Speakeasy forum: Reasonable and moving commentary from Joe Scarborough

Welcome to the world of community/social psychology.

How often do bullies get away with bullying because boys will be boys or other such stupidity? In such instances are the grounds of tragedy laid.

There was a time when someone could be cruel to small animals and such and people would generally ignore it. They might not like it or the person, but it wasn't their business. Now we know that such is the sign of a sociopath in the making and something better be done sooner than later.

grimgraphix wrote: "Your neighbor who has the easiest access to weapons of war are the ones you have to worry about the most because they are the ones most likely to pick up an assault rifle."

In one way, you are correct, in that the ones with access to "weapons of war" are the ones most likely to pick up an assault rifle for the simple reason that those who don't have access can't pick one up. That argument is, however, a logical fallacy.

I grew up around people who had constant access to such weapons and none of them ever went psycho and started shooting people in an insane outburst. In fact, the vast majority of the people I grew up around had ready access to FULLY AUTOMATIC weapons, military grade ones, and none of them ever went bonkers. This comprised two primary groups of people: first, US military personnel and second, Europeans who all did mandatory military service. In some countries, after doing their minimum commitment, the soldiers then take their weapons HOME with them. How many violent crimes like this have you heard of in Switzerland where every adult male is a member of the militia and has an automatic weapon in their home? Take a look at their home crime rate, violent break-ins and such.

is for a great number of people to be inconvenienced and deprived of their rights because a few individuals go off the deep end and do something horrible. That happens with things other than guns, such as cars being suggested, but where is the call for everyone to walk or use public transportation because some do a DUI and kill antother, or deliberately use the car in a rage attack? No, it's just this ov erblown Silly Suzy Fainting Fairy act many go into because a gun was involved.

I don't think you even understand the issues involved here. See, people want to bring up irrelevant diversions rather than talk about the realities of the situation. People want to make silly comparisons between pickups and assault weapons. A pickup is not comparable to an m-16. On the other hand a tank is. Just because people have cars, does that mean people should have tanks?

Let us see how biffs' argument sounds with the substitution...

So, if the same guy decided to drive his TANK through the crowd of school children walking out the front door at the end of the day, do we ban TANKS? School lets out and you have a solid stream of children flowing out the door. By their very nature, just about all schools have a sidewalk on which a TANK-BRADLEY-PATRIOT MISSILE BATTERY could easily drive, sending little bodies flying without a second thought.

Wow... suddenly that paragraph seems quite silly.

I'm a gun owner. Am I anti-gun? Oh hell no. However, I just don't see the need to own an assault rifle (the weapon of choice for most rampages). They are designed to do one thing. Kill or wound people, and do it with as much damage as possible. Frankly, biff lost any credibility with me as soon as he said a .22 and a .223 were similar. That's like saying a VW Bug and a Ferrari are similar just because they weigh almost the same.

But getting back to my original question to you... just what am I arguing for James? Am I arguing for unlicensed drivers on the road allowed to possess and drive big rig trucks? Am I arguing for the right to own chemical and biological weapons? ("really officer, it's just for hunting and home defense")

How can you even talk about inconvenience to gun owners? Just how inconvenient a day did those kids up in Connecticut have last week?

... and you do realize that privately owned tanks are not allowed to have working artillery pieces on them without a special license?


... and you do realize that feigning glib satisfaction is not a substitute for rational discussion.

There are innumberable items which can damage other humans that are commonly used everyday by many people, but they aren't banned because of that. You could buy a nail gun and go around shooting nails at people, in fact they fire about the same as a short load .22 but with a longer payload into someone's head or other body part. The occasional wrong use of a AR-15 doesn't make them any worse than the occasional wrong use of any other appliance.

why do you keep this going? Need for personal embarassment?

The paragraph you pirated about was misused. The point of that paragraph was that virtually any POV (personally owned vehicle) could easily be turned into a weapon of mass murder against school children. No "military" weapon or ammo involved. Take away the "civilian" or "military" weapons and and those desiring to do evil will still find a ready way to do so. All you accomplish by such legislation is to deny legitimate "normal" people from ownership.

The Right to Bear Arms was intended to allow the civilian populace to arm themselves in particular against incursions by government troops, a possibility readily envisioned by the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To be effective, that means the populace needs to be able to arm themselves comparably to the government. So today, that means high-power automatic weapons. So long as the citizen does not have a criminal record or mental defect or abnormality making them untrustworthy, they have every right to own such.

I am quite clear that a .22 round will not work in an M-16/AR-15. I have handled both. The CASING of the AR-15 round is substantially larger and the round itself is substantially longer. Those issues go to range, penetration and velocity of the round (primarily), none of which are factors in at classroom range on 6 year-olds. I expect that I know a heck of a lot more about the M-16 than you do. Do you know its MOA for example (without looking it up)? How about why a relatively small .223 caliber was chosen as opposed to the much more "popular" caliber of the NATO 7.62mm, standard in the ubiquitous AK-47?

