Good points. I never said we should do nothing. I am simply saying doing something effective will be hard. I think you agree.

Yes – a sane person can go crazy. That is true. That is also why with 400 million weapons already in the public’s hands it will be hard to stop gun violence.

Of course good guys with guns could accidently kill people – whether from poor training or vehicle backfires.

I would rather live in a country were everybody was armed and the bad guy was killed by well trained citizens before they could kill more than one person (or better yet before they could get a shot off) and a certain number of people were killed or wounded by accident, than a country were everybody is disarmed and the bad guys kill more people than those killed by accident in the first scenario. My first scenario is what the 2nd amendment envisioned. You carry your weapon for protection and hunting and use it to protect yourself, your family and your community.

I would like to see every adult drafted for six weeks of firearm training, reactive fire training, firing in a crowd training and medical training. Then give trained citizens a free government weapon (or perhaps a discounted one). If you don’t want a weapon you don’t have to carry one – but you have to be trained.

An army of citizens, armed, in public, would cut down on the death toll from mass shootings. Only an experiment would show whether the people killed by accident exceeded our current death toll. I would like to see that experiment run.

Would you car jack if the person driving was armed? Would you rape a person on a subway if all the passengers were armed? All valid self-defense situations where you could defend yourself or somebody else legally. Crime would go down.

I have written many times on the difficulty of changing the constitution. I never said it was impossible – just very very difficult.

A wise man once said:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,”

I also feel passing unconstitutional laws is unwise and a waste of time.

From the Atlantic:

“The surprising aspect of this conclusion is not that the Constitution can be informally amended. That has been the usual way of making revisions. In 1803, the Supreme Court granted itself the power to review laws and overturn them. In 1824, the states tied the electoral vote to the popular vote. Neither of those changes was inscribed on parchment or envisioned by the Founders, but today we can’t imagine our constitutional system without them. “

The 45th president profoundly altered our system of government.

There is no effective gun control that will staunch the flow of blood-letting and death.

That is the problem. Your persistent attempts to argue that effective gun control is impossible so we do nothing is a morally bankrupt stance.

The higher the percentage of the population that are armed, the faster the bad guy could be blown away. 5%, 10%, 25%, at some point there would be enough people scattered throughout the population that a bad guy would be taken down by one or hopefully multiple people before the death count rose to the level of a mass shooting. At least that would be my hope.

What if the good guys with guns go rogue. Because somebody is sane does not mean they will stay so. I can just see the scenario, a car passing a bank backfires, suddenly every body with a gun draws it and starts shooting in the direction from which they though the ‘gunshot’ came from. Of course this could be a school during an assembly with all the adults armed. The carnage would be horrendous.

I could deal with each bad point of yours but it begins to feel, only part way in, like trudging through the slough of despond

That you fail to see the flaws in your arguments makes me wonder what sort of lawyer you are, no not your speciality but how effective you are.

And so it continues.

US gun death rate hits 30-year high with female fatalities rising faster than men’s

Yes – I have written many times on the difficulty of changing the constitution. I never said it was impossible – just very very difficult. First you have to get it through congress, get the president to sign it and then get 3/4 of the states to ratify. Possible but very very difficult. Especially with something as core as the right to own a gun for self-defense (or the right to free speech). I believe the amendments are in order of their importance, which is why speech is first and the right to keep and bear arms is second. Personally, I don’t think the 2nd amendment will ever be changed – it is that important to that many people that the necessary majority will never exist to change it. I also feel passing unconstitutional laws is unwise and a waste of time. Almost like virtue signaling – a total waste of time.

Gun deaths committed by criminals and mentally ill people are terrible. Gun death suicides are regrettable, but less terrible (I think suicide should be legal – after all how can you stop it?). Gun deaths in valid self-defense situations are one of the very laudatory purposes of the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms. So gun deaths range the gamut from terrible to regrettable to actually good.

There is no effective gun control that will staunch the flow of blood-letting and death. Criminals will always be able to get guns and so will mentally ill people. Trying to ban semi-automatic weapons is doomed to failure, even if the constitution were to be changed. Of course, we can try to keep guns away from criminals and mentally ill people and I am all for legal laws being passed to do that. But it won’t stop gun deaths or mass shootings.

I am afraid that we will have to get very tough on illegal uses of guns. Perhaps the death penalty enforced much quicker than the typical 20 year wait would help. Perhaps very very tough enforcement of illegal possession could be made a top priority – to try to get guns out of the hands of criminals and gang members. I don’t know – both of these seem like they won’t do much.

But I do know that the 2nd amendment does protect the right of adults of sound mind, who have not committed a felony, to keep and bear arms. Trying to stop that will not work, and in fact will only backfire and cause more guns to be sold (legally and illegally). History has shown that to be the case.

A very tough problem. Perhaps we could get a movement going to get trained people to conceal carry. The higher the percentage of the population that are armed, the faster the bad guy could be blown away. 5%, 10%, 25%, at some point there would be enough people scattered throughout the population that a bad guy would be taken down by one or hopefully multiple people before the death count rose to the level of a mass shooting. At least that would be my hope.

Given the fad like nature of a lot of these mass shootings, and the massive media coverage they all get, I am afraid they will continue and even accelerate. Death by cop (or suicide after the mass shooting) seems to be getting more popular these days. The only solution is a faster death for the shooter. Hopefully they can be taken down during the shooting and better after their first shot, and even better as they are drawing their gun before they can shot or kill anybody.

Mass shootings, including mass shootings in schools, criminal activity that results in shootings, suicides, accidental shootings of all kinds, are all related in America, because we have a pro-gun culture which sees treating guns as dangerous items as somehow unfair, or unconstitutional. (See this for further discussion on the links.) And, because this pr-gun culture results in there simply being a gazillion guns. Guns are everywhere, even in random places kids can stumble into.

