The Terrible Tragedy in CT, and what do we do about it?

[TX82FIAT]

Surfingfreeman, I would not consider it a slam dunk that someone with an eating disorder is only killing themself. The obesity rate in the united states is out of control and killing millions with things like heart disease, high bood pressure, diabetes.... This is something that people can control but in many cases have a mental aversion or lack of education to control what they put in thier mouth.

What casuses a large portion of the Americans to be obese is the evolution of our self indulgent fast food culture.

What causes an increase in gun violence is an evolution of our self indulgent violent culture.

Some very well thought out responses for enforcement of the laws on the books, stiffer penalties for crimes where an illegal gun is used and sweeping the streets. Various sugestions will treat the cancer. However, the shift to serve others, respect life, other people property is a cultural shift that can not be legislated.

Respect for other includes opinons expressed on all sides of a discussion and not belittling the thought by calling it "low hanging fruit"

[RRoller123]

I think it is pretty obvious to most of us that the cultural change is/will be the hardest. Look at today's general media and the messages that they send. Now I am not advocating going backwards to the corny stuff of the 50's and 60's, but at least there generally were positive messages projected, a focus on fairness, right from wrong, adherence to law, egalitarianism, etc. For example, why do thay have to go back to Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph with Burl Ives, Mr. Magoo Christmas Special, etc. to get anything wholesome and heartwarming for the kids? There's almost nothing in the past 40-50 years that would work? Today the moral and ethical messages embedded in media product are all garbled and mixed up, and I think it is just for commercial purposes. They know that crap sells, so they do it. Creates and promotes crappy thinking, and therby more demand for crap. The Media, Entertainment and Hollywood elites have a lot of soul searching to do, and this is a cultural issue that goes way beyond firearms.

[TX82FIAT]

One other thing that just came to mind and I don't think is getting any attention. There is some irony in people looking to the US Goverment to solve a gun use issue via "gun control". This is the same Goverment that released control of guns in the "Fast and Furious" scandal. They had a program that knowingly put weapons in the hands of Mexican cartel criminals resulting in the loss of how many lives?

We need to stop looking to Government for answers and do the best we can each and every day in our lives to be caring, giving, self sufficient people. We the people have the power to change our culture one person at a time and one decisions at a time. Move away from self indugence and indifferent sloth by changing the channel and spending your dollars someplace else. Money talks, ratings, box office sales, video game sales all reflect what we spend our money on and the demand we place on these items. If enough individuals recognize we are the change agents of our culture then we can create a tipping point. OR... we can just look to the Goverment to solve an impossible cultural issue. If we continue to turn to the goverment instead of looking within ourselves as people that can change things, then our personal control will only deteriorate further.

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian" Henry Ford

[surfingfreeman]

Hi TX82Fiat
I stand by what I said, and of course I respect your right to voice your opinion. But again trying to draw an analogy between government controlling people's eating habits by controlling the size of their eating utensils (which the government is not doing), to the government controlling firearms that are used to murder innocent people, makes no sense to me. When was the last time you read a headline saying "obese woman kills 20 school children with over-sized ice cream spoon"???????? That being said this debate over gun control came up during my family's Christmas dinner and it was discussed how video games have become so realistic and violent and may well have the potential to be desensitizing our children and I now think that there may well be some truth to this. As I thought back to my childhood we had games like Pac-Man and asteroids and atari but this has all changed for the worse, not sure on a solution.

[RRoller123]

Just today there is a letter in the WSJ whereby it is stated that new armed forces recruits since 1980 (roughly when the shooting video games came out) are much less disturbed by shooting humans. It is surmised by the writer that there is indeed desensitization due to video game violence. I personally think it is de facto obvious, it is just that we are so constantly immersed in this crap that it is a "forest for the trees" problem in identifying it.

[Gunsmith]

Surfingfreeman,

I think you are missing the point of the analogy he was making. Although the spoon was the tool the obese person used to get fat it was the behavior that really caused the problem and if there was not a spoon the obese would just eat with their hands. I don't think he was trying to say people kill with spoons although no doubt someone probably has. I know they do in prison.

