It was a college student with a history of mental illness who sauntered into a
gun shop, bought a couple guns and enough ammo to decimate Albert Hall. He
walked back to school, killed the girl who spurned him and then killed about 20
teachers and students. This just happened a year or two ago in Virginia. If the
kid had been forced to wait, maybe his judgement would have kicked, maybe
he would have sought help. Who knows? Where I live, I can walk into all kinds of
stores and buy a rifle, a bunch of ammo and tip my hat, “Good day to you Mr.
Gun Salesman!” How these people sleep at night is beyond me. I am not against
gun rights, but regulation of guns AND ammunition is a priority. Like illicit
drugs, some will slip through the cracks, but the point is to make it harder for
psychos to get guns and kill innocent people. It will never be possible to obtain
100% security, but we should do everything we can to move in that direction
without restricting people’s constitutional rights. Please see my previous
comment about the constitutionality of gun legislation. Every police department
in the country supports gun control legislation. These pro-gun tirades just
show how powerful the propaganda machine of the NRA is to delude people of
the dangers of unrestricted gun sales.

The statistical association of guns per capita with
murder, seems to have been derived from examples
found in a little book, published first in 1954,
written by Darrel Huff.  It is titled, “How to Lie
With Statistics.”  His examples have been widely
adopted by all branches of the USGov, the world-wide
pharma industry, and generally medicine in the USA,
especially “Oncology.”  Genuine statistical
associations are derived only via the appropriate
application of statistical procedures.

The basic element in assassinations such as in
Tucson, is to determine who planned it. In said case,
all precautions were taken to finger the trigger-
puller, AND NO ONE ELSE. Like the middle-aged man
seen with him just prior thereto,,, “who does not
exist.”  Similar to the 50ish man in the expensive
suit who forced NW Airlines to accept the Moslem
youth with explosives in his underpants, at Amsterdam
International Airport on Christmas day, 2009.  Which
man does not exist.  In the Tucson assassination,
extreme care was taken in the acquisition of the
Glock, so that it could be traced only to the dealer,
AND NO ONE ELSE. Instead of the trigger-puller having
been supplied with a Glock by acquaintances who
“disappear” afterwards. 

Perhaps the most evasive element is predicting what
an alleged “dangerous person” who owns a gun plans to
do with it.  Where are the statistics to associate
dangerous persons with the intent to murder, PRIOR TO
THE EVENT?  They do not exist, as this variable is
not definable, thus cannot be statistically
evaluated.  Was the policeman in Seattle who shot Mr.
Williams in cold blood in early January, identifiable
as a dangerous person?  Are all former soldiers
returning from the bloody murder fields in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere “classifiable”
due to their Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome - or much
worse mental state in many cases ? 

The bugle call for identifying “dangerous persons” in
order to prevent selling a gun to such persons sounds
noble.  At least up front, to naïve´ folk who are
impressed with superficiality.  However, the concept
is at best a conundrum, and at worst a non sequitur.
When a legal scholar such as Chief Judge of the U.S.
District Court for Arizona, John Roll, declares such
a clause in the Brady Gun Law to be unconstitutional,
it is a very complex issue that cannot be solved by a
petition signed by ten zillion sincere but naïve´ 
folk.  Nor by having such valuable scholars
assassinated, because they hinder the machinations of
the dishonest few who govern a nation.

I think Obama is trying to reach across the aisle yet again. Maybe with a GOP
majority in the House, they will be more amenable to compromise legislation on a
range of issues. Of course the atmosphere of dialogue and civility after Giffords
shooting is fading quickly. It reminds me of when President Reagan was shot, but
still fought against any restrictions on gun usage. Yes, the NRA calls the shots.

Yeah, and as the late Jeff Cooper once said, “You’re `outgunned’ only if you miss” ...

“Many of these criminals are outgunning our police officers,” Craig W. Floyd, chairman of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, told the Times. “We’re seeing criminals with high-velocity clips on their guns.”

He probably means magazine and he should know the difference.  And you don’t put a “high-velocity clip” on your gun.  You think a guy in his position would know that.

Just saw a headline from the WaPo which says the Egyptian military is telling protesters to “go home”. One wonders if “or else” is implied; that if the protests don’t end, the military will open fire ...

