Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
NRA at its’ best…
My heart goes out to the victims and their families, along with the victims and families of the next several senseless mass-shootings which will happen in the coming weeks and months because Americans have such fucked-up priorities that they will continue to accept the status quo rather than actually do anything to prevent this kind of thing.
I’ve seen this horror show enough times I could probably recite the next ten posts by heart so this seems as good a time as any to take a break from social media for a while. See you in a month or two.
I was just listening to a podcast this morning that was recorded in June but only just broadcast. They made a reference to the Charleston shooting, noting that it wouldn’t be timely in the podcast but there would doubtless be another shooting that had happened in the meantime. And there you go.
Hold out your hand like you have a gun in it. Now pretend to shoot someone. Did they die? No, of course not, because you didn’t have a gun and you didn’t intend to kill anyone. Maybe if people who wanted to actually shoot someone didn’t have a gun, they couldn’t shoot anyone too. Just a thought…
My tangential take:
I used to be a gun owner, not anymore, my guns got stolen. They were locked up very appropriately in a secure facility (not my home), some very thorough thieves apparently wanted them (or the money form pawning them) more than I did.
Point is, I have almost no desire to replace my guns. Sure, target shooting was a fun hobby that I really enjoyed. But hearing about all this gun violence just makes it seem kinda gross. I just can’t justify going out and buying more guns.
With my new hobby, woodworking, at least if I’m careless I’d probably only injure myself and not accidentally kill someone else.
Try sawdust explosions - nice AND dangerous! : )
General hunting season, in this area - west of the Cascades - for bucks, opens on Saturday. I’m not feeling much like getting out the hunting rifle…
Awful.
I’ve reached this weird fucked-up full-circle on gun control, where if we’re not going to have any, I’m starting to think I should have one.
Gonna take about a week before the Infowars types say this was another false-flag operation by a black tresonous President who wants to take away YOUR guns. For all the smoke and noise, why hasn’t it worked?
A week? On Reddit they start within minutes if not seconds. Really.
The Infowars types use a story like this the way a 13-year-old boy uses a tube sock.
Another wannabe-gun-control thread that will make feel-good noise and accomplish exactly the same as the similar threads before.
Better go read up on electrical discharge machining. With a 3d printer mechanics and one added axis, possibly operated from the extruder stepper output to minimize the amount of needed changes in the hardware/firmware, it could be used for making rifling in barrels. The feedback for the z-axis from the EDM’s capacitor bank voltage can be handled with an external python script generating g-code, if we wouldn’t want to putz too much with the firmware of the printer controller itself.
More of the gun control I’ve heard proposed recently wouldn’t fix much. (though I suppose a fractional improvement will eventually mean one less mass shooting if mass shootings become prevalent enough…)
I hope we get some more public discourse about violence, privilege, entitlement, and gender. I’ve been meaning to write to Obama with some general thanks. Maybe I should finally do so and include some thoughts along those lines.
edit: from my removed 10 minute research session - the gun control I hear about deals with legal transfers, which covers maybe 3% of the 300 million weapons in more than 40% of US homes.
If only we didn’t have violent mass media such as violent movies, TV, and videogames, this wouldn’t happen.
Whether it’s a cyber mob or just a handful of hateful acts, the end result is maintaining and reinforcing and normalizing a culture of violence — where violent people are supported by their peers and rewarded for their violent attitudes and behaviors, and the nonviolent are dismissed as un-American wusses.
The rest of the world watches and plays with the same media. Yet we stand alone.
I wrote this list of things we could do regarding gun control a few months ago. I’d say exactly which mass shooting it was in response to, but there’ve been so many I DON’T REMEMBER.
First:
- Abolish the second amendment. It was created over 200 years ago when you could fire a single-shot musket once every 5 minutes or so, and had basically even odds of hitting someone with your shot. It was not designed to deal with the kinds of weaponry and standing armies we have today. The second amendment is not sacrosanct, it can be modified or repealed through a new constitutional amendment.
To improve the general safety and accountability of gun ownership commensurate with the danger these weapons pose:
- Create a national registry of firearms and link them to their owners. We do this (at the state level) with cars and even some prescription drugs, so doing it with a lethal weapon doesn’t seem like a terrible stretch.
- Require a license for all firearms, which must be renewed annually through a re-application process requiring no less than three hours of firearms training relevant to the type of weapon being licensed, as well as a psychiatric evaluation to assess the mental fitness of the potential owner.
- Every additional firearm purchased by an individual must require similar registration, training, and screening.
To reduce the dangers of criminals with guns:
- No firearm may be sold without first having its barrel rifling pattern recorded along with its serial number, so that in the event of a crime, its owner can be located.
- Gun owners who lose their guns or have them stolen from them will be obligated to file a police report, and gun sales must be reported to a state authority.
- If a weapon is not reported as sold, lost, or stolen and the firearm is used in a crime, the original owner will be considered to have aided and abetted in the commission of that crime.
- In the event of a stolen weapon being used in the commission of a crime, negligent ownership on the part of the rightful license holder will be grounds for criminal charges, regardless of whether the weapon was reported stolen.
- Create a fund, backed by the addition of a tax on gun and ammunition sales, that can be used to institute a permanent federal gun buy-back program (ideally one which rewards more than 100% of the gun’s current value). If a registered gun is stolen and then traded in to the buy-back program, the owner can file a report, the gun can be returned to them, and the person who traded it in would also be on record to pursue for the theft.
To aid in the process of “making whole” those families who are victims of gun violence:
- Require every gun owner to carry insurance for their firearms.
- Eliminate liability lawsuit immunity for gun manufacturers.
- Establish a fund, also backed by the firearm/ammo sales tax, that can be tapped by victims and their families to provide for medical care and/or funeral costs.
And we did not have, nor did the founders want a standing army hence the militia wording. This is also a big big difference now.
I read about this and wanted to find out more information, so I did a Google search for “Oregon college shooting”. Here’s the results page. WTF.
And this isn’t our first nightmare-rodeo. A little over 1-hour away:
