Time for a "Mass Shootings" Forum?

Mike Huckabee: Professional Asshole

 

So?

 

I do. and I'm beginning to come around to the idea that they should be banned. the rate of fire they allow is simply too high and not really necessary if all you need is a finishing gun (if you're hunting) or home protection. a single action revolver should do the trick for both.

 

I also used to be in the "rifles/revolvers are OK" crowd but at this point, the situation has become drastic and so more drastic measures are called for until we as a society have had a rethink on this. If gun owners want to blame anyone for that, they can look in the mirror. Like you've pointed out, they've had decades but most (but not all) still refuse to pull their heads out of their asses and address our problems seriously. The time for deeming these tragedies as acceptable losses while spouting gun nut bumper sticker slogans about "freedom" and for muddling through without seriously thinking about it let alone doing anything is now gone.

The following only strengthens that belief:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs.../?Post+generic=?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost

Based on the facts, we need to get ourselves to the point where we're sane enough as a society to handle the kinds of laws they have in most of the rest of the developed countries where you can have a decent level of gun ownership without a sky high homicide rate. Getting to that place will take a multifaceted approach - gun bans initially working our way to sane gun control measures as appropriate, regulated hunting by renting guns with draconian penalties for failing to turn your rented gun back into the authorities, better education in schools, adjusting the media and its glorification of violence and guns, more accessible mental health care and probably a bunch of things none of us has as yet thought of.

We also need to grow the hell up, stop thinking we're perfect and the rest of the world has nothing to teach us and look at what is working overseas and borrow their ideas as appropriate to our society.

 

Unless you miss with the first shot.

 

Man, I'm up for this. Reminds me of Bill Maher's rant about the "Donner Party" - people on the left get the worse end of every "compromise" because we start off way too close to the middle. We should be advocating that all guns be banned, rather than completely ceding the gun control issue like we are right now. Maybe we'd end up with some gun control then, rather than barely any.

 

god, I can't believe some of my facebook are really going with the car analogy to defend guns. ugh!

 

cock the hammer, pull the trigger. repeat 4 more times if necessary.

 

Good analogy. On the one hand you have cars, designed as transport from place to place. On the other hand you have guns, designed for........Nevermind

 

You really can't believe it? Don't they go with the car analogy after every massacre? My facebook friends do.

 

A gunquake that registered 9.0 on the constitution scale hit Connecticut today. It was one of the most deadly gunquakes in U.S. history, resulting in almost 30 deaths and destroying a school and the nearby community.

 

yeah...
my answer is, when people kill others with a car, we call it an accident, because the car was not serving its intended purpose. when guns kill people (or people kill people using guns), we call it murder. I'm sure that if people starting using cars more and more to intentionally kill people, there would be some serious thought given to banning cars - or certain types of cars too! it's not a hard concept. not sure why so many people struggle with it.

 

I have to turn off the TV and leave the computer, because I'm becoming obsessive. This story has affected me very deeply. Of course it's affected everybody. It's a horror beyond comprehension. For me personally, it hits home in a specific way that pertains to being a teacher. When I taught in Brooklyn we had drills to practice what to do in the case of an unauthorized person entering the building. These were basically school shooter drills, but we didn't call it that. It was in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting. I spent an irrational amount of time thinking about what I'd do if it happened, even though school shootings are relatively rare.

But I want to articulate what I'm feeling here -- why I've literally been crying all day. When I was teaching I was constantly in a state of stress over my responsibility to the kids. I put so much mental and emotional energy into trying to do right by them. You want every child who enters your classroom to go home better off at the end of the day and the end of the school year. You want to improve their lives. At the very least you want to create a safe environment for them. This was especially urgent for the population of kids I was working with, who often had pretty terrible lives in so many ways. It's almost paralyzingly stunning to me to think about children being harmed like this. In their school. In their classroom.

But the children I taught were not strangers to gun violence. Many of them were suffering from PTSD because of violence they had witnessed. Most if not all of them lived in fear of it. They didn't need the unlikely possibility of a mass shooter to bring fear into their classrooms. It was already there, all the time. I hate how that gets ignored. I hate so much that an entire kindergarten class had to be murdered in order for people to finally start talking about our nation's problem with gun violence. I hate that this incomprehensible tragedy had to happen before the President could even obliquely mention maybe starting to talk about an answer to gun violence.

I used to work so hard to create some kind of safe oasis where my kids could feel secure and free their minds from worrying about the violence all around them. Hearing about children being murdered in their classroom like this... It sounds very strange but it feels like a personal failure.

Sorry for the self-indulgent emo shit. I'm just very upset today.

 

Anybody know the math on Intruders killed by a gun owner Vs. Friends/Family killed in domestic disputes or accidents in a gun owner's home?

 

Yesterday in China a man did the exact same thing, stabbing 22 kids. None are dead.

http://metro.co.uk/2012/12/14/man-w...hildren-at-school-in-chengping-china-3316760/

 

or pregnant girl friends killed while cop was "cleaning" his loaded gun.

 

We should just go after the 2nd Amendment.

 

Or provide an explanation as to why the suicide rates are higher in households with guns than those without....

 

Or redefine the "well regulated militia" part. Which, in today's terms, would probably be the police or maybe National Guard.

 

Mine go with the conspiracy theories and the "gun control kills" stuff. In addition to the "gun control propaganda is coming" memes

 

I think Red Dawn really set us back in this regard.

 

yeah, as I wrote on the previous page, we don't need a privately-run well-regulated militia. we already have a state-run well regulated militia to protect us from both foreign and domestic enemy. also, we are not a frontier society any more, where we have to worry about those crazy injuns coming to kill us and rape our women.

 

Fuck Everything, Nation Reports-Just Fuck It All To Hell

Link's being a bitch, here's the direct:http://www.theonion.com/articles/********-everything-nation-reports,30743/

Edit: GD BigSoccer is ********ing up the link because of the word ********, just ******** it all to hell.