Post by The Prighlofone on Apr 4, 2015 18:32:15 GMT -5
As I am digging deep for inspiration for my college essay, I figure I may well post this unfinished essay on the importance of gun control now, and you guys could hopefully tell me what you think. I figure it's a bit of time before I finish it, and I'm a perfectionist procrastinator anyway which aren't two traits which go well together, and I wanted to show some people. I have lots of other things I want to elaborate on here but haven't had a chance to fully, so if there's a fallacy I missed or there are times where I seem not to prove my point enough, there's a good chance I'll do more writing about it in the future.
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Criminals don’t care about gun laws, therefore gun laws won’t stop murders/massacres with guns from happening.
While undoubtedly, anyone who is plotting a mass murder with guns (or any other weapon, but this essay focuses on guns) won’t care about the law, this is – to put it nicely – a really stupid argument.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got their guns from the Internet, and more significantly, the gun show loophole. The gun show loophole is a big problem – it basically says that if you get a gun at a gun show, there is no 5-day waiting period, you can walk out of that place immediately holding and officially owning a new gun. That problem has been solved at the state level in Colorado and several other states, but it has not been taken action on in a federal level. And that is something that needs to be done – when people’s lives are at stake, you can’t just call “states’ rights” and expect to win the argument.
The idea of “they don’t care, it’ll happen anyway, so why should we do anything to stop it?” can apply to all laws, and is the ultimate cowardice when it comes to facing a problem. Seriously, what if we applied that thinking to terrorism?
Not to mention, how many times have you seen a headline which read something like “School shooting plot discovered, thwarted”? It just happened not too long ago in Southern California. With the power given to police and Washington agencies that are supposed to track enemies foreign and domestic (no matter whatever the rest of the Constitution says) we should not hear about plots that were just thwarted right before they got put into action, MUCH LESS actual massacres that law enforcement and government bureaus failed to stop.
Obama’s executive orders to try to limit mentally ill people from owning guns is against our Constitution.
There’s been a big, bad influence on people’s view of the Constitution in the past few years. It is as thought President Obama is the first to make any executive orders in the 238 year history of the country.
Let me just say this: it’s not true. Executive orders were not established in 2009. As a matter of fact, despite a blocked Congress, Obama is the President who has relied least on executive orders since Grover Cleveland, who presided over the nation at the end of the 19th century. Now, I wouldn’t expect most Americans to know a thorough history on his presidency other than the noteworthy fact that he served two non-consecutive terms, so let’s ingrain this in Cleveland’s legacy: someone who did not overuse the executive order. Okay, got that?
Now, this issue is something I try to approach with logic. I’ve never lived in a city riddled with high crime, but if I were forced into somewhere like Flint, Michigan or Camden, New Jersey, I’d probably have an impulse to buy a gun for protection. And that’s exactly what I’d say to justify the purchase of the gun – I would merely use it for protection, and never to end another person’s life unless I or someone I love/who is innocent is in dire jeopardy. That’s what a lot of people say, right? It’s the same reason why even though I haven’t fought much in my life or gotten myself into many situations that have turned violent and necessitated combat, why I have thought about learning more about self-defense in the event I ever need to use it to defend myself.
For the “just in case” reason. Because we live in a world that is unpredictable and often brutal and hostile, even though in the last several decades violence has dropped at an unsurpassed rate.
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Some say that with the advent of nuclear weapons, one of the things that has actually made us safer in these times is Mutual Assured Destruction – the idea that countries and civilization itself would suffer so greatly even with the dropping of one atomic bomb, let alone more, that it has nullified the reasons to declare war and risk that, especially considering unthinkable collateral damage is almost an inevitability with the onset of a war that uses nuclear weapons.
There are probably some people who believe that, if more people in the country had a gun, Mexican standoffs would end with people lowering their weapons and walking away because everyone would wind up dead in a zero-sum game. But is that really likely, does everyone think the same in a situation like that? Some may have more to gain, less to lose and care far less about the other people they are in a stand-off with. But – and sure, you can argue that it is not entirely safe for only one person in charge (the President) to have the nuclear codes, because a pivotal decision that will change history and the world is only in the hands of one person, but let’s remember the intelligence the President always has at his disposal. Remember the fact that Harry Truman knew nothing about the Manhattan Project until FDR died and he ascended to the presidency, and that President Obama’s decision to raid the bin Laden compound in Pakistan was second-guessed by many other government officials, prior to its success.
And let’s not forget atomic bombs were only dropped twice in the history of the world: both in August 1945. By the United States.
And, of course, there’s the simple fact that guns are not bombs. Guns can be obtained easily, and at the slightest physical movement or misunderstanding, can be discharged.
Don’t believe that there truly are so many people concerned about the “2nd Amendment”, “freedom”, “liberty” or “rights”. And by putting these in quotations, I’m not trying to diminish their meaning – but it’s the fact that many these people are paranoid and selfish, some who seem to act as if the massacres of the last several years – including Newtown, the deadliest – simply didn’t happen. Or that they’re not important. These are often the same people who decry abortion as the murder of a potential person. Phrases like those have become buzzwords in the last several years with the arrival of the Obama administration and the Tea Party and they have been warped from their original meaning.
