HOUSTON (AP) -- Companies, customers and others critical of Texas gun rights advocates who have brought military-style assault rifles into businesses as part of demonstrations supporting "open carry" gun rights now have a surprising ally: the National Rifle Association.
The advocates' actions in restaurants and other public places — part of a push for less restrictive gun laws, including legalizing the open carry of handguns — have prompted public criticism.
The NRA has long been a zealous advocate for gun owners' rights. But the group's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, has called the demonstrations counterproductive to promoting gun rights, scary and "downright weird."
The NRA said the demonstrations have "crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness."
"Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners. That's not the Texas way. And that's certainly not the NRA way," the NRA said in a statement posted on its website Friday.
The president and vice president of Open Carry Texas, one of the groups behind the recent demonstrations, did not return emails seeking comment late Monday.
But in a statement posted on its Facebook page, Open Carry Texas criticized the NRA, saying if the group doesn't retract its comments, Open Carry will have to withdraw its full support for the NRA.
"It is unfortunate that an organization that claims to be dedicated to the preservation of gun rights would attack another organization fighting so hard for those rights in Texas," Open Carry Texas said. "The more the NRA continues to divide its members by attacking some aspects of gun rights instead of supporting all gun rights, the more support it will lose."
Texas has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country, but openly carrying handguns remains illegal. Long guns like rifles can be carried openly but must be done so in a way that does not cause alarm. But gun holders can be charged with disorderly conduct if anyone around them feels threatened.
The activists' demonstrations, while peaceful, have upset some witnesses.
The Chipotle restaurant chain asked customers last month not to bring firearms into its stores after members of Open Carry Texas brought military-style assault rifles into one of its restaurants in the Dallas area.
The funny thing is, nowhere in there does the NRA state an intention to support legislation to deny the right to open carry.... Merely that these idiots carrying "ARs" into public venues are rude, and fething stupid.... And we all know that being rude is reason enough to draw the ire of Hannibal Lector
I doubt the NRA opposes open carry of long arms. Rather, they've decided that these open carry rallies are counter productive to their cause and want them to stop.
Has the NRA ever been particularly extremist? It's a bit of leap going from reasonable people have a right to own firearms to lets be donkey-caves and carry our AR-15s everywhere to scare the feth out of people.
It's one thing to be allowed to carry opening, another entirely to flaunt a firearm in a public space, especially in this cold dark age of mass shootings and what not.
The other threads gonna get locked, but even if it's legal to carry a loaded AR or AK with you into Walmart or Taco Bell or Arbys, it's an enormous douche move, like, a 26 out of 10 on the doucheometer.
trexmeyer wrote: Has the NRA ever been particularly extremist? It's a bit of leap going from reasonable people have a right to own firearms to lets be donkey-caves and carry our AR-15s everywhere to scare the feth out of people.
Some members have been rather publicly extremist. And the group certainly gives money to some extremist politicians to say and do extremist things.
You'd think people would learn from the alienation caused by those "Starbucks Appreciation Day" events that got held on a nearly weekly basis. Being a pest does not help the cause.
They've certainly been very combative for the last few decades. Other gun control groups have commented that the NRA is far more interested in fighting than in winning.
Part of the gun-rights battle is a PR battle. If you act like an ass people are going to think gun owners are asses and they will drop their support for them.
HOUSTON (AP) — The National Rifle Association has rolled back an earlier statement criticizing "open carry" rallies in Texas in which gun rights advocates have brought military-style assault rifles into public places.
Chris Cox, the executive director of the group's lobbying arm, said in an interview Tuesday on an NRA-hosted radio show that the statement was "a mistake" and that it was written by a staffer who was expressing his personal opinion.
"The truth is, an alert went out that referred to this type of behavior as 'weird' or somehow not normal, and that was a mistake. It shouldn't have happened," said Cox, who added that the group "unequivocally" supports open carry laws.
The open carry rallies in restaurants and other businesses — part of a push for less restrictive gun laws, including legalizing the open carry of handguns — have prompted public criticism, and the NRA appeared to join in last week.
The statement appeared on the website of the group's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, saying that the demonstrations were counterproductive, scary and "downright weird."
"Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners. That's not the Texas way. And that's certainly not the NRA way," the unsigned statement said. It remained on the NRA's website early Wednesday.
Open Carry Texas, one of the groups behind the recent demonstrations, had said if the NRA didn't retract the statement, Open Carry would withdraw its full support for the NRA.
Tov Henderson, an Open Carry member, told WFAA-TV in Dallas that the group's clarification was refreshing.
"Getting the clarification from them that it wasn't an official stance and that it was just a low-level employee ... it makes sense," Henderson said.
Texas has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country, but openly carrying handguns remains illegal. Long guns like rifles can be carried openly but must be done so in a way that does not cause alarm. But gun holders can be charged with disorderly conduct if anyone around them feels threatened.
The open carry demonstrations, while peaceful, have upset some witnesses.
The Chipotle restaurant chain asked customers last month not to bring firearms into its stores after members of Open Carry Texas brought military-style assault rifles into one of its restaurants in the Dallas area.
Shame that the NRA back pedaled on this. I fully support people exercising their Second Amendment rights, but walking around with a long gun on a sling when buying a burrito is just going to alienate people and give those in favour of gun control more metaphorical ammunition
Shame they changed their mind on this. Even if you support the right to keep firearms (and I broadly do) I would have thought that the only reason for a weapon to be ‘drawn’ was if you where planning to use it, or at least threatening to do so. It’s a hostile act and the authorities should have every reason to treat it as such.
trexmeyer wrote: Has the NRA ever been particularly extremist? It's a bit of leap going from reasonable people have a right to own firearms to lets be donkey-caves and carry our AR-15s everywhere to scare the feth out of people.
Its only extremist in the eyes of lefty tree huggers and evil forenners who are secretly agents of Hydra.
But man the amount of junk mail they send you is...impressive.
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Ouze wrote: The other threads gonna get locked, but even if it's legal to carry a loaded AR or AK with you into Walmart or Taco Bell or Arbys, it's an enormous douche move, like, a 26 out of 10 on the doucheometer.
Its the selfie crowd on Youtube who finally found a way to get maximize the number of hits they get. Watching the CHilis and Sonic videos they made, its clear that theya re absolute morons who are just seeking attention.
There is a lot of discussion on Texas threads that they might be plants from the antigunners. Their antics are that stupid and strangely timed at the same time that OC of pistols had a real chance of passage in the Texas legislature this year.
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LuciusAR wrote: Shame they changed their mind on this. Even if you support the right to keep firearms (and I broadly do) I would have thought that the only reason for a weapon to be ‘drawn’ was if you where planning to use it, or at least threatening to do so. It’s a hostile act and the authorities should have every reason to treat it as such.
This can only lose them support.
They didn't change their mind. Both the TSRA and NRA have disavowed these groups (comprising all of about ten people it seems).
If the NRA is backpedaling from this then it seems like a clear case of "money talks"...
As for "possible plants": I can name 4 people on my shift that would be dumb enough to act that way and who support people like that. So I don't think you need fakes to do the job these idiots are doing.
Overall I think that certain gun-owners and pro-gun folks are doing a greater job demonizing guns than the anti-gun crowd could wish for.
d-usa wrote: If the NRA is backpedaling from this then it seems like a clear case of "money talks"...
As for "possible plants": I can name 4 people on my shift that would be dumb enough to act that way and who support people like that. So I don't think you need fakes to do the job these idiots are doing.
Overall I think that certain gun-owners and pro-gun folks are doing a greater job demonizing guns than the anti-gun crowd could wish for.
The crazed OCers are about 12 people in total, so no I don't think its a case of "Money walks"
d-usa wrote: Part of the gun-rights battle is a PR battle. If you act like an ass people are going to think gun owners are asses and they will drop their support for them.
The NRA recognizes that.
This. This exactly. The NRA wants the debate to be more "polished" and less "bat gak crazy".
d-usa wrote: If the NRA is backpedaling from this then it seems like a clear case of "money talks"...
As for "possible plants": I can name 4 people on my shift that would be dumb enough to act that way and who support people like that. So I don't think you need fakes to do the job these idiots are doing.
Overall I think that certain gun-owners and pro-gun folks are doing a greater job demonizing guns than the anti-gun crowd could wish for.
The crazed OCers are about 12 people in total, so no I don't think its a case of "Money walks"
And how many people are supporting them?
If it is just a fraction of the people that are pissed at restaurants that just recently banned OC in their establishment it would mean it's a sizable number.
Why is the NRA backpedaling then?
d-usa wrote: And how many people are supporting them?
For the gun blogs I frequent, very few. It s just that the few are vocal
d-usa wrote: If it is just a fraction of the people that are pissed at restaurants that just recently banned OC in their establishment it would mean it's a sizable number.
People are pissed with restaurants not allowing open carry because (a) many restaurants have bowed to pressure from Bloomberg's $50-million-bought-grass-roots-campaign, (b) because the restaurants forbade all firearms and not just long guns
My guess would be the vocal minority causing trouble and saying that the NRA is not supporting their right to bear arms. Also calling your supporters "weird" has a tendency to alienate them
If a business can request that someone wear a shirt and shoes, it can request that someone not bring a gun onto their property, unless the crazy "they're going to take our gusn away" conspiracy, now includes the typical business owner.
If this is a vocal minority, and people agree that it's distasteful to walk into a business and start flashing a firearm, maybe the minority should be the target of your ire, since they're the reason you can't bring a gun to Chipotle anymore. The NRA is making the right call for the cause*. These idiots make guns rights advocates look crazy, something that guns rights advocates have to contend with enough as it is. The NRA shouldn't care about splitting them and their supporters from its base as they're being counter productive to the NRA's mission and the mission of guns rights.
Saying "we have to put up with these fethers because we don't want to split the base" is nonsense. Keeping them around is going to turn the middle ground against you because while that middle ground can get behind the idea of open carry in general, the idea of seeing people walking around in public with rifles all the time just cause scares the gak out of them and it should. That's some rather bizarre and weird behavior for a person to be engaging in. Who goes out for Friday night diner at TGIF and thinks "better bring my hunting rifle with me."
EDIT: You should cull the crazy from your base. They're not helping. Who cares if they withdraw their support? Everyone else thinks they're crazy and a minority.
*And that's what I get for not catching up on the topic since I first read about it. And here I was hoping the NRA was finally going to grow some balls and say enough is enough XD
d-usa wrote: If the NRA is backpedaling from this then it seems like a clear case of "money talks"...
As for "possible plants": I can name 4 people on my shift that would be dumb enough to act that way and who support people like that. So I don't think you need fakes to do the job these idiots are doing.
Overall I think that certain gun-owners and pro-gun folks are doing a greater job demonizing guns than the anti-gun crowd could wish for.
The crazed OCers are about 12 people in total, so no I don't think its a case of "Money walks"
And how many people are supporting them?
If it is just a fraction of the people that are pissed at restaurants that just recently banned OC in their establishment it would mean it's a sizable number.
Why is the NRA backpedaling then?
I never understood 'open carry'. Isn't the 'power' of allowing average citizens to carry firearms is that they are concealed out of sight so while only one out of 100 may have a concealed weapon, it could be literally anyone... hence the deterrent.
If the people who have the weapons are wearing them out in the open... the gun has lost its power. Not only does it make them a target to be 'shot first' when they clearly won't be expecting it, but it doesn't deter the crime, simply makes it so the crime potentially happens when the person leaves. In fact... if you see who has a gun, you can attack them and get the gun from them when they are not expecting it.
In Arizona, I saw a 400lb fat woman with a holstered pistol. Anyone could have walked up to her, knocked her to the ground and taken her gun with literally no effort. She was not at all vigilant either. One hand on an ice cream cone and the other with a toddler on a leash. How was her strapping on a gun and wearing it as open carry doing anyone a damn bit of good?
Maybe if she had it concealed, a criminal would expect her not to have one and she could have stopped a crime and saved her family, but the way she was, she was a liability to herself and everyone around her.
I simply don't understand why people want 'open carry' unless they intend to use it to intimidate people and then I question their motives.
The NRA would have done better if they didn't say anything. Backing off their statement just makes them look stupid and people who are critical of the "Ima gonna bring my tacticool super rifle to McDs" idiots will now have less reason to care about a group that panders to them.
These guys are causing more harm than good with their drama-queen approach of open carrying. They have caused setbacks for the general 2A movement with their confrontational tactics. I mean, look at some of these idiots, they look like unwashed, unkempt anti-social misfits - people Id expect to see at a comicon rather than at a range:
These are people in desperate need of attention, using 2A as a vehicle to get some. No more, no less. This video about sums it up:
nkelsch wrote: I never understood 'open carry'. Isn't the 'power' of allowing average citizens to carry firearms is that they are concealed out of sight so while only one out of 100 may have a concealed weapon, it could be literally anyone... hence the deterrent.
If the people who have the weapons are wearing them out in the open... the gun has lost its power. Not only does it make them a target to be 'shot first' when they clearly won't be expecting it, but it doesn't deter the crime, simply makes it so the crime potentially happens when the person leaves. In fact... if you see who has a gun, you can attack them and get the gun from them when they are not expecting it.
In Arizona, I saw a 400lb fat woman with a holstered pistol. Anyone could have walked up to her, knocked her to the ground and taken her gun with literally no effort. She was not at all vigilant either. One hand on an ice cream cone and the other with a toddler on a leash. How was her strapping on a gun and wearing it as open carry doing anyone a damn bit of good?
Maybe if she had it concealed, a criminal would expect her not to have one and she could have stopped a crime and saved her family, but the way she was, she was a liability to herself and everyone around her.
I simply don't understand why people want 'open carry' unless they intend to use it to intimidate people and then I question their motives.
It is true. It is a better deterrent when the gun is concealed. And frankly I think concealed carry should be an easy to obtain license anyone without a felony can get for free.
Open carry also doesn't have to mean its obvious. openly flaunting a weapon is bad news, but than again I think you should have a right to do it. As much as you have a right to wear hideous outfits, pierce your body with outlandish amounts of metal, and generally act like an ass. It should be allowed, but that doesn't mean its a good idea.
It also shouldn't count as being concealed if the weapon is not on your person. So if a woman had a gun in her purse she wouldn't need a CCL to have it there. She would only need it if it was in a holster on her body.
People want open carry because its a statement that they are demanding their 2nd amendment rights not be infringed. Its no different to other civil rights demonstrations of the past, such as sit-ins. You do something you wouldn't normally do so you can get the right to do what you want to do(I doubt many of the participants of the sit-ins would actually want to order food at whatever restaurant they were sitting in on at the time. It was a stand on principle)
Meme: either "Pinky and the Stupid" or "the Man from Golden Corral " Why am I afraid fatty's going to blow his own balls off before the weekend is out? Is it me or is that tacticool rifle that shaved Gimli is holding bigger than he is?
Meme: "This why we can't have nice things" or "OREOS: so good they need an armed escort."
Also this is what happens when neckbeards get some of the good stuff in Texas. Sometimes you just get the munchies.
Frazzled wrote: Meme: either "Pinky and the Stupid" or "the Man from Golden Corral " Why am I afraid fatty's going to blow his own balls off before the weekend is out? Is it me or is that tacticool rifle that shaved Gimli is holding bigger than he is?
I think it might be. And If he blew them off, that might be the first time he saw them in years Also, Tacticool, I have seen that thrown around, what does it mean?
Tacticool is where you take something and throw crap on it to make it more cool. Its for people who go around calling themselves "operator" Theze are the guys who dress out in genuine Chinese BDUs, and buy AKs and pout lights, sights, laser sights, can openers, and aything else they can find on them.
Tacticool is also in parallel with "shopping mall ninja"
Here's a good google search. I'd attach but I can't photobucket at work
Open carry also doesn't have to mean its obvious. openly flaunting a weapon is bad news, but than again I think you should have a right to do it. As much as you have a right to wear hideous outfits, pierce your body with outlandish amounts of metal, and generally act like an ass.
I think there is, in fact, a difference between openly carrying an item that can escalate a conflict to lethal levels in a matter of seconds and having bad taste.
