Is Gun Control the Answer? Politics Didn’t Create the Oregon Shooter
“The powers-that-be in the college administration had clearly bought into the lie that if we all disarm, the bad people will pity us and leave us alone.” Politics Didn’t Create the Oregon Shooter
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Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
We had a school shooting in our community a day before the Oregon shooting. I wrote this article for our local newspaper (I submit an article every 2 weeks) showing that sin is a the root of the problem. Please pray that it will reach hearts. Here is the link to the article. http://www.southtownchurch.com/blog.php
Usually what it takes to stop a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun. I’m for good men and women having guns.
I’m glad our local Lee College has security guards that are actually armed with real guns.
My thoughts on gun control:
http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2012/12/gun-control-in-light-of-con…
David R. Brumbelow
Do you want your teacher armed with a .45 on his hip?
You ask a snarky question of him. His hand drifts down to his holster. “You feel lucky today punk? Well, do ya?”
These thoughts are certainly not really original with me, but listening to some out there liken guns to cars with respect to regulation, I would be just fine with laws that license guns like cars.
We would be entirely free to own and use a gun on our own property, just like a car. If we take it out in public, there would be licensing (just like the CCW course I had to take, which included legal instruction (i.e. on the laws) and required shooting of the gun in some different scenarios), because the need for safety and sanity is higher. We would also be able to go from state to state, just like with a car. And even a retest every 5 years or so would be fine.
If this is done correctly, I think it would take care of many of those supposed teachers who would pull a Clint Eastwood on the students. In my opinion, this would be similar to allowing airline pilots to be licensed to carry while flying. I don’t worry that they will go postal on the passengers either.
Dave Barnhart
http://www.wsj.com/articles/something-we-should-politicize-1443805023
If Obama’s objective is actually to prevent future such crimes, he ought to have waited out of respect not only for the dead, and for those who are not already persuaded, but for the facts. Presumably by “common-sense gun-safety laws” he had in mind proposals such as those the Democrat-controlled Senate declined to pass in 2013: bans on certain types of guns (deemed “assault rifles”), limits on magazine size, and mandatory background checks on persons buying guns privately (i.e., not from licensed firearms dealers, who are already compelled to run checks on their customers).
Would such restrictions have done anything to prevent this crime? There’s no way to know until the facts are in, but often the answer turns out to be no, as CNN reported in 2013. The perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which prompted the president’s unsuccessful gun-control campaign the following year, used guns that were “legally purchased and registered to his mother … who was his first victim.”
…
gun-rights supporters steadfastly resist even “common-sense” proposals that may seem unobjectionable in themselves. Suppose Congress had responded to Obama’s call in 2013 by enacting all the measures he favored. Suppose further that more high-profile mass shootings had occurred in the interim. Would the president and his political allies respond by acknowledging that gun control had failed, and perhaps refocusing their efforts, say on identification and treatment of mental illness?
Not a chance. They would call for ever more limitations on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Where would it end? Obama made that clear in the most revealing part of his statement yesterday:
We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours—Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.
“Great Britain has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the world,” according to a report from the Library of Congress:
Handguns are prohibited weapons and require special permission. Firearms and shotguns require a certificate from the police for ownership, and a number of criteria must be met, including that the applicant has a good reason to possess the requested weapon. Self-defense or a simple wish to possess a weapon is not considered a good reason.
Likewise in Australia:
In 1996, following the Port Arthur massacre, the federal government and the states and territories agreed to a uniform approach to firearms regulation, including a ban on certain semiautomatic and self-loading rifles and shotguns, standard licensing and permit criteria, storage requirements and inspections, and greater restrictions on the sale of firearms and ammunition. Firearms license applicants would be required to take a safety course and show a “genuine reason” for owning a firearm, which could not include self-defense.
Australians have surrendered hundreds of thousands of guns to the government in so-called buyback programs. The president has now made clear that he views “common-sense gun-safety laws” as but a first step toward outright bans and confiscation. That’s why it doesn’t matter if the laws would actually have prevented the crimes to which he frames them as a response.
On Hillary:
[Mrs.] Clinton argued that the NRA has “so intimidated elected members of Congress and other legislative bodies that these people are passing the most absurd laws.”
“The idea that you can have an open carry permit with an AK-47 over your shoulder walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket is just despicable,” she said.
Observation: Anyone observed this: [a guy] with an AK-47 over your shoulder walking up and down the aisles of a supermarket
…But if I had, I’d be much less worried about someone willing to carry openly and going about his business, than the thug robbing the store who probably had a pistol under his shirt that no one could see anyway, and that he likely wasn’t licensed to carry concealed.
Of course, if someone walks in wearing a ski mask with an AK-47 held at the ready position, that’s a much different question. I think even Hillary should be able to tell the difference between the two — she would easily know which she would get offended with and from which she would hide.
Dave Barnhart
I have not personally seen rednecks carrying the AK-47’s in supermarkets but I have definitely seen the pictures and it is happening (legally by certain types who want to flaunt their freedom). Personally, I am not comfortable with any moron being able to carry because I don’t really trust them to make good decisions with their guns. I would not want everyone bringing their guns to my church either. I would not trust the vast majority of my church to handle a gun properly in an emergency.
