If "guns don't kill people, people kill people", why aren't guns being allowed at the NRA convention?
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Duh ! Their afreared a wack-nut-job will come in with a 50 caliber and mow them all down.
You know what? It’s actually kind of a blessing that people are so dependent on guns. In countries that prohibit guns, people are much more creative when it comes to ways to kill people. Acid is actually a very common method to kill in my country, to name a few.
@Mimishu1995 But acid can only kill or maim one or two people at a time. Which in itself is horrible. But guns can kill many, many people at one time.
@chyna my point is that countries that ban guns aren’t necessarily safer. People who have never seen a gun in their life can still go out of their way to kill. Knife, acid, rope, harpoon, car, improvised weapons… They can kill if they want to.
Because guns kill people. They lie.
What would be the point? Usually, I think, people wear their guns to show unarmed people that they have them. Everybody at a NRA meeting knows everybody there has one…
And just because someone has one doesn’t mean they’re going to use it against someone else.
@Mimishu1995
We’d have to figure out how many weapon related injuries/deaths each country had to determine if they’re equal.
I have an inkling they’re aren’t even close, but I could be wrong.
@Blackberry yeah, that would be a better way to measure. But I have a feeling my country can easily surpass the US in terms of death if everyone is given a gun, given how easily provoked people can be. There have been so many incidents when people kill each other just because of a disagreement here already. There are also incidents where people form mods and kill just with everything they have in their hands. Gangs of school children, gangs of adults, and in some cases even the entire village.
Fine, people kill people. Why are we trusting incompetent people with guns? Incompetence comes in many forms. People too young to handle the responsibility, people who have various mental issues, people who haven’t taken a safety class. Then there is the matter of semi-automatic weapons, how often do 30 people come charging at someone that you need a semi-automatic weapon to protect yourself?
It’s all bullshit, of course guns kill people. Just ask a cop. They shoot to kill.
I think my responses might come off as me being pro-gun. I have to clarify: I’m in no way pro-gun. If you think gun laws can help, I have no problem with that. I’m just saying that gun isn’t the root cause of everything. I’m speaking in the perspective of someone who lives in a country that outright bans guns and has most of its citizens not seeing a real gun before, yet terrible crimes still happen. I can’t imagine the day my country stops banning gun. I would be dead in 5 minutes after that law was passed because I crossed path with a random person and they thought I was not looking at them and not looking at them meant I was disrespecting them.
The restriction is not being put into place by the NRA. It is being put into place by the US Secret Service. That is because President Trump is speaking. They have the duty to keep him alive. And it isn’t the guns they are worried about. It is the guns in the hands of nut-jobs that have Trump Derangement Syndrome that would want to kill, or try to kill Trump.
That brings us back to it being the person, not the gun. If all you had were guns sitting in every seat with no people, it wouldn’t be an issue.
@seawulf575 That brings us back to screening people before selling them a gun.
@JLeslie What would you propose we screen them for? Every gun I have ever bought required an FBI background check. That makes sense to me to ensure convicted felons aren’t getting guns.
I’ve heard about “red flag laws” and I’ll tell you I find them scary as hell. It would make accusation enough to mess with you. Let’s say you got divorced and your ex decided to be spiteful. So she declares you are a threat to yourself and possible others. What if your teenaged son gets pissed off because you grounded him for doing drugs and files a complaint? What if your neighbor that just doesn’t like guns calls in a complaint on you so he can feel good about getting guns taken away? In swoops the authorities, treating you like it is all gospel and you need to have all your guns taken away. What we now have is a situation where you were deprived of your property without any due process at all. And I have seen from other efforts like this that once the person’s guns are taken away it is a long, costly and ultimately futile effort to get them back. Even if the guns were seized wrongfully (bogus claim) the state will never give them back. So what you end up with is bullshit claims from spiteful people with an ax to grind. AND you’ve set the precedence that you are guilty until you prove your innocence. NOW, if you wanted to add a caveat to these laws that says if they are false claims the claimant is going to prison for 10 years without a trial, I might consider it. And that would apply to police, DAs, everyone.
What else? What other screening do you propose? Here’s the problem with things like this: they don’t do anything. Suppose we mandate a psychological evaluation prior to purchasing a gun. And we’ll even assume (which I feel is a bogus assumption) that all psychologists are perfectly professional with no bias or outside influence. And you pass that evaluation and then go buy your gun. But then 2 weeks later, your life suddenly went into the toilet and so you decided to go crazy so you can commit suicide by cop. You did all the proper things to get the gun and none of it would stop the later changes that might occur. Or here’s one…the shooter in TX was a trans person. What if the efforts to make that person Trans unhinged them? Would you be willing to entertain issues like that? The whole thing is just a sham to try stigmatizing guns.
