Gun Control

[Nacho45]

14 year old Girl shot Dead by step father , the Girl was thought to have been a burglar .
This shooting occurred in Colorado… Was the shooter of stable mind?
Was the Shooter a trigger happy believer in his right to bear arms ?
Well there is another innocent life cut short because of stupidity…

You realize, of course, there are a multitude of stories which favor the opposing view. Yes?

But I believe there should be government micromanagement and regulation for all tools. I submit ladders as a weapon of death.

A man in Bakersfield California fell from his ladder while working and died. If there were no ladders, people would not be tempted to climb them. It would not be as easier to climb up on things; therefore, people would not get higher than three feet off the ground, resulting in less death. Unless we take into account they trip while walking. Yes, government should regulate walking as well. It’s just too dangerous. (I apologize for my sarcasm, but it seems necessary to make the point).

 

[Nacho45]

I just read an article posted this past summer which reveals an average of about 1,000 knife attacks in the city of London, alone, per month. Four teenagers were stabbed to death in the first half of the year. Hundreds were injured in the attacks. During the first four months of the year it was reported that 284 were seriously injured, 413 were moderately injured and 870 had minor injuries. Remember, this is London where guns are extremely restricted and regulated. And this is apparently less than in previous years. Another article states knives are the weapon most often used in murders.

So, it isn’t the weapon of choice which is the problem rather the people using them.

In fact, the USA isn’t the number one country of murder by gun per capita in the world even though we have far more of them and far more people who carry them. For instance, in the USA it is 2.97 per 100,000 and in Jamaica (vacation spot) it is a whopping 39.4 per 100,000 which is even less than Honduras.

 

[Phil_Marinus]

You realize, of course, there are a multitude of stories which favor the opposing view. Yes?

But I believe there should be government micromanagement and regulation for all tools. I submit ladders as a weapon of death.

A man in Bakersfield California fell from his ladder while working and died. If there were no ladders, people would not be tempted to climb them. It would not be as easier to climb up on things; therefore, people would not get higher than three feet off the ground, resulting in less death. Unless we take into account they trip while walking. Yes, government should regulate walking as well. It’s just too dangerous. (I apologize for my sarcasm, but it seems necessary to make the point).

I appreciate the sarcasm to show your point… But really… I would hate to be the father of a child… And the step dad cut a life short… There are arguments and counter arguments
We could argue till the cows come home… This is why I stated a few pages back…

Well folks,there are no clear winners to this argument....

But I should have added, There is only loss of innocent life …
What a F@$&@ waste of life…

 

[Phil_Marinus]

You realize, of course, there are a multitude of stories which favor the opposing view. Yes?

But I believe there should be government micromanagement and regulation for all tools. I submit ladders as a weapon of death.

A man in Bakersfield California fell from his ladder while working and died. If there were no ladders, people would not be tempted to climb them. It would not be as easier to climb up on things; therefore, people would not get higher than three feet off the ground, resulting in less death. Unless we take into account they trip while walking. Yes, government should regulate walking as well. It’s just too dangerous. (I apologize for my sarcasm, but it seems necessary to make the point).

I appreciate the sarcasm to show your point… But really… I would hate to be the father of a child… And the step dad cut a life short… There are arguments and counter arguments
We could argue till the cows come home… This is why I stated a few pages back…

Well folks,there are no clear winners to this argument....

But I should have added, There is only loss of innocent life …
What a F@$&@ waste of life…
Just because people stand by there right to bear arms nonsense…

 

[Nacho45]

I sincerely believe if a person does not like guns or think they are nothing more than weapons of murder, that person should not own any and by no means be forced to own or use them.

They also should not infringe on those who disagree with their personal view point the ability to do the opposite.

 

[Phil_Marinus]

I sincerely believe if a person does not like guns or think they are nothing more than weapons of murder, that person should not own any and by no means be forced to own or use them.

They also should not infringe on those who disagree with their personal view point the ability to do the opposite.

I agree…same goes for people that like fast cars…
That’s why there will never be a victor of this debate

 

[freeRadical]

I appreciate the sarcasm to show your point… But really… I would hate to be the father of a child… And the step dad cut a life short… There are arguments and counter arguments
We could argue till the cows come home… This is why I stated a few pages back…

Well folks,there are no clear winners to this argument....

