Maria wrote:You all act like everyone owning firearms has them for some irrational purpose. Farmers need them. Many people just like to shoot them as a targeting game. Not everyone is a nut case spinning zombie apocalypse fantasies, or paranoid about home defense.
They are a tool. Some people misuse them. The vast majority of gun owners do not. Thinking up ways to make guns impossibly hard to buy is an exercise in .... well, I'm having trouble thinking of exactly the right word.... an exercise in spitefulness that I find repugnant.
There is a belief among some that the desire to be armed is a desire to "strap on that there shooin' iron" and "go get me some bad guys." Like a discussion that once took place on preppers, those storing food aren't doing so out of a desire to lord it over those who don't, but instead to be prepared just in case.
I agree with your description.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:
There is a belief among some that the desire to be armed is a desire to "strap on that there shooin' iron" and "go get me some bad guys."
Some of us have that impression because we've been to town hall meetings, etc.. and that's *exactly* what people are saying. Our (very low crime) town had a BIG to-do about guns being allowed in the public library (the board had voted to be a gun-free zone). Some people (people who were not previously involved with the library) wanted guns to 'protect the children in the library should a 'bad guy' start shooting in there'. Instead of a 'gun-free zone' they wanted to make it a 'criminal free zone' (as if our library was a hang-out for criminals?) The crime rate in our town (or lack thereof) does not substantiate the need to carry guns in our public library. What the hell are people thinking? Anyway, the board which voted 'no' to guns was forced out and replaced with a board that voted guns 'IN', also forcing out the head librarian (who 'retired' early).
Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:There is a belief among some that the desire to be armed is a desire to "strap on that there shooin' iron" and "go get me some bad guys."
That's cuz it's true, for some people. And it's false, for some other people.
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
Whatever the "right" answer is here, it still gets to me that THIS is what people choose to get worked up about. Schools so defunded that teachers are forced to buy supplies out of pocket? You know, my job's hard too. Entire town's water supply poisoned due to mismanagement? Meh; get back to me when it happens to someone who isn't poor. Voting districts gerrymandered to hell? Well; MY congressman's ok, it's just all the other ones. Literally no money to salt the roads in winter? Those tax cuts gotta come from somewhere! But purely symbolic motion to restrict deadly weapons from public libraries in a crime-free town? I'M GONNA VOTE TWELVE TIMES!!!
So, uh, how come tougher laws seem to be the answer when it comes to terrorists?
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When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Like the last shooting, there is so much about this that fails to connect.
We still don't have a motive for the Vegas shooter by the way.
This one, the Texas church shooting, is the second worst church shooting in Texas history. The guy was a dishonorably discharged veteran and forbidden from acquiring firearms under the laws of his jurisdiction, except the Air Force failed to process his discharge correctly leading to a cascade failure of gun control laws that ended with him going there to shoot a few particular targets and getting several others as well. Since the existing laws were supposed to prevent him AND were not enforced, I cannot see how more laws to not enforce would make any difference.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
He had a bad conduct discharge, which does not automatically end gun rights. He had a history of domestic violence (broke a baby’s skull), which should have ended them, but the Air Force didn’t share that info even though he’d spent a year in a Navy prison for the violence. The failure was there. The laws would have prevented him from buying weapons. In most cases they do.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
It doesn't help that guns are so commonplace, so easy to own and carry around in public, that someone carrying a gun down the street, which they have a right to do, doesn't set off the alarm bells that it should. As I commented earlier, US culture views guns and violence as a premier way of solving problems and that is part of the problem.
In this case, it appears there were multiple failures, including lack of mental health care and proper procedure, which should deeply concern our society as a whole.
It isn't the fact that guns are "commonplace", because they aren't. The only people I see doing open carry, even when I'm visiting home in the South, are police officers. I do see gunracks in vehicles, but not people open carrying. It is actually an uncommon thing to do.
In this case there was a cascade failure of existing laws, so more laws simply means more laws to fail.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
So, C-G, why have laws against rape and murder if they've failed to completely end rapes and murders? Or is it possible that they reduce the incidence, and that they lock away a fair number of rapists and murderers? And that this is a good thing, even if the laws are imperfect?
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
It's not even that. It's that, without a law, there can't be a crime, which means nothing can be done to stop it. It means that a person checking into a hotel with a duffel full of weapons that can kill someone half a kilometer away is not doing anything wrong up until he murders 50 people. Whereas a person walking around with brass knuckles is breaking a law.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
If they aren't enforced, then all the laws in the world won't make any difference. The issue here wasn't that there weren't enough laws, it is that they weren't enforced.
If you pass yet another law, what will it accomplish if it isn't enforced? The issue isn't how many laws there are or aren't. I know we are supposed to use every example of every shooting to advocate for more laws, but this is an explicit example of laws not being enforced, which is the real and actual point.
Not whether or not the laws should be there, which is what you are trying to imply. What good are laws if they aren't enforced in the first place?
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
C_G, you are smart enough to understand the fallacy of that argument. Some laws are designed to make them almost impossible to enforce. Other laws are much more effective. For instance, a total ban on semi-automatic weapons would be much easier to enforce than the highly complicated background check system currently in place (one thing I don't anyone has pointed out here is that even if the Air Force had reported Devin Patrick Kelley's domestic violence conviction to the database it still likely would not have prevented him from purchasing the guns because the military uses different terminology and probably still would not have come up in the background check as domestic violence). Almost all of these mass shootings have been done with these semi-automatic weapons, which have no legitimate use other than killing a lot of people in a short amount of time. Just because the highly bureaucratic background check system sometimes fails to prevent killings that they should have stopped, does not mean that more effective laws would not be -- more effective. Would any law be perfect at preventing gun violence? Of course not. But making it much more difficult for testosterone-driven men to get there hands on weapons solely designed to kill lots of people would make it less likely that testosterone-drive men would kill lots of people.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
"Semi-automatic" covers a very wide range of firearms, to say they have "no legitimate use other than killing a lot of people in a short amount of time" demonstrates that the speaker is not informed on the subject that the speaker wishes to regulate.
"Testosterone-driven men". Nice slam on half the human race. We should blame everything on toxic masculinity.
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
-- Samuel Adams
The weapons used in the Las Vegas shooting had bump stocks to allow them to simulate fully automatic fire. That's how Paddock managed to kill so many in so short a time.
Here's what a 'mass shooting' would look like in the days when the Second Ammendment was written!
[sigghh] Why can I NEVER get these things to work??
CG, you talk about gun laws not being enforced. I think I can give you one VERY GOOD reason why!
THIS!!
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When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:"Semi-automatic" covers a very wide range of firearms, to say they have "no legitimate use other than killing a lot of people in a short amount of time" demonstrates that the speaker is not informed on the subject that the speaker wishes to regulate.
"Testosterone-driven men". Nice slam on half the human race. We should blame everything on toxic masculinity.
Neither of these statements do anything to address to main point of V-man's post.
(It is interesting - and perhaps a bit surprising? - that to my knowledge these mass shootings in the US have never been by a woman even though women can pull and hold a trigger as easily as men, but that is a highly tangential observation.)
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
That's true, Yov, but I can't see how it's particularly relevant to gun control. Though it DOES sort of help prove Voronwë's point.)
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Number of mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and October 2017, by shooter's gender (link)
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"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Though it DOES sort of help prove Voronwë's point.)