A different take on all those firearm deaths

[JayHawk]

There's two sides to that. One way of looking at it is yours... "whee, we get people who actually care/have invested something with a say." The flipside would be that most of the people with any say would be people with a military background and primarily men. And laws affect everyone, not just able bodied people who've served in the military.

I'm AMAZED at how far out of your own character you have gone on the topic once guns comes into the discussion.



Being a natural born citizen in this country is skin in the game JayHawk. I reject this arrogant notion that the only people whose opinion, viewpoint or perogatives matter are people who joined the military (or would do so if that were a requirement to vote.)

This country would also be a "far different place" if only college educated people could vote, or only people who passed psychological evaluations could own any firearms, or only people who passed intensive education on parenting could have kids. But that's just sitting here and postulating what-if's that Kul would shoot down as horrible ideas on any other topic, right?

I'll tell you guys in one line my biggest problem with the idea. The military is not an institution that fosters free and critical thought. The military is an institution that regimentizes and yes, brainwashes. Whether or not either of you agree with it I am sure you both have heard the phrase "you don't have a thought of your own until you leave the military." There's a reason people say that. It is a beyond terrible idea to take an institution where many personal freedoms are suppressed and channels of information and propaganda can be controlled and make it the exclusive pool from which people have a say in the direction of this country. It's moronic and backwards.

Any gains in terms of "well then the people voting are people who actually care" would be more than undone by the fact that our country would be getting votes only from people very comfortable with the idea of regimented thought and with a lessened sense of the need for respect for individual rights.

Now that your done. Please go back read and then comprehend what i have written. it has nothing to do with group think or the solidarity required of a Army or marine unit. Again as I ask Rolyo, is the peace corps doing a water project in costa rica militant? What about job corps opportunities at the Nation Parks?

I get that being in the military is intimidating to many of you and that you feel you couldn't have thought. That however is you and is not the majority of those that stay and lead. However, a peace corps or job corps type operation has zero to do with the military but could be used as a group setting to teach compulsory courses such as first aid, CPR, gun safety and so forth. I will be all for it in a situation where you must be college educated to vote as well because then college would have to be funded by the government and then these compulsory courses could be integrated. There are many solutions.

And no being born here isn't automatically having skin in the game. How many votes were cast last election? How many people are in america? We average from 55% in a General year to 40% in a off year. What is very true is that voting is declining because people understand it has little to no effect on their lives. Unless you belong to a special interest group then that is very true.

[Benvolio]

Compulsory service is a idea borrowed from the totalitarin regimes. The Hitler youth for instance. Stalin and Mao loved it. Fortunately our Constitution forbids it. No involuntary servitude. No deprivation of liberty without due process. It is a monstrous idea. If the government has the power to take two years, it has the power to take 5 or 10. There is no limit. And it can use the threat or fact of mandatory service to compel other compliance.
Military draft is an exception arising from the express power to raise armies.

[andysayshi]

I'm not particularly opposed to National Service, although I think there should be easy options to be exempted. I am strongly against limiting the vote for any reason whatsoever. The right to vote is sacrosanct in a democracy. Nothing should interfere with it.

[JayHawk]

I'm not particularly opposed to National Service, although I think there should be easy options to be exempted. I am strongly against limiting the vote for any reason whatsoever. The right to vote is sacrosanct in a democracy. Nothing should interfere with it.

Right such as if you are required to serve in the first ten years of which you are at the age of majority, well if you are in Med school then that would not allow for service. However so many doctors do serve freely and for a small amount of money in different organizations I don't think you would have to force compliance. The same would go for many professions.

As far as limiting the vote I do say so a bit tongue in cheek. The uneducated and useless in our society appear to take away their right to vote on their own. I am however convinced the world view of some yokel who has never seen the outside of the county line in Tennessee, Upstate New York or the remote eastern Washington regions would be forever altered IF they saw outside their doorstep.

[Kulindahr]

How about we stay clear of the moronic Starship Troopers philosophy that having been in the army somehow makes you more "deserving" of having a say. Modern countries are - and should be - a peaceful entity. Having cleaned toilets and been made "a man" has zero bearing on your capacity as a responsible citizen.

How about you address what people say instead of making crap up?

