Gun Control Debate - Haymarket, VA

Anne wrote:

No one needs a 40 caliber semi automatic handgun.

Okay Anne, what calibers would you say are acceptable and for what purposes? What about loads? length?
It' always nice to get advice from an obvious expert and authority on the subject like yourself.

Bob wrote:

Let's hear the gun nuts answer Bob's questions

Bob's questions were easy to dispatch. But a dolt like yourself will never understand. Keep taking your medication, Anne. We don't need you back causing any more problems. And go brush your tooth.

Anne wrote:

So the gun nuts do not have any answers to Bob's questions.

Are you back, Anne? How many hours are you allowed computer access there in the pen?

Bob wrote:

Maybe they should ask the NRA to give us some answers. The NRA can tell us and the politicians in their pockets why we need more handguns to kill people.

Really? Will you be supplying proof of that? Soon? Real soon?
That you're a colostomy bag with ears is obvious, but that you would publicly display your stupidity is bold.
When is your next parole hearing?

Bob wrote:

What do we have so many handguns?
Why are we the most heavily armed nation on earth?
Why do we agree with 30,000 gun death every year?
Why is the suicide rate ten times higher in families with guns?
Why are so many handgun murderers men?
Why does almost every mayor in the country want realistic guns laws?
Why does anyone need to buy more than one gun a month in Virginia?
Why does a civilized society tolerate the mass killings by guns?
We can not control people, we can control the guns that kill people.

You're full of crap Bob. That's okay though, Anne eats up crap like that.

Louiston wrote:

<quoted text>
Are you back, Anne? How many hours are you allowed computer access there in the pen?
<quoted text>Really? Will you be supplying proof of that? Soon? Real soon?
That you're a colostomy bag with ears is obvious, but that you would publicly display your stupidity is bold.
When is your next parole hearing?

Excellent!!!

Law wrote:

<quoted text>Like...
Why are we not focusing on the perps instead of inanimate objects?

Why do we have a 'revolving door' justice system?

Why are even hardened criminals allowed to plea down their offenses to as much as 1/3 of the full sentences mandatory for those crimes?

Why are we punishing the majorty for the acts of a very small minority?

Why do people believe that if some laws are good, more laws must be better? Especially when it's a fact that criminals don't obey gun laws.

Why do people want guns to be registered when criminals are not duty bound to register theirs?

Why do so many people confuse rights with privileges?

Why do so amny people have faith that the government will always do the right thing?(Especially after a $15 trillon and growing).

Why is disarming groups of law-abiding people and then advertising that fact with signs a good thing?

How's that? I'd like to get a few from you too.

I say again: You're asking the wrong questions. We all need to start asking how to prevent events like the shooting in Aurora.

You just complained in form of questions.

Clappy wrote:

<quoted text>
I say again: You're asking the wrong questions. We all need to start asking how to prevent events like the shooting in Aurora.
You just complained in form of questions.

You asked him/her for questions. He/she gave you some.
Now you don't like the questions so you'll complain yourself.

Louiston wrote:

<quoted text>You asked him/her for questions. He/she gave you some.
Now you don't like the questions so you'll complain yourself.

We all need to start asking how to prevent events like the shooting in Aurora.

Clappy wrote:

<quoted text>
We all need to start asking how to prevent events like the shooting in Aurora.

See Post #96.

Time to face facts on gun control

It has now been just over a week since a lone gunman opened fire on moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. The airwaves have been dominated by soul searching.

Most of the pundits have concluded that the main cause of this calamity is the dark, strange behavior of the gunman. Talking about anything else, they say, is silly. The New York Times’ usually extremely wise columnist, David Brooks, explains that this is a problem of psychology, not sociology.

At one level, this makes sense, of course, as the proximate cause. But really, it’s questionable analysis. Think about this: are there more lonely people in America compared with other countries? Are there, say, fewer depressed people in Asia and Europe? So why do they all have so much less gun violence than we do?

The United States stands out from the rest of the world not because it has more nutcases – I think we can assume that those people are sprinkled throughout every society equally –but because it has more guns.

Look at the map below. It shows the average number of firearms per 100 people. Most of the world is shaded light green – those are the countries where there are between zero and 10 guns per 100 citizens. In dark brown, you have the countries with more than 70 guns per 100 people. The U.S. is the only country in that category. In fact, the last global Small Arms Survey showed there are 88 guns for every 100 Americans. Yemen is second at 54. Serbia and Iraq are among the other countries in the top 10.

We have 5 percent of the world's population and 50 percent of the guns.

But the sheer number of guns isn’t an isolated statistic. The data shows we compare badly on fatalities, too. The U.S has three gun homicides per 100,000 people. That’s four times as many as Switzerland, ten times as many as India, 20 times as many as Australia and England.

