Redbrickbear said:

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cms186 said:

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Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

The Bill of Rights (and rest of the Constitution) seems very much to anticipate the expansion of new rights as the people and their representatives deem them needed or justified.

But it certainly does not imply that any already created and established Rights can ever be restricted.

So as an example the right of women to vote can be given...the right to vote for men can never be taken away.

The right to own space lasers might be give in the future...the right to own guns can never be taken away.

---

Why? is it because common sense dictates that a normal, law abiding citizen shouldnt need a Weapon that powerful? then why would a normal, law abiding citizen need anything other than a Pistol for Self Defence or a Bolt Action Rifle/Pump Action Shotgun for Hunting?

If you say that the 2nd Amendment would currently restrict someone from owning a Space Laser, then surely it can also restrict other weapons? it says a citizen has the right to bear Arms, it doesnt specify what kind.

boognish_bear said:

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Gun homicide rates by country….https://t.co/ub33DTkSnN pic.twitter.com/TJ2Ey4KFH5

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 25, 2022

---

now do chemically altered food and drug use.. we got alot of sick people in this country

cms186 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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cms186 said:

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JL said:

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boognish_bear said:

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C. Jordan said:

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ScottS said:

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Our school district has a policeman at each school. They implemented this in reaction Sandy Hook years ago. And guess what, no school shootings at any school in this district. The politicians in DC always have a back and forth but their solutions are all talk. They aren't on the local level and their solutions (and talk) won't solve anything.

---

No other country in the world has this problem. Maybe we could look to them for answers.

---

This is the part I don't understand. There are models out there that have demonstrated success with reducing gun violence for over 20+ years with measures they enacted. We don't have to copy those things 100%....but couldn't we at least have a conversation at looking at some of the measures.

---

Those other countries also don't have a Bill of Rights to contend with, or as stated above, 120 guns per 100 people to content with. At the end of the day, our leaders won't do the hard work of coming up with solutions that would prevent these tragedies. An evil person will be able to get a gun no matter what new gun control you want to start. The US has to look beyond gun control and get to the root of this evil.

---

Most countries have a Constitution or a similar document enshrining Citizens rights, Britain does and in it, a Citizen has a right to bear Arms, just, when we had a School shooting, we introduced Laws to make Gun Ownership (outside of some Hunting Rifles) very difficult, but not impossible, theres a Gun Shop in the town nearest to where i live, for example, that sells Shotguns and Hunting Rifles, I dont know what hoops i need to go through in order to be able to buy one though.

---

Really?

"Unlike most modern states, Britain does NOT have a codified constitution but an unwritten one formed of Acts of Parliament, court judgments and conventions."

https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-constitution

https://constitution-unit.com/2020/01/08/do-we-need-a-written-constitution/

---

then tell me what the 1689 Bill of Rights (one which heavily influenced parts of your own Constitution) is then

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/revolution/collections1/collections-glorious-revolution/billofrights/

---

I'm no expect at all on the legal/political system of the United Kingdom.

I have just always heard that the UK does not have a written constitution and that seems to be how its phrased by the government.

https://constitution-unit.com/2020/01/08/do-we-need-a-written-constitution/

https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf

"These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document."

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/britain-written-constitution

"Britain doesn't need a written constitution"

cms186 said:

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JL said:

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cms186 said:

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JL said:

---

cms186 said:

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JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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boognish_bear said:

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Ghostrider said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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I don't want to ban guns.

I just want to restrict who can buy them so troubled 18-year-old kids can't buy assault weapons the week after they turn 18 and kill 19 kids and 2 teachers in an elementary school. Does that sound like a reasonble goal to you?

---

. What is a troubled kid? What troubling thing in his life would have prevented him from getting a gun? Knowing that he was bullied? Knowing he failed 12th grade? Knowing he wore eyeliner? Serious questions.

---

Seems like most….if not all…including this one….had posted pics online of themselves with their stockpile of weapons. That seems to be a common red flag.

I'm not sure exactly what schools or police have an authority to do or investigate when online pics like that surface….but that seems to be a definite commonality with these shooters.

---

How about not selling people guns until they're old enough to legally drink alcohol?

Our society long ago concluded it was unwise to let teens drink adult beverages until they reached the minimum age of adulthood. Owning a gun is an adult responsibility.

My issue isn't with guns. They don't shoot themselves.

It's with the gun lobby's/politicians' complete failure to require people to exercise minimal care and responsibility in the sale of firearms and ammunition.

To get the guns this kid got, he should have been required to undergo gun safety training and get a license, like a hunting license. At his own expense. Tired of seeing "financial burden" arguments applied to gun safety training and licensing that conservatives don't accept when applied to the cost of healthcare and other basic necessities of life.

And, yes, if you want to own and use an assault weapon, you should be in a national database as the purchaser/owner of an assault weapon. There should be a clear public record of who has purchased assault weapons and ammo. The good guys who own these weapons proudly should have no problem with doing that on the record. And if somebody's assembling an arsenal to do a mass shooting, there should be ways to detect those purchases and investigate.

I'm really tired of an irresponsible level of "freedom" related to one specific product--guns--being valued far more than the lives and safety of children and other mass shooting victims.

It's also telling that there's a huge outcry about the 19 kids in Uvalde, but not so much of one about the racist shooter who carried out a carefully planned attack, right down to the body armor that made the "good guy with a gun" who was on the premises an inadequate defense against his attack, killing people for no other reason than because they lived in a black neighborhood and were shopping at their neighborhood grocery store.

---

From reading this, I can only assume you have very little knowledge of firearms and "freedom."

---

Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

---

Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

---

You had to take a Driving Test to be able to drive didnt you? You have to have Insurance to drive, in case an accident happens whilst you are driving, right? I dont know about the US, but asides from New Vehicles (I think they are exempt for the first 5 years? not 100% sure about that), our Cars are subject to yearly checks to make sure they are fit to drive

---

Car ownership is not in the Bill of Rights. Should you have to take a test to be able to vote?

---

Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

Passing gun control laws is not the same as a Constitutional Amendment, much different process.

---

Im aware, im saying that the levels of Guns available to the average Citizen when the Bill of Rights was written are a world away from what you can get now, the 2nd amendment also says "Well Regulated", I would have thought that would give anyone enough scope to restrict what people can and cant buy on the open market without infringing on their right to be able to have a Pistol or something to defend themselves with in their own home if thats what they want

---

"Well regulated" doesn't mean restricted; it means provided for/maintained. Also, private citizens owned cannons. Rights don't change just because technology has changed. The 1st amendment still applies to electronic communication.

Canada2017 said:

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Limited IQ Redneck in PU said:

---

Some guns should not be available. As long as we are a culture that glorifies guns we will have them. I dont think most people need them and the thought of a bunch of guys walking around armed all the time scares me.

---

Honest question …are you willing to give up all your firearms ?

---

NO!
Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the nation yet there are 500 to 700 murders by firearms each year. If and when we are all forced to give up our guns it will only be the good guys that do it.

