cue pointless exchange of entrenched positions.

someone shot a robber who broke in & "lunged" at them in the south sound yesterday, too.

Wait. What are they right about? That police officers should have guns? We knew that. That police belong at courthouses? We knew that. There have been plenty of shootings in the past that have been stopped by police, military members and security guards. What's lacking is evidence that guns in the hands of any jackass who wants one keeps anybody safer.

Looks to me like we can add three more dead to the body count of unrestricted gun access.

Closing the gun show loophole would keep guns out of the hands of many of these out of control men in divorce cases, at least when there is a restraining order against him. Makes one wonder if that would have prevent these three deaths.

The more you focus on the NRA and their wacky straw man fiesta, the more you prove their strategy as a winning one. Since the NRA has no actual power, the more they focus attention on themselves, the less attention gets focused on the people who actually create and vote on laws.

Lo and behold, no one holds lawmakers responsible in the media or at the ballot box, and everyone demonizes the NRA. The NRA wins again, as everyone uses their ammunition to punch holes in a paper tiger, pardon the metaphor. Politicians do not think gun control is a losing issue because the NRA tells them so. They believe it because voters make gun control a losing issue, regardless of their personal thoughts on the topic.

The NRA is one of the weakest lobbying groups, both in terms of money and manpower. Their power comes from the public's odd desire to elevate them to the status of lawmakers and hold them up as an easy target for outrage.

@3

Translation: Stop paying attention to guns, part 3,927.

@4: Wow, if that is what you took from my statement you are either such a zealot that you are only able to see any slight disagreement as completely polemical to your beliefs, or you just do not understand the statement.

The whole point is that to pay attention to guns you have to stop paying 100% attention to a stupid lobbying group and its circus of stupid arguments. Lobbying groups with serious financial and human resources who lose popular support always become the weakest ones in actual results. See the tobacco lobby for more details. Yet you claim the NRA, with expenditures and abilities at a laughable fraction of the tobacco industry, has lawmaking powers in congress. You just have no idea what you are talking about in a factual sense, as your response proves: you have no real argument here.

You have a lot of bizarre, unfounded hatred for people who disagree with you, and ironically I am not even one of those people. You clearly have a lot of fun writing screeds against the NRA multiple times a day, but you are fooling yoruself if you think it has any bearing on the debate, or you are even arguing something that is relevant. I think the NRA is a batty and ultimately destructive group, but if you think they are the cause of gun violence or proliferation in this country, you are out of your mind or willfully ignorant.

Ted, she's already proven that she's a fucking nutjob; don't let her get under your skin.

You know, it used to be that the only people in the average county/district courthouse with guns were the bailiffs and the cops escorting prisoners in from holding cells.

Over the last thirty years as guns have proliferated, courts have haphazardly plopped all these security checkpoints out near the building entrances because the courthouses, many of them from the 19th century even, were not designed for them, so they end up in hallways and stair landings.

This greatly increases the danger to the general public—people arriving for jury duty or to get a copy of their birth certificate or visit the ag commissioner or whatever—because the bad guys have to shoot their way all the way to their target courtroom.

I'd like to see more thought given to court security from the general public's perspective, especially the placement and configuration of checkpoints.

5280, you're really circling the drain, old fart. Pwargnarth Pchulthu has been one of the very reasonable and intelligent persons posting here, with straightforward, reasonable answers to reducing gun violence. While also using real facts and stuff to deflate the inflated rhetoric of you and the rest of the the 'Yay, Guns' crowd.

And you dismiss her as a 'nutjob'. Care to back that assertion up with any actual, real facts? Please cite actual 'nutjob' posts or assertions made by P-G. We'll all wait...

Or, you know, you could be the nutjob. Since all you are doing any more is poking the fire and calling people names. Way to make your side sound like the reasonable, prudent ones, dude.

Maybe it's time you made good your *ahem* oh-so-scary threat to leave Slog forever. You remember, the one you made back in the early Fall when Mittens was starting to crash and burn on national TV.

