guns and bullets

Cosmo

unsung wrote:

There was a recent church shooting that was stopped by a citizen that carried.

...
Actually...
The Truth is the assailant was stopped by an armed On-Duty Security Guard at that church in 2007:
"It seemed like it was me, the gunman, and God," said Jeanne Assam, describing her feelings as she confronted a man who charged into her Colorado Springs church Sunday firing a weapon.

Assam, a church security guard with law enforcement experience, fired her own weapon at the invader and stopped his attack, police say.

Police on Monday identified the gunman as Matthew Murray and said he was also responsible for an attack earlier Sunday at a missionary center some 80 miles away.
ref. http://articles.cnn.com/2007-12-10/us/c ... s?_s=PM:US
...
Because seriously... what nut would bring a concealed weapon into a church with him/her... other than someone who is paid to do so?

Cosmo

Godfather. wrote:

absolutely ! some like that kid in AZ who got kicked out of community collage because he was unstable, that kind of thing should be reported and his name on list, then when a person registers to buy a gun that should pop up and stop the sale of weapons and amo to people like that, it wouldn't stop crimes by these people all together but is a good move.

Godfather.

...
It makes sense and sounds reasonable, right? But, that is precisely the type of thing Gun Control opponents argue against. It being a violation of Second Amendment rights.
I think that there are just some people that should not be allowed to own guns... across the boards, in all states. Convicted felons, mentally/emotionally unstable, people with a history of (non-gun) violence, etc... But, the right wing of the NRA wouldn't agree with that. They see a restriction on one as a restriction on them. Which is should be... if that NRA member is a convicted felon, mentally/emotionally unstable, anger management inept, roid raging/road warrior, etc...

unsung

Paul David wrote:

unsung wrote:

There was a recent church shooting that was stopped by a citizen that carried.

that would be an anomaly, and not the norm.

Yep, I agree. Mass murder is also an anomaly, not a norm.

This is a tragedy, anyone that turns it political is really without a clue.

Cosmo

unsung wrote:

Paul David wrote:

unsung wrote:

There was a recent church shooting that was stopped by a citizen that carried.

that would be an anomaly, and not the norm.

Yep, I agree. Mass murder is also an anomaly, not a norm.

This is a tragedy, anyone that turns it political is really without a clue.

...
Really? Do you know who the main target of the attack was? I'll tell you... she was a Congressional Representative for the district where the shooter lived. In other words... she is a politician.
So... yeah... politics is involved.

unsung

My point is the attacks on Fox News and Palin are without merit, those are the type of political talks that have no place. The person was a nut job. Period. Left vs right should not be part of this.

Blame Blame Blame

If I told someone to jump off a 50 story building, should they?

Blaming right-wing speech is irresponsible.

Cosmo

unsung wrote:

My point is the attacks on Fox News and Palin are without merit, those are the type of political talks that have no place. The person was a nut job. Period. Left vs right should not be part of this.

Blame Blame Blame

If I told someone to jump off a 50 story building, should they?

Blaming right-wing speech is irresponsible.

...
I understand your point. But, aren't 'blame' and 'responsiblity' interchangeable here?
...
Also... you would be responsible if you told the person to jump off a building... and they did. IF you were a person of authority. Like, if you were both in the army and he was a recruit and you were a Major... or is he was a deranged person and you were his care person. You should be held partially responsible for your words.
...
Right-Wing (or Left-Wing) hate speech holds some responsibility. Especially, if it comes from authority figures (either real or percieved) and translated by the weak or dim witted persons amongst us. People... especially those with access to a massive audience... need to be held responsible for the words they say.

unsung

They used metaphors, they did not say go out and start shooting people that don't do what you want them to.

Since we are going to talk about left vs right, many democrats did that exact same thing that Palin did. They just showed an east coast (D) Senator shooting a gun saying he is going to "take aim" on DC.

Bottom line is that there were plenty of warning signs with this guy, much like the VT shooter. More focus needs to be put on those that are mentally unfit.

unsung

And another thing, if this was irresponsible of people like Palin to speak like this, then the acts and writing of the NYTimes in response is just as bad.

