Al queda, the NRA, chicken Senators versus 90% of Americans

You own a car, right? Why have you failed to accept responsibility for all those traffic deaths? It's either you running over people or it's being done on your watch, you heartless bastard.

Aside from attributing crimes to people who had nothing to do with 'em you seem intent on the idea the problem is that people are just unaware guns are dangerous. Really? That's what you wanna go with?

 

Lets be honest and call those stats out for what they are. BS. If those stats are to be believed the lion's share of "terrorist" activity inside the US in the last decade has been leftist groups like the ALF and ELF. You'll have to forgive me if I don't categorize the bombing of animal testing facilities, the bombings and arson of abortion clinics, or even the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal building in the same category as what most of us understand to be terrorism.


In my opinion, Eric Rudolph was one of the few guys who actually pulled off a domestic act of terror, when he set off bombs in the Olympic park, and as much as I hate to admit it, he was a right wing lunatic. When you give terrorism it's proper definition, namely the creation of terror in civilian populations by bombing/burning/shooting up soft civilian targets of no political significance, Muslim extremists pretty much own 100% of it, both domestically and abroad. Even the Basque didn't target civilians this way, though the IRA certainly did.

 

If you commit multiple DUI's you don't get alcohol taken away from you, you lose the privilege of driving on public roads. There is no debate here. When you shoot someone with a gun, you lose the ability to own a gun. If you commit any felony, you lose that right. So what are you trying to say here? It seems the penalties for gun abuse are far greater than those of alcohol and other drugs.

Are we really trying to compare smoking and drinking to gun rights? Yes, lets go down that road. But I do not expect you to directly respond, because I have blown all your arguments up in your face every other time.


Drugs kill about 3x more people each year than guns. Alcohol, which is considered a separate category for deaths also kill much more than guns. How easily can people access alcohol? The only laws regulating alcohol are that you need to be 21 years old, not do it while driving, and not display stupidity in public while doing it. Other than that, you can drink as much as you want, wherever you want. The media even goes so far as to portray it as cool, normal, and fun. Through all this alcohol related deaths far outnumber gun related deaths, and no one is crying foul like they do about guns.

The fundamental difference between guns and drugs, and why you cannot compare them, is that guns by themselves, or used properly, are no danger to the user or other people. It takes the will of an individual to make a gun shoot someone. You cannot punish the physical object as if it were the reason harm was committed as you would do with drugs. Without the individual, nothing would have happened. Instead of trying to punish the physical object, go after the individual. It makes no sense to outlaw weapons that are rarely used in crimes.

I would really love to hear about how any of the proposed laws would have prevented any of the mass shootings. I asked you to explain how they would be effective, but you refuse to respond because you have no answer. I'll go ahead and answer. Most of these mass shooters have no criminal record that would prevent them from legally buying guns. Universal background checks won't stop a crazy person with no prior record from buying an AR-15. The common thread here is the mental problems. All of them displayed social problems. All of them displayed red flags that should have alerted parents, school councilors, friends, etc. No gun law you come up with is going to stop one of these crazy people from acting out on their thoughts. As we have seen recently, knives and explosives are also used to inflict mass damage.

 

The Toomey Manchin bill would have restricted people who had demonstrated mental issues from buying guns. If the rules had been in place the murderer at Virginia Tech would have been prevented from purchasing guns. 32 people were shot and killed. 17 were wounded from the shootings.

The killer at Aurora Colorado also had demonstrated emotional problems. He too could have been prevented from purchasing guns. The shooter who shot Gabby Griffiths and killed 6 plus injuring many would have been prevented from purchasing guns. Cripes that last guy was prevented from enlisting in the military b/c he was a nut case.

Currently up to 90% of the population in poll after poll has come out for the Toomey Manchin type legislation.

Public opinion can turn rapidly. Focused attention can turn rapidly. The astonishing turn in polls showing a current majority of Americans favoring Gay marriage is something that took hold over the last decade, gained in speed, and now as of the latest polls showed that 81% of Americans aged 18-29 favored gay marriage. Simply an astounding number.

After repeated mass murders the horrendous situation at Newtown will probably have the same impact on pushing public opinion and action on the gun issue.

The Toomey Manchin bill was carefully crafted with the assistance of very specific 2nd Amendment Issue groups. Among other things it dramatically and specifically addressed that there would be no national gun registry.

Regardless, at the last minute the NRA got its supporters to flood Senators offices. Many of the calls spoke to the fears of a National Gun Registry....an absolute lie.

The NRA relied on lies to its base...and its base turned up calls to Senate members.

The same tactics, considerable money and truth will have an impact to reverse that action.

Its a shame. The most moderate crafted thought out, common sense bill was blocked in Congress by a minority of Senators, threatening a subsequent filibuster, relying on a fear based push by a small interest group, that fed fear based lies to a small but active tiny minority of voters.

