The National Rifle Association insists that unmitigated stupidity and unchecked use of deadly weapons shall not be infringed. They call it the Second Amendment, I call it an assault on the American People. Perhaps when Jahmesha McMillan and Treka MacMillan recover from their wounds, they can join in that discussio . Jasmine Thar, though, is dead and won’t be able to. And her only crime was standing in her driveway with her family, about to leave on a trip to the nearby beach.
That’s when James Blackwell, gun nut, was cleaning his high powered rifle, or so he says, across the street, and accidentally discharged, or so it is assumed, a single round which passed through the bodies of all three aforementioned victims.
But really, this was not an accident. It is not an accident that people unable to safely clean a gun own very dangerous weapons and are allowed to play with them in populated areas. That is quite intentional. The NRA has taken down another American Citizen.
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What kinna fool “cleans” a gun without checking to make sure its empty first? Does sound suspicious. Not that I’m anti-gun, but I do think there should be limits and maybe an IQ test to gun ownership.
Seriously… You cannot restrict the freedoms and liberties of responsible people because idiots do stupid things… That’s like punishing your daughter because your son breaks something… It’s like the biblical fable of Noah, blaming his grandson for his son seeing him naked after he, himself god piss-drunk and passed out that way…
There will always be stupid people who do stupid things… Gun restriction won’t change that…
That Amish girl that was killed recently also died because of an alleged “accident” involving an inbred halfwit cleaning a loaded gun.
Are you seriously suggesting that innocent lives are more important than the ability of insecure idiots to use deadly weapons as prosthetic penis extensions?
There are all manner of restrictions on free speech and on exercise of religion. If you yell “fire” in a crowded theater and this causes the death of people in the theater, you can be prosecuted and go to jail. If you kill someone because God told you to do so, you can be prosecuted and go to jail.
If you discharge a firearm because of negligent behavior and a bystander dies, you should be prosecuted and go to jail. This doesn’t seem hard to me.
Azkyroth, want to explain how my comment ‘suggests’ “innocent lives are more important than the ability of insecure idiots to use deadly weapons”? You’re reading a lot that isn’t there. I’ll have to echo John Moeller above, this guy did something stupid and is making excuses.
Want to explain how you concluded my comment was addressed to you rather than to the OP?
Azkyroth, mea culpa. Seems there’s been some renumbering since I commented. comments now numbered 2 & 3 were not there when I posted what is now #6, don’t know which end the faults on there. Clearly you were responding to wss_75.
Registration of every gun does not infringe on the right to own a gun. It just makes them traceable so the owners can be held responsible for murder.
I would go further and if a gun is stolen and used to commit a crime, and if the owner did not show due diligence in the prevention of the theft, the owner can be charged as an accessory to the crime. Even if the theft is reported.
Mandatory minimum sentence 5 years, no parole.
Of course in this case there are at least three crimes two grave injuries and one involuntary manslaughter.
If he is not charged, then the Chadbourne law enforcers are a criminal institution and have aided and abetted the killing after the fact.
If he had lost control of his car and run over these three neighbors, killing one, would he have been released without charges the next day? No. He would have been charged with wanton endangerment, reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter and would have had to post bail to be released. Chances are, nothing will happen to him in a criminal court, but he will have to face civil charges.
Gun accidents are a special class of accident thanks to the NRA, a group that does not represent gun owners (like myself, a target shooter, occasional hunter and primitive firearms hobbyist), and instead represent gun manufacturers and the far right of the GOP. (they used to represent scared white people, afraid that blacks would get guns and start a race war, how the times change) The NRA leadership believes that President Obama has proven that he will confiscate all guns in the US during his second term by not pursuing any meaningful regulation during his first term. They say that we don’t need new gun regulations, but simply need to enforce the ones on the books, and then ensure that those laws can’t be enforced, either by red tape or by cutting funding for the agencies that are asked to enforce existing law.
Welcome to the NRA’s United States.
But it can change the number of people who do stupid things WITH FIREARMS.
Err, no. It was a sarcastic response to Greg Laden’s original post.
This always happens to Greg on gun control. He gets paranoid and uses weasel words like “allegedly” and “so he says”. I also raise an eyebrow at this “high powered” rifle business. It seems to suggest a superfluously powered gun, when there is no such thing as a “low powered” rifle.
I remember once Greg accused a man of outright cruel murder (or something damn close) when the guy fired a single .22 caliber bullet into the chest of an intruder in the middle of the night.
