Guns

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1. DBK April 17, 2007 9:57 am

   That is the gun conversation. The one neither the media or our gutless politicians want to have.

   So let me begin….

   Fair enough. It strikes me as an effort to leverage the tragedy of yesterday to gain points, but I’m game.

   If anyone buys a handgun, they are planning on killing humans. Period. No discussion. There is no other purpose for them.

   Well that was a pretty short discussion. Nothing like a fair and open mind to get a conversation off the ground…and nothing like a closed one to bury it in the ground.

   If you are unable to think of other uses for handguns, such as, oh, lemme see, self-defense, target practice, or showing off to your buddies because there really are guys who think it means they have a bigger penis, then you lack imagination, but that doesn’t reflect on guns, just you. If you can’t imagine that someone would get a handgun in case they or their family’s lives were threatened, not because they are “planning on killing humans”, but before they think it brings them security (whether they are right or wrong about that), then you are dogmatic, sure, and it’s a fine rant, but it isn’t a conversation and your monologue is sadly disconnected from reality.

   But you had more to say.

   And - in our instant gratification society - a handgun has become weapon of choice for anyone who is momentarily unhappy about something. Upset with your ex-girlfriend, ex-wife or children? Grab a handgun from the local WalMart and fire. Realize that you just shot someone? Fire again - point blank into your head. Why think about it?

   Maybe in your reality, but “anyone who is momentarily upset” is not actually grabbing a handgun and killing people in the world I inhabit. In fact, most of us just, well, get over it. Like normal people. Like the vast majority of us.

   I don’t mind a little gun control advocacy. I’m pretty strong on the need to regulate gun ownership. But extremist rants don’t really make a strong case. They don’t convince anyone. You kind of have to connect to reality to convince people. The VT killings…that was horrible. But that’s an extreme case. Arguing to regulate the lives of the majority because of the actions that a tiny minority perpetrate is kind of like throwing out the Bill of Rights because 21 extremist nutcases flew planes into some buildings.

2. gorky April 17, 2007 11:15 am

   As I said - guns were invented to kill humans. You haven’t disputed that. Even in the protection area, you are protecting yourself against other people. Ergo - shooting humans. Also - target practice happens at ranges, usually under a controlled environment. Showing off to you buddies? How dickless are you, really?

   And if you haven’t been reading the papers lately, that’s not my problem. You only hear what you want to hear then. Good for you! Less to think about. But it won’t take much to search back even in my local, backwoods papers and find gun violence against family members at least once a week. (But oddly rarely a note about someone fending off an attacker with his or her pistol.)

   The funniest is the Bill of Rights argument. There is NOTHING in that amendment saying that every man, woman and college student should be carrying fire-arms. Nothing at all. “A well regulated militia” is what it says. So, let’s start regulating. Quickly.

   Of course, I might agree with the need to protect yourself or your family. If everything went apeshit in world or the country were invaded or something that extreme occurred - I would probably raid my grandfather’s arsenal and fire at will. But MY world is not that place.

   I have no problem with taking an extreme position. Getting shot is pretty extreme. Just ask the kids at Virginia. Tech.

3. Mike April 18, 2007 8:40 am

   OK…Now coming from someone that works at a college who has had to have meetings about how to protect this place, let me add my two cents…We need workable, reasonable gun law reform. I understand the hunting and self-defense arguments. A normal, law-abiding citizen with a legitimate reason should be able to legally purchase a gun. But there should be some way for the sellers and the local law enforcement to know who has them, and what they have. And they should get suspicious if someone is loading up an arsenal of legal weapons, and find out what is going on. Now, from what the news reports say, this guy was mentally off. Was there any way to stop him from buying the gun? Probably not. Was there a way to stop and question him about why he needed two? Yes. But would anything have stopped him from doing what he did? Again, as someone who has had to address that question in a similar environment, the answer is no. So what do we do? Do we arm all the students so they can defend themselves? No. We do all we can do, by being vigilant and on the look-out for anything out of the ordinary happening. As lame as that sounds, outside of strip-searching every individual that walks in the door and not letting anyone back in after they leave, that is all we really can do.

4. gorky April 18, 2007 10:06 am

   Thanks Mike.

   They say he was actually charged with stalking to girls in 2005. If “they” are correct, couldn’t the gun retailer have checked the police records on this kid? Or does that make too much sense?
   It’s so weird in this country. If someone is convicted of a sex offense - especialy against a child - we can take away every right he has. Tell him where he can and can’t live. Refuse him employment. There’s even talk about keeping them in jail after they do their time. BUT they could probably still legally buy a gun.
   Frankly, I’m with Chris Rock. Keep the guns and charge $1000 per bullet.

5. kerry April 18, 2007 6:13 pm

   How about we argue for the establishment of reasonable background checks? In Virginia, the shooter was asked whether he had ever been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. He had been. He lied. He bought a gun.

6. John Bolllinger April 19, 2007 8:09 am

   How can every Swiss citizen have a gun and yet have murder rates massively lower than the US?

   I just saw a piece on BBC World News last night where Zimbabwa’s residents were so frightened of being taken away by theire goverment they hid their faces when a camera pointed at them. Considering how close we came in the recent years to being a completely military state, how can we take away our ability to protect ourselves?

   Even if the supposed nutjob at VA Tech couldn’t have gotten a gun, if he was truly as insane as the Corporate Media claims (isn’t it interesting that NBC, part of the largest defense contractor in the world, got the video?) aren’t there at least a couple of other ways that he could have killed as many as he did or more? None of the engineering labs at VA Tech were dangerous?

   Do you remember when we were young that the hosts of kid’s TV shows used to lecture us on being safe with guns?

