I did not actually propose anything more than a dialogue on what to do about the epidemic of gun violence peculiar to America over other developed countries. If we want to get biblical, you know a tree by its fruit. We have many Christian leaders and pastors that go on and on about the decayed moral character of America. Drugs, gay marriage, abortion, Hollywood, no prayer in schools, and so on. Is that the fruit of a "good tree"? Oh, and we kept slavery--despite our hypocritical claim that all men are created equal. Then had a hundred years of discrimination. What kind of tree grows such "fruit"?

Consider this: our Revolution against "the governing authorities" planted bad seeds for our future. "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever REBELS against the authority is REBELLING AGAINST WHAT GOD HAS INSTITUTED, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."

Your title said "tighter gun control."

It could be tightened up quite a bit without even creating any more laws but you won't stop the brainwashed, drugged-up cyborgs from doing whatever.

What would produce the most fruit the quickest?

What you already know won't happen or what we all agree on now...that is, if you have nut on your hands there's not a damn thing anyone will do until he kills some people.

Social media is like leaving an empty booze bottle on the seat next to you while driving drunk. The cop has every right to consider it evidence.

Amazing how everyone seemed to know who this guy was.

Before Obama took office and for the eight years of his presidency we got a constant barrage by the NRA, Republican legislators, Conservative Media, and alt-Right conspiracy theorists that he was going to take away all guns (with "black helicopters" confiscating them in the middle of the night and taking the owners to "FEMA concentration camps"). He didn't do that. He did tighten gun control by executive order in January of 2015. Obviously, it was not enough.

The rate of murder or manslaughter in America by firearm is the highest by far in the developed world. We have had 18 school shootings in the first 45 days of 2018. Is it really right to do absolutely nothing to try and curtail this excessive violence? Or are more and more guns the answer? "Thoughts and prayers" are falling short and come always too late to save our children. And the nuclear argument that any control means the eventual end of Second Amendment rights to cease all discussions on the subject is wrong and irresponsible. The subject needs, demands, open and sincere dialogue for the sake of our nation's innocents and all citizens.

Debating the actual intent of the wording of the Second Amendment is useless; it no longer matters. You and I both know the Founding Fathers could not have possibly envisioned our present state and this is not 1776. What matters are American lives. We keep our guns, yet make sensible universal controls to try to insure greater safety for all. If there was a pandemic, and this rampant violence is a pandemic, Federal measures would be taken to protect the general public. Safeguards to help reduce this epidemic of murder and mayhem is simply just and wise. Help me see why we shouldn't act on better precautions. Or are we just to accept these tragic loses as "the cost of freedom," as O'Reilly said, willingly sacrificing our sons and daughter's for the "un-infringed" right to keep and bear arms?

When the government takes the reports of potential killers seriously and makes a serious effort to deprive them of access to weaponry of any nature there will be no need to ban guns. In almost every case these mass murderers have been reported to the FBI and they did nothing.

Take away all the guns, then you can take away all the knives both hunting/fighting and kitchen knives and the household chemicals and all computers which allow people to learn how to build bombs. Close all the gyms, particularly those teaching martial arts. The problem is not the tools, it is the people who commit the crimes and the people who are tasked with preventing them and the latter have been doing a pee-poor job.

You cannot wrap the nation in cotton candy to insulate them from all perils. We should be agitating for the arrest of the FBI agents who ignored clear warnings that this individual intended to murder school students. Let's put them on trial for malfeasance and complicity in the murders.

There is no defense for such ignorance.

Any firearm is an efficient killing machine if that's what someone wants to do with it. I own AR15s and have shot many thousands of rounds with them. I have never killed anyone nor do I intend to do so unless absolutely necessary to protect my life and/or the lives of my family and friends. I truly resent your slanderous accusation that only because I own and shoot an AR15 I am deranged, delusional or disturbed. It is obvious that you have a deranged, delusional and disturbed attitude toward millions of responsible Americans who own and shoot AR15s, or any other gun for that matter. You've been spoon fed the anti-gun hype that guns are the problem. Your entire view of this is not based on reason, common sense, critical thinking, or any knowledge of firearms and the responsibilities of ownership, it is not based on what it means to be a self reliant and responsible American citizen, you are completely consumed by leftist politics, a party apparatchik. If it weren't for liberal politics, your f*cked up world would cease to exist. And this goes for all the liberal airheads blowing the gun control trumpets. None of you give a tinker's damn about the victims of violence, you don't give a shit about the causes of it, you don't even give a crap about enforcing the laws against crime, you are not looking for common sense, reasonable, practical solutions to violence. All that you care about is to demonize an inanimate object that has no say in how it is used. All that drives you is to condemn those of us who really do care about finding solutions to crime and mental illnesses.