They don’t care about their rights, they care about their guns. They conflate the two as though they are the same. Political humorist Daniel Kurtzman said that these demagogues would “rather be caught dead than defending any other article or amendment in the Bill of Rights”, and think about it – do you often see 2nd Amendment “defenders” taking on any other cause, except for perhaps equating hate/controversial right-wing speech to free speech under the 1st Amendment?
More guns, less violence (including “authorities in every school should be armed”) OR The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
So, how are we supposed to know people are planning massacres with guns before they start them? Although most do plan them and plenty thankfully leave enough evidence to be thwarted before anything happens, it’s not like they always make subtle gestures at the place they are targeting. If they are, measures should be taken to perhaps report him or alert him to the authorities, NOT immediately shoot him. How is any good guy with a gun supposed to know a bad guy with a gun is suddenly about to start shooting, or even if he HAS a gun, considering concealed license permits are allowed in all 50 states now. And why wouldn’t he (or she, theoretically – although there have been no notable mass shootings by a woman in America in recent memory), even if armed, immediately try to get somewhere safe or call the authorities rather than shooting more? It has been proven that if a bad guy starts shooting, and in the very unlikely event a good guy with a gun who happens to be nearby with lightning fast reflexes also starts shooting (in the direction of the bad guy), the police are much more likely to see that “good shooter” as an accomplice/participant rather than just a Good Samaritan trying to solve the situation. Policemen also resent when citizens get in the way by trying to “solve” these things to boot, as they are not trained professionals even if they do have an extensive knowledge of guns and safety.
Also, if “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is a true maxim, I’ve got two words for you: Amadou Diallo. What I am referencing, of course, is the 1999 shooting of an unarmed New York City civilian by a group of policemen who believed he was reaching for a gun, when in fact he was reaching for his wallet. How exactly do we prevent more and more of these things from happening if this “good guy with a gun” is truly the solution? Aren’t policemen supposed to be the vigilant, trustworthy “good guys” of the nation – how many Americans truly feel that way about them? In the aftermath of Ferguson, MO, 8 months headlines still swirl around that town, and does anything look like it's becoming safer or going back to normal? To get back to my earlier point, nobody has the foresight to see into someone’s mind about what they are going to do, and most people – including, of course, gun rights activists – would be screaming police state if we continued to up surveillance and checked for weapons before they entered a public place. Many, many “good guys with guns” have shot at actual good, unarmed people causing their deaths (seriously, take a minute and Google “accidental shooting”), and of course, it happens disproportionately to blacks. With a gun – or more appropriately, a man who shouldn’t have a gun – impulses are acted on immediately because of the threat they feel, and once a trigger is pulled in a response to an impulse, it’s an action that can never ever be taken back.
Of course, since I wrote that last paragraph, a bunch of other people – mostly minorities – have been killed by policemen that have had no action taken against them – most recently being Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Which proves my sad point.
In the Red Lake massacre (perpetrated in March 2005 by Jeff Weise) and the Columbine massacre, the guards were the first one killed by the shooters. Weise’ path was very similar to Adam Lanza – he stole the gun from his grandfather, murdered him, and then went to the Minnesota school to start the massacre.
It’s not just Diallo – it happened to Sean Bell, Michael Brown and many others (some having to do with guns, others with abuse of police authority). And let’s take a look at the reverse as well: Antoinette Tuff, a woman in a Georgian elementary school decided to talk with a potential shooter with a gun back in 2013 with both rationality and emotion, talking about what the right and secure thing to do would be to drop the weapon and about her own misfortunes throughout her recent past. She was praised by hostage negotiators despite not having any background in it professionally whatsoever. What she did was heroism. Another person shooting indiscriminately in response (even if their intentions are to save) to a madman shooting indiscriminately is not heroism. And hey, I’m not saying it is impossible, and I’m not saying that a gunman with skill and a large amount of luck can’t do it, but to posit it as a sure thing in response to a deadly massacre commencing is so incredibly foolish.
You know how many of the last sixty-two shootings have been stopped by a good guy holding a concealed weapon?
Zero.
It is not entirely true to say all shooting massacres are perpetrated by white men – you can look at the Red Lake massacre committed by Jeff Weise or the Virginia Tech massacre by Seung Cho or even – if you want to go back a few decades – to the Cleveland Elementary school shooting in 1979 in San Diego by Brenda Spencer (who is the latest female mass shooter of note in American history – there was also another shooting in another school named Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, California in 1989)
Also, good guys don’t start shootings. Bad guys do. To say no form of gun control is prudent is to almost entirely leave things up to chance for any “good guy with a gun” to be there, know exactly what is going on, and stop them before they injure or kill anybody. And how likely is that, really? If you’re one of these guys who get into one of these situations and you start shooting, how exactly are you going to reassure those around you? By yelling loudly “DON’T WORRY, I’M NOT PART OF THE GROUP THAT’S SHOOTING, I’M ONE OF YOU – I AM FIGHTING BACK WITH MY OWN GUN!” and hoping it all works out? Well, hopefully they’ll hear you over the sound of the bullets firing.
