17 dead in u.s. high school

[Nimbus]

Actually if you wish to be factual, half of the votes did not go to Trump. Aslo in that vein, our Constitution is a living document that has and can again be changed by the will of the people acting through the formal amendment process spelled out in the document itself and also by interpretive regulations, laws and court rulings. Keep in mind that the second amendment, is an amendment itself, and that its has been interpreted over the years by law, by executive action and by holdings of the Court. The amendment can be further interpreted to permit reasonable restrictions that can be fashioned to pass Constitutional muster. "Banning" is a red herring and smug is the right adjective.

Let's split some more hairs.

So, you said "degunned" and somehow it's different than banning guns? They are two different words but they mean the same. If you wish to just limit guns, there are many other words in the dictionary that would accurately express the concept, like 'restrict', or 'reduce', or 'control', etc.

I am well acquainted with the landmark decisions by the Supreme Court, which basically say each state (not just the federal government) is bound by the 2nd amendment, and that the right is individual, not contingent upon serving in the military. In short, degunning USA is unconstitutional. While the constitution can change, it requires ratification from 3/4th of the states, which is roughly 3/4 of the population. In an age where candidates and parties win by a single digit percentage points, this is a pipe dream.

As I said many times over, any measure that doesn't reduce the number of guns in circulation is worthless. On top of it, any measure that applies only to people who don't yet have guns is both worthless and discriminatory.

 

[Anglian]

Best be accurate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...b6cf72-1264-11e8-8ea1-c1d91fcec3fe_story.html

I was referring to this news item, I wasn’t too accurate

 

[waarmstrong]

"Degun" mean to me the shedding of the presumption that access to firearms is unlimited under the second amendment in terms of who and what. Its entails a shift in attitude, that I think is happening now, among the majority of the people. A shift toward reasonableness in our gun laws.

Sorry, I did not intend to stock the fires of your fear that government black shirt thugs are poised to forcibly confiscate your guns. That would also be an unreasonable action at the other end of the scale.

 

[Davita]

I'm watching the Town Hall meeting in Florida and their GOP Senator Rubio is having a hard-time with the audience. Fortunately he isn't up for re-election in November or I'd suspect he'd be looking for a new job.

 

[Nimbus]

"Degun" mean to me the shedding of the presumption that access to firearms is unlimited under the second amendment in terms of who and what. Its entails a shift in attitude, that I think is happening now, among the majority of the people. A shift toward reasonableness in our gun laws.

Well, if you are inventing your own definition, then you can't give people a hard time for not agreeing with it. It's like declaring that 'defrost' doesn't mean "removing frost" for you, instead it means "shedding the presumption that frost has to exist".

Sorry, I did not intend to stock the fires of your fear that government black shirt thugs are poised to forcibly confiscate your guns. That would also be an unreasonable action at the other end of the scale.

I'm not sure what this means. It seems to be an attempt at sarcasm, but it doesn't work because I'm not paranoid about the government confiscating guns. It might work against a right wing nut in an armed militia, but I'm just a guy who doesn't want to be helpless.

If it's somehow possible that no civilians have guns (like in Indonesia), I'm fine with it. Everybody is equal because nobody can have guns. What is not acceptable is letting existing gun owners keep their arsenal while prohibiting newcomers (read: immigrants) from enjoying the same right. That's discrimination, in favor of private militias, KKK, neo Nazis, and their type.

 

[Nimbus]

I'm watching the Town Hall meeting in Florida and their GOP Senator Rubio is having a hard-time with the audience. Fortunately he isn't up for re-election in November or I'd suspect he'd be looking for a new job.

He is having a tough time in that forum, but Florida is part of the south, and it is decidedly very pro-gun. I think his seat is safe, which is unfortunate because I can't stand the guy.

