Americans have normalized gun ownership and an armed citizenry.
Let's change attitudes.
Yesterday I heard an advocate of "common sense gun regulation" on MSNBC. She said it was common sense to change the age from from 18 to 21 for buying a military-style rifle. She had a firm, indignant tone. An 18-year-old cannot buy a beer, she said, but he can buy an AR-15. And it is perfectly legal right up until the moment he points it at people and starts killing them. That's wrong, she said. Change it to 21.
She attempted to qualify herself as a reasonable person of moderate intent before she urged this change in law. "Look," she said in a soothing, reassuring tone, "I'm not anti-gun. I'm a gun owner myself, and I love my guns, but it's only common sense to. . . ."
Some small percentage of people are crazy, hot-headed, addicted, stupid, or for some other reason dangerously unreasonable. Every career salesperson knows it. Every owner of a restaurant or bar. Every school principal. Every politician. Put that together with ubiquitous guns, and there will be gun violence and mass shootings.The range of the "common sense" debate--age 18 or 21 for purchasing military weapons, big magazine or bigger ones--miss the reality of the real problem--the pro-gun culture.
If we are going to reduce gun violence including mass shootings, the better opening disclaimer for the pundit would have been, “I personally want no part of guns, and I think that people carrying guns is as dangerous as people having concealed carry of pet rattlesnakes, so it is only common sense to. . . .”
Wrong: "Like all of us, I find it disgusting to clean up after my dog, but for reasons of public health. . . ."
Instead: "I have a dog and of course I clean up after it. . . ."
Changing gun culture will take decades. The new ideas will take hold unevenly. It may not happen at all. It is a long march.
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17 comments:
How about liability insurance for owning a gun just like owning a car. It would probably have to take place at original purchase to insure compliance. Wonder how much that would cost?
A couple of facts:
"Almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns, according to an April 2021 Pew survey. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries...While personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted." - CNN
It has also been reported that the profile of the gunman fits that of an immature young male with anger issues and an unstable home. An argument with his grandmother escalated into murder because he had a weapon. Similar incidents have told of teens who shoot someone impulsively and then go on a rampage, something explained as a narcissistic rationalization of their rage. This is clearly someone who could have been identified as at risk with "red flag" policies.
So I'd ask:
Why do so many think they need a gun for personal protection?
They are afraid. The Republican fear mongering of "replacement" and "CRT" is amplified by the NRA and the gun culture. It's racist and the purpose is to sell guns to people who otherwise wouldn't want them, and certainly don't need them.
"They don't send their best people. They're rapists..."
Yes, behaviors need to change. The first one is stop voting for Republicans. And let's not mince words about "moderate" Republicans like Mitt Romney who is the biggest recipient of contributions from the NRA, 13 million. Also, while reviewing a list of candidates who got donations from the NRA I found token amounts ($3 to Cory Booker?) were accepted by Democrats. These should be returned immediately.
I was raised in the military and got my marksmanship merit badge, but guns have become a plague in the U.S. Assault-style weapons with large capacity magazines are the worst, their sole purpose being to mow people down. In 1994 there was a ten-year ban on them, resulting in a reduction in mass shooting deaths. In the decade after the ban ended, the number of mass shooting deaths more than tripled. Gun nuts refute this with doubts, guesses and outright lies, but that doesn’t change the numbers.
We now have deranged wingnuts, including an ex-president, making threats of civil war. They like to boast that they have more guns. Sometimes I can’t help wishing that all the gun-worshipping wackos who dream of taking up arms against the government would actually do something besides blabber about it. They’d last about 10 minutes against our military and that, in turn, would significantly improve the nation’s I.Q.
'Guns could eventually be put away along with spittoons."
"I'll give you my spittoon when you pry it from my cold, dead hands"
A couple of facts:
"Almost a third of US adults believe there would be less crime if more people owned guns, according to an April 2021 Pew survey. However, multiple studies show that where people have easy access to firearms, gun-related deaths tend to be more frequent, including by suicide, homicide and unintentional injuries...While personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted." - CNN
It has also been reported that the profile of the gunman fits that of an immature young male with anger issues and an unstable home. An argument with his grandmother escalated into murder because he had a weapon. Similar incidents have told of teens who shoot someone impulsively and then go on a rampage, something explained as a narcissistic rationalization of their rage. This is clearly someone who could have been identified as at risk with "red flag" policies.
