Mark Steel on NRA reaction to Boston bomb. Genius

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@ Jacoby: we get US news, but only as an afterthought with the rest of our news. I don't watch US news channels, because I don't care that much about America.

Once again, you appeal solely to the second amendment. Just because somebody a long time ago thought something was a good idea, doesn't mean that something is a good idea. I would also like to know how the American public constitute a "well run militia".

What other interest do people campaigning for gun control have, other than decreasing gun deaths? Public interest theory- if they succeed, they'll lose out on money. The NRA, in the long term, cannot win, they'll always need to exist, so they are guaranteed to keep attracting money.

This is your standard line, and I know as well as you do that no country has ever seen that. You are deliberately asking for very specific proof of a very general point.

I have a few counter points. Firstly, surely we should factor in other things? What if violence stays the same, but a few people get stabbed or punched instead of shot and so survive? Murders down, assaults up? Look at that lunatic who ran around a Chinese school with a knife and killed... nobody. A great success for gun control. What about gun accidents and suicides? Australia showed a reduction in gun related deaths, with no substitution of suicides and no increase in the murder rate. Unless you want to claim that suicides and accidents count less than murders. What about just cutting out the mass shootings, even if the reduction is too small to be statistically significant?

The UK has seen a giant reduction in violent crime. We cracked down on guns, knife crime went up. We cracked down on knives, violent crime went down, despite other factors associated with violent crime (like poverty) increasing. The lesson is that the US should crack down on other weapons along with

Which begs the question why you're so against our 2nd Amendment.

Surely if you don't care about the county it applies to the amendment in question is a moot point.

I don't care enough about America to deliberately watch your news channels. I care enough about America to want gun violence to stop.

You presumably don't routinely watch Syrian news channels, but you presumably would prefer the war to end. You presumably don't routinely watch Indian news channels, but you presumably would like rates of sexual violence in India to drop.

I care enough about America for them to get their s**t together regarding guns because I am fed up hearing about massacres on the news every other week.

Personally, I don’t care what they do in Syria or India.


That’s really weak.
1. Suggestion: Stop reading/watching the news.
2. I don't care what you’re fed up with. We’re not going to endanger American lives in effect by enacting some feel-good law and throw away our rights just so you can feel good about reading/watching our news.


Really, folks; how many times do we need to go over this?
Go back five years and find one, just one, valid argument that the gun haters have brought to these discussions and bring it here to this thread.

I'm not going to comment on the gun-control vs NRA aspect ( not a huge fan of strict gun control ) but the criticism of the whole "terrorism" angle and massively disproportionate overreaction in this country is spot on. It seemed like the media and even the president just had to milk this thing for all it's worth. I bet he was thinking right away when the news broke "if the perpetrators turn out to be Muslim I must be prepared to demonstrate my "toughness" and "patriotism" for the Republicans".

Not sure how it was massively disproportionate overreaction, maybe by law enforcement by sending in 25,000 troops and tanks + shutting down a major city for a couple days just for two guys. Saying that even, they were planning more attacks. Not that the cops could of known. Considering there were folks on the left openly hoping for it to be a "right wing extremist" in order to push their own agenda, one could only assume Obama's reaction. Remember what Rahm Emanuel said, never let a crisis go to waste. This narrative that we somehow ignore "domestic terrorism"(code for right wing white American male) is baffling and makes no sense, we're still talking about Timothy McVeigh to this day. It really isn't based in any fact at all but I guess if it gets repeated enough some people will believe it.

I do agree that neocons have attempted to move the goal posts when it comes to foreign policy/the wars/"homeland security", Obama has continued and expanded almost EVERY Bush era policy. That's partly the lefts fault as well for not holding their man accountable, guess all those Iraq War protesters were just partisan hacks.

