My right to bear arms is under fire right now.

[the_edsta]

We have a gun sickness in this country. I myself see the attraction. I do like guns, as objects, as simple machines, and theoretically as weapons. But we need to wake up from this state of believing that more guns = good, or that the mass production and distribution of them is a 2nd Amendment issue.

In the world there are something like 20,000 starbucks locations.

Just in the US there are somewhere shy of 15,000 McDonalds.

In the US, there are 35,000 convenience stores.

In the US, there are 50,000 retail stores that sell guns.

We don't have to enact draconian gun control measures OR repeal the 2nd Amendment to simply make them less available and TRY to alter the 'culture of guns' in this country.

It is a sickening day for me to even consider defending having 50,000 stores that sell guns in the US (or 100,000 licensed firearms dealers). I understand that today's events have more to do with mental illness than anything else, but it seems irresponsible to argue that sheer availability does not effect who owns and uses these things.

 

[airenlow]

I would bet most criminals don't get their guns from retail stores...

 

[Rich Z]

I can get a CCP based on a hunters safety course I took 25 years ago.

The presumption for making this a requirement for a CCW is that a person taking such a course would have learned and retained something from it. Am I taking this correctly that in your case you believe the lesson didn't stick?

Are you serious. Do you really think the guy today would have killed 26 people with a knife if he couldn't have gotten a gun (or several guns in this case).

Give me a couple of glass bottles filled with gasoline with a soaked rag sticking out of the top and a lighter and I could take out a hell of a lot more people than that in a crowded mall. Explosives are easy to make and from materials that would surprise you. Anything that will build pressure rapidly via binary chemical combinations in a container with nails glued all around the surface of that container will do the job nicely. And truth be known, rather potent chemical weapons are remarkable easy to make as well. It doesn't even take a genius to do it, only someone with the incentive. Do you think that stuff like napalm is really all that hard to make?

And do you REALLY think that outlawing guns will stop criminals who want them from making those devices themselves in their home workshop? Truth be known, a full automatic weapon is rather easy to make with rudimentary metal working tools. If you can find it, look up the design blueprint diagram of something like the Ingram MAC-10.

All such laws will do is to just stop law abiding citizens from having the means to protect themselves from such predators. We can see how well the "gun free" zones are working out, now can't we?

It isn't really the tools used in such atrocities that are being committed that needs to be addressed, it's the WHY.

 

[AliCat37]

Who's theory is that, the NRA's? The point is that a knife, the family car, a bow and arrow and a walking stick combined aren't as effective at killing as a low caliber (9mm) handgun. Even crazy people understand that.

I don't know, but 33 kids were stabbed to death in China on a killing spree. So...

 

[airenlow]

I tried that one...they didn't buy it.

 

[the_edsta]

I would bet most criminals don't get their guns from retail stores...

My point has little to do with that. I have read those statistics; as I mentioned elsewhere, James Q. Wilson has a great article to that effect (that gun control only affects, by definition, LAW abiding citizens, not criminals). My point is simply that 50,000 is too many. We don't need 15,000 McDonalds, and we CERTAINLY don't need more than three times that many locations selling guns. It is simply about mitigating the 'culture of guns' and violence in the mainstream.

 

[airenlow]

So you agree that this would only hurt law abiding citizens?

 

[kathylove]

"...We don't need 15,000 McDonalds, and we CERTAINLY don't need more than three times that many locations selling guns..."

And who would decide just how many McDonalds and gun sellers we need? Maybe some central planning committee like the old USSR had? If McDonalds, gun sellers, and other businesses don't get enough patronage, they fail and go away on their own. So buyers must think we do need that many, or we wouldn't have them (or they will be failing soon). And as said above, criminals probably don't buy their guns at the local gun store, anyway. I am not sure where the crazy people (those who commit mass murders for no apparent reason) get their guns, though.

Maybe some pyschologists could pore through the mass murderer stats and come up with some commonalities that could be used to deny, or at least take a closer look at, those with the same characteristics? But I would imagine that this has already been tried, obviously without complete success.