Cosmo

unsung wrote:

They used metaphors, they did not say go out and start shooting people that don't do what you want them to.

Since we are going to talk about left vs right, many democrats did that exact same thing that Palin did. They just showed an east coast (D) Senator shooting a gun saying he is going to "take aim" on DC.

Bottom line is that there were plenty of warning signs with this guy, much like the VT shooter. More focus needs to be put on those that are mentally unfit.

...
I agree... how 'bout we start by not selling them fucking guns?
...
I also agree that all of this 'Us vs. Them' really has to stop. Anyone that labels someone who disagrees with them as an oppponent... whether they've attacked Republicans or Democrats, Liberals or Conservatives. If they see any of these terms and it riles their blood... they need help. And certainly should not be alllowed to purchase firearms because they are unstable fucks.

Cosmo

unsung wrote:

And another thing, if this was irresponsible of people like Palin to speak like this, then the acts and writing of the NYTimes in response is just as bad.

...
Responses such as...? I am not familiar with them.

haffajappa

Moonpig wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

dunkman are you from the USA ? if not then how could you possibly understand and if you are, that 300 year old piece of paper guaranteed our freedom...along with guns. so really.. run off and bitch about your own country or shut up. have a nice day.

Godfather.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI

i just spit out my tea!

kenny olav

HeidiJam wrote:

FACT: Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 per day.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Often the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminals) is shed.

FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to the very serious man who brought you these FACTs:


Dr. Gary Kleck, FSU Criminologist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck

JonnyPistachio

kenny olav wrote:

HeidiJam wrote:

FACT: Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 per day.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Often the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminals) is shed.

FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to the very serious man who brought you these FACTs:


Dr. Gary Kleck, FSU Criminologist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck

I honestly dont care where these stats came from anyways, you cant say "FACT" and "estimated" and expect me to take it seriously.
Heres how he conducted his research: (?) He conducted a national survey in 1994 (the National Self-Defense Survey) and, extrapolating from the 5,000 households surveyed, estimated that in 1993 there were approximately 2.5 million incidents in which victims used guns for self-protection, compared to about four hundred thousand crimes committed by offenders with guns.

"FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired."

these ^^^ numbers sound ridiculous.
How do you know if a rape is prevented with a gun? Does a guy have to have an erection and have it 'out'? if its prevented, how do you even know a rape was going to take place?

haffajappa

JonnyPistachio wrote:

kenny olav wrote:

HeidiJam wrote:

FACT: Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 per day.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Often the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminals) is shed.

FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired.

* Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State Univ.

Ladies and gentleman, I'd like to introduce you to the very serious man who brought you these FACTs:


Dr. Gary Kleck, FSU Criminologist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck

I honestly dont care where these stats came from anyways, you cant say "FACT" and "estimated" and expect me to take it seriously.
Heres how he conducted his research: (?) He conducted a national survey in 1994 (the National Self-Defense Survey) and, extrapolating from the 5,000 households surveyed, estimated that in 1993 there were approximately 2.5 million incidents in which victims used guns for self-protection, compared to about four hundred thousand crimes committed by offenders with guns.

"FACT: Every day, 550 rapes, 1,100 murders, and 5,200 other violent crimes per day are prevented just by showing a handgun. In less than 0.9% of the time is the gun ever actually ever fired."

these ^^^ numbers sound ridiculous.
How do you know if a rape is prevented with a gun? Does a guy have to have an erection and have it 'out'? if its prevented, how do you even know a rape was going to take place?

You know what they say,
a hand gun a day keeps the rapists away!

Moonpig

haffajappa wrote:

Moonpig wrote:

Godfather. wrote:

dunkman are you from the USA ? if not then how could you possibly understand and if you are, that 300 year old piece of paper guaranteed our freedom...along with guns. so really.. run off and bitch about your own country or shut up. have a nice day.

Godfather.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI

i just spit out my tea!

Ha, sorry I couldn't resist throwing it up there

nuffingman

Moonpig wrote:

haffajappa wrote:

Moonpig wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI

i just spit out my tea!

