posted on March 6, 2001 03:17:25 PM
Well, with the latest school yard killings, I knew our new Resident of the United States would not utter a word about gun control.
However, he did say that children have to learn right from wrong, not control the weapons of destruction.
But to follow this anti gun control logic, we should allow Sadam Hussein and whoever else that wants weapons to have them, and send teachers of ethics and morals to their country instead of war planes and cruise missles.
Why try to control the spread of nuclear weapons ? It is the sovereign right of a country, just like our "right" to own weapons, to have whatever weapons one wants.
Well, the bottom line is people that are shot dead or nuked probably have a different view about these "rights", just as most reasonable people do. There is always going to be nuts and wrong headed young people around. There does not have to be weapons around for them to get their hands on.
All this rhetoric about gun violence being a "new" problem brought about by our lack of morals is poppycock. I have read case law from the nineteenth century dealing with kids shooting other kids - not to mention adults doing it. The difference now is that there are millions of cheap guns all over the U.S. for any misguided youth or hot headed crazed adult to get his/her hands on.
We can not exert the necessary control over people in a free society to prevent these massacres, we can however get the weapons of destruction out of their hands, just like we are doing in Iraq. If we have the moral right to do it in Iraq, we have the right to do it here in the U.S.
posted on March 6, 2001 04:46:13 PM
You put right in quotes, like this, "right" as if it were some curiosity to you. I won't bother to debate the 2nd Amendmant with you as I'm sure I wouldn't change your mind, but so far we DO have a RIGHT to firearms, with MANY restrictions.
You refer to the Sovereign right of nations to have nuclear weapons, but I am unaware of any World Constitution that bestows or denies "rights" to nations. In fact, practice in recent decades is that nations DO have a right to defend themselves, and that inherent in that is a right to weapons of their choosing. That is why the international movement to limit proliferation of nuclear weapons is VOLUNTARY, each nation being free to sign or not sign the non-proliferation agreement. While pressure can be brought to bear by the major powers, the US included, a small nation with the know how and funds can join the club if they like. None of the "nuclear club" nations were pleased to see India and Pakistan join them- but I am unaware of any plan to try and take their weapons away from them. On top of that , to compare a nuclear weapon with a 38 is ludicrous.
You refer to the 19th century and then imply that things are much worse now- even though weapons were in far more homes in the 19th Century than now- and essentially NO restrictions existed about types or who could own them.
"....for any misguided youth or crazed adult to get his/her hands on". Oh really? Where is that? Tens of thousands of laws prohibit the sale or possession of guns by minors or "crazed adults". Or are you speaking of the "street" market? Can YOU go buy a gun tonight? Tomorrow? In the next 3 days? In the ghettos, perhaps, but the availability of weapons to the average person is much overstated, unless you are speaking of legitimate gun dealers, who are after all, selling a legal product bound by reams of regulation.
Finally, you draw a comparison between our actions against Iraq and the "right' we have to do something, I suppose confiscation, here in the US to our own citizens. There is NO valid comparison here- NONE.
As citizens, we have, as of this moment, a RIGHT, granted by the Constitution of the United States and by MANY State Constitutions, to keep and in some cases, bear arms. That right is taken away if we break certain laws, most especially if we use
a gun in a crime. In most jurisdictions,ALL gun crimes, even menacing, are felonies and as you may know, felons lose their right to guns.
In Iraq's case, they attacked a neighbor with an army, we interceded and stopped them. As nations go, i suppose this qualifies as a "felony". We then made a feeble attempt to deny them CERTAIN classes of weapons, guns, tanks, cannon NOT included. We also banned the sale of ADDITIONAL weapons of ALL types and machinery etc of military value by other nations. This was not a unilateral action, it was a UN mandate and strongly supported by many nations. these mandates are now enforced primarily by the US for several reasons, the most important being we have the means and the wherewithal to do so.
To stretch that to say we have the right to confiscate the weapons of law abiding citizens here is absurd.
