Gun Control

[supertype]

Re: Gun Control

So you claim to speak for the entire United States and all of the continental Americas? That can't be productive. At least I don't see how it could be.

do you agree our freedoms are being slowly taken or corroded away? just like our gun rights are going away slowly so is sanity in our country

for instance a couple in the USA had a garden for 17 years growing food and living well. The city sent them a note saying they had to stop and destroy the garden or face a fine for every day they did not comply. This was not a ugly garden it was very well kept and looked beautiful by all means.

here is the article LINK

[Coptech]

Re: Gun Control

The US's biggest problem is our broken justice system. No possibility of parole does not mean they will never be released. We have instances where they decide prison overcrowding and model behavior warrants "a second chance". Punishment does not fit the crime. Where is the deterrent?

I was a juror in a capital murder trial. All through the defendant's history, were cases where he should have never seen the light of day again. But our justice system failed to do it's job and "looked the other way" when he got drunk and used a gun after he was never supposed to be in possession of one after his previous convictions. Fast forward and he kills someone in a bad robbery attempt. If our justice system functioned as it should have, he would not have been free to kill.

Most criminals get away with crimes more often than they are caught. Just like the gambler at the slot machine, the time they "won" is worth the risk of another attempt. With no real fear of the justice system, and no real punishment, the risk is worth the potential "rewards". In an armed society, the risk is greater, What if they stand a chance of losing their own life during the commission of the crime? Maybe that would give them pause and make them rethink "is it worth it"?

If you give them an unarmed society, in essence, a safe robbery zone, where they are the only ones armed with their easily obtained black market gun, you have taken the majority of the risk out of their crime for them.

I don't get the naivety of those that think by taking away legal guns, the world will turn to roses and we will all live in a Utopia. I have bad news for them, crime DOES pay for many people and it becomes the chosen profession of many. Until they are removed from society using a better legal system they will always be a threat.


Speaking of that, personally, I don't get the "life with no possibility of parole". If a person is so bad that there will never be any chance of rehabilitation, why do you want to keep them around with a possibility of escape? But again, our justice system is so ridiculous, there is most likely no chance of repair. Think about this, In America, before we "euthanize" a criminal with lethal injection, we wipe the place on their arm where the needle will go with an alcohol swab...What are we afraid they will get a nasty infection and get sick before they die?

[slimslob]

Re: Gun Control

You hear people talk about no "cruel AND unusual" punishment. Most equate the word AND with the word OR. They are different. I feel that for a crime to be unconstitutional, it needs to be both cruel and usual. If the punishment is the usual punishment for a crime then no matter how cruel it is Constitutional. If overcrowding is the norm, it is Constitutional. Imprisonment should be punishment, not a resort where they get more services than the average citizen. Let prisoners request a doctor appointment and have to wait for months or years the way our Veterans have to wait.

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

I keep seeing all this talk of "Black market guns" and the mention that if someone really wanted one, they would find a way. Tell me, if it's so easy to obtain one, why doesn't everyone just do that instead of waiting for a registry check etc.? I'll break it down here.

I full well know the methods and locations, but that's because I'm a former no-life kid who spent 24/7 on the vast space of the internets. I can tell you it's not cheap, as anything illegal tends to be. There's also the hassle of actually procuring the item; I constantly hear tales of how mail gets picked up and intercepted on its way to the destination. If you send it to yourself, then that's just asking for trouble.

For the average person, it's simply too much hassle. Then you add the fact you require specific knowledge to get one, or at least be in the know with someone who has these same means. So to say it's easy is a ridiculous simplification, akin to the same logic from people who say "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still monkeys?" The fact is, if you want a "black market gun" it takes a hell of a lot of trouble and effort, and it's actually easier to just get one the legal way. In any circumstance, you'll have the minority that are so determined they'll find a way, but they're such a minority they shouldn't even be considered. The fact this particular minority gets the most attention on the whole topic is what skews perception of the problem.

On the other hand, if someone wants their own "black market gun", just leave me your credit card info and I'll have it to you within a month.

(See how stupid it can be?)

[DWise]

Re: Gun Control

Very interesting (if true)...

Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and its not the weapons used.

Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one thing in common, and it isn't weapons. -- Society's Child -- Sott.net

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

Very interesting (if true)...

Nearly every mass shooting incident in the last twenty years, and multiple other instances of suicide and isolated shootings all share one thing in common, and its not the weapons used.

Nearly every mass shooting in the last 20 years shares one thing in common, and it isn't weapons. -- Society's Child -- Sott.net

I like that article, interesting point being made.

