:agree:

I went to the hardware and feed store to purchase some fertilizer but was turned down. I was told that I had to have a special permit to purchase fertilizer because someone had used a fertilizer bomb in OK to blow up a building. If I was to go to a special school on the proper use of fertilizer and get my certification of completion, I could come back and buy my fertilizer. In order to enroll in the state run school, I was first required to get a certifying letter from my doctor stating that I was mentally stable enough to handle fertilizer safely so as not to harm anyone else.
After completing all the requirements, I was able to obtain a 40lb bag of manure, but was instructed that I must keep it concealed so that my neighbors wouldn't get excited. I timed my arrival at home to coincide with dusk, but one of my neighbors observed me unloading the sack of manure from the trunk of my car and called the police. After being jacked up by the arriving police, they slit open my sack of manure and searched through it for anything that might be used to ignite it. Finding nothing, they excused themselves, after lecturing me thoroughly about manure safety and departed. My manure was scattered about my property.

So I am not sure whether I should say this was a case of shooting the bull, bull shooting, or flinging manure about. But, I am BSing you.

Don't know what you mean? Perhaps you misunderstood my post. I was correcting someone else.

But, to answer your question, you can't keep people from breaking the law.

According to a recent report (2013) only seven (7) States required background checks at gun shows. However, we can quote and "spin" statistics all we want to make a point but perhaps we can all agree that there is way too much gun violence in the U.S.

In 2013 there were 33,169 deaths related to guns. In addition, there were just north of 84,000 injuries. I would think any reasonable person would say that is not okay.

Like I said, you can spin it anyway you want but the fact remains that this is the facts. You see---the first thing in solving a problem ----you have to recognize you have a problem to start with. We can't even do that!

Some don't want the facts
 

:beer3: You are spot on.

Has anyone read a post or went to a cited link and changed their position?
If so, I'd like to read it too.

Smart or wise
 

Tom: very good question---only a very wise person. I have a late Tee time so will leave with one of my original thoughts. "Do you know the difference between a smart person and a wise person? A wise person is smart but he/she also has the ability to change their mind". :gc:

Half of the gun deaths in America are suicides, which means if they didn't have a gun then it would be razor, pills, bridge, etc.

Maryland has one of the strictest gun laws in America and has one of the highest gun related death rates. Laws are not the answer.

Out of 218 countries USA is not even in the top 100 countries for murders by population ratio. And the USA has the highest gun ownership in the world.

Murder is not a gun problem. Murder is a world problem, not specific to the USA. Guns are a convenient tool of murder/suicide but not necessary to achieve the goal of death. As a matter of fact, the Americas has the lowest murder conviction rate in the world, with less than 25%. We have a problem, but it's not guns. America has a mental health problem that is not isolated to just the USA.

You are not going to eliminate murder any more than you can eliminate air pollution. You can do a few things to act as a band aid, but you will never eliminate it. You have seen how much gun control does as far as stopping murder. Cities with the strictest gun control have the highest murder rates.

I'm no expert, but:

(1) It's not a false premise.
Gun Show Background Checks State Laws
(2) The CDC is the nation's agency for public health. Some would argue that getting shot is a threat to one's health. Certainly mental illness is a public health issue.
Quietly, Congress extends a ban on CDC research on gun violence | Public Radio International
(3) Maybe handguns are a bigger threat and Congress should focus on controlling those but this report states that more than half of all of the mass shootings use assault weapons.
More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines | Mother Jones
(4) Not sure why "the left" gets blamed for impeding institutionalization. Regardless, placing a person in a mental institution or an institution for the criminally insane is not an easy task, and shouldn't be, to protect us all. Regardless, every state in America has a set of standards for involuntary commitment.
Involuntary Treatment Civil Commitment Standards
(5) You're right. Gun buybacks in cities in America have not worked that well, but they worked like a charm in Australia, so maybe we have something to learn from them.
Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted. - Vox

If a woman or an old person needs to defend themselves with the use of a gun then good for them. I don't think you'll find many examples, however, of a woman or old person defending themselves using an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine, but I'd be happy to read about that if you share.

The number of gun deaths due to suicide is actually worse - it is almost two-thirds. You are absolutely correct - we have a mental health problem.

Did you know that a veteran of the US armed forces just have to show a DD 214, get fingerprinted, and pay about $115 for a CCL. They can buy a handgun with no waiting period.

Does not matter when they were in military. Could be 50 or 70 years ago. No proficiency test required.

Somewhere around 21,000 of those deaths were suicides. Do you think that if those people didn't have guns that they wouldn't have found some other way to kill themselves?

Also, a percentage of those deaths were justifiable homicide. People were killed either by law enforcement personnel or by citizens defending themselves and a small number were accidents.

So the total number of non suicide, or unjustified homicides is somewhere around 10,000. Is that a lot for a country of 330,000,000 people? It's 0.00003030303 percent of our population.

I'm not sure that we do have a problem.

...

I don't know you so I do not know if you are jesting or not!?

IN FLORIDA. Other states handle CCW applications differently. The reason for the use of the DD214 is to show that the applicant has had firearms training. You are still fingerprinted for a background check. Members of the military have a lot more training than they give in these short state run classes.

You can have or not have training for new CCW applicants, and it will have no effect on killings. The killings are not about gun safety or knowing the laws. Gun killings are caused by mental illness in the majority of cases. Half of the gun related killings in America are suicides. Do you have a means to stop suicides? Is taking a gun away going to stop someone from killing themselves?