America`s Gun Culture

[stew]

WTF has you are more likely to be killed by someone you pass every day than by a muslim terrorist got to do with anything,  they are stabbing people like you muppet, they are killing the weakest in western society muppet, why do you focus on the right when the extremist Muslim terrorists want to kill up ass? Answers on a postcard please!

[muppet]

Muppet, it is in their DNA you cannot deny that it is Muslim extremists that attacked California and Paris can you? The c***ts want us all dead, not just us conservatives, they want you dead too dear.

Of course they want you dead.

And yes maybe even me too.

After all, Bush Snr bombed them back to the Iron Age.

And then his son bombed them back to the Stone Age.

Out of both of those events, mad bunches of terrorist nut jobs appeared. They will have the odd fleeting 'success' but they are no threat whatsoever to 99.9999% of us. I will live my life exactly as I would have lived it anyway.

You can scream how terrified you are, and even scream at us that we should be terrified too. But I would see that another fleeting success for the terrorists. So I couldn't be bothered worrying about them.

[muppet]

WTF has you are more likely to be killed by someone you pass every day than by a muslim terrorist got to do with anything,  they are stabbing people like you muppet, they are killing the weakest in western society muppet, why do you focus on the right when the extremist Muslim terrorists want to kill up ass? Answers on a postcard please!

Do you know how many people in the US die every year from car accidents?
Do you know how many people in the US die from non-terrorist violence?

Do you know how many people in the US die from Muslim terrorist attacks?

Seriously, do you have any idea of the numbers involved in the above?

Answers on a postcard yourself.

As for why do I focus in the right right. The Neo-Cons fought the two wars in Iraq, for no obvious reason other than to protect their oil interests. Wars always have long term consequences. ISIS is a direct consequence of your elected Neo-Cons actions in the 2nd Iraq War. Former US ally, Al Queda's war on the West was arguably a result of the 1st Iraq War.

[Hardy]

WTF has you are more likely to be killed by someone you pass every day than by a muslim terrorist got to do with anything,  they are stabbing people like you muppet, they are killing the weakest in western society muppet, why do you focus on the right when the extremist Muslim terrorists want to kill up ass? Answers on a postcard please!

Stew, you might want to recalibrate your hysteria meter. The extremist muslims (if it's shown that San Bernardino was indeed a Jihadist attack) have managed to kill 17 of you so far this year. Seventeen too many, but paltry by comparison with the 448¹ slaughtered in mass shootings in the USA by down-home, gun-toting, second amendment beneficiaries. Even paltrier by comparison with the 1,048² shot by the police (and no, I'm not suggesting these were all innocent - just quoting another statistic). I don't have a word to compare it with the total of 12,313³who have died in gun violence so far this year.

So if you want to be terrified, even just about mass killings, worry about your muslim neighbour 26 times less than about yer man walking out of your local gun shop with an AK47 or a bazooka or whatever is on special this week.

1. http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015
2. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
3. http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

[omaghjoe]

Here's a conversation I pulled off a Facebook friends' page.....interesting perspective from viewpoint of a concealed carrier (in a conversation with her friend who is all for gun control)


Everyone assumes anything other than what they believe is an oppositional extremist view. I'm not naive enough to think that this stuff won't happen no matter what we do. I do however think that we have a better chance of protecting ourselves and each other if we have some way of defending ourselves in a room full of automatics weapons pointed at us. Imagine you and I are standing at a concert, Julia and Madeline in tow. They are going to try and kill all of us, execution style, regardless of what we say or do. You know I am concealed carrying and I've had the opportunity to practice and be a pretty good shot. Wouldn't you feel better knowing I could at least try to save our and our daughter's lives? I would. And whether you agree with me or not, I'll still pull it out and try to save you all, because it's my right to do that. I'm not saying we should all just have guns laying around. Gun sales on black Friday went up 4% from last year. Guess who reported that? The FBI. Because the people who are buying and concealing are doing it legally and through the system with background checks, etc. The people who are doing these shootings are extremists and/or criminals. Stricter gun laws aren't going to keep these people from obtaining guns ILLEGALLY which is what they do. DO you see my point here? Gun LAWS are for LAW ABIDING people. You know, the people who aren't breaking the law. Stricter gun laws are going to have ZERO effect on criminal use of firearms because they don't follow what? Laws. Right. Why punish the non-problem-causing, law abiding citizens by enforcing laws that don't effect the people who are the actual problem? The only effect that it has is that it makes the illegal gun owners aware of the fact that they will have little to no resistance if they attack.

But so many of these mass murderers DO get their guns legally! Isn't there some merit to tracing how many guns and rounds of ammo people buy on that basis? I wouldn't know where to begin to buy a gun in NYC, whereas when we're out west at the wife's home place I can just stroll into a sports shop to get a nice weapon and a pair of runners. How is the background and tracing stuff going to hurt the law abiding gun enthusiast?

Really? Have you actually tried to go through the process? I assume they are on display in cases? I doubt you can pick one up and carry it to the the counter and pay for it like you would a ham? I dunno? I assume you just cant buy a gun like a toy or a tin of beans?

Besides the point anyway. People that want deadly weapons get them anyway. Bans don t work and the US knows that better than anybody. Prohibition didn t turn out too well. In fact that probably contributed to the gun culture.

