Random thoughts about guns, Democrats, Liberals and other stuff:

Where I live, in the bible belt, people own guns.
The majority are Democrats. They own guns. Most boys over 12
have one or more and more than a few girls do too.

Those who vote will vote for a Democrat unless the candidate is in

favor of gun control. Many of them couldn't find Iraq on a map of
Iraq but it doesn't matter to them. Their guns do. And right behind
that is abortion (they get them but it's a secret) and gay rights
(never mind the divorce rate is the highest in the nation.)

Does that mean they are hypocrites? Conservative Democrats? Phony

Liberals? I don't know. Don't a lot of us Liberals actually embrace

what the conservatives USED to espouse...keeping the government out of

our lives as much as possible? Do we really, as the RWers often claim,

-really- want a cradle-to-grave nanny state?

I tell you this, dear DUers, disbelieve me at your own political peril:

If we pick a presidential candidate for the 08 election who embraces

draconian gun-control measures, we will lose...and lose huge.

Pat Buchanan is near the bottom of my list of admired people but like

the blind pig he occasionally finds an acorn and something he said

today seems absolutely on target: (paraphrasing) - "It's too bad there

wasn't an off-duty cop or a trained shooter with a sidearm in that

classroom." He was exactly right. I worked at the Tulsa P.D. to pay

for my college tuition and I carried a gun. I knew then, 43 years ago

how and when to use it - I can't believe there are no adult college

students at Va. Tech who couldn't be in the same situation. Gun-free

"zones" are like the lock on your front door...they only keep out

honest people.

And what about hijacking airplanes? A Boeing 767 has been shown to be

a potential weapon as we all know. It was a matter of minutes after

Wilbur and Orville flew at Kitty Hawk until somebody figured "hey,

that's a great way to drop bombs on people!"

Does anyone seriously doubt a hijacking attempt in the USA nowadays

would result in passengers sitting meekly waiting for the probable or

certainly possible suicide impact? Not -this- puppy.

Pandora's Box was fiction long ago but the story was prophetic. If I

might be permitted to adapt and modify a comment we mostly all derided

by our esteemed ex-Sec'y of Defense, "We live in the world we have, not

the one we wish we had." Sure, the context is totally different but

the sentiment is valid. What is, is. We cannot uninvent guns, or

thermonuclear weapons. Or cell phones. We kill trillions of bacteria

every second, yet we can't survive without them. Yeah, that's a bit

afield but my point is that adaptation is the only known alternative to

obliteration.

That's all for right now - I know some of you think I'm a jerk and my

Democratic/liberal credentials ought to be revoked. I think I'll hang

onto them for the time being. ;-)

Well said.

:D

Seriously em, a welcome post for my eyes tonight.

it only stopped those who may have been able to stop him. I cringe at the thought of a classroom full of students packin and I don't think it would have deterred this asshole but one armed person could have easily stopped him.

It's not an easy question to answer. Our family is full of gun owners and hunters and all of them except me vote repub on this very issue. Personally I tell them if they are afraid of the government confiscating their guns they have more to fear from the republics but I fear they've bought into the scare tactics. I gave up NRA membership years ago for this very reason.

Call me crazy.

Why do you live there? It sounds like hell.

I'm not hard to find. And it's not hell, it's a very pleasant place in most ways. :D Maybe you live where there aren't any crazies. It sounds like heaven.

Hey, If I were omnipotent, I'd vanish every weapon. But how long would that work?...until somebody picked up a tree limb and clubbed an "enemy" with it...and the whole process continues again.

I really didn't mean to dis your home town, but if I were in that situation I'd get the hell out.

I left Kansas after college for similar reasons.

Does a 13 year old kid with a .22 rifle going out to hunt rabbits qualify for that appellation? Let me tell you something about living in a lakeside community: every spring dozens of unwanted "pets" are dumped out here by people from the Tulsa area. They cannot or will not take proper care of them and in some perverse act of 'compassion' they bring them out this way and throw them out of the car thinking someone will adopt them. A lot of them actually DO find a home. We have 3 dogs and a cat who came to us by that means. Almost everyone around here has done the same for 1 or 2 or 3, yet every day we see several abandoned animals who have no clue how to fend for themselves. Our county doesn't even have an animal shelter so most of these critters die from starvation or become roadkill. The only alternative to their eventual suffering is simply to shoot them. That's one reason we keep guns. Yes, it's ugly. And yes it's awful. It's one very good reason to "pack heat".

