Shooting at CT Elementary School. WTF AMERICA?!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Effect on the murder rates with guns or the total figure.

What possible difference does that make?  If you're dead, you're dead, whether you are shot with an illegal gun, stabbed, strangled, whatever.

Because there probably isn't a rate from a time when there are no guns in recent years, which pushes me towards the Lost cause column again.
It's now half one, I have to get up for work in five an a half hours.

There has never been a time in America in which there were no guns.

Except for her entire history pre Columbus.

Yes, because that's totally relevant to the United States.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

i don't see what the failing of the typical explanation is, i.e. the self-reliance required by a frontier society, and a heritage of mistrust of govt.

Bolded part is utter goo and drivel.  The American public worships the government.  Part of that worship is pretending to despise it, which they do poorly.

Americans worship all manner of things that don't actually exist.  Government is pretty much #2.

The other part is drivel too.  People on the frontier need tight communities.  There's room for hermits and mountain men, but they're dependent on the communities that they trade with and those communities were way more in one another's business than any modern American would be willing to put up with.

Absolutely.  No support system = death.

[LMNO]

To even imagine how a lone person could survive on the frontier brings to mind a savage existence of subsistance farming and malnutrition.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

To even imagine how a lone person could survive on the frontier brings to mind a savage existence of subsistance farming and malnutrition.

Death by rabbit starvation.  Or a broken arm.  Or an absessed tooth.  Or simple exhaustion.

Humans are primates; we have a pack mentality for a reason.   We're not good at ANYTHING individually.  We can't sprint worth a damn, fight, or even hide.  In groups, though, nothing has ever stopped us.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

To even imagine how a lone person could survive on the frontier brings to mind a savage existence of subsistance farming and malnutrition.

Death by rabbit starvation.  Or a broken arm.  Or an absessed tooth.  Or simple exhaustion.

Humans are primates; we have a pack mentality for a reason.   We're not good at ANYTHING individually.  We can't sprint worth a damn, fight, or even hide.  In groups, though, nothing has ever stopped us.

It's so weird how the forum keeps spitting up new unread replies to posts, even when I thought I'd tapped that well dry.

And yeah, basic human survival is social in nature. "Lone survivalists" quickly become "That skeleton we found in a cabin in the woods".

[Cain]

Lolz.  So it turns out, Wayne LaPierre was another Vietnam draft-dodger.  "Nervous disorder", was the diagnosis.

[Salty]

Lolz.  So it turns out, Wayne LaPierre was another Vietnam draft-dodger.  "Nervous disorder", was the diagnosis.

Oh man, I can't wait to happily deliver that information to the fella I saw standing at a stoplight with a cardboard sign reading: FIRST HITLER TOOK GUNS.

[Salty]

I actually nearly shit myself with laughter.

This guy, this blubber bubuh, is doesn't give a shit about money=speech, thus making either term useless, doesn't give a shit about warrant-less wiretapping or other, many other, 4th amendment violations, doesn't even stand out there concerned that Obama can execute any citizen. No.

But his pistol grips. Oh heavens no.

FTR, I don't agree 100% with pro or anti gun people. I am gun agnostic. Certainly I don't think Joe Biden is going to save anybody's life.

[Cain]

Lolz.  So it turns out, Wayne LaPierre was another Vietnam draft-dodger.  "Nervous disorder", was the diagnosis.

Oh man, I can't wait to happily deliver that information to the fella I saw standing at a stoplight with a cardboard sign reading: FIRST HITLER TOOK GUNS.

Which, incidentally, he didn't.

Except from the Jews, of course.  Hitler in fact liberalised the previously stingent gun laws of the Weimar Republic.  Hitler made great hay about armed gangs in 1932, but that was an election year, and by "armed gangs" he meant the KPD's paramilitary wing.  His own paramilitary wing was curiously not mentioned at all...

Also, Sandy Hook was staged by Obama in order to take all your guns.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/professor-won-t-back-down-newtown-massacre-conspiracy-183530799.html

The commentary on the above piece is interesting, as I am seeing places where people are saying he said that Obama staged the entire massacre then used paid actors to pose as the parents, in order to take away guns.

Which is, to put it bluntly, not so.

The professor writes on his blog, Memory Hole, "While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place—at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described." He suggests that there were multiple shooters and that the number of dead is incorrect. The blog post was published on the Global Research site, where it caught the attention of the Web.

The academic, who is known for his conspiracy theories on 9/11 and the Oklahoma bombing, believes—as he claims on his blog and recently stated on a radio show—that trained "crisis actors" may have been employed by the Obama administration to shape public opinion on gun control.

The 47-year-old, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in mass communication, wrote on his blog, " As documents relating to the Sandy Hook shooting continue to be assessed and interpreted by independent researchers there is a growing awareness that the media coverage of the massacre of 26 children and adults was intended primarily for public consumption to further larger political ends."

Questioning the police and whether there where in fact multiple shooters isn't entirely crazy.  And of course the media coverage of the massacre is being put towards political ends.  I just doubt those ends are the seizure of guns.

[Cain]

FP crunched the numbers: no correlation between gun ownership and freedom

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/01/09/guns_dont_kill_dictatorships_people_do

Edit: also, when someone stopped a shooting with their own weapon, they were a trained professional with a firearm http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/18/a_league_of_our_own?page=full

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Heh.  Figured.

What most people don't realize is what happens to your perceptions when you get in a situation like that.  It takes frequent training to do things automatically.  Going to the range once a month doesn't cut it.

[Mangrove]

Heh.  Figured.

What most people don't realize is what happens to your perceptions when you get in a situation like that.  It takes frequent training to do things automatically.  Going to the range once a month doesn't cut it.

I have a friend who was a SWAT trainer. One of the drills they had to do was soak their arms up to the elbows in ice water and then demonstrate they could still maintain, load & shoot their weapons effectively with severely reduced dexterity. The numbing from the ice was said to simulate the state of being highly adrenalized in an extreme situation.

Of all the people I know with guns, if shit went down, Steve is the only guy who I would actually want around. The rest of them are either totally out of practise or believe that standing in a shooting range makes them combat ready.

[Pergamos]

I'm a moderate when it comes to gun control.  I'd like to see them licensed and registered like automobiles.  However registration is not going to happen as long as there is a credible threat of it leading to confiscation.

[Cain]

Or even an uncredible but widely perceived threat.

My preference is for that kind of system myself, though living as I am in the UK, our problem is overly strict gun control.  It is bad enough here that our own Olympic marksmanship team has to live and practice in Switzerland, because sporting is not a valid enough excuse for a gun licence.  My preference is for that over a far too permissive gun regime, but I'm not going to pretend either are really preferable options.

[Pergamos]

So to look at it from another perspective, what keeps the UK from liberalizing their gun laws?  I know that inertia is part of what keeps guns nearly unregulated in the US and nearly non existent in the UK, but I assume it is more than that.