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you are anti-gun. If you want to convert anyone to your way of thinking, you're gonna have to come up with LOTS better rationales than these.
If you're simply preaching to the anti-gun choir, enjoy.
posted on March 6, 2001 04:49:59 PM
I don't know why these kids bother to steal their parent's guns to take to school as an aid to vengeance against their peers when a simple pipe bomb well placed would kill many more of them.
If they really want to see their destruction they could maybe use a sword, but if they're afraid to try their prowess with one of those, common household poisons wouldn't be difficult to put into a punchbowl at a school party or rally.
Anyone with a mind to killing can find myriad ways to do it up to and including wholesale slaughter of roomfuls of teasing classmates.
Yet you persist in blaming the gun as if it somehow floated into the person's hand or into the school hell bent on murder and seeking only some poor innocent who can be hypnotically persuaded to pull it's trigger.
Any kid in metal shop can make a gun easily enough. A rudimentary little lathe of the type that are used to make model railroad parts and steam engines can be used to make a nice gun. A piece of tubing, a rubber band and a flint will make a gun and a fishing weight melted into any shape that fits in the tube makes a bullet. Better ban fishing weights to keep these idiots safe.
posted on March 6, 2001 05:03:42 PM
In Guatemala, thugs slash peoples throats with stale tortillas (I'm not making this up--they really do get hard when dried out! I know someone who survived an attack like this and has a tortilla scar), so we ought to ban tortillas while we are at it--or at least pass a law that ensures we eat them all before they get stale.
posted on March 6, 2001 05:16:52 PM
In a technological society it is impossible to keep people from having weapons. Anyone who knows a little chemistry and is a half way skilled mechanic can make all sorts of weapons easy. When it was more difficult to obtain a cheap gun back in the middle of the last century you had kids making the almost forgotten "zip gun". It is easy to make terrific air/fuel explosives with a butane lighter or refill. To stop people from making weapons yopu have to keep them away from knowlege and soon you have nobody to service all our widgets.
posted on March 6, 2001 05:38:15 PM
LOL @krs
Where I live, last year we had a rash of assaults with tunas. Seems whole flash frozen tunas can be deadly weapons. No doubt if a gun had been handy, that would have been the weapon of choice. But the thugs had to make do with the tunas. Made front page news here. I'm not making this up either.
posted on March 6, 2001 06:04:53 PM
And if corn is banned, there goes Fuzzy's idea to make tens off her "corn rats" idea.
I think the issue is less the availability of firearms or whether they should be banned and more of what seems to be a "gun culture" in the US. Guns are perceived to be the answer to any sort of threat, no matter how small or inconsequential.
Rather than banning firearms, I think there needs to be a radical change in the thinking of Americans. Until the society changes how guns are considered, random shootings will continue.
posted on March 6, 2001 06:26:17 PM
reamond, I'm sorry if I came across as making fun of you personally--I really wasn't. Your concerns are valid.
Shadowcat says "Rather than banning firearms, I think there needs to be a radical change in the thinking of Americans. Until the society changes how guns are considered, random shootings will continue." I agree 100%.
Parents aren't teaching their kids the difference between right and wrong--and in many cases the parents don't know right from wrong themselves. The kids learn from their 'heros' and friends.
Look at the American media and entertainment industry...you've got award-winning knuckleheads (idiots like Puffy what's-his-name and Tupac) singing the praises of gun violence and power.
My concern is somewhere down the road government is going to take away my right to have guns. The right to bear arms insures that we can protect ourselves. Of course, I understand the right to have guns entails important responsibilities (safety, etc.)
posted on March 6, 2001 07:02:54 PM
I agree with shadowcat also. Guns are not
more accessible to today's children than they were to children years ago.
