America is the promised land of freedom without responsibility!

therefore, we wouldn't want to restrict your freedoms.

And he's also a bloody fool. This is not a time to let these wankers get away mouthing the talking points of the NRA. This is a time to challenge the bastards and take them to task both for their obvious lack of giving a damn about the victims of the massacre and the insanity of their stance on the "rights" of Americans to purchase, load, and use weapons that are specifically designed to kill human beings.

It would be nice, wouldn't it, if the vast majority of the Country, the horrified 90% or so, actually had a goddam voice in Congress, and in the media, to call these whores and fools to task for advocating open access to the tools of slaughter.

The OMFG-BIG-BAD-NRA card is old hat.

You can't beat that title.

the gun lovers won't be happy until a developmentally challenged 6 year old can walk into the 7-11 and buy an Uzi for 50 cents....



There can be no freedom in an armed society....

Letting the idiots who talk loudest get the soapbox. Shame on Think Progress. I got tired of their style of journalism. It is self defeating, to only fight the evil, without solutions and answers. Just debating morons in Congress, etc. is not going to solve the real problems we have. It takes more brains to solve problems, not debate talking points of lairs and crooks.

Oh wait,....a lot of them don't bother voting.....

.....that the "Democrats" in DU's Gun Control/RKBA group don't post on a daily basis.

GMAFB

GMAFB...indeed.

Wasn't responding to your post- he was telling the person that told you to GMAFB to GMAFB. so, you are telling the wrong person to fuck themselves.

Since I walked away from the shooting sports, my aim is sometimes faulty......

he didn't say keeping them away from demented individuals would harm our freedoms.

He said the efforts required to keep them away from demented individuals would.

This guy had no mental health issues prior to the shooting (none diagnosed anyway).

So it's a non-issue anyway.

That's a clear sign of mental illness, right there.

B) 6,000 rounds sounds like a lot to someone who is not familiar with a gun. You can shoot off that many in one day at the range. And you ought to if you just purchased a gun to become familiar with it.

I can probably get you at a decent grouping in under 50.

Yeah, I'm sure you take exactly 50 rounds to the range.

Did you learn how to shoot in the Core?

They get tagged "snipers".

Morons take a bit more.

are those who practice with their guns until they are proficient.

Geniuses like yourself can just pick up a gun and hit a bullseye on the first shot.

/a legend in his own mind. Boppers was captain in the imperial marine core during the kickass-wars.

I've been teaching others to shoot since I was 12.

If a person needs 20 rounds to understand their weapon, their sights, etc., then they are probably "self taught", and are basically learning by trial and error.

It's not very efficient.

perhaps every other expert on the planet is wrong.

Or . . . perhaps occams razor comes in to effect.

I'm pointing out that if your shooting basics are wrong at 10 rounds, another 100 or even 1,000 rounds aren't going to fix that.

If we restrict demented persons' access to guns, then tea party people will indeed have have their 'freedom' to own guns curtailed.

He's proposing a sort of arms race between the criminally insane and "responsible" gun owners. Who in their right mind would think that would lead to a safer country?

If their were only some kind of "drug test" that could determine if a person was a "sick, demented individual who want to do harm" a considerable amount of our gun problems would be gone.
Yes guns would still be involved in roberys and crimes of passion.
If only people like James Holmes could somehow not pass the required sanity test.........
Unfortunately even in the alternate reality of a Moose, this just isn't passable.

America should see them for what they are.

Was added, and not part of the original constitution. This is not some holy right, untouchable.

This amendment leads to many, many murders.

you need to read some history for christ's sakes. The BoR was added to ensure that American's civil liberties were recognized and protected.

Some of the amendments are no,longer applicable, like this one. It is not written in stone. That is my point. The amendments make the constitution flexible.

And you need to learn some manners.

So far they have not. And I doubt they ever will in your life time.

Five extremist, right-wing, activist judges, whose opinions you and all the rest of us have appropriately ridiculed for many years, dismissed the plain wording of the constitution and 200 years of legal precedent in order to make the decision you attribute to "the American people." All it takes for a sane interpretation of the Second Amendment to be restored is the replacement of just one of those barking mad, rabid, foaming at the mouth supreme court judges with someone sane for "the American people" to reach a different decision.

Very little occurs in this country that isn't disappointing, it's hard to not get used to it.

at least you are the safest you have ever been - that certainly is a encouraging thing, don't you think?

( )

then you will never be happy.

Fercryin'outloud, PEOPLE are DYING--needlessly. Can't we just STOP KILLING??!?

I've read any number of articles on the decline in violent crime in the US in recent years and most of them seem to consider the fact that we now have so much of our population in prisons as being the cause behind that. Not one scholar or study has attributed the decline in violent crime to more people having more guns. Given that the price we as a society pay for being physically safer is that we employ police state tactics and incarcerate more of our population than any other country on earth, I confess, my enthusiasm for even that "boon" is somewhat lukewarm.

then there is hope that there are other avenues to reduce gun violence besides an unrealistic hope that the 2A will be reinterpreted to your liking.

