Gun Control

[RosslynV]

I am wondering when the Fed Govt will change the gun control laws. Should I hold my breathe?

 

[RosslynV]

follow up-- like 30000 people have been killed by fire arms since Sandy Hook.

How many more Sandy Hooks do we have to suffer through?

Granted, like 60% of homicides are actually suicides, but nevertheless, less guns would mean less suicides and or homicides and or massacres.

Peace

 

[GEddie]

You are aware, of course, that being armed is a constitutional right in the USA, and has been since 1791?

No-one likes losing a right, so I don’t expect that to change for a long time.

And even if it did, the guns are still physically there and would remain there. They would just be hidden.

As to suicide, one does not need a gun to do that.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[Nacho45]

follow up-- like 30000 people have been killed by fire arms since Sandy Hook.

How many more Sandy Hooks do we have to suffer through?

Granted, like 60% of homicides are actually suicides, but nevertheless, less guns would mean less suicides and or homicides and or massacres.

Peace

You’ve placed suicide in with homicide? I think I understand why, but they are not the same.

Less guns means more other ways people kill each other. It’s only a tool. Other countries have extremely high knife attacks, but few guns. Murder still happens. Cain didn’t kill Abel with a Barrett sniper rifle. Most people who commit suicide use other means.

Have you ever heard the saying “Guns kill people like spoons make people fat?”

The best way to protect society from a lunatic with a gun is to arm all the sane people and provide proper training.

 

[Nacho45]

I am wondering when the Fed Govt will change the gun control laws. Should I hold my breathe?

I wouldn’t. Even if they did, people would still have guns, but then criminals would only be armed and could run rampant.

 

[GEddie]

You’ve placed suicide in with homicide? I think I understand why, but they are not the same.

Less guns means more other ways people kill each other. It’s only a tool. Other countries have extremely high knife attacks, but few guns. Murder still happens. Cain didn’t kill Abel with a Barrett sniper rifle. Most people who commit suicide use other means.

Have you ever heard the saying “Guns kill people like spoons make people fat?”

The best way to protect society from a lunatic with a gun is to arm all the sane people and provide proper training.

The problem with your last sentence is that every lunatic was a sane person once. If you arm everybody, you will have more armed lunatics; there’s no way around it.

Edit: At least no way that this society would accept (mental checks for buying guns, etc).

ICXC NIKA

 

[Nacho45]

The problem with your last sentence is that every lunatic was a sane person once. If you arm everybody, you will have more armed lunatics; there’s no way around it.

Edit: At least no way that this society would accept (mental checks for buying guns, etc).

ICXC NIKA

The problem with your concern, and it is a legitimate concern, is you don’t know who the lunatics are, but they already have access to those guns anyway. It is one solution. If everyone is carrying and capable of adequately eliminating a threat, fewer people will become a threat, at least, this is what my experience has taught me. Of course, not everyone would want to carry, so allow those who do want to the ability to do so and protect in ways even law enforcement cant.

And we must never forget why this right was placed into the Constitution. To protect ourselves from the government.

 

[Lost_Sheep]

It has been said many times before but it bears repeating. Criminals do not care about gun laws any more than they care about any other law they choose to break. Even if it were possible to take away all the guns from society, criminals would get them illegally and use them in commission of their crimes. Handguns are illegal in Canada and Great Britain but handgun murders still occur. Guns are obviously prohibited in prisons, but inmates are clever enough to fashion other weapons out of other available materials and kill with those.

It is a sad but true fact that some people are going to kill. It has been going on since Cain and Abel. Cain used a rock. Later along came clubs, then spears, then arrows, then bullets. Someday gunpowder weapons will be obsolete and killing will be done with laser pistols and light sabers.

Killing is a people problem; not a gun problem.

And I won’t even get into the Constitutional right to bear arms for both self-defense and for checks and balances against tyranny.

 

[mountee]

The issue to me is far greater than more stringent gun control laws. For example, I am 62 years old and in my life I have known 7 people personally who have committed suicide. Only one of those people used a gun. Do I believe that a person who wants to kill themselves won’t because they don’t have a gun, absolutely not, the desire to commit suicide is far more complicated than having a gun available, I believe than until our country recognizes that the mentally ill need to be properly identified, diagnosed and treated, even if it isn’t politically correct, we will have insane murders continue even if there isn’t a gun left on earth. The desire to inflict great pain and suffering on people with a complete disregard for human life goes well beyond gun control.

 

[Nacho45]

My favorite celebrity quote on gun control.

“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”

• Clint Eastwood

 

[Lost_Sheep]

Gun Control means hitting your target.

 

[GEddie]

The problem with your concern, and it is a legitimate concern, is you don’t know who the lunatics are, but they already have access to those guns anyway. It is one solution. If everyone is carrying and capable of adequately eliminating a threat, fewer people will become a threat, at least, this is what my experience has taught me. Of course, not everyone would want to carry, so allow those who do want to the ability to do so and protect in ways even law enforcement cant.

And we must never forget why this right was placed into the Constitution. To protect ourselves from the government.

We already have a government that is less than a neck-skin away from tyranny, but it is already too late to even think about guns as the answer. The same mighty machine that won two world wars and (with help from the Pope) faced down the CCCP isn’t going to back down before its own huddled masses. It would meet them with tanks.

And not every lunatic has easy access to guns. Making that access just slightly more difficult would deter a lot of them.

ICXC NIKA

 

[vz71]

How many more Sandy Hooks do we have to suffer through?

The right to bear arms has little to do with it.
If there is no gun, people will simply find another way to kill.

 

[Lost_Sheep]

How many more Sandy Hooks do we have to suffer through?

