Arizona Blue Dog Dem shot at public event

[Stella_Omega]

You're still focussed on the means used -- which existing law, if enforced, should have prevented. That gives the impression that you consider the method more important than the result.

If a gun hadn't been used, we'd be discussing ways to ban explosive vests and keep them out of the hands of nutcases. Instead, the predictable cry of, "I always said guns caused people to go crazy" has arisen and we're discussing whether MORE laws would have pervented the tragedy.

No, honey, we are discussing the very simple fact that a gun is an easy way to kill people. If someone wants to kill people he can, of course, hit them with a rock. It's not quite as easy that's all.

No, more laws against guns won't solve the problem, they'll just change the means crazy people use to cause tragedies. Perhaps public gathering will be safer if we can effectivley ban unrestricted purchases of explosives, too, but I doubt it.

(Oh wait, explosives are already controlled substances and you need a licence to buy them or detonators for them. Good thing that, somebody might blow up a federal building or something if we hadn't required a license to possess and use explosives.)

Which happens so very often-- especially when you think of how rarely people shoot guns at each other. Yep, you've got a point there.

 

[JackLuis]

Like I said before, we ought to call it the War On Crazy, and address the roots of our nuts.

 

[Weird Harold]

No, honey, we are discussing the very simple fact that a gun is an easy way to kill people. If someone wants to kill people he can, of course, hit them with a rock. It's not quite as easy that's all.Which happens so very often-- especially when you think of how rarely people shoot guns at each other. Yep, you've got a point there.

Of course mass murder by explosion is less common than mass murder by firearms. People shoot people with guns every day and guns are much easier to hide than moving vans.

What I fail to understand it that since the large majority of those people killing other people with guns are already doing so with illlegal guns, how is making more guns illegal going to solve anything.

Unless you're politely avoiding being blunt and saying what you really want is to to stuff the genie back in the bottle and collect every firearm in america (world?) and destroy them. Sorry, but the genie is too big. Even if you successfully outlawed every single projectile weapon on the face of the planet, mass murder would still happen -- and happen more and more often as mental health care budgets, public and/or private, keep getting cut.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

An airliner does a nice job of killing 1000s at a time. Everyone should walk.

 

[Weird Harold]

We now have more than ample evidence that handguns with thirty round magazines are an inherent risk to the general welfare.

An afterthoght on 30 round magazines:

Your soul mates down here in th eUS suceeded in getting high cpacity magazines banned. Too bad they had such a reasonable provision attatched to such an unmitigated piece of trash legislation that even anti-gun lobbiests just looked aside when it came time to renew it.

 

[ishtat]

This is the man who single handedly changed Australia's gun laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bryant

Although he was obviously mad he was tried because he knew what he did was wrong.

Firearms murders were very low before Bryant and have remained low (less than 3% of the US rate. When the laws were tightened up about a million illegal guns were handed in.The police concluded that there were far more guns in private ownership than they had realised.

The laws appear to be very tightly policed in Urban areas and hardly at all in the country.

.

 

[Weird Harold]

This is the man who single handedly changed Australia's gun laws.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bryant

...

Interesting. Lots of rhetoric and media frenzy there. Lots of interesting links, too, like the one to the article on Gun Politics in Australia Which contains this typically rabid stance:

The [Australian] Federal Government

Until 1996, the Federal Government had little role in firearms law. Following the Port Arthur massacre, the Howard Government (1996–2007), with strong media and public support, introduced uniform gun laws with the cooperation of all the states. The then Prime Minister John Howard frequently referred to the USA to explain his opposition to civilian firearms ownership and use in Australia, stating that he did not want Australia to go "down the American path". In one interview on Sydney radio station 2GB he said "we will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns... ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia". John Howard had earlier expressed a desire to introduce restrictive gun laws when he was Opposition Leader during a 1995 interview with Australian political journalist Laurie Oakes. In a television interview shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre, he reaffirmed his stance: "I did not want Australia to go down the American path. There are some things about America I admire and there are some things I don't. And one of the things I don't admire about America is their... slavish love of guns. They're evil". During the same television interview, Prime Minister Howard also stated that he saw the outpouring of grief in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre as "an opportunity to grab the moment and think about a fundamental change to gun laws in this country".

That last quote from PM Howard sounds a LOT like the rhetoric being spouted by the Prohibitionists.