then you're okay with anyone having them?

dp

??
I suppose I could just shut my eyes and pretend they don't exist...

and not see the thermonuclear weapon your neighbor has ... if that makes you feel better ??

dp

Maybe I misunderstood your point...?

guns and nukes. Are you okay with anyone having nukes, neighbors/neighboring countries, et al?

dp

In my utopian world, guns would be banned. But pragmatically, as you point out, that thrust would be death to the Democratic Party. So, let's find a compromise. Comedian Cris Rock said it best: "I wish bullets were $1000 each. Then I'd get a job and pop a cap in yo' ass!"

K&R

:D

draconian gun control measures.

Stop pushing the right wing/NRA memes.

The first thing to recognize is that making some weapons illegal or hard to obtain, banning some weapons, does not equate to a violation of the 2nd amendment. Regulations does not equate to banning.

Members of the democratic party want to protect all of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, including the 2nd amendment. You can't say that about the republicans, they have been willing to sell out our rights in the name of security.

Get the message right and speak it clear. Gun Regulations do not equate to violations of the 2nd amendment, do not equate to banning of guns or trampling on our rights to keep and bear arms. Stop letting folks think it does, stop pushing their memes.

And re-read your post. Then talk to me about the Constitution and Rights.

the constitution, all parts of it. I also know how to read and understand the legal precedence which has interpreted the constitution and legislation that is passed under the powers as provided by the constitution.

Can you scream "fire" in a crowded theater?

Abortion is about a woman's control of her body, not even comparable to the 2nd amendment.

Nice to know you like to repeat conservative talking points and have adopted them as your own.

You can keep and bear arms, you just can't keep and bear arms that congress (under the powers as provided in the Constitution for the purpose of ensuring the protection of all rights of all citizens) has deemed present a risk to the security of the citizens.

Can you legally own a bazooka, nuclear weapon, grenade, sawed off shot gun, or tommy gun?

Regulations have been upheld, regulations (as in outlawing certain weapons) does not equate to banning all weapons and trampling on the 2nd amendment.



Welcome to DU :hi:

Can you legally own a bazooka, nuclear weapon, grenade, sawed off shot gun, or tommy gun?

Yes, No, Yes, Yes, and Yes, but not in ALL states though. Google "National Firearms Act of 1934".

The 2nd Amendment says "bear arms" that means "small arms".... i.e. man portable. Nukes are not man portable.

Oh and "Constitution" is always capitalized. You maybe able to read and understand, but you cannot spell.

substitute abortion and freedom of speech. LOL, you have such room. :rofl:

"Bear arms" means "arms". There is no asterick in the document which notes that it means "small" arms.

As I have said, I know the laws and I know that regulations do not equate to a violation of the 2nd amendment.

And get over your superiority efforts by telling me about capitalization. That is just petty, but not at all surprising.

I actually immigrated from Germany in 1994 and owning guns was a totally foreign concept to me. I've changed my mind. Americans have always owned guns...there is no way to go back...it would never ever happen.

We are actually thinking about getting a gun. Of course, we'll have training and make sure that we'll lock it away.

I wish someone with a gun would have been there to take that guy out before he had the chance to kill so many innocent people.

Peace

I get a lot of flak for speaking truth. Some people don't care to hear it.

just looking at DU, we have pro-gun, ambivalent, and anti-gun...and everything in between.

I can understand some of the points the anti-gun DUer are making. However, this nation's citizens will NEVER give up the right to carry guns. Democrats can NOT run on an anti-gun platform...unless they have a death wish.

... I'd like to see some substanatiation of the assertion that "most boys over 12 in the south own a gun".

I grew up in Texas, and my family lived in a small town and most boys I knew did not own guns. Most of them have fired one, but more often than not it was one belonging to their dad.

My grandma was a helluva shot with a .22 rifle, and I did some shooting as a kid, but was never given a gun of my own.

But my claim is, I confess, largely based on my own small community and the fact I and most of my contemporaries had their own guns for many years (over 57 in my case.) I find it somewhat surprising that in a "small town in Texas" you
encountered so few young gun owners. My dad gave me a .22/.410 "over and under" when I was about 8 yo. He
taught me how to shoot it and how to handle it safely. Maybe, to be technically accurate, it didn't actually "belong" to me but that's how he and I considered it.

