I was wondering who would be the first to suggest that the solution to the Omaha mall shooting was more guns, and our winner is Neil Boortz with an assist from the Instapundit:
I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven’t posted on it. I don’t really have anything to say that I haven’t said before. But it’s worth noting — since apparently most of the media reports haven’t — that this was another mass shooting in a “gun-free” zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free.
Yeehaw.
More guns makes everything better.
Jason C.
So much for “tort reform” I guess.
viola cella
So I’m thinkin’ (yeah, first mistake. I know) that cuz I’m a teacher teachin’ our high school young’uns, that maybe we should be pushing to arm all students AND teachers, just in case, you know? Picture a “free gun” zone.
Woohoo. I’m loving that Boortz.
r€nato
Sure does. Just take a look at Iraq.
Zifnab
Isn’t Neal Boortz the genius who brought us the Fair Tax? Why, yes he is!
Dear Michael: Zing.
r€nato
Michael Moore made the point quite well in Bowling For Columbine.
Canada has very liberal gun laws too, yet they don’t have anywhere near the gun violence we do. Why?
Perhaps because our nation is run on fear. Fear of crime, fear of illegal brown people, fear of Muslims. When the greatest threat our nation has ever faced peacefully collapsed in 1989-91, Republicans literally didn’t know what to do without something to tell people to be afraid about, therefore they had to elect GOP politicians to keep them safe from the new boogey man.
9/11 was a godsend for the GOP.
Cassidy
While I’m a firm believer in the right to bear arms and whatnot, if a community chooses to not have guns, that should be their choice.
James Rednour
So InstaDimwit is opposed to private property owners placing restrictions on what people can do own their property? I thought he was supposed to be a libertarian.
/sarcasm
Punchy
Just picture 49 Random Rambos, all opening fire on whomever they think The Evil Gunman truly is. Everyone just firing at each other, each thinking the other is The Evil Gunman. 14 shooters dead, 31 innocents struck by gunfire, 78 injured total.
What a fucking ridiculous, insane suggestion. Par for the course, of course, for Boortz. At least he supports the FairTax, though.
Cassidy
This is a fairly unlikely scenario. The average gun owner with a CCW, has gone through some pretty decent training, that satisfies the state, before having it issued. The whole “OK Corral” scenario is just as unlikely as the suggestion in the post.
Cassidy
And this is part of the problem. How can you possibly be open-minded when you’ve automatically assumed that gun owners are Rambo-wannabes? You have already dehumanized them to an inaccurate caricature.
r€nato
Actually, there is a substantial bloc of gun nuts who believe not only that the 2nd Amendment is the most important amendment (and even the ONLY amendment) in the Bill of Rights, but that their right to carry a gun should supercede your private property rights to say, ‘we don’t want anyone carrying guns on our property, thank you!’
I don’t think so. One is not required to hold a CCW in order to pack heat, you just can’t have it concealed. I can easily picture such a scenario as Punchy describes.
For instance, consider the fact that many of these gun nuts are likely the same sort of crazies who write all that insane crap at RedState.
jenniebee
My husband and father-in-law both have that permit here in VA. At no point in the (IIRC) four hour seminar required before getting the permit did the instructor, the certifier, or anybody else screen for yahoos.
Cassidy
Depends on the location. Just because you don’t have a CCW, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to open carry in many communities. If I remember correctly, and I’m not sure where I saw it, most there are far less open carry areas than there is concealed carry.
r€nato
you don’t pay much attention to what fervent gun-rights advocates say and write, do you? They all envision themselves as saving the nation from tyrannical government (well, at least tyrannical government run by Democrats, they are AWOL while Bush is busy assuming dictator-like powers) and criminals.
Ask law-enforcement officials what they think of Boortz’ scenario. I would wager they’d agree with Punchy before they’d agree with you.
Cassidy
That’s what the background check is for. And like it or not, regardless of a person’s individual beliefs, if they meet the legal criteria to own and carry guns, then they have the right too.
Assuming that most of gun owners and CCW holders are “yahoos” is ludicrous. Am I to assume your husband and father-in-law are batshit-crazy?
Cassidy
I pay quite a bit of attention actually, as the 2nd A is very important to me. I alos know that the stereotypical “gun nut” is a small percentage of gun owners and are relatively ignored by the majority.
You’d lose the bet. I’d wager that law enforcement would prefer neither scenario. Armed and trained citizens, despite their good intentions, can confuse a scene.
Why are we asking the cop’s opinion anyway? I thought they were all jack-booted thugs?
r€nato
I would say they are not a small percentage, though I would also not say (and did not say) that every gun owner is a nut.
I have also never said that. Can I get you another bale of hay? You’re going through the straw awfully quickly.
Blue Jean
Last time I checked, gun owners were just as prone to panic and error as non-gun owners. If every last gun owner had to go through the screening and training necessary to say, a police officer or a shigh end ecurity guard, yes, I’d agree with you. but a four hour session isn’t going to give anyone nerves of steel, perfect aim, omnipotence or anything else the gun toting good guys always have on TV.
cleek
the day after T-Giving, 4AM, outside the doors of the local mall. KB Toys has 10 XBox 360s. there are 50 people lined up, half-asleep, grumpy, waiting for the doors to open so they can get those XBoxes.
normally, it’s merely a stampede. sometimes people get hurt, with all the shoving and running.
in Libertarian Fantasyland, everyone has a gun.
Zifnab
Key words: the average gun owner.
But Boortz wants to change all that. He wants to turn “the average gun owner” into your 87 year old grandmother and the 16 year old kid who mows your lawn. The interstate trucker with a drinking problem, the guy just back from Iraq with PTSD, the 19 year old who broke up with his girlfriend and just lost his job who hasn’t taken his meds in a week and who’s foster dad owns a Kalishnakov assault rifle, should all be encouraged to pack heat.
It reminds me of the argument for driving SUVs.
“Why, there are so many SUVs on the road that driving anything else just isn’t safe!”
Police are still trying to figure out why this guy’s foster dad had such a piece of firepower. Nevermind that if gun-lock laws and the like had been enforced, this kid might not have even had access to the weapon, wingnuts want to argue gun deregulation is the true path to protection.
tBone
I think Punchy’s overstating the case too, but it bears mentioning that CC training doesn’t include live fire exercises. I know a few people with CC permits, and the only one I would trust when their target’s shooting back is the one who’s in the military.
ThymeZone
Fascinating. In the witness descriptions of the event, shots were heard, and in some cases people were seen falling, but the witnesses couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from.
I’m sure that a mall filled with armed Nebraskans could have seen a glorious shootout, with grandmothers and store clerks shooting at each other in the mistaken belief that they were aiming at the bad guy, and a hail of bullets would have filled the mall with fun and exicitement for all.
After the gunfight was over and the dead buried, a mural depicting the event could be painted there in the hall in from of the Von Maur store, so that future visitors could relive the thing and tell their kids about the Second Amendment.
Punchy
You just proved my point. Thanks. I’m sure all those gun owners had proper training that involved simulated shootouts in shopping malls, full of myriad mirrors and shiny surfaces (confusing the hell out of where everyone is), loud echos, a gazillion people screaming, and everyone running in completely opposite directions in a mad and chaotic frenzy.
Yeah, I’m betting they trained for that, and would be very well versed in exactly where and whom to shoot. No mixups, really. It’s in their training manual, says Cass…
libarbarian
I got to second Cassidy on this. I’ve had more than one person go from polite&friendly to hostile&rude simply after hearing that I own a gun. Even friends have an illogical aversion to guns.
Seriously, gun-o-phobia is a strong in some liberals as drug-o-phobia is in knee-jerk conservatives – they don’t want to use them, touch them, see them, or know anyone who has.
Yahoos exist but they are a minority of gun owners – and since they are more likely to shoot themselves than others it’s sort of a self-correcting problem :).
And they are wrong and probably will never win that one in court.
srv
Can anyone take a gun into Boortz’s tv studio?
Why does Neal hate property rights?
Katherine Hunter
we dont need no fn terrorists blowing up our malls / we can terrorize on our own
r€nato
I don’t know about winning it in court, but the NRA does lobby to have such bills introduced into legislatures. Last year some yahoo GOP state legislator here in AZ, introduced a bill to forbid the prohibition of firearms-carrying in places of public accomodation; in other words, a business could not forbid gun carrying by citizens, not even a church could forbid it.
The bill, IIRC, received significant support from other Republicans in the Legislature and if we had had a GOP governor, it could well have become law.
I’m not one of those. But you have a substantial number of yahoos in the uber-pro-2nd-Amendment crowd that give all of you a bad image. And I don’t buy the argument that they are ‘just a few bad apples’. There’s a LOT of them.
Cassidy
Agree to disagree. Loud and obnoxious sure, but the numbers are still low.
Absolutely. I”m no more a supporter of Boortz idea than you are. OTOH, I think it’s unfair to the millions of law abiding gun owners to assumer we’re all crazy and frothing to start a John Woo style gunfight in a shopping mall.
From what I understand, it was a fairly common rifle. I’m not sure what you are referring to.
I don’t read Boortz (I’m sober at the moment), so I don’t know if that’s what he meant. From the post, I gathered that he thinks that everywhere should be a CCW/ open carry area.
You’re right it does. That’s why I think the idea is ludicrous, personally. As I mentioned earlier, I’m all for a community choosing to allow some sort of concealed or open carry. But I also support the right of a community to not want it and not be blackmailed into it by threat of lawsuit.
TZ, you’ve seen way too many movies.
Cleek, I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
r€nato
Amen, brother/sister. A four-hour training course does not train you to make critical split-second decisions about whom to shoot and whom not to shoot when under fire.
Cassidy
Replace your terminology with eco-terorist. Sure, there are a lot (1 is too many), but nowhere near substantial enough to really drive policy.
Punchy, try reading what I’ve actually said. Seriously. Stop making assumptions. I think I’ve been pretty clear in what I said.
D. Mason
There’s another caricature painted with a broad brush. Most gun owners I know, including myself, see the second amendment as a deterant to tyranny(and crime), which was the founders intent. A tyrant or criminal will always choose a helpless victim over a victim who might be dangerous just as a predator in the wild will choose weak/sick/young prey when available. The fact that you see people who assert their gun rights as lunatics or “Rambos” is much more informative in regards to your state of mind than theirs. As for your assertion that they accept dictator Bush also serves to expose your ignorance, which is no surprise. You clearly prefer to have a demonized viewpoint of citizens who assert their rights, maybe you should ask yourself why that is. Take a hard look at what you have in common with the real Bush sycophants who are quick to demonize people who try to assert their own 4th amendment rights. The common ground you share is vast.
The fact that you’ve chosen to argue dishonestly, thereby making me side with cassidy, disgusts me btw.
cleek
a fact about which i am neither surprised nor concerned.
Cassidy
I didn’t say it does. I did say that the training is pretty good.