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

As for the other comment above re: someone's opinion as to who needs a gun, well it is not about need. It is about my right to have a gun or guns.

C. Jordan said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

cms186 said:

---

JL said:

---

cms186 said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Ghostrider said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

I don't want to ban guns.

I just want to restrict who can buy them so troubled 18-year-old kids can't buy assault weapons the week after they turn 18 and kill 19 kids and 2 teachers in an elementary school. Does that sound like a reasonble goal to you?

---

. What is a troubled kid? What troubling thing in his life would have prevented him from getting a gun? Knowing that he was bullied? Knowing he failed 12th grade? Knowing he wore eyeliner? Serious questions.

---

Seems like most….if not all…including this one….had posted pics online of themselves with their stockpile of weapons. That seems to be a common red flag.

I'm not sure exactly what schools or police have an authority to do or investigate when online pics like that surface….but that seems to be a definite commonality with these shooters.

---

How about not selling people guns until they're old enough to legally drink alcohol?

Our society long ago concluded it was unwise to let teens drink adult beverages until they reached the minimum age of adulthood. Owning a gun is an adult responsibility.

My issue isn't with guns. They don't shoot themselves.

It's with the gun lobby's/politicians' complete failure to require people to exercise minimal care and responsibility in the sale of firearms and ammunition.

To get the guns this kid got, he should have been required to undergo gun safety training and get a license, like a hunting license. At his own expense. Tired of seeing "financial burden" arguments applied to gun safety training and licensing that conservatives don't accept when applied to the cost of healthcare and other basic necessities of life.

And, yes, if you want to own and use an assault weapon, you should be in a national database as the purchaser/owner of an assault weapon. There should be a clear public record of who has purchased assault weapons and ammo. The good guys who own these weapons proudly should have no problem with doing that on the record. And if somebody's assembling an arsenal to do a mass shooting, there should be ways to detect those purchases and investigate.

I'm really tired of an irresponsible level of "freedom" related to one specific product--guns--being valued far more than the lives and safety of children and other mass shooting victims.

It's also telling that there's a huge outcry about the 19 kids in Uvalde, but not so much of one about the racist shooter who carried out a carefully planned attack, right down to the body armor that made the "good guy with a gun" who was on the premises an inadequate defense against his attack, killing people for no other reason than because they lived in a black neighborhood and were shopping at their neighborhood grocery store.

---

From reading this, I can only assume you have very little knowledge of firearms and "freedom."

---

Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

---

Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

---

You had to take a Driving Test to be able to drive didnt you? You have to have Insurance to drive, in case an accident happens whilst you are driving, right? I dont know about the US, but asides from New Vehicles (I think they are exempt for the first 5 years? not 100% sure about that), our Cars are subject to yearly checks to make sure they are fit to drive

---

Car ownership is not in the Bill of Rights. Should you have to take a test to be able to vote?

---

Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

The Bill of Rights (and rest of the Constitution) seems very much to anticipate the expansion of new rights as the people and their representatives deem them needed or justified.

But it certainly does not imply that any already created and established Rights can ever be restricted.

So as an example the right of women to vote can be given...the right to vote for men can never be taken away.

The right to own space lasers might be give in the future...the right to own guns can never be taken away.

---

For some reason they erased the phrase "as part of a well-armed militia" in order to find this right.

---

They did a hell of a job erasing it too. I just checked the Amendment, and I can't even see it.

4th and Inches said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Gun homicide rates by country….https://t.co/ub33DTkSnN pic.twitter.com/TJ2Ey4KFH5

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 25, 2022

---

now do chemically altered food and drug use.. we got alot of sick people in this country

---

The fact that Israel has a similar rate of gun ownership as the US...along with a long running military conflict with the local Arab adversary (terrorists/or freedom fighters depending on your point of view).

But yet Israel is clustered closer to the other developed nations tells me something else is going on with gun violence in the USA other than just having guns widely available to the populace.

JL said:

---

cms186 said:

---

JL said:

---

cms186 said:

---

JL said:

---

cms186 said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

---

Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

---

You had to take a Driving Test to be able to drive didnt you? You have to have Insurance to drive, in case an accident happens whilst you are driving, right? I dont know about the US, but asides from New Vehicles (I think they are exempt for the first 5 years? not 100% sure about that), our Cars are subject to yearly checks to make sure they are fit to drive

---

Car ownership is not in the Bill of Rights. Should you have to take a test to be able to vote?

---

Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

Passing gun control laws is not the same as a Constitutional Amendment, much different process.

---

Im aware, im saying that the levels of Guns available to the average Citizen when the Bill of Rights was written are a world away from what you can get now, the 2nd amendment also says "Well Regulated", I would have thought that would give anyone enough scope to restrict what people can and cant buy on the open market without infringing on their right to be able to have a Pistol or something to defend themselves with in their own home if thats what they want

---

"Well regulated" doesn't mean restricted; it means provided for/maintained. Also, private citizens owned cannons. Rights don't change just because technology has changed. The 1st amendment still applies to electronic communication.

---

The dictionary definition of Regulate:

Quote:

---

control (something, especially a business activity) by means of rules and regulations

---

that sounds like it could certainly mean restricting something to me

The Bill of Rights has changed with peoples changing attitudes, like abolishing Slavery and introducing and then abolishing prohibition

cms186 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

cms186 said:

---

Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

The Bill of Rights (and rest of the Constitution) seems very much to anticipate the expansion of new rights as the people and their representatives deem them needed or justified.

But it certainly does not imply that any already created and established Rights can ever be restricted.

So as an example the right of women to vote can be given...the right to vote for men can never be taken away.

The right to own space lasers might be give in the future...the right to own guns can never be taken away.

---

Why? is it because common sense dictates that a normal, law abiding citizen shouldnt need a Weapon that powerful? then why would a normal, law abiding citizen need anything other than a Pistol for Self Defence or a Bolt Action Rifle/Pump Action Shotgun for Hunting?

If you say that the 2nd Amendment would currently restrict someone from owning a Space Laser, then surely it can also restrict other weapons? it says a citizen has the right to bear Arms, it doesnt specify what kind.

---

I think its simply about trying to read the Constitution has written.

The founders intended for citizens to be able to own and acquire projectile weaponry known as guns. How powerful those guns can be does seem to be a political question...the government does of course already ban .50 cal heavy machine guns for example.

Laser weapons operated from space (along with biological weapons and chemical) were not considered.

Redbrickbear said:

---

4th and Inches said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Gun homicide rates by country….https://t.co/ub33DTkSnN pic.twitter.com/TJ2Ey4KFH5

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 25, 2022

---

now do chemically altered food and drug use.. we got alot of sick people in this country

---

The fact that Israel has a similar rate of gun ownership as the US...along with a long running military conflict with the local Arab adversary (terrorists/or freedom fighters depending on your point of view).

But yet Israel is clustered closer to the other developed nations tells me something else is going on with gun violence in the USA other than just having guns widely available to the populace.

