Gun control is withering on the vine.

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How much you want to bet that the hippy would only soil his trousers if he were ever forced to defend himself?

If the oppressors were from another culture, the hippie would refuse to fight, and tell his peers to be open minded about their oppressor's culture and that they have no right to judge them...even as they are being made to dig the ditch they are about to get dumped in.

Robert Heinlein (American's greatest science fiction author said): An armed society is a polite society. He also said one should not drink and shoot. Why? One might aim at a tax collector and miss.

ruveyn

As if all unarmed societies are impolite?

I really need to get together a macro for responding to this topic because I get tired of repeating it.

Yo, what you do here is you make sure your representative is following valid and credited materials in making these types of decisions.

If you have any confidence in your representative, you should take it on faith that whatever he or she has chosen to support is what the science points to as the best thing to do.

Now, if you don't have all that much confidence in your rep., that's on you. If you can't be bothered to participate in the affairs of your district enough to know whether or not your representative is likely to use proper reference materials in making important decisions, that's your own problem.

Finally, if you're telling your representative to do either this or that just because it's your casual or philosophical opinion that he or she should do so, you're being freakin' ret*d, and I have no pity for you. You don't make life or death decisions with the same airs that you decide on your next brushstroke on a freakin' abstract painting, you morons. I don't give a dump what you think is better aesthetically or what lines up better with your ideals. If you're demanding legislation based on nothing but your personal preferences or insecurities, you are low-bred white trash, and that's just how it is.

End.

Neither is a peacekeeper.

If my freedom requires arms to be defended, I don't have any freedom to get defended.

That depends on what science you are referring to: The combined stack of statistics about the number of shootings with little insight into the circumstances, or the FBI's psychological reports from jails about what criminals think about private gun ownership? Or how about the overlooked estimates on how many times guns are used in self defense that ends without a shot being fired? Most gun control lobbyists do not acknowledge all these different findings much less take them into consideration and more recently won't even acknowledge that certain government agencies propagated bold faced lies about gun sales and contributed to violent crime, so no, such politicians cannot be trusted to make the best decision for their constituents.

I tend to be biased toward material produced by accomplished academics because everyone else is too f*****g bone lazy to perform research I would so much as bother to urinate on.

None of which I find to be promising.

I trust external political activists and noise-makers (you being a prime example of a "noise-maker") significantly less than I trust politicians.

What I would do if I really felt any concern over the actual issue at hand, which I really don't, would be to sit down with my representative in Raleigh and have a long talk about who she actually talks to when she is considering her stance on gun control. Who is her go-to guy on the subject?

If it were a professor of sociology at UNC-CH, I would then proceed to examine that professor's reputation and read over his or her publications. This would take me a bit of time, but it would be worthwhile if I really cared about the subject. If I approved, my mind would be put relatively at ease, and I would rest in confidence that my representative is likely to engage in relatively sound decision-making on the subject. If I did not approve, I would find one more to my liking and make a recommendation to my representative, hoping that my opinion will be taken into consideration.

It's really not complicated or difficult to avoid acting like a total moron when approaching a political issue of this nature.

Have you gone through the trouble to file a FOIA and obtain all the source material used by the FBI, CDC, or Florida State University's publications to draw your own conclusions? Did you include all the doctored statistics from gunrunner and all the problems the government deliberately caused from it? Are academics like Michael Bellesiles your idea of a reputable source? How many of these academics you trust so much are proficient enough with firearms to understand the subject matter objectively?


If you disregard information about the minds of the people responsible for violent crime you are never going to a set of gun control laws that reduce crime.


Do you trust people like Diane Feinstein or Barbara Boxer who still promote and champion the statistics about the gunrunner scandal despite now being known to be lies, or how about Carolyn "I think it's the shoulder thing that goes up" McCarthy?


Good luck with that without a 4-figure check in your hand.


Sociology professors aren't known for being knowledgeable about guns, so your representative isn't likely to get balanced information from them. Finding a new source of information from another sociology professor to give your representative isn't likely to be any better for the same reasons. And just like every other issue, sociologists aren't going to be much use.