After 49 people were murdered two years ago in Orlando (February 2016), gun law in Florida didn't become more strict, it actually became less so.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...o-orlando-pulse-rick-scott-less-a8213781.html

 

[waarmstrong]

I am just a guy who who wants to begin the process of degunning America as a means, over time, to improve public safety. I do not want my country to be characterized by a fear of senseless random mass murder. We can begin by restricting access both in terms of the stability of purchasers and the lethality of the equipment for sale. Once the faucet is turned off, efforts to drain the reservoir might have a chance of success. The do nothing option has not worked; of the broad options of more people with more guns versus fewer people with less lethal guns, my choice is the latter. I hope that a majority feel the same way and vote accordingly.

 

[Nimbus]

I am just a guy who who wants to begin the process of degunning America as a means, over time, to improve public safety. I do not want my country to be characterized by a fear of senseless random mass murder. We can begin by restricting access both in terms of the stability of purchasers and the lethality of the equipment for sale. Once the faucet is turned off, efforts to drain the reservoir might have a chance of success. The do nothing option has not worked; of the broad options of more people with more guns versus fewer people with less lethal guns, my choice is the latter. I hope that a majority feel the same way and vote accordingly.

I'm familiar with the "we gotta do something now" argument.

After 9/11 USA did a whole bunch of stuff in the "we gotta do something now" spirit. One such measure is the NSEERS which targeted Muslim immigrants for removal. In a lot of people's mind, 19 Muslim terrorists just brought down 2 towers and took almost 3000 lives. It didn't matter that one fifth of the world was Muslims, and the vast majority weren't terrorists. This mindset persists among many conservative Americans even today, and they bristle at liberals for failing to see how Muslims are a danger to America, considering incidents like Fort Hood, Boston, and San Bernardino shootings.

That's not all, the push also lead to the Patriot Act and REAL ID Act, one expands surveillance to Americans and the other essentially created a national ID. That's not even the worse: the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were the most harmful and expensive products of this mentality.

It is sad to see ideological blindness. Conservatives blame Islam and liberals blame guns. Never mind that the vast majority of Muslims and gun owners are upstanding people, just think of the children and do something now. Don't worry about discrimination and stuff, we don't have the luxury of political correctness.

 

[Davita]

Your posts are very informative Nimbus.
To any outside observer the theoretical political dichotomy of the USA two-party registration system is it divides people who otherwise would communicate, be considerate, compromise and agree. However...in general, the system itself, for many, has defied critics until recently...since Trump!

Therefore, in regard to weapons that can cause mass deaths in a short time and to advocate the founding father's simplistic amendment to a constitution, so long ago, to be sacrosanct and not open to debate...WTF? That is what USA civilised Gov't does..... or should.

Many posit that social media, video games and pop TV has 'assumed' the intellect of the US populous and, in particular, the millenials (generation Y) generation. I've also observed that video games, recent movies and most popular TV series include violence and guns...could there be a connection?

Notwithstanding...USA has an openness to guns designed for military use whereas most other countries do not...and USA has a problem with mass shootings.

According to the Chump theory all teachers should have a gun to protect students against mental students...then what...when the retard buys a tank on ebay?

 

[Daniel50]

It is sad to see ideological blindness. Conservatives blame Islam and liberals blame guns. Never mind that the vast majority of Muslims and gun owners are upstanding people, just think of the children and do something now. Don't worry about discrimination and stuff, we don't have the luxury of political correctness.

Okay then, given the overall situation you described providing more guns for "good" people is probably a plausible answer. Everyone should be armed .........well the good people anyways, as of course "good" is a static state.

 

[Nimbus]

Okay then, given the overall situation you described providing more guns for "good" people is probably a plausible answer. Everyone should be armed .........well the good people anyways, as of course "good" is a static state.

Since we can't trust people to always be good, should we ban religion and guns?

It's a complex subject, so the easy answers are always wrong.

 

[Nimbus]

Some ideas:

http://www.businessinsider.com/one-...-shootings-has-nothing-to-do-with-guns-2018-2

 

[Jamu]

The mass shootings and idiotic debate over whether it's ok for ordinary citizens to own military grade weapons (seriously, this is actually a debatable issue???) are just further examples of a country and a society in decline. America is no longer the great country it arguably once was and only blind Americans still believe in their own exceptionalism. The rest of world is either laughing or crying, or both, at this unfortunate state of affairs.