Huh? This WAS "domestic terrorism". The two idiots were mostly radicalized in the US over the internet. Okay, one of the brothers wasn't a US citizen, but they weren't your stereotypical "foreign Islamists". They spoke English. They went out to bars. They didn't go to school in some wahabi/salafi madrasa in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Why should this be treated any different than if they were converts to some neo-nazi group or eco-terrorist (for the folks on the right to salivate over) group? I'm not criticizing the response of law enforcement either. Just the amount of disproportionate media attention and xenophobia stoking that probably wouldn't have happened if they were not Muslims. That and the talk having them questioned as "enemy combatants" was sickening. Not that I care that much for their rights in particular but why do they deserve more attention than an ordinary criminal? If anything "enemy combatant" elevates them to the status of "jihadi warriors".

Advocating the preservation of a Constitutional right is now an attack? Down the *ahem* rabbit hole we go...



The NRA insists you be armed? Really? I must have missed the mandatory armament plank in their platform. Moving along, violent crime has been falling in the US for years now, to historic lows; gun sales have also reached historic highs. Record high gun sales, ever more states adopting shall issue concealed carry without bloodshed, in fact usually seeing drops in violence? Things look grim for your naked assertion there.



Come again? After Sandy Hook, the NRA was silent a full week, during which every anti-gun politician and group out there had a full blown public orgy of attacking the NRA, attacking gun owners in general, whipping up emotion and trying to build momentum to enact their agenda before common sense returned, but you see it as the NRA attacking the gun control groups? Are you willfully deceptive, or do you actually believe that crap?



It's only absurd if you insist upon approaching the argument dishonestly. It's not just good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns, there's also the significant impact of good guys with guns deterring bad guys from starting anything in the first place. You ever hear much about muggers targeting armed policemen? Even the decidedly anti gun Harvard study found at least 100,000 instances of defensive gun use in the US every year, while other studies have shown much higher numbers. Stacked against less than 10,000 gun murders, the NRA's argument is starting to look a bit less absurd.



I beg to differ, the anti gun people are trying to use the power of the state to restrict my ability to own and operate firearms, a right codified in the Constitution but existing naturally even without that enumeration. Would you *not* describe efforts to enact broad censorship laws to be an attack on the First Amendment and an attack on your rights?

[puts on bullet proof vest]

Why all the fuss over a spelling mistake in the 2nd Amendment, isn't the correct spelling:
" The right to bare arms"

[ducks, and disappears quickly]

Cheers

You know why it's my standard line? Because no one has yet been able to answer the question, and it refutes the idea that gun control is common sense or a sure thing. Gun controllers, among other people, have this nasty habit of assuming their opinions are common sense or self evidently the right course, and my "standard line" forces them to actually examine the facts, at which point they usually claim I cheated.

Remember, you're the one who said " In every other developed country which has had the problems America is having with people shooting other people en masse, guns have been severely restricted and the problem has gone away- Australia being the best example, mass shootings just aren't a problem there any more.", to which I said "back your sh*t up". If it was such a great idea and worked so well, why is it that no one can prove it? Why is it that no one can even give me one example. Even if I give you that Australia has not had a *mass* shooting since they enacted strict gun control, I'll point to the infrequency of those events vs infringing upon the rights of millions, and that the overall violent crime rate was not affected like the gun control advocates claimed.



Okay, limit it to murder, and show me a country that had successfully and unambiguously used gun control to slash their murder rate. Again, no cheating by grouping gun murders separately, or by picking a country that enacted gun control on the heels of a massive economic boom or something.

I would also point out that you're focusing too much on the symptoms and not the disease; people don't commit violence against each other because they own a gun or some other weapon, there's a whole host of cultural and socioeconomic factors at work, many of which would be easier to address than trying to limit access to firearms. I call your approach "strapping down the patient", so they can do less harm, where as mine is "administer epilepsy medication", so they stop lashing out, without having to resort to restraint. Follow me?

Finally, I could just as easily point to every victim of violence who was legally unable to defend themselves and suffered for it and call that a "triumph of gun control", or point to every would be victim who thwarted their attacker and lay the consequences had they not been armed at the feet of gun control advocates. It's what they do to me.



They do count less than murders as far as the appropriateness of government interference as a remedy; suicide is a personal matter, and accidents are both small in number and easily addressed through safety classes. The NRA offers classes for free and will even come to your classroom, if you let them. I would also point out that the US, despite our position atop the civilian gun possession pyramid, does not lead the world in suicides, not even close. The Japanese, for example, manage to off themselves in greater numbers than we do, despite their nearly complete lack of firearms.



