Politics Gun violence in CT

No, I'm saying that the stand your ground and CCW laws do not discriminate. The only criteria is lack of a criminal record and in some states, some sort of file on record with a mental health system.

Frustrated cowards, bullies, assholes, mean pricks, alcoholics, abusive husbands, morons and functioning narcissists are allowed to own and carry guns if they've managed not to get arrested or behave so irrationally as to get caught in the very flimsy net that is our mental health system.

They're walking around armed, possibly hoping someone will cross them. "Go ahead punk, make my day"

If they're 1 out of 10, it's too many. I've been subjected to a variety of personality assessments, some of them fairly in-depth and sophisticated, others were a complete joke. The point is, I took them as a pre-screening to determine if I was the sort of personality a company would be willing to hire. Then again. I don't have the NRA and gun lobbies to shield me from such invasive tactics.

 

Ah! You meant a PERFECT solution! Gotcha.

Doubt such a thing exists.

Incidentally, my suggestions don't involve banning guns.

There will always be risk. The debate is surely how best to mitigate that risk reasonably.
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This is something I posted elsewhere and, rather than retype it, I thought I'd just quote it. Hope that's OK!

This only covers my views on gun ownership. I absolutely agree that proper access to mental health care for everybody who needs it must be a priority.

 

NRA press conference live on c-span (11:00 am)


Live Video - C-SPAN | C-SPAN


They will not be taking questions.
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LaPierre attacking the first amendment rights of Hollywood and video games.

"We need armed guards at schools".....not sure how that will prevent mass shootings at theaters, malls, churches.....
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"The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
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"Why are guns good (secret service) to protect the President, but not our children."
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Clearly, the NRA position is to frame the issue solely in terms of school safety, not the larger issue of gun violence.

 

Volunteers like George Zimmerman?

 

wow.
wayne lapierre.
what a fucking asshole.

 

I don't quite understand the focus on guns as some sort of tonic to protect us against tyranny. I mean, it makes sense on a superficial level, but it ignores the fact that a lot of governments have fallen as a response to nonviolent action, which is to say that guns aren't necessarily the solution. Also, the idea that we should arm citizens as a protection against oppression fails to acknowledge instances where armed subsets of a county's citizenry were co-opted and used against less well armed subsets. History is full of examples of well regulated militias committing genocide against their countryfolk.

In the U.S. there is no shortage of people who can recall a time when 'well regulated militias' like the KKK - enabled by sympathetic law enforcement - terrorized minorities in the name of good Christian values. Would the situation have been better if the minorities were armed? Maybe, but maybe not. They were outnumbered and didn't have the benefit of institutional support like the white folks did. An armed black populace might have just seen itself more violently oppressed.

 

Eventually expanding from a volunteer action at schools to the hiring of private companies such as Dyncorp and Blackwater to provide a security presence in every vulnerable nook and cranny of the US. Erik PrinceWorld brought to you by Wayne LaPierre and the NRA's generous paving of the way.

/shivers.

I had to turn it off before it finished. I was getting sick to my stomach listening to his fucked up rationalizations. I heard enough though. Enough to know that nothing's changed on that side.

 

This all sounds so hopeless, really. How can you fix a problem so big that nobody agrees on anything. Just a really sad situation...

 

It's not hopeless, freetofly but it's difficult and complicated and made all the more so by entrenched positions on both sides of the issue.

I think everyone agrees that the problem is multi-faceted and that, for the short term at least, it needs to be minimized in a way that doesn't end up exacerbating the problem. My opinion, which is also backed up by historical data, is that arming teachers or posting armed civilians in schools, malls, movie theatres, restaurants, etc., is a solution that carries with it the likelihood that it will result in more gun violence, not less.

Nevertheless, there will be states and local school boards who will opt for this solution. It remains to be seen how it will work if and when it's put to the real test as there is no way to collect data on how effective it might be in discouraging would be shooters.

Incidences of the sort that occurred at Sandy Hook, though horrible and more frequently occurring than we'd like, are relatively rare in comparison to the occurrences of gun related incidents in general where statistics prove that more guns = more violence.

That's the concern. The risk/benefit factor in having guns in a school where the risk of a crazed attack by an outside shooter is almost negligible, compared to the greater likelihood of a gun-related incident at a school simply because there are guns in the school.

 

basically, this whole post. as nice as it would be to have a law that would stop all domestic gun violence, it's a little too fantastic. i think if we really want to eliminate gun violence (for the most part anyways) the problem isn't a legislative one, but a cultural one. hell, i wouldn't be above spanking my kid if they joke about killing people at a young age. that's something you don't joke about and IMO somehow people have become desensitized to the loss of life until it affects them personally