Time for a "Mass Shootings" Forum?

Sure you did. Not so frequently in schools; but definitely in other circumstances. The watershed event was Charles Whitman in Austin, TX.

 

*plonk*

 

I've heard this line a lot from conservatives but it makes no sense. Maybe back in the day when it was musket for musket but there's no way a citizen or group of citizens could stand up to the government. At the very least you would have a huge SWAT team breathing down your neck with a tank rolling in behind them. Now all it would take is a drone strike. The "guns keep us safe from government" argument needs to stop because it's stupid.

 

Took me a while to catch up in the thread - two of these events in one week should cause you to think deeply about the issue and eschew simple responses if nothing else. But in the context of the Newtown school shooting, I do understand an emotional reaction, because when something involves young children at school the way this one has it is much easier to personalize the event rather than it being more amorphous. If you're a parent, then chances are you have sent or will send your young child to school. You know this could be you in a way other events do not imply. I know I do. This really could have been me and my family.

And while I appreciate the suggestion/practice that we should all hug our kids a little tighter, what then? I certainly hugged both my kids, but my 12 year old needed more. She sobbed for a good twenty minutes just thinking about what happened and how scared the kids must have been, and I tried to help as best I could, which meant alternately letting her cry and also trying to talk through the issue. The hug was the easy part. Maybe the only rational thing I've seen in some remarkably polarizing FB exchanges is the Mr. Rogers anecdote about his mom: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mothers’ words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world." That might help. But she's old enough to feel real emotional pain, and is feeling it. My older daughter is 16 and it seems like there has been tragedy in the news since she was five when 9/11 happened. She's more resilient and is "okay" right now.

 

I know it's a typo, but that's the problem with the current gun laws. Too many people dear to others are too easily killed by guns that are too readily available.

 

It is stupid because you do not agree with it, for me and many others it is a hill to die over. That is one of the things you guys are leaving out of the equation. There comes a time after a long usurpation of rights that citizens are obligated to stand up to their government if they are to remain free.

The men who founded this country were called traitors and terrorists as well. If you could point to how well drug laws have controlled drugs then you might have some hope of convincing this might do something other than make sure criminals are the only one who bear arms.

There was a post a few pages back that talked about LE being in favor or more carry laws. I am in favor of open carry. There would be a lot less home invasions and muggings if that were the case. My reason for wanting to continue owning guns like my neighbors have to do with others safety as well as mine.
Nobody is going to massacre people in a McDonalds or movie theater I am in until after they shoot me. Hell a good argument could be made to let us teachers open carry.

My neighbor and i within the last year had to visit some other neighbors and "splain" to them how they were not going to cook meth in our neighborhood. Multiple calls to the po-po got nothing done, one conversation later they decided that even if they won the shootout that the neighborhood would be to hot to be cooking meth in so they moved. Without firearms I doubt my neighbor or i would have ventured to have that discussion for fear of our safety. (Note: Neighborhood is not the same as in suburban america rather neighbors are often a quarter mile or so apart. Far enough to be sort of country but not so far that you can't smell the burning plastic smell of meth cooking.)

You can say gun ownership is not some inalienable right in the Declaration and I would remind you that the Declaration is not the rule of law in this nation. It is though the second amendment and it must have been important to the founders. If it is your assertion that is no longer needed then you need Washington to get 35 states to agree with you.

You can call me selfish and i can counter that it is for my grandchildren and their rights that I even bother to argue. Within three years of finishing college I will be virtually self sufficient so it really will not matter to me. I have taken responsibility for myself and my family, and we will do just fine even in the unlikely event of a SHTF scenario. In the meantime we will enjoy fluoride free water, and organic raised poultry with free range eggs, home canned jelly and vegetables and fresh produce, along with our own honey. I cannot help it that I am not cut from the entitlement mentality that is always looking to some other entity to solve their problems.

 

Hi General Ripper!

 

Guns in a place with a lot of inquisitive kids is a horrible ide.

