Sensible Gun Safety

[youthathletics]

The point seacoaster is that gun violence is gun violence. And it revolves around people that have a disconnect with the value of life....for a modicum of reasons.

Your comment is borderline justifying the street crime because it’s only a handgun. Both often have intended targets or kill just to kill.

[Trinity]

The tough guy Texas shooter spells Trump’s name out in guns on his Facebook page and mimics his racist language. Then he shoots babies. Let’s talk about video games.

[youthathletics]

Was that guy mentally ill?

[Trinity]

Did Trump encourage him? It’s not like he’s a one-off.

[DMac]

That's an outstanding article, CU77, thanks for posting it. There's very little in it about guns but a lot about people, and that is where the answer lies, IMO. Conservatives, liberals, Ds, Rs, policy, laws, none of that has much to do with anything. I'm surprised there's no mention of drugs in that article. We have to figure out how to stop doing to ouselves what it is that is cuasing people to behave this way and I think there's a lot in that article that tells us what it is. It aint about guns and politicians, it really aint. JMHO.

[cradleandshoot]

Serious question. What causes all the shootings in Chicago each day?.....73 just this past week? Why is it not headline news each and every single day on ALL MSM networks to keep this in the news and draw attention for the need of gun/ammo background check change?

Is it because the shooters are primarily black and that is a touchy subject, is it because we can't also call them(insert racial/radical group) lunatics, is it because it is a liberal city, or just because they are not using an assault rifle?

Maybe it really just boils down that it must involve a white or brown man, an assault weapon or bomb, and more than 1-2 people at a given event.

Your point in larger RED is exactly why I posted this. The mere fact we ignore blacks killing blacks at an alarming rate....somehow makes the cries for change when we have events like this just seem condescending. No, I am not speaking to you or anyone here directly, just venting at the selective concern only when something can sell papers or increase ratings.

A big cause is the cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities. Throw in the war on drugs and broken incarceration policies and crime boils over early and often. These kids are starting in the batter's box while we're starting on second base.

It's not headline news because it's normalized - it happens often so it's not news. Mass shootings don't happen a lot relative to gang / drug / economic crime shootings so they garner attention. Next add in the fact that white people are doing a lot of the mass shootings and you get the disparity.

I agree that the cries of change are misguided. AR-15's are a small fraction of gun violence but they're public enemy #1 for the Dem's. There's a lack of logic to this, which is understandable because it's a highly emotional subject.

Both of my parents grew up dirt poor during the heyday of the great depression. If poverty was the excuse for killing people then the folks of the greatest generation should have all been mass killers given the excuse that poverty causes. It is not about being poor... it is about a callous lack of regard for human life. Once you figure out where that comes from... if you have a child playing video games from dawn to dusk where they are killing every person in sight. When the game is over they click start again and continue where they left off. In the real world you can't click start a new game. In the real world all you can do is deal with the latest carnage and wonder why/how it happened.

As for our children... they learn what they live. If you as a parent have not indoctrinated your children into the value of every single person that they interact with... then you have failed as a parent. The best thing for both of my boys, outside of their parents influence was becoming involved in lacrosse. They had a coach that demanded their attention and dedication to their school work and their teammates and their sport. They also had parents that did not cut them any slack and never expected perfection... but always expected them to give their best for the team. My personal feelings... get your damn kids away from those violent video games and don't use them as a baby sitter to make an excuse for your lack of being an involved parent.

[youthathletics]

That's an outstanding article, CU77, thanks for posting it. There's very little in it about guns but a lot about people, and that is where the answer lies, IMO. Conservatives, liberals, Ds, Rs, policy, laws, none of that has much to do with anything. I'm surprised there's no mention of drugs in that article. We have to figure out how to stop doing to ouselves what it is that is cuasing people to behave this way and I think there's a lot in that article that tells us what it is. It aint about guns and politicians, it really aint. JMHO.

+1
Precisely my point in my last bit of posts. It seems America suffers from some sort of collective narcissism. It's like that Cookie Jar song we sand as kids.

President Trump took the cookie from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes you!
Couldn't be?
Then Who?