But I should have added, There is only loss of innocent life …
What a F@$&@ waste of life…
Just because people stand by there right to bear arms nonsense…

It may be nonsense to you but its not nonsense to me. I will always believe in liberty and I will always believe in the right to bear arms.

 

[freeRadical]

14 year old Girl shot Dead by step father , the Girl was thought to have been a burglar .
This shooting occurred in Colorado… Was the shooter of stable mind?
Was the Shooter a trigger happy believer in his right to bear arms ?
Well there is another innocent life cut short because of stupidity…

18 year old girl was raped and killed on a college campus. Another innocent life cut short because she wasn’t allowed to carry a gun. Another innocent life cut short because of stupidity.

 

[Phil_Marinus]

On the flip side of the argument…

Considering the mega Huge stockpile of weaponary available…

The amount of tragedy is actually minuscule .......

So in that instance… There is an incredible amount of responsibility shown…

 

[Nacho45]

The main thing with issues like this is to understand not everyone is going to agree and at least attempt to see things from the others point of view. There is nothing intrinsically evil about having a gun, but that does not mean everyone thinks they are a good idea. As long as civility is maintained, I do not mind such discussions.

 

[epan]

If that really is your benchmark, you’d be SOL (sorry, out of luck) unless you have a tank dealer nearby.

In the vanishingly unlikely event that the USA were to go into tyranny, it already has tanks and the resisters would have to face them.

Since the country would almost certainly not survive such a conflict in its current form, it would be better just to put up with it than to try resistance. IMNAAHO.

I don’t have any use even for a Humvee, much less a 70 ton $9M Abrams. But my point is that the purpose of the constitutional protections to bear arms, or the protections preventing the standing army from engaging in domestic law enforcement, the protections ensuring due process in a variety of areas, freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and so on… all serve one purpose, which is to limit the power of our government.

Given the incessant inclination of governments to try to increase their powers, and to grow in size and bureaucracy over time, I believe that we should be very cautious about repealing our own rights. I am not in favor of suspending the right to gun ownership in order to solve a policing problem, any more than I am in favor of suspending habeas corpus to make it easier to hold and question people for which there is insufficient evidence to do so.

As Benjamin Franklin wrote to the Pennsylvania assembly in 1755: “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

I also feel that as we continue to methodically eliminate the middle class in the US, then the propensity for radical change to be demanded by the populace will increase. As this happens, there will be a tendency by those in power to continue to try to restrict civil rights and accrue every more power to the government. Because this trend continues at a very slow pace, and other rationalizations are used (ie. terrorism, or firearm usage…), people generally don’t recognize the trend, and sometimes they actually favor it. See Franlkin’s quote above.

I have long felt that compulsory military/government service is a good idea. If everyone served the country for a few years, then the perspective on government would change, and many career bureaucrat jobs would be eliminated. Most of the work in the government and the military do not require a career employee. As it is now, the military is in a mess, having to spend 50% of its budget on health and retirement benefits. This will only worsen. But back to the responsible gun ownership / gun control question. I believe that a person who is properly trained in the use of a weapon is less likely to use it improperly. Perhaps the better answer to the problem is compulsory firearm training for the population. Countries like Switzerland do this.

 

[oldcatholicguy]

Is there any such thing as a “good” abortion?

Is there any such thing as a “good” speeder?

Is there any such thing as a “good” rape?

Is there any such thing as “good” sexual abuse?

Doesn’t matter since you claimed that my comparison was faulty because none of the examples I listed had a “good side” while firearms do. I’ve invalidated your claim.

As for the above, is there any such thing as a “good” murder by firearms, a “good” attempted murder by firearms, a “good” robbery by firearms, or a “good” assault by firearms?

 

[oldcatholicguy]

If that really is your benchmark, you’d be SOL (sorry, out of luck) unless you have a tank dealer nearby.

In the vanishingly unlikely event that the USA were to go into tyranny, it already has tanks and the resisters would have to face them.

Since the country would almost certainly not survive such a conflict in its current form, it would be better just to put up with it than to try resistance. IMNAAHO.

