Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

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AlexisInfectious®

Active member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

No I didn't.
What I'm blaming is a pervasive gun culture where seemingly normal people rationalise, excuse and seek to find loopholes whereby the ownership of deadly weapons, that cause massive amounts of preventible death, is maintained.
I blame responsible gun owners for maintaining the high gun ownership status quo that then leads to high degrees of gun crime.
The problem isn't that "Joe Responsible" has a gun he just uses for shooting targets.
Or that "Joe Nutter" has a gun.
It's that guns are widely owned by EVERYONE.
As such they are prone to miss-use by default because widespread ownership of anything will result in miss-use.

And as someone else said...a gun may be responsibly owned and still be used to commit a crime (because someone less responsible gets hold of it).

Quite ironic that you used domestic violence to make your point because guns are used massively in domestic violence (as you'd expect in crimes that happen in the home where things are to hand).

I made a comparison to owning a gun to owning a pitbull and I think it's sound. You can find people that own them responsibly. You can find people that take all the right precautions.
And yet...when they become widely owned they become a problem.
So, IMHO, they shouldn't be widely owned, no matter much I personally would want to own one.
 
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eskudo12791

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Really PASmith, putting the general well-being of people ahead of your own whims and desires?

Living in a totalitarian socialist nightmare has destroyed your capacity for rational thought.

I can only dream of how free it must make one feel, knowing that anyone you see (or not, if they see you first) may be carrying a firearm.

Anyway, I'm off to see the NHS death panel, they'll let me know if granny has to die today. Still, I can't complain, at least I don't need private insurance to get her bumped-off.
 
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kgurl

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Right I'll assume you believe the whole thing was a hoax. That's what you seem to have posted.
 
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iiLoveHimm

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

And just to expand on my pitbull analogy.
Pitbulls first came to the UK in the late 70's but didn't become a problem until the late 80's/early 90's (they still are a problem to this day).
The tipping point to them becoming a problem was widespread ownership. As such they started to become owned by less than responsible people and/or widely enough owned that even responsibly owned ones caused problems.
Banning them hasn't stopped them being a problem.
Idiots will still own them even if they are banned.
But the problem is certainly reduced.

Sadly I think the US has gone too far. There're too many guns now in circulation. It's too pervasive.
 
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samstaffen

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Here's an interesting perspective on the 2nd Amendment:

(you might not like the guy, but he seems to have done more research than most)

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13786-the-founding-fathers-vs-the-gun-nuts

If you can't be bothered to read that, this video goes over similar themes:

Thom Hartmann untangles the perverted history of guns - YouTube
 
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FamilyDoce

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Drunk-driving kills over 10,000 Americans each year. Drunk-driving deaths in the USA are roughly comparable to gun homicides in the USA. There's no pressing need for alcohol in society; heck, certain sects of Christianity (most notably Mormons) and much of the Middle East do without it entirely. So should we blame responsible drinkers for "alcohol culture" and suggest that a parent is criminally negligent if their teenage son breaks into the family liquor cabinet, gets drunk, borrows the family car, and goes out and kills four people? Should we ban hard liquor because it makes it "easier" to drunk-drive than beer and there's no medical justification for single-malt Scotch (as opposed to red wine)?

[emotionally manipulative argument] HOW MANY MORE CHILDREN HAVE TO DIE BEFORE WE SAY "A FUN FRIDAY NIGHT" ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY DEAD CHILDREN??? [/emotionally manipulative argument]

Or should we combat drunk-driving by getting more cops on the street to stop the crime itself, instead of banning the instrumentality of the crime (which is also widely-enjoyed in a legal manner by the majority of people involved with it). My vote is on the cops instead of the ban.

PS--as for pitbulls, they act on their own. They're not mechanical devices that lay inert unless a person uses them.
 
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Lucky465

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

If the same investment went into public transport as private cars, only people living in the sticks would need to use them.
 
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coryk125

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

It's not just private cars though(for Mitlovs analogy) is it ?
Taxis , delivery vehicles etc all have the same capacity to be driven drunk.
 
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AndrewMontgomery

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Absolute nutbar. If that's the best you can offer that is a really sad, sad commentary on not only your own ability to think rationally but the ridiculous conspiracy brigades slow burn that so much of uneducated middle America seems to be subscribing to these days.

Absolute fail in every single respect.
 
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judyw1950

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

If it's only about the theoretical capacity for harm, what about computer-controlled metro/tram systems?

Totally doable if the investment was there.

I do tend to think of cars as largely unnecessary death machines. I realise I'm in the minority in that view.
 
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anniebo47

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

A nice idea , though I fear it would fail on 2 levels

1/ Modern society is so used to the concept of door to door travel , an awful lot of people just would not want to do that much walking.
2/ People like to feel a human is in control of any vehicle they travel in , and would distrust something completely computer controlled.

as an aside , the technology to completely control cars by computer isn't that far off.



I'm afraid you are , as a mechanic I'm afraid I'm pretty biased
anyway
 
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BjD

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

I think recently having heard the blood-curdling screams of a fatal car accident, I'm a bit biased too (BTW, I didn't just listen to it, but by the time I phoned 999 and got my shoes on the emergency services had already turned up - it was literally yards away from both fire and ambulance stations).



Yeah, back to the guns
 
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haley7

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

You completely missed the analogy. I proposed banning BOOZE, not banning CARS. There is an objective societal need for transportaiton but there is no no pressing societal need for bourbon.

If we should take guns away from law-abiding gun owners after Sandy Hook, we should have taken alcohol away from law-abiding drinkers after the Carrollton, Kentucy bus crash, where a drunk-driver in a pickup rammed a church bus, killing 27 and injuring 34.

Ten thousand deaths caused by drunk drivers each year in the USA. Any argument you can make about "how many children need to die before you give up your .357 Magnum," I can make about "how many children need to die before you give up your scotch."
 
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HannaW

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

There was. At first, reports were that he had left the AR-15 in the trunk and used only sidearms. In fact, he used the AR-15 and sidearms and left a shotgun in the trunk. People are making a conspiracy theory out of contradictory news reports while the news was still breaking.

On the other hand, there was no rifle used at Virginia Tech, a massacre with a higher death toll and the same ten-minute time frame.
 
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jmanadab

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

According to the crazy conspiracy theorists, there's a question about whether it happened at all.
 
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EvacuateTheBuilding

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

We could only wish it didn't happen. Crazy world we live in. I like my guns I don't need an assault rifle, and I think mentally ill people should not have access to guns. I f your going to own a weapon a certain responsibility comes with it just as owning a car, or any other machine that could cause destruction. Education is IMO a requirement for gun ownership. The trick is to protect the right to bear arms and the right for people not to get killed by them. Aren't we smart enough to do both?
 
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DJChris

Member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Your analogy is flawed , alcohol mixed with anything that requires rational thinking whether it's driving or shooting is a bad idea .
Didn't we cover this in the other thread ?
In case I missed it , is it illegal to be drunk in possession of a firearm ?
 
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jok3r

New member
Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"

Do you think it would be reasonable to have to undergo a short training course and basic psychological evaluation before someone could be licensed to own a firearm?
 
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