I half expected to open it up and see "X person was smoking marijuana when they went on their shooting spree". Interesting that the most commonly prescribed was Zoloft and Prozac, often in doses well above the norm. The question should be, who were the doctors that prescribed those dosages, based on what, and why are they not facing repercussions?

[supertype]

Re: Gun Control

i think most people are 120% BLIND to what is going on in the real world and keep living in the fantasy they like to see america as.

when you read between the lines you get shocked. TSA? Flat out joke and yet we throw more than we give to our schools yearly at this worthless contract.

what has the TSA stopped but freedom and they will even stop you and question you if you have silver coins on your person when going through the airport.

or lets look at the prison system see link

Private Prison Monopolies | NationofChange

[supertype]

Re: Gun Control

I like that article, interesting point being made.

I half expected to open it up and see "X person was smoking marijuana when they went on their shooting spree". Interesting that the most commonly prescribed was Zoloft and Prozac, often in doses well above the norm. The question should be, who were the doctors that prescribed those dosages, based on what, and why are they not facing repercussions?

I remember reading an article that said the mafia has 51% logical control of any drug company and if you look at the flip side they control all illegal drugs

when you control media and people in power you have everyone under your thumb. if you wish to know who the real rulers are just look at who you can't criticize

Doctors just seem to be drug dealers and not healers anymore, Not all doctors but you can't play the game and not get corrupt eventually it seems

If you really want a good dose of real medicine go search youtube for "Dr. Tent" your mind will be BLOWN!!

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

There was a report done several years ago showing how much extra doctors are receiving from drug companies for peddling their products, it winds up dwarfing the amount the doctor was making just on their salary as a doctor in the first place.

[Coptech]

Re: Gun Control

I keep seeing all this talk of "Black market guns" and the mention that if someone really wanted one, they would find a way. Tell me, if it's so easy to obtain one, why doesn't everyone just do that instead of waiting for a registry check etc.? I'll break it down here.

Are you under the impression that crimes are committed with registered guns? No, the majority are stolen guns, illegally imported guns, fabricated guns, borrowed guns, found guns, the list goes on.

If someone is in a police pursuit, usually, they will toss the gun in an attempt to not be caught with it when they feel they are about to be caught. The penalty difference makes it worthwhile to ditch the weapon. So now you have kids finding them in the sandbox at the neighborhood park. Guns can be made from most anything. You need something to hold a shell casing, a makeshift barrel, and something to hit the primer. Guns will never be removed from society.

My point is that a level playing field makes a better deterrent than the current hand slap penalties. Yes, we have over medicated youth that have been numbed from real world by video game addiction feeling like firing a shot into a crowd can just be reset by starting the game over. Society is screwed up! Reading the Prozac, Zoloft, Ritalin report, how many of those kids do you think will be released back into society after some doctor proclaims them "rehabbed" from their particular drug? None of them should be...At least in my opinion. Blame the meds, blame the guns, blame their environment, but for God's sake, don't hold it against them that they killed someone. "They might not have even known what they were doing"..."They were just kids". Bullshit! Take them out of society. Take them out of the gene pool. Make them the example that give the next kid the pause to rethink his actions feeling that there might just be real consequences after all.

Take care of the problem. Don't just try to remove one of the props. I am told that near the border in Arizona, there are places so dangerous from drug cartel, it is not a place for anyone to hazard into. Our Government has chosen to put up signs warning of the dangers posting to "Keep out" rather than attempt to stop or even control the illegal activity.

It is bad here and trying to control the law abiding citizens while ignoring those that do not care about the laws will resolve nothing.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, they stopped Tim McVay for not having a license plate on his car. People thought "what kind of a moron attract attention to himself after that kind of a crime by such a stupid means. Truth is, if you have such little regard for law and human life, why would you care about a traffic law? I bet it never entered his mind that it would be his downfall.

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

Are you under the impression that crimes are committed with registered guns? No, the majority are stolen guns, illegally imported guns, fabricated guns, borrowed guns, found guns, the list goes on.

If someone is in a police pursuit, usually, they will toss the gun in an attempt to not be caught with it when they feel they are about to be caught. The penalty difference makes it worthwhile to ditch the weapon. So now you have kids finding them in the sandbox at the neighborhood park. Guns can be made from most anything. You need something to hold a shell casing, a makeshift barrel, and something to hit the primer. Guns will never be removed from society.

