Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

You don't think using a developing nations crime statistics as a comparison with the US is more than a little embarrassing? If I'd made such a comparison, people would be screeching about how Anti-American I was being.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

A key element in Mexico's gun crime is the easy availability of guns in the USA. It's been recognised for a long time now that the USA is a crucial source of illegal gun shipments into Mexico.

As a developing country Mexico doesn't have the resources to secure this border. The USA however does. It simply chooses to deploy those resources elsewhere. And while better securing the land border would certainly make a dent in the flow of guns into Mexico and the flow of drugs out of Mexico. It wouldn't stop those shipments completely. Gun runners and drug cartels have been using semi-submersible boats and even fully functional submarines for a while now.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

You have proven my point. Strict laws and bans, either in the US or abroad will not stop gun ownership nor stop gun violence

http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/11/mexico-as-an-example-that-tighter-gun-co

Stat wise, more people are killed one-to-one, each day/year in comparison to one mass slaying that the liberal media uses as a vehicle to bash guns

People need to realise, it is not the gun killing, it is the PERSON using a tool. I have contacts the world over,who tell me people are slain without guns on a routine basis
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Big news in Philadelphia today, 3 murders last night all involving guns. I agree with 47 it's the person who does the attack but if they didn't have access to guns would all three assaults have ended in murders? Guns don't kill people but they make it much more probable that the assault will end with a death.

I don't believe that guns should be banned but what we have now simply doesn't work.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

It isn't ONLY guns.

Places were there aren't many guns in civilian hands, still have mass killings;
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/16/world/europe/norway-breivik-trial/index.html

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/associated-press-story-believe-it-or-not-mass-killings-are-not-on-the-rise-they-are-on-the-decline/
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Read this today and thought about everybody in this thread. Written by an evil liberal for gun control, I recommend it!

http://kontradictions.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/why-not-renew-the-assault-weapons-ban-well-ill-tell-you/
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

47, I agree it isn't only guns and as I have said before I am against banning guns. That doesn't mean there can't be some sort of discussion on how to reduce gun violence in this country.

Ero, very good article and I agree with the author.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Exceptional article
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I just can't get on board with a point of view that equates being killed by someone with a legally held gun with accidentally drowning or getting food poisoning.
Why can't we just talk about guns killing people in an of itself?
Why do they always have to be compared to other things that kill us?
People can't live without food and water. So we'll always have drowning and food poisoning to some degree.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No I haven't. The point is, Mexico has a massive issue with gun violence because of the easy availability of guns in the USA. The guns that pose a problem in Mexico. Come from the USA.

I posted in another discussion that the USA has more licensed firearms dealers than it has grocery stores. Surely that must ring alarm bells with someone?
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I thought the most compelling part of that article made the point that the Virginia Tech murderer, with just two handguns and minimal firearms training, was the worst mass-shooter in American history, causing a death toll significantly higher than either massacre involving the AR-15 rifle (Aurora and Connecticut). The VT shooter used handguns appropriate for self-defense and with standard magazines; he reloaded about fifteen times during the course of the massacre. No assault rifle and no extended-round mags necessary to kill 32 and wound 23. It lends credence to the argument that focusing on feature lists for firearms, "military-style weapons," etc may not make one lick of difference in actually improving public safety, instead merely deflecting time and energy from other measures that might actually help and giving us a placebo effect that we've "done something" by barring AR-15 sales or whatever.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Yeah...I can get with that to some degree...but there was still quite a bit of preamble before that, which, to my mind still smacks of loopholing, post hoc gun love justification and is attempting to minimise the perception of the harm guns do (by equating them to the normal every day dangers of water and food).
I don't think the debate needs that.
If "assault" weapons are badly designated and banning them would do no good then just say so.
I find comparing guns to fuel, fertilizer, drowning and food poisoning distastful and flippant.
To me it doesn't portray pro-gun people as empathetic or interested in minimising the harm guns can do when they do that.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I don't disagree with most any of that (except comparing murders by guns to murders by bombs, which I think is totally legitimate given Timothy McVeigh and the Bath school massacre).