Any organization worth belonging to has membership requirements. The membership requirement for a country, i.e. citizenship, should be something that demonstrates a willingness to work for the whole. Why should anyone have a say in how a country is run if they don't care enough to serve it for a few years?

And for someone praying to the altar of self-ownership and considering himself to be ultra free and non-sheep/slave, you are awfully keen on a LOT of invasive government things - first compulsory arming of teachers, now compulsory national service?

Again, how about stop making stuff up?

I said not a single word about "compulsory national service" -- that's your idea.

Democracy - like freedom of speech - can't be screened. Either everyone has a say, or you have a dictatorship with those who "deserve", and those who don't. And you become a slave.

Why can't it be screened? And who decided that "democracy" is the god to which we have to bow down? To have a say in something means you have ownership in that thing. How can you have ownership without paying a price for it?

[Kulindahr]

You don't invent compulsory militarization of society

If you don't like the idea, don't bring it up. You're the only one here who's said such a thing.

[Kulindahr]

There's two sides to that. One way of looking at it is yours... "whee, we get people who actually care/have invested something with a say." The flipside would be that most of the people with any say would be people with a military background and primarily men. And laws affect everyone, not just able bodied people who've served in the military.

I'm AMAZED at how far out of your own character you have gone on the topic once guns comes into the discussion.

I think the problem is that you (and others here) have this fixation with guns and the military and stop thinking rationally when the topics come up. Yours is evident in the fact that you're directing your response to something I haven't said.

I'll take it from an angle suggested by Rolyo -- who obviously hasn't actually read the book he referenced, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. The concept there is that to be a voter, you have to put in your service. But he's got the entirely wrong idea about that service, and the correct idea smashes yours above. In that book, anyone can sign up for national service -- and he can't be turned away. If he's got an IQ of 75, if he's in a wheelchair hooked to a medical pack, if he's blind -- none of those matter, because if a resident of the country is of a proper age to sign up, he or she can't be refused. And on top of that, there's a requirement that the government not waste talent by sending people with valuable skills off to do grunt work.

So take our musician, who decides to be a voter, and so goes to sign up for national service. If soldiers aren't needed at the time, that's not even a consideration; the country can make use of talented musicians in many ways, whether as touring 'diplomatic' missions around the world, cultural outreaches to deprived areas, whatever. The PTBs would be forbidden from assigning someone with such a skill to any duty that might impair that skill, and would have to at the very least send the recruit somewhere "safe" in terms of protecting that skill.

Of course the recruit might want, say, to be an aviator. The recruit's choice rules, unless the government judges there are talents possessed which an overriding interest requires somewhere else -- for example, someone who has done groundbreaking research in optical energy transfer could be told no, you can't go risk your life in aerial combat, because we need your expertise in research.

The only reason that in Starship Troopers the majority of recruits go to the military is because in the story the entire planet is at war, and infantry is needed along with space navy.

If you've been paying attention, there's no reason at all to believe that even a large plurality of public service positions would be in the military.

I'll tell you guys in one line my biggest problem with the idea. The military is not an institution that fosters free and critical thought. The military is an institution that regimentizes and yes, brainwashes. Whether or not either of you agree with it I am sure you both have heard the phrase "you don't have a thought of your own until you leave the military." There's a reason people say that. It is a beyond terrible idea to take an institution where many personal freedoms are suppressed and channels of information and propaganda can be controlled and make it the exclusive pool from which people have a say in the direction of this country. It's moronic and backwards.

Any gains in terms of "well then the people voting are people who actually care" would be more than undone by the fact that our country would be getting votes only from people very comfortable with the idea of regimented thought and with a lessened sense of the need for respect for individual rights.

I think you're not familiar with today's military. Independent thinking and problem-solving are encouraged.

But if you've paid attention to my posts, you know you're completely slanting the result here -- our country would be getting votes from people accustomed to arguing a lot, from people accustomed to being in charge of their own efforts, from people accustomed to teamwork, from people who value collaboration....

or do you really think that the Peace Corps drums in regimented thinking?

[xbuzzerx]

I think the problem is that you (and others here) have this fixation with guns and the military and stop thinking rationally when the topics come up. Yours is evident in the fact that you're directing your response to something I haven't said.

