General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI can think of no better time to start a dialogue on gun control than right now.
Yes, people pull the trigger. They make a choice to do that.
However, if there are no triggers to pull, then people will not be shot.
That sums up my own view about guns.
There were apparently no assault rifles used by today's shooter. Just two handguns. Two of the untold millions of them out there.
Millions.
And some of them are owned by crazy people who sit in their chairs watching the news and raging. Rocking in their chair and raging. Rocking and Raging. Blaming others for their lives.
Most of them will just be sad stories of lives lived to no significance.
But a few of them will grab their guns and act on their rage.
This may or may not have to do with today's shooting. Indeed, it is little more than a word picture I painted to make my point.
And those few crazy people who sit and rock and rage are EXACTLY why we need to lock down guns in this country. But that genie long left the confines of the bottle. So now we have a far greater task ahead of us.
But this can NOT be allowed to continue.
So yeah, let's talk about gun control.
Right now.
uppityperson
(115,681 posts)stellanoir
(14,881 posts)let us do so.
Lasher
(27,638 posts)Might feel like discussing it tomorrow. Might not.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)??
Stinky The Clown
(67,819 posts)Gun *bans* do.
Make the gun owners' worst fear come true. Take away the guns.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Australia did that in 1997, and their violent crime rate actually ROSE:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847
>>It is a common fantasy that gun bans make society safer. In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent), says the D.C. Examiner.
Even Australia's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research acknowledges that the gun ban had no significant impact on the amount of gun-involved crime:
* In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
* Sexual assault -- Australia's equivalent term for rape -- increased 29.9 percent.
* Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
Moreover, Australia and the United States -- where no gun-ban exists -- both experienced similar decreases in murder rates:<<
former-republican
(2,163 posts)Stinky The Clown
(67,819 posts)Trow the guns in there.
Melt 'em to slag.