Ha, sorry I couldn't resist throwing it up there

That vid I didn't know whether to or :? or :shock: . I think I'll go with

wolfamongwolves

US gun crime: death for sale

Jared Lee Loughner was suspended from college and had been in trouble with the police. And yet he could buy a gun and go on to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and kill six others. What is it with guns and America?

Ed Pilkington
guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 January 2011 22.00 GMT Article history

The next time you happen to be in Arizona drinking a cool beer with some time on your hands, ask the person along the bar to describe for you the Glock 19. Likelihood is he will know what you're talking about, as gun ownership rates in Arizona are among the highest in the world. Heck, he might even be packing himself, as it's legal in the state to carry concealed weapons into bars.

He might begin by telling you that the 9mm Glock 19 is the workhorse of US law enforcement. Produced outside Vienna, it is the gun of choice of the New York Police Department. Its compact steel and plastic body is 174mm long, weighs 595g and retails for about $500 (£320). Since 2004, when federal restrictions on high-powered guns were loosened, you can clip to it a high-capacity magazine loaded with up to 30 bullets. It fires like a dream, the advert says, and, compared with the old revolvers it replaced, is "significantly more powerful and much easier to shoot fast and true".

It was this model of killing machine that Seung-Hui Cho deployed when he went on his rampage through Virginia Tech on 16 April 2007, massacring 32 people. It was precisely the same gun that Jared Lee Loughner branded last Saturday morning outside Safeway in Tucson, Arizona, shooting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords through the head and killing six others.

Loughner had bought the gun on 30 November from a Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson. Which, when you think about it, was kind of odd. A month previously, he had been suspended from the local community college because of his erratic and disruptive behaviour in class and told he could only return if he passed a mental health check that confirmed he was not a danger to himself or others.

By November, he had begun posting weird YouTube videos that talked of brainwashing and dream manipulation, in which he referred to himself as a political terrorist. A few years previously, he had got in trouble with the police over drugs.

A few minutes tapping his name into Google would have thrown up such worrying material, but Loughner was handed the Glock 19 nonetheless, no questions asked. It's a puzzling discrepancy – that a young man who was clearly suffering mental health problems and displayed threatening behaviour should be sold a powerful semi-automatic weapon without so much as a by-your-leave. But then Arizona has recently passed a law allowing anybody to carry a concealed weapon in public, without a permit. The only stipulation is that they must be over 21 (Loughner is 22).

What is it with America and guns? Why does the most advanced democracy, which prides itself on being a bastion of reason and civilisation in a brutal and ugly world, put up with this carnage in its own back yard? Why does it tolerate the sea of blood that flows from gun incidents, with about 100,000 people killed or injured every year? Why does it accept an annual murder rate by guns that is 13 times that of Germany and 44 times that of England and Wales? People tend to remember the low points, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968. But do they know that since those two men hit the floor, more than a million people have been killed in the US from the barrel of a gun?

Every time a gun massacre happens in America, the pattern seems to be the same: initial bewilderment is followed by outrage, calls are made for a renewed look at the country's almost uniquely loose gun laws, and then . . . nothing. If anything, says Josh Sugarmann, head of the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, US regulations have become even more relaxed since Virginia Tech.

"Each time we have a truly horrible incident involving firearms in this country like Virginia Tech, it merely raises the bar in terms of what shocks us as a nation. Now we can have what happened in Tucson on Saturday, and we will have moved on within a week."

On a federal level, since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009 the US has moved backwards on gun control. His election prompted a sudden surge in sales of guns and ammunition as gun owners panicked that he would clamp down on their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. As time has shown, they needn't have worried.

The president has made no attempt to revive the ban on assault weapons that Bill Clinton introduced and George Bush allowed to lapse in 2004. If he had, Loughner wouldn't have been able to carry his Glock 19 loaded with 30 bullets, all of which he fired within a matter of seconds. He probably still would have shot his target, Giffords, but he wouldn't have taken the life of six others and wounded 14 more.

Instead, Obama has allowed, on his watch, guns to be carried for the first time in the US's national parks. He has watched as the courts have stripped Washington and Chicago – two cities troubled by high gun crime rates – of their stringent controls on handguns.