What has liberalism done to make America a better place? What has it done to advance the cause of the American way of life. NOTHING. All liberalism has done is crush the human spirit, break down our society, erode our morals, corrupt our culture, thwart prosperity, destroy our education and healthcare systems, suppress our God given gift of freedom and free will, victimize and politicize everyone and everything, suppress intelligence, corrupt the fields of science, and in so many ways, pollute human existence. Put simply, liberalism has created the environment in which crime and violence thrives. And you have the gall to label all those opposed to your wickedness as deranged? Lord deliver us from godless reprobates.

"Sorry, I honestly don't understand why the resistance to tighter gun-control"

Of course you don't understand that. The resistance to tighter gun control is because gun control has never nor ever will prevent such violence. Gun violence, or any violence for that matter, is a symptom not the disease, it is the effect not the cause. Putting a bandaid on a headache doesn't work. Guns are not the problem

Anti-Gun Nonsense: Here Are Three Idiotic Talking Points Being Peddled By The Left After Florida Shooting

Matt Vespa

Posted: Feb 15, 2018 6:30 PM


Yesterday was horrific. Nikolas Cruz, a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, ventured onto campus with an AR-15 rifle and smoke grenades, pulled the fire alarm, and began to open fire on students and faculty. He killed 17 people and wounded at least a dozen more. It didn’t take long for the anti-gun crowd to start spewing their drivel across various mediums. We have the usual Cobb salad of crap: we’ve had 18 school shootings this year, we should ban semi-automatics, which is an unconstitutional gun ban, you can conceal carry a rifle (no, I’m not kidding), and Trump made it easier for the mentally I’ll to buy firearms. All of this is either flat out wrong or grossly inaccurate.

We all knew that we would have to restack the sand bags. We always do after these tragic events, but we also always win these arguments. Liberal anti-gun positions don’t get better with time; it’s not like aging a fine wine. It’s still the same putrid red progressive meat that everyone else refuses to digest. So, let’s go through the motions of eviscerating these talking points again.

Let’s go with a liberal favorite: Trump rescinded an Obama-era mental health regulation on firearms. This has been brought up before. Last November, former Air Force veteran David Patrick Kelley killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. He should have been barred from owning firearms since he served a year in jail for domestic abuse, but the Air Force didn’t forward his criminal record to the FBI to update the National Instant Background Check Database. First, the regulation never went into effect. Second, various disability advocacy groups and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed it (via Stephen Gutowski) [emphasis mine]:

The regulation in question was adopted in December 2016 and went into effect on January 18, 2017, after the election of President Trump but before his inauguration two days later. Compliance with the rule was scheduled to begin on December 19, 2017. Before compliance ever began, however, the rule was repealed by a law passed through the House of Representatives and Senate, then signed by President Trump in February 2017. The regulation never had any effect.

The regulation would have required the Social Security Administration to report recipients who have their benefits managed by a representative payee and who meet other criteria to the FBI's background check system, effectively barring them from legally owning firearms. It would have applied to recipients between the ages 18 and 65 who Social Security assigned a representative payee to after determining they were unable to manage their own finances due to a mental impairment. The Social Security Administration would then notify those affected over the phone and in writing. Those affected would have been able to challenge their designation but only after their records have been submitted to the FBI.

Groups from across the political spectrum fought against the regulation's implementation and urged its repeal. Gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association said the rule was a "gun grab" and criticized it for lacking a determination that those affected are a threat to themselves or others.

