I hate the idea of gun control. It’s the assholes pulling the trigger we have to control.
I assume everybody agrees that crazy people should not have military grade weapons… bombers, fighter jets, drones, tanks, artillery, machine guns or a high capacity, high-speed rifle that can kill 9 people in 30 seconds. (Dayton)
Gun lovers say it’s “mental health issues” and “violent video games” — so doesn’t that mean we need to keep these weapons out of the hands of crazy people and gamers? Sure the second part is idiotic, but most politicians are idiots.
We can spend all the money on earth on mental health. But we are not going to “cure it.” We would be lucky if we could just identify the dangerous ones and keep them from loading up a garage full of weapons. No one wants to see the guy in his pajamas jacking off on the bus on Monday, come back covered in a bandolier of bullets and cleaning his rifle on Tuesday.
And Democrats want to limit guns… apparently just to limit guns. That’s pretty fucking stupid too, but at least it includes “we don’t want crazy people to have guns.”
Only the real nutjobs and gun manufactures will even argue the idea that the mentally ill should be fully locked and loaded.
Don’t give me that “2nd amendment right” shit. Read the whole fucking amendment…
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.
A well-regulated militia… A militia is controlled by the state — we call it the national guard. Hell, George Washington shot people in the militia who were “un-regulated.”
Surely we can check people to see if they would “qualify” for a well-regulated militia before we issue them the means to kill many, many people at will.
We take freedom and the power to make your own decisions away from the severally mentally ill all the time. We could use the same mechanisms to keep crazy people from getting these high-powered weapons (legally).
I’m talking about the big weapons, the high capacity shit they saw in Dayton or Las Vegas that lets one person kill an entire crowd in just a few minutes (or a few seconds) before the cops can get there.
Sure most gun murders are done by handguns, and yes people get killed with knives. But we are reducing those crimes over time. They would go down even more if we reformed our fucked up drug laws… but that’s another story.
What’s going up are these mass shootings when one asshole shoots up a school or a store or a movie theater or a church. That shit is getting worse, and we are doing nothing about it.
Getting more background checks, checking people for mental fitness and making it tougher to get these guns is not going to solve every potential mass shooting. But it’s something, and it’s pretty fucking likely to stop some.
Like Congress, “thoughts and prayers” do nothing.
So let’s start where our founders did. “Well regulated” means “crazy people should not have powerful guns.”
That’s where Madison began the Second Amendment 228 years ago. He had to write out every word and every copy by hand with ink and a feather. He’s not just throwing in words for fun. There’s a reason, the second amendment says “well-regulated,” so let’s go back to putting some regulations around who gets to carry around the means to kill us all.
Found it difficult to get beyond the first sentence but…. glad I did
Thanks. We are so trained to key in on the words “gun control”, we have forgotten what the words actually mean. It would be like saying getting a driver’s license is “car control.”
It’s absurd that we can’t do one fucking thing about it. Not even a tiny rule that would stop the stream of nutters from stockpiling guns and ammunition. Nothing. But pray. And half of the country doesn’t do that.
I’m sick of cleaning up brains. Let’s get our shit together.
Thoughts and prayers.
I find myself wondering if your comment about cleaning up brains was honest or hyperbole. I worked the streets for 18 years and the only ones who cleaned up crime scenes were street cops, the fire department or coroner’s office.
I suspect you and I are not in agreement on this one. Background checks on nuts might stop a few of these shootings, but not many. I can’t think of a more effective way to stop mass shootings than to outlaw the assault rifles that make it possible to kill dozens of people in a matter of seconds.
I could agree to that. But let’s start where everyone should agree.
It doesn’t sound as if you are familiar with weapons or their use. Your assumption that limiting assault rifles, whatever they are will have any effect on violent crime is untested. Removing the homicides that are committed using all rifles barely makes a dent in the overall numbers.
My friend is a 2nd Amendment guy and likes to point out that the Swiss have a ton of weapons and low crime and few mass shootings. I chatted with a Swiss guy online and he pointed out a huge difference is that the Swiss don’t have a violent culture. They aren’t obsessed by guns — sure, some of them are but people call them Waffennarr (gun-fools). A lot of people are in the militia and have a rifle at home or kept at the armory. Not a lot of pistol owners. Most Swiss see guns as tools and don’t get a hardon about all the different guns out there to collect.
I’m all about having stricter background checks and having certain guns restricted to members of a well-regulated militia. People want a weapon for home defense. How about shotguns? You don’t need an AR-15 blowing through your walls and the neighbors’ walls and killing them. And needing them to defend against the government – please, some dude and his militia buddies will be wiped out by the armed forces in no time.
Canada has a lot of guns too. But the attitude is completely different too. Yeah the idea citizens with ar-15’s are keeping us “free” is nonsense.
You should probably also point out that the gun-nut-militia guys you’re referring to are probably prior service veterans. They might be a little slower than they were, but I doubt that they would be wiped out that easily.
The other point is that penetration is not dictated by what you call a weapon but the characteristics of the round. You should educate yourself on weapons before you make exaggerated statements on performance.
Interesting point. But like the fighters in Ukraine, there is little a group with small arms can do against a modern military with drones, helicopters, artillery… The idea of house to house fighting is a nightmare similar to Iraq in early 2000s and Gaza in 2024. I fight it strange that people who argue to carry AR 15’s think they could survive such a world and that anyone would want to live that way. Even in the small chance they could hold out for a few months or a year.
