Oh, yuck. I just looked at the site (haven’t had much time to do that lately), and we’re carrying ads for “Concealed Carry” magazine. A whole magazine, dedicated to people who are obsessed with carrying deadly weapons in public, and whose promoters have put up a general ad buy for any site that has discussions about gun control. Like this one.
Just the fact that such a rag exists and that it has people who buy it says a lot about one of the things wrong with America.
Jeez, I got work to do. I shouldn’t ever look at a site like Pharyngula that works me up into a lathering fury.
Serves you right for trying to make a buck, you capitalist… ummm… atheist communist?
It is Monday morning, that’s the best I can do. :(
I have ads for crutch pads and donating to an xmas dinner charity.
I’ve been yelling this for years.
Years.
to no avail.
They have ads on the internet now? O_o
Yay not getting your icky american ads. People just want to sell me cars, tshirts, toy cars based on pixars Cars movie, and education
My company webblocker filters out nearly all such web advertising before it even reaches my browser.
I had to read the post a couple times before I realized that “magazine” referred to a paper magazine and not one that carries bullets. That’s gun culture for you, I guess.
I don’t know about anyone else, but one problem I have with gun control debates is that quite often they’ll get into the specifics of guns and ammunition. This is probably a good thing, and I realize that I don’t really have informed opinions on exactly what kinds of guns should be controlled in what ways, but really, anyone who knows so much about guns gives me the “slowly back away” impulse.
It’s not that bad. Just take satisfaction in the thought that almost nobody who visits this site would actually click their ad so they’ll be wasting their money running it here.
I think that’s the logic for why so many LBGT websites run ads from anti-gay hate grou… family values advocates. Make them waste some of that illegally laundered church money on ads targeted towards an audience who detests them.
I saw the ad when I first saw this post. Imagine they’re pushing to get exposure on any place that talks about shootings.
My (sensible) family ended up talking about the shootings while we were celebrating my graduation this weekend. There are way too many idiots who buy into the narrative that they’re going to save the day with a headshot, and instead they’d likely mess everything up. I can certainly imagine if there were enough of these people around for a shooting, it’d turn into a meat grinder when, in the confusion, they mistake the first “defender” for a second shooter, triggering a cascade. One point I didn’t know about Texas, but am not surprised by: You only need a hour lecture or something to get a license, not a real safety course.
One source of facepalm: The mention of people carrying handguns in their pockets, with a bullet in the chamber and the safety off. I think the best reason we need gun control laws is because our culture has been encouraging irresponsible gun ownership.
Argh. Turned off adblock plus for freethoughtblogs.com and… Got a pop-up add for a hormone that will remove belly fat!!! Screening of these ads really needs to be done. OK. Turning adblock plus back on again.
but really, anyone who knows so much about guns gives me the “slowly back away” impulse.
The closest I’ve ever come to a firearm were BB guns me and my brother got as little kids, and which our parents took away after a local girl accidentally killed her brother by shooting him through the eye with one, but I still know all kinds of stuff about guns from a combination of videogames and documentaries. Different types of ammo, difference between a battle rifle and assault rifle, how a silencer actually works, etc.
Still can’t be bothered to give half a damn about the difference between a clip and a magazine though.
Any weapon whose description or capability smacks of military/paramilitary use –automatic, semiautomatic, assault, expanding or hollow point bullets (forbidden to the military under the Hague Conventions!), et al.– ought to be forbidden for civilian possession/use in the United States, as they are in many other countries.
I grew up hunting and target shooting. I have some knowledge of guns. I have three long arms that belonged to my father-in-law, who hunted with them. I clean them regularly, store them locked, and they haven’t been fired in years. I haven’t hunted for forty years, and my eyesight is not good enough for much fun target shooting any more.
Please don’t back away from me. :-)
I’m one of those people whom marketeers hate.
I once heard a Safeway radio ad that for some inexplicable reason started off with, “You know that good feeling you get when you buy a new set of tires? Well, you can get that feeling from a can of Van Camp’s Pork and Beans, now on sale at Safeway for blablabla.” I have no idea why Safeway would mention tires, but I decided that since my tires were getting thin on tread anyway, it woudl be a good time to get some new ones.
I keep the remote close at hand when I’m getting my brain treatments in front of the TV; I wore out the Mute button on the first one and had to replace it.
That said, click on the gun links! Click-throughs make money for FTB. They bought the ad space; they bought the clicks. You don’t have to even look at the content. (On a Mac it’s command-click then comand-W. Open in a new tab and shut.)
This site has ads?
Rey Fox:
Sorry that bothers you. What bothers me is that if you combine the people who are extremely anti-gun with the rational gun owners who support strict gun control that still falls short of an absolute ban, we outnumber the gun nuts by a whole lot. A bunch of rational gun owners simply sit out the discussion because they are tired of being accused of being part of one extreme by the other extreme. Like for instance, you insinuating that anyone who knows about firearms is dangerous and you need to physically avoid them. And from a purely pragmatic standpoint, knowing what you’re talking about is better than not knowing, and defuses a common (and unfortunately correct) criticism from the NRA-types.
It is the same mistakes us progressive types often make, in trying to pretend that politics is academics, and giving up the emotional/storytelling ground to the regressives. The statistics are good and true and necessary, but imagine the anti-assault weapons campaign you could put together with a bunch of combat veterans carrying the message that combat weapons aren’t for “recreation” or hunting?
In the UK the police are normally not routinely armed. Those officers who do carry firearms have to undergo a strict selection process, followed by a length training course. One they have passed that course they join specialized firearms units that either are deployed protecting airports, government buildings etc, or armed response units that are deployed whenever their colleagues feel there is threat of the use of firearms.
They spend about one week in four undergoing more training, and must re-qualify every few months or loose the right to carry firearms.
These people are well trained, and they keep their skills upto date. And even they make mistakes and kill innocent people.
How the fuck are people with minimal, if any, training supposed to manage ?
I’m afraid Freethought Blogs is the site that finally pushed me to install AdBlockPlus.
It was when you had a video that auto-played with sound in a pop-under.
Oh gods those stupid turkey survivor island ads with their stupid little tribal beats that autoplayed. MAKE THEM STOP! Just glad they seem to have disappeared, I don’t want to install ad blockers but that kind of thing gets to me.
“How the fuck are people with minimal, if any, training supposed to manage ?”
I don’t know, Matt.
What came to mind was something from was something from the Marines, talking about the hand-to-hand stuff they taught us. I went to the instructor training course, and they told us that the real purpose of the training wasn’t to make us unarmed killing machines, and that trying that stuff in a bar fight would most likely get you beaten up really really badly. The real purpose was to instill confidence and hopefully have people freeze up in combat. Considering the very minimum shooting at moving targets we did, I have to assume that the marksmanship training had a similar primary goal… and a lot of people were really, really bad shots.
How the fuck is it a good idea to put more and more deadly weapons in the hands of more and more people, when the reality is that even the people we expect to be well-trained and highly-skilled often aren’t, and even high levels of training don’t prevent all the mistakes?
I like ads.
Without them, how would I know what I need?
Not really a surprise to see more ads on ftb that are a bit out of place. Haven’t seen them lately but for the longest time I’d see ads for that odious apologetics site everystudent.com. It was pretty annoying.
That shit is the worst. If hell was real, the obnoxious fuckers who thought ads that randomly start playing (sometimes you cannot even mute the ads or pause them) were a good idea to get people interested in their products would almost certainly be roasting for eternity for sins of severe annoyance.
