Comments on: Do gun control laws control guns?

By: G-Man

G-Man — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:59:53 +0000

RLW whatever are we going to do with the poor boo hoo clueless liberals..I see where Congress cut 2.6million from CDC..2.6huh..that wouldn’t even cover an obama Christmas in Hawaii..get real clueless..I’ve read there are @ least 5 other agencies along with private orgs..wasting time and money on this non-subject..what?..Not enough for you?..Like yips like Warren Buffet who bemoan tax reform..then do everything they can to lower their own taxes,outright evade taxes,and then beyond on all comprehension DON’T PAY BACK TAXES OWED!!..What’s wrong with you RLW?..You liberals slay me..You’ll fight tooth and nail against waterboarding people who are more than willing and able to do you harm..then turn around and advocate the murder of millions of unborn babies..You enable an imperial government to live like Sultans while millions are undernourished in this country…You embarrass yourself and insult my intelligence when you gripe about a 2.6million cut in research while your lovely little pimple of a president invest(aka wastes) billions on green energy…Tell you what cat..you don’t want to write Congress you want to write the White House (I hear they have people who can actually read there)..and tell them..HEY!!How about mothballing Air Force One for a few months..bingo..research money found..now all that’s missing is your integrity.

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:03:20 +0000

G-Man: Well, all right! You can join me then in calling for Congress to lift the firearm research funding ban by repealing the stupid law that gave rise to it.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 08:58:35 +0000

RLW…What can I say?..humans have a propensity for violence..and unstable humans have an unpredictable propensity for violence..weapons used are irrelevant..it could be a gun..it could be a can of gas and a match..or maybe a truck packed full of whatever that goes boom…If research is done by Academia then that research has a liberal taint as most Academia is liberal…I choose not to beat my head against the wall…but I’m OK with you doing it..

By: Can't You See

Can't You See — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 06:51:45 +0000

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 06:37:16 +0000

G-Man: Well, I was about ready to apologize, but as I read on, it sure sounds like you don’t want to study anything! And your idea of what research is might be the problem. Researchers are people much like you or me, with curiosity about the way things are, or aren’t, and some skills in collecting and analyzing data. What the government does is ask the questions. But if we don’t pay for the research, we don’t get any answers. And the NRA makes it worse by making it painfully obvious that they are willing to be the enforcer of the funding ban. If any researcher gets close to looking at guns, their grant might be yanked. So they stay far, far away from firearm research. Obama has issued executive orders that provide a safe harbor for researchers within the law. It lessens the intimidation by the NRA, but it doesn’t solve the overall problem of the funding ban.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:45:26 +0000

G-Man doesn’t want to study anything?..He has all the answers he wants already?..That’s not fair..ALl I’m saying is enforce the laws we have…as for research into gun violence…once again cause you’re thick as a brick…Academia sitting in a classroom pontificating on this theory or that..won’t stop the odd nut case that just snaps…live with it our species is just violent..the only one that I can think of that kills for pleasure or for reasons other than food or survival.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:38:51 +0000

G-Man dioesn’

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:32:19 +0000

Well said, Vallejoan. But guys like G-Man don’t want to study anything; they have all the answers they want already, and they don’t seem to be interesting in persuasion. I would say my priority is the deranged person type of violence, and Sandy Hook doesn’t justify any other reaction. Stopping (sane) criminal violence is also important, but not my present focus. I think most people are willing to assume the risk of crime, but not that they might be gunned down at random by a nut on the street with a very efficient weapon.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:56:00 +0000

Adolph Hitler when asked isn’t he afraid to always be standing up in an open car..replied..”Nothing can save a man from another man who’s willing to sacrifice his life to take yours”…Armed guards,metal detectors,armed teachers etc are all valid..but WAIT..here comes that bomb thru the window…We MUST pass the Brady Bunch Bill…NOW!!!..

By: Vallejoan

Vallejoan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:02:26 +0000

While it’s the horrible stories of mass murders that make the headlines, most gun violence isn’t committed by crazy people but by criminals. Clearly it would take very different strategies to combat the two different types of violence, so perhaps we should start by clarifying and prioritizing our goals. Do we want to focus on preventing the majority of gun violence? That would be the criminal uses. Or do we want to focus on the mass killings that take fewer lives overall but involve more innocent people than do the criminal incidents? We don’t need more knee-jerk reactions that produce ineffective laws, we need real analysis and we need to make careful decisions about how to use our scarce resources. Since CA has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, it would be useful to really study which of those laws are producing results and which are not. Take the ineffective laws off the books instead of wasting the resources of law enforcement and the courts to enforce useless laws.