Whatever you think of gun rights and gun control, the numbers don’t flatter America.

I saw an interesting graph in The Atlantic magazine recently. A spectrum shows the number of gun-related deaths by state. Now if you add one more piece of data – gun control restrictions – you see that the states with at least one firearm law (such as an assault weapons ban or trigger locks) tend to be the states with fewer gun-related deaths.

Conclusion? Well, there are lots of factors involved, but there is at least a correlation between tighter laws and fewer gun-related deaths.

I've shown you data comparing countries, and comparing states. Now consider the U.S. over time. Americans tend to think the U.S. is getting more violent. In a recent Gallup survey, 68 percent said there’s more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago. Well, here’s what I found surprising: the U.S. is actually getting safer. In the decade since the year 2000, violent crime rates fell by 20 percent; aggravated assault by 22 percent; motor vehicle theft by 42 percent; murder – by all weapons – by 13 percent.

But guns are the exception. Gun homicide rates haven’t improved at all. They were at roughly the same levels in 2009 as they were in 2000. Meanwhile, serious but non-fatal gun injuries caused during assault have actually increased in the last decade by 20 percent, as guns laws have gotten looser and getting automatic weapons has become easier.

We are the world’s most heavily-armed civilian population. One out of every three Americans knows someone who has been shot.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but not to his or her own facts. Saying that this is all a matter of psychology is a recipe for doing nothing. We cannot change the tortured psychology of madmen like James Holmes. What we can do is change our gun laws.

Tom wrote:

Time to face facts on gun control
It has now been just over a week since a lone gunman opened fire on moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. The airwaves have been dominated by soul searching.
Most of the pundits have concluded that the main cause of this calamity is the dark, strange behavior of the gunman. Talking about anything else, they say, is silly. The New York Times’ usually extremely wise columnist, David Brooks, explains that this is a problem of psychology, not sociology.
At one level, this makes sense, of course, as the proximate cause. But really, it’s questionable analysis. Think about this: are there more lonely people in America compared with other countries? Are there, say, fewer depressed people in Asia and Europe? So why do they all have so much less gun violence than we do?
The United States stands out from the rest of the world not because it has more nutcases – I think we can assume that those people are sprinkled throughout every society equally –but because it has more guns.
Look at the map below. It shows the average number of firearms per 100 people. Most of the world is shaded light green – those are the countries where there are between zero and 10 guns per 100 citizens. In dark brown, you have the countries with more than 70 guns per 100 people. The U.S. is the only country in that category. In fact, the last global Small Arms Survey showed there are 88 guns for every 100 Americans. Yemen is second at 54. Serbia and Iraq are among the other countries in the top 10.
We have 5 percent of the world's population and 50 percent of the guns.
But the sheer number of guns isn’t an isolated statistic. The data shows we compare badly on fatalities, too. The U.S has three gun homicides per 100,000 people. That’s four times as many as Switzerland, ten times as many as India, 20 times as many as Australia and England.
Whatever you think of gun rights and gun control, the numbers don’t flatter America.
I saw an interesting graph in The Atlantic magazine recently. A spectrum shows the number of gun-related deaths by state. Now if you add one more piece of data – gun control restrictions – you see that the states with at least one firearm law (such as an assault weapons ban or trigger locks) tend to be the states with fewer gun-related deaths.
Conclusion? Well, there are lots of factors involved, but there is at least a correlation between tighter laws and fewer gun-related deaths.
I've shown you data comparing countries, and comparing states. Now consider the U.S. over time. Americans tend to think the U.S. is getting more violent. In a recent Gallup survey, 68 percent said there’s more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago. Well, here’s what I found surprising: the U.S. is actually getting safer. In the decade since the year 2000, violent crime rates fell by 20 percent; aggravated assault by 22 percent; motor vehicle theft by 42 percent; murder – by all weapons – by 13 percent.
But guns are the exception. Gun homicide rates haven’t improved at all. They were at roughly the same levels in 2009 as they were in 2000. Meanwhile, serious but non-fatal gun injuries caused during assault have actually increased in the last decade by 20 percent, as guns laws have gotten looser and getting automatic weapons has become easier.
We are the world’s most heavily-armed civilian population. One out of every three Americans knows someone who has been shot.
Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but not to his or her own facts. Saying that this is all a matter of psychology is a recipe for doing nothing. We cannot change the tortured psychology of madmen like James Holmes. What we can do is change our gun laws.

Very disingenuous matter about posting something without giving a proper cite to the author.

The author is full of crap. Automatic weapons have not gotten any easier to get than they were in the past and I'll bet he can't list one recent crime where automatic weapons were used.
He also is trying to comapre thsi country with others that don't have anywhere near the same socio-economic dynamics as the US.
Mexico has tougher gun laws but higher crime rates than the US.