Also, the ads are terrible in another way: they don’t bring us much money. FtB has phenomenal traffic, and sadly has a miserable return rate on ads.
Ed’s been trying to compensate by throwing more ads at the site, and I don’t think that works — it’s ugly and annoying, and 4 ads that get miserable click-throughs are not worth one good targeted ad that brings in 10 times the revenue. We are a small operation, though, with virtually no paid staff (one part time tech person), which limits the quality and effort put into the advertising business.
Ed’s getting smarter, though — last time I talked to him he’s getting some serious training in running the business side of a busy web site. Things should improve a bit down the road.
I find that NoScript does a pretty good job of blocking the annoying ads, though it does require tinkering with each new site one accesses, to allow the content while blocking the crap. I don’t mind sidebar ads for apologetics or Christian dating sites — let them waste their money funding a bunch of godless chatter.
I have adblock, but even when I turn it off out of curiosity, I mostly just get ads for education, dieting, healing crystals or some other mystical cure.
I often see ads here for Xtian dating, or lessons in Biblical Hebrew, or “How do we know God is real?” Also ads for investment firms, arthritis medication, or Pilsbury pastries. Occasionally, I’ll see an ad for mature d@ting, with the insulting tagline, “We don’t want anyone young and handsome- we want you!”
PZ #23, Glad to read that improvements are being considered.
I have always held that if one must run advertisements on a website, they should a. be served from the same host/domain as the site itself, b. consist of only static pictures or text (no animated GIFs, Flash, Java or other obtrusive shit), c. not make use of trackers or other malicious scripts and cookies and d. fit in with the site, thematically and ideologically. These are things that no generic “ad network” can deliver I am afraid.
Just be glad that this one hasn’t shown up here yet, or has it?
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/280711110485762048
The ads I’m seeing now are for an on-line game, funny t-shirts, and loan consolidation.
@PZ:
I would pay $10 a month for no ads subscription.
I saw the ads on here last week when I was on a “unsecured” computer. Totally unbelievable. Do you charge by the 1/2 hour? Do I need to wear a condom? WTF???
Numbers don’t mean much, if resulting gun laws are unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court ruled recently that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individuals to carry guns for their personal protection.
Assault weapons are ugly, yes, designed for combat. But functionally, they are no different than the types of weapons used by individuals which are covered by the 2nd Amendment. They are semiautomatic weapons.
So whenever a horrific massacre occurs, instead of a knee-jerk reaction to vainly rally for gun control laws, we might consider that it would benefit a heck of a lot more people to not help get more Republicans elected by giving them, once again, this campaign issue on a silver platter.
Personally, I am many orders of magnitude more concerned about the billions of people and millions of species which are virtually guaranteed to die due to global warming because of batshit Republican politicians, than I am about the relatively extremely tiny number of innocents killed by madmen with guns. These batshit Republicans get elected, you know, by batshit voters who take efforts to impose gun control pretty fracking seriously.
Let it go, folks, let it go. :(
Just a few weeks ago you had a banner ad for “Diana Numerologist — Let the Numbers Reveal Your Future” just below the crocaduck. The top post below the ad was “O, look. It’s Brute Reason.” Wish I knew how to post the screenshot I took because there was a headless Diana surrounded by numbers. It was too funny.
I can certainly understand the truly responsible gun owners being discouraged from speaking up. Unfortunately, the silence is probably another contributing factor to the nuts getting more unhinged over time, since they don’t have critics within the gun owning community to rhetorically slap some sense into them. I’ll continue trying to keep my own arguments focused on the loonies while respecting responsible gun owners.
Robro #32, for sharing pictures you could use a service like imgur.com. No registration is required. There are others, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photo_sharing_websites
So, they care more about having their precious fee-fees hurt than human lives. Figures.
And you really think those “batshit voters” are going to vote for any politician rational enough to accept the science on AGW? In the USA, gun nuttery and AGW denialism are part of the same toxic belief complex.
The Venn diagram would be a perfect circle.
Fuck I hate this wish for easy solutions. I would hate to be thought of as a pro-gun nut but the NRA is strictly speaking correct when it says “guns don’t kill people people do”. By themselves they are inert steel tools used for sending projectiles at high speed at targets.
They are operated by human beings they do not operate autonomously .
Of all the things that can be said about people like this particular mass killer they are not happy contented people they are at the least upset and see no other way to solve the problems they are facing. You can make all the laws you want restrict everything you can that you can think of that would allow anyone to comet a mass killing and you would not do anything to help these miserable desperate people find some way to cope. They would still be left be in the same hopeless place but would you really be safe?
uncle frogy
As I live in Portugal, my ads are not about guns, but about a cellphone provider and a fortune teller.
Calos Cabanita: My ads are “Todavía es verano en Lisboa” and “Is Jesus God?” Scholars examine the evidence.
Blogs don’t work people up into a lathering fury. People work people up into a lathering fury.
Wonder if you can get a permit to carry a blog…
Oh, is that all they are?
How insignificant an object of complete obsession.
Here’s an inert tool.
Worship that instead. Problem solved.
No.
Uncle Frogy, #37:
Of course they are right when they say it, but then again it is just a useless truism that cannot really be used as an argument either pro or contra guns or gun control. It is a catchy but empty slogan thrown around to confuse the debate, nothing more. Don’t get caught in it.
Of course it is people who kill people. And of course there is something wrong with a lot of people, as you say.
And that is exactly why people should not have unrestricted, unconditional access to guns.
And if you want people who have something wrong with them to be able to get help, that’s honestly a nice idealistic thought. But I think the first priority must be that as few people as possible get killed either intentionally or accidentally. Therefore, the weapons must be taken away from the populace, starting with those weapons that can potentially do the most damage.
@37: You know, controlling firearms in a more rational manner is not mutually exclusive with providing better social services for people in need (unless of course you do it like a previous Canadian government did, which is to say by creating a fantastically expensive gun registry, which might be a good idea except for the first two words, when that money could have been spent on, like, social services). And yes, we would be safer if unstable people didn’t possess quite such *convenient* instruments of mayhem.
@45 Eamon Knight
Forget the unstable people it would just be better to have better social services to try to deal with all the suicides done with firearms.
The first and foremost reason I use Firefox is Adblock Plus. There’s a free adblocker for Internet Explorer, but the free version only blocks 200 ads per day, which is ridiculous – it usually doesn’t last into the evening.
Many of the animated ads on ScienceBlogs (before the Nat Geo takeover) simply overwhelmed this old computer, slowing it down and eventually freezing it while I was waiting for the task manager first to appear and then to kill the browser. I’m sorry, I need to block the ads.
No.
As long as I’m not convinced that I’ve been wrong, I don’t let go. Why would I?
Of course banning assault rifles (however defined) or similar legislative action wouldn’t be a miracle cure. The black market for guns is unusually large in the US, for one. But can you really argue that it wouldn’t have any net beneficial effect? After all, one big source of illegal guns are stolen legal guns…
And can you really argue that the right to carry guns for self-protection* entails the right to carry semiautomatic weapons? If you really need 20 shots to defend yourself, you’re dangerous to any bystanders within miles and really, really shouldn’t have a way of firing 20 shots in one day.
* Which, incidentally, is an admission by the Supreme Court that the USA has failed at one of the things states exist for: having a reliable police.
well there’s your problem! All you need to do is slow down those projectiles so they aren’t so dangerous.
dude, seriously, this is a REALLY stupid argument, and you should know better. the NRA is NOT right about this, and never has been.