SpotWeld
Okay here’s a thought experiment:
Let’s assume we have a smallish mall with about 700 people shopping. (About right for the current pre holiday rush.). Let’s further assume that guns are lightly restricted and about a third of those shoppers have chosen to carry concealed. (230 people). Okay, now shots are fired. Let’s take that group of 230 and assume about 99% keep their heads about them and don’t panic. Instead they start heading towards the exits, getting into cover, helping the inured, calling 911, etc…
The remaining 1% panic and draw their weapons (2 people). So now you have 3 people with guns out including the original shooter. More shots are fired and someone turns a corner, sees someone with a gun out and shoots them.
Now, who just got shot?
(Is there anything unreasonable about this scenario?)
Pb
Would you happen to be a gun owner, Cassidy?
By the way, props for decently discussing the topic this time–keep it up, and I might rather have you on the Front Page instead of Michael D., heh.
Pb
Shots fired in a mall during the holidays, and 99% keep their heads about them and don’t panic? No way.
ThymeZone
That might have made sense 200 years ago. Today, it is about on the level of superstition. Anybody who owns weapons today in order to hold off the government is probably crazy. Self defense, collection, hunting, sport, competition … all legitimate uses. Preventing tyranny? Nutcase thinking.
And before you get up on your phony high hobby horse, I’m a gun owner and I have no desire to confiscate guns. But I also think that gun advocates have become irresponsible pimps of an idea that went out of control a long time ago.
Guns need to be made safer, distribution of weapons and ammunition needs to be made responsible and responsive to the true needs of public safety, and gun ownership needs to be controlled and managed. That’s just common sense.
In addition, manufacturers and sellers of weapons and ammunition need to be held legally responsible for the safety of their products, and held to very high standards.
SpotWeld
Pb> Well, I assumed a dual condition of panic and pulling a gun. It’s certainly possible for someone to panic and still keep enough of thier wits to keep the gun holsterd.
canuckistani
I’m afraid to step out of my front door up here in Toronto. The odds are 50/50 whether I’ll be murdered by gangsters or sandbagged by the secret police and sent to Gitmo in exchange for a suitcase of Euros. I wish I had a gun.
Kilgore Trout
Let’s assume we have a smallish mall with about 700 people shopping. (About right for the current pre holiday rush.). Let’s further assume that guns are lightly restricted and about a third of those shoppers have chosen to carry concealed. (230 people). …
(Is there anything unreasonable about this scenario?)
I think one in three carrying is a wild overestimate.
r€nato
D. Mason, then where are all the ‘guns keep us safe from tyrannical government!’ types with Bush claiming the power to throw any American in prison indefinitely, without the right to see a lawyer or know the evidence against them?
Where’s that crowd when Bush claimed the power to wiretap innocent Americans without a warrant?
This regime is the most tyrannical, Constitution-trashing government this nation has ever witnessed. My entire life I’ve read diatribes from the uber-2nd-Amendment crowd. It seems now is their chance to put their money where their mouth is, and you know what? I would wager that 90% of such people fully support what Bush has done. They won’t even speak out rhetorically against this tyranny and encroachment on their freedoms, let alone take up arms against it.
I would also wager that if Hillary or Bill were president and had done the exact same things as Bush, 90% of such people would be talking about how it would be a patriotic ac to ‘take out’ the tyrant.
Let’s be clear about something: I don’t hate guns. I don’t think that every single person who owns a firearm is a gun nut, and it’s an equally absurd cariacature that there is this great mass of liberals who think all guns and gunowners are icky, Bud-swilling yahoos driving oversized pickup trucks with rifle racks that have their own rifle racks. Remember, that horrible demigod of Teh Libruhl, Michael Moore, is an NRA member and has been since a teenager.
The issue at hand (I thought) was whether it’s wise or whether it’s foolish to think that the tragedy in Nebraska (or Columbine, or wherever) might have been stopped if the average citizen were packing heat and could have drawn a bead on the kid and taken him out before the cops arrived.
I just don’t buy that. If you could assure me that every ‘average citizen’ would have the same training a police officer gets so that not only do they know how to safely carry and use firearms but they would also have the intense training which gives one the ability to make snap decisions under fire as to whom to shoot and whom not to shoot, then I might agree with you.
But that’s like wishing for ponies. It ain’t gonna happen. So, no, I don’t at all think that everyone carrying guns would have stopped the shoot-out in Nebraska. It likely would have led to more innocent deaths. And then some GOP legislator would have introduced a bill to prevent a citizen who mistakenly shot and killed an innocent bystander while trying to play Rambo or Dirty Harry or Chuck Bronson, from being sued over it.
grumpy realist
I’d go for the “allowing more arming” if and only if such license to own was contingent upon passing some pretty stiff training/tests on how to use a gun properly, what to do under fire, and how NOT TO MAKE A MISTAKE. WITH a lot of simulation which would have to be repeated each year. Let’s also have some hearing and sight tests as well, please.
Sorry, 4 hours of training doesn’t cut it. Not to do all the above AND get drilled into the reactions you need to have–to keep your head under fire, carefully analyze where the shooting is coming from, accurately figure out who the real shooter is in a crowd of people, and drop him with a high level of accuracy without killing anyone else.
And considering the police themselves are notorious for shooting people who turn out to be holding gloves, wallets, etc. have their hands in their pockets, I think the blood count if we allow the average citizen to pack heat will end up, in the long run, be higher. And it doesn’t make too much different if you get killed by a mall sniper out of malice or by a would-be-Rambo “duh, but I thought I knew who was shooting!” Dead is dead.
KCinDC
Yes, SpotWeld, it’s unreasonable in that scenario to assume that 99 percent of the gun carriers ignore their guns.
Zifnab
Tell that to the Branch Dividians. Or the Iraqis, for that matter. Guns don’t make liberty. People do.
Sanity. Yes. Thank you.
Gus
Cassidy, the proportion of nuts to gun owners is much higher than the proportion of eco-terrorists to environmentalists, and they do have more of a voice in policy. That isn’t to say I disagree on your larger point, I just think you chose a poor example. Where I’m from, almost every house had at least one gun. Virtually everyone hunted. Personally, I’m pretty comfortable around guns, but thinking that untrained people with handguns will be able to take out someone with an assault rifle is ludicrous.
Dreggas
Ya know, I am against the whole “everyone should be packing” argument because of judgement issues etc. However I do have to agree with Cassidy on the idea that a large percentage of gun owners are not nuts or whack-jobs.
That’s like saying a large percentage of liberals are all members of PETA. It’s a hasty generalization (one I have even had to eat crow on during my own descent into liberal-land).
Now growing up in a small town in Upstate NY, in a town of maybe 2-3000 most if not all households had firearms, more often more than one and in our case we owned somewhere around 10-15. We all hunted, we all sat on the back porch and shot targets (cue dueling banjos ha-ha). Never once did anyone in the local area go completely ape shit and start shooting people.
Who does? Those who somehow think that guns are some great equalizer. People who have little to no power who think a gun changes that, most often people with issues not unlike the columbine kids, the kid in WV or this one in Nebraska. Why do they do it? Again for whatever reasons they do.
However they are not the majority and while the headlines always trumpet the latest whack-job because dead bodies sell, the majority of us are not nuts, and not in the business of shooting people just for the hell of it or because our girlfriends left us or whatever.
Further just because the MSM news, much like the tabloids, is happy to find the nuttiest person out there and put them in front of the camera doesn’t mean we’re all that nut-job. I hate to use the term but there is, really, a silent majority that are law-abiding mentally stable (and even a few not so mentally stable) gun owners who are responsible.
If anything, what I think needs to happen is there should be more education about guns. I think there should be courses offered in firearms safety. Just like I loathe abstinence only sex education I loathe the fact that people want to hide guns from their children rather than explaining to them that the gun is dangerous, it’s not a toy and should not be played with.
There is no respect for firearms anymore and it’s not the fault of video games, it’s not the fault of TV or rap music, it’s the fact that parents want to hide their kids from everything and feel that somehow they are doing the right thing. Sure, don’t leave the gun out where your 3 year old can get it but at the same time don’t be afraid to teach your 10 yr old that the guns aren’t toys, even teach him or her how to shoot so they see just what bullets do.
I remember my father doing that with me when I was that age with our .22 rifle. We sit here and advocate for not hiding truths from our kids, we advocate a realistic sex education system in order to prevent disease and pregnancy. Why not advocate a real education about guns as well? We have a second amendment, we will be able to get firearms, that’s a reality. Why not teach our kids about them rather than hide them away like some dirty secret?
Cassidy
Ironically, most gun owners don’t like Bush due to his lack of conviction on gun ownership.
I was hoping you’d try and clarify what you said. I’m sure you had a point to make, but it wasn’t very clear.
tBone
Whackjobs stockpiling arms in a compound and posting sentries to watch for black helicopters = nutcase thinking.
Wondering what new mischief our goverment would get up to if there weren’t millions of gunowners in our country = interesting thought experiment.
SpotWeld
Kilgore Trout> That number of people carrying is intentionally large to fit the concept of a “well armed society is a polite society” that seems to be the proposition of Neil Boortz. Since the argument that a lack of guns makes a group of patrons unsafe. Therefor, for this hypothetical, I’m assuming a largely armed group of pratons to run though the question if that makes them more safe.
OxyCon
These right wing shitheads want to turn the clock back to the 1850s, and turn the entire country into the Wild, Wild West”.
Cassidy
Yes, I am. I don’t have a CCw, nor do I want one. If I were to ever be in a situation like this mall shooting, my only priority would be to get my family to safety.
I usually start out pretty genial, until someone decides that name calling is a decent rebuttal. Than I just have fun screwing with the hot-head.
Never said it did. I did say the training was pretty good. Also a lot (numbers unknown) the states require some sort of accuracy test. While it isn’t very intense, you at least have to be able to hit what you’re shooting at.
I don’t think this is a foolish thought. It is entirely possible that a well trained cop or military vet with a concealed gun could have stopped this guy. It has happened before in less sensationalized scenarios. I don’t think it is likely enough to warrant forcing communities to allow weapons on any premises, though.
Guns don’t kill people. People do.
Seriously it is a tool. And I don’t think it’s an outdated mindset. In all likelihood, this Administration is the closest to tyranny that our country will ever see, but the possibility exists that our authoritarian politicians will always try to consolidate power.
Zifnab
Do you honestly believe “millions of gun owners” keep politicians and police officers in check? It certainly hasn’t curbed the stun-gun epidemic. It hasn’t halted crackdowns on habeus, free speech, misuse of eminent domain, corrupt government officials and contracts. Guns didn’t reveal secret renditions to foreign countries. They didn’t expose abuses at Abu Gariab. They didn’t run Republicans out of office in ’06 and they haven’t stiffened the spines of Democrats in ’07. They haven’t ended the War in Iraq or brought down Osama Bin Laden. They haven’t cut our taxes. They haven’t funded our schools. They haven’t paved our roads or cleaned up our air and drinking water.