Better to have arms and not need them, than need arms and not have them. State militaries can’t be trusted.

AnnaCatherine, there are Obamazombies.  There’s really no hope them.  But I
enjoy giving them facts, imagining them, like a tea party zealots denying global
climate destabilization, getting enraged, spouting (and imagining) fantasy
attributes of their slick power pimp Obama.

“The strategic relationship between Egypt and the U.S. was bipartisan. When
President Barak Obama was asked by the BBC during his celebrated visit to
Egypt in June 2009, whether he regarded President Mubarak as an authoritarian
ruler, Obama answered with an emphatic “No.” Then he spelled out the
strategic value of Mubarak when he said, “He has been a stalwart ally in many
respects to the United States. He has sustained peace with Israel which is a very
difficult thing to do in that region.

On the same day, while Egypt’s security forces were killing, beating and
gassing the Egyptian people by the thousands, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
offered this flimsy reaction: “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is
stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests
of the Egyptian people.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/

But, almost certainly, Obamazombies will go back to thier thumb sucking,
erotic comfort zones, stroking their crush for their handsome and charming
abusive pimp, Obummer.  They will watch some more CNN, or other corporate
fascist media outlet (this includes PBS, NPR), willingly brainwashed into
believing the fantasy that the US is not the main supplier and supporter of
murder, torture and slave labor; the mercenary arm of the corporate rape and
pillage of our planet.  Then, they will self righteously send a donation in to their
corporate pimp, making believe that he really, really means what he says, no
matter what he does, or did say, or,,,,uh, do.

****************

Anyone paying attention in 2008 would have seen, heard or
detected o pledging his fealty and the whole support of the u.s.
not just to corporate america but also the american izraeli public
affairs committee. THAT was his true self and who and what HE
was going to be and the only 2 things anyone should have had to
know to keep them from voting for o.

So would that not correlate with the never ending issues, in this
country and the world, of no matter how much he went on and
on about any issue, how miraculously he sides with the few who
want to keep issues as they are or block any regulating of issues
or ‘appoint’ the very crooks who got the u.s. where it is today,
which are so plainly not in the interest of the citizens but the
interest of the few wealthy elite or dung or whatever name one
wants to use.

I won’t say to look for this in his 2012 campaign as all his
actions until today and into 2012 are what he will continue to be
and do until the next putz for the dung is elected. That is ‘fuck
the citizens’ and ‘what can I do for you’ to the dung who
continually pull his every string.

Amazes me also that the egyptians will revolt and protest, but in
in the american green pastures, sheeple lounge and munch on
the grass and maybe talk the egyptian language but we sure
don’t and won’t walk like and egyptian.

@aacme88     You got it perfectly

In so many ways, Obama is a colossal disappointment. This is probably true because people really believed the words of his election campaign. I would say that we were so hoodwinked because we wanted to finally believe in someone who would speak for the people after the self-serving, opportunistic vacuum of Bush. Can the people ever believe again?

After the ruthless, single-minded pro-business Bush administration, we expected someone to ruthlessly represent us in the same manner.

Once again in this department Obama is a bust.

Most public, paid intellectuals condone and even encourage all kinds of violence—look at the chorus in favor of the invasion of Iraq—so I don’t know why anti-intellectualism should be taken as a sign of a propensity to violence.

“If you want change, I suggest you start attacking the TV and movie culture than
glorifies guns.”

Good point and it raises an issue of glorification of the military to solve our
problems rather than peaceful means. We have a cowboy culture in much of our
country and a media that is filled with cops and robber shows that glorify guns.
Add to this the anti-intellectualism in those same parts of the country and you
have a recipe for even more tolerance of violence.

Alcohol does a lot more damage than guns. We tried prohibiting alcohol, and it didn’t work. Why does anyone think prohibiting guns will work? The business of “if we outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns” is drivel. I live in DC, which until the Heller case basically prohibited guns. Yet lots of people, otherwise law abiding, had them.

I am a progressive on most issues, and I urge my fellow progressives to get real. Gun control isn’t going to happen until and unless the culture changes. If you want change, I suggest you start attacking the TV and movie culture than glorifies guns.