---

Agreed. The gun issue is just a distraction toward the broader issue. We could outlaw gun sales tomorrow and our open border to the south would flood the market with guns as it does today. There is this stupid assumption that all these guns are bought legally by law abiding citizens.

It's odd the same people that pan the War on Drugs thinking banning guns will stop gun violence.

Lock the front door.

Redbrickbear said:

---

cms186 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

cms186 said:

---

Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

---

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

---

---

The Bill of Rights (and rest of the Constitution) seems very much to anticipate the expansion of new rights as the people and their representatives deem them needed or justified.

But it certainly does not imply that any already created and established Rights can ever be restricted.

So as an example the right of women to vote can be given...the right to vote for men can never be taken away.

The right to own space lasers might be give in the future...the right to own guns can never be taken away.

---

Why? is it because common sense dictates that a normal, law abiding citizen shouldnt need a Weapon that powerful? then why would a normal, law abiding citizen need anything other than a Pistol for Self Defence or a Bolt Action Rifle/Pump Action Shotgun for Hunting?

If you say that the 2nd Amendment would currently restrict someone from owning a Space Laser, then surely it can also restrict other weapons? it says a citizen has the right to bear Arms, it doesnt specify what kind.

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I think its simply about trying to read the Constitution has written.

The founders intended for citizens to be able to own and acquire projectile weaponry known as guns.

Laser weapons operated from space (along with biological weapons and chemical) were not considered.

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Ok, thats fine, but do you not think, given the proliferation of Arms available to the average American and the advancement in technology in that regard, that they probably did not intend for the average individual citizen to be able to own and use Guns capable of killing 10s of people in under a minute?

Back then (and i dont claim to be a firearms expert in any way shape or form, so please correct me if im wrong) most commonly available weapons were smoothbore (so incredibly inaccurate at anything other than short distances) and muzzle loading, which meant you could maybe fire 3-4 shots per minute, if you knew what you were doing. that is a world away from the kind of weapons you can get nowadays

C. Jordan said:

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ScottS said:

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Our school district has a policeman at each school. They implemented this in reaction Sandy Hook years ago. And guess what, no school shootings at any school in this district. The politicians in DC always have a back and forth but their solutions are all talk. They aren't on the local level and their solutions (and talk) won't solve anything.

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I like having a policeman at the school, but in your district I don't know that it necessarily deterred any attack. While these attacks are horrible and happen, the odds of such a shooting at any individual school or even school district are really low.

I would also note, that the Tops grocery had an armed guard. The shooter knew it and it didn't deter him. He just wore body armor and killed the guard, who was a retired policeman.

I would love to see all handguns and assault rifles banned. But I'm a realist and know that won't happen.

Absent that, your policeman idea is helpful but not necessarily curative. These shooters all gave warning signs of what they were going to do. But they were either missed, ignored, or encouraged. Maybe schools engaging in closer monitoring of students. But that's difficult because I'm sure right now thousands of young men are showing warning signs, but most likely none of them will do anything.

No other country in the world has this problem. Maybe we could look to them for answers.

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No other country is as mentally ill as the United States.

cms186 said:

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JL said:

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boognish_bear said:

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C. Jordan said:

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ScottS said:

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Our school district has a policeman at each school. They implemented this in reaction Sandy Hook years ago. And guess what, no school shootings at any school in this district. The politicians in DC always have a back and forth but their solutions are all talk. They aren't on the local level and their solutions (and talk) won't solve anything.

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No other country in the world has this problem. Maybe we could look to them for answers.

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This is the part I don't understand. There are models out there that have demonstrated success with reducing gun violence for over 20+ years with measures they enacted. We don't have to copy those things 100%....but couldn't we at least have a conversation at looking at some of the measures.

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Those other countries also don't have a Bill of Rights to contend with, or as stated above, 120 guns per 100 people to content with. At the end of the day, our leaders won't do the hard work of coming up with solutions that would prevent these tragedies. An evil person will be able to get a gun no matter what new gun control you want to start. The US has to look beyond gun control and get to the root of this evil.

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Most countries have a Constitution or a similar document enshrining Citizens rights, Britain does and in it, a Citizen has a right to bear Arms, just, when we had a School shooting, we introduced Laws to make Gun Ownership (outside of some Hunting Rifles) very difficult, but not impossible, theres a Gun Shop in the town nearest to where i live, for example, that sells Shotguns and Hunting Rifles, I dont know what hoops i need to go through in order to be able to buy one though.

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CMS, you are a good poster, and I've never had any issues with your opinions. Except this on this issue. In the other thread before it got locked, you derided America's "Culture of guns." Must I remind you of where that began? It was the oppressive and militaristic British government - your government. When shaking off the yoke of the British crown, our founding fathers debated whether our government should place the bulk of the powers in the states or in a Federal government. The anti-federalists pointed to the oppressive British government as a reason to place the power in the states. The Federalists countered this argument by arguing that if the Federal government became too oppressive, it would be overthrown by the citizens, in large part because of the citizens' right to bear arms. So the "culture of guns" was central to the nation's formation and was in direct response to your government's actions. In fact, in Federalist 46, James Madison specifically pointed this out and noted that the European governments did not trust their citizens to own arms for just this reason. Here's what Madison said in supporting a strong Federal government:

"Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. "

JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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boognish_bear said:

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Ghostrider said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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SIC EM 94 said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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cowboycwr said:

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1. Armed police officers works for districts that can afford an officer per school. It doesn't work for smaller schools.
And as pointed out it doesn't always help if the officer does nothing like the Florida shooting.

2. Then there is the issue that they can't be everywhere at once and a shooter can still get in to the school.

3. Someone mentioned the locked doors. This is huge. There should be one entrance used to the school. Which is a problem at older schools that have multiple buildings like detached gyms, locker rooms, band halls, etc.

4. All schools need the locked outer door and an interior vestibule door that is locked.

5. Then go a step further and the glass on both doors and windows next to them need to be bullet resistant. I know of plenty of schools that have the two door system but both are just regular safety glass. Hard to break with a rock, chair, etc. but a gun would be able to shoot it out.

6. Panic button at the front desk.

7. Front desk person armed/ safe with locked gun. Or at minimum something like a can of bear spray.

8. Armed staff

9. Lots of drills. Currently in Texas schools have to do two lock down/active shooter drills a year. It should be more. With practice on what to do.

10. All classrooms should have devices used to jam the doors shut. There are a lot of options for any type of door.

All of these don't need to be done but at least two or 3 would help a lot.

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Yeah, I really want my grandkids to spent their school hours doing lots of active shooter drills and investing time and energy in all of the rest of this stuff instead of actually learning how to read, right and do arithemetic so Cowboy can open carry.

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What the Hell does open carry have to do with school shootings? You are so consumed by your dream of banning guns, that you make the most irrelevant posts over and over. Can you please try and think like an adult?

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I don't want to ban guns.