Guns haven’t played a significant roll in US Politics since the Civil War. And that was a roll I really wouldn’t want to see repeated.
grumpy realist
Oh, and yeah–add more people waving guns around in a situation and I bet you, just bet you, that we’ll have the following scenario:
Sniper gets shot.
Person who shoots sniper gets shot by someone else/police.
There’s also the fact that the police, if called to the case of a mall sniping where they’ve heard there’s “one or more gunmen” are most likely to take out ANYONE waving a gun around, whether the sniper himself or a good citizen just carrying out his 2nd Amendment rights in a Boortzian manner. On general principles.
(I have nothing but contempt for a certain percentage of hunters. We’ve got the jerks who think that “No Trespassing” signs are only for decoration, the yahoos who shoot out of season and don’t care if they get a buck or a doe, the idiots who never bother to check how close they are to human habitation, then (in my area) we’ve got the drunken weekend warriors up from NYC who have a tendency to shoot anything that moves, including cows and humans. Which is a pity, because we really do need good, responsible hunters to thin out the deer population….)
Buck
I interpret Cleek as saying that if you have 10 XBoxes and 50 guns somebody is going to die.
Punchy
Shorter Cassidy–that training manual that tells you how to unlock the safety, load the ammo, and prep for the kickback IS CRUCIAL for knowing whom and what to shoot in a shopping mall full of people screaming like mad and running around and 5 other people next to me all brandishing guns and pointing them at each other.
I’m sold. Give everyone who passes Cassidy’s CCW test course a Glock and a blueprint of the local shopping mall.
demimondian
Cassidy, what you’re missing is that the damage done by one of those gun nuts is disproportionate to their numbers.
The truth of the matter is that this kind of “arm everyone” bullshit crops up whenever one of those gun nuts really loses it and becomes a mass murderer. Remember Virginia Tech? Calling people sissies for not shooting back? I’ve been a college prof, dude, and dread the thought of a firefight in a crowded classroom.
I may be a good shot with a reasonably level head, but how many of my students would be? Not many. How many would have spent thirty hours in the range in the last year?
It’s a nonsensical proposal, meant to make people feel less helpless. Problem is, they *are* helpless, even when armed, even in the easy cases where the shooter is visible. In this case, where the shooter wasn’t even visible…it would have led to greater tragedy, not less.
grumpy realist
BTW, thanks, Cassidy, for discussing this reasonably. And yeah, let’s get some more education out there!
My own feeling is that people who are too clueless/stupid to use technology responsibly shouldn’t be allowed access to the technology. This applies to guns, cars, airplanes, and computers….
(I’m also thinking about the death penalty for spammers and persistent telemarketers.)
Zifnab
I blame video games.
Face
Since when is this whole argument about “whack-jobs”? Normal, logical people carrying guns could/would very well draw them in a mall at the sight/sound of a shooting. It is at that very instance that chaos begins. The mere sight of a gun by another may cause that other to then draw, ad nauseum.
It doesn’t take “nutjobs” to cause mass panic and confusion. Well-intentioned people all holding guns in a confusing situation is damn near guarenteed to get some innocents shot.
Besides, who are the Police going to go after in that situation? They’d be overwhelmed by gun-holding individuals.
jenniebee
The background check doesn’t screen out people who think that engaging in a shoot-out across a mall is OK as long as there’s a bad guy in the general direction of where the bullets are going either. Shit, if it did, three quarters of the NRA would be barred from buying. Your whole “it wouldn’t happen because they screen out people who would want to use their guns in self defense” is ludicrous on its face.
And your stuff about open-carry is back-asswards too. It’s illegal to flourish, but if you want to carry a legal and licensed pistol in a hip holster where it can be clearly seen but isn’t being brandished, that’s protected by the 2nd amendment. It just looks ridiculous, is all.
Could you please turn in your conservative credentials at the door? kthxbai
cleek
essentially, yes. people already hurt each other trying to get to the ‘hot items’ every year. with guns, it could easily get fatal.
and, think of what plentiful guns would do to rush-hour traffic! whee!
RSA
Here’s what John Lott had to say, somewhere else:
I’ve seen a good bit of this discussion in various places, but it’s not clear to me whether Westroads actually had a posted “No Concealed Firearms” policy. Does anyone know? I think that this is critical to the arguments of some that more guns make everyone safer. Not that establishments in general can rule out guns on the premises, but that Westroads in particular did.
Tim C
We keep focusing on the wrong issues. This is not a gun issue. It is an issue of why did this person come to believe the solution to his problem was to kill a bunch of innocent people. We are creating monsters in our society and all I’m hearing is arguments about guns. Who is going to step up and say, wait a minute, there is something really wrong with a society that creates someone who can conceive of doing this? Once again, like the VA Tech shootings, people are coming forward and describing a history of behavior for this guy that makes it no surprise we’ve ended up here, yet while it was developing, no one said, wait, this guy needs help. We just argue about guns. We don’t talk about a culture that wants to slap an NC-17 rating on a movie where 2 guys kiss but fairly turns a blind eye at any amount of film violence. We don’t talk about a culture that glories in kill-everything video games. We don’t talk about people who used to be thought to be authority figures who are now afraid to say anything to anyone for fear of a lawsuit. We just argue about guns. It’s a lot easier and we can blame an inanimate object.
jenniebee
I used to agree with that. Then we invaded Iraq and I saw what kind of chaos a few dead-enders with personal AK-47s could unleash.
Of course, there’s something to be said for it that the prevention of tyranny really comes from simply testing the will of the people against the will of the government and that all the guns really do is raise the stakes both ways. Sheesh – look what French farmers can do just with their tractors. They don’t need hardware by HK to remind the government that power lies with the people; John Deere works just fine.
Perry Como
Who did the police go after in this situation? It seems that the whack jobs that go on shooting sprees tend to take care of themselves before the police do anything.
AkaDad
I think we need to focus on the true threat. Environmentalists with suicide vests.
Robert Johnston
Amen. The constant invocation of guns as a bulwark against tyranny is the leading thing keeping me firmly in the strict gun-control camp and away from middle ground on the gun issue. People who treat guns as religious icons, preaching against all evidence and common sense with a religious fervor about the power of guns to prevent tyranny and make one safe, scare the living shit out of sane people.
In the modern American world, guns are modestly useful and moderately dangerous tools and provide entertainment for hobbyists. There’s nothing wrong with that, and if that’s how people treated guns I’d be all for regulating guns not much more strictly than cars, which fit a similar model. But the vast number of people who place a religious faith in guns and treat them as the holy grail of liberty do a better job of making the case for gun control than anything else I can imagine. I don’t care how much gun training a completely crazy person has; he still can’t be trusted with a gun.
numbskull
I’ve been around guns and gun owners all of my life. Until I got married, I’d shoot all the time (it bothers my wife, so I don’t any more).
I can honestly say that I don’t know a SINGLE gun owner who has never improperly used a gun.
That’s right, every single gun owner I know or knew (and that’s dozens or more) at some point did something stupid with a gun. Even me. (!) But I’m a numbskull.
Also, the majority of those owners I wouldn’t trust in a mall with a shooter. I would trust them to pull the trigger, over and over, and they’d for sure hit SOME one, but probably not the right one.
So, the idea of arming EVEN more people, well, I think you’re not dealing in reality.
Zifnab
That didn’t do a damn thing to “prevent tyranny”. A massive labor strike of Iraqis manning oil wells would have been infinitely more persuasive to the US than the random acts of civic violence.
Iraq isn’t a better place because they have more guns. After we leave, it won’t be any less of a hell hole. And all the AK-47s in the world haven’t changed Bush’s mind about “Korea-style” occupation.
Face
And the police, entering a shrieking, terrorized mall, seeing 8 people with handguns, knows this? They just draw down, clearly knowing that everyone left holding a pistol is a law-abiding citizen?
Can’t wait to see those police reports, with 50 different people claiming they saw 20 different people shooting at 50 different people. It’ll make it quite easy to figure out what happened.
RSA
Except. . .
I don’t think Iraq and Afghanistan provide much good evidence for the “guns prevent tyranny” argument.
Nathan
Seriously, and I apologize for my language, but fuck these guys. The idea that a law or policy would bring these poor men and women back to life sickens me. The left will use this to push for more gun control, the right will use it to push for more guns, and they’re both doing a gigantic disservice to the families of the victims. What happened here, and at the Virginia Tech campus, and at Columbine, were horrendous tragedies, but to say that they could have been avoided “if only the other side listened to me” is callous and arrogant.
tBone
I think it serves as a passive deterrent to our government deciding to trample on even more of our rights, yeah. Over the last 7 years we’ve witnessed things that none of us thought would ever happen in this country. Is it that hard to imagine these fucking clowns pushing things even further if they thought they could get away with it?
Understand that I’m not stockpiling guns, canned food and tinfoil in my underground bunker. I don’t even own any guns, actually, although I grew up around them and I’m comfortable using them. I just take a small measure of comfort in knowing that if things ever got really bad, there’s going to be some Red Dawn shit going down.
Jake
OK, we’ve heard from one dipshit. When will Derbyshire bewail the fact that no one rushed the gunman?
tBone
Yes, they do.
Cassidy
Like I said, I don’t think this is the solution. The imagined outcome, is a possibility, but I don’t think it’s possible enough to really warrant examining.
Punchy, I realize that you are posting with your MO; the usual assumptions and illogical conclusions, etc. You’re looking like a fool.
Jeeniebee, those things you mentioned are 1) not a criminal act just for thinking it, and 2) not able to be screened for anyway. Not to start this old argument, but do they screen people for the same thing before they get a drivers license?
demimondian
jenniebee — it wasn’t a few dead-enders with AK-47’s. It was a highly trained army with extensive military ordnance, adapting it in unusual ways.
And, in fact, if anyone truly needs a tool with which to “rise up”, then the farmers in your home state, and the miners in West Virginia, and the ranchers in the southwest already have it. It’s called potassium nitrate and fuel oil, and it’s a far more effective deterrent than a gun. As long as it’s used to blow up mountains and fertilize fields, the populace will always be adequately armed.
John Cole
Oh bullshit on the defense from tyranny crap. Your shotgun isn’t going to do shit when the 2nd Cav is bearing down on your ass.
Not to mention, all the ass pirates who claim to need weapons as a check on government have demonstrated themselves to be objectively pro-tyranny. You seen any of these folks (ie Instapundit) stand up to the bullshit from Bush and company? No, they are standing on the sidelines, eating mayonnaise sandwiches, polishing their smith and wesson, and giggling about librul’s being pussies when it comes to terrorism.
Please cut the crap.
ThymeZone
Good grief man, try to stand up for the integrity of the reality community: There’s no evidence that I know of anywhere that modern gun ownership is a deterrent to government tyranny in this country.
That’s just pure bullshit.
Cassidy
Trust me, I don’t miss it. Just as I’m usually vilified by fellow Democrats for not being liberal enough, I’m also vilified on some gun forums for not being hardcore enough. In the end, I ignore them as most reasonable gun owners do.
Cassidy
Heh…2nd Cav…bad example.
Doug H.