Gun violence is promoted and in large part due to violent movies, music and video games.
Ever since Columbine happened fifteen years ago, this ludicrous argument has been brought up. At first, when there were very little details on motives and background, both parties (as well as some regular American citizens) blamed things like movies, music, and video games. When unintelligent, aggressive gun rights advocates realized that assumption was wrong; they nonetheless clung to it.
Let’s take a look at Columbine: here’s the deal. Eric Harris was a psychopath. He had no empathy, no remorse of any kind. Perhaps he had love for his family, but there were times where he made chilling statements about them, one in particular where he and Klebold mocked what they thought would be their parents’ inevitable reaction to the news of the massacre in what are known as “the basement tapes”. There were several bombs planted inside the school in addition to the dozen people killed. If those bombs had gone off, there would have been a death toll in the hundreds. And while bullying in the school was supposedly quite prevalent, that does not mean that their mental illnesses are easy to discount.
Psychopathy is something a human being is born with, and it’s a well-known fact there are telltale signs that foreshadow its development in childhood. I’m not going to deny that the Columbine shooters played video games or listened to violent music, but the logistics of that argument – the one that proves lots of other, much more sane people do the same thing and are unaffected – swung in the favor of “get the fuck outta here with that bullshit” long ago. Of course, logic doesn’t mean much in America these days – you just need to keep repeating the talking points.
All you need to do is take a survey of Americans who play video games or watch violent movies, and see how many of them have a violent criminal history. Most don’t, and the fact remains that if they do correlation does not equal causation.
It’s either we keep our guns or we lose our rights.
Is that so? Then why is it that President Bush (with the help of a Democratic Congress) passed the most expansive gun control bill since the 1960s in 2007 after the Virginia Tech massacre (the strengthening of the NICS)? Have we lost our rights? Have gun massacres plummeted or stopped entirely, or have we had many in the last 7 years? Former President Bush also supported extending the assault weapon ban, as does every living former President today.
Or the fact that all living former Presidents – including Reagan, patron saint of conservatives and would-be assassination victim (from an unstable man with a gun), supported the Brady Bill back in 1993, even though it took years to get passed? Theoretically, ask yourself what would happen were another attempted assassination were to happen (or, God forbid, one succeeded) would people still have the same view? President Johnson signed in a very expansive gun control bill in the late 1960s after multiple assassinations of some of the country’s most important men – John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
That is not to say that past Presidents have not supported the Second Amendment – it took Reagan nearly a decade to change his mind on gun control – this was after his attempted assassination, and Bush passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005
prior to the VA Tech shooting.
But in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he did suggest that training was one of the most effective ways of promoting gun safety in America, and that some ammunition should be point blank (no pun intended) kept out of the reach of common citizens. Don’t believe me? Check this PolitiFact link.
www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2013/feb/05/barack-obama/did-reagan-support-assault-weapons-ban/
People are losing their rights in this country, but it’s not because Democrats want sensible reform of this country’s gun laws. It’s because Republicans realize that one day in the future they will be outnumbered, and that consolidation of power is necessary to maintain the control that they desire.
But Prigh, you yourself said the police of America can be dangerous and unreliable! How are we supposed to successfully keep cops from profiling, harassing and/or unlawfully detaining us without the threat of personal firearms to protect us?
There is no doubt that is true.
The scary thing is people are more likely to show an interest in buying a gun because of police militarization and minority targeting as much as a mass shooting. Of course, I’m of the belief that more guns being sold to scared, and in some cases paranoid, people after a mass shooting isn’t particularly wise on anybody’s part, but…
The Founding Fathers knew/feared one day a tyrannical government would take over, so they wrote the Second Amendment so we could defend ourselves!
Yes, the Declaration of Independence does guarantee “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. But when has the government – whether in the 1700s or now – ever said or implied something to the effect of “Even with a weapon that has the ability to end another human being’s life permanently, the freedom to have that weapon without any type of scrutiny regardless of its purpose is more important than life itself”? Is there anybody fucked up enough to interpret it that way? Anybody who wound consider gun ownership more important than a human life deserves not only their American citizenship, but their human pass, revoked.
Defense spending is routinely in 11 figures, and with the Edward Snowden NSA leaks that occurred in June 2013, we have more of an idea of the insane measures the U.S. government has put into place for our “protection”.
To quote Melle Mel: “the gift of life really means a lot / And in the ghetto, your life is all you got”. The number of gun deaths in this country is horrifying. Isn’t it time we at least TRY our best to care about the lives of our fellow citizens, rather than grabbing your own piece and trying to convince yourself that you’ll be protected just in case the government happens to come to your house and orders you to turn it over to them immediately?
It makes little sense to me that the ones defending gun rights are also the staunchest with their religious beliefs (who have catalyzed the idea of corporate religion in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case so that specific parts of health care – mostly contraception for women – are disallowed under company-wide insurance policies)
When Jesus lived, there were no guns, but don’t you think he might have something to say against horrific murder perpetrated by the ignorant and violent? How come, when most conservative Republicans try and back up their logic or beliefs, especially in regards to abortion, Jesus always comes up, but He is always absent from the gun debate? And from the same people claiming this is a Christian nation, no less.
