I suggested in another thread that we start opening gun addiction treatment centers, akin to centers that treat heroin addiction, for instance. The gundamentalists did not like my suggestion one bit.

fetish

noun fe·tish \ˈfe-tish also ˈfē-\

: a strong and unusual need or desire for something

: a need or desire for an object, body part, or activity for sexual excitement

: an object that is believed to have magical powers

seems to fit the gun-humpers' mental issues to a tee.

It's some twisted and irrational thinking on their part.

Ever.

Their guns are more precious to them than any number of innocent lives, no matter how large.

It's a pathology in an uncommonly pure form, and it's unique to this country.

Pick any # you like. Might as well go with 100/week.

In their minds, the guns will NEVER, EVER, EVER be too blame. It's always the user who is at fault. Or rather, it's often the fault of the mental health system, a vague enough boogieman to make it sound like a solvable problem.

A person with a gun is viewed as responsible, until they kill a bunch of people, and then they're suddenly not.

And don't dare talk about guns being a problem after an incident. It's much too soon. Have you no compassion for the victims?

and everything else they hold "dear."

The questions you should be asking are: why do some feel the need to slaughter? Why do some feel the need to harm others?

If you could make every single weapon disappear today, there would still be those who feel the need to harm, to slaughter.

And all you would have accomplished is to create a huge number of defenseless victims - subject to the whim of the bigger, stronger tyrant. No thanks.

These folks would put those snake handlers and faith healers to shame. Their trust and confidence in the tenets of the High Church of Redemptive Violence is absolute and unshakable. You might as well try to put a reed through leviathan's nose and steer it where you will.

in a road rage incident. Keene still pushed for more guns in more places. I suspect most gunners would not change if a family member were killed by their irresponsible gun fancying, guns are too important to them.

Tough gun laws will have to enacted while they whine and threaten terrorist acts.

Some shithead was on here the other day looking to define a "mass killing"

They will never relent.

more guns solve the problem.

They will never be silenced after a shooting.

The next generation will grow up saner. I think.

The gun murder lovers and justifiers will never be satisfied. At least the ignore function here at DU works well and my screen won't be tainted by them.

When will those who want to ban guns start asking what we can do to stop the criminal that pulls the trigger instead of blaming an inanimate object made out of metal and polymer?

But I echo the question above - what do you mean by "relent"? Many people - me included - support some gun control measures, such as background checks, but the simple truth of the matter is that such a law would do nothing to prevent mass shootings and would do nothing to get the gun out of the hand of the felon who wants to commit a robbery/murder. If by "relent" you mean support a gun ban/confiscation then I suspect that you'll find little support. I'm not aware of a single politician from the Democratic party (and certainly not one in a swing state) who has proposed a gun ban or repeal of the Second Amendment. And keep in mind, the official platform of the party states that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, so if your position is confiscation/gun ban then you are at odds with the party and our president.

Please don't tell me that less guns won't matter.

That's what this gun owner supports.

Although those measures likely would not have prevented Charleston or Sandy Hook, for instance.

total ban and confiscation of all firearms in this Country. That's not going to happen.

Does not get safer, only more gun violence.

Gun violence has been steadily declining for 20 years.

But an uncomfortable fact that controllers don't want to admit.

Street, go shopping, go to church, go to work, go to theaters and why is this, because we don't have the guts to say enough, if a person is not capable of exercising the privilege of owning a gun because their target practice is on humans then it will start to infringe on the ability of law abiding honest hunters to freely purchase weapons, this picture can be changed, it will take guts to knock out NRA and do the right thing to make our world safer. BTW, I am a gun owner.

I refuse to cater to them.

The USA relationships with money and guns vividly express the narcissism reflected in the ugly American stereotype.

Both are the manifestations of a sense of entitlement in it's purest form. If ya can't have one, the other is abundently available for a person to live a life devoted to their personal desires.

Both fulfill a narcissitic desire but only one is available to a significant number of the population. It is far too satisfying to have access to the realization of the most irrational sense of the American dream. I think it is also possibly based on the greed that sometimes accompanies a sense of disenfranchisement.