I just want to restrict who can buy them so troubled 18-year-old kids can't buy assault weapons the week after they turn 18 and kill 19 kids and 2 teachers in an elementary school. Does that sound like a reasonble goal to you?

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. What is a troubled kid? What troubling thing in his life would have prevented him from getting a gun? Knowing that he was bullied? Knowing he failed 12th grade? Knowing he wore eyeliner? Serious questions.

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Seems like most….if not all…including this one….had posted pics online of themselves with their stockpile of weapons. That seems to be a common red flag.

I'm not sure exactly what schools or police have an authority to do or investigate when online pics like that surface….but that seems to be a definite commonality with these shooters.

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How about not selling people guns until they're old enough to legally drink alcohol?

Our society long ago concluded it was unwise to let teens drink adult beverages until they reached the minimum age of adulthood. Owning a gun is an adult responsibility.

My issue isn't with guns. They don't shoot themselves.

It's with the gun lobby's/politicians' complete failure to require people to exercise minimal care and responsibility in the sale of firearms and ammunition.

To get the guns this kid got, he should have been required to undergo gun safety training and get a license, like a hunting license. At his own expense. Tired of seeing "financial burden" arguments applied to gun safety training and licensing that conservatives don't accept when applied to the cost of healthcare and other basic necessities of life.

And, yes, if you want to own and use an assault weapon, you should be in a national database as the purchaser/owner of an assault weapon. There should be a clear public record of who has purchased assault weapons and ammo. The good guys who own these weapons proudly should have no problem with doing that on the record. And if somebody's assembling an arsenal to do a mass shooting, there should be ways to detect those purchases and investigate.

I'm really tired of an irresponsible level of "freedom" related to one specific product--guns--being valued far more than the lives and safety of children and other mass shooting victims.

It's also telling that there's a huge outcry about the 19 kids in Uvalde, but not so much of one about the racist shooter who carried out a carefully planned attack, right down to the body armor that made the "good guy with a gun" who was on the premises an inadequate defense against his attack, killing people for no other reason than because they lived in a black neighborhood and were shopping at their neighborhood grocery store.

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From reading this, I can only assume you have very little knowledge of firearms and "freedom."

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Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

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Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

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You had to be 21 to buy alcohol. Not 18.

You had to take driver's ed and pass 2 tests, a written test and a test where a cop got in the car with you and make you show you could responsibly operate a car, before you were issued a driver's license.

The state can also make you take an eye test to determine if you can see well enough to drive. Texas made my father-in-law do this, and he flunked it. Everybody in his family was relieved that he was no longer allowed behind the wheel.

The only reason there aren't licensure and training requirements for gun laws is that the extremely powerful gun lobby has bought and paid for Republican policians and campaigned hard on the idea that unlimited, unrestricted gun sales, ownership and use are a public good when that's clearly not true.

Others posting on this thread have accurately pointed out that the U.S. is awash in guns and they aren't going anywhere. But legal purchase and carry should be restricted to people old enough to drink alcohol. Everyone who carries should have to have a license to do so, and that license should be renewed at least as often as you renew your driver's license. And you should be required, at your own expense, to take and pass a gun safety test. Assault weapons should have special restrictions and involve more safety training.

Since the horse has left the barn, that's not going to stop deranged kids from getting their hands on guns and committing a massacre, as happened at Sandy Hook and this spring in Michigan, thanks to 2 of the most criminally stupid parents on the planet. But it's a start, and we need to make one.

Franko said:

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CMS, you are a good poster, and I've never had any issues with your opinions. Except this on this issue. In the other thread before it got locked, you derided America's "Culture of guns." Must I remind you of where that began? It was the oppressive and militaristic British government - your government. When shaking off the yoke of the British crown, our founding fathers debated whether our government should place the bulk of the powers in the states or in a Federal government. The anti-federalists pointed to the oppressive British government as a reason to place the power in the states. The Federalists countered this argument by arguing that if the Federal government became too oppressive, it would be overthrown by the citizens, in large part because of the citizens' right to bear arms. So the "culture of guns" was central to the nation's formation and was in direct response to your government's actions. In fact, in Federalist 46, James Madison specifically pointed this out and noted that the European governments did not trust their citizens to own arms for just this reason. Here's what Madison said in supporting a strong Federal government:

"Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. "

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Thanks for the nice words, i do appreciate that this can be a sensitive issue and i try to be balanced, i didnt mean to sound derisory, but it is hard to convey tone on the internet!

Yes, I fully understand why that was initially written into the constitution and i do often see this argument put forth as an argument to why Americans should have the right to arm themselves with whatever they choose. The British Imperial engine has a lot to answer for. Thats not really relevant nowadays though, is it? The country is too fractured to unite in revolution against the Government and if it did, they would need a lot more than AR-15s and similar Semi-Automatic Weapons to do much against the US Army.

But the main point i would make, especially in the backdrop of yesterdays tragedy, is the theoretical ability to be able to stand a tiny chance of overthrowing your government, worth the very real Human cost that your country pays on a weekly basis with Kids getting cut down in Schools, in a place where they should be learning, growing, being safe and bettering themselves?

I remember when Columbine happened and it being such a tragedy and a unique occurrence, it was all over the news in the UK and i remember talking with my school friends at the time and wondering how remarkable (in the worst way) it all was, Nowadays, we would just say "Oh, happened again, has it?" "Will they offer their Thoughts and Prayers?" "I wonder who will say more Guns is the answer" etc. and then being incredibly unsurprised when nothing actually happens to help solve the situation. Partisan Politics should be put to one side in these situations, it should be a National Emergency that Kids are getting Murdered in their classrooms, but its not, outside of these immediately effected, Uvalde will be forgotten in a few weeks, brushed under the carpet and resigned to being just another of the countless entries on the list of School Shootings in the USA

cms186 said:

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JL said:

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cms186 said:

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JL said:

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cms186 said:

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JL said:

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cms186 said:

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JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

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Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

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You had to take a Driving Test to be able to drive didnt you? You have to have Insurance to drive, in case an accident happens whilst you are driving, right? I dont know about the US, but asides from New Vehicles (I think they are exempt for the first 5 years? not 100% sure about that), our Cars are subject to yearly checks to make sure they are fit to drive

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Car ownership is not in the Bill of Rights. Should you have to take a test to be able to vote?

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Neither was Blacks or Women being able to vote, the Bill of Rights is a Living document, even the people who wrote it expected it to evolve over time

Thomas Jefferson:

Quote:

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I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

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Passing gun control laws is not the same as a Constitutional Amendment, much different process.

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Im aware, im saying that the levels of Guns available to the average Citizen when the Bill of Rights was written are a world away from what you can get now, the 2nd amendment also says "Well Regulated", I would have thought that would give anyone enough scope to restrict what people can and cant buy on the open market without infringing on their right to be able to have a Pistol or something to defend themselves with in their own home if thats what they want

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"Well regulated" doesn't mean restricted; it means provided for/maintained. Also, private citizens owned cannons. Rights don't change just because technology has changed. The 1st amendment still applies to electronic communication.

