let the marginalization of the NRA begin

davesdatahut: The National Rifle Association, one of the most dangerous organizations in America masquerading as a representative of good citizens, has proposed putting armed police in all our schools. The trap was set by the killings in Connecticut and the NRA has taken the bait by putting out a radical solution that most Americans will reject. Consider this the first step toward the significant marginalization of this destructive organization in our society.
As noted in past posts, the NRA should be invited to discussions about how to prevent more gun violence. They are part of this issue and part of the problem, as are a lot of other forces in our society. But if this is their view, they will end being like the fools who sit in the corner and let everyone else make the decisions.
I am not sure if I am happy or not about this latest move of theirs. But I cannot say it is surprising. Perhaps they will quickly reconsider when they start hearing the reaction to what they have proposed.

Sarcastic Dots: They're panicking because blaming video games is falling on deaf ears as the ones that grew up with games reach positions of influence. These guys can no longer scapegoat and have to confront the issue of, you know, a mentally unstable person wielding a gun independently from forms of media that millions of people play quite healthily daily.

I mean, I reiterate my point from elsewhere: What happens when you arm the schools and another shooting happens? After that level of escalation, where is the point where you can't reach any higher on the steps of crazy?

davesdatahut: And while the vile and the subhuman who make up the NRA leadership were calling for armed cops in the schools, ho hum, another mass shooting occurred in Pennsylvania. Aren't guns and the NRA lovely?

davidk14: .

I do not like the idea that we have to have armed guards ANYWHERE. They were not around 30 years ago. Why? Because our society has now crumbled to a point where a few nut jobs, knowing the media will make them martyrs, decide to go out and make a name for themselves.

Sick.



Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the country yet it has one of the highest murder rates. Conn. has the fourth toughest gun laws in the country and this happened.

There are armed guards at mall, at move theartres, anywhere there are people in large numbers. Even at collage campuses there are armed guards. Yet, when someone suggests having armed guards at schools where our defenseless children go daily? Seriously?



There are over 300,000,000 guns owned by individuals in the US which has a population of 310,000,000. I live in a state where I see at least, 4 people a day with side arms on their hips. Absolutely normal to see. No one goes nuts. It's very natural to see.

"Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf."

Gandhi

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Sarcastic Dots: "Absolutely normal to see. No one goes nuts. It's very natural to see."

Anecdotal evidence is cool and all, Dave, but this:

"There are armed guards at mall, at move theartres, anywhere there are people in large numbers. Even at collage campuses there are armed guards."

Has not made America a less violent society, and it certainly sends out the message that society is beyond fixing and the only way to survive is to turn every building into a fort. It's not a solution to the problem, it's a containment of it before it happens again. I mean, really, do you want your country to be known as somewhere that is so dangerous -the world's richest nation- that you need to have armed security guards protecting your kids? That's okay with you?

davesdatahut: Sarcastic, you put it quite well. And you raise important questions, like do we really want our schools to resemble military camps or prisons?
The gun lovers want to solve their problems and societies problems with guns. Guns, guns and more guns. There can never be enough guns for these people. No thinking about why problems exist and how to get to the root of them. Just guns. Guns, guns and more guns! Until everyone walks around with a gun and you have an entire culture scared shitless of one another. This is their logic carried to its logical end - a surreal place where every man, woman and child stays within tiny boundaries of behavior because they never know that something they do or say might provoke someone to take out their gun. Fortunately, this view is not in the majority. And we must do everything we can to prevent it, and reverse the place where we are now.
If you heard the NRA press conference today (some press conference...the guy raved for 25 minutes and took no questions!), you saw full-on why the NRA is one of the most dangerous organizations in America. There are few words to describe how repulsive the NRA leadership has become.

davidk14: .

Taking guns away from the citizen will not solve the problem of the decline of morals in our society. There is not a movement to reduce the availability of drugs to solve the drug problem, but to increase the amount of drugs. There is not a movement to reduce the availability of alcohol to reduce motor vehicle deaths either. If you take away guns from Mr and Mrs Joe Citizen, then the only ones that will have guns will be the criminals.

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davesdatahut: We are not discussing drugs here...that is a red herring and a distraction. Ditto cars. Ditto knives. Ditto every other kind of sleight of hand and circular reasoning the social destroyers in the NRA leadership throw up, in order to change the subject. We are discussing lethal weapons, the purpose of which is to kill or maim people, and the proliferation of same, as well as the ability of them to get into the hands of nuts. What is your proposal to fix this problem, other than to arm Americans to the point where every citizen has a weapon and we have a society that resembles some kind of dystopian crucible of fear? Do your ideas go no farther than guns, guns and more guns? The issue is how to improve society WITHOUT more lethal weapons.
I propose bringing all sides to the table to discuss how to achieve this end, and this includes the NRA leadership, despite their heretofore grotesque inability to think this issue through with less radical ideas. It also includes gun makers, gun control advocates, cops, educators, mental health experts, etc.
What is your view? Or, I should ask, do you have one, beyond an armed-and-dangerous society?

davidk14: .

dave,

I do not even have to look this up.

More people die from alcohol than guns.

More people die from drugs than guns.

More people die in swimming pools than from guns.

Just these three are more lethal than guns. Are we going to ban alcohol, durgs, and swimming pools?


When you go into a gun shop to purchase a gun, you need to have a background check by the FBI. When you buy a 5th of Jack no background check by the FBI.

Serioulsy?

It's all about education. Education is a must whether it be for firearms training or for alcohol or drug awareness and pool safety.


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LiptonCambell: davesdatahut what exactly are you suggesting be done?

davesdatahut: I am suggesting that smart people on all different sides of this issue come together for two goals: making it harder - MUCH harder - for unstable people to get guns, and figuring out in the long term how to move from the question of gun control to the question of violence control. Because violence control is what this is all about anyway, not just gun control.
I should note that I am not opposed to people owning guns to protect their homes and businesses. I don't want one myself, but I will never advocate anything that stops people from protecting their families and possessions. But I strongly advocate stronger background checks to stop nuts from getting weapons and keeping them out of house where mentally unbalanced people live.

LiptonCambell: >>>making it harder - MUCH harder - for unstable people to get guns

I haven't honestly researched much in the topic, but if what David said above is true, that simply doesn't work.

"Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the country yet it has one of the highest murder rates. Conn. has the fourth toughest gun laws in the country and this happened. "

Why do you suppose that is? Because it seems your solution is ineffective.

>>>and figuring out in the long term how to move from the question of gun control to the question of violence control.

Ummm....so what are you suggesting? What is your solution for violence control...

>>>But I strongly advocate stronger background checks to stop nuts from getting weapons and keeping them out of house where mentally unbalanced people live.

Keeping this in terms of the recent tragedy- did the parents of that boy have any history of mental instability? Did the child up to that point had any?

Would the laws you are suggesting have any real preventive effect on what happened recently?

Whimsical Fairy: A background check was done on the Mother (whom owned the guns) It seems everyone (world wide) is forgetting that these guns were "legal" and registered...to the Mother.

Bottom line, nothing...no law would have stopped this person from shooting 26 people.

Whimsical Fairy: I have a question for Dave. Why should anyone give up their rights because a family member has mental issues? How does that even seem right in your eyes. Not only that but you act like every mentally unstable person is prone to violence. I beg to differ with you.

davesdatahut: Whimsical, you ask a very good question about a very complicated issue, which has a very imperfect answer. The essence of the answer is that keeping a gun out of a house where there is someone with mental illness reduces the chance of that gun being used in a very bad way, just as not selling it directly to that person also reduces this chance.
You don't like that answer, I suspect. But here's my best shot at explaining:
A gun is a lethal weapon and, while our society has given people the Constitutional right to own one, we also have the right to confer that ownership in a way that protects the greater community as BEST as possible. We already know, without question, that when mentally ill get their hands on weapons, really bad things can happen. Like massacres. Or shootings we never hear about. Will these terrible things necessarily happen when a gun is within reach of a mentally ill person? Chances are they won't because most mentally ill people are not violent. But the chances are greater that they WILL happen than if that gun is near an unstable person because unstable people are, well, unstable. As we have seen.
Does this inhibit the rights of the clear-thinking, stable folks who may be unlucky enough to have a crazy person in their midst? Yes. It does. And so it is not a perfect solution. I can't offer you a perfect one because there aren't any. I can hear people already say, "but your answer would not have stopped Adam Lanza because he may have had no official record of mental illness." Maybe not. We don't know. But I would like to see a background checking system that tries to find out.
We do not want mentally ill people being able to buy guns (at least I think most people do not want that). So part of a stronger background checking system must include finding out if there are unstable people who could easily get a hold of whatever gun is being sold.
If the answer to that question is yes, then the answer to the prospective gun buyer needs to be no.

Wild__: Blaming the NRA for the shooting in Connecticut isn't going to prevent further shootings.

Owning a gun safe could have prevented this tragedy.

davesdatahut: Blaming the NRA for shooting is foolish because they didn't do the shooting. Blaming the NRA for refusing to come with ways to curb gun sales to crazy people is so self-evident as to barely worth the time it takes to type it.

Wild__: The NRA has been involved in past legislative attempts at making it harder to get guns.

Its our politicians who have failed.