And there is the fact that people will say “but I’m more vulnerable if I give up my gun, and much more likely to get hurt or killed without having any way to defend myself!” The problem with many gun owners is the fact that they have a hard time dealing with not everything in life being able to be controlled.
A gun, or anything that promotes the threatening of a life, is the ultimate form of control. But nowhere in the world does anyone – not a President or dictator or billionaire business magnate – does everyone have control always. That’s a part of life that must be understood by anyone seeking to have at least a modicum of mental health.
Which is why they hate the idea of gun control. That puts the whole idea of control outside of their space. Sure, they can do the whole fallacious argument about “faceless government bureaucrat” not actually having any more interest, intelligence or intuition than the average American citizen who is a gun owner just to put faces to the gun owners and paint the government as the enemy, which might do something that will terrify gun owners: make and pass a law. Laws are not tyranny, and the redefinition of tyranny as “something we do not have any type of control over” cannot stick. America has been too susceptible to propaganda in many different ways and examples throughout its history, and in recent years things have just gotten worse. Language has been
Do these people see themselves, in regards to this country, as citizens first and gun owners as just another small part of who they are as a complex human being, or are their firearms their number one priority?
Now it’s possible you’re saying “Prigh, you’re treating all gun owners as if they are far-right, trigger-happy morons with dangerous beliefs”. I don’t want to do that, of course. Lots of Americans have both guns and consciences, and while the empathy level of the GOP (especially its gun-rights activists) shrinks by the day and has been doing so for decades, that doesn’t mean every registered Republican or gun owner is dealing with the same affliction.
In the reducio ad Hitlerum scenario – you can, rather than reiterating the false point of Nazis taking away all Jews’ guns – realize that Nazis shooting people they deemed inferior to themselves and continuing to have access to those weapons in which they used as far more similar to the America of today. We stand up for the rights of the killers, not the lives of the killed.
Because some people legally have a gun. But all people legally have a life, that can be taken away by a gun. It is the first thing mentioned in things we should strive for as citizens in the Declaration of Independence.
Obama is merely trying to appeal to emotion rather than facts to get his agenda passed.
The previous statements and figures that I’ve cited should count as facts; facts without agenda, but if that doesn’t convince you…
If twenty children getting murdered in cold blood – not to mention the other dozens who were killed in the massacres before Newtown and after Virginia Tech - does not necessitate an appeal to emotion against a powerful, despicable NRA intent on misrepresenting the Constitution for their own personal hunger for power and some of the worst paranoia and undocumented suspicion of a President and his administration in the history of the country, what does? Do you really think that the Founding Fathers – whom many arguments opposing gun control hearken back to – would hear of something like this, “A 20-year-old boy with weapons more than two centuries advanced what you’ve ever seen goes into an elementary school, kills 20 kids and 6 adults before shooting himself” and would agree nothing should change? Regarding the religious who defend their own right to own guns, do you believe Jesus himself would think that? If you think that and you still believe America is a land of liberty, opportunity and/or Christian ideals, you have incurable cognitive dissonance.
Winston Churchill once famously said, “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” I guess either we simply haven’t tried enough yet or it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet.
Gun violence is technically down and it has been for around a decade. But the fact is that there have been 80 mass shootings in America since 1990. Let’s look at other democracies around the world: Israel has had 16, Australia has had 15 (and only one this century since a mass shooting in the ‘90s led them to dramatically reform their gun laws), the UK has had 5 and Canada has had 4.
60% of murders are committed with guns, and over 50% of suicides are. It’s the easiest way when it gets down to the ultimate act, and it’s pretty easy when it comes to acquiring them as well.
I don’t want to think that it is an inevitability that a mass shooting will happen again. To me, that’s terrifying. To say that we cannot stop individual choices to do something heinous with actions such as this, it is completely against the American spirit to forfeit when up against an enemy. Responsible gun owners are not the enemy, senseless and indiscriminate violence that leads to injury and death is. And that is why I believe there should be something done.
Armed citizens are often more careful and make less mistakes than police officers when presented with a deadly shooting situation.
The American government is going to forcibly take away the guns of every single citizen.
Seriously?
Tell me where the President or anybody in the administration said something of that nature. If your retort is “well, of course they’re not actively saying it, but it’s their plan” give real examples. If it’s already started, tell us about the innocent victims of gun retrieval by the U.S. government. Funny, I’ve heard very few stories about them…
…maybe the media is covering it up. The LIBERAL MEDIA!
Anyway, if they’re not actively saying it, and they’re not actively doing it, and nobody is saying that it has happened to them, there’s a good sign it’s not happening.
That being said, I can't help but paraphrase “Orange is the New Black”: you know the only people who are paranoid enough to think the government is taking their guns away? Probably don’t deserve to have guns.
With these shootings that have happened in the last few years, it amazes me that there are people angrily protesting things that AREN’T GOING TO HAPPEN (like a forced seizing of all firearms from every single American citizen who has them). This country faces lots of dangers, including the idea and possible rollout of the 3D printer which can make untraceable guns for anyone. If any paranoia at all is understandable, it’s the kind that makes people think they or their loved ones may get gunned down at any public place at any time.