 

Is this G.I. Joe-Lee-Coyote character for real?

 

Why should I have to move my country has granted every citizen the right to own firearms, you have the right to move to a country where guns are illegal, I accept the status quo and feel no need to move thank you very much.

To be honest i find it heartbreaking, but i did not kill a one of them, nor were my guns or ammunition used in any killings ever. So I do not feel any responsibility for it whatsoever. I do as a citizen find the number of innocent people killed by our military (accidental or not) in the middle east greatly troubling, but just like gun control I get one vote.

 

Not that it's a good idea at any age, but I was thinking of kids in kindergarten who like to check out new things..

 

"I didn't kill any of them, my selfish attitude toward gun control did."

 

Yup

I find it interesting that all the gun control advocates are glossing over the fact that Conn has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. It seems that in this terribly tragic case gun control is shown to be epic phail.

 

Whoopdeedoo. You can probably drive two hours from Connecticut and buy whatever kind of gun you want to. When is the Second Amendment crowd going to stop making this irrelevant argument?

That's a rhetorical question, by the way. You don't have any relevant arguments.

 

No people with no reasoning skills similar to yours did.

 

Drugs are freakin' tinny. $10,000,000 worth of drugs can fit in a few suicases. $10,000,000 in guns would require several shipping pallets. On top of that, guns are metal!

The market for drugs exists because of a high price/volume or price/weight. Drugs are 100 time easier to conceal.

If there was a black market for guns, a 9 millimeter would cost tens of thousands of dollars. A decent size assault weapon would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. 99% of criminals wouldn't be able to afford those prices.

 

Goddamn you Second Amendment people are selfish. You have no conscience whatsoever. But enjoy your miserable hobby.

 

Uh, no, it shows that our standards of "restrictive gun control" are way out of whack with reality.

 

No, not one -- that was just the big one that most people who know the history think really started the phenomenon. Before Columbine, and since the mid-60s, we have this set of rampage shootings (including school shootings, workplace shootings, etc., but NOT including familicide or incidents that clearly involve a religious/political/racial motivation -- in other words, trying to concentrate on the ones that most leave you going "what the ********?!"):

