I never knew I had so many anti friends until today...

[Green Lantern]

I have some family that....well, if they weren't family I'd probably lump them firmly in "anti" category. Among "solutions" proposed earlier by some of them:

- not allowing ownership of more than X number of guns
- if you own X number of guns and want to "collect" more, fine so long as additional guns are rendered non-firable
- banning internet ammo sales
- requiring registration of ammo

Luckily OTHER immediate members of same family group are very much not anti and helped try to point out flaws there. I pointed out that owning a gun you couldn't shoot was as dumb as owning a book you couldn't read. Cousin pointed out highly-collectible comic books to me, To which I replied that some people DO choose to spend their money on books they can't read (well they CAN but it'd ruin the value), but I ain't one of them.

...I did admit that there was ONE exception I would CONSIDER making in owning a gun I couldn't shoot: an unfired ASP 9mm.

They said that the alternative to gun control would be to have metal detectors about everywhere, which would mean that I couldn't CCW in a lot of places. I reminded them that here in NC there are already tons of places that are off-limits to CCW - including every place that charges admission (IE, movie theaters). I said that any place that forbids CCW SHOULD put up metal detectors and armed guards, it's the only way to actually TRY to force the bad guys to comply.

I had to justify "high-caps" by pointing out that criminals don't always work alone, and even when they do "Hollywood Rules" DO NOT APPLY. James Bond can shoot the bad guy with a .32 from 50 yards away and have him drop dead on the spot, that does not happen in the real world. Especially with some of the drugs out there these days!

Some people are saying that the gun-control hysteria will blow over. Hope they're right. Some have gone as far as to speculate that Obama has more to lose than Romney over the issue - and "King" Mike Bloomberg is doing his darndest to force both of their hands on the gun control issue.

I wish a lot of things right now, and sitting close to the top of the list is that the guards would "accidentally" stick this monster in with the general population and let them make good on their assorted threats to him....


ETA: I have to agree with the earlier poster that said sometimes the best thing is just pointing out that YOU own an "assault weapon" or CCW or..etc. It's so very easy to demonize a nameless, faceless member of a group, but put a FACE on it...

 

[JagerRanger]

I am not sure if the theater is actually posted or not. If it is, and a legal permit holder did not bring his/her firearm to the movie because it was posted and wound up shot, it could make for a very interesting lawsuit.

I read from some site a comment that alleged that there were five permit holders, but disarmed due to the theaters policy. We will learn more in the coming days.

 

[JagerRanger]

I had to justify "high-caps" by pointing out that criminals don't always work alone, and even when they do "Hollywood Rules" DO NOT APPLY.

I posses not a single "high-cap" magazine. All my 30, 20 to 15 round magazines are standard for those guns.

 

[Green Lantern]

Jager - their words, not mine. Didn't want to get into that argument as well at the time...

 

[Millwright]

My prayers for the victims.

So far as I can discover that particular theater chain has a "no firearms" policy in all of its venues across the nation.

Its reliably reported Holmes did enter the theater and prop open an emergency exit to the outside, enabling his entry without activating any alarm.

Perhaps - considering what police/ATF/FBI discovered at his apartment - Holmes chose "directed energy" weapons, (i.e. guns), rather than "area weapons", (i.e. bombs), as he reportedly had the knowledge/capability to create them !


Most of all I'm struck by the timing and venue Holmes chose. Maximum shock effect and publicity from the "premiere" over a weekend when a lot have time to follow the story. Were i of a covert bent with national access to personnel files/profiles and psycho-active drugs and an anti-gun agenda I might choose this scenario.

Jes' pondering at the key board, y'know ! >MW

 

[Kayaker 1960]

Gun control

Living in N.California the majority of my friends are Democrats. I know that most of you think that they are almost all anti gun but I haven't found that to be the case. most of them don't own guns but in many discussions I've seldom encountered people with strong anti gun leanings. Maybe we would all be better off if guns were never invented but since they were and other people have guns then I want mine!

 

[Plan2Live]

asked how anyone could purchase so much ammo without sounding some kind of alarm

Even legitimate farmers buying high nitrgen content fertilizer were watched for a while after the Oklahoma City bombing. I'm hoping we don't see similar scrutiny because of this nut case.

 

[coloradokevin]

Those people are dead and wounded BECAUSE THEY OBEYED THE LAW. The theater is posted no-guns.