 

[Davita]

The mass shootings and idiotic debate over whether it's ok for ordinary citizens to own military grade weapons (seriously, this is actually a debatable issue???) are just further examples of a country and a society in decline. America is no longer the great country it arguably once was and only blind Americans still believe in their own exceptionalism. The rest of world is either laughing or crying, or both, at this unfortunate state of affairs.

I agree..... but your point about the decline of USA goes beyond the argument about military weapons. Every day this irrational POTUS talks the rest of the world squirms knowing he is Commander-in-Chief of the great USA military and they have taken an oath to obey him. Scary!

How blind are the citizens to this snake-oil salesman and his stupid remarks.

 

[Anglian]

I don’t know, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to almost all of the US states, I at no time did I ever feel threatened and met some of the nicest and friendliest people, so personally I see no reason to own an army rifle, machine gun or whatever, I watched the leader of the NRAs speech the other night, what a dork, then sadly Americans now have a President, words fail me, there just isn’t any words in English that can accurately describe him, wake up America, the Redcoats aren’t coming,the Injuns are encircled on the reservation, the enemy is within, you don’t need all these heavy weapons, there will be another mass shooting , and we will have another one of these threads saying how sad it is at the poor parents of the children killed, you don’t need these guns, I was offered a very nice 9mm, 5 million Rp, it felt very nice, and I’m quite a good shot, but what am I to do with it, just shoot people, so I rejected it, that’s what guns are for

 

[Davita]

Considering the argument about the USA 2nd amendment how about this hypothetical....
A guy is carrying his legal machine-gun down the street where there's a large group of children walking. The guy casually takes his gun to the firing position a few times but never shoots. A neighbor sees this and takes his legal magnum from his secret pocket and shoots the guy dead. The machine gun is found to be empty of cartridges and still has the price ticket so it's obviously a new purchase..
What would the legal case be re: the neighbor.?

 

[R Cameron]

Considering the argument about the USA 2nd amendment how about this hypothetical....
A guy is carrying his legal machine-gun down the street where there's a large group of children walking. The guy casually takes his gun to the firing position a few times but never shoots. A neighbor sees this and takes his legal magnum from his secret pocket and shoots the guy dead. The machine gun is found to be empty of cartridges and still has the price ticket so it's obviously a new purchase..
What would the legal case be re: the neighbor.?

I don't know what precedences exist in case law, but in that scenario the guy with the unloaded gun would still be guilty of brandishing: https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/brandished/

Sadly, I think the skin color of the people involved in the scenario you describe would give a good indicator of the legal case against the neighbor.

 

[Davita]

I'd thought about that as it came up in a police case on TV where they shot a kid brandishing a toy gun. I wonder what right does a civilian have to take the law into his own hands in case he simply sees someone carrying a machine gun. It can open a can of worms if anyone can simply say "I saw him brandishing the gun so I shot him"....when in fact the guy had just legally bought it from a store, without any ammunition, and was carrying it home .
Its rhetorical and I'm only posting to show how silly some interpretation of US Amendments to the Constitution, written around 1790, can be.
Common sense doesn't seem to have any place.

 

[waarmstrong]

I don't view a complete and more thorough process for background checks and a ban on semi-autos and large capacity magazines as unreasonable limits, nor do I buy into the slippery slope justification for doing nothing. My hope is that elections will eventually result in legislators that will forgo NRA money and pressure, enact reasonable limits, and that the courts will hold them Constitutional. I detect a beginning shift in attitude that I hope this time does not fizzle out.

 

[Anglian]

Now here is a very odd fact, during the American civil war, it was found that the combatants were a bit loath to shoot each other, eventually they did, hence the slaughter, it was also found in the British army soldiers were reluctant to kill Germans and Germany’s not keen to kill Brits, this after a while changed, I noticed during rifle shooting that the nice bulls eye target changed to a full sized ugly Russian, when I asked the instructor about this he said it’s getting you into the feel of shooting a man, as the average untrained soldier is loath to kill, now if you start to give ordinary teachers guns, how many will actually want to shoot anyone