My point is that a level playing field makes a better deterrent than the current hand slap penalties. Yes, we have over medicated youth that have been numbed from real world by video game addiction feeling like firing a shot into a crowd can just be reset by starting the game over. Society is screwed up! Reading the Prozac, Zoloft, Ritalin report, how many of those kids do you think will be released back into society after some doctor proclaims them "rehabbed" from their particular drug? None of them should be...At least in my opinion. Blame the meds, blame the guns, blame their environment, but for God's sake, don't hold it against them that they killed someone. "They might not have even known what they were doing"..."They were just kids". Bullshit! Take them out of society. Take them out of the gene pool. Make them the example that give the next kid the pause to rethink his actions feeling that there might just be real consequences after all.

Take care of the problem. Don't just try to remove one of the props. I am told that near the border in Arizona, there are places so dangerous from drug cartel, it is not a place for anyone to hazard into. Our Government has chosen to put up signs warning of the dangers posting to "Keep out" rather than attempt to stop or even control the illegal activity.

It is bad here and trying to control the law abiding citizens while ignoring those that do not care about the laws will resolve nothing.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, they stopped Tim McVay for not having a license plate on his car. People thought "what kind of a moron attract attention to himself after that kind of a crime by such a stupid means. Truth is, if you have such little regard for law and human life, why would you care about a traffic law? I bet it never entered his mind that it would be his downfall.

Are you under the impression that crimes are committed with registered guns? No, the majority are stolen guns, illegally imported guns, fabricated guns, borrowed guns, found guns, the list goes on.
A stolen gun would have been registered at one point. Illegally imported guns cost a fortune. Fabricated guns are a real thing, but very impractical and just as likely to harm the wielder (having seen a homemade shotgun in action it was only good for a single use). Borrowed and found are still likely to be registered at one point. I'd challenge anyone to find usage statistics, I would hazard the assumption that most are standard issue firearms that were stolen or registered to the perpetrator.

If someone is in a police pursuit, usually, they will toss the gun in an attempt to not be caught with it when they feel they are about to be caught. I'd like to see the data that supports this, usually in these publicized situations the perpetrator was apprehended with their weapons on hand unless they were carrying enough of an arsenal that discarding each weapon as it was spent was the problem... But how often does that really happen?

Yes, we have over medicated youth that have been numbed from real world by video game addiction feeling like firing a shot into a crowd can just be reset by starting the game over. Over medicated, yes; but to blame video games for any of that is asinine. Studies have shown that video games remain just that to those of us who are mentally competent, it's a scapegoat for people to find a correlation between violence and youth.
Here's my source, a 10 year study on 11000 children. Do television and electronic games predict children's psychosocial adjustment? Longitudinal research using the UK Millennium Cohort Study

"They might not have even known what they were doing"..."They were just kids". Bullshit! I wholeheartedly agree. Age being the magic number that determines mental wherewithal is grossly inaccurate. A 13 year old should have no problem identifying something right from something morally reprehensible.

The problem in majority of these cases seems to be mental illness or deficiency of some sort; the solution is to stop the idea that mental illnesses can just be taken care of with a lifestyle change and to "stop being such a downer" and actually treat the people who require it. Everything else just happens to be a constant variable around mental illness.

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

Random statistics in articles from TheGuardian and Washington Post, take them as you may. I found the article somewhat comical in the response of those debunking the statistics.

The gun lobby
Map: There have been at least 74 shootings at schools since Newtown - The Washington Post

So is the general consensus in those articles correct? Is there a "numbness" to these school shootings that have happened almost weekly since Newtown? Are you siding with Charles Johnson in reclassifying "school shootings" to something so specific it rules out any other variable?

[Coptech]

Re: Gun Control

Guns are here. They will not go away on their own. Registering them is not possible. Where do you get importing them as prohibitive. Throw one in the mail. I bet 9 times out of 10, they will arrive safe and undisturbed. You could buy a gun issued to a police officer if the price was right, they would turn it in as stolen in a chase and it would be on it's way to a statistic.

I did not blame video games but they do contribute in my opinion. They blur the lines between reality and fantasy. It is as simple as that.

I would LOVE to live in the world that is in your head...what color is the sky there?

Look at history since the beginning of time. Man, beast, every living thing attacks what is smaller and weaker. It is nature. My point again is that if both sides are armed, most likely the weapons both might stay hidden. The fear of finding out the playing field is level might just be the deterrent needed.

You are a funny guy, I like your thought process. I sat next to several people just like you during jury selection in the aforementioned murder trial. They didn't feel it was right to take the life of a person who had taken another's.

Somebody gets stuck with the dirty work. It is just a fact of society.

