs. Fury, deep despair, and callous selfishness eventually crystalize into fantasies of violent revenge on a scale that will draw attention. The mass murderer typically expects to die and frequently does in what amounts to a mass homicide-personal suicide. He may kill himself or script matters so that he will be killed by the police.
However, the author of the study also says;
"Dr. Knoll's clarification above on the demographic and psychological factors helps explain what motivates the mass murderer.
Now that we know what mass murderers look like, can we use this knowledge to prevent them from becoming mass murderers?
For the most part, the answer is a disappointing "no" because it is just not possible to find needles in haystacks."I think I can safely say we see a great growing dissatisfaction with the ideologies in America. We see a great division, and a growing inability to accept or understand "the other's point of view". We see conversations become personal and at times inappropriate, where one personally verbally attacks the other.
So, has our ability to reason become somewhat impaired? Many in society feel emboldened to say --- it's my way or the highway... Can this attitude be attributed to an individual feeling justified in committing
a horrific crime? Especially, in a person that has mental problems, to begin with.
I truely believe red flag laws would somewhat help diminish mass shootings committed by people with clear mental problems.
Myself, I feel that gun violence has grown due to societal problems. Too many to mention.
Off on a different tangent to add to the conversation
There is the position of those having knowledge of weapons in general or the ‘responsible’ gun owner’s knowledge. And, there is the average Joe that may have never held a gun or seen one and now wants to own one for whatever purpose.
Have any looked deeply into the marketing techniques for assault rifles? Or, watch videos about them on YouTube or in advertising? I have. So, though yes, they are just as powerful as a Ruger .223 Predator, they are not marketed in the same way. The purpose must be considered and different minds can interpret it in different ways.
The Predator is a field/farm/rancher weapon and is marketed as such. The assault weapon is marketed with pictures and videos showing a military aggressor using one and/or using terminology in the ad such as a sniper rifle. What would a person infer that to mean? Certainly not varmint hunting as I see it for Mr. Average. One possibility is self-defense. Let me emphasize, 'one' of many.
One article may give pause for thought why mass shooters choose an assault rifle for their insane actions. Though it is from the Democratic perhaps alarmist side, it brings about relevant information to consider especially with mass murderers.
These 5 gun ads are alarming critics, changing laws
Could gun ads go the way of Joe Camel from the cigarette industry? Gun safety groups say now is the time to restrict content for firearm marketing.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/ … 347606002/
What I am trying to say, though may not be accepted, is, yes, an assault rifle is an inanimate object and its usage is determined by the user. And, yes, a larger percentage of the time it is for target shooting. But, the marketing campaigns feed on the psychology of ‘all’ customers based on research with the purpose of total sales seeking a profit. Simple capitalism, right?
An analogy is how the performance car/truck parts industry markets to the shall we say 'ego' of the car/truck owner wanting something more than average or typical stock performance. In my automotive career, I have sold and done truck lifts for people who never went off-road. Many times on two-wheel drive trucks. In other words, it was overkill, no pun intended."What I am trying to say, though may not be accepted, is, yes, an assault rifle is an inanimate object and its usage is determined by the user. And, yes, a larger percentage of the time it is for target shooting. But, the marketing campaigns feed on the psychology of ‘all’ customers based on research with the purpose of total sales seeking a profit. Simple capitalism, right?"
I could not agree more --- Subliminal advertising is and has been dangerous to society for decades. However, the ads have become more than subliminal, they have become clear, and enticing."One article may give pause for thought why mass shooters choose an assault rifle for their insane actions."
This one statement is very true in more ways than one. Consider that it not says the obvious, but that mass shooters are murderers in their own mind before they choose a weapon.
If they cannot get that special weapon they want they will still be murderers-to-be. The gun changes nothing.But shouldn't we make it more diilfficult at the very point of choosing "that" weapon" ??
Wilderness, I sent this to you earlier, was your lack of response mere oversight or was it avoiding information that definitively shot down your assessment of the issue?
-------------
Before you get on your usual tack, please see page 11 of the linked report. Can you still tell me that being stabbed with Sterling silver pickle forks has the same lethality as firearms? Note the preferred method of one to dispatch another from this world.
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdfSorry, Credence, I didn't see it. Just as well - it is "page not found".
But I will say that if the pickle fork kills you then it is exactly the same lethality as a gun.
How about you - is a nuclear bomb the same lethality as a bullet?Here it is again, you have got to see this...
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdf
Page 11Saw page 11, which was revealing. Booked marked for the future.
This document has the stats on all things related to gun violence and death. I think it dispels a lot of myths. Everyone should take a look.
It does dispel one myth: that mental health isn't a major driver of gun homicide deaths. I hadn't realized that suicides are typically the largest contributor to gun deaths. My focus had been on the mental health issues of public shooters—like the most recent private school incident.
Since we don't have 'Minority Report' capabilities that would allow us to screen out mentally troubled folks the only workable solution is to ban all guns.
It is a cold evaluation, but that would restrict 100% of the population for the benefit of 0.000075% of it.
GAYou are 100% correct/right about mental health is not the main driver for gun violence and gun deaths themselves much less violence itself. To support that peek at the article next linked. It states "studies show that mental illness contributes to only about 4% of all violence". It is from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
The Truth About Mental Health and Gun Violence
https://namica.org/advocacy/criminal-ju … -violence/
Some Too Much Information from the study they linked to is the conclusion from it as follows:
"We do not know in advance the specific form and features of the most effective policies that will address the national problem of gun violence and suicide at its interface with mental health problems, services, and systems. We do know that such policies must work together to target the diverse web of causal pathways that are involved with the problem, and we do know that the strategy must balance a commitment to public safety and respect for persons with serious mental illness as well as the constitutionally protected rights of lawful gun owners [92]. Policies must be pursued, which do not further stigmatize individuals with serious mental illness or discourage them from seeking mental health treatment. Evidence is clear that the large majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violence against others, and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness. However, psychiatric disorders, such as depression, are strongly implicated in suicide, which accounts for more than half of gun fatalities. An emphasis on time-sensitive risk for violence or suicide, as the foundation of evidence-based criteria for prohibiting firearms access, would be a more productive policy approach to prevent gun violence than focusing broadly on mental illness diagnoses and a record of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization at any time in one's life."
Edit: I just discovered an interesting interactive graph by the CDC showing the Top Ten Leading Causes of Death in the U.S. for Ages 1-44 from 1981-2020. Of course, suicide and homicide are among them. Interestingly enough suicide began in 5th and homicide 3rd. In 2020 suicide is 2nd and homicide is 3rd. It is not specific to guns as a cause, yet we probably can connect the dots to some extent.
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/anim … auses.htmlAlso, remember that the United States has similar rates of mental illness to other countries but much higher rates of gun violence.
I think that it clears up a great deal, Colton, thanks
Cred,
Interesting study.
I noted out of the 45,222 gun deaths only 14,384 were homicides.
Some interesting things it left out.
1. It failed to mention the most gun homicides against black men are committed by other black men.
2. It did not work in the "defund the police" movement. That has played a major role in the increase in gun violence in the United States.
3. There was no mention of legal guns vs illegal gun usage. This is a huge and important statistic. Most homicides are committed with illegal guns. These are guns that laws cannot prevent from being used.
The report seems a little biased to me and lacking in some important information.As I see it, it should be noted that 24,292 were suicide thus exceeding homicides. And, whites exceed blacks immensely. I say that with a focus on mental health, especially considering the person's age. The graph was revealing.
