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"It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Security Guard stops gunman, is shot dead by police.

...
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
"Stay in your lane":  According to the NRA, doctors, including emergency-room doctors who've dealt with shooting victims, have no right to say anything about gun violence because they haven't consulted firearms experts.

Quote:“Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves.”

Good freaking grief.

One of the doctors who "shot" back was forensic pathologist Judy Melinek:

Quote:“Do you have any idea how many bullets I pull out of corpses weekly? This isn’t just my lane,” she tweeted Friday. “It’s my [expletive] highway.”

A Washington Post reader using the handle JMagnus remarked:

Quote:They have a point.  The lane marked "shameless, soulless merchants of death who profit by stoking paranoia and hatred" does not belong to doctors.

*****
"Oh, my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god itself. And there was Atombomb, the dread destroyer, who would some day come to end the world." — Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, H. Beam Piper
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Reset, 1 dead, 3 injured: https://denver.cbslocal.com/2018/11/19/d...-lawrence/
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
A possible tragedy averted: http://time.com/5478690/dennis-intermedi...d=tcoshare
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
As Trump calls for a border wall to keep trouble out, illegal U.S. guns are fuelling violence in Mexico

Quote:The violent criminals that U.S. President Donald Trump frequently cites as the justification for a proposed border wall may, in fact, be getting their weapons from his own country.
According to Chelsea Parsons, a gun violence prevention researcher at the Center for American Progress. (So, not an unbiased source.)

However, it's easy to see that there's at least a loose correlation. Mexico has one legal source of guns, but their rates of gun violence have been increasing as it's become easier to buy guns in the USA.

And people are heading north to the USA because they're fleeing gun violence.

So, if the USA really wants to do something about stemming the tide of refugees, make it more difficult to export guns ... which practically means make it more difficult to obtain guns, because the guns that are being used in that violence (that people are fleeing) aren't crossing the border legally.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
But why would you do that?

I mean, guns and bullets are the USA's major export. Sometimes they even do home delivery.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Hey, as long as you keep shipping out weapons, you'll keep getting refugees in exchange. Your call.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
I'm Dutch Rob, not a US citizen.

Besides, it looks like my sneer was a little too subtle.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Ah, right. My apologies for getting that wrong.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
I'm gonna call reset, again. Sure, there was only one death, but this had all of the elements of a mass shooting except the shooter having bad aim. Guy approaches a traffic accident on a bicycle, shoots a rookie policewoman from behind and kills her, then starts shooting unsuccessfully at everyone else in the neighborhood with a few clips of ammo. Goes home, and watches the police investigation from his porch. Then when they figure out who he is, he shoots himself in the head using his gun that he was ordered to surrender months ago.

Incidentally, I used to live in this area, a couple blocks away from the shooting location. Davis a nice large college town, and it was a great, quiet place to go to school and ride bikes. But that's how it is now in America -- eventually, all of the places you remember fondly become scenes of violence.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
I'm gonna call a foul on this one for several reasons.

For one, he'd already been ordered to surrender his firearms.

Two, he apparently used guns that were not registered to him. While not evident at this time, it is very unlikely that they were 'gifts' from a friend or family member. (EDIT: an elaboration - he either bypassed the background check system through illicit means, or the background check system has somehow failed once again. Either way, new laws are not going to have any effect, though reforming the current background check system and better enforcing current gun control laws probably would have stopped this from happening.)

Three, it's pretty obvious the man was mentally unstable, even if this has only been discovered hindsight - I stand by my argument that mental health care reform will do far more to stop mass shootings than making up new gun control laws.

Unless you guys wanna make this yet another round of "Nobody should ever own guns" again? Pretty sure the conclusion we all came to was, "It won't happen because it will cause more violence in the short term than it will solve."

(As a reminder to our members who do not live in North America, keep in mind that there are people here in the USA that have bumper stickers that say "They can have my gun when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers." This is not an idle warning. Try to take their guns away and they WILL make good on that promise.)
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
I wasn't making the argument that gun control would have fixed it. If anything, it's just another data point that America has a problem with people wanting to be mass shooters. Like, it's a meme now. And even when the system works, it doesn't work.