This is projection, Kul. I've said it before and though it's not penetrating I will say it every single time you levy the "emotionalism" accusation at everyone else because your ideas have consistently been addressed as radically impractical by the great majority of people here-- and it's very safe to say that this forum is far more progressive and looks at more things more radically than the general mainstream population does. You don't like that reaction, so you label is as irrational emotion, dismiss it, and continue trucking with your radical views on gun ownership and the proper place of guns and regulation (or lack thereof) in our society.

I don't have a wildly emotional attachment for, or against, guns. In that department the side of the debate suffering from huge partiality would be the gun zealots who feel threatened at so much as the mention of sensible regulation.

To me, this is simply a problem in our society. A lot of guns, a lot of unstable people, the combination of which is resulting in rather horrific public killing sprees. I'm interested in solutions to that problem. Emotion isn't involved other than the (I think) understandable stance that these killings are rather horrific and that they are something we should do sensible things to decrease as much as possible. You're interested in protecting what you believe to be a principled truism about-- yes, I will say it-- a 200 year old document that we have no reason to believe foresaw a time when someone could hold down a trigger and spray a room with a weapon they picked up at a local store, without training and without oversight, and would do so out of severe mental illness and a sick need for public notoriety before they shuffled off their mortal coil.

I'm not interested in Constitutional debates because our Constitution was made with an eye towards the concept that it would be revised, amended and refined over time. And that if it a time ever came where that process failed completely then the founding fathers encouraged revolution. So, as far as I'm concerned, this notion that there is one enshrined interpretation of all possible ramifications of the 2nd Amendment which must be observed hands-off for all time is fiction. The Constitution was not a document written to trap us into self-destructive behaviors out of a dogmatic, religious reverence for a fundamentalist, literalist view that the reflection it gave of 18th century democracy should be observed without revision for all future time.

So that's why I reject a lot of what you've been saying in these threads. You handwave that off as "emotion." I regard it as I'm a pragmatist and you're a fundamentalist, at least on this topic.

I think you're not familiar with today's military. Independent thinking and problem-solving are encouraged.

But if you've paid attention to my posts, you know you're completely slanting the result here -- our country would be getting votes from people accustomed to arguing a lot, from people accustomed to being in charge of their own efforts, from people accustomed to teamwork, from people who value collaboration....

or do you really think that the Peace Corps drums in regimented thinking?

I think your entire viewpoint on this is underlined by a belief that the door is too open and needs to be more closed. I think that is fundamentally the opposite of what equality and equal voice in this country is supposed to be about.

No, I don't think that any serious problem with our society is that "people who don't care/have nothing invested are voting." I think people who truly don't care aren't voting at all, and there are too many of those people, and their apathy enables a lot of bad shit to go on all the time because they wont' get off their duff and vote and they aren't paying any attention. I think a lot of people voting are uninformed, or rather, intentionally misinformed due to the privatization of news media and its transformation into privately funded propaganda as a corporate lever of political control. But I don't think shutting more people out of voting or making it more difficult to get the right to vote is at all the right approach. I think it's a step backwards.

[Kulindahr]

. . . a 200 year old document that we have no reason to believe foresaw a time when someone could hold down a trigger and spray a room with a weapon they picked up at a local store, without training and without oversight . . . .

It's certain you're operating on emotion when you continue to repeat lies that have been corrected multiple times.

[Rolyo85]

Ok, I wanted to respond, but buzzer said most of what I would have said, and probably better than I would have been able to.

JayHawk, yes the peace corps is not "militant", but the overall mentality is there, and it's unavoidable. Any sort of military training - even if it has nothing to do with soldiering - still requires a sort of obedience that I do not believe is a productive soil for a strong thinking voter to spring out from. As I said - I understand your point of view, and I don't share it. I come from a very different place of thought and I don't think we can meet on this.

Kuli, yes, I have actually read Starship Troopers. To me the fact that it is not all "military", doesn't really make much of a difference. We had this compulsory "you'll go work there" thing in Bulgaria. The Communists were doing it. Didn't work well.

And I am not inventing anything. I am offering you the cleaned up version of what you're suggesting. You're hiding behind ambiguity, and have been since the whole gun debate started, so that if faced with any unpleasant reading of what you've said, you could back down and accuse us of making shit up. I call dishonesty.

