[Phere]

I'm relatively new to this forum, but have been impressed with the intelligence and kindness of the people I have thus far encountered. This shooting has crippled me in ways I didn't think possible. I am a strong, even keel person. I do not suffer depression or other emotional challenges. However, since having my child my tolerance for the suffering of others has become a huge weight. Especially stories about children. Fucked up horrible things happening every day in every country to children is just more than my heart can bear. A week before the shooting I had avoided all news because I just couldn't handle another fucked up headline ('couple beats and strangles 2 yr old to death so they can go to amusement park' for example). I was DONE. Then that Friday came. I heard whispers and murmers and finally checked the news. And I fucking broke. There hasn't been a day where I haven't crumpled in sobs, every moment feels like a nightmare - only there's no relief upon waking because this shit is real and it happened. I am an atheist. I believe that this life we have, this one fleeting spark of time is it. It makes life - every life - so incredibly precious. These babies' deaths are not in anyway softened for me by the hopes that they are in heaven awaiting their family members. I have to face this head on and it's motherfucking horrible, motherfucking raw. Regarding the gun issue I am irate. Absolutely irate. This is the last straw. It should have been the last straw the first time someone blew away fellow civilians with an AR-15. No one needs a fucking arsenal in their homes. Events in which guns in homes are used to do harm completely overshadow events in which guns are used successfully for self defense. I am done with the same old tired excuses. Maybe these people can't visualize what that classroom looked like. Those teachers and those little bodies shredded apart by a semi-automatic. Those lives brutally and horrifically snuffed out in the span of a few heartbeats. FUCK the NRA. It took those motherfuckers a WEEK to come up with that? Arming every school????? With what funds? They and their conservative affiliates would squash ANY attempt to fund such an attempt by raising taxes. What a slap in the face to those families suffering the worst thing life has to offer. Fucking old-west style shootouts in public schools. What about movie theaters? Colleges? Parking lots? Restaurants? Oh...and you know what else? There WAS an armed guard at Columbine. He was added to the body count. FUCK the NRA for thinking we are so stupid as to even consider their brilliant fucking solution. I am sorry for the ranting and the language - for the first time in my life I am truly moved to do something that affects more than my family and my community - we need to make our voices heard. MY voice WILL be heard. When I hold my 2.5 year old to my chest and feel his heart beating and his arms wrapped tightly around me - my heart is absolutely torn to pieces for those Sandy Hook parents that will never be able to embrace their babies again. This is personal.

[Ulrik]

D, on 22 December 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

MTS, on 22 December 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

Nationwide, at least 23,000 schools — about one-third of all public schools — already had armed security on staff as of the most recent data, for the 2009-10 school year, and a number of states and districts that do not use them have begun discussing the idea in recent days.

Out of curiosity, has anyone outside the U.S. ever been to a public school that even had security staff, let alone armed security staff?

Not here, but we are small country, in school are just bullies and one crazy kid that stabbed teach to back with pocket knife... So far no need for guards, but thats about fact its impossible for teenager to get a gun. Otherwise, those little fucks are more rude and without respect...

[Pig Iron]

A petition on whitehouse.gov to deport CNN reporter Piers Morgan for saying much of the same things as in this thread has over 30000 signatures:

http://piersmorgan.b...-guns-not-more/

https://petitions.wh...ndment/prfh5zHD

Edit: in a country of more than 300 million that is ...

This post has been edited by Pig Iron: 24 December 2012 - 10:04 AM

[Shinrei]

I don't mind Piers Morgan, but the day after the shooting he had some people on his show, one of whom was a pro-gun advocate. Piers did his best Bill O'Reilly impersonation of yelling over the guy whenever he opened his mouth, and telling him what his opinion was. I don't care what your politics are, I can't stand that shit.

[Pig Iron]

Shinrei, on 24 December 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

I don't mind Piers Morgan, but the day after the shooting he had some people on his show, one of whom was a pro-gun advocate. Piers did his best Bill O'Reilly impersonation of yelling over the guy whenever he opened his mouth, and telling him what his opinion was. I don't care what your politics are, I can't stand that shit.

Never seen him. Just thought it was a sign of the strength of pro-gun sentiments (or lobby). Ironic if you want guns to protect things like freedom of speech.

This post has been edited by Pig Iron: 24 December 2012 - 11:57 AM

[Battalion]

Briar King, on 23 December 2012 - 09:20 AM, said:

Id like to share a story with yall concerning one of the most profound lessons in my childhood given to me by one of the best people in my life, my father a Vietnam Vet.

