Soxbadger

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 11:45 AM) Soxbadger is proposing hypotheticals that are intentionally out on the edge to illustrate a point, I think. Yeah Im making extremely authoritarian suggestions (which goes against my very nature), just to show that it can be done. I dont even know if I like the ideas Im making. haha

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 11:37 AM) Um, no. That's not about taking responsibility. You can be 100% responsible and have your weapon stolen somehow. I don't agree with blaming that person if they took every precaution against it, but it happened anyway. Sorry if it was unclear, but it was in response to the "How can we force people to lock their guns". If you were following all the rules, they wouldnt have broken a crime. I was using the "they didnt follow the law." My solution would force people to. And I understand that its heavy handed, and I really dont like the solution. But at some point we need to hold people responsible.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 11:29 AM) And I'm asking how. Presumably gang members use friends or family to get legally acquired guns. What restriction on those family members could be put into a law to stop that gun from getting to a gang member and being used? Gonna do a background check to make sure that the person doesn't have any gang member relatives? If a gun you bought or owned is used in a crime, you go to jail for the period of the crime. You act like we cant make rules to stop this. We can make them, it just would require people to really man up about responsibility. To use something close to my heart. If they passed a law legalizing all drugs, I would be okay with a law that stated I was responsible for the actions of anyone who I gave drugs to, or who stole them from me. Its called taking personal responsibility.

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 11:17 AM) Can I tell you one of the answers that I know with 100% certainty and see and hear little birds in the neighborhood mentioning quite frequently? Well, just think, if Mexico can smuggle hundreds and hundreds of living human beings and inanimate drugs across the border on a daily basis, weapons are just as easy to smuggle. Its like when I was in Iraq and we would constantly blow up gigantic weapons cache's on an almost daily basis, only to find that these guys have been outfitted yet again by a neighboring country within the week. Eh there is no need to smuggle guns into the US as the US likely already has the most guns in the world. Smuggling is supply and demand. In the US its way cheaper to steal or buy a gun, then to try and buy one smuggled from Mexico. You dont hear a lot about heroin being smuggled into Afghanistan, you dont smuggle things where you can get them easily. The only type of weapons that the US would be smuggling in, would be military grade stuff for the very high level cartels. And those cartels dont want random gangs having that type of equipment.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 11:15 AM) That's the point exactly. It isn't the law that changes behavior. People are going to do what they are going to do. The only real deterrent to that is a real threat of punishment. If this woman wasn't locking her guns up with a mentally unstable kid around, what's the real rationale that she would have done it because her government told her to do so? She was already more lax in a more extreme situation than most would be. I don't see another law as having changed this situation. So put a real deterrent in. If your gun is used in a violent crime and it was not safely secure, you get charged with murder, under felony murder rule. ( am taking it to the absurd, but you can create deterrents.) You want to own a gun, you want to put other peoples lives at risk, take ownership of that awesome responsibility.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 10:58 AM) Exactly. s*** written in 1791 should not be controlling us today. Its more that we should look at the people who wrote the words and their intentions, as opposed to the words themselves. They were bound by the thinking of their time. The US was a trendsetter, it was going against what had become the norm for how a country is run. The founding fathers were radical liberals who went against conservative ideology. It would be folly to think that such forward thinkers would constantly be binding themselves to the past. Because if that was the case, then the US would never have been founded. It is important to recognize where we have come from. It is important to build on others before us (the same way our founding fathers took from Locke, Montesquieu, etc), but build is the important word. The US constitution is not meant to be an end, it is a beginning. And as time passes you change. I hate to tell Scalia, but the Constitution is living, anything that can be changed is not dead.

Bet they boo the kicker in GB.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 10:52 AM) The other part that is interesting in a historical context is how the national government treats any militias now. They pretty much send the FBI to wipe them out. That's why they are hard to find. It isn't that people don't believe in them or their usefulness anymore, the government that we were warned against has crushed them... right or wrong. People are allowed to organize into armed groups anymore. Turns out letting people organize into armed groups wasnt a good thing. Otherwise the mafia, latin kings and every other street gang would claim their rights were constitutionally derived. The world of the late 18th century is not comparable.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) Why would he have to be a safe cracker? She took him shooting on multiple occasions. He's 20 years old. It's pretty reasonable to assume he would know the combination. Is the law going to be that only owners can know the combination? GMAB. Well you bring up an interesting argument against the "law abiding" meme. I dont know the rules in every state, but at least in some you can not shoot or possess a firearm without a license. So if the owner of the gun was truly "law abiding" then they have a duty to ensure that only people who are properly licensed use their gun, correct? So if they let other non-licensed people use their weapons, they are not law abiding, they are actually "criminals", which means that criminals are legally obtaining guns. The only way to be "law abiding" is to follow every law. Good luck with that.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 10:34 AM) Most tyrannical governments take over with popular support. The double edged sword of Democracy. But the days where a group of people with guns are going to stand up against the King and his soldiers are the past. Unless I can buy a nuke, I really have no way of stopping the US.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 17, 2012 -> 10:27 AM) Which is, frankly, all defenders of the 2nd Amendment have to go on. Well historically I believe 2nd amendment supporters could point to the Civil War and the South using their weapons to protect themselves against the tyrannical North. But otherwise I am not sure that there are any United States historical examples of where guns have aided a large group of people from protecting themselves against the govt. In fact those people are usually considered criminals and killed.

If we want to yell about founding fathers and the constitution all day, we should at least start with the fact that both allowed for change. If the arguments are just going to be "2nd amendment gives me that right" its pretty pointless to spend 20+ pages discussing it. The question is whether or not the 2nd amendment should be changed.