So I'd ask:
Why do so many think they need a gun for personal protection?
They are afraid. The Republican fear mongering of "replacement" and "CRT" is amplified by the NRA and the gun culture. It's racist and the purpose is to sell guns to people who otherwise wouldn't want them, and certainly don't need them.
"They don't send their best people. They're rapists..."
Yes, behaviors need to change. The first one is stop voting for Republicans. And let's not mince words about "moderate" Republicans like Mitt Romney who is the biggest recipient of contributions from the NRA, 13 million. Also, while reviewing a list of candidates who got donations from the NRA I found token amounts ($3 to Cory Booker?) were accepted by Democrats. These should be returned immediately.
Lucky for our lungs that there was no amendment in the Constitution giving Americans the right to smoke.
So many gun nuts honestly believe they are stockpiling weapons in order to defeat a tyrant, to be ready to defeat China's invading army. They believe owning guns is their civil right. Doubtful their attitudes could be changed in 50 years.
A lot of schoolkids will be massacred in America in 50 years, waiting for attitudes to change. Any young family that can escape the US and emigrate to Europe or Australia should do so now.
America is not going to enact universal health care or control guns; go to a civilized country if you possibly can do so.
I bought a gun after there was a string of three home invasions in a neighborhood near mine. I am currently 75 years old and have physical problems that would make it unlikely for me to succeed in physical combat against a much younger criminal.
I look with extreme prejudice on any proposal that would compromise my ability to defend myself and my family. I am not alone in this. 40% of American households currently own guns.
“When seconds count, the police are minutes away.”
And that’s the ones that haven’t been defunded or demoralized by the current political climate. Portland, for instance, has a huge shortage of police officers because so many have retired to get out from under the anti-police attitudes that are prevalent here. The local 911 system has ever-increasing response times due to bureaucratic incompetence.
The Democrats who run this area seem to have two goals: weaken the ability to control crime, and weaken the ability of citizens to defend themselves from the crime they have enabled. That’s not a winning political look, not even in a deep blue area like this.
This is the political death spiral that happened in New York City in the early 1990s, leading to the election of tough anti-crime mayor Rudy Giuliani. Even deep blue areas of the city had had enough of out of control crime by then.
Let's change attitudes? How about if we change liberals' attitudes towards abortions (or baby killing, to be exact). MORE THAN 800,000 babies are killed annually in America due to abortions. 800,000!! Think about it! More than 200 late-term abortions are performed in Oregon annually. That means they are killing 200 fetuses annually in Oregon that are more than 5 months along. That's pretty gruesome. CONVERSELY, less than 8,000 children are shot by guns annually in America (and that includes suicides). So, One Hundred Times more children are killed by abortions than shot by guns. I'm not trying to discount gun shootings, but compared to abortions, they are minimal in a population of 330 million people.
Liberals really don't care about crime. Liberals are into power and control, and they don't want people to own guns, because guns provide freedom from tyrants. Liberals are soft on crime, they want to de-fund the police, and they don't want schools protected by guards. I really can't take a liberal seriously since they are hypocrites, and mentally ill.
Perhaps liberals need to focus more on the breakdown of the family unit, homes without fathers, and on mental illness instead. That's who is causing all the crimes, not law-abiding gun owners.
Curt Ankerberg
Medford, OR
It’s doubtful that the assault weapons ban was a factor in any reduction of mass shootings. During the 10 years of the ban, pre-ban high-capacity magazines were easily available, and gun manufacturers continued to produce functionally equivalent semi-automatic rifles with cosmetic features altered enough to be legal under the ban.
There were other things going on in that time period. It was a time of unprecedented prosperity thanks to the peace dividend from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Internet.
“A and B happened at the same time” does not prove that A caused B.
The effectiveness of the assault weapon ban is supported by data, as reported in a study by New York University's Schook of Medicine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30188421/)
and by PolitiFact: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/25/joe-biden/joe-biden-said-mass-shootings-tripled-when-assault/
As I said earlier,tThe only things opponents of gun control have to refute these facts are doubts, guesses and outright lies.
