That's an erroneous news report. Lanza only used the AR-15 at the school, not sure about what he shot his Mom with. It even says "Aired on December 15, 2012" below the video.
Mad American made the same exact dumb mistake, called us names for challenging him, repeated it 3 more times, finally admitted he was wrong, never was accountable for the 3 repetitions and the name-calling. Did you two get duped by the same gun nut source linking this ancient and wrong report? Which?
So how about some legislation regarding the use and protection of firearms? It has been pointed out ad nauseaum that "no law would have prevented the Newtown shooting" because the shooter stole guns that were legally purchased. Let's think about that. Shouldn't there be some criminal/civil liability for leaving a weapon around where your should-have-been-certified nut of a son can get to it. (Yes, I know - the poor woman got killed, but that's beside the point). There are laws about keeping firearms away from kids, but how about keeping them away from non-owner adults? How about some law that says (over-simplified) "if you choose to own and keep a firearm, you can be held responsible for its use whether or not that use was actually your fault." It's similar to the law that spreads guilt to everyone involved in a crime using guns whether or not they fired it, held it, or even knew someone had it. Instead of making a law requiring gun owners to keep them locked up, unloaded, and with the ammunition stored separately (which we all know makes having the gun pretty useless for defence), just sharply increase the liability and penalty if somebody gets hold of it because you didn't store it away. That way, if somebody really is under siege by hordes of bad guys, they can choose to keep their weapons loaded and at hand, but if they aren't - if the sense of needing "protection" is a bit imaginary - maybe they'll make more of an effort to protect against unlawful use of their weapon.
Maybe instead of banning high-capacity magazines, since there is no way to go around collecting all the hundreds of thousands of them already out there, there is just a $500 tax on purchase of a new one. So again, if you're really under siege, it's worth it. If you're just going to plink targets with your Newtown model, maybe you'll buy a smaller capacity. Black market would thrive the same in either case (banned or taxed), but the penalties could be increased for using one illegally, so probably a lot of bad guys would find it easier just to go with the smaller magazine.
In the AC-T today, a letter decried the proposal to make guns fire-able only by the owner. Worked well for Bond, but still... Anyway, he went on about what if he wasn't in the house - now he'd have to buy a gun for his wife so she could protect herself. And what if the kids were in the house by themselves - he'd have to buy them guns to protect themselves, yada. By the time I finished reading, I was howling with laughter. My response (yes, sometimes I yell at the TV or newspaper), was "Dude! if your life and that of your family is in that much constant danger, maybe your should move! What the fck do you need all that "protection" from? And if you really do need it, buying more guns is the least of your problem! Idiot!
Well, shucks O'really...lets hold vehicle owners responsible for not keeping their cars secured, allowing a car thief to gain access/use, and then killing a family of six in a crash!!!
Mad American wrote:Well, shucks O'really...lets hold vehicle owners responsible for not keeping their cars secured, allowing a car thief to gain access/use, and then killing a family of six in a crash!!!
Love how you guys can't seem to stay on the topic of guns, and jump to cars or whatever. Because of their fundamental purpose(s); because of the Second Amendment; because of the American gun culture; guns are different from cars or any other piece of equipment that might be dangerous in some way. But the point is, you (collectively) don't want any restriction on the purchase or keeping of firearms, nor any restrictions on the design or operation. Okayfine. What other approach might there be to discourage use of these weapons by criminals? Tougher penalties after the crime obviously aren't preventative.
Mad American wrote:Well, shucks O'really...lets hold vehicle owners responsible for not keeping their cars secured, allowing a car thief to gain access/use, and then killing a family of six in a crash!!!
Love how you guys can't seem to stay on the topic of guns, and jump to cars or whatever. Because of their fundamental purpose(s); because of the Second Amendment; because of the American gun culture; guns are different from cars or any other piece of equipment that might be dangerous in some way. But the point is, you (collectively) don't want any restriction on the purchase or keeping of firearms, nor any restrictions on the design or operation. Okayfine. What other approach might there be to discourage use of these weapons by criminals? Tougher penalties after the crime obviously aren't preventative.
Well, I love how you guys think that penalizing law abiding citizens is going to do anything to prevent a criminal from carrying out crime. We only shift to cars, hammers, and ball bats to point out how stupid it is to place limits on just guns when other things are just as lethal in the wrong hands. On the penalties, I disagree. Tougher penalties does not mean more years in prison where you get three hots and a cot, unlimited time to lift weights, and access to cable TV including soft porn. Tougher penalties are more years working in rock quarries with hammers, more use of the death penalty, and less time dragging death sentences through appeal after appeal. If the New York shooter had still been in prison, or better yet, dead, the responding firefighters would still be alive.
Last edited by Mad American on Thu Jan 17, 2013 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mad American wrote: Tougher penalties are more years working in rock quarries with hammers, more use of the death penalty, and less time dragging death sentences through appeal after appeal. .
There are real-life examples in the US (sort of) where that's been tried. The history of Angola prison in Louisiana might be interesting to you. Over the years it has been one of the worst places for a prisoner to go - now they have literacy classes and rodeos. The activities for the inmates in any prison aren't really to be nice to the inmates - it's part of how they are controlled. A matter of having something to lose. Nobody who knows anything whatsoever about prisons thinks it would be a good idea to keep everybody in some version of solitary or lock-down, with no activities in their life. Nobody with the slightest clue of human or animal behaviour thinks it would be a good idea to keep a guy in a cage for 10 years and then turn him loose on society. And nobody thinks that a life without parole sentence for every crime is a good idea.