I myself have a 9mm automatic pistol. It is not a “penis extender”. I do not flash it. It is not what makes me tough. I enjoy target shooting and I’ll admit having it near me at night makes me feel safe.
To be fair, I will say that anyone cleaning a gun and not checking the breech as the FIRST step is a raging moron. It takes less than 3 seconds to check any gun for a bullet in the chamber.
Down here in Oz we have pretty strict gun laws. Very few people own guns.
We also have very few gunshot injuries and deaths — at least we do outside of duck season.
It’s probably just a coincidence.
Oh, right.
Yeah, he could just as easily have been cleaning a box of rat poison, or a rope, or a kitchen knife, and killed someone standing across the street with it. Guns TOTALLY have NOTHING to do with it.
The NRA has extensive and comprehensive programs teaching gun safety.
Someone unintentionally discharges a gun and people die.
Therefore the NRA is obviously responsible and all guns should be strictly controlled
I wonder if there is a Logical Fallacy here.
I also wonder if my post removed like one I put up yesterday.
There are lots of Canadians who own guns, even handguns (which are *very* strictly regulated) and ‘long guns’ (whose regulation is being loosened, inadvisedly, because of ideological and not scientific reasons). And we have very few shooting deaths, and *very* few ‘accidents’ of the type mentioned in the OP. And almost all of the gun crime here is committed by stolen guns which were improperly secured at someone’s home, or smuggled guns from the US. In the former case, if the lawful owner is found, they are held to account for not following the law in storing their firearms.
Having a gun close to hand at night makes you feel safe, John? What happens when someone who’s not an intruder walks into your bedroom while you’re asleep and startles you awake? Is it close enough to hand to shoot them without thinking? If not, then *how* could it make you feel safe against a professional thief who could break into your home intentionally and murder you while you sleep? Or do you simply never have friends over, aren’t in any kind of relationship, and never want to have children…just to feel ‘safe’? Because that’s what keeping a loaded gun within arm’s reach while you sleep should cost you, John. At a minimum. The fact that it doesn’t kind of proves the OP’s point.
Keeping loaded guns in the house is a recipe for disaster, not protection. Either they let you (or your children, or your friends) kill themselves or others accidentally, or they make people overconfident in *real* life-or-death situations, and make you think you have a chance of defending yourself instead of letting you flee, which is by far the most effective defense against violent crime.
@John-
After reading the original news article (http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2011/12/23/1146019?sac=Local) I fail to see how Greg is somehow misrepresenting the facts of the incident.
Try again, dumbass.
“The NRA fights tooth and nail against any efforts to use the power of law to either reduce gun ownership in general or to restrict gun ownership to responsible individuals.
A person handling a firearm negligently kills someone.
….”
Come on, you can do this…
John: I myself have a 9mm automatic pistol. It is not a “penis extender”.
John, I’ve never called a gun a penis extender.
It is, though.
It takes less than 3 seconds to check any gun for a bullet in the chamber.
Do you think this guy did not know he was supposed to do that?
Paul Hunter: The NRA has extensive and comprehensive programs teaching gun safety.
Someone unintentionally discharges a gun and people die.
The minimal training required to own a gun of most types in most states is not extensive anywhere, as far as I know. I know that wasn’t your point, but I thought this would be a good point to mention it.
I also wonder if my post removed like one I put up yesterday.
I’ve not removed any post of your as far as I know. I’ll check the spam bin to see if it ended up there by accident somehow.
“To be fair, I will say that anyone cleaning a gun and not checking the breech as the FIRST step is a raging moron. It takes less than 3 seconds to check any gun for a bullet in the chamber.”
I fully agree!
______________________________________
Over several weeks there have been many posts, in Free Thought Blogs, about unconstitutional religious displays and abundant support for everyone attempting to stop the displays.
We find religious arguments filled with faulty logic and frequently outright lies. Very often disagreement is said to be unpatriotic and an indication of stupidity. We’re appalled at the vitriol we receive when we express concerns.
We attempt to point out the true history behind their claims and use logic to refute the claims. We explain that our Constitution quarantines certain rights and it is our duty to resist all attempts to reduce or even eliminate those rights.
We forget that facts and law don’t mean much to “True Believers”,
I have to observe that unfortunately the second amendment and gun control set up the same style of arguments that we see in discussion about religion or lack of it.
