Newtown CT shool shootings.

[motomaniac]

a balance of regulation and enforcement that goes with gun ownership - too easy !
The world wishes  good luck to anyone taking guns off Americans
especially the current admin in the wake of what they are doing.
You forget why Jefferson and the founding fathers included the second ammendment ,and the first for that matter in the constitution in the first place.

Well I guess you are screwed then...

bad guess

[eric318]

I recently settled in the USA, have 2 small children in school, no fences, all is so nice and sweet, green lawns and play grounds...
In the past week, I have contemplated options from getting a gun, quitting my job to do homeschooling or leaving the country altogether. This is just plain lunacy. In the end I will stay and not give in to the fear.

The rate of murders by gunshot is 200 (two hundred) times higher in the US than in the UK. Yes the real problem is guns, plain simple.
There are 300 million (three hundred million) guns in private hands in the USA. Anybody can buy an unregistered gun from anybody with no checks at all from a garage sale.

The second amendment was supposed to help protect people, it ended up achieving the exact opposite. Freedom is a privilege disguised as a right that is being abused by irresponsible idiots. Yes you can live a free happy safe life without a machine gun.

I have grown up with dozens of guns, including military grade stuff, grenades and some more crazy items, I am reasonably trained (you know, dismantle-assemble the gun blindfolded within 30s kind of gig), I have killed countless animals. Then I almost killed myself with a .22. That was the end of the madness for me, the wake up call.  No it does not only happen to others...

I really do not see the need to have a gun in my home, even with the madness going around : it would simply make my kids much more unsafe (the data is compelling). The Newtown mad boy first shot his own mother with her own gun, point proven. A few weeks ago in Pennsylvania some sad guy shot and killed his own 7 year old son coming out of the gun shop, an accident. How many more innocents have to fall?

Guns were invented to kill, this is what they do, no surprise. Pretending the contrary is a sign of mental disorder, a good reason to stay away from guns. And for those for whom target shooting is a life necessity, try darts.

Putting armed guards in schools will not work, Columbine proved that, sorely. The NRA's address today was pathetic, irresponsible. They failed to grab the opportunity for true leadership and showed that they really are what they are accused of being. Indulging their self serving nerdy interests in the name of freedom and cautioning the price to pay for it, while pointing the finger at everything else but guns. This was quite simply shocking and frankly incompetent: they proved their ineptitude (which is probably a good thing as they have almost certainly damaged their cause). But overall, shame on them.

Shame on the politicians to not have had the balls to address this earlier and even let the ban on semi-automatic weapons expire. Look at the timetable of mass shootings in the US: the acceleration of such incidents is frightening: the next one should happen within less than 6 months. The scenario is now well known: smart kid who cant cope with life (and yes our society is great at producing lots of these...), puts hands on guns (because they are just there), goes out seeking futile revenge and exit with a big bang, taking as many with him as he can for maximum media effect (oh Fox News, how much you love this!).

I am very impressed with the way Australia has handled the problem. Respect! May be time to look for a job there... I promise I'll bring the C&J bikes with me

[Rosco]

Copy and Paste the below link and check those Stats Out.


http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2012/12/17/gun-control-stats-compare-the-ten-big-killers-in-the-us/

[eric318]

These stats will make the folks from Tucson, Columbine, Newtown, Virginia Tech feel so much better. Wonderful insights.
Add to these the 15,000 suicides by gunshot, and the 70,000 wounded but not killed.
Even without these 2 additional numbers, the rate is 400 times higher than in the UK (and there certainly are as many crazies/100 Brits as there are crazies/100 Yanks: the difference is the availability of guns).
Today, 3 more dead in Pennsylvania (+ the killer) and 2 in Alabama (nightclub argument apparently, go figure who was the good guy bad the bad guy...), will probably reach the usual 34 daily tally.
What a waste.

[SUZUKI311]

I recently settled in the USA, have 2 small children in school, no fences, all is so nice and sweet, green lawns and play grounds...
In the past week, I have contemplated options from getting a gun, quitting my job to do homeschooling or leaving the country altogether. This is just plain lunacy. In the end I will stay and not give in to the fear.

The rate of murders by gunshot is 200 (two hundred) times higher in the US than in the UK. Yes the real problem is guns, plain simple.
There are 300 million (three hundred million) guns in private hands in the USA. Anybody can buy an unregistered gun from anybody with no checks at all from a garage sale.

The second amendment was supposed to help protect people, it ended up achieving the exact opposite. Freedom is a privilege disguised as a right that is being abused by irresponsible idiots. Yes you can live a free happy safe life without a machine gun.