 

[Nova_C]

I don't know, but 33 kids were stabbed to death in China on a killing spree. So...

Well, to be a killing spree, someone would have to die, I think. There were no fatalities according to the articles I've read.

 

[Dale]

Well, to be a killing spree, someone would have to die, I think. There were no fatalities according to the articles I've read.

Then look back to 2010.

 

[Outcast]

Well, to be a killing spree, someone would have to die, I think. There were no fatalities according to the articles I've read.

I can't remember if it was you that asked about statistics of how many mass murders were prevented by law abiding gun toting citizens, but I think you just answered your own question.

 

[the_edsta]

As the great magnet would have it, while this thread was still going at 9pm, I had a gun pulled on me by a vigilante.

I was visiting a friend at his new house in a high-end development. All the houses look exactly the same, so I drove to the end of the street examining the houses, trying to figure out which was his (I had been there once before, though in the daytime, while he was moving in). I pulled to the side of the road, car running, lights on, to text him and figure out which house was his. Another car had just pulled into an adjacent driveway, and it quickly pulled back out of the driveway and behind me. I pulled up a bit further. He pulled up further as well.

He got out of the car and I could see the pistol in his hand. I didn't say anything to my wife, and remained calm. When he got to the window (the gun was better concealed by this point), he began barking at us, "What are you guys doing? Who are you looking for? (a friend, I answered) What is his name?" The guy's name is John, and when I said that, he didn't sound convinced. It escalated as he demanded information from me. I told him I was texting him and trying to get his address... when he saw my wife (who looks like she is about 16) and saw me texting, he finally backed off.

I saw john about three houses up waving, so I pulled up. When I got out of the car, the other car pulled up and the guy yelled, "I was just trying to protect you guys, that's all." I absolutely ripped him a new one, telling him next time to keep his GD gun in his pants, or better yet to go the hell inside and call the police, and stop trying to be a vigilante neighborhood hero. After I yelled a bit, he said, "You are lucky" and I responded, "Yes, I am lucky I wasn't shot for not being able to find my friend's house."

I do own a gun. Imagine if I had seen his and decided to reach for mine in the glove box while he was approaching?

In my previous posts, I said nothing about closing retail stores or enacting any kind of legislation (including gun control). I state several times that we have a gun sickness and that we need to change the culture of guns. I stand by that. We need to STOP constantly and immediatley defending the availability of guns; it should not be a default position. We need to STOP so readily worrying about our 'freedoms' and simply recognize that guns, as tools, can as easily escalate and facilitate further problems as they can somehow 'solve' them. They are alarmingly dangerous and engineered to kill. Let's all be wary, respectful, and appropriately afraid of them, and as a whole, reduce DEMAND for them (as Kathy pointed out...) but 'markets' are not manipulated by sheer accident; we need to solve this through discussion, through education, and by changing the way we THINK about them. (As an educator myself, I tend to put a lot of stock into the power of careful thought and discourse!)

 

[Rich Z]

My point is simply that 50,000 is too many. We don't need 15,000 McDonalds, and we CERTAINLY don't need more than three times that many locations selling guns. It is simply about mitigating the 'culture of guns' and violence in the mainstream.

I think it would be an interesting statistic to find out how many people McDonald's has "killed" from health problems over the years stemming from their products compared to deaths caused by the products sold by the gun shops.

And quite honestly even the comparison of 15,000 McDonald's to 50,000 gun stores is likely ingenuous, at best. Most McDonald's are rather large affairs with parking areas and high traffic, whereas MANY gun stores if you tracked them down and checked them out would be little hole in the wall shops, and in a lot of cases, some shack on someone's property next to the house. As long as their property is zoned commercial or dual use, a person can become a licensed FFL dealer and sell directly out of their own home. And it's not at all like the pictures you might see in the anti-gun rags implying that ALL dealers and "stores" have rows and rows of guns to sell. Many of them have a minimal inventory, but place orders for what customers desire to give them good prices because of their lower overhead. Honestly most of these smaller "shops" don't even advertise and they can be rather difficult to even find. Some actually will only sell at gun shows. Many will be difficult to FIND much less have any sort of actual traffic buying constant streams of guns from them. So trying to present the mental image of 50,000 McDonald's sized stores selling guns is quite misleading.