President Obama took the cookie from the cookie jar.
Who me?
Yes you!
Couldn't be?
Then Who?

[ggait]

.

[MDlaxfan76]

Serious question. What causes all the shootings in Chicago each day?.....73 just this past week? Why is it not headline news each and every single day on ALL MSM networks to keep this in the news and draw attention for the need of gun/ammo background check change?

Is it because the shooters are primarily black and that is a touchy subject, is it because we can't also call them(insert racial/radical group) lunatics, is it because it is a liberal city, or just because they are not using an assault rifle?

Maybe it really just boils down that it must involve a white or brown man, an assault weapon or bomb, and more than 1-2 people at a given event.

Your point in larger RED is exactly why I posted this. The mere fact we ignore blacks killing blacks at an alarming rate....somehow makes the cries for change when we have events like this just seem condescending. No, I am not speaking to you or anyone here directly, just venting at the selective concern only when something can sell papers or increase ratings.

A big cause is the cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities. Throw in the war on drugs and broken incarceration policies and crime boils over early and often. These kids are starting in the batter's box while we're starting on second base.

It's not headline news because it's normalized - it happens often so it's not news. Mass shootings don't happen a lot relative to gang / drug / economic crime shootings so they garner attention. Next add in the fact that white people are doing a lot of the mass shootings and you get the disparity.

I agree that the cries of change are misguided. AR-15's are a small fraction of gun violence but they're public enemy #1 for the Dem's. There's a lack of logic to this, which is understandable because it's a highly emotional subject.

Exactly, most of the urban/poverty violence is drug gang related. It's truly awful, yet I think it's less about 'normalized' than that the victims are often the marginalized in our society so don't receive nearly the outrage as when someone of higher socio-economic status is killed, violated, etc. The 'outrage' is often 'faux outrage' disguised within cries of 'whatabout black-on-black killing'? The point of that argument isn't to actually help, it's to suggest that it's the 'liberal policies or leaders' of these cities, or worse, the color of the perpetrator's skin.

The issue is poverty and the war for drug turf. It won't be solved by gun confiscation as indeed the criminals will continue to find a way to obtain weapons. Which doesn't mean that being tough on illegal gun sales isn't appropriate.

Drug decriminalization and serious investment in the infrastructure in these areas, housing, food, education, etc. It's going to require decades of hard work, but an essential part will be decriminalization. Take the profit out of pushing drugs.

The issue of ideological driven mass violence is entirely different. Requires an entirely different response.

[DMac]

MDlaxfan76 wrote
Take the profit out of pushing drugs.

Both legal and illegal.

Although pharma sales salaries are on the lower end of the healthcare sales spectrum, the figures are still impressive by most standards. Pharmaceutical sales jobs come with other perks too, including company cars or car allowances (94%), expense accounts (78%), stock options(35%), and more. All of this contributes to overall job satisfaction, which is relatively high among these respondents. A combined 80% say they are either very satisfied (32%) or somewhat satisfied (48%) with their pharmaceutical sales job.

With a solid income and plenty of perks, it’s easy to see why pharma sales jobs continue to be highly sought-after among medical sales jobs.

Sell, sell, sell...what kind of bonuses do the big shots get, millions?
https://www.medreps.com/medical-sales-c ... ary-report

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://nypost.com/2019/08/04/dayton-ma ... officials/

[ggait]

They'll use IEDs, truck, pistols, knives, etc.

To coin a phrase, I call BS on that. Anyone with a brain does too.

I could easily kill/main a dozen people in 60 seconds with an assault rifle. And I'm a pudgy middle aged suburban guy with no special training or skills or special access to gear. Also, I can come up with dozens of soft targets within a 5 mile radius of my house to do it -- churches, schools, restaurants, movie theatres, stores, malls, etc.

I could not do that with a revolver, shot gun, knife or baseball bat. Maybe I could inflict some mayhem with a semi-auto pistol, but an assault rifle is just so much better of a tool. That muzzle velocity really brings the fatality!

It would be really really hard for me (and almost all of these wackos) to successfully pull off a bomb blast. The El Paso and Dayton shooters were messed up crazy young guys. They played video games and attended community college -- they did not attend Army Ranger school for pete sake! With some extensive planning I might/might not be able to pull off the truck massacre. But I'd never bother to try since the assault rifle path is sooo much easier and soo much more effective.