Well thats the game. No way can Butler overcome 3 guys fouling out.

Then its pretty bad that they let him in the school if his mom wasnt even there... I guess well have to wait and see. To many variables. I already came up with a way he could get in if his mom wasnt there "Hey my mom said I should come and pick some things up from her classroom".

Its all speculation but if the guns were in a backpack he could easily walk in and be like "Oh got a surprise for my mom" That actually sounds terrible when I type it.

QUOTE (Wanne @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 04:39 PM) I hear ya and feel the same way. Making restrictions is a start...but in all honestly does nothing to the well over 300,000,000 weapons in the United States today. Good luck gathering all those up. But today is more of a day for reflection and prayers to the people and families effected by this horrible event. I am desensitized, I deal with bad things all the time. Part of reflection is asking what could have be done differently. I just do not like defeatest attitudes. If we as a society believe that less guns would improve society, then 300 million, 100 billion or 1 billion trillion guns should not deter us from trying to reach that goal. But that is the first step in this discussion, do we really want to give up guns? I am willing to. I would rather die myself, than have a weapon I owned be involved in the death of someone else. I am probably not in the majority, I recognize this. But that is where the discussion really needs to start. How many of us would be okay with destroying all civilian guns tomorrow. In my opinion the answer is not the majority. So until then we are stuck with what we have. Which is why in my opinion the best solution is to allow states, cities, etc to create their own rules. If citizens of Chicago are okay with only criminals having guns and are fine with that risk, so be it. If Texas wants to allow rocket launchers, so be it. I do not believe I can change the mind of everyone in America, but I do believe that as American's we should have the right to determine whether we can collectively agree that we do not need to have guns to survive.

Unclear but probably related to the alleged fact that his mother worked there.

I agree, and as I said on the first page if you want to make the best laws you have to be cold and heartless, not filled with emotion.

QUOTE (Wanne @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:47 PM) That's because you only hear of events like this...with guns. Do you hear about daily drunk driving accidents in every state that kills families and children...no. And guns also serve social purposes...I recreational shoot with a group often as many, many people do. It's all in the mind of what's "socially acceptable" huh?...k. So people can go out and get s*** faced...awesome. I do. But some people wipe out families because of it. Should your rights to drink be eliminated because of them? I also own guns and recreationally shoot and don't kill anybody. But my rights should be eliminated because of a few nutbags? You have your opinion...I have mine. I'm assuming you're not a gun owner... I actually agree with this (see the other thread I posted in.) If gun owners want to let me have my drugs, hookers and gambling, I have no problem letting them have their guns. That being said, why are certain vices "banned" if banning serves no purpose as is being argued in this thread. We might as well just legalize everything and see what happens.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:43 PM) We're talking about black market guns here. How would that ever get traced back to a source? Especially in murder-suicide situations. The person acquiring the gun can't exactly give you up. Everything has a source. The gun used today, Id bet that will be able to track down where it was bought/stolen etc. It really is not that complicated. Its not like a bag of weed. If you really want to track guns, simply put serial numbers inside a part that cant be reached. This isnt rocket science, its tracking down something that is extremely difficult to make without a factory. They can easily track a bullet to a gun based on the grooves, yet its beyond our capabilities to find a way to track guns. Seems ludicrous.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:42 PM) I'm having a conversation in reality, when banning guns will never happen and simply flipping a switch won't remove 300 million guns in this country. Most of us are in reality. But part of being in reality is that we hope/dream/strive to do the impossible. What is our purpose if we simply give up whenever a problem arises?

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:37 PM) Just as with drugs or cars or slaves or widgets, if you decrease the supply and increase the price, you are going to decrease the number of consumers who will demand the product. There is no perfect solution, but the simplest solution is simply making it harder to access handguns. Guns will be less frequent in gangs, and these shootings will be less frequent. They will still happen because of the sheer number of guns in the United States. You would think simple principles would prevail. But the problem is that many of the people who are the strongest voices, do not really understand criminals. They think that somehow criminals have easy access to everything in the world. They just do not understand that getting something on the black market is difficult and then once you have it, you dont do stupid things like killing 30 random strangers to lose it.

And to be fair, people did talk about banning alcohol and it was banned by amendment. There is a big difference between trying something and seeing if it works, and just saying "Oh this wont work".

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:30 PM) Gangs. Seriously, that's the answer. No other country has the number of gangs and gang members as the US. It's a small, incredibly violent, group of people in our society. I've looked before but couldn't find a study that looks at homicide rates in non-gang related shootings. I bet it's still higher than the rest of the world, but that number of gun related homicides shrinks to a much more comparable figure. How are gangs relevant to the discussion of mass murder sprees? And also, China has gangs, Japan has gangs. But still its entirely irrelevant because we are talking about murder sprees, that almost never involve gang members. Gang members are not in the business of murdering children at school, murdering random people at the mall. These are not money makers.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 14, 2012 -> 03:15 PM) Then whydoes the US constantly have one of the highest homicides rates of civilized first world countries? The UK and Europe overall have about 25% of the homicide rate. WHy is that? Why? Because the US has the most guns and guns are a very effective way of killing people. There are tons of posts of mine on the 2nd Amendment. Just this week I was arguing with Jenks why (imo) the 2nd amendment explicitly allows gun control and at best guarantees a militia the right to bear arms. There was a lot of debate on it because of the IL law being overturned by the 7th circuit. I really hate the hypocritical nature of the argument about drugs and guns.