How many gun-owners? Anti-gun funded studies say 54-80 million.

[jody]

The DLC funded study “Winning the Gun Vote” slide 10 says “Gun Owners (37% of Voters)”.

Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2006 says the voting age population is 220+ million.

DLC and government data together suggest there are 80+ million gun owners in the 2006 electorate.


The Joyce Foundation funded study 2001 National Gun Policy Survey (NGPS) by NORC reports in “Table 5. Levels and Distribution of Gun Ownership” (page 27) that 39.2% of men and 10.2% of women own guns.

WISQARS says in its 2005 Injury Mortality Reports that the number of men 18 and over is 108,338,837 and the number of women 18 and over is 114,633,984.

NGPS and government data together suggest there are 54+ million gun owners in the 2005 electorate.

[gorfle]

1. And people wonder

And people wonder why we work so hard to change the party platform to stop alienating those 80 million people.

[iverglas]

6. so ... you're saying ...

All women in the U.S. vote for pro-choice candidates?

[gorfle]

7. We've been over this before.

The ownership of firearms is a Constitutional right that empowers personal freedom and choice.

Controlling peoples' bodies is not.

You seem to think that because I feel the Democratic Party should seek out firearm owning voters they should also seek out voters from any other excluded demographic. I won't be baited into defending this ludicrous idea.

[iverglas]

8. if only you would stay on the track of what we've been over

This silly hijacking attempts are just ... silly.

We're talking about how people vote. Not about constitutional rights.

If we're going to talk about how owners of firearms vote, somebody, someday, really has to come up with some basis for asserting that they vote the way everybody here keeps claiming they vote.

Who gives a shit whether there are 54 million or 80 million or 217 million firearms owners in the US -- if their firearm ownership status DOES NOT PREDICT their voting choices???

If someone wishes to state that it DOES, then s/he is obviously saying that all women vote for pro-choice candidates.

If being a firearm owner determines how people vote on firearms-related issues, then being a woman determines how people vote on women-related issues.

Own it or give it the hell up.

[gorfle]

9. Like I said.

I'm not going to entertain your attempt to tie a firearms debate into a discussion on abortion.

If you want to believe that firearm ownership does not influence voting habits, take it up with Bill Clinton.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[gorfle]

11. Ya right.

If you want to claim that all firearms owners oppose the Democratic Party's platform, prove it.

First of all, I don't claim that all firearm owners oppose the Democratic Party's platform. This would be ludicrous.

Nonetheless, you are foolish if you think the firearm owning voting block is inconsequential.

Oh, let me guess your next statement: b-b-b-b-but I didn't SAY that!.

[iverglas]

12. nah

First of all, I don't claim that all firearm owners oppose the Democratic Party's platform. This would be ludicrous.
... Oh, let me guess your next statement: b-b-b-b-but I didn't SAY that!.


I'll just quote you:


And people wonder why we work so hard to change the party platform to stop alienating those 80 million people.

Would you like that ludicrous with mustard or horseradish?

[gorfle]

13. Mustard, please.

OK, I admit it. At least 1 of those 80 million people will not be alienated.

Christ on a crutch.

[spin]

2. But the big liberal cities are the base of the Democratic Party...

And people in these cities are convinced that guns are bad, bad, bad.

They believe in draconian laws that restrict owning guns for self defense against criminals, but they never seem to notice that their judicial system does little to punish criminals caught carrying firearms. The criminals run wild, murdering and pillaging and this merely reinforces the belief that guns are bad, bad, bad. Too often, when they are caught by law enforcement carrying a firearm, little or nothing happens. The criminal merely walks through the revolving door of the justice system and obtains another weapon to use on the street.

If a community has laws that restrict gun ownership for self defense, the very least they could do is send armed criminals off to prison for a long, long time. Twenty years without parole might be a minimum. Some might argue that criminals wold still carry guns, but fewer and fewer would remain on the street as they were arrested.

