I think you have the wrong "devil". 200+ years with the 2nd amendment and because of this relatively recent behavior is because of the NRA? I find that hard to swallow.
This latest event was the pure and utter failure of our precious/wonderful government who you apparently want to grant 100% of every American's personal security. School district: fail. Law enforcement: fail. FBI: fail. See something, say something: fail. Gun control laws: fail.
Maybe you should take a look at social issues, which I believe are at the root of this problem. Welfare, single mom households, declining religious/moral influence, etc.
Trying to blame the NRA is borderline ludicrous. I guess what is really sad to me is that the NRA has to exist to protect a right which is #2 in the Bill of Rights. It's the only right that helps to guarantee that all our other rights will not be stripped from us.
Owning a firearm in the country is our right and shall not be infringed
(even though it is constantly being infringed). I do want to save the children, so, let's outlaw abortion for starters. Abortion is not written anywhere in our Constitution, gun rights are. Let's get serious and save the lives of those yet to be born. Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air.
You're not at all addressing what I said in the post, but to clarify:
Yes, the 2nd Amendment has been around for 200-something years. We didn't have the constant mass-shooting problem until recent decades. We also didn't have the NRA as a primarily arms-dealer lobbying organization until recent decades. For the first century-ish of its existence it really was the "AAA of gun owners", not the political arm of the arms dealers. So that suggests... the problem isn't the 2nd Amendment, it's the NRA, or more generally the power of lobbyists in general.
I at no point said I wanted to have the government "grant 100% of every American's personal security". I didn't get into personal security at all. I have a laundry list of issues with the government and with both major parties, but that's off topic for the moment. You're attributing to me a statement I didn't even get close to making; I would appreciate it if you don't make up things I didn't say.
Abortion is also completely off topic and has nothing to do with the point in the slightest. You don't know what my stance on abortion is, so don't try to bring it in where it has nothing to do with anything.
It is simply false to claim that the 2nd Amendment guarantees everyone the right to own any weapon of war they feel like. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the survival of a free state". It gives an actual reason, right there, and includes "well-regulated". Also bear in mind that historically the arms in question were single-shot muskets, and when raising an army it was common to expect people to bring their own weapons to the battlefield. The US had a paltry standing army at the time, and was reliant on local town militias (organized, managed the local government, now turned into the state national guard) for defense. The "survival of a free state" was as much about defending against invaders as the oft-claimed defending against a government run amok.
"There are 4 boxes to use in defense of liberty: Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo. Use in that order." (I'm not sure of the original source but I've seen it circulated often.) - Which means if you get to the point of needing an Ammo box, you have already failed as a citizen three times. The claim that it is "the only right to that helps to guarantee that all our other rights will not be stripped from us" is only applicable if you view violence as the most important part of a functioning society. I do not.
You missed the part where I explicitly said that "take all the guns" is not a viable approach, nor is it one that most people are calling for. (Some are, but not most.) But we can't even get the basics down like trigger locks or background checks or mandatory training (that well-regulated part) because of the NRA's lobbying.
Please don't try to turn this into yet another "us vs them, all or nothing" debate. My point is precisely that such an approach is what is killing us, literally and figuratively, and the NRA and arms dealers actively encourage that division.
If we want our kids to stop dying, we need to move past that. Fixing the broken political system is the first step to moving past that, and to fixing a myriad other problems we have.
Thank you. After reading that reply, I was somewhat exasperated, as it clearly showed that they didn't read to the end.
But you made a far better reply than I could have managed. I take my hat off to your prowess.
I am a gun owner and not a member of the NRA and to bring a diffrent point of view to the conversation i would like to bring up a couple issues. i am sure they will not change your point of view but i would like to lay them out . I will try to keep it short.
