I can't understand why you would say I know better than this. When seconds count, the police are minutes away and if you are someplace with a pusillanimous police force like Uvale police action is an hour away. The reason that more mass shootings are not stopped by armed citizens is that not many people carry on a regular basis.
I can't understand why you would say I know better than this. When seconds count, the police are minutes away and if you are someplace with a pusillanimous police force like Uvale police action is an hour away. The reason that more mass shootings are not stopped by armed citizens is that not many people carry on a regular basis.
This is a rare and uncommon incident, a RKBA fantasy made real in a single instance.
Let's just close our eyes and shake our heads and ignore that this situation wouldn't have happened in the first place if assault rifles or for that matter handguns weren't so increasingly easy to get, even with history of mental illness.
The fact that there were 140 "good samaritans" sitting outside joking and waiting for the Uvalde creep to run out of ammo doesn't seem to make much of an impression.
Yeah one (1) time some guy with a gun "took out" a shooter. Whoop.
You must be aware how fragile the "self defense" arguments are; how much practice it takes to face danger without trembling.
Now picture the realization of the gun-owner scenario: a theater full of people, a shot rings out, a woman screams, every intrepid packer of heat sees his chance, pulls out his gun and leaps to his feet looking for the guy with the gun, which is dozens of people. You'd have to take out the corpses with a bulldozer.
I have a better idea. Get rid of the goddamn things. In a nation where 30% of adults wouldn't pass a psychiatric exam, an armed society is a murderous society.
America has the easiest access to guns; America has the highest per capita metric of firearm deaths. Sorry but arguing for more guns just makes no sense.
I think you're smarter than this, Dave, I've seen a lot of evidence of that on this forum. "Gun free zones" doesn't move me either. It implies that we need to learn to live with ever increasing massacres. I'd rather disarm the populace. Our real enemies are the conservatives and the wealthy, not those who crack under the strain of hopelessness.
Access to guns was easier when I was young than now, and things weren't like they are today. There are other things in the mix.
I don't own a non-military looks military rifle like an AR-15. The desire to own them is something new. I've had friends with no military background ask me to teach them how to field strip their AR-15s and non-military version AK-47s so they could clean them. I took one to a rifle range to teach him safety and marksmanship. Do I think it good that the clueless are buying them like cheeseburgers? Not really, but it's what happens when the anti-gunner politicians run their mouth. They were bought in record numbers under the Obama administration and now the Biden administration. What hath the "We're going to ban them" babblers wrought? This: https://tinyurl.com/yc23v2jn If there wasn't all the ban them talk, I don't think so many people would be buying them. "Better get one while I can, even if I have no idea how to use it."
I don't hunt or compete in shooting competitions anymore, but I don't sell my firearms because I don't believe in unilateral disarmament. My neighborhood has deteriorated over the years. On the citizen app I regularly see reports of robberies, assaults, stabbings and shootings within two miles of my home. If I lived in NY or Hawaii that would not get me a needs-based permit. I live in a Constitutional Carry state, but I took the training, tested and obtained a Concealed Firearms Permit that I don't actually need. It is very rare that I carry a firearm. I don't want to, but I want to be able to because criminals and idiots are. I carried an M-16 everywhere for 20 months, I don't want to do that again and don't want America to look like that. I don't have visions of killing bad guys. I don't even like mercifully finishing off the badly wounded birds that my cats bring in.
The real enemies? The ultra-rich globalists who have no use for the 2nd Amendment or nationhood. They view red-blue politics, intersectionality, racial divide and all complex divisive issues as tools to distract us from what they are doing. They've always done that, but it is much easier with the internet. Conservative/Liberal is a facade when it comes to them. They really don't care about that except for its divisiveness.
All that to say that the world we live in is not the world we wish it to be. This commentary which has ranged widely is about the lack of clear definitions, brought on largely by activists who push so hard that they guarantee pushback to a degree that solutions are made impossible. As long as activism feels threatening to us, rather than to the power elite they will do their best to perpetuate it since the activists are acting as the power elite's useful idiots. As George Carlin famously said, "The owners don't give a f*k about you" or me.
Our cats came from parts unknown and moved in with us. We recently had the second occurrence of a cat observing us in the back yard, sizing us up for a few days and then walking in through the pet flap they saw our cats going in and out of and making itself at home. My kindhearted wife is an animal magnet. Interesting since as a child in Thailand farmers dogs' bit her and monkeys pissed on her from trees.