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The dictionary definition of Regulate:

Quote:

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control (something, especially a business activity) by means of rules and regulations

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that sounds like it could certainly mean restricting something to me

The Bill of Rights has changed with peoples changing attitudes, like abolishing Slavery and introducing and then abolishing prohibition

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The 13th amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. (slavery was also never a specific enumerated right found in the Constitution itself...except for how slaves were to be counted in the population census the Constitution was silent on slavery)

The 18th amendment enacted prohibition....it was repealed by the 21st amendment.

To create some kind of large scale ban on gun ownership you would have to pass a Constitutional amendment that repealed the 2nd amendment....just like with alcohol.

BellCountyBear said:

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Lock the front door.

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I think almost all schools now have a locked front door and you have to buzz in and show ID.

Redbrickbear said:

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The 13th amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. (slavery was also never a specific enumerated right found in the Constitution itself...expect for how slaves were to be counted in the population census the Constitution was silent on slavery)

The 18th amendment enacted prohibition....it was repealed by the 21st amendment.

To create some kind of large scale ban on gun ownership you would have to pass a Constitutional amendment that repealed the 2nd amendment....just like with alcohol.

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They would, sure, but noone is proposing to ban guns entirely, even in the UK, you can buy Guns, what could be suggested is more restrictions on what kind of Guns you can buy, which would not require a Constitutional amendment

Wangchung said:

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cowboycwr said:

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Wangchung said:

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In addition to other things, how about enough cameras to cover the school and a dedicated observer of said cameras.

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I doubt that would work. A person sitting in an office all day watching cameras isn't going to stop someone getting in. Other measures need to be taken to prevent them from getting in.

Not to mention they would get distracted, be on their phone, on the computer, sleeping, etc.

Also, if you have an officer on campus they should be out walking around not sitting in an office.

Plus the benefit of them walking around gives a chance to show police in a good light which many schools and kids need to see to fight the anti police rhetoric that flies around these days.

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Oh it's definitely just one thing to add and wasn't meant as the only solution. Your list was excellent.

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Thank you. I feel that school safety conversations need to include multiple options and a variety of fixes. Not a one solution to fix it for every size school.

J.B.Katz said:

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cowboycwr said:

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1. Armed police officers works for districts that can afford an officer per school. It doesn't work for smaller schools.
And as pointed out it doesn't always help if the officer does nothing like the Florida shooting.

2. Then there is the issue that they can't be everywhere at once and a shooter can still get in to the school.

3. Someone mentioned the locked doors. This is huge. There should be one entrance used to the school. Which is a problem at older schools that have multiple buildings like detached gyms, locker rooms, band halls, etc.

4. All schools need the locked outer door and an interior vestibule door that is locked.

5. Then go a step further and the glass on both doors and windows next to them need to be bullet resistant. I know of plenty of schools that have the two door system but both are just regular safety glass. Hard to break with a rock, chair, etc. but a gun would be able to shoot it out.

6. Panic button at the front desk.

7. Front desk person armed/ safe with locked gun. Or at minimum something like a can of bear spray.

8. Armed staff

9. Lots of drills. Currently in Texas schools have to do two lock down/active shooter drills a year. It should be more. With practice on what to do.

10. All classrooms should have devices used to jam the doors shut. There are a lot of options for any type of door.

All of these don't need to be done but at least two or 3 would help a lot.

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Yeah, I really want my grandkids to spent their school hours doing lots of active shooter drills and investing time and energy in all of the rest of this stuff instead of actually learning how to read, right and do arithemetic so Cowboy can open carry.

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Clearly you did not spend time learning the things you want your grandkids to do.

Like arithmetic and learning to write. Both that you misspelled/used wrong word.

I never said anything about open carry. I never said anything about me. Just a list of options.

Think about it like this. Fire drills. They did not used to be mandatory. Kids died in school fires. then they became mandatory and since then no deaths in school fires.

But at least I offered real world options not attacking individuals like you are doing and not trying to solve anything.

I would expect most if not all schools have physical security measures in place, including restricted access points and some security individuals. These can always be enhanced and improved. Beyond local controls and equipping educators and staff to prevent incursions by other individuals, there is not much left except to train them to react and respond to safety threats. I'm not much of a fan of arming school employees although perhaps a case can be made here.

The bedrock issue of the school and workplace killings has been individuals with mental illness: from Va Tech to Sandy Hook to Parkland in Florida; from Columbine to the Buffalo market: all had illnesses which they expressed beforehand, witnessed by others. The Va Tech shooter was known to the FBI to be dangerous. And yet, nothing was done to prevent these. Interventions by the courts and law enforcement could have prevented all of these had they been done appropriately. More evidence will emerge about the kid in Uvalde, but anyone who shoots his own grandmother has some serious mental issues, even if undiagnosed. But he did express himself in threatening terms, the full meaning of these will come later (if at all).

Background checks can and do fail at times, and will fail always if known mental illness is not documented and reported in terms of firearm ownership and purchase. Tricky ground, no doubt, but we have solved other problems which challenged freedoms. Restricting firearms will only work if all firearms are taken from the public and outlawed in terms of private property. No doubt, some want to go there; others, the majority, know that to be dangerous ground and threat to liberty. In the end, it is not the firearm itself that poses the problems and threats to life, it is us: we individuals who wield those weapons. We have neglected mental health disorders and their effect on life's activities far too long. Those conditions, including unresolved anger, threaten liberty far more seriously than a .223 or 9mm.

cms186 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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The 13th amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. (slavery was also never a specific enumerated right found in the Constitution itself...expect for how slaves were to be counted in the population census the Constitution was silent on slavery)

The 18th amendment enacted prohibition....it was repealed by the 21st amendment.

To create some kind of large scale ban on gun ownership you would have to pass a Constitutional amendment that repealed the 2nd amendment....just like with alcohol.

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They would, sure, but noone is proposing to ban guns entirely, even in the UK, you can buy Guns, what could be suggested is more restrictions on what kind of Guns you can buy, which would not require a Constitutional amendment

---

Yes but that is the same problem as not proposing banning free speech...but just suggesting more restrictions on what you can say out in public, what you can say in print, what you can say on the airwaves.

Any steps to curtail a Constitutional right is suspect from the get go.

An I do sympathize...I look at all the absolute hate speech I see coming out the corporate media toward white people and I think "something needs to be done about this toxic stuff". I see the epidemic of violence taking place in the country and think "something needs to be done about guns on the street and in the hands of mentally ill people"

But I also acknowledge these are Constitutional rights.

falconbear said:

---

Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Dept of Public Safety tells @andersoncooper the shooter crashed his car near the school, got out with a gun and wearing body armor, was engaged by law enforcement, but made his way into the school anyway and went classroom to classroom shooting.

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 25, 2022

Yes, more cops is surely the answer.

