new thoughts & actions on gun control

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  • June 23, 2016 at 9:48 pm #46950
    Billy_T
    Participant

    Another issue I hadn’t given much thought to, before this interview on fresh air:

    Handguns In America And The Rise Of The ‘Concealed-Carry Lifestyle’

    Making a Killing The business and politics of selling guns. By Evan Osnos

    Concealed carry. Its proliferation. The obvious and repeated dangers. Turning heated arguments into deadly encounters. Turning what would normally have been a fist fight, with bloody lips and sore bones, into deadly encounters.

    Escalation. From physical encounters where all parties go home afterward, to tragedies where some go home in body bags. America moves far too quickly now to DEFCON 1. No early to middle stages. Think Zimmerman and Tayvon Martin. No gun, and there’s no death. Just an older Zimmerman getting his butt kicked by a kid, and deservedly so. The gun made it a deadly tragedy. The gun itself.

    Time to roll back conceal carry, all across the nation.

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Billy_T.
    • This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Billy_T.
    • This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by zn.
    June 23, 2016 at 11:15 pm #46955
    TSRF
    Participant

    Oh, Billy…

    Thoughts like your post above are EXACTLY why the NRA didn’t want to budge on any gun law. They were completely and rightfully afraid that it would all fall down like the house of cards it is.

    Big doings this week in the congress, led by my Senators, I must say.

    I hope what we are seeing continues.

    “I demand a better future”
    -David Bowie

    June 23, 2016 at 11:41 pm #46960
    zn
    Moderator
    TSRF wrote:

    Big doings this week in the congress, led by my Senators, I must say.

    Yeah that was interesting.

    June 24, 2016 at 1:45 am #46961
    Zooey
    Participant

    I dunno. The whole thing seems like a stunt to me. The bill is window dressing. This is the biggest wave of support for gun control the country has seen, and the Democrats are spending the moment to use it to stop sales to people on the No Fly list? That’s not going to make any measurable difference. Typical waste of time from the party that claims to be progressive.

    Maybe next they can cure urban blight by limiting the number of cans of spray paint people can buy at one time.

    On the NRA’s intransigence: I had a (gun-toting survivalist) friend of mine tell me that he was worried that ANY gun restrictions would just lead the way to more. He said, “We saw what happened to cigarette smokers…one restriction after another.”

    June 24, 2016 at 2:31 am #46963
    zn
    Moderator
    Zooey wrote:

    I had a (gun-toting survivalist) friend of mine tell me that he was worried that ANY gun restrictions would just lead the way to more. He said, “We saw what happened to cigarette smokers…one restriction after another.”

    Well your friend made an interesting unconscious comparison to an addiction.

    June 24, 2016 at 9:26 am #46970
    Billy_T
    Participant

    Well your friend made an interesting unconscious comparison to an addiction.

    And not just any old addiction. An addiction that kills the smoker and the people around the smoker. Which fits perfectly with guns. Science tells us, in fact, that a cigarette, sitting there in the ashtray, has a greater cancer-causing payload than directly inhaling it as a smoker. Smokers kill 40,000 non-smokers a year in America alone. Worldwide, it’s ten times that amount, at least.

    I still can’t wrap my mind around the idea that it’s a major destruction of someone’s “freedom” not to be able to kill others — or wound them, or make them seriously ill.

    June 24, 2016 at 9:30 am #46971
    Billy_T
    Participant

    I dunno. The whole thing seems like a stunt to me. The bill is window dressing. This is the biggest wave of support for gun control the country has seen, and the Democrats are spending the moment to use it to stop sales to people on the No Fly list? That’s not going to make any measurable difference. Typical waste of time from the party that claims to be progressive.

    Zooey, I can see that view, and part of me thinks of it only in that way, too. As a stunt. But another part of me is so damn happy to see the Dems do ANYTHING that isn’t in the fetal position, I see it as a major step forward. And, from what its leaders were saying, it wasn’t just about the No Fly lists. It was also to push for things like the assault weapons ban. It was a “first step” kind of thing to help mobilize them, and I’m all for first steps, especially when we’ve seen full scale retreats for two decades.

    It’s really about setting the table for future opposition to the NRA, which hasn’t been defeated on any aspect of the gun issue in close to two decades. Their movement has been unchecked for nearly that long, and if it takes some theater to change that, I’m all for it.

    June 24, 2016 at 9:42 am #46972
    Billy_T
    Participant

    A side note on that No Fly list issue. Both parties are guilty of abusing this and being disingenuous. The Republicans want us to believe they just got religion on the matter of “due process,” and they hope we’re too stupid to realize that the No Fly lists themselves, which they fully support, are likely un-Constitutional. It’s not the denial of gun purchases that should be questioned. It’s the lists themselves. So real civil libertarians would be working to end them, not working to protect gun proliferation, a side issue related to those lists. The lists don’t appear to have Constitutional support. Gun control definitely does.

    And the Dems? Their use of the No Fly lists to push for sensible, common-sense gun safety is also disingenuous, of course. To me, the best way to go about this is to work to end the lists AND to institute sane, effective gun safety laws.

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