As things stand, I don't have a lot of hope. Because, even here, the stanchest gun advocates consider these shootings to be collatoral damage to the ends of their own sense of personal satisfaction (be it personal safety, hunting trophies, or target shooting expertise).

I DO, however hope that I will be proven wrong.

lock and load.

When 99.9x percent of people that own guns do not misuse them to commit gun violence, and 99.9x percent of guns in private possession are not misused in the commission of gun violence, the problem is not and can not be the guns. If the problem was the guns, those numbers would be starkly different. But they aren't, that's reality.


Its something else.

but maybe more than one of the anti's have a habit of lurking in a dark grotto of the web, longing to be mentioned there. I mean seriously, reading some of these posts is comical.

I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

is a logical, rational argument.

Gun lovers love their guns. It's an emotional attachment, and therefor intractable to logic and rationality.

I've pretty much given up on having a rational discussion with gun enthusiasts. They're deaf to reason, logic, compassion, humanity, you name it.

I can think many thing that we should ban if saving lives is all that matters.

And that you view guns differently then equally dangerous things. That fact that you embrace prohibition means you value the culture wars over rational discussion.

guns as they want. Sandy Hook didn't do it -- what will?

Instead of holding Adam Lanza responsible for Sandy Hook you blame the gun?

and no one gives an actual shit...

Waiting for Americans to care is like waiting for Godot.

and usually by someone they know.

I find the entire concept of "compelling" another to give up a right to be very disturbing. Also very . . . I don't know, authoritarian? Compelling someone to conform with your notion of what is right and wrong sounds very much like what the Khmer Rouge do, or the Taliban. In other words, it doesn't sound particularly American. Someone who isn't breaking the law and isn't harming another should be able to act as they see fit.

Do pray tell how will you compel?

the NRA has no "skin" in the "game".

than any lives.

I read a while back that the husband (or maybe it was the father, not quite sure) of the woman who was shot and killed by her toddler in the grocery store when the toddler pulled her loaded gun out of her purse, that man said it didn't change his mind. Too bad the toddler didn't shoot him. Although that could still happen, given that he doesn't seem to think basic gun safety is very important.

I honestly think that what could turn things around would be to publish the photographs of those murdered by guns. People need to see just what violence is done to the human body by bullets. It's not the sanitized version we get from Hollywood. It's brutal and terrible. People should see it.

If the media had published photos from Sandy Hook, we would have some sort of meaningful gun control in this country with a strong headwind toward repealing that antiquated murder clause in the Constitution otherwise known as the 2A.

national gun control. Now we have the Brady Act, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and all kinds of other rubbish. I'd love to go back to the days before GCA '68. I think the legislative history just illustrates how guns are not the problem.

If we didn't need gun control before 1968, why do we need it now?

Gun kooks have withdrawal symptoms if they can't get their Saturday night special right away.

Full auto weapons were strictly regulated in 1938 so your post is FAIL.

was passed in 1934. It wasn't until 1986, that the Hughes Amendment was added to FOPA, which prohibits the sale of new fully automatic firearms.

My original point was that prior to 1968, we didn't have most of the regulations we have now on civilian small arms. This illustrates that guns laws really don't make much of a difference one way or the other.

Seriously, if you have to ask why any lethal or toxic substance needs to be controlled, you're the poster child for gun control.

the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table?

No matter how many deaths occur, neither are likely to relent.

Plows into a parade, as happened a few weeks ago in Oklahoma, or into a group of trick or treaters, as happened on Saturday in New York, and kills a bunch of people I don't see anyone bellowing for a ban on Budweiser. Why? Because the individual that drove the car is responsible for the carnage caused, not Budweiser or Jack Daniels. So why do you blame the gun when an individual uses that item to kill someone?

Swimming pools, ladders, household chemicals, blah, blah, blah.

We've played this stupid game at DU before.

Ban/confiscate guns? I agree we need to dramatically decrease murders in this country, so how do we do that? Universal background checks will have minimal impact. I favor mandatory training since that will cut down on accidental gun deaths, but will have zero impact on murders/suicides.

that's why you want to ban semiautomatic rifles but not the long list of things that kill many more people.

based on your priorities.