The National Council on Disability, Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities, and National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery all submitted letters calling for the reversal of the rule during hearings conducted by the Ways and Means Committee.

"There is, simply put, no nexus between the inability to manage money and the ability to safely and responsibly own, possess or use a firearm," the National Council on Disability said, echoing what the other groups have said. "This arbitrary linkage not only unnecessarily and unreasonably deprives individuals with disabilities of a constitutional right, it increases the stigma for those who, due to their disabilities, may need a representative payee."

So, when you see stuff like “Trump signed a law making it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns,” it’s a lie.

The second round of stupid occurred when CNN tweeted that in Florida, “you don’t need a permit to conceal carry a rifle or shotgun, although you do need it to conceal carry a handgun.” It’s really not worth delving too much into this. If you think you can conceal carry a rifle, you need to stop reporting on firearms. Briefly though, the author seemed surprised that you don’t need to register your firearms in Florida, and that you can buy as many as you want. Yeah, only deep blue states require registration of firearms, with a few outliers; Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine are all constitutional carry states. That’s right in these states, including Vermont, the land of Bernie Sanders, they don’t require any of its residents to have a permit to concealed carry their firearms. They all also don’t require registration of firearms with the state. In Vermont, at least 70 percent of the population owns a firearm.

Bonus CNN tweet:

The last narrative that’s being peddled is the ‘we’ve had 18 school shootings so far this year.’ This is total bunk. It’s trash. Even The Washington Post said this statistic is “flat wrong” (via WaPo) [emphasis mine]:

The stunning number swept across the internet within minutes of the news Wednesday that, yet again, another young man with another semi-automatic rifle had rampaged through a school, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in South Florida.

The figure originated with Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit, co-founded by Michael Bloomberg, that works to prevent gun violence and is most famous for its running tally of school shootings.

It is a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong.

Everytown has long inflated its total by including incidents of gunfire that are not really school shootings. Take, for example, what it counts as the year’s first: On the afternoon of Jan. 3, a 31-year-old man who had parked outside a Michigan elementary school called police to say he was armed and suicidal. Several hours later, he killed himself. The school, however, had been closed for seven months. There were no teachers. There were no students.

Also listed on the organization’s site is an incident from Jan. 20, when — at 1 a.m. — a man was shot at a sorority event on the campus of Wake Forest University. A week later, as a basketball game was being played at a Michigan high school, someone fired several rounds from a gun in the parking lot. No one was injured, and it was past 8 p.m., well after classes had ended for the day, but Everytown still labeled it a school shooting.

Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury. Another three appeared to be intentional shootings but didn’t hurt anyone. Two more involved guns — one carried by a school police officer and the other by a licensed peace officer who ran a college club — that were unintentionally fired and, again, led to no injuries. At least seven of Everytown’s 18 shootings took place outside normal school hours.

…since Everytown began its tracking, it has included dubious examples: In August 2013, a man shot on a Tennessee high school’s property at 2 a.m.; in December 2014, a man shot in his car late one night and discovered the next day in a Pennsylvania elementary school parking lot; in August 2015, a man who climbed atop the roof of an empty Texas school on a Sunday morning and fired sporadically; in January 2016, a man in an Indiana high school parking lot whose gun accidentally went off in his glove box, before any students had arrived on campus; in December 2017, two teens in Washington state who shot up a high school just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, when the building was otherwise empty.

In 2015, The Post’s fact checkers awarded the group’s figures — invoked by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) — four Pinocchios for misleading methodology.

Another incident that Everytown included was a broken bus window caused by a BB gun. No injures were reported.

There is always a knee-jerk reaction to these incidents. Policymaking is cold-hearted. It’s facts and numbers. Yes, personal stories help sell certain initiatives, but it doesn’t negate the fact that most Democratic gun control policies won’t stop future mass shootings, won’t curb gun violence, and only infringe on the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans.