May God help us. And also, PLEASE stop trying to convince people that God/Jesus hates abortions and gay marriage but has no problem with guns. You make yourself look like an idiot with that argument.
To me, the facts favor the gun control advocates.
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Criminals don’t care about gun laws, therefore gun laws won’t stop murders/massacres with guns from happening.
While undoubtedly, anyone who is plotting a mass murder with guns (or any other weapon, but this essay focuses on guns) won’t care about the law, this is – to put it nicely – a really stupid argument.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got their guns from the Internet, and more significantly, the gun show loophole. The gun show loophole is a big problem – it basically says that if you get a gun at a gun show, there is no 5-day waiting period, you can walk out of that place immediately holding and officially owning a new gun. That problem has been solved at the state level in Colorado and several other states, but it has not been taken action on in a federal level. And that is something that needs to be done – when people’s lives are at stake, you can’t just call “states’ rights” and expect to win the argument.
The idea of “they don’t care, it’ll happen anyway, so why should we do anything to stop it?” can apply to all laws, and is the ultimate cowardice when it comes to facing a problem. Seriously, what if we applied that thinking to terrorism?
Not to mention, how many times have you seen a headline which read something like “School shooting plot discovered, thwarted”? It just happened not too long ago in Southern California. With the power given to police and Washington agencies that are supposed to track enemies foreign and domestic (no matter whatever the rest of the Constitution says) we should not hear about plots that were just thwarted right before they got put into action, MUCH LESS actual massacres that law enforcement and government bureaus failed to stop.
Obama’s executive orders to try to limit mentally ill people from owning guns is against our Constitution.
There’s been a big, bad influence on people’s view of the Constitution in the past few years. It is as thought President Obama is the first to make any executive orders in the 238 year history of the country.
Let me just say this: it’s not true. Executive orders were not established in 2009. As a matter of fact, despite a blocked Congress, Obama is the President who has relied least on executive orders since Grover Cleveland, who presided over the nation at the end of the 19th century. Now, I wouldn’t expect most Americans to know a thorough history on his presidency other than the noteworthy fact that he served two non-consecutive terms, so let’s ingrain this in Cleveland’s legacy: someone who did not overuse the executive order. Okay, got that?
Now, this issue is something I try to approach with logic. I’ve never lived in a city riddled with high crime, but if I were forced into somewhere like Flint, Michigan or Camden, New Jersey, I’d probably have an impulse to buy a gun for protection. And that’s exactly what I’d say to justify the purchase of the gun – I would merely use it for protection, and never to end another person’s life unless I or someone I love/who is innocent is in dire jeopardy. That’s what a lot of people say, right? It’s the same reason why even though I haven’t fought much in my life or gotten myself into many situations that have turned violent and necessitated combat, why I have thought about learning more about self-defense in the event I ever need to use it to defend myself.
For the “just in case” reason. Because we live in a world that is unpredictable and often brutal and hostile, even though in the last several decades violence has dropped at an unsurpassed rate.
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Some say that with the advent of nuclear weapons, one of the things that has actually made us safer in these times is Mutual Assured Destruction – the idea that countries and civilization itself would suffer so greatly even with the dropping of one atomic bomb, let alone more, that it has nullified the reasons to declare war and risk that, especially considering unthinkable collateral damage is almost an inevitability with the onset of a war that uses nuclear weapons.
There are probably some people who believe that, if more people in the country had a gun, Mexican standoffs would end with people lowering their weapons and walking away because everyone would wind up dead in a zero-sum game. But is that really likely, does everyone think the same in a situation like that? Some may have more to gain, less to lose and care far less about the other people they are in a stand-off with. But – and sure, you can argue that it is not entirely safe for only one person in charge (the President) to have the nuclear codes, because a pivotal decision that will change history and the world is only in the hands of one person, but let’s remember the intelligence the President always has at his disposal. Remember the fact that Harry Truman knew nothing about the Manhattan Project until FDR died and he ascended to the presidency, and that President Obama’s decision to raid the bin Laden compound in Pakistan was second-guessed by many other government officials, prior to its success.
And let’s not forget atomic bombs were only dropped twice in the history of the world: both in August 1945. By the United States.
And, of course, there’s the simple fact that guns are not bombs. Guns can be obtained easily, and at the slightest physical movement or misunderstanding, can be discharged.
Don’t believe that there truly are so many people concerned about the “2nd Amendment”, “freedom”, “liberty” or “rights”. And by putting these in quotations, I’m not trying to diminish their meaning – but it’s the fact that many these people are paranoid and selfish, some who seem to act as if the massacres of the last several years – including Newtown, the deadliest – simply didn’t happen. Or that they’re not important. These are often the same people who decry abortion as the murder of a potential person. Phrases like those have become buzzwords in the last several years with the arrival of the Obama administration and the Tea Party and they have been warped from their original meaning.
They don’t care about their rights, they care about their guns. They conflate the two as though they are the same. Political humorist Daniel Kurtzman said that these demagogues would “rather be caught dead than defending any other article or amendment in the Bill of Rights”, and think about it – do you often see 2nd Amendment “defenders” taking on any other cause, except for perhaps equating hate/controversial right-wing speech to free speech under the 1st Amendment?
