The claim that gun regulations won't "rid us of mass shootings" is the biggest straw man in recorded history. Of course they won't. How about reducing them? You think that might happen? You think regulations might stop, or at least delay for a few days while a kid with an immediate reaction to a bad family situation, might prevent a kid from going nuts with a gun? Or that if it doesn't, you could reduce the kills by banning high-capacity magazines? Second biggest straw man: Dems ignore the legit needs of gun owners for "protection." From what--burglars? You need an AR-15 with a high-capacity magazine for that? The people who want to keep these unregulated weapons want them for a fever dream of rebellion--Exhibit A is Mo Brooks on Fox this morning: "we need guns to protect us from a dictatorial government." When Mo's hoped-for apocalypse comes, who's going to be more authoritarian, Joe Biden or the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters? Trust me, they will have no use whatsoever for empty suits like Mo Brooks.
The bothsideism in this article is inaccurate and disingenuous.
No credible Democrat or liberal suggests that instituting reasonable gun regulation will eliminate all mass shootings. And the discourse on the Democratic side is anything but "oversimplified". Detailed studies giving rise to specific regulatory frameworks (like the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and the Brady Bill, both of which had the desired effect of reducing gun violence) comes from Democrats.
But what do we get from Republicans? Less doors in schools (!!). Arm the teachers (!!!). More God and Christian prayer in the schools (!!!). It's utter stupidity and obscures what we need to do. Republicans sometimes mention addressing mental health issues, funding for which they NEVER vote for, or eliminate in their state budgets (see: Greg Abbott). You've posted a Christmas photograph of Thomas Massie and his heavily armed wife and children - if that isn't a picture of mental illness that gives rise to violence, I don't know what is.
In 1988, one metal dart killed one child, and metal darts were eliminated. No child has died from a metal dart since. That should tell us how far we've fallen down the gun culture rabbit hole since. It's my opinion that the 2nd Amendment is not absolute, as Scalia said - we must, in the public interest, restrict and regulate guns. But, somehow, at the same time, must break the raging ugly fever of the sick gun obsession that pervades and is overtaking our nation. We're on the precipice of becoming a failed nation. That's not an "oversimplification". It's reality.
The thing is that all these mass shooting events disappear without the tool doing the shooting. Lack of access to a firearm stops them all.
My mom has argued with me that someone intent on harming someone could use a rock as justification to consider guns as neutral. But it takes a lot of rocks and skill to kill 21 people even with cowards providing some bonus time.
A gun is the ability to kill. We should really thoughtfully consider to whom we grant that potential ability.
It is worthy of note I think that Police were more than willing to stand by while George Floyd was suffocated in the street with dozens watching . It is also worthy of note that nineteen police officers stood by while the gunman massacred people in the building in Texas because :"someone might get shot".
We should go to first grade reading primers "Run Dick Run" See the police run"
If the armed police will not go into harms way because nineteen of them feel out gunned, we really need to ban assault weapons and oversized magazines for all weapons. How may bullets does it take to bring down a deer after all?
So, ashamed, they lied about it from top to bottom. I'd be ashamed too if I had done that but certainly no one felt ashamed after the death of George Floyd. They were filmed and that's what brought a verdict.
Hardened Schools? How about Hardened grocery stores or big box stores or rock concerts?
How about manning up and banning assault weapons along with their accoutrements?
How about serious waiting periods regardless of age? I do have to wonder how many of theses slaughterfests were committed with freshly bought tooling. Then I can wonder how someone who would get carded buying cigarettes can buy these guns.
I have my answer and it isn't even hard. Can you say the NRA, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Marco Rubil and the dregs of the death party in the US. No, not hard at all. Vote them out since they won't listen to the public.
This was my third and LAST week reading Cathy’s Sunday article. Waste of time.
After spending half the article saying why bother to do anything about the gun issue, she digresses into writing about the Heard-Depp, a celebrity shitshow.
This is all I got from her on the gun issue:
- If you restrict guns, shooters will ignore the law, so why bother.
- Non-gun violence if twice as bad as in UK, so why bother restricting guns.
- Cherry-picking stats to tell the story she wants to tell, no gun bans.
- Claiming Dems want to bar guns in general, which is just not true. The issue is banning AR15’s and the like military-style weapons out of citizens’ hands.