You bring nothing to the table here, you add nothing to the conversation. All you're doing is trolling, and you're doing it bad. Nobody will miss you when you finally leave, so now would be a good time.

@5

Just when public revulsion against the NRA is starting to sting, you come along to suggest we stop talking about the NRA? Coincidence?

Gun ownership and gun owners are not the problem. It's a twisted, extremist kind of thinking that is the problem, and the NRA is the source and the mouthpiece of that thinking. Turning the public against the NRA is exactly the way to get pandering politicians to break ranks and use their common sense.

But it's a free country. Talk about what you want to talk about. All I know is that when I hear "You shut up about this. You shut up about that. You can't say that." I know it comes straight from the NRA playbook.

@9: I know a big part of your worldview is that anyone who dares to disagree with you must be being paid to do so, but you may want to reign in that massive ego a bit and think for a moment that maybe you do not have all the answers.

It is insanely crazy how you decide that anyone who disagrees with you is a paid shill. Think about how nuts that is for one moment: anyone you think has a differing opinion must be getting paid to think that way.

You can talk about the NRA all you want, but do not think it is getting you, or the debate, anywhere. The NRA is objectively weak, in manpower and financial power. They only exercise the power we the public allow them to. As long as voters do not think of gun control at the ballot box, the NRA will still seem to have power. When was the last time you voted for someone because of their gun control stance? Think about it.

I have never said once that gun owners or guns are not the problem, and there is no way for me to feel a "sting" regarding the NRA and public opinion, because I am not in the NRA, do not abide by their worldview, nor do I give any money. This is all nonsense you make up because you can only argue against the crazy gun nut position of no regulation, no how.

The only way politicians have ever acted is if they believe their jobs are in danger. Demanding action on gun control and holding politicians accountable for inaction gets them moving, not a bunch of people calling the NRA assholes, true as it may be. But hey, that is the hard and sober road, isn't it? If you have anything but crazy, made-up straw men in this specific not-even-really-gun-control argument, feel free to bring them up at anytime.

http://www.ktvz.com/news/Bend-man-shot-b…

Bend man shot by wife bending over...ha ha

For anyone asking WHY you need a gun at McDonald's?

The Hamburglar could have shown up and tried to steal her Big Mac. Duh.

Thanks for that link, @11.

As I've said before, I've decided I'm okay with ever-increasing numbers of people doing open drop or concealed drop or any other kind of butterfingered gun moves—because ABSOLUTELY NOTHING will do more, in a shorter period of time, for tightening firearms licensing, training, and liability.

But every time this happens, I want these people charged to the maximum that local laws allow. No "well, it was an accident, and nobody got hurt this time" bullshit, like that recent case where a guy dropped a derringer in a Cost Plus World Market in Kitsap County, WA, with 35 customers and employees in the store.

If I borrowed a rifle and took it down to the end of my block and did target practice on some old cans and bottles set up on the bluff—you know, actually AIMED at non-living things and pulled the trigger deliberately—I'd get hauled in and fined for discharging a firearm within city limits.

Reckless endangerment, assault, civil suits, whatever fits the circumstances every time we have one of these little "oopsies." Every goddamn time.

@12: Sounds great.

If you have any outrage left over once you're done prosecuting the handful of these that happen this year, maybe you can direct it toward the thousands of revolving-door criminals who will be shooting and killing rivals and civilians this year, or the tens of thousands who illegally attempt to purchase guns but are denied by the background check process.

In those cases the "maximum that the local laws allow" is pretty impressive, with lots of jail time and supervision, if anyone bothers to enforce and prosecute them, which they rarely do as evidenced by the stats on recidivism.

And maybe you could even rage for a moment at the priorities of politicians who purchase $300M (each) fighter planes to use against... Mexico? Some Taliban guys hiding in huts in the Himalayas? over things like, say, preventing some of the 20,000ish gun related suicides that will happen this year.

But first, get the guy who dropped his gun in Cost Plus, because tightening licensing etc..