Posting a "no guns" sign at a theater does not have the force of law here in Colorado. That is a fact that is substantially different from most states. If they actually had metal detectors permanently set up at the front of the theater, they could then ban guns.

In addition to the many threads running about this issue here on THR, I do hope that many of you are making efforts to post about this subject via other channels. Lets face it, we're all on the same page around here, even if we're sometimes on different lines of that page. We don't need to convince anyone on this forum that guns are worth having, but we darn sure ought to make sure that we are tactfully sharing our opinions with others.

 

[fallout mike]

All it takes to uncover a persons true self is a tragic circumstance.

 

[ReadyontheRight]

Countries having successful gun control laws in the 20th Century -- and the results of those laws:

1915-1917 Ottoman Turkey, 1.5 million Armenians murdered
1929-1953 Soviet Union, 20 million people that opposed Stalin were murdered.
1933-1945 Nazi occupied Europe, 13 million Jews, Gypsies and others that opposed Hitler, murdered
1948-1952 China, 20 million anti-communists or communist reformers, murdered
1960-1981 Guatemala, 100,000 Maya Indians, murdered
1971-1979 Uganda, 300,000 Christians and political rivals of Idi Amin, murdered
1975-1979 Cambodia, 1 million educated persons, murdered
1995 Srebrenica Bosnians disarmed by the UN, the UN withdrew, Srebrenica was overrun and over 8,000 now-disarmed people were murdered by the Serb army.

That’s more than 2000 unarmed men, women and children murdered by their own government for every single day in the 20th century.

Proof enough for me that gun ownership is a basic human right that should not be infringed.

"Regular" people used to need Kings, Lords, Knights...basically Gang Leaders to organize a force of men with swords and pikes to protect us "subjects" from invasion.

The rifle freed the USA from needing "Lords" who could organize "Knights" to to organize us into gangs to protect our lands.

We are citizens, not subjects. Our politicians are "representatives", not "leaders". Please remind your "representative" of that every time you can.

We can protect ourselves. THAT is why we are free.

 

[Wanderling]

I can't understand some of my friends who are seemingly intelligent. They refuse to understand that criminals and crazies do not obey gun laws nor magazine capacity restrictions. Why is this fact so hard for some to grasp?

When that large mob occupies your neighborhood, and decides they deserve your private property more than you do, you'll want that hi-cap mag.

Sure if all guns are taken away and gun possession is a crime carrying a very hefty penalty, in a couple of generations even the street criminals won't use guns. They will use something else - either because the guns would be hard to procure, or because the penalty for illegal possession is too high - and the crime rate won't be affected much. Most people simply don't understand it.

The crazies.. this is a different story altogether. A crazy person with no criminal connections, in a society where guns are outlawed, would have very hard time procuring a gun. So they would resolve to homemade bombs. Or Molotov cocktails. Or something else. Crazy doesn't mean stupid, and they can be very resourceful.

 

[Lost Sheep]

(edited for focus and for brevity)
"Regular" people used to need Kings, Lords, Knights...basically Gang Leaders to organize a force of men with swords and pikes to protect us "subjects" from invasion.

The rifle freed the USA from needing "Lords" who could organize "Knights" to to organize us into gangs to protect our lands.

We are citizens, not subjects. Our politicians are "representatives", not "leaders". Please remind your "representative" of that every time you can.

We can protect ourselves. THAT is why we are free.

All your points are well taken.

But I would like to point out:

At times of invasion, the common people were commonly drafted or "pressed" into service (armies) to back up those knights and "gangs".

I would also like to point out that the English Longbow (the combination battle rifle and personal defense handgun of its day) was the "great equalizer", being able to defeat knights' armor, and at a distance. It was instrumental in the development of modern tactics of ground warfare as it made mobile footsoldiers able to effectively defend against cavalry.

As such the Longbow holds a sacred place in the hearts of free Englishmen everywhere and that legacy has been handed down to us Americans as an affection for the rifle and the personal-defense handgun.

At least, that's one interpretation.

Lost Sheep

 

[SilentStalker]

Ok, so I might need your help on sources to show gun ownership areas that are huh generally have lower crime rates. I need all of the sources I can get. Also sources on why gun ban laws ^^^do not work. Apparently, the lib friend that posted what in put in a statement earlier got his ammo from the world health organization (or his stats) if you will. Everythig I find seems to be independent studies, by Fox News, etc. But nothing as big as the WHO.