 

[stephen55]

The times, they are a changin'....deal with it

You can make a powerful explosive out of diesel fuel and high nitrogen fertilizer. Mining companies use the stuff to take the tops off mountains. High nitrogen fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) was used in the first attack on the World trade Center. It was part of Timothy McVeigh's bomb that brought down most of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

According to Wikipedia, " In the years since the bombing, scientists, security experts, and the ATF have called on Congress to develop legislation that would require customers to produce identification when purchasing ammonium nitrate fertilizer, and for sellers to maintain records of its sale. Critics argue that farmers lawfully use large quantities of the fertilizer,[185] and as of 2009, only Nevada and South Carolina require identification from purchasers.[185]"

Would it be such an imposition on farmers and fertilizer dealers to keep track of who is buying ammonium nitrate? Farmer Bill walks into Fred's "Feed and Tack" shop.

"Hello, Bill. What can I get for you?"

"Hey, Fred. I need another five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate."

"Sure thing, Bill. Give me a look at your driver's license and put your John Henry right here."


How long did that take? Ten seconds?

It might, it just might, be a good idea for the FBI, ATF and Homeland Security to know if Leroy "Meathead" Goehring, disaffected city boy and member of the Aryan Nation, has just tried to purchase five hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate and also asked where he could pick up a few hundred gallons of nitromethane.

For God's sake, America of 2011 is not the America of 1776 or 1791.

If you believe that the Constitution and Amendments really should make it easy for Timothy McVeigh, Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Loughner to murder all of those people, in the name of freedom and personal liberty (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed...I'll be God Damned if I'm gonna sign for ammonium nitrate!!)...then you are insane...crackers...but most of all...morons.

I'll say it again...morons.

I think it's time to back up a little and consider that America of 2011 is very much a different place than America of 1776. Some of you have to get it through your heads that giving up some things (moronically easy access to high capacity firearms and explosives materials) will make your world a better place and not a totalitarian, oppressive gulag.

But then there are some of you who believe that you shouldn't have to a driver's license to drive and that if you have a car, no one should know it's vehicle registration number and dammit!...cars shouldn't have vehicle registration numbers!!

One more time....

As Dr. Phil might ask, "The status quo...how's that working out for you?"

 

[JackLuis]

Here is Gabby's current update.

Arizona Shooting News: Giffords Reaches 'Major Milestone'

 

[Stella_Omega]

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_f6572541-3612-5abf-9bf5-8535641529be.html

Seems like someone convinced Fred Phelps that insulting a child's funeral was a REAL bad idea. Who knew he had any boundaries at all?

 

[amicus]

SeaCat.. If I may, let me, in a small way, come to your defense here and also urge you to become even more strident in your defense of individual rights.

"Usual Suspects", is a loose, but good definition of the varying shades of gray that are the Left; those who advocate control of the individual for a multitude of reasons.

This is not a difficult argument: does an individual have the innate right to defend himself?

America understands something that the rest of the world (and Canadians, poor things) never had a chance to learn, and that is that the individual, by his very nature, is responsible for his own life.

As I noted earlier, if a Club is the weapon de jour, one should have access to a Club for one's own self defense. So too, with firearms. Our Usual Suspects, huddle together and look to an abstraction called, 'government' to protect their lives and property; a rational person looks to himself.

Neither the Consitution in general or the Second Amendment in specific are outdated or reflections of an earlier day. Both represent the conceptual acknowledgement that the individual is supreme, not the herd, and that our values are individual values, not collective.

I wouldn't stoop to calling progressive ignorance a genetic defect, as they do those who think for themselves; not even a mass hysteria applicable only to the Left; they are simply intellectual cowards without a shred of self esteem, who look to and depend on others for their sustenance.

Of course they hate those who stand of, by and for themselves, that independent psychological attitude is a prominent threat to their group identity, without which, they have nothing.

It is not a new phenomenon in human history, if you are not a member of the 'group' then you are ostracized, be it Catholic, Prostestant, Jew or Nazi, your identification, safety and security, indeed your entire livilhood, depends on the hive, not the individual.

The 'usual suspects' really and truly, sincerely believe that, and they truly do not comprehend how one man can stand against the crowd and from that gain and succor independence and freedom.

To whom ever said the whole world understands while America lags behind; you got that right, we have always had a history of individual freedom, the rest of the world only dreams about it and envies Americans and wishes we would fail to justify their misery of collectivism.

I said it was a simple argument, and it is, when one has and sustains their own values. The argument becomes dimensional and complex when one looks to the 'group' to identify, establish, and sustain values. Which group? How much control? When does it ever end?