It’s also exactly why people don’t have unrestricted, unconditional access to cars and can’t always use the ones they own as they please.
You’d be a fuck of a lot safer if there were many fewer guns in private hands. Try looking outside the USA for a moment.
I use Firefox but don’t bother with Adblock – I’ve got an intracranial adblocker, and almost never notice them.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. People with guns kill people more efficiently. People with certain guns can even rack up a bonus score. Fuck you.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. People with guns kill people more efficiently. People with certain guns can even rack up a bonus score. Fuck you. Your fetish isn’t worth the cost. Suck it up.
This is a deliberate mistatement of the facts. The true statement is “people use guns to kill people”, (emphasis on their lie of omission) and their attempts to deflect the truth should always be refuted.
@51: When FTB premiered there were fucking *pop-ups* that happened every time I entered the site –even just changing from one blog to another. Hard to ignore those, which is why I installed NoScript on my work computer.
Sure, guns don’t kill people. People are the ones killing each other. If we are going to work towards minimizing these killings, I think it is far more feasible to create strict laws regarding firearms. People have been kiling people for some time now, despite a variety of strict laws against it. Since we haven’t been successful in stopping human on human violence, we need to do what we can to make it as difficult as possible for us to kill one another.
Put another way: do we outlaw guns or people?
michaelD: you are from Canada too, no? If so, awesome! It warms my heart to see Canadians on ftb!
And I had a thought while shoveling snow today.
You know how pro-lifers are always saying ‘but the fetus could have grown up to cure cancer’
Well, any one of those children killed in Newtown, or any of the children killed by guns every year, could “cure cancer”
Many pro-lifers, being right wing, also tend to love the guns. Funny how they can accept dead children from guns, but cannot seem to accept dead embryos eh?
Me too. I’ve just scrolled through the page to see if I had an adblocker installed or not.
Of course, if I now go out and buy a car or play poker, the internal filter obviously doesn’t work.
Yup another Canuck here. We are canadian and we are everywhere O.O
gingerbaker @31:
Please don’t tell people where and how they should focus their energies. Thank you.
Is there a Canadian invasion of FtB going on? Just keep the peas and there will be no problem.
All the targeted ads on FTB suck actually. They’re obnoxious and many seem fraudulent. I get that you personally are (probably?) not making the decisions on this but the popups of “LANGUAGE PROFESSORS HATE HIM!” and targeted shit ads haven’t seriously gone unnoticed before this have they?
Whoever’s in charge of monetizing your page took a page from myspace and the guys in charge of the stuff on during talk show time slots.
The really scary thing about Canadians is that they look just like regular people.
Guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people. When shot out of guns, by gun nuts. And while it’s tempting to get rid of gun nuts, I suppose we have to recognise they’re human beings too, even if they are somewhat disfunctional, and there’s nothing really wrong with most of them that a good long course of addiction therapy won’t fix. So it’s probably best if we just get rid of the guns and bullets instead.
gingerbaker @31, That was a stupid argument when it got used against marriage rights, and it’s a stupid argument now.
Fortunately they taste way different tho.
Like the difference between cold water lobster and warm water lobster?
I suppose if I tried really, really hard I might be able to do that. The “look like regular people” thing, that is. The “scary thing” – I can do that! (alas, not as well as I could in my younger days)
Maybe. I’m a prairie boy (well, aspen parkland but let’s not quibble): I don’t know lobster.
Maybe like the difference between pierogi and koldunai?
I like AdBlock because it not only blocks the wingnutty ads, but it also ensures that I am not sexually objectifying the T-shirt models.
<blockquote" I’ve got an intracranial adblocker, and almost never notice them.
Me, also, too. Except that horrendously noxious turkey thing (ibid)!
I can recall two ads, in all my time using the intertoobz, that were for something I was interested in. One was for a microscope vendor (good prices on binocular loupes), and something else I don’t remember.
I don’t mind most of the religious ones, since most of them are just kind of sappy. There is some outfit called Dor or something like that that sells weapons – I’d be happy to seem gone forever. I’ve seen a few for fraudulent stuff, but don’t recall any on ftb.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people (and monkeys too, if they have a gun).”
@27: Straight from the horse’s mouth:
http://www.bushmaster.broco.com/mancard/
Bobo:
And you’ve nailed it. Just goes to show how much those fuckers love their dogma above actual people.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
1) Go to “Support FTB” near the bottom of the sidebar and sign up for a monthly donation.
2) Install Adblock Plus
There you go!
PS to PZ: You should move that donation widget closer to the top of the page where it will have more visibility. I only noticed it for the first time yesterday.
Apparenlty Mike Huckabee is now saying that the newtown massacre occured ‘cuz contraception’
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/12/17/1344001/huckabee-blames-tax-funded-abortion-pills-for-newtown-massacre/
Ok oddly I was just over at stephanie`s and got ads for hunting knives and martial arts armour (like sparring armour)….. o.O
I quite enjoyed this.
if nothing else is done to address the sources of the problems or to address the problems themselves besides “getting rid of guns” there will be just as many miserable desperate isolated people. Some will find some other way to kill a bunch of people it is not hard. Will there be less or more of these events?
I am deeply suspicious of quick easy fixes .
These things are symptoms of problems as well as problems themselves. Is our drug policy very effective at curbing drug addiction, are our anti terrorist policies effective in diminishing terrorist activity at what cost? could we do something else to address the symptoms that these things represent?
We wont. We prefer to look at things in small bits. We will try another easy answer and have this conversation again next time because we are stubborn and lazy.
uncle frogy
Wait a minute…
that means
hold on
That must mean
I look like a Canadian?
damn it
a decent-sized octopus with the right gun could kill people too.
Probably would.
People who carry a concealed firearm have prevented a multitude of crimes. By and large they are people who have great respect for the letter of law and only wish to defend themselves. There is not a 1:1 ratio of police to citizen. Studies have found that concealed carry permit holders are 13 times less likely to commit a crime than a member of the general public.
iceclimbr wrote:
Because correlation is causation, amirite?
Citation needed, as gun nuts like you are liars and bullshitters until you can provide third party evidence to show you aren’t liars and bullshitters, and sloganists….
Five bucks says that people NOT carrying any kind of weapon at all have prevented even more crimes.
What about the flapping heads and beady eyes?
gingerbaker wrote:
Personally, I am many orders of magnitude more concerned about the trillions of species that are virtually guaranteed to become completely extinct due to the heat death of the universe than I am about the relatively tiny number of ones that will die due to global warming.
There’s always a greater tragedy that means your personal pet concern should have to wait. And no one here ever buys it.
Uncle Frogy #79:
But at least they will not make as many victims.
And of course “the sources of the problems” also need to be addressed.
Actually, it is. If you have a gun and ammunition you can create a massacre on a whim. Load your weapon, go on the street or into a building, kill people dead. It is too easy.
Now take for instance this case which happened on exactly the same day as the tragedy in Sandy Hook, a couple of hours earlier in fact: Chenpeng Village Primary School stabbing. Happened in China. Very comparable situation: disturbed man attacked a classroom full of children. But he did it with a knife. And he certainly did hurt and maim many of them, but none are dead.
If a deranged mad man must attack your child, would you prefer he used a gun or a knife?
Even if there were more of such events, if they are less deadly it does appear to be an easy choice.
But do you really think there will be more attacks if there are less guns?