This stark national picture is even more pronounced in Arizona, which the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence last year ranked second bottom only to Utah in its league table of states that fail to protect their people from the threat of firearms. Out of a possible 100 points it could have scored for protecting its residents, it notched up two.

The love of guns runs deep with Arizonans. Giffords herself was opposed to further gun control and reportedly owns a Glock 19 of the sort that propelled a bullet through the back of her head and out the side. She calls gun ownership an "Arizona tradition".

Which is not quite how the outspoken local sheriff sees it. But then, he has to pick up the pieces from all the havoc wrought by guns in Tucson. He calls the town the "Tombstone of the United States".

Gun fanatics and lobbyists will tell you that carrying a lump of metal in your hand is as American as cooking baked beans and sausages around a campfire. Invocations of the golden age of the Wild West are often heard at times like these, when people need reassurance that the cost of so much death and maiming is worth it.

But there is a flaw in the argument. Yes, the gun was ubiquitous in the days of the westward migration, when the courage and ingenuity of the early settlers flourished. But then, so was scurvy, syphilis, snake bites, mining accidents and amputations. You don't hear people lauding those hazards as noble American traditions.

"The endurance of the gun in America is not about nostalgia for a golden past," says Sugarmann. "It's about political fear. Politicians have abandoned their moral responsibility to ensure public safety because of the perceived power of the gun lobby."

The National Rifle Association, the giant of the gun rights lobby, has put up a statement on its website on the Tucson shooting. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this senseless tragedy," it says.

Yet such honourable sentiments are strangely detached from the organisation's actions, which include the $10m it spent during the 2008 presidential election (drawn from its annual income of more than $200m) to forward the cause of the right to bear arms.

"Don't blame the gun, blame the person who pulls the trigger," is one of the NRA's favourite mantras. Or to contextualise it: "Don't blame the Glock 19, blame Loughner."

Which is fine so far as the argument goes. But Loughner's execution by lethal injection, almost certain at some unspecified future date, will not heal Giffords's head wounds or bring those six residents of Tucson back from the dead.

unsung

I'm glad someone brought up Chicago. Since the ban was declared unconstitutional last June the murder rate has gone down.

Bans don't work.

This my last gun post on these forums because I'm no longer going to beat my head off the wall. Liberals fail to grasp the concept of addressing the reasons why someone would do this, instead they want to blame an inanimate object. Much like the VT shooter there were multiple signs this person was unstable and addressing that is the one and only real issue.

Gutting the 2nd Amendment would open up the entire Constitution for dismissal, another concept that is lost upon the left.

And to all of the foreigners that love to chime in on America with your hatred, I wish you all a good day.

wolfamongwolves

unsung wrote:

This my last gun post on these forums because I'm no longer going to beat my head off the wall. Liberals fail to grasp the concept of addressing the reasons why someone would do this, instead they want to blame an inanimate object. Much like the VT shooter there were multiple signs this person was unstable and addressing that is the one and only real issue...


And to all of the foreigners that love to chime in on America with their vile and hate, I wish you all a good day.

I have no hatred for America, and I resent the completely false implication that just because I question something that I therefore hate it. That's just nonsense.

Nor have I never made any statement in any post so simplistic as just blaming the gun in isolation from the other factors. I did address the issue of this guy's mental instability. But I think that it is naive to say that that is the only issue, and to completely decontextualise it like that. That is just not realistic.

I think it's a shame that you feel the need to reduce the discussion to such simplistic misrepresentations of what some people have said here. I think that there have been a lot of salient points made and issues raised by people in this thread that have been simply ignored by gun advocates. My only assumption from that is certain people don't like to acknowledge the weaknesses in their position and so just refuse to hear anything that challenges them in a serious way.

Whatever - that's your prerogative, and you're just as entitled to your opinion as the rest of us. Good day to you too.

Peace

nuffingman

unsung wrote:

And to all of the foreigners that love to chime in on America with your hatred, I wish you all a good day.

As I'm one of the foreigners that's been on these posts I find your comment puzzling. The posts I've seen don't seem to show hate just a load of questions how America can allow people to roam around with guns.

And a good day to you too.