Um, tanks aren’t that great in fighting light infantry, let alone an insurgent force. Too big, too loud, too few, mobility issues, wrong type of firepower, etc. I won’t even go into the issues a conventional military faces (even when equipped correctly) in regards to a hostile populace.

 

[epan]

14 year old Girl shot Dead by step father , the Girl was thought to have been a burglar .
This shooting occurred in Colorado… Was the shooter of stable mind?
Was the Shooter a trigger happy believer in his right to bear arms ?
Well there is another innocent life cut short because of stupidity…

The shooter was not properly trained in the use of his firearm. He did not properly acquire his target prior to squeezing the trigger. How tragic that a father killed his own daughter. It would be like running her over in the driveway, because he did not bother to look where he was driving.

During OIF1, I was associated with a group of individuals whose job was to act as a target to attract enemy fire, and also to act as a quick reaction force to put out various “fires” quickly. One of our tasks was to extract a group of 1,000 men who had been pinned down under fire. Our little battalion arrived first, followed on by a Regimental Combat Team of 6,000 with armor and air support, and two more battalions. The clever commander was stymied because those of us from Pendleton where on a different encryption standard than were the pinned down group from Lejuene. There was no direct way to communicate with them. He was actually relieved of his command on the spot later in the day for inaction. But that is another story. So, we had his order to do a recon run through the town. Our commander disagreed with the tactic, but rank prevailed, and we prepared for a high speed recon/assault mission right into the center of the enemy stronghold (in open vehicles with no roofs). We identified where we were likely to be ambushed. As luck would have it, a vehicle stalled right at that point, and we were indeed ambushed precisely there. We learned some new tactics of the enemy, at the cost of one Marine wounded. We got out of that situation by introducing the enemy to the effects of our weaponry, and then continued on our merry way to exit at the other side of town, having confirmed precisely what we had already determined by looking at a map, but paying for that confirmation with a wounded man. Clever RCT commander. So, a btn coming in from the other side of town saw our trail of dust rising as we sped through the town. They took up positions at our anticipated exit point thinking that we were likely to be the enemy coming to greet them. They decided to be the hospitable party, and to be ready to greet us, too. When we exited the town, there were approximately 500 rifles pointing at us, in addition to SAW’s and a 50 mm machine gun or two, and probably and rocket launcher or two… I saw the men lower their eyes to their sights in anticipation of firing at us. We would have been pulverized.

But guess what? Each of those men were trained in the proper use of his weapon. Nobody squeezed a trigger before acquiring his target. So, nobody got hurt. I did nearly **** in my pants, if that counts for anything.

My point is that one would not drive a car without proper training, because it would be dangerous to do so. One should not attempt to use a weapon without proper training, because it is dangerous to do so.

 

[ARSpade]

If that really is your benchmark, you’d be SOL (sorry, out of luck) unless you have a tank dealer nearby.

In the vanishingly unlikely event that the USA were to go into tyranny, it already has tanks and the resisters would have to face them.

Since the country would almost certainly not survive such a conflict in its current form, it would be better just to put up with it than to try resistance. IMNAAHO.

I always find this argument so amusing and naive considering Iraq just happened and Afghanistan is still going on. It’s cute, really. “Oh, you’d never survive against the rather small and spread out US military that couldn’t over a decade really defeat a bunch of peasents with light weapons.”

Also, “just putting up with it” worked so very well for people in Germany and the Soviet Union.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

 

[GEddie]

I don’t have any use even for a Humvee, much less a 70 ton $9M Abrams. But my point is that the purpose of the constitutional protections to bear arms, or the protections preventing the standing army from engaging in domestic law enforcement, the protections ensuring due process in a variety of areas, freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and so on… all serve one purpose, which is to limit the power of our government.

Given the incessant inclination of governments to try to increase their powers, and to grow in size and bureaucracy over time, I believe that we should be very cautious about repealing our own rights. I am not in favor of suspending the right to gun ownership in order to solve a policing problem, any more than I am in favor of suspending habeas corpus to make it easier to hold and question people for which there is insufficient evidence to do so.

