Guns don't kill people ....

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Flint

How about let's not attack each other.

I think that would be nice...but change 'us' to sexobot.

I should've known I would get flamed and insulted for showing real and true emotion. I wasn't arguing about anyone's guns. I was expressing the emotion I feel for this horrible tragedy.

That sexobon thought it would be funny to take one of my typical hyperbolic when upset comments (please to see my 'what is a friend' post and put two and two together) and use it to make fun and demoralize is, really, par for the course...and nothing I need right now.

[Spexxvet]

You know what? I don't give a shit about guns or knives or bats. I want these types of killings to stop. I want violence to stop. How do we do that?

[Flint]

Or, how about let's not attack each other.

[infinite monkey]

Jesus. Fuck this.

[Ibby]

[Big Sarge]

I have been greatly disturbed by this incident because they were children and Addie is 5 yoa. The only thing we can do now is believe these innocent lambs are in a better place. At least that is what I keep telling myself......

Gun control probably would not have prevented this. Take away all the guns and then you'll start seeing SVIEDs (suicide vests) or SVBIEDs (suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device). If a nut job plans on killing a bunch of people, there are a lot better options than a gun. You can do a lot of damage by driving a car or a large truck through a crowd. Should we ban all vehicles because they kill more people than guns every year?

Mental illness is the key. We must do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others. In my state, they have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals. One last shout from my soap box, I truly feel that violence on TV, graphic video games, etc. have desensitized the younger generations.

Now I will prepare to be stoned for my thoughts.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Mental illness is the key. We must do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others. In my state, they have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals. s.

I heartily agree with you there Sarge. Mental health centers/crisis centers are a fucking joke in my state. They are staffed by the most burned out, underpaid, overworked zombies you'd ever care to see. Working with the mentally ill takes a toll on a person and burn out is about five years---similar to ED workers. Add slashed budgets, stale salaries, working thru lunch, holding your bladder b/c you MUST admit one more person before you go; and hostile, over burdened workers who cannot support you emotionally, an indifferent or even evil management "team" (there's usually 5 "managers" and 1 RN for every 7 patients) and insurance co. who don't want to pay a single dollar for mental health care in this country...yeah, a LOT of somebodies slip thru the cracks. All these shooters gave clues to what they were going to do or thinking of doing. Everybody always says the same thing: I thought he was kidding. I was taught that if someone says they are going to kill themselves or another you take them VERY seriously.

I hadn't heard he'd killed one of his brothers..? He has a bro named Ryan who's been constantly interrogated since the shooting but that's all I've heard on the sibling front.

boy had mommy issues------that's pretty clear. I've also heard that he was 20 and then 24. I hope to get some good information today. It's all been so speculative. And those babies who were killed-----IIRC, they are still lying where they were shot as they process the scene. I cannot begin to imagine that.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

The only thing we can do now is believe these innocent lambs are in a better place.

No it's not. We can

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

In my state, they

Tell it like it is: The REPUBLICANS

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Now I will prepare to be stoned for my thoughts.

Pass the doobie.

Seriously, what are you willing to sacrifice to ensure that this doesn't happen to Addie?

[Big Sarge]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Seriously, what are you willing to sacrifice to ensure that this doesn't happen to Addie?

Our Constitutional Rights are sacred. Think how many have fought and died for these rights. I'm willing to keep our right to bear arms, even if it did endanger my precious angel. We need to start putting our country and constitution first. To be a free country, you often have to pay a price

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

To be a free country, you often have to pay a price

I'd love to live in a free country.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

I have been greatly disturbed by this incident because they were children and Addie is 5 yoa. The only thing we can do now is believe these innocent lambs are in a better place. At least that is what I keep telling myself......

Gun control probably would not have prevented this. Take away all the guns and then you'll start seeing SVIEDs (suicide vests) or SVBIEDs (suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device). If a nut job plans on killing a bunch of people, there are a lot better options than a gun. You can do a lot of damage by driving a car or a large truck through a crowd. Should we ban all vehicles because they kill more people than guns every year?

Mental illness is the key. We must do a better job in identifying these people before they can harm themselves or others. In my state, they have been slashing the mental health budget. Most of our regional crisis centers have been closed and even one of the state (mental) hospitals. One last shout from my soap box, I truly feel that violence on TV, graphic video games, etc. have desensitized the younger generations.

