Omaha

[Bagoas (imported)]

You are mistaken, Riverwind. The NRA favors gun safety courses and offers them. Many gun clubs require new members to take an NRA-approved gun safety course before being approved for membership. I don't think that there is strong opposition in the NRA to point-of-sale registration of guns.

The problem with gun-control laws is that the only people whom they deter from obtaining firearms are law-abiding citizens. It will not discourage a person intent on acquiring a weapon to commit a crime to commit another crime in order to obtain it.

As I know you are aware, there is a huge black market in firearms. It is easy to obtain firearms illegally. Prisoners interviewed about the subject have said that within hours of release, despite being barred from legal purchase of firearms, they could have another gun.

Concerning the Avtomat Kalashnikoff 47, I can envision no legitimate civilian use for one. It is ill-suited for hunting, target shooting, and home defense.

[A shotgun such as you have considered acquiring, is a far better choice for home defense. A 12-gauge loaded with 00 buck is a formidable defensive

weapon.]

In my personal opinion, the AK 47 should be controlled as were the Browning Automatic Rifle and the Thompson sub-machine gun in the 1930's when only the military, the police, and the Mafia had them.

I have to attribute this age of gratuitous violence with firearms to changes in values and attitudes. I was a boy in the 1930's and a teenager in the 1940's. Any adult and any boy accompanied by an adult could buy a rifle at a sporting goods store, many department stores, and most hardware stores. There was no paperwork involved. Ammunition was as easily acquired.

Pistols were a little harder to obtain, but not much. Yet, there were no drive-by shootings, no workplace shootings, God knows, no school shootings. Such things were literally unthinkable. Social theoreticians tell us that poverty causes crime. Well, in the 1930's poverty was widespread.

I lived in a very poor neighborhood. Yet the only crimes committed there were occasional domestic violence (beatings, not shootings) and public drunkenness when someone could spare some money for booze. If someone had a dispute with a co-worker, they'd come to blows, probably in the parking lot. He wouldn't come in and shoot everyone in his department.

In 12 years in the public schools, I never even saw a knife fight. Certainly, nobody EVER brought a gun to school. Such things not only weren't done, they weren't even thought of. I brought a sword to school for a school play once. Of course, I got the Principal's permission first. I couldn't have got away with it if I hadn't and I wouldn't have thought to try to.

Human nature hasn't changed in a few decades, so what has ? Evidently, values and attitudes. Society has changed. Kids are not taught moral values.They're not brought up by their parents but by disinterested pre-school schools, day-care centers, etc.

It's in the home that kids learn about decency and respect for the rights and feelings of others. There, or nowhere. It's not in the home, so it's nowhere and we are reaping the whirlwind.

[jane_says (imported)]

Count me as another one if favor of having plenty gun laws on the books already, thankyewverymuch. I carry a Bersa 380 (along with a concealed carry permit) everywhere I go. My first reaction to this tragedy was sadness that no one in the vicinity was legally carrying a gun and able to take the gunman out before he was able to kill anyone else. I expect and hope that if some asshole waltzed into out local mall with an assault weapon draped in a sweatshirt, he'd be picked off in short order by a farmer or a welder (or the wife of one) before he had the chance to do as much damage as this guy did.

[Blaise (imported)]

Count me as another one if favor of having plenty gun laws on the books already, thankyewverymuch. I carry a Bersa 380 (along with a concealed carry permit) everywhere I go. My first reaction to this tragedy was sadness that no one in the vicinity was legally carrying a gun and able to take the gunman out before he was able to kill anyone else. I expect and hope that if some asshole waltzed into out local mall with an assault weapon draped in a sweatshirt, he'd be picked off in short order by a farmer or a welder (or the wife of one) before he had the chance to do as much damage as this guy did.

I have same opinion. Two people with guns saved me from serious injury during an attack many years ago in New Orleans.

[IbPervert (imported)]

The problem with carrying a gun or any weapon is that it can be taken away from you, and used against you.

[markdf (imported)]

As for the "youth". I feel nothing toward him but disgust.

And this is why these kinds of incidents will never stop -- too many people thinking that way. Rather than trying to understand why this kid did these things, and show some compassion, they just feel blind hatred. It's exactly these kinds of cold, inhuman, sociopathic attitudes that create such situations in the first place. Instead of acknowledging that he could have been helped -- and having the chance to save EVERYONE involved, you're only thinking of how he could have been killed more efficiently. Given the choice, I'll take NO deaths instead of vigilante slayings any day of the week. It's stunning to me that there are humans (if they can so be called) who don't agree.

If people want to be sheep then good luck with evolution. I refuse to be a sheep and would rather die fighting back instead of getting slaughtered while pissing on myself like a coward.

Statistically, gun owners are much more likely to die than people who don't own guns. The same goes for the immediate families of gun owners. Evolution is absolutely NOT on the side of gun owners. It's on the side of the "sheep" who make themselves safer by not keeping in their homes a tool whose sole purpose is ending the lives of people.

You can disagree if you like, but the statistics (that is to say, REALITY) is against you on this one. Of course, reality has a well known liberal basis, but that's just how it is.

Too many live in the protected illusion of an embryonic world and don't realize what a dangerous place the world is.

The world is actually pretty damn safe. Violent crime has decreased throughout the western world every single decade for the last two centuries with only a handful of exceptions (like Texas, where it keeps going up; so much for the safety of a well-armed populace ).