[jody]

3. Good idea, 20 years to be served only after all other time has been served. n/t

[spin]

4. We might have to build some new prisons...

but after a while the word might get out in the criminal community and the bad guys will avoid carrying guns.

Without guns they will still be dangerous, but at least they won't be extremely dangerous.

And we could possibly ship the bad guys to Arizona and let Sheriff Joe Arpaio put them in pink underwear and house them in tents. He might change a little, but since he feeds the inmates on 90 cents a day, it shouldn't be too expensive.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/

[iverglas]

14. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, every good Democrat's idol

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/126870

Updated: September 27, 2008 - 11:08PM
Guadalupe leaders sue to block Arpaio decision

... Arpaio and Guadalupe have been involved in a high-profile fight over police tactics since April, when the sheriff flooded the heavily Hispanic town with deputies in search of illegal immigrants.

At the time, a number of leaders and residents accused the sheriff’s office of violating residents’ civil rights in the sweeps. Arpaio responded by telling leaders he was ending his agency’s long-standing contract with the town because they didn’t like the way he does business.

... The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, essentially says the sheriff cannot cancel the contract simply because the town’s leaders criticized him.

In doing so, according to the lawsuit, Arpaio would be violating the town’s free speech rights. “I don’t understand this,” Arpaio said Saturday, before he’d had a chance to see the lawsuit. “It has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the fact that they don’t like the way I enforce the law in Guadalupe.”

Funny thing. I work on contract. If the other party doesn't like the way I do the work, I get to do it over again the way they want it done.

Seems to me that if the town wanted Arpaio sweeping the place for illegal immigrants, they would have included it in his contract. Apparently they didn't.

If anyone here actually thinks that pink underwear and tents is an accurate characterization of the practices of this barbaric asshole, well, I guess it must be the mainstream media falling down on the job again.

[tburnsten]

15. I think his jail is great

Exactly how a prison should be, spartan conditions, opportunities for the inmates to give some labor back to the communities they have harmed and the taxpayers they are sucking money out of, and run cheap cheap cheap. So long as no one is escaping or killing one another, obviously it is going to happen every once in awhile, can't keep everyone in solitary confinement, but as long as the place is under control and under budget they are doing their job. I especially liked his response to the inmate who wanted to have a word with him.

[iverglas]

16. I can only assume

that you haven't lifted a finger to determine the truth and facts of what you're talking about.

Not my job to educate you, so you can just keep voicing your support for a fascist thug here if you like.

[tburnsten]

17. He runs a prison not a daycare

And all I read was the article posted, his jail looked like maybe the most responsibly run correctional facility in the U.S., what more do I need to know? Do his personal politics make any difference in the way he runs his prison?


I think "correctional" facilities should actually accomplish a little "correcting", they should be places prisoners do not want to return to for any amount of time, and they should be working while they are there, they are not in a daycare though it seems that way in most jails now.

[iverglas]

18. so I assumed correctly

And all I read was the article posted, his jail looked like maybe the most responsibly run correctional facility in the U.S., what more do I need to know?

if I am to believe that all you know about Sheriff Joe Arpaio is what you read in one newspaper article. Odd how I know quite a lot more than that myself.

What more do you need to know? Oh, there's always the truth, i.e. the whole truth.


Who said anything about his personal politics?

I dunno. Not me. If you're referring to "fascist thug", it was a bit of a figure of speech for someone who behaves as he does.


I think "correctional" facilities should actually accomplish a little "correcting", they should be places prisoners do not want to return to for any amount of time, and they should be working while they are there, they are not in a daycare though it seems that way in most jails now.

Bully for you. Now, anytime you want to educate yourself about the "correctional" practices of this individual, you feel free.

[tburnsten]

19. Another page of meaningless text eh?

He is running his jail as if it were meant to be a punishment for the people incarcerated there, and I say good for him, few if any jails actually run below budget and get any return at all from the people wasting our money by leading the lifestyles that got them there in the first place. So the area has a source of cheap labor for different public works projects if it needs them, that is a hell of a lot better than letting them sit around watching tv all day.