And buzzer is right - there are many ways of screening voters. But that's not what the political process needs.

- - - Updated - - -

It's certain you're operating on emotion when you continue to repeat lies that have been corrected multiple times.

"Corrected" meaning you disagreed with them and called them lies.

[Kulindahr]

JayHawk, yes the peace corps is not "militant", but the overall mentality is there, and it's unavoidable. Any sort of military training - even if it has nothing to do with soldiering - still requires a sort of obedience that I do not believe is a productive soil for a strong thinking voter to spring out from. As I said - I understand your point of view, and I don't share it. I come from a very different place of thought and I don't think we can meet on this.

If you think this, then no one who's ever held a job should be allowed to vote -- they've all been trained in hierarchy and obedience.

Kuli, yes, I have actually read Starship Troopers. To me the fact that it is not all "military", doesn't really make much of a difference. We had this compulsory "you'll go work there" thing in Bulgaria. The Communists were doing it. Didn't work well.

You mean the compulsory labor camps? That would explain your twisted view of things.

I went to a summer "labor camp" once. It almost forced initiative and self-motivation: there was a new job list each day, and it was first come, first serve -- those who got to the breakfast hall first got to pick from the list what they wanted to do. Once you'd picked your job, you (and teammates) were expected to figure out how to accomplish it. We learned problem solving and innovation without realizing we were even learning.
So just because the Communists managed to screw something up doesn't mean it can't be done right.

And I am not inventing anything. I am offering you the cleaned up version of what you're suggesting. You're hiding behind ambiguity, and have been since the whole gun debate started, so that if faced with any unpleasant reading of what you've said, you could back down and accuse us of making shit up. I call dishonesty.

I haven't been ambiguous at all -- you guys have been making assumptions based on things other than what I've said.

And buzzer is right - there are many ways of screening voters. But that's not what the political process needs.

So stop talking about "screening voters". I'm talking about earning a right to be at the table.

"Corrected" meaning you disagreed with them and called them lies.

No, corrected means false statements keep being made and I've provided the truth.

In fact, the most repeated false statements were corrected, with citations, by a mod or two.

[White Eagle]

Was looking for a place to put this and decided to put it here.
I'm not really surprised at the amount of the guns turned in, but 75 assault weapons? At least they are tuning them in.


http://www.kiiitv.com/story/20427694...annual-buyback

LA gun buyback collects more than 2,000 weapons

Posted: Dec 26, 2012 2:34 PM CST Updated: Dec 27, 2012 1:25 PM CST

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A one-day gun buyback program in Los Angeles brought in 2,037 firearms.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office says the weapons collected Wednesday included 901 handguns, 698 rifles, 363 shotguns and 75 assault weapons.

[Kulindahr]

Was looking for a place to put this and decided to put it here.
I'm not really surprised at the amount of the guns turned in, but 75 assault weapons? At least they are tuning them in.


http://www.kiiitv.com/story/20427694...annual-buyback

So they got 75 guns that someone thought looked scarier than a lot of other guns just like them in operation? Who decided which ones were the scary ones?


BTW, criminals love these so-called "buy backs": rarely are any questions asked at all, so criminals who have a gun used in a crime send someone to sell the thing and thus eliminate that evidence.

[Rolyo85]

Ah, yes. Communists fucked up compulsory labor camps (we called them "barracks training"), but you guys are totally gonna do it right. Just like you're doing everything else right. Everyone all responsible, educated and well trained...

I am getting tired of your arrogance. No, you have not provided truth. You've provided delusions, and provided them with a bullying attitude of "obviously that's the way to do it, and you're a sheep/slave/uncaring about children's safety if you disagree". And you've been vague, because you know what you propose is delusional, and just as impossible as repealing the 2nd Amendment. So you vague it up to allow for instant backtracking and accusations of being emotional and making stuff up.

Maybe if you were clearer, people wouldn't have to make stuff up to fill in the logical gaps, eh?

[JockBoy87]

Ah, yes. Communists fucked up compulsory labor camps (we called them "barracks training"), but you guys are totally gonna do it right. Just like you're doing everything else right. Everyone all responsible, educated and well trained...