I expect the results to change in due time.

 

Hot and cold running bullshit.

Democrats would do a lot better selling their legislation if they could just shout down or shoot the fact checkers.

 

Thanks O-nation: That link provides a great case for why the Manchin Toomey legislation is applicable and helpful. Your link to the article in Wikipedia references an article that states than Laughner passed an FBI check. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/09/arizona-suspected-gunman-no-stranger-to-trouble/

The guy had a long history of problems, wasn't accepted by the military when he tried to enlist, had been arrested but not convicted. He had been kicked out of his school and told he couldn't return without psychiatric approval.

That is exactly the kind of guy the Toomey Manchin proposed legislation would flag, and exactly the kind of guy that isn't flagged by current checks.

Its a great reference. Thanks. OTOH you show that you'll reference anything to cloud the issue. OTOH, your defence of the current status quo is essentially music to the ears of the al queda terrorist/publicist who tells terrorists to go to the US and buy guns. Its easy.

In your world you would reinforce the status quo and make it easy for guys like that to buy guns.

A beautiful reference. I totally appreciate your helping me make the case for this legislation.

 

Any law that allows mental health officials to subjectively disqualify individuals from owning guns will not get support. What stops an anti-gun doctor from overhearing a patient talking about his new AR-15? That doctor could interrupt the conversation differently and report the guy when he did nothing wrong. There is too much room for abuse. The NRA and right are not against "enhanced" background checks that can include mental health information. But if it is subjective, or based on a doctors opinion, it is prone to abuse and errors.

No one should have the power to take a persons 2nd amendment rights except for the court system. The right to own guns is a constitutionally protected right, the same as the 1st.


The only reasonable effort to curb mass shootings has come from the NRA. Adding more security officers in schools, and possibly even arming teachers is an effective way to scare mass shooters away from even trying. As we saw in the recent shootings, the shooter stops and gives up after encountering resistance. Add more resistance to schools. Allow children to be protected with force, not with words on a piece of paper.

 

Fascinating. I'm not intimately familiar with the Toomey Manchin legislation, so I can't speak to the true (or blatantly false) nature of your claim. I guess the devil is truly in the details.

What I can speak to, however, is the bogus connection you just confessed to making between a poll showing support for "universal background checks", and legislation that you claim changes how existing background checks are done. Wouldn't an honest claim of "90% support" show polling data that represents what is actually in the legislation, rather than a vague concept of what people think is in the legislation, or worse still, what you tell them is in the legislation?

What you are demonstrating here is exactly how dishonest your entire argument really is. "90% support this or that", while acknowledging that the "this or that" from the poll would have no real effect on gun violence, furthering the dishonesty by admitting the legislation is loaded with all kinds of other goodies that may or may not have prevented such tragedies, and then wrapping it up with a dishonest bow, by not opening up the discussion to an honest evaluation of these other provisions in the legislation and what their effects *and side effects* would be.

Some obvious questions that would have to be discussed would include: What medical records would health care providers be obligated to furnish to the state, and when? Would such disclosures violate dr. Patient confidentiality? What threshold of "mental illness" would be used to strip people of their 2nd amendment rights? Would a claim of depression do it? Or perhaps stress? Who would make the subjective decision as to when the rights of the patient would be stripped of him/her? Would he have a chance to appeal those rights?


I can completely understand why you wouldn't want to discuss the issue honestly, because those questions are political losers. They equate to the 3rd rail on the subway, so best just to stick to misleading polling data that has little to do with the legislation being proposed. No wonder Republicans and Democrats alike killed this legislation.

 

R2D2: There was an armed guard at the high school in Columbine, Colorado. The gun men knew it. It didn't stop them from killing students. Putting armed guards everywhere is no guarantee to stopping all shootings in schools.

It might work some of the time...but one would never know if it deferred shooters, would it? OTOH, it doesn't work all the time. Evidence--> Columbine.

O-nation: So now you acknowledge that mental health issues are worthy of commentary and your ridiculous but very helpful,( and completely misdirected effort to distort the topic )

One interesting thing about the details on Toomey Manchin was that it made adjustments for checks based on implementation over time.

oh..wait.. you didn't read it. you don't know anything about its details but decided to be against it.

Along with your attack on doctors in the US service wanting to cut their incomes and then your crying about GP's not making enough...its clear that behind every statement you make there is no thinking...just a clear interest in putting right wingers in power and damn all the consequences one way or the other.

If the NRA were willing to suggest anything besides arming more people and was about anything but pushing more guns onto the public it might be more credible to the public.

Its latest great feat is to support guns being sold to little kids. Gun manufacturers are recently marketing guns to kids. And one of those guns for kids was used by a five year old to fatally shoot his two year old sister.

Isn't that something else?

