manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

I have always wanted to write a definitive post on the gun problem. Today, I began it, and I hope to finish it today. Here is the first draft!

The Problem

We have a gun-happy society, and unfortunately, too many shooters that take the lives of many people and wound many more.
So, the problem statement is rather simple: What to do to stop the k*****g and wounding?

We have a abundance of laws on the books in every State, County and City that should help the situation, but the fact is the laws do not work. This is quite evident as the news will attest today, tomorrow and on into the future.

Many believe that by physically removing all guns, or removing some types of guns from public hands, the situation will dramatically improve. I differ strongly on quite a number of counts:
1) Removing guns from the public will make the public much more vulnerable to criminal elements;
2) The criminal is not deterred by laws, is most likely not to be found to confiscate his weapons, and is most certainly able to purchase guns on the black market, or even from friends and acquaintances. So, the threat has not been deterred at all. In fact, the public would be far more threatened than before;
3) The mentally-deficient persons that load up and go on a shooting spree might be deterred from finding a gun, since there wouldn't be any nearby. This is the principal excuse some have to confiscate our weapons. The case of mental deficiency represents the primary challenge to all of us that abhor the current situation.
4) It appears that the school system, parents, police and the medical profession collectively do not have a definitive solution to the mentally-challenged individual that grabs a gun and goes k*****g.
5) The educators do not want to be sued if they do something about their observation of a deficient student. The parents are reluctant to act on their offspring, and the police must act within their policies, which excludes many deterrent acts. The medical profession is quite reluctant to pass judgment on a person openly without extreme proof of their danger to the public, and they too, want to avoid lawsuits.
6) It is a well-known fact that over two million encounters of citizens with a criminal occur every year where the armed citizen managed to resolve the situation satisfactorily. Often, simply showing a weapon is sufficient to ward off criminals.
7) All of us are aware that calling 911 for the police is necessary in such an encounter, but one must not forget that the police are from 5 to 20 minutes away, which gives the criminal sufficient time to wreck havoc in many quite unpleasant ways from basic robbery to rape and murder. That is what the defensive weapons are owned for: to thwart the criminal before the police arrive.
8) Even partial solutions such as banning the AR-15-style of automatic weapons, and high-capacity magazines is whistling in the dark. Many of the shootings have been done with pistols, but few have been done with rifles. This is a ready-fire-aim solution. (Incidentally, I agree with banning fully-automatic weapons, pistol, carbine or rifle, from the public.)

What is very obvious indeed is that it isn't the gun that k**ls, it is the deficient person with a gun that k**ls. A gun is an inanimate object. So, the focus ought to be on prevention of such deficient people from acquiring a weapon at all, ever! It is also obvious that if criminals can use the backdoor to get a weapon, so can the deficient! He can find a way to steal it, too, or find it in the home, where parents are remiss in locking their weapons up very securely.

This appears to me to be the dilemma we are in, and sitting here in my home today I do not have a solid answer to the deficient person problem: how they are identified early enough; or what can be done to ensure they do not go on a k*****g spree with any sort of weapon, such as a gun or even a knife, machete, baseball bat or chainsaw, for instance.

What I am sure of is that I have the weapons at hand to defend myself, and so do millions of our citizens! And I am convinced that taking weapons away from the citizenry is not only contrary to the Constitution, it exposes all of us to the criminal elements in a serious way, and those elements are quite aware of the eventual possibilities presented to them from unarmed homes.

If I have left out any significant elements here, I would appreciate being told!

steve66613

The solutions for today’s “gun violence problem” probably can be determined by studying the differences and changes in American society between 1953 and now. One could sift through the myriad of factors such as: general societal civility, moral views and values, educational values, self respect, views about elicit drugs, patriotism/nationalism, work and career ethics, religious beliefs, etc., etc. I.e., we’re we “better off” in 1953? What changed?

“Gun violence” is simply violence. The deterioration of society, observed and
measured by wh**ever means, may result in some answers about the “why”societal violence, but, may not offer solutions.

Good luck with your reasearch.

WinkyTink Loc: Hill Country, TX

Using the Terms AR15 and automatic weapons in the same sentence confuses the uninformed. The AR15 is semi-automatic, I think you know that.

The prime reason for the 2nd amendment is prevent the citizenry from being defenseless against an oppressive government, foreign or domestic. The ability for the citizenry to protect itself against is obviously essential but secondary to the former.