I am getting tired of your arrogance. No, you have not provided truth. You've provided delusions, and provided them with a bullying attitude of "obviously that's the way to do it, and you're a sheep/slave/uncaring about children's safety if you disagree". And you've been vague, because you know what you propose is delusional, and just as impossible as repealing the 2nd Amendment. So you vague it up to allow for instant backtracking and accusations of being emotional and making stuff up.

Maybe if you were clearer, people wouldn't have to make stuff up to fill in the logical gaps, eh?

Both Nazis and Communists had labor camps, so they are not restricted to political ideology.

The only safeguard is recognition of moral leadership, such as the examples of Quintus Hortensia, Sulla, Cincinnatus, and Washington, who safeguarded freedoms in times of crisis.

[Rolyo85]

I know they are not restricted to ideology, I was just pointing out the whole "open relationships never work, but they might work for us" idiocy.

And by the way, it IS "screening voters", whether you put it in a different way, or not. You add requirements for ALLOWING people to vote. And who gets to decide the criteria? Who is the judge of who is fit to vote and who isn't? It's all deliciously Orwellian.

[Kulindahr]

Ah, yes. Communists fucked up compulsory labor camps (we called them "barracks training"), but you guys are totally gonna do it right. Just like you're doing everything else right. Everyone all responsible, educated and well trained...

I am getting tired of your arrogance. No, you have not provided truth. You've provided delusions, and provided them with a bullying attitude of "obviously that's the way to do it, and you're a sheep/slave/uncaring about children's safety if you disagree". And you've been vague, because you know what you propose is delusional, and just as impossible as repealing the 2nd Amendment. So you vague it up to allow for instant backtracking and accusations of being emotional and making stuff up.

Maybe if you were clearer, people wouldn't have to make stuff up to fill in the logical gaps, eh?

You're blinded by hatred. All you can see is the dark past you think any of my proposals means to return you to.

Get out of your fears and start to listen.

[Kulindahr]

I know they are not restricted to ideology, I was just pointing out the whole "open relationships never work, but they might work for us" idiocy.

And by the way, it IS "screening voters", whether you put it in a different way, or not. You add requirements for ALLOWING people to vote. And who gets to decide the criteria? Who is the judge of who is fit to vote and who isn't? It's all deliciously Orwellian.

I'll try to say it again, though I've said it before:

the people themselves decide.


And you have yet to give a reason why someone should be permitted to vote without having made any investment in the country.

[xbuzzerx]

It's certain you're operating on emotion when you continue to repeat lies that have been corrected multiple times.

You're blinded by hatred. All you can see is the dark past you think any of my proposals means to return you to.

Get out of your fears and start to listen.

Kulindahr you are seriously making discussion with you impossible. I think you know me well enough by now to know that when I say something like "this is starting to feel like a discussion with HenryReardon" I'm not saying it lightly and I don't say it left and right to just anyone I disagree with on anything. That's seriously how this is feeling. Literally every single response from you is just kneejerking out like a fortune cookie machine that always says "Liar", "Emotion", "Irrational."

You are making discussion impossible. If I didn't know that you are a very intelligent guy who generally has his head in the right place most of the time I would think you are intentionally trolling all of these threads to kill and derail attempts at discussion. In the end result that is what is happening whether that's your intent or not.

If you sincerely believe i'm just "lying" out of my "irrational hatred of guns", then put me on ignore and stop responding to me. What you're doing isn't productive, at this point you're just spitting out an insult everytime you see me post.

[Kulindahr]

Kulindahr you are seriously making discussion with you impossible. I think you know me well enough by now to know that when I say something like "this is starting to feel like a discussion with HenryReardon" I'm not saying it lightly and I don't say it left and right to just anyone I disagree with on anything. That's seriously how this is feeling. Literally every single response from you is just kneejerking out like a fortune cookie machine that always says "Liar", "Emotion", "Irrational."

You are making discussion impossible. If I didn't know that you are a very intelligent guy who generally has his head in the right place most of the time I would think you are intentionally trolling all of these threads to kill and derail attempts at discussion. In the end result that is what is happening whether that's your intent or not.