Meanwhile the tiny minority supporting the NRA and against any changes in current gun laws....won't take any responsibility for all these deaths occurring in so many ways...and simply wants to pour more guns on the streets, and put them in everyone's hands, including nuts, little kids, potential terrorists, you name it.

 

Neither did any of the people who supposedly support it by a margin of 90%. I think that is exactly the point I made.

I see you have once again abandoned, for now, the 90% support claim. No surprise there.I swear you scurry from topic to topic faster than a cockroach when the light goes on.

As has been pointed out to you many times, the NRA support is not a tiny minority. It is likely not a minority at all. They are no more responsible for the deaths of those children than the DMV is responsible for the thousands who will die from auto accidents this month.

Regarding arming children, I think its a great idea. If only some of Dr. Gosnell's "patients" had weapons they knew how to use, we could have saved more young children's lives than were lost in Newtown.

 

Did you hear about the concealed carry guy at that Oregon mall who stopped a mass shooter before he could unleash on the hundreds of people in the mall? What about just this week in the texas airport where a security officer shot a guy that started firing an AR-15 in the air? And what happens when these mass shooters encounter resistance? You can't just throw out one situation and expect to convince me that the plan would not be effective when there are so many that have already proven that meeting guns with guns stops murders.

Given the choice of sending your kids to a school with trained and armed security personnel, or moving to a school in a state that bans semi-auto rifles, high capacity magazines, and requires background checks on private gun sales, which would you feel better with? Obviously neither solution is perfect, but arming the school is more effective. A kid that attends either school has access to their parents guns, or stolen guns, no matter which solution is implemented. Now when the kid gets to school with the gun, thats when the armed security solution has an advantage. That solution assumes that we cannot predict or reasonably stop everyone from obtaining weapons. But if it does happen, which it will, at least you have a deadly force that can fight for those kids lives.

If there is one thing that the right and left could agree upon to help save lifes, it is that armed security is common sense. They protect important people. They protect money. Why not our children in schools? I don't see any reasonable objection to this plan besides cost, which we can work around.

They make guns specifically for kids. And there isn't anything wrong with it. Used safely and under adult supervision, kids can enjoy guns as much as adults. As a kid growing up in a small town it was uncommon not to own at least one gun. By the age of 10 every boy hunted or at least shot their dads guns once.

If you want to blame someone for the death of the 2 year old girl who was shot by her brother, maybe blame the parents? Who was supervising the shooting activities? Obviously you don't let your 5 year old play with a gun without direct, controlled supervision. Why wasn't the gun locked up out of reach if the parents were not around? The solution to this kind of situation is easy. BE A BETTER PARENT. You can't substitute parenting with legislation. For every one horror story you come up with about kids and guns, there are millions of other kids who grow up with guns without one incident. In fact, the earlier you learn about gun safety the more you respect their power.

 

I'd love to continue but this conversation, like every other conversation between many of the same participants on the same topic... is not going to change anyone's mind. Earl will continue to quote a push-poll as if he wasn't aware of what that is, and compare anyone on the right to terrorists (which is funny considering most mass shooters are left wingers... but why let reality intrude on a great fantasy).

It will never at any point register that the problem is NOT access to guns... we had much greater access when I was a kid and we didnt solve our problems by shooting each other at school. The problem is our lack of values as a society. That's what changed. No school shooter ever said his hobbies were racing horses, raising 4-F calves and singing in the church choir. Those kids arent at risk... they can go hunting every weekend and they arent going to take the gun to school to settle their issues. Taking their parents guns away accomplishes nothing good.

Still, nothing anyone says will move Earlpearl off the religiously held conviction that the REAL problem is guns... not a generation of little assholes whose parents ignore 'em, drug them to keep them calm, and let them be raised on the internet playing 1st person shooter games.

Earl, I'm sure you really believe the vast majority of America agrees with you, that the right wing hates America, etc... It's horseshit, but I'm not going to repeat this stuff ad infinitum. My time can be better spent not chasing this rabbit trail, as I know where it leads. Y'all have fun. There's an old saying about leading a horse to water, and I've ignored it too often here.

 

The beauty of the gun debate in America is, it is NOT partisan. Its' probably about the only thing that both sides either agree or disagree on and with each other.

There are just as many bleeding heart liberals clinging to their guns and religion in this country and while they never seem to cross party lines on any issue, with regards to this - it's the reason you'll NEVER seen legislation like that ban or background checks pass.

It was tried before and failed.

 

that is a lie.
In any case , a bottle of gasoline in the hands of a man with half of a brain can cause a lot more damage than a 12.7 mm machine gun. Would you suggest the same checks and restrictions for gasoline buyers? How about knives, axes, hammers?

 

It's 90% because Barry said so... There is no, nor has there ever been any valid source backing up that 90 percentile number other than the fact that the POTUS decided to say it.