It also shouldn't count as being concealed if the weapon is not on your person. So if a woman had a gun in her purse she wouldn't need a CCL to have it there. She would only need it if it was in a holster on her body.
I don't understand the distinction. Is this because it would take longer to dig into your purse for your firearm than to draw from a holster on your body?
Guys can old carry and look threatening because it's the law.
Somebody else can shoot them because they looked threatening because it's the law.
Rinse, repeat, problem solved.
Open carry also doesn't have to mean its obvious. openly flaunting a weapon is bad news, but than again I think you should have a right to do it. As much as you have a right to wear hideous outfits, pierce your body with outlandish amounts of metal, and generally act like an ass.
I think there is, in fact, a difference between openly carrying an item that can escalate a conflict to lethal levels in a matter of seconds and having bad taste.
Maybe, but we have yet to see any evidence that open carry causes conflicts to escalate. There have been no "wild west" style shoot outs in grocery stores or parking lots because someone was carrying.
About that yeah... It's more a thing where they (or at least, many of them) think that "Ohh, Special Forces guys use this, it's gonna make me shoot so much more better!!"
I mean, if some magazine publishes that a member of SEAL Team 6 uses pink fluffy bunny ear muffs for his hearing protection, then suddenly "pink fluffy bunny ear muffs" are gonna see a spike in sales, because the "tacticool" idiots think they need it.
Frazzled wrote: Tacticool is where you take something and throw crap on it to make it more cool. Its for people who go around calling themselves "operator"
Theze are the guys who dress out in genuine Chinese BDUs, and buy AKs and pout lights, sights, laser sights, can openers, and aything else they can find on them.
Tacticool is also in parallel with "shopping mall ninja"
Here's a good google search. I'd attach but I can't photobucket at work
Frazzled wrote: Tacticool is where you take something and throw crap on it to make it more cool. Its for people who go around calling themselves "operator" Theze are the guys who dress out in genuine Chinese BDUs, and buy AKs and pout lights, sights, laser sights, can openers, and aything else they can find on them.
Tacticool is also in parallel with "shopping mall ninja"
Here's a good google search. I'd attach but I can't photobucket at work
Grey Templar wrote: It is true. It is a better deterrent when the gun is concealed. And frankly I think concealed carry should be an easy to obtain license anyone without a felony can get for free.
I agree, generally. I have no issue with being required to show some basic education and competency for ccw which quite a few states do not require, but some others take this way too far and have too lengthy of waits, imo.
I'm not super familiar with the P90. How does the second magazine work on this? Does it feed into the first, making it a kind of halfass drum mag, or does it allow quick changes, like those utterly ridiculous star shaped NY AR mags?
Frazzled wrote: Meme: either "Pinky and the Stupid" or "the Man from Golden Corral "
Why am I afraid fatty's going to blow his own balls off before the weekend is out?
Is it me or is that tacticool rifle that shaved Gimli is holding bigger than he is?
Emperor on Terra what did that monster do to that SKS?
I might have heard the most sensible description of guns by the media on NPR today when they were talking about thee guys. They used the term "semi-automatic civilian versions of military style assault weapons". It almost made me shed a tear.
5 minutes later they talked about the court house shooter and his assault weapons and ruined it...
Ouze wrote: I'm not super familiar with the P90. How does the second magazine work on this? Does it feed into the first, making it a kind of halfass drum mag, or does it allow quick changes, like those utterly ridiculous star shaped NY AR mags?
The second mag allows for a faster reload. When the first magazine is empty you remove the magazine and flip it over to the fresh magazine. The magazines do not feed into one another, in fact the leading round in the second magazine can be seen just behind the Eotech sight
Ahtman wrote: All I really know about the p90 is that they were really popular in Goldeneye multiplayer.
I first seen it in Counter Strike (when it was bundled with Half Life, and on disc). I've been fascinated with it since then because of it's design and the fact that it was so different to many other firearms.
Ahtman wrote: All I really know about the p90 is that they were really popular in Goldeneye multiplayer.
I first seen it in Counter Strike (when it was bundled with Half Life, and on disc). I've been fascinated with it since then because of it's design and the fact that it was so different to many other firearms.
I just remember the p90 from one of the Call of Duty games... and dual-wielding that was epic.
Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor wrote:Target goes gun-free, becoming biggest US retailer asking customers to disarm
Moms Demand Action has launched online petitions against corporations after members of open-carry groups brought loaded assault-style firearms into stores. In the case of Target, 400,000 signatures were collected.
The decision by Target, one of America’s largest retailers, to ask its customers to please not carry firearms to its stores anymore marks another surprising victory for gun control groups, which have rallied for attention and impact after the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.
Moms Demand Action, a part of the Everytown for Gun Safety consortium, which is funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now has six notches in its belt after targeting major corporations with online petitions and protests. In the case of Target, 400,000 signatures were collected. Chili’s, Starbucks, Chipotle, Sonic, and Jack in the Box have all responded to petitions by specifically asking customers to shop and/or eat unarmed.
Target is by far the biggest retailer to date to concede to the demands of Moms Demand Action. Target’s competitor Wal-Mart is the country’s largest firearms seller and has noted that it doesn’t plan to make any policy changes on gun carry.
The petitions have come in response to demonstrations by so-called open-carry groups where members bring loaded assault-style firearms into stores. Those tactics have sparked a rare public backlash against public gun carry and introspection among gun owners in a country where states recently have, on the whole, pushed laws strengthening gun and self-defense rights.
To be sure, gun rights groups point out that some recent corporate policy changes are meaningless since they don’t actually ban guns, but simply request nicely that customers don’t bring them. But after the pressure on corporations like Starbucks and now Target to change their policy on guns, it’s clear that what Moms Demand Action calls its “common-sense” approach on the Second Amendment is winning converts, and at least shifting the weight slightly on the long-running tug of war between pro-gun lobbyists like the National Rifle Association and gun control and antiviolence organizations.
“Moms everywhere were horrified to see images of people carrying loaded assault rifles down the same aisles where we shop for diapers and toys,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, after Target’s announcement Wednesday. “... Target recognized that moms are a powerful customer base and political force – and you can respect the 2nd Amendment and the safety of customers at the same time."
The open-carry demonstrations and ensuing petitions have been discomfiting for US corporations, which have in the past mostly allowed local ordinances to dictate whether customers could bring guns to their stores. Target, especially, is in a tough spot after alienating some of its customer base with its handling of a massive data breach that took place around Thanksgiving last year.
Coming out with an antigun policy is a potentially risky move that could alienate large swaths of the buying public. But in the end, Target could have been more worried about the effects of a month-long #OffTarget social media campaign, urging mothers to shop at other stores until Target changed its policy. The retailer’s stock price rose slightly Wednesday on the news.
“This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create,” Target interim CEO John Mulligan said on the company blog. “[S]tarting today we will … respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.”
Target has 1,700 stores in the United States and made about $70 billion in revenue last year. It doesn’t sell firearms.
The NRA, in a blog post in May, chastised open-carry demonstrations as “weird” and ultimately damaging to gun rights. But chief NRA lobbyist Chris Cox later walked back those comments, saying that calling open-carry protests “weird or somehow not normal was a mistake.”
After Target’s announcement, at least some gun owners acknowledged that the move suggests gun control groups are winning this battle.
“They have been generating outrage and delivering it to companies who will listen. We have been sitting on blogs complaining about [Open Carry Texas], open carry, the state of Texas, and anything else we can think of to make ourselves feel superior while the antis were – quite effectively – lobbying for a policy change,” writes “Dave,” a commenter on the well-read “Shall Not Be Questioned” blog. “Their strategy was superior. [T]hat’s a bitter pill, but the fact is the other side beat us at a game we have traditionally owned.”
CAMP SHELBY, MS - The Army’s Warrior Leader Course is a big step in a soldiers’ progression to Staff Sergeant. Sergeants take part in field leadership exercises, physical training, and operations. But for Sergeant Nathan Brown, his behavior at the course means he’ll have to try again.
Brown, an Infantryman (11B) from 155BCT, was attending the Warrior Leader Course to further his career and make himself eligible for promotion. His record was impeccable until a recent exercise at the Urban Operations (MOUT) town. He was armed with twenty blank rounds — already expended moments after the exercise began. When tasked with clearing a room, he went with the only option he had left – his knife hands.
Administrative specialist SPC Katherine Young was present the day that SGT Brown lost control.
“It was horrible. I was playing OPFOR. I thought it would be fun to yell ‘safety kill’ as someone came in the room. I had no idea what SGT Brown was capable of. I thought he was such a sweet man.” Young stops to wipe away tears at this point and continued, “He did a flying bicycle kick against the door, knocking it off the hinges. After that he turned to me with this look in his eyes: the only way to describe it is blood lust. I looked down and saw he had his knife hands at the ready.”
At this point, SGT Brown was heading straight for Young, knife hands fully unsheathed.
“I didn’t know what to do. I just started screaming for help. ‘Someone please stop him’ I yelled over and over. It was no use; he attacked me uncontrollably with those terrible, terrible, killing machines.”
The TMC at Camp Shelby treated SPC Young for minor wounds. She was returned to duty the same day, but with stipulations. TMC Doctor COL Bob Gearhart commented, “She’s a brave soul, having gone through such trauma and still being willing to return to duty. While her physical wounds are superficial, the mental wounds inflicted by knife hands can sometimes be more traumatizing and may stay with her for her entire life.”
SSG Bagely, an instructor at the 3rd NCO Academy issued the following statement on behalf of the Academy:
“What happened here was truly tragic. Knife hands are a dangerous tool that should be used only in the most dire of situations. We here at the 3rd NCO Academy do not tolerate this kind of behavior and are deeply sorry for the trauma that has been caused to the other soldiers enrolled in the course. The situation is currently under investigation and will be resolved as soon as possible.”
SGT Brown was unable to comment at the time of this publication as he is in the custody of the Camp Shelby PMO awaiting a military hearing. SPC Young is currently in counseling for Post Traumatic Stress.
Target can ask all it wants. I have a valid Virginia concealed carry permit, and Virginia law allows me to ignore their request and carry concealed in Target stores to my heart's content.
Seaward wrote: Target can ask all it wants. I have a valid Virginia concealed carry permit, and Virginia law allows me to ignore their request and carry concealed in Target stores to my heart's content.
Do they have to give you access to their store? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not sure if being a large store means they count as public sort of, or if they are a store so they count as private and therefore can ask you to leave for whatever reason they want.
motyak wrote: Do they have to give you access to their store? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not sure if being a large store means they count as public sort of, or if they are a store so they count as private and therefore can ask you to leave for whatever reason they want.
Nope.
But, having carried concealed for quite a while now, I've never had anyone even once notice that I'm doing so, so I'm fairly confident that the eighteen year-olds at the checkout counters aren't going to pick up on it, either.
motyak wrote: Do they have to give you access to their store? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not sure if being a large store means they count as public sort of, or if they are a store so they count as private and therefore can ask you to leave for whatever reason they want.
Nope.
But, having carried concealed for quite a while now, I've never had anyone even once notice that I'm doing so, so I'm fairly confident that the eighteen year-olds at the checkout counters aren't going to pick up on it, either.
Good point, the whole idea of CC is that someone can't see it. So...how would they know.
But, having carried concealed for quite a while now, I've never had anyone even once notice that I'm doing so, so I'm fairly confident that the eighteen year-olds at the checkout counters aren't going to pick up on it, either.
And even if he notices it... it's an 18 year old kid. His only priority is to pay as little attention as possible through his entire shift, because all he wants to do is go home and play minecraft. He's not going to make a scene if you're not making a scene.
Seaward wrote: Target can ask all it wants. I have a valid Virginia concealed carry permit, and Virginia law allows me to ignore their request and carry concealed in Target stores to my heart's content.
Do they have to give you access to their store? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not sure if being a large store means they count as public sort of, or if they are a store so they count as private and therefore can ask you to leave for whatever reason they want.
Basically speaking, from what I've seen/gathered (and this depends on your locale) ANY company can put up a sign that reads "please no guns" or "no guns allowed"... But unless they are backed by law, and you have a carry permit (some places it's for any carry, not just concealed) , you can carry into that establishment... This means all those Chipotle, Starbucks and Targets of the world are still open for you to carry in. Of course, the usual places where you cannot carry no matter what still apply (banks, gov't buildings and the like)
The thing is, if an employee/manager/security sees you carrying (if it's conceal carry, you're not doing it right if they do see) and asks you to leave, you DO then have a legal obligation to leave at that point, otherwise you are trespassing.
Seaward wrote: Target can ask all it wants. I have a valid Virginia concealed carry permit, and Virginia law allows me to ignore their request and carry concealed in Target stores to my heart's content.
Do they have to give you access to their store? I'm genuinely asking, I'm not sure if being a large store means they count as public sort of, or if they are a store so they count as private and therefore can ask you to leave for whatever reason they want.
Basically speaking, from what I've seen/gathered (and this depends on your locale) ANY company can put up a sign that reads "please no guns" or "no guns allowed"... But unless they are backed by law, and you have a carry permit (some places it's for any carry, not just concealed) , you can carry into that establishment... This means all those Chipotle, Starbucks and Targets of the world are still open for you to carry in. Of course, the usual places where you cannot carry no matter what still apply (banks, gov't buildings and the like)
The thing is, if an employee/manager/security sees you carrying (if it's conceal carry, you're not doing it right if they do see) and asks you to leave, you DO then have a legal obligation to leave at that point, otherwise you are trespassing.
It depends on the state. IN some states simple gunbuster signs are enough. In Texas you have to put up a very specific and very obnoxious sign.
The wife however is from Chicago. They have a more flexible view of laws.
SWMBO: " They're opening a new Sprouts (hippy treehugger grocery store) right by us. Hurray!"
Frazzled: "I'll never step inside it. They are unabashedly 30.06 (sign type required by law)"
SWMBO: "Don't sass me boy. Signs are merely guidelines."
Frazzled: "yes dear."
the Reason the NRA backed off is because the people keeping them afloat are these type of people.
I can understand concealed or open carry of a hand-gun. I can understand owning these rifles for sport shooting.
But why would you bring one of those into a target? How is that more safer then another gun? Not only that, but the way I see these idiots carry it, it looks like the perfect angle and height to reach a little kids head.
Trust me, that is going to happen some day soon.
Seaward wrote: Target can ask all it wants. I have a valid Virginia concealed carry permit, and Virginia law allows me to ignore their request and carry concealed in Target stores to my heart's content.
Part of my feels that Target is studiously not taking a side on this, and both sides are claiming victory. Besides, don't they have to display a no guns sign for this to have any legal force?
Frazzled wrote: In gun circles, especially on the Texas side, there is a very large group of people that believe at least some of these guys are antigunner plants.
This has been mentioned by a few people across several gun sites. OCT are just the gift that keeps on giving.... to the gun control crowd
d-usa wrote: Why worry about Brady and Co. when those idiots do all the work for them...
Because one group is undermining the pro-gun position, the others are spreading mis-information and skewing facts to mislead public opinion. They are both working toward the same end, regardless of intention
**edited for potential confusion from use of "your" **
d-usa wrote: Why worry about Brady and Co. when those idiots do all the work for them...
Seriously. In my circles* I don't know anyone that supports what those jackwagons did. They just give pro 2nd side a bad name.
*I'm a moderator on a gun forum, so it's not just a close group of friends.
Agree here. I was actually proud when the NRA spoke against it, and then saddened with they retracted their stance.
I think Open Carry of handguns is fine. I don't think open carry of rifles makes any sense. I think we should be able to own whatever the feth we want, but there's literally no functional reason to carry your rifle around with you.
Not to mention half these fools have so much gak on their rifles that I have trouble believing they use them regularly.
Breotan wrote:One of the posters on the blog I linked to at the bottom of the quoted article made this observation...
That really does show how the rifle-OC people are more 2nd-Amend cosplayers
They definitely look like MLG COD players doing their best to try and become a 2nd Amendment cosplayer. Mimicing the silliness of some "private contractors" and the awkwardness of a forever on the FOB warrior is hilarious and sad. Try carring that stuff for hours on end. They might realize that the people they wish they were, prefer minimum junk on their weapon. Optic and maybe a flashlight...maybe.
If you want to OC like they way that those guys are. Try enlisting into the service and doing it for real. Actually no...please do not. The last thing the military needs is more people like that.
Also who the hell wears their weapon slung at the low ready like that? Its just going to slap you in the nuts the whole time you are walking.
Here is everybody else <--------------------------------------------------
What has Brady actually accomplished in regards to gun rights over the last decade?
What have these guys managed to accomplish in regards to gun rights in the last year alone?
More private businesses are now anti-carry because of those idiots and more people see gun owners as idiots because of those guys. They even managed to use their influence to drag the credibility of the NRA down with them. There have not been that many gun-restrictions passed, and more pro-gun laws were passed in the last decade than anti-gun. Laws expired and others were overturned.
Brady is a well known group of idiots that twist statistics to try to make their point and influence legislation. But other than legislators hardly anybody even knows what they are saying or pays any attention to them. These idiots are on the news a lot, people know about "those idiots that just run around everywhere with their assault rifles".
Automatically Appended Next Post: And more stupid news:
d-usa wrote: Why worry about Brady and Co. when those idiots do all the work for them...
Seriously. In my circles* I don't know anyone that supports what those jackwagons did. They just give pro 2nd side a bad name.
*I'm a moderator on a gun forum, so it's not just a close group of friends.
Agree here. I was actually proud when the NRA spoke against it, and then saddened with they retracted their stance.
I think Open Carry of handguns is fine. I don't think open carry of rifles makes any sense. I think we should be able to own whatever the feth we want, but there's literally no functional reason to carry your rifle around with you.
Not to mention half these fools have so much gak on their rifles that I have trouble believing they use them regularly.
Open carry makes perfect sense in the areas its traditionally used.
*Rural environments
*Your own land
*When travelling.
People might not be used to open carrying, but I think even handguns would be much less of a deal even with people that are not a fan of it. People are more used to seeing guns on hips than rifles, so even if they don't agree with it is not "that" unusual to see and they would probably freak out a lot less.
The only place I have OC'd so far has been when visiting my dad and helping him round up the cows that got loose.
The guy had no right, nor business, to ask someone else for his permit. Mush less draw his firearm. People familiar with the arrested person have said that he frequently asks people for ID when they try to buy alcohol/cigarettes and he isn't an employee. Just an interfering busy body.
But note the reaction of the responsible gun owner. He didn't escalate. He didn't provoke any further confrontation. He paid for his items, left, and informed the police. The exact opposite of what may pro-control groups claim will happen when open carry occurs more widely
Wow he ignored the other guy, paid for his stuff and left. I'm impressed. Pull a gun on me and I'll immediately empty a mag into you. THEN I'll call the police.
d-usa wrote: People might not be used to open carrying, but I think even handguns would be much less of a deal even with people that are not a fan of it. People are more used to seeing guns on hips than rifles, so even if they don't agree with it is not "that" unusual to see and they would probably freak out a lot less.
Agreed.
Honestly, through this whole thing I've been trying to find situations in my every day life where it would "make sense" for me to carry a long gun on me, but they simply don't exist.
Any situation where I'd need to protect myself can pretty much be satisfied, for me, by a handgun.
Now, if martial law were to be instilled, or I lived on a farm or ranch, I could potentially see more "make's sense" opportunities, but I don't.
But then again, my two HD guns are a shotgun and a .40, so I don't even use my rifles for HD. I use them for hunting and sporting pretty exclusively.
Frazzled wrote: Wow he ignored the other guy, paid for his stuff and left. I'm impressed. Pull a gun on me and I'll immediately empty a mag into you. THEN I'll call the police.
How many Rounds can an aassault weiner carry? 10? 15?
Frazzled wrote: Wow he ignored the other guy, paid for his stuff and left. I'm impressed. Pull a gun on me and I'll immediately empty a mag into you. THEN I'll call the police.
How many Rounds can an aassault weiner carry? 10? 15?
Depends on what they were feed the night before. Mexican food or red beans and rice - we're talking belt fed machine gun weiner dog!
Maybe this question has been answered but I did not notice it on the boards. I have seen this issue pop up all over the internet with these guys in places that carry weapons in a place because of the law allows them too even though the owners of those places have asked that the weapons be left behind.
So here is the question
Why are the store operators even letting them into the store, can't the store owners or employees refuse them entry ask them to leave and if they refuse have them charged with trespassing and call the police?
Are the store owners not allowed to dictate what is allowed on their property, hell if restaurants and golf courses have mandatory dress codes why can't these store owners stop these guys from entering their property with weapons?
Because from my point of view these open carry enthusiasts are infringing on the rights of the people who do not want to have a bunch of people carrying weapons that are used to fighting a war in a fething grocery store.
I also get the fact that in the US you have the right to bare arms but that dose not mean you have the right to be and idiot
Alpha 1 wrote: Maybe this question has been answered but I did not notice it on the boards. I have seen this issue pop up all over the internet with these guys in places that carry weapons in a place because of the law allows them too even though the owners of those places have asked that the weapons be left behind.
So here is the question
Why are the store operators even letting them into the store, can't the store owners or employees refuse them entry ask them to leave and if they refuse have them charged with trespassing and call the police?
Are the store owners not allowed to dictate what is allowed on their property, hell if restaurants and golf courses have mandatory dress codes why can't these store owners stop these guys from entering their property with weapons?
Because from my point of view these open carry enthusiasts are infringing on the rights of the people who do not want to have a bunch of people carrying weapons that are used to fighting a war in a fething grocery store.
I also get the fact that in the US you have the right to bare arms but that dose not mean you have the right to be and idiot
I would imagine they could since most people might be reluctant to frequent a business where someone is openly carrying a weapon.
Many states allow stores to post signs prohibiting different types of carry. For quite a few of those states the standard "gun-busters" sign won't do. It has to be a specific sign, specific size, with specific language. If you decide to enter one of those places that is posted in accordance to the law you are breaking the law. Any store in any state can ask you to leave for any reason though, and if you refuse you can be charged with trespassing.
Some freedom loving people get upset when other people use their freedom though...
d-usa wrote: Many states allow stores to post signs prohibiting different types of carry. For quite a few of those states the standard "gun-busters" sign won't do. It has to be a specific sign, specific size, with specific language. If you decide to enter one of those places that is posted in accordance to the law you are breaking the law. Any store in any state can ask you to leave for any reason though, and if you refuse you can be charged with trespassing.
Some freedom loving people get upset when other people use their freedom though...
Here is the thing, Freedom isnt true freedom. True Freedom in Anarchy.
Bullockist wrote: There is no freedom in anarchy. The only people who have freedom in anarchy are the strongest or the most organised/richest. Anarchy is a pile of gak.
Anarchy though makes everyone an equal opportunity target.
Bullockist wrote: WHich would be handy Jihadin if I owned a tank or a drone or any weapon other than a blunt kitchen knife.
Access to propane tanks? Maybe scuba tanks? If house hold weapon. A blunt kitchen knife not going to save you from those critters you have in Australia. I'm sure you do not have a "Cirith Ungol" there like we encounter once in Afghanistan. Someone I know made a shuriken pistol that was pretty effective using normal stuff
It will only get worse if the chain store's armed guards face off against concealed carry citizens exercising their "Stand Your Ground" rights.
Well, in Texas, if the the scanners didn't permit any firearm, I'd just put it on the list of 30.06 sites and move on. No confrontation or any of that nonsense. frankly if its a business I'd just walk away.
d-usa wrote: Many states allow stores to post signs prohibiting different types of carry. For quite a few of those states the standard "gun-busters" sign won't do. It has to be a specific sign, specific size, with specific language. If you decide to enter one of those places that is posted in accordance to the law you are breaking the law. Any store in any state can ask you to leave for any reason though, and if you refuse you can be charged with trespassing.
Some freedom loving people get upset when other people use their freedom though...
Here is the thing, Freedom isnt true freedom. True Freedom in Anarchy.
Spoken like a college boy indoctrinated in all the hep cat left wing bs that a California college offers.
No. Thats not what freedom is.
MrDwhitey wrote: I think if the Purge (stupid as it is) were to really happen in Chicago, the death toll would be in the tens of thousands at the least.
Traffic would very much approve in the Chicago area. Though the fee's collected from like nine tolls around Chicago will nose dive.
skyth wrote: They're coming out with a sequel that shows the lower end of it.
The purge should have been a very dark movie with societal overtones. One of my friends said it should have been a Anthology movie. With one where a clerk of a small store has to defend his family but I also christian and a pacifist. One about a serial rapist. And I forgot the other one.
d-usa wrote: Many states allow stores to post signs prohibiting different types of carry. For quite a few of those states the standard "gun-busters" sign won't do. It has to be a specific sign, specific size, with specific language. If you decide to enter one of those places that is posted in accordance to the law you are breaking the law. Any store in any state can ask you to leave for any reason though, and if you refuse you can be charged with trespassing.
Some freedom loving people get upset when other people use their freedom though...
Here is the thing, Freedom isnt true freedom. True Freedom in Anarchy.
Spoken like a college boy indoctrinated in all the hep cat left wing bs that a California college offers.
No. Thats not what freedom is.
I dont believe that no.. Im just making a joke. Freedom in america is an interesting concept. We obviously are not free to do anything, like Own Nuclear Weapons or A Sacrifice. So what is freedom?
Personally, I don't havea problem with open carry, however, I feel that some of these demonstrations are doing more harm than good to the pro gun movement. In fact, I strongly suspect that some of the more extreme cases might very likely be coming from the antigun left just to discredit the gun legit open carry activists. It's really screwed up. And I don't see it getting any better any time soon. One thing is certain, people have finally hand enough of this over reaching government and started to stand up to it, look at the protesters who stopped the buses full of illegal immigrants, the EPA and bundy ranch/ militias, and now the open carry rallies. As long as cool heads prevail I am all for it. I do think that if this was 20 years ago with Janet Reno being in charge the bundy ranch would have turned into an all out war with a blood bath on both sides.
I dont believe that no.. Im just making a joke. Freedom in america is an interesting concept. We obviously are not free to do anything, like Own Nuclear Weapons or A Sacrifice. So what is freedom?
Going through an S curve, then leaning in and winding out the throttle on your bike as you come out of it until the engine screams. -Freedom.
Waking up the next day and not having to pay for that full body cast. -Canadian Health Care.
I dont believe that no.. Im just making a joke. Freedom in america is an interesting concept. We obviously are not free to do anything, like Own Nuclear Weapons or A Sacrifice. So what is freedom?
Going through an S curve, then leaning in and winding out the throttle on your bike as you come out of it until the engine screams.
-Freedom.
Waking up the next day and not having to pay for that full body cast.
-Canadian Health Care.
Praying that your kids never do that.
-Parenting.
Wait. Canadian Health Care is ration. So two leg cast, strapped to a back board, and splinted arms with broom handles and duck tape. Head is held within a table vice
Jihadin wrote: So far I predict the serial rapist to survive the night. Give the third if you remember eventually
Oh I remember now. It was about a family of pedophiles that raises their kids for the purge.
Like I said, he thought it should have been a dark movie that disturbs. He said "It should show what happens when all restrainst are gone for even a miniscule night"
He said the most disturbing would be "The Next day" In which everyone would be shown to be living a normal life. The Rapist a teacher, The guy who killed the clerk a Mailman and the family ushering their kids to school
Raven911 wrote: Personally, I don't havea problem with open carry, however, I feel that some of these demonstrations are doing more harm than good to the pro gun movement. In fact, I strongly suspect that some of the more extreme cases might very likely be coming from the antigun left just to discredit the gun legit open carry activists. ... ...
It actually is irrelevant to public opinion who is doing the open carry. If open carry scares the average citizen they won't care about the party affiliation of the open carrier.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Guys can old carry and look threatening because it's the law.
Somebody else can shoot them because they looked threatening because it's the law.
Rinse, repeat, problem solved.
It actually doesnt work like that. You shoot someone because you think they look threatening will land you in jail.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Nah, they had them holstered/slung in those days. Only an idiot would carry a heavy arm all day without some form of retention/weight distribution. Even a cord would do.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
It matters if the crew doing it wants to pass said legislation, when before them it was never an issue in the first place.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Define "military style assault rifle" please.
Airsoft guns. Alternatively, Martini Henry rifles.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
It matters if the crew doing it wants to pass said legislation, when before them it was never an issue in the first place.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Define "military style assault rifle" please.
To democrats "I know it when I see it" kinda nonsense
Jihadin wrote: Waist band carry?
Ankle holster consider old carry?
Shoulder Holster?
Clip on revolver/pistol?
Hold Out Pistol?
Pistol/revolver on a two or three point harness?
Maybe....
But is any of that considered "threatening" enough to get someones panties in a twist to the point that they think it merits shooting the person committing the fashion faux pas?
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Define "military style assault rifle" please.
Irrelevant. The yummie mummies will define it for themselves.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Define "military style assault rifle" please.
Irrelevant. The yummie mummies will define it for themselves.
Irrelevant.
Wow, wish I could give that as the answer whenever Im faced with a question I have NO ability or hope to answer correctly.
If the law allows people to wander around "insert local department store/amusement park/shopping mall" with a military style assault rifle, scaring the yummy mummies, it is irrelevant if the people who point that out by doing it are pro or anti doing it.
Define "military style assault rifle" please.
To democrats "I know it when I see it" kinda nonsense
Reminds me of this conversation:
Q: why so many Chicago gun death?
A: because Indiana guns stores...
Q: why so few Indiana gun deaths?
A: Chicago bought all their guns...
Raven911 wrote: Personally, I don't havea problem with open carry, however, I feel that some of these demonstrations are doing more harm than good to the pro gun movement. In fact, I strongly suspect that some of the more extreme cases might very likely be coming from the antigun left just to discredit the gun legit open carry activists. It's really screwed up. And I don't see it getting any better any time soon. One thing is certain, people have finally hand enough of this over reaching government and started to stand up to it, look at the protesters who stopped the buses full of illegal immigrants, the EPA and bundy ranch/ militias, and now the open carry rallies. As long as cool heads prevail I am all for it. I do think that if this was 20 years ago with Janet Reno being in charge the bundy ranch would have turned into an all out war with a blood bath on both sides.
People are tired of the government following the law so this will end like the siege of a cultist?
Raven911 wrote: Personally, I don't havea problem with open carry, however, I feel that some of these demonstrations are doing more harm than good to the pro gun movement. In fact, I strongly suspect that some of the more extreme cases might very likely be coming from the antigun left just to discredit the gun legit open carry activists. It's really screwed up. And I don't see it getting any better any time soon. One thing is certain, people have finally hand enough of this over reaching government and started to stand up to it, look at the protesters who stopped the buses full of illegal immigrants, the EPA and bundy ranch/ militias, and now the open carry rallies. As long as cool heads prevail I am all for it. I do think that if this was 20 years ago with Janet Reno being in charge the bundy ranch would have turned into an all out war with a blood bath on both sides.
People are tired of the government following the law so this will end like the siege of a cultist?
This is why we can't have nice things...
Whoah, mind blown!!!
This government is following the law? When did it decide to start?
Raven911 wrote: Personally, I don't havea problem with open carry, however, I feel that some of these demonstrations are doing more harm than good to the pro gun movement. In fact, I strongly suspect that some of the more extreme cases might very likely be coming from the antigun left just to discredit the gun legit open carry activists. It's really screwed up. And I don't see it getting any better any time soon. One thing is certain, people have finally hand enough of this over reaching government and started to stand up to it, look at the protesters who stopped the buses full of illegal immigrants, the EPA and bundy ranch/ militias, and now the open carry rallies. As long as cool heads prevail I am all for it. I do think that if this was 20 years ago with Janet Reno being in charge the bundy ranch would have turned into an all out war with a blood bath on both sides.
People are tired of the government following the law so this will end like the siege of a cultist?
