Can we have an honest, respectful discussion about guns in America?

Bumpo, perhaps it's because we are a mixed society, and many of us were raised poorly ,lack self-respect and were taught to blame others for theirr own choices- and so, are inherently arrogant and disrespectful. Worse, such people have no ability to recognize those problems within themselves; it is nearly impossible for one to look at themselves honestly. .
Just now you describe gun owners as "Rabid", applying a blanket slur to millions of people you neither know or understand. That isn't exactly the way people work together or communicate, and it doesn't make you appear reasonable or logical. It's a blanket insult- like walking into a meeting and saying "All you fools listen up! You are idiots, I'm going to tell you how to think!~"

And of course, believing yourself. Then assuming others are incapable, because they don't think you are capable. Then wondering why you don't get respect for your opinion that we are all "rabid".

 

There is an unfortunate tendency among the anti gun crowd to paint with a broad brush and comingle decent law abiding folks with the vile thugs who comprise the majority of homicide perpetrators and victims.

 

If that is your explanation of why Americans endure a rate of firearm fatalities so much higher than all other advanced nations, do you believe that we are capable of confronting the problem, or do you believe that we must surrender to it.

There are of course, both "rabid" proponents and opponents of the gun culture. The one advocates minimal safeguards; the other would ban private ownership of guns entirely. Most folks are not of either extreme.

Your pretense that "all" are rabid is not valid. Not "all" gun fanciers are content to have the United States the mecca of firearm fatalities among advanced nations. It is imperative that they offer their recommendations for legislation to protect the public and reduce the incidence of Americans being shot to death.

 

Straw man much?

Read Natty's post again.

He's talking about "Rabid gun fanciers" who appear incapable of offering a coherent explanation why firearm fatalities in the US....

That's a far cry from calling (all) gun owners "Rabid",

In fact if you read through the threads on this subject that refers to the relatively small number of gun owners who want NOTHING to be done to deal with this problem and who will say anything to prevent sensible gun regs from being enacted.

Pretending that is any kind of "blanket" insult is the kind of dishonest thing that the "rabid" gun owners do...

 

Agree. Mandatory sentencing. Problem solved.

 

I'm fine with life in prison if a gun is used in the commission of a crime enhanced with death penalty if you kill someone.

 

Dear Leader Pelosi would disagree with you. She wants all the guns, period. She is not alone...

 

A, Natty Bumpo is not Pelosi. HE was not talking about "taking all guns" or even "taking" any. He was also not talking about "all gun owners"

B. I never hard Pelosi say that. Please link to a quote where Pelosi was to "take all guns"

Apparently the answer to the OP's question is a resounding NO

 

I didn't call them all rabid, your did- it's not my pretense. And, the GC side doesn't want to address the cause of people being shot, they want to address the weapon. That is logic equal to hitting your left thumb with the hammer in your right hand- and blaming the hammer for being so careless, demanding hammer manufacturers make it safer. Just as the person's hand controls that hammer, it is a person who pulls the trigger of a gun or wields any of hundreds of weapons to harm people.

Guns can be dangerous, but not hazardous. That means that by themselves- they pose no risk to you or me at all. However when a person with malicious intent picks one up, the danger becomes a potential- but totally in the control of the person. This is true of a chain saw, a hammer, and a howitzer. It takes people to kill. The weapon is secondary; removing it does not remove the danger of the person, the intent to kill. In the case of mass murders, that is almost always a person with a history of instability, violence and known mental issues. That is the active element that makes such violence possible. Why not address that walking time bomb?

Nobody wants to see firearms fatalities. I suspect that most gun owners cringe every time some idiot goes wacky, because they know the howl for more control of guns is endless, just waiting for another opportunity to demand that guns be controlled.... but the loonies that do these things? No. We can't talk about that. Of course while there are perhaps 10,000 potential nutcases we should be monitoring or controlling, there are 400 million guns, and we are far from knowing where they all are. It makes sense to the GC to ignore the 10,000 we could identify and impose regulations on the law-abiding people in an effort to keep those guns out of the hands of the 10,000.... who have no intent of respecting the law. A huge amount of energy- directed towards a cosmetic solution that doesn't have a chance in hell of producing results.

If the gun control people could widen their scope of thinking to murder control, and remember that in order to succeed, any plan must be practical and actually work- maybe the conversations would be better. Cosmetic actions to appease people may be popular among many, and when they don't work, invariably the cry is that it's still the right answer, we just didn't go far enough. IF laws- registration and controls- were going to have a significant impact on criminal use, we would be seeing a lot of that now. However the only correlation readily identifiable is the one between crime rates decreasing in direct relationship to concealed carry expanding. Again, while that is readily documented- GC people deny it.

I don't know any gun owner who is careless, who wants to see guns used improperly, who wants to make it easy for bad guys to get guns, that doesn't think criminal use of guns should carry high consequences. Not one. It's a matter of being logical in the approach to improving the issue. I have yet to read anything from the GC lobby that isn't just more of the same concept; it is guns that kill, not people. .

I believe the primary motivation in that is fear- fear of guns, in the same way some fear snakes. Those people don't differentiate between dangerous and harmless- their state of mind precludes that judgment capacity. Snakes are evil, do away with them. Even rubber toy snakes scare people like that. It's an irrational fear, but one that they do experience- and want someone else to protect them from.

 

No. He did not.

Your inability to be honest about that very basic and easily checked fact renders anything else you post null

Again...it is NOT possible to have an honest and respectful discussion about this

 

Sorry- that insult applied a label of "rabid" to anyone who "fancies" a gun. That is pretty much anyone who owns one.
And nobody wants nothing to be done- but some think that what we do should actually work, not be a cosmetic move to appease fears but fails to help.
Investing energy in useless acts only misdirects our focus, makes it harder to see the real issues and figure out what might actually work.

