http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/12/14/members-of-the-local-nra-respond-to-todays-elementary-school-shooting Comments On: Members of the Local NRA Respond to Today's Elementary School Shooting by Cienna Madrid en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Tue, 21 May 2013 12:30:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by liberty4all]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:38:07 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Siddha]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:22:56 -0800 The Stranger Posted by jgrast]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:31:51 -0800 The Stranger Posted by jgrast]]> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:28:46 -0800 The Stranger Posted by 10m&m]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:55:32 -0800 The Stranger Posted by scratchmaster joe]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:41:11 -0800 The Stranger Posted by aislander]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:35:38 -0800 The Stranger Posted by felixh515]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:00:25 -0800 The Stranger
@65 Thank you for injecting some rationality into what's mostly a mindless rant by the lunatic fringe. And thank you for recognizing the "halo effect", the collateral protection afforded those who do not own guns by those who do. One important benefit of concealed (vs. open) carry is that the bad guys can't know who is armed: it raises their risk of attacking anyone. And it enables defensive gun use by people who would never carry a gun. "Get back, I have a gun!" is surprisingly effective almost anywhere in America. Try this in London, or Tokyo, or Beijing - the criminals will laugh.

The halo effect is only one of many benefits of gun ownership. Gary Kleck's NDGU study indicates 400,000 people every year believe their use of a gun saved a life. Even if 90% of them are wrong, that still means 40,000 innocent lives are SAVED every year by ordinary civilians with guns. That's a lot: substantially more than the 31,000 killed every year. When you include the rapes that don't happen, the burglaries, robberies, and assaults that don't happen because good people had (or said they had) guns, the benefits of widespread personal gun ownership stack up very respectably against the costs.

And, the issues are complex. Any number of systemic poisons from pharmaceuticals, to lead in the gasoline, to plasticizers in the rayon, to hormones in the meat could easily be a major factor. (I forgot. They banned lead in gasoline because it WAS DAMAGING CHILDREN'S MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.)

And to those who think FPS video games are harmless: see Col. Dave Grossman's study of mass shooters. He found that ALL OF THEM (in recent years) spent hours every day - for years - immersed in these "games". Some kids even learned ALL their marksmanship by video simulation, having only handled a real gun once - for a few hours - before blowing away their classmates. These games are so effective at teaching people to kill that the US, Britain, Australia and Canada have for years used them for training their soldiers.
Posted by LMT_FormerNRA]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:07:43 -0800 The Stranger
How about this as a first step? ALL firearms must be registered and titled like cars are. Any registered owner can be held (at least partially) responsible for crimes committed with that weapon? This would certainly close the gun show loophole and more.

And maybe second step: require massive liability insurance (like with cars) to cover any harm caused by the weapon. Seems to me to be a good place to start!
Posted by aislander]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:46:17 -0800 The Stranger Posted by LMT_FormerNRA]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:20:00 -0800 The Stranger
Yeah, sure, no firearm is more or less dangerous than any other. A .22 pistol is exactly as lethal as a shotgun. Is this one of the new talking points of the NRA?
Posted by clashfan]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:59:50 -0800 The Stranger
Neglectful parents who (to their benefit) didn't learn how to model constructive and pro-social behavior for their children are a dangerous, growing phenomenon in our society.

Who's regulating/monitoring parenting skills? Because we become parents doesn't give us a "free ticket" from having mental health and interpersonal communication issues which need attention.

Metaphoric to a person who seeks to acquire a gun - a parent who is not "qualified" (has no "background check" or monitoring done for parenting/communication skills) is potentially very dangerous. Further, parents "wrap their hands around" a child, guide/"aim" their direction, and, ultimately, pull the trigger.

What we really need to give our attention to is not the gun, but who's behind the trigger?

Posted by friendlyneighborhood]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:30:20 -0800 The Stranger
Which isn't to say there aren't more than a few nutcases hanging around the NRA. The rest are programmed with canned answers to the very questions asked of them here, and without ideas of their own about stopping mass murder. Mass murder isn't their thing, so they don't give it any more head space than say Lady Gaga's upcoming spectacle, obviously. Other than some damn wacky ideas, most of those guys are good guys, safe firearm owners, and not prone to busting out their inner mass shooters. Are guns to blame for mass killings? Where they're available, more often than not they are the weapon used. But where not available, the psychos use other means, such as the rash of mass murders of schoolchildren in China with knives and hammers. So guns or not, mass murders are happening, and often in clusters. What is a unifying pattern in many cases? LEGALLY PRESCRIBED PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS for one. Death by gun doesn't even come close to the top of the list of total causes of death in America.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, pharmaceuticals kill more than 290 people per day. The psychotropic drugs themselves contain warnings that they may cause suicidal and homicidal behavior. So why the hell is everyone talking about taking anyone's guns away? The vast majority of gun owners are sane and lawful. The 31,000 people killed by guns annually in America is tragic, but pales in comparison to the 106,000 deaths by legal prescription drugs each year. Why does this get glossed over each time we find out these kids are are on Prozac or Paxil or any other FDA approved psychotropic drug?