Who says there are any? But that doesn’t mean you can just leave the out-of-control gun situation exist.
We Canadians can be terribly frightening to USAmerican tourists who aren’t allowed to pack their sidearms and then we have the unmitigated gall to laugh at the poor dears.
They also don’t much like the fact that they have to have ALL firearms sealed if they want to take them into out national parks.
The UK banned all assault rifles in 1987 following the Hungerford Massacre, but that didn’t stop the 1996 Dunblane massacre (also elementary school kids).
After the Dunblane massacre, the UK banned all handguns, but that didn’t stop the Cumbria shootings in 2010.
Banning specific TYPES of weapon doesn’t do a goddamned thing other than give you the warm fuzzies right up until the next mass shooting.
It’s pay-per click add right?
In that case we should all click it and drain their cash?
Specious argument. You have to look at the rates of mass shootings over time, and the severity of the incidences, and the surrounding factors that contribute to how each individual incident happened.
Taking a flu vaccine doesn’t guarantee that you won’t get the flu that year. It only reduces your risk. That doesn’t mean it is useless and should not be done.
kyoseki #90:
Exactly. This is why all types of guns must be restricted.
The concealed carry doesn’t bother me that much. However, can someone explain this to me, why aren’t gun owners legally required to secure their firearms in a locked box or safe when not being used? The whole point is that they shouldn’t get in the wrong hands so why don’t we require owners to take reasonable safeguards from this happening? As I recall, the recent shooter used weapons that were registered to his mother so it begs the question how he obtained them.
Kyoseki #90
The Hungerford, Dunblane, and Cumbria shootings were all perpetrated with legally-held weapons….and you’re trying to use that as an argument against gun control?
The point still stands, however;
If you give anyone access to firearms, you’re going to get mass shootings.
Everyone’s jumping on the “let’s ban assault weapons” bandwagon because it’s a quick and easy way to make themselves feel like they’re doing something.
It’s like saying “I’ll pray for you”, it has no real effect other than to make the person feel better about themselves.
You don’t need an assault weapon to perpetrate carnage. In fact, most mass shootings don’t use the things because handguns are cheaper, more readily available and concealable.
There are quite a lot of gun control changes I’d love to see, but blanket bans on any specific type don’t do shit, the shooters just change their tactics.
Ban them all or don’t waste your time.
Where am I arguing against gun control?
I did not realize anyone was making the argument that there would never be another shooting if they were banned or heavily restricted. As Amphiox points out, that is not a very good way of measuring effectiveness.
It seems many people that are against increased gun control seem to think that those that are for it see it as a panacea that will fix everything and make all horrible events go away. If someone says that please do call them out, but I do not see it here.
evilDoug
Fear out menacing canadian chortle O.O (I like chortle)
The argument does get made constantly though, there’s even an op ed by Dianne Feinstein on sfgate somewhere (google it, I think putting any kind of hotlink into a response automatically flags it for review) where she literally makes the argument that these kinds of tragedies wouldn’t happen if people didn’t have access to the things.
evilDoug wrote:
Why, with our streets and cities not awash in rifles and handguns, it’s a wonder our society hasn’t completely collapsed. It’s almost every other week that I hear of some homicide occurring in my city, which is surely much higher than any U.S. city.
ckitching
Every other week?
My city has at least one fatal shooting per day. The number of murder per year here exceeds the number of the county I used to live in before (!!)
I saw this yesterday:
“When everyone in a society feels the need to walk around armed, that society has failed.”
I can make a good argument that the US is actually very close to BEING a collapsed society, and I wouldn’t be the only one to do so.
Link to studies please.
New Zealand has 2 per month, on average. even accounting for per capita differences, it’s at least an order of magnitude lower than the US.
People here own guns. the difference is, nobody feels a NEED to own a gun, unless they hunt to live.
in the US, you have an entire culture that has been brought up to think that using guns is wholesome family fun by gun manufacturer advertising, going all the way back to even before WWII. Generations of Americans don’t even question being attracted to guns; it’s what they grew up with – they see full page adds for assault weapons in their sunday paper. they see glossy magazines entirely devoted to gun fanaticism. they see television shows on channels that are labeled “Discovery” glorifying the sale and use of guns.
The US literally has a privileged gun culture, perhaps the first in the world to have such a thing, and it will be tremendously hard to tear that down.
but tear it down is what must be done. The good news is that tearing it down will NOT result in the teething, screaming gun owners being killed by their government, black helicopters will NOT invade your local town and disappear gun owners into the night… no, what instead will happen is that the fictions that have maintained this farce will simply be put to light, the idea that everyone needs an arsenal of weapons will slowly die, and sanity will begin to return.
it took generations for this nightmare culture to be promoted into existence, it will take generations to see the back of it.
To do nothing, is to accept that the culture that currently exists is in fact what you want.
Kyoseki, while you were creating your straw man argument trying to show UK gun laws have had no preventative effect on other mass shootings, I take it you just didn’t notice the long gaps between those incidents or the completely different nature of the attacks one from the other. You really think the UK incidence of school shootings is on a par with the US rate? Seriously?
Uncle Frogy…
“Some will find some other way to kill a bunch of people it is not hard.”
.I know Olav has already pretty much made this point but its really worth repeating. Please, just for a few moments, engage your imagination and (distressing as it is) put yourself in the role of the mass murderer. To carry out such an attack you have to be able to quickly overcome anyone you meet in the target area, your method has to be quick and efficient so that you maintain control over the target group – if you get involved in a messy, distracting struggle with one victim the other victims are far more likely to take steps against you. Guns and large capacity magazines are great for this kind of work. You can kill many people, quickly. You do not have to reload and thus render yourself vulnerable. You can act at a distance Finding some other method IS hard. Knives, clubs and other close up and personal weapons take much more skill to use and more often than not will degenerate into a struggle, you will be vulnerable to attack potentially by more than one of your victims, you will not maintain control of the situation. How about poison or bombs? Well for a start that is a completely different kind of attack. It requires time, planning, acquisition of materials, assembly of the weapon etc. Lots of time for rage to dissipate, for your activities to alert someone. More fundamentally, for someone angry, vengeful or mentally ill it completely lacks the spontaneous, rapid “vengeance fantasy” quality of grabbing a few guns and a shitload of ammo and blowing the people you have dehumanised into valid and deserving targets, out of their socks. I would also argue that in committing such an act dehumanising your targets is a common phenomenon and for most people an essential one ( although I must emphasise that how anyone can fail to empathise with a child and objectify them in this way is frankly beyond my comprehension), it is a helluva lot easier to maintain this emotional disconnection if you are keeping your victims relatively at a distance and dispatching them with a pull of a trigger. Even disturbed and rage fuelled human beings are likely to have more difficulty in doing so if they are using weapons that require them to inflict horrific wounds with, say, a knife or similar.
The problem is not just these kinds of mass shootings. the death toll in the US is truly shocking. the ready availability of such an effective, convenient weapon inevitably makes other shootings more likely to happen on the spur of the moment, the heat of an argument, the grief of a betrayal. They make people act with greater recklessness and bravado. Give a 9mm to Walter Mitty and he turns into John Wayne.
it’s probably the wiki they are referring to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States
but the quote is cited from an amalgamation of sources, some of which no longer link to anything.
aside from this, it’s rather a useless argument, since we don’t know what the demographics are, and frankly, there are so few concealed carry owners to begin with, that it is like trying to use the idea that trained NASCAR drivers have few accidents on the road as being relevant to how cars should be regulated.
this statement refutes itself with a second’s thought.
if it were so easy to kill people without guns… there wouldn’t be a lucrative business in developing, manufacturing, and selling them now, would there.
and, if you want to say something stupid like: “Well, you can kill with a knife, too!”
tell me, o hypothetical genius, just how many people were killed in the incident in China that happened almost at exactly the same time, with the same number of people involved, the only difference being the attacker was using a knife instead of guns?
hint: ZERO. ZERO PEOPLE DIED.
just in case there are still people who somehow missed it (and there are – amazingly enough).