Lastly, it is obvious that after 20+ years of "mass" shootings at "soft" targets, little has been done to harden those targets. Yeah, it will take some money/investment in equipment and procedure, but what are the priorities of the states and their schools? How many dead kids will it take before solid procedure, electronics and armed guards are put in place?

okie don

With all the i******s flooding in, I am concerned about a huge increase in crime nationally. I heard some of these border crashers are involved in stealing from stores out in California. If so, it will probably increase across the nation in due time unless this madness is stopped.

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

Nobody wants to away everybody’s guns.
They want assault looking weapons like the AR15 off of the streets.
The glorification of the AR15 is the problem. It has become the end all problem solver .
I’m sure no other weapon gives the bearor the superiority over all of life’s problems , as deranged as that seems.
People want these guns off of our streets .
Everything thing else is smoke and mirrors.
Just take the ffing guns off of the streets. With severe penalties for illegal ownership./or possession.
Why is this such a hard thing to accomplish.
We had laws banning Thompson machine guns., banning silencers , made it illegal to cut off shotgun barrels. We had laws at one time. T***sporting guns had to be broken down and in a different part of the car from the ammo. We had laws.
Nobody was upset by these laws. They kept people safe.
Today we are unsafe over a second amendment argument.
Never brought to light before.
Do you really have a right to die over the 2nd Amendment.

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

==================
Thanks for your comment. Violence is caused by people, obviously, so the problem is a people problem, more specifically those people who are somehow compelled to commit violence. Only a few people are so compelled, but finding them is the difficulty, especially very early in their maturation. But then, after finding them, we must do something with them and this, too, is a problem.

This is far beyond my pay grade to solve! I am neither a doctor nor a lawman nor a social worker, just a citizen with grave concerns for the vulnerable in our society.

I have great agreement with the idea that the armed citizen needs to be armed to defend freedom and liberty. Those who would take our arms away are dangerous people and they must be defanged, beginning with Biden.

WinkyTink Loc: Hill Country, TX

I do have that right. Hopefully won't be going alone.

manning5 Loc: Richmond, VA

====================
Well, you focus on the weapons and not the people that use them. That is stupid, because a gun hasn't been known for running around k*****g and maiming without a user. It is the users we need to cope with, not the weapons themselves, as any rational person will agree. There are hundreds if not thousands of types of guns we could focus upon and it would be totally irrelevant to the problem. People k**l, not the guns themselves.

Name a gun, and I can show you how to k**l many people rapidly with it, even a single-shot Derringer. I'd just have to carry a few of them preloaded on my person, and more loaded in a simple carryon. Move up to a bolt-action rifle with 6 or 8 rounds in its magazine and more can fall fast, subject to the sk**ls of the shooter. Go further up to a semi-automatic rifle or pistol and it is faster yet to k**l. With an M-4 and full auto, even faster!

The point is, it is the shooter we need to stop, not a specific type of gun.

Gatsby

According to the Crime Prevention Research Center,4 97.8 percent of public shootings occur in ‘gun-free zones’

In one review11,12 of 484 drugs in the FDA’s database, 31 were found to account for 78.8 percent of all cases of violence against others, and 11 of those drugs were antidepressants.

The researchers concluded that violence against others was a “genuine and serious adverse drug event” and that of the drugs analyzed, SSRI antidepressants and the smoking cessation medication, varenicline (Chantix), had the strongest associations. The top-five most dangerous SSRIs were:13

Fluoxetine (Prozac), which increased aggressive behavior 10.9 times
Paroxetine (Paxil), which increased violent behavior 10.3 times
Fluvoxamine (Luvox), which increased violent behavior 8.4 times
Venlafaxine (Effexor), which increased violent behavior 8.3 times
Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), which increased violent behavior 7.9 times

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/97-8-of-mass-shootings-are-linked-to-this-4537542?autoemail=racnsc%40q.com&utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&utm_campaign=roundup&utm_term=

