DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Penny Can
HTML https://pennycan.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Off-Topic
*****************************************************
#Post#: 15220--------------------------------------------------
Guns
By: Mac Date: December 30, 2012, 1:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[glow=red,2,300]Guns[/glow]
I don't know exactly where I stand on guns, but for a long time
I hated them. Now listening to my radio Station with Dave
Glover, they have a lot of talk about Guns. Mostly in their
Guns, Ammo and Liquor segment. Really it's a just fun discussion
about types of guns and wines. Go figure. The discussions
definitely have me leaning the other way.
But... with the recent shooting in Newtown, my beliefs have been
thoroughly shaken. Everything needs to be re-examined. I'm
appalled at the NRA's director's comments. I am never in favor
of someone who has convictions that so override common sense. I
understand gun advocacy. I understand the genie is out of the
bottle with so many guns out in people's hands.
I also understand what we as American's are doing is NOT
WORKING. Lots of essay's have come out over the past month, but
I haven't re-posted because I wanted more info. I do think this
latest one has some pretty solid arguments.
[quote][glow=red,2,300][size=14pt]The NRA Myth of Arming the
Good Guys[/glow]
HTML http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_51/fatalities3_0.png
The gut-wrenching shock of the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary
School on December 14 wasn't just due to the 20 unthinkably
young victims. It was also due to the realization that this
specific, painfully familiar nightmare was unfolding yet again.
As the scope of the massacre in Newtown became clear, some news
accounts suggested that mass shootings in the United States have
not increased, based on a broad definition of them. But in fact
2012 has been unprecedented for a particular kind of horror
that's been on the rise in recent years, from Virginia Tech to
Tucson to Aurora to Oak Creek to Newtown. There have been at
least 62 such mass shootings in the last three decades, attacks
in which the killer took the lives of four or more people (the
FBI's baseline for mass murder) in a public place—a school, a
workplace, a mall, a religious building. Seven of them have
occurred this year alone.
Along with three other similar though less lethal rampages—at a
Portland shopping mall, a Milwaukee spa, and a Cleveland high
school—2012 has been the worst year for these events in modern
US history, with 151 victims injured and killed. More than a
quarter of them were young children and teenagers.
The National Rifle Association and its allies would have us
believe that the solution to this epidemic, itself but a sliver
of America's overall gun violence, is to put firearms in the
hands of as many citizens as possible. "The only thing that
stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," declared
the NRA's Wayne LaPierre in a press conference a week after
Newtown, the same day bells tolled at the National Cathedral and
the devastated town mourned its 28 dead. (That day a gunman in
Pennsylvania also murdered three people and wounded a state
trooper shortly before LaPierre gave his remarks.) LaPierre
explained that it was a travesty for a school principal to face
evil unarmed, and he called for gun-wielding security officers
to be deployed in every school in America.
As many commentators noted, it was particularly callous of the
NRA to double down on its long-standing proposal to fight gun
violence with more guns while parents in Newtown were burying
their first graders. But more importantly, the NRA's argument is
bereft of supporting evidence. A closer look reveals that their
case for arming Americans against mass shooters is nothing more
than a cynical ideological talking point—one dressed up in
appeals to heroism and the defense of constitutional freedom,
and wholly reliant on misdirection and half truths. If only
Sandy Hook's principal had been packing heat, the argument goes,
she could've stopped the mass killer. There's just one little
problem with this: Not a single one of the 62 mass shootings we
studied in our investigation has been stopped this way—even as
the nation has been flooded with millions of additional firearms
and a barrage of recent laws has made it easier than ever for
ordinary citizens to carry them in public places, including
bars, parks, and schools.
Attempts by armed citizens to stop shooters are rare. At least
two such attempts in recent years ended badly, with the would-be
good guys gravely wounded or killed. Meanwhile, the five cases
most commonly cited as instances of regular folks stopping
massacres fall apart under scrutiny: Either they didn't involve
ordinary citizens taking action—those who intervened were
actually cops, trained security officers, or military
personnel—or the citizens took action after the shooting
rampages appeared to have already ended. (Or in some cases,
both.)