The wish for a non-military civil war with “armed gangs” on each side and a divided military or one that sits in the sidelines is a future like Haiti. Unthinkable to me. Immoral and horrible for everyone. Thinking armed citizens could survive in either scenario is a pipe dream at best and a national nightmare at worst.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Sorry. No one needs an AR-15. If you think you need one in your day-to-day life, you’re already nuts. And how do you propose profiling people as to who should have a gun and who should not? Most people have enough intelligence to pass the sniff test. Gun control in other countries work. Facts are facts. I’m tired of people thinking that gun control means “taking away our guns and freedom!” Grow up. It’s not all guns that are a problem. You can keep your hunting rifles and handguns. Can we begin somewhere with some first steps and some sensible legislation, or will Americans just keep arguing and praying for the next 20 years while thousands of innocents die.
Suprise! I disagree. The arguments are poorly informed at best. As with most facts and information, the information being referenced is skewed by the media it is being delivered through.
Most of the homicides are not being reported by the mainstream media. In the U.S. we barely ever hear about the murders that happen in other countries and rely on secondhand reports. If we look closer at the crime statistics from Britian and Australia, there is a significant jump in homicides from knives. It is an arrestable offense to carry any bladed weapon in the U.K. Recently in Australia, there was a mass murder of children in a playground with a knife.
In the States, unless the shooting is splashy, it doesn’t make it past local news. Only then are we subjected to a series of “experts” who pontificate on their particular opinion. Rarely are there any comments on the weapon, if it was purchased by the user or stolen. There are even less intelligent comments on the difference between “military grade” and civilian models of AR 15 platform rifles. Arguments about effective range, penetration, energy transfer, traumatic damage are even more irrelevant and less informed.
What we hear even less of are the times that crimes are prevented or stopped by an armed civilian. Sadly, the statistics aren’t available since the FBI changed the Crime Statistics reporting platform in 2020. I guess COVID messed up the data integration, but, whatever.
I agree that there are people who are mentally unfit to have access to weapons. How do we propose to limit their access without limiting everyone’s access? Who determines what mental instability is? Do we exclude all Trans people, because there have been several mass shootings, in schools, committed by mentally unstable trans offenders? What about anyone with PTSD? Do we exclude every police officer, military veteran, rape victim and home invasion survivor? How do we prevent personal prejudice from creeping into the system and a hyper-liberal psychologist barring anyone who doesn’t believe the same way as them? Or, the opposite, and someone who will simply rubber stamp everyone? As with our laws, the ability to commit a crime is not the same as actually committing a crime.
The argument of separating or prioritizing lines of the constitution by language and linguistic style is also false and unsupported by either the Supreme Court or the Federalist Papers. Rhetoric was the language of the educated in the 1700s, it is involuted and can be difficult. Our modern language is more direct. Do we allow our current prejudice and linguistic preference to dictate our understanding?
Feel free to call me a gun nut or whatever you feel is appropriate. I spent 40 years defending your right to your opinion. I defended it carrying a gun. It’s your life. Your choice. Defend yourself and your family or not. Call 911 if you think it will help. I’ve cleaned up enough crime scenes to know what your chances are.
We make judgements about who is mentally fit all the time. Who must be the institutionalized, who is not. Who is fit to be a police officer and who is not. Who can serve in the military and who cannot. We can develop a system to limit people who can have access to guns. Domestic abusers, people who have been violent in the past, people who have violent fantasies as expressed in drawings at school or told to mental health professionals should not have access to high powered weapons with high rates of fire. No system is perfect and it will not be easy. But we have to try and do something. Ignoring the problem is not fixing it.
MAYBE WE CAN LEARN SOMETHING FROM OUR “FOUNDING FATHERS”.
“In the UK, people must have a good reason and police approval to own a gun, and must pass strict background checks. The police issue a firearms certificate to possess, buy, or acquire a gun or shotgun, and to buy ammunition. Most handguns have been banned in Great Britain since 1996.”
Proportionally, UK has a higher homicide rate per capita than the US, according to the 2022 statistics, with those numbers reflecting the tighter gun control laws you cite. The statistics also reflect the same concentration of violence in the minority communities, though with more deaths by stabbing. The draconian laws about carrying a knife don’t seem to have much effect. I haven’t addressed the reports of aggravated assault that don’t result in death.
While everyone screams “gun control”, I wonder why we don’t just enforce the laws we already have.
What we learned from our founding fathers is simple, sometimes you need a gun to protect yourself.
I don’t know where you are getting your stats but quick Google shows homicide rate in Uk is 9.3 per million compared to 6.3 per 100,000 in US. Meaning violent crime is 3 to 7 times higher in US than UK. https://academic.oup.com/book/36298/chapter-abstract/317747759?redirectedFrom=fulltext#. For 2022 the US had 4 times the intentional homicide rate. https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime/Violent-crime. Please cite your source, because from everything I find it is upside down. The founding fathers called for a “well regulated militia” not guns for everyone to carry everywhere.
Good stuff as always. As a gun owner i tend to agree with Jim Jeffries (comedian) on his bit about gun owners and control. Really the only real reason you need a high capacity assault rifle is for fun. That’s it. Get some better laws on regulation. I will keep my shotguns for sporting clay and bird hunting and the bolt action deer rifle i have for the one deer a year I get. The pistols I got just mainly hang out in the safe for the beer bottle and can army or boring range shooting. I hate cleaning those bastards so rarley do they come out. Really dont need them for anything other than fun though. Truly sad day when that guy shot all those kinds here in Uvalde Tx. Nothing was done. 0. That is also a secondary tragedy.
-Butterpants
Thanks. I’m all for fun and freedom. But with weapons of mass destruction comes responsibility to the masses.