It’s American Exceptionalism. That’s the excuse they’re dancing around. Because America is #1, and stronger and better and other bullshit that isn’t actually true, any sensible thing another country does that someone here doesn’t like “wouldn’t work here” because 'MURICA.
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Kinda off-topic but I’m inordinately curious: is the chance of/unfortunate history of mass shootings something families and potential students take into account when selecting colleges to attend? Or are they ultimately too ‘random’ (probably not the right word but you know what I mean?), or is there perhaps too many other factors to take into account when applying for colleges?
(And is it @chgoliz who has a daughter selecting colleges right now? I guess it’s mainly her I’m thinking about with regards to this post. And I apologise if these questions are inappropriate or too close to the bone right now.)
But there is a movement to police drivers, force them to carry insurance, and have them go through a mandatory test for a driver’s license. If you fail the test, you don’t have a license.
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My daughter started her sophomore year at college a week ago.
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It does feel lonely…
Ok. So were potential of/history of mass shootings at colleges a factor when you guys were choosing schools to apply to?
Never came up. Lack of civilised healthcare was enough to scrub all US schools from contention.
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No because they aren’t predictable or follow a pattern. The college my daughter wanted to attend was the primary factor.
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In twenty years of arguing wth pro-gun USAdians on the 'net, I’m yet to run across an explanation for the extraordinarily high USAdian murder rate that doesn’t ultimately reduce to “it’s because we have too many black people” (as an attempted counter-explanation to “it’s because we have too many idiots with guns”).
White supremacy is America’s original sin, and it continues to screw up everything it touches.
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So, you’re a supporter of Nixon?
Even Hitler loved dogs:
The evilest people in the world usually still have a few sympathetic traits.
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Once you’ve dismissed those whose opinions, values and experiences differ from your own as being psychopathic, homicidal, insecure, inadequate, paranoid, wanton, irrational, unsophisticated and small-in-the-bulge your chances of finding a middle ground are practically nil.
But I think we all can agree that these are horrible tragedies and that we want them to stop.
No, they just haven’t used them yet. If they target shoot, they are only practicing for when they have to use the gun - to shoot a target. If I buy a fishing pole and never go fishing, but rather just swing it around in my backyard, that doesn’t mean it is designed for anything other than catching fish.
I checked out of this one too. Gun people are crazy. My friend showed me his new Beretta yesterday. It was beautiful. But he’s crazy. And so are all the other gun obsessed weirdoes who think more guns are somehow magically going to make school killings less prevalent. Lol, that’s crazy talk because we are already in the era of more guns. More isn’t solving shit. But the comic was right: this debate may rage but the issue is essentially settled because nothing is going to change about guns for many years. So blow off steam but there is no point.
Even if you were right, that’s not an argument for not doing it.
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“The shooter was asking people to stand up and state their religion and then started firing away, Moore said”
Hmmm. It will be interesting to find out more about the shooter. It’s an old, long-debunked myth among certain right-wing Christian types that one of the Columbine shooters did just this. Wonder if this guy spent too much time on web sites promoting such ideologies. Too soon to tell, I guess.
It would be more trouble than its worth to remove the second amendment. That is, you’d need a revolution to tamper with the Bill of Rights–and frankly, I’d be aginnit. Not that I want to own a gun, but I want the right.
In a society with its head on straight, I think pretty much all the other actions you’ve outlined would work. None of those would keep you from owning a firearm for hunting, target shooting or home protection.
Instead, how about we ONLY allow musket and black powder rifles? IT WAS THE FOUNDER’S INTENT! Even the police.
Heck, make ownership mandatory.
Of course, bayonetting would skyrocket.
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It occurred to me that maybe gun reformers are going about this the wrong way. What we need to do is convince the NRA that there is money to be made in the promotion of safer, stricter, saner gun laws.
They’ll come to the party if they know they’ll be able to get theirs snouts good and wet.
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