[iverglas]

21. keep running your mouth

You're doing a fine job of demonstrating that you don't belong in this century, or even the last one.

Your opinion about Arpaio or anything else is actually of absolutely no value, and of no interest to anyone who knows anything.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-09-11/news/was-juan-mendoza-farias-beaten-to-death-by-sheriff-joe-arpaio-s-guards/

On December 2, 2007, a 40-year-old man named Juan Mendoza Farias was arrested and booked into the Maricopa County Jail. Like a lot of people who come through Sheriff Joe Arpaio's doors, Farias' offense was DUI-related, a probation violation.

... After three days, he was clearly going through alcohol withdrawal. According to written accounts from detention officers, Farias became hostile and started resisting their orders.

When that happened, officers cuffed Farias and put his legs in shackles and moved him to an isolated "safe" or "soft" cell, designed to prevent him from hurting himself or others. The officers fired six rounds of crowd-control "pepper balls" at Farias and shocked him with at least two Tasers.

... Farias was fighting for his life. The county medical examiner documented "blunt force injuries" on his face, torso, and limbs. His neck muscles hemorrhaged internally from the strain, and a gash was notched out of his nose — either from being struck or from being pressed into something.

As the guards held him face down, one noticed that Farias was no longer moving or breathing. The guards rolled him over and pulled the spit mask off his mouth. It was filled with blood. So were his nostrils.

Sounds a little like the behaviour of the US military in Iraq, doesn't it?

I suggest you read that entire article, not just the little I am allowed to excerpt here.

Not much I can say if you think that killing someone for a probation violation is appropriate punishment, though.

As far as cost-effectiveness ...

http://hispanic.cc/joe_arpaio_has_cost_taxpayers_$41_million.htm

Vermin, filth, medical care suggestive of POW camps, chronic mismanagement, the wanton destruction of records, and a steady parade of corpses in Maricopa County jails have cost taxpayers an astonishing — and until now, undisclosed — 41.4 million dollars.

Joe Arpaio has perpetuated his reign as "America's toughest sheriff" with an open checkbook.

Your open checkbook.

The Sheriff has captured the imagination of voters with his almost cartoonish contempt for the prisoners in his charge. He's subjected inmates to pink underwear, chain gangs, and rancid bologna sandwiches, and he's garnered big wins at the polls. But Arpaio's jail policies have generated a tsunami of lawsuits from prisoners and their families.

There simply isn't another jail system in America with this history of taxpayer-financed litigation.

Again, you'll want to read the entire article. A lawyer who contracted MRSA from the filthy conditions at the prison. A pregnant woman -- convicted of no crime, awaiting trial -- beaten by other inmates, miscarrying, getting no medical attention. A diabetic woman not given insulin and denied medical attention as her cellmates desparately tried to get help for her, dying after finally taken to hospital in a coma. A developmentally disabled man arrested for trespassing -- TRESPASSING -- suffocated into brain death by restraints. Suicides by unstable people placed in unsafe premises.

In 2003, the county hired Jon Bosch, a corrections consultant with 20 years of experience, to audit Arpaio's jails.

"The current correctional healthcare program at Maricopa County is not in compliance with the basic healthcare rights provided to inmates under the U.S. Constitution," Bosch concluded. He found that Arpaio's jails violate the Eighth Amendment prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment."

But hey. Fuck their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS. They're ... uh ... alleged trespassers. They deserve to die.


Vomit.

[tburnsten]

25. So my support based on one article

Makes me a troglodyte because of information contained in other articles? You're too much.





And this is wrong
"Sounds a little like the behaviour of the US military in Iraq, doesn't it?"