Wild__: *^^^harder for mentally unstable people to get guns

davesdatahut: Lipton, let me respond to your post with this post...
>>>I haven't honestly researched much in the topic, but if what David said above is true, that simply doesn't work.<<<
What of David's comments are you referring to. He mentioned several things. Can you be more specific?

>>>"Chicago has one of the strictest gun laws in the country yet it has one of the highest murder rates. Conn. has the fourth toughest gun laws in the country and this happened. "
Why do you suppose that is? Because it seems your solution is ineffective.<<<
I'll answer this by saying that Europe has stricter gun control laws than us and far lower murder rates. And New York City's murder rate has dropped dramatically, amid very strict gun control laws. But I'm not sure ho wmuch one has to do with the other. The issue of murder rates has a lot to do with a lot more factors han just gun control.


>>>and figuring out in the long term how to move from the question of gun control to the question of violence control.

Ummm....so what are you suggesting? What is your solution for violence control...<<<

I am not sure what the answer to this is. But it requires a broad approach that involves better educating people on responsible gun ownership, improved background checks, better mental health care that can better treat potentially violent people and - perhaps most important - a broad refocusing of the attitude our country has about violence and how acceptable it is.



>>>But I strongly advocate stronger background checks to stop nuts from getting weapons and keeping them out of house where mentally unbalanced people live.

Keeping this in terms of the recent tragedy- did the parents of that boy have any history of mental instability? Did the child up to that point had any?<<<

We do not yet know enough about this family to know the answer to this.

>>>Would the laws you are suggesting have any real preventive effect on what happened recently? <<<
We can never know this. But doing better background checks to prevent guns from getting into the homes of crazy people surely would.

davesdatahut: Wildmann, what has the NRA done in the past to make it harder to get guns? From what I have read, they have been four-square against efforts to make it harder.

Wild__: After the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007 Congress began debating legislation to make it harder for mentally unstable people to get guns. The NRA was involved in said debate and specifically advocated for due process of the law for those deemed "mentally unstable."

So in other words... when a federal agency deems someone "mentally unstable," they can no longer legally purchase or own guns yet they can fight to regain their rights.

davesdatahut: Ok, so the NRA's part in that was to make sure that when someone was denied a weapon because of mental problems, they had a right to contest it. A noble stance on behalf of the deranged, but how was that an effort to make it harder to get guns?

LiptonCambell: >>>What of David's comments are you referring to. He mentioned several things. Can you be more specific?

Huh....wha....i quoted exactly what I was referring to...

>>>I'll answer this by saying that Europe has stricter gun control laws than us and far lower murder rates. And New York City's murder rate has dropped dramatically, amid very strict gun control laws.

So then why do you suppose the contradiction in the evidence David provided?

>>> a broad refocusing of the attitude our country has about violence and how acceptable it is.

That seems to be pretty unclear....the rest of your comments are just a repeat of your previous comments on gun control....you don't have any real solutions on how to address violence in society, besides addressing gun control?

>>>We do not yet know enough about this family to know the answer to this.

Well, we know his parents got a weapon legally- so they passed a background check in the state with the 4th toughest gun laws...didn't seem like the background check protected anyone in that instance...

>>>We can never know this. But doing better background checks to prevent guns from getting into the homes of crazy people surely would.

Are you certain? It didn't seem to happen in the past

davesdatahut: Lipton, David was going on about alcohol, drugs and swimming pools, which have nothing to do with this debate. So I'm not sure there is any value in quoting his claims, regardless of their truth.
As for violence control, I am not sure what the answers are. i sure don't have them all. What I want to see happen is for a lot of very smart people on all sides of this issue come together and figure it out. Because things are not working now.
A couple of points that DO have great value are better background checks that would prevent guns from getting into homes where someone is crazy. Would this have stopped the Connecticut shooing, I don't know. But I'd like to see it tried. In addition, I would like to see a concerted education campaign in this country aimed at changing the glorification of violence we see all around us, starting at the youngest ages.
As for the contradictory evidence on murder rates and gun control laws, I'll restate what I said earlier. There are a lot of factors that come into play when talking about crime rates. Gun control may be one of them. But there is a lot more to it than that - economics, neighborhood makeup, police strategies, demographic changes, and more. So to quote one city's crime rate and tie it to gun control is a huge stretch and a serious case of circular reasoning, belying a good bit of ignorance on the issue.
What, if I may ask, are your thoughts on how to address this problem?

davesdatahut: As a narrow aside, is there any reason anyone should have a semi-automatic machine gun like an AR-47? Even if you think people should be able to go anywhere they want with a pistol in their pocket, is there a single good reason for people to be able to buy so-called "assault rifles?"