This is why we can't have nice things...
No, people are tired of the government not enforcing the law when it should, ignoring the law when it shouldn't, and making it up as they go when ever they want.
These are two of the more whacked out examples of government sticking it's damn nose where it doesn't belong. In recent news you have the IRS targeting conservative groups, spying, refusal to secure the southern border and threats to prosecute the states that are trying to do it themselves, increasing debt, the list goes on and on. Just look at the Supreme Court shooting down several of this administrations laws. They know that it's crossing the line.
d-usa wrote: Two more examples of people violating the law and the government following it. The outrage! The humanity! It's all Breitbart News up in here!
d-usa wrote: Two more examples of people violating the law and the government following it. The outrage! The humanity! It's all Breitbart News up in here!
d-usa wrote: Two more examples of people violating the law and the government following it. The outrage! The humanity! It's all Breitbart News up in here!
Lordofhats, is that you? If the government is doing it it must be right! It wouldn't be a law if it wasn't right, right?
I think we had a thread about this when it happened too...
I think it was in the original IRS thread some time back. As I recall it was about wood of allegedly dubious provenance. The raid took place. There was a threat of legal action, and instead Gibson were given a fine. The feds could not prove that the wood in question was actually obtained unlawfully.
I think we had a thread about this when it happened too...
I think it was in the original IRS thread some time back. As I recall it was about wood of allegedly dubious provenance. The raid took place. There was a threat of legal action, and instead Gibson were given a fine. The feds could not prove that the wood in question was actually obtained unlawfully.
I remember now...
It wasn’t even American law they were supposedly violating, but for supposedly violating the laws of India and Madagascar, which came as something of a surprise to authorities in India and Madagascar if I remember correctly .
The biggest thing that got me was that the folks at Gibson were never allowed to see the sealed warrant that authorized the raid. Took quite some time to get that unsealed. Why even seal it in the first place? EDIT: actually, it's still sealed AFAIK, which makes all of this dubious.
Bah... getting side-tracked...
Can "sanity" ever be in any vernacular during a Gun Debate?
Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote: Lordofhats, is that you? If the government is doing it it must be right! It wouldn't be a law if it wasn't right, right?
See, it'd be one thing to argue that a law is wrong, because then that (hopefully) leads to a sensible response based around legal means to change the law.
But instead our new poster is arguing that government is actually ignoring the law. I have no idea if this is because he is unaware of the laws in question that government was looking to enforce, or if we're going to end up with one of those truly wonderful round trips in to constitutional gobbledigook that ends up talking about free citizens and how government can't charge income tax, but either way it leads to a conclusion that armed resistance is needed.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: It wasn’t even American law they were supposedly violating, but for supposedly violating the laws of India and Madagascar, which came as something of a surprise to authorities in India and Madagascar if I remember correctly .
Just hypothetically, how did you think international trade deals work? Do you actually think that countries in those deals are just completely indifferent to breaches of their trading partner's laws?
Mexico has extremely strict gun laws, as does Guatamala, Ecuador, and El Salvador. They also have the highest murder rates in the world, so much so that their children are flooding the US as refugees. Brazil also has strict gun laws and has a joyously high crime rate. Its almost like different countries are each unique...
Argentina has strict controls on who can play Evita, and sing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina."
They might become intelligent and go to ground trying to be the average citizen. If they don't know we're tracking them then its easier to round them up and/or execute them trying to esca....eerrrr Zombie bite us to spread the infection.
Dumbest thing I ever done was standing out in the open acting like I own the world. Pointing in the direction for my gun shy troopers to shoot back. To the troops I was Hardcore. To the SMAJ I was Stupidity. Think my left arse cheek has grown fully back
Apologies, I had meant to say cities in States with strict gun control have some of the worst crime. I should have been more precise with what I was saying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/29/states-gun-violence_n_5541292.html If you're going to include suicide then that will distort the figures. It also notes that in general crime is higher in these areas.
Jihadin wrote: Dumbest thing I ever done was standing out in the open acting like I own the world. Pointing in the direction for my gun shy troopers to shoot back. To the troops I was Hardcore. To the SMAJ I was Stupidity. Think my left arse cheek has grown fully back
Stupidest thing I have done is question a proffessor in my sociology class.
There is an excellent study by South African surgeons which suggests a considerable cause and effect relationship between getting shot and serious injury/death.
Kilkrazy wrote: There is an excellent study by South African surgeons which suggests a considerable cause and effect relationship between getting shot and serious injury/death.
I read that people who own guns are more likely to use a gun for suicide than those who don't. Maybe it was the same guy!
Kilkrazy wrote: There is an excellent study by South African surgeons which suggests a considerable cause and effect relationship between getting shot and serious injury/death.
Bullocks, he's just afraid of jumping Great White sharkies.
I heard that people who chew gum are more likely to choke on gum.
Frazzled wrote: (looks at number of murders in Chicago in 2013 and this year vs. Houston)
Mmmm no.
You do relalize there is more to Illinois than Chicago right? Don't feel bad though, as someone who has lived in Illinois all their life but never Chicago I find people make that mistake all the time.
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Apologies, I had meant to say cities in States with strict gun control have some of the worst crime. I should have been more precise with what I was saying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/29/states-gun-violence_n_5541292.html If you're going to include suicide then that will distort the figures. It also notes that in general crime is higher in these areas.f
Not really, of the top 10 most crime ridden cities, 5 are in blue states, 4 are in red states and one is a in a swing state. And why should we not include suicide? It is a major problem. And also there is more to states than just cities, and since many laws on gun control are at the state level comparing states makes a lot more sense than just looking at cities.
Easy, the CDC wasn't allowed to study gun violence because I guess someone doesn't like people pulling back the certain with facts... Obama did sign a executive order last year letting them do it again. Republicans of course are against this move.
Also "researchers did not establish a cause and effect relationship between guns and deaths. Rather, they could only establish an association" means something like"we need more money and time to look into this but we think something is there". That sort of conclusion is not entirely surprising given the huge lobby movement to kill research on gun violence by republicans and the NRA.
The simple answer to why we have little data to go about what laws work best/worst for example is because the NRA and the gun lobby spent millions to kill the research funding.
Edit:
For your last link I can view the errata, but not the article itself
It is a short article:
A study claims to have new evidence that proves tighter gun control laws can reduce gun violence. After the repeal of a 2007 Missouri law — a law that required potential gun buyers to be vetted and licensed by a local sheriff — Researchers in Missouri tracked changes to the homicide and non-negligent manslaughter rates.
The report, soon to be published in the Journal of Urban Health, analyzed the data and found there was immediate spike in gun violence and murders, with more than 60 additional gun-related murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.
“Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates in Missouri,” Daniel Webster, one of the lead authors of the study, told the BBC. Webster is also the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. He believes that the study confirms that strict firearm laws lead to less gun deaths.
Many states have worked to tighten their gun control laws after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., but gun and ammunition sellers reported sales had been increasing throughout the past two years. Sellers attributed the spike in gun sales to President Barack Obama’s re-election, CNN reported. Obama spoke out against assault weapons during his 2012 presidential campaign and continued to push for stricter gun control regulations into his second term. Gun sales spiked again after the shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Unlike 2013, guns sales have plummeted in the first few weeks of 2014. According to a CNN Money report, gun industry analyst Rommel Dionisio said, “Retail (gun) inventories, which had been in short supply last spring, have largely returned to normal now.” Outdoor-gear retailer Cabela’s Inc. reported gun and ammo sales were down 50 percent from this time last year. FBI background checks are also down about one-third from January 2013.
The Congressional Research Services estimates that there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States.
As shown above, Detroit, and Chicago have substantially higher rates. Texas cities are lower. NY is comparable to Texas cities, but evidently their crime rates are rising post Blasio.
You can't say its firearms when there are already severe firearm laws on the books (but not enforced), and the violence is only centered in a few areas.
Frazzled wrote: As shown above, Detroit, and Chicago have substantially higher rates. Texas cities are lower. NY is comparable to Texas cities, but evidently their crime rates are rising post Blasio.
You can't say its firearms when there are already severe firearm laws on the books (but not enforced), and the violence is only centered in a few areas.
Looking at the states as whole makes a hell of lot more sense than just looking a few case examples. The fact is that states with more strict gun laws have lower levels of violence, trying to find a few anecdotal examples won't change that.
So we should only talk about cities? You do realize there is plenty of crime going on rural areas. Locally drug use is really bad in poor rural areas around where I live.
From there, it looks like there's little rhyme or reason to the level of gun control vs gun murder rate.
Hawaii and Idaho have very similar firearms murder rates, but Idaho has nearly 10x the firearm ownership rate, and much laxer firearm laws. Meanwhile, CA, Illinois and NY and TX have roughly similar firearm murder rates (all several multiples above Idaho and Hawaii), but CA and NY have notably lower firearms ownership rates and much stricter gun control laws than TX has, while Illinois state has relatively lax gun laws but Chicago (the state's biggest population center and primary center of most gun violence) has exceedingly strict gun control laws.
Meanwhile Washington DC has *very* strict gun laws, *very* low firearms ownership rates, and sky high firearms murder rates.
While gun violence isn't exclusive to cities, the vast majority of it takes place in cities (especially as most people live in cities).
Blood Hawk wrote: So we should only talk about cities? You do realize there is plenty of crime going on rural areas. Locally drug use is really bad in poor rural areas around where I live.
I doubt it had a company's worth of casualties like Chicago did last weekend (so far only two apprehended).
Further I wouldn't trust anything from the Huffington Post.
Blood Hawk wrote: You do relalize there is more to Illinois than Chicago right? Don't feel bad though, as someone who has lived in Illinois all their life but never Chicago I find people make that mistake all the time.
And there is more to Texas than Houstan
Blood Hawk wrote: Not really, of the top 10 most crime ridden cities, 5 are in blue states, 4 are in red states and one is a in a swing state. And why should we not include suicide? It is a major problem. And also there is more to states than just cities, and since many laws on gun control are at the state level comparing states makes a lot more sense than just looking at cities.
What does party have to do with gun control? Answer, very little
Blood Hawk wrote: Easy, the CDC wasn't allowed to study gun violence because I guess someone doesn't like people pulling back the certain with facts... Obama did sign a executive order last year letting them do it again. Republicans of course are against this move.
Also "researchers did not establish a cause and effect relationship between guns and deaths. Rather, they could only establish an association" means something like"we need more money and time to look into this but we think something is there". That sort of conclusion is not entirely surprising given the huge lobby movement to kill research on gun violence by republicans and the NRA.
Except the CDC did look at gun violence, and the results did not correspond with what the Administration was agitating for. The study was commissioned by Executive Order (so those Evil Republicans couldn't interfere with funding) and it had a budget of $10 million to carry out this study, as well as overturning a ban from 1996 preventing the CDC from studying firearm violence. And what did they report back?
1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
3. Mass shootings and accidental firearm deaths account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths, and both are declining:
“The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths. Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” The report also notes, “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”
4. “Interventions” (i.e, gun control) such as background checks, so-called assault rifle bans and gun-free zones produce “mixed” results:
“Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.” The report could not conclude whether “passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.”
5. Gun buyback/turn-in programs are “ineffective” in reducing crime:
“There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).”
6. Stolen guns and retail/gun show purchases account for very little crime:
“More recent prisoner surveys suggest that stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals. … According to a 1997 survey of inmates, approximately 70 percent of the guns used or possess by criminals at the time of their arrest came from family or friends, drug dealers, street purchases, or the underground market.”
7. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are not homicides, but suicides:
“Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.”
But it must be so much easier to blame the go to boogeymen instead of the findings.
Blood Hawk wrote: The simple answer to why we have little data to go about what laws work best/worst for example is because the NRA and the gun lobby spent millions to kill the research funding.
Except for the $10 million, Executive Order enabled CDC study that undermined the case for gun control
And Bloomberg's $50 million being spent on furthering gun control, and setting up "grassroots" campaigns
A study claims to have new evidence that proves tighter gun control laws can reduce gun violence. After the repeal of a 2007 Missouri law — a law that required potential gun buyers to be vetted and licensed by a local sheriff — Researchers in Missouri tracked changes to the homicide and non-negligent manslaughter rates.
The report, soon to be published in the Journal of Urban Health, analyzed the data and found there was immediate spike in gun violence and murders, with more than 60 additional gun-related murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.
“Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates in Missouri,” Daniel Webster, one of the lead authors of the study, told the BBC. Webster is also the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. He believes that the study confirms that strict firearm laws lead to less gun deaths.
Many states have worked to tighten their gun control laws after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., but gun and ammunition sellers reported sales had been increasing throughout the past two years. Sellers attributed the spike in gun sales to President Barack Obama’s re-election, CNN reported. Obama spoke out against assault weapons during his 2012 presidential campaign and continued to push for stricter gun control regulations into his second term. Gun sales spiked again after the shooting in Newtown, Conn.
Unlike 2013, guns sales have plummeted in the first few weeks of 2014. According to a CNN Money report, gun industry analyst Rommel Dionisio said, “Retail (gun) inventories, which had been in short supply last spring, have largely returned to normal now.” Outdoor-gear retailer Cabela’s Inc. reported gun and ammo sales were down 50 percent from this time last year. FBI background checks are also down about one-third from January 2013.
The Congressional Research Services estimates that there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the United States.
Shame that report's findings goes against the national trend, and that there is little else to go on, or even what other factors were considered when the report was compiled. There was also quite a few accusations from John R. Lott Jr., president of Crime Prevention Research Center, that “There is a lot of arbitrary cherry-picking of the data,”, and that the murder rate in Missouri was already on the rise before the study (“Missouri was on an ominous path before the law was ended.”)
2. Most indices of crime and gun violence are getting better, not worse. “Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”
4. Handguns are the problem. Despite being outnumbered by long guns, “Handguns are used in more than 87 percent of violent crimes,” the report notes. In 2011, “handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and non-negligent manslaughter incidents.” Why do criminals prefer handguns? One reason, according to surveys of felons, is that they’re “easily concealable.”
5. Mass shootings aren’t the problem. “The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths,” says the report. “Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” Compare that with the 335,000 gun deaths between 2000 and 2010 alone.
6. Gun suicide is a bigger killer than gun homicide. From 2000 to 2010, “firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm-related violence in the United States,” says the report. Firearm sales are often a warning: Two studies found that “a small but significant fraction of gun suicides are committed within days to weeks after the purchase of a handgun, and both also indicate that gun purchasers have an elevated risk of suicide for many years after the purchase of the gun.”
7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
10. It isn’t true that most gun acquisitions by criminals can be blamed on a few bad dealers. The report concedes that in 1998, “1,020 of 83,272 federally licensed retailers (1.2 percent) accounted for 57.4 percent of all guns traced by the ATF.” However, “Gun sales are also relatively concentrated; approximately 15 percent of retailers request 80 percent of background checks on gun buyers conducted by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Researchers have found that “the share of crime gun traces attributed to these few dealers only slightly exceeded their share of handgun sales, which are almost equally concentrated among a few dealers.” Volume, not laxity, drives the number of ill-fated sales.
As the anniversary of the Newtown shooting approaches, the usual gun control advocacy organizations are gearing up their propaganda campaigns to try and convince us that guns make us less safe, and that the only “common sense” solution to the “gun violence epidemic” is gun control. But as we’ve proven time and again here on this website (and cataloged for you in our Gun Facts section), that’s just not the case. Every claim that gun control advocates make trying to link the existence of guns to violence falls flat on its face when you add a splash of context and some verified numbers. But in preparation for this weekend, I wanted to bring together some of those hard and fast facts, based on verified numbers from the U.S. government (rather than surveys or flawed studies), that illustrate the truth about guns and violence in the United States. This way you’ll have a single post to link to when you come across one of these pro-disarmament articles . . .