We still have car crashes even with drunk driving laws and a 55 MPH speed limit. Does that mean we should let people drive drunk and 100 MPH? People still rob banks even though that's against the law. Should we give that one up too? We all lock our doors at night, even though we know it is no guarantee against intrusion. Since when do we let the forking perfect be the enemy of the good????

This is a beyond stupid argument to make. Sheesh. SMH.

And here's the other idiotic argument I can't stand. 50k people die each year in car crashes and suicides. So these mass shootings are really no big deal. Fork that. By that reasoning 9/11 was no big deal -- only 3k killed, right?

[CU77]

And to get a driver's license, I had to pass a written test, a vision test, and a driving test one-on-one with an evaluator. And just last week I had to pass another vision test to renew my license.

Let's put those in place for guns, and then we can talk about car deaths.

[CU77]

David Frum (formerly a speechwriter for George W Bush) in The Atlantic:

There is one developed country—and only one—in which it is not only legal, but easy and convenient, to amass a private arsenal of mass slaughter. That country also happens to be the one—and the only one—regularly afflicted by mass slaughters perpetrated by aggrieved individuals.

You would not think that this is a complicated problem to puzzle out. Yet even as the casualties from gunfire mount, Americans express befuddlement, and compete to devise ever more far-fetched answers.

As far as anybody can ascertain, the deadliest mass shooter in American history had no specific political motive. Stephen Paddock apparently opened fire from a Las Vegas hotel room in October 2017, murdering 58 and wounding hundreds more, out of purely personal rage at the world.

The second-deadliest mass shooter, Omar Mateen, espoused Islamist loyalties in his final messages before he attacked a gay nightclub in Orlando in June 2016, killing 49 and wounding 53.

The third- and fourth-deadliest—the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho and the Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza—were both antisocial, and battled different mental-health issues. The fifth-deadliest—the Sutherland Springs church shooter—was a loudmouthed atheist. The El Paso, Texas, gunman ranks eighth; authorities are investigating whether he wrote a white-supremacist manifesto. The Islamic fanatics who killed at Fort Hood, also in Texas, in 2011 and San Bernardino, California, in 2015 are tied for 14th place.

A paranoid defense contractor carried out the Washington Navy Yard shooting that killed 12 people in 2013. We don’t yet know what motivated the gunman in Dayton, Ohio, to kill nine and wound 27. But in 2014, a 24-year-old man named Elliot Rodger killed six and wounded 14 in California, to express his rage at women for perceived sexual rebuffs.


This menu of atrocities offers a wide range of political points to score, if that is your wish. You will find here immigrants and natives; whites and nonwhites; Muslims and Christians; right-wingers, left-wingers, and the nonpolitical. There is even a woman, Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, targeted a Christmas party sponsored by the local Department of Public Health, where the husband worked.

Despite their diversity, all these killers had one thing in common: their uniquely American access to firearms. In turn, these killers unite the country in a uniquely American determination to ignore the obvious.

White nationalism is emerging as a deadly international terrorist movement. El Paso is only the latest in a line of killings. Yet 48 hours before the El Paso mass shooting, the Italian interior minister erupted in a racist tirade against Roma people. It was not a first offense from Matteo Salvini, an admirer of President Donald Trump. Italy has a lively far-right political movement, which stages public demonstrations to honor Benito Mussolini. You know what it does not have? Mass shootings.

Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism is a dangerous internal political threat to democracy. Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism extends across borders, targeting isolated and angry young people for online radicalization. Like Islamic extremism, white nationalism can turn murderous even in countries—Norway, New Zealand—where guns are rationally regulated.

Like the threat of Islamic extremism, the specter of white nationalism summons Americans to defend their institutions and values against a repugnant, violent ideology. But it is not because the U.S. is uniquely afflicted with either Islamic extremism or white nationalism that it suffers vastly more gun deaths than the rest of the developed world. America’s uniquely bloodstained record of violence is a consequence of America’s uniquely reckless attitudes toward weapons of mass death.