---

This does not prove that more police is not an answer. Mainly because there are so many details still missing. Was the officer that he engaged between the shooter and the school? Or was he across the street following the shooter who fled into the school?

boognish_bear said:

---

Jack Bauer said:

---

falconbear said:

---

Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Dept of Public Safety tells @andersoncooper the shooter crashed his car near the school, got out with a gun and wearing body armor, was engaged by law enforcement, but made his way into the school anyway and went classroom to classroom shooting.

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 25, 2022

Yes, more cops is surely the answer.

---

A Border Patrol agent who was nearby when the shooting began rushed into the school without waiting for backup and shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade, according to a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it.

The agent was wounded but able to walk out of the school, the law enforcement source said.

---

So maybe we need 2 cops at each of the 8,000 elementaries in Texas

---

Or just one at the front door. Was the officer he engaged at the school, at the front door, outside, or across the street?

SIC EM 94 said:

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J.B.Katz said:

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cowboycwr said:

---

1. Armed police officers works for districts that can afford an officer per school. It doesn't work for smaller schools.
And as pointed out it doesn't always help if the officer does nothing like the Florida shooting.

2. Then there is the issue that they can't be everywhere at once and a shooter can still get in to the school.

3. Someone mentioned the locked doors. This is huge. There should be one entrance used to the school. Which is a problem at older schools that have multiple buildings like detached gyms, locker rooms, band halls, etc.

4. All schools need the locked outer door and an interior vestibule door that is locked.

5. Then go a step further and the glass on both doors and windows next to them need to be bullet resistant. I know of plenty of schools that have the two door system but both are just regular safety glass. Hard to break with a rock, chair, etc. but a gun would be able to shoot it out.

6. Panic button at the front desk.

7. Front desk person armed/ safe with locked gun. Or at minimum something like a can of bear spray.

8. Armed staff

9. Lots of drills. Currently in Texas schools have to do two lock down/active shooter drills a year. It should be more. With practice on what to do.

10. All classrooms should have devices used to jam the doors shut. There are a lot of options for any type of door.

All of these don't need to be done but at least two or 3 would help a lot.

---

Yeah, I really want my grandkids to spent their school hours doing lots of active shooter drills and investing time and energy in all of the rest of this stuff instead of actually learning how to read, right and do arithemetic so Cowboy can open carry.

---

What the Hell does open carry have to do with school shootings? You are so consumed by your dream of banning guns, that you make the most irrelevant posts over and over. Can you please try and think like an adult?

---

So very true. I said nothing of open carry and posted ideas. She posts attacks.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/texas-elementary-school-shooting-uvalde/

Students, teachers in Uvalde elementary school shooting were in one classroom, law enforcement says

The 19 children and two teachers killed Tuesday at a South Texas elementary school the second-deadliest public school shooting in U.S. history were all in the same classroom, a state law enforcement official said Wednesday morning.

The gunman Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old Uvalde resident barricaded himself inside a classroom at Robb Elementary School and "began shooting anyone that was in his way," Lt. Chris Olivarez, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson, said in an appearance on "The Today Show."

Ramos was "able to make entry into a classroom, barricaded himself inside that classroom and … just began shooting numerous children and teachers that were in that classroom, having no regard for human life," Olivarez said.

Law enforcement officers arriving on the scene could hear gunshots inside the classroom, Olivarez said. Officers tried to enter the school, but the shooter fired on them, hitting some of the officers, Olivarez said. At that point, police officers "began breaking windows around the school" in an attempt to evacuate children, teachers and staff, he said.

Officers were eventually able to force their way into the classroom and kill the shooter, who wore a tactical vest, Olivarez said.

The gunman is believed to have shot his grandmother in a domestic dispute Tuesday before driving away and crashing a truck near the school. The grandmother was hospitalized in critical condition.

The shooter legally bought two rifles along with 375 rounds of ammunition just after his 18th birthday earlier this month, according to a briefing state Sen. John Whitmire received from state authorities late Tuesday. One of the rifles was left in the truck, according to the briefing.

Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to provide an update on the state's response to the shooting Wednesday afternoon joined by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan, and Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, among other elected, state and law enforcement officials.

Robert Francis O'Rourke invades the press conference at 11:33

Coke Bear said:

---

With respect to the "small school" theory, Uvalde is a 4A school. They have the money to have mag-locks on the doors and controlled entrances in their schools.

I would guess they do. Most, if not all schools, in Texas have this in place. As mentioned earlier, all school practice Active Shooter drills.

Besides locked doors, other devices have been installed to help prevent a shooter from breaching a classroom.

Sometimes, sadly, we can't stop evil.

---

Now that there is a 6A in the classification system 4A are still sort of small schools to large ones. The cutoff numbers are like 550 through 1300.

But yes I get your point. They should have the money for good magnetic locks.

Jack and DP said:

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Why aren't we seeing stories of high school football players becoming school shooters?
We need young men participating in activities that burn off energy and make them part of their schools. High school athletics is a great way to make the young person an insider instead of an outsider.

---

Shooters often are the loners in a school.

But when you get to 1000 kids, 2000, etc. it gets hard to make teams, clubs, etc. and be active on them.

cowboycwr said:

---

]Shooters often are the loners in a school.

But when you get to 1000 kids, 2000, etc. it gets hard to make teams, clubs, etc. and be active on them.

---

More difficult to make sports teams, yes.

But, I've noticed that in larger schools, the athletes are significantly outnumbered by those that aren't in athletics.

The larger schools will have a more diverse range of cliques to be a part of.

cms186 said:

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Franko said:

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CMS, you are a good poster, and I've never had any issues with your opinions. Except this on this issue. In the other thread before it got locked, you derided America's "Culture of guns." Must I remind you of where that began? It was the oppressive and militaristic British government - your government. When shaking off the yoke of the British crown, our founding fathers debated whether our government should place the bulk of the powers in the states or in a Federal government. The anti-federalists pointed to the oppressive British government as a reason to place the power in the states. The Federalists countered this argument by arguing that if the Federal government became too oppressive, it would be overthrown by the citizens, in large part because of the citizens' right to bear arms. So the "culture of guns" was central to the nation's formation and was in direct response to your government's actions. In fact, in Federalist 46, James Madison specifically pointed this out and noted that the European governments did not trust their citizens to own arms for just this reason. Here's what Madison said in supporting a strong Federal government:

"Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. "

---

Thanks for the nice words, i do appreciate that this can be a sensitive issue and i try to be balanced, i didnt mean to sound derisory, but it is hard to convey tone on the internet!

Yes, I fully understand why that was initially written into the constitution and i do often see this argument put forth as an argument to why Americans should have the right to arm themselves with whatever they choose. The British Imperial engine has a lot to answer for. Thats not really relevant nowadays though, is it? The country is too fractured to unite in revolution against the Government and if it did, they would need a lot more than AR-15s and similar Semi-Automatic Weapons to do much against the US Army.

