U.S. Gun Violence

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Than perhaps you should STFU and listen to those of us who not only have experience, but have done the research to make informed comments, rather than making ignorant statements that you can't support with evidence.

I don't notice you presenting a lot of evidence, just a lot of bluster.

Yeah ok, I'm crazy for using some common sense to crush the same old tired ass slippery slope argument. Keep misrepresenting what you were responding to and pretending you can weasel your way out of every argument.

The original post had no mention of the words "kill" or "people" either so your idea of validity is jerking off to the semantics. The topic is related to "self-defense" and the "indiscriminate" nature of nerve gas should make it obvious to anyone that the whole "Guns don't kill people, people do" doesn't imply a slippery slope to some arms race. Seems like you value keywords more than the substance of the argument itself. It's like I'm arguing with a search engine.

American culture being what it is, lots and lots of Americans do have serious anger issues. And, given our easy access to guns, too many Americans see guns as an easy means of dealing with an anger problem.

There does seem to be considerable correlation between having an obsessive interest in guns, and having anger problems.

In Florida, they're thinking about requiring purchasers of bullets to complete anger-management training.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03 ... on-buyers/

I think that this would be a good idea. I know that this is a "constitutionally-dubious solution to the problem of gun violence." Overall, it would do a lot more good than harm. Even if just one hot-head finds a means of calming down without shooting someone, it would be worth it to require all bullet-purchasers to go through the training.

Last edited by ArrantPariah on 20 Jan 2014, 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wrong,any feed store in a rural area has plenty.People buy huge truck loads to spread on the hay fields.They do regulate blasting caps and dynamite.Used to you could buy all you wanted and never had to even sign for it.

If you review some of the angry comments that have been made in WrongPlanet discussions about gun control: oh, if anonymous posts on internet message boards could kill.....

But, they can't. An angry person with guns, however, can kill.

Actually, one very positive development to have derived from the various school massacres is the anti-bullying campaigns.

Previously, school bullies did as they pleased, and pretty much ruled the schools. School administrators ignored the problem, and allowed the bullies to act as aggressively as they wanted. Now, at least, the schools are trying to address the issues.

I do have some appreciation of the frame of mind of those who are pushed to the tipping point and end up going on a killing rampage. If I'd had some guns, then I might have been there myself, at a few points in my life.

It will probably require a lot more people "going postal" before the problem of sociopathic supervisors is addressed in any meaningful way. Now, they always seem to blame the killers.

I'm not the one making a claim that I need to support with evidence, evidence that in your case does not exist outside of your own personal bias. Make an evidence based claim, and I'll provide my own to dispute it with, otherwise I'm just wasting my time on someone who goes with feelings over facts.

If someone has a gun out of their holster in public - by all means you should stay the f* away. They're either preparing to take a shot at someone, or they're being extremely stupid. However, that wasn't the scenario presented - the scenario presented was someone who was carrying a gun, presumably in a holster - which means their gun is pointed in a safe direction (down) and the trigger is covered.



How do you know to avoid someone with a gun if you can't tell that they have a gun? That's ridiculous.

of course not. It was an honest question. You said that cops shoot more people than CCWs do, which I believe; I just wonder what the actual public exposure of the two is, because without that the relative 'dangerousness' of the two (which *you* brought up) can't be determined just by the relative numbers of shootings. For example, if CCW's only actually carry about 1/8 of the time when they leave the house (or less), whereas cops are carrying five days a week, that might not mean as much; I know at least a couple of CCWs where I used to live, in Humboldt County, CA, almost never carried. They wanted a permit so that they could carry if they wanted, but had never felt much of a need during the years that they'd had the permit.


Sounds like an argument for getting rid of the police. Do you have an unbiased source for that? Again, that's a dramatic claim and it's an honest question.

Also in Humboldt County, for a couple of years (before the old police chief was tossed and a new one was brought in), the cops were shooting (and/or showing a few too many 'suspicious deaths' in custody after a 'struggle' during arrest) more people than the *criminals*, much less any CCWs. So, in counties like that, I don't find your original statement a stretch at all, and since living there I have been more leery of cops. I just wonder if it would be different if more civilian CCWs were packing more of the time, and thus more likely to have access to a weapon when they get provoked.