With the exception of one, they have all already been neutered. Cats have excellent homing ability, so they were either abandoned or decided they didn't like it where they were. Keeping them inside is not easy.
There are too many "I'm moving and can't take our dog and need to rehome it" or in the case of cats, just abandoning them. People suck.
Mass shootings happen in "gun-free zones" for a reason, which is also the reason that there are not more law-abiding citizens stopping mass shootings. Most people are like me, they leave their guns at home in a safe. The number of guns and percentage of households with guns does not equate to guns on the street.
A few years ago, I decided to look up the FBI's listed mass shootings in my greater metropolitan area. When most people hear the words "mass shootings" they think of the relatively rare spectacular and highly publicized events. That wasn't on their list. What was there was drug deals gone bad. Misuse of words is something you have commented on here in The Commentary. A shootout between drug dealers should not be conflated with a school, church or store shooting.
In this instance, the GGWAG wisely braced against a pole which reduces shaking and increases accuracy and if there had been another GGWAG he wouldn't have been a man with a rifle actively shooting terrified people eating at a table in the food court. I certainly wouldn't shoot at a man who was shooting at a man actively engaged in mass murder.
Get rid of the guns? It will have the same effect as gun free zones, more defenseless innocent people. But then in America, getting rid of the guns is not likely to happen. Perhaps some percentage of the population will willingly give them up, but there will be plenty left for the criminals. There is quite a market for stolen firearms being sold to felons who are prohibited possessors.
It's not "drug deals gone wrong" that are killing dozens of schoolchildren or country music fans or Jews at synagogue; it's young men who can buy weaponry of massacre. 18-22yo, AR-15. Every time.
The "only outlaws will have guns" thing doesn't move me. As you said, armed people will mostly shoot each other.
It's not the population that willingly surrenders them I want gone, it's those guys who make those videos yelling "come an' try to take away mah gun!!' I would like to see gone.
We agree on more than you might think. Our primary difference is that I go beyond zero trust in politicians (government), I expect deceit.
Take the current abortion brouhaha for example. The Arab story of the camel's nose come to mind. Roe v Wade began with a widely acceptable "Safe, available and rare." It progressed to the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion where they drill a hole in a fully formed fetus while some portion of it is still inside the woman. While not fully legal everywhere I cite it as an example of progressive creep. Politicians and activists always want more than they claim in the beginning. ALWAYS.
There are gun control things that I might embrace if I trusted government. I recently looked at a web page that listed "registered firearms" by state. They gave a number for Arizona, a state that formally has no gun registration. Firearm sales records are illegally being maintained past the date they are to be destroyed. As per Snowden, the government collects data illegally and keeps it forever. Gun registration makes nobody safer; its only purpose is future gun confiscation.
When government, military and police want to ensure that you are helpless to resist the first thing they do is disarm you. History tells us we might not want to be fans of that. Red flag. It will be abused for political purpose. The objectionable changes with the swing of the political pendulum. I don't think that the average 2nd Amendment fan, at least the ones my age, are World at War video game fantasizers who want a 15-minute murderous fame. We are dying off and the media is doing a fine job of promoting pusillanimous hoplophobia so resistance to disarmament of citizens will diminish. For the sake of my grandchildren, I hope it is not the dystopia of tyrants that I foresee.
If only politicians could be trusted. But they can't
Well I am not about to argue for trusting government. I trust corporations a hell of a lot less. Though the abortion thing is tangential and I don't want to argue about it.
I have no issue with firearms being kept in records. Sorry, but we have to license all kinds of things as long as we have or do them, like driving a car, practicing law or medicine; if I had my way there would be no national right to own firearms, that is supremely ridiculous, permits should only be granted on demonstration of need e.g. living in a high crime neighborhood or running a jewelry store. And, no, "I enjoy killing animals" is not a need.
History: Hitler made guns more available, not less, as the RKBAs claim. Right now parents are biting their knuckles because their kids are in school and some disgruntled kid could kill them. The RKBA answer is yet more guns.
The idea that an armed citizenry would inhibit tyranny is a fantasy. A hell of a lot of gun owners would side with the tyrant enthusiastically, liberated to shoot people like me. And those who would resist think they can go up against the US military and prevail? Really?
I don't see the media (plural: ARE) promoting disarmament. Unless you want them to be silent about the more than daily mass shootings.
All I hear is raising the age to buy a massacre weapon to 21.
I grew up in the south. I heard a lot of gun nuts. I had debates in steam rooms with guys who swore they were going to kill me in the parking lot. I'm sick of guns.