Mike, I am more focused on the manner of homicides.
Wilderness and I have been debating this topic for some time.
It was the usual argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
the gun was just another tool in the box no more significant than the Bowie knife. The availability and quantity of firearms have no relationship to the amount of violent homicides. Well, I begged to differ.
Well, I am going to provide a hypothetical. If all guns were banned, tell your right wing buddies not to blow a gasket, this is just hypothetical, do you really think that the current homicide rate would be as high? Firearms are responsible for almost 75 percent of homicides in 2020, can we really equate that with possible death by pickle fork or claw hammer?
The statistics regarding the methods used in homicides have nothing to do with race or ethnicity, defunding the police nor any of the other stuff right wings obsess over. With the stats that were provided, it is sort of difficult to say that there can be no correlation between the sheer number of homicides and the availability of firearms to accomplish them.
It blows holes in so much of the right wing reasoning supporting a society inundated with firearms. From that standpoint, the report spot on and I have no reason to believe that bias is involved.Aren't the answers right in front of us?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/worl … itain.html
Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway: All had a culture of gun ownership, and all tightened restrictions anyway. Their violence statistics now diverge sharply from those of the U.S.
"Gun safety measures don't work". They ARE working in many places around the world.Well, while we do not have to be as draconian nor absolute about gun possession as shown by countries within Europe and British Commonwealth, we surely can come away a bit further from the opposite extreme of an “open shooting gallery”.
Exactly. Sadly, far to many of our Republican politicians are OWNED by the NRA.
"it is sort of difficult to say that there can be no correlation between the sheer number of homicides and the availability of firearms to accomplish them."
I would counter with the fact that there are over 300 million people who live in the United States. Over 50% own at least one firearm and many own more than one. Those sheer numbers should indicate the number of responsible gun owners in the United States.
I think if all the guns were taken away we'd have a drastic increase in the number of stabbing deaths like the have in the UK.
"The number of people killed with a knife in England and Wales in 2021/22 was the highest on record for 76 years."
According to a report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of people killed with a knife in England and Wales in 2021/22 was the highest on record for 76 years.
The ONS said the recent increase was driven by an 18% rise in the number of male victims, from 184 to 218, in the 12 months to March 2022.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/l … 59248.htmlI am not saying that most gun owners are not responsible. But, I am saying that 75 percent of homicides in America are caused by firearms.
I can't believe, presuming that all firearms were eliminated tomorrow that the horrendous homicide rate that firearms contribute to would be replaced by knives, bludgeon instruments, bombs, poisons or what have you. The nature of the statistics and the sheer magnitude of the relevance of firearms as part of this does not make sense. The increase in knife violence in Britain is rather small in comparison. So,we cannot compare apples with hand granades, Mike.
This is unique to the United States alone.
Many of the recent mass shootings and school shootings were bought legally.
That link has good solid information, however, it only covers stats about 2020. The problem has truly gotten much worse in the past 3 years.
Check out current stats to ascertain what has been going on for the past three years. Any thoughts on why we are seeing so many more violent gun crimes, and suicides?
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
2023, and only three months in. These stats predict record-breaking years for deaths by gun.
PUBLISHED DATE: April 01, 2023
Total Number of GV Deaths - ALL Causes 10,445
Mass Shootings 131
Homicide/Murder/Unintentional/DGU1 4,439
Suicide 6,006States are actively rolling back laws related to gun safety. Many have made guns much easier to obtain. Tennessee currently is considering and will likely pass permitless open carry of any type of gun for 18 year olds.
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Guns were banned during Trump's speech at the NRA conference. What's good for the goose???
I don't know, I'm just as uncomfortable with the thought of people openly carrying guns at the grocery store. I want the same circumstances Trump gets.In a world of ubiquitous availability and access to firearms, you allow people to express rage at any slight with a lethal response.
Madness is a reality the world over, it is just that here, people are free to express it in terms of body counts.
In Texas there has been talk of allowing college students concealed carry privileges. I can’t think of anything more dangerous, 18 years olds learning to properly manage gasoline, alcohol and now gunpowder…Everyone should take a look.
https://youtu.be/M40IpOzU9H4Cred,
And yet, at 18, I operated some of the most dangerous weapons in the Army. I knew about M16's, 9mm handguns, rocket launchers, artillery, tanks and more. I've owned guns since I was eleven years old. So, age really has nothing to do with it. There are people in their late twenties and early 30s and beyond who aren't mature enough to have a firearms.I am more than confident, Mike, that you have met every standard and know what are your doing.
Age is a component, I generally do not give responsibility and privilege to 12 years olds that I would an adult. It is a crazy to think that minors are the equivalent to an average adult in maturity, experience, judgement and reasoning. The law does not allow me to hold minors accountable and responsible for what they do in the same way adults are, thus their perogatives and privileges are limited. And that is the way it should be.
People are unhinged here and making it easy to arm everyone to the teeth will just make certain that inevitable altercations can now prove potentially lethal.
This Dodge City attitude is a state of de-evolving, this incessant fear of always having to prepare oneself to shoot or be shot is a negative one associated with less sophisticated people and primitive thinking.
In this facet, Europe is ahead of us.
I think you grabbed onto the point of my comment. I am just looking for why gun violence has gone up in the past years. Your sentiment makes sense, and certainly could play a part in why we have an increase in gun crimes
It's gone up because there are now more guns in America than people. They are everywhere and easy to get and use.
DeSantis just signed HB 543 into law, which will allow Floridians to carry a concealed firearm without the need for a permit.
Who does this benefit? How does this help society?
Happy to see the young people of Tennessee walk out of school by the thousands today to yet again descend on the capitol. We can only hope this group, motivated by the desire not to to killed at school, will make a difference."Who does this benefit? How does this help society?"
Wrong question. The right one is "how does it hurt". Given that murderers and criminals in general will do it with or without the law means it is only those law abiding citizens that will be affected. With that in mind, how does it hurt society to increase freedoms?I think, very simply put, making it as easy as possible for sick individuals to carry guns is putting the rest of us at risk. I, for one, am tired of my rights bring subverted by "gun rights". Second amendment rights are not absolute and they aren't set in stone. Our Constitution is and was always intended to be a living document that could be changed, hence the amendments. It's time for change. Children shouldn't be gunned down at school because we think it's more important to put guns in the hands of anyone who wants one regardless of permit, background check or mental status.
It doesn't appear that you have studied the matter either, simply pulling the fear generated by the left into your mind and running with it.
I suggest you do an in-depth study of those things I mentioned. If done with an open, questioning mind it quickly becomes obvious that while America has a large problem with violence, it isn't generated by guns and it isn't caused by guns.
Of course, if you are accepting of corpses without bullet holes then you are right - the guns need to go. Personally I don't like the whole corpses thing at all but people ARE different and have different concepts and desires.Well, Wilderness, you continue to overlook information I provided earlier in this thread that takes your ideas about violence and its relations to gun ownership and availability to the rubbish heap. There is no 404 this time, so why not take a look and then grace us all with your sage observations?
What is the source? (Not going to search back over a dozen pages looking for your post, but always looking for new information in the field)
Here is your new information, page 11, if you please...
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdf
Not to mention the surplus of weapons which will go to the Government!?! But, that's not scary at all...especially when students aren't being taught history in many schools, only how to be a good activist.
What do you mean by "surplus of weapons?"