Heck, just for chuckles I opened up the 2010-2011 phone book for Tallahassee (the latest one I can find at the moment. They may have made the 2012 version so small that I can't see it.) and there are 11 McDonald's listed in the yellow pages. In the Guns & Gunsmiths section there are only 5 listings, with 2 more in Crawfordville outside of the city. The McDonald's in Crawfordville is NOT listed in that phone book. So I have my doubts about the authenticity of the numbers present, much less the relevance to really anything in this discussion.

 

[Becca]

^ I, for one, would have called the police immediately and let them know that there was an armed civilian running around a neighborhood playing vigilante. I would have told them everything that had happened and I would have watched as they arrived and carted the guy off to jail for flashing his gun and acting in the manner in which he did.

However, I would also like to state that I know several....SEVERAL....CCW permit holders and not a single one of them would have acted like this guy did. They never would have approached you, nor would they have flashed their weapon (because that's just stupid and asking for trouble you don't need) nor demanded answers out of you. Instead, they would have parked a little away to make certain you didn't have plans to storm someone's house while they silently dialed 911 and turned your butt in to the police. The "armed vigilante" you encountered is a small....TEE-TINY fraction of the people out there who are responsible gun owners. You could have done YOUR part in all this by simply calling the police and turning the guy in. You can't just go around waving a gun and threatening people and CCW carriers KNOW that.

It never ceases to amaze me that there are still people out there who believe that peace can be won by simply making up more gun rules. When you start taking guns out of the hands of LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS, you place 100% of the control into the hands of the criminals. After all, what's to stop them from coming in, stealing you blind, raping and killing your wife/children and then setting fire to your house on the way out if they KNOW you don't have a gun? They sure have a gun, I can GUARANTEE you that.

What's that, you say? Wait on the police to handle it? If you're willing to put the lives of yourself and your loved ones in the hands of some officers who may be 5+ minutes away, that's on you. I, for one, am going to shoot the ******* before he takes five steps into my house. I live in a state where a HUGE majority of people have a CCW permit. My own husband has one and he carries everywhere that he is allowed. There have been NUMEROUS occasions here in Utah of people stopping burglars, saving people....heck, we even had one instance of a CCW carrier stopping a shooter at one of our malls in Salt Lake City. The guy was packing to kill numerous people and he only managed to get off a couple of rounds before he was put down. THAT is why *I* believe that the issue isn't about gun control...it is more an issue about people control and we need to figure out better ways of spotting warning signs before it ever gets that far.

 

[Rich Z]

As the great magnet would have it, while this thread was still going at 9pm, I had a gun pulled on me by a vigilante.

I was visiting a friend at his new house in a high-end development. All the houses look exactly the same, so I drove to the end of the street examining the houses, trying to figure out which was his (I had been there once before, though in the daytime, while he was moving in). I pulled to the side of the road, car running, lights on, to text him and figure out which house was his. Another car had just pulled into an adjacent driveway, and it quickly pulled back out of the driveway and behind me. I pulled up a bit further. He pulled up further as well.

He got out of the car and I could see the pistol in his hand. I didn't say anything to my wife, and remained calm. When he got to the window (the gun was better concealed by this point), he began barking at us, "What are you guys doing? Who are you looking for? (a friend, I answered) What is his name?" The guy's name is John, and when I said that, he didn't sound convinced. It escalated as he demanded information from me. I told him I was texting him and trying to get his address... when he saw my wife (who looks like she is about 16) and saw me texting, he finally backed off.