At 12, I was given a .22 but did control it until I was 16. It was kept in the gun rack - remember those? Now, everyone has a gun safe instead. I got a 16 guage shotgun at 15. The only pistol around was my grandfather's Colt 1911. We lived in the city. Hunting and shooting was done on the farm. I got a shooting merit badge.

If Democrats adopt further gun control measures they will loose and loose big. I assure you if Democrats unreservedly supported the RKBA, the way they do the Right to Choose, they would control all three branches of government. Permanently.

is this idea that we're going to be better off with somebody packing heat next to us in that stats class. I know that the ideal is that that somebody is well trained and levelheaded, but as you say, we live in the world we have. For every cool hand who can bring down the mass murderer with one or two shots and no innocents hit, how many would there be fumbling for the weapon, hoping to be able to pop the perp and letting off a volley of small arms fire in all directions?

You're trying to shoot as many as you can...and you see several people who appear to be "going for a gun", so to speak. The dynamic has changed...you're now in a defensive posture instead of being in total command of the situation. How many people can you concentrate on? And this is hypothetically -after- the fact...how willing would 'you' be to confront a group of people if you knew -some- of them were armed? Somebody who wants to kill a lot of people picks a setting like a 'gun-free-zone', not a police station.

in a gun-free zone then shoots himself in the face, he didn't choose the gun-free zone because he was afraid of being shot.

I dunno - just seems to me that the likelihood of facing a homicidal maniac is so remote that surrounding myself with a couple thousand nervous nellies wearing Glocks and waiting for the next Cho becomes the worse option.

We can't get inside this kid's head, especially since he's dead, but it seems to me that if suicide was his ultimate goal, he would've chosen some other venue where he'd have known there were armed people around. Am I missing something here? I have to assume he was just shithouse-rat nuts to do what he did and I have no idea how to prevent people like that from doing similar things. But I'm totally open to suggestions, as I imagine law enforcement agencies would be as well....

Things like Columbine and VT get so much of our attention exactly because they don't happen very often. I don't think it does us any good to start looking behind every classroom door because of this incident.

Yeah, I imagine he probably had planned to kill himself after killing as many others as he could, but not to commit suicide by cop - probably more a control thing. I don't think he was nuts as in mentally ill, although he undeniably "had issues". I don't know how to prevent it either unless we round up all the guns, which wouldn't be workable and isn't what I'm suggesting anyway.

sentiments I don't buy.

I don't even know a way to make us 'safe', do you? And if there were a way, how long would it last? Forever?

is very high. By all sorts of people.

I agree that the fastest way to turn our recent political gains in my state into losses would be to have Dems come out for gun control.

:D

We need to arm ourselves against the world which has led to the brink of nuclear disaster time and again. And to the war in Iraq.

Fine, that may be the world you want to live in, but the one I desire would be one without your weapons of death.

A vote for new gun bans is a vote for repub hegemony...just like 1994.

FWIW, for those of you who hate guns, I'd invite you to read the following:

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (2004)

I wrote that shortly after the 2004 election, pulling a lot of thoughts together into one document about how the party might stop alienating gun owners so badly. Please read it with an open mind, and it may at least help you understand where most of us gun owners are coming from. I personally think the '06 wins by pro-gun Dems (Webb, Tester, Strickland, Casey) in pro-gun states vindicate that approach.

How the ban-more-guns thing plays among rural Dems: Alienated Rural Democrat

And why fighting to ban the most popular civilian rifles in America is pointless: Murder, By State and Type of Weapon (FBI) -- note how rarely rifles of ANY type are misused.

As for "losing big" in rural areas in the bible belt because the voters there are so determined to hang on their guns?

First, I know of very few politicians who are bold enough to propose gun confiscation. Are rural voters so stupid as to confuse "control" with the non-threat of confiscation? As you mentioned, Bible-belt voters are likely to vote against any politician who advocates a woman's right to abortion or homosexual civil rights. Do you propose that the advocates of both drop their support?

As for the shoot-em-up Rambo scenarios of students and citizens shooting it out with the "bad guys" on airplanes and in classrooms...it works well in the movies but real life isn't a movie or comic book.

The Democrats may lose, maybe lose big...in the Bible belt.

But most Americans support rational gun control and can tell the difference between "gun-grabber" paranoiac rhetoric and sanity.