The question should be what is causing the
violence today.
posted on March 6, 2001 07:19:15 PM
I think there's a lot of blame to go around where school killings are concerned: A society that glorifies violence as a source of entertainment ... Parents who lose touch with what's going on in their children's lives ... School administrators who look the other way as kids bully each other ... School guidance counselors who either don't care or don't have the expertise to identify a kid at risk ... and oh yeah, the gun suppliers.
I think guns are too available. That notwithstanding, I think that in degree of blame, the gun providers probably bear the least of it. But ironically they receive the brunt of the finger-pointing when these shooting tragedies happen.
Why? Because the other parties, while by far more culpable, are too abstract to pin down. How can you go after "society?" How can you force "society" to change the way it operates? How do you determine what makes a "bad parent?" How do you force "bad parents" to change? How do you apportion fault to schools?
But the gun dealers -- those you can do something about. You can point your finger right at them. You may be powerless to do anything about the demand for weapons, but by God you can write laws to affect the supply.
Gun dealers are scapegoats. You can write all the laws and pass all the safety measures you want. But until society itself abandons its romance with violence and killing .. until parents and schools learn to communicate with, to help and to treat troubled kids ... the problem will never go away.
posted on March 6, 2001 07:27:58 PM
katyd, I can imagine a frozen tuna would be pretty dangerous. Don't they have big sharp spikey fins on them? Which reminds me, did you ever drop a frozen turkey on your foot? I have and I limped for days--I think it broke something.
Here is a true story from New Orleans. Our fanatically left-wing liberal mayor is all pro-gun control. A couple years ago he had the city put on these 'guns for groceries' campaigns. People could exchange their guns for supermarket gift certificates--no questions asked (or axed, as they say here in N.O.)
So what happened to all the guns they collected? They were put up for sale and some other city bought them (I can't remember for sure but I think it was Chicago). The city got all the money. It was a big scandal.
posted on March 6, 2001 07:39:13 PM
Some years back I overheard the kitten and several of his friends talking about how they were going to "kick someone's a**". Now the kitten had been raised that violence is hardly ever the best way to solve a problem so I was quite surprised to hear him chiming in his agreement.
I asked the kittens why they felt they needed to beat someone up, why they didn't talk to the other kids and try to work something out. The kittens stared at me like I suddenly sprouted a few extra heads. My kitten sputtered that these kids had insulted them. I said so? All the kittens tried to explain that they HAD to respond with force to show they weren't weak. If they were thought of as weak, they'd be the targets for all the other kids
I was reminded of the scene in "The Untouchables" where the Sean Connery character tells Costner's character: "If they hurt you, you put one of theirs in the hospital. If they put you in the hospital, you kill one of them."(Or something close to that)
I think that's the message being told today, that letting any slight, real or imagined, go by without nailing the other person's hide to the wall will show the rest of the world that you're weak. And those who are seen as weak are also seen as easy targets.
posted on March 6, 2001 07:47:20 PM
Well don't look to the government to teach any different. Kids watch TV and see how the law works. When the government wanted that Cuban kid last year they lied and then went in with machine guns and riot gear. You thing the message doesn't get out?
posted on March 6, 2001 08:08:50 PM
How should we modify the Bill of Rights in order to create a gun-free American society?
Keep in mind that it's not only the second amendment that would need be ignored.
I don't think there is a workable solution to this problem. Consequently, I do not agree with sweeping anti-gun legislation.
I do agree with making it more difficult to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Mandatory training should be a part of the process. I also agree with legislation that provides stiff penalties for violators.
We can make laws that attempt to control the ownership and use of firearms but we cannot enforce an outright ban on guns.
You say "More of the same rubbish and non-sense the gun lobby has been putting out for years. Little babies that have to have their dangerous toys to make them feel like men.", yet you are nothing more than a child of the media yourself. Several times you have opened up with your repetitive dogma and not once have you had a single fact to back your premise.