Considering said clowns have the gun vote locked up out of fear of the other party’s “gun grabbers”, I would say its not that hard to imagine at all.
demimondian
Sorry, Cassidy, I didn’t make myself clear. I ignore the spoutings of the Cheetos-wielding gun nut wannabees, just like you do. It’s the silence of the real nuts who have guns that scares me — the will-be mass murdering folks with borderline personality disorder, who walk in our midst, unmarked, until they kill 22 students in a rampage. A tiny number of them do a huge amount of damage.
And, yes, we’re helpless about that, as long as they can easily obtain the tools to commit their murders, they will.
Oh, and, no, it isn’t the case that if we took their guns away, they’d just move to something else. Obtaining the fertilizer and putting it together into an IED, as McVeigh did, takes quite a bit of organization, skill, and planning.
Pb
Tim C., Nathan, etc.;
I think the real big issue being overlooked here is actually often our health care system, not society or alleged partisanship. People don’t just go on killing sprees because they played too many video games–they go on killing sprees because they’re sick and need help. For an extreme example, there’s Charles Whitman’s brain tumor; I’m not saying that this explains everything, just that it’s a huge and obvious factor to consider.
PaulW
I can’t wait for a shootout at an NRA gun show, and see what the excuses will be then about allowing more guns everywhere.
I don’t have a problem with the Second Amendment, I just have a problem with some of these gun nuts who want the *right* to own military grade weapons but who ignore the *responsibility* they owe to the rest of us who don’t want to get shot at.
Cassidy
Unfortunately, I don’t this is about guns. These kind of people will find ways to hurt others regardless of the tools available.
AkaDad
I bet if I tried really hard, I could take down a stealth bomber with my 12 gauge…
tBone
If your conditions are “modern gun ownership in this country,” well, no, I suppose there’s not much evidence. If we ever descend into full-blown tyranny I guess we’ll have an answer.
I believe there may be some historical precedent, though.
Anyway, why are all of you assholes so intent on destroying my fantasy of tying on a red headband and watering the tree of liberty? Jerks.
scarshapedstar
Okay. So, were any gun owners forced to go to the gun-free mall?
Didn’t think so.
Cassidy
Here is part of the problem. What constitutes military grade? A bayonet lug? A flash suppressor? A collapsible buttstock? The kind of round used? A lot of our modern firearms, especially the ones used in hunting, are designed off of military rifles.
Trust me, a trained individual can do just as much harm, regardless of what he is carrying. I could go on a rampage with a Ruger 10/22, firing the piddly .22 LR round, with a 100 round drum and hurt just as many people, if not more, than an SKS or Mini-14.
I think approx. 800 million gun owners could fight against tyranny. If nothing else, it’s a perpetual reminder to our gov’t, should we ever see a “real” tyrannical gov’t, that at least some of the populace will fight. Sometimes, it isn’t about winning.
Tim F.
Who says that they would stand against it? Look at where red-blooded muricans stand on torture, government surveillance, unfettered executive power and habeas corpus rights for either brown people or suspicious American citizens. Gun ownership doesn’t look like much of a hindrance to me.
Cassidy
Even using your logic Tim and assuming it’s right, they’d still oppose it coming into their own neighborhood.
LITBMueller
You want proof that “arming everyone” only creates more violence? Visit North Philadelphia. EVERYONE has a fucking gun! And guess what? Everyone’s shooting each other and everyone is terrorized.
And you’d be surprised at the number of people who actually have a CCW. That’s because PA is a “shall issue” state. And, those who have any trouble getting a permit in PA can literally mail in an application to another state, like Florida, and get reciprocity. Or, you can have someone with a clean record buy the gun for you (a “straw purchaser”).
Also consider that the gun owners in North Philly (legal and illegal) have other things in common: they can’t shoot straight and tend to discharge their weapons on crowded streets. As a consequence, we have innocent children being hit by stray bullets. These gun owners also do other stupid things, like bring their guns with them to bars and get drunk, which leads to all kinds of nonsense.
Believe me, there is no easy answer to the “to arm or not to arm” dilemma, but we definitely have a great example in Philly of a heavily armed population, and the effects of that arming on the community. Instead of being any sort of deterrent, the result has only been more shootings and more lives lost. Too many of them innocent.
Pooh
What he said.
binzinerator
TZ:
I totally agree with that, TZ, and I’m a gun owner too. To achive the intent of that admendment now would require weapons, firepower, explosives, communications and organization at least on the level of the insurgents in Iraq.
Because to oppose tryanny by arms here means an insurgency too, an American insurgency. And like the insurgency in Iraq, we would likewise need fully automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, mortars, C-4 explosives, explosively formed penetrators. And, if you believe the conservatives on Iraq, such an insurgency would still lose.
You gonna stand up to an armored hummer with just your .30-30? You and your neighbors gonna take your deer rifles and your duck gun and your glocks and get in a firefight with an Army squad who are armed with automatic weapons and grenades and who wear body armor? And what you gonna do if they call for armor and air support?
You’re gonna lose, is what. Every time.
The second amendment became obsolete by 1914, for the same reasons cavalry charges became obsolete when facing machine guns, barbed wire, and massed artillery.
Unless of course, this nation decides the 2nd Amendment rights include widespread ownership of automatic weapons, RPGs, explosives, antitank guns and anti-aircraft missles.
Yeah! That’s the answer! We need to make it so everyone can pack any kind of heat everywhere! Then we’ll be safer.
I know it’s been said before, but I didn’t see these vaunted gun rights (and the NRA freaks who froth about it) do a damned thing in preventing the erosion of our freedoms.
Bush told us the islomafascists hate us for our freedoms, so he took some of those freedoms away. That’ll make us safer! (Heckuva job, Bushies!) And the 2nd Amendment nuts are still love-rubbing the barrels of their guns, telling us over and over again how it prevents exactly that from happening.
demimondian
Cassidy, you don’t understand the importance of the divide and conquer strategy. Niemoller did, though…
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
[Godwin!]
Tsulagi
Was it Boortz or was it some other right wing wonder advocating all students be packing who said handguns are defective? Known truth because the proof was that he couldn’t hit shit with one and no one else he knew could either.
First off, note to patriot warriors looking to discover their gun side. The bullet goes where the barrel is pointed. It follows a known and extremely predictable trajectory. If holes aren’t appearing in the target where you think they should, or you’re not hitting the target at all, look for a variable other than the handgun that is dysfunctional.
I want to have these kind of idiots packing in a mall? Ones who can’t hit a static paper target, plus worse when they hear, or think they hear shots, now be holding a weapon with their heart rate going through the roof, adrenaline pumping, deathly afraid for their own life? Yeah, I’d trust their skill and judgment.
Yep, nothing could go wrong there. So I’m in line with my two kids so they can see Santa. Santa thinks he hears shots fired so he pulls a SKS out of his bag wildly swinging it hyperventilating looking for the evildoers. Just great, then I have to pull my .45 blowing Santa away in front of the kids. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Xmas shoppers.
Perry Como
On the scale that McVeigh did it, sure. But on a smaller scale it’s trivial.
Besides, McVeigh got help from Saddam. /wingnut
demimondian
Perry…ever done it? Building an improvised bomb is harder than you think. Building an improvised bomb without blowing yourself up halfway through is far harder.
RSA
In my neighborhood, gun ownership has historically proven to be a 100% effective deterrent to government tyranny and attacks from man-eating tigers. Also land sharks. And zombies.
jenniebee
No argument there. Guns are in the best hands in this country to stop the Cuban Mtn Warfare machine from pushing the Wolverines around, in the worst hands for making sure that if, say, Bush took a page out of the Musharref playbook that anybody would be able to do anything about it.
You gonna fight their war, or are you going to make them fight yours? The reason guerrillas are able to make such merry work of our poor guys is that our guys are equipped, trained and led to fight MGs and Soviet tanks rolling across Germany. Against a popular uprising armed with Mao’s Little Red Book and whatever’s on the shelves at Greentop’s and Southern Gun World, the 2nd Cav could be forced to make some very nasty choices to restore law and order.
Dexfarkin
The reality is that widing the number of guns in a crisis situation increases the possibility of innocent deaths. Police and military train on a constant basis to react to split-second issues like this; constant regular training with professional oversight and evaluation, and look at how often mistakes still happen. The idea that even a slightly trained gun wielding populace is somehow going to make better decisions is against all reasons.
I believe in gun control because there’s a very simple equation that gets proved time and time again all over the world: the less guns you have in circulation, the less incidents of gun violence you witness.
Simple. Not less crime. Not less tyranny. Less guns means fewer gun related crimes and deaths.
All of this nonsense about ‘if you put in gun control, only criminals will have guns’ is ridiculous. The United States has roughly the same levels of crime as most Western countries in terms of assaults, violence, robbery, etc, save one major area; gun related offences. The vast majority of weapons that reach the street come stolen from legitimate private ownership. The more you arm your population, the more you arm the criminal element of it, and to date, it has shown to provide no deterrent in criminal activity.
Guns escalate poor judgement, random impluse, and general negligence to a lethal level immediately, like being behind the wheel of a car. That doesn’t mean gun owners are stupid, crazy or irresponsible people. It means though that if one of them has a bad day, has too much to drink, or just lets anger take over for a moment, they’ve got the capability to easily and swiftly kill other people. The more armed people you bring into a situation, the more likely it is that you’ll have that percentage which doesn’t exercise good judgement.
Cassidy
That’s why I have my guns.
Dreggas
So let’s just blame movies and video games instead? What’s next blame Ozzy and Iron Maiden?
binzinerator
By the way, it isn’t merely the hardware that makes the 2nd Amendment utterly obsolete. I think military training, organization, tactics and communications have likewise evolved and also have rendered the purpose of that amendment meaningless.
I think this is part of the reason the nation’s founders were so opposed to a professional army. A standing army ensured a class of people who would begin to see themselves as a group apart from civilians, and the civilians would lose any contact (knowledge and experience) of military activities.
Not only do the citizens not have the means to oppose tyranny by force, they have less and less knowledge of how to go about doing so.
Krista
Yikes. Having to do the paperwork on a clusterf**k like that….there would be some SERIOUSLY cranky cops running around.
Tim F.
No Cassidy, it is your logic that needs work. If people support government tyranny because it doesn’t specifically (yet) affect them, then it already is in their neighborhood. They let it in. You cannot or will not get the the point that tyranny never oppresses everybody at once. Civil protections disappear first for unwanted and easily demonized groups, then go on eroding from the outside in.
Again, the behavior of real gun owning Americans, today, proves that they have no problem with tyranny as long as they get to point the guns at someone else.
tBone
And then Malkin/Hewitt/et al would have aneurysms trying to decide whether to a) praise you for heroically plugging a crazed shooter or b) viciously attack you for escalating the War on Christmas.
demimondian
What about the Flood? I hear that energy swords are the way to go when it invades your neighborhood.
tBone
Drop the most ardent gun control zealots in a mob of flesh-hungry zombies, and they’ll be asking you to please pass the shotgun. Hypocrites.