pescado rojo

You just are not that bright, are you? You actually think that a rifle's appearance has something to do with it's performance. It does not.
Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of. Refusing to have it corrected is. I am here to save you a little embarrassment. I'll send a bill later.
First, you say "people want these guns off the streets." That must be why well over 20 million of them have been sold.
I know this is hard for you, but there is an actual law enforcement source you can reference if you doubt what I'm saying. It's called the FBI. Everything I am telling you is in their official publications. (Links to follow).
https://www.usa.gov/crime-statistics
You will note my cites have .gov after them.
Scary looking rifles are used in less than 2% of the murders every year. This is not my opinion, this is fact taken from official FBI publications you can check for yourself.
Knives, clubs and bare hands account for more murders every year for the past twenty years than your scary looking rifles. Every. Year. Once more I provided the FBI stats above.
You cannot just "take the guns off the streets." This has nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment, but with Article I Sections 9 & 10 of the US Constitution, which forbids either State or Federal government from making ex post facto law. You probably don't know what that is. It means you cannot make something illegal retroactively, nor can you penalize someone for doing something that was legal when they did it.
The Clintoon gun ban absolutely exempted previously purchased firearms, magazines, etc.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript
Thompson machine guns are not prohibited, they are just heavily regulated.
When you say "silencer" you mean "suppressor." These do NOT make a firearm silent, except in the case of a small caliber weapon whose projectile is moving at a subsonic speed. Projectile speed, by the way, is not impacted by the presence of a suppressor. In heavily gun controlled Europe, in many areas, suppressors are required. They do not silence anything, they just make it less noisy in most cases.
It has never been illegal to cut off a shotgun barrel, as long as it is at least 18" long.
Firearms, except in a few states, could be t***sported all in one piece and usually loaded.
In the past 25 years, the US population has grown by over 60 million people. More than 100 million more firearms have found their way into private hands, more than 20 million of these are your scary looking rifles, and more than 20 million concealed carry permits have been issued. This doesn't count the 26 states who no longer require a permit to carry a concealed firearm.
The result is a murder rate that is about 30% lower than 25 years ago.
https://www.usa.gov/crime-statistics
These are facts, backed by US government statistics, not your less than knowledgeable opinions. You should hire someone to fact check for you since you seem unable to grasp the concept yourself.
Go ahead; try and prove me wrong. Provide some government or law enforcement statistics that contradict what said.
"Youz" have a nice day.
Oh, and by the way, you frequently use "youz." It's spelled "youse."

JR-57 Loc: South Carolina

“They want assault looking weapons like the AR15 off of the streets.”

Assault looking weapons?

With that type of reasoning; let’s take assault looking people of the streets.

Your many errors in thinking have been pointed out above by others.

Assault looking weapons. Amazing.

Over 393,000,000 firearms did not commit a crime yesterday, mine included.

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

Manning... first, I thought your OP was quite good..

But my reply is to the your comments to Milo... just to clear a point.. it always comes out.. that guns do not k**l it is the people, so blaming the guns is stupid..

In fact we, melosa, the dems and I do not blaime the guns.. You all misread what is posted.. It is the AVAILABILITY OF A STYLE OF GUN WHICH WE ARE MOST OPPOSED TO...

Now of course, I can not speak for Milo, nor anyone else.. but this particular oversight always makes my hair bristle, so an effort to clear up the point is long overdue to me..

permafrost Loc: Minnesota

In addition to the post I just finished.. It so often seems the shooters in these murderous attempts are very unsk**led. Lines such as over 40 shells casings found. wounded two people..

But perhaps I should only be grateful for the poor shooting sk**l of the perps.

skyrider

Jim, we all know that all of which you write is a result of kicking God out of the country, and specifically out of schools. It is just history repeating itself.

Jim0001 Loc: originally from Tennessee, now Virginia, USA

There are over 26K laws on the books concerning firearms. Firearms are the most regulated item in our society. The laws are ineffective if they are not enforced. Making another law to be ignored will not fix the societal problem that exists. Gun control boils down to one thing, it's not about guns, it is about control.

Full Automatic firearms while legal to own are out of the reach financially for the majority of Americans, prices begin in the five-figure range. Additionally, they can only be t***sferred through a class III federally licensed firearms dealer. That is after an arduous BATFE background check that even includes the local sheriff, and takes
six months to a year to complete. It also requires the purchase of a tax stamp from the treasury dept.

Incidentally, the same procedure is required to own a suppressor (or in Hollywood parlance, a silencer). Ridiculous because I have to have a muffler on my vehicles. No one has ever been murdered by a suppressor. I digress.

The people who commit the atrocities have all had a previously identified history of mental or behavioral issues. The families who are their "caretakers" are not caretakers but rather "enablers". They refuse to deal with the real issues these people have. A mother who carelessly leaves a firearm in reach of a six-year-old who shoots his teacher. A mother who allows her psychotic teenage son the use of an AR-15, A g****r dysphoria suffering female who shoots school children and the family stands by and says, "We didn't know". You see family members saying things like "he was such a good, loving boy, he only had a few misdemeanors". These are examples of society failing to take responsibility and then blaming an inanimate object.

I am a life-long firearm collector and none of mine have never harmed a human being while in my possession.
They just stand in the vault silently doing nothing and harming no one. They are a tool just like my John Deere which sits silently in the barn doing nothing until called upon to go to work.

Blame the finger, not the trigger. Leave criminals in jail and put those who break the laws in jail and seek help for those with mental issues.