I don't think banning so-called "assault weapons" would do any good. After a lengthy debate with a friend on facebook who disagrees, I think I narrowed down why the more I mull it over, the more opposed to it I am. I hope the next four paragraphs, whether you agree or disagree, are coherent. Given that I'm trying to minimize forum time as a New Years' resolution, I might not follow-up on this post for a while.

Targeting the AR-15 is a red herring. At Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho, with minimal training, two self-defense-oriented handguns with standard magazines (a Glock 19 and a Walther P22), and ten minutes, killed three times as many people as the Aurora shooter with his AR-15 and drum magazine. People claim that Connecticut and Aurora wouldn't have been as bad with other weapons. Virginia Tech proves otherwise. It's not the specific model. Any firearm can kill two dozen people in ten minutes.

And this red herring is dangerous. Why? Because AR-15s and AK-47s are also incredibly, incredibly common, and trying to register and monitor each and every one (which we'd have to do with a grandfather clause, and any ban without a grandfather clause has ex post facto legal problems) is going to cost a metric ton of federal dollars. Dollars we could be spending on increased police presence in public areas--the single most consistently successful method of stopping massacres. Prevented them in San Antonio 2012 and Salt Lake City 2010. Stopped them partway through by killing the shooter in New York (the firefighter murder) and Jerusalem (Mercaz HaRav) and University of Texas (Charles Whitman), or by apprehending the shooter (Aurora and Norway). And the shooters shot themselves as the police approached at Connecticut and Virginia Tech.

More common police presence means more massacres prevented, and shorter police response times mean fewer deaths when a massacre does occur. Federal dollars are a zero-sum game. Every dollar spent on a massive bureaucratic system meant to weed out semi-automatic rifles and handguns (i.e., most rifles and handguns currently sold in the US) is one less dollar we could use to improve our police presence. Let's remember that Norway 2011 wasn't the worst single-shooter massacre in human history because there was anything special about his weapon (it was just a run-of-the-mill 5.56mm hunting rifle sold for hunting purposes under Norway's restrictive laws); it was the worst massacre ever because the police response time was so exceptionally long.

Finally, mass shootings are a high-profile but statistically insignificant portion of America's annual homicides. Even if a massive bureaucracy regulating rifle ownership diminished the severity or frequency of mass shootings (and Virginia Tech suggests otherwise), that's ALL it would do. Increased police presence, on the other hand, would not only reduce mass-shooting severity and frequency, but would deter everything from convenience-store robbery homicides to teen gang fights to drunk-driving negligent homicides. Far, far more lives would be saved per dollar because we would be fighting all crime, including but not limited to mass shootings. Given that federal dollars are a zero-sum game (and given the so-called fiscal cliff, who can doubt that), it simply seems to me a better way to reduce more murders with a given amount of federal funding.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I don't think it's legitimate because it's comparing some things that, by the very nature of their use (fuel and fertilizer), need to be widely and freely available daily life. Controlling or banning fuel and fertilizer would bring society to a halt.
They also aren't designed to kill things but, instead, have been pressed into service to do so.
Fuel and fertilizer aren't "bombs". They can be turned into bombs. There's a difference.
I also feel there's a percentage problem. The percentage of fuel or fertilizer (if you could ever quantify such things) that end up directly killing or harming someone is going to be orders of magnitude less that the percentage of guns that do. This percentage problem is why comparing gun death to food poisoning is also spurious (given the millions and millions of meals and food that is consumed daily).
And that, to me, make fuel and fertilizer a different sort of "thing" to a gun and, therefore, a spurious and misleading comparison designed to make guns seem more benign.



I don't think it proves that at all. By your own admission massacres are rare events. There just aren't enough events to really prove anything. The only way you'd be able to prove that would be to somehow run each massacre a number of times with different weapons and see how many died.
Maybe the Virginia tech shooter was a really good shooter and the Connecticut shooter really bad? Maybe if the Connecticut shooter had to negotiate several mag changes he'd have slipped up somewhere and not been as effective?