More guns, less violence (including “authorities in every school should be armed”) OR The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
So, how are we supposed to know people are planning massacres with guns before they start them? Although most do plan them and plenty thankfully leave enough evidence to be thwarted before anything happens, it’s not like they always make subtle gestures at the place they are targeting. If they are, measures should be taken to perhaps report him or alert him to the authorities, NOT immediately shoot him. How is any good guy with a gun supposed to know a bad guy with a gun is suddenly about to start shooting, or even if he HAS a gun, considering concealed license permits are allowed in all 50 states now. And why wouldn’t he (or she, theoretically – although there have been no notable mass shootings by a woman in America in recent memory), even if armed, immediately try to get somewhere safe or call the authorities rather than shooting more? It has been proven that if a bad guy starts shooting, and in the very unlikely event a good guy with a gun who happens to be nearby with lightning fast reflexes also starts shooting (in the direction of the bad guy), the police are much more likely to see that “good shooter” as an accomplice/participant rather than just a Good Samaritan trying to solve the situation. Policemen also resent when citizens get in the way by trying to “solve” these things to boot, as they are not trained professionals even if they do have an extensive knowledge of guns and safety.
Also, if “the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is a true maxim, I’ve got two words for you: Amadou Diallo. What I am referencing, of course, is the 1999 shooting of an unarmed New York City civilian by a group of policemen who believed he was reaching for a gun, when in fact he was reaching for his wallet. How exactly do we prevent more and more of these things from happening if this “good guy with a gun” is truly the solution? Aren’t policemen supposed to be the vigilant, trustworthy “good guys” of the nation – how many Americans truly feel that way about them? In the aftermath of Ferguson, MO, 8 months headlines still swirl around that town, and does anything look like it's becoming safer or going back to normal? To get back to my earlier point, nobody has the foresight to see into someone’s mind about what they are going to do, and most people – including, of course, gun rights activists – would be screaming police state if we continued to up surveillance and checked for weapons before they entered a public place. Many, many “good guys with guns” have shot at actual good, unarmed people causing their deaths (seriously, take a minute and Google “accidental shooting”), and of course, it happens disproportionately to blacks. With a gun – or more appropriately, a man who shouldn’t have a gun – impulses are acted on immediately because of the threat they feel, and once a trigger is pulled in a response to an impulse, it’s an action that can never ever be taken back.
Of course, since I wrote that last paragraph, a bunch of other people – mostly minorities – have been killed by policemen that have had no action taken against them – most recently being Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Which proves my sad point.
In the Red Lake massacre (perpetrated in March 2005 by Jeff Weise) and the Columbine massacre, the guards were the first one killed by the shooters. Weise’ path was very similar to Adam Lanza – he stole the gun from his grandfather, murdered him, and then went to the Minnesota school to start the massacre.
It’s not just Diallo – it happened to Sean Bell, Michael Brown and many others (some having to do with guns, others with abuse of police authority). And let’s take a look at the reverse as well: Antoinette Tuff, a woman in a Georgian elementary school decided to talk with a potential shooter with a gun back in 2013 with both rationality and emotion, talking about what the right and secure thing to do would be to drop the weapon and about her own misfortunes throughout her recent past. She was praised by hostage negotiators despite not having any background in it professionally whatsoever. What she did was heroism. Another person shooting indiscriminately in response (even if their intentions are to save) to a madman shooting indiscriminately is not heroism. And hey, I’m not saying it is impossible, and I’m not saying that a gunman with skill and a large amount of luck can’t do it, but to posit it as a sure thing in response to a deadly massacre commencing is so incredibly foolish.
You know how many of the last sixty-two shootings have been stopped by a good guy holding a concealed weapon?
Zero.
It is not entirely true to say all shooting massacres are perpetrated by white men – you can look at the Red Lake massacre committed by Jeff Weise or the Virginia Tech massacre by Seung Cho or even – if you want to go back a few decades – to the Cleveland Elementary school shooting in 1979 in San Diego by Brenda Spencer (who is the latest female mass shooter of note in American history – there was also another shooting in another school named Cleveland Elementary in Stockton, California in 1989)
Also, good guys don’t start shootings. Bad guys do. To say no form of gun control is prudent is to almost entirely leave things up to chance for any “good guy with a gun” to be there, know exactly what is going on, and stop them before they injure or kill anybody. And how likely is that, really? If you’re one of these guys who get into one of these situations and you start shooting, how exactly are you going to reassure those around you? By yelling loudly “DON’T WORRY, I’M NOT PART OF THE GROUP THAT’S SHOOTING, I’M ONE OF YOU – I AM FIGHTING BACK WITH MY OWN GUN!” and hoping it all works out? Well, hopefully they’ll hear you over the sound of the bullets firing.
Gun violence is promoted and in large part due to violent movies, music and video games.
Ever since Columbine happened fifteen years ago, this ludicrous argument has been brought up. At first, when there were very little details on motives and background, both parties (as well as some regular American citizens) blamed things like movies, music, and video games. When unintelligent, aggressive gun rights advocates realized that assumption was wrong; they nonetheless clung to it.