But those facts don't matter to the gun rights die-hards, who
never seem to run out of intellectually dishonest ammo. Most
recently, they've pointed to the Portland shopping mall rampage
earlier in December, in which an armed civilian reportedly drew
his gun but thought twice about potentially hurting an innocent
bystander and ducked for cover instead of firing. The assailant
suddenly got scared of this retreating good guy with the gun,
they claim, and promptly shot himself dead. Obviously.
Another favorite tactic is to blame so called "gun-free zones"
for the carnage—as if a disturbed kid shoots up a school, or a
disgruntled employee executes his coworkers, or a neo-Nazi guns
down Sikhs at worship simply because he has identified the
safest place to go open fire. All we need to do is make sure
lots of citizens have guns in these locations, and voilŕ,
problem solved!
For their part, law enforcement officials overwhelmingly hate
the idea of armed civilians getting involved. As a senior FBI
agent told me, it would make their jobs more difficult if they
had to figure out which of the shooters at an active crime scene
was the bad guy. And while they train rigorously for responding
in confined and chaotic situations, the danger to innocent
bystanders from ordinary civilians whipping out firearms is
obvious. Exhibit A: the gun-wielding citizen who admitted to
coming within a split second of shooting an innocent person as
the Tucson massacre unfolded, after initially mistaking that
person for the killer, Jared Loughner.
The NRA's LaPierre was also eager to blame violent video games
and movies for what happened in Newtown, and to demonize the
"unknown number of genuine monsters" walking among us. Never
mind that the failure to recognize and treat mental health
problems is a crucial factor in this dark equation: Of the 62
mass shootings we examined, 36 of them were murder-suicides,
while assailants in seven other cases died in police shootouts,
widely considered to have been "suicide by cop."
Those who are serious about contending with the problem of mass
shootings understand that collecting and studying data is
crucial. Since we began our investigation after the attack in
Aurora in July, we've heard from numerous academic researchers,
legislative aides, and others wanting access to our full data
set. We've now published it here.
The question now isn't whether most Americans will take
seriously the idea of turning every grammar school in the nation
into a citadel. (Here, too, the NRA's argument falls apart; an
armed sheriff’s deputy at Columbine and a robust security force
at Virginia Tech didn't stop those slaughters from occurring.)
Now that we've just witnessed the worst year for mass shootings
in memory, including 20 of the most innocent of lives snuffed
out, what remains to be seen is whether real reform is finally
on the way on Capitol Hill. Despite years of this kind of
carnage, next to nothing has been changed in our legal system
with respect to how easy it is for a disturbed young man to get
his hands on a military-style assault rifle and a stockpile of
highly lethal ammunition.
Sen. Diane Feinstein has vowed to introduce a new ban on assault
weapons when Congress reconvenes in January. President Obama has
signaled that the gun issue will be a real priority going
forward. But once the raw emotion of Newtown dissipates there
will be the danger of slipping back into the same inertia and
political stalemate so successfully cultivated by the pro-gun
ideologues. Soon lawmakers will start eyeing their 2014
reelection campaigns and thinking about how much money the NRA
has in its coffers to take aim at them with should they dare to
dissent. This time, have we finally had enough?
Mark Follman
Senior Editor
Mark Follman is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Read more of
his stories, follow him on Twitter, or contact him with tips or
feedback at mfollman (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS | Twitter
[/size][/quote]
#Post#: 15224--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Chiprocks1 Date: December 30, 2012, 2:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
All of Obama's talk about Gun Reform will amount to....nothing.
We see this time and again after every shooting about how they
will NOW change the gun law because "enough is enough". At the
end of the day, each and every politician is just doing lip
service until the public moves onto something else to protest
and they won't have to go through with their proclamations.
#Post#: 15396--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Mac Date: January 3, 2013, 11:13 am
---------------------------------------------------------
A well thought out piece...