All I want is for every firearm to be registered like Motor Vehicles. If the police find an unregistered firearm on a person, it's a misdemeanor. If it's registered to you and used in the commission of a crime, it's a felony, unless you can prove you took reasonable steps to keep it under control. We don't even know where the guns we have are. This is not a problem with motor vehicles, a similarly dangerous item.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
I'm saying it's too easy to get guns in the USA.

Keep them locked up when they're not in use. Keep them secure in the stores. Don't sell them to anyone who's been ordered by a court to not have them (which means background checks at point of sale, I know). Keep track of them. And, for $DEITY's sake, keep them on your own side of the border.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
And yes, fund better mental health. Why settle for one partial solution, when we can have multiple overlapping approaches?
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
The USA needs better, and better funded, mental health programs regardless of the gun debate.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
(01-13-2019, 02:37 AM)Labster Wrote: I wasn't making the argument that gun control would have fixed it.  If anything, it's just another data point that America has a problem with people wanting to be mass shooters.  Like, it's a meme now.  And even when the system works, it doesn't work.

All I want is for every firearm to be registered like Motor Vehicles.  If the police find an unregistered firearm on a person, it's a misdemeanor.  If it's registered to you and used in the commission of a crime, it's a felony, unless you can prove you took reasonable steps to keep it under control.  We don't even know where the guns we have are.  This is not a problem with motor vehicles, a similarly dangerous item.

(01-13-2019, 10:27 AM)robkelk Wrote: I'm saying it's too easy to get guns in the USA.

Keep them locked up when they're not in use. Keep them secure in the stores. Don't sell them to anyone who's been ordered by a court to not have them (which means background checks at point of sale, I know). Keep track of them. And, for $DEITY's sake, keep them on your own side of the border.


(01-13-2019, 07:50 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: And yes, fund better mental health.  Why settle for one partial solution, when we can have multiple overlapping approaches?

(01-14-2019, 12:34 AM)hazard Wrote: The USA needs better, and better funded, mental health programs regardless of the gun debate.


Well, I agree on all those points.  They do need every bit as much regulation as motor vehicles - even more so seeing as they're most emphatically weapons.

And ditto for the background check system.  That shit needs to be fixed so it is something that is agile and responsive.  I'd prefer an encrypted government database limited to the sole purview of the ATF since that's their field anyhow.  Though as a caveat to people worried about police abuse, I'd say make red-flagging someone in such a database something that requires a court order - much like an arrest warrant.  However, I'd also want to make it so any licensed medical health doctor can also red-flag someone.

For sales, I'd make it so anyone who is either a licensed seller of firearms or a registered firearm owner (for the purposes of private 1st party sales) can and will be required to perform a check on the buying customer, which would yield nothing more than a basic go-nogo result with no personal details attached beyond what's needed to verify identity.

Otherwise, a lot of the laws we already have on the books - particularly penalties for crimes committed with firearms - are pretty stiff already.  Here's a brief rundown of those penalties.  Keep in mind, these are the penalties at the FEDERAL level.  Individual states can impose their own penalties as well.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/fi...uncard.pdf

About the only one I'd change, really, is the one regarding firearms on school grounds.  I feel that ought to be ten years as opposed to five.  Also, pretty sure that all of these are felony offenses.

Current law already covers transporting firearms and ammunition over state lines - it's a flat-out no-no unless you're in the process of relocating, in which case you need to make sure you're in compliance with state law where you're relocating to.  Pretty sure crossing national borders counts - there, you'd not only be held liable under US law, but the law of the country you were crossing into as well.

The main problem isn't so much the law itself as much as catching the people that break the law.  And a lot of that is dependent on people actually reporting illegal activity.  It's only just now starting to catch on in people's minds that the best way to stop a shooting from happening is to actually SAY SOMETHING about it before it happens, and that idle threats this day and age are not likely as idle as they seem anymore.

The other half of the problem is law enforcement itself taking these reports seriously, but the recent backlash from events where LEOs had been informed and did nothing has been making examples of the consequences of these failures - not only in the form of the toll of human lives lost, but also the punitive measures taken in the conclusion of internal investigations.

It's going to be a long road, unfortunately, with Democrats having knee-jerk reactions and demanding blanket-bans and their Republican counterparts reacting just as badly any time sensible gun regulation is brought to the table.

