Another US Campus mass shooting.
Discussion
creampuff said:
Oakey said:
Right now the likes of creampuff don't give a s
t because it doesn't affect them personally.
Quite a disingenuous comment based on your own sense of moral outrage that guns should actually be allowed, rather either of anything that I said or than the reality is they are allowed, so there must be a way to reduce accidental and intentional shootings, while recognising the reality that almost half of US households have guns, will continue to have guns and in the overwhelming majority of cases use them safely. t because it doesn't affect them personally. I draw your attention to this:
http://everytownresearch.org/reports/innocents_los...
which discusses accidental shooting by or of children. The 11yo shoots the 8yo is no accident, but an 11yo lacks the judgement and personal responsibility of an adult and so the same gun storage methods which keep guns away from children so they can't accidentally shoot anyone also stop them intentionally shooting someone. My 8yo niece with the 22 never gets to take it out without her dad supervising btw.
Here is an example of a shooting from that article:
"Just hours after enjoying a Christmas dinner of chicken and macaroni and cheese, a father in Conway, South Carolina turned to make a phone-call and his two-year-old boy picked up his loaded handgun from the living-room table and accidentally shot and killed himself."
It's stupid. It's a tragedy. It just didn't need to happen, just like the 11yo shooting an 8yo as reported on the BBC did not need to happen. You should never leave a loaded gun or a gun and ammunition around where children can get at it unsupervised.
The article above lists some pretty simple steps which would stop accidental or intentional child shootings happening, all of which seem like a good idea to me:
- States should adopt stronger laws to prevent children from accessing unsecured guns, by authorizing criminal charges if an adult gun owner stores his or her gun negligently, a child gains access to the firearm, and harm results.
- Congress should appropriate funds for research to improve public health surveillance of unintentional child gun deaths and to develop effective educational materials for promoting safe storage.
- Congress should earmark funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to evaluate and set standards for emerging technologies that promote gun safety, such as biometric gun safes.
- Doctors should be allowed and encouraged to promote gun safety, and efforts to gag physicians should be opposed.
- Greater awareness of the issue should be promoted through a national public education campaign enlisting law enforcement, corporate, and non-profit partners.
So it comes back to, what's the point in everyone having them around the house?
rohrl said:
The best way to avoid children shooting each other and themselves is of course to not have a gun in the house at all.
That is an unrealistic and unachievable objective. And there is nothing unsafe about a gun to which children don't have access. I assume you don't get bothered about walking around in the United Kingdom, because there are plenty of shotguns around.London424 said:
The thing with having guns locked in safes in a different part of the house etc. it then makes it a bit pointless when you need it 'to defend yourself from burglars/rape/death'.
So it comes back to, what's the point in everyone having them around the house?
You could get a gun out of a locked compartment in a few seconds. The other advantage is if you always put it in the locked compartment, you know where it is. As opposed to "oh crap, Big Bubba is breaking down my front door, I can't remember where I put my gun"So it comes back to, what's the point in everyone having them around the house?
creampuff said:
London424 said:
The thing with having guns locked in safes in a different part of the house etc. it then makes it a bit pointless when you need it 'to defend yourself from burglars/rape/death'.
So it comes back to, what's the point in everyone having them around the house?
You could get a gun out of a locked compartment in a few seconds. The other advantage is if you always put it in the locked compartment, you know where it is. As opposed to "oh crap, Big Bubba is breaking down my front door, I can't remember where I put my gun"So it comes back to, what's the point in everyone having them around the house?
Yes there are lots of shotguns about. But in the home they are locked away (unloaded, gun in one safe, ammo in another) because we don't feel the need to have them in our handbags, pants drawer or under the sofa cushion for self defence. Also, I defy a 2 year old to load, close, un-safety and aim a shotgun,and the size and weight means they won't be shooting themselves.
Yet suggest such a thing to America and everyone screams "but constitution". Surely it's common sense, but if not then where or why is there such an argument for legislation in a supposedly developed, intelligent first world country?
Yet suggest such a thing to America and everyone screams "but constitution". Surely it's common sense, but if not then where or why is there such an argument for legislation in a supposedly developed, intelligent first world country?
creampuff said:
London424 said:
Really? Where is the gun safe stored? Where do you put the keys?
I'm sure it is not beyond the wit of man to think of an accessible and lockable place to store firearms. OpulentBob said:
Yes there are lots of shotguns about. But in the home they are locked away (unloaded, gun in one safe, ammo in another) because we don't feel the need to have them in our handbags, pants drawer or under the sofa cushion for self defence. Also, I defy a 2 year old to load, close, un-safety and aim a shotgun,and the size and weight means they won't be shooting themselves.
There's no requirement for shotgun ammo to be stored separately in the UK, you can quite legally keep it right next to your shotgun. The two safes thing for firearms in the UK is, imho, because it is thought that it reduces the risk for both the gun and ammo to be stolen. You can also quite legally buy a small, light, child useable 410 shotgun in the UK. Saying you need separate safes to keep guns and ammo away from children is a furphy. A gun in a locked compartment either loaded or unloaded but with ammo present is just as unshootable for a child with no access to that compartment as a unloaded gun with no ammo. creampuff said:
London424 said:
Well my first thought would be to have a gun safe in the garage. How do I get a gun in seconds?