I can't understand why you would say I know better than this. When seconds count, the police are minutes away and if you are someplace with a pusillanimous police force like Uvale police action is an hour away. The reason that more mass shootings are not stopped by armed citizens is that not many people carry on a regular basis.
This is a rare and uncommon incident, a RKBA fantasy made real in a single instance.
Let's just close our eyes and shake our heads and ignore that this situation wouldn't have happened in the first place if assault rifles or for that matter handguns weren't so increasingly easy to get, even with history of mental illness.
The fact that there were 140 "good samaritans" sitting outside joking and waiting for the Uvalde creep to run out of ammo doesn't seem to make much of an impression.
Yeah one (1) time some guy with a gun "took out" a shooter. Whoop.
You must be aware how fragile the "self defense" arguments are; how much practice it takes to face danger without trembling.
Now picture the realization of the gun-owner scenario: a theater full of people, a shot rings out, a woman screams, every intrepid packer of heat sees his chance, pulls out his gun and leaps to his feet looking for the guy with the gun, which is dozens of people. You'd have to take out the corpses with a bulldozer.
I have a better idea. Get rid of the goddamn things. In a nation where 30% of adults wouldn't pass a psychiatric exam, an armed society is a murderous society.
https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/ActingOnData/2021/firearm_Page_1.png
America has the easiest access to guns; America has the highest per capita metric of firearm deaths. Sorry but arguing for more guns just makes no sense.
I think you're smarter than this, Dave, I've seen a lot of evidence of that on this forum. "Gun free zones" doesn't move me either. It implies that we need to learn to live with ever increasing massacres. I'd rather disarm the populace. Our real enemies are the conservatives and the wealthy, not those who crack under the strain of hopelessness.
Access to guns was easier when I was young than now, and things weren't like they are today. There are other things in the mix.
I don't own a non-military looks military rifle like an AR-15. The desire to own them is something new. I've had friends with no military background ask me to teach them how to field strip their AR-15s and non-military version AK-47s so they could clean them. I took one to a rifle range to teach him safety and marksmanship. Do I think it good that the clueless are buying them like cheeseburgers? Not really, but it's what happens when the anti-gunner politicians run their mouth. They were bought in record numbers under the Obama administration and now the Biden administration. What hath the "We're going to ban them" babblers wrought? This: https://tinyurl.com/yc23v2jn If there wasn't all the ban them talk, I don't think so many people would be buying them. "Better get one while I can, even if I have no idea how to use it."
I don't hunt or compete in shooting competitions anymore, but I don't sell my firearms because I don't believe in unilateral disarmament. My neighborhood has deteriorated over the years. On the citizen app I regularly see reports of robberies, assaults, stabbings and shootings within two miles of my home. If I lived in NY or Hawaii that would not get me a needs-based permit. I live in a Constitutional Carry state, but I took the training, tested and obtained a Concealed Firearms Permit that I don't actually need. It is very rare that I carry a firearm. I don't want to, but I want to be able to because criminals and idiots are. I carried an M-16 everywhere for 20 months, I don't want to do that again and don't want America to look like that. I don't have visions of killing bad guys. I don't even like mercifully finishing off the badly wounded birds that my cats bring in.
The real enemies? The ultra-rich globalists who have no use for the 2nd Amendment or nationhood. They view red-blue politics, intersectionality, racial divide and all complex divisive issues as tools to distract us from what they are doing. They've always done that, but it is much easier with the internet. Conservative/Liberal is a facade when it comes to them. They really don't care about that except for its divisiveness.
All that to say that the world we live in is not the world we wish it to be. This commentary which has ranged widely is about the lack of clear definitions, brought on largely by activists who push so hard that they guarantee pushback to a degree that solutions are made impossible. As long as activism feels threatening to us, rather than to the power elite they will do their best to perpetuate it since the activists are acting as the power elite's useful idiots. As George Carlin famously said, "The owners don't give a f*k about you" or me.
I agree with every word you say except th gun-grabbers stuff.
Nobody needs an assault rifle, and the fear they will be banned doesnтАЩt change that.
My cats stay inside. Cat kill too many birds.
Our cats came from parts unknown and moved in with us. We recently had the second occurrence of a cat observing us in the back yard, sizing us up for a few days and then walking in through the pet flap they saw our cats going in and out of and making itself at home. My kindhearted wife is an animal magnet. Interesting since as a child in Thailand farmers dogs' bit her and monkeys pissed on her from trees.