Wonder how many of those kids have studied the supposed correlation and causal effect of owning a gun on homicide rates. How many have studied what tools are commonly used to murder with, both in the US and abroad. How many have deeply considered long term results of removing guns from our society vs what they can reasonably expect homicide rates to do if they accomplish the goal? How many have looked at examples of other countries and compared the results there with what they expect of Americans if they are successful.
How many of those students are reacting from fear rather than reason? And how many of them have already given up their own weapons vs how many just want others to be controlled?
Sharlee, as I told Mike I was more in emphasis of the manner of homicides in this society and the 2020 stats serves as a good example.
But, as for the rising crime since 2020, who is to blame?
It certainly is not the President of the United States as this problem is generally localized at the municipal level.
Conservatives associate crime with Democrat run cities. The only problem with that reasoning is Democrats are mayors in about 90 percent of the top urban areas in (30) population. So, maybe instead of blaming crime or rising crime on Democrats we might consider that a large city by its very definition is going to have more crime problems than a small one or that in a comparably rural locale.Your thought about considering that Democrat-run cities will naturally have more crime because they have more people needs a qualifier: they will 'potentially' have more crime because they have more people. That still leaves the difference between 'will have' and 'potentially will have' being how crime is handled.
Even with so few Republican-led big cities to compare, I recall that the 'more people' thought didn't hold up. It can't change that city management is the difference between have and could have.
GAWhat of the idea that there are more opportunities for crime in larger cities as well as more enticing benefits to commit certain crimes. Also the idea of a lowered probability of arrest in large urban areas. Less recognizability in a bustling area? Anonymity. I don't know, if I want to rob a store I probably wouldn't do it on Main St. USA for all those reasons. I think small towns have some inherent protective factors in terms of crime that have little to do with their governance.
I think that was Cred's point. The more concentrated the population the more opportunity and more pressure on human instincts to commit crimes. Even with that truism the 'difference' is still management.
To think otherwise is to say that the big cities are being managed as best they can be regardless of who might be managing them. I don't think that's right.
GAOf course governance has an impact but so do a multitude other other factors. I think that far too many people today want to pin it all on the one who runs the city while ignoring all the variables that affect crime. I think we like simple answers in America.
Who else but the leadership would you blame? If all those 'other' aspects are the same regardless of who is leading, and choosing that leader is the only controllable variable, then the leadership must be responsible for any changes—good or bad.
If that's a fair perspective, my reference to Top 'X' lists in another comment does seem to argue in the favor of Republican leadership being more effective.
GAI'm not sure if comparing our largest cities to small towns gives an accurate picture of of what's happening in either place. Both are dealing with some of the same challenges but on a different scale.
Is it as simple as taking the mayor of Uber-safe Yorktown NY and install him to the mayor's office in Memphis and their crime stats would decrease in good time? That is assuming he's a Republican? But what if Yorktowns Mayor is a Democrat?? How could Yorktown maintain it's rating as one of the safest towns in America? An anomaly that a very safe small and midsize towns are lead by Democratic mayor's?. Leadership , IMO does and can make a difference but city size is also an important factor.
is true that large cities do have more crime. And they do have more Democrats But it’s a classic example of correlation without evidence of causality.
Research seems to support the idea that violence stems from a small percentage of the population and geography in a city, so connecting that to the overall politics is a stretch at best.
Studies have repeatedly found that urban crime is not a widespread phenomenon but a product of small groups of people in small areas.
Across an array of large cities, 1% of city streets account for about 25% of the crime, and 5% of streets account for about 50% of the crime.
But if we want to link violence to party politics: California’s homicide stats show that in fact, as noted by Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria, some of the worst murder rates in the state were recorded in the most politically conservative counties.
Also surprising to learn that on a per capita basis, controlling for differences in population size, the homicide rate in Republican led Bakersfield (Leader McCarty's district) in 2020 was more than double that of San Francisco.
Ultimately, I think crime stats are much more complex than attributing them completely to a political party.
Looking at the issue of "city management" for the few largest cities that have Republican mayors, for example, I don't see any difference that would give one the impression that Republican governance means less crime. Miami and Fort Worth are run by Republican mayors.
I don't see any GOP example that they have any better handle on the issue short of bashing Democrats....You got me. I don't think my recall is wrong, but I'm too lazy to revisit those comparisons to defend it.
If the perspective is that all comparable big cities have a similar crime standing—both in actual stats and demographics, regardless of which party is running it (your message), then ideologically-driven policy changes (of both sides) won't make much difference (again, your point).
If I got that right, then that's nuts. A Google scan of compiled lists (media content, not 'official' organizational stats, it was a scan, not research) that come up with Top 10 (or 15 or 20) lists are very different. The Top X most dangerous are almost all Democrat-led and the Top X safest are almost all Republican-led.
If it all boils down to the management style of leadership (aka R vs D), those lists tell the story.
Here's the scan that reinforced my perspective: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=20+most+dange … amp;ia=web
GAHere's my data, so let's compare
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of … crime_rate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of … ted_States
These charts can be adjusted, the 50 largest cities by population. you can see which of the Largest cities have Democrat or Republican mayors. And which of those cities have the greatest crime rate, Oklahoma City and Tulsa don't count as they are not major metropolises.
If you look at crime rates, per capital, New York City has an overall lower rate than many others in the Top 30, an unexpected find.
Looking at both lists, I don't see Republicans as any better.GA, I'm sorry. I encounter a scam(?) error!
I never in any of my comments on this thread brought Washington politics into the conversation. I simply put out feelers to ascertain why others here feel gun violence and suicide is on the rise.
Some users did pick up on my train of thought. I shared I feel the increase is due to new ideologies, as well as psychological problems, and societal problems.
I in no respect pointed out that any president or political party is responsible for what we are seeing in rising gun violence. To be honest, I have not researched the Democratic versus Republican demographics or the stats on Democratic Goverend states versus republican run states.
Here is where I jumped into this conversation, I hope you will have a look at how the conversation progressed. https://hubpages.com/politics/forum/358 … ost4288171Thanks Sharlee, I remember the chart. Over all the period where these stats were being measured crime rates fluxuated. I would not even want to hazard a guess as to why.
"It would seem to me we have more than a gun problem, but a problem where some individuals will pick up a gun and have no problem killing another human being"
It is probably a bit of both. We all had been hit hard by the pandemic and economic uncertainty..
Hey . . . what about the crime rate where you live? Interested? Use the link following for your zip code and read the report.
Crime by Zip Code by CrimeGrade.org
https://crimegrade.org/crime-by-zip-code/
Here this link is for states and major metro cities
https://crimegrade.org/crime-in-my-area/
and, here is the main landing page
https://crimegrade.org/I posted those at a crime rate discussion many moons ago too. I think most people 'may' go to it and when opening it will stop at the letter grade. Yes, it is an auto report, but the stats provided later as you scroll are significant. The same with the states and metro cities it is the stats later in the report that offers the opportunity to compare/contrast.
'There are people in their late twenties and early 30s and beyond who aren't mature enough to have a firearms.'
And yet, the right makes policy that freely allows those same people unlimited access to those firearms, despite knowing full well that they should not have them.The same thinking could apply to driving a vehicle. There are some who are mature and responsible at 16. There are others who are reckless, get DUIs even into their 30s, 40s and beyond.
How? Both parties are in agreement that those who drive recklessly should have their ability to drive revoked. Only in the guns situation, do many red states advocate giving guns to untrained or potentially impaired users.