When did mass shootings become a thing? I would say they actually became more prevolent in the mid 70's because of Deinstitutionalization and the more wide spread practice of using antipsychotic drugs that could be administered in the home. I am sure your eyes are rolling back in your head and can visualize me sitting here with my tinfoil cap on, but i read your whole article so please do me the same in return. I promise i am not totally insane. By allowing people with pshycological issues to roam around in the public instead of an institution, eventually they are going to have some sort of episode. Mix in the other factor of the antipsychotic drugs that people are administering to them selves under the quise that they will take them correctly or be able to deal with the side effects that often include thoughts of suicide then you make the situation worse. Most all of the mass shootings in my life have been commited by people on some sort of antipsychotic drugs.
Authorities droping the ball and failure to prosecute the rules that are already on the books. Part 1 - dropping the ball. In almost all of these mass shootingsyou can trace it back to someone screwing up before the incodent. The recent florida shooting highlighted how poorly the entire case was handled. The police was sent to his house on over 20 occasions for various violence calls , he was reported to the FBI on multiple occasions for writing on websites that he wanted to be a famous school shooter
part 2- Failure to prosecute the laws on the books. In a local case where i live there was a Female officer that was pregnant that was shot by a convicted felon in a traffic stop who should have never had a gun. he was later killed in a shoot out with the police. After the investigation was over they tracked the gun owner down to be his girlfriend who was a straw purchaser for him. This is suposed to be highly illegal. After it was all said and done she got sentenced to unsupervised probation.That is insane. ENFORCE THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE.
If you made it this far thank you very much for listening to my thoughts.
To answer the second point first, absolutely agreed that laws that go unenforced are useless. We do need to do a better job of enforcing the paltry laws we have now, in addition to whatever new ones happen.
However, that is stymied by current laws that restrict law enforcement's ability to do its job. For instance, ATF (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) is effectively banned from... using computers. No kidding:
The 1986 Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, passed with the backing of the National Rifle Association, outlaws the creation of a national gun registry. As a result, any documents the ATF scans must be stored as static images that cannot be searched digitally. I watched tracers sitting on the floor, thumbing through pages spread out on the carpet.
Even enforcing the background checks is actively undermined.
In the late ’90s, the ATF published reports that identified the guns most commonly recovered at crime scenes. Shooting victims, their families, and cities used this data to sue gun manufacturers and dealers. So the gun industry went to Congress. In 2003, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) introduced a series of riders to federal spending bills. The Tiahrt Amendments, versions of which have passed every year since, prohibit the ATF from publicly releasing detailed gun trace data and limit its ability to share this data with other law enforcement agencies. “I wanted to make sure I was fulfilling the needs of my friends who are firearms dealers,” Tiahrt said. NRA officials, he added, “were helpful in making sure I had my bases covered.”
So yeah, let's enforce the laws we already have. That means getting the NRA out of the way and letting law enforcement actually use 20th century tools (to say nothing of 21st century tools) to do its job. But that won't happen until the NRA's stranglehold on Congress is eliminated.
To your first point, my limited googling just now hasn't found a solid resource tracking the rise in mass shootings. The best I've found is from Mother Jones, here:
which only goes back to the early 80s but does show a clear upward trend. However, half of those recorded have happened since 2006. So there's a definite recent-change, not something from the 70s.
I will completely agree that the dismantling of the public mental health system was a terrible thing. We as a country completely ignore mental health and when we do pay attention it's just to use it as a scapegoat, especially so we can write off white-males as "just a mentally disturbed lone wolf, nothing to see here". (Of course, if a Muslim shoots someone then it's clearly because he's Muslim. But that double-standard is a topic unto itself.)
That said, blaming that for the rise in mass shootings is not, as far as I'm aware, supported by the data. Most people with a mental illness are not a threat to anyone; those that are, are primarily a threat to themselves. Gun suicide I can totally see linked to mental health issues, and we absolutely need to take more steps there (both on the gun side and the mental health side). In short, citation needed.
Well i believe we both laid out our sides pretty well true to our beliefs and we can let the readers so what they do and make up their minds. With that being said I hope you have a good day. Steem on my friend.