As a night patrolman in North Portland I carried a sidearm. To and from work, the revolver was in a briefcase locked in the trunk, unloaded. At work I inspected the revolver and loaded it, then did my rounds. The thought of shooting someone was disturbing to me. Working in a high crime area, the likelihood I would be required to draw my weapon and shoot someone was troubling. I quit, surrendered my carry permit and later sold the revolver to a gun collector. I saw no reason to be an armed, concealed carry individual.
The fact that anyone you meet on the street could be a licensed conceal-carry permitted armed citizen is one of the main reasons why police go for their sidearm quickly because they know the chances are likely a gun may be on the suspect they stop.
As with smoking, gun violence is a public health matter. Death by firearm is one of the leading causes of youthful death and older men's suicide. Clear as day and dark as night, pulling the trigger on a gun pointed at a person changes instantly and, forever in many cases, a person's life and ending another. Little is written about the after action mental trauma of the shooter or the family of the wounded or dead, or the officer's own mental anguish. It's nothing like what is portrayed in the movies. Like the photo of the smoker's lung, as painful as it is to see, the nation must look at the horror and grotesque corpses of these 19 student and two teachers shot to death with a rifle firing extremely high velocity ammunition designed for the military and the battlefield. Enough already!
The effectiveness of the assault weapon ban is supported by data, as reported in a study by New York University's Schook of Medicine (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30188421/)
and by PolitiFact: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/may/25/joe-biden/joe-biden-said-mass-shootings-tripled-when-assault/
From the NIH research article:
Conclusion: Mass-shooting related homicides in the United States were reduced during the years of the federal assault weapons ban of 1994 to 2004.
This research does not establish causation. They include no evidence that the assault weapons ban caused the reduction in shootings. All they have established is that the ban and the reduction happened during the same time period.
Old joke:
A guy is out in the middle of the night, snapping his fingers.
Cop: “What are you doing out here?”
Guy: “Keeping wild elephants away by snapping my fingers.”
Cop: “There are no wild elephants within thousands of miles of here.”
Guy: “See how well it works?”
—————————
Association does not prove causation.
For anyone who has trouble connecting the dots between the assault weapon ban and the concomitant reduction in mass shooting deaths, here's a helpful clue: in the decade after the ban ended, massing shooting deaths more than tripled.
Here's another helpful clue, pretty much EVERY mass shooter's weapon of choice has been an AR-15, aka an "assault weapon." The reason for this is obvious: because that gun in particular and assault weapons in general are very good at shooting large numbers of people in short amounts of time. Hence the term "assault weapon."
As opposed go weapons that could reasonably be thought to be for self defense. I too have a gun in my home, a Mossberg 512 shotgun that holds 5 rounds. Which should be more than enough for any self defense situation I'd ever need it for.
I've shot AR-15's before, and from first hand experience I can tell you they are fun to shoot. There's something very exhilarating about holding something in your hands with that much power, in a certain way it elevates you to feeling somewhat demi-God like. Which is exactly why no average citizen should be allowed to buy an AR or anything like it. I'm not allowed to buy a missile launcher or a tank because those weapons are too destructive to be in the hands of just anyone. Exact same thing for AR's and assault weapons. As proven by the fact that we are the ONLY "developed" country where mass shootings like this are routine. It's time to end this madness.
All you have to do is convince enough people in this country so that a constitutional amendment can be passed. It’s been done before, almost 30 times.
I bought a gun to commit suicide when the time arises. Go up a logging road, leave out the shock to the neighbors and tell your kids what you intend to do, no surprises. Selfish? Cowardly? I am a coward. I probably will let someone wipe my butt and clean the drool
And food splatters from my face. The stroke will probably prevent me from pulling the trigger in a timely manner or I will fire the gun and the bullet will travel through the open window and cause unforeseen damage to someone else. So lie like a vegetable in your bed until you gasp your last breath with several bags of something injected into your arm. There are many ways to commit suicide but maybe a bullet through the brain might be the best most sure method. You see, guns can be useful.
Ralph,
I totally agree. Make sure there’s something solid on the other side of your head to stop the bullet.
I’m not going to end up a vegetable, if I can help it.
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