It's quite disheartening to think that nothing could be done, but that's just the facts. None of the recent mass shootings would have been stopped by more gun laws--even The Post gave that claim a Geppetto mark. Banning those on terror or no fly lists, which are secret government lists with zero due process mechanisms, won’t stop mass shootings. Most of the people on these lists are not Americans, so they can’t buy firearms anyway. Expanding background checks won’t stop mass shootings. The cumulative effect argument is still terrible because one bill won’t be made more effective by several other pieces of shoddy anti-gun legislation attached to it. Mass shootings are terrible. They’re also rare. And they still are. As we’ve said before, citing FiveThirtyEight, viewing this issue solely through this lens of mass shootings is a sure fire way to create some really bad policy on guns. Also, it appears that Cruz was reported to the FBI by a YouTube vlogger months ago, but the bureau couldn’t identify the user. It appears as if Cruz used his own name for his account, however.

If there is one article that offers some good points to consider regarding tackling gun violence in America, read The Guardian’s Lois Beckett. The only question is whether the anti-gun Left wants to drop their confiscatory ethos to actually have a conversation on this. Yet, with the anti-gunners spreading shoddy information on shootings and the Second Amendment, I'm afraid we probably won't get there.

First, it is a societal problem. Those guns don't go off by themselves, somebody has to aim them and pull the trigger. Bullying and freezing oddball kids out of social interactions goes a long way towards reacting with force to years of aggregation and frustration. Identifying these kids and not allowing them to acquire or possess firearms would go a long way towards solving this problem, but most parents would say 'they're really a good kid, just misunderstood.' They would not admit that their kid had the capacity to do these kinds of things.

Second, this is a rural/urban divide mostly. Those of us that live outside city limits or way in the boonies like me, consider guns as tools. They are necessary for plinking ground squirrels, popping coyotes or wolves that are after a calf, or defending yourself when you run into the occasional hungry bear or cougar. We teach our kids from day one how to handle them and most rural kids take it to heart. And most know better than to shoot up the school, or settle disputes with firepower.

I believe two things here ... first that there is no place for handguns or assault weapons in urban areas, except inside the home for defense. I think that if you're caught on the street carrying a handgun or an assault rifle, it should send you straight to the hoosegow for a year or two. Second, that people with psycho-social traits (like anger management or impulse control problems) should be id'd and their weapons taken from them. The problem is to decide who makes the decision to legally prevent them from possessing weapons. Should it be a shrink? A judge? The local PD?

Problem is this ... there's over 300,000,000 guns in this country, and out here, there would be deputy sheriffs and US Marshals getting shot if they tried to confiscate some of the arsenals around here. So that's not a viable solution. The trick is to keep the firearms out of the hands of as many people as you can with anti-social behavior problems. That will require a culture shift for the general population. But it's the only way to get this under control. Good luck with that.

First, it is a societal problem. Those guns don't go off by themselves, somebody has to aim them and pull the trigger. Bullying and freezing oddball kids out of social interactions goes a long way towards reacting with force to years of aggregation and frustration. Identifying these kids and not allowing them to acquire or possess firearms would go a long way towards solving this problem, but most parents would say 'they're really a good kid, just misunderstood.' They would not admit that their kid had the capacity to do these kinds of things.

Second, this is a rural/urban divide mostly. Those of us that live outside city limits or way in the boonies like me, consider guns as tools. They are necessary for plinking ground squirrels, popping coyotes or wolves that are after a calf, or defending yourself when you run into the occasional hungry bear or cougar. We teach our kids from day one how to handle them and most rural kids take it to heart. And most know better than to shoot up the school, or settle disputes with firepower.

I believe two things here ... first that there is no place for handguns or assault weapons in urban areas, except inside the home for defense. I think that if you're caught on the street carrying a handgun or an assault rifle, it should send you straight to the hoosegow for a year or two. Second, that people with psycho-social traits (like anger management or impulse control problems) should be id'd and their weapons taken from them. The problem is to decide who makes the decision to legally prevent them from possessing weapons. Should it be a shrink? A judge? The local PD?

Problem is this ... there's over 300,000,000 guns in this country, and out here, there would be deputy sheriffs and US Marshals getting shot if they tried to confiscate some of the arsenals around here. So that's not a viable solution. The trick is to keep the firearms out of the hands of as many people as you can with anti-social behavior problems. That will require a culture shift for the general population. But it's the only way to get this under control. Good luck with that.