Excuse me a moment while I fanboy squee. :-) (Although I confess I did reach out to him for an RT, as we've talked a few times before at reform-centric events. That he recognized me on Twitter afterward had me squee-ing for a week.)
I think you have the wrong "devil". 200+ years with the 2nd amendment and because of this relatively recent behavior is because of the NRA? I find that hard to swallow.
This latest event was the pure and utter failure of our precious/wonderful government who you apparently want to grant 100% of every American's personal security. School district: fail. Law enforcement: fail. FBI: fail. See something, say something: fail. Gun control laws: fail.
Maybe you should take a look at social issues, which I believe are at the root of this problem. Welfare, single mom households, declining religious/moral influence, etc.
Trying to blame the NRA is borderline ludicrous. I guess what is really sad to me is that the NRA has to exist to protect a right which is #2 in the Bill of Rights. It's the only right that helps to guarantee that all our other rights will not be stripped from us.
Owning a firearm in the country is our right and shall not be infringed
(even though it is constantly being infringed). I do want to save the children, so, let's outlaw abortion for starters. Abortion is not written anywhere in our Constitution, gun rights are. Let's get serious and save the lives of those yet to be born. Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air.
Thanks for sharing the truth.
You're not at all addressing what I said in the post, but to clarify:
Yes, the 2nd Amendment has been around for 200-something years. We didn't have the constant mass-shooting problem until recent decades. We also didn't have the NRA as a primarily arms-dealer lobbying organization until recent decades. For the first century-ish of its existence it really was the "AAA of gun owners", not the political arm of the arms dealers. So that suggests... the problem isn't the 2nd Amendment, it's the NRA, or more generally the power of lobbyists in general.
I at no point said I wanted to have the government "grant 100% of every American's personal security". I didn't get into personal security at all. I have a laundry list of issues with the government and with both major parties, but that's off topic for the moment. You're attributing to me a statement I didn't even get close to making; I would appreciate it if you don't make up things I didn't say.
Abortion is also completely off topic and has nothing to do with the point in the slightest. You don't know what my stance on abortion is, so don't try to bring it in where it has nothing to do with anything.
It is simply false to claim that the 2nd Amendment guarantees everyone the right to own any weapon of war they feel like. "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the survival of a free state". It gives an actual reason, right there, and includes "well-regulated". Also bear in mind that historically the arms in question were single-shot muskets, and when raising an army it was common to expect people to bring their own weapons to the battlefield. The US had a paltry standing army at the time, and was reliant on local town militias (organized, managed the local government, now turned into the state national guard) for defense. The "survival of a free state" was as much about defending against invaders as the oft-claimed defending against a government run amok.
"There are 4 boxes to use in defense of liberty: Soap, Ballot, Jury, Ammo. Use in that order." (I'm not sure of the original source but I've seen it circulated often.) - Which means if you get to the point of needing an Ammo box, you have already failed as a citizen three times. The claim that it is "the only right to that helps to guarantee that all our other rights will not be stripped from us" is only applicable if you view violence as the most important part of a functioning society. I do not.
You missed the part where I explicitly said that "take all the guns" is not a viable approach, nor is it one that most people are calling for. (Some are, but not most.) But we can't even get the basics down like trigger locks or background checks or mandatory training (that well-regulated part) because of the NRA's lobbying.
Please don't try to turn this into yet another "us vs them, all or nothing" debate. My point is precisely that such an approach is what is killing us, literally and figuratively, and the NRA and arms dealers actively encourage that division.
If we want our kids to stop dying, we need to move past that. Fixing the broken political system is the first step to moving past that, and to fixing a myriad other problems we have.
Thank you. After reading that reply, I was somewhat exasperated, as it clearly showed that they didn't read to the end.
But you made a far better reply than I could have managed. I take my hat off to your prowess.