Many years ago a home owner was tried and convicted
of murder.  The ‘murder?’  The man’s home had been
repeatedly broken into and robbed when the man wasn’t
there so he set up a gadget whereby anyone who broke
into (their favorite window, or door) would activate
the trigger of strategically placed guns and kill the
intruder.

Florida recently tried to enact a law (whether it did
or not, I don’t know) which would make it legal for
anyone accosted on a public street to shoot the
mugger.

Two examples of how far our gun laws have devolved
into the farcical.

Anyone else also have the “Front Sight Firearms Training Institute” advert on
display with this article?  I have both the “Keep guns out of the hands of
dangerous…” ad and a firearms training ad in the same frame.  No limit to the
absurdities of our silly economy.  Although I might have just outed myself as ads
are geared toward the cookies on your computer…

I agree, we should keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.  However, we need to start at the top, where the really big guns are, and work down from there.  Take guns—and bombs, rockets, drones, fighters, battleships and other death machines—out of the hands of politicians and other Great Leaders, who are mostly overt sociopaths.  Bring our soldiers home so they can give their weapons a nice rest in the company armory.  Eventually we’ll get down to the cops’ Glock 9s and shotguns—those which they haven’t sold to gangbangers.  The world will be a safer place.

All modern browsers inflict us with trash ads we
don’t want.  One pops up with Truthdig stories, a
solicitation to sign a petition, “Keep Guns Out of
the Hands of Dangerous People”.  Which appears to be
a very noble cause, initially.  However, defining
“dangerous people,” and establishing laws to identify
them, in a manner that can be enforced, is more than
a superficial solicitation to sign a quasi-
meaningless petition that looks noble up-front.

How is it possible to keep guns out of the hands of
drug-runners between Mexico and the US, whether
Mexicans or Americans?  Which group murdered over
35,000 people in 2010 ?  How is it possible to keep
guns out of the hands of Blackwater/Ex/etc
mercenaries, some of whom murder for fun?  Murder is
murder, whether JFKSr or an unknown Iraqi or Afghani. 
How is it possible to keep guns out of the hands of
Delta Force Assassins in the US Army?  Or an assassin
such as murdered Pat Tillman ?  Or a mentally-
deranged policeman, who murdered a vagrant man in
cold blood in early January in Seattle?

When Federal Judge John Roll declared such a clause
in the Brady Bill to be unconstitutional, he
carefully based the conclusion on legal precedent
within U.S. Constitutional law.  However, his
scholarly action may have resulted in his
assassination. 

The statistical association of guns per capita with
murder, seems to have been derived from examples
found in a little book, published first in 1954,
written by Darrel Huff.  It is titled, “How to Lie
With Statistics.”  His examples have been widely
adopted by all branches of the USGov, the world-wide
pharma industry, and generally medicine in the USA,
especially “Oncology.”  Genuine statistical
associations are derived only via the appropriate
application of statistical procedures.  The
explanation of the results of which procedures is
often not understood by folk who can`t do these
procedures.

Again, to state the obvious, ours is one of the most violent cultures on the
planet.We own more guns per capita, have more citizens in prison,more death in
the streets, make more profit from the manufacture and sale of weapon than any
nation on earth.In fact, the weapons industry is one of the pillars of our economic
strategy. We have instituted the right, via the archaic 2nd amendment, to possess
the tools of self and mass destruction of man. You get what you do in this life.
When you are motivated by fear in heart, self interest in your mind and a gun in
your hand, you get death in the streets. Congress or the Executive will never
challenge the gun (death) lobby in this country. Its too profitable. Its a tyranny of
cowardice.

For once, the man’s smart, as I see it. All Obama has to do is emit one little peep that sounds like “gun control”, and he’ll all but guarantee his ouster from the White House on January 20, 2013. Besides, he has a lot more grist to grind than gun control—think of the Overseas Empire, for one thing, looking more and more like a house of cards awaiting a good hard sneeze.

I don’t care what kind of gun control they have in NYC or Chicagoland or the entire state of California, as long as such stupid forms of gun control stay OUT of my beloved Georgia. Face facts—this is a big country, with lots of bickering, very different people, and its unity is becoming harder and harder to maintain. Leave us gun owners alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Fair?

And let me hasten to say I’m not a Repub or an NRA member—just a decent, law-abiding guy who wishes to be left alone to enjoy what few rights we have left in this country. I don’t like the wars or the Empire any more than anyone else here does—and I sure don’t like either the Repubs or the Demos.