But the main point i would make, especially in the backdrop of yesterdays tragedy, is the theoretical ability to be able to stand a tiny chance of overthrowing your government, worth the very real Human cost that your country pays on a weekly basis with Kids getting cut down in Schools, in a place where they should be learning, growing, being safe and bettering themselves?

I remember when Columbine happened and it being such a tragedy and a unique occurrence, it was all over the news in the UK and i remember talking with my school friends at the time and wondering how remarkable (in the worst way) it all was, Nowadays, we would just say "Oh, happened again, has it?" "Will they offer their Thoughts and Prayers?" "I wonder who will say more Guns is the answer" etc. and then being incredibly unsurprised when nothing actually happens to help solve the situation. Partisan Politics should be put to one side in these situations, it should be a National Emergency that Kids are getting Murdered in their classrooms, but its not, outside of these immediately effected, Uvalde will be forgotten in a few weeks, brushed under the carpet and resigned to being just another of the countless entries on the list of School Shootings in the USA

---

First I would like to point out that the US Military couldn't take over the US. They can't subdue insurgent and guerrilla tactics in places like Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Vietnam. Don't think they could do it to their own countrymen even if you could get them to participate. But that is somewhat beside the point.

My larger point would be with this statement "But the main point i would make, especially in the backdrop of yesterdays tragedy, is the theoretical ability to be able to stand a tiny chance of overthrowing your government, worth the very real Human cost that your country pays on a weekly basis with Kids getting cut down in Schools, in a place where they should be learning, growing, being safe and bettering themselves?"

Imo the problem with the discussion about firearms in these terms is that it isn't a full picture and doesn't flesh out the pros and cons of relatively free access to firearms. Firearms are a weapon that can be used offensively and defensively to great effects. So to properly debate firearms merits one should consider the defensive use of firearms. And not just the theoretical use of a check on government power.

J.B.Katz said:

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JL said:

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J.B.Katz said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Ghostrider said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

SIC EM 94 said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

cowboycwr said:

---

1. Armed police officers works for districts that can afford an officer per school. It doesn't work for smaller schools.
And as pointed out it doesn't always help if the officer does nothing like the Florida shooting.

2. Then there is the issue that they can't be everywhere at once and a shooter can still get in to the school.

3. Someone mentioned the locked doors. This is huge. There should be one entrance used to the school. Which is a problem at older schools that have multiple buildings like detached gyms, locker rooms, band halls, etc.

4. All schools need the locked outer door and an interior vestibule door that is locked.

5. Then go a step further and the glass on both doors and windows next to them need to be bullet resistant. I know of plenty of schools that have the two door system but both are just regular safety glass. Hard to break with a rock, chair, etc. but a gun would be able to shoot it out.

6. Panic button at the front desk.

7. Front desk person armed/ safe with locked gun. Or at minimum something like a can of bear spray.

8. Armed staff

9. Lots of drills. Currently in Texas schools have to do two lock down/active shooter drills a year. It should be more. With practice on what to do.

10. All classrooms should have devices used to jam the doors shut. There are a lot of options for any type of door.

All of these don't need to be done but at least two or 3 would help a lot.

---

Yeah, I really want my grandkids to spent their school hours doing lots of active shooter drills and investing time and energy in all of the rest of this stuff instead of actually learning how to read, right and do arithemetic so Cowboy can open carry.

---

What the Hell does open carry have to do with school shootings? You are so consumed by your dream of banning guns, that you make the most irrelevant posts over and over. Can you please try and think like an adult?

---

I don't want to ban guns.

I just want to restrict who can buy them so troubled 18-year-old kids can't buy assault weapons the week after they turn 18 and kill 19 kids and 2 teachers in an elementary school. Does that sound like a reasonble goal to you?

---

. What is a troubled kid? What troubling thing in his life would have prevented him from getting a gun? Knowing that he was bullied? Knowing he failed 12th grade? Knowing he wore eyeliner? Serious questions.

---

Seems like most….if not all…including this one….had posted pics online of themselves with their stockpile of weapons. That seems to be a common red flag.

I'm not sure exactly what schools or police have an authority to do or investigate when online pics like that surface….but that seems to be a definite commonality with these shooters.

---

How about not selling people guns until they're old enough to legally drink alcohol?

Our society long ago concluded it was unwise to let teens drink adult beverages until they reached the minimum age of adulthood. Owning a gun is an adult responsibility.

My issue isn't with guns. They don't shoot themselves.

It's with the gun lobby's/politicians' complete failure to require people to exercise minimal care and responsibility in the sale of firearms and ammunition.

To get the guns this kid got, he should have been required to undergo gun safety training and get a license, like a hunting license. At his own expense. Tired of seeing "financial burden" arguments applied to gun safety training and licensing that conservatives don't accept when applied to the cost of healthcare and other basic necessities of life.

And, yes, if you want to own and use an assault weapon, you should be in a national database as the purchaser/owner of an assault weapon. There should be a clear public record of who has purchased assault weapons and ammo. The good guys who own these weapons proudly should have no problem with doing that on the record. And if somebody's assembling an arsenal to do a mass shooting, there should be ways to detect those purchases and investigate.

I'm really tired of an irresponsible level of "freedom" related to one specific product--guns--being valued far more than the lives and safety of children and other mass shooting victims.

It's also telling that there's a huge outcry about the 19 kids in Uvalde, but not so much of one about the racist shooter who carried out a carefully planned attack, right down to the body armor that made the "good guy with a gun" who was on the premises an inadequate defense against his attack, killing people for no other reason than because they lived in a black neighborhood and were shopping at their neighborhood grocery store.

---

From reading this, I can only assume you have very little knowledge of firearms and "freedom."

---

Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

---

Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

---

You had to be 21 to buy alcohol. Not 18.

You had to take driver's ed and pass 2 tests, a written test and a test where a cop got in the car with you and make you show you could responsibly operate a car, before you were issued a driver's license.

The state can also make you take an eye test to determine if you can see well enough to drive. Texas made my father-in-law do this, and he flunked it. Everybody in his family was relieved that he was no longer allowed behind the wheel.

The only reason there aren't licensure and training requirements for gun laws is that the extremely powerful gun lobby has bought and paid for Republican policians and campaigned hard on the idea that unlimited, unrestricted gun sales, ownership and use are a public good when that's clearly not true.

Others posting on this thread have accurately pointed out that the U.S. is awash in guns and they aren't going anywhere. But legal purchase and carry should be restricted to people old enough to drink alcohol. Everyone who carries should have to have a license to do so, and that license should be renewed at least as often as you renew your driver's license. And you should be required, at your own expense, to take and pass a gun safety test. Assault weapons should have special restrictions and involve more safety training.

Since the horse has left the barn, that's not going to stop deranged kids from getting their hands on guns and committing a massacre, as happened at Sandy Hook and this spring in Michigan, thanks to 2 of the most criminally stupid parents on the planet. But it's a start, and we need to make one.

---

18 years olds are trained to use machine guns in the Army. You would allow 18 year olds to die for your freedom overseas, but they can't defend themselves at home?