I am a gun owner and not a member of the NRA and to bring a diffrent point of view to the conversation i would like to bring up a couple issues. i am sure they will not change your point of view but i would like to lay them out . I will try to keep it short.
When did mass shootings become a thing? I would say they actually became more prevolent in the mid 70's because of Deinstitutionalization and the more wide spread practice of using antipsychotic drugs that could be administered in the home. I am sure your eyes are rolling back in your head and can visualize me sitting here with my tinfoil cap on, but i read your whole article so please do me the same in return. I promise i am not totally insane. By allowing people with pshycological issues to roam around in the public instead of an institution, eventually they are going to have some sort of episode. Mix in the other factor of the antipsychotic drugs that people are administering to them selves under the quise that they will take them correctly or be able to deal with the side effects that often include thoughts of suicide then you make the situation worse. Most all of the mass shootings in my life have been commited by people on some sort of antipsychotic drugs.
Authorities droping the ball and failure to prosecute the rules that are already on the books. Part 1 - dropping the ball. In almost all of these mass shootingsyou can trace it back to someone screwing up before the incodent. The recent florida shooting highlighted how poorly the entire case was handled. The police was sent to his house on over 20 occasions for various violence calls , he was reported to the FBI on multiple occasions for writing on websites that he wanted to be a famous school shooter
part 2- Failure to prosecute the laws on the books. In a local case where i live there was a Female officer that was pregnant that was shot by a convicted felon in a traffic stop who should have never had a gun. he was later killed in a shoot out with the police. After the investigation was over they tracked the gun owner down to be his girlfriend who was a straw purchaser for him. This is suposed to be highly illegal. After it was all said and done she got sentenced to unsupervised probation.That is insane. ENFORCE THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE.
If you made it this far thank you very much for listening to my thoughts.
To answer the second point first, absolutely agreed that laws that go unenforced are useless. We do need to do a better job of enforcing the paltry laws we have now, in addition to whatever new ones happen.
However, that is stymied by current laws that restrict law enforcement's ability to do its job. For instance, ATF (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) is effectively banned from... using computers. No kidding:
From: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/09/atf-nra-battle-guns/
Even enforcing the background checks is actively undermined.
So yeah, let's enforce the laws we already have. That means getting the NRA out of the way and letting law enforcement actually use 20th century tools (to say nothing of 21st century tools) to do its job. But that won't happen until the NRA's stranglehold on Congress is eliminated.
To your first point, my limited googling just now hasn't found a solid resource tracking the rise in mass shootings. The best I've found is from Mother Jones, here:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map/
which only goes back to the early 80s but does show a clear upward trend. However, half of those recorded have happened since 2006. So there's a definite recent-change, not something from the 70s.
I will completely agree that the dismantling of the public mental health system was a terrible thing. We as a country completely ignore mental health and when we do pay attention it's just to use it as a scapegoat, especially so we can write off white-males as "just a mentally disturbed lone wolf, nothing to see here". (Of course, if a Muslim shoots someone then it's clearly because he's Muslim. But that double-standard is a topic unto itself.)
That said, blaming that for the rise in mass shootings is not, as far as I'm aware, supported by the data. Most people with a mental illness are not a threat to anyone; those that are, are primarily a threat to themselves. Gun suicide I can totally see linked to mental health issues, and we absolutely need to take more steps there (both on the gun side and the mental health side). In short, citation needed.
I did a quick google search and this poped up. i skimed through it and it pretty much says what i was thinking so i will throw it out there.
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/madness-deinstitutionalization-murder
Well i believe we both laid out our sides pretty well true to our beliefs and we can let the readers so what they do and make up their minds. With that being said I hope you have a good day. Steem on my friend.
Your post has been retweeted by Lawrence Lessig!
Excuse me a moment while I fanboy squee. :-) (Although I confess I did reach out to him for an RT, as we've talked a few times before at reform-centric events. That he recognized me on Twitter afterward had me squee-ing for a week.)