2005Stang032

Maybe the requirement of a tough gun safety course, kind of like drivers license test (not that those are tough enough, but thats a different subject), would eliminate the thugs with guns. At least to some extent. But the truth is that if the this psycho wanted a gun bad enough he could of found illegal channels to get one. But maybe, just maybe, a gun safety course would have scared him away, for a while......

neil07gt

What kind of questions would be on your mental aptitude test? That's a slippery slope and would certainly be abused.

I think it's events like this that give gun control people a bad rap. Do you realize this monster chained the exit doors shut? If a professor or student had been allowed to legally carry a concealed weapon then maybe a bystander could have stopped this nut job before he had a chance to kill 32 people.

I realize that I'm not going to change your mindset and you aren't going to change mine. But I believe in personal freedom and so i'm going to support it whenever I can. Like you, I don't want criminals and people with mental disorders to own guns, but if you aren't careful, you will enact enough laws and enough hurdles such that only criminals will have guns.

I-70 west

Very well said:
All the gun registration in the world isn`t stopping the gun crime here in Canada. When gun banning and registration was upgraded in the UK and Australia, gun violence went up.
The 2nd amendment is for personal protection first and foremost, PERIOD.

future9er24

Neil,

In hindsight, after reading both your and other member's posts, I see the issues with my "mental aptitude test". I still think its a good goal, to have only people of sound character and mind owning guns, but like I said earlier, it isn't an easy thing to attain, unfortunately.

I'm willing to admit that I'm out of potential ideas at the moment. Guess all that's left is to hope for the best

2005Stang032

I agree and believe that giving the goverment more and more power is always risky. Once they have it they won't give it back.....so the only people with guns would be those working for the government (local police, ARMY, FBI, etc.) and the criminals and corrupt.....leaving you and me defenseless from both a possibly overbearing government(scary) and those who prey on others.

RobK

I'm afraid that travesty is the new reality. We're already there. We now live in a society where street thugs shoot each other for looking at someone the wrong way or standing on "their" corner. Our youth walk the halls in schools occupied by armed police officers. Our children get shot playing in the streets. ****, a guy recently got shot in the head while getting dressed for work in his own bedroom! Keep all the guns you want, I don't really give a hoot. I'm so happy you have this inalienable right to own a gun. Good for you. I just feel something needs to be done to limit the fact that they're so **** easy to get. Something is horridly wrong with a society that makes it harder to buy cigarettes and beer than to buy a gun. I'm not looking for a fight or a response, I'm voicing my opinion. I'm excercising MY right to have an opinion and express it. I don't need a bunch of rhetoric to tell me my opinion is wrong!

HOSS429

you`re scaring us rob

GottaHaveIt

I'll stand by you on this !so true on the cig's and booze .

RobK

I'm cool. I'm just getting tired of what's going down these days. And I'm tired of folks going on about entitlement.

65205

If it's this hard to get a few people on a forum thread to agree on a solution, imagine how difficult it must be for our congress and senate. It amazes me how our founding fathers were able to draft such a remarkable constitution. It isn't perfect, but it's the best thing out there. A little tweaking here and there and it's still going strong. I believe I have the right to own a gun(s), but I have nothing to hide. Do a background check. Make me wait a month. Interview 3 people who know me. Whatever-just make it harder,not impossible,but harder for bad guys to have guns.

jsaylor

Entitlement? Give me a break.

Are you entitled to free speech, to due process of law? No moreso than I am entitled to own a firearm. I despise those who would do harm to the innocent as much as anybody. However, I am just as tired of those who are willing to surrender their own rights and mine in a ridiculous attempt to sanitize society. Every time somebody offers to surrender a right, particularly one so signficant, in some pointless attempt to acquire a greater measure of protection they dishonor the lives of every American who ever fought and died for those rights.

Frankly I have to go along with Ben Franklin on this one and say that I don't know if people so willing to give up those rights deserve them in the first place.

kevinb120

I'm with you there, and that nut lived less then a mile from me. Some people don't realize how fully trained they are by our media.

HOSS429

it pleases me to see someone who can still think for themselves now and then

RobK

Fine, entitlement was a poor choice of words.

Look, I'm not suggesting anyone surrender their rights here. Relax already! Stock up on guns, I dont' really care. I simply question the concept that average Joe citizen needs to have access to high power/high capacity firearms. If you're an avid collector then fine. There need to be additional checks and balances in place to limit the sale of such firearms to make 100% certain that the individuals buying them are competent enough to own them. Your argument that this would include all but single shot rifles and pistols is BS. You know as well as I do what the pieces of choice are for the average street thug. If we could get them under control and limit access to them then it's inevitable that we'd reduce the number of them that show up on the street. We also need to do something to crack down on these ******** that buy bunches of guns legally, then sell them on the streets. If you sell guns to criminals then you get charged along with the criminal that used it.

kevinb120

Bleg, I need some of this stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg3FqEW4K2g

1 COBRA

I believe this was a very methodical plan. Too well planned for an individual which is incoherent at times, with alledged mental problems, but then follows details as if conducting a well prepared and rehearsed military mission. I get the impression there might be more to this story than a simple SOB going wacko because of personal rejection or discrimination.