Tony J
Other than you just now, I haven’t seen anyone, Left or Right, saying anything like that. Can you link to any examples other than the one you’ve just provided?
How so? One side would have much firmer gun-control laws that might stop tragedies like this happening in the first place. The other side would make it easier for nuts like this one to get the firepower with which to kill innocent people. Please explain how the former does a disservice to the families of the victims, because I don’t think I’m alone in not seeing it.
No, it isn’t. It’s just an uncomfortable truth that the MORE GUNS lunatics like Boortz would rather ignore.
Punchy
I’m a fool to believe that 50 armed civies in a shopping mall shootout is a reciepe for disaster. Yep, I’m the fool.
And you’re just a dishonest concern troll who thinks firearms permits only go to young men with great eyesight, calm nerves, and 10+ years of prior gun ownership. No, wait, you’re fool.
Tony J
I always found a nicely directed pulse of bullets from the assault rifle did the trick for me.
Guav
He did not suggest that the solution to the Omaha mall shooting was more guns.
binzinerator
Perpetual reminder. What a laugh. Hell, most of the people who claim that ‘perpetual reminder’ bullshit wouldn’t recognize a real tryannical government if one came and tased them in the ass.
The proof is in the last 7 years. Hell, they wanted those tyrants in the government in the first place, and they continue to insist on keeping them there. It’s a perpetual reminder to the rest of us how stupid, clueless or authoritarian they really are.
And what happened to voting as a reminder? Why haven’t Bush and Cheney been impeached? Why do republican congressmen almost without exception still support their undemocratic and un-American policies? (You show me the voting records and the issues of anyone who hasn’t — and if they number anything less than single digits, you’ve strengthened my point).
Why do conservatives vote for and approve of these people? And almost every damn one of the 2nd amendment frothers is such a conservative. (You go to a gun show and you find me a dozen liberals who rail about 2nd amendment rights and whose trucks have that NRA-approved ‘From my cold dead hands..’ bumpersticker on it. Find me just one, even.)
The Other Steve
The gunman shot himself.
Perry Como
Back in my high school days I did a lot of things that would get myself and my friends labeled terrorists these days. We never hurt anyone, nor did we want to. We were a bunch of geeks making things go boom. And no, we were never stupid enough to play with TATP.
Cassidy
I can think of several dictators that have our group of idiots beat. If you think we’re living under tyranny, then I’d propose you don’t really understand what that means.
Don’t be self-delusional. Tragedies like this will happen regardless of the tool used.
Keep making assumptions…keep looking like the ass.
Dreggas
I’m one of those, I am a firm believe in the 2nd amendment, I am just not bat shit crazy and don’t own a truck.
Zifnab
Well, why didn’t you say that from the start? Go Wolverines.
But seriously, if the rash of stun-gunnings and the Waco incident and the war on drugs teaches me anything, its that gun ownership actually puts you in greater risk of physical harm. “He could have had a gun!” always seems to be the reason for some kid getting 58 rounds in the back in the Bronx, or why we’ve got to go in with SWAT team fully armored no-knock raids to bust some hippie growing canabis in his basement. Meanwhile, I’ve never heard of a criminal or even a mafia organization successfully out-gunning a US police unit that asked for back-up. Show me the pack of crazy survivalists who think they can take down the federal government – or even launch prolonged insurgent activities – and I’ll show you a bunch of corpses.
Julie
Wait. What? Is this a real conspiracy theory/meme out there?
cleek
Building an improvised bomb is harder than you think.
bah. on a small scale it’s trivial.
you can get all the explosives you need for a down at your local sporting goods store. they sell it in little plastic jugs. it’s called “black powder”. they sell it for muzzle-loaders. or, if you don’t like that flavor, there’s some good stuff packaged in those colorful plastic shotgun shells.
maybe it’s not the best explosive you can get, but it will get you there.
cleek
oh hell yeah.
be sure to note the third link on that Google search. oh that liberal media!
John S.
Now that’s simply retarded.
Are you seriously contending that a man armed with a knife could pull off what happened in Omaha?
Or that a crazed student armed with a baseball bat could have pulled off what happened at Virginia Tech?
I mean if that is what you are seriously contending, Cassidy, then you are beyond self-delusional.
Tony J
What John S Said.
Nathan not sticking around? Shocking.
Cassidy
Absolutely John S. An individual who intends on causing gross levels of harm, will do so, regardless of the tool at their disposal. It isn’t about the weapon used. It’s about the person doing the killing. You can outlaw all the guns in the world and these kind of incidents will still happen.
Cassidy
What’s retarded is believing that no guns= no crime/ no violence. There have always been weapons. There have always been atrocities. And there will always be people willing to commit them.
demimondian
John S.: what is the single largest incident of mass murder in US history? What about the second? What about the third? What about the fourth? Hint: none of them involved a single gun. The top three involved box cutter knives and airplanes, and number four involved nothing more than a Ryder truck.
demimondian
That said, Cassidy, I think that the incidents of mass-murder we’re talking about here do, in fact, require guns. Typically, mass murderers seem to be seeking the pain and terror of their victims, and a bomb has neither the impact, nor the cathartic effect of continuing to pull the trigger. Guns are unique that way.
cleek
add them all up and they still won’t equal the number of homicides by handgun for a single year. in fact, they won’t even reach the number of gun-related homicides committed by 18-24 year olds, in a single year.
Jake
“A man with a criminal record went on a rampage at a mall today and shot 12 shoppers … with rubber bands.”
Yep. Well, call me crazy, but given the choice between being on a subway train when Johnny Whackjob pulls out a gun or Johnny Whackjob pulls out a knife, I’ll take JW with the knife.
tBone
Agreed, absolutely. But I was operating on the assumption that if things got bad enough (ie, Stalinist-style purges), it wouldn’t just be the nutjobs who would fight back. Maybe you and Tim are right, and everyone would ignore (or, in the 28%ers case, cheer on) creeping totalitarinism until it was too late.
Or maybe the coming zombie scourge will render such concerns moot.
binzinerator
Tim F.:
Uh, Tim, I’m a real gun owning American and I have a real problem with tyranny, espcically when I see it in our government. Torture is tyranny. Denying habeas corpus is tyranny. Secret prisons are, and so is the so-called extraordinary rendition. So is wiretapping without warrant. The break down of separation of church and state. The unofficial religious test our presidential candidates now must take. The deleted emails. The lies about WMDs in Iraq and now in Iran. The “free speech zones”. The penalty-free perjury and obstruction of justice. The unaccountability. The secrecy.
And on and on. You know what I’m talking about here.
I never voted for Bush — it was obvious to me he wasn’t fit to be president, although I had no idea it was tyranny, not only incompetence with a swagger, until 2 weeks into the Iraq war (what no WMDs? Oh well — Hey, let’s bring democracy to the raghea – oops — Iraqis!).
I call and write letters to senators and congresspeople, both my own and weasels like Feinstein, Schumer, and Specter (fat lot of good that does, but I make the effort). I give money to groups that oppose this crap, and I vote. Every time.
So please qualify your statement. It’s not true as it stands.
zzyzx
One of my all time favorite internet arguments I had was when I was reading the Free State Project board; what can I say, the idea behind taking over a state fascinated me.
Anyway, someone blithely said that no one should have a problem if their neighbor wanted to have nuclear weapons in their house, because – y’know – if they think they can handle them and/or needed them, who are the rest of us to be scared for our lives.
srv
Why would you want to go to the Mall packing otherwise? I mean, really. You really feel that unsafe when shopping in public? Whether you’re crazy with fear or just crazy still means you’re crazy.
Julie
Ho-lee crap. I had no idea.
I was fairly young when the OKC bombing happened, and oblivious about a lot of the details. What stands out to me, reading some of that stuff now, is how closely those conspiracy theories mirror the 9/11 ‘truth’ stuff: it being a “false flag” operation, the idea that the explosion alone couldn’t have caused the building collapse, rumors of Iraqi involvement.
Wow. Just when I thought I couldn’t be shocked anymore.
Cassidy
If you had read everything, you’d have noticed I don’t carry a concealed gun and explained why. The only place I go “packing” is whatever war I happen to be deployed to.
I’m not sure I believe that, but that’s an argument of opinion really.
And more people die in car accidents every year. This is an old argument. I’ll give the usual response: Do you want to outlaw cars to, so that everyone is safer?
cleek
then feel free to stay out of it.
don’t bother.
(ooops, too late!)
where did i say anything about outlawing anything ?
Tim F.
bizinerator,
I did not say all, and the ones who do resist aren’t using their guns. My point is limited to refuting the argument that arming citizens is either necessary or sufficient for resisting tyranny in America.
Cassidy
I think you’re underestimating the American people. Wile I don’t doubt that many would go like lambs, I think a good percentage would put up a fight, no matter how one sided.
Cassidy
So after railing against gun ownership, you’re going to try and say that you’re in favor of gun ownership? You’re logic is dizzying. I think that’s worth a better explanation.
binzinerator
srv:
I think so too. But this is all part of the republican strategy of 1) fuck up it up so it fails, 2) blame the failures on what remains, 3) demand more powers and greatly leeway to fuck it up further, 4) repeat.
They want the fear and uncertainy. They are creating their own justification for what they do. They want a negative feedback loop because it works to their advantage in promoting their social agenda and creating a society of many fearful havenots easily ruled by the few haves.
Look at public education vs. home school/school vouchers, FEMA vs. private ‘disaster response teams’, FDA vs. self-inspection, US Army vs mercenaries, and assault rifle bans vs. this AK-wielding nut.
They win, everyone else loses, and they get rich while recreating a social and economic society from the 1890s.
Cassidy
Bear in mind that this same level of violence could have been accomplished with any gun and that the legally defined “Assault Weapon” of the AWB was not only retarded but inaccurate.
binzinerator
Thanks for the clarification, Tim.
I do agree with your point: arming citizens is neither necessary nor sufficient for resisting tyranny in America.
binzinerator
That’s a great argument for getting rid of them all. I was willing to compromise, but you’ve convinced me it would be useless.
numbskull
Oh, good analogy. No – really.
I’m on board with this. You want to own and use a gun? Great! You need to go through mandatory gun-user’s classes, just like Driver’s Ed. Ya gotta have ’em all registered. Ya gott have insurance, which is subject to not only state laws, but all kind of industry loopholes and demands on your proficiency, experience, etc. Ya gotta have ’em safety inspected every year (trigger locks, etc.) by the state and ya gotta have yearly physical inspections done by the state to be able to keep using them.
Break any of those rules, or any other rule totally unrelated that even the most local of municipalities feels like tossing in the mix, and you lose your gun license, JUST LIKE YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE. ‘Cause, hey, guns are just like cars.
Hey, I’m surprised you suggested this, Cassidy, but more power to you!
Cassidy
And already responded to. I must be psychic:
I was actually suggesting that more people die in America every year due to MVA, therefore, according to the anti-gun logic, cars should be outlawed. It’s a rather ridiculous scenario, but it points out the ridiculousness of absolute solutions, which really aren’t.