I have grown up with dozens of guns, including military grade stuff, grenades and some more crazy items, I am reasonably trained (you know, dismantle-assemble the gun blindfolded within 30s kind of gig), I have killed countless animals. Then I almost killed myself with a .22. That was the end of the madness for me, the wake up call.  No it does not only happen to others...

I really do not see the need to have a gun in my home, even with the madness going around : it would simply make my kids much more unsafe (the data is compelling). The Newtown mad boy first shot his own mother with her own gun, point proven. A few weeks ago in Pennsylvania some sad guy shot and killed his own 7 year old son coming out of the gun shop, an accident. How many more innocents have to fall?

Guns were invented to kill, this is what they do, no surprise. Pretending the contrary is a sign of mental disorder, a good reason to stay away from guns. And for those for whom target shooting is a life necessity, try darts.

Putting armed guards in schools will not work, Columbine proved that, sorely. The NRA's address today was pathetic, irresponsible. They failed to grab the opportunity for true leadership and showed that they really are what they are accused of being. Indulging their self serving nerdy interests in the name of freedom and cautioning the price to pay for it, while pointing the finger at everything else but guns. This was quite simply shocking and frankly incompetent: they proved their ineptitude (which is probably a good thing as they have almost certainly damaged their cause). But overall, shame on them.

Shame on the politicians to not have had the balls to address this earlier and even let the ban on semi-automatic weapons expire. Look at the timetable of mass shootings in the US: the acceleration of such incidents is frightening: the next one should happen within less than 6 months. The scenario is now well known: smart kid who cant cope with life (and yes our society is great at producing lots of these...), puts hands on guns (because they are just there), goes out seeking futile revenge and exit with a big bang, taking as many with him as he can for maximum media effect (oh Fox News, how much you love this!).

I am very impressed with the way Australia has handled the problem. Respect! May be time to look for a job there... I promise I'll bring the C&J bikes with me

Well said. You are welcome out here anytime!

[firko]

Well said. You are welcome out here anytime!

Same from me Eric, you've beautifully articulated the phone conversation I had with an old friend in San Francisco on Friday. She's lived in the USA all her life and has had it up to her teeth with the gun culture. She works in fine arts, a normally lefty aligned, liberal community but she was shocked to realise that more of her colleagues owned guns than those who didn't. Her gun owning workmates actually made her the butt of their jokes when she told them that she'd never in her life held a gun in her hand and hoped that she never would. It upset her so much she started crying when she told me the story two days after. Let's hope America as a nation sees the light.....somehow however I think it'll remain business as usual  .

Where did you move to the USA from Eric?

[eric318]

I live south of San Francisco. California is one of these restrictive states where you cannot buy more than one gun per month (from a shop that is...), horror of horrors

I think it is clear to all humans with at least half a brain that extremist gun-lovers have managed to abuse an old text (an important one mind you) to satisfy their excessive fixation on what is nothing more than a hobby or a borderline pathological and deluded desire for more personal power. The whole self-protection thing is a fallacy, data shows it. But as we know, the boogeyman is a strong part of the modern American psyche: extra-terrestrials, communists, the government, black people, Cubans, Mexicans, Iraqi WMDs, the end of the Mayan world, when there is nobody to worry about they invent him, and of course now he is legally armed to the teeth (at least nobody is suggesting a looming invasion by Canadians, ah but wait of course, the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants...). This can only go away with education (have you seen the quote by Jeff Johnson the clown: "I suggest to put teachers in gun shops" . Hopefully over time the fear-mongers will loose grip on the population as all grow their critical thinking skills.

Around here we hear about the odd shooting and gun murder: the absolute totality of them involve rival gangs fighting over their pissing grounds. If they did not have guns, they would use baseball bats, and still kill each-others, great, less risks for innocent onlookers. But they pretty much stick to their own. Hardly an issue for the likes of me (and I realize that I am fortunate). And you know what, if some lunatic is crazy enough to empty my garage I certainly would not try to stop him with a gun: he would likely have a bigger one anyway and much more ready than me to use it.

I feel bad for your friend. Having a gun has become a bit like smoking: most urban folks don't exactly know why they have one, but since others do it, they might just as well do it. The vast majority would be incapable of using their gun in a state of panic (seriously, do they sleep with the gun armed on their bedside table? Ready to jump like Bourne at the first suspicious noise?) and would most likely hurt themselves if they had to use it. I feel sorry for them, the way I have always felt for smokers... There is no need to try to reason, just avoid the conversation. Then of course you have those who say they own one but in fact don't, you know like you took that you jump on your 1978 Maico and you were doing, well at least 80mph, I swear...