I saw john about three houses up waving, so I pulled up. When I got out of the car, the other car pulled up and the guy yelled, "I was just trying to protect you guys, that's all." I absolutely ripped him a new one, telling him next time to keep his GD gun in his pants, or better yet to go the hell inside and call the police, and stop trying to be a vigilante neighborhood hero. After I yelled a bit, he said, "You are lucky" and I responded, "Yes, I am lucky I wasn't shot for not being able to find my friend's house."

I do own a gun. Imagine if I had seen his and decided to reach for mine in the glove box while he was approaching?

In my previous posts, I said nothing about closing retail stores or enacting any kind of legislation (including gun control). I state several times that we have a gun sickness and that we need to change the culture of guns. I stand by that. We need to STOP constantly and immediatley defending the availability of guns; it should not be a default position. We need to STOP so readily worrying about our 'freedoms' and simply recognize that guns, as tools, can as easily escalate and facilitate further problems as they can somehow 'solve' them. They are alarmingly dangerous and engineered to kill. Let's all be wary, respectful, and appropriately afraid of them, and as a whole, reduce DEMAND for them (as Kathy pointed out...) but 'markets' are not manipulated by sheer accident; we need to solve this through discussion, through education, and by changing the way we THINK about them. (As an educator myself, I tend to put a lot of stock into the power of careful thought and discourse!)

In my opinion, the guy who approached you with a gun in his hand was stupid. The chances of anything that COULD have happened turning out favorably for anyone was very VERY slim. He could have easily been viewed as the aggressor and suddenly found himself dead on the ground. As it is, my opinion is that HE was violating the law by brandishing a firearm and YOU could have called the police and filed charges against him. As it is, if you have any identifying information about that guy, I would contact the local police in that area and file a report. He needs to get pulled back down to earth before someone DOES get shot because of his actions.

Reduce availability of guns? All the hoops someone has to jump through to buy a gun isn't enough? A person has to ask permission of the government BEFORE they can buy a gun from a dealer. If they don't have a CCW (at least in Florida) there is a waiting period they have to go through before they can take possession of their purchase.

That being said, so we can have a "right" to keep and bear arms, but only as long as there are laws heavily restricting the ability of anyone to find and obtain these arms? Well, that's sort of like saying that yes, we do have the right to free speech, but at birth you have to have your lips sealed shut, and if you do want to speak about something, first you need to fill out an application and get approval in order to do so. And there is only one station available to do the surgery necessary, and there is a waiting list. But if it saves lives from even one incident of crying "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater..... So where exactly does the concept of "freedom" squeeze into that sort of scenario?

 

[Rich Z]

There have been NUMEROUS occasions here in Utah of people stopping burglars, saving people....heck, we even had one instance of a CCW carrier stopping a shooter at one of our malls in Salt Lake City. The guy was packing to kill numerous people and he only managed to get off a couple of rounds before he was put down. THAT is why *I* believe that the issue isn't about gun control...it is more an issue about people control and we need to figure out better ways of spotting warning signs before it ever gets that far.

Seems kind of odd that it is rather difficult, and rare, to find those sorts of incidents making the front page news of the media, doesn't it? I guess there must always be much more newsworthy situations taking place on those particular days.

 

[Becca]

Seems kind of odd that it is rather difficult, and rare, to find those sorts of incidents making the front page news of the media, doesn't it? I guess there must always be much more newsworthy situations taking place on those particular days.

Sad as it is to say, Rich, the good stories don't make the news like the shocking ones do. :shrugs: Instead of reporting on how many people were saved by the quick actions of a CCW carrier, the only thing you hear about are how many people were killed by a crazed lunatic. Just a few months ago, a guy about 10 minutes south of me was in bed with his wife sleeping. They both heard a noise at their front door and found themselves face to face with a burglar. The homeowner had a gun, but he kept it in his downstairs dresser. I can't remember if the burgler had a gun too (seems like he had some weapon, I'd have to look it up), anyway, he insisted that they take him to their bank and withdraw all of their money. The guy told the burglar he'd be happy to take him to get the money, he just needed to get his keys out of the dresser drawer. The homeowner shot the burglar and killed him. That gun SAVED that man and his wife's life. There is no telling what that criminal would have done. Anyway, after the investigation, the homeowner was released of all possible charges and found innocent and well within his rights to have taken the man's life. It graced the news for a day and was gone in a flash.