The problem has not come about overnight and unfortunately can not be solved over night with some draconian law. Judging by your video game references I would say we are about the same age. There were plenty of shoot em up movies back then as well but most of us did not turn into killers. I believe the difference in the games and movies of then and now is what goes unnoticed. Even though there were movies like Rambo and Alien and plenty died or got shot in them there was still value placed on human life. When a character was killed it caused the hero to act to protect others I don't think that same message is given in modern media it's just kill as much as you can with no real reason. Also in our video game days you had three lives for a quarter. If you did not protect yourself or pay attention or save the girl it was "Game Over". Remember that saying from the 80's? Anyways as silly as it sounds there was finality in death even in a video game, if you ran out of quarters you were done. Today when I watched my nephew play his latest video game joined by people all over the world I noticed all they did was graphically destroy everything in sight and they could even walk through lava and not die. When I asked what the goal of destroying everything was he said to keep going up to the next level. So it's not like the old movies or games where you were trying to save the princess and yourself it is just destroy more than the other guys. I really think that has a lot to do with what's wrong. So many of the shoot em up movies and games have no purpose to save the girl or value any of the characters lives it seems.

So what I don't understand is if the presence of a firearm is supposed to cause violence why do so many anti gun people say the content in the media that is viewed has no effect? It just does not make sense to me. You would to have an evil thought and act on it to use a gun but all you have to do to view violence is sit on your butt in front of the screen and do nothing.

I also don't understand how antigun proponents say that modern firearms should not be covered in the 2nd Amendment but this Internet we are using right now is covered under the 1st amendment? The argument I have heard is that they only had muskets back then and not semiautomatic rifles but keep in mind they where also sate of the art back then and were the military rifle of the time as well. In fact every firearm type has been a military firearm at some point. So when I hear the term "Military style assault rifle" I am perplexed as every firearm was of military style at some point in history. It would also have been much easier for our founding fathers to comprehend a modern mechanical semiautomatic rifle we have today over this IPad I am using right now to exercize my 1st amendment right don't you?

I have not met an anti gunner yet that has not told me how important the 1st amendment right is to our country and covers everything including extreme graphic violence and pornography but I hardly think that is what the founding fathers thought of when they drafted the 1st amendment do you? I would say they were probably thinking about being able to voice decent with your government or being able to call them out as needed. But the left says that Internet porn is what the 1st amendment is?

So it is ok to expand the 1st amendment to what ever media and subject you like but the 2nd must be cut down as far as possible. Now before you say words don't kill but guns do I beg to differ. How many kids and even adults have committed suicide over being bullied over the Internet without one physical punch thrown?

The statement of "We have to do something or start some where" should be followed with "By trying to understand the root of the problem" not disarming the weak and volnerable and see if that works. I think part of the problem is that most anti gunners when they think of gun owners think of some bearded overall wearing simpleton hiding in the trees and not a single mother protecting her family from a crazed lunatic. It is much easier to tell the big burly man he will have to use his fists to protect himself rather than tell the mother she has to decide which one of her children will she sacrifice in order to save the others when attacked isn't it? Before you scoff at this know this does happen.

The statement of we have to limit access to these weapons also leaves me guessing how this is supposed to work? There are already laws on the books for this as have been stated on this thread over and over but I guess someone has some great new idea for a lock that detects if you're a lunatic or not?

The consequences of passing poorly written and researched legislation is too great to let it happen.

