[NoMo50]

The gun control debate will rage beyond our lifetimes, and there are passionate people on both sides. But, for those interested, remember that you can choose your opinions, but you don't get to choose your own facts.

Fact: You can lay a firearm on a table, and leave it there for 20 years, and it will not harm anyone until/unless it is manipulated by a human being.

Fact: The city of Chicago has more shootings over any given weekend than any other large city. They also have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation...and, they have the lowest prosecution rate for gun crimes of any large city.

Fact: More people are killed each year in the USA, year after year after year, with blunt objects than with all types of rifles combined. Does that mean we should consider banning hammers, bats, lamps, clubs, etc?

Fact: If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

Fact: Millions of people keep firearms for self protection. Remember, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. For every news story about the illegal use of a firearm, there are hundreds of incidents where someone has used a firearm to save/protect a person or persons. Just because the media chooses not to report those incidents does not mean they did not happen.

I have owned firearms my entire life, starting with my first .22 rifle at age 10. I carried a firearm every day in service to my community for 34 years. I have never used a gun in an unlawful manner, nor have any of my friends. I know which side of this debate I stand on, but I will defend your right to believe differently. Just be honest with yourself if you are in the gun ban camp, and don't expect a good guy with a gun to come to your aid if the wolf is at your door.

[cjrjck]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

‘Shocked and heartbroken’: Patient shoots, kills doctor in exam room

Get rid of the guns or get rid of the people. . .

get rid of the guns so that someone with anger and irrational issues doesn't have a chance to do something stupid. .

Go ahead. It's not that complicated. 2/3 of both houses of Congress must pass the amendment and then it has to be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures. Best place to start would probably be with your state representative, congressman, or one of Florida's two senators. My guess considering who they are you are not going to be too successful but that shouldn't deter you if you are that passionate about it.

[Whitley]

Originally Posted by bp243

If it isn’t the gun, then do you agree that people should qualify in some way to own a gun, as people need to qualify to drive a car which is a lethal weapon as well?

QUalify "in some way" leaves a lot unanswered. There are some states where the qualification to own a cw are downright racist and elitest.

I have had a carry for NY, NYC, NJ and a few others. To get the NY and NYC license I had to go with my attorneys and spend thousands. I was able to do so, however others who live in horrible neighborhoods often times can not afford what needs to be done to qualify to own a gun. I lived in a gated, private police department community and had my own security on top of that. A person living in the bad section of Washington Heights could not get the license. It seems a bit unjust doesn't it?

[Whitley]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Same here. And to my knowledge, none of my neighbors had guns. Most people I went to school with didn't have guns. A few had rifles because they lived on farms and needed them for when the coyotes got too close to the chicken coop but they used it sparingly. Freaking out the chickens with gunshots meant fewer eggs laid the next morning. And a few sometimes would go to the hunt club and bag themselves wild turkey for Thanksgiving dinner once a year. We had a friend of the family who was a supernumerary policeman, who had to leave his weapon in his car if he wanted to come into our house.

In college in Boston - I knew of no one who owned a firearm other than similar farm-raised students, who left them at their farms since they didn't need a rifle in the city. For personal protection, I had a knuckle-stick - which was illegal. It was on my keychain. About as thick as my thumb, four inches long, made of hard-wood with a metal rod going through it. If anyone tried giving me a hard time I'd shove it in their eye, or drive it into their leg. It wouldn't cut them but it could break a bone or pop an eye out. I'd recite Shakespeare out loud while walking to the 7-11 late at night for snacks, and gesticulated with my free hand while holding tight to the knuckle stick with the other hand. People thought I was one of the typical crazy people and stayed far away while I walked in any neighborhood I damn well felt like walking in. No firearm needed.

If they think you're crazier than they are, they won't bother you. It just requires a bit of confidence, and a lot of creativity. For people who lack confidence and creativity, there's firearms I guess.

So you carried this "knucklestick". An illegal knucklestick. Don't you see the slightest bit of hypocrisy here? You being ok with carrying an illegal item for protection.

[Heytubes]

I guess the folks that want gun registration missed the memo about how guns were confiscated via registration files during WW2 in Europe, (remember the Jews were left unarmed), as well as even in Cuba when Castro’s army went door to door with the registration files disarming the citizens. Our military oath as well as law enforcement contains the phrase, “from foreign AND domestic.” Guess some folks don’t understand that.

[Joe C.]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

‘Shocked and heartbroken’: Patient shoots, kills doctor in exam room

Get rid of the guns or get rid of the people. . .

get rid of the guns so that someone with anger and irrational issues doesn't have a chance to do something stupid. .