Your thought of the registered guns? I like that...I can see the police interview now. "Did you happen to see the serial number of the gun that the man had that robbed you"?

[Akitu]

Re: Gun Control

Guns are here. They will not go away on their own. Registering them is not possible. Where do you get importing them as prohibitive. Throw one in the mail. I bet 9 times out of 10, they will arrive safe and undisturbed. You could buy a gun issued to a police officer if the price was right, they would turn it in as stolen in a chase and it would be on it's way to a statistic.

I did not blame video games but they do contribute in my opinion. They blur the lines between reality and fantasy. It is as simple as that.

I would LOVE to live in the world that is in your head...what color is the sky there?

Look at history since the beginning of time. Man, beast, every living thing attacks what is smaller and weaker. It is nature. My point again is that if both sides are armed, most likely the weapons both might stay hidden. The fear of finding out the playing field is level might just be the deterrent needed.

You are a funny guy, I like your thought process. I sat next to several people just like you during jury selection in the aforementioned murder trial. They didn't feel it was right to take the life of a person who had taken another's.

Somebody gets stuck with the dirty work. It is just a fact of society.

Your thought of the registered guns? I like that...I can see the police interview now. "Did you happen to see the serial number of the gun that the man had that robbed you"?

Guns are here. They will not go away on their own. Registering them is not possible. Where do you get importing them as prohibitive. Throw one in the mail. I bet 9 times out of 10, they will arrive safe and undisturbed. You could buy a gun issued to a police officer if the price was right, they would turn it in as stolen in a chase and it would be on it's way to a statistic.
Who said anything about registering them after? At time of a legal purchase they would be registered, which is where a majority of guns used in the largest reported statistics tend to be; ie. a friend or family member legally owned said gun and was taken by perpetrator. Please try sending one in the mail and tell us how it goes. 9 out of 10 is a pretty reasonable number, statistically you should be fine, so what are you afraid of by sending it in the mail?

You say video games blur the lines between reality and fantasy; you sound like everyone who has never played a video game. Do you also believe there is an omniscient sky being who determined every event in the known universe several thousand years ago when it was all created at once? I like your thought process. The colour of the sky in my head is blue, as it's merely the refraction of light off the surface of the earth's oceans. What colour is the sky in your world?

You're correct in your statement of how nature works, with the biggest asserting dominance of the weakest. The fact humans have the intelligence to behave differently but choose not to shows where we as a collective species are failing. The playing field is also level if nobody has any sort of weapon, but as always there are variables (pre-emptive stop of a "hands are dangerous weapons on a trained professional" comment). If the fear of finding out the playing field may be level, why is there no current deterrence? Your solution seems to be "give everyone a gun, then nobody will want to harm anyone else"; which is about as farfetched as the above mentioned omniscient sky being. Look at statistics from nations with harsher gun control laws, take into account variables such as population density and give us some real data to comment on as opposed to hypotheticals and straw-man arguments.

I like how you think you know me as an individual. I'm all for the swift hand of justice with an eye-for-an-eye perspective in certain circumstances. I just don't think the solution is to give every Tom, Dick and Jane a gun in the hopes that it may deter violence.

[Coptech]

Re: Gun Control

Look, a good friend of mine had a nephew that was a first responder at Newtown. I saw how it affected him and never want to take anything from the tragedy that day or the many like it before and since.

I just believe that the truly bad will always find a method to arm themselves and make them the favored candidate in a crime. I believe criminals are cowards in that sense. If you could blink your eyes and take all guns from the planet, do you not think they would still rob with something like a crossbow?

The root of the problem is in the punishment system (in my opinion) If there is no real consequence to bad actions, why not try it? Nothing to lose and everything to gain.

You and I may never agree...That doesn't matter, We may both only be partially right or one of us may be all wrong. But you and I will not live long enough to know.

As far as statistics, take them with a grain of salt. Anything can be distorted for a desired outcome and I do believe both sides of the argument use that power to bolster their belief. I'm willing to back out of this debate if you are ready to "shake hands and agree to disagree". It is just my belief that you take the simplistic approach to resolving violent crime. My belief still lies in getting bed seed out of the gene pool or at the very least, making the criminal responsible for their actions to a level of at least the same as their crime. An eye for an eye kind of thing...intentionally take a life, surrender theirs.

Oh, and by the way, as much as it may sound otherwise, I am not a "gun toting anything". I have shot competitively, I don't even hunt. I just believe what I believe. We OK?

Oh yeah, If I am ever facing a case where I have to dial 911 against an attacker, I hope they send a policeman with a gun and not a preacher with a Bible...does that make me a bad person?