Also, most of the stuff you suggested would be unconstitutional anyway.
demimondian
We know, by looking at the effects of loosening of driver’s licenses, that mandatory licensing does reduce the rate of injury and death — not to mention property loss — due to motor vehicle accidents. We also know that regular practice at the range does reduce the rate of incorrect firing — why not require that?
Nathan
Hey now, that’s not fair. I only have an hour to respond to something that was posted about my own comment before being attacked?
Look, I tend to agree that we, as a nation, need stiffer gun control laws. And the fact of the matter is that the majority of those that disagree really believe what they’re saying. I just think it does a disservice to the victims to frame a political issue around a horrible tragedy like this. The bottom line is, would this guy have done this, or something similar, if there was tighter gun control? Who knows–we can’t change the past. To suggest otherwise strikes me as cold.
Cassidy
Well, I’m not sure of the legal aspects to this, but seems to me if you “require” private citizens to maintain a certain number of hours of practice, then it would 1) be the States obligation to provide such an area (hooray, free shooting ranges), and 2) legitimizes the Pro-2nd A argument that the people are said militia. I’ll die of old age before Pelosi or any of those other authoritarian twits allow something like that.
demimondian
Why? Pelosi et al. would have no problem with a well regulated militia, I suspect. I will tell you that when this was even proposed one place I lived, the soi-disant authoritarian left said “Hmm. OK, it’s certainly an improvement over what we’ve got now; sure, it’s worth a try” and the local chapters of the NRA went bat-shit insane “They’re going to take our guns away!”
Jake
The only people allowed to trot out this lame counter-argument are those who can’t understand the difference between a gun and a car. Those who can’t understand the difference shouldn’t be allowed near either.
Beej
Interesting discussion, but what Cassidy and a few others have not acknowledged so far is that those few “gun nuts” (and I will agree that they are a small proportion of gun owners)apparently include past and present top leadership of the largest gun owners’ organization in the country. The leadership of the NRA often appears absolutely nuts on the subject of the rigidity of the 2nd Amendment. Incidentally, they are also poor readers. They are, apparently, only able to read the last clause of the 2nd Amendment, not the first clause. The cause of responsible gun owners has been badly served by the likes of Wayne LaPierre and his compatriots.
cleek
where exactly am i’m railing against gun ownership ?
mocking the nonsensical notion that a mall full of armed shoppers will stop people from shooting other people in malls is not a fucking thing like “railing against gun ownership”.
what’s the point of pretending i said something i didn’t ?
srv
So it’s unfair in your case, but accurate to the millions who do want to pack at the Mall. Got it.
srv
Exactly. If you don’t think everyone packing at the Mall is a great idea, you hate the Constitution. And property rights are well, just relative.
Cassidy wants his cake and eat it too.
binzinerator
I don’t think anyone here said no guns = no violence. I sure as hell didn’t, neither literally nor implicit in anything I’ve said.
But I believe a worthy knockdown of your strawman had been posted earlier, too, by Jake:
You are not convincing this gun owner. There are serious problems that gun ownership creates in our society. I’ve not seen these problems addressed convincingly, and I’ve seen a bogus reason — resisting tyranny — trotted out as a benefit.
You’ve convinced me of this, however; you use straw in your arguments because you have little else of substance to use.
tBone
“Appears” nuts? I think you’re giving them too much credit. They’re fucking bonkers.
ThymeZone
Cassidy’s slogan for America:
Better Than Saddam!
Good work, Cassidy. You have forever elevated the idea of what America really is. I put you right up there with Lincoln, and I see a big memorial to you at the National Mall someday.
jcricket
Judas Priest, man, Judas Priest. Iron Maiden’s too silly to inspire anyone to violence. They inspire people to make silly drawings and grow mullets.
You forget after #3 and before #4 people elect Democrats who just barely get things cleaned up/back on track (while Republicans are screaming about Dems using the same powers as Repubs demanded, and still blaming the failures on Dems). Then once things become “OK”, Republicans convince Americans there is such thing as a free lunch, and so the cycle repeats.
If Dems can ever get their act together enough to pin the blame on Republicans and have it stick; and to take credit for what Dems do, and have it stick; Republicans will have to figure out a whole new set of tactics.
jcricket
You realize of course that’s the “go to” fallback position any time Republicans lose an argument.
“The real Nazis were worse”, “Stalin killed a lot more people”, “there was once a tsunami in that area so those people should be happy we give them tainted rice”.
Cassidy operates from the same playbook, so it’s not surprising it’s his response.
Cassidy
Quote where I said that. When you can’t, I’ll accept your full and humble apology.
TZ- I’m not surprised that you fail to grasp what I said.
Punchy
Wow. Just wow. A guy with a knife able to take out 12 people from 200 feet away. That’s one special knife.
I want whatever Cassidy’s drinking, cuz that’s some good shit.
Cassidy
Really jcricket? Are you going to honestly sit here and try to tell me that our current gov’t is on par with Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, several African despots, and the various South American dictators over the years? Do you really think they are the same thing.
If you do, then you are truly no longer worth speaking to. That is about the most ignorant, uneducated, idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.
Fyi, not a Republican. You really have a problem with facts.
Tim F.
You insist on missing the point. A good number would not go at all, they would be right in front paving the way. I have no idea why you think that every gun owner in America would find tyranny disagreeable. The FOX News demographic seems to consider it a capital idea, as long as brown Americans get the shaft first.
James
Cracks me up….didn’t these idiots see the pictures of EVERYONE in the mall coming out with their hands up? When a cop hears over his radio “A man with a gun is shooting up the mall,” guess what? They’re going after the man with the gun.
And that includes Rambo, John McClain, and Jack Bauer….
cleek
that 5:31… can anyone else make sense of it?
Ted
Hey! You guys enticed Cassidy to come out from under her bridge!
les
Jebus on a pogo stick, are you an idiot or just illiterate? The point is not that jcricket said anything like that. The point is that you bedwetters constatnly claim that everything is just peachy, Bushco is no problem, because somebody else was worse. God, you must get a quantity rate on your straw.
John S.
I see what you’re driving at demi, but you’re fudging your facts a little. I presume you’re referring to incidents that are not military related (since all of them involve guns in some capacity), so let’s examine that.
According to Wikipedia, we’re looking at a group termed “Criminal and non-political massacres”. Here are the top five on that list in US history:
#1 1990 Happy Land Fire — 87 killed — (Arson)
#2 2007 Virginia Tech massacre — 33 killed — (Gun violence)
#3 1984 Dorothy Mae Apartment Hotel Blaze — 25 killed — (Arson)
#4 1991 Luby’s massacre — 23 killed — (Gun violence)
#5 1984 McDonald’s massacre — 22 killed — (Gun violence)
So, you are incorrect about none of these incidents involving a gun. Apparently, though, arson is also an extremely effective means of achieving murder on a large scale. For the most part, the incidents on that list (both here and abroad) involve guns.
Now, you were including an act of terrorism as being part of this data set, but I don’t think it belongs there (and neither does Wikipedia). Yes, it was an act of mass murder, but it was perpetrated by a foreign enemy under special circumstances. Good old-fashioned domestic mass murder perpetrated by Americans on Americans more often than not is caused by gun violence.
Also, what cleek said:
John S.
Most absurd POTD. Thanks for that, Cassidy.
I’ll be sure to watch out for mass murderers wielding knives, pitchforks, chainsaws and other tools from Grand Theft Auto intent on taking out dozens of people.
demimondian
John S,
Since when was Timothy McVeigh a foreign political actor?
Cassidy
les, you find where I’ve said something like that, and you’d have a point. I never said everything was peachy. if you have a problem recognizing what real tyranny is, take it out on your HS gov’t teacher.
John S., you fail to recognize the psychotic state these people are in. regardless of the tool used, they will find a way to harm themselves and the people around them. ban the guns, though. keep your head in the sand. That’s sound policy.
Cassidy
I’m really starting to think that you all should stop calling yourselves the “reality based” community. So far, very little said here has much connection to reality. Simple, absolute “solutions” to complicated problems have never been the answer.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and have a few beers and eat dinner…if our tyrannical overlords say it is okay, of course.
jake
‘Cos like, crazy people have special powers that allow them to take out a a dozen people with a knife without coming anywhere near them. Are ya gonna outlaw knives moonbats? Are ya?
John S.
Perhaps you should follow the link, Demi.
Wikipedia has a category specifically for “Politically motivated non-governmental massacres”, which is where both Oklahama City and 9/11 fall. It isn’t so much about where the perpetrator comes from as what their motivation is.
Seeing as how this thread spawned from a discussion about the Omaha mall shootings, I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to surmise that we are talking about “Criminal and non-political massacres”. People that go on crazy rampages like these are not motivated by politics.
I’m just trying to compare apples to apples here.
John S.
After making assertions like this, you have no business deriding anyone for not being reality-based.
I don’t give a fuck how psychotic a person is, without a gun they aren’t going to get very far in harming anyone besides themsleves. The only true exception is arson, which is a tool that has proven to be far more deadly than any lunatic with an arsenal of guns. If you wanted to make a cogent point, you could have gone that route, but instead you prefer to shower us with your nonsensical platitudes.
Cassidy
Shorter John S.—-I have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’m just going to disregard anything that doesn’t fit into my narrow world-view. It’s just easier to blame guns.
John S.
Cassidy-
If you have a point to make – make it. Otherwise stop acting like a little fucking child (which I know is asking a lot from you).
You want to counter that mass murder has nothing to do with gun violence? Fine. Cite some facts, point to examples and make a case. You want to explain how realistically this Omaha thing happens without guns? Fine. Explain how exactly it could have happened otherwise and build a reasonable case.
If all you’re gonna do is sit there and sling insults and spout nonsense, then shut the fuck up and let the adults talk.
demimondian
So you have defined out the cases that don’t serve your ends, eh? Mass murder is mass murder whoever commits it, and whatever the purpose is.
JWW
Hey John,
I could care less what you decide to run as an ad. What do you suggest is the answer?
Cassidy
Please stop embarrassing yourself and read the whole thread.
Pot…kettle…heh.
Cassidy
Btw, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be using wiki as my sole source. That right there speaks volumes.
John S.
Please. You want to compare apples to bananas? Fine. Let’s group this kid in Omaha with Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, the 9/11 hijackers, Hitler, Stalin and every other mass murderer in the annals of history.
My ends? What utter bullshit. I’m looking at a set of data. One that is logically arranged. You want to compare data points from unrelated sets to draw a conclusion that supports your ends? Fine.
The botom line is that incidents that are similar to this situation have a tendency to involve guns. That is a fact, and if you don’t like it prove me wrong.
John S.
I haven’t seen a single source out of you anywhere on this thread that supports any of your bullshit, big mouth.
You think Wikipedia’s compilation of masacres and organization therein is flawed? Fine. Point me to another source that is different and supports whatever claim you are making.
Otherwise, take your snark and stick it where the bulk of your other thoughts come from.