30,000 bullet-riddled corpses per year is quite enough, thank you. Besides, the majority of gun deaths aren't committed by violent criminals, but rather by ordinary people whose disputes get out of hand and, thanks to guns, result in a fatality.

were just ordinary people letting their disputes get out of hand?

Pardon my bluntness, but you don't know what you are talking about. We understand the demographics of crime very well. Here is a good place to start:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expandhomicidemain

"Of the murders for which the circumstance surrounding the murder was known, 41.8 percent of victims were murdered during arguments (including romantic triangles) in 2010. Felony circumstances (rape, robbery, burglary, etc.) accounted for 23.1 percent of murders. Circumstances were unknown for 35.8 percent of reported homicides."

age, race, etc. ?

Please, by all means, continue to dazzle me with your insight. It's so thoughtful of you to keep furnishing the data to support my point of view and undermine your own. I really must thank you for saving me the trouble of having to look these numbers up for you.

because it is just ordinary people losing their cool?

I believe that violent crime is geographically concentrated in poor urban areas - at list of the most violent places in America is a list of poor urban areas. The perpetrators and victims are predominately young men.

The assertion I made, for which you were so kind as to provide hard data, was not that there are no patterns to gun-related violence, but rather that the linkage proposed by gun enthusiasts between increased gun ownership and reductions in crime rates was spurious at best, because the number of gun homicides committed in the course of a felony is greatly outnumbered by the number of gun homicides that occur in ordinary, i.e., non-criminal, disputes. As your own numbers show, that is clearly the case.

Whether gun violence is even distributed, that's a different and much more complex question, for which there are numerous, hotly contested hypotheses, most centering on prevailing economic and social conditions. I do not presume to be well enough informed on those hypotheses to have any opinion that would be meaningful, but I do not doubt that you are correct that there are patterns.

there is no data to support that.

I can prove, however, that more guns did not cause more gun violence. I am sure you can appreciate the difference.

Hence my comment that there are other means to reduce gun violence.

There certainly are a great many causes underlying gun violence, if I have given a different impression, I apologize for the misunderstanding. And I agree entirely that those underlying contributors need to be addressed as well. My main concern about guns is that, at 30,000 deaths per year, we simply aren't ready for prime time; that, for whatever reasons, our culture cannot be trusted to handle guns responsibly, anymore than an infant can be trusted with a hand grenade.

I'm less sure whether more guns directly cause more gun violence or not - it's honestly kind of hard to tell when there are so many guns out there already. I mean, if the number of guns in American increases from 250 million to 300 million, would you necessarily expect to see an increase in gun violence? Either way, it's still one hell of a lot of guns - we've already got ten times the number of guns in the country needed to carry out the annual bloodbaths we are witnessing. With the country so inundated already with guns, and having been so inundated with guns for so long, I would imagine that it would be difficult to find data in this country that would demonstrate a correlation one way or another between the number of guns on the streets and the number of gun deaths. For that, I can only look to the experience of other countries that, through stricter gun control laws, have succeeded in gradually reducing the number of guns and, perhaps more importantly, in instilling in their populations' gun owners a profound sense of personal responsibility for their decision to keep and bear arms that is so conspicuously absent in this country. Those countries can now boast per capita gun death rates that are but a tiny fraction of what ours is. Admittedly, those other countries have very different prevailing economic and cultural conditions, so the extent to which their experience is directly comparable is open to dispute. But the vast difference between their gun death rates and ours suggest that, at the very least, it's worth examining closely, and perhaps emulating.

How about Japan?, Australia?, New Zealand?
England...The list goes on.
Less guns DOES equal less gun deaths.
How is that so hard to understand?

we are discussing the drastic decline of gun violence in the past 30 years - a 50% decrease in firearm murders and manslaughter deaths. At the same time there was a drastic increase in gun ownership.

I said that those stats prove that more guns does not automatically mean more gun violence.

Guns are far more important to them than our society.

I think some would take issue if we decided to alter that one.

But a well armed militia is not.

can't we just trust the government to allow what speech is necessary and censor what isn't?

Why set it in stone?

The militia the second amendment talks of is not.

The big government boogieman shutting down the internet or reading your mail?

Just pass-word encrypt, you'll be fine.

It's not like mass protests work anymore. Maybe that made sense back in the day but now they are meaningless.

your point is.....????

The Amendments are just as important as the Constitution, which provides the framework for our gov. The issue here is "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" linked to the "militia" statement. The RWers have hijacked the statement to mean any militia they want to form, not to fight a tyrant like King George in the 1770s and 1780s, but whoever THEY call a tyrant and whatever THEY determine is a tyrannical government.

Plan to hear the words tyrant and tyranny thrown around a lot over the next few months by the Reich Wing. That gives them "license" to do whatever they want with their militias, in their little warped Fox News minds.

Just look at the word. The 18th amendment was modified/removed/undone, however you want to put it. The 2nd amendment is no longer relevant.

Personally, I like the amendment b/c one day I might want to own a gun to protect myself against a tyrannical gov. That's what the amendment's for.

It's the lack of gun control I don't like.

Treating gunshots ain't cheap.

How much cost went to health insurance companies?