Gun Ownership On the Rise
Over the last decade, the number of guns being purchased in the United States has skyrocketed. Just over the last two years, there really hasn’t been a month where the NICS checks (the background check required to buy a firearm from a firearms dealer) has dropped under a million checks per month. The NSSF tracks the number of NICS checks reported by the FBI, and while the numbers are slightly lower than last year around this time (artificially high due to Obama’s re-election) sales are still through the roof. And that doesn’t even count the number of new (factory fresh) gun sales in states where a concealed handgun license exempts the holder from having to pass a NICS check, such as Texas and Virginia.
Ruger is shipping over 1.2 million firearms this year, and that’s just one gun manufacturer — and not even the largest one. Some companies have backlogs of gun orders that will take them up to 2 years to fill, and when those guns do hit the market they’re quickly sold out in stores. Even without the new sales, guns are “durable goods” which means that they last a long time and the existing number of guns in the United States is (by some estimates) enough for eight guns for every ten people in the country.
All this is to say that guns are prevalent, and more guns are being sold every year in this country. The standard cry from gun control advocates is that more guns equals more death and more crime, so if their assertion is correct we should see a direct correlation between the number of guns being sold and an increase in the death rate in this country. But the numbers say otherwise.
Firearms Related Deaths On the Decline
If the gun control activists are right, then more guns must equal more crime. However, even in this graph that shows the overall homicide rate in blue and the firearms related homicide rate in red, you can clearly see that the phrase “steady” is the worst you can use to describe the current state of affairs in the United States, and the phrase “decline” might be more appropriate for the years since 2005. These numbers are from the U.S. Government Center for Disease Control, which tracks all deaths in the United States, and I personally pulled them yesterday when researching this article. .
Gun control activists constantly clamor that there’s a “gun violence epidemic” in the United States, but the numbers don’t reflect that statement. In fact, the argument could be made that as the firearms ownership rate increases there’s a correlation to a decline in the murder rate. So perhaps, more guns equal less crime? That’s the position taken by a recent study from Virginia that showed a decrease in violent crime as the number of firearms being sold increased, and while it’s an interesting possibility there’s no good way to decisively prove it. On the other hand, this data does decisively disprove the gun control hypothesis that “more guns = more crime.”
To give you a little context on where these crime rates are compared to historical data, take this chart which shows the murder rate over a much larger period. The last time the United States was this peaceful was 33 years ago, according to the CDC. The United States has seen a decline in the murder rate ever since the peaks of the 1990s, and yet the gun control advocates claim that there’s now a “gun violence epidemic.” I’m not buying it.
Accidental Deaths On the Decline
While crime prevention is one claim of gun control advocates, another popular statement is that more guns mean that more people will accidentally shoot themselves. Well, again, the CDC disagrees with that assessment. Even as gun ownership is on the rise, and more people than ever are carrying concealed firearms, the number of people (raw number, mind you) accidentally killed with firearms each year continues to drop. The accident rate shows an even more marked decline.
Let me put this into context a little bit more. There are, according to the CDC, 308 million people in the United States. That’s 308,745,538. Of those 308 million people, only 600 were accidentally killed with a firearm. That’s a 0.000194% chance that you will be accidentally killed with a gun in any given year. According to the National Safety Council, over 12,000 people die every year simply by falling down.
Accidental Death Rate High, but Guns are Not the Problem
The accidental death rate in the United States is about twice that of other countries, like the United Kingdom (18/100,000 versus 39/100,000). And while that may seem like a vote against guns, in reality the number of firearms related accidental deaths are so small that they’re barely visible in this chart (source: CDC). The main issue in the accidental death rate is traffic accidents, but when gun control advocates talk about their topic of choice they make it seem like the only thing keeping us from having the same lower statistics as the UK is gun control. It’s a lazy analysis of the situation, and even if we eliminated all firearms related accidental deaths it still wouldn’t bring us any closer to eliminating the gap in overall accidental deaths.
Interesting side note: the difference in accidental death rate is actually based on the way we commute to work. Cars are basically death traps, and the United Kingdom relies more on public transportation to get to work than the United States. We love our cars, even though we have an extremely high likelihood of dying in them. And yet we still drive, even though there’s a 0.012% chance we’ll die in one every year. For comparison, I have a 0.0002% chance that I’ll accidentally kill myself with my gun. So in reality, my gun is safer than my car. Go figure. Maybe I can somehow shoot my way to work, circus clown style…
Proportion of Guns Used in Crimes: Very, Very Low
Going back to that original point of the gun control advocates, that guns directly cause crime, then we should expect that a large percentage of the guns in this country would be used in a crime. However, that’s just not the case.
This chart shows the number of guns in the United States (using a LOW estimate from Wikipedia) versus the total number of victims of violent crime involving a firearm every year (source: Bureau of Justice Statistics numbers for 2012). If we assume that a different gun was used for every robbery, murder and assault, then that number comes out to 460,718 firearms. That’s 0.185% of all guns in the United States. For reference, every year 2.13% of all motor vehicles are involved in a collision. So again, guns are safer than cars.
Concealed Carry: Safer and More Law Abiding than the Police
With the increasing popularity of concealed carry, there was a common thread among the gun control advocacy groups’ opposition: the statement that concealed carry would bring “blood in the streets.” That these “gun nuts” who carry guns everywhere they go are just “looking for trouble” and itching to kill someone. Well, again, that’s just not right.
Thanks to some sleuthing, we know that concealed carry holders are actually less likely than even the police to commit a murder. According to the Violence Policy Center, Florida has the highest murder rate among concealed carry holders, and Dean figured out that those numbers put the murder rate at somewhere around .58/100,000. Counting domestic homicides only, police officers committed 1.85/100,000 over the same time period. Nationally, the murder rate in the United States sits right around 4.5/100,000. Therefore, you’re over three times less likely to be killed in a room filled with concealed carry holders than police officers.
Cool, huh?
Firearms and Children: Declining Murders and Accidents
The last refuge for those without a logical leg to stand on is “think of the children!” OK, let’s think about the children for a second in terms of guns.
According to the CDC, the number of firearms related fatalities for “children” has been steadily falling over the last two decades even without more restrictive gun control laws. I put children in quotation marks because, while some people consider 24 year old people to still be children, my cut-off is the age at which the state lets you operate a 2-ton moving death machine unsupervised in public (16). The reason that this age bracket is used by gun control advocacy groups, as I outlined in this article, is that this is the age range in which most gang related crime is committed. Some estimates put the percentage of gang related murders in the United States at around 80%, indicating that the issue isn’t the availability of guns but the prevalence of gangs and the related violence.
Let’s move away from the murders for a second. Gun control advocates love to use the image of a child who accidentally shot themselves or someone else and died after “playing” with a gun. It evokes a parental response, making you feel like you need to “do something” to prevent such tragedies. And while those incidents do happen, it’s extremely rare — and getting rarer by the year.
Notice that distinctive downward trend? Yeah, I did too. Nevermind the fact that this happens to less than 150 kids every year, the fact of the matter is that the “problem” of kids accidentally killing themselves or others with a gun is one that is disappearing. Instead of increasing as more guns are being sold to the U.S. population, not only is the raw number of kids being killed in this matter staying relatively stable but it even seems to be declining.
Public Support for Increased Gun Control Measures
The gun control activists like to make the claim that “90% of Americans” support whatever new gun control scheme they’re pushing that week. However, if you look at the results of a reputable polling organization (like Gallup) the truth is very, very different.
The facts of the matter are that the hunger for stricter gun control in the United States is like a fad that has run its course — fewer and fewer people every year believe that gun control is a good idea. The numbers of supporters have been steadily dropping since 2002, and with the exception of a small spike in 2012 (just after the Newtown shooting) that trend has been steady. The real surprise is that the percentage of people who think gun control laws should be less strict has been steadily on the rise, and in 2014 that number tripled to 16%.
Gun control advocates claim that the vast majority of Americans support new gun control laws. In reality, 56% of Americans either want gun laws to stay the same or become less strict. “Common sense” indeed.
Conclusions
The burden of proof is on the gun control activists. Their assertion is that more guns equal more crime, that concealed carry means “shoot-outs in the streets” and deranged “gun nuts” looking to kill people, and that there’s a “gun violence epidemic” that needs to be addressed. But looking at the numbers from the CDC, I don’t see it. Gun sales have gone through the roof in the last six years, and at worst the numbers for firearm related deaths are stable. At best, they’re declining. Not one single metric that I could find indicated that gun owners were anything less than model citizens, and that gun ownership is not the root of all evil.
The best confirmation of this comes not from any study or calculation, but from the opinions of the American people themselves. Support for gun control is at an all time low. I’d like to think that it’s because people are finally understanding that the object is not the problem but instead it’s the behavior that needs to be changed. However, some people still don’t see the light. Hopefully with enough proof we can change their minds as well.
In the week before gun violence in Chicago left 14 people dead and another 68 wounded over the holiday weekend, it’s worth asking what the gun advocate groups were busy doing.
Many were engaged in an all-out assault on mass retailer Target for refusing to ban legal guns in their stores.
Moms Demand Action and Everytown For Gun Safety, the two groups spun out of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s first failed anti-gun group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, took their fight to — where else — Twitter.
Sending a flurry of tweets urging people to boycott Target using countless hashtags, Moms Demand Action flaunted photos of consumers buying their paper plates and hotdogs elsewhere. When Target finally capitulated, MomsDemand was victorious, retweeting supporters like CT Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who posted, “I’m shopping @Target today because they’re doing the right thing on guns.”
Then, over the weekend, the very same weekend that Chicago was erupting in gun violence, ABCNews aired a package featuring Moms founder Shannon Watts proudly touting her wins over Target and other retailers. “They listened to us when we said we don’t want loaded assault weapons around our children when we’re shopping.”
It’s a good thing Moms and Everytown are on the case, keeping us all safe from the army of legal gun owners who shop at Target, drink lattes at Starbucks and eat barbacoa burritos at Chipotle.
This is what counts as “productive” if you are a gun control advocate today. Watts may be proud of her group’s efforts, but the sad reality is that today’s anti-gun activists are nothing more than political operatives, no more noble than any other kind of lobbyist, and generally less informed about their own issue.
They may have been operatives by trade, who wandered into gun control as a lucrative issue to back. Others might start as victims of gun violence but by virtue of the strategies, tactics and channels they employ, they end up investing a lot more in gun politics than they do in meaningful community outreach, the real bedrock of activism, the kind that doesn’t rely on hashtags.
The problem with gun violence isn’t the woman with a concealed carry license at her suburban Target or Chipotle, or the prepper in rural Kansas with a handgun collection. And it isn’t the legal gun owner in Westchester County, N.Y., whose name and address was published by the Journal News after the Sandy Hook shooting.
And yet this is where gun control groups are directing their resources. This and, of course, toward the NRA. Moms and Everytown’s latest initiative is to score politicians on their commitments to gun control, the way the NRA scores on commitment to gun rights.
How does any of this even begin to solve gun crime in cities like Chicago? It doesn’t.
If the gun control groups were less interested in scoring meaningless political points and disarming lawful citizens, and were more interested in reducing gun crime, they'd be on the streets of Englewood, starting community programs to occupy inner-city children and teenagers and pull young men out of gangs and into jobs.
Talk to any Chicago principal and they will tell you their biggest fear isn’t what happens during the school year, it’s what happens over the summer when school is out, when many of their students either engage in violence or are the victims of it.
Credit goes to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for acknowledging as much, saying in a statement on Monday, that we “have to give our young people alternatives to the street, and as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors.”
I doubt he means by boycotting the Highland Park Target or scoring Sen. Dick Durbin on a questionnaire.
Of course, when Moms Demand Action finally got around to addressing the violent weekend in Chicago, its response was predictable (and on Twitter):
“Weak federal gun laws led to deadly holiday weekend in Chicago. #momsdemand #gunsense”
Lazy. Ineffectual. Political. Exploitative. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe the irresponsible approach these hashtag advocates take to gun control.
By coercing businesses to cave into utterly meaningless demands, and by focusing largely on lawful gun owners — the only people who will submit to background checks, gun registries, magazine restrictions and other legislation — gun advocates may feel productive.
But the real problems — and victims — are left behind.
I always think that looking at state/city level gun control is pretty silly anyway, especially if you want to make conclusions about national gun control policy effects.
Cities and states don't have closed borders, so any gun control laws will be hard to enforce since anybody can drive down I-whatever and pick up what they want and drive it back home, criminals even more so.
d-usa wrote: I always think that looking at state/city level gun control is pretty silly anyway, especially if you want to make conclusions about national gun control policy effects.
Cities and states don't have closed borders, so any gun control laws will be hard to enforce since anybody can drive down I-whatever and pick up what they want and drive it back home, criminals even more so.
It's a two edges sword, that's for sure. I think gun-control at the state level is pretty ineffective. Stuff like handling CCW licenses is fine, but "no magazines with more than 5 bullets" is just nothing that can ever be realistically enforced with the non-borders states have. Gun control would be better handled at the national level, but then you run into state rights issues.
It's a two edges sword, that's for sure. I think gun-control at the state level is pretty ineffective. Stuff like handling CCW licenses is fine, but "no magazines with more than 5 bullets" is just nothing that can ever be realistically enforced with the non-borders states have. Gun control would be better handled at the national level, but then you run into state rights issues.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: What does party have to do with gun control? Answer, very little
..Because you said that cities with strict gun control have higher crime so I pointed out that among the top 10 cities they are evenly split between red states (that have weaker gun control laws) and blue states (that do)...
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Except the CDC did look at gun violence, and the results did not correspond with what the Administration was agitating for. The study was commissioned by Executive Order (so those Evil Republicans couldn't interfere with funding) and it had a budget of $10 million to carry out this study, as well as overturning a ban from 1996 preventing the CDC from studying firearm violence. And what did they report back?
1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”
Ok stop what is your point here? So if you want to feel safe you have to go out armed? What is America a warzone or something? I am not some left wing liberal who wants to strip away the second amendment or anything I just want to be able to drive down to the 7-eleven for a soda at 11pm without having to look like this . But according to the NRA that makes me "part of the problem".
I mean you look at what happened in Chicago last weekend you may think that America is a warzone but arming a bunch more citizens and putting everyone on edge is the only answer? Really?
Dreadclaw69 wrote: 7. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are not homicides, but suicides:
“Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.”
WASHINGTON, DC – A senior U.S. general has confirmed that the military has secretly drawn up plans to round up large numbers of privately-owned firearms from American gun owners.
Gen. James M. Scott of the U.S. Air Force confirmed that the Pentagon received a series of formal directives from the White House between November 7 and December 13 to begin plans for a massive nationwide operation to confiscate guns using a series of federal databases compiled over the last few decades.
Scott spoke with Shifty reporters in a parking garage in northern Virginia.
Scott also confirmed that a certain four-star general who heads the U.S. Transportation Command was intimately involved in the planning. General Scott would not reveal the general’s name out of concerns for his safety.
The plan, known in the military as Operation PREAKNESS, combines a series of tactics developed for house sweeps and room clearing in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Scott admitted had been used as test-runs for the U.S.
“If we can confiscate millions of firearms in a country where we don’t speak the language or understand the culture, the U.S. should be easy,” Scott told Shify Blog. “I do not feel sorry for Osama fellow we had to kill to justify the whole thing.”
According to Scott, the actual planning for Operation PREAKNESS was initiated in early 2009 and developed in conjunction with the United Nations, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and several other liberal organizations such as the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, the American Federation of Labor, and the National Rifle Association, which is apparently a front for all the previous groups.
While there was initially some concern about the constitutionality of using the military on American soil, page 2131 of the ObamaCare Act actually amends the Posse Comitatus law to allow the military to disarm private citizens at the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Objections by then-CIA Director David Petraeus were quietly silenced in November.
A test-run for PREAKNESS was actually conducted in early December in Clinger, Pennsylvania. A joint platoon of Army Rangers and UN Peacekeepers, working with select state and local officials and using imagery collected by the Google Street View Car, quietly went door-to-door and managed to collect all the firearms from Clinger owners.
The few owners who did complain were initially transported to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to explain their case before a special international tribunal, before being sent to the National Center For Gun Control in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A follow-on operation using just the UN Peacekeepers is planned later this week for any owners missed in the previous sweep, although the Peacekeepers have confirmed they will be using a post office truck to infiltrate the area.
d-usa wrote: Cities and states don't have closed borders, so any gun control laws will be hard to enforce since anybody can drive down I-whatever and pick up what they want and drive it back home, criminals even more so.