With the exception of one, they have all already been neutered. Cats have excellent homing ability, so they were either abandoned or decided they didn't like it where they were. Keeping them inside is not easy.
There are too many "I'm moving and can't take our dog and need to rehome it" or in the case of cats, just abandoning them. People suck.
Mass shootings happen in "gun-free zones" for a reason, which is also the reason that there are not more law-abiding citizens stopping mass shootings. Most people are like me, they leave their guns at home in a safe. The number of guns and percentage of households with guns does not equate to guns on the street.
A few years ago, I decided to look up the FBI's listed mass shootings in my greater metropolitan area. When most people hear the words "mass shootings" they think of the relatively rare spectacular and highly publicized events. That wasn't on their list. What was there was drug deals gone bad. Misuse of words is something you have commented on here in The Commentary. A shootout between drug dealers should not be conflated with a school, church or store shooting.
In this instance, the GGWAG wisely braced against a pole which reduces shaking and increases accuracy and if there had been another GGWAG he wouldn't have been a man with a rifle actively shooting terrified people eating at a table in the food court. I certainly wouldn't shoot at a man who was shooting at a man actively engaged in mass murder.
Get rid of the guns? It will have the same effect as gun free zones, more defenseless innocent people. But then in America, getting rid of the guns is not likely to happen. Perhaps some percentage of the population will willingly give them up, but there will be plenty left for the criminals. There is quite a market for stolen firearms being sold to felons who are prohibited possessors.
It's not "drug deals gone wrong" that are killing dozens of schoolchildren or country music fans or Jews at synagogue; it's young men who can buy weaponry of massacre. 18-22yo, AR-15. Every time.
The "only outlaws will have guns" thing doesn't move me. As you said, armed people will mostly shoot each other.
It's not the population that willingly surrenders them I want gone, it's those guys who make those videos yelling "come an' try to take away mah gun!!' I would like to see gone.
We agree on more than you might think. Our primary difference is that I go beyond zero trust in politicians (government), I expect deceit.
Take the current abortion brouhaha for example. The Arab story of the camel's nose come to mind. Roe v Wade began with a widely acceptable "Safe, available and rare." It progressed to the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion where they drill a hole in a fully formed fetus while some portion of it is still inside the woman. While not fully legal everywhere I cite it as an example of progressive creep. Politicians and activists always want more than they claim in the beginning. ALWAYS.
There are gun control things that I might embrace if I trusted government. I recently looked at a web page that listed "registered firearms" by state. They gave a number for Arizona, a state that formally has no gun registration. Firearm sales records are illegally being maintained past the date they are to be destroyed. As per Snowden, the government collects data illegally and keeps it forever. Gun registration makes nobody safer; its only purpose is future gun confiscation.
When government, military and police want to ensure that you are helpless to resist the first thing they do is disarm you. History tells us we might not want to be fans of that. Red flag. It will be abused for political purpose. The objectionable changes with the swing of the political pendulum. I don't think that the average 2nd Amendment fan, at least the ones my age, are World at War video game fantasizers who want a 15-minute murderous fame. We are dying off and the media is doing a fine job of promoting pusillanimous hoplophobia so resistance to disarmament of citizens will diminish. For the sake of my grandchildren, I hope it is not the dystopia of tyrants that I foresee.
If only politicians could be trusted. But they can't
Well I am not about to argue for trusting government. I trust corporations a hell of a lot less. Though the abortion thing is tangential and I don't want to argue about it.
I have no issue with firearms being kept in records. Sorry, but we have to license all kinds of things as long as we have or do them, like driving a car, practicing law or medicine; if I had my way there would be no national right to own firearms, that is supremely ridiculous, permits should only be granted on demonstration of need e.g. living in a high crime neighborhood or running a jewelry store. And, no, "I enjoy killing animals" is not a need.
History: Hitler made guns more available, not less, as the RKBAs claim. Right now parents are biting their knuckles because their kids are in school and some disgruntled kid could kill them. The RKBA answer is yet more guns.
The idea that an armed citizenry would inhibit tyranny is a fantasy. A hell of a lot of gun owners would side with the tyrant enthusiastically, liberated to shoot people like me. And those who would resist think they can go up against the US military and prevail? Really?
I don't see the media (plural: ARE) promoting disarmament. Unless you want them to be silent about the more than daily mass shootings.
All I hear is raising the age to buy a massacre weapon to 21.
I grew up in the south. I heard a lot of gun nuts. I had debates in steam rooms with guys who swore they were going to kill me in the parking lot. I'm sick of guns.