It doesnt't end, once it begins, until the 'usual suspects' have you completely under their control and dependent on them for even your next meal.

Think on that and then hurry to the nearest gunshow and buy as many and as much as you can.

Amicus

 

[michchick98]

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_f6572541-3612-5abf-9bf5-8535641529be.html

Seems like someone convinced Fred Phelps that insulting a child's funeral was a REAL bad idea. Who knew he had any boundaries at all?

It's nice to see people coming together like that, instead of arguing and bickering about things they have no power to change.

 

[stephen55]

There is a problem here. Fix it.

so why do prohibtionists keep bringing up the militia clause?

I didn't bring the second amendment into this thread, stephen55 did.

Harold, I brought up the second amendment because I think it is front and center in the discussion about guns and gun violence.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.


Back in 1791, American English and it's grammar was different than it is today. Kind of like how American society and technology is different today than it was two centuries ago.

Rephrase the amendment and you come up with...

The security of our free state depends on a well regulated militia, comprised of the people. Therefore, the people must have the right to keep and bear arms.

That might have been true back in 1791. It is not true today.

The security of the USA does not depend on citizen militias. It never really did. After the War of Independence, the security of the USA was the job of the military. Today, a case can be made that citizen militias are a threat to the security of the USA.

So, do the people have the right to firearms? I sat they do, but not because they need them to be effective in a citizen's militia. So far, the US Supreme court agrees. People have the right to own firearms regardless of the specific wording of the second amendment.

I see the problem as stemming from that phrase, "shall not be infringed".

Back in 1791, it didn't matter if someone owned one flintlock muzzle loader or thirty flintlock muzzle loaders. You could only get off one shot per rifle.


"Good day, neighbor Clem. I see you're carrying thirty rifles."

"That'd be a fact, Zeke. Some goldern fedraal politician's gonna be talkin' down at the courthouse."

A minute later...

"Sheriff Dan, you might want to have a word with Clem...because I just saw him..."


Back in 1791, I doubt Zeke ever had to mention Clem's odd behavior to Sheriff Dan.

Back in 1791, the everyday, well understood definition of "arms" meant the common firearms of the day. Not infringing on the people's right to have firearms wasn't a problem. Practically every American back in 1791 lived on a small farm or in a small village. A rifle was an everyday working tool. A rifle kept meat on the table and predators away from the livestock. Pistols were of little value because they did neither. Pistols were, and always remained primarily a weapon against other people.

I am not a prohibitionist. I probably own more firearms than 99% of the US population. (That includes three semi-auto pistols.)

I am completely okay with reasonable limits on what type of firearms I can own as well as reasonable limits on the magazine capacities. In other words, I don't mind a bit that in Canada, my rights to keep and bear arms are infringed. All I'm allowed to own are typical hunting and target rifles, shotguns and handguns. I have no problem with not being allowed thirty round detachable magazines. I"m not allowed fully automatic firearms, handguns with a barrel shorter than 10 cm (four inches), any rifle or shotgun with a barrel shorter than 35 cm (14 inches). Rifle and shotgun capacity is limited to five rounds and handguns are limited to ten.

I am allowed semi-auto (auto-loading) firearms. While I fully understand that from a purely mechanical or engineering point of view, that there is no significant difference between the mechanism of a Browning BAR Mark II in 30-06 and an AK-47, (both operate to reload without any action by the operator) I fully accept that while I can purchase a browning BAR in Canada (or a Remington R-15), I can't purchase an AK-47. After the Montreal Massacre (fourteen dead at the École Polytechnique) Canadian gun laws were amended to outlaw semi-auto rifles that are specifically designed to accept high capacity magazines. You may quibble all you want but it seems a reasonable response to a madman's rampage.

BTW; the rifle that Marc Lépine, the shooter used, was a Ruger Mini-14. That rifle is still sold in Canada. You just can't get the ten round clips that Lépine carried. I shudder to think what would have happened if the guy had carried two or three thirty round clips to go with an AK-47.

Bottom line...(some) Americans are in love with the second amendment. They feel it gives them the right to carry almost any and all firearms, concealed if they care, and to do pretty much what they please, even if it scares the hell out of the other people in the coffee shop and if some guys back in 1791 said it's so, then it's so forever.