 

[gunsandreligion]

One thing I find interesting is that no one Really wants the results of a gun free world. If a person wants to murder, they will find a way, semi trucks, explosives, airplanes, gas, poisin, the list is endless. With a gun in a gunfree zone with few exits a killer can take down 15-25 people. In a place where concealed carry is allowed and practiced, the number decreases drasticly.
How many serial killers plan on getting away? Almost none do. So anyone with evil intentions will go to extremes to find the chance. Expenses? Hey, they arent gonna need money, and they wont be around to pay off that bank loan anyway. Such people do not suddely throw a fit and murder, they carefully plan and will go to any extreme. If enough people carried to make a gun present 70-80 percent of the time, the murder will be taken down often enogh to make such a act minor, and so probably a failure and therefore not a option in the eyes of the would be killer( or at least that is what i imagine they would think.) if the right and supplies to defend ourselves is taken away, more murders will result in masses killed, therefore making a disturbed(to put it nicely) person consider walking into acrowd a option to become infamous and strike a blow to humanity. We will never get rid of tools for killers to use. We can only defend ourselves and thereby make such a endevor unsuccessful and a failure in the eyes of a killer, reducing the impact and terror of such a event and thereby csusing mass murders to be impossible so they are not even tried.

 

[Viper225]

One thing no one has mentioned is TIMING.

Guess what comes up next week? The United Nations Vote on the Arms Trade Treaty. We all know how the Old Witch will go on this one.
Nothing better than a big shooting incident to stir up Congress before they vote on it.

 

[SilentStalker]

^^^ yes, at times it makes you wonder if things were orchestrated to help further a cause. Anyways he arms treaty will not take your guns away either. All it really does is say that we cannot sell arms to nations that are not sovereign. However, it does open up the doors for it to make it much easier for them to write legislation that does erode your rights eventually. While it will not effect us immediately it will longterm and either way it is not something we want.

 

[Skribs]

In this case, the guy had armor, so my normal comment doesn't really work, but whenever someone says "because this man has a gun, he was able to kill X people", my usual response is "well, if someone else had a gun, he wouldn't have killed nearly that many."

Throw on some armor and painkillers, and I don't think that a few CCWers would have stopped THIS guy, but most of the mass shootings done recently could have ended with far fewer casualties.

 

[Mello]

There is no government solution to preventing violence committed by a person who has no record of wrong doing.

The government promises safety by taking away your rights; by creating circumstances which are more likely to make you a victim of criminal violence?

Many other countries with much stricter gun laws than the USA have mass killings including Britain, New Zealand, France, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Germany, Nepal, and Finland.

 

[SilentStalker]

One thing is for sure, this is a very tiring battle.

 

[Trent]

I agree SilentStalker.

When I heard the news, I was on the road. My wife told me that there was a mass shooting in CO. I turned to her and said "Great, that's just what we need right now. Another whack job shooting up a crowd."

It occurred to me later that night, that my first thought wasn't for the lives lost and the suffering there, but for fallout on the gun rights movement.

That's when *I* realized *I* was jaded.

Since then I've read up on some of the victims, and got myself in balance again. Lots of friends have send me messages or called. Even my neighbors (who know I'm pro gun because they've been shooting with me) were talking about it yesterday.

What's sad? When things like this get lumped in to citations or statistics, accumulated with other like events, to use as an ARGUMENT. Talk about being self centered! It's piggybacking on human suffering - and it does NO side any good.

This event isn't a point for a debate. It's a damn tragedy.

Not a rallying point, not at all - your convictions were sound BEFORE this happened, they are sound AFTER this happened. Just stick to the "I want to protect myself argument" and when asked to justify it, "Because I want to SURVIVE if bad things happen." Leave it there. You've made up your mind and explained it, no reason to drag things like this through. Keep it as personal and poignant as possible - let people who are on the OTHER side of the fence take the "low road" and throw around body counts.

 

[Sky]

Reuters) - Here is a timeline of some of the worst shooting incidents carried out by one or two gunmen around the world in the last 25 years:

March 13, 1996 - BRITAIN - Gunman Thomas Hamilton burst into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

April 28, 1996 - AUSTRALIA - Martin Bryant unleashed modern Australia's worst mass murder when he shot dead 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania.