Cassidy
So you just dismantled your own argument. Give a window licker enough rope…
John S., you should really stop being so angry. I understand how hard it is to have a rational conversation, especially when your sole foundation is emotionalist rhetoric, but please, try to rise above your own shortcomings.
Cassidy
Bolded the wrong part.
John S.
To be perfectly honest JWW, I don’t really have one. And I’m sure if there was an answer simple enough for me to type out in a paragraph that would resolve the problem, it would have been implemented already.
All I know is that when you look at massacres in the modern era, the majority share one thing in common: guns. Without that commonality, I am certain that the death toll in many of those incidents goes down significantly, if not completely undoing the incident altogether. Without guns, there probably would not have been a Virginia Tech, or a Columbine or a McDonald’s massacre. So although I can’t say for certain that it is the guns that are the problem (because I’m not one to play around with cause and correlation), I think it is pretty clear that they are not the solution.
John S.
Incidents that are similar to this one refers to “Criminal and non-political massacres”. I thought I made that clear upthread, but then, you aren’t very bright, are you? Then again, you are such a dishonest hack that it doesn’t surprise me that you would draw the conclusion that I am looking at a data set that only includes gun violence. Because naturally, that’s the kind of scam you would pull.
Of course you do. You are incapable of having one.
How you coming with your citations and facts? Oh, you still don’t have any to support your ‘argument’. Pity.
Cassidy
Well lo and behold, you finally get around to saying what everyone here has said, minus Boortz of course.
Couple of things you said:
Good point. As technology has advanced and made it easier to kill people (see my point about the common citizen being mroe lethal in the tasing thread), of course the weapon of choice will be the easy to use, and easy to get if you don’t have a criminal record, gun.
I’m not entirely certain of that. As you yourself pointed out, arson is a very effective weapon. Home made explosives are relatively easy to make, depending on the ingredients. Is it a far stretch of the imagination to imagine one of these sick people making a suicide vest?
This isn’t a bad opinion, but you’re leaving out the key factor. The people that committed these actions felt a desperate need to take others with them. A focused individual, in the middle of a psychotic episode, is not going to stop because they can’t find a gun.
I don’t believe you. I’ve gathered from your previous statements that you believe guns are the problem. Doesn’t matter, though. The usual talking heads will say it and be wrong. Banning guns is a simple solution to a complex problem. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the proper action.
Cassidy
It really is sad to try and have a rational discussion with someone so simple-minded that they can’t do it without insults. Pathetic, john S. I really feel sorry for you.
grumpy realist
Cassidy, you haven’t explained how the exact same death count would have occured in Omaha had the gunman been armed with, say, a pocket knife.
If you honestly want to back up your claim that if someone has the intent, it doesn’t matter what he’s armed with, you’re going to have to address that point. Otherwise you have a hole in your argument big enough to drive a battleship through.
JWW
John S,
The ? was meant for John Cole.
That’s okay, but in reality, people that mean to do harm, will find a way. I will admit that a gun, legal or stolen makes killing your specific target easier. But if you have the intent, mental awareness and driven desire to kill someone, you will do it. You don’t need a gun, you only need the mind set to do so. Most legal gun owners don’t buy guns with murder in mind.
Most important, a gun does not do anything, ever, unless it is in the hands of a human being. They, like a car, computer, baseball, or lawnmower only do what the human mind and body cause them to do.
John S.
Delicious irony! Do you even get it?
Of course not, there is so much you don’t get. It’s actually amazing that you say so much, and yet so little.
Maybe one day you’ll produce any sort of fact or citation that backs up the meandering opinions you throw scattersshot around here. But I won’t hold my breath.
Until you can address the point of how any of the mass murders on Wikipedia’s list of “Criminal and non-political massacres” that involve gun violence could have been perpetrated without a gun, you have absolutely nothing but a hollow opinion.
John S.
I know JWW, guns don’t kill people…people kill people.
Perhaps you’d like to take a stab at the $64,000 question?
How the hell does this kid in Omaha pull off what he did without a gun?
demimondian
Actually, G.R., Cassidy has offered a competing mechanism: arson. I’ve argued that Timothy McVeigh was a mass-murderer who may have had a political agenda, as is Osama bin Laden. None of those cases used a firearm at all.
demimondian
Having just been fired from the McDonalds, John, he goes out and buys a couple of gallons of gasoline. He pours it outside the exits, and lights it. He then splashes the back of the store, and sets it afire, as well.
Alternatively, he uses several Molotov cocktails.
Either way, he can manage multiple deaths, lots of media coverage, and plenty of terror and pain.
JWW
Just an add on, guns no matter what type are by far a lesser evil than other methods if the mind is prepared to employ them. These mass shootings are random, the killers, as of late want fame or revenge. They don’t get specific, they only want to release anger, and be remebered for it. I am not making a joke or being coy in this statement, “if they really wanted to” and with no gun involved kill 100’s with each given incident.
John S.
Actually, I introduced that competing mechanism. But so far this thread, you haven’t maintained a very high level of accuracy.
I’ll submit that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other cases of mass murder that don’t involve firearms, either. Oh, and Osama bin Laden didn’t actually kill anyone on 9/11 – the hijackers did. But like I said, you like to play fast and loose on this thread with facts.
demimondian
No, John, I’m playing perfectly well with the facts. You conveniently redefine mass murder, because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions, then you cite a source which actually refutes your core claim, then you change the subject repeatedly.
You lost the argument. You know it; I know it; we all know it. Would arming the people in the stores in Omaha have made a difference? Piffle. No. Would banning guns make a difference in mass murders? Perhaps, but it’s far from an easy case to make, and you certainly haven’t made it.
John S.
That’s a reasonable point.
One problem, though.
The type of mass murderers that tend to kill in this fashion don’t really exhibit much thought or planning behind their actions. They simply round up some assault rifles or handguns and go to town. Do you really think that if these people didn’t have access to guns that they would still take the time to plan out what you described and acheive the same goal? I highly doubt it. These are impulsive people that seem to prefer the easy way out, hence their modus operandi in the manner in which they commit violence.
demimondian
Actually, the VA Tech shooter spent many weeks planning and building up his arsenal, just as the Columbine shooters did. The Lubey’s murderer did the same thing. We don’t know how long the Omaha shooter planned his attack, but it obviously wasn’t entirely spur of the moment, if only to pick that sniping post.
I don’t see mass murderers as poor sick men who’ve just had their final support kicked out from under them, but rather as cautious and thorough predators who carefully assemble their weapons and then use them.
John S.
Uh, no. From the outset I examined the only types of mass murder that can even be equated to this incident. You prefer to think that nuclear bombs, terorism, shooting sprees and genocide are all identical.
It most certainly did not refute my claim. It refuted yours. Then, you expanded the scope of what this incident relates to because you can’t admit you made a mistake. Projection be thy name, demi.
Wondefrul strawman. I never proposed such a thing. I nfact, I stated the exact opposite to be my opinion on the matter. Like I said, accuracy really isn’t your strong suit here.
That’s an excellent question, but I haven’t answered it because I haven’t even been trying to. All I’ve been trying to do is state the simple fact that in the large majority of criminal massacres, guns made the death toll significantly higher than they would have been absent those firearms.
You an Cassidy have spent the entire thrad pretending that isn’t the case.
demimondian
And that claim has been refuted, both by us and by your own evidence. What more do you want?
John S.
Wow. Rounding up a whole bunch of guns and ammo and figuring out the best way to use it for maximimum effectiveness passes for strategic brilliance? That says a lot about your position.
I wonder what these folks would have come up with if they didn’t have access to the arsenal they ended up using. Your molotov cocktail scenario is intriguing, but somehow I think there is a reason we haven’t seen that happen. It obviously isn’t worth the effort – not when it is so much easier to build up an arsenal of firearms.
demimondian
Who’s talking about strategic brilliance? I’m certainly not doing so; strategic brilliance has squat to do with mass killing.
I’m talking about whether or not the ready availability of guns makes a significant difference in the number of mass murders. The answer is “maybe, but it is far from clear. There are many techniques available, and they don’t necessarily require great skill.”
srv
…
This must be your attempt to be ‘ironical’. Or maybe there’s a big disconnect between those two hemispheres.
Reasonable. I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
JWW
Well John S and Grumpy,
The $64000.00?
I you could maybe open your mind or see a little with basic common sense, it really is not that difficult to answer.
You could drive a large truck at full speed(ram a parade barricade), pick a large college campus(use a knife), select a home(use a bat), prep an area(use fuel), run through a mall(use an ax), drink(ram a tourist bus). Your arguements don’t stand up, they are a crutch.
If somebody has it in mind to do harm, they will. If they succeed, they have met have met their goal. In our society, if they do not succeed, they didn’t know how to plan.
John S.
Oh really? I must have missed that illuminating part of this discussion. From that list on Wikipedia that I’ve been looking at, the overwhelming number of incidents involve firearms. So I guess I didn’t see the refutation on there.
I’m guessing you haven’t even bothered to peruse that appalling list, though. Why look at the facts when you can comfort yourself with your own insular opinions!
I give up demi, you win. You have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Columbine, VA Tech, Tianemen square and so many other massacres – including this Omaha incident – would still have been just as deadly without guns. I just missed the part where you prived that, but I’ll take your word for it.
I guess we’re going to see a spate of arson related killings all over the news once these stupid madmen realize they don’t need guns to kill.
John S.
I find it fascinating that the people who haven’t committed mass murder on this thread (presumably) have come up with far more imaginitve ways to kill lots of people than, you know, actual mass murderers who tend to just use guns.
I wonder why that is?
John S.
Are you seriously advancing these as possibilities? At least demi had a little imagination.
A knife-wielding lunatic is going to kill 33 people at a college campus? REALLY??
A bat-wielding lunatic is going to kill multiple victims before having the bat shoved up his ass? REALLY?
An axe-wielding maniac is going to run through a mall and manage to kill 9 people before being tackled to the ground? REALLY?
Man, all these possible scenarios…and yet none of them have ever fucking happened.
I get it. You people love your guns, but seriously…
srv
Everything about 9/11 plan was brilliant. The method, the targets, the staggering the strikes far apart enough that there was a high probability that they’d occur ‘live’ to tens of millions of viewers.
And it achieved the strategic goal for which it was intended.
And you’re going to have to work on your definition of mass.
demimondian
Yes, srv, the 9/11 attacks were strategically brilliant. Here’s a question for you: would they have been less strategically brilliant if nobody had died?
I argue that, if anything, they’d have been more effective if nobody had died, because then the US wouldn’t have been able to go into Afghanistan as quickly as we did.
John S.
Good luck. To demi, nine people or nine thousand, nuclear bomb or assault rifle, it’s all the same mass killing to him.
Anyway, I’ve more than said my peace on this topic. I’ll look forward to seeing others responses on the matter tomorrow.
Good night.
cleek
It really is sad to try and have a rational discussion with someone so simple-minded that they can’t do it without insults.
wait. this shit can’t be for real. you’re spoofing, right?
