I say we politicize the shit out of this shooting. Let's broadcast it on every TV news station day in and day out, and force President Obama, every congressperson, the heads of the NRA, and every NRA supporter to explain why it makes sense to continue living in an America in which the barrier for entry to gun ownership is this low. While we're at it, let's also ask why, in virtually every instance, mental-health services remain considerably more difficult and expensive to obtain than handguns. Until the day we begin doing those things, it will not be those of us calling for politicization who are failing the victims of gun violence; it will be those who sit, weep, and consistently promise to get started on the gun problem tomorrow.
-Cord Jefferson
You can read the rest of his excellent article HERE.
Maybe you need to restrict the ammunition that an individual could buy. One bullet per gun per year. If you want extra rounds they should cost you 1000 dollars per.
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8 comments:
Yet another reason why I love you, Cal (i.e., this post).
xoRobyn
Disagree. I blogged about it yesterday. Living in Mexico where guns are banned is how I have come to appreciate the U.S. stance on guns. We need them. In Mexico we live in daily fear of the mafia and zeta gangs. When guns are outlawed then the outlaws have the guns.
I have sympathy for your situation and am glad I live in a place where guy 'accidents' or 'incidents' are remarkably low. I prefer my way of living.
As an American, and a gun owner I think the article and the idea of "one bullet a year per gun" are to put it nicely facile at best. I hunt, I shoot for fun, I even carry a licensed handgun, I'm not going to go into a huge diatribe on your blog about gun rights, but I will say that limiting access to firearms won't solve this problem. Hell, it appears the guns used in this shooting weren't even the guy's anyways so even if he couldn't have purchased them due to tighter laws, he still would have gotten them. It's a tragedy plain and simple and I feel for the parents and families involved, but restrictive gun control won't solve this. As Hobgoblin283 said if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have them. I'm with Heinlein "an armed society is a polite society." All that said, I do agree that access to mental health care should be more readily available here in the US.
I am all of the thing Jeff said and I agree with all of that. I'm not the problem, I wish I had the solution. I don't. Motivated and unstable are a very bad combination.
The more guns you guys have I don't see your society become any politer, especially when I watch your vision political discord.
Canada has so many less guns, so many less gun massacres per capita and a government that can actually get things done. We were lucky to realize a long time a go that we didn't need to emulate you and we have chose to learn from your mistakes. Does that make us UNSAFE? Hardly. But I guess the world of fear where everyone and everything not like you is the enemy it's hard to make the leap into enlightenment.
And before you bitch me out, being shot at for saving a girl who would have been beatened and murdered by her drunken boyfriend in now way turn me into a gun carrier.
He wants to know "why"?
That question has been asked and answered millions of times. It will be asked and answered over and over again in the coming weeks.
He just doesn't like the answer.
You're looking for reasonable compromise... Let's play "what if", Cal:
You now have the power, today, to pass any gun control law you can devise. Go nuts.
How could you possibly restrict my ability (via gun control laws) so that I could not go to an elementary school tomorrow and kill twice as many kids - if that is what I chose to do?
Remember.. it would have to be a law restricting guns and/or ammunition. And "success" of the law isn't measured by how good or safe it makes you *feel*. It isn't measured by how many guns you get off the street, out of the hands of gun owners, or how hard it makes it for me to buy another gun.
Simple test of success for your gun control law: Stop me from killing the kids.
Go...
Over your head again, eh..?
I hate guns, but also hate the knife slaching of 22 kids in China, which has gotten little international attention.
Ban knives then..?
Of the large states in the union with guns allowed (like TX and NM), you don't have any significant array of shootings or violence. It's sick individuals who slip through the cracks and invoke this sick violence for attention. I'm still concerned for the Sikh mass shootings here in Wisconsin months ago, nary generating a presidential visit, which was oddly telling.
Our president seems very selective in his concern.
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