As if this incident weren’t horrifying enough. 
@beschizza: your headline is painfully accurate; the woman executed her daughters. I don’t have words to explain how broken this country is.
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This is why we need Fundamentalist Mormonism.
The only thing that could have stopped a bad mom with a gun
is a good mom with a gun.
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I’m not following the logic on the fundamental mormonism part. Please, elaborate.
Probably, but when it comes to people who have ten guns because they’re convinced that Obama is poised to take away eight of them…
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Too bad the police killed her that day. Had she survived, she might have been elected Governor.
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…then I guess she only ever really wanted to have two firearms, else she would have had just five.
Or she only wanted three, but could not afford five more?
Thanks Obama?
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You know … where I live, and despite the rhetoric from fear-mongering quarters in the US, there is no outright ban to owning firearms by private citizens. There are also, AFAICT, no predefined regulations or barriers ‘for some’ to own firearms*. And as a private citizen I can own a machine gun or a musket, or a pistol or a full on cannon if I want to.
But if I want to own a firearm I have to get a licence, and that involves cost (not huge, but not piffling) and requires safety training, and deliberately involves delay, and an inspection of my house to ensure I have appropriate storage facilities, and also requires interviews with me and some nominated referees. And if I want to keep that licence I have to go through the process again on a regular basis (every 5 years? Maybe 10?). That’s for a basic licence, for a small-magazine bolt action or semi-automatic rifle, or a shotgun. If I want something more exciting I have to get a higher class of licence, and the requirements for that are increasingly more stringent, including - in the case of a pistol licence - that I am a member of a pistol shooting club and that I regularly (EVERY month) attend the club and do some shooting. There are also strict rules on the storage and carriage of weapons, including that pistols must be in a locked container at all times when not being used at a range. The net result is that getting and maintaining a firearms licence is kind of a PITA, and most people just don’t bother. Hunters do, of course, and good on them. So do farmers, naturally. I don’t, but my partner does because she wants to keep the rifle her father gave her (it’s not especially flash - just a .22LR, but it has a lot of sentimental value). Collectors do, of course, and I have several friends with licences for pistols and/or military-style semi automatics with whom I go shooting occasionally.
Do people still get shot? Of course they do, but its rare, and a large part of that is idiot hunters shooting their mates because they didn’t bother to properly identify their target. Is there still gun crime? Of course, but it’s so vanishingly rare that most incidents are reported on the news, regardless of whether anyone was hurt … or even if there were shots fired. And yes, there are firearms suicides, but not THAT many, especially given that it’s actually quite awkward to fatally shoot yourself with a rifle. I think farmers, as a group, are especially susceptible to firearms suicide - the social isolation coupled with the financial pressures associated with farming are a problematic combination.
All of which is a longwinded way of saying: this is a solved problem. You can have open access to firearms AND firearms safety. You don’t even need a 2nd amendment.
Jon
'* or if there are, they’re very few. The minimum age to get a firearms licence much lower than either the voting, drinking, or driving age. Criminals released from prison can - as a class, if not in all individual cases - get firearms since they have, after all, completed their sentence. Mental illness isn’t a barrier in and of itself. And so on.
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some folks ought to be drowned at birth…!
There was a “gun nut mom” involved in the Roseburg mass shooting as well.
Now I am thinking Gun Nut Mom is a character like Florida Man.
You never know what she’s gonna do.
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Other than a car, I feel a gun is the quickest way to go from a temporary problem to a tragically permanent solution.
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Polygamy is the joke. Many wives = many moms. /jokesplain
The thing about most rights is that you need to be alive in order to exercise them.
The right not to be shot shouldn’t be an afterthought.
The “Zeroth” Amendment, we might say.
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This. What is free speech, guns, privacy and very other right worth if the state (or in this case: other citizens) is allowed to kill you? But that opens a discussion about the death penalty - another can of worms …
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Plenty of Right Wing Christian nutjobs think they are God’s Law and God made America.
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According to AP she’s been having mental health problems for years and her marriage was crumbling. But her reason for calling a family meeting was her objection to the oldest daughter’s fiancé, to the point where she wanted to ground the 22 year old to keep them apart.
urgh. now a need a Trump chaser.
A world without guns is one in which the “sheep” can gang up. Look at dogs. Or flocking birds.
In a world without guns the Athenians managed to create a mass oligarchy. Both South American tribespeople and Inuit managed to create remarkably non-hierarchical societies. I don’t know who Sam Harris is but I’m pretty confident he is neither and anthropologist nor a sociologist.
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They know that a mistake or an accident while they are trying to help others could result in them being charged with murder.
Point 3 is important. If you are (collectively) determined that access to killing tools is a fundamental human right, do you really want that right contingent on the decisions of psychologists, i.e. people like me, i.e. witch-doctors? Which other rights would you let me take away if if you tick the wrong boxes on my check-list or my clinical judgement tells me that your eyes are excessively crazy?
Picking on “people with mental illness” as The Other, and designating them