Lets talk guns.

[Aloha_Shooter]

There were only 2 statistics mentioned and no facts that I could see. What exactly did you find interesting and how did you find them "middle of the road" (unless you meant they were squishy and lacking in structural support like most roadkill)? Out of the 30 people he claims die because someone decided to point a gun in their direction, how many were criminals, engaged in criminal activity, or victims of criminal activity who might have lived if they'd had their own gun? Is he claiming the suicides wouldn't have suicided without a gun? People still jump in front of trains, jump off bridges/tall buildings, OD, and take other even less pleasant ways to commit suicide.

What exactly is fascinating about more factless propaganda from the anti-gunners? Read some Harry Potter or Tolkien instead -- it'll be more enjoyable and better grounded in reality.

[Justin]

I am still trying to figure out how my acquisition, ownership and use of firearms is anyway relevant to suicide rates, thugs killing each other in a random city, or some loser shooting-up the local mall.

Because the opposition is, quite literally, utterly incapable of telling the difference between you, and those you listed.

To them, the only difference between you and someone who is suicidal/gang member/mass shooter is that you haven't done those things...yet.

[DavieD55]

The opposition does not care about right or wrong. Their real goal is to dominate, dictate, and control every aspect of life and everything else. The uninformed public thinks they are just stupid idiot liberals.

The uninformed do not understand the bigger picture of what the left and even some on the right are doing to this country. Some may disagree and that is ok, but the left is overthrowing the Constitution, this country, the states, and local wherever they hold a majority like NY and CA.

The bottom line is that it isn't about safety or keeping guns away from truly demented/bad people, the agenda is to control and dominate everyone.

For decades there has been gun control law after gun control law passed combined with unconstitutional regulations imposed on Americans and they are not going to stop until everyone is completely disarmed or is legislated into being a criminal or a mental case.

The fact of the matter is that we live in a corrupt and violent world and it has been that way since the beginning of time and it will be that way forever.

Gun control is control and nothing else.

[Sawin]

Gun Control = Ultimate Control...

Free people can never be under "ultimate control", or they're not truly free. The balance again comes down between liberty and safety...

[Buff]

There were only 2 statistics mentioned and no facts that I could see. What exactly did you find interesting and how did you find them "middle of the road" (unless you meant they were squishy and lacking in structural support like most roadkill)? Out of the 30 people he claims die because someone decided to point a gun in their direction, how many were criminals, engaged in criminal activity, or victims of criminal activity who might have lived if they'd had their own gun? Is he claiming the suicides wouldn't have suicided without a gun? People still jump in front of trains, jump off bridges/tall buildings, OD, and take other even less pleasant ways to commit suicide.

What exactly is fascinating about more factless propaganda from the anti-gunners? Read some Harry Potter or Tolkien instead -- it'll be more enjoyable and better grounded in reality.

Middle of the road comment was it wasn't pro or anti leaving the viewer to choose. The interesting thing was assault style weapons accounted for 3-4% of the shootings.

I have no idea what your reference to Harry Potter or Tolkien is nor do I care.....

Everyone has an opinion and a comment to go along with them.
Thx for sharing that's the beauty of forums.

[Kraven251]

It was far from the perfect piece, but it did in fact not just jump on the guns bad rhetoric. They humanized it reporting the lives lost, which is true and unfortunate. 30 to violence, 60 to suicide...it paints a pretty grim damn picture, especially given that 22 of the suicides per day still continue to represent veterans.

They also dismissed the scary black rifles as anything more dangerous than a baseball bat or a hammer when it comes to homicide stats, which was good. I wish they would have focused down on the social issues of revolving door prisons, recidivism, gangs, and crimes committed by people in the country illegally. These are the numbers that paint the larger picture and the clearer picture of the problem.

It doesn't mean that parolees are evil, or your Guatamalan neighbor is going to shoot you...it does however mean that we have a much larger problem than those "bad ole guns," and the populace at large would rather find Pokemon than pay attention to the shit around them.

[jhood001]

It was far from the perfect piece, but it did in fact not just jump on the guns bad rhetoric. They humanized it reporting the lives lost, which is true and unfortunate. 30 to violence, 60 to suicide...it paints a pretty grim damn picture, especially given that 22 of the suicides per day still continue to represent veterans.

They also dismissed the scary black rifles as anything more dangerous than a baseball bat or a hammer when it comes to homicide stats, which was good. I wish they would have focused down on the social issues of revolving door prisons, recidivism, gangs, and crimes committed by people in the country illegally. These are the numbers that paint the larger picture and the clearer picture of the problem.

It doesn't mean that parolees are evil, or your Guatamalan neighbor is going to shoot you...it does however mean that we have a much larger problem than those "bad ole guns," and the populace at large would rather find Pokemon than pay attention to the shit around them.

The article sucked, but this post was good.

[HoneyBadger]

Middle of the road comment was it wasn't pro or anti leaving the viewer to choose. The interesting thing was assault style weapons accounted for 3-4% of the shootings.

"Assault style weapons"??

First of all, WTF is that? That's not a real thing. However, if you want to pretend like it is, then lets define our terms. If we're talking about AR and AK pattern rifles, the FBI stats show them involved in a very very very small fraction of a percentage of all unlawful shootings. If you want to use California's definitions, then a Glock 19 (and any other pistol or rifle that is designed to accept a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds) is an "assault weapon". The party which defines the terms is the party which controls the debate.


Afterthought:
Wait, are we not excluding lawful shootings?? Well, that's asinine.

[Aloha_Shooter]

I've been ignoring this thread after reading the article. Frankly, the article to me smacked of classic subtle propaganda -- instead of being in your face like Soviet-style agitprop, this latter version tries to influence subtly by appearing to be objective or moderate while changing the language and middle-point of the debate or conversation. Instead of talking immediately about gun control and bans, instead they resort to talking about shootings and conflate the statistics by including suicides and good-shoot type scenarios and criminal-on-criminal shootings in with criminal-on-victim shootings and talking only about the victims as if the numbers applied to all shootings.

The latest tactic appears to be to focus on suicides as if people wouldn't suicide at all if they didn't have access to guns (it also ignores cases like Richard Farnsworth or Brian Keith where the men in question had been suffering for years). It certainly would have been cleaner if they had used a Kevorkian-style machine or fed a hose from the tailpipe of their car into the passenger compartment but the presence of the gun didn't make them commit suicide.

The article Buff linked did this same kind of thing. It only referred to 2 statistics and both of them were conflated and generalized, apparently to make the reader conclude guns are a general danger. That's not moderate or middle-of-the-road, even if they weren't rabidly in-your-face about it. It's the same kind of deceptive propaganda that Obama used when he first became a national figure in 2006 or that Bill Clinton would use in 1992 and 1994.

My reference to Tolkien and Harry Potter was simply that those books are generally recognized as fantasy but more strongly tied to the Real World than this kind of fiction masquerading as a blog or editorial.