When I was 9 or 10 yrs old one day out on our hunting lease we were walking down a firelane to go put out deer food. We both had 20 gauge shotgons with us and I desperatly wanted to fire it at something. A small finch(bird) landed on a tree by us and I got excited over it. I asked my dad if I could shoot it and he asked me why cause we werent out there to kill birds. My response was just to do it dad. So he tells me to go ahead then and do it. I did and I remember being happy when I saw it falling out the tree. With a smile on my face I turned to my dad shrieking dad dad did you see that I got it! Yes he said and I noticed that he wasnt excited along with me. He said ok son now lets go see what you killed. We walked over to it lying on the ground and I saw its broken little body and what I had done cause I wanted to kill something. My dad(and his face is stuck in my head 22 yrs later) asked me if I was happy at what I had just done. No I told him Im not. We cant eat this bird Tanner he said so you didnt need to kill it that was senseless son. I asked him then why did you let me do it dad. He said to teach you a lesson about the power you are holding in your hands and what it does and to ALWAYS remember it, that killing an animal for food is one thing, killing to kill is quite another son, now bury this bird and to remember the lesson it taught you.I cried the entire outing till we got back to camp and I went to bed and to this day Ive not shot anything that hasnt gone onto our table to eat. I can not even grasp the concept other then in war what it would take to fire that kind of power on a human.

Guns require the utmost respect from their handlers and I like to think my family has this honor and that I pass it onto my 2 kids and future kids if Im lucky enough to have them.


Guns do not belong at schools. Arming teachers are a fucking dumb idea. I can deal with the idea I guess of a security officer stationed outside the building but they need to be ex military/police with extensive training and on going training period.

This post isnt ment to purposefully offend anyone so if it does Im sorry to whoever you are.

Great story, your Dad sounds like a wise man, you must be proud of him.

Regarding this: "The only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun." While I happen to agree that once someone flips and starts shooting kids, the sooner a cop or a soldier can get on the scene and take the person out, surely armed guards in schools and shootouts in classrooms can't be the answer.
Society needs to be more ready and alert to people who are mentally unstable, because ultimately I kind of go along with the guns don't kill people, people kill people line. Maybe we need to spend more time researching what it is that pushes people over the edge, what kind of people they were building up to the breakdown and so on.
These things must be about prevention. I wonder if somewhere along the line these people who commit such acts of madness might be diagnosed with the same brain failure.

[Coco with marshmallows]

Just a general point regarding the (to me, idiotic) idea of arming teachers -

Isn't teaching a job with a pretty high nervous breakdown / stress sickness rate already?

It can be damn stressful dealing with a roomful of people at the best of times, and its fairly common to hear of teachers flipping out and slapping/hitting a kid because they've been pushed too far.

And people recommend arming them?

If a person has enough rage to blindly lash out against a kid with their hands, is it really such a stretch for one of them to draw and fire instead if they have that option?

[nacht]

Shinrei, on 24 December 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

I don't mind Piers Morgan, but the day after the shooting he had some people on his show, one of whom was a pro-gun advocate. Piers did his best Bill O'Reilly impersonation of yelling over the guy whenever he opened his mouth, and telling him what his opinion was. I don't care what your politics are, I can't stand that shit.

I never thought I would miss Larry King :-)
Thinking back now, Larry almost seems the perfect interviewer. He was always calm, treated his guest with respect and let the guest do most of the talking ..

[nacht]

Cocoreturns, on 24 December 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

Just a general point regarding the (to me, idiotic) idea of arming teachers -

Isn't teaching a job with a pretty high nervous breakdown / stress sickness rate already?

It can be damn stressful dealing with a roomful of people at the best of times, and its fairly common to hear of teachers flipping out and slapping/hitting a kid because they've been pushed too far.

And people recommend arming them?

If a person has enough rage to blindly lash out against a kid with their hands, is it really such a stretch for one of them to draw and fire instead if they have that option?

I think this actually illustrates the fundamental issue at the heart of the discussion. Ultimately it is about trust and choice. Do you trust people to make the right choice?
In general, it seems people simply cannot believe that a teacher who "chooses" to arm himself or herself can be trusted to use it only when necessary.
Every day school teachers have the power to mess up the childs mind if they so desire to..
I tell this because my son is generally not happy about going to school (kindergarten) and he used to love going to a kindergarten class at daycare the previous year. His biggest flaw is that he is overenthusiastic and overcompetitive and does not follow the "school way" as a result (and I get to hear about it a lot)

Quote

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

I am not a gun fan (I only touched one once and it gave me the creeps and am basically a strong proponent of "rights") and never looked at the 2nd amendment seriously but looking at it closely actually shocked me. There are no restrictions or allowances of any kind. Nothing about "insane" people, nothing about the "weapons", basically anything goes. And the blind belief that people will make the right choice or bear the consequence... (WOW) or maybe they decided that federal government should simply not get involved in this (and that it should be a state or an even more "local" right assuming the state permitted it). I don't know what there intention was as I am not knowledgeable about it.