Is it possible you've never purchased a gun from a gun store?
The one I've use have always offered safety training. Some include it with the purchase of a gun. Don't put this on people who are responsible gun owners.Not sure your argument about whether I have personally purchased a gun really invalidates states leaving gun regulation laws as lax.
As to safety, having it offered is much different than requiring it. Is the safety training required? Absolutely not, and that is the point. Do you need to pass the safety training to continue on to gun ownership? Absolutely not. Therefore, in those states, the government doesn't care if you are qualified or not to own and use a lethal tool.We have states allowing open & concealed carry with no licence, no permit and no background checks for private sales. The government in certain states not only doesn't care if you're properly trained, they don't even care if you're of sound mind.
Many appear to equate automotive training to gun training as if cars are intentionally used to murder and learning to drive will eliminate those murders.
The point is that safety training does NOT remove the desire to kill from an insane person. It only makes them more effective. And no, that does not mean that people should not have gun training any more than it means they should not be trained to drive a car.
How is it defined by the law, though?
As consistent standard is to be applied, do we let everyone drive at 14 because a rare few may be exceptionally mature?
If your exception can be treated as an adult at 16, why should not other kids at the same age have this right.
Conservatives, by their very nature, always presume that the law should accept the premise that some people are more equal than others without a objective way to distinguish a discernible difference.That the fear mongers have not been active, explaining that the cars on the road are actually military tanks, ready to destroy cities, might play a part here.
Let the left convince people that others are driving military weapons on the roads and we could see cars banned, too.
Where do you think they will go when they are taken away from law-abiding citizens?
No one is advocating taking away your guns. Maybe though, just maybe we could have some measures to insure that sick individuals who want to kill school children don't have quick and easy access to the method to do it. Again, your gun rights do not supercede my rights and the rights of 9 year olds to live. The second amendment isn't absolute. I don't want or agree with permitless carry. I'm VERY HAPPY to see the young people in Tennessee speaking out for their lives. Gen z is showing is they aren't going to roll over and let government do whatever they want . I'm sure you would like your grandchildren to have some safety attending school. The shooter in Nashville completely shot out the entry door in seconds. Plus, Tennessee has virtually no gun laws so when the mother of this maniac wanted to report her as a danger and a person who shouldn't have a gun there was NO one to go to. No red flag laws. Guess those lives were just the price we pay so that this lunatic could have her gun rights. Not in my book. Selective rage?? I'm baffled by the far right idea that the ONLY positions on guns in this country are the absolute free and unrestricted access to literally everyone or some government goon shows up at you door to forcefully take your legally owned gun. Really?? Is there NOTHING in between?
"The second amendment isn't absolute. I don't want or agree with permitless carry."
Just curious, but why? Given that only law abiding citizens that would never murder anyone will be affected, while murderers will carry with or without the law, why does it matter? Is it just a matter of controlling others - you wish to exert control without any benefit for anyone?You can be shot by anyone for anything. What gives you this idea of law abiding citizens verses criminal definitions being set in stone?
People misuse and overreact, "standing their ground" and all the rest of the nonsensical themes that run through red states.
Conservatives deny facts that are not to their liking and want to alter facts when they become inconvenient. It is part of the "Because, I said so", anti-intellectual attitudes defining today's rightwinger.You didn't even come close to explaining why permitless carry is harmful, just deflecting to partisan politics.
Try again?So you have no problem with everybody and anybody being able to carry a firearm without a license, background checks or anything more involved than buying a banana split at the malt shop?
This reflects alternate ideological poles that i believe cannot coexist as they currently are.
Yes, the idea is that sane law abiding citizens can purchase guns. The ones who want to kill children and people at the grocery store should probably be restricted . Seems like a no brainer to me. I'm for protecting kids not lunatics .
Will the surviving children of the Nashville shooting ever be able to escape the sound of 153 bullets being fired?How do you tell the difference? And how do you guarantee that gun buyers will remain sane? No doctor will deny that they cannot predict who will kill, so how would YOU find those people?
These aren't reasons to forgo measures at the point of gun sale. I don't buy the argument that we should throw our hands up in fultility and say this individual may become unbalanced at some point so why bother making sure he's balanced before we let him purchase guns. No, we can't make predictions but we do have the responsibility to determine to the best of our ability that we are selling guns to stable people. Also, the red flag laws would give those who have seen troubling behavior or have concerns with an individuals mental state a place to bring those concerns as well as a mechanism to deal with those concerns.
So we can't make predictions on whether someone would kill, but we should still do a mental test to see if the will kill.
You realize how silly that sounds?
Yes, red flag laws sound like a very good thing...until the potential for abuse is considered, and how often that would be."So we can't make predictions on whether someone would kill, but we should still do a mental test to see if the will kill."
No but background checks can uncover issues related to mental health. I don't believe there is any test to determine if someone "will kill" but I do know there is a commonly used test to determine if someone is currently a danger to themselves or others. At the very least the fact that an individual has documented mental health issues or disorders should factor into their ability to purchase a gun. If you're a known schizophrenic hearing voices, I don't want a gun in your hand.
"Potential" for abuse of Red flag laws does not outweigh benefit in my view. We also have penalties for those who abuse laws or act in purposefully deceptive ways.
I recall some past debates on gun laws.
In particular how in states like NY if you use a gun to defend yourself in your own home, it will be you, not the criminal who broke in and attacked you in your home, that would be arrested and sued.
Here is another story out of NY that is pretty despicable:
https://youtu.be/SbwEf6asuIo'In particular how in states like NY if you use a gun to defend yourself in your own home, it will be you, not the criminal who broke in and attacked you in your home, that would be arrested and sued.'
This is a complete fabrication which in past debates on this thread was debunked, but which the poster refuses to accept the true reality.
To the scrap pile, melted down for steel. At least that's what Australia did.
You obviously didn't read my thoughts on this early on in this discussion.
I can surely see the historical truth and present reality of a society inundated with firearms....
I think this is fearmongering. It's the tactic used by the NRA.
Their mission seems to center more and more on boosting the profits of gun manufacturers, so it’s no surprise that they want as many guns as possible in the hands of Americans. These are exactly the type of fear based messaging strategies. often employed by dictators. The NRA uses the "they're coming for your guns." message to advance its gun rights narrative within the country..
It's an organization that continues to divide people based on lies and fear. It villifies those who want common sense gun safety measures solely for the purpose of lining their pockets as well as gun manufacturers and Republican politicians.
No one wants to disarm Americans but a lot of us out here have had it with our rights being superceded by gun rights so that these people can get rich.I need to go back and check, did you ever respond to my question about a baby's rights being superceded by the so-called right to kill them? Don't remember seeing it Colton. And yes it is relevant to this particular thread.
Baby - a very young child, especially one newly or recently born. Your definition of baby is being confused with the definition of a fetus. Until the debate is settled about when someone gains their rights (conception or birth), your question is a matter of opinion.
Do you really not have access to the internet to answer that question?
Opinions on the definition of a fetus? You're kidding, right?
Sadly, science has become debatable these days.
This is a discussion for another thread.
I too would be interested V, in your opinion, what is a fetus?
Does no one on the right own a dictionary? I did not supply an opinion for the definition of baby, but took it from a dictionary. Why would I have an opinion on the word fetus either?
Can there be any real differences here? Does opinion even enter the scene with such a well defined term?