Not so fast there, Slick. The moment any licensed firearms dealer sees an out of state ID, you can be sure he'll be covering his ass before he lets you leave with that firearm.
-Only "long guns" (rifles and shotguns) may be purchased out of state and given directly to the buyer. Pistols cannot - they must be transferred to your State via a FFL. Same applies to any Class III items.
-The weapon you are buying must be legal to purchase in both States.
-You still have to pass the background check.
WASHINGTON, DC – A senior U.S. general has confirmed that the military has secretly drawn up plans to round up large numbers of privately-owned firearms from American gun owners.
Gen. James M. Scott of the U.S. Air Force confirmed that the Pentagon received a series of formal directives from the White House between November 7 and December 13 to begin plans for a massive nationwide operation to confiscate guns using a series of federal databases compiled over the last few decades.
Scott spoke with Shifty reporters in a parking garage in northern Virginia.
Scott also confirmed that a certain four-star general who heads the U.S. Transportation Command was intimately involved in the planning. General Scott would not reveal the general’s name out of concerns for his safety.
The plan, known in the military as Operation PREAKNESS, combines a series of tactics developed for house sweeps and room clearing in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Scott admitted had been used as test-runs for the U.S.
“If we can confiscate millions of firearms in a country where we don’t speak the language or understand the culture, the U.S. should be easy,” Scott told Shify Blog. “I do not feel sorry for Osama fellow we had to kill to justify the whole thing.”
According to Scott, the actual planning for Operation PREAKNESS was initiated in early 2009 and developed in conjunction with the United Nations, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and several other liberal organizations such as the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, the American Federation of Labor, and the National Rifle Association, which is apparently a front for all the previous groups.
While there was initially some concern about the constitutionality of using the military on American soil, page 2131 of the ObamaCare Act actually amends the Posse Comitatus law to allow the military to disarm private citizens at the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Objections by then-CIA Director David Petraeus were quietly silenced in November.
A test-run for PREAKNESS was actually conducted in early December in Clinger, Pennsylvania. A joint platoon of Army Rangers and UN Peacekeepers, working with select state and local officials and using imagery collected by the Google Street View Car, quietly went door-to-door and managed to collect all the firearms from Clinger owners.
The few owners who did complain were initially transported to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to explain their case before a special international tribunal, before being sent to the National Center For Gun Control in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A follow-on operation using just the UN Peacekeepers is planned later this week for any owners missed in the previous sweep, although the Peacekeepers have confirmed they will be using a post office truck to infiltrate the area.
Edit
In the works
I know you never cite your sources, but if you are going to post duffleblog articles you really should say so before someone accidentally takes you seriously.
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But according to the NRA that makes me "part of the problem".
Incorrect. You are not part of the problem for not wanting to go to 7-11 with a rifle held at low ready. However, if you are also advocating regulations that are going to sling my butt into a small cage for carrying a handgun when I am out hunting, or in a situation where a legit CCW holder has his shirt ride up a little that day and expose part of a handgun (Grats, you have now "Open carried" in quite a few locales.) ....Weeeeell...Yes. Now you might just be part of the problem.
So suicide isn't a problem then?
Whether you consider it a problem or not, gun regulation as a means of preventing or controlling it is so short sighted that it should be resisted on principle.
You complained when Frazz compared Houston with Chicago, saying that there was more to Illinois than one city. I was pointing out your refusal to extend the same courtesy elsewhere
Blood Hawk wrote: ..Because you said that cities with strict gun control have higher crime so I pointed out that among the top 10 cities they are evenly split between red states (that have weaker gun control laws) and blue states (that do)...
I made no mention of political party. You seem intent upon injecting it into the discussion. There are pro-gun Democrats, and anti-gun Republicans
Blood Hawk wrote: Ok stop what is your point here? So if you want to feel safe you have to go out armed? What is America a warzone or something? I am not some left wing liberal who wants to strip away the second amendment or anything I just want to be able to drive down to the 7-eleven for a soda at 11pm without having to look like this http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Open-carry-Chipotle-even-via-Facebook-615x345.png. But according to the NRA that makes me "part of the problem".
I mean you look at what happened in Chicago last weekend you may think that America is a warzone but arming a bunch more citizens and putting everyone on edge is the only answer? Really?
You mean what was my point in absolutely refuting your sources, and your attempts to blame the Dastardly Duo of the NRA and Republicans? I would have thought that was self evident
Who said America was a warzone? You mentioned it twice in that one short passage. No one else did.
And don't conflate Open Carry Texas with all gun owners. Most gun owners think that their antics harm gun owners. And you are aware that OCT meeting was agreed with the restaurant beforehand, and none of the patrons objected to their presence?
Hawaii and Idaho have very similar firearms murder rates, but Idaho has nearly 10x the firearm ownership rate, and much laxer firearm laws. Meanwhile, CA, Illinois and NY and TX have roughly similar firearm murder rates (all several multiples above Idaho and Hawaii), but CA and NY have notably lower firearms ownership rates and much stricter gun control laws than TX has, while Illinois state has relatively lax gun laws but Chicago (the state's biggest population center and primary center of most gun violence) has exceedingly strict gun control laws.
Meanwhile Washington DC has *very* strict gun laws, *very* low firearms ownership rates, and sky high firearms murder rates.
While gun violence isn't exclusive to cities, the vast majority of it takes place in cities (especially as most people live in cities).
I feel that, at least in places like CA, and Illinois (namely the Chicago area) where the gun laws are, or are seen as, very strict there is no real genuine way to determine the true level of gun ownership... I'd presume that the Feds take "gun ownership" statistics from the FFLs in the given state, and find out how many guns were sold (ie, all Oregon FFL/gun stores sold 28k firearms in the year 2010) and use that to say there are X number of households that own guns. Obviously, unless a firearm is confiscated as a result of a crime, an illegally held weapon will never be counted.... So in a place like Southern California, with it's notoriously high gang population, saying there are 20k homes with firearms in the state of california is a bit ridiculous.
You complained when Frazz compared Houston with Chicago, saying that there was more to Illinois than one city. I was pointing out your refusal to extend the same courtesy elsewhere
Still don't get what you mean, I never mention any specific city at all or Houston for the matter. Besides that whole thing was supposed to be a joke, if you are not from Illinois obviously that flew right over your head.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: I made no mention of political party. You seem intent upon injecting it into the discussion. There are pro-gun Democrats, and anti-gun Republicans
Red states tend to have loser gun laws generally than blue states. Forget I said anything about blue/red if that bothers you I didn't mean anything particularly by it.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: You mean what was my point in absolutely refuting your sources, and your attempts to blame the Dastardly Duo of the NRA and Republicans? I would have thought that was self evident
Who said America was a warzone? You mentioned it twice in that one short passage. No one else did.
And don't conflate Open Carry Texas with all gun owners. Most gun owners think that their antics harm gun owners. And you are aware that OCT meeting was agreed with the restaurant beforehand, and none of the patrons objected to their presence?
Ok on the refuting sources thing.
1. Gun violence does include suicide, that is part of the formal definition of gun violence. If you don't like that well whatever, but the study including those figures is appropriate.
2. The date of the that study is before Obama study reported their findings, you know before the CDC did research on gun violence. Also different studies sometimes have different results because of actual methods, data, they are studing different things, asking different questions, etc. The CDC study doesn't disqualify all prior studies just because the prior ones had conclusions you didn't like.
Also I wasn't saying anything about Open Carry Texas, I just looked from pic of a normal looking guy carrying a gun that is what popped up in the goggle search. You made that jump by yourself.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: It is. It is a mental health problem. It should be treated as such. Treat the issue, not the symptoms.
Access does matter though, as does effectiveness. Not all suicide attempts are successful but ones done with guns, as some data shows, more likely to be successful than drug overdoses. I am not saying that trying to keep guns out of the hands of those prone to suicide will fix the problem per say, and the reality of why/how people commit suicide is complicated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/us/to-lower-suicide-rates-new-focus-turns-to-guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Dreadclaw69 wrote: I made no mention of political party. You seem intent upon injecting it into the discussion. There are pro-gun Democrats, and anti-gun Republicans
Red states tend to have stricter gun laws generally than blue states. Forget I said anything about blue/red if that bothers you I didn't mean anything particularly by it.
I think you have that backwards... Blue states tend to have stricter gun laws than red states, Case in point:
Blue states: California, NY, Illinois (though this is mostly due to Chicago, and large urban centers tend to vote more blue), Mass.
Red states: Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
Blood Hawk wrote: Red states tend to have stricter gun laws generally than blue states. Forget I said anything about blue/red if that bothers you I didn't mean anything particularly by it.
At the top of Brady’s “best” (the most restrictive) states are:
California
Connecticut
New York
New Jersey
Massachusetts
Hawaii
Leading the “worst” list (according to Brady) are three states that might be considered the “best” states for gun owners. All three scored a ZERO on the Brady checklist. Getting a zero is probably like scoring 100 in the eyes of a firearms fan. Meet the “zeros”:
Arizona
Alaska
Utah
Rounding out the rest of the top 10 best states for gun ownership (based on Brady) appear to be:
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Florida
Wisconsin
Texas
Wyoming
Mississippi
So which restrictive states are red? New York is purple. The rest are definitely blue states.
1. Gun violence does include suicide, that is part of the formal definition of gun violence. If you don't like that well whatever, but the study including those figures is appropriate.
So is slitting your wrists counted as knife violence? Overdosing pharmaceutical violence? Carbon monoxide poisoning from a car vehicular violence? If not why not
Blood Hawk wrote: 2. The date of the that study is before Obama study reported their findings, you know before the CDC did research on gun violence. Also different studies sometimes have different results because of actual methods, data, they are studing different things, asking different questions, etc. The CDC study doesn't disqualify all prior studies just because the prior ones had conclusions you didn't like.
Conclusions that are no longer supported by facts. Like does not come into it.
Blood Hawk wrote: Also I wasn't saying anything about Open Carry Texas, I just looked from pic of a normal looking guy carrying a gun that is what popped up in the goggle search. You made that jump by yourself.
Which jump? If you're talking about OCT I was merely giving context. The real jumping was the person who leapt feet first into the "warzone" comment
Oh goody, the NY Times. One of the more pro gun control sources out there. That is about as fair a source on firearms as MSNBC is on Dubya, or Fox is on Obama.
And more access to cars means a greater liklihood of getting hit by one. Anyone who is determined to end their live will do it regardless of what methods are available
I think you have that backwards... Blue states tend to have stricter gun laws than red states, Case in point:
Blue states: California, NY, Illinois (though this is mostly due to Chicago, and large urban centers tend to vote more blue), Mass.
Red states: Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
Whoops I did mean the other way around. Sorry will fix that.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: So is slitting your wrists counted as knife violence? Overdosing pharmaceutical violence? Carbon monoxide poisoning from a car vehicular violence? If not why not
We ain't talking about any of that. You can find any irreverent example you want you are still wrong. Suicides are included as part of gun violence, never said you have to like it.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Conclusions that are no longer supported by facts. Like does not come into it.
Sorry the world doesn't work that way, the CDC study doesn't all of sudden make the other study not true they looked at different aspects of this anyway. States with loser gun laws have more gun violence. Never said you have to like it.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Which jump? If you're talking about OCT I was merely giving context. The real jumping was the person who leapt feet first into the "warzone" comment
Clearly then you don't understand I was just exaggerating to try to make a point. You were the one that seems invested in talking about Open Carry Texas.
Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Oh goody, the NY Times. One of the more pro gun control sources out there. That is about as fair a source on firearms as MSNBC is on Dubya, or Fox is on Obama.
And more access to cars means a greater liklihood of getting hit by one. Anyone who is determined to end their live will do it regardless of what methods are available
You clearly aren't getting the point, whatever. Have fun.
Blood Hawk wrote: We ain't talking about any of that. You can find any irreverent example you want you are still wrong. Suicides are included as part of gun violence, never said you have to like it.
I believe that we already covered this; your "Conclusions that are no longer supported by facts. Like does not come into it. "
Blood Hawk wrote: Sorry the world doesn't work that way, the CDC study doesn't all of sudden make the other study not true they looked at different aspects of this anyway. States with loser gun laws have more gun violence. Never said you have to like it.
Again, your conclusions are no longer supported by facts. Like does not come into it
Ever since the school shooting in Newtown, one of the preferred tactics for gun control advocates has been to argue that guns kill lots of children every year. It’s one hell of a propaganda claim, since there’s nothing quite like the bodies of dead children to empower the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, override the analytical abilities of the voting public and try to sneak through a little gun control legislation. We’ve seen this tactic before from the New York Times and we thoroughly debunked it. Now it looks like a medical student and his advisor have taken it upon themselves to pick up the mantle and try to advance the party line a little further. And once again, they’ve used some remarkably flawed data to back up their efforts . . .
To be fair, it was actually Discovery that first tipped me off to this steaming turd of a study, but NBC News will get no less of my ire for actually running with it.
The study was conducted by a Boston medical student and his adviser at Harvard. They ostensibly investigated the death rate of “children” at hospitals from gunshot wounds. Right away we run into a problem, because like the New York Times article the medical student in question includes all patients under the age of 20 in his definition of “children.”
The reason the word “children” is so loaded is that it evokes images of innocent, cherub-faced little tots barely old enough for elementary school. The picture that the title of the article and that the study tries to paint is one of innocent little Suzie being shot and dying before her 10th birthday. But in reality, as I discussed in the Times takedown, the vast and overwhelming majority of deaths from firearms for this age range happens in those 15 and over.
Personally, my cut-off for calling someone a child is where the state believes that they’re capable of operating a deadly machine at high speeds on the public roadways: 16. Any reasonable person might expand that definition to, at most, 18. But the study included, ahem, “children” up to the age of 20 because the probability of being wounded or killed by a gun increases drastically for every year between the ages of 15 and 20. The numbers simply weren’t big enough using actual children, so the study’s authors padded their numbers with those cohorts most associated with gang membership.
OK, so the stats are plainly padded. But before we actually get to the numbers, where do these authors get their statistics? From the NBC article:
Madenci, and his colleague, Dr. Christopher Weldon, a surgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, tallied the new statistics by culling a national database of 36 million pediatric hospitalizations from 1997 to 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available.
Wait. So, what they were looking at were the numbers of pediatric patients hospitalized for gunshot wounds? That would exclude anyone who A) was admitted to a non-pediatric service, B) was killed at the scene and never transported to the hospital, or C) was treated at a hospital that didn’t report in to the database. That’s like trying to get water out of a well using a sieve.
OK, so the data set includes an abnormally large swath of the population and uses a terribly flawed database for its input. What were the results?
During that period, hospitalizations of kids and teens aged 20 and younger from gunshot wounds jumped from 4,270 to 7,730. Firearm deaths of children logged by hospitals rose from 317 in 1997 to 503 in 2009, records showed.
That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The authors claim that nationwide, the trend for “children” dying from firearm related causes is on the rise, but I just ran the numbers from the CDC, and they paint a different story.
For actual “children” (12 and under), the following stats were recorded:
1997: 318 fatalities
2009: 209 fatalities
For “children” between 13 and 19, here’s what the CDC said was going on:
1997: 3,905 fatalities
2009: 2,502 fatalities
Two things pop out immediately. First, the study conducted by the med student and his mentor missed a couple thousand fatalities. Second, their conclusions were completely bogus.
If the study and NBC News are to be believed, the number of children dying from gunshot wounds is on the rise. But if we look at an actually unbiased source (the CDC, who collect all death-related statistics in the United States), the number of deaths from firearms is declining.
What’s even more astounding is that the raw number going down, not just the rate. With the increase in population we might expect that the raw number of children killed by guns to rise in proportion to the population, but the rate to remain the same or drop slightly. In this case, both the raw number AND the rate are declining. And yet NBC News and Discovery are both reporting that these numbers are on the rise.