April 1999 - UNITED STATES - Two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver, shooting 13 students and staff before taking their own lives.

July 1999 - UNITED STATES - A gunman killed nine people at two brokerages in Atlanta, after apparently killing his wife and two children. He committed suicide five hours later.

June 2001 - NEPAL - Eight members of the Nepalese Royal family were killed in a palace massacre by Crown Prince Dipendra who later turned a gun on himself and died few days later. His youngest brother also died later raising the death toll to 10.

April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser opened fire after saying he was not going to take a math test. He killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two pupils and a policeman at the Gutenberg Gymnasium, before killing himself.

October 2002 - UNITED STATES - John Muhammad and Lee Malvo killed 10 people in sniper-style shooting deaths that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area.

April 16, 2007 - USA - Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest rampage in U.S. history when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.

November 7, 2007 - FINLAND - Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse, the principal and himself with a handgun at the Jokela High School near Helsinki.

September 23, 2008 - FINLAND - Student Matti Saari opened fire in a vocational school in Kauhajoki in northwest Finland, killing nine other students and one male staff member before killing himself.

March 11, 2009 - GERMANY - A 17-year-old gunman dressed in combat gear killed nine students and three teachers at a school near Stuttgart. He also killed one other person at a nearby clinic. He was later killed in a shoot-out with police. Two additional passers-by were killed and two policemen seriously injured, bringing the death toll to 16 including the gunman.

June 2, 2010 - BRITAIN - Gunman Derrick Bird opened fire on people in towns across the rural county of Cumbria. Twelve people were killed and 11 injured. Bird also killed himself.

April 9, 2011 - NETHERLANDS - Tristan van der Vlis opened fire in the Ridderhof mall in Alphen aan den Rijn, south of Amsterdam, killing six before turning the gun on himself.

July 22, 2011 - NORWAY - Police seize a gunman who killed 69 people at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling political party, on the small, holiday island of Utoeya. Anders Behring Breivik is later charged with the killings, as well as with an earlier bombing in Oslo which killed eight people. The trial ended last month with Breivik saying that his bombing and shooting rampage was necessary to defend the country - prompting a walk-out by relatives of his victims.

December 13, 2011 - BELGIUM - Gunman Nordine Armani killed three people, including a 17-month-old toddler, wounding 121 in a central square in the eastern city of Liege, before shooting himself. The next day Belgian investigators found the body of a woman in warehouse used by the gunman raising the death toll, including the killer, to five.

July 20, 2012 - UNITED STATES - A masked gunman killed 14 people and wounded 50 others when he opened fire on moviegoers at a showing of new Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in the city of Denver.

Found this ^

 

[armoredman]

Latest report on Yahoo says murderer was NOT wearing armor, but an "urban assault" vest with two mag pouches and knife. His rifle's 100 round mag also reportedly jammed, what I am told is common with those cheaper models.
This changes the "possible response" of someone lawfully carrying in that place.

 

[T.R.]

What if this madman had used an axe instead of handguns? I doubt if anyone would call for new laws to regulate axes.

TR

 

[tmarks11]

Oh boy and here is what one of the anti's friends posted... gun crimes in the UK where guns have been banned for a while: In 2011 the UK/Wales had just under 6000 recorded gun crimes (crimes involving guns being fired), in the US, that number is close to 100,000 per year.

It is always strange that people quote UK's rates as justification for getting rid of guns.

UK violent crime rate is the worst in Europe. It is worse then South Africa.

It is more then 4x that of the US (2050 vs 468 per 100k population). Goes to show: when the government encourages everyone to be a victim, that is exactly what happens. They traded the right of self defense for the right to be a victim.

The UK police encourage citizens not to fight back, as it escalates the violence. ??!?

78% of burglary in UK occurs in occupied houses, vs. 13% here. Anyone wonder why?

 

[Lex Luthier]

The overreaction to this tragic event was easy to anticipate, based on other similar recent events and their spinning in the media.

The Anti2As are flaming, and will light up the interweb until they have a life changing experience that rightly alters their world view, or some celebrity does something newsworthy and distracts the inertia of the 24 news cycle.

I am actually amazed at the number of my fb friends who haven't politicized it.