- She completely ignores how Republicans take millions in campaign funds from NRA and threats of being primaried as the biggest reason needed gun reform is not happening
- And finally, the Dems are at fault for guns with
“ Meanwhile, too many Democrats send signals suggesting that they do want UK-style firearm ban and ignore the perspective of non-fanatical gun owners who believe they need a gun for protection. Perhaps the dialogue could start from there. Perhaps we can talk about meaningful harm reduction, even if there’s no full solution to the problem. But in any such conversation, we also have to stick to the facts.”
Indeed we need to STICK WITH THE FACTS. AR15’S have been the gun of choice for over 10 mass murders because it gives the terrorist the biggest chance of mowing down the most people - especially the 19 children killed this week.
Just looked it up: the firearm homicide rate in the U.S. in 2020 was 6.1 per 100,000 Americans up from 4.6 the previous year. You stated in your article, Cathy Young, that the non-firearm homicide rate in the U.S. was 1.96 per 100,00 people in 2020. That means that the rate of homicides in the U.S. in 2020 would have been 1/3 the actual rate it was were it not for homicides by guns.
The TOTAL NUMBER of homicides in England and Wales in the year ending March 2021 was 594, with a rate of 9.9 per million. The most common method of killings were "sharp objects, including knives".
So don't tell me, Cathy Young, that "the differences can not be reduced to gun restrictions."
If guns were as unavailable in the U.S. as in the UK, we wouldn't have 18 year old boys spraying bullets around classrooms, supermarkets, or nightclubs killing multiple people. We more likely would have that 18 year old boy killing one person with a knife.
Again, don't tell me, Cathy Young, that "the differences cannot be reduced to gun restrictions." The differences in gun homicides in every other country comparable to the U.S. can absolutely be explained by the fact that they have a fraction of the guns we have here, and laws restricting guns.
It absolutely infuriates me that we Americans feel helpless to stop this carnage because of the Second Amendment and the fact that we have so many guns in the country already. And it infuriates me even more that this situation makes me ashamed of my country.
We talk about nibbling around the edges of the problem by begging our legislators to pass a few laws making it harder for unstable people to get guns able to spray around many bullets per minute; the goals of these laws to cause "incremental" improvements in the number of gun deaths.
I am going to say it again and again and I think it needs to be said out loud by more and more Americans: we need to repeal or re-write the Second Amendment, and then confiscate some of the 120 guns per every 100 American that we currently have in this country.
And you and everyone one else can say that is not going to happen because there are just too many guns, and people won't stand for it. Well, we have lots of smart people in this country, who seem to be able to solve a lot of hard problems (Covid vaccine developed and made available in record time for instance?). We have a hard problem in this country with gun violence. Let's solve it.
I'm with Justice John Paul Stevens, repeal 2A, it's a relic of the country's past created to alleviate the concerns the founders had regarding a standing army. Those circumstances and the public's opinion on a standing army have obviously changed.
This country has totally failed our children. The most obvious failure is counted by the number of children who have been killed in mass shootings.
What other civilized nation thinks it’s acceptable to allow children to be massacred in the name of 2nd Amendment “rights”?
What other civilized nation thinks the answer to school massacres is to build fences and walls around schools and arm teachers who are then expected to fend off an armed shooter?
What other civilized nation thinks the answer to school massacres is to have active shooter drills where young children are expected to hide in silence in dark closets and practice barricading their classroom?
The child survivors of school massacres are scarred for life. They will never be the same. Their lives have been shattered in the name of 2nd Amendment “rights”.
These are uniquely American responses. The trauma we allow to be inflicted on our children is an absolute disgrace.
Wow ..I'm not a constitutional scholar either but it took all the way to 2008 to find it ? And Scalia did write there are limits , it's not a limitless right.
The facts are Australia has only one mass shooting since 1996 and here's another fact...the one thing present at every one of ours? A semi-automatic , rapid fire, high capacity weapon. The easy access to these weapons fuels these atrocities. The shooter will find a way is a morally and intellectual bankrupt argument. We should make it harder not easier. If the individual has to go a different route, he ( almost always a he) may give up or get caught or yes maybe be successful, however we shouldn't hand him the tools.
I find this to be particularly awful " or maybe the regulations would have stopped Ramos, but not the next shooter". I think if it saves one school shooting we should agree that it's worth it.
The right/ gun fetish lobby should stop with the good guy with a gun garbage and just say it " 19 children" is the price of this " right".