And for you who think you or anyone's brain is immune to exposure to constant violence whether first hand, shooter games or graphically violent movies, you can't then be aware of ongoing brain science studies which are verifying that these inputs do in fact measurably affect aggressive behavior, especially in young men. If we refuse to take a hard look at how evolving cultural norms are affecting our society, we have our heads in the sand. Multiple factors, including massively available sophisticated weaponry have changed the game. But if we limit ourselves to black and white thinking and believe that mass murder can be legislated away by restricting access to sane, lawful people, we're delusional.

At the same moment our president wipes invisible tears to mourn these tragic deaths, he oversees a massive killing operation that daily kills innocent civilian men, women and children through his drone program, which earns the USA a reputation as planetary bully in many places. Yet we're shocked -SHOCKED-when our kids--or THEIR kids-- use the same sort of violence to vent their rage at the schizoid nature of our society, which touts freedom and democracy on one hand, and delivers endless war and deep class schism on the other.

Ever since humans have had weapons, there has been tragic death and sometimes mass murder. Thanks to instant media and a larger than ever population scale, this fact is constantly in our face as if it's a brand new reality. Of course we desire to prevent what we possibly can. But we must stop blaming the weapons themselves. Let's instead question why these previously mostly mild mannered sane individuals snapped and went mad for blood. Accessibility to a gun does not make one snap and go homicidal.

Beyond all of this, I want to know how this kid got past the school's new security system with the arsenal of weapons reportedly found at the scene. And why initial reports--as with the Aurora shooting--said there were two shooters.

We need to dig deeper folks and stop the knee jerk fear reactions that make us want to suddenly gut a basic tenet of freedom in America. Study history and the inevitable outcome of powerful central governments disarming their citizenry, and don't be naive as to think it couldn't happen here, as more and more of our personal and civil rights are being gutted in the name of 'security'.

Personally, I am a small woman living alone in a rural neighborhood. I still don't like guns one bit and am not armed. Just not my thing. Being physically accosted is a bigger concern to me than getting shot, so I've learned how to deflect and protect myself. But I do appreciate my well-trained and ethical friends who choose to arm themselves and frankly am glad they're around because if there were a nutty situation out in these here parts, the cops wouldn't have enough time to respond.

The questions are complex, and so are the answers. Prohibition is not the answer, you lucky dogs who now get to light up without fear of being caged.
Posted by Punawahine]]> Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:37:37 -0800 The Stranger
Posted by Rocket Scientist]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:58:04 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Jordan Maroubra]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:02:21 -0800 The Stranger
The sad part is-where was the school security? Seriously--how did this guy get in? Dont say you have a secure school and then fall back on a false sense of security.--Legislatures need to put the money for safety measures truly into the hands of public places like schools.

Go ahead and take away all legally owned guns--cause thats the only ones youll get--its the illegally used guns that cause things like this

Posted by seneca]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:19:27 -0800 The Stranger Posted by S T]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:43:02 -0800 The Stranger Posted by dyscyple65@gmail.com]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:47:59 -0800 The Stranger Posted by dyscyple65@gmail.com]]> Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:43:15 -0800 The Stranger Boy, it's a good thing you're ready for Doomsday. I too feel the need to arm myself so that when mass riots arrive on my doorstep and want my TV and the gold bricks under my bed that I can make a last stand, slaying hundreds as they swarm over one another at my doors and windows. Preferably automatic weapons...that way I can take down many more of them before, in their mindless frenzy, they swarm into my house and tear me limb from limb.

Wait...maybe I'm thinking of an episode of The Walking Dead.
Posted by tempo36]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:19:22 -0800 The Stranger Posted by F. McGinty]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:32:22 -0800 The Stranger
So sorry about your small penis.
Posted by Frank Blethen's vodka distiller]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 14:08:19 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Thomas Garber]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 08:28:49 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Backpackjunkies]]> Sat, 15 Dec 2012 03:06:01 -0800 The Stranger