If they can't get a gun, then they'll probably get a knife. Bad people, intent on doing bad things will always be around. IMHO, responsible concealed carry can prevent or minimize these events, as the police always arrive too late.

[Gac57]

Originally Posted by Keefelane66

And, NRA Sues ATF Over New Pistol Stabilizing Brace Regulations.
There are an average of 100 shootings daily
So far this year there have been over 350 mass shootings.
Wish it wasn’t so.

How many have been killed by cars in the same time frame? Probably more killed by cars. Are you ready to go back to the horse and buggy?

[I'm Popeye!]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

‘Shocked and heartbroken’: Patient shoots, kills doctor in exam room

Get rid of the guns or get rid of the people. . .

get rid of the guns so that someone with anger and irrational issues doesn't have a chance to do something stupid. .

How about bringing back the electric chair and USE it?
PS - Once in a while, I'll volunteer to pull the switch..

[mtdjed]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

Some might say that people who have rifles in the gun racks in the windows of their pickups are the lunatics. Maybe if they were all put into asylums, no one would need a gun to defend themselves in the first place, hm?

Also - knives have purposes other than killing people or animals. You can't fillet a chicken with a rifle. You can't trim your hedges with a Colt 45. You can't scrape a few errant drops of dried paint off the floor with a pistol. You can't perform surgery on a patient with a machine gun.

What can you do with a gun? You can - fire at a target. Or you can use it as a club to beat someone or something over the head. I suppose you can use it as a paperweight. But mostly - you can fire at a target. Whether the target is a person, animal, or a non-living inanimate object set up to see how well you can hit it - it involves a bullet, and bullets exist to cause damage, destruction, and death.

Bows and arrows must be on your list of things to ban also. How about fishing rods? Spears, swords, javelins, etc.

Whether you accept it or not, shooting things at targets is as a universal human activity. It is a sport and the things that are projected are not evil.

[Joe C.]

Gun violence ......GUN violence ...... GUN VIOLELNCE.
That's all you hear and read about. More people are killed by vehicles in this country than by guns, yet you don't hear about CAR violence. After they flew those airplanes into the trade center, you didn't hear about Airplane violence, did you? That's because those leftists don't want to get rid of cars or planes because so they use them. They want to blame "the gun" and not the person.
Learn some critical thinking.

[Cybersprings]

Originally Posted by bp243

First of all, what an absolute shame. In reality, anyone shot to death with a gun has lost their precious life…whether a good, bad or otherwise person in your view!

Why do we have a driver’s license? In the simplest terms it’s to prove that we qualify to drive a car and to designate that our car belongs on the road. When someone proves incompetent regarding their driving record, their license can be removed. They may still continue driving w/o a license, but the message is clear that they are doing so illegally.

It seems that current gun owners object to this idea for guns. Why is that the case other than the second amendment which is clearly outdated for the times? Although I’ve heard every reason from gun owners, the reality is that losing precious lives continues to grow and if it’s someone you know then the pain of loss continues. Have you lost someone to a gun and if so, how do you feel about tighter qualifications to own one? Likewise, if you haven’t lost someone to a gun, what is the issue with proper controls to address the potential loss of a precious life?

1. The second amendment is no more outdated than the first. The author's never imagined TV, the internet, social media, etc. However, the concept is still as relevant and needed today as it was in 1776.
2. So, if someone proves incompetent, their drivers license can be revoked. Driving in the villages or I75, you know that is not generally the case, but we can play along. You admit someone can still drive after losing their license, but it would be illegal. How many times a day does someone die from an accident caused by someone without a license or a suspended license. I would bet quite a few. So if someone lost their right to carry a weapon via whatever process you are proposing, yet they want to kill someone, you think the penalty for murder would not disuade them, but the penalty for possession of firearm without a license would? Really? Really? Why can't gun grabbers understand that laws restricting possession or ownership of fireharms only hurts law abiding citizens who would not be committing murder? It has ZERO effect on someone who wants to commit a crime with the firearm.

[GATORBILL66]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

‘Shocked and heartbroken’: Patient shoots, kills doctor in exam room

Get rid of the guns or get rid of the people. . .

get rid of the guns so that someone with anger and irrational issues doesn't have a chance to do something stupid. .

That's exactly what Hitler and Stalin did, they took the guns away from the people and only the bad guys had guns.

[dougjb]

Other countries with the same historic wild west attitude as the USA have banned guns...successfully. For example, both Australia and New Zealand have pretty much resolved their gun issue by making the possession of guns illegal unless properly registered (and that is really hard to do in those countries).

In the UK, you can be in the extreme southeast of the country and if there is a shooting of a person in Northern Scotland (as far away as you can get from SE England), you hear about it on the national news. Here, you don't hear of murders occurring through the use of guns in the next community over.