Do yourselves a favour. Amend the second amendment. Leave the hunters and the target shooters alone but infringe on the rights of the narcos and the crazies to get their hands on firearms that are equipped to shoot up the people of Tucson Arizona with thirty rounds before the crazy can be taken down.

Hunters and target shooters don't need thirty shot clips. The narcos and the crazies think they're the cat's ass. There is a problem here. Fix it.

 

[SeaCat]

You are thickheaded about not recognizing that guns do kill people. That any conveniently present violent weapon is going to result in more people dead than if the violent weapon wasn't conveniently available.

It was the presence of the gun that resulted in the deaths of those people in Tucson. If the nut had been there without the gun, 20 people would not have been shot. One might have been taken out by physical force, possibly, but the crowd wouldn't have let the nut go further than that. The people were killed by the presence of a gun. Bullets from a gun killed them.

And you are thickheaded about it because you want to be a MAN and own a gun, so you are choosing to be self-possessed and thickheaded about it.

And here is yet another prime example of why I rarely enter into debates of any kind on this board. Too many on this board are fanatics about their beliefs and are unwilling to compromise or even listen to the other side. Instead of even trying to maintain any sense of civility in their discussions they resort to name calling, insults and veiled innuendo when others disagree with them.

As for your last comment I do not wish to be a man and own a firearm. I am a man because I act with Honor and I treat others with respect.

Cat

 

[SeaCat]

No names for you here, SeaCat. I'm just wondering why the gun show loophole remains. It seems like every time someone wants to address that issue, they get shouted down by the NRA. The NRA would get a lot less grief from the public if they did support closing the gun show loophole - and if they supported restricting high capacity magazines to law enforcement personnel only.

Here's another link to the Limbaugh billboard.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/13/rush-limbaughs-tucson-billboard_n_808563.html

Wierd Harold gave a very good answer to this and I have very little to add to it.

As for the N.R.A.'s stance on this, there is a reason I don't belong to the N.R.A. I dislike fanatics of any kind and their actions border on fanatacism.

Cat

 

[sr71plt]

And here is yet another prime example of why I rarely enter into debates of any kind on this board. Too many on this board are fanatics about their beliefs and are unwilling to compromise or even listen to the other side. Instead of even trying to maintain any sense of civility in their discussions they resort to name calling, insults and veiled innuendo when others disagree with them.

As for your last comment I do not wish to be a man and own a firearm. I am a man because I act with Honor and I treat others with respect.

Cat

Excuse me? I can compromise on gun control. That wasn't the issue here. It was your decision to take the ridiculous stance that guns don't kill. I'd like to tell my father that to see if he could get a good laugh--but he's dead. Bullets killed him. If the sniper who shot him hadn't had a gun, there's not much else he could have used from where he was hidden.

So it's a simpleton being simplistic to say that guns don't kill.

(Just one caveat. The bullet wounds didn't send the blot clot to his heart until 35-years later--but the doctor confirmed that it was the Korean War wound that got him.)

 

[SeaCat]

Excuse me? I can compromise on gun control. That wasn't the issue here. It was your decision to take the ridiculous stance that guns don't kill. I'd like to tell my father that to see if he could get a good laugh--but he's dead. Bullets killed him. If the sniper who shot him hadn't had a gun, there's not much else he could have used from where he was hidden.

So it's a simpleton being simplistic to say that guns don't kill.

(Just one caveat. The bullet wounds didn't send the blot clot to his heart until 35-years later--but the doctor confirmed that it was the Korean War wound that got him.)

A) First off I'm sorry to hear about your father. My condolences.

B) You have my humble appologies for questioning your obviously much higher intelligence, knowledge and intellect. I am indeed a thick headed simpleton for daring to attempt to state in a civilised manner my views. Indeed I shall go away and play with my blocks because as you so succinctly put it in your opinion I am not a man but merely a boy trying to act like a man.

Have a pleasant evening oh great master.

Cat

 

[sr71plt]

A) First off I'm sorry to hear about your father. My condolences.

B) You have my humble appologies for questioning your obviously much higher intelligence, knowledge and intellect. I am indeed a thick headed simpleton for daring to attempt to state in a civilised manner my views. Indeed I shall go away and play with my blocks because as you so succinctly put it in your opinion I am not a man but merely a boy trying to act like a man.

Have a pleasant evening oh great master.

Cat

Thanks, and enjoy playing with your blocks. Don't sit near a window, though. One of those guns that don't kill people might get you accidentally. You never know in the States, with all the nuts with guns running around. Of course without the readily accessible gun, you probably wouldn't be in much danger.

