Elementary school shooting

Boom-boom, ZING!

 

When I posted the Pistorius comment it was cos I'd heard 'early speculation' that it was an accident when he mistook her for an intruder, but the story now seems to be that the guy's just a ****, which rings true with the way he reacted after losing his paralympic race. I'm beyond sick & tired of the way all sports stars are portrayed as premium role models for the sake of commercial interests.

 

It's funny that you should post that comic, as it deals with Oliver Wendell Holmes jr.'s oft mis-paraphrased interpretation of the ever controversial Espionage Act of 1917. It is said that he regretted that decision later in life, and the Schenck v. US decision may have been overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

For more recent examples of how the Espionage Act of 1917 is used as justification to abridge the First Amendment, we can look up Daniel Ellsberg. Or we can ask Bradley Manning how he feels.

 

My 2p

Ownership of a gun is fine. Its the application that's the problem. So a few 'off the top of my head' remedies.

First handguns. A concealable weapon of death. This has no place in modern society. If you want one you can buy one, it gets shipped direct to your local gun range. There it stays. Once you have done that you can make carrying of handguns illegal with a long term jail sentence.

Semi/Fully automatic weapons. Same rule as with handguns. Only at a gun club/range.

Outlaw gun ownership in any urban/sub-urban areas, except where the gun is at a local gun/club range.

Now if you live out in the sticks and are likely to come into contact with dangerous animals then you should be allowed to own a shotgun or bolt action rifle.

Combine those measures with gun/ammunition control. Every gun purchase is logged. Every ammunition purchase is logged. Make it illegal to sell guns/ammunition unless you are police regulated.

While this may not stop the loonies from mass killings and murder, it would make the process of gearing up to do it harder and make it easier for the authorities to monitor.

 

I can't find anything wrong with this. Would definitely go over well. 10/10.

 

All law abiding citizens give up their guns, meanwhile all the criminals and the equally evil and corrupt American goverment get to keep theirs.

Give up lawful gun ownership at your own peril!

 

Strange. Here in Europe we seem to manage fine without. In the UK even best police don't carry guns, and somehow crime certainly isn't worse, and government more corrupt, than in the US. I guess your hypothesis has some flaws in it.

When it comes to safeguarding democracy™, I'd worry more about American citizens being informed voters than gun owners.

 

That is becuase there is nowhere near the same amount of illegal weapons in circulation in Europe.


And, what use is an informed voter when all political parties are working for the same group of elites?

 

In an interesting twist to the idea of laws that forbid gun ownership, a small town in Georgia recently passed an ordinance requiring every household to own a gun and keep ammunition. Although the town has almost zero crime and the ordinance is full of exceptions (also, it has no means of enforcement), city leaders have boasted that the measure is symbolic, and is intended to send a message to would-be criminals that the townspeople are armed and ready to defend themselves.

This raises the idea of outwardly boasting about your gun and the defense it will provide. Does that approach work? Possibly. But there are two recent very high profile examples that illustrate otherwise. When political tensions were running high in Arizona, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords once commented that she owned a Glock and was a pretty good shot. A short time later 6 people were killed, and she and 13 other people were injured in a mass shooting that took place during a political rally. More recently, a district attorney and his wife in Dallas, Texas, were killed in their home. He had been threatened by the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and he stated in a newspaper interview that he carried a gun for protection, and the he was "ahead of everybody else because, basically, I'm a soldier."

 

This is a little bit of an apple and orangey comparison. The Kennesaw example establishes a systematic atmosphere that deters more "crimes of opportunity". Day to day small stuff that can get out of control if not address but it is more systematic.

The other examples are of borderline psychotic (shooting someone for attention/fame/whatever) and deep personal agendas. Those are much harder to deter. But I have to ask the same question I always start out with "Compared to what". Is there any argument that Giffords would NOT have been shot had she not bragged about her shooting skills. Would the District Attorney's wife NOT been shot for similar reasons. I think reasonable people would have to say "no" it wasn't the deterrent that cause possible violence but was a product of the impending threat of it.

Bottom line: If several Aryan guys were coming for my wife for something I had done, regardless of what they showed up with, I would want the first thing they see when they kick the door in is her with our Remmy 870 pointed at them rather than her with her mobile phone in her hand trying to call 911

 

Perhaps my tone was a bit misleading. My point is that the apparent intent of the ordinance in Georgia is to let the bad guys know that the citizens are armed, and therefore the criminals should move on to the next town. But we have real world examples of people openly stating that they are armed and ready for the bad guys, only to end up shot.

I take your point that the two situations are a bit different (crimes of opportunity vs planned murder), but I think the Georgia town's city leaders are a bit misguided if they believe that braggadocio is going to keep them safe.

The truth is that the town has near zero crime to begin with. Now, whether that's because most of the citizens are already armed, or whether the low crime is due to some other factor(s), is up for debate.

Edit:

A couple days ago I was listening to an interview with one of the law-enforcement officials involved in the case. She said that based on forensic evidence, there is some speculation that the district attorney was killed while he was attempting to get his gun.

 

Kennesaw is an affluent suburb to begin with (ie low crime rates). The ordinance is more than likely only effective as a public policy reflecting their overall stance on crime. I know for a fact that not all households have firearms (I know a lot of people in Kennesaw) so it can't be the fact that everyone has a gun because it's simply not true. It is that overall policy that is probably keeping people safer more than anything. Setting a tone that law enforcement will support property owners defense of their own property and lives with possible lethal force sets a tone that can cut the criminal process off at the pass which can making any causational statistics almost impossible to gather.