What exactly is an assault weapon and why should they require special restrictions?

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

JL said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Ghostrider said:

---

J.B.Katz said:

---

I don't want to ban guns.

I just want to restrict who can buy them so troubled 18-year-old kids can't buy assault weapons the week after they turn 18 and kill 19 kids and 2 teachers in an elementary school. Does that sound like a reasonble goal to you?

---

. What is a troubled kid? What troubling thing in his life would have prevented him from getting a gun? Knowing that he was bullied? Knowing he failed 12th grade? Knowing he wore eyeliner? Serious questions.

---

Seems like most….if not all…including this one….had posted pics online of themselves with their stockpile of weapons. That seems to be a common red flag.

I'm not sure exactly what schools or police have an authority to do or investigate when online pics like that surface….but that seems to be a definite commonality with these shooters.

---

How about not selling people guns until they're old enough to legally drink alcohol?

Our society long ago concluded it was unwise to let teens drink adult beverages until they reached the minimum age of adulthood. Owning a gun is an adult responsibility.

My issue isn't with guns. They don't shoot themselves.

It's with the gun lobby's/politicians' complete failure to require people to exercise minimal care and responsibility in the sale of firearms and ammunition.

To get the guns this kid got, he should have been required to undergo gun safety training and get a license, like a hunting license. At his own expense. Tired of seeing "financial burden" arguments applied to gun safety training and licensing that conservatives don't accept when applied to the cost of healthcare and other basic necessities of life.

And, yes, if you want to own and use an assault weapon, you should be in a national database as the purchaser/owner of an assault weapon. There should be a clear public record of who has purchased assault weapons and ammo. The good guys who own these weapons proudly should have no problem with doing that on the record. And if somebody's assembling an arsenal to do a mass shooting, there should be ways to detect those purchases and investigate.

I'm really tired of an irresponsible level of "freedom" related to one specific product--guns--being valued far more than the lives and safety of children and other mass shooting victims.

It's also telling that there's a huge outcry about the 19 kids in Uvalde, but not so much of one about the racist shooter who carried out a carefully planned attack, right down to the body armor that made the "good guy with a gun" who was on the premises an inadequate defense against his attack, killing people for no other reason than because they lived in a black neighborhood and were shopping at their neighborhood grocery store.

---

From reading this, I can only assume you have very little knowledge of firearms and "freedom."

---

Then educate me.

Why should we have fewer restrictions on the purchase, ownership and use of lethal firearms and than we do on driving cars and drinking alcohol?

There are many areas of life in which we don't have unrestricted freedom. Conservatives obviously don't support unlimited freedom in many areas of life. Many are very eager to restrict the freedom of women and girls to make personal decisions for themselves, even in cases of rape or incest, the freedom of gay people to marry same-sex partners (some even favor laws outlawing certain sex acts most people do behind closed doors where the government should, IMO, never intrude), and the freedom of parents in the state of Texas to work with their children's doctors to make decisions about medical treatment without fear of having Child Protective Services show up.

So why should freedoms relating to the purchase of all types of guns and ammo be unrestricted when so many other freedoms are simultaneously at risk of being severely restricted or eliminated altogether?

If making sure deranged, angry teens can't easily arm up and kill more than 20 kids and teachers in an elementary school isn't pro-life, then what is?

It just strikes me as really ironic that conservatives claim to be pro-life and pro-child when they have done everything possible to make our country a very unfriendly place to have and raise children:

-high cost of child care,
-no paid parental leave for many workers (especially low-income workers who need it most),
-no secure access to medical care for many working-age people,
-few or no workplace accommodations for pregnant women,
-schools that aren't safe where kids are forced to do active shooter drills because the right of anybody over 18 to own and carry lethal assault weapons is valued much higher politically than the lives of little children,
-schools where the school boards are banning books and trying to force a sanitized version of American history into the curriculum,
-schools where one religion is clearly favored and endorsed over all others (a sore point with me--my high school in the 1960s couldn't even have a prom because our principal was Church of Christ and wouldn't permit a dance and my grade school had a Christmas pageant that my Jewish classmate participated in because his parents thought that might keep him from being bullied. I thought we'd moved beyond that pettiness, but we clearly haven't, despite living in a country founded on the principles of no state religion and separation of church and state.

And the strategy to cope with a declining birth rate? Forced birth, even in cases or rape or incest, reducing a woman to a "vessel" + restrictions on contraception. That dismissive attitude toward woman as people whose personal agency and freedom also matters is what made it to easy for Paige Patterson and his ilk to flourish in the SBC for so many years.

What's sad is, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers will just wait this out. As they have every other mass shooting. If Sandy Hook and Parkland, where most of the victims were white middle-class kids, didn't spark change, a small-town school where most victims are Hispanic certainly won't. Which is a sick commentary on a supposedly Christian nation where "in Christ there is no east or west, in him no north or south, but one great fellowship of love..."

Love is not what those kids felt when they were shot to death in Uvalde. Shame on us as a nation.

---

Again, you obviously have never bought a firearm and know nothing about guns other than what CNN has told you.

I've never had to have a backgound check to buy a car or alcohol.

---

You had to be 21 to buy alcohol. Not 18.

You had to take driver's ed and pass 2 tests, a written test and a test where a cop got in the car with you and make you show you could responsibly operate a car, before you were issued a driver's license.

The state can also make you take an eye test to determine if you can see well enough to drive. Texas made my father-in-law do this, and he flunked it. Everybody in his family was relieved that he was no longer allowed behind the wheel.

The only reason there aren't licensure and training requirements for gun laws is that the extremely powerful gun lobby has bought and paid for Republican policians and campaigned hard on the idea that unlimited, unrestricted gun sales, ownership and use are a public good when that's clearly not true.

Others posting on this thread have accurately pointed out that the U.S. is awash in guns and they aren't going anywhere. But legal purchase and carry should be restricted to people old enough to drink alcohol. Everyone who carries should have to have a license to do so, and that license should be renewed at least as often as you renew your driver's license. And you should be required, at your own expense, to take and pass a gun safety test. Assault weapons should have special restrictions and involve more safety training.

Since the horse has left the barn, that's not going to stop deranged kids from getting their hands on guns and committing a massacre, as happened at Sandy Hook and this spring in Michigan, thanks to 2 of the most criminally stupid parents on the planet. But it's a start, and we need to make one.

---

18 years olds are trained to use machine guns in the Army. You would allow 18 year olds to die for your freedom overseas, but they can't defend themselves at home?

What exactly is an assault weapon and why should they require special restrictions?

---

Army personnel are trained professionals. They are supervised by commanding officers. They're using a weapon issued to them by the U.S. government. It doesn't belong to them. They can't take it with them when they leave military service. They face severe consequences if they misuse or abuse their weapon.

They aren't just issued an assault weapon with no training because they had enough money to buy one and turned loose to figure out how to use it and where to use it.