10 or more dead 20 or more wounded in campus massacre

[AthenaAwakened]

Meaningless in terms of preventing bad things.

#3 is one of the wish-list items of the gun-grabbers.

Ohhh! Scary! If the Gun Grabbers come for me I will simply close my eyes and say "There's no such thing as a gun grabber" three times, which is guaranteed to get rid of them forthwith.

They have to know where the guns are when they ban them so they don't just disappear. No matter how you guise it up the right will absolutely hate it because of this.

Who gives a shit. The right hate it because it fuels their paranoid fantasies about gun grabbers; the right hate it because it might lead to lower gun ownership overall, and to lower gun sales; the right hate it because they have no fucking clue. But the rest of us hate seeing dead children. And that trumps any petty hatreds the right might have many times over.

Denying it doesn't make it go away. Since you support banning guns you don't see the problem with measures needed to accomplish it.

I don't support banning guns. I support making them far more difficult for people to obtain casually; getting a gun should be fairly arduous, so that only those who feel that they have a genuine and pressing need for one bother.

These things are what you need to stop school shootings. They demonstrably work to achieve that objective. They do not inconvenience sporting shooters unduly; certainly not so severely that it is worth accepting thousands of children dying per annum so they can avoid the paperwork.

The half-arsed registrations you have over there are just pretend. They do nothing useful.

None of these things would have done anything about most school shootings as the people involved were to outward appearances law-abiding.

But they are almost completely effective everywhere outside the USA. What other explanation is there for the fact that only the USA has frequent school shootings?

Mass shootings are actually quite rare. The number saved by guns is substantially higher than the number that die in mass shootings.

But sadly you seem to have misplaced the evidence for this assertion...

Thus banning guns because of mass shootings is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

READ MY LIPS:

I DO NOT SUPPORT BANNING GUNS.

The insurance aspect - which you airily dismiss as unimportant except as a means to accomplish effective registration - is critical here. Just as most under 25s can't afford to insure a big powerful car, the premiums for insuring an under 25 to own a gun of any kind will be a major disincentive to ownership.

Ok, so it's backdoor banning.

No. It is restricting the ownership of guns to those who feel they have a genuine need for them, and who can demonstrate competence in their use, and a commitment to their safe and secure storage when not in use.

But if you support treating guns like, well, guns and not like fetish toys or party favors, then how can someone worshiping at the altar of half of the second amendment argue against you? You will just HAVE to want to BAN ALL GUNS FOREVER. So change your position immediately and let that strawman become a real boy!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

LP has be trotting that "backdoor ban" crap for a long time now.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No. It is restricting the ownership of guns to those who feel they have a genuine need for them, and who can demonstrate competence in their use, and a commitment to their safe and secure storage when not in use.

In other words, for the rich and powerful.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

LP has be trotting that "backdoor ban" crap for a long time now.

Calling it crap doesn't make it go away.

 

[bilby]

No. It is restricting the ownership of guns to those who feel they have a genuine need for them, and who can demonstrate competence in their use, and a commitment to their safe and secure storage when not in use.

In other words, for the rich and powerful.

Sure. Just like cars are for the rich and powerful.

Of course, the subtext of your comment is the INSANE idea that a gun can protect a poor or (otherwise) powerless person against rich or powerful people. It can't. I know that the American Way, Apple Pie, Motherhood and Superman all rely on the belief that if you have a gun, you can overthrow a tyrant; but it is a fucking stupid idea with no basis in reality whatsoever.

A poor person is being stupid if he spends what little money he has on gambling; He is acting inadvisably if he buys the latest top-of-the range car, TV, or dishwasher, and as a result cannot afford to eat; But neither of those choices is as stupid as his buying a gun and ammo to defend against the rich and/or powerful.

The very idea is FUCKING NUTS. It needs to die.

 

[bleubird]

I see it as a health care issue.How do we intervene in the life of friends and family that we know have mental problems?Should a doctor tell the police if his/her patient talks about killing?
USA is piss poor at this.

 

[abaddon]

It's a societal problem. People of the US are all at least a little crazy. We don't just have a few isolate crazies. Though of course it'd be a good idea to think on how to help especially those ones.

Ultimately whatever you do about the guns themselves is merely a technical solution.

Maybe if there’s something different about the US from other nations, it’s not just that we have more availability of guns but something in our culture makes them extremely attractive to paranoid types. Americans feel empowered by weaponry.

You see right here in the thread a fantasy about guns as a good solution to whatever is the poster’s bogeyman… They justify it with an “us good citizens against criminals” story but ultimately it’s the same ideation shared by guys like Adam Lanza and Chris Harper-Mercer.

Taking the gun away doesn’t fix the crazy. And the crazy’s not just in a few isolated people’s heads, it’s in the culture.