Aren't you really asking if a fetus is a person, with the rights of an adult? It is obviously alive (and no, I don't think anyone would claim it is dead), but is it a person?Actually this line of questioning began with a baby and morphed into a fetus, so the initial point I was attempting to make, fell short.
I don't want to divert this thread toward the Abortion issue. I think your argument would hinge on when life begins. Also bodily autonomy issues, constitutional privacy rights issues. It's complex. But if you'd like to link the gun rights issue and abortion:
Some Judges and legal scholars have also put forth the idea that a woman’s “right to abortion,” is analogous to the right to bear arms.
At its core, each protected right is held by the individual: the right to decide to have an abortion and the right to have and use firearms.
You can make a case either way. Many of the arguments made for gun rights can also be used for abortion rights.
Additionally, I do believe we all have an inalienable right, that is supported by our founders, to safety in our daily lives from the dangers of those who are allowed to have guns when they clearly should not.Do you also believe you have an inalienable right, supported by our founders, to safety in our daily lives from being mugged? From being killed with a car? A pipe bomb? Do we have an inalienable right, never to be violated, to not get sick from fellow citizens? To not drown when our boat sinks?
Nature gives you an "inalienable" right to die, and government cannot give you any more. It can try, but that's all, and for every one of a vast list of "human rights" someone else has their rights taken from them."Do you also believe you have an inalienable right, supported by our founders, to safety in our daily lives from being mugged? From being killed with a car? A pipe bomb?
Yes, I sure do. and that's why we have laws and regulations around all the areas you mentioned. We don't simply say muggings are inevitable so why have laws regarding them?
I don't buy into the idea that if you can't curb ALL crime, ALL the time then why bother with preventative measures.
Actually what the dictators do is take away the guns.
Just to give you an example, before the socialist government was first elected here in Brazil in 2000 violent crime existed but was not a major issue. Most people could walk on the streets without fear.
They started taking away guns in 2004. The murder rate went up until a conservative goverment started rolling back the laws to allow citizens to end guns. The murder rate started falling and then another socialist was elected.
He took office in January of this year so I do not yet have any statistics on the current murder rate. I can tell you that people are now afraid to walk around with the smart phones as the new president said if commits an armed robbery to steal a phone, as long as it is just to buy food and have a beer, it is not a crime.
It is much worse in countries like Venezuela where the government took away the guns before crushing free speech. If you live in Venezuela now you are likely to die from starving to death but if you complain about it you can die even quicker when the armed government come to shut you up.
You complain about guns but when a new government is elected that does not agree with your views. and decides to lock you up for making your voice heard, do you not feel like you should be able to defend yourself?Thank you Doc, many people never seem to learn, especially difficult, when education has become indoctrination.
I read your comment about carrying your gun in your purse. I keep my shotgun out to protect my sheep from feral dogs but do lock away my handgun when my grandkids are present. I wonder if those that are against the ownership of guns, like the person you were replying to, can not understand that there are reasons citizens own these tools and that we all have different requirements for safe handling.
Concerning the gun in the purse, If you own a gun, you’re more likely to get shot than if you don’t own a gun. That’s a simple fact. I can give study after study but using a gun for self-defense doesn’t mean you’re less likely to get hurt, it means you’re more likely to get hurt. The NRA’s myths around gun ownership gloss over the dangers of gun ownership. The American Journal of Public Health found that the odds of an assault victim being shot increased 4.5 times if they carried a gun, and the odds of them being killed increased 4.2 times...often by their OWN gun.
People here want some basic safety measures to at least reduce the risk of being murdered by a lunatic that was able to quickly purchase a gun with little to no restriction. That's all. No one is calling to disarm EVERYONE. That is simply fearmongering by the far right.I trained amd received my permit under a retired sheriff. The first statement he made to all of us:
"If you aren't willing to use your weapon to protect yourself and others against an intruder, a mass shooter, leave now."
One person got up and left. It isn't for everyone.If you do not own a gun, and someone sticks a gun in your face and pulls the trigger, you die. I can cite studies that prove that. That seems to be the alternative that you are suggesting we accept?
The left glosses over the fact that many times guns save lives as it does not count in the statistics that they like to qoute. Many new gun owners are women, but the left does not want to accept that many times rapists choose women just because they have no means to defend themselves. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/27/us/g … index.html
And yes, there are plenty of people on the left that are calling to disarm everyone. That is NOT fearmongering of the right. You may not want to disarm everyone but there are a lot out there that are trying to do just that.
Thank you for providing real world experience.
This morning, April 5, a crazed man went into a nursery school in one of the southern states here in Brazil and murdered four preschool age children with a hand axe.
Guns are not the problem. People that want to murder will use whatever they have available.I'd like to prevent as many people from being murdered, regardless of the method used by the perpetrator, as possible.
Good! We are on the same page then!
What can we look at to decrease the violence in our country? Does it come from video games? Violent sports like ice hockey or football? Modern day stress? Violent movies?
Where can we start to look at the causes of violence here?
And can use even a branch of a tree, or a more refined hockey stick, which is deadly on the head, and that can send one to the great beyond.
Yes, since the anti-gun advocates in the UK were successful they now want to eliminate knives. I think they will want to outlaw tree branches and hockey sticks after that proves not to stop murder.
Dr. Mark, I giggle. The other day I was watching a James Bond film. Yea, Bond was in Asia, in a locally made small canoe, on a river. A dim-wit try to sold Bond a stuff, apparently, to captured or kill Bond. Bond got up and serve him a leg kick to the chin. That sent the rogue to the great beyond! What I'm trying to get across is: should there be a law to stop the leg from kicking?
Doc, I have presented this page 11 of this report to rightwing gun oriented people and the silence in regard to any response has been deafening. Have I caught them with their britches down?
I present this to you and ask how this information weighs in to the idea that the gun and its availability have nothing to do with the horrendous homicide rates in America?
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdf
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/defa … 2022-b.pdfI am reading the recommendation section, and I noticed they suggest gun purchasing lisencing. I do not see anything about enforcing all of the other laws that are out there already. Why do so many criminals use a gun and then skate with very light sentences? There are many laws out there already, so why is not one of their recommendations "enforce existing gun laws".
This all comes down to the fact that this is not a gun issue. This is a murder issue. If someone wants to murder people, like that person I was referring to this morning in Santa Catarina, they will do so with whatever means they have available. In that case it was a hatchet, but I am sure if the guy had a handgun available it could be blamed on Bolsanaro and rising gun violence.
Why dont they come up with recommendations on how to reduce the murder rate? Could it be that they are employed by an anti-gun commitee and do not want to look for solutions on how to reduce murder? If one is shot and killed or clubbed and killed that person is still killed.
There is a lot more to comment on. The fact that Nebraska, where 40% of people own guns and there are no overbearing gun laws, has the same rate of gun violence as California, a state with laws that govern gun ownership and the ability to purchase ammunition.
There was also this statement " Young Black males
(15–34) are disproportionately impacted—although they represented 2% of the total population
in the U.S., they accounted for 38% of all gun homicide fatalities in 2020." Arent you concerned this kind of comment could be used to justify stricter gun control for black males?
They also point out "Elderly people ages 75 and older are at the highest risk for dying by gun suicide. They
had a gun suicide rate twice the national average." So are they recommending that elderly are not allowed to own guns?
The problem here is murder, not guns, which are a tool. Why is no one looking to decrease the amount of murders?You are missing the point, Doc.
I have been debating the merits of this argument for years with conservatives.
