people are going to rain shit on you. Excellent post and here's a rec.

Thank you.

Just don't touch their precious guns...

This man has rights after all and they will defend it to the point of overthrowing the government: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022000277

For years, "responsible gun owners" have stood in the way of reasonable regulation. If they don't want to see a growing movement demanding extreme gun control, they need to get in front on this issue and lead the change themselves.

Including bans on assault weapons.

They've only sunk us deeper into the epidemic. They take and take, and give us back only piles of corpses. They are sdespicable and beyond persuasion.

We need to work with these people like we need - yes - a hole in the head.

Woman's suffragists didn't work with the anti-Suffrage people. They didn't reach a settlement. They destroyed the anti-Suffrage position rhetorically and electorally and ethically. That is the only option left for dealing with the gun culture and its murderous orientation.

Perhaps it's time for a new approach. We've been spinning our wheels stuck in the mud for far too long.

We need an ACT UP for gun control: in their faces, non-stop, all the time. Together with that, we need a multigenerational, long-term movement to destroy their arguments and culture.

What we do not need is what we do now, and what you're suggesting more of: hand holding with recalcitrant sociopaths and suckers for the gun manufacturers who do nothing but talk nicely about "reason" out of one side of their mouth while contributing to a public health epidemic nonstop with the other.

We've been doing nothing BUT trying your way, and it is a catastrophe. You're like the public health officials who tried to gingerly gain consensus for shutting down the bath houses in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They were stymied at every turn, and were unable to shut down the bath houses, which they finally did by pure fiat, for three years. Meanwhile, thousands were infected and died. That's you. That's your position: let's talk, let's gain consensus: but just as the bath house owners and their flunkies and dupes would never in a million years agree to shutting down the bath houses, even as they amplified the epidemic, so the gun manufacturers and their flunkies will never in a million years agree to anything. We've seen their offers: death - a non-stop epidemic of gun death into the future, and forever. Fuck them. Your way has failed miserably. It is wrong. It is morally repugnant. And it is deeply impractical.

That plain that simple.

Most of my collection is antiques but I do own a few modern arms and thoroughly enjoy sport/target shooting.

As a gun owner I have supported the following positions for quite a while now:

-subject the private sales of used firearms to the same background checks that dealers have to use. want to sell a gun? Take it to a licensed FFL dealer and pay a small fee for using the NICS system to facilitate the sale.

-strengthen the NICS system to better look for red flags such as violent mental health history etc.

-emphatically enforce existing laws regarding straw purchasers and make life a living hell for anybody who buys a gun for someone who is legally unable to buy it for themselves.

-legally require secure storage for guns and impose stiff penalties for those that don't follow good custody practices in keeping their weapons secure. This should be a no brainer for responsible gun owners, I think most of us get it but as we saw this week, apparently some don't. It's high time to write this one into law.

-end this ridiculous "war on drugs". It's gone on far too long and too many people have been gunned down over the black market it creates.

I don't care if any of this pisses off my fellow gun owners, I'm also the father of a first grader and I had to sit down with her last night and attempt to explain whet happened, it was a very hard thing to do.

Absolutists from either end of the spectrum are not going to help solve this.... we are going to have to meet in the middle and have a rational discussion or once again, nothing meaningful will get done.