[narfire]

The problem has not come about overnight and unfortunately can not be solved over night with some draconian law

So true... It will take a generation or perhaps two, to try and get the negative fire arm related statistics to perhaps close to where other countries that have a more restricted fire arm policy in place. How that is done will take politicians with some spine, without knee-jerk responses and are workable/doable, and not really punish the gun owners that are responsible. Rights or privilage??? Drivers licences are privilages,fire arms are currently a right I believe.
Impossible???, time will tell, but the current state of affairs I don't think are the way to go.
A qualifier...I own a 30-06 and a 870 sawed down legally with folding stock,extended tube mag..(legal for protection from predatory animals only)(Forestry related issues) and re-load for the 06. I enjoy reloading and punching holes in paper,used to hunt more frquently, but find it expensive. I used to have to renew a possesion licence every 5 years. If I had been found guilty of certain offences/mental health issues other than continually working/fixing Fiats, I would not have been able to renew the licence and have to forfit or sell my two guns. The current government has now ki-boshed the registry and destroyed all information about citizens ownership from the past 15 years.
Going backwards in my opinion.
Chris

[Gunsmith]

The reason as is given when most gun control laws are dropped or abandoned is that they cost many more millions than anticipated to impliment and maintain and have little to no affect on criminal behavior. Canada found not enough benefit (if any) to justify the cost to the tax payer. According to Canadian law enforcement I spoke with.

[courtenay]

Interestingly enough, most law enforcement agencies in Canada were in favour of keeping the gun registry. The bulk of the cost had already been sunk in establishing the thing with the ongoing costs being relatively minor. The real issue was that we have a Conservative Government who bowed to the right wing element within their constituency to eliminate the long gun registration process. I agree with Chris that it was a backward move.

[Gunsmith]

What I find interesting is the press searches very hard to find those in law enforcement that agree with their position to quote but rarely show law enforcement with an opposing view to theirs. I spend a considerable amount of time with law enforcement even from many other countries and they regularly say gun control is a myth.

[surfingfreeman]

Brother Gunsmith
Can you site where you got this info, are there any statistics to back it up? Your info regarding Canadian gun law controversy seems to run counter to Chris & Courtney's experience????????

"The reason as is given when most gun control laws are dropped or abandoned is that they cost many more millions than anticipated to impliment and maintain and have little to no affect on criminal behavior"

Just curious.

Mike

[Gunsmith]

I will try to remember where I read the article on it but most of the information I got on it came from some Canadian SWAT team members. They would have no reason to make it up I would imagine?

[Jimb]

Chris & Courtney are quite correct...and I know a lot of law enforcement officers first hand.

Jim

[RRoller123]

Well said, Gunsmith about your observations on protection of first versus second amendment rights. If the Second only covers muskets, then logically the First only covers quill pen, inkwell and paper, and the US Postal Service is going to make a miraculous recovery!

My memory reading in the WSJ about the dismantling of the Canadian Registry was that there was no measurable effect upon crime rate, and the money was thereby being wasted. Programs like this may make people feel that they are doing something, but if that something proves not to work, at least the Canadians had the guts to change it. We in the US keep doing many governmental things that don't work, and in fact we are stupid enough to just keep throwing more money into them as well!

[Gunsmith]

Well my Canadian neighbors I don't know what to tell you I only know what I have read and heard from your own Law Enforcement Officers and the fact that your Government decided to abandon the program. How many people were prosecuted under the program anyways?

Either way it really doesn't matter what happens in Canada anyway I suppose. We may share a boarder but have very different cultures for sure. Down here in South Florida we have a ton of your friends, neighbors and relatives that have decided to live here. Many of them have also become high capacity pistol and rifle owners as well. So far I am not aware of any of them loosing their minds and using their new found freedom of gun ownership in a negative way. Like many of have said it is a cultural view on life that makes the difference.

I'll ask again:

What gun control measures do you feel need to be put into law?

How will they work?

What will the penalty be?

What will this cost?

How will this affect law enforcements job?

How do you think the 150 million American gun owners will react to this new law or laws?

I don't see why these are such hard questions to ask of those of you that insist we need more laws to protect the innocent from the evil and the criminally insane?

Since the question of what is shown in Movies and video games come up on both sides of the issue both for and against regulation in these areas why don’t you tell me what we should or should not do there? Are you also for or against more regulation on the 1st Amendment?