 

[Kokopelli]

Thought I'd chime in... as someone who lives in another country and with very different regulations regarding weapons of any sort.

First, my sincere condolences for the events that transpired today, there aren't words that can really do any justice after this horrible day.

In regards to fire-arms... Israel civilians cannot carry a weapon without a permit(which in order to receive you have to either live in a location that is deemed dangerous(near hostile Arab villages for instance), or having been in a combat-oriented role in the army and now working in security/police related roles. Once you get a permit, you have to renew it by going to a shooting range and shoot X rounds/score some points.

Yes, I can understand the security one may feel when having a gun... but I can't say I can relate to the very fervent "obsession"(please don't take it literally, just due to lack of better term) with it.

Guns have been developed as weapons- regardless of whether you use it for hunting or sports, shooting a bullet is a violent chemical reaction... the culture that evolved around collecting them, I can understand... but I don't believe military grade weapons should be readily available in any store.

Yes, criminals are likely to get guns from the black market... but people who have a momentary lapse in judgement?

I don't know... personally, I believe that in Israel we live in a riskier environment than most... and we don't feel the need to carry a gun half as strongly as so many of my American friends seem to.

I wouldn't want to infringe on everyone's rights and you can find reasons not to regulate everything but civilized society can't really exist without these sort of compromises.

 

[Chip]

As the great magnet would have it, while this thread was still going at 9pm, I had a gun pulled on me by a vigilante.

While I would have called the police and reported this individual, you and I have a different definition of having a gun pulled on you.

 

[the_edsta]

^ I, for one, would have called the police immediately and let them know that there was an armed civilian running around a neighborhood playing vigilante. I would have told them everything that had happened and I would have watched as they arrived and carted the guy off to jail for flashing his gun and acting in the manner in which he did.

However, I would also like to state that I know several....SEVERAL....CCW permit holders and not a single one of them would have acted like this guy did. They never would have approached you, nor would they have flashed their weapon (because that's just stupid and asking for trouble you don't need) nor demanded answers out of you. Instead, they would have parked a little away to make certain you didn't have plans to storm someone's house while they silently dialed 911 and turned your butt in to the police. The "armed vigilante" you encountered is a small....TEE-TINY fraction of the people out there who are responsible gun owners. You could have done YOUR part in all this by simply calling the police and turning the guy in. You can't just go around waving a gun and threatening people and CCW carriers KNOW that.

It never ceases to amaze me that there are still people out there who believe that peace can be won by simply making up more gun rules. When you start taking guns out of the hands of LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS, you place 100% of the control into the hands of the criminals. After all, what's to stop them from coming in, stealing you blind, raping and killing your wife/children and then setting fire to your house on the way out if they KNOW you don't have a gun? They sure have a gun, I can GUARANTEE you that.

What's that, you say? Wait on the police to handle it? If you're willing to put the lives of yourself and your loved ones in the hands of some officers who may be 5+ minutes away, that's on you. I, for one, am going to shoot the ******* before he takes five steps into my house. I live in a state where a HUGE majority of people have a CCW permit. My own husband has one and he carries everywhere that he is allowed. There have been NUMEROUS occasions here in Utah of people stopping burglars, saving people....heck, we even had one instance of a CCW carrier stopping a shooter at one of our malls in Salt Lake City. The guy was packing to kill numerous people and he only managed to get off a couple of rounds before he was put down. THAT is why *I* believe that the issue isn't about gun control...it is more an issue about people control and we need to figure out better ways of spotting warning signs before it ever gets that far.

After being yelled at, he left in his car and did not return while I ws there. My friend knows where he lives, obviously, and we are considering contacting authorities. If you will read my posts again, though, you will see that I am always in favor of DISCOURSE and changing the way people THINK, not always relying on the power of the state.