This is the incident in China I am referring to:
Knife attack at Chinese school wounds 22 children
sorry, but if he had a gun, does anyone really think nothing but injuries would have resulted?
Ichthyic wrote:
As someone else pointed out on that story you linked, if knives and guns were equally dangerous, the expression “never bring a knife to a gun fight” would be meaningless.
yup.
why bullets cause more damage than knives, the short version:
CAVITATION
Regulate semi-auto weapons just as tightly as full-auto weapons are regulated now.
We Canadians aren’t all that hard to spot. We’re the ones with the crazy look in our eyes… but without guns.
Do you know how much more difficult it would be to kill 20 children AND a half a dozen adults with a knife? Even a really good knife. All in one go?
That shit happens up here, too. But not nearly as often. Not because we have no assholes and crazies up here, but because when someone goes batshit, he probably doesn’t have a gun handy, and by the time he finds a way to get one, he’s probably mellowed out on the weed he found first.
BANG! BANG!
Did it work?
No? But I pointed my finger and everything!
. . .
I will accept the argument that it’s just as easy to kill with knives as with guns when I see modern militaries arming their tank, choppers, and planes with knives instead of guns.
Easier to maintain, simpler, lighter, and just as lethal, right?
…right?
Agree with most of it, but I have the vague sense that hollow points are useful as hunting rounds because they help ensure a one-hit kill. Am I misremembering?
I heard a gun nut on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today. He wrote a piece called ‘More Guns, Less Crime’. (I hope it wasn’t a whole book; what a waste that would be.) He seriously suggested that the reason we have these mass shootings is because of ‘gun-free zones’. If guns were allowed everywhere, that would solve everything. As soon as I heard that, I turned him off, and wondered, what the hell, NPR? Why would you allow such a crazy notion to get airtime? I guess for the same reason we still hear the anti-climate-change people: ‘balance’.
I work with kids in an open school, one of those buildings from the 1970s with few internal walls. If one of these killers came in, I would die. I would have few places to hide my kids, I would try to stop him, and I would die. And this wingnut’s answer? No! You don’t have to die; you can kill instead!
I turned the radio back on when I thought he’d be done, and he was saying, ‘Why would people put up a sign saying “No guns allowed on this site”? You wouldn’t do that at your house; that would be an invitation to people like this. So why do it at your place of work?’ How about because, at least here in Wisconsin, it’s the only way to legally keep guns out, and some of us DO NOT WANT them near us! Idiot. I turned him off again.
I don’t want my choice to be either to kill or to die. I know the odds are very low that I will ever have to deal with this. But after Friday, I keep imagining my sweet kids in terror. Guns DO kill people, too damned easily. And every argument I’ve ever heard against strict controls of these weapons has been absolutely bogus and indefensible.
I love it when gun nuts argue out of both sides of their mouth on this one. Consistently.
“Guns aren’t that dangerous! Cars/knives are JUST AS BAD ™! Basically everything is a dangerous weapon if someone wants it to be, so what’s the Big Deal with guns? You libruls are fussing over nothing!”
“Whatever would we do without guns!? How would we fight off criminal scum and overthrow tyrannical governments without such effective murder machinery? You libruls are taking away our only defense!”
Basically, it is the same dynamic as things put in place that violate church-state separation: They are nothing notable or serious, but if we take it away it will be an anti-religious assault that is the beginning of the end for human civilization as we know it. Useless little decorations and trinkets that aren’t doing nothing in particular, but that will rip apart the fabric of society if you try to clean up shop by throwing the supposedly unnoteworthy little embellishments and toys into the rubbish.
I don’t think I ever argued that the US and the UK were enduring shootings with anything like the same frequency, my argument was related to the type of firearm available, a huge number of people are using this tragedy to push another assault weapons ban, which is pointless.
Right now, the US bill of rights guarantees you the right to own a firearm, until that changes (and I’m not holding my fucking breath on that point), any argument over the type of gun you’re allowed to own is futile, people can (and do) commit mass shootings with any firearm they have to hand, any legislation we come up with has to address all of them.
I actually like the NZ system, it requires you to earn the right to own a gun, consequently you treat it with a great deal more respect than something you are practically given – but even then, it doesn’t stop mass shootings as we see from the Norway attacks.
kyoseki:
As far as I can see, you are using one of the great many bogus arguments against gun control that I’ve heard all my life (and I’m not very young anymore): Unless we can get everything, there’s no point in getting anything. You used the word ‘pointless’. We aren’t going to get EVERYTHING, but if we get SOMETHING, and a few less people are killed, that is better than NOTHING. It will also give me some hope that things can continue to improve. We have to start somewhere, and we have to keep pushing to make things better.
Doing nothing truly is pointless.
First: someone’s managed a mass shooting with a black-powder rifle? I’m seriously asking – has this been done?
If not, might we recognize that some forms of firearm are just a teensy bit more dangerous than others?
(And I’m not being anachronistic here, there are black-powder-only hunting seasons in a number of places.)
.
Second: as we are unlikely to come up with effective treatments for all kinds of cancers, we should, presumably, stop administering any treatments until we have them all?
As we are unlikely to be able to cure every disease, we should, presumably, stop trying to treat any of them?
As all attempts to remain alive are eventually doomed to failure, we should, presumably, not bother avoiding death?
.
Small improvements are small, but they are improvements. I’d rather put small impediments in the way of people looking to commit these sorts of crimes than none at all, hoping for something perfect around the corner.
As usual, The Simpsons writers hit the nail on the head.
Lisa: “The second amendment is just a remnant from revolutionary periods, it has no real meaning today.”
Homer: “You couldn’t be more wrong Lisa. If I didn’t have this gun the King of England could just come in here and start pushing you around. Do you want that, well do ya?”
Mike the Mad Biologist reminds everyone to remember the role ALEC plays.
I don’t think there’s any real way to guarantee decent advertising on a website using a major ad network.
When they don’t use targeted advertising, you get broad-based, lowbrow advertising like diet pills, “earn money from home” and those stupid IQ test ads.
When they do use targeted advertising, if the page has a clear subject you’ll often get ads contradicting the position of the text. Otherwise they’ll latch on to some random keyword and throw in non-sequitur ads.
If you want any level of editorial control, you’ll need some sort of curated ad serving. You’d get the most control by managing the ads in-house, as Penny Arcade do. You can probably charge more, as the ads are heavily targeted and you have total control over ads you accept, but someone has to manage the whole thing (which will likely negate any income benefit).
Or you could try a smaller ad network that either maintains a higher editorial standard themselves, or gives you more control over the ads you accept. Project Wonderful apparently lets you moderate or reject ads, and Skepchick is using it for (one of) their ad spots. I can’t vouch for its economic returns though.
This reminds me of a movie I saw many years ago. Someone kept haranguing Mickey B., while he was painting the Sistine Chapel. Over and over he was asked, “When will you make and end?”, to which he replied “When I am finished.”
