The Goat Pen

Speaking of law enforcement, I am puzzled that so many Democrats have suddenly started vigorously defending the virginal honor of the FBI. The Dem’s have always been the FTP party. It’s like listening to the GOP champion Planned Parenthood.

Everyone is talking about a school shooting every other day but aren't talking about the days without a school shooting. Why not take a glass half full attitude?

sadly there is a certain numbness to it.

young children with a bright future died today, families are broken forever because of someone who was mentally deranged

Seems you left out a pretty key part of the problem.

Lack of discipline?

Internet?

if a sane rational person had a gun would he shoot up a school?

It's weird that the US has so many more mentally deranged people than everywhere else in the world.

Cletus wrote:It's weird that the US has so many more mentally deranged people than everywhere else in the world.

they're called liberals

I predict that in our lifetime there will be a mainstream effort to repeal that 2nd Amendment. Not saying it's going to happen, but people are going to start talking about it, which you never hear now. I think the main reason is that people think the constitution can't be changed, supporters just say "too bad, it's in the constitution, you gotta live with it", but I don't think either party fully appreciates or, more likely, doesn't even realize that the constitution can be changed. When enough people get a grasp of that idea, you'll likely see the gun lobby become much more willing to compromise much more quickly. The majority of people don't own a gun and I have to believe that at least some number of people who do aren't rabid about it. And even if the 2nd Amendment is repealed, that won't necessarily mean that people can't own guns...

This is not the time to go off half-cocked about tighter gun laws.

We as a society failed that young man who shot up the school. Trump's apropos tweet about the tragic event: "So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”

Cletus wrote:It's weird that the US has so many more mentally deranged people than everywhere else in the world.

Our kids are drugged up more than other countries

hedge wrote:I predict that in our lifetime there will be a mainstream effort to repeal that 2nd Amendment. Not saying it's going to happen, but people are going to start talking about it, which you never hear now. I think the main reason is that people think the constitution can't be changed, supporters just say "too bad, it's in the constitution, you gotta live with it", but I don't think either party fully appreciates or, more likely, doesn't even realize that the constitution can be changed. When enough people get a grasp of that idea, you'll likely see the gun lobby become much more willing to compromise much more quickly. The majority of people don't own a gun and I have to believe that at least some number of people who do aren't rabid about it. And even if the 2nd Amendment is repealed, that won't necessarily mean that people can't own guns...

I don't think you've been paying attention. This has been going on for decades.

The biggest problem is people like Cletus focus on one type of gun - the assault rifle and think that makes up the majority of 2A issues. But the assault rile, while extremely effective at killing people is a gun that few people in the scheme of things own.

You don't rob a liquor store with a Bushmaster, you don't commit suicide with a Smith and Wesson MP15, you don't protect your home with an Oracle PDMS.

A gun is a tool for self protection, and the reason the second amendment will stay and the "voices of reason" will be shot down is because in this country, no one is going to tell a person they can't protect themselves in a manner they see fit.

The first start to removing the second amendment is remove crime from Urban areas. Until Americans feel its safe to walk the streets and that urban crime won't spread into the suburbs, we will always have the second amendment. That I'm 100% sure of. And as long as there is a disparity of poverty in this country to the extent that criminal activity is deemed as a necessity for survival, we aren't getting rid of urban crime.

now lets talk about globalization and mass immigration that takes away blue collar jobs and lower wages for unskilled labor in America.

The problem is the "slippery slope" mentality in society...on both sides. On the lib side it's late term abortions, on the conservative side it's limits on assault rifles. The logical thing is to have mental health evaluation, instruction, and a 21year old age limit for assault rifles, but many will feel, "oh here we go, this is just the beginning". Now, I know it wouldn't stop many of the mass shootings, but it's just common sense to do.

But the idea of disarming the public is so anathema to how this country was founded because of an inherent distrust of government since the founding, which is a good thing because government should be distrusted. If you want to take away assault rifles completely from the public then you take it away from law enforcement and relegate it to military bases and oversea fighting

The FBI was allegedly actually given a specific tip about this guy because he posted a comment on a YouTube video in September saying he was gonna be a "professional school shooter". I'm sure the FBI has had a lot on their plate, though.

"But the idea of disarming the public is so anathema to how this country was founded because of an inherent distrust of government since the founding"

The idea of taking away alcohol was also anathema but it happened, via constitutional amendment. And then it got repealed. I'm not saying that's going to happen with the 2nd Amendment, but it could...

I've actually seen a couple places talk about the gun problem in the same breath as the opioids problem since yesterday, both with the ultimate conclusion opined that we need more stringent gun laws. Watching "news" is like watching a festival of morons, it's sickening to listen to these vacuous cocksuckers. Are you even listening to yourselves? Yeah, argue about gun control, but to even insinuate that it is in any way similar to the opioids crisis where we are talking about something that is heavily regulated, and then on the black market, outright illegal with stringent penalties. Does it stop people from dying? The two problems are not in any way similar. In fact comparing guns to opioids HURTS your argument because it is a crystal clear example of the ineptitude of government restrictions to have an impact on public public safety.

http://wredlich.com/ny/2012/07/gun-cont ... olishness/

I tend to side with the ban on assault weapons until you read something like that

certainly this years vegas shooting/church shooting and now this school shooting would not have been as devastating if they didn't have access to assault weapons.

but they always will

The reason the AR-15 is a target compared to say the Remington 7400 is price.

You can buy an AR-15 for $399 and 30 round mags are $20.

A Remington 7400 (which is junk btw) is a $600 gun.

I won't argue that guns are the easiest choice and are readily available if you want to kill someone...or multiple people.

But a sane individual doesn't do this. A sane individual doesn't drive a car into a crowd or fill a truck full of ammonia nitrate and improvised C-4

We have pushed for years to take special needs kids and push them into the general populace, we warehouse these kids and as adults there is no money to support the cost of long term mental care for people that need it. We cure depression with a pill and send people on their way. And since we value their rights to privacy and profiling is a dirty word in this country, they have access to buy guns and do harm.

If the best argument we have to gun control is that taking away guns means that mentally ill people won't kill as many people when they do go on a rampage, that seems like a bit of a cop out to addressing the real problem.

They will never even try to abolish the 2A. That would WAAAY take too much effort, and would require a meaningful consensus through the democratic process. Liberals only rarely get their policies enacted through the democratic process. It's usually done by judicial fiat. Did we ever have a national vote on abortion? Did we ever vote for national gay marriage?

They will instead just do to the 2A what they did to the 10A. Just ignore it, start passing laws that plainly violate it, and get enough judges to say that's okay. The attempt to abolish guns will be as successful as the attempts to abolish alcohol and drugs. Those two acts of emotional utopian naivete just made America more lawless and violent, not less.