Thread: End the Gun Epidemic in America

End the Gun Epidemic in America

​It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD DEC. 4, 2015
Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/op...n-america.html

Last post of the evening. The sun has long ago gone down over the Pacific....

NO. NO. NO. Not with close to 100 million AK-47's and knockoffs over in Asia and Africa. First.... we got the cheap Chinese products, then the Indian hackers, the Chinese hackers, the Taiwanese and Korean cheap products, etc. etc.. So we don't need any more globalization of the Asian kind. They can keep their AK-47s over there.

And we will keep the Second Amendment.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Oh yes it is, absolutely necessary. The Bill of Rights is immune from reasonable regulation when it states as it does in the wording of the Second Amendment that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, which means in our language, that this right can not be infringed by "reasonable regulation". This Amendment is a right of the people to keep and bear sufficient arms to defend ourselves, without which we would not have a nation. Without the arms of the people during the American Revolution and the use of those arms in the battles against the British, we would not have a country. It is completely absurd to believe that the intent of this right was to enable the people of every other country in the world to be armed to the hilt at the expense of the American People to overthrow their governments in Syria and Libya or to fight the Russians in Afghanistan or tens upon tens of other situations in other countries including several as close to home as Central America, is not a right of the people of the United States.

I wonder how the New York Times would feel if we passed "reasonable regulation" of the First Amendment and banned anti-American, anti-Constitutional editorials in the United States but used tax-payer money to fund a Free Press in other countries?

I suppose it depends on which side your bread is buttered. Running your mouth for money in political rant editorials (1st Amendment) or using firearms to defend ourselves (2nd Amendment).

I support both rights, and it would be nice to see those who butter their bread with one to respect and uphold the rights of others to defend themselves with another.

Those that ignore history, will repeat it. JMO

A PLEA FROM RUSSIA: “Americans, Never Give Up Your Guns”

from Pravda, of all places, where Stanislav Mishin writes:

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or “talking to them”, it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

…No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

http://www.mrconservative.com/2013/0...-up-your-guns/