NRA Lobbying causes US shootings

[Rwede]

Using that logic, we should let everyone have access to grenades, bazookas and Stinger missiles, because we let them have access to box cutters and manure.

Since the Sandy Hook shooting, more than 900 Americans were shot and killed. I suspect the number of Americans killed by box cutters and manure in the same time period is far less.

How many were killed in the same time period before the SH lunatic showed up?

How many were killed by baseball bats? Knives? Tire irons?

Where's your call to deal with systemic violence instead of running around looking to ban guns (or maybe bats and knives and tire irons) if you think about it logically instead of emotionally?

[Nebula]

Where's your call to deal with systemic violence instead of running around looking to ban guns (or maybe bats and knives and tire irons) if you think about it logically instead of emotionally?

You're making assumptions. I don't believe I've run around on this forum looking to ban guns. If you can find where I said that I would appreciate you pointing it out.

[sobrohusfat]

I don't believe I've run around on this forum looking to ban guns.

No, of course you wouldn't

[French Castanut]

I watched the video and I'm shocked at the statistics. I still don't understand WHY there are good people, while it seems normal for other ones to commit crimes, to do wrong and take away or ruin honest people lives (at the rate of 450something violent crimes per 100,000 people in the US). It means than for a city like Kelowna, in 2013, 500 lives will be changed forever because of criminals and wrongdoers. Over 10 years, we're talking of 5,000 people.

Shame, shame, shame on our specie. Even animals knows better.

[Glacier]

^ I'm not sure how delusional the clown making that report is, but I'd rather be involved in a violent crime than shot dead. All that video proves is that the US doesn't have any many murders as wartorn countries.

Or half of Canada either.

As has already been mentioned numerous times, the homicide rate in the U.S. is 104th out of 209 countries. This is quite high by western standards to be sure, but what is driving this is NOT the number of gun owners, but rather the number of gangs and such. If it were about guns then the homicide rate in Nunavut would not be 5 TIMES higher than the U.S. rate and Switzerland would NOT have one of the lowest rates in Europe.

The cause is a moral and social problem, and you cannot legislate morality.

I watched the video and I'm shocked at the statistics. I still don't understand WHY there are good people, while it seems normal for other ones to commit crimes, to do wrong and take away or ruin honest people lives (at the rate of 450something violent crimes per 100,000 people in the US). It means than for a city like Kelowna, in 2013, 500 lives will be changed forever because of criminals and wrongdoers. Over 10 years, we're talking of 5,000 people.

Shame, shame, shame on our specie. Even animals knows better.

The violent crime rate in Canada is much higher than that of the U.S. The rate in the territories is 10 times that of the U.S. Again, it has nothing to do with the lack of guns nor the excess of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crime ... Canada.svg

Some people think that spending $500,000 to ban the guns used in 2% of gun crimes will affect the overall crime rate. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this will do anything except make people feel safer.

[French Castanut]

The violent crime rate in Canada is much higher than that of the U.S. The rate in the territories is 10 times that of the U.S. Again, it has nothing to do with the lack of guns nor the excess of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crime ... Canada.svg

Thanks for the info!

I'd be curious to compare the crime rate between states that allow death penalty vs their neighbour who doesn't allow it. That probably makes more difference than owning a gun or not.

[Glacier]

I don't know, but here is a good place to start reading... http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.ans ... nID=000983

[Gone_Fishin]

Some people think that spending $500,000 to ban the guns used in 2% of gun crimes will affect the overall crime rate. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this will do anything except make people feel safer.

Alan Rock spent $2 billion in Canadian taxpayers' money to bring in a long gun registry that didn't save one single life, but the federal Liberals sure felt safer. Or did they?

[sobrohusfat]

Are Guns the Problem?
By Walter Williams

When I attended primary and secondary school — during the 1940s and '50s — one didn't hear of the kind of shooting mayhem that's become routine today. Why? It surely wasn't because of strict firearm laws. My replica of the 1902 Sears mail-order catalog shows 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped.

Dr. John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," reports that until the 1960s, some New York City public high schools had shooting clubs where students competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. They carried their rifles to school on the subways and, upon arrival, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved their rifles after school for target practice. Virginia's rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school and sometimes storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars that were parked on school grounds. Often a youngster's 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to him by his father.

Today's level of civility can't match yesteryear's. Many of today's youngsters begin the school day passing through metal detectors. Guards patrol school hallways, and police cars patrol outside. Despite these measures, assaults, knifings and shootings occur. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2010 there were 828,000 nonfatal criminal incidents in schools. There were 470,000 thefts and 359,000 violent attacks, of which 91,400 were serious. In the same year, 145,100 public-school teachers were physically attacked, and 276,700 were threatened.

What explains today's behavior versus yesteryear's? For well over a half-century, the nation's liberals and progressives — along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts — have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values. These people taught their vision, that there are no moral absolutes, to our young people. To them, what's moral or immoral is a matter of convenience, personal opinion or a consensus.

During the '50s and '60s, the education establishment launched its agenda to undermine lessons children learned from their parents and the church with fads such as "values clarification." So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination that sought to undermine family and church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed and considered passé and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortions. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions with neither parental knowledge nor consent.

Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms — transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings — represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws that are needed to regulate behavior.