"What we can do is change our gun laws. "
Reall? Holmes bore at least 12 gun laws. That's what criminals do.
So what good is it to change laws that will still be broken by those that do it for a living?

The author is Fareed Zakaria of CNN. Very respected journalist.

DaveTom wrote:

The author is Fareed Zakaria of CNN. Very respected journalist.

And yet the original poster didn't cite that. And respected journalists are not authorities of Constitutional law nor public policy.
Zakaria is of the mistaken belief that criminals obey laws.

Tom wrote:

I saw an interesting graph in The Atlantic magazine recently. A spectrum shows the number of gun-related deaths by state. Now if you add one more piece of data – gun control restrictions – you see that the states with at least one firearm law (such as an assault weapons ban or trigger locks) tend to be the states with fewer gun-related deaths.

First of all, the term "assault weapon" is a government-created term that was drummed up in the 90's to make certain semi-automatic rifles sound scarier than what they were. Cosmetic, not practical, characteristics were applied during the 94-04 ban which was simply a feel-good measure. Both the CDC and National Research Council concluded in 2004 that they couldn't find sufficient evidence to support the ban having any actual affect on gun violence.

The reason why gun control advocates tend to lose their argument is because they generally know nothing about firearms, and play to emotion. As more people become gun owners and get involved in the shooting sports, they start to see through the BS.

Another day, another mass shooting with a HANDGUN. Two Semiautomatic handguns in fact. In wisconsin at a house of worship. The gun nut with the handguns killed six people. A brave copy shot the gun nut. The cop is in surgery.

If this gun nut did not have two semi automatic handguns then six people would still be alive and the brave copy would not be in the operating room fighting for his life.

The us has 1% of the population and 50% of the guns. No one NEEDS two semiautomatic handguns. But our civilized society tolerates mass gun killings and does nothing to stop the handgun murders.

Gun nuts and the NRA tell us why we tolerate handgun murders? And tell us that if someone in this house of worship had a gun everything would have been ok.

More civilized countries do not have so many guns and they rarely have mass gun killings. Why do we continue to accept mass handgun killings?

It is time to stand up to th NRA and the politicians who are on the NRA payroll.

Well said Mike. And good questions. Let's hear from the gun nuts.

Whenever the is a mass gun killing, the NRA goes all quiet because there is little they can say that doesn't sound stupid.

The gun nuts also have nothing to say whever there is blood and dead bodies laying around after a gun nut with a handgun kills more people.

How long before the next mass handgun killing?

Gun nut defend this one.

Nice job basically just copying and pasting the same tired, old arguments and just replacing "assault weapon" with "handgun". This guy could have used a musket and you would still be doing your blood dance. Just admit, you anti-gunners won't be happy until the entire populace is disarmed.

Mike wrote:

Another day, another mass shooting with a HANDGUN. Two Semiautomatic handguns in fact. In wisconsin at a house of worship. The gun nut with the handguns killed six people. A brave copy shot the gun nut. The cop is in surgery.
If this gun nut did not have two semi automatic handguns then six people would still be alive and the brave copy would not be in the operating room fighting for his life.

You don't know that to be true, Mike. And what is a brave copy?

Mike wrote:

The us has 1% of the population and 50% of the guns. No one NEEDS two semiautomatic handguns.

Who are YOU to decide what anyone needs? The 2nd Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, NOT the Bill of Needs.
That same day over 60 million gun owners (many who own semis) did NOT use them to kill anyone.

Mike wrote:

But our civilized society tolerates mass gun killings and does nothing to stop the handgun murders.

BS!!! There are over 20,000 gun laws and the courts prosecute the offenders.

Mike wrote:

Gun nuts and the NRA tell us why we tolerate handgun murders?

Nobody says they should be tolerated. But useful idiots like yourself don't want to face the reality that criminals break laws all of the time. Gun control nuts don't want to recognize that.

Mike wrote:

And tell us that if someone in this house of worship had a gun everything would have been ok.

Nobody can say for sure but one thing is clear. Without anyone else there armed and capable of trying, the rest of the people were easy pickings for the criminal.

Mike wrote:

More civilized countries do not have so many guns and they rarely have mass gun killings. Why do we continue to accept mass handgun killings?

Why do you continue to lie? Who said anything about accepting mass "handgun" shootings.

Mike wrote:

It is time to stand up to th NRA and the politicians who are on the NRA payroll.

It's time to pull your head out and quit regurgitating the tripe spewed by polluticians and talking heads. But a gun control nut doesn't know any better.

Anne wrote:

Well said Mike. And good questions. Let's hear from the gun nuts.

Right Anne. Sock puppets like yourself are almost always gun control nuts and frustrated control freaks.