If you sincerely believe i'm just "lying" out of my "irrational hatred of guns", then put me on ignore and stop responding to me. What you're doing isn't productive, at this point you're just spitting out an insult everytime you see me post.

Just stop repeating things that are false. First among them is the bizarre notion that anyone at all can walk into a store and buy a gun that can "spray bullets" by "holding down the trigger". That's right out of the elitist liberal playbook that assumes most Americans are totally ignorant and so can be jerked around by lies if they're repeated often enough. It's the equivalent of quoting Glen Beck as an authority.

The facts of federal law have been posted: it's impossible to buy that kind of weapon in any store at all in the U.S., not just for felons, but for anyone. To own such a weapon, you have to qualify for the required federal license, and then persuade one of the limited number of people who own such a weapon to sell it to you, from a selection where the cheapest of such weapons now goes for $12k. It would actually be easier, if you're in the southwest anyway, to buy one from a Mexican drug cartel (it would probably have come in through Guatemala, with a good chance of having been made in Europe or China). That's part of and/or a result of the National Firearms Act, which someone already linked (easy enough to find on Wikipedia if nowhere else). It's the same law that makes "sawed-off" shotguns illegal and made pipe bombs essentially illegal because they fall into a category of device the Act requires to be registered with the government.

Since these facts have been posted, what am I to assume but your deliberately ignoring them?

[xbuzzerx]

Just stop repeating things that are false. First among them is the bizarre notion that anyone at all can walk into a store and buy a gun that can "spray bullets" by "holding down the trigger". That's right out of the elitist liberal playbook that assumes most Americans are totally ignorant and so can be jerked around by lies if they're repeated often enough. It's the equivalent of quoting Glen Beck as an authority.

The facts of federal law have been posted: it's impossible to buy that kind of weapon in any store at all in the U.S., not just for felons, but for anyone. To own such a weapon, you have to qualify for the required federal license, and then persuade one of the limited number of people who own such a weapon to sell it to you, from a selection where the cheapest of such weapons now goes for $12k. It would actually be easier, if you're in the southwest anyway, to buy one from a Mexican drug cartel (it would probably have come in through Guatemala, with a good chance of having been made in Europe or China). That's part of and/or a result of the National Firearms Act, which someone already linked (easy enough to find on Wikipedia if nowhere else). It's the same law that makes "sawed-off" shotguns illegal and made pipe bombs essentially illegal because they fall into a category of device the Act requires to be registered with the government.

Since these facts have been posted, what am I to assume but your deliberately ignoring them?

All of these spree shooters had semiautomatics. Please explain where they got these weapons if they're as restricted as you are claiming.

[Rolyo85]

Every citizen should vote because laws apply to every citizen, whether they have "investment in the country" (whatever that means), or not. Every citizen should vote because that's how democracy works. Every citizen should vote, because the opposite is slavery, regardless of how benevolent the ideas behind it. People with more rights than other people is what we're fighting, not what we're striving for, for fuck's sake.

Also, I find it almost hilarious that suddenly "the people" will decide, but Government is NOT the people in your eyes. You flip back and forth between ancestral government paranoia and promoting bigger and bigger government.

[Kulindahr]

All of these spree shooters had semiautomatics. Please explain where they got these weapons if they're as restricted as you are claiming.

Semiautomatics cannot "spray bullets". They fire one bullet per pull of the trigger.

According to the Oxford dictionary:

adjective

partially automatic
(of a firearm) having a mechanism for self-loading but not for continuous firing: semi-automatic rifle

[Kulindahr]

Also, I find it almost hilarious that suddenly "the people" will decide, but Government is NOT the people in your eyes. You flip back and forth between ancestral government paranoia and promoting bigger and bigger government.

What's hilarious? The answer to all your questions about who would decide is "the people"; it is most certainly NOT "the government".

As I've already explained, the government would only get to decide if there's a clear case of serious national interest.

[xbuzzerx]

Semiautomatics cannot "spray bullets". They fire one bullet per pull of the trigger.

According to the Oxford dictionary:

And if they had to reload for 30 seconds in between shots with a 1776 musket we wouldn't be having any of these discussions because the kinds of massacres they're pulling off wouldn't have been possible.