Personally, if I were introducing such legislation, I'd trade-off by also relaxing certain bans, such as reopening the machine gun registry.  At one point in time, people could buy actual machine guns provided they were listed in a national registry.  That registry was closed during - surprise-surprise! - the Reagan Administration in 1986.  Machine guns made before that date can still be sold.  But don't worry - the actual process of background checks takes over a year (by the ATF), can only be facilitated by specially licensed dealers (by the ATF), has a $200 tax tag on each individual weapon, and the ban extends to the manufacture of new receiver assemblies and parts as well so no one can just cobble one together.

Details here: http://thefederalist.com/2017/10/02/actu...-guns-u-s/

I know, The Federalist is not exactly a shining star in the world of journalism, but this article is well written and very low-key. But as co-founder Sean Davis says in the conclusion of the article:

Quote:These are not my opinions. They are cold, hard facts about gun laws in the United States. We all want to stop the kinds of atrocities that happened in Las Vegas, but we can’t do that unless we know and accept all the facts about the situation. The sooner we can all agree to debate the facts, rather than be ruled by our emotions, the sooner we can work together for a solution to the problem of gun violence.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Frankly?

I wouldn't accept that idle threats are idle. Make it not a taboo subject, but something you don't do because it comes with consequences, even if it's something as minor as a fine equal to the price of the weapon you make the threat with.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Another damned reset:
At least 5 people killed at SunTrust Bank in Sebring, Florida, police say

I’m starting to feel like Stacker Pentecost. Except that I don’t have a nuke to ram down the NRA’s throat.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
SilverFang?

Need I remind you that the NRA is implicated to have been compromised by the Russian government and used as a method to bring illegal campaign contributions into US politics?

I anticipate that will be a considerable problem for the NRA in the future.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
(01-24-2019, 06:58 AM)hazard Wrote: SilverFang?

Need I remind you that the NRA is implicated to have been compromised by the Russian government and used as a method to bring illegal campaign contributions into US politics?

I anticipate that will be a considerable problem for the NRA in the future.

Considering who is making the accusation and doing the investigating, I consider it a huge pile of horse dung to go along with the rest of the myriad of accusations that have been leveled with either no proof whatsoever, or based on flat out lies, re Buzzfeed
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Oh?

You do not consider Robert Mueller reliable, or Maria Butina a warning sign?
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
He really doesn't.
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
(01-24-2019, 02:21 PM)hazard Wrote: Oh?

You do not consider Robert Mueller reliable, or Maria Butina a warning sign?

I'm actually going to ask this seriously, Maria who? 

As for Mueller he himself may be trustworthy, I reserve judgment on that until such time as I see evidence laid out that is sufficiently fact checked. However, the entirety of the investigation that he is leading is in my mind currently on shaky ground due to fruit of the poisoned tree where the FISA warrant is concerned
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
If you don't know who Butina is, do read up on her. I don't expect most people to know about minor figures like Alex van der Zwann, but you should probably know the person who plead guilty to working with Republicans and the NRA on behalf of Russia. She's cute, too!

As far as the fruit of the poisoned tree... I don't even know what FISA warrant you're talking about. We're so far beyond that point that inevitable discovery almost certainly applies, as would attenuation. I'll remind you that federal rules of evidence don't apply at all in impeachment trials, should we ever get to that stage.

Or let's put it another way. If multiple judges in three different jurisdictions, dealing with three different divisions of the department of Justice have overseen convictions based on this evidence without declaring any of the trials void, how deep would the Deep State have to be to let this happen if all the evidence was inadmissible? One of the appeals went to the Supreme Court, which upheld a lower court's finding of contempt of ?Company Redacted?. So, confirmed by hundreds of experts in the field, randomly selected. If you believe that the evidence of Russian interference is inadmissible, you're currently off in fringy conspiracy land with the antivaxxer climate deniers.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: "It's always too soon to talk about gun control"
Washington state recently passed laws that require people buying semi-automatic rifles be over 21, pass a background check, take a safety course, wait nine days to pick up their weapon and also store it safely. Some law enforcement officers are refusing to uphold these rules.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019...?CMP=fb_gu

I don’t see anything that would be unconstitutional. Just gun owners throwing a tantrum.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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