Limiting ammunition purchases would be a start. The murderer bought over 1000 bullets in a week. Make it 15 rounds a month. If we can limit cough syrup and hay fever medicine, then we can limit bullets.
We managed to ban lawn darts and there's no thriving black market.
I love how people think it's really easy for people who aren't in criminal circles to buy illegal guns.
I can overlook a lot. I've spent a lot of time and effort avoiding having to read or watch anything to do with the Heard/Depp trial. And now it's infested my beloved Bulwark+. Curse you! ;)
Let's try this idea. The right to defend oneself is one of those rights our founders considered as understood by all - similar to the right to privacy (and by the way the right relating to search and seizure is clearly just a downstream expression of personal privacy. So (despite how conservatives treat the non enumerated rights) these are basic and come before the constitution.
By the way property rights as they are described in law are also just elaborations of the right to own and use property.
If we think this way, we can return the second amendment to the right of states to form militias. This is how the 2nd amendment was understood until the last 40 years.
There is no reason for any private citizen to have large capacity magazines. I also suspect that 18 year olds and other mass shooters who have to switch out after firing off 10 rounds will fumble the swap, or be disabled/shot by private citizens/bystanders. My issue with guns in America is that more law enforcement officers, kids under 18, and firefighters are going to eat the muzzle of a pistol and blow their brains out this year compared to those will be killed in the line of duty, or be murdered by a stranger. I'd love to see all firearms restricted, because that will be part of breaking the cycle of violence among young people in large cities, and it sucks to be a parent who has to bury a child wether they die because of a mass shooting, a suicide, or because some idiot needed to prove their manhood to a bunch of other idiot teens. I've worked shootings of all sorts in my EMS days, and they suck, but especially when they involve young people. This Republic deserves better, and if people want to really learn to shoot well they can go see their USMC recruiter - He has a quota to make. Peace be with all of you.
Can We Stop Mass Shootings?
The claim that gun regulations won't "rid us of mass shootings" is the biggest straw man in recorded history. Of course they won't. How about reducing them? You think that might happen? You think regulations might stop, or at least delay for a few days while a kid with an immediate reaction to a bad family situation, might prevent a kid from going nuts with a gun? Or that if it doesn't, you could reduce the kills by banning high-capacity magazines? Second biggest straw man: Dems ignore the legit needs of gun owners for "protection." From what--burglars? You need an AR-15 with a high-capacity magazine for that? The people who want to keep these unregulated weapons want them for a fever dream of rebellion--Exhibit A is Mo Brooks on Fox this morning: "we need guns to protect us from a dictatorial government." When Mo's hoped-for apocalypse comes, who's going to be more authoritarian, Joe Biden or the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters? Trust me, they will have no use whatsoever for empty suits like Mo Brooks.
The bothsideism in this article is inaccurate and disingenuous.
No credible Democrat or liberal suggests that instituting reasonable gun regulation will eliminate all mass shootings. And the discourse on the Democratic side is anything but "oversimplified". Detailed studies giving rise to specific regulatory frameworks (like the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and the Brady Bill, both of which had the desired effect of reducing gun violence) comes from Democrats.
But what do we get from Republicans? Less doors in schools (!!). Arm the teachers (!!!). More God and Christian prayer in the schools (!!!). It's utter stupidity and obscures what we need to do. Republicans sometimes mention addressing mental health issues, funding for which they NEVER vote for, or eliminate in their state budgets (see: Greg Abbott). You've posted a Christmas photograph of Thomas Massie and his heavily armed wife and children - if that isn't a picture of mental illness that gives rise to violence, I don't know what is.
In 1988, one metal dart killed one child, and metal darts were eliminated. No child has died from a metal dart since. That should tell us how far we've fallen down the gun culture rabbit hole since. It's my opinion that the 2nd Amendment is not absolute, as Scalia said - we must, in the public interest, restrict and regulate guns. But, somehow, at the same time, must break the raging ugly fever of the sick gun obsession that pervades and is overtaking our nation. We're on the precipice of becoming a failed nation. That's not an "oversimplification". It's reality.
The thing is that all these mass shooting events disappear without the tool doing the shooting. Lack of access to a firearm stops them all.
My mom has argued with me that someone intent on harming someone could use a rock as justification to consider guns as neutral. But it takes a lot of rocks and skill to kill 21 people even with cowards providing some bonus time.