As far as sports are concerned, there is a huge difference between handguns and long rifles. What hunting event involves handguns? None. At best they are used for target practice...or maybe shooting up your neighbors. The use of them as protective devices is vastly overrated. Most wind up being stolen or used to commit suicide by their owners. Rarely are these guns ever used to protect one's life or property. By the time you get to them, the robber has taken it away from you and used it on you or it has now become the property of the robber.

Here is one proposed solution: All firearms must be registered. Failure to register them is a felony offense subject to a jail sentence. Once registered, the owner is responsible for all the activities of that gun, including all crimes, whether the original owner of the gun sells the gun (without a proper transfer of registration) or if it is stolen.

In my neighborhood in the Villages, a neighbor reported that a handgun they had in their unlocked car in an unlocked glove box was pilfered overnight when they left their car out in the driveway. Some of the responses of the neighbors was, So what...its only a gun!. In my estimation, that neighbor should be held responsible criminally and financially for any crimes then committed by the pilferer.

Stringent requirements: Yup! But, we are not going to get rid of these continous mass murders and less than mass shootings if all we can do is wring our hands and suggest the second amendment says we can do nothing. Believe it or not, since the Bill of Rights was ratified in the 18th Century, the Supreme Court heard only three cases implicating the Second Amendment until the mid 1990's. In each of those cases, it was held the government had a right to restrict ownership/possession of firearms. In a 5-4 decision, the Heller case held that the Washington DC laws were too restrictive an impingement on Second Amendment rights. Even Justice Scalia suggested that possession of firearms could be subject to some restrictions. Yet, the movement of the Supreme Court to a much more conservative perspective (from the mid-1970's onward) has opened up Pandora's Box by allowing the almost unfettered possession of weapons that should only be allowed in a well-regulated militia. Perhaps the Supreme Court's pendulum will once again swing to a perspective that universal ownership and possession of guns is not a smart thing to do in a densely populated country!

[Cybersprings]

Originally Posted by Whitley

So you carried this "knucklestick". An illegal knucklestick. Don't you see the slightest bit of hypocrisy here? You being ok with carrying an illegal item for protection.

And apparently the fact that the knucklestick being illegal had no effect on her possession of it anyway was missed also.

[Cybersprings]

Originally Posted by dougjb

Other countries with the same historic wild west attitude as the USA have banned guns...successfully. For example, both Australia and New Zealand have pretty much resolved their gun issue by making the possession of guns illegal unless properly registered (and that is really hard to do in those countries).

In the UK, you can be in the extreme southeast of the country and if there is a shooting of a person in Northern Scotland (as far away as you can get from SE England), you hear about it on the national news. Here, you don't hear of murders occurring through the use of guns in the next community over.

As far as sports are concerned, there is a huge difference between handguns and long rifles. What hunting event involves handguns? None. At best they are used for target practice...or maybe shooting up your neighbors. The use of them as protective devices is vastly overrated. Most wind up being stolen or used to commit suicide by their owners. Rarely are these guns ever used to protect one's life or property. By the time you get to them, the robber has taken it away from you and used it on you or it has now become the property of the robber.

Here is one proposed solution: All firearms must be registered. Failure to register them is a felony offense subject to a jail sentence. Once registered, the owner is responsible for all the activities of that gun, including all crimes, whether the original owner of the gun sells the gun (without a proper transfer of registration) or if it is stolen.

In my neighborhood in the Villages, a neighbor reported that a handgun they had in their unlocked car in an unlocked glove box was pilfered overnight when they left their car out in the driveway. Some of the responses of the neighbors was, So what...its only a gun!. In my estimation, that neighbor should be held responsible criminally and financially for any crimes then committed by the pilferer.

Stringent requirements: Yup! But, we are not going to get rid of these continous mass murders and less than mass shootings if all we can do is wring our hands and suggest the second amendment says we can do nothing. Believe it or not, since the Bill of Rights was ratified in the 18th Century, the Supreme Court heard only three cases implicating the Second Amendment until the mid 1990's. In each of those cases, it was held the government had a right to restrict ownership/possession of firearms. In a 5-4 decision, the Heller case held that the Washington DC laws were too restrictive an impingement on Second Amendment rights. Even Justice Scalia suggested that possession of firearms could be subject to some restrictions. Yet, the movement of the Supreme Court to a much more conservative perspective (from the mid-1970's onward) has opened up Pandora's Box by allowing the almost unfettered possession of weapons that should only be allowed in a well-regulated militia. Perhaps the Supreme Court's pendulum will once again swing to a perspective that universal ownership and possession of guns is not a smart thing to do in a densely populated country!

everything about this post is wrong and ill-advised.