You sleep in your garage. If you treat your wife like the clueless halfwit that gun owners are described as in this thread, then she might make you sleep there. You either need a gun to hand (easy for kids etc to get hold of) or you have them tucked away safe and then not to hand when you need to defend yourself.
Gandahar said:
If you need a gun to protect yourself then I assume you also require a bulletproof vest. That would be a sensible precaution.
What is the number of bullet proof vests sold in the USA every year and what is the number of guns?
I'm not sure that most Americans buy guns for protection. I don't know anybody who says they buy guns for protection, though there will be plenty, just in a minority. IMHO most people buy guns because they like guns. The popular guns are not suitable for "protection". A 22 is one of the most popular guns. That's the last thing I'd use for an unfriendly encounter with Big Bubba. What is the number of bullet proof vests sold in the USA every year and what is the number of guns?
London424 said:
I'm honestly trying to see the logic here. They seem like diametrically opposed POV's though.
You either need a gun to hand (easy for kids etc to get hold of) or you have them tucked away safe and then not to hand when you need to defend yourself.
Well if I was living in a bad 'hood where I felt I needed a gun for protection, which I've never felt the need for then I'd guess I'd be putting it in an electronic combination safe next to the bed. So I can get at it in a hurry, you know, if Bad Bubba comes. You are going to have to get it from somewhere unless you carry it on your person, which seems a bit extreme if you are lounging around your house in sweatpants. You either need a gun to hand (easy for kids etc to get hold of) or you have them tucked away safe and then not to hand when you need to defend yourself.
Edited by creampuff on Tuesday 6th October 14:39
creampuff said:
Breadvan72 said:
Two points:
1 Why do the gun lobby always miss out the bit about a WELL REGULATED militia? Wandering about a school, shopping mall or whatever shooting down random dudes doesn't sound all that well regulated to me. No doubt creampuff, will tell me that I don't know anything about militias (despite studying them as part of a degree at a reasonably well thought of university) but, hey.
Don't ask me, we already worked out I'm an nutter gun toting ignoramus with no penis remember, what would I know? 1 Why do the gun lobby always miss out the bit about a WELL REGULATED militia? Wandering about a school, shopping mall or whatever shooting down random dudes doesn't sound all that well regulated to me. No doubt creampuff, will tell me that I don't know anything about militias (despite studying them as part of a degree at a reasonably well thought of university) but, hey.
Ask US Supreme Court Justice Scalia who in ruling on this specific meaning of militia said:
" The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” See J. Tiffany, A Treatise on Government and Constitutional Law §585, p. 394 (1867); Brief for Professors of Linguistics and English as Amici Curiae 3 (hereinafter Linguists’ Brief). Although this structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose. See generally Volokh, The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 793, 814–821 (1998)."
Three provisions of the Constitution refer to “the people” in a context other than “rights”—the famous preamble (“We the people”), §2 of Article I (providing that “the people” will choose members of the House), and the Tenth Amendment (providing that those powers not given the Federal Government remain with “the States” or “the people”). Those provisions arguably refer to “the people” acting collectively—but they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a “right” attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right.[Footnote 6]
What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. As we said in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 265 (1990):
“ ‘[T]he people’ seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution… . [Its uses] sugges[t] that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.”
This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”
We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.
There's more obviously, but you can read the full text of Justice Scalia's opinion, in the Heller case where it was found that US citizens DO have the right to INDIVIDUALLY bear arms here:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/57...
Edited by creampuff on Monday 5th October 20:48
Scalia, by the way, believes that the Devil is a real person active in the universe. Your judicial hero has some very odd notions. The Court divided along conservative vs liberal lines in its recent gun law decisions. The balance of the Court is likely to change in the next presidential term or two, and its decisions are not set in stone, so interesting times may lie ahead.
creampuff said:
And there is nothing unsafe about a gun to which children don't have access.
Except, maybe, desensitisation - familiarity, those things pro gun people alledge about violent movies and computer games. Take them out of society, maybe people will start to treat them with respect, as the dangerous things they are. I keep chainsaws on my lounge table. No petrol in them, so they're perfectly safe and my toddlers play with them all the time....(see where I'm going there ??)
I'm still struggling with the concept of 'safe, responsible gun use'. Surely, the best use of a gun is not to use it at all. And once you're using one (except for sporting target practise), the last thing they are is safe.
gavsdavs said:
Except, maybe, desensitisation - familiarity, those things pro gun people alledge about violent movies and computer games. Take them out of society, maybe people will start to treat them with respect, as the dangerous things they are.
I agree. Many of the people I worked with felt that the most unnerving thing about the 7/7 bombings was the proliferation of armed police in tube stations in the weeks following the attacks. They were apparently there to reassure the public but for most it seemed to have the opposite effect- as a nation we're so unused to seeing a gun that they can be genuinely unsettling. creampuff said:
London424 said:
Well my first thought would be to have a gun safe in the garage. How do I get a gun in seconds?
You sleep in your garage. If you treat your wife like the clueless halfwit that gun owners are described as in this thread, then she might make you sleep there. London424 said:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/tag/weekend-shootings/ That link is a week by week summary of 1 US city.
Holy fk!!!Jon321 said:
London424 said:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/tag/weekend-shootings/ That link is a week by week summary of 1 US city.
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