Maybe we should really interpret it as the "the right to not have their arms cut off" and not the right to own weapons. That would solve the little problem of how to amend the constitution.

[Gnaw]

From the LA Times Op-Ed page:



A conservative case for an assault weapons ban
If we can't draw a sensible line on guns, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.


By Larry Alan Burns

December 20, 2012



Last month, I sentenced Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison for his shooting rampage in Tucson. That tragedy left six people dead, more than twice that number injured and a community shaken to its core.

Loughner deserved his punishment. But during the sentencing, I also questioned the social utility of high-capacity magazines like the one that fed his Glock. And I lamented the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, which prohibited the manufacture and importation of certain particularly deadly guns, as well as magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The ban wasn't all that stringent — if you already owned a banned gun or high-capacity magazine you could keep it, and you could sell it to someone else — but at least it was something.

And it says something that half of the nation's deadliest shootings occurred after the ban expired, including the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. It also says something that it has not even been two years since Loughner's rampage, and already six mass shootings have been deadlier.

I am not a social scientist, and I know that very smart ones are divided on what to do about gun violence. But reasonable, good-faith debates have boundaries, and in the debate about guns, a high-capacity magazine has always seemed to me beyond them.

Bystanders got to Loughner and subdued him only after he emptied one 31-round magazine and was trying to load another. Adam Lanza, the Newtown shooter, chose as his primary weapon a semiautomatic rifle with 30-round magazines. And we don't even bother to call the 100-rounder that James Holmes is accused of emptying in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater a magazine — it is a drum. How is this not an argument for regulating the number of rounds a gun can fire?

I get it. Someone bent on mass murder who has only a 10-round magazine or revolvers at his disposal probably is not going to abandon his plan and instead try to talk his problems out. But we might be able to take the "mass" out of "mass shooting," or at least make the perpetrator's job a bit harder.

To guarantee that there would never be another Tucson or Sandy Hook, we would probably have to make it a capital offense to so much as look at a gun. And that would create serious 2nd Amendment, 8th Amendment and logistical problems.

So what's the alternative? Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't let people who already have them keep them. Don't let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don't care whether it's called gun control or a gun ban. I'm for it.

I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That's why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state.

I even say it as someone whose feelings about the NRA mirror the left's feelings about Planned Parenthood: It has a useful advocacy function in our deliberative democracy, and much of what it does should not be controversial at all.

And I say it, finally, mindful of the arguments on the other side, at least as I understand them: that a high-capacity magazine is not that different from multiple smaller-capacity magazines; and that if we ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines one day, there's a danger we would ban guns altogether the next, and your life might depend on you having one.

But if we can't find a way to draw sensible lines with guns that balance individual rights and the public interest, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

There is just no reason civilians need to own assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Gun enthusiasts can still have their venison chili, shoot for sport and competition, and make a home invader flee for his life without pretending they are a part of the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden.

It speaks horribly of the public discourse in this country that talking about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting is regarded as inappropriate or as politicizing the tragedy. But such a conversation is political only to those who are ideologically predisposed to see regulation of any kind as the creep of tyranny. And it is inappropriate only to those delusional enough to believe it would disrespect the victims of gun violence to do anything other than sit around and mourn their passing. Mourning is important, but so is decisive action.

Congress must reinstate and toughen the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Larry Alan Burns is a federal district judge in San Diego.

[Overactive Imagination]

MTS, on 23 December 2012 - 08:14 AM, said:

More guns in the classroom is more likely to lead to more gun-related accidents in the one place such a measure would be designed to protect anyway, which is the height of stupidity.

Yeah, and more gun-related incidents (not accidents), like students stealing the guns, people breaking into schools at night to steal them... tons of possibilities.

[Tapper]

Shinrei, on 23 December 2012 - 09:35 AM, said:

Silencer, on 23 December 2012 - 03:08 AM, said:

Seriously, Shin, are you even arguing with anyone in this thread? XD

I guess I'm not sure. I think, to be perfectly honest, that I keep confusing comments by many as meaning "outright ban", when in fact we're basically advocating the same thing - sensible regulation. I think there ARE some people on here who would like to ban them outright, but I should just ignore them I suppose.