1965 Jan 1, Louis Koullapis shot 27 people in Gardenia, CA.
1965 Apr 25, Michael Clark shot 13 people in Santa Maria, CA.
1966 Aug 1, Charles Whitman shot 47 people in Austin, TX.
1967 Oct 23, Leo Held shot 12 peole in Lock Haven, PA.
1968 Mar 16, Eric Pearson shot 9 people in Ironwood, MI.
1969 Apr 5, Donald Lambright shot 20 people on the PA Turnpike.
1969 May 15, Robert Smith shot 12 people in Twinsburg, OH.
1972 May 29, Harvey McLeod shot 11 people in Raleigh, NC.
1972 Jun 21, Edwin Grace shot 12 people in Cherry Hill, NJ.
1973 Apr 22, William Bonner shot 14 people in Los Angeles, CA.
1974 Dec 30, Anthony Barbaro shot 14 people in Olean, NY.
1975 May 24, Russell Smith shot 11 people in Dayton, OH.
1976 Apr 25, Moses Pearson shot 17 people in and around Jacksonville, FL.
1976 Jul 12, Edward Allaway shot 9 people in Fullerton, CA.
1976 Oct 30, Kenyon Pruyn shot 12 people in Mechanicville, NY.
1977 Feb 14, Frederick Cowan shot 10 people in New Rochelle, NY.
1977 Jul 23, Charles Henry shot 6 people in Klamath Falls, OR.
1977 Aug 26, Emile Benoist shot 6 people in Hackettstown, NJ
1977 Nov 26, Ulysses Cribbs shot 26 people in Omaha, NE.
1978 Mar 2, Lesley Torrey shot 17 people in Jackson, MI.
1979 Jan 29, Brenda Spencer shot 11 peole in San Diego, CA.
1979 Apr 27, Ira Attebury shot 33-49 people (news reports differ and I don't have the time to run it down) in San Antonio, TX
1980 Jun 22, Alvin King shot 15 people in Daingerfield, TX
1981 May 7, Lawrence Moore shot 23 people in Salem, OR.
1982 Jun 11, Robert Harrington shot 39 people in Detroit, MI
1982 Aug 9, John Parish shot 10 people in Grand Prairie, TX
1982 Aug 20, Carl Brown shot 11 people in Miami, FL
1982 Oct 1, Douglas Mozingo shot 12 people in Sacramento, CA
1983 Mar 3, Louis Hastings shot 8 people in McCarthy, AK.
1983 Oct 11, Eliseo Moreno killed 6 people in and around College Station, TX.
1984 Feb 24, Mitchell Tyrone shot 14 people in Los Angeles, CA.
1984 Jun 29, Abdelkrim Belachheb shot 7 people in Dallas, TX.
1984 Jul 14, James Huberty shot 40 people in San Ysidro, CA.
1986 Aug 20, Patrick Sherrill shot 20 peole in Edmond, OK.
1987 Apr 23, William Cruse shot 16 people in Palm Bay, FL.
1988 Feb 16, Richard Farley shot 11 people in Sunnyvale, CA.
1988 Sep 6, Cho Mun Chu shot 16 people in New York, NY.
1989 Jan 17, Patrick Purdy shot 35 people in Stockton, CA.
1989 Sep 14, Joseph Wesbecker shot 20 people in Louisville, KY. (*)
1990 Jun 18, James Pough shot 13 people in Jacksonville, FL
1991 Oct 16, George Hennard shot 43 people in Killeen, TX
1992 May 1, Eric Houston shot 14 people in Olivehurst, CA
1992 Nov 7, Lynwood Drake shot 8 people near San Luis Obispo, CA
1993 Jul 1, Gian Ferri shot 14 people in San Francisco, CA
1993 Aug 6, Kenneth French shot 11 people in Fayetteville, NC
1993 Dec 7, Colin Ferguson shot 25 people in Garden City, NY. (**)
1994 Jun 20, Dean Mellberg shot 27 people at Fairchild AFB, AK
1995 Oct 27, William Kreutzer shot 19 people at Ft. Bragg, NC.
1998 Mar 24, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson shot 15 people near Jonesboro, AR.
1998 May 21, Kip Kinkel shot 28 people in Springfield, OR.

I have to tell you that the two hours or so it took to come up with this list have been two of the saddest hours I've had in recent memory, for two reasons:

One is the obvious one -- just look at it. So many lives damaged or destroyed. So much possibility and promise gone. So much pain caused to other people who loved these people, and for what? For nothing.

But the other is more insidious, and relates to the incident marked with a (*) and a (**) above. I lived in Louisville at the time of the Standard Gravure massacre in 1989; I remember the horror there at the time, remember lining up to give blood, and remember the certainty everyone had that things would change. They didn't change. In fact, eventually this faded from my memory -- I'm sure I haven't thought about it in 15-20 years. And when Colin Ferguson shot up the LIRR in 1993, a good friend lost a member of her family and another member of that family was left handicapped for life. She, too, believed that this horror would convince everyone that things had to change. They didn't.

We, as a country/society, are not interested in changing our priorities so as to implement an effective and pro-active mental health system. We're not interested in changing our gun laws to reflect the reality of our time. We might be willing to talk about things; but we're not willing to do anything differently that might actually cost us something or require us to make any sacrifices. Individual members of society are; but as a society, we aren't. Which is terribly, terribly sad.

 

Ok, I am glad you are not judge. You call me selfish for exercising my constitutional rights? My freedom is more than just a hobby to me sir! There is the rule of law in this country and I am not doing anything irresponsible or contrary to that. The fact that there are many incompetent parents in the world who cannot raise their children to know right from wrong is a reason to keep my gun, not surrender it. I have no desire to become a victim or live in fear. If that makes me selfish then so be it.