The statistic that I point to shows that 75 percent of homicides in America is done with a firearm. When it comes to homicide, the firearm is not just a tool, but THE tool.
Do you really believed that if all guns were banned tomorrow, homicides previously committed with firearms would be merely replaced by other methods and manner to anywhere near the same extent?
Firearms are the preferred choice because of the lethality, ease of application and ready availability, so why use anything else?
I am not talking about gun bans, I am driving holes in the ancient conservative arguments that the availability of the gun has no bearing on the expressions of violence in our society.
Looking at the sheer percentages combined with the hypothetical removal of firearms, it would not be unreasonable to consider that homicide rates would simply not be as high as they currently are.
Who would think that knifings, blunt instruments and poisons shown as insignificant causes on the graph would completely replace or even come close to the 75 percent attributed to firearms?No, if you banned all the handguns tomorrow there would not be as many gun deaths. If a woman were attacked by a bigger guy and pulled a knife to protect herself he could take it away from her and go ahead and rape her.
That would be one less gun death though. I guess we can all cheer for that.
Do you really believe that if someone wants to go murder children in some Tennessee christian school and does not have a gun they are going to say, "Wait, I may only be able to kill three or four instead of a full half dozen, so I think I better not go there."?I believe if all guns were banned tomorrow there would be less homicides, period. the 75 percent figure makes it pretty obvious regarding a strong correlation between firearms and homicides.
The are always the exceptions and the sensational examples from the other side, but would that be what you would expect as the rule?I believe that if someone goes into a school and kills 6 children, or even if they do not have a gun and are able to kill just 4, it is a tragedy.
Getting rid of guns is not going to end tragedy.You're going to tell me that if someone went into a TOPS in Buffalo with an axe or knife, that the body count wouldn't have been way less than if they used a rifle? The tragedy might not have ended, but it would not have been as severe, that's for certain.
How about if they drove a car bomb through the door and reduced the entire place, including the people, to kindling? Would that be better than fewer bodies, but with bullet holes?
Yes, I think you are correct. If he had only killed 5 instead of 10 would you consider it less of a tragedy?
While it may not eliminate the tragedy, it can reduce its proportions. That affair is Las Vegas a few years ago, where a bump stock shooter killed scores of people from a hotel room window. Could that have been accomplished in its immediacy and lethality with any combination of knives? Would any of other kind of weapon be as easy to employ?
Only guns allow people with minimum knowledge, training or elaborate prior preparation to kill that many people in an instant. We both know that, Doc."Would any of other kind of weapon be as easy to employ?"
Sure, and more deadly to boot. And you can list at least a half dozen if you are honest.I concede to you, yes, in fact there are more dangerous and deadly ways of massacre then to be mowed down by semi-automatic weapons.
There are nuclear bombs in suitcases, car attacks in mass, sarin, bombs, etc. But what is the weapons of choice for most assailants in these cases?
When I think back over the years, about mass killings over 5 people that did not involve a firearm, what were they? We had Oklahoma City in 1995, a meticulous plan involving trucks and explosive mixtures of fertilizers. This was not impromptu, McVeigh had to plan to acquire the materials, rent the vehicles and properly place it to do the most damage. What McVeigh did in 95 is not so easy today as transfer of large quantity of such materials are monitored by the government. So much for that idea.
Acquiring fissionable materials for a small nuclear bomb may prove hard to come by.
Can you kill 53 people with a moving vehicle? Probably yes, but the logistics and certainty success of such a plan is wanting. During the Charlottesville protest of 2017, only 1 person was killed as a result of a crazed Rightwinger plowing into a crowd with his car. Is that a good tool for creating mass casualties? I think not.
Every successful massacre, save for Oklahoma City or 9-11 in this country involved firearms, it is the tool of choice for a reason. And I still say that if all guns were hypothetically removed tomorrow, because all these more deadly methods are relatively more difficult to employ with ease and certainty, the homicide rate would fall.
So, Americans are not necessarily more violent, they simply have the ease of access to a tool that more civilized societies lack. As the tool of choice for Seventy Five percent of homicidal maniacs, it can't be wrong.
Some interesting reading material for you to peruse, if you can find the time...
https://www.americanprogress.org/articl … shootings/
And yet the statistics world wide show zero correlation between the number of guns in a society and the homicide rate. If removing guns produces less homicides, how can there be no correlation? Why don't fewer guns in a country produce fewer homicides in that country?
No. That's not correct. Don't you think they can use a hand bomb or poisonus gas canister?
'There are many laws out there already, so why is not one of their recommendations "enforce existing gun laws".
I am going to have to disagree with that. Here in America the trend is toward removing restrictions
Making it as easy and quick as possible to buy the gun of your choice.
Republicans in statehouses have been steadily expanding access to guns.
Republicans have pushed this year to remove background checks and roll back red-flag laws .
in Florida on Thursday, the Legislature approved a bill allowing the carrying of concealed weapons in most places, without a permit.
In 25 states, no permits are required to carry a handgun, nine more than in 2020.
“That has been the most rapid expansion of gun rights at the state level that we have seen,” said Jacob Charles, an associate professor who specializes in firearms law at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.
In Tennessee, the site of this week’s mass shooting, lawmakers have passed a series of measures that have weakened regulations, eliminating some permit requirements and allowing most residents to carry loaded guns in public, open or concealed, without a permit, training or special background checks.
We're going in the wrong direction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/n … -laws.html"In 25 states, no permits are required to carry a handgun, nine more than in 2020."
Tell me you do not believe that a killer on the rampage is going to care one whit whether they have a permit to carry that handgun. Because if not, what good is the permit?
1. Because it is much easier to frighten people into banning what they don't own anyway. All too many people simply don't care if others suffer a loss as long as they don't suffer themselves.
2. Because the ultimate goal, irrespective of the claims of the anti-gun crowd, is to disarm the American public.
"I present this to you and ask how this information weighs in to the idea that the gun and its availability have nothing to do with the horrendous homicide rates in America?"
As the link discusses only homicides with a specific tool, rather than the general homicide rate, it has little to do with the what you ask, which concerned the overall homicide rate.
Many understand that guns are not the problem, but the person's intent to kill and pick up a gun. If one is sick enough to want to kill they will kill, with their bare hands if necessary. Some can't comprehend that concept, and they never will. They choose to blabber on about guns, instead of facing the fact that we have a huge problem with mental illness in the world. Sick individuals have the ability to kill, without any remorse.
So you are willing to give the mentally ill who cannot be accurately indentified unfettered access to tools that can kill scores of people. I don't consider that babbling
This tracking mentally ill stuff is just another RED herring, we all know that there is no real method to determine the mental state of anyone at any one time. Intent and danger can only be determined through background checks, and while nothing is foolproof, it is better than just selling a handgun wrapped in a brown paper bag, no questions asked."it is better than just selling a handgun wrapped in a brown paper bag"
That is how thousands of illegal guns are sold and there really is no background check done or red flag law in place for them.Well, Mike, tons of heroin crosses are borders daily, does law enforcement just throw up their hands and consider it a lost cause and forego enforcement efforts?
You Rightwingers recognized that there are thousands of abortions that take place every year, does that stop your people from trying to legislate and strongarm, using every tool available to stop them? You folks just don't throw up your hands over this..."Well, Mike, tons of heroin crosses are borders daily, does law enforcement just throw up their hands and consider it a lost cause and forego enforcement efforts?"