_________________________________________________________
We need to support all the Constitution, now just the parts we agree with.
Paul, so you are saying that The Constitution is right, even when it is wrong, and that it is somehow illogical to disagree with it?
Had the 2nd amendment been used responsibly, I’d be all for it, but it has not. Lobbyists and special interests groups that don’t even represent anything important … they are merely representing, for the most part, boys with their toys … have taken over that part of the constitution and hijacked our political system.
Make no mistake. I am calling not for getting rid of guns, but for getting rid of the Second Amendment and the letting the guns and the gun owners stand on their own, gaining the respect of the rest of society, being forced to make the same kinds of arguments we all have to make for the things we feel are important, and keeping a a-Constitutional but still basic right to own guns alive. Or, not, if the gun owners chose to continue to act as a group in this irrepsonsible manner.
I am calling for the abrogationof the 2nd amendment which turns out to be a tool of a repressive classist government. You are telling me that I can’t do that because people need to have their tiny little hand guns and shotguns and stuff to throw off they yoke of tyranny.
Do you see why you are so deeply, fundamentally in error? They own you, Paul.
Why? Why do we need to support something we don’t agree with? More to the point, why do we need to support an interpretation that we don’t agree with.
I would say that we don’t need to support what we don’t agree with, we need to work to change it.
I like guns. I have a 30/30 hunting rifle and a 12 gauge shotgun which I use for killing deer and ducks respectively.
I also live in the absolute middle of nowhere, handle my guns (except when I first bought them and drove them home) in the absolute middle of nowhere and hunt, in the absolute middle of nowhere.
That being said, I agree with the premise of this post. There are some weapons which are far too dangerous for private individuals to own, especially in heavily populated areas. Plus, there is no practical reason or benefit to owning them. There is no legitimate reason to want a high powered rifle, or a fully automatic weapon, or armor piercing bullets.
The only thing those guns are good for, is killing people. If you shoot a deer with something like that, you’re not going to get much edible meat out of it. If you shoot a duck with it, all that will be left is a puff of feathers.
They’re not even good at killing people in to only reasonable situation to kill someone, self-defense. When it’s dark, and you’re scared and startled and half asleep, you’re probably going to fire that turbo-high-powered rifle into one of the walls of your house, rather than into the intruder. The best gun for home defense is the a shotgun, because at the close ranges you’d face, it’s just about impossible to miss, plus if you do somehow miss, the pellets are a lot less likely to keep going and injure someone else.
I think undue respect is given to the constitution. When it was written, the best rifle in the world was inaccurate, muzzle loaded and expensive. A bullet was a little metal ball that you had to pack down the barrel of your gun along with black powder with a ramrod. Reloading to fire again was something that could take minutes.
Now, I could go out with about a week’s worth of pay and get something that can empty dozens of rounds a second with good accuracy. I can buy rounds which are hollow or explode, and with another full clip, I can reload in seconds. There is no comparison in power level. Times change, the constitution should too.
We need the power to ban some firearms from the general public, just for public safety reasons.
Including the 3/5 clause?
I don’t know a whole lot about gun surveys and the numbers and things of that nature… the brady campaign just seems overly wimpy, and the NRA are even more paranoid than the brady guys… but i like my rifles. i like my handgun. I don’t have a superdeeduper magical ubercannon that fires .50 cal incendiaries. however, i do shoot a .243 pump action rifle, a .22 lever action, a .357 magnum, and a glock copy. I plan to own an M1 garand rifle. The trick to controlling firearms is not to lock them all up and hope nobody ever figures out how knives work, and neither is it letting anyone cart around an NTW 20 antimaterial rifle. it’s teaching people that a gun is always loaded, even when you know it isn’t, that “safety” doesn’t mean safe, and that you should never, ever point your gun at something that you do not want wiped off the face off the earth.
I use my rifle to get food for my family, saving us massive amounts of money, as well as allowing me to learn new skills (I’m 18, btw). I make each one of my shots perfect, never forcing myself to pull and jump, and have only missed twice. I studied anatomy so i can place my shots well, causing either instant unconsciousness by shock, or immediate death by severing the brain stem or spine. if that isn’t a humane way to go, i don’t know what is. as far as i can tell, i have a good sized penis, judging from what my girlfriends and boyfriends say. I don’t hate the “guvmint”, hell, i’m as liberal as it gets. however, i firmly believe that firearms are tools to be used for protecting the nation when we fail to use words, for guarding ourselves when help is too far away, and for the harvesting of sweet, sweet, sweet venison.