[glow=red,2,300]The NRA Claims the AR-15 Is Useful for Hunting
and Home Defense. Not Exactly.[/glow]
By Justin Peters @ Slate
[quote]Crime is Slate’s new crime blog. Like us on Facebook, and
follow us on Twitter @slatecrime.
On Dec. 24, in Webster, New York, an ex-con named William
Spengler set fire to his house and then shot and killed two
responding firefighters before taking his own life. He shot them
with a Bushmaster AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle—the same
weapon that Adam Lanza used 10 days earlier when he shot and
killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary. James Holmes used an
AR-15-style rifle with a detachable 100-round magazine this past
summer when he shot up a movie theater in Colorado. (Though the
AR-15 is a specific model of rifle made by Colt, the term has
come to generically refer to the many other rifles built to
similar specifications.)
Three makes a trend, as we all know, and many people have
reacted by suggesting that the federal government should ban the
AR-15 and other so-called assault weapons. Gun advocates have
responded with exasperation, saying that, despite appearances,
AR-15-style rifles are no more dangerous than any other gun. In
a piece today on humanevents.com titled “The AR-15: The Gun
Liberals Love to Hate,” NRA president David Keene blasted those
critics who “neither understand the nature of the firearms they
would ban, their popularity or legitimate uses.” Keene noted
there are several valid, non-murderous uses for rifles like the
AR-15—among them recreational target shooting, hunting, and home
defense—and argued that law-abiding firearms owners shouldn’t be
penalized because of homicidal loners who use semi-automatics
like the AR-15 for criminal purposes.
I generally consider myself a Second Amendment supporter, and I
haven’t yet decided where I stand on post-Newtown gun control. I
would own a gun if New York City laws didn’t make it extremely
difficult to do so. But I nevertheless find Keene’s arguments
disingenuous. It’s odd to cite hunting and home defense as
reasons to keep selling a rifle that’s not particularly well
suited, and definitely not necessary, for either. Bolt-action
rifles and shotguns can also be used for hunting and home
defense. Unfortunately, those guns aren’t particularly lucrative
for gunmakers. The lobby’s fervent defense of military-style
semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 seems motivated primarily
by a desire to protect the profits in the rapidly growing
“modern sporting rifle” segment of the industry.
The AR-15 was designed in 1957 at the behest of the U.S. Army,
which asked Armalite to come up with a “high-velocity, full and
semi auto fire, 20 shot magazine, 6lbs loaded, able to penetrate
both sides of a standard Army helmet at 500 meters rifle,”
according to ar15.com. When it entered Army service in the
1960s, it was renamed the M16, in accordance with the Army
Nomenclature System. “AR-15” came to refer to the rifle’s
semi-automatic civilian equivalent. From 1994 to 2004,
AR-15-style rifles were subject to the now-expired Federal
Assault Weapons Ban. Since then, the rifle and others like it
have become tremendously popular. Last month, I estimated that
upward of 3.5 million AR-15-style rifles currently exist in the
United States. People like the rifle because it is modular and
thus customizable (one article calls the AR-15 “perhaps the most
flexible firearm ever developed; in seconds, a carbine can be
switched over to a long-range rifle by swapping upper
receivers”), because it is easy to shoot, and because carrying
it around makes you look like a badass.
But the AR-15 is not ideal for the hunting and home-defense uses
that the NRA’s Keene cited today. Though it can be used for
hunting, the AR-15 isn’t really a hunting rifle. Its standard
.223 caliber ammunition doesn’t offer much stopping power for
anything other than small game. Hunters themselves find the
rifle controversial, with some arguing AR-15-style rifles
empower sloppy, “spray and pray” hunters to waste ammunition.
(The official Bushmaster XM15 manual lists the maximum effective
rate of fire at 45 rounds per minute.) As one hunter put it in
the comments section of an article on americanhunter.org, “I
served in the military and the M16A2/M4 was the weapon I used
for 20 years. It is first and foremost designed as an assault
weapon platform, no matter what the spin. A hunter does not need
a semi-automatic rifle to hunt, if he does he sucks, and should
go play video games. I see more men running around the bush all
cammo'd up with assault vests and face paint with tricked out
AR's. These are not hunters but wannabe weekend warriors.”