Sorry, but there's really no compromise that I can see on the question of whether guns--or any other weapon of violence at a distance--kill people. To play this silly game is either being a simpleton or using a ruse to escape reality. If you see a compromise on that issue, do let me know. I'd be happy to see where you would budge from such a dumb claim. Until then, I think playing with blocks is probably your safest bet.

 

[amicus]

Ah, SeaCat, you should realize that the Left in general and sr71 in specific, feel they are so superior that they are not only beyond criticism, but that sarcasm and irony doesn't apply to their idiotic lack of logic.

Like their entire philosophy, they all prefer to depend on others to defend them, feed them, educate them, supply their aspirins and BC pills, give them a home and a job and anyone who says different has surely got to be insane or 'childish' in their eyes, certainly old fashioned, out of date and naive to the wonders of a collective society.

To suggest that they all should be confined so as not to corrupt real people, would no doubt be classified as 'hate speech', and Oh, my, I wouldn't want to be accused of that! Mercy!



ami

 

[amicus]

Obama Cancels Border Fence!

http://content.usatoday.com/communi...obama-cancels-troubled-virtual-border-fence/1

It is estimated that an additional 1,000,000 illegal immigrants crossed that border in the past year...amazing that the extimated number of illegals in the country never rises about the accepted 12 million number?

Forget that there is chaos along the unfenced areas of the border, guns, drugs, terrorists are pouring into America and no one in the big O administration seems to care.

Open border policies and amnesty for all...is that next on Nombama's agenda?

Amicus

 

[sr71plt]

Like their entire philosophy, they all prefer to depend on others to defend them, feed them, educate them, supply their aspirins and BC pills, give them a home and a job and anyone who says different has surely got to be insane or 'childish' in their eyes, certainly old fashioned, out of date and naive to the wonders of a collective society.

Hey, thou old fart parasitic drone. You're the one not paying his taxes and letting the government keep him alive.

I'm the one stuck with paying your bills.

 

[sr71plt]

http://content.usatoday.com/communi...obama-cancels-troubled-virtual-border-fence/1

It is estimated that an additional 1,000,000 illegal immigrants crossed that border in the past year...amazing that the extimated number of illegals in the country never rises about the accepted 12 million number?

And a half hour after they've crossed the border they could each have procured a semiautomatic gun. Stick that in your craw and process it.

 

[Weird Harold]

Harold, I brought up the second amendment because I think it is front and center in the discussion about guns and gun violence.

It has nothing to do with the discussion in THIS thread until you brought it up. My argument is and was that passing MORE gun control laws fixes nothing because the shooter in this incident should not have had a gun.

Any constitutional considerations aside, the response of the Prohibitionists is more "thank god some nut made the headlines! We can push through our agenda on the tide of outrage" instead of "Why didn't this crazy person get the help he needed before he went off the deep end," which is the root problem in this case of "gun violence."

Rephrase the amendment and you come up with...[/SIZE][/COLOR][/B][/I]

Amicus posted a list of alternatives considered by the authors. You attempt fall far short of any of the wordings they rejected.

That might have been true back in 1791. It is not true today.

Which is why the second amendment was not part of THIS discussion until you brought up the militia clause as a reason individuals should NOT have military grade weapons when, IF the militia clause applies at all to today's circumstances, would mean that the "sporting purposes" test is exactly opposite of the original intent, and your argument failed on that point alone.



In today's world If the anti-gun prohibtionists would (could) craft intelligent and effective legislation, then then the ban on high-capacity magazines wouldn't have expired in 2004, along with the ineffective cosmetic bans the legislation was named for.

Personally, I don't think the Prohibitionists can craft intelligent, effective legislation; certainly those who crafted the Assault Weapons Ban showed no understanding of what they were trying to ban.

 

[Huckleman2000]

And a half hour after they've crossed the border they could each have procured a semiautomatic gun. Stick that in your craw and process it.

Exactly. For all the drugs crossing the border going north, there are assault guns and high-capacity magazines going south. The scary violence that the right uses to whip up anti-immigrant fervor is a product, to a great extent, of the availability of military-grade weaponry.

 

[Weird Harold]

And a half hour after they've crossed the border they could each have procured a semiautomatic gun. Stick that in your craw and process it.

Not legally.

Why not enforce the existing prohibition on illlegal aliens possessing guns? It has only been on the books since 1968.