The toll of mass shootings in the USA since 2014 has been logged.

Since 2014 the US has averaged more than one mass shooting a day, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. There is no official definition of “mass shooting”, but this database tracks incidents in which at least four people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

This list includes the high-profile incidents, such as the Parkland shooting, the Orlando shooting and the Atlanta shooting. But thousands of other mass shootings have come and gone like any other day.

Every mass shooting in the US – a visual database

Just look at the toll for November 2022 alone.

RickA and Locus (that latter brave enough to use their real name) have no valid arguments for not implementing effective gun control that would staunch this flow of blood-letting and death.

RickA likes to witter on about how an amendment can not be dropped or modified when this has in fact been done since there was a constitution and amendments. Both of these tools of the NRA, even if not by official status, like to use bloviating rhetoric often involving whataboutery in nugatory arguments.

“A right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from the moment of birth.”

Then why can’t infants have guns? Or criminals? Or mentally unstable people with anger management issues? Or children?

And so, in Indiana, another kid familiar with firearms took a pass at ruining his life, his family’s life, and the life of at least one innocent victim. And, as usual, it is unlikely that anybody will check his blood lead level. Why would they? It is only 2018. Knowledge of the devastating effect of heavy metal toxicity on important neurological functions is still fairly primitive. So even kids from privileged families can get lead poisoning by going to the shooting gallery with Dad. And then, of course, there is the intoxicating feeling of power a young boy can get by shooting a gun. A power that this particular boy did not have under control. So this lad, possibly slightly lead addled, decided to take that awesome firepower to school where he possibly had some issues with powerlessness? But hey, it is not politically correct in gun culture to discuss lead poisoning, or psychology, or, apparently, any science that might might help understand the effects of firearms on a culture.

The second amendment needs to be de-convoluted. Can a militia that lets children take weapons to school to murder people be considered in any way self regulated? Can a militia that lets criminals obtain firearms with little or no effort to restrict them be considered well regulated? Can a militia that lets toddlers get Daddy’s gun and kill themselves be considered well regulated? Can a militia that lets small children shoot machine guns and then accidentally kill themselves be considered well regulated? If the militia is well regulated, and certain members of it are restricted from having arms, say because of past behavioral anomalies, such as threatening their ex, how is that different from an infringement on their “right” to bear arms?

It is 2018. The rate of school shooting seems to be rising. The destruction of the sanctity of places of learning is now complete. Nearly all kids today live with concern or outright fear of school shootings. Small price to pay to protect NRA winners from the rare home invasion they seem to constantly fear.

A rational society might protect kids from exposure to lead from shooting… both high velocity ballistic lead, and lead fumes from shooting.
A rational society might not worship guns.
A rational society might realize that a rule made in 1787 might be flawed or obsolete.
A rational society might realize that there are an awful lot of ways to prevent a home invasion without leaving loaded guns lying around the house.
A rational society would not let guns carelessly fall into the hands of children, the mentally incompetent, or the untrained. But our does.

“When the home invasion starts to happen, you will have several minutes to call 911, unlock your gun, load it, and search around for the invader”

# 3, however, could easily get one kill. I can barely make a pee trip during a
commercial break, yet in several minutes, I am to call the cop shot after finding
the telephone, then go to a different room and get the firearm and then load it?

By the time the vic has finish these instructions, the invader is searching around
for the homeowner.

Children taking their daddy’s unguarded musket and laying waste to other children was apparently something not anticipated by our beloved founding fathers when they penned the second amendment. If they did, they might have been a little more robust in their definition of why we need to have access to muskets and what a grave responsibility it was to guard access to them. Alas, they didn’t do so,and now we have various murder epidemics going on.

The founding fathers were, however, ingenious in realizing that we might need to adjust our Constitution for unforeseen future needs, and, oh by the way, isn’t it time that we disambiguated the second amendment? Instead of arguing about what the dead founder wanted, how’s about we make an amendment that actually defines for modern day Americans just who should have fire arms and how they should be regulated?

Let’s repeal any laws or rules that prevent the CDC from researching gun violence.

Technically the Dickey Amendment doesn’t ban the CDC from doing any research on this, it only says that “”none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control” can be used for it. However, that amendment, written and pushed by the NRA, came with a PR coup: they pushed the huge lie that previous research that demonstrated the link between increased risk and gun ownership was a form of “advocating for gun control” (pure bullshit, of course) and the amendment explicitly says that can’t happen.

Even when funding was available it was woefully inadequate (based on amount of funding compared to number of deaths from gun violence: similar comparisons for expenditures of diseases give much higher values).

States can do some work, but not on the scale needed. Private money — even less, since the Tiahrt Amendments, which prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing its firearms-tracking database with anyone outside of law enforcement, mean private studies cannot access that data.

People who say the research can be done by states or private groups may not know the whole story, but more often they do know what they propose won’t work but they want to sound “reasonable”.

In the meantime, the data needed to answer questions like how guns move from locations where they are easily purchased to places with more restrictions, relationships between poverty and gun access, ownership, and use, where guns used in crimes come from, how often they are used in domestic assaults, how often are the people who use a gun in a crime the original owner of that gun, and more complicated questions, aren’t getting addressed.

All because earlier studies showed that having a gun in the home increased the risk of being shot and that the expansion of “stand your ground laws” was associated with increases in murder rates. The NRA and their supporters didn’t like those ugly facts coming out.

On the issue of whether cops hit anyone – I just saw this story:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/some-santa-fe-shooting-victims-may-have-been-caught-crossfire-n876171

Basically we don’t know anything yet, but the cops don’t think they killed anyone. They didn’t mention whether they thought they wounded anyone. I am sure we will find out in time.