To me banning "assault" weapons is, if nothing else, an action of intent to to change gun culture. It's not going to be the most effective way of stopping people die but it sets a tone.
No one needs a gun like that (there are, IMHO, better guns for any other need to you could have).
It's an attempt to ask people "Why do you feel you need a gun like this?".
Maybe even an attempt to make people stop and think "Why do you feel you need a gun at all?"
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

One would think that. I think the point is that what the anti-gun lobbying groups are doing (focusing on assault weapons and high capacity magazines) is actually useless given the statistical data on the weapons that actually hold the majority of gun related crime/injury.

There are certain things about "assault rifles" (from my experiences which range from shoulder launched rocket and missiles, machine guns, and high caliber rifles) that I do think should be taken into consideration. I do think rifles/carbines that can be concealed easier by a collapsible stock, have the ability to have a suppressor (I know some may not agree, but honestly, if you shoot at somebody from a distance with a suppressor it is a lot harder for somebody to locate you and I have experience in using this for tactical advantage), or have the ability to attach multiple tools that are extremely useful for close quarter combat should be taken into consideration with new laws but should not be the focus. Current gun crime, from what I've seen does not make use of all of the things I just described and the only reason I do mention it is because I know how much more capable those things would make me. However, I am a lot more trained in firearms, maneuvering, and shooting these weapons then a lot of gun enthusiasts. I just think those things should be acknowledged for precautionary measures to be honest but it's actually not that significant.

While I do agree with PASmith about a lack of acknowledgment the article I posted has for empathy, I'll be the first to admit when I read statistics, view events related in gun crime, or discuss the subject that I lack empathy. My life experiences have made me such and you can call me what you want but you won't call me dishonest. However that does not mean I cannot understand a need for better regulations and laws concerning firearms.

Instead of the current focus from lobbyists who actually know nothing about gun culture or firearms themselves except the flamatory, one liner rhetoric, and gun enthusiasts/lobbyists countering that juvenile and ignorant opposition (being the same themselves), we need to shift a focus to actually doing something that matters.

In my opinion, giving severe jail time for having their weapons used in a crime if they are stolen and used for crime, are used by their children or family members which results in injury or death (without you being present and allowing that person to use the firearm in your presences especially), and requiring locking mechanisms to be purchased along with a hefty fee for not maintaining your weapon being locked away would do more to minimize some of the firearm related incidents, especially in children related death by firearms in the home. I also think that the more dangerous the weapon (caliber, range, ability to conceal) the older you should have to be to buy it.

What I think the biggest problem is, would be the fact that we want to pass laws and regulations currently that assume people are not responsible enough to own firearms. I think we need to pass laws and regulations that enforce the required responsibility of the individual to own a firearm instead and that could be said in many different areas of American culture as well.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

There are however regulations on the amount you can buy at any given time. It's illegal to stock pile fuel without a license and there are back ground checks done when buying the types of fertilizer in large quantities that can be used to make bombs.

Edit: Well in the UK at least. Seems to work.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

The same thing should be done for ammunition. If people want to argue that they need tons of ammo to "defend their freedom if needed" then my response to them would be if you're in that situation . . . I don't think you're going to be going out to buy ammo more then you're seizing it.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Enacting a rule that makes it difficult to acquire hundreds or thousands of rounds for routine marksmanship practice at a firing range seems like a tremendously bad idea to me. Owning a firearm and never practicing with it at the range is kind of like calling yourself a cage fighter but never sparring with gym-mates.

You can commit a horrible crime with a couple dozen rounds. A responsible owner who practices regularly will need to buy ammunition by the hundreds or thousands of rounds. There is no way to limit ammo sales enough for a mass shooting without completely shutting down responsible firearms practice.
 
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Well if you're in that situation I doubt you'll be worrying about the law.
 
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