Besides, fear of punishment has rarely been a factor in crime prevention, other in places where they haul you out of your house, chop off your hands or head and toss your remains in the street. Desirable as that might sound to some, there's probably some Constitutional obstacles.
How about suggesting something that addresses the fact that if guns are easy for law abiding people to get, they're going to be easy for criminals to get.
Phantom109 wrote:Well, shucks O'really...lets hold vehicle owners responsible for not keeping their cars secured, allowing a car thief to gain access/use, and then killing a family of six in a crash!!!
Odd how you reach for the Car=Gun=Car analogy when it suits your view but shift into over-whine when it goes the other way.. .. so much for gunnut consistency.. .
Anyone catch the NRA ad dragging Obama's children into the mix? (There are posters of the family along that same meme making the rounds on wingnut blogs Facebook posts. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull. All good NRA members know that that family just doesn't belong in the White House.)
The NRA was trying to make a point about Obama's kids having armed guards at their school while Obama was "skeptical" that armed guards would work at other schools.
They lied.
He was skeptical that armed guards were the ONLY solution, In fact, he proposed Congress provide funds for more school resource officers.
They also chugged Breitbart Kool Aid, the dumbasses. Breitbart claims that Sidwell Friends School has 11 armed guards. They have 11 people listed in security. Only 5 have the title that would allow them to carry guns, and if Breitbart had bothered to make one frickin phone call, Breitbart would have found that Sidwell guards DON"T carry guns.
Not 11 armed guards. Not 5 armed guards. ZERO armed guards.
But the NRA listed Breitbart as the source of their misinformation, so their members will all chug the Kool Aid without a moment's hesitation.
Breitbart -- lying to the all, believed by the gullible ... or those who just don't care.
I'm pretty sure the Secret Service guys guarding the President's family have guns. Maybe the NRA would prefer not to provide professional security for them. Oh yeah. I guess they really would prefer that. Nevermind.
Mad American wrote: Tougher penalties are more years working in rock quarries with hammers, more use of the death penalty, and less time dragging death sentences through appeal after appeal. .
There are real-life examples in the US (sort of) where that's been tried. The history of Angola prison in Louisiana might be interesting to you. Over the years it has been one of the worst places for a prisoner to go - now they have literacy classes and rodeos. The activities for the inmates in any prison aren't really to be nice to the inmates - it's part of how they are controlled. A matter of having something to lose. Nobody who knows anything whatsoever about prisons thinks it would be a good idea to keep everybody in some version of solitary or lock-down, with no activities in their life. Nobody with the slightest clue of human or animal behaviour thinks it would be a good idea to keep a guy in a cage for 10 years and then turn him loose on society. And nobody thinks that a life without parole sentence for every crime is a good idea.
Besides, fear of punishment has rarely been a factor in crime prevention, other in places where they haul you out of your house, chop off your hands or head and toss your remains in the street. Desirable as that might sound to some, there's probably some Constitutional obstacles.
How about suggesting something that addresses the fact that if guns are easy for law abiding people to get, they're going to be easy for criminals to get.
Like I said, prisoners should be made to work. The control by fear of something to lose is the ability to take away their day off! You made my point in your second paragraph. You start executing murderers on a regular basis, and stop the appeals process, that will become a deterrent. Even convicted of 1st degree murder, and sentenced to die a prisoner has nothing to fear for years. You start a process of being found guilty, sentenced and executed in a matter of weeks you will see violent crime drop. As far as ease of access to guns it is quite the conundrum. Making it more difficult for a law abiding citizen to get a gun is going to do just that...make it more difficult for a law abiding citizen. Criminals are not going to care and will still get the guns just as easy as they do now.
Taken at their word of having 4 million members, NRA membership is about 1.5% of the US population. And of those, probably no more than half are really the idiots driving the train. Isn't it time the rest of us grew a backbone and a set of balls and tell them to fuckoff?
The general public may be somewhat afraid of the NRA because of an exaggerated strength portrayed in its own propaganda, but the real problem is all the members of Congress the NRA owns. Those members really believe that if they vote against the NRA, they'll be dead - politically and maybe literally. So even presented with polls showing their constituents support anti-NRA legislation, they still vote NRA for fear of their own job. That's going to be hard to overcome. It's going to take a concentrated effort not necessarily in support of gun control legislation but specifically anti-NRA to convince members of Congress that they will keep their jobs if they oppose NRA but will likely lose them if they go with the NRA.
Might not have worked ten or more years ago, but given the speed of destruction seen in instances like Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Penn State, etc., and given lessons learned by the right's treatment of ACORN, I think social media is the way to take down the NRA. Taking suggestions from Rove, I think if the 98% or more of Americans who are not NRA members started associating NRA with bad connotations, and started making them look foolish instead of their version of "patriotic," we could make a difference. One really good quote that went viral, or one good scandal...
Anyway, here's some interesting factoids...
The NRA claims about 4 million members - that's coincidentally about the same number who watch "Honey Boo Boo"
The NRA won't say what percentage of it membership is minority, but at an NRA convention in St. Louis in 2011, out of about 73,000 attendees, there were about 12 black members.
The NRA wants unrestricted access to military style firearms. So does Al Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood.