Nostradamus.

who depends on emotion rather than logic. Hence my comment about semiautomatic rifles.

coming from a emotional gunhumper, I will treasure it.

can you imagine how far the gun control movement could get if they moved away from grade school insults and sexual innuendo and actually tried to engage gun owners in a rational manner? Because you will not get anything without us. And I bet that you and I agree more than disagree when it comes to gun control. There are only two things I categorically reject - the rest I am willing to discuss and many I already support. Shall we take some time to find common ground?

Oh, I get it, those people aren't as dead as those that die by a firearm.

Nobody gives a shit anymore. It's every Man/woman/child for themselves!

In this country. I've represented criminals who have used guns in crimes. Everything from beat up Glocks to hundred plus year old black powder little 32 caliber revolvers that are likely more dangerous to the users than the would-be victims. These criminals have been juveniles and men over fifty (had one 62 year old).

If we address the problems of entrenched poverty, lack of safety nets that mobilize people to attain jobs, lack of job creation and wage growth, end the war on drugs (shift from a penal plan to a recovery plan), lack of single payer health care (or at least a public option in extending Medicare to all), many of these problems in involving guns would go away.

You can remove guns from this country but not the motivation to commit murder. When Orlando was having its peak murders back in 2008 (or '07 can't remember exactly), most of the people killed were being stabbed to death and were affiliated with drug dealing so gun control wouldn't have addressed those deaths.

Plus, gun control has become commercialized in my opinion with Bloomberg having entered the foray. I'd rather focus on making the country better for everybody, and helping the broken and the damned. I've personally helped people escape homelessness and created businesses that paid better wages than what the people were previously earning.

A candidate's stance will not be a deciding factor for me in voting. It's going to be about what are they doing to help people.

accept smart guns?

When it is reliable enough for the police and military let me know.

They did a segment on it
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/smart-guns-60-minutes-lesley-stahl/

One Maryland dealer tried selling a smart gun made in Germany. Within hours he was swamped with phone calls and emails making threats. The Clinton admin tried to get Smith and Wesson to make it and it almost killed their company. There is a "mandate" law in NJ requiring everyone in their state to switch to one if they are ever sold here.

Open carry is soon going to be legal in more places than it is illegal. The vast majority of Americans seem perfectly content with living in Dodge City.

I don't even know what my goal is at this point.

Of course, the Breaking News notice may be late in arriving.

There will have been c. 30-32 gun-related homicides today, excluding suicides, assuming an average day. As is generally the case, most or all of these will be "solo shootings," and as such not considered newsworthy (or comment-worthy here on DU). Mass shootings kill about 500 people a year...out of about 11,500.

Yet the gun control steps that are suggested are almost exclusively aimed at weapons sometimes used in mass shootings and almost never in ordinary solo killings...or are aimed at steps to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of mass shooters (but which would be useless in preventing the criminals responsible for the majority of solo killings from getting their handguns).

I understand wanting to stop the former category. Mass killings are horrific to contemplate. But given the tremendous amount of political capital that must be spent to pass additional gun controls, I'd far rather it be spent addressing the areas in which the largest (by a mile) portion of the death toll occurs. How do we keep handguns out of criminal hands?

Case in point. The mother of one of the Sandy Hook victims has written a book. The pro-gun minions have gone on Amazon in droves to give her book one star. Fortunately, there are more people who want to read her story. The gun-nut publicity might turn it into a best seller.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1401945864/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1446511425&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=nurturing+healing+love&dpPl=1&dpID=41z1IkRIP9L&ref=plSrch

the slaughter will continue until it impacts profits.

AND there is a problem with people not storing their guns properly.

And I'm not even a fucking "gun lover", just a GUN OWNER (whose background contains nary a criminal charge and whose guns are locked in a safe).

Happy now? You got exactly what you asked for. Happy? I'd wager not in the slightest.

... so stick 'em up your ass."