If all the teachers at Sandy Hook had been allowed to carry firearms (and had been properly trained how to use them) more people could have survived.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

A few remarks:

RosslynV wants an answer on how many more Sandy Hooks do we need? My answer is this: Far too little is written about the effects of the psychotropic drugs that virtually every mass shooter has been associated with. Including Adam Lanza, James Morris and Jared Loughner, to name three of them. The Columbine shooters were on them; the Virginia Tech shooter was on them. There is far too much effort instead to keep the drug use confidential as it protects the doctors who prescribed them and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Further keeping this part quiet is part of the gun control agenda. It’s no coincidence that every mass shooting is accompanied by loud calls for more gun control and no (or much fewer) calls for publicly investigating the psychotropic drug histories. Those who think as RosslynV have bought this line and are forgetting that mental illness is a real problem in this country, the way we handle it is another big problem and minimizing the discussion of it does us all a real disservice.

As a Catholic, I believe that everyone has an inalienable right to life which extends from conception to natural death. But that right to life is no good without the corollary right to defend that life and the lives of those who can’t protect their own lives (such as the young, the unborn and the infirm). Everyone should have the choice how they exercise that right, one can have guns in the home or in public or not at all, as one chooses. That choice shouldn’t be taken from us. The way I choose to think about it: when I have seconds to act on armed criminals in my vicinity but minutes to wait until the cops arrive, that’s a bad place to be with no defense. Cops can’t be everywhere. If Rosslyn wants to trust them with his life, that’s his choice. Don’t force it on me. I don’t go armed everywhere, but I want to be the one to exercise that choice.

It has been remarked above that guns are inadequate when the government can roll out the tanks. Ye forget too soon the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, that a dedicated resistance can make life rather interesting for the allegedly superior occupying force. Else why is the gun control lobby still working its rear end off? Their favored end game is to disarm us all, but they’ve been stymied thank goodness and are reduced to reducing gun rights an inch at a time.

 

[Brendan]

As a Catholic, I believe that everyone has an inalienable right to life which extends from conception to natural death. But that right to life is no good without the corollary right to defend that life and the lives of those who can’t protect their own lives (such as the young, the unborn and the infirm). .

Actually, it’s not just a right to defend oneself, in regards to others in our care, the Church says that it’s a DUTY

legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another’s life, the common good of the family or of the State. Unfortunately, it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose actions brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason."

Pope John Paul II - Evangelicum Vitae

 

[Hobbes42]

A few remarks:

RosslynV wants an answer on how many more Sandy Hooks do we need? My answer is this: Far too little is written about the effects of the psychotropic drugs that virtually every mass shooter has been associated with. Including Adam Lanza, James Morris and Jared Loughner, to name three of them. The Columbine shooters were on them; the Virginia Tech shooter was on them. There is far too much effort instead to keep the drug use confidential as it protects the doctors who prescribed them and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Further keeping this part quiet is part of the gun control agenda. It’s no coincidence that every mass shooting is accompanied by loud calls for more gun control and no (or much fewer) calls for publicly investigating the psychotropic drug histories. Those who think as RosslynV have bought this line and are forgetting that mental illness is a real problem in this country, the way we handle it is another big problem and minimizing the discussion of it does us all a real disservice.

As a Catholic, I believe that everyone has an inalienable right to life which extends from conception to natural death. But that right to life is no good without the corollary right to defend that life and the lives of those who can’t protect their own lives (such as the young, the unborn and the infirm). Everyone should have the choice how they exercise that right, one can have guns in the home or in public or not at all, as one chooses. That choice shouldn’t be taken from us. The way I choose to think about it: when I have seconds to act on armed criminals in my vicinity but minutes to wait until the cops arrive, that’s a bad place to be with no defense. Cops can’t be everywhere. If Rosslyn wants to trust them with his life, that’s his choice. Don’t force it on me. I don’t go armed everywhere, but I want to be the one to exercise that choice.

It has been remarked above that guns are inadequate when the government can roll out the tanks. Ye forget too soon the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, that a dedicated resistance can make life rather interesting for the allegedly superior occupying force. Else why is the gun control lobby still working its rear end off? Their favored end game is to disarm us all, but they’ve been stymied thank goodness and are reduced to reducing gun rights an inch at a time.

To the drug use,
If legislature allowing for checks to ensure that those who have a backround of mental illness which would compromise their ability to own a firearm responsibly, those killings would not have happened (granted, those persons would also have to be removed from access to firearms as well)

As to the claim about ‘fighting the gubment’,
Let me remind you that this talk is against the founders ideals, see the Alien and Sedition acts, you can’t go talking about fighting your government… No one is rolling tanks out, and there will continue to be peaceful transfers of power.

 

[SubjectVerb]

Another gun control thread. SIGH

I’ll just leave what the Church has to say about self-defense here:

Legitimate defense (CCC)

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

To the drug use,
If legislature allowing for checks to ensure that those who have a backround of mental illness which would compromise their ability to own a firearm responsibly, those killings would not have happened (granted, those persons would also have to be removed from access to firearms as well)

Nice sidestep, that.

As to the claim about ‘fighting the gubment’,
Let me remind you that this talk is against the founders ideals, see the Alien and Sedition acts, you can’t go talking about fighting your government… No one is rolling tanks out, and there will continue to be peaceful transfers of power.

There exists the possibility that there may not be peaceful transfers of power for that much longer for reasons much discussed elsewhere. So I’ll quote the Declaration of Independence:
The Founding Fathers:

… That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
…

A truly subversive document, is it not? I don’t believe it’s taught in depth in public schools anymore…

 

[Lost_Sheep]

There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, that proves mental illness and/or the medicines use to treat it cause a person to go on killing sprees.