I understand that stories like this can piss you guys off, it gets to me too, believe me. but banning firearms and calling people who use them for legitimate purposes names is… well, it’s pretty unfair, and quite a dick move, i must say. If you’re gonna mock anyone, mock Perry, look at him, he can’t make it any easier than he already is… But people like me, Texans like me, gunowners, hunters, sport shooters, and collectors like me… we are not the problem. we just need to educate people correctly on how to handle firearms. Switzerland has the right idea, mandated training, how many accidents do they have? but banning firearms, now… I just don’t understand that.
To Greg: I’m not sure what to do with the dual statements “I have never called a gun a penis extender” and “It is though”. Ok…now you have. In any event, I was responding to Azkyroth in post #4. Greg, you say gun owners should prove they are responsible. How, objectively, do they do this to your satisfaction? How many dead people ARE allowed? If you are saying one dead person = all guns to the police station, you aren’t really being honest about not wanting to ban all guns.
To Manamoto in post 18: You fail to see how he mis-represents it? Let me give you an example. Manamato has never cheated on his wife…so he says. I’m not saying you cheated on your wife…just implying it like all hell. Greg implied this guy didn’t really accidentally shoot those people, despite not having an ounce of proof. This is some Glenn Beck level weaselyness. “Did the president’s trip to India cost 300 million dollars? Tune in to hear about it!”
To riptide in post 17: I live alone in a one room carriage house. If someone is in here, there is a problem. I have nowhere to run to, no way to escape. I’m not afraid of pro thieves, however. A.) My apartment is a bad place to rob and b.) Pro thieves break in when people are NOT there.
I know I’m not going to be 007 in the middle of the night in a rough situation. I do know, however unlikely it may be, that if some nut wants a crack at me, I have a recourse other than hoping my door holds until the police get here. Sleepy as I may be, I can rack a slide and point at a chest. I also don’t keep the gun within arms reach. I’d have to cross the room and give adrenaline a second to wake me up. Also, I never keep a bullet in the chamber and if I pick the gun up, I take out the mag and clear the breech. No exceptions.
The main reason I have it is, I like guns. I enjoy going to my dad’s farm and shooting junk. I’ve never accidentally shot someone, nor do most of the hundreds of thousands of gun owners.
Why is it that everytime a gun incident is mentioned, someone brings up NRA? Are they not a voluntarily joined ‘enthusiasts club’, blaming them for gun violence is like blaming Honda or Kawasaki for biker gangs. They don’t control who has guns, and I am sure that NRA members hate idiots that misuse guns just as much as other people do.
the argument is that in the long long term, the benefits of an armed populace like being able to resist dictators, foreign invasions, alien invasions and zombies outweigh the disadvantages like these accidental deaths.
is it a valid argument? that i leave to you to decide
Jet (#27): Calling the NRA an “enthusiasts group” is like calling OPEC an “Oil drilling hobbyists club.” The NRA is a tremendously powerful lobby that politicians have courted for years. They have had a great amount of success in defeating or neutering gun legislation, and in ensuring that ownership requirements are limited and (at best) unevenly applied.
I agree with Greg that the USA desperately needs comprehensive reform of the way we deal with firearms, though I’m not sure we agree on the 2nd Amendment. I’m firmly of the opinion that any reasonable interpretation of the document asserts that the right to bear arms is not a universal, individual right, but one related to the existence of a “well regulated militia.” Given that the presumed role of a militia was to protect individual states from federal tyranny, there’s no reason not to believe that the National Guard doesn’t comprise the “militia” of our time.
And even if you don’t buy that logic, it’s my firm belief that our individual right to bear arms should still be “well regulated.” It currently isn’t. My understanding is that some countries (I’ve heard Canada and Switzerland referenced) have relatively high levels of gun ownership, with relatively low levels of gun violence, due to comprehensive regulation and enforcement of laws related to the ownership of those weapons. It’s time for the US to (at the very least) follow that example.
Jet: blaming them for gun violence is like blaming Honda or Kawasaki for biker gangs.
Huh. I had no idea that Honda and Kawasaki had lobbiests in Washington blackmailing members of congress to limit lawas against gang-related activities. Interesting.
They aren’t nearly as powerful as the Harley-Davidson sponsored “Hell’s Angels” lobby.
That’s Mr. Hells Angels for the likes of you.