More guns, more killing. Fewer guns, less killing. Everybody else has figured that out. Americans—and only Americans—refuse to do so.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/595450/

[runrussellrun]

No pass, no justification. I want to confiscate their guns just like I want to confiscate the white supremacists guns.

Disturbing, these incidents.

Maybe, Congress can take up legislation conversations about what to do about this situation. Outright ban on guns? When is the last time someone introduced a bill to Repeal 2nd amendment? And wouldn't it be ironic that the cue for voting on bills, put a 2nd amendment repeal right after voting YES to sell the exact same things (weapons) to our Frenemies. Can you/we have it both ways.

Why do all these "white supremicist" kill primarily white people ?

[LandM]

C&S - had to chuckle - sour dough pancakes, never again. Old man retired E-9, not allot of money back in those days especially with 5 mouths to feed and every hot spot in world he was gone - never saw him for 5 years. Mom before school would say you are all going to college, she had an 11th grade education but understood, "they cannot take your college degree away" - somehow we all made it. HS football coach when the tail would get a little long would grab and cut it (probably be in jail if done today); when things would look a little side-ways, get invited to his house for dinner with a prayer that would say, "Lord, please ensure my players avoid chewing tobacco, drugs, alcohol, shooting sparrows off telephone polls, and do the best in school, amen" . Coach, mentor and teacher. Maybe free college could be used to provide mentors to youth they teach. Ty Laws HOF speech did a good job summarizing what a family can provide.

MD, as you pointed out, allot alike in many ways, different in others. Last three years take rich white kids off the lake for a week and work in a homeless shelter in downtown Rochester, NY. These kids give up the chance to play in tournaments (not just lax) whereby college coaches could see them. This is the last stop for a homeless person, you get booted, you are on the streets. They feed 1,000 meals a day ALL from donated food; house 87 people; they have a warehouse where polo, Patagonian, toys, shoes, jeans are left the night before - all unwrapped. Organize. On the 300 yard walk these kids get to see drug, alcohol, and prostitution deals go down. Driving back they ask why the residents do not help - mental health and drug counseling is sorely needed in this country. The good news is that we are a very generous country IMHO with people trying to help. It is extremely tough to help those that do not want to be helped.

What is sad in all of this, excluding Las Vegas, these are mostly people under 35. With 3-D printing who knows what can come next. We have laws for drugs, driving drunk, spousal abuse, and many others but the problems still persist. If you want a weapon of choice you can get it and IMHO it is naive to think a law is going to prevent that.

[foreverlax]

Was that guy mentally ill?

Is it possible that he wasn't?

[ggait]

If you want a weapon of choice you can get it and IMHO it is naive to think a law is going to prevent that.

Not prevent. Duh. Laws against bank robberies haven't eliminated bank robberies.

But what the laws can do (and did do during the prior AWB) is to reduce harm, deter and make it harder to do these things. The El Paso and Dayton shooters weren't doing 3D printing. They weren't wiring up bombs. They weren't experts in obtaining black market weapons. They were a couple of 20-somethings who played video games and sporadically attended community college. They had no special skills or training. They probably got their MSSA weapons from a local retailer. We could not make these attacks easier for them to pull off.

The Dayton police stopped the shooter in under 30 seconds. You could never have a quicker and more effective response. Guy still shot 30+ people and killed nine. In under 30 seconds. That kind of lethal force has no business being in civilian hands. Period.

[ggait]

Keith Edwards
‏ @keithedwards

2019 mass shootings:

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12:49 PM - 3 Aug 2019

FYI, all of these countries have video games and crazy people.

[runrussellrun]

That's an outstanding article, CU77, thanks for posting it. There's very little in it about guns but a lot about people, and that is where the answer lies, IMO. Conservatives, liberals, Ds, Rs, policy, laws, none of that has much to do with anything. I'm surprised there's no mention of drugs in that article. We have to figure out how to stop doing to ouselves what it is that is cuasing people to behave this way and I think there's a lot in that article that tells us what it is. It aint about guns and politicians, it really aint. JMHO.

Why is it that the vast majority people of voting age are ignored. Most do NOT belong to a political party.