Now I will prepare to be stoned for my thoughts.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

Our Constitutional Rights are sacred. Think how many have fought and died for these rights. I'm willing to keep our right to bear arms, even if it did endanger my precious angel. We need to start putting our country and constitution first. To be a free country, you often have to pay a price

I agree with you regarding focus on Mental Health Resources. Crimes like this have happened in countries with strict gun control laws e.g. UK

I disagree that the USA is a "free country". or at least any more free that a plethora of other countries. Ones which do have gun control among other things. And odn't necessarily have a "constitution" that is help up as sacred.

Just saying something doesn't make it so. Just because something was written on a bit of parchment eons ago doesn't make it sacred.

How many parents feel free of fear, right now, for example? And a little regulation wouldn't strip your law-abiding sane citizen of their right to own guns -just maybe a few more nutters. What is so wrong with the idea of "Gun Owners Ed" with a mental evaluation being part of the process? Shame mental evaluation isn't part of Driver's Ed.....

No matter what, though, you can't stop a nutter who is prepared to die. I am so saddened by this incident and yet, I feel I need not to feel. You can't wrap them in cotton wool and keep them at home. Or they turn into nutters. Sometimes.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Stormieweather

I think gun ownership should be more difficult to achieve. Not impossible, except for automatic/semi-automatic weapons, just more carefully controlled.

Whats the difference, these are semiautos...

Other than the badass appearance of the first two they are the same, work the same, do the same. Full autos are illegal without difficult and expensive federal machine gun permitting. Some semiautos, other than the badass guns, use a detachable magazine too.

Semiautos allow you to make the second or third shot quickly and smoothly. It's not a case of you missed the first shot so no meat for you. It's you hit your first shot and if you don't make the second, the animal will escape wounded and suffering.

I think a permit and complete background checks should be required of all permit holders.

Permit for each gun, like license plates, or permit for each person like a drivers license?

[ZenGum]

Last Friday there was a similar incident in China - an effed up individual attacked children at an elementary school.

He didn't have a gun, so he used a knife.

22 children were "slashed" but as far as I can tell, none were killed.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-1...-china/4428958

[Aliantha]

Such a tragedy. I woke up to this news today and still have been trying to process it. It's almost inconceivable, except it's not.

[piercehawkeye45]

This may ruffle some feathers but if gun policy is going to be discussed, I think it is extremely important that we look at the issue from multiple perspectives. It does the country harm if the narrative is controlled by people who only look at the issue as black in white.

The truth is, a gun saturated population can prevent crime and murder along with increasing crime and murder at the same time. It largely depends on the decisions made by the person holding the weapon, which varies greatly culture to culture, person to person, and even at different times with the same person.

Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote an article in the Atlantic about how we need more gun regulation while not preventing responsible gun owners from possessing guns. I don't agree with everything but the pragmatic viewpoint is refreshing. Here is his response to the massacre in Newton along with a link to the article.

The massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, has caused many people, including people at the White House, to say that this is not the day to talk about gun policy. This day is obviously for mourning the dead, but I don't understand why we shouldn't talk about the conditions that lead to these sorts of shootings. I wrote about this issue in the current issue of The Atlantic (you can read the story here), and I want to quickly make a few points drawn from that longer article.

1) This is a gun country. We are saturated with guns. There are as many as 300 million guns in circulation today (the majority owned legally, but many not) and more than 4 million new guns come onto the market each year. To talk about eradicating guns, especially given what the Supreme Court has said about the individual right to gun-ownership, is futile.

2) There are, however, some gun control laws that could be strengthened. The so-called gun-show loophole (which is not a loophole at all -- 40 percent of all guns sold in America legally are sold without benefit of a federal background check) should be closed. Background checks are no panacea -- many of our country's recent mass-shooters had no previous criminal records, and had not been previously adjudicated mentally ill -- but they would certainly stop some people from buying weapons.

3) We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons. This is crucially important, but very difficult, because it would require the cooperation of the medical community -- of psychiatrists, therapists, school counselors and the like -- and the privacy issues (among other issues) are enormous. But: It has to be made more difficult for sociopaths, psychopaths and the otherwise violently mentally-ill (who, in total, make up a small portion of the mentally ill population) to buy weapons.

4) People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read The Atlantic article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don't know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.

5) All of this is tragic. As I wrote in The Atlantic, Canada, which has a low-rate of gun ownership and strict gun laws, seems like a pretty nice place sometimes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...sacres/266300/


Full article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ontrol/309161/