Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge A run on guns

I saw a news item this morning reporting that, due to a fear of gun-control legislation, there has been a run on gun stores with guns and ammo crossing the counter about as quickly as it could be placed there. In the piece I watched one person had an armload of ammunition.

I wondered, even if a person believes they need an automatic or rapid-fire weapon to protect themselves from a home invader (I don't), how many times do they think they're going to be invaded and how many invaders are they expecting?

It seems some think it's going to be a horde a week.

At this point whatever might happen re gun-control legislation after Newtown is a guess. Personally I suspect there might be (talk about) some sort of assault rifle restriction at the Federal level. No idea what's being contemplated at State levels. But regardless of what's going on, I'm not optimistic about common sense prevailing.

I'm not optimistic either, but Senator Manchin, Defender of Gun Rights, Shifts His View. BTW, "common sense" is an oxymoron.

I understand, and I believe that's part of the problem.

Just jumping back into the fray for the nonce ... and then I'll disappear again. I figured this subject would pop up.

"Assault rifle" means one thing and one thing only: a weapon that can be fired in full automatic mode. (And this time round The New York Times and The Globe and Mail got it right in their reportage.)
Examples from the war field are the AK-47 (safe / semiautomatic / full automatic) and from NATO (including USA and Canada) M16 and currently M4, which have selective fire (semiauto / 3-shot burst / full auto).

The .223 Bushmaster M4 "knock-off" is available to civilians in semiautomatic; the military and police can acquire it with semiauto + full auto.

More pertinently, assault rifles and true machine guns (eg, tommy guns from way back when) have always been restricted in the USA, although it is possible to acquire such if one goes through the Dept of the Treasury and files considerable paperwork plus fees for so doing. The same holds true for sound suppressors ("silencers"). In all cases, Big Brother knows who and where you are. The obvious exceptions to the rule are smuggled and otherwise illegal weapons ... which obviously are not covered by law.

In no mass shootings in recent history has the legality of the weapons involved been challenged. All were legal and legally obtained.

Corrective measures can only deal with the (potential) perpetrator and not the instrument.

True enough....as was the case last Friday. However, the question is: "Why would anyone think they "need" such weapons or so many of them?"


After the 1996 shooting rampage in which 35 people died, Australia almost immediately implemented gun control legislation that included a ban on pump-action and automatic weapons. They also tightened up other gun ownership legislation.

In the following decade their firearm homicide rate dropped by 59% and the firearm suicide went down by 65%.

That's a fallacy (not to use stronger terms) that the gun lobby would like everyone to believe. The issue is furthermore not weather a particular gun qualifies as 'assault' rifle or not, but weather even the semi-automatic version of such guns should be freely available (apart from the fact that they often can be converted fairly easily to fully automatic). The same question can be asked of things like special ammo types and large capacity clips (e.g., > 10 rounds), particularly because their people-killing effect has long since left the realm of possibility-only.

Obviously, there's also more than enough to fix in the sorry state of psychiatric care in the US and the access to it, but there's absolutely no reason why both contributing factors shouldn't be addressed at the same time, let alone to exempt one of them.

And since enough time will surely be wasted discussing the relative merits of these issues for several more massacres to occur, I'd like to suggest using some of that time to consider erecting a National monument for the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims of the 2nd Amendment, whether they would have been for or against its current liberal interpretation.

But that's just my opinion...

I see the NRA is now on record as suggesting that armed guards should be posted in every school. That's one thought.......

However, perhaps the flip side would be a better idea.......that is, post a teacher in every gun shop to teach alternative values.

The NRA's suggestion of posting an armed police officer in every school in the country is a bit peculiar. Doesn't the NRA say that we need to have unrestricted access to guns in order to avoid...err, a police state?

I know, maybe we should put police in every school to shoot bad guys, and armed teachers in every school to shoot the police and prevent a police state!

Armed teachers, that's downright brilliant! I can see it already: a 120 lbs teacher trying to control her hormonal, impulsive and possibly even angry students, most of whom outweigh her and can easily take her gun from her for all kinds of fun and games. Who could possibly be against that?

Does the NRA remember what happened at Columbine? There were two armed police officers on the scene and they were unable to do anything to prevent the slaughter except fire some bullets in the general direction of the killers (and the school for that matter).

As far as armed teachers goes, very responsible police officers have said that if they go into a school with armed teachers, they are as likely to shoot the teacher as they are the assassin because they would have no way to tell the difference.

Potentially the most dangerous thing used in the Columbine shootings were common propane gas cylinders available at any hardware, drug, or grocery store. Had those been used as the shooters intended they had the potential to kill a lot more people than the guns did. Providing tolerable security for schools, or any public facility, presents no easy or simple answers.

I remain confused…

The same teachers that just few weeks ago were too inept to determine and control their participation in a union, are now being encouraged to carry guns in to the classroom.

How reassuring it is that they have, in but a few weeks, become wise and competent.

I dunno... The last three posts have given credibility to a thought that I'd be willing to bet tacit posted totally tongue-in-cheekedly.

No..that's not the intended meaning of my post. I would not encourage guns anywhere in a school in anyone's hands - guards, teachers, or otherwise.

I should have replaced "That's one thought......" with a tongue-in-cheek icon. Sorry for the confusion.

The confusion is in that your thought was placing a teacher in every gun shop, whereas it was tacit who suggested arming the teachers...tongue-in-cheek, too, I assume.

I believe there were armed guards at Virginia Tech too, and they didn't reduce the slaughter there either.

Yes....just a jest.

The CT police have said that the guy was so heavily armed they couldn't have taken him out with standard issue equipment even had they been present.

And bottom line for me is that children shouldn't have to grow up feeling that they need armed guards in their schools to protect them from NRA spawned psychos!

I agree fully. It seems to me that, if children are educated while surrounded by armament, they will simply be "learning" some wrong concepts in addition to their classroom studies.

And even more peculiar when you think that applying their logic to scenes like this will mean that armed guards should accompany firefighters going about their work.

I'm sure you're right about tacit's intention, given the fact that so many others quite seriously proposed it in recent days (which probably contributed to his decision to post it in the first place). The thing is that this notion, like so many others that haven't been properly thought through, squarely ran into the law of unintended consequences with a force that prompted me to spell out one of those consequences.

It turns out that picking the proper græmlin(s) to unequivocally convey 'ridiculous seriousness' or 'serious ridiculousness' isn't all that easy, if at all possible. [Note to self: try harder.]

Not unexpectedly the NRA thinks everything should be examined except gun regulations. That blinkered and partisan attitude seems well-described by a few words from a Molly Ivins essay written in 1995: "Getting Control of the Frontier"'.

“It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks. OK?"

Armed guards will keep us safe; much as the hundreds of [heavily] armed (and well-trained) personnel precluded the carnage at Ft. Hood…

In an amazing demonstration of the notion that there is no idea that is so bad Arizona won't try it, the state attorney general is calling for arming the principal of each public school.

We've tried the armed guards idea; Columbine had armed guards. It didn't work then. I wonder why these folks think it will work now?

Because sometimes stupidity is invincible.