A gun is the ability to kill. We should really thoughtfully consider to whom we grant that potential ability.
It is worthy of note I think that Police were more than willing to stand by while George Floyd was suffocated in the street with dozens watching . It is also worthy of note that nineteen police officers stood by while the gunman massacred people in the building in Texas because :"someone might get shot".
We should go to first grade reading primers "Run Dick Run" See the police run"
If the armed police will not go into harms way because nineteen of them feel out gunned, we really need to ban assault weapons and oversized magazines for all weapons. How may bullets does it take to bring down a deer after all?
So, ashamed, they lied about it from top to bottom. I'd be ashamed too if I had done that but certainly no one felt ashamed after the death of George Floyd. They were filmed and that's what brought a verdict.
Hardened Schools? How about Hardened grocery stores or big box stores or rock concerts?
How about manning up and banning assault weapons along with their accoutrements?
How about serious waiting periods regardless of age? I do have to wonder how many of theses slaughterfests were committed with freshly bought tooling. Then I can wonder how someone who would get carded buying cigarettes can buy these guns.
I have my answer and it isn't even hard. Can you say the NRA, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Marco Rubil and the dregs of the death party in the US. No, not hard at all. Vote them out since they won't listen to the public.
Guns are spendy paperweights without ammo.
So tax the crap out of the ammo.
Tax each and every bullet before it leaves the ammo factory.
Tax it so high that even those with the deepest pockets feel the pain.
Use the proceeds to fund care for the depressed and disaffected and to help make whole the lives of those who suffer at the hands of the mass shooter.
This was my third and LAST week reading Cathy’s Sunday article. Waste of time.
After spending half the article saying why bother to do anything about the gun issue, she digresses into writing about the Heard-Depp, a celebrity shitshow.
This is all I got from her on the gun issue:
- If you restrict guns, shooters will ignore the law, so why bother.
- Non-gun violence if twice as bad as in UK, so why bother restricting guns.
- Cherry-picking stats to tell the story she wants to tell, no gun bans.
- Claiming Dems want to bar guns in general, which is just not true. The issue is banning AR15’s and the like military-style weapons out of citizens’ hands.
- She completely ignores how Republicans take millions in campaign funds from NRA and threats of being primaried as the biggest reason needed gun reform is not happening
- And finally, the Dems are at fault for guns with
“ Meanwhile, too many Democrats send signals suggesting that they do want UK-style firearm ban and ignore the perspective of non-fanatical gun owners who believe they need a gun for protection. Perhaps the dialogue could start from there. Perhaps we can talk about meaningful harm reduction, even if there’s no full solution to the problem. But in any such conversation, we also have to stick to the facts.”
Indeed we need to STICK WITH THE FACTS. AR15’S have been the gun of choice for over 10 mass murders because it gives the terrorist the biggest chance of mowing down the most people - especially the 19 children killed this week.
Just looked it up: the firearm homicide rate in the U.S. in 2020 was 6.1 per 100,000 Americans up from 4.6 the previous year. You stated in your article, Cathy Young, that the non-firearm homicide rate in the U.S. was 1.96 per 100,00 people in 2020. That means that the rate of homicides in the U.S. in 2020 would have been 1/3 the actual rate it was were it not for homicides by guns.
The TOTAL NUMBER of homicides in England and Wales in the year ending March 2021 was 594, with a rate of 9.9 per million. The most common method of killings were "sharp objects, including knives".
So don't tell me, Cathy Young, that "the differences can not be reduced to gun restrictions."
If guns were as unavailable in the U.S. as in the UK, we wouldn't have 18 year old boys spraying bullets around classrooms, supermarkets, or nightclubs killing multiple people. We more likely would have that 18 year old boy killing one person with a knife.
Again, don't tell me, Cathy Young, that "the differences cannot be reduced to gun restrictions." The differences in gun homicides in every other country comparable to the U.S. can absolutely be explained by the fact that they have a fraction of the guns we have here, and laws restricting guns.
It absolutely infuriates me that we Americans feel helpless to stop this carnage because of the Second Amendment and the fact that we have so many guns in the country already. And it infuriates me even more that this situation makes me ashamed of my country.
We talk about nibbling around the edges of the problem by begging our legislators to pass a few laws making it harder for unstable people to get guns able to spray around many bullets per minute; the goals of these laws to cause "incremental" improvements in the number of gun deaths.