JWW
John S.
Now I see you as stupid. It wasn’t the weapon, it was the intent. You are an ass that could defend in any senerio, and all are very viable. Yes, they have all occured, you just limit your reading to this site. I’ quite sure you would not have to go back more than two years to find any of these incidents. Like I said, you have made yourself out to be an ass. Go find the truth, not the mirror you look into each day.
demimondian
I don’t think a knife wielding lunatic could kill 33 people on a college campus, but I’ll bet that a car-wielding person could. I can think of several recent mass deaths (probably not mass murders) which were perpetrated simply by driving a car along a sidewalk, running people down. The tools of a mass killing require remoteness (which guns give) and mobility (which guns also give). For maximum sadistic pleasure, the ability to watch the victims die and watch others around them scream has to be valuable, too. Guns even give this.
However, fire, poison, blunt force trauma, and explosives also have the same properties. Sarin gas in the Tokyo sewers? Check. Firebombs in the Tube? Check. Anthrax in plain envelopes? Check. All of these are also established — and highly effective — methods for killing lots of people and causing lots of ego-inflating agony.
demimondian
Sorry, typo in my last post. Tokyo Subway, not sewers.
srv
demi,
The medium is the message.
If it weren’t about the weapon, then we’d have an equal set of samples from bus and car drivers. Sarin and anthrax, require technical brilliance at a very minimum.
People who fondle guns may also fondle stearing wheels, but for some reason, they choose to use one over the other.
I’m hungry. Later.
JWW
Look, without getting out of control, yes, having a gun makes multiple killings an easier task. It is not however the most effective way, but you will make the news for days on end(but it has to be multiple killings). If it doesn’t involve a public or grand slaying, you are local news.
My point was that if a human has indiscriminent killing in mind, they will, and generally succeed.
The media however, prints only the stories that sell. Murder or multiple murders are reported only as a sales point. Murder, missing children, and robbery are only reported on national TV for money. If you live in ???? city USA, and you don’t have a great tale to tell, you get on the local news and local AM radio stations.
There are roughly 48 people murdered in this country every day. If they come in multiples, you see it on national news, if they are rich or famous, you see it on national news, if it is some single no-name person, you will hear it or read about it on local media.
Llelldorin
Frankly, I’d be terrified of 800 million gun owners. Since there are only 300 million American citizens, many of whom are too young to own guns, 800 million gun owners would presumably represent an immense foreign army that could assign two soldiers to watch every citizen and have plenty of folks to spare.
Cassidy
I must have misread it and either added a zero, or it’s the number of total guns. Thanks for catching that.
Llelldorin
No worries–the number just struck me as funny. 80 million gun owners sounds about right; I could easily believe that one in five citizens owns a gun.
jake
It appears that for maximum carnage caused by an individual your choices are guns or fire. (Letter bombs if your hands are really steady and maybe anthrax but we won’t know until the terra warriors catch someone.)
I know of a few mass killings caused by people in cars but if memory serves, in one case the guy was just old, lost control of his car, panicked and hit the accelerator. In a more recent incident the woman was baked out of her mind on angel dust. I can only think of one incident where the perp. got in his car with the intent of turning it into a weapon.
Anne Laurie
Well, I gotta agree with Dreggas that better education would be a fine thing, concerning both guns and sex. The first thing we’d need to get straight — at least for the firearms class — is the distinction between a tool and a magic icon. A gun is a tool, like a chainsaw; not everybody needs to own a chainsaw, and even those who use one don’t need to carry it with them 24/7, or to stockpile a spare chainsaw in every nightstand. Glenn Reynolds and Boortz are mistaking their imagined guns for magic wands that will protect them from armed crazies, government tyranny (okay — Democratic tyranny, because they have no problem with the current administration), buyer’s remorse, and the heartbreak of librul and islamofascisexuals laughing at their tiny weak… arguments. Guns aren’t designed for these jobs, any more than chainsaws are designed for improving one’s chance of getting a seat on the bus. Expecting a gun to keep you “safe from tyranny” is like expecting a bible to keep you “safe from sin”, except that no six-year-old has ever accidentally murdered his eight-year-old cousin with the bible he found under granny’s mattress.
I first heard the libertarian “an armed society is a polite society” slogan back in the early 1980s, when I acquired a button that concluded “… ask any Lebanese!” These days, you’d probably want to change the last word to “Iraqi”, but the argument hasn’t improved with age.
TenguPhule
Of course, the obvious point JWW, is that WE SHOULDN’T MAKE IT ANY EASIER FOR THEM TO DO SO.
A car takes a bit more effort to turn into a weapon then a gun, which is DESIGNED as such.
If the country went back to stick shifts, that would pretty much reduce such ideas quite a bit. Nothing like grinding
out to kill that ol’ killer edge.
Trying to compare this to cars is a sign of pure absurdity. Cars are a means of transportation. They’re not made for killing. Guns are. There is no other purpose to the gun then to expel a projectile at a speed where it makes a bloody hole in the body.
Yes, you can kill with bats or knives. You can also defend against them better with materials at hand. Guns are a special level of assholery because 1)they’re designed so an idiot can kill very quickly with it 2)they keep the killer well out of range of the victim 3)defense is a moot point, unless you’re wearing a vest and even then it isn’t a sure thing.
Cassidy
Sure, lets institute a curfew all over the country. And we can put police checkpoints about every 300m, with heavily armed riot police everywhere. How about roving APC’s full of SRT’s just roving the streets to keep the peace?
Seriously, if you’re going to ban/limit one tiny part of the problem, why not go all out? Let’s eliminate the problem completely. If we bring about that tyranny that supposedly exist, then no one can go into a public place shooting. If we institute a real tyranny, then no one has the freedom to do anything but exist.
p.a.
Don’t they realize their idea has already been tried. It was called Dodge City. How’d that work out?
Tony J
No one attacked you, Nathan. I took exception the opinions you expressed, explained why, and asked you to respond with some kind of explaination.
After an hour you hadn’t responded. I said that was shocking. That’s not an attack, that’s being snarky.
No argument here.
Since you described their opinion as being “More guns would stop people shooting each other”, and have already said you don’t agree with them, that’d mean you think they’re wrong, wouldn’t it? I agree. They’re horribly, stupidly wrong.
And again, how is this the case? If people genuinely believe that a change in the law might stop things like this from happening, that makes it a political issue.
What’s the alternative? Not saying anything about it?
For me, the bottom line is that there’s one ‘side’ saying that having less guns, with more controls on who can have them, would make it harder for mentally deranged people to get their hands on them. While the other ‘side’ is saying that if only everyone was packing heat no one would dare do anything like this or, if they did, would be quickly and safely taken out by their potential victims and/or any onlookers.
I’m saying that one ‘side’ has a bit of logic behind it’s argument, while the other ‘side’ would just get more people killed.
And again, who – apart from you – is talking about turning back time and raising the dead?
Since the answer is no-one, I’d call that a strawman argument. Please stop using it or you will end up getting attacked.
John S.
Oh noes! If they takes our guns, then we haz no freedomz!
Seriously, you might as well speak in LOLcat if you’re going to continue spouting gibberish. At least it will be a clear warning for people to give your posts the serious consideration they deserve.
Cassidy
Johm s. you really are a sad example. Please do me a favor and refrain from voting. or breeding for that matter.
John S.
Are you trying to take my freedom?!?
You leftist authoritarian thug, you can have my voting and procreation rights when you pry them from my cold dead hand! Next thing you’re gonna want a loyalty oath from me and my right to bear arms! You’re just like every other right-wing authoritarian – just the flip side of the same bad penny. It’s a shame you’re such a fucking retard that you can’t have a rational debate without resorting to namecalling.
/cassidy
numbskull
Cassidy said: Sure, lets institute a curfew all over the country.
Man, first the lame car analogy that you got your ass kicked over and now this moldy oldy. Cassy, you could at least try to be more original – this stuff is just boring.
Waah! Waah! Mommy! Mommy! Making ANY gun laws is JUST LIKE taking away ALL of my rights ALL of the time RIGHT NOW and 4ever and ever!! Columbine and Omaha would’ve happened even if the kids didn’t have guns! No – really! They could’ve done it with pointed sticks and bananas!!
By making these false arguments – it’s all or nothing, cars kill more than guns, etc. you really are hurting your case. Hell, until you came along, I pretty much agreed with having minimal gun control laws. But if you’re an example of the common gun owner, shit, let’s take ’em all away. You people are too fucking stupid to be allowed out after hours (there’s that curfew), in cars (great analogy, pull me another one!), with or without guns.
Cassidy
Numbskull and John S….two different people who show the same lack of depth or basic understanding of American Gov’t concepts taught in high skull. At least one of you is aptly named.
John S.
Judging from your posts, I’m not entirely sure you even went to high school.
numbskull
Cassidy, Cassidy, Cassidy, I’m not the one throwing around inane, non sequitor analogies and setting up strawmen.
I’ve seen zero depth in any of your pablum. Hell, you yourself admit that the car analogy is an old trope that you regurgitate like dog hearing a bell. Look upstream, you’re hoisted on your own petard.
What’s great, or sad, depending on your POV, is that you just can’t help yourself. Ring the bell and there goes Cassidy, drooling all over the place.
Cassidy
It is such a shame that you two cannot have a rational discussion without launching into emotional hyperbole and [attempted] bully tactics. I guess thats all you have when you have no argument.
John S.
It is such a shame that because you are an ass you cannot have a rational discussion without launching into personal attacks. If only you would elevate the level of discourse – like I do – without resorting to ad hominems. I guess thats all you have when you’re a douchebag with no argument.
/cassidy
numbskull
Poor, poor Cassidy, he tried to pass off stale old tripe as a thoughtful argument. Look, bub, quit being such wuss. You made the nonsensical car analogy, you made the false either/or strawman argument. Am I bullying you to call you on worthless arguments? At least one of which you admit you just pulled out of the NRA hat of one-size-fits-all arguments about gun control? Really? That’s bullying?
You have every chance to redeem yourself. Nobody is going to whack you. You can make a case for why your arguments don’t suck or you can make new, better arguments. What point is it that you’d like to make?
Cassidy
You two are obsessed with hearing yourselves speak/ type. Quantity is not equal to quantity. I’ll continue to debate with you when you come back with a basic understanding of The Constitution and political/ gov’t systems.
binzinerator
Wasn’t he/she homeschooled?
binzinerator
Annie, I had no idea that bullshit meme went back so far. These fucks must think 1870 Tombstone AZ was a “polite society” or that Iraq is now a “polite society”. Fucking morans.
binzinerator
Oh Anne you rock!
And I own guns. That’s why I keep them empty and locked up, with the ammuntion stored someplace else. If I’m worried about tyranny, I’ve got plenty of time to unlock and load my guns (assuming my deer rifle and .22 will be useful in resisting any putsch.) Otherwise, they are more an accidental threat to my kids than the percentage of chance of a break-in with scary armed bad druggie (and no doubt black) dudes.