In terms of repelling a home invasion—which is what most people
mean when they talk about home defense—an AR-15-style rifle is
probably less useful than a handgun. The AR-15 is a long gun,
and can be tough to maneuver in tight quarters. When you shoot
it, it’ll overpenetrate—sending bullets through the walls of
your house and possibly into the walls of your neighbor’s
house—unless you purchase the sort of ammunition that fragments
on impact. (This is true for other guns, as well, but, again,
the thing with the AR-15 is that it lets you fire more rounds
faster.)
AR-15-style rifles are very useful, however, if what you’re
trying to do is sell guns. In a recent Forbes article, Abram
Brown reported that “gun ownership is at a near 20-year high,
generating $4 billion in commercial gun and ammunition sales.”
But that money’s not coming from selling shotguns and
bolt-action rifles to pheasant hunters. In its 2011 annual
report, Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation announced that
bolt-action hunting rifles accounted for 6.6 percent of its net
sales in 2011 (down from 2010 and 2009), while modern sporting
rifles (like AR-15-style weapons) accounted for 18.2 percent of
its net sales. The Freedom Group’s 2011 annual report noted that
the commercial modern sporting rifle market grew at a 27 percent
compound annual rate from 2007 to 2011, whereas the entire
domestic long gun market only grew at a 3 percent rate.
As the NRA’s David Keene notes, a lot of people do use modern
sporting rifles for target shooting and in marksmanship
competitions. But the guns also appeal to another demographic
that doesn’t get nearly as much press—paranoid survivalists who
worry about having to fend off thieves and trespassers in the
event of disaster. Online shooting message boards are rife with
references to potential “SHTF scenarios,” where SHTF stands for
“**** hits the fan”—governmental collapse, societal breakdown.
(Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy Lanza, has been described as “a
gun-hoarding survivalist who was stockpiling weapons in
preparation for an economic collapse.”) An article on ar15.com
titled “The Ideal Rifle” notes that “the threats from crime,
terrorism, natural disaster, and weapons of mass destruction are
real. If something were to happen today, you would need to have
made a decision about the rifle you would select and be prepared
for such an event. So the need to select a ‘survival’ rifle is
real. Selecting a single ‘ideal rifle’ is not easy. The AR-15
series of rifles comes out ahead when compared to everything
else.” Depending on where you live, it’s perfectly legal to
stockpile weapons to use in the event of Armageddon. But that’s
a far different argument than the ones firearms advocates have
been using since the Newtown shootings.
As I said, I generally think of myself as a Second Amendment
supporter, and a month ago, I would’ve probably agreed with the
NRA’s position. But the Newtown shooting caused me to re-examine
my stance—as is, I think, fitting—and to question some of the
rhetoric advocates use to defend weapons like this. In his piece
at Human Events, Keene ridiculed the notion that AR-15-style
rifles ought to be banned just because “a half dozen [AR-15s]
out of more than three million have been misused after illegally
falling into the hands of crazed killers.” And, sure. But the
AR-15 is very good at one thing: engaging the enemy at a rapid
rate of fire. When someone like Adam Lanza uses it to take out
26 people in a matter of minutes, he’s committing a crime, but
he isn’t misusing the rifle. That’s exactly what it was
engineered to do.
[/quote]
#Post#: 16003--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Mac Date: January 20, 2013, 11:06 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[glow=red,2,300]Five Injured In Accidental Gun Show Shootings On
‘Gun Appreciation Day’[/glow]
HTML http://talkingpointsmemo.com/assets_c/2013/01/gun-show-virginia-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg
[quote]As gun rights activists celebrated the turnout at gun
shows for national Gun Appreciation Day Saturday, police
responded to at least thee accidental shootings that left five
people injured at shows across the country.