Not sure exactly what the rules are in her state, but it's not onerous judging by the routine nature of gun ownership there. I've been to family events where people were even open carrying. A little unnerving with small kids around, even climbing around the people packing.

I'm not advocating a ban. That ship sailed long ago.

Must be Arizona then?

Easy for me to say as its not my family but where you not tempted to blow town? I wouldnt want my weans around the like of that

Not Arizona, but a similar type of mindset, at least in parts of the state in question.

And yes, I was not comfortable. My, at the time, 3 year old was removed from the situation whenever he went near them.

Is this your inlaws Christmas card J70?

[Rossfan]

It's probably the Stews.
Excellent post by Hardy by the way.
Pity you hadn't the number of Syrians killed so far this year.

[whitey]

It's probably the Stews.
Excellent post by Hardy by the way.
Pity you hadn't the number of Syrians killed so far this year.

Bottom line is that many of the murders occurr in almost exclusviely black inner city neighborhoods, where white people would never go in a million years. They are drug and gang related and by no means random. When the people who are murdered dont look like you.....many people dont care

Homicide rate for white gun mad Americans is 2.5 per 100,000

Total homicide rate in Ireland is 1.1 per 100,000


Just to give you alittle perspective

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/black-americans-are-killed-at-12-times-the-rate-of-people-in-other-developed-countries/

[gallsman]

Muslim centric president ffs. Ironically, the appropriate response to that is "Jesus Christ!".

[armaghniac]

I think after 9/11 they should have allowed the sale of anti aircraft missiles.

[heganboy]

given that its your right under the constitution to bear arms

Let me just remind every one is it is an interpretation of AN AMENDMENT to the US constitution, that is deemed to give you the right to bear arms.

And just to mess with you- there's actually a couple of versions of the amendment in question, and a lot of debate has occurred on the importance of the first part of the text referring to a well regulated militia.

this is the version that was passed by Congress and kept with the rest of the original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights as prepared by William Lambert

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However the version that Jefferson had ratified by the states read as below:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed 

So that's clear as mud then and prone to the interpretation of the grammar nazis as well as everybody else. You could ask what constitutes a well regulated militia, and do people only have the right to bear arms in that militia?

Amend the amendment would seem to be the sensible idea. That happened with prohibition so there is precedent.

oh and so far in 2015 26 people have been killed by lightning in the US. 22 people have been killed by cows. NRA would do well to look into this.

[Hardy]

Pity you hadn't the number of Syrians killed so far this year.

I should have made that point. The major statistic is that about 187,000 civilians were killed in Syria in the four-and-a-half years from March 2011 to October 2015 and that, of those, killings by the Syrian regime outnumber those by all other actors by more than an order of magnitude: http://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/Who_Are_Killing_Civilians_in_Syria_en.pdf

In the context of the Jihadist killings of civilians in the West, it's worth noting that the number of of civilians killed in Syria by International Coalition forces between March 2011 and October 2015 is 251.

[whitey]

given that its your right under the constitution to bear arms

Let me just remind every one is it is an interpretation of AN AMENDMENT to the US constitution, that is deemed to give you the right to bear arms.

And just to mess with you- there's actually a couple of versions of the amendment in question, and a lot of debate has occurred on the importance of the first part of the text referring to a well regulated militia.

this is the version that was passed by Congress and kept with the rest of the original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights as prepared by William Lambert

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However the version that Jefferson had ratified by the states read as below:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed 

So that's clear as mud then and prone to the interpretation of the grammar nazis as well as everybody else. You could ask what constitutes a well regulated militia, and do people only have the right to bear arms in that militia?

Amend the amendment would seem to be the sensible idea. That happened with prohibition so there is precedent.

oh and so far in 2015 26 people have been killed by lightning in the US. 22 people have been killed by cows. NRA would do well to look into this.

Interesting, but I'd be surprised if it was changed in my lifetime. 

The popluar interpretation of the second ammendment has been upheld, and some would say strengthened by recent Supreme Court rulings

[Jell 0 Biafra]

given that its your right under the constitution to bear arms

Let me just remind every one is it is an interpretation of AN AMENDMENT to the US constitution, that is deemed to give you the right to bear arms.

And just to mess with you- there's actually a couple of versions of the amendment in question, and a lot of debate has occurred on the importance of the first part of the text referring to a well regulated militia.

this is the version that was passed by Congress and kept with the rest of the original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights as prepared by William Lambert

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However the version that Jefferson had ratified by the states read as below:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed 

So that's clear as mud then and prone to the interpretation of the grammar nazis as well as everybody else. You could ask what constitutes a well regulated militia, and do people only have the right to bear arms in that militia?

Amend the amendment would seem to be the sensible idea. That happened with prohibition so there is precedent.

I think people don't know/understand what has to happen for an amendment to be repealed  It's ridiculously tough, and right now there would be nowhere near enough support in enough states (neither general population nor elected reps) for repeal of the second amendment.

[armaghniac]

In fairness a gun could be used to stop a rogue cow. This may be an excuse for anyone near a cow.

[rrhf]

A bit like the quran open to interpretation.