How much cost went to hospitals?

How much to taxpayers?

Putting aside the human tragedy for a moment, and maybe it's too early,
but who pays for this financially?

It's a cost, for or against ACA, or private insurance, it's a cost that
someone has to bear.

(....doesn't want it to go unsatisfied.....)

if i get caught with a doobie!!

Ahhh, republican freedom... aint it grand

an authoritative way, the idiocracy will believe them!

In 1791, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, part of the United States Bill of Rights, protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Soooo, IF your weapons would

a.) be made by a gunsmith
b.) have rudimentary rifling
c.) be a single-shot weapon
d.) be loaded through the muzzle, and
e.) fire by means of a flintlock

I see no problem.

BUT, nowhere does it say you can walk around with your damn musket already loaded.

consequences; that's THE truth and if you can't live with the truth, YOU ARE NOT FREE.

Free? Tea Thugs do not even know the meaning of freedom. They know NOTHING about being free.

They should not be allowed to use the word.

I love it - an assault rifle to match every outfit and social occasion! Hmm, I'm going to a formal dinner tonight, I think I'll go with the burgundy paisley assault rifle. It so brings out my eyes, don't you think?

the Libertarians who are "Libertarians" for one reason and one reason only; it's an excuse to do any and all of the drugs they want.

And put the word 'VOTE'. I wonder if he would be concerned.

that the citizens of my state saw fit to elect this person.

He is an embarrasment to those of us who didn't.

Because it wins every time.

There seems to be no way to ever win when the right brings up second amendment rights.

It's the one right that trumps every other right in the constitution.

Nothing is as important as the ability to destroy the lives of other citizens.
That and the ability to destroy lives of other country's citizens are the foundations of our society today.

Our country is so deeply insane that there's no way we will ever escape.

It's outrageous that somebody can carry around an AR-15 rifle, much less walk into a crowded theater and open fire. What about the people killed in that theaters freedom to simply live. Is that somehow a lesser freedom than the right to own a fancy weapon?

But like every other issue in American politics, it's about the money. As long as our election system is dictated by the raising and expenditure of cold hard cash, groups with a financial interest and the money to expend to protect that interest (in this particular case the NRA) we will see those well moneyed groups imposed their will on the balance of society because elected officials need their money and advertising assistance more than they need to enact sound policy in order to retain their positions.

Those are sacrosanct to the right-wing!

I'm so sick of the CHL defense! What could anyone with a gun have done in that theater? It was dark, there was smoke and/or tear gas. The suspect had body armor.

Even if some "responsible" person had possessed a gun, he/she would not have been effective. Shooting a gun in that atmosphere would likely have resulted in the death of more innocent people.

I'm sorry but every redneck with a CHL on my Facebook page is "yee-hawing" about what he would have done in there with a gun, and it's just not that simple here.

They wouldn't have been able to take out the shooter, though.

You can be sitting in the next movie theater or other public place somebody decides to use as a shooting gallery.

medical impossibility to remove it. Our only hope for this condition is he will suffocate from all that shit.

In fact the Tea Pary House plans to visit him in jail. You know, becaus the Tea party is all about doing the opposite of Obama.

...who have most of the guns.....


This strategy is not going to end well.......

We've already got gun nuts claiming that they need assault style weapons to adequately defend themselves from the other crazies with bigger and badder guns. Once everyone has an assault rifle, we'll need machine guns, then flame throwers, then grenades... where does it stop? When everyone is dead, I guess. Well, on the bright side, at least the other species on the planet will be better off once we've all blown ourselves to bloody bits.

and suburbs..........

Our freedoms to be safe from armed nutcases like your friend Holmes there, dirtbag? Since it's so damn important to you, senator, why aren't YOU stepping up and showing leadership on this, and "policing yourselves" like your type of idealogue always gets a hard-on for? I'd love to be able to tell a jerk like this - "you should deal with this problem - unless you want the rest of us to do it for you!" Of course, if the polls are to be believed, most Americans side with him, and not me. Which I Do NOT Get. At ALL.

undiagnosed demented individuals?

Fuck him.

When they can find their way to a voting booth.

for these people to live up to their rhetoric, they should be anarchists.

I would like it if everyone registered at Ar15.com and posted their opinions about Mitt Romney to the area of the forum called "General Discussion." I joined the site without knowing much about it and thought of it as a political discussion forum used by people from the center and center-right. However, when I said that I was to the left of Mitt Romney on many issues and criticized his debacle in Britain, I was banned from the site ... even though I did not violate their code of conduct. I had enjoyed debating people respectfully and commenting on popular topics, but I was targeted by the idiotic administrators of the site. I would greatly appreciate if all of you made at least one account with that far-right website and then made your voices known on their forum. The moderators on the site harass people into leaving the site if they have even the slightest disagreement with them.

"Keeping Guns From ‘Demented Individuals’ Will ‘Restrict Our Freedoms’. I have the right to not be shot by some one with a gun, I have the right to no carry a fucking gun.

There will come a time when the gun is no longer considered "freedom" but an imprisonment of fear and a tool of terror and suffering. Unfortunaly I will not live to see that day.