When will you make a start? When you begin. But of course their tactics include telling you over and over again that there is no hope in trying, nothing will work, you’ve lost before you walk onto the field. You might as well forfeit the game right now.
It ain’t a game.
If ANY workable piece of legislation with regard to gun or gun owner control can be implemented, I think one of the most powerful things it can do is send a message to gun owners that they will be controlled, and that their every whim will not be indulged. It will make a beginning.
I don’t really see anything wrong with taking there money, especially considering that this site is almost certainly NOT giving them a positive return on investment. What really annoys me are the ads you have that break their bounds and obscure the entire side bar. I prefer to turn adblock off for sites I frequent and support, but they’re making it awfully difficult.
[Citation needed]
I don’t disagree, something HAS to be done, but wasting all your time and effort going after assault weapons is like trying to curtail road deaths by banning Ferraris. The underlying problem is people’s attitudes, not the guns themselves, we need to foster the idea of responsibility.
I would propose the following:
1: All gun sales/transfers must go through NICS (no more “gun show loophole”)
2: NICS records be kept indefinitely (to allow the tracking of all new guns and any transferred after)
3: Trace & prosecute all straw purchasers (hence the need for the previous two rules)
4: All firearms must be stored locked & unloaded with the ammunition stored separately (in a safe that only the owner has access to).
5: Mandatory waiting periods for each and between firearm purchases (at least for the first few firearms)
6: Mandatory safety/proficiency training for all types of firearm
7: Nobody gets to buy bulletproof/resistant gear unless they’re armed forces/police
8: Get rid of all state/county/city ordinances, there’s no fucking point in having a type of gun be illegal in California if I can just drive to Nevada and buy it.
9: Create a tiered licensing system, probably with another category for larger magazines (anything over 20 rounds and anything that protrudes from below the bottom of a handgun’s grip) & semi auto rifles.
10: Concealed carry should be legal, but require an absolute fuckton of training.
11: Abolishing “stand your ground” laws, the duty should always be on the gun owner to retreat
12: You are no longer allowed to machine your own gun frames without registering them (amazingly, this is a thing. You can machine an AR-15 lower at a machine shop as long as it’s for your own personal use and you don’t have to tell anyone about it).
To my knowledge, none of these things are problematic from a Constitutional standpoint (unlike an outright gun/handgun ban, which is) and a lot of them are already law in a handful of states and most countries that allow firearms (which is still most of them), therefore you stand a snowball’s chance in hell of actually passing some of them on a federal level.
… and that’s just the gun related legislation. I have no idea how you go about trying to undo America’s love affair with the things, but you’re never going to pass any kind of ban or major restriction until people no longer want the things.
ChasCPeterson wrote:
Not all the T-shirt advertisers are bad. Threadless’ ads are pretty good, and I’ve purchased some stuff from them (I’m particularly fond of the “Loch Ness Imposter” design). In retrospect, I probably should’ve clicked an ad from here before buying last time. Next time…
kyoseki:
I don’t disagree with many of your ideas, but I also think attempts should be made to limit things you mention: ‘anything over 20 rounds’ is fucking insane. Anyone who argues otherwise needs to be called out with anger and ridicule. I’d go a hell of a lot lower than 20 rounds. Personally, I like the idea of 7-foot-long single shot rifles that can only hold three rounds, but that’s just me.
I also call bullshit on your analogy with Ferraris. If they were being used to deliberately kill large numbers of pedestrians, and made doing so really easy, then, yeah, they ought to be taken off the roads.
This crazy idea that we can only do certain things, and all others are useless, is wrong.
I’m no expert on gums — and have no desire to — but we need to figure out what we can get past the wingnuts in the SCOTUS, and then we need to get new folks in there who are not full of shit.
I’m pissed, and I know too many people who are dead from guns. We cannot do anything by conceding defeat before we even try. And I don’t really care if you, or anyone else, thinks we ‘stand a snowball’s chance in hell’. The gun lobby has just kept pushing the envelope for decades. They have gotten things passed that are outrageous. It’s time for pushing back, and not giving in before we even start.
Ha! Make that ‘guns’, not ‘gums’.
I’m sure that this isn’t original to me, but requiring that all firearms sold or possessed in the US be bright pink might help.
Oh, and one way to get people to ‘no longer want the things’ is to speak truth about them. The gun nuts spew absolute garbage. They have a powerful lobby that needs taming. Hard? Yeah. Impossible, definitely, if we just keep going as we have, and let them keep lying.
Chris:
And seven feet long; and only able to fire two rounds in succession. I have a brother who’s an avid hunter, and he’s got no problem with this. We talked about it, and the pink, about twenty years ago.
And they could go “Pew! Pew!”
Chris:
Bright pink?
You do know they’re phallic standins, right?
Chris, yours is the first post I’ve seen suggesting pink, but I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing for a couple of days. I know Glock has a “ladies gun” in pink (a 380, as a I recall – a gun very clearly designed with the sole purpose of shooting people).
One thing that has been abundantly clear to me, having been around lots of gun owner and hunters, is that guns and hunting are about 97% things to show off and brag about (which relates to my comment on your post about how I think it is important to teach kids to learn to be self satisfied with self advancement, rather than needing to be competitive with others and seek adulation). Lots of menz is way too insecure to have anything pink. I suspect if assault rifles were only available in pink that sales would drop to next to nothing. Unfortunately, pink seems to be the “official” color for breast cancer matters. Maybe pink with little orange and lavender flowers.
I also suspect sales would drop if there was some way to make a law saying “you can have (type of gun), but you may never show it to anyone else and you may not talk about owning it or using it”.
Jeebus it would be good if gun nuts would learn to buy $300 shoes to be like the cool kids and make their friends envious.
I think you guys are underestimating the popularity of pink guns in general, but I don’t think making them look like toys is a particularly clever idea.
… and someone has already beaten you to the punch, just Google “hello kitty AR”, still think coloring them pink with flowers is going to stop anyone buying/building one?
Murdered children are necessary to protect your freedom>
I do not have any particular problem with rational gun control and I expect that we will get another attempt at it this time.
I am afraid that is all we will get though. Law Enforcement will get a little more funding but not enough to really do an effective job, social services will not get any increase in funding neither will education nor health care. We will flounder around and we will be back to this problem again.
Often it appears to me that these killings are a variety of suicide by cop in which the shooter kills a few people then is shot by the police or kills himself . They will still kill a lot fewer maybe but they will do it just the same. This guy first killed his own mother while she was sleeping , then went out in a “blaze of glory and death”, and why not his life was over and dead already. They will still do the first part the second may have to be truncated but death will still result and we will do nothing much about it.
No one asked me but I have seen this all too many times already. We are not going to do anything other than what we have done before and we will get the same results.
uncle frogy
Pink is good. Certainly would go against that advert I linked to earlier. Reacquiring your ‘man card’ doesn’t look so good if it’s in pink. How about banning guns the American way? Link them to money. You want to buy a gun? Insure it. compulsory insurance against any event that that gun causes. If it gets stolen, and used in a crime you pay for the crime. Or insure it, like you’d have to insure a car. You’re a gun dealer? Make them responsible for every weapon they sell. Personally responsible. You sell a gun to someone, and that someone commits a crime with it, you appear in court as an accessory to the crime.
Just saw an interview with a gun dealer in the US. It seems that the massacre has been very good for sales. Sick, sick, sick.