Many customs, traditions and moral values have been discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized society, and now we're paying the price. What's worse is that instead of a return to what worked, people want to replace what worked with what sounds good, such as zero-tolerance policies in which bringing a water pistol, drawing a picture of a pistol, or pointing a finger and shouting "bang-bang" produces a school suspension or arrest. Seeing as we've decided that we should rely on gun laws to control behavior, what should be done to regulate clubs and hammers? After all, FBI crime statistics show that more people are murdered by clubs and hammers than rifles and shotguns.

[SurplusElect]

Are Guns the Problem?
By Walter Williams

I can think of one problem, Walter

So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination that sought to undermine family and church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed and considered passé and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortions.

You!

[Captain Awesome]

While I like guns (just like any other natural male and not a sissified pansy most colleges produce who thinks guns are bad), watching anti-ban protests makes me uneasy - some of the individuals who keep chanting "Hands off you gun grabbers!" and showing off their 400+ gun collections in case of a zombie outbreak are clearly mentally unstable. I wish it was possible to ban guns just for those lunatics, and leave responsible gun ownership to normal people.

[underscore]

Are Guns the Problem?
By Walter Williams

Dr. John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," reports that until the 1960s, some New York City public high schools had shooting clubs where students competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. They carried their rifles to school on the subways and, upon arrival, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved their rifles after school for target practice. Virginia's rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school and sometimes storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars that were parked on school grounds. Often a youngster's 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to him by his father.

Note the word rifle, not handgun, not assault rifle, but hunting rifles. Those are a completely different weapon for a completely different purpose.

During the '50s and '60s, the education establishment launched its agenda to undermine lessons children learned from their parents and the church with fads such as "values clarification." So-called sex education classes are simply indoctrination that sought to undermine family and church strictures against premarital sex. Lessons of abstinence were ridiculed and considered passé and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortions. Further undermining of parental authority came with legal and extralegal measures to assist teenage abortions with neither parental knowledge nor consent.

What a bleeping moron. Thats completely off topic, but in this article, so it shows the kind of mindset of this person. You can preach abstinence all you want, but if people choose not to abstain, shouldn't they know how to protect themselves? What a bleeping idiot.

[Glacier]

Mr. President, Chicago's Gun Victims Need You Now



Mr. President, please come to Chicago.

In Washington on Wednesday, as you rolled out a slate of gun control measures quickly cobbled together in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, you said, “If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try.”

If you believe those words, Mr. President, here is a heartfelt suggestion: Come back to your adopted hometown and personally host a summit that grapples seriously with the causes of -- and crafts meaningful solutions to -- gang violence in America’s big cities.

It’s really not much of an exaggeration to say that parts of Chicago resemble a war zone. The numbers are grim. Unofficially, there were 513 homicides in Chicago in 2012, nearly 100 more than New York City, which recorded 414 killings but which has a population three times larger. Chicago’s body count is 200 more than the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan last year. The carnage has continued unabated into the New Year.

It’s gone on too long, sir.

The sad reality is that while terrible mass shootings like the ones at Aurora and Newtown shock the nation’s conscience, pull at the public’s heartstrings, and garner wall-to-wall media coverage, they represent a tiny fraction of the number of gun homicides in the country every year.

Consider this, Mr. President: During the first 16 days of January, 26 people have been killed by guns in Chicago -- the exact same number as at Sandy Hook Elementary School. By the time this year is out, the south and west sides of the city we both call home will have endured, in terms of sheer numbers of people killed, the equivalent of 20 Sandy Hook massacres. That’s on top of the equivalent of the 19 Sandy Hooks the city experienced in 2012.

Yet there has been little outcry by the national media, and not much public attention paid to Chicago’s crucible by either national political party. Just the sterile news stories in the local papers every morning recounting the details of yet another young person’s life cut short and another family ripped apart thanks to senseless violence.

The other sad reality, Mr. President, is that almost nothing proposed this week in Washington, D.C., by your administration will do anything to stem the tide of gun violence in our inner cities. Most of these crimes were not committed with semi-automatic assault weapons, they weren’t committed by the mentally ill, and they won’t be stopped by universal background checks.

If you are serious about doing everything in your power to curb gun violence and save lives, then you must harness your immense popularity in Chicago -- and in other big cities -- to address the elephant in the room: the failures of a society grown coarsened, desensitized to violence, and too tolerant of such carnage.

This is true of American culture broadly: Hollywood has become too blithe in its glorification of murder, and makers of ultra-violent video games share some of the blame too. But it’s particularly true within the African-American community, where too many fatherless young men have given up hope for a better future and embraced a nihilistic gang culture that not only accepts brutal violence on a daily basis but encourages it.

During your presidency you’ve been asked a number of times about issues of concern to the black community, such as the high rate of African-American unemployment. You tend to respond, gracefully, and rightly, I believe, that you are president of all Americans, and not just one particular group or another.

This issue is different. Because of your heritage and your stature as the first African-American president, you may be the only person in this country who has the influence and moral standing to speak much needed truths to address this longstanding scourge in the black community.

As you said, “If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there is even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try.”

There is one thing you can do, Mr. President. Come home to Chicago. Talk to the kids. If they’ll listen to anybody, they’ll listen to you.

[Glacier]

While I like guns (just like any other natural male and not a sissified pansy most colleges produce who thinks guns are bad), watching anti-ban protests makes me uneasy - some of the individuals who keep chanting "Hands off you gun grabbers!" and showing off their 400+ gun collections in case of a zombie outbreak are clearly mentally unstable. I wish it was possible to ban guns just for those lunatics, and leave responsible gun ownership to normal people.

I agree that pragmatic and reasonable restrictions on guns should exist. These people often forget that it was under Reagan's watch that assault riffles were banned.