As Benjamin Franklin wrote to the Pennsylvania assembly in 1755: “They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

I also feel that as we continue to methodically eliminate the middle class in the US, then the propensity for radical change to be demanded by the populace will increase. As this happens, there will be a tendency by those in power to continue to try to restrict civil rights and accrue every more power to the government. Because this trend continues at a very slow pace, and other rationalizations are used (ie. terrorism, or firearm usage…), people generally don’t recognize the trend, and sometimes they actually favor it. See Franlkin’s quote above.

I have long felt that compulsory military/government service is a good idea. If everyone served the country for a few years, then the perspective on government would change, and many career bureaucrat jobs would be eliminated. Most of the work in the government and the military do not require a career employee. As it is now, the military is in a mess, having to spend 50% of its budget on health and retirement benefits. This will only worsen. But back to the responsible gun ownership / gun control question. I believe that a person who is properly trained in the use of a weapon is less likely to use it improperly. Perhaps the better answer to the problem is compulsory firearm training for the population. Countries like Switzerland do this.

Great — force all healthy young males (we are just too squeamish to include females) to offer their bodies as disposable pieces on our government’s infinite global chessboard? Embolden even more world interventionism by our government that has been the curse of this century? The same government you want to prepare to insurrect against?

Am I missing something here?

And if your point in requiring this is to save on “benefits”. – you mean that once someone has given his limbs, sight or mind for his government that they should be denied those benefits?

Whooh.

ICXC NIKA

 

[epan]

Great — force all healthy young males (we are just too squeamish to include females) to offer their bodies as disposable pieces on our government’s infinite global chessboard? Embolden even more world interventionism by our government that has been the curse of this century? The same government you want to prepare to insurrect against?

Am I missing something here?

And if your point in requiring this is to save on “benefits”. – you mean that once someone has given his limbs, sight or mind for his government that they should be denied those benefits?

Whooh.

ICXC NIKA

Yes, you are missing something.

I am not planning an insurrection against our government. Far from it. I served in the military as a combatant, and also as a surgeon.

Not all government service calls upon one to offer a disposable body. In fact, only a small fraction of it does, and those areas could be volunteer positions.

And no, I never advocated denying benefits to anyone who has served (including myself).

However, the point stands, that a truck driver, a cook, a clerk at the IRS, and the 90% of other government jobs which require little skill beyond a high school diploma could be filled by citizens serving their country. Many countries in the world, including Germany, Israel, and Switzerland take this approach.

Now let me ask you - do you believe that we should waste taxpayer money, and perhaps drive our government into insolvency, when it is not necessary to do so?

It is the secretary of defense who is now pointing out the obvious problems of a volunteer armed forces.

Consider another point please. If everyone was liable to serve in the military, then the public discourse before engaging in military action would be much different. The public would be involved in the discussion, instead of flipping the channel and ignoring what the Congress is up to.

 

[epan]

Great — force all healthy young males (we are just too squeamish to include females) to offer their bodies as disposable pieces on our government’s infinite global chessboard? Embolden even more world interventionism by our government that has been the curse of this century? The same government you want to prepare to insurrect against?

Am I missing something here?

And if your point in requiring this is to save on “benefits”. – you mean that once someone has given his limbs, sight or mind for his government that they should be denied those benefits?

Whooh.

ICXC NIKA

No, I would not exclude females from service. I would exclude them from ground combat positions for reasons of physical ability.

But that does not exclude a myriad of other civil service positions, combat positions not on the ground, and noncombat military jobs.

For example, there are great female pilots. No reason a female could not captain a warship, etc… but digging a ranger grave to sleep in, and carrying 100 pounds of battle rattle, most women are not physically strong enough for that.

 

[thedavidwilson]

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.

I wonder if they are also aware that the apostles carried assault weapons (the equivalent in their day to a FULLY automatic M-16) and that there were assault weapons at the Last Supper and that the first Pope used his assault weapon in the Garden of Gethsemane?

barnhardt.biz/the-one-about-jesus-and-guns/

The first Pope in action:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Saint_Peter

 

[thedavidwilson]

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

Do what Jesus did:

barnhardt.biz/the-one-about-jesus-and-guns/