That is now apparently a predictable occurrance. It can’t be that they think they need a gun to protect school kids from spree shooters. They must just be imagining that there are a lot of dangerous people with guns out there and that they need to protect themselves and their families from them – by increasing the number of dangerous people with guns in close proximity to their families.
“I don’t think I ever argued that the US and the UK were enduring shootings with anything like the same frequency, my argument was related to the type of firearm available, a huge number of people are using this tragedy to push another assault weapons ban, which is pointless.
Right now, the US bill of rights guarantees you the right to own a firearm, until that changes (and I’m not holding my fucking breath on that point), any argument over the type of gun you’re allowed to own is futile, people can (and do) commit mass shootings with any firearm they have to hand, any legislation we come up with has to address all of them.”
No Kayoseki you didn’t argue that UK & US frequency of mass killings was the same but you’re entire argument is based on the distortion that they are EQUIVALENT. The point I am making is that one mass shooting every 10 to 14 years is a helluva lot better than the, what is it? 31 since Columbine? The frequency of these events (and all the other deaths and maimings that a society knee deep in firearms endures) is clearly influenced by the ease with which guns can be acquired. If you haven’t got a gun you can’t shoot anyone.
So all weapons are created equal when it comes to inflicting huge numbers of deaths in a short space of time? Fantastic! We can now empty the armouries of the military and save unimaginable amounts of money on the Defense Bill. What were they thinking creating the assault rifle when soldiers can be just as effective with a shotgun. Without semi automatic weapons, large capacity magazines and all the other innovations that get your bullets into people ever more quickly and without interruption, the death toll would be lower. That is worth achieving. It is neither pointless nor futile. If it were then why bother with any restrictions at all? After all according to your reasoning there would be no meaningful difference if perpetrators had free access to automatic cannon, firing explosive shells.
I’m all for the measures you propose, where I disagree is this idea that it is a choice between a ban on assault weapons OR other measures. The measures you suggest are entirely consistent with also banning particular classes of weapon, types of ammunition etc. whose whole purpose is the killing of as many people as possible. The arguments you have advanced against such measures apply equally to the measures you yourself propose, according to your logic someone deprived of bullet proof gear and large capacity magazines can still kill people therefore it is “pointless and futile” according to your earlier statements to impose any such restrictions short of a total ban on everything.
I just want to suggest that everybody go back and read Kyoseki’s list and consider mailing it to your congressperson. Not only would it make us safer, it would create jobs!
I’d just make a couple of adjustments:
1. Nobody should be able to buy more than one firearm a month, and there should be an absolute cap on the number of firearms one household can possess – say, 10. Collectors must make excess weapons unfireable by removing parts and having them stored in a locked facility.
2. with regards to that locked facility, encouraging community arms storage facilities would be a plus. You’d have to sign out your weapon for a stated length of time and destination.
3 Kyoseki’s #9, tiered licensing system: I don’t think you should have a mag or clip that holds over 20 rounds unless you are in law enforcement.
I must confess that, as a small, aging woman, I’ve considered concealed carry, but opted for pepper spray instead.
Kyoseki #138:
Agreed. And I just did Google “Hello Kitty AR”. Thanks for that. More proof, as if we needed it, that insanity is humanity’s default condition.
@ kyoseki: I agree with the idea behind a lot of what you are saying, but some of the points you made have specifically been found unconstitutional.
This one was recently struck down along with bans on handguns in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). This is an important case that anybody who cares about gun regulation should become intimately familiar with. This supreme court has found that the 2nd amendment contains within it a right to self defense. In that context, handguns cannot be banned and you cannot force people to lock up their guns when they are not in use. This decision is so recent that it is unlikely that anything similar will survive to the supreme court again in our lifetimes.
Similarly bullet resistant gear would have a protected self defense purpose under that interpretation of the 2nd amendment. This is interesting in that, sinse there is a right to self defense, it might be a violation of a suspect’s due process rights to confiscate their firearms prior to a conviction. Which is both absurd and horrifying.
These I think are the most important hurdles to overcome. A national database combined with a mandatory proficiency training (I’d combine that with strong penalties for negligent discharging of a firearm) is a great step toward enforcing a responsible gun culture. It isn’t without its hurdles though.
In Mack and Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) the supreme court held that requiring background checks prior to purchasing a firearm at the federal level is a violation of the 10th amendment. The federal government has a hard time compelling the states to do things like this.
I don’t think that hurdle is insurmountable. The government cannot regulate firearms out of existence because of the right to self defense found earlier, but the government has the right to regulate the militia. One could argue that the federal government has an enumerated responsibility to regulate the militia.
New legislation should focus on regulating who has access to firearms, specifically linking firearm ownership to training and some sort of lay membership in the national guard (which is technically the regulated militia). Along with firearm training maybe we should require first responder training for all people who want a firearm license.
Also important in this debate: “[t]he Federal Government may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.” New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 188 (1992)
We appreciate all your good work, PZed. xx
I’ll skip the rest since it misses the point again. The UK, even when you could buy assault rifles, never had this problem did it? It’s not like there were mass shootings every week until they banned semi auto rifles is it? The firearms legislation itself was secondary to the attitude of the populace, the UK was only able to ban guns simply because almost nobody wanted the things in the first place.
Similarly, other industrialized countries around the world give their populace access to the same types of guns that are available in the US. Canada, Norway, Finland, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland all allow you to own semi automatic handguns and rifles and all of them have murder rates FAR below that of the US.
There are some additional restrictions, true, but do you seriously expect me to believe that the only reason Canadians aren’t murdering each other with wild abandon is because their handguns only hold 10 rounds instead of 14?
Even with California’s gun laws which are easily the strictest in the nation (assault weapons ban, 10 round magazine cap, 10 day waiting period, 1 gun a month maximum), we’re still well above the national average in terms of gun deaths (seriously, California has a higher firearms murder rate than Texas, we’re only marginally “behind” Arizona, who have practically no gun laws whatsoever).
I wouldn’t mind seeing the same laws across the country, but I am not optimistic that it’ll do anything to lower the overall gun death rate or stop more incidents like this one until we have a media that doesn’t idolize death & destruction.
dobbshead:
Thanks for that information. We are really backwards in this country.
kyoseki, 149:
This makes sense, but I keep getting the message from you of ‘why bother?’ Maybe that’s not what you’re trying to say, but it’s what I’m sensing. Yes, it’s going to be nearly impossible, but we have to try. The other option is worse. And, again, we cannot get anywhere if we don’t start somewhere.
I just heard another wingnut on Minnesota Public Radio saying with complete seriousness that a ban on assault weapons would be terrible, and that if teachers and principals were only allowed to carry weapons, then everything would be fine. Yeah, we have trouble ahead for a long time.
@dobbshead
Hmm, I was familiar with DC vs Heller (at least with regards to the handgun ban), but didn’t realize that it also bans trigger locks and other safeguards (which seems pretty fucking asinine to me).
California has laws against leaving loaded firearms anywhere a minor might get hold of it, surely the DC vs Heller decision renders those unconstitutional? (even though I completely support the idea – why the hell weren’t these guns locked away?).
Ah, but bullet resistant gear doesn’t qualify as “arms” though, it’s “armor” which isn’t specifically protected under the 2nd amendment, so I think there’s some wiggle room here.
Agreed, although accidental shootings are actually pretty rare, the vast majority of gun deaths are deliberate (murder or suicide).
So the NICS background check system is entirely voluntary?
Could it be compelled financially? Much like states have to perform certain actions to qualify for Federal highway funding?