You can't depend on the police, their response time usually ranges from 15 minutes to over an HOUR!!!!

I call the police from work at least twice a month. They typically arrive in less than two minutes. Incidentally, in the entire two years that I've worked there (a service station, theoretically a likely target for robbery) there's only been one violent incident (a hold-up), no one was hurt. $200 lost, versus murdering one junky in defense of that money. I'd say that even a junky's life is worth $200. But then, I value Human life. I'd like to think that I'm in the majority in that regard...

Don't confuse this for some pro-gun-control stance -- I totally and unabashedly support the right to bear arms, with the normal sane restrictions on, say, machine guns and explosives and whatnot. As I've pointed out, guns are (as the figures prove) primarily a danger to their owners and their families. If the competition (that is, you and yours) wants to eliminate themselves, so much the better for me and mine.

[A-1 (imported)]

Statistically, gun owners are much more likely to die than people who don't own guns.

Depends on how you calculate the statistics and how many who own guns and how many does not.

Simple example.

Say you have 1000 people who own guns. Say there are 10000 who don't.

Take an average of 35% killed each year by guns from the group.

Statistics

35% of 1000 < 35% of 10000

...gotta watch them proofs

...

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I can't see where widespread carrying of concealed guns makes one safer or does not make one safer. In my neighborhood the perception is that street robberies are more dangerous because of a new concealed carry law (the first such law in the state's history). The robbers are now shooting the victims before demanding valuables seemingly on the theory that if the victim is armed that takes him (or her) out of the fight from the start. In more objective terms I am not convinced that there is any good evidence on either side of this one. --FLO--

[markdf (imported)]

Depends on how you calculate the statistics and how many who own guns and how many does not.

Simple example.

Say you have 1000 people who own guns. Say there are 10000 who don't.

Take an average of 35% killed each year by guns from the group.

Statistics

35% of 1000 < 35% of 10000

...gotta watch them proofs

...

Of course 35% of a large group of people is more than 35% of a small group ... but what's your point? It has nothing to do with what I said. But if 1% of one group gets killed by guns each year, and 0.2% of the other group gets killed by guns each year -- all else being equal -- only a goddam fucking idiot would choose to be in the first group. A person would have to be deeply and profoundly stupid to deliberately choose a 1-in-100 chance of being murdered over a 1-in-500 chance. It has nothing to do with how BIG those groups are: that's the whole point of describing these things using a percentage.

Incidentally, that's exactly how the media tricks stupid people into believing that society is unsafe. Rather than showing people percentages for violent crime rates and so on, they show absolute numbers. Naturally, because the American population is growing, the absolute number of violent crimes each year is increasing, even though each person's chance of experiencing a violent crime themselves is decreasing. Society is getting safer overall -- it's just that society is getting larger much faster than it is getting safer,

which creates the illusion of increasing danger.

I can't see where widespread carrying of conceale

d guns makes one safer or does not make one safer.

The issue here is that robbery is VERY rare. Murder by random sociopaths is VERY rare. Home invasions are VERY rare. And yet it's a quintessentially American characteristic to assume that this stuff is happening all the time, everywhere, to everyone. The safety issue has nothing to do with robbery or home invasions, because those things are so rare that they barely affect violent-crime statistics at all.

What is NOT rare are things like depression, divorces, short-term bouts of irrationality, heated arguments between neighbors, jealous lovers, and so on. These things are relatively common, and when one of the parties involved owns a gun, these situations can easily turn deadly.

Just three common scenarios:

One in three people will experience a period of serious depression at some point in their life. So what happens if they happen to own a gun while they go through that? There's a strong correlation between gun ownership and successful suicide attempts; suicide attempts by gun owners rarely fail.

Most children who are murdered are murdered by their parents. Any parent who owns a gun is truly and completely retarded, because odds are it is the parent who will be trying to murder their own children. Evolution selects very strongly against gun owners.

Most women who are murdered are murdered by husbands or boyfriends (both ex and current). Anyone who dates or marries a gun owner is truly and completely retarded. Anyone who buys a gun to protect their wife or girlfriend is equally stupid, because odds are that he himself is the one who will be trying to murder that wife or girlfriend.

And that is why carrying concealed weapons makes people less safe. Because of the high likelihood that people will turn those guns on themselves, on their families, on their loved ones, on their neighbors.

[crankshaft (imported)]

but, having been there done that (had firearms )for all my life,

got the teeshirt, having repelled borders on a home invasion, if it WASNT for having a firearm probably would not be alive, take it or leave it,

also stumbled into some gangbangers at a mall parkinglot, must have thought I was a easyone with the grandkids along, they found out not to bring a knife to a gun fight,

as for parents, all 3 generations of our family have had firearms, ALL the kids are still ALIVE and grown, and all the kids have firearms in thier homes now,and on down the line, too

the none gunowning types I have known, dont seem to have all thier marbles, they were the ones that killed one of thier kids, another one beat his wife, about killed her, I could go on and on on this,

as for depression, a gun is just a tool, cars, rope, ect work just as well, seen that over my yrs,

you sound like one of the brady kiddies(sarah bradys handgun control inc) with your quote facts, say what you want, but there are those of us out here that know/are living proof otherwise,

good day

[Blaise (imported)]

This looks like murder-suicide.