 

So you rearrange words to suit your argument (the way you do with the 2A)?

He very clearly was talking about a particular subset of gun nuts...

Your dishonesty is duly noted

 

I see... So, he's talking about rabid gun fanciers who don't agree with him.
However, that still pretty much includes all gun owners.
By the way, respectful discussions don't start by calling those you address "rabid".
Unless of course, you think believing you are righteous entitles you to treat others in a way that would be highly offensive to you if it was coming your way.

 

I never said that "all" gun owners were rabid. You made that up.

Do you have any recommendations regarding sensible legislation the United States might enact to effectively address its astronomical level of firearm fatalities compared to all other advanced nations, or do you advocate surrendering to it?

 

Thank you for reposting. I had been falsely accused as characterizing "all" gun owners as rabid.

 

Let me point out to readers that Bumpo started this thread, with:

"Can we have an honest, respectful discussion about guns in America?"

He then proceeds to respond to my post referring to gun fanciers as "rabid". It doesn't make any difference if he had only one or two in mind, but since he didn't say "some". It's pretty much left up to the reader of that comment to assume "Oh- but of course he didn't mean me...."

The book of proper internet flame decorum decrees that when you establish your thread with the premise of "honest, respectful" discussion, you must first wait until the other party refers you as a "bloated toad" (or the equivalent derogatory remark) before you can refer to people like them as "Rabid".

Tell us Bumpo- since you say the word "all" is false, then which gun owners in particular do you actually characterize as rabid? If it's not a general insult, exactly who are you insulting?

Since you certainly don't know most of them, how do you arrive at the diagnosis of their being "Rabid"?

 

Your dishonesty is that post alone shows that the answer to the OP is a resounding NOI

He did NOT claim that all gun owners were "rabid" anything...

This is not a lot different than the "deplorables" comment that Clinton made. She was clearly only talking about a subset of really out there Trump supporters (illustrated by the ones who showed up at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville)

If you think that in either case...that you are the ones being discussed...that's YOUR problem

 

Yes, you may not like to admit it, but there are "rabid" gun fanciers who assemble large arsenals of firearms and/or oppose all legislative initiatives to reduce the exceptionally high level of firearm fatalities in America, They, like their rabid opposite numbers that demand a total ban on private ownership of firearms, have nothing to contribute to an honest, respectful discussion.

Only reasonable folks willing to suggest serious measures that might be taken to reduce the gun carnage to that of other advanced nations have anything serious to offer, which I repeatedly solicit them to do.

If you wish to offer your proposals, please do so.

 

That's been done dozens of times by me- thousands of times by others, and GC people seem to be deaf to it. However...

We have two levels of persons who present risk to consider.
One is the basic criminal mindset, the person who uses violence as a way to negotiate life. Not surprisingly, by the time he has escalated to murder, he has a trail of various offenses the tell us of the risk he presents, which we generally ignore. Domestic violence and a list of less than murder crimes. NOT invisible- just ignored, other than we already have laws that prohibit the ownership or possession of arms by such a person. That allows us to punish him, IF we catch and convict him. As he does not object to violating the law, such laws do not prevent anything, only provide a consequence.

The other is the psychologically disturbed group of people. They are by far the type of person involved in mass shooting. However, while the trail here is usually different, like the Texas shooter- it's totally obvious that the person is dangerous. We basically ignore that too. This person is particularly dangerous- because the aspect of consequence means little to a person who expects to die during his crime anyway, often by his own hand. If we ignored the first level, which is usually targeting someone specific, the second is one that kills indiscriminately and often intends to kill large numbers. This is the Texas Church shooter profile; he was readily visible and on the radar of multiple authorities, but nobody did anything to prevent the inevitable event that all the signs forecast. Had that intervention happened, the death toll at that church would not have been "mitigated", or reduced- it would be Zero. Never happened.

We fail to take steps to monitor or control the relatively small number of people whose mindset makes them walking time bombs like that.
They are the catalyst element that allows violence to happen. The weapon is secondary.
Remove the catalyst and the threat disappears. Remove the gun, assuming that is was possible- and the choice of weapons changes, while the threat remains in place. Perhaps we "mitigate", but likely not. In 1927 a man killed 58 people in a school in Bath Michigan . Didn't have a gun, so he fire-bombed them. Once again- remove the person, the catalyst, and that mass murder total would also have been Zero.

I'm in favor of Zero. I'm not in favor of doing things that have no chance of success.
Try talking about things that will work, and you will get a lot of people in agreement.

Why are we not targeting the catalyst, monitoring and controlling the prime cause of the violence?

IF we had anywhere near the level of control over that element as we already practice over guns- you would already see a great deal of success.

 

I stand corrected. It was not Pelosi, but rather Fineslime... easy mistake as they are practically interchangeable.

 

You've identified people you think are a danger to society. Fine.

What's your solution? A "Minority Report" with capital consequences?

 

I thought so. SHE is talking about assault weapons...

 

That might be what she's saying in the context of this news story, but if she could confiscate every single firearm in private hands, you know she would do it. But I suppose you ageee with her on the 'assault weapons,' right?

 

Americans do not resign themselves to the astronomical level of firearm fatalities with no hope of lowering it to the much lower rate of all other advanced nations.

What legislative attempts to safeguard folks from homicidal gunsters do you support, if any?

 

So you admit you were wrong but you're a mind reader.

Oh...