The issue here is really the source of the data. If the authors wanted to know the truth about whether increased gun ownership is increasing the risk of fatal incidents involving firearms, the CDC’s numbers are there and readily available — he didn’t need to go trudging through an incomplete and obscure database for statistics. But rather than look at the whole picture, they decided to restrict their input to deaths in hospitals.
As an EMT, I can tell you that we don’t typically transport corpses to the hospital emergency room — they go straight to the morgue. Those instances aren’t counted in the study. Similarly, not all injuries are serious enough for a $400+ ambulance ride and $1,000 hospital bill. Those instances aren’t in the study either. And including both those instances, you start to clearly see the downward – not upward – trend in “children” and firearms related deaths.
In the Discovery version of the article, the author of the study officially loses all credibility as far as statistical analytical ability is concerned.
“Based on our research, we know that there is a clear correlation between household gun ownership (and gun safety practices) and childhood gunshot wounds in the home on a large scale,” Madenci said in an email to Discovery News. [...] He said he decided to look at the question of gun ownership and childhood gun deaths after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
If the author were to say that the overall accident rate for children in houses with guns had increased, that would be an interesting finding. But he didn’t — he wrote that gun accidents happen more when guns are present. That’s like saying households with cars are more likely to have a family member die in a car accident. What would be a persuasive argument to me is if the author proved that having a gun in the home increases the overall death rate (including all methods of death), because that would indicate that guns increase the overall probability of death. But he didn’t.
All he did was point out that by owning a certain object you’re more likely to be killed by that object that means nothing. Unless he’s trying to get some free publicity to help in his search for an intern position at a hospital in the near future, that is.
Blood Hawk wrote: Clearly then you don't understand I was just exaggerating to try to make a point. You were the one that seems invested in talking about Open Carry Texas.
You linked to a story about them, and included a picture. I merely discussed the facts you had placed in issue. I apologize if I am more familiar with the matter than you.
Blood Hawk wrote: You clearly aren't getting the point, whatever. Have fun.
If you're determined to ignore the evidence presented that is entirely your prerogative, but it does make any meaningful conversation somewhat vexing. Have a good day.
You linked to a story about them, and included a picture. I merely discussed the facts you had placed in issue. I apologize if I am more familiar with the matter than you.
No I linked a pic, but I did not link to any story that was about them. You are literally just pulling that out of your ass. I am done with you, you are literally putting words in my mouth several times now so yea no point in continuing this.
Jihadin wrote: Think they throw that in the stats because its a violent mean to opt out.
So is slitting your wrists, hanging yourself, or any other number of ways to take your own life. Yet only one method of suicide is categorized and recorded as violent
Blood Hawk wrote: No I linked a pic, but I did not link to any story that was about them. You are literally just pulling that out of your ass. I am done with you, you are literally putting words in my mouth several times now so yea no point in continuing this.
My apologies, I misread the tag as url instead of img in the quote as I was replying. Regardless, I discussed the image (and it's surrounding circumstances) that you had put into issue At no stage have I maliciously attempted to distort your words, one minor error does not malice make. I have responded with facts, statistics, and sources which you did not want to engage with. Instead your most recent exchange speaks for itself, so perhaps it's best that I leave you to your own devices.
The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
This dude forced his way into his former in-laws' house, tied 'em all up, and shot them each in the back of the head. One of the victims, a fifteen year-old female, survived the point blank headshot and called the cops after the donkey-cave left the house in search of his ex-wife.
If nothing else, hopefully this will show us that sensible gun legislation can make a difference. Mandatory waiting periods, for example. A waiting period might have given this guy time to rethink what he was doing. Instead, this remained a spur-of-the-moment massacre prompted by the easy availability of guns, and it remained spur-of-the-moment all during the twenty-three hour drive from where he lived in Utah down to Houston.
A ban on high-powered (what I believe to be) automatic assault combat rifles, for another. Now, yes, the murderer in this case used a revolver, but he could have used a high-powered automatic (what's that mean, anyway?) assault combat rifle if he wanted to, as is the case in at least 0.5% of gun crime in the US.
A magazine ban seems pretty obvious in its effectiveness. Lives could have been saved if his gun could only carry six five bullets and he didn't know how to reload it. And all the pro-gun crazies will come in here and point out that there are literally thousands of documented cases of armed assailants being shot multiple times before finally being incapacitated or otherwise stopped, but we on the left side of truth know that you only need to shoot someone once, and thus one, maybe two bullet-things is all you'll ever need. Unless your target is a prone fifteen year-old female at point blank range. But that's hardly a self-defense situation, is it? So there.
Do I even need to point out how background checks would have stopped this?
And obviously Mom or Dad going around "heeled" like we were in some sort of Old Western wouldn't have helped no matter what anyone's going to say. When there's an armed man in your house with your kids tie up when you come home, you meekly do what he says, because the statistics are on your side in that this probably will be one of those armed home invasions that doesn't end in death or injury. Defending yourself with lethal force is neither enlightened nor politically correct and it never works!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Kilkrazy wrote: The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
You really need to read an updated account of this, man. That's not even kind of close to what happened. I actually posted my parody of weak-kneed liberal response to this before having read the above, but man, am I proud of my prescience.
If you had no guns at all it would have made it even harder for him to shoot them.
That said, a gun distances you from the act of killing (even in close range attacks) physically and emotionally making it easier to go through with the act of killing.
Additionally, the majority of murders and "attempted murders" are carried out on an unplanned basis using whatever is closest to hand, that being generally (in the USA) a gun, knife, blunt instrument or bare hands. Unfortunately, guns are particularly good at killing people very quickly meaning that in instances where guns are used, the victim is far more likely to be killed.
So in summary, guns make killing psychologically easier, make it easier to kill physically stronger individuals and groups of individuals, and are, generally, more deadly when used on a person than other methods.
SilverMK2 wrote: If you had no guns at all it would have made it even harder for him to shoot them.
Let me know when you've invented a time machine and we can make that happen. .9 guns for every 1 person in the US aren't just going to go away through the power of friendship.
That said, a gun distances you from the act of killing (even in close range attacks) physically and emotionally making it easier to go through with the act of killing.
Additionally, the majority of murders and "attempted murders" are carried out on an unplanned basis using whatever is closest to hand, that being generally (in the USA) a gun, knife, blunt instrument or bare hands. Unfortunately, guns are particularly good at killing people very quickly meaning that in instances where guns are used, the victim is far more likely to be killed.
So in summary, guns make killing psychologically easier, make it easier to kill physically stronger individuals and groups of individuals, and are, generally, more deadly when used on a person than other methods.
That's all great, and who knows, maybe even true. Doesn't do much to change the hilarity of people trying to use this particular story as the latest cause célèbre in the anti-gun crusade despite the fact that no law known to man, or even the Messiah himself (I speak of Jesus or Barack, depending on your persuasion) would have been able to stop it.
Seaward wrote: Let me know when you've invented a time machine and we can make that happen. .9 guns for every 1 person in the US aren't just going to go away through the power of friendship.
Surprisingly one does not need a time machine in order to alter the future. One simply needs to take action in the present. Of course, that action must be supported and taken forwards.
However, it is nice to see you attempt to derail my comments with some kind of nirvana fallacy.
Doesn't do much to change the hilarity of people trying to use this particular story as the latest cause célèbre in the anti-gun crusade despite the fact that no law known to man, or even the Messiah himself (I speak of Jesus or Barack, depending on your persuasion) would have been able to stop it.
I was not making any comment at all on that particular news story; I was responding to your ridiculous post. You don't even attempt to respond to anything I have said other than to essentially ignore it and continue attacking those you disagree with.
SilverMK2 wrote: Surprisingly one does not need a time machine in order to alter the future. One simply needs to take action in the present. Of course, that action must be supported and taken forwards.
However, it is nice to see you attempt to derail my comments with some kind of nirvana fallacy.
Pretending that it's possible to get to a "no guns" state, as your "if you didn't have any guns, he would have found it even harder to shoot somebody," post implied, would in fact require a time machine.
I was not making any comment at all on that particular news story; I was responding to your ridiculous post. You don't even attempt to respond to anything I have said other than to essentially ignore it and continue attacking those you disagree with.
You weren't many any comment at all on the news story? Who was the "he" who would've had a harder time shooting someone with no guns at all around, then?
As for responding to the rest of what you said...I'm not sure how many times we need to rediscover that guns became popular because they make it easier to kill people than using one's bare hands, or a sword, or a flail, or a crossbow. No kidding. Are you channeling sebster or something?
Seaward wrote: Pretending that it's possible to get to a "no guns" state, as your "if you didn't have any guns, he would have found it even harder to shoot somebody," post implied, would in fact require a time machine.
While drifting even further from the topic... and to repeat...
A decrease in the number of guns in the future simply takes action in the present to meet that goal.
You weren't many any comment at all on the news story? Who was the "he" who would've had a harder time shooting someone with no guns at all around, then?
A single line that segued into my post and main points while referencing the origin of your post?
As for responding to the rest of what you said...I'm not sure how many times we need to rediscover that guns became popular because they make it easier to kill people than using one's bare hands, or a sword, or a flail, or a crossbow. No kidding.
And yet you seem resistant on any thoughts or discussion on how it might be possible to reduce the damage that guns do both to individuals and your society as a whole... and instead continue to attempt diversions from any kind of discussion while simultaneously carrying out ad hominems on people.
Are you channeling sebster or something?
I've never seen both of us in the same place before...
Seaward wrote: Let me know when you've invented a time machine and we can make that happen. .9 guns for every 1 person in the US aren't just going to go away through the power of friendship.
Surprisingly one does not need a time machine in order to alter the future. One simply needs to take action in the present. Of course, that action must be supported and taken forwards.
However, it is nice to see you attempt to derail my comments with some kind of nirvana fallacy.
Doesn't do much to change the hilarity of people trying to use this particular story as the latest cause célèbre in the anti-gun crusade despite the fact that no law known to man, or even the Messiah himself (I speak of Jesus or Barack, depending on your persuasion) would have been able to stop it.
I was not making any comment at all on that particular news story; I was responding to your ridiculous post. You don't even attempt to respond to anything I have said other than to essentially ignore it and continue attacking those you disagree with.
Of course we could take similar action against alcohol because of incidents like this:
Since it was an alcohol caused accident that killed six, it won't generate the level of outrage there is against guns, even though it is proven by the CDC there are 3x the the people who die from alcohol over guns. This isn't even mentioning the fact that 2 out of 3 domestic abuse cases involve alcohol or all of the health related incidents tied to it.
This dude forced his way into his former in-laws' house, tied 'em all up, and shot them each in the back of the head. One of the victims, a fifteen year-old female, survived the point blank headshot and called the cops after the donkey-cave left the house in search of his ex-wife.
If nothing else, hopefully this will show us that sensible gun legislation can make a difference. Mandatory waiting periods, for example. A waiting period might have given this guy time to rethink what he was doing. Instead, this remained a spur-of-the-moment massacre prompted by the easy availability of guns, and it remained spur-of-the-moment all during the twenty-three hour drive from where he lived in Utah down to Houston.
A ban on high-powered (what I believe to be) automatic assault combat rifles, for another. Now, yes, the murderer in this case used a revolver, but he could have used a high-powered automatic (what's that mean, anyway?) assault combat rifle if he wanted to, as is the case in at least 0.5% of gun crime in the US.
A magazine ban seems pretty obvious in its effectiveness. Lives could have been saved if his gun could only carry six five bullets and he didn't know how to reload it. And all the pro-gun crazies will come in here and point out that there are literally thousands of documented cases of armed assailants being shot multiple times before finally being incapacitated or otherwise stopped, but we on the left side of truth know that you only need to shoot someone once, and thus one, maybe two bullet-things is all you'll ever need. Unless your target is a prone fifteen year-old female at point blank range. But that's hardly a self-defense situation, is it? So there.
Do I even need to point out how background checks would have stopped this?
And obviously Mom or Dad going around "heeled" like we were in some sort of Old Western wouldn't have helped no matter what anyone's going to say. When there's an armed man in your house with your kids tie up when you come home, you meekly do what he says, because the statistics are on your side in that this probably will be one of those armed home invasions that doesn't end in death or injury. Defending yourself with lethal force is neither enlightened nor politically correct and it never works!
And this is the script after each of these tragedies, almost like clockwork (but minus the satire)
The man who allegedly shot dead a married Houston couple and four of their children in an execution-style killing on Wednesday was jealous of their happy life together, claimed the children's grandfather.
Speaking to Mailonline from his home in Sun City, California, Thomas Stay said that Ron Haskell, 33, envied the life his son Stephen had built with his wife Katie and their five children.
According to Thomas Stay, Haskell couldn't accept his separation from his ex-wife Melannie - Katie’s sister - and chose to massacre his son and his family because he was ‘jealous of Stephen and Katie’s family and what they could have that he didn’t have’.
Thomas also opened up about Haskell’s history and said that he had been ‘unstable for a long time’ - but had been known to his family for years.
He said: ‘Ron’s brother Bobby is Stephen’s best friend. It’s strange. I think that mentally he’s just not right.
‘The whole thing doesn’t make any sense. Ron was just all mixed up.
‘He and Melanie split about six months ago, they were living in Logan, Utah, and he was abusive, very controlling. Their divorce was finalized in February.
‘She couldn’t take it any more.’
Thomas said that his son and daughter-in-law moved to Texas about four years ago having previously lived in Utah.
Like Haskell they had four children, but unlike him their marriage lasted.
He said: ‘Melissa had the kids with her. I don’t know if he was thinking maybe the will be at Stephen’s house.’
Paying tribute to his son and daughter-in-law, he said: ‘They were very religious, they had a lot of faith in the gospel. They loved each other and did things together.
‘They just loved life.’
Stephen’s mother Joyce Stay, 74, added: ‘We lost our son, our daughter-in-law, our four grandkids. We know the man that did it.
‘His family has been friends with ours for years. He was not well person. I watched this kid grow up, I have had him in my home for sleepovers.
‘This is a good family that this man comes from - there is something wrong in him to do this kind of thing, it’s not normal’.
Thomas Stay also revealed that Cassidy, 15, the sole survivor of the shooting, is now out of the Intensive Care Unit and is conscious.
This comes as the first photograph of the family reveals the smiling faces of the Stays - shot dead 'execution style' by 33-year-old suspect Ron Lee Haskell in Houston on Wednesday night.
Also pictured is the brave 15-year-old girl who was able to phone 911 and warn deputies that Haskell planned to travel to her grandparents' home to kill them before she was rushed to hospital in a critical condition.
According to police, Haskell killed, Stephen Stay, 39 and Katie Stay, 34 and four children - two boys ages 4 and 14 and two girls, ages 7 and 9, inside their home in the suburb of Spring.
However, Haskell's 15-year-old niece, who has been identified in local media as Cassidy, survived the shooting and played dead before courageously phoning 911 and alerting police despite suffering a gunshot wound to the head.
Police in Houston said that the shooting spree stemmed from the suspects divorce from his wife.
Just last week, Karla Jean Haskell, Ron Haskell's mother accused her son of domestic violence in San Marcos, California.
Court records reveal that Karla Haskell claims on July 3, her son got angry at her for talking to his ex-wife and duct taped her to a chair, with her arms taped as well.
According to ABC 13 the domestic violence report claims Haskell accused her son of choking her until she lost consciousness and that she stayed taped to the chair for four hours.
Indeed, according to court records, Haskell once had a restraining order filed against him by his ex-wife and had been considered a threat to their children, court records reveal.
Haskell was looking for his ex-wife, Melannie Haskell, when he forced his way into her sister's home, tied up her famiy and shot them all.
According to the Harris County District Attorney's Office, Haskell's wife had left him and moved from Utah to Houston with the help of her sister, who lived there.
According to NBC News, Melannie Haskell petitioned a court for an order of protection in July 2013. The judge granted this order, and Melannie Haskell filed for divorce the following month.
In October last year, the protective order was lifted when the couple decided on a mutual restraining order and custody arrangements involving their children.