Like any social issue, there is no silver bullet (pun intended) it's invariably a combination of factors. To attribute success to any single one is just as foolish as thinking that revoking it won't have any consequences. Kennesaw has very low crime rates, the ordinance for gun ownership may have zero effect on crime. But before removing it, who is it harming? The net-effect is that people who don't want guns don't buy them and enjoy very low crime rates. Another great answer to a question no one asked.

What is dismissed as braggadocio could also be seen as a policy consisting of a firm stance with clearly stated consequences. That policy is one that seems to be one that works for them without making innocent people into victims and without firing any shots to boot.

 

If the ordinance can't be enforced, and contains exceptions so as to exempt just about everyone, then what's the point? Georgia already has 'stand your ground" laws, so in essence the perceived threat to criminals is already present.

 

This ordinance predates any "stand your ground" law so removing it was really a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" scenario. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with evaluating what works and what doesn't. In the grand scheme of things, revoking laws/rules in a community with low crime rates seems to be on the "small stuff" end of the problem wheel.

Reason would seem to dictate emulating communities with low violence rather than pick them apart evoking examples where these policies weren't present or relevant.

 

I'd want the first thing they see to be an open back door, as my wife has legged it over the garden fence to safety.

Some myths imbue inanimate objects with a spirit of sorts, like the Algonquian Indian concept of manitou. It is presumed that they have a will of their own: a hammer wants to hammer, a knife wants to cut. The idea is that when you get cut, it is not the blade that injured you, but its manitou, its spirit turned against you.

Although the idea, taken literally, is just a product of our mind's tendency to anthropomorphise (especially when your computer plays up again, at which point we tend to imbue it with lots of personal attributes), there is (as always) some truth in it somewhere. An object compels you to use it. When you have a hammer, everything becomes a nail. When you have a gun, everything becomes a target (there is a neurological correlate that becomes obvious in brain injury, called utilisation behaviour, where exposure to an object triggers an automatic behavioural response to use it. See a switch, flip it; see a glass, drink from it, see a pen, pick it up and scribble etc. It becomes an uncontrollable compulsion. But I digress).

Basically what I'm saying is that certain tools constrain your choices rather than widen them. Their mere presence funnels your thinking and problem solving into a narrow, specific direction. When you hear a noise downstairs at night, having a gun may prompt you to go down and investigate where otherwise you might have considered hiding and calling 911 or fleeing the house. You may choose to confront a conflict rather than de-escalate or avoid it.

This is why I think that arming airline pilots is not an effective deterrent to hijacking (apart from the fact that they may be drunk): rather than locking the cabin door and landing at the next airport where a trained SWAT team can deal, the pilot now feels compelled to heroically dash in and save the passengers and stewardesses from the crazy terrorists who have a knife at their throats. Thus exposing himself and the cockpit to being overpowered.

Running and hiding is generally safer than coming out shooting. Only your pride gets hurt.

 

She would perhaps not have the option.

If a plane would be hijacked today I think many passengers would fight the hijackers, most likely they would have nothing to lose. If they didn't, chances are they would end up dead, come crashing into the ground or into a building.

A cockpit door can always be breached.

As for the pilot I'm not so sure he would react in the way you describe. When you have the responsibility for 300 + passangers there's a different set of rules.

 

You've obviously never been in a real world situation when you felt the need to retrieve a firearm for protection (or had the option). I have on a few occasions (I hope I never do again). I assure you, the last thing on your mind is pride, and in my experience, the next to last thing is going searching for a nail to hammer (figuratively speaking).

That said, when you are in a deliberate situation like a gun range, you do want to shoot and shoot and shoot. It is an entirely different universe of reality when reaching for one because you fear for your life.

 

I was specifically referencing the new ordinance that was just passed in Nelson, Georgia. Certainly Nelson is not the first to go down this path. Other cities across the nation have similar laws (both recent and pre-existing)

It also occurs to me that such laws presume distinct characters. The city ordinance requires that we (the good guys) must be armed so as to defend against them (the bad guys). What such laws fail to address is just who the bad guys are. Rarely do you hear of some crime in which everyone shrugs and says, "Oh, him? Yeah, we knew all along that he was a bad guy." The narrative that usually plays out is one in which the bad guy turns out to be an upstanding member of society, or that quiet kid who nobody seemed to know, or the stressed office worker who finally cracked under the pressure of losing his job while his wife was pregnant.

A common phrase you hear in the gun control debate is that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. It seems to me that if you require everyone to own a gun, then you ensure that every future bad guy will be armed.

 

That's why I believe in good locks and solid doors first, escape routes second and guns last. And not getting too attached to worldly goods. When it comes to buglars, you only have to be able to run faster than your widescreen TV.

That's a rational assessment. But social psychology suggests it is never that simple... Usually, unless someone takes the lead, people will not budge --they'll hope that if they don't make a fuss, play ball with the terrorists, they'll somehow come out alive. There is a lot of denial to overcome before someone can acknowledge that they are facing certain death and have nothing to lose, and then contain that despair and act in an organised and rational fashion.

Not with the kind of tools that you can smuggle past boarding control. Titanium, for all its lightness, is tough.

Yup, that's why they never drink before a flight.

It's not about what you feel (fear, usually; sometimes anger) but the choices you make. Does having the option of a gun blind you to other potentially safer choices? Does it cause you to overestimate your chances or control? When you buy a gun for home defence, you are in fact already planning for and comitting to a scenario: bad guys break in, I get my gun and shoot them. Nobody buys a gun "just as an additional option for when we get burgled".