We have so many laws against illegal drugs, you'd think there would be no heroin problem. I guess that shows that passing laws may not really solve anything. It may make people feel good and as if they are doing something, but reality is more laws against guns do nothing but punish law abiding gun owners.Reforms.may be needed to bolster or refine our efforts in stopping drugs coming to the country. But Because our efforts aren't ALWAYS successful doesn't mean, IMO, that we rollback efforts.
State legislatures are working on bills to make it easier to carry and conceal firearms and discouraging any attempt to add safety measures.
Our politicians should be working to strengthen our gun laws, not weaken them.
You wouldn't want drug enforcement efforts rolled back , why loosen laws and requirements around guns? Seems to be that you're seeking a standard of perfection in terms of any measure applied to gun ownership. If a measure doesn't work 100% of the time why bother? If we applied that notion across the rest society we'd be absolutely lawless."You wouldn't want drug enforcement efforts rolled back , why loosen laws and requirements around guns"
The point is we don't need any MORE laws.Some states are looking to add gun safety measures but many states are looking to loosen or get rid of gun safety laws all together.
You support the rollbacks?
Are you equating the Constitutional right to bear arms to the Constitutional "right" to buy illegal drugs?
Absolutely not and I've made it clear I don't believe gun rights are absolute.
You're in line with the vast majority, then, for I've not heard anyone claim gun rights apply to everything. Military weapons, for instance, are nearly impossible to get to the point that they are not available.
Problem is that liberals keep expanding the list of guns that are NOT available; how long until nothing is."are nearly impossible to get to the point that they are not available."
Police will tell you this only applies to law abiding citizens. Criminals have been caught with weapons that would amaze you. Everything from TEC-9s to Uzis and more.
As law abiding gun owners, and many times polices, we are out gunned by the criminals.
"we all know that there is no real method to determine the mental state of anyone at any one time."
And therefore no one in the country should have a gun, right? Any one of them might turn in a murderer and without a gun they will not kill."So you are willing to give the mentally ill who cannot be accurately indentified unfettered access to tools that can kill scores of people. I don't consider that babbling"
Please read my comment, I certainly did not share my view on thoughts on reevaluating Gun laws. I shared my view on the comments I have been following on this thread. Actually, I shared my view on the need to reevaluate gun laws, and I support the red flag law. My wording was hyperbolic and guttural. I am sorry, but I have become very discussed with the subject.
I disagree with regard to tracking the mentally ill. In most cases, the mass shooters did have various mental problems, that their peers, family, and work associates were aware of. If red laws were passed, IMO, many would step up and report what they might see as possible problems of violence.
Many states have very stringent background checks, which have proved ineffective in keeping guns out of the hands of people that use guns in crimes.
Let's have a look at California in regards to having the most stringent of gun laws. 9I won't put any more time beyond offering California as a reference. I am offering California as the best reference due to their laws.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/experts-expla … d=96665000
In my view, we need to look at current gun laws and revamp them, I feel more strongly about red flag laws, which might, and I say might help, get to the persons that might have mental problems that could lead to killing period. Using a gun or any other weapon.The problem we have is that too many conservatives do not want any sort of screening before access. They are more than content to allow universal access and possession as easily as I buy a box of nails at the hardware store. Gosh, they even screen glue and aerosols on a majority age basis now, but I can get a gun easier than buying a "Big Mac"?
Conservatives too often ignore the principle of deterrence. You have posted speed limits, there will always be those that skirt them, but they serve as a warning for most not to for fear of ticketing and arrest.The state of California (with it's stringent laws) has one of the lowest gun death rates in the country at 8.5 deaths per 100,000 people. That is about 37% lower than the national average, according to data compiled by the CDC
Gun homicides in California, at a rate of 3.9 per 100,000 people, is much lower than Texas' rate of 6.1 per 100,000 people, figures from Everytown shows.The state of Nebraska, where about 40% of people have guns, has almost the same death rate per 100,000. In Nebraska, however, 74% of those gun deaths are suicide and only 22% are murders, or 2.2 homicides per 100,000.
https://maps.everytownresearch.org/wp-c … braska.pdf
Do those statistics prove anything? Do yours?I'm not referring to the sheer number of guns but rather
how laws that govern those guns impact homicide rates. My comparison of California (stringent gun laws) and Texas (with lax laws) was to show the difference in homicide rate. According to the same research you've sited, Nebraska has some solid gun safety measures. #22 in the country for gun law strength.
What do I gather from Nebraska? They're committing suicide by gun at an alarming rate but their gun laws are curbing homicide.
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/ … rst%20law.Your link does not mention homicide rates, only gun homicides, which means you cannot tell if any lives were saved. Only that there are fewer than the national average that have bullet holes in them.
Be careful about that; the anti-gun crowd never publishes homicide rates, just gun homicide rates, assuming that if people don't die from gunshot they don't die at all. An obviously false conclusion as there are more people killed with hands and feet than all long rifles combined.Another gross fabrication, Wilderness. I have presented evidence time and time again that show that 75 percent of homicides in America is caused by firearms. So, the hands and feet can't count for more than 25 percent. Distinguishing between firearms in general and long rifles does not change the gist of this discussion.
Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) U.S. murders in 2020, 19,384 out of 24,576 – involved a firearm.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 … n-the-u-s/And because most murders use a gun means that if gun homicides fall so do homicides in total? The logic is sorely failing there.
Again, if you want to know if gun legislation is useful then look at how much the death toll goes down. NOT how much the gun death toll goes down, for that number assumes (assumes!) that without a gun killers won't kill; an obvious fallacy.
So California is way up there on the list of "solid" gun safety meaures, and Nebraska is way down in the middle at number 22. Why is the homicide by gun twice as high in California as it is in Nebraska?
Are you even willing to entertain the possibility that draconian gun laws do not prevent someone from commiting murder if they want to kill, or are you stuck in the narrative that more gun laws are necessary?Another interesting point is that California has some very strict gun laws, red flag law, etc. and they lead the country in mass shootings with 257.
More evidence that laws alone don't stop gun violence."Why is the homicide by gun twice as high in California as it is in Nebraska?"
It isn't. Again, California has a gun death rate of 8.5 per 100,000 and Nebraska a rate of 10.1 per 100,000. And yes, the gun laws in Nebraska are not as stringent as California but not as lax as others. Seems to be a correlation here between gun law and the gun death rate.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosm … irearm.htmI said the homicide rate. Why do you not discount those deaths by suicide? Could it be because you want to support an argument against gun ownership instead of pointing out the real issue?
(You can go to that link I posted for that information.)
Should we make it as easy and quick as possible for these individuals to purchase guns? I agree with your premise but I still think it's important to keep guns out of the hands of those sick individuals. I don't feel it's blabber but concern that we have common sense gun safety laws so that the rest of us can feel that there are at least a minimum of protections. Gun rights are usurping the rights of the rest of us. The NRA owns the Republican Party.
"Gun rights are usurping the rights of the rest of us. "
So, what about the rights of the ones you feel are usurping the "us" rights?
Do they just not deserve rights? Do you realize how many Americans support the right to own guns? Do they lose a right they feel is constitutional?The rights of gun owners should be balanced with the rights of rest of us. Their rights are no more important and shouldn't take precedence over our inalienable right to life. Gun rights are not absolute. I'm not nor have ever advocated for taking away everyone's guns. That's an assumption of others here who only see things in absolutes. I've advocated for gun safety laws. That's very different than taking away everyone's stockpile of guns. Had Tennessee enacted red flag laws those children may still be alive as the shooters mother expressed grave concern with her child possessing guns but there was no avenue to address that concern.