How, if it's only "little babies that have to have their dangerous toys do you account for the interview given by a woman, Texas representative Suzanna Gratia Hupp, who remembered how her parents were killed with 20 others in a Texas cafeteria massacre in 1991. She says she "had a shot at the gunman, but wasn't carrying her pistol because back then it was against the law." Hupp added: "Had my legislators not legislated me out of
the right to protect myself and my family, we would have had a chance, at least a chance to protect ourselves." Or the interview on the NBC investigative "Guns in America" in which Reporter Robert Hager talked to Ryland Moore, a 71-year-old man who foiled a teenager’s attempted robbery in a diner, who said: "Things happen all the time. You know people are attacked, robbed, killed, and I don’t intend to be a statistic if I can help it."
Thousands of cases of citizens protecting their lives by use of arms go unreported in the media. But every case of the misuse of guns is widely and horrifically reported so as to point the finger at the gun but not at the person who weilds it. After all, who will admit to failing as a parent if a mechanical object can be given the blame?
I grew up with guns and have dozens of them at any given time now. Yet even though they have always been available to me, and even though I have the pubescent issues and peer presssures under my belt with the associated problems, I resolved those confrontational issues either by intellect or by maturity, or by the use of my fists. It never occurred to me to use a gun.
If guns are perceived as a normal part of day to day life how can there be an excitement, a perception by children that they are forbidden and thereby fascinating?
By the way, the NRA, of which I am a Distinquished Life Member, fully supports maximum penalties under the law for those who use guns in any crime.
Here, you can piece out some of this next time so that you can at least seem to be something other than a little baby crying over something you don't understand. (You called me that)
And the next time you come here and call Charleton Heston (AKA Moses, AKA Ben Hur) a little babie spewing rubbish I'll insist that this thread be locked for anti-semantic slurs.
posted on March 6, 2001 08:50:17 PM
Guns were never more available than today. Many states, early on,in order to maintain a militia made it mandatory for citizens to own a gun because most could not afford one and the states could not afford to arm the militia.
Guns were an expensive luxury. Those that had them were wealthy or had them on the frontier as a necessity.
You folks have watched too much television.
This talk about "other" weapons being used is foolish. Those dead kids stood a better chance against a pipe bomb - which is easily discovered and isolated, and you can leave the area, or a club, rock, or anything other than a semi-automatic pistol.
You know, I knew a fellow once who was an NRA member. When his NRA gun safety trained son blew his own brains out with one of his guns, he didn't renew his membership, and there hasn't been a gun in his house since. The fact is you or a loved one are far more likely to be harmed or killed by your own gun than any other defensive measure a gun might be used for.
There always has been and always will be adults and children that act out of anger, pain or mental illness. The difference is that they now have easier access to guns. The manufacturers flooded the market with them.
I remember reading an appellate case from the 1800's of an 11 year old that shot and killed a 12 year old, after the 12 year old and a friend hit him with a stick. I believe the issue was putting an 11 year old in prison for life, not whether anyone taught him right from wrong.
This "moral decay" is so much unmitigated propaganda. The Prohibition era had more cold blooded murders and violent corruption than now - and ushered in the regulation of fully automatic weapons. Yet supposedly we were a more moral nation then?
Stop watching television and listening to Moses Heston, and start reading history.
posted on March 6, 2001 08:54:29 PM
Thanks for posting that interesting link, krs. It shows yet another example of the news media being driven by an agenda (which doesn't value our freedoms, that's for sure).
posted on March 6, 2001 08:59:20 PM
Who could discuss history with a person who slants it to their purpose. You haven't brought a single factual example of what you say, only your own misreads.
An expensive luxury? A Winchester rifle could be had from Sears for $8.00 in 1910, now they can be had for $400. But you'd never know that would you, if you confine your reading to descriptions of the court of Louis XVI?
posted on March 6, 2001 09:06:19 PM
I too have had guns most of my life. I have never used one in anger, nor been tempted to.
I HAVE used them on two occasions for their intended purpose- to restore order to a previously disorderly situation.