I was totally disappointed, and I was a big Obama supporter.”

One by one ‘til there are none.

“I guess he was making his conciliation speech”

More of a concession speech.

“.. he is afraid… “

Very likely so.

Well, I personally, mrfreeze, am shocked—shocked!—that a Harvard lawyer is acting like a Harvard lawyer. I had fully expected him to come out talking like John Madden—boom, bam, look at the sweat lines on that big ass, folks—and outlawing guns and demanding electric cars and shutting down the Congressional Military Industrial Complex last week. 

So beyond bashing Obama with a tired old switch, let’s talk about another part of this issue. 

For one, we have the right to bear arms, which can be a hoe, a sword, a single shot musket loader or a rifle with a lethal range and accuracy of around a mile or so. Awesome. 

It is insane that we even have to argue over this nonsense but we also live in a country that has been in a perpetual state of war since 1941, which makes people paranoid, cuts down on money for public education, tends to make guns and more guns even more readily available to people who happen to know how to use them well because—did I mention our country is in a perpetual state of war?

The truly sad part is the debate stops where it does:  I have the right to bear arms and join a well-regulated militia, dammit! And by arms I extrapolate that to mean rifles that can blow the legs off a running elk at 200 yards, dammit!   

Thank Goodness hunters have not figured how many moose and grizzly bears they could take out with hand grenades! Then they wouldn’t have to bother with those troublesome hand cannons that bruise their perty little shoulders (you got a perty smile there, boy). 

And land mines—holy hot holes!—do you realize what ranchers could do about prairie dogs, foxes, coyotes if we would just let them have all the landmines they need! 

And—praise Goodness and pass the ammunition—if our country was not so senseless as to withhold surface-to-air missiles from our good citizens—do you realize how much fun those suckers would be when a flock of unpatriotic Canada Geese fly over dropping turds the size of Pomeranians on our fair cities? 

See. 

It’s a communist plot, I tell ya.

Yes, my friends, the really sad part is this country never even has serious debates about controlling guns on our own soil, much less taking serious steps to clean up weapons of individual destruction worldwide and really start pressing our allies, our enemies and our own agencies to stop selling weapons to every up-and-coming tyrant prince in a Royals Royce. 

Think about this:

How many people were killed in the Twentieth Century with nuclear weapons?  Yes. It’s a horrible number.

Now consider how many people were killed with weapons of individual destruction:  Machine guns, assault rifles, land mines, RPGs, SAMS, tanks, helicopter gunships and so forth. Yes. That’s a horribly larger number. 

Now think about why we dropped the nuclear bombs on Japan.  Ah, because it would have cost a million or so American lives to have taken Japan with troops—they had too many weapons of individual destruction, so we had to resort to the fat boys. 

That’s where I would go with this debate if you want to really twist Obama’s underwear:  Point out that the worldwide proliferation of weapons of individual destruction make it more likely that weapons of mass destruction will be used when push comes to Tugger Nuts. 

Thank you all for allowing me to waste my time here tonight.  One day, when I get real big, I’m gonna write me a book. 

Uh-huh.  I hear ya talking, baby.

Goodnight, John Boy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut up! 

Alright, which one of your turd-birds hid his Risperdal again? 

I’m just saying—

Oh, please stop with Obama bashing regarding guns. I hate guns as much as the next uber-liberal, but the problem is this…...

The battle against guns was lost decades ago and no matter how much carnage is enabled by the 2nd Amendment, we will forever be a nation of gun totting Neanderthals. If Obama got anything right it was his comment that Americans, the pussies that we are, will always clutch the bible and guns whenever the wind blows the wrong way.

In fact, whenever the Brady people, or any other anti-gun group opens up their mouths, huge numbers of guns are sold and mountains of money pour into the coffers of the NRA. Why would Obama fight that fight? It’s a waste of political capital.

Obama isn’t “backing down,” but you all are sure big talkers. What solutions do you have?

Well there is a piece of news!  Obama backs down just about always unless he is spewing at liberals.

Obama = COWARD!

aacme88: What you said. Perfect.

The phrase “Obama Backs Down” should just be permanently programmed on the headline machine. Is there a speed-dial type feature?