I am going to say it again and again and I think it needs to be said out loud by more and more Americans: we need to repeal or re-write the Second Amendment, and then confiscate some of the 120 guns per every 100 American that we currently have in this country.
And you and everyone one else can say that is not going to happen because there are just too many guns, and people won't stand for it. Well, we have lots of smart people in this country, who seem to be able to solve a lot of hard problems (Covid vaccine developed and made available in record time for instance?). We have a hard problem in this country with gun violence. Let's solve it.
I'm with Justice John Paul Stevens, repeal 2A, it's a relic of the country's past created to alleviate the concerns the founders had regarding a standing army. Those circumstances and the public's opinion on a standing army have obviously changed.
This country has totally failed our children. The most obvious failure is counted by the number of children who have been killed in mass shootings.
What other civilized nation thinks it’s acceptable to allow children to be massacred in the name of 2nd Amendment “rights”?
What other civilized nation thinks the answer to school massacres is to build fences and walls around schools and arm teachers who are then expected to fend off an armed shooter?
What other civilized nation thinks the answer to school massacres is to have active shooter drills where young children are expected to hide in silence in dark closets and practice barricading their classroom?
The child survivors of school massacres are scarred for life. They will never be the same. Their lives have been shattered in the name of 2nd Amendment “rights”.
These are uniquely American responses. The trauma we allow to be inflicted on our children is an absolute disgrace.
I’m a retired combat veteran. I’m sick of these pathetic “non-starter” arguments. BULLSHIT. LIFE is ALSO a fundamental constitutional fucking right.
Wow ..I'm not a constitutional scholar either but it took all the way to 2008 to find it ? And Scalia did write there are limits , it's not a limitless right.
The facts are Australia has only one mass shooting since 1996 and here's another fact...the one thing present at every one of ours? A semi-automatic , rapid fire, high capacity weapon. The easy access to these weapons fuels these atrocities. The shooter will find a way is a morally and intellectual bankrupt argument. We should make it harder not easier. If the individual has to go a different route, he ( almost always a he) may give up or get caught or yes maybe be successful, however we shouldn't hand him the tools.
I find this to be particularly awful " or maybe the regulations would have stopped Ramos, but not the next shooter". I think if it saves one school shooting we should agree that it's worth it.
The right/ gun fetish lobby should stop with the good guy with a gun garbage and just say it " 19 children" is the price of this " right".
Limiting ammunition purchases would be a start. The murderer bought over 1000 bullets in a week. Make it 15 rounds a month. If we can limit cough syrup and hay fever medicine, then we can limit bullets.
We managed to ban lawn darts and there's no thriving black market.
I love how people think it's really easy for people who aren't in criminal circles to buy illegal guns.
I can overlook a lot. I've spent a lot of time and effort avoiding having to read or watch anything to do with the Heard/Depp trial. And now it's infested my beloved Bulwark+. Curse you! ;)
Let's try this idea. The right to defend oneself is one of those rights our founders considered as understood by all - similar to the right to privacy (and by the way the right relating to search and seizure is clearly just a downstream expression of personal privacy. So (despite how conservatives treat the non enumerated rights) these are basic and come before the constitution.
By the way property rights as they are described in law are also just elaborations of the right to own and use property.
If we think this way, we can return the second amendment to the right of states to form militias. This is how the 2nd amendment was understood until the last 40 years.
There is no reason for any private citizen to have large capacity magazines. I also suspect that 18 year olds and other mass shooters who have to switch out after firing off 10 rounds will fumble the swap, or be disabled/shot by private citizens/bystanders. My issue with guns in America is that more law enforcement officers, kids under 18, and firefighters are going to eat the muzzle of a pistol and blow their brains out this year compared to those will be killed in the line of duty, or be murdered by a stranger. I'd love to see all firearms restricted, because that will be part of breaking the cycle of violence among young people in large cities, and it sucks to be a parent who has to bury a child wether they die because of a mass shooting, a suicide, or because some idiot needed to prove their manhood to a bunch of other idiot teens. I've worked shootings of all sorts in my EMS days, and they suck, but especially when they involve young people. This Republic deserves better, and if people want to really learn to shoot well they can go see their USMC recruiter - He has a quota to make. Peace be with all of you.
Regarding 2nd Amendment absolutism: Even Antonin Scalia would not go that far. Writing for the majority in the Heller case:
"The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast
doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by
felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or
laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of
arms."