When we compare the states head-to-head on the top 50 gun safety policies, a clear pattern emerges. States with strong laws see less gun violence. see for yourself.
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/
I believe in a law-abiding individual's right to own a firearm. I also know we have a responsibility to help keep our schools, streets and communities safe. The gun debate isn't a choice between reducing violence and protecting the Second Amendment. It's about the willingness of a responsible majority to do both.Your link shows only that without guns there won't be bodies with bullet holes. It says nothing about the number of bodies, though, and experience says the pile will not diminish with strong gun laws.
So what is the point, if not to keep people alive?
(Have you ever wondered why the people producing such articles never, ever talk about homicide rates in general, only claiming that gun homicides fall when gun ownership is reduced? Ever wonder about that, and what it means?)" The gun debate isn't a choice between reducing violence and protecting the Second Amendment. It's about the willingness of a responsible majority to do both."
I can agree with this sentiment.
This is all very true, but irrelevant.
Those fearing guns so much will, I believe, still allow us to carry a muzzle loading blunderbuss that is more likely to kill someone other than the target that it is to actually hit that target.
Of course it will have to be unloaded at all times even though dozens of people could be killed while the owner loads their "self defense" weapon.
I could easily be wrong though - fear does strange things to people and the gun haters know nothing but fear - we might only be allowed BB guns shooting foam balls.
"I think this is fearmongering."
LOL And the crusade to turn a common, simple, civilian rifle into a dreaded "assault weapon" whose primary purpose is the use by military's everywhere is not? 99% of the objections to guns center around irrational fear.
No one has a problem with responsible gun owners, which I assume you mean owners who are well-trained and keep their weapons safely locked away when not in use.
One question: What does anyone need an assault weapon for?Well, mine is in my purse at all times, along with my permit to carry it, in my purse. What good will it do me or anyone else, at home, locked up in the safe?
An assault weapon is just a scary name for a rifle.If this is true, why have cities banned all guns? Why does the left want the most common rifle gone from the land?
"One question: What does anyone need an assault weapon for?"
To attack enemy positions with an army of soldiers. Of course the real question you mean to ask is "What does anyone need of a rifle commonly used for target practice and hunting?" and the answer is self evident in the question. In addition, the law does not say you have a need, acceptable to Kathleen Cochran, to own such a rifle.Happy to be singled out in this discussion because to me it says I struck a nerve. And in these pages and pages of the same old arguments that keep us from solving a solvable problem I'm happy to strike as many nerves as possible.
My doctor's never said to me, congratulations you are having a fetus, but it is okay, I completely understand why you do not wish to participate in this particular line of questioning.
It doesn't fit, so many things do not fit the leftist narrative and so, selective parts and pieces are presented. I get it, just so you know.I am participating, but you and your doctor seem to confuse the end product with where you currently were at the time in your desire to ignore simple definitions as outlined in the dictionary. As usual, the rightist narrative ignores basic facts to try and make words mean something that they simply do not, to help sell government overreach that allows them to convert others to their own religious doctrines.
What does giving birth have to do with religion?
Do you not understand that in other religions, life begins at birth as opposed to conception?
Do you understand that you will twist yourself into a pretzel in an effort to make your life more valuable than other lives?
That is such a strange personal attack. That because I'm thinking of other religions, and by noting that those religions have as much freedom from government persecution as Christianity does, that that equates to 'turning myself into a pretzel to make my life more valuable than others.' Perhaps recognize that your own view of when life begins is something that triggers you to insults when others do not share that same view.
And that if other religions do not recognize life until actual birth, then government policy limiting abortion would be an infringement on their religious beliefs.
In others or some religion likewise, 'life' begin when the 'prana' incubated the human soul. So if you abort the fetus, it translated to killing a person! Any relevancy that that here? Thread closed?
Not only do other religions belief life begins at birth, the Bible says when God breathed into Adam the breath of life, man became a living soul. That action separated him from the animals.
Life begins at conception was an idea created in the 1970s when Christian college presidents created the Right to Life political movement to create a voting block. They wanted to continue segregation in their schools without losing their tax-exempt status. They couldn't rally their church members behind that idea so they tried Right to Life, condemning abortion but protecting all other forms of birth control used before conception. Documentation widely available with a Google search - more than easily listed here.Not only the differences between religions regarding when life begins but there are also differences between denominations within Christianity itself as it ties into abortion.
Some religions base when life begins on ensoulment, which varies amongst them. Also, there is a definite discussion amongst scholars of philosophy as well as notable ones such as Aristotle and Socrates about when life begins.
'Well, all the data and statistics indicate that gun control laws, right up to and including outright ban on all guns, will not significantly reduce the death toll.'
Another false absolute when it's pretty obvious that the poster didn't even bother to view the links I provided above that showed just the opposite, that red flag laws did have a significant preventative effect on the incidences of mass shootings.
In New York, there have been 1,900 Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) since August of 2019. Troopers have applied for 339 orders, more than three times the number of applications made last year, and courts have approved 86.5 percent of those applications. The average number of ERPOs issued a month increased to 403 from June 2022 through October 2022, compared to just 45 per month from October 2019 through May 2022. Clearly, prevention is increasing as people are used to the law.Your post claimed that 58 mass murders were prevented...assuming that without the law they would have happened. And I commented that it seemed peculiar that not a single one of those supposed killers made any effort at all to continue with a different weapon. A comment that you conveniently did not reply to.
Your "proof" is founded on assumption, not fact.
Maybe we should discuss the defense use of firearms. This includes the use of the AR 15 for protection.
"Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year. There’s good reason to believe that most defensive gun uses are never reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets."
https://datavisualizations.heritage.org … in-the-us/"We don't need to address gun violence; we need to figure out why our society is so violent and address that. "
OK. Let's do that. Let's figure out why other industrialized countries can manage to reduce gun deaths and we can't? Then, why not just follow their success and apply it here?Homogeneous peoples that promote racist policies have less gun violence. I really do not think it is a good idea to follow policies like those of Japan, where it is legal to put up signs like "No foreigners allowed."
This thinking is why nothing ever changes and our children keep dying.
Don't forget that.For crying out loud, nobody is coming for the guns you own. Just trying to do something about the ease of buying guns that are made to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Or, to qoute one politician, hell yes we are going to take away your guns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXcL_I3uTGIBeto doesn't represent the views of ALL Democrats. Maybe his being out of step with what Americans find important is the reason he has failed to win an office..twice.
The majority of Americans support gun safety laws.
This is yet another area that today's Republican party is out of step with what is really important to Americans.Unfortunately, Beto is not alone. Democrats forever complain that they are NOT out to take guns away, that no one ever said that, that Conservatives are lying when they report such statements from Democrats.
But there it is, open for all to see and cheered on by (presumably) a Democrat crowd.
Love the applause as the idiot says over and over that he is going to take the military weapons designed for the battlefield. You know, the civilian ones like the AR15 that is used by no military in the world but is made for the battlefield.
Hmm. That would be guns like the M249 (SAW) used by the military. The one that is highly illegal to own, and no one does. The one that is a true "assault rifle" rather than the fake ones that are so much in the news as "military grade".
Gross exaggerations do not help your case.
One politician? One? I wouldn't worry too much about only one.
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