I’m cool with that. Other countries mandate membership in sporting clubs for anyone who wants to own a firearm. While I like that idea, I don’t think it’s enforceable here, not with the 2nd amendment in place.
The more one thinks about it, the more likely it is that enacting reasonable legislation requires the removal or modification of the (fairly unreasonable) 2nd amendment, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.
My guess is that we’ll see another federal assault weapons ban, along with a high capacity magazine ban, which (based on past legislation) won’t render any current weapon or magazine illegal, but beyond that, I don’t think we’re likely to see any major changes from a legislative standpoint – and I can guarantee you that sales of semi automatic rifles are going through the fucking roof right now.
@Paul K
I guess what’s driving me nuts is the attitude that there is any such thing as a “safe” gun or that “atrocity X would never have happened if only we’d banned gun type Y”; even if you limit people to bolt action rifles, you’ll still get fuckheads up clock towers shooting people.
What I fully expect we’ll do here is ban assault rifles again, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done and then carry on being smug until the next tragedy.
We need a fundamental change in attitudes in this country and that needs to happen before any meaningful legislation can be enacted.
Yeah, fuck those guys.
Azykoth @ #116– Yes, hollow-points by their structure do have greater “stopping power” and are indeed required for hunting use in the UK. In some ways they are safer because they are less likely to ricochet or fragment on impact.
Good news. Guv. Snyder of Michigan did veto Bill 59 today which would have permitted concealed carry in otherwise gun-free zones such as schools. Our nincompoop GOP legislature had passed this nicompoopery on Friday morning– before Newtown. Whether he is actually showing some courage (after the right-to-work shenanigans I doubt that) or whether he’s thinking it would be bad PR to sign it in the wake of Newtown, I don’t know.
@Chris:
Nope, not original
pink guns bring Hope!
/sarc
no.
you know what the best way to comit suicide by cop is?
go and pull a gun ON A COP.
not on 20 children, not on your own mother, not on a bunch of teachers…
well yes sloppy wording reaching for some clever turn of phrase. What I was getting at was that some of these events look like a suicide in the end where the killer has to kill some number of others before killing themselves broadly a variety of suicide.
some how I get the feeling that if this had not killed himself there would be many maybe none here who would be recommending some form of revenge like death.
I am in no way trying to defend gun ownership but pointing out that what I do not hear much at all is any concern about these people who have to act out in this way only anger over guns.
Take the guns away who cares about these people!
uncle frogy
still not exactly getting it. you mean like: “Life sucks and I’m gonna take you all down with me in spite!” kinda thing?
If so, I can understand that as a concept, but can’t vouch for its applicability much. Can’t recall seeing much evidence for it.
Not that I have any evidence either, but my guess would be killing kids wasn’t done, in the killer’s mind, so much for the killer, as they probably felt that it was doing the kids a favor. If one is terminally depressed, that could easily get projected, so that you think EVERYONE must be terminally depressed and would be likely better off dead, than suffering as you are.
My guess is, that this person was not angry at all, but very depressed. most people he seemed to kill “execution” style, which suggests to me that he was rationalizing that he was causing the “least pain to ease suffering”.
*shrug*
again, no way to tell.
I disagree. I wonder where you get that idea from? this is not the first shooting we have discussed here. Were there lots of pharyngulites calling for the death of Breivik? not that I recall.
again, I disagree. there have even been posts BY Chris Clarke discussing those very issues, let alone hundreds of comments on it.
I just know what I see that is the way it seems to be first they kill some number of people often the family then they kill themselves.
So what are you saying about the people who do these kinds of things?
uncle frogy
hmm.
I posted this in the other thread:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_School_massacres
the table is sortable by field.
sort it by weapon, and look at the “additional notes” section afterwards.
your conclusion?
that is a useless chart dates from 1913 to current and all over the world
today in the U.S. is the only place I can have a say on any measure to address the random killings by someone with a gun here.
Without looking up every case my first thought was the killing in Israel might have something to do with the Palestinians which we were not talking about so I stopped looking at the chart.
I did notice a lot of suicides
you do not seem to care much about who did it or why I guess.
so we will try to just prevent the would be mass killers getting industrial military weapons and amo. and be contented with them acting out in a more restricted way so long as it is only there closet friends and relations die or they figure out some other way which is not that hard as someone mentioned. Might stop the kill on a whim but not the planners like the columbine kids who planed for over a year or the shooter down in Tucson not a school though but I think he just used a pistol but that’s OK .We do not have to get it right all at once we can try something else next time. ;-)
uncle frogy
The one that stuck out for me was this one (I tried to link but it keeps borking in the preview, or just ganking the formatting all to hell):
No one died. Imagine if he hadn’t been required to submit to a background check before being able to buy a gun, or if he’d lived with or known someone who could pass a check, or had acquired one by some other means. Evidence certainly suggests a very different outcome.
Also of note is the principal stopping him without being armed herself, and while seriously injured. Another outcome that would likely have been different had he been able to get a gun.
I realize, of course, that it’s just one instance. Still, it’s a good example of why easier access to guns is not a good idea.
Sorry. The above is reachable by searching for the man’s name on Wikipedia (which is how I found it). He was in the list linked by Ichthyic, but his name was not a link in the list for some reason, though his page exists.
There should be a law: before pro-gunners post abject fucking stupidity like frogy’s here, they must be forced to name three non-gun-related laws that prevent 100% of the issue they’re supposed to.
Welcome to how adults think, you fucking numbnuts asshole.
I hesitated to even get into this in the first place because I knew it would be seen as being pro-guns but I could not resist.
Let me try this from the other side
If we do not become more proactive in treating people, all people with care and respect this will continue to happen.
If we do not become more proactive in finding those isolated individuals, those desperate victimized abuse survivors who suffer and lash out it will continue.
If we do not increase the access to good effective social services for everyone it will continue. If we do not remove the stigma from psychological problems and counseling and increase access to it things will continue as they are.
If we do not reach-out to those who we tend to ignore, who we find too different, too disturbing too different it will continue.
We can ban all guns of any kind, and anything else we can think of they will still remain and probably increase in numbers. What I hear is so what they wont be able to kill “us” but I would not be so sure of that. Is that the kind of world we want to live in? Where if you do not fit in because of what ever reason it is just your problem alone?
I think that is what we will do it is what we have been doing because we can not afford it and it is too hard and too complicated. It is easier to ban guns and condemn anyone who does not agree entirely as a fucking numbnuts asshole.
I just read a WSJ editorial that might be of interest
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323723104578185271857424036.html
Now I think I will go and hang a security door
uncle frogy
Hey, fuckhead: why don’t you learn to read what people are actually writing?
Ok no one actually says out loud that they do not care what they the would be killers do but it sure sounds like the focus is much more on the weapons than anything else. The majority of solutions I have read and heard are almost entirely security based. If that is all we do I doubt much will change.
I will admit I have been unable to read every post and thread on this subject I find it too depressing. If I am wrong and just have not read or heard everyone I apologize
uncle frogy
One of the reasons the focus is one guns *at this time* is because we don’t know the underlying reasons why Lanza committed this horrible act. We don’t know what was going on in his head. Until we know that, we really cannot approach this from other angles. If and when we do, it will be a multi pronged approach. Even *if* security based solutions were the only options available, if fewer people die–that’s a good thing!
dude, stop trying to read my mind, mkay?
while you’re at it, I’m sure everyone else would appreciate it too.
go hang that door.