Let’s take a look at Columbine: here’s the deal. Eric Harris was a psychopath. He had no empathy, no remorse of any kind. Perhaps he had love for his family, but there were times where he made chilling statements about them, one in particular where he and Klebold mocked what they thought would be their parents’ inevitable reaction to the news of the massacre in what are known as “the basement tapes”. There were several bombs planted inside the school in addition to the dozen people killed. If those bombs had gone off, there would have been a death toll in the hundreds. And while bullying in the school was supposedly quite prevalent, that does not mean that their mental illnesses are easy to discount.
Psychopathy is something a human being is born with, and it’s a well-known fact there are telltale signs that foreshadow its development in childhood. I’m not going to deny that the Columbine shooters played video games or listened to violent music, but the logistics of that argument – the one that proves lots of other, much more sane people do the same thing and are unaffected – swung in the favor of “get the fuck outta here with that bullshit” long ago. Of course, logic doesn’t mean much in America these days – you just need to keep repeating the talking points.
All you need to do is take a survey of Americans who play video games or watch violent movies, and see how many of them have a violent criminal history. Most don’t, and the fact remains that if they do correlation does not equal causation.
It’s either we keep our guns or we lose our rights.
Is that so? Then why is it that President Bush (with the help of a Democratic Congress) passed the most expansive gun control bill since the 1960s in 2007 after the Virginia Tech massacre (the strengthening of the NICS)? Have we lost our rights? Have gun massacres plummeted or stopped entirely, or have we had many in the last 7 years? Former President Bush also supported extending the assault weapon ban, as does every living former President today.
Or the fact that all living former Presidents – including Reagan, patron saint of conservatives and would-be assassination victim (from an unstable man with a gun), supported the Brady Bill back in 1993, even though it took years to get passed? Theoretically, ask yourself what would happen were another attempted assassination were to happen (or, God forbid, one succeeded) would people still have the same view? President Johnson signed in a very expansive gun control bill in the late 1960s after multiple assassinations of some of the country’s most important men – John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
That is not to say that past Presidents have not supported the Second Amendment – it took Reagan nearly a decade to change his mind on gun control – this was after his attempted assassination, and Bush passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005
prior to the VA Tech shooting.
But in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, he did suggest that training was one of the most effective ways of promoting gun safety in America, and that some ammunition should be point blank (no pun intended) kept out of the reach of common citizens. Don’t believe me? Check this PolitiFact link.
www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2013/feb/05/barack-obama/did-reagan-support-assault-weapons-ban/
People are losing their rights in this country, but it’s not because Democrats want sensible reform of this country’s gun laws. It’s because Republicans realize that one day in the future they will be outnumbered, and that consolidation of power is necessary to maintain the control that they desire.
But Prigh, you yourself said the police of America can be dangerous and unreliable! How are we supposed to successfully keep cops from profiling, harassing and/or unlawfully detaining us without the threat of personal firearms to protect us?
There is no doubt that is true.
The scary thing is people are more likely to show an interest in buying a gun because of police militarization and minority targeting as much as a mass shooting. Of course, I’m of the belief that more guns being sold to scared, and in some cases paranoid, people after a mass shooting isn’t particularly wise on anybody’s part, but…
The Founding Fathers knew/feared one day a tyrannical government would take over, so they wrote the Second Amendment so we could defend ourselves!
Yes, the Declaration of Independence does guarantee “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. But when has the government – whether in the 1700s or now – ever said or implied something to the effect of “Even with a weapon that has the ability to end another human being’s life permanently, the freedom to have that weapon without any type of scrutiny regardless of its purpose is more important than life itself”? Is there anybody fucked up enough to interpret it that way? Anybody who wound consider gun ownership more important than a human life deserves not only their American citizenship, but their human pass, revoked.
Defense spending is routinely in 11 figures, and with the Edward Snowden NSA leaks that occurred in June 2013, we have more of an idea of the insane measures the U.S. government has put into place for our “protection”.
To quote Melle Mel: “the gift of life really means a lot / And in the ghetto, your life is all you got”. The number of gun deaths in this country is horrifying. Isn’t it time we at least TRY our best to care about the lives of our fellow citizens, rather than grabbing your own piece and trying to convince yourself that you’ll be protected just in case the government happens to come to your house and orders you to turn it over to them immediately?
It makes little sense to me that the ones defending gun rights are also the staunchest with their religious beliefs (who have catalyzed the idea of corporate religion in the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case so that specific parts of health care – mostly contraception for women – are disallowed under company-wide insurance policies)
When Jesus lived, there were no guns, but don’t you think he might have something to say against horrific murder perpetrated by the ignorant and violent? How come, when most conservative Republicans try and back up their logic or beliefs, especially in regards to abortion, Jesus always comes up, but He is always absent from the gun debate? And from the same people claiming this is a Christian nation, no less.
And there is the fact that people will say “but I’m more vulnerable if I give up my gun, and much more likely to get hurt or killed without having any way to defend myself!” The problem with many gun owners is the fact that they have a hard time dealing with not everything in life being able to be controlled.