In regards to the studies between the US and the UK, I have spent some time looking and it is sort of hard to determine which country’s laws work better. For sure, there is not a huge difference. It is not like one can claim the upper hand definitively.
I see no good reason not to have reasonable gun control. I would not mind if we were like the UK actually. I don’t really buy into the argument that citizens need to arm themselves to protect against the government. That might have made sense two centuries ago, but the sophistication of today’s military sort of makes that idea silly. There is no way any number of guns can protect citizens from our government if they decide they want something.
Mrs. Rodham-Clinton doesn’t realize the legal restrictions already in place in owning a military issue AK-47. By military issue, I mean a selective fire weapon. There are semi-automatic only look alikes, but these firearms are not AK-47s.
Hoping to shed more light than heat..
Do civilians with guns ever stop mass shootings?
Note: Washington Post … not NRA reporting
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/03/do-…
Many mass shootings happen in supposedly “gun-free” zones (such as schools, universities or private property posted with a no-guns sign), in which gun carrying isn’t allowed. And there is no central database of such examples, many of which don’t hit the national media, especially if a gunman is stopped before he shoots many victims. Moreover, at least some examples are ambiguous, because it might be unclear — as you’ll see below — whether the shooter had been planning to kill more people when he was stopped.
[GregH]I don’t really buy into the argument that citizens need to arm themselves to protect against the government. That might have made sense two centuries ago, but the sophistication of today’s military sort of makes that idea silly. There is no way any number of guns can protect citizens from our government if they decide they want something.
Yeah, I’ve thought about that too. When you have a government that has satellite, infrared technology that can see and hear you in your house, and that already tracks all your communications, and is able to fly unmanned drones over your house / hideout 24/7 and launch missiles into your front door, even a compound full of AK-47s isn’t going to do much. If a dictator ever took over the U.S. government, there would be some guerilla warfare for sure, but I doubt the effectiveness of most middle-aged gunslingers.
[Mark_Smith]Do you want your teacher armed with a .45 on his hip?
You ask a snarky question of him. His hand drifts down to his holster. “You feel lucky today punk? Well, do ya?”
In Israel, elementary teachers carry assault rifles. Seems to work.
[T Howard]GregH wrote:
I don’t really buy into the argument that citizens need to arm themselves to protect against the government. That might have made sense two centuries ago, but the sophistication of today’s military sort of makes that idea silly. There is no way any number of guns can protect citizens from our government if they decide they want something.
Yeah, I’ve thought about that too. When you have a government that has satellite, infrared technology that can see and hear you in your house, and that already tracks all your communications, and is able to fly unmanned drones over your house / hideout 24/7 and launch missiles into your front door, even a compound full of AK-47s isn’t going to do much. If a dictator ever took over the U.S. government, there would be some guerilla warfare for sure, but I doubt the effectiveness of most middle-aged gunslingers.
Of course, it would really depend on the size of the uprising, how badly the government wanted to quell it, and what collateral damage they are willing to accept. You are right that our government has missiles, spy satellites and drones, but at the moment, our government is pretty powerless against Al Qaeda, ISIS, or really, about any other terrorist group because they are not willing to do what it takes (cf. the accidental shelling of the MsF hospital) to completely take them out, not because they don’t have the capability. With a large enough uprising (like the same percentage as those who went to war against Britain 200 years ago), done in guerilla style, rather than outright fighting like during the Civil War, I suspect it wouldn’t be as easy for the government to get rid of it as you think.
I don’t disagree that a few hundred “militia” members wouldn’t have much chance. Still, an idea is a powerful thing.
Dave Barnhart
[T Howard]GregH wrote:
I don’t really buy into the argument that citizens need to arm themselves to protect against the government. That might have made sense two centuries ago, but the sophistication of today’s military sort of makes that idea silly. There is no way any number of guns can protect citizens from our government if they decide they want something.
Yeah, I’ve thought about that too. When you have a government that has satellite, infrared technology that can see and hear you in your house, and that already tracks all your communications, and is able to fly unmanned drones over your house / hideout 24/7 and launch missiles into your front door, even a compound full of AK-47s isn’t going to do much. If a dictator ever took over the U.S. government, there would be some guerilla warfare for sure, but I doubt the effectiveness of most middle-aged gunslingers.
Ask yourself why we are still fighting in Afghanistan. Ask yourself why Russia failed against Afghanistan. Dissidents with 300,000,000 guns in the USA could put up a pretty good struggle too, if need be.
[GregH]In regards to the studies between the US and the UK, I have spent some time looking and it is sort of hard to determine which country’s laws work better. For sure, there is not a huge difference. It is not like one can claim the upper hand definitively.
I see no good reason not to have reasonable gun control. I would not mind if we were like the UK actually.
UK and USA gun crimes are an unfair comparison for obvious reasons. Compare instead violent crimes in each of these countries.
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