Last edited by LKL on 20 Jan 2014, 3:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ok. The reason that prohbition and the 'war on drugs' were, and have been, such catastrophic failures, though, is that the banned substances in question are addictive and provide temporary psychological relief for living in miserable, hopeless conditions. The same cannot be said of guns.


Dude, *no* law is effective for people who don't generally obey laws. That's the point. Speed limit laws are completely ineffective against speeders, but they do reduce the overall average speed and they do make speeders stand out more so that they're easier to catch.
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I've seen this type of argument before, and proposed it, but I haven't seen this response before, so I'm asking an honest question: do you think that the 'right to bear arms' can be limited to self-defensive weapons, which can precisely target one person/criminal at a time? Because that is an entirely sane argument, and slightly different from other forms of pro-gun arguments that I sometimes see.

If I read between the lines, what I think you're trying to ask is "why are cops more likely to be involved in a shooting than CCWers" I think you touched on one of the contributing factors (that cops are carrying more on average than most CCWers) - but I think that's a relatively minor part of the answer. I think primarily there are two things in play here:

One factor is that most cops receive less firearms training than CCWers do (both per year and in total). Most jurisdictions only mandate that officers qualify once or twice per year at the range and take a refresher course on judicious use of force once a year - and many cops don't go to the range in-between. Many of the people I know who carry are at the range once a week, and taking self defense training classes several times per year.

The other factor is that cops are expected to put themselves in dangerous situations where they might have to draw and fire their weapon, whereas citizens who carry are only doing so to protect themselves and/or their family - they aren't seeking out trouble, and they aren't acting under color of law.

Well, I would point out that chemical weapons are not "arms", they are "ordinance". But, to answer your question, the Supreme Court dealt with the issue of "what types of weapons are covered by the 2nd amendment" already in US v. Miller.

Their conclusion was that the second amendment protects arms that are "in common use at the time" by the military forces, as one of the original intents of the second amendment was to allow citizen militias to compliment the standing military with weapons they had in their possession at the time.

After the new chief was brought in in HumCo, the police shootings and deaths in custody abruptly dropped from half a dozen a year (it was a rural area, low population, so that's more significant than it sounds) to zero. I don't know what he did, whether it was training or just a promise to fire the next guy who shot someone without good cause, or kicked their ribs in during arrest, but I wouldn't mind having the level of training you describe required for cops, too. There wasn't a sudden increase of injuries to police after he came in, either, so it wasn't about being 'necessary for self-defense.'
The thing is, that level of training is far from universal even for CCWs; there's a map a couple of posts up showing a lot of pretty permissive areas in the US. Again, in Humboldt County, the CCWs I knew IIrc had to qualify once a year at a range, and that was about it.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... ones-a-fan

can we all agree that this might not be a good idea?

I'm pretty sure that the founders were pretty strongly against having a "standing army," so I'm not sure if that's an accurate assessment. And that's a far cry from being the entirely sane use of precisely-targetable guns for self-defensive purposes; I really don't like the idea of a militarized neighborhood. I like it even less, in fact, than I like the idea of a militarized police force, which I think is a really, really bad idea.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/ ... rmies.html
http://www.infowars.com/no-wonder-america’s-founders-distrusted-standing-armies/
(this is an interesting article - hopefully a little bit paranoid, but interesting to read.

Last edited by LKL on 20 Jan 2014, 4:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't believe you have to legislate requirements for training for people who carry - there's already a huge incentive for people who want to carry to seek training on their own - namely, if you engage a target and something goes wrong, you likely wind up in jail for a very, very long time. I've taken concealed carry classes as a pre-requisite for getting permits in many states, and I've never taken a class where the instructor didn't say that this was the beginning of their training, and gone into great detail about what happens when you make a small mistake due to lack of training or w/e and end up with a bad shoot. The people who are only getting the permit for "occasional/home carry" or to remove some of the restrictions the state places on them that have nothing to do with carry don't really pay attention - but the people who carry on a regular basis absolutely do pay attention.

Incidentally, I've never actually gone to a concealed carry class that "only" met the requirements that the state provides. Instructors feel like they have a responsibility to teach a lot more than what the state says they have to.