It smells to me like a well trained executioner willing to die for a cause, a martyr who has accepted that immortality by death is more important than life itself, which could ultimately indicate an association with an organization or power with long term goals patiently attacking our society and system from different angles. The success of uncompromising enemies is their reliance on attacking the weakenesses of those they wish to defeat and conquer, preferably from within.

I also find the low key interest of some of our government agencies being a bit peculiar, as if they are going out of their way assure calm, prevent alarm, and play second fiddle to the local authorities.

Hollywood_North GT

It's interesting you say this, George, because to my eye, this guy's M.O. shows classic "programming." Call him a Manchurian Candidate, if you will.

As to whether or not one has the right to bare arms: remember that the original framers of your Constitution instituted that right at a time when the U.S. was a new and lawless frontier, with pressures from all sides on the new Republic. Civil and military infrastructure were fledgling at best, so it made perfect sense for private citizens to carry guns to protect themselves.

Frankly, I just don't see the need now. Handguns are for killing people, pure and simple, and I don't believe they should be carried by anyone other than law enforcement officials. Sure, criminals will always find a way, but your chances of being the victim of a gun crime are less than your chances of being struck by lightening. If you look at this latest massacre, or Columbine, or other related shootings, in many, many cases the individuals in question just walked in, plunked down their money, and bought a gun over the counter. To me, that's insanity.

If one wants to anaylize whether or not gun control works, one only has to look at other countries where carrying a gun around is illegal and carries stiff penalties. Here in Canada, guns are strictly controlled, and we have far less gun crimes per capita than you do in the United States. Talk to any cop in a big city here in Canada about this issue, and he will vehemently list a dozen reasons why private citizens should not be allowed to carry handguns around in public.

It's actually not a difficult equation at all, but those who want to keep and carry guns - and they're entitled to their opinions, of course - make it thus because they don't want to give them up.

The question is: where do you draw the line on deadly weapons in the hands of private citizens? Guns? Rocket launchers? C4? Outlawing handguns won't eliminate violent crime, but I'd bet good money it would significantly reduce the instances of violence like the kind we saw this week in Virginia.

My 2 cents.

RobK

Very well put. Times have changed for certain.

jsaylor

The framers made their intent very clear, and it had very little to do with a lawless frontier, scavenging bear, large scorpions, rabid chickens, or even the occasional po'd possum. People in American possess arms because it prevents a government from getting too many ideas about walking all over the populace. The very fact that so many in our government would like to take that right away only reaffirms the continuing need for it.

Then why does Sweden, a country where almost every household with a male in it has a fully automatic weapon in the house, and where right to carry isn't even an issue, have a gun crime rate that makes yours look like the rebirth of the old west? Better yet, why did violent crime, and gun crime in particular, drop drastically when Florida instituted the amazingly lax right to carry laws they have now?

Both of those seriously contradict your argument and frankly, from a statistical standpoint, effectively disprove it. The problem is that the differences which cause the disparities you cite are largely cultural, and the legality of guns wont change anything significantly. As for your last point, any police officer that thinks only he should have a gun probably shouldn't be an officer or have a gun.

Hollywood_North GT

Interesting perspective, though historically, not entirely accurate.

So let me ask you this? Has gun ownership in your country prevented the government from walking all over the populace as it has arguably been doing since 9/11?

Are you planning a coup d'état? Perhaps you think that yourself and a few thousand like-minded citizens could actually overthrow your present government if they were well-armed with Smith & Wessons? "Mr. Smith goes to Washington and goes nuts."

Citizens being allowed to carry handguns ain't gonna help you overthrow the White House and Congress in this day and age. You'll need more than handguns to accomplish that. Again, times have changed.

Cultural and sociological factors are very important, I agree. Sweden is a good example of this. But the United States is a far more violent country than Sweden, and analyzing why could be the subject of a PhD thesis by itself. But again, it begs the question: should such a society - given its proclivity for violence - allow all its citizens to bear arms, in public, no less?

Changing a country's cultural mosaic is much, much harder than banning handguns. Guns don't hold grudges; seek revenge; have fatal character flaws or go nuts - but the people who can easily access them often do. You can't effectively eliminate the people, but you can do something about the products to which they have [easy] access. One of the two must be altered, because together, the results are often deadly, as we saw this week. Something's gotta give, and it seems to me easily accessed deadly weapons are it.

As to your statistics: all of your aforementioned points have been addressed and largely disproved in the past, and I'm not going to get into the picayune debates that so often come up and are frankly biased by things such as parameters of study, length of time given for analysis, methodologies employed, filtering of statistics by metrics of analysis, etc, etc.

Anybody can find (or doctor) any statistics they want to prove a point. It's the same with the global warming debate. Such "arguments" fly in the face of common sense, and obscure the bigger (and frankly, obvious) issue at hand. The bulwark of money & power held in a few hands (be it the NRA or the oil lobby) is very effective at obfuscating science and common sense, even as the problem escalates around us.

We humans too often react to issues as though there is no problem, until it's too late. Place a frog in hot water, and it will leap out immediately. But place it in luke warm water and very gradually increase the temperature, and the frog will just sit there until it boils to death.