The part of the entire debate over guns that is entirely excluded is the overwhelming number of gun lawful gun owners that do not present a threat at all. The number of gun homicides in this country is around 8000 a year with most of those being criminals that acquired their guns illegally. The number of gun homicides that were committed by people that obtained their guns legally is extremely small…even in places like Texas that have lax gun control laws. it is in the tenth or hundredth of a percent of all gun owners.
Look, there is not going to be one perfect answer.
Better help for people who are mentally ill or struggling will help. People reporting seeing or hearing someone post threats or talking about harming someone would help. Raising gun purchase laws to 21 (Florida did raise the age) with some reasonable exceptions. Not allowing easy purchase at gun shows. Not allowing multiple gun purchase in one day. Not allowing semi-automatic weapons to be sold to the average person. Teaching empathy in school and raising expectations to be good to each other. Teaching customer service in school. I feel like we teach not to bully, but we don’t teach how to treat each other.
Background checks will be imperfect, age restrictions will be imperfect, and our mental health system will always be imperfect. The thing is each type of prevention might prevent some of these massacres. Just like being cautious about communicating contagious disease might prevent some infections, and in the case of covid would have prevented some deaths. It won’t be perfect, but everything counts.
If this young man had had difficulty buying a gun because of his age or trouble buying a semi-automatic weapon, this probably would not be the same story in the news. I read he used to harm animals, and people knew it. That should have been reported if that’s true. Makes my stomach turn.
@JLeslie You do understand that most weapons are semi-automatic, right? And that even single shot guns can still kill people? Here’s a thought: why do these nut jobs target schools? Elementary schools? Because they know that it is unlikely that anyone there will fight back. Guns are not allowed in schools, the children are way too young to pose any threat of retaliation or resistance. And shooting up a school gains them fame. So think about why these are such attractive targets.
Ever hear of the Chardon High School shooting in 2012? It happened in Chardon Ohio. A 17 year old stole a gun (didn’t buy it) and killed 3, injured another 6. Know what the families of the Chardon HS students asked for? That the asshole NOT be named…that he would get no fame from the media. As a result, there was little coverage on that shooting. The kid did not get his 15 minutes of fame.
There have been instances where armed guards in a school have stopped the active shooter. But we don’t want to arm teachers (and train them) or have full time guards in the schools. So we don’t want guns in the schools and we don’t want to have people that could fight back. We’d rather leave it to police which delays response and allows the shooter to do more damage.
So it seems like we don’t want to look at the target to evaluate that. We don’t want to do things that could potentially deter or stop a shooting at schools. But we want to try addressing the guns (which is pretty much impossible at this point in our country) or the mental health angle (which you have, yourself, stated to be imperfect).
I have a great idea: let’s look at social things that influence these shooters. I already mentioned the fame aspect. What about violent video games or movies that they grow up being saturated with? What about music that talks about violence and racism? Again, violence is saturating our society, yet no one really wants to address any of that.
@seawulf575 Most people are fine with trained armed guards in schools, they just have a problem with teachers being armed.
I’m fine looking at the violence in videos and movies and doing something to curtail it. I think it’s unnecessary and I don’t like watching it myself.
If I’m not well versed in gun jargon let’s leave that to people who know the technical names and mechanism. My point is 6 or 8 rounds is enough and guns that require pulling a trigger every time would kill fewer people than just holding down a trigger and 45 bullets fly in a minute.
I’m done. I’ve said what I want to say here. I’m not trying to get rid of all guns or blame one thing, I’m trying to argue we need a multi-pronged approach, see what helps, maybe tweak again in the future, but do SOMETHING, and in fact more than one thing. Cherry picking why one law or policy wouldn’t have worked in one particular case ignores that it might have worked in another case.
Governor Abbot has been talking about improving mental health care in TX for years, and yet TX is at the bottom of the states for mental health care according to some surveys. When is he going to do something? Even if he does improve it there will always be mental illness in a society.
Texas I think, skipped the screening, you got cash and you got the gun !
Instead of screening specifically for gun ownership, how about better mental healthcare as a whole, which would as a side benefit make life safer in general.
Edit to add I think Mimi has made very good points.
Very few people will realize or even admit they have a mental issue.
Considering guns have flooded this country for hundreds of years and that this is a rather new phenomena it’s pretty clear that there are other issues at play. I will say it is too easy to just buy a gun all willy nilly though. I would think it should take the same hoops as it does to get a carry permit.
No guns are allowed for the simple reason that the convention organisers don’t want anyone to be shot. A simple idea but who knows, it may catch on.