It's a complicated issue. It's only not complicated to avoid being accused of being a moron if you are easily cowed into silence on the issue. It's a hot-button issue so naturally there are going to tempers are going to flare on both sides. Fighting for a cause close to your heart is not "moronic". Even Clinton admitted those "morons" altered the course of the '94 and 2000 elections, and were a factor again in 2010. Being called a moron is a small price to pay to defend personal liberty.

I have never had the desire to. What part of "I don't really care about the issue itself very much" do you not understand? I am happy enough with the status quo. I feel safe enough under our present gun control laws, and I do not feel under any serious threat from anybody holding a gun. I don't see them as magic death sticks. I was raised by a guy who was taught to shoot by his grandma, the same woman who taught me how to turn dirt into food. I have shot little birds out of the sky and then broken their little necks on nearby logs, and then I had the little bastards the same night in a casserole. Best meal I ever ate. I'm actually a pretty good shot.

Is there something about this conversation that you do not understand? Do you even know what my stance is? I mean it's not like I've been unclear about what my stance is. I have said repeatedly that I hold my representatives under an expectation to use the most authoritative information they can find when trying to construct the laws that I am to be governed by. I am really not a difficult person to satisfy. As far as I can tell, my own representative isn't even uncompromisingly anti-gun.

http://ncmetromayors.com/tag/rep-deborah-ross/

She actually asked for a perfectly sensible amendment to a bill allowing concealed firearms in venues that serve alcoholic beverages. The amendment simply gives the owner of the venue the right to be informed about who in his or her establishment might be carrying a firearm. The law protects the liberty of the person who owns an establishment rather than infringing on anyone's rights. Can you point to anything in her record that you would even argue with?

Really, somebody help me with this guy. An outside opinion, please. Are my views really that unreasonable? Do I sound like a brainwashed gun control activist to anyone besides this guy here? Help! Help!

I didn't suggest that we did.

Okay, so just explain to me how you think psychological profiles from the FBI should be used in this discussion? The context in which you brought it up did not make it read as very promising.

Ms. Ross is actually a very nice and approachable lady, and I consider her to be trustworthy.

Criminology is an applied social/behavioral science that deals specifically with concerns like gun violence, so a professor of sociology who specialized in the study of criminology would have more expertise in studying the relationships between commercial codes and gun violence than someone who was an expert on guns. It struck me as a fairly logical sort of person to ask for information on this subject.

Are you bent on being contrary for the sake of being contrary?



So you admit here that you are governed more by your emotions than by common sense, right?

So why don't you start a discussion about what our priorities as a society should be, such as security versus personal liberty, instead of annoying people with idiotic casuistry? If the reason you are against gun control is that you feel that your personal liberty is threatened by it, you should first establish that your personal liberty is really that important.

Your failure all along has been that you have neglected to address the basic assumptions of the conversation. Instead of discussing the rules first, you just went with the rules made by proponents of tighter gun control: according to their rules, the best laws for gun control are the ones that do the best job of keeping people safe. It was you, John, who made the decision to discuss this issue based on those rules, not me.

Look, the main thing about this issue that I am uncomfortable with is the fact that political noise-makers and activists seem to have more to do with this issue than people who actually know what they are freaking doing. When that happens, something ridiculous is always the result. ALWAYS. If my legislator is advocating bills and she hasn't consulted with anyone except for panicky activists and NRA lobbyists, she's a screw-up! Fortunately, in the case of my district, the person representing me is fairly educated.

But, if your district has a representative who hasn't seen more than a high school level education and that person's office is crowded by panicky activists, political noise-makers and NRA lobbyists and your representative doesn't even know HOW to look up a legitimately professional opinion, be afraid. Be very afraid.

well, since i was called out.......i was low-bred white trash but i hope that i have progressed somewhat from that really terrible beginning....so let me speak for my fellow morons and fools.

i have a pistol. a 38. one that i can shoot quite ok thanks to 4 years of military craziness, including two war zones.
it's a tool, ready in case it is needed. thankfully, only on the firing range.

i live in kentucky. it's pretty easy to obtain a concealed carry permit here, so i took and passed the class. the written part of the test is very simple and open book so no one should have any problems with it. when the instructor graded the test he said to me that i was the first person to score 100%. j. f. c. must be all those white trash people.