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:33:41 +0000

Vallejoan: Sorry about that. But I think it important that we stop talking about gun control when that is not our real interest. We should especially stop talking about gun control in the abstract that no one in authority is proposing. That scatters people away from a serious conversation. Our real interest is what I said and with which you agree. That’s what we shoud be talking about, not gun control. So here it is again; say it again and again and see if the scattered folks will come back to the campfire to talk: “The objective is to do something reasonable and practical that will reduce gun violence, especially the mass killings of innocents by a deranged person.” The NRA has suggested having armed guards at schools. That’s a fair response to meeting the objective. In evaluating it, we have to ask: Is it reasonable? Is it practical? (For example, how do we pay for it?) Will it work to meet the objective? We can do the same analysis for regulating magazine capacity, banning military-style semi-automtice weapons, requiring more screeing of gun sales, etc., etc. We need to reserve judgment until all the ideas are in, then evaluate and act. I would like to see some pro-gun states take the initiative to try out some of the the pro-gun solutions. That’s one of the beauties of our federal system–states can act as laboratories.

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:33:13 +0000

By: Vallejoan

Vallejoan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:49:45 +0000

rlw, I was using the extreme example to make a point. I never said anyone had proposed it. “The objective is to do something reasonable and practical that will reduce gun violence, especially the mass killings of innocents by a deranged person.” Agreed – but in practice the focus is almost solely on “gun control,” never on “people control,” or “mental health control.” I don’t have the answers, but experience has shown that gun control can do only so much. We need to find other approaches.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:01:14 +0000

Exactly..so since I presume you and certainly not I are mind readers..we can only go by what we’ve experienced in the past..the little man is a politician on steroids..and as such has told half truths,and outright lies all his political life…

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:15:31 +0000

Not what he thinks, just what he’s proposed.

By: 4 some reason....a haiku

4 some reason....a haiku — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:02:51 +0000

Good Gracious Gary….Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts…And me I’m a Loon…Good night

By: G-Man

G-Man — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:45:50 +0000

Good night,Gary

By: Cheap mixers

Cheap mixers — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:36:28 +0000

U know what…frozen lemonaid (reconstituted)and cheap Sherry is a nice pick me up. Say Good Night Gary.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:25:33 +0000

Nice to see you’re so tuned in as to how obama thinks…Next time you talk ask him if his Portuguese Water Spaniel,”BO” (He even names the freaking dog after himself) is a grooming headache.

By: Monty Python Argument Clinic

Monty Python Argument Clinic — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 05:05:37 +0000

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:57:46 +0000

Straw man argument. No one in authority, least of all the president, is proposing anything close to “all privately owned firearms outlawed, all firearms confiscated and destroyed, and all gun shops shut down,” and the objective is not to “stop all gun violence.” The objective is to do something reasonable and practical that will reduce gun violence, especially the mass killings of innocents by a deranged person.

By: rlw895

rlw895 — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:49:24 +0000

One thing of which we can be sure is the “factual studies” weren’t funded by the federal government, because the NRA has succeeded in having such funding banned. See dailyrepublic.com/usworld/will-obamas-order-lead-to-surge-in-gun-research/. Draw your own conclusions, but I suspect the factual studies Sowell cites are funded by pro-gun groups. They don’t have to worry about any competing views funded by the pesky federal government. We will never come together on this issue when we don’t have facts we can all trust. But that serves the NRA fine; as soon as we come together, it is out of business, except to go back to low-profit activities like recreational shooting and gun safety classes.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:54:28 +0000

The latter most certainly…

By: G-Man

G-Man — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:48:23 +0000

Maybe you can help Dr. Sowell out..and do some digging of your own..you may find that of the top 10 ways humans do harm to each other..illegal and legal guns rank 9th and 10th…Perhaps look@ crime statistics in the UK,and our cities like Chicago, and Washington DC..If you’re willing to abrogate your own safety to outside sources,police etc then you’ll be a useful tool for the Gun Control Goons.

By: Vallejoan

Vallejoan — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:27:56 +0000

This is the part that so many well-meaning gun control advocates miss: “But nothing is easier than to disarm peaceful, law-abiding people. And nothing is harder than to disarm people who are neither”

If all privately owned firearms were outlawed in the US tomorrow, all firearms confiscated and destroyed, and all gun shops shut down, do you really think that gun violence would stop? What about all the guns already owned by criminals that they hid during the firearms roundup?

Such a ban would create a massive black market for firearms. Not just imported firearms, either, but privately manufactured ones. It’s really not that difficult to build a gun if you’re not too picky about having safety locks, changeable magazines, and all the other perks of modern weapons.

So the important question to ask at each step of the way is, what will this proposed new law really accomplish in the real world? Will it reduce the number of weapons in the hands of criminals, or reduce them only for peaceful, law abiding citizens?

By: Vincent Pitzulo

Vincent Pitzulo — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:13:15 +0000

…..and the factual studies are? Dr. Sowell fails to cite a single source, but why should this article be any different.

By: G-Man

G-Man — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 05:59:49 +0000

I can’t think of a word that Sowell wrote that doesn’t ring true..Is this the dog poked w/ a stick that Kirchubel wrote about..Doesn’t seem so..Sowell’s piece is the dialog some of you have been asking for..