In other words, who cares. These people with semiautos can lay out enough firepower in a short enough amount of time with high enough ammo capacity to kill dozens of people. That's part of this overall problem. Saying "they had to pull the trigger more than once" doesn't change the situation at all. Guns + ammo clips that let you take out a big portion of a movie theater in seconds is part of the problem. I'm sorry that you see that as someone's muddy boot treading on the holy bible of the Constitution, but it is the issue in discussion here and it is part of the problem that needs addressing.

Do you need that kind of firepower to stop 1 intruder in your home or to hunt a deer? Of course not.

[Kulindahr]

And if they had to reload for 30 seconds in between shots with a 1776 musket we wouldn't be having any of these discussions because the kinds of massacres they're pulling off wouldn't have been possible.

In other words, who cares. These people with semiautos can lay out enough firepower in a short enough amount of time with high enough ammo capacity to kill dozens of people. That's part of this overall problem. Saying "they had to pull the trigger more than once" doesn't change the situation at all. Guns + ammo clips that let you take out a big portion of a movie theater in seconds is part of the problem. I'm sorry that you see that as someone's muddy boot treading on the holy bible of the Constitution, but it is the issue in discussion here and it is part of the problem that needs addressing.

Do you need that kind of firepower to stop 1 intruder in your home or to hunt a deer? Of course not.

"Who cares" is anyone who wants to appear intelligent on the topic.

I can see limiting public possession of magazines to a sixteen-shot one -- a number I pick because there are a lot of firearms with one that large built in (I own two). I'm not sure how to do that with detachable magazines, though, because someone intent on shooting a lot of people can just carry multiple magazines -- after all, if he plans to end up dead, he's not going to be worried about felony charges for having multiple magazines. The restriction there would have to come in rules about storage, so even if a madman broke in to someone's house any extra magazines would be stored locked apart from the firearm they go with.

[JayHawk]

The last few posts got me thinking a bit about the subject and the history of mass murderers... which is what we are talking about ... right?

Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns.

[Kulindahr]

Explosives are another technology that isn't going back in the box. I have a friend who knows a half dozen different ways to build a deadly bomb out of materials from the local grocery+department store, and can add several more if an auto supply and farm supply store are added in. I could make two different kinds, though not large, from what's sitting in my garage right now as common supplies. And besides explosives, with a quick trip downtown for a few supplies I could make two different kinds of (airborn) chemical weapons and one suitable for poisoning a water supply.

Addressing materials isn't going to work. We have to tackle the problem, not just symptoms.


Here's a different take: there's one very simple and powerful ethical rule that emerges directly from self-ownership, "Treat others as you'd have them treat you", which is easily tweaked into a more famous version from the New Testament, "Love your neighbor as yourself". We have all these cries about this being a Christian nation, cries which result in a call for using the power of government to coerce and punish people. But if Christians are going to accept government coercion as legitimate for keeping this a Christian nation, they had best start with the greater principles that Jesus Himself taught and not ones lifted from Moses. So if this is supposed to be a Christian nation, let's use taxes to show our love for a portion of the population for whom Jesus had a special place in His heart: "the least of these".

[xbuzzerx]

"Who cares" is anyone who wants to appear intelligent on the topic.

I can see limiting public possession of magazines to a sixteen-shot one -- a number I pick because there are a lot of firearms with one that large built in (I own two). I'm not sure how to do that with detachable magazines, though, because someone intent on shooting a lot of people can just carry multiple magazines -- after all, if he plans to end up dead, he's not going to be worried about felony charges for having multiple magazines. The restriction there would have to come in rules about storage, so even if a madman broke in to someone's house any extra magazines would be stored locked apart from the firearm they go with.

Not every public spree killer stole his weapons. In fact I'm pretty sure not even most did.

The last few posts got me thinking a bit about the subject and the history of mass murderers... which is what we are talking about ... right?

When someone kills 28 people with his bare fists in one public killing spree we'll talk about that.

[Kulindahr]

Not every public spree killer stole his weapons. In fact I'm pretty sure not even most did.

But they would have to if my proposal was followed, unless they borrowed them from friends or something.

Even this last guy wouldn't have been able to have the pile he did, because his mom would not have been allowed to just leave them around unsecured.