A gun, or anything that promotes the threatening of a life, is the ultimate form of control. But nowhere in the world does anyone – not a President or dictator or billionaire business magnate – does everyone have control always. That’s a part of life that must be understood by anyone seeking to have at least a modicum of mental health.
Which is why they hate the idea of gun control. That puts the whole idea of control outside of their space. Sure, they can do the whole fallacious argument about “faceless government bureaucrat” not actually having any more interest, intelligence or intuition than the average American citizen who is a gun owner just to put faces to the gun owners and paint the government as the enemy, which might do something that will terrify gun owners: make and pass a law. Laws are not tyranny, and the redefinition of tyranny as “something we do not have any type of control over” cannot stick. America has been too susceptible to propaganda in many different ways and examples throughout its history, and in recent years things have just gotten worse. Language has been
Do these people see themselves, in regards to this country, as citizens first and gun owners as just another small part of who they are as a complex human being, or are their firearms their number one priority?
Now it’s possible you’re saying “Prigh, you’re treating all gun owners as if they are far-right, trigger-happy morons with dangerous beliefs”. I don’t want to do that, of course. Lots of Americans have both guns and consciences, and while the empathy level of the GOP (especially its gun-rights activists) shrinks by the day and has been doing so for decades, that doesn’t mean every registered Republican or gun owner is dealing with the same affliction.
In the reducio ad Hitlerum scenario – you can, rather than reiterating the false point of Nazis taking away all Jews’ guns – realize that Nazis shooting people they deemed inferior to themselves and continuing to have access to those weapons in which they used as far more similar to the America of today. We stand up for the rights of the killers, not the lives of the killed.
Because some people legally have a gun. But all people legally have a life, that can be taken away by a gun. It is the first thing mentioned in things we should strive for as citizens in the Declaration of Independence.
Obama is merely trying to appeal to emotion rather than facts to get his agenda passed.
The previous statements and figures that I’ve cited should count as facts; facts without agenda, but if that doesn’t convince you…
If twenty children getting murdered in cold blood – not to mention the other dozens who were killed in the massacres before Newtown and after Virginia Tech - does not necessitate an appeal to emotion against a powerful, despicable NRA intent on misrepresenting the Constitution for their own personal hunger for power and some of the worst paranoia and undocumented suspicion of a President and his administration in the history of the country, what does? Do you really think that the Founding Fathers – whom many arguments opposing gun control hearken back to – would hear of something like this, “A 20-year-old boy with weapons more than two centuries advanced what you’ve ever seen goes into an elementary school, kills 20 kids and 6 adults before shooting himself” and would agree nothing should change? Regarding the religious who defend their own right to own guns, do you believe Jesus himself would think that? If you think that and you still believe America is a land of liberty, opportunity and/or Christian ideals, you have incurable cognitive dissonance.
Winston Churchill once famously said, “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else.” I guess either we simply haven’t tried enough yet or it hasn’t gotten bad enough yet.
Gun violence is technically down and it has been for around a decade. But the fact is that there have been 80 mass shootings in America since 1990. Let’s look at other democracies around the world: Israel has had 16, Australia has had 15 (and only one this century since a mass shooting in the ‘90s led them to dramatically reform their gun laws), the UK has had 5 and Canada has had 4.
60% of murders are committed with guns, and over 50% of suicides are. It’s the easiest way when it gets down to the ultimate act, and it’s pretty easy when it comes to acquiring them as well.
I don’t want to think that it is an inevitability that a mass shooting will happen again. To me, that’s terrifying. To say that we cannot stop individual choices to do something heinous with actions such as this, it is completely against the American spirit to forfeit when up against an enemy. Responsible gun owners are not the enemy, senseless and indiscriminate violence that leads to injury and death is. And that is why I believe there should be something done.
Armed citizens are often more careful and make less mistakes than police officers when presented with a deadly shooting situation.
The American government is going to forcibly take away the guns of every single citizen.
Seriously?
Tell me where the President or anybody in the administration said something of that nature. If your retort is “well, of course they’re not actively saying it, but it’s their plan” give real examples. If it’s already started, tell us about the innocent victims of gun retrieval by the U.S. government. Funny, I’ve heard very few stories about them…
…maybe the media is covering it up. The LIBERAL MEDIA!
Anyway, if they’re not actively saying it, and they’re not actively doing it, and nobody is saying that it has happened to them, there’s a good sign it’s not happening.
That being said, I can't help but paraphrase “Orange is the New Black”: you know the only people who are paranoid enough to think the government is taking their guns away? Probably don’t deserve to have guns.
With these shootings that have happened in the last few years, it amazes me that there are people angrily protesting things that AREN’T GOING TO HAPPEN (like a forced seizing of all firearms from every single American citizen who has them). This country faces lots of dangers, including the idea and possible rollout of the 3D printer which can make untraceable guns for anyone. If any paranoia at all is understandable, it’s the kind that makes people think they or their loved ones may get gunned down at any public place at any time.
May God help us. And also, PLEASE stop trying to convince people that God/Jesus hates abortions and gay marriage but has no problem with guns. You make yourself look like an idiot with that argument.
To me, the facts favor the gun control advocates.