Yet I really understand the feeling of power that having a gun can provide,  because I lived that. Jeez, I felt like the world was mine. There is a wicked awesomeness about having such power elegantly contained, ready to unleash at your demand. It is inebriating, like alcohol and sex or driving a Hummer.... It also gives you the feeling that your reproductive appendage is much bigger... And it is hard to fight that urge. Friends are in awe, wicked. Some never grow out of it.

I don't particularly want to take away guns form law abiding Americans. Only from my perspective, the current legal framework is a gross abuse of the second amendment that has gone too far and has made a joke of the intent behind the text. The current situation is shameful: America can do better, much better than that. Freedom and fun do not have to come at the price of dozens of innocents every 6 months. This is plain crazy. The leaders on both sides of the argument have totally failed to lead. I do have faith that something really important is now going to happen, with or without the extremists. The NRA really screwed up, but this time the majority has swung by such a margin that it becomes politically palatable to be audacious. January will be interesting.

Hey thank you for starting this subject here. A much  better place than the US blogs where the grammar-challenged red-necks quickly deliver assault with four letter words and capitals but little substance. Imagine having an argument about this with one of them in a bar late at night...

OK, I have probably abused your patience here. Cheers

[Nathan S]

You've not even begun to test my patience, Eric.

Very eloquent, and very interesting for this outsider.

[Purple Dave]

All I can say as an old Magpie is...........Bring back The Bluebags and The Pies !!

[firko]

I don't know how I got on this loony's mailing list but he's sent me another of his crazy rants..............Here's his email address if you feel the need to reply  [email protected]



They used a poster child for this to get everybody's sympathy and to get everybody's emotions up so that they could hopefully bring in a gun ban. They used a little poster child, a little blonde-haired blue-eyed six year old girl. She was the face, the poster child. She was supposedly killed along with the other 19 six year olds and seven year olds at Sandy Hook. Three days later Obama was there doing a photo op and she's sitting on his knee. She's supposed to be dead, used as a poster child, this little girl died - she's sitting on Obama's knee three days later. The same little girl.

And then they have her parents interviewed. It shows that they're all actors. It never really happened, because the guy that was supposedly her dad, is shown in the video where he's to the side and he's laughing and joking with other people and then he's called up in front of the camera. He's off to the left. Then he's called to the center, to the focus of the camera to be interviewed and to give his speech about Sandy Hook and about his daughter. And he goes from on the side from laughing and joking with everybody, he comes up to the center and ... he takes the joking, smiling face off and you can see him physically trying to force his face to look sad and then he starts talking about how his daughter's been killed. They're actors. There were no bodies.

It was a made for TV drama to try to ram through the gun control laws, because they want to kill the American people and they can't kill armed people. That's why Hitler disarmed the Germans, it's why Stalin disarmed the Russians, it's why chairman Mao disarmed the Chinese and they killed between them something like 120 million of their own people. And that's what they want to do in America and they can't do it because the people have the Second Amendment and they have guns. So they have to do all of this, and they'll keep doing it. There will be more incidents like this, which are made for television, until they manage to persuade the American people to give up their guns. And then they'll start killing the Americans. Because the Americans are the only people stopping them from doing what they want to do already. They know they can't put their next phase, which is reducing the world's population, they can't put that phase into operation whilst the Americans have got millions!
  of guns.
 

[Bitten]

I may be wrong but I thought the second amendment "The right to bare arms" was never about the individuals right to own a gun but more about states rights

As a way to appease individual states / colonies concerns about joining the Federation and giving up some states rights in the process they wrote into the constitution that individual states, in the face of a tyrannical federal government had the right to raise and arm a state militia to defend themselves.

Over the years the interpretation has been grossly massaged to suit narrow ( ever broadening) interests and further supported in a ruling by the US Supreme Court some time back.

My some total of experience with guns is firing a shot gun (only recently) at some clay discs and whilst fun I have no inclination to own one, for me guns like boats have no place in my thoughts.

Other than people on the land I do not quite get the need to have them

[Nathan S]

I actually bothered to read one of the conspiracy websites. The 'argument' was so full of holes, it resembled an old Lada that had been parked on the beach for the last 20 years...

In particular, the conspiracy theory moved between "the children never existed", "the children weren't killed" and "the government murdered kids" without even a twinge of embarassment.