• In Indianapolis, a man shot himself when his gun went off
outside a gun show. From WISH-TV:
A person who was loading a gun outside of the Indy 1500 Gun
and Knife Show at the State Fairgrounds was accidentally shot
when his gun discharged Saturday afternoon. ... The man,
identified as Emory L. Cozee, 54, was walking back to his car,
was loading his .45 caliber semi-automatic and accidentally shot
himself in the hand, [police said.]
• In Raleigh, N.C., three people were injured when a shotgun
went off at a gun show there. From the News & Observer:
A 12-gauge shotgun discharged shortly after 1 p.m. as its
owner unzipped its case on a table for a security officer to
check it at a security entrance at the Dixie Gun & Knife Show,
according to Joel Keith, police chief of the state Agriculture
Department. Keith said birdshot pellets hit Janet Hoover, 54, of
Benson, in the right torso; Linwood Hester, 50, of Durham, in
the right hand; and Jake Alderman, a retired Wake County
sheriff’s deputy from Wake Forest, in the left hand. Hoover and
Hester were taken to WakeMed, but officials said their injuries
did not appear to be life-threatening.
• In Ohio, a dealer at a gun show accidentally fired a gun,
induring one. From WJW-TV:
Jim Conrad, event organizer, said there were about 200
people there at the time, and they heard one gun shot. Conrad
said a visitor to the event had handed an exhibitor his gun to
look at. It apparently was loaded, and while the exhibitor was
looking at the gun, it accidentally went off, hitting another
man in the arm.
Meanwhile, gun rights advocates touted Gun Appreciation Day --
which was organized to oppose efforts in Washington, D.C. to
pass new gun regulations after Newtown -- as a success. Dave
Workman, a former NRA board member, wrote that gun rights
activists in Washington state showed up in big numbers at a gun
show in Puyallup and a rally in Olympia.
"Among many of these gun owners is a newfound activism, ignited
by the gun prohibition rhetoric over the past month, and stoked
by the president’s remarks earlier in the week," he
wrote.[/quote]
#Post#: 16006--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 20, 2013, 11:31 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Guns don't kill people, but stupid people aren't helping either.
#Post#: 16007--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 20, 2013, 11:33 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]Hello Kitty Bubble Gun Gets 5-year-old Suspended
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iOhMB0Qc9M
Watch out, kid's packing bubbles!!!!
#Post#: 16248--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Mac Date: January 26, 2013, 8:39 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I think a balanced, reasonable discussions need to take place.
Gun advocates don't need to put blinders up and Gun
non-advocates don't need to go overboard the opposite way. This
just polarizes people and sometimes make up their minds to be
contrary. I like what King suggests here.
[glow=red,2,300]Stephen King writes post-Newtown essay on
guns[/glow]
[quote]Horror writer Stephen King is seeking to provoke a
discussion on gun control and gun rights following the school
shooting massacre in Newtown, Conn.
The Maine native is a gun owner. He calls for three "reasonable
measures" to curb gun violence in an essay titled "Guns,"
released Friday as a Kindle single through Amazon.
King says he wants background checks on all gun sales and bans
on high-capacity magazines and military-style weapons like the
rifle used in the Newtown shooting, which killed 20 children and
six school officials.
King describes a pattern of mass shootings in which anger and
frustration give way to political rhetoric before discussions of
gun control "disappear into the legislative swamp." He says on
his website: "If this helps provoke constructive debate, I've
done my job."
[/quote]
#Post#: 16452--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 31, 2013, 7:32 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]Women's Gun Advocate's Hilariously Hypocritical
Testimony
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu6iq9-XFjs
Today must be a National Holiday for Dumb people. Sheesh!
#Post#: 16458--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Mac Date: January 31, 2013, 2:30 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
It certainly is a special day for stupidity...
(groan)
#Post#: 16564--------------------------------------------------
Re: Guns
By: Chiprocks1 Date: February 3, 2013, 11:45 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]Obama No Longer Gun Shy: White House Releases New Photo
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a9O9bahOUs
*****************************************************
DIR Next Page