Take the bold as my answer.



You never had guns like we do, you never had violent crime like we do. This is why I keep harping on showing me a place that had a real violent crime problem and dealt with it through gun control; England never really had a violent crime problem. Neither did Japan, the other country most often held up as a triumph of gun control. You've also blanketed your country in surveillance cameras and steadily eroded the civil liberties of your citizens; not an approach worth emulating even if you could prove it reduced violent crime. I'd rather be at slightly higher risk from my fellow citizens than further under the thumb of my government.

In all those cases, wouldn't you say that it's better to form and express an opinion from a position of knowledge rather than one of ignorance? To harp on another of my "standard lines" of gun control, I've yet to meet the gun controller who really knows the subject, they all seem to crib from the same bad info and refuse to actually educate themselves, which is why I tend to hold them in such contempt (I can agree to disagree with someone I think is honest). This also explains why they tend to lose in the US, gun controllers are dilettantes, only caring about the subject when some tragedy strikes and gets exploited by the politicians, where as the gun people tend to live and breath guns full time and be both better educated and more willing to go to the mat politically over them.

People seem to forget that attempting to reduce the murder rate by taking away guns and the fundamental right to self defense in general tends to cause a massive increase in other crimes such as robberies, sex crimes, assaults, and property crimes. This can already be seen in New York just as it has happened in many other places around the world.

It's not like all or even most of those people weren't doing something illegal or stupid when they got shot either. How many times has a parent gone on TV screaming "ma babby be innothint! He never did 'nuffin wrong! He finally be 'turnin his life aroun!"? How many women refuse to leave an abusive partner because they love him too much and they think they can change them or their partner's life will fall apart without their intervention? At some point that becomes just as much of a natural selection issue as joining or keeping company with gang members and those in the drug trade! The problem is not guns, it is that prisons are too nice, forced labor is seldom part of the prison system, and executions are extremely rare. There are a ton of other things about society that need to be addressed to reduce crime, but getting rid of the thugs is a great start.

In the media "domestic terrorism" is code for Christian right wing white males. When the left wing media was speculating that it was "domestic" that is what they were implying, they weren't talking about any eco-terrorists. I don't believe this is being done out of xenophobia and I don't believe the amount of media attention would of been any less had it been "domestic", if anything I think there would be more.

I agree that they're not enemy combatants and Dzhohkar should be trialed in civilian court tho. The usual suspects that call the stripping of rights are unsurprising and predictable. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Peter King. Neocon scum. Too bad their buddy Lieberman retired, BARF. Funny thing about Peter King, he was a strong supporter of the IRA. Maybe some anti-terror policies he advocates so much should be used against him. I'm sure they'd be saying the same thing regardless of who perpetrators are tho, they would like to declare everyone an enemy combatant and do away with our constitution. Their bloodlust crosses partisan lines.

As for the brothers, I'd be hesitant to completely rule out foreign involvement considering the older brothers travels overseas and Russia's flagging of his potential extremist beliefs. Their mother seems like a real piece of work, has federal charges for shoplifting before she left the country. I think their uncle Ruslan is probably right, they're losers.

You say Australia, I'll say Jamaica. Jamaica banned guns and confiscated them door to door like only in the dreams of gun grabbers here in America. What happened? Their murder rate exploded, it's one of the most dangerous countries in the world. It wasn't always liked that.

If the NRA represents the will of the people, how come congress did not approve the new restrictions on guns when public opinion was firmly in favour of it.

Is it just the the NRA knows better?

My nephew committed suicide using a rifle, because his father did not store the bolt and ammunition seperately from the rifle.

I found the ready availability of guns in the USA when I was there for 6 months disturbing.

I was also incredibly surprised when I drove into the University of North Carolina where they had very large signs: "No guns allowed on campus".

I know here they used to have rules about kids bringing guns to kindergarten, but that was about toy guns.

I prefer the restrictive rules they have here in Australia.