   Change registeration laws. Make it a national law rather than regional ones like the moronic VA standards. But trying to blame the existence of guns for human insanity is blaming the messenger.

   Speaking of messenger and Corporate Media, can we look at how this event has obscured that yesterday was the worst day of violence in Iraq, that Gonzales is testifying in DC, that the Supreme Court upheld the ban on partial birth abortion and even that Sanjaya was finally booted off AI?

   Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

   The price of Liberty is eternal vigilence {not vigilanteism of any sort).

7. gorky April 19, 2007 9:44 am

   > But trying to blame the existence of guns for human insanity is blaming the messenger.

   Maybe. But I’m still just talking about handguns. The only reason for the proliferation of handguns (other than fun which I don’t accept) is to protect us from human insanity. Now, if someone’s coming at unarmed me with a baseball bat or a knife, I still having a fighting chance and he has to get pretty damn close. With a gun, he (or she) can just stand outside my window and point. See the difference? A nine millimeter shoots x many shots at a range of y. A knife… we’re talking one at a time from a distant of eight inches. See the difference?

   As I said, if the world went apeshit and whatever is left of the National Guard started rolling down the streets or Indians came around looking for revenge - then I’m with you. Pass the ammo!

   But are we there yet? I don’t think we’re there yet. But maybe we get there faster if everybody’s “packing heat”. Human insanity, remember, has an itchy trigger finger…

8. John Bolllinger April 19, 2007 11:20 am

   I don’t think the insanity/guns thing works in reverse, I didn’t parse the sentence and diagram it, but I don’t think so.

   Taking it to a handguns versus baseball bats isn’t really applicable for the reasons the you mentioned. The disembodied aspect of shooting a gun is the issue with a pyscho.

   In the VA Tech case, I just went to a site that listed what labs they have on campus. It only took me scanning about ten down on a long list of maybe 74 to 100 different labs to find the Active Combustion Control Group.

   And if your point is everyday life, a baseball bat or knife is the only thing that people can kill a person with, consider being run over by a car; the effectivness of poison ( big killer before the advent of guns); Asian throwing darts; zip guns; electrocution or any of probably dozens of things we can get our hands on every day.

   As for the Storm Troopers, if you ban handguns, there won’t be any ammo for you to sign up to get it.

   On the point of being a seriously fascist state, I said that we just barely avoided it, but it was way to close for comfort, when probably most of the rest of the world is under some form of totalitarianism, where people are spirited away in the night all the time.

   The absolute truth that is irrefutable here is that the genie is out of the bottle as far as the 210 MILLION private held hand guns in the country. Control and education are the only things that can keep the genie on our side.

   Buy backs work on a limited basis, but for us to buy back that many guns would break the Treasury more than Dubya and his boys have done so far.

   And then they would just come back into the country from other countries and not be registered.

9. gorky April 19, 2007 12:38 pm

   >{I don’t think the insanity/guns thing works in reverse, I didn’t parse the sentence and diagram it, but I don’t think so.}

   People use handguns to protect themselves from people with handguns, so if there were fewer handguns we wouldn’t need so many handguns. That doesn’t work for you?

   >{And if your point is everyday life, a baseball bat or knife is the only thing that people can kill a person with, consider being run over by a car; the effectivness of poison ( big killer before the advent of guns); Asian throwing darts; zip guns; electrocution or any of probably dozens of things we can get our hands on every day.}

   No. My point is convenience, availability and volume of victims. Maybe he could have made a bomb. But maybe he wasn’t that bright. You don’t have to know chemistry to use a handgun. Plus a car is used for other things. Poison and electicity are used for other things. Throwing stars? Not so much. But a handgun has ONE function - which is the one point no one has yet to dispute. ONE function…

   > {As for the Storm Troopers, if you ban handguns, there won’t be any ammo for you to sign up to get it. }

   Eh, I probably know a guy…

   > {The absolute truth that is irrefutable here is that the genie is out of the bottle as far as the 210 MILLION private held hand guns in the country. Control and education are the only things that can keep the genie on our side. }

   This I will agree with you on. Control and education is our only hope. The handguns are more plentiful than pot and a bigger cash crop. And, no, you can’t know when someone is going to snap. But hells bells! This kid was a walking warning sign! Where are the laws? Where are the background checks? Did he have a permit even? There is no reason to make it easier than getting your drivers license!!!

10. John Bolllinger April 20, 2007 12:36 pm

    Good we basically agree. They aren’t going away and we need to controll them.

    Sorry about the confusion that the reversal of the argument doesn’t work, I thought you were talking about another part of my discussion.

    That said, the VA Tech thing is definitely a lot deeper than the Corporate Media is letting on. His sister, a Princeton grad, works for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. An organization that Dubya brought into existence to replace the Coaltion Provisional Authority, the wonderful people who happened to “lose” $9 billion” in Iraq. It’s official charge is to management the US billions used for reconstruction.

    Oh, yeah, I wondered why the Bushies jumped into this so quickly and decisively. They definitely and without question want the press to NOT get to her. But also consider if in the video and the manifesto that was sent to the world’s largest defense contractor’s media subsidiary, NBC contained him blathering on about what his sister does.

    Michelle Malkin wrote a screed against talking to the girl Sun Cho, immediately after the AP did a short blurb on her.

    Can you imagine if in her distraught state, she started rambling on about what the IRMO is actually doing?

    And let’s not even mention what three degrees of separation to the officially biggest mass murderer in US history would do for the Bushies.

    This is one of those things where the more people talk about it the greater the likelyhood that we may find out what is going on.

    Google Cho Sun State Department or Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.