@JLeslie “guns that require pulling a trigger every time would kill fewer people than just holding down a trigger and 45 bullets fly in a minute.” What you are describing is a fully automatic weapon (a machine gun) They are and have been all of my life, illegal.
Not illegal @Jaxk
“Federal law prohibits the possession of newly manufactured machine guns, but permits the transfer of machine guns lawfully owned prior to May 19, 1986, if the transfer is approved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives. As a result, a substantial number of machine guns are still in circulation. As of 2020, the national registry of machine guns contained registrations for 726,951 machine guns.”
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/policy-areas/hardware-ammunition/machine-guns-50-caliber/
@Jaxk Ok, my mistake, so is it just that you can load a lot of ammo at once? That still seems like a problem. Lots of people being killed. Large bullet too, isn’t it? Causes a tremendous amount of damage.
@JLeslie The dreaded AR-15 shoots a modified .22 caliber bullet…about the smallest bullet there is.
^^At close range though the velocity is going to tear through those young children. It doesn’t matter all this technical stuff. For knowledge yes, but we can all see plain as day these weapons are killing multiple people in mass shootings.
Someone told me the AR15 is marketed to teenagers. Is that true? They really are ISIS in America. Evangelical Christians just eat up all that gun stuff. Who are you fighting? Who are the bad people that you need those fire arms?
Oh crap. I think this is the Q I meant to unfollow. Lol.
The .223 or 5.56 NATO the typical AR-15 shoots is more powerful than a .22LR. It’s medium calibur. I don’t know where teenagers get advertising trying to sell them an AR-15. The media seems to be selling more of these by demonizing them. They likely do this because they look big and scary to people who are not familiar with firearms. Banning that particular rifle does nothing, at all. Listen up non-gun people, what you are after is detachable magazine capacity. That’s it. That’s what makes sense. Without going into too much technical detail the magic number is greater than 10 rounds. That is something that can be accomplished.
@JLeslie Yes, it is a beefed up charge, but the bullet itself is not a “large” bullet. I’m with @Blackwater_Park that the media has done more to put the AR-15 in the limelight than anything else. I’ve seen VERY few actual ads for AR-15’s. But you hear about them all the time. Combine that with video games and movies where these “wicked looking” guns are very popular and voila! you have a growing market.
@JLeslie Who are we fighting? That’s the problem. You never know. And people that aren’t bad right now might become bad later on. Take a look at Venezuela as a perfect example. A decent country until the government ran it into the ground. Then the people, that were normally very nice, were suddenly at each other’s throats because they were starving. A break down of society is, in my opinion, not only possible but highly likely in this country in the not so distant future. Want another example? Look at Portland, Seattle, Kenosha, Ferguson, Charlotte and how many others where a “peaceful protest” suddenly broke into riots, assaults, arson, murder, and everything else in between. Remember Mark and Patricia McCloskey? They were the Missouri couple that made the news. A group of “peaceful protesters” broke down the gates of their community to march in. Ostensibly they were going to the Mayor’s home to protest, but how would any of the members of that neighborhood know that? So the McCloskeys got their guns and sat outside. The mob walked by threatening to come back to them later. So if a group of, say, 30 people that are associated with protests that have become violent just broke into your neighborhood and were threatening you, your family and your home, what do you think…would 8 shots be enough? How about 10? 30? The scenarios are very real, factual in the news. The only part that DIDN’T get tested was how many bullets would be needed because the homeowners showed the proper restraint…you know…obeying the gun laws.
@seawulf575 okay so you are a Trump follower. He said during the BLM Protests, “Can’t you just shoot them.”
That is war on the members of your country, because they are not the same color.
@Tropical_Willie First off, I am not a Trump follower. I may vote for him and I may get pissed off at the lies that are passed as facts about him. But I follow my own mind.
As for quotes from him (and in reference to the comment about lies about him), what are your sources?
That’s not a source. If you tried to call that proof in a court, the judge would give you an eye roll an threaten you with contempt charges if you don’t knock it off. In fact, a high school debate student would tear you apart for that one.
“I got it from a paper that said some Trump acquaintance told someone he said it.”
Who is stupid enough to believe that?!? Lol, I don’t see your hand up.
@Tropical_Willie That is a report about a book from a disgruntled former employee. Hearsay at the very best. Hardly a solid source. Babylon Bee can come up with stuff just as good.
You be all or nothing if you want. I’m not.
I don’t know any Trump supporters who agree with him on everything. That includes his wife, kids, and exes.
I was against a total pull out of Afghanistan. I think we should have claimed ownership. In my opinion, we paid for it in full.
But then, instead of leaving, we surrendered.
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