with 300,000,000 guns available in the usa, gun control seems like a impossible goal for those who want it.

what i want is for the law to change in ky (elsewhere?) that allows anyone, over 18, to go into a gun show, peel off 400 or 500 dollars and buy a rifle or pistol. walk out with it. and buy ammo just before you walk out the door. no check what-so-ever. any criminal, lunatic or terrorist can buy a gun and have it is in hands and loaded in 5 minutes.

statistics my ass. the loon in arizona killed a little girl at the giffords shooting. some people should not have any sort of weapon . this little girl may only represent 0.01 percent of some statistic, but that 0.01 is too high.
everyone who has a gun should have to have some sort of background check....criminal and psychological. no matter what inconvenience a background check causes, it's worth it. yeah, i know he had a background check, but not psychological. he's so out there he cannot stand trial till the gov't forces psychotropic drugs into him.
one little girls life is worth it.

or at least that's the white trash badly bred moronic view of things.

Got news for you, freedom is not free. You have to be willing to fight for it, cause total pacifism only works on paper, it doesn't work in real life.

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. For it is not the critic who counts, not the slacking draft-dodger who points out how the soldier stumbles or where the hero could have done better. The credit belongs to the soldier who is actually on the battlefield, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who misses and comes falls again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great victories, the great devotion to duty, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while fighting valiantly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who sleep peacefully in their beds and know neither victory nor defeat.

Now, there's one thing that veterans will be able to say when they get back home, and they may even thank God for it. Thirty years from now when they're sitting around their fireside with their grandchildren all around, and one of them asks, "What did you do in the war?" -- they won't have to say, "Well, I posted ignorant bullsnot on a social website criticizing the price of freedom and those who paid it for me."

(With thanks to George Patton, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill for their examples and inspiration.)

This is a commonly misunderstood area, and one where the gun control lobby has capitalized by terming the law a "loophole". A better term might be the "garage sale 'loophole'", since what they're objecting to is the ability of a private citizen to transfer his property to another citizen absent any interference from the state, same as any other piece of property.



Firstly, that fellow bough his pistol from a store and did go through a background check, the kind of stringency you're demanding would probably disqualify you from gun ownership based on some of the statements you've made here alone, let alone the ASD diagnosis.
Secondly, too high according to who? To reverse the question, what about people who are victimized because they are not allowed access to the tools to defend themselves; how many of them are too many? To trot out an old warhorse, more children are killed by swimming pools than by guns; are you proposing a ban?

You're just making it harder for the people most likely to use a gun responsibly; law abiding folk. The thing you dislike about guns, their ease of use, is also what makes them so particularly valuable for the average citizen. A knife or other small defensive weapon requires a fair bit of strength and training to use effectively, while a firearm is relatively easy to gain proficiency with, doesn't require great physical strength, and is not inconvenient to carry about the person. This allows a law abiding citizen with no intention of seeking out conflict to possess an effective means of defense without having to devote a large amount of time and expense to it, and levels the playing field for those not physically powerful and likely to be victimized. No other weapon has this property, and the mere threat of a firearm is often enough to avert a violent encounter, even if the victim is over-matched physically and outnumbered.

As to the threat of angry (legal) gun carriers opening fire when angered, while I can't say it never happens, it is certainly beyond rare. In the US we're now up to 49 states allowing concealed carry, and violent crime is at a historic low. The CCW system of licensed carry has not brought the wild west antics predicted by the gun control lobby, and the states with the most liberal carry laws tend to be those with the lowest violent crime. I won't argue causality between the two things, but it's pretty hard to argue that allowing carry causes violence in the face of these facts.



In this case, we're talking about criminalizing a longstanding and widespread practice that would place a very large chunk of the population into the lawbreaking category, not simply taking the step of criminalizing a bad behavior. I'd call it similar to the difference between prohibiting public drunkenness and prohibiting possession of alcohol, they're hardly the same thing as far as who and what is affected. One is targeting a bad behavior, while the other is targeting people who simply posses something that can be misused; see the difference?