Or maybe when Fiona Glenanne shoots them dead.

They'll be excited getting shot by Fiona until that final dying gasp realization that bullets hurt fucking gawd awful bad, and maybe they never were the "good" guy.

Go directly to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Or much, much worse, surviving as someone who shot someone. (Excepting the psychopaths, of course...)

The most disturbed war veteran I've ever met shot and killed two kids, he thinks they were about thirteen or fourteen years old, one or the other having shot him first, costing him large chunk of bowel so he never could shit normally again.

He earned a Purple Heart and very honorable discharge, and he hated it. It took him a long time and much counseling to rebuild his life as an ordinary peaceful human.

Ordinary peaceful humans do not shoot other humans or carry guns imaging any circumstance where they might shoot other humans.

The tragedy that kills one of their kids, their partner, their parent, a friend...

I was wrong, and hopelessly naive. Now I'm convinced that it won't change in our lifetimes.

There is a fetish about guns and the disasters are self-replicating.

We have become the nation where people shoot each other out of hopelessness, revenge, attention, or plain meanness.

Ugly.

I grew up in a gun culture and many people in the rural area where I live consider guns as a fact of life but have not had a hunting license since age 17 in 1970 not shot a gun since 1984 (and that was to sample twigs and cones from conifers for insect studies).

Earlier today I asked a life long friend if he ever felt like he needed a gun for safety. He said he had a gun when he grew pot illegally and commercially in the 70s and 80s but not really. Neither of us hunt and are sort of old hippies but he is American Indian and I am not.

I recreated and worked in the woods for years where there were lions, bears, rattlesnakes, and gnarly humans distant from any feasible LE and never felt any need to carry a weapon. People hunt. The American Indians do not have the same restrictions on hunting in the surrounding National Forest and Reservation lands as the general public (that needs a restricted state-issued hunting license rather than a Tribal Card). I like venison and salmon and people seem to be willing to gift me treats.

My Dad was less than thrilled about my dis-interest in guns for 40 years.

I seldom post about guns but did mention on the two places where I post on the internet the idea about regulating ammunition rather than guns in the USA. The idea was ignored.

However, Gavin Newsom has a similar idea and has worked out the concept and proposed legislation which IMO is smart and creative.

My idea went a step father in that all ammunition should be able to be traced from production to consumer.

I heartily approve of the proposed legislation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-lt-gov-gavin-newsom-proposing-gun-control-ballot-initiative-in-wake-of-shootings/

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing a 2016 ballot initiative that would ask voters to strengthen the state's gun laws by restricting ammunition sales, requiring owners to turn in assault-style magazines that have a large capacity and requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to law enforcement.

If adopted, the proposal Newsom planned to release Thursday would make California the first state in the nation to require background checks at the point of sale for ammunition, although other states require purchasers to obtain licenses and go through background checks ahead of time.

snip

The ballot initiative would ask voters to make five changes to state law:

- Eliminate the stockpile of now-banned large-capacity magazines with 11 rounds or more: Owners would be required to sell them to a licensed firearms dealer, take them out of state or turn them in to law enforcement to be destroyed. State law already bans manufacturing or selling magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

- Background checks for ammunition purchases: Ammunition dealers would need to conduct a background check at the point-of-sale for all ammunition, and dealers would need a license similar to those required to sell firearms. Stores also would be required to report to law enforcement if ammunition has been lost or stolen.

- Reporting lost and stolen guns: California would join 11 other states in requiring that lost or stolen firearms be reported to law enforcement.

- Felons must relinquish weapons: California courts would set up a clear process to relinquish weapons. The authors say that more than 17,000 Californians who are prohibited from owning firearms currently have guns.

- Firearms database: The California Department of Justice would have to notify the federal instant criminal background check system when someone is added to the database of those prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm. California currently reports to the federal system voluntarily.

snip

Unless it hits them directly, nothing will change. In other words, nothing is going to change.

Every time they just run out and buy more guns.

In fact the opposite seems to happen. They dig in crazier and deeper all the time.

would save a single human life, I would give them up.

Safety first...