A judge also decreed that Ron Lee Haskell’s visits would be watched by a psychologist. ''Mr. Haskell’s parent time will be supervised until such time that his physical therapist can report that the respondent is no longer a threat to the children,' the judge wrote.
IIndeed, Haskell has had a number of previous run-ins with the law in his home state of Utah when he was living there with his wife.
Before she filed her restraining orders, Utah law enforcement said that Haskell was arrested several times by the Logan City Police Department and was jailed for a time in the Cache County jail in 2008.
Mr. Haskell was booked into the Cache County Jail on charges of simple assault and child abuse or neglect, both class B misdemeanors, on June 5, 2008,' according to a news release from the Cache County Sheriff’s Office.
Since then, he has had multiple involvements with Logan City Police Department and had a protective order served on him by Cache County Sheriff’s deputies on July 9, 2013.'
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Haskell was also arrested in June 2008 and charged with simple assault and domestic violence in the presence of a child.
He was also jailed in the same year on charges of assault and child abuse or neglect according to a statement from the Cache County Sheriff's Office.
Both were dismissed the next year.
The teen's call allowed police to rush to the scene and corner the suspected gunman who eventually sank to his knees and surrendered after a tense three-hour stand-off with deputies who had corralled him into a suburban cul-de-sac.
'It appears this stems from a domestic issue with a breakup in the family from what our witness has told us,' Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Mark Herman of the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office told reporters. He did not explain further.
According to documents read out in magistrate court this morning in Houston, the 15-year-old girl managed to give police a witness statement.
The teen said that Haskell arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday dressed as a FedEx worker looking for his estranged wife and asked for her parents, but she told him that none of them were at home.
He left, only to return a short time later and the teen once again told him that her parents were not home.
It was at this point that she recognized him as her 'ex-uncle' and tried to close the door on him.
Haskell kicked the door in and tied her up and then waited for her four brothers and sisters and parents to return.
When they did he tied them up as well and then laid them face-down on the floor.
According to police documents read out in court this morning he demanded to know where hs wife was and when they said they did not know, he shot them all 'execution-style' in the back of the head and left.
However, the bullet only fractured the teen's skull according to Click2Houston - and she played dead until he left and then called 911.
She was able to tell deputies who the shooter was and that she believed he was headed to another residence at Anvil and Ella to possibly attack more family members.
Deputies were able to intercept Haskell, who led them on a chase that came to an end about three miles from the shooting scene.
Haskell, 33, was transferred to the Harris County jail overnight and has been charged with multiple shooting deaths.
The shootings took place about 20 miles north of downtown Houston at a four-bedroom home in a quiet, middle-class residential neighborhood near the town of Spring.
Reached at her home in San Marcos, California, Haskell's mother Karla, 61, fought back the tears as she admitted she still did not know exactly what her son had allegedly done.
She said: 'We have no idea about what went on. We still don't know.
'I can't watch it. I just can't do it. I really can't talk right now'.
Haskell's brother Robert said: 'I would like to say that our thoughts and prayers are going to the family that were affected and people that lost their loved ones.
Asked about his brother's state of mind, he said: 'There's a lot going on but I can't comment further. I have not spoken to the police'.
Police say Haskell held the five children and their parents prisoner, tied up and then shot them all.
Gilliland said the teenager was in 'very critical condition' at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston late Wednesday night after being airlifted there.
It was the 15-year-old survivor who told deputies that Haskell was headed to her grandparents' home and they were able to pass along the warning, he said according to local press reports.
Constable Ronald Hickman in Houston said she gave police a description of the suspect and was providing 'critical information' to authorities.
'While quickly responding to that location, we saw him coming up to that residence where other relatives of that family lived and we assumed he meant to shoot them as well,' Hickman said.
According to KHOU in Houston, 'He (Haskell) came to this location yesterday afternoon – late – and came under the guise of a FedEx driver wearing a FedEx shirt,' said Constable Ron Hickman.
'…came to this residence, gathered up the children that were here and awaited the arrival of the parents. Sometime later the victims were shot in this residence, and we now learned that Mr. Haskell was married to a relative of the residents of this home.'
FedEx confirmed that Haskell worked for them through a contractor - but said he had performed no duties for them since the New Year.
'We don't know why this happened,' nearby resident Paul Anthony Slawinski told Reuters. 'This man, his wife, and children were the definition of compassion and charity.'
A woman who said she lives across the street from the house described the family as close-knit to the Houston Chronicle.
'It was a Mormon family,' she said. 'They were very sweet and their kids were very shy. This is a sad, sad day.'
Public records state that Stephen Robert Stay and Katie Stay, ages 39 and 33, are living at the residence on Leaflet Lane, however, they are not listed as the owners of the house.
A web page from the Houston Association of Realtors lists Stephen Stay as a real estate broker in the area and listed the home's address as his residence.
Authorities said the teen's information also helped them intercept the suspect. The suspected gunman then led authorities on a chase, with nearly two dozen deputy constables' patrol cars following him into a cul-de-sac shortly before 7 pm.
There, the suspect's boxed-in vehicle remained for hours. Finally, about 10 p.m., after hours of waiting and negotiations, the man emerged from his car, raised his hands and sank to his knees as deputies placed him under arrest.
During that time, Gilliand said, there were 'two hours of constant talking with a man armed with a pistol to his head and who had just killed six people.'
Gilliland described the man as in his 30s with a beard 'and cool as a cucumber.' He said that when he and other officers first approached, the man was 'just sitting in his car looking out at us.'
'This concluded the way we wanted it to,' Gilliland said after the surrender.
Said Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman, 'He was in the car for 3½ hours. He was worn down like the rest of us. He came out of the car without resistance.'
Danna Stevens, 75, and her husband, Texas Stevens, live four doors down from the home where the shooting happened but weren't home at the time.
She said she didn't know her neighbors well and that they had moved into the subdivision about a year ago.
So a court had ordered the involvement of a psychiatrist prior to this event, he had a history of anger problems, and after this horrific attack he was on the verge of suicide. This is not a gun control issue, this is a mental health issue.
And yes, had the victims had a firearm then they could have defended themselves a lot easier.
Relapse wrote: Of course we could take similar action against alcohol because of incidents like this:
Of course, we could also conduct an association fallacy whilst simultaneously continuing to divert discussion away from the topic.
Since it was an alcohol caused accident that killed six, it won't generate the level of outrage there is against guns, even though it is proven by the CDC there are 3x the the people who die from alcohol over guns. This isn't even mentioning the fact that 2 out of 3 domestic abuse cases involve alcohol or all of the health related incidents tied to it.
And indeed there is nothing stopping you attempting to discuss the issues in a place where such discussion is valid, such as a thread on curbing the dangers of alcohol. Nor, as has been pointed out many, many, many times, can only one thing at a time be done by society to improve its lot. One can focus both on alcohol and gun safety without diluting the efforts of either.
But again, since you seem only intent on diverting the discussion...
Relapse wrote: Of course we could take similar action against alcohol because of incidents like this:
Of course, we could also conduct an association fallacy whilst simultaneously continuing to divert discussion away from the topic.
Since it was an alcohol caused accident that killed six, it won't generate the level of outrage there is against guns, even though it is proven by the CDC there are 3x the the people who die from alcohol over guns. This isn't even mentioning the fact that 2 out of 3 domestic abuse cases involve alcohol or all of the health related incidents tied to it.
And indeed there is nothing stopping you attempting to discuss the issues in a place where such discussion is valid, such as a thread on curbing the dangers of alcohol. Nor, as has been pointed out many, many, many times, can only one thing at a time be done by society to improve its lot. One can focus both on alcohol and gun safety without diluting the efforts of either.
But again, since you seem only intent on diverting the discussion...
Nope, just demonstrating the hypocracy of people calling for a ban on guns because, "guns kill people", when most of these same anti gun people turn around and support the alcohol industry, which does far more damage than guns.
Relapse wrote: Nope, just demonstrating the hypocracy of people calling for a ban on guns because, "guns kill people", when most of these same anti gun people turn around and support the alcohol industry, which does far more damage than guns.
Relapse wrote: Nope, just demonstrating the hypocracy of people calling for a ban on guns because, "guns kill people", when most of these same anti gun people turn around and support the alcohol industry, which does far more damage than guns.
Well, if it makes you feel any better I don't drink and only condone alcohol use in moderation and when it is safe to do so
It might be called hypocritical to call people hypocritical who call for stricter gun laws when there are already stricter car and alcohol laws in effect.
IDK how strongly the car and alcohol lobbies lobbied against such laws.
The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
Or he could have used a butcher knife or a nice Louisville Slugger.
SilverMK2 wrote: If you had no guns at all it would have made it even harder for him to shoot them.
That said, a gun distances you from the act of killing (even in close range attacks) physically and emotionally making it easier to go through with the act of killing.
Additionally, the majority of murders and "attempted murders" are carried out on an unplanned basis using whatever is closest to hand, that being generally (in the USA) a gun, knife, blunt instrument or bare hands. Unfortunately, guns are particularly good at killing people very quickly meaning that in instances where guns are used, the victim is far more likely to be killed.
So in summary, guns make killing psychologically easier, make it easier to kill physically stronger individuals and groups of individuals, and are, generally, more deadly when used on a person than other methods.
Really? There are a number of established peer reviewed papers which would suggest otherwise. Not to mention crime statistics. I would welcome your input as to what is incorrect and why.
The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
Or he could have used a butcher knife or a nice Louisville Slugger.
So we can just conceal carry a butcher knife or Louisville Slugger, because there is no difference between a gun and those things.
That the right of every citizen to keep and bear arms, ammunition, and accessories typical to the normal function of such arms, in defense of his home, person, family and property, or when lawfully summoned in aid of the civil power, shall not be questioned; but this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons.The rights guaranteed by this section shall be unalienable. Any restriction on these rights shall be subject to strict scrutiny and the state of Missouri shall be obligated to uphold these rights and shall under no circumstances decline to protect against their infringement. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent the general assembly from enacting general laws which limit the rights of convicted violent felons or those adjudicated by a court to be a danger to self or others as result of a mental disorder or mental infirmity.
"Strict scrutiny" is the key. It essentially requires that the action be justified by a compelling state interest and it must be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.
d-usa wrote: Butcher blades come with a switchblade option now?
And your comment misses the point anyway. If everything else is just as effective as a gun, then why do we need to carry guns?
Everything kills, but everything isn't protected under the Constitution of the United States.
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Kilkrazy wrote: It might be called hypocritical to call people hypocritical who call for stricter gun laws when there are already stricter car and alcohol laws in effect.
IDK how strongly the car and alcohol lobbies lobbied against such laws.
But there aren't stricter alcohol laws. When they're are your argument wil make sense.
I don't know about the US but the UK has a number of increased penalties for drink related lawbreaking, as well as lowering of tollerances for drink related crimes to kick in. All brought into force in the last few years.
Which again is beside the point when discussing guns.
SilverMK2 wrote: I don't know about the US but the UK has a number of increased penalties for drink related lawbreaking, as well as lowering of tollerances for drink related crimes to kick in. All brought into force in the last few years.
Which again is beside the point when discussing guns.
And carrying an illegal firearm is typically a felony. Still not getting the argument that booze is regulated more than firearms, because its not. Only someone ignorant of firearms regulation would make the claim.
Frazzled wrote: And carrying an illegal firearm is typically a felony. Still not getting the argument that booze is regulated more than firearms, because its not. Only someone ignorant of firearms regulation would make the claim.
Frazzled wrote: And carrying an illegal firearm is typically a felony. Still not getting the argument that booze is regulated more than firearms, because its not. Only someone ignorant of firearms regulation would make the claim.
Brandishing booze is also not a crime
Well, if we equate brandishing to drinking there are many places where you can't drink booze in public.
Drinking is a false comparison, All brandishing, or improper exhibition, does not require that the firearm is being used as a container of alcohol is used. Just that it is visible. The equivalent would be arresting someone for carrying a six pack of beer out of the store after purchase
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d-usa wrote: Selling alcohol to minors, social hosting, serving alcohol to drunk people, all good examples of alcohol laws frequently ignored though.
Really? There are a number of established peer reviewed papers which would suggest otherwise. Not to mention crime statistics. I would welcome your input as to what is incorrect and why.
On the one hand, Jihadin is correct, I mean, look at the number of Vets currently undergoing treatment for PTSD as just ONE example of this idea that it is simply easier to pull a trigger on the psychological level. I would say also that within those same crime stats you mention, there is going to be some level of sociopathy, or psychopathy involved.... As people generally don't commit crimes against other people without some form of either of those.
Kilkrazy wrote: It might be called hypocritical to call people hypocritical who call for stricter gun laws when there are already stricter car and alcohol laws in effect.
IDK how strongly the car and alcohol lobbies lobbied against such laws.
As has been pointed out earlier, it's far easier to get alcohol than a gun. I also don't see firearms advertised on the networks as much, if at all, like alcohol is.
Then of course, there is the very possible connection between alcohol and crime:
SilverMK2 wrote: If you had no guns at all it would have made it even harder for him to shoot them.
That said, a gun distances you from the act of killing (even in close range attacks) physically and emotionally making it easier to go through with the act of killing.
Additionally, the majority of murders and "attempted murders" are carried out on an unplanned basis using whatever is closest to hand, that being generally (in the USA) a gun, knife, blunt instrument or bare hands. Unfortunately, guns are particularly good at killing people very quickly meaning that in instances where guns are used, the victim is far more likely to be killed.
So in summary, guns make killing psychologically easier, make it easier to kill physically stronger individuals and groups of individuals, and are, generally, more deadly when used on a person than other methods.
Really? There are a number of established peer reviewed papers which would suggest otherwise. Not to mention crime statistics. I would welcome your input as to what is incorrect and why.
Post me a establish peer paper. I like to see one out of curiosity.
A fire arm does not distance yourself from the killing. A individual has to actively "aim" the weapon lining up the rear and front sight. Track the target through the sights and apply 9lbs trigger squeeze. There's a calm detach mental effort into it. Individual knows what about to happen but calm enough to ensure a "center mass" shot. A "pray and spray" is pretty straight forward. Point the weapon. Apply 9lbs and track the weapon towards the target. The rush of putting steel on target is enhance by the number of rounds in the mag or revolver.
There's a mental "block"/"pause" when one about to squeeze the trigger on a target. One removes the mental "block" by getting use to shooting paper targets with a human outline in it or a human shape dummy. Also the front sight post pretty much put a "upright black rectangle" over the target. Also the "dot" they put on some front sight post is a mind trick because the mind is focus on the dot
The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
Or he could have used a butcher knife or a nice Louisville Slugger.
No. Do not let him do that. Do not allow him to simply make gak up. He's referencing events that did not happen.
On my phone so no papers atm... note that "easier" does not mean "easy". PTSD is one indication that even with training, killing isn't easy. Further note that a large number of attacks in the civillian world are spur of the moment "unthinking" attacks - the use of a gyn in such attacks often escalatung "harm" to "death".
I think I came across clearly but re-reading my post I might have dropped the ball. I'm going to probably feth up here and assume you get what I was saying.
There's a thought process before action. No one can predict a "trigger" on someone who goes violent. It just happens. They're shooting with both eyes open
The ones that goes about planning it are the ones that are "disturbed". Envisioning step by step, shot by shot, body by body drop, in what order they drop. They're building up the trigger moment
The "soldier" mentally trained just by going to the rifle range. Trigger going to come when how close they come to getting killed.
The point about this particular incident is that it supports the argument for gun control.
In this case it seems that the husband and wife had an argument that got out of hand. With a gun easily available, the husband was able in a fit of rage to grab it up and shoot dead six people including four of his children.
Perhaps it might be argued that if the wife and children had also been armed, it could not have happened like that.
Or he could have used a butcher knife or a nice Louisville Slugger.
No. Do not let him do that. Do not allow him to simply make gak up. He's referencing events that did not happen.
And making stuff up sort of flies in the face of what this thread is supposed to be about, doesn't it?
So I'll post the video here.
dumbarse.
thought this was a good idea?
. But according to the NRA that makes me "part of the problem".