There were numerous other failings too - including a pic of "hired actors" and the evidence of this was that they had a pic of grieving parents and then another the same couple smiling, supposedly in their real home in Florida. Absolutely nothing to support the idea that they're from Florida, and apparently it's impossible that these people were happy before the shooting?

The real failing of the this conspiracy theory is that it's utterly inconveivable that these school shootings are frauds, with dozens sloppy mistakes made, and yet NOBODY has blabbed. 

These nutters need to apply the same paranoid scrutiny to their own ideas. Then they'd STFU, out of pure embarassment.

[Mike52]

I don't know how I got on this loony's mailing list but he's sent me another of his crazy rants..............Here's his email address if you feel the need to reply  [email protected]

 the guy that was supposedly her dad, is shown in the video where he's to the side and he's laughing and joking with other people and then he's called up in front of the camera. He's off to the left.
 

I hate to say it but that father and mother were on the news tonight and I noticed that they  didn't look too upset at all .
Then I read this post.
Strange Days.

[Lozza]

I live south of San Francisco. California is one of these restrictive states where you cannot buy more than one gun per month (from a shop that is...), horror of horrors

I think it is clear to all humans with at least half a brain that extremist gun-lovers have managed to abuse an old text (an important one mind you) to satisfy their excessive fixation on what is nothing more than a hobby or a borderline pathological and deluded desire for more personal power. The whole self-protection thing is a fallacy, data shows it. But as we know, the boogeyman is a strong part of the modern American psyche: extra-terrestrials, communists, the government, black people, Cubans, Mexicans, Iraqi WMDs, the end of the Mayan world, when there is nobody to worry about they invent him, and of course now he is legally armed to the teeth (at least nobody is suggesting a looming invasion by Canadians, ah but wait of course, the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants...). This can only go away with education (have you seen the quote by Jeff Johnson the clown: "I suggest to put teachers in gun shops" . Hopefully over time the fear-mongers will loose grip on the population as all grow their critical thinking skills.

Around here we hear about the odd shooting and gun murder: the absolute totality of them involve rival gangs fighting over their pissing grounds. If they did not have guns, they would use baseball bats, and still kill each-others, great, less risks for innocent onlookers. But they pretty much stick to their own. Hardly an issue for the likes of me (and I realize that I am fortunate). And you know what, if some lunatic is crazy enough to empty my garage I certainly would not try to stop him with a gun: he would likely have a bigger one anyway and much more ready than me to use it.

I feel bad for your friend. Having a gun has become a bit like smoking: most urban folks don't exactly know why they have one, but since others do it, they might just as well do it. The vast majority would be incapable of using their gun in a state of panic (seriously, do they sleep with the gun armed on their bedside table? Ready to jump like Bourne at the first suspicious noise?) and would most likely hurt themselves if they had to use it. I feel sorry for them, the way I have always felt for smokers... There is no need to try to reason, just avoid the conversation. Then of course you have those who say they own one but in fact don't, you know like you took that you jump on your 1978 Maico and you were doing, well at least 80mph, I swear...

Yet I really understand the feeling of power that having a gun can provide,  because I lived that. Jeez, I felt like the world was mine. There is a wicked awesomeness about having such power elegantly contained, ready to unleash at your demand. It is inebriating, like alcohol and sex or driving a Hummer.... It also gives you the feeling that your reproductive appendage is much bigger... And it is hard to fight that urge. Friends are in awe, wicked. Some never grow out of it.

I don't particularly want to take away guns form law abiding Americans. Only from my perspective, the current legal framework is a gross abuse of the second amendment that has gone too far and has made a joke of the intent behind the text. The current situation is shameful: America can do better, much better than that. Freedom and fun do not have to come at the price of dozens of innocents every 6 months. This is plain crazy. The leaders on both sides of the argument have totally failed to lead. I do have faith that something really important is now going to happen, with or without the extremists. The NRA really screwed up, but this time the majority has swung by such a margin that it becomes politically palatable to be audacious. January will be interesting.

Hey thank you for starting this subject here. A much  better place than the US blogs where the grammar-challenged red-necks quickly deliver assault with four letter words and capitals but little substance. Imagine having an argument about this with one of them in a bar late at night...

OK, I have probably abused your patience here. Cheers

They would probably shoot you on principal. The second amendment seems to get twisted like the Westbro Baptist Church twists the bible.
Be welcome here anytime

[vmx42]

Just to show you how safe guns are... and how responsible and intelligent some gun owners are...

Natural selection at work...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gun-fails-second-amendment-rights-gone-wrong_n_2490579.html?1358451268&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1827062,b=facebook