... for the specific issue at hand. A .22 round would have been just as effective at 30 ft against a 6 year old as a .223.

The question on MOA was more a question to see if you even knew what MOA was - most people don't ... I had not seen your other posts which demonstrated more intimate knowledge of firearms.

So, since the government now has predator drones, we are now supposed to give up our rights and cede all power to the governing elite - those relative few which have the financial and political backing to get into power? Funny, the Afghani's or other hostiles haven't ceded victory to the predator drones, I wonder why they haven't given their inherent superiority over the individual. For that matter, why aren't we disbanding, at least the infantry, if the drones are so effective? Why are we risking the lives of individual soldiers when we have these super weapons which work just as well or better than a thousand soldiers with M-16's? Curious minds want to know. Given how much it costs to train and equip a SINGLE combat infantryman, I would think we could fill the skies with drones for the cost of but one or two battalions.

Last armed rebellion by US citizens against US forces? I don't know ... but the wacko's in Waco come to mind ...

When might it NEED to happen again? I am not sure, but the federal government we have now as greatly exceeded its Consitutional authority and bounds in MANY areas. As I seem to recall, the precept with the Constitution was that any power not EXPLICITLY given to the federal government implicitly belonged to the states. And yet today, we have a federal government operating and controlling many, many aspects of life in which the Constitution does not explicitly empower it. Although a believer in aspects of social responsibility and social "goodness" one might say, with no intention or desire for violent acts, I am very concerned with the increasing encroachment upon our personal rights and private lives by the government,even though I know it is "for our own good" ... Its for our own good that alcohol was banned ... oops, that didn't work ... so you have to be 18 ... nope, you have to be 21 ... etc. I have to take a medication daily in an on going basis, yet Uncle Sam says I have to have a new prescription each and every month. My doctor isn't even allowed to write it to have refills. So each and every month I have to pay to see the doctor just to get the new prescription because Uncle Sammy is afraid I'll ... what? Become a criminal? What does it matter if the doctor writes in refills so I don't have to go back to the office every month?

Yeah, I know, OT. But the point is that government continues to encroach incrementally in areas it doesn't belong and if this continues, there will come a point where it will have to be put back in its place or utterly discarded and revamped. The alternative is that we become mindless drones doing exactly what big brother tells us to do each and every minute of the day, surrendering all personal will to the uber machine.

... as a dependent of the military, I was able to go to the range and get 50 rounds of .22s for target shooting on the range.

you buy a car, file a title, can keep it forever if you want. Whether the use of public roads is a right or a privilege is an entirely different matter.

Inconveniencing people is a heck of a lot better than burying them.

Into each life some rain must fall?

We're punishing?/making you not do something you want to do, for the good of the majority.

Have you told your grandkids about the shootings?

If so, have they expressed any concern of being shot while in school?

Have you told them about the bad people that are trying to restrict the sale of automatic weapons?

Which is more important to you?

Having happy gun owners or happy children?

Gays tend to spread HIV among themselves. I can imagine you would encourage that, since it lessens not only their activity but their number also.
Giving them free condoms would help, by the way. You would support that policy?

Gun owners tend to kill persons that don't have one (ready). Let's call them 'innocents'. That's incomparable.
And I read there's a huge sale of ' bullet-free backpacks' for the children in Newtown (and maybe elsewhere also). Shouldn't they be made free also? Makes it more difficult for gun-owners to kill them.

Controlling people so they don't do what you don't want them to do (like having sex or shooting) often is more difficult than limiting the consequences.

Kees

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

There's no need to avoid normal social contact with HIV-carriers. It's only contagious via blood and sexual contacts.

An ad campaign in the Netherlands stresses this idea: http://www.google.nl/imgres?hl=nl&client=firefox-a&hs=rBs&sa=X&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&biw=1280&bih=835&tbm=isch&tbnid=abF12R3ky4PLDM:&imgrefurl=http://madbello.nl/9145/zou-je-mijn-blog-lezen-als-ik-hiv-positief-zou-zijn/&docid=OzO1ynyodKaH9M&imgurl=http://madbello.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/poster_aidsfonds_plasterk-grt.jpg&w=283&h=384&ei=JunUUKTsItCr0AXl-oG4BQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=218&vpy=262&dur=10885&hovh=262&hovw=193&tx=93&ty=120&sig=110640015663157931336&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=100&start=0&ndsp=34&ved=1t:429,r:8,s:0,i:112 is a last-year picture of politician Ronald Plasterk (now Minister of the Interior - sorry, that's Googles translation) asking "Could I still become Minister if I would be HIV-positive").
The intended answer is "Of course, you could. HIV isn't contagious. It has become just a chronic disease".

Now imagine an ad campaign by the NRA figuring unknown young (white, black, hispanic) males pointing a gun to the camera and asking "Would you feel at ease if the two of us would be alone in the same room?".

Kees