It absolutely does not. I have been around while MPs were training a unit headed to Iraq on the proper way to search and if neccessary detain someone, and while they repeated over and over that the individual you are searching is going to rely on your squeamishness regarding their personal space, so you can't be shy when searching them, that being respectful is absolutely important. For instance, in regards to headgear the instruction was to let them know you will be removing it but place it down where the person can see it, and knows it isn't being vandalized.


Anyway you are wrong, have a nice morning.

[iverglas]

26. no, your spewing based on wilful ignorance

makes you exactly what spewing based on wilful ignorance makes a person.

I'm wrong. Well there you go. Those people's rights were not violated and they were not tortured and mistreated and killed. And Joe Arpaio, who is responsible for all those things -- and many, many more vile if not equally vile things -- is a fine upstanding fellow whose example should be followed. Oh, and nobody has been tortured or killed in Iraq in violation of law and decency.

Well there I go.

[east texas lib]

5. Well!

You can't just expect the criminals to accept responsibility for (or the legal consequences of)
their actions! That's sooooo 18th century and downright barbaric. It's much more trendy to rely
upon the tried and true socio-economic gambit (Hey man, I was born without any stuff so I'm takin'
your stuff!), the ever popular conformist approach (Everybody else does it, so I did to!), and
my personal favorite, the religious exemption (The devil made me do it! That and demon rum!).
I do hope we've you straightened out on this, now!:D

[jeepnstein]

20. Jails are a joke.

Jail is no deterrent anymore. There is a whole class of criminal out there that consider doing a stretch in prison with the same regard as we would going to graduate school. Our culture just doesn't have the stigma about going to prison anymore. It can be shocking to see how much one is allowed to do before getting sent to prison, as long as you do it to the right kinds of people.

You ought to see how a prison really runs. Guys waiting to be fed, waiting to be taken to class, waiting to be taken to the yard, making business contacts; mostly waiting to get out and increase their status. The culture of prison is something you cannot imagine until you've seen it in action. There's no reforming these people because they are ruined beyond repair. Even the ones who finally figure out what they are doing is wrong still carry a "convict" mentality till the day they die. In order to truly punish these folks you would have to be brutal beyond the scope of your wildest imagining and clearly that will not happen in the United States.

Where does that leave the average man or woman on the street? You know, the one who works hard for a living and follows the rules? It leaves them at the mercy of the criminals and the justice system that just goes through the motions without any real hope of changing anything. If you knew what kind of monsters the system releases back into society every day you'd understand why some folks want a bit of personal protection.

Crime has very little to do with guns. The whole gun issue is just a convenient excuse for not discussing what is really wrong with the criminal justice system.

[old mark]

22. Thank you for this post.

I worked for a few years with adloescent drug users and sellers. The thing that stood out to me was in nearly all their families, every male relative was either in prison, had been in prison, or had died as a result of drug or criminal activity. It is their accepted way of life.
The rehab they were in was just a training program for an adulthood filled with violence, crime and incarceration.

When I worked there, I hav not owned a gun for years, but after my wife and I were threatened by a group of these guys, I bought a .357 magnum revolver and taught my wife to shoot.

mark

[jody]

23. IMO every study shows guns are not the problem, other factors cause violent crime. I wish those who

want to prohibit law-abiding citizens from owning firearms for self-defense would stop and join the pro-RKBA group in fighting violent criminals.

I would be happy if governors activated the unorganized militia which would include pro-RKBA and gun-control types and use them to fight violent crime in those cities that are out of control.

For example, D.C., PA, IL, MI all laws that allow heads of state to use the unorganized militia to enforce the laws of the state.

Perhaps walking the streets together and confronting violent criminals might cause those enamored with gun-control to understand the reason the pro-RKBA community demands the right to be armed against violent criminals.

[iverglas]

24. if wishes were horses

then pigs would fly.

Or demand guns. Or something.


Oh my oh my oh my.

All those root causes of crime that need so much addressing ... the poverty, the unemployment, the decaying social infrastructure ...

It can all be solved with a few vigilantes strolling the streets.


Youse guys are such a gas.