Once the sound of a shotgun having a shell pumped into it's chamber brought a faint "oh, sh*t" followed by the rapid footfalls down the stairs of my apartment. Moments before, the sounds in the hall had been of someone tampering with the locks, which stopped suddenly at my door.
The second time, it was similar, the chambering of a round into a 45, and VOILA! the trouble was off and running.
Guns are tools, nothing more, nothing less.
They do have however a unique quality that no other tool possesses. It is the only tool that the mere presentation of it will often, in fact, frequently, achieve the desired result. By comparison, I can hold the hammer above the nail forever, but until I swing, the nail remains unmoved.
In my misspent youth, I became acquainted with the local narcs, socially, one of them being interested in my roomie. He explained why they raided a local dealer with 10 or 12 men in flak jackets with Shotguns and automatic weapons. It wasnt to blast this guy with his 6 ounces of coke and a 38. It was to make it instantly clear when they kicked the door that he had no chance. He looks up at the door flying in, considers his 38 and then saw what he was up against. He sat back down, raised his hands and smiled. In the 4 years I knew them, noone in that town was shot during a raid. Massive firepower equals massive intimidation. Intimidation equals non injury arrests.
The same thing works on a smaller scale. My 45 against a small time burglar. He left. Quickly.
[ edited by donrob2 on Mar 6, 2001 09:11 PM ]
posted on March 6, 2001 09:07:53 PM" I knew a fellow once who was an NRA member. When his NRA gun safety trained son blew his own brains out with one of his guns, he didn't renew his membership, and there hasn't been a gun in his house since".
How sad. But what did the NRA or the gun have to do with the suicidal intention of the son. You've only described a case of paternal guilt and I'd wonder what sorts of mentality the father imparted to the child.
In point of fact I removed myself from membership in the NRA as well (me and Daddy Bush ) because I could not countenance their then vehement defense of a right to own fully automatic weapons and armor piercing bullets. I knew that the perception was that to give up any part of a right is to eventually relinquish all of it, but I could not see that the right extends to those areas. And I still don't. Once they agreed with me I welcomed them back to the fold. LOL!
posted on March 6, 2001 09:10:35 PM
reamond, I am stunned that you think the moral decay of our nation is merely propaganda. Our sense of morality in this nation comes from the Constitution, which is based on divine inspirations. We've strayed far from the divine in this country. I'm concerned that you are so truly deceived.
There have been cold-blooded killers since Caine and Abel--unfortunately there will always be those with us. By the way, Caine didn't use a gun when he killed his brother in cold blood.
posted on March 6, 2001 09:18:47 PM
krs- The NRA has consistently fought against laws that make gun owners criminally and civilly liable when their guns are negligently accessed by members of the household or guests. Not to mention holding gun manufacturers to standards of product liability.
It is also a load of processed hay these claims about "if I had a gun". The Rep Hupp you mentioned was probably paralysed with fear in the incident mentioned and if she had a gun couldn't have used it. It reminds me of those guys who cower in a corner during a bar fight, but the next day they are talking about how they busted this guys nose, and broke a chair over another guy. Nothing but hot air.
The fact is policemen freeze up in those situations, as well as soldiers freeze up in those situations, but you ask us to believe it is rational that anyone capable of owning a gun should have them in these situations. I suppose it would give us a choice of being shot by the criminal or the amateur armed citizen, or being shot by the criminal after he/she takes the gun away from the citizen - which is usually what happens.
Even our most highly trained law enforcement personel commit one mistake after another in gun fights. Everything from shooting the wrong person to shooting each other.
In any event, your children, your spouse, or yourself, are far more likely to be harmed or killed by your gun than the gun will ever be used for any defensive measure.
) because I could not countenance their then vehement defense of a right to own fully automatic weapons and armor piercing bullets. I knew that the perception was that to give up any part of a right is to eventually relinquish all of it, but I could not see that the right extends to those areas. And I still don't. Once they agreed with me I welcomed them back to the fold. LOL!