There is one thing I need to ask though -

Whether you are pro-gun/anti-gun/pro-regulated-guns or whatever, there are guns everywhere in the USA. Regulations are still not going to stop the occasional madman from getting their hands on some. I know we hate the idea of turning schools into armed camps/prisons or whatever, but what can or should be done to secure the schools?

The answer here is that you can't make schools secure - if someone is carrying a gun, he can shoot the disarming marshal first, after all, before going on a rampage. There have been school shootings in several countries with strict laws, and a person like Breivik could cause a massacre as well.
And if you ban guns or install metal detectors, what prevents a nut from bringing a plastic/home made explosive? Or transfer his shooting from the school to the school bus? Or walk into a supermarket? Or a gas station. Or a football stadium.

So the answer is, you can't ever prevent this 100% - just like criminals of a certain type will likely carry no matter the law (more the dealers/extortionists/ robbers than burglars). I think on the whole, you're more looking at ways to make the chance of it happening much smaller - but gun laws are not going to prevent people with a brain melting down from shooting others, or a shop keeper firing at robbers when they're already chased off when he pulls the shotgun out. What it will do, is reduce accidents, reduce domestic use, reduce people using guns in personal conflicts, and, as the article Gnaw posted says, take the "mass" out of mass killing - unless someone goes around carrying a bazillion guns like Neo in the Matrix. In which case, it is fairly visible that they have no good intentions.

[Silencer]

Yup. After all, all the increased airport security measures don't actually STOP terrorists blowing people up. After all, why bother struggling to get onto the plane in the first place, when you can just set off your bomb in the massive queues before Customs? Sure, it's not likely to be as psychologically effective, but you could get bigger bombs, and take out just as much people and fuck air travel over even more. And yet still regulations exist to help prevent the kind of plane bombings and hijackings that have gone on in the past.

[worry]

What's your opinion on the legality of silencers?

[Silencer]

worrywort, on 26 December 2012 - 02:02 AM, said:

What's your opinion on the legality of silencers?

For obvious reasons, I feel that I am completely legal in all nations! I mean, really, what sort of silly question is that?

[Illuyankas]

Unless they're literally a pillow taped to a barrel, ban 'em. YES YOU TOO MR ADMIN

[Silencer]

Illuyankas, on 26 December 2012 - 02:03 AM, said:

Unless they're literally a pillow taped to a barrel, ban 'em. YES YOU TOO MR ADMIN

Let's see how that goes for you. Considering, after all, I am the Law!

[Gnaw]

I don't know why any civilian needs them. And virtually non for police officer to have one.

[Phere]

No civilian needs semi-automatics with 100 round drums. Why ANYONE is disputing this is beyond me. For fuck's sake - this is not a 2nd amendment issue - this is about public safety. At the VERY LEAST these weapons should be stored at the local police department - if you are going to target practice - you fill out a form with a week's advance notice - check them out and back in at the appropriate time or heavy fines are incurred - perhaps there are already such systems at shooting clubs? (whatever those places are called)

[Una]

America is a very strange place. We outsiders can comment all we want, but I find that we really just don't get them.

For example, I was visiting my cousins in San Francisco. One of my favorite things to do is swing dancing, and San Francisco has a really good dance scene, so I headed out to a dance to check it out. I'm dancing with this guy I've only just met and we're chatting. Keep in mind I've known this person for about 2 minutes:

American: "So, you're from Canada?"
Canadian: "Yup! Just visiting some family."
American: "I hear they have gun control where you're from."
Canadian: "Well, yes."
American: "So then, I have a question. How do you defend yourself?"
Canadian, totally not trying to be facetious, just saying the first thing that comes into her head, because she really hasn't considered this problem, "Defend myself? Against what? Bears? I live in the city."
....
Canadian, as she clues in to what he is trying to ask, "Oh! I see what you are asking. It's just different where I'm from. People do have guns, but big stretches of the country are actually quite rural, so people that live in the country really do need guns to scare off bears and wolves or shoot gophers and rabbit on their farms and stuff like that. So that's what I was thinking when you asked. But if you live a city like I do, you don't really have to worry about wild animals, so most people in the city don't actually need guns. You're talking about defending against people, right?"
American: "Uh-huh"
Canadian: (speechless)

It's just a different world. I haven't lived there for any significant length of time, so I can't tell if it really is that dangerous down there, or people are just paranoid. I just can't tell. All I know is that even though they look like us and talk like us, and even share some common history, culturally, once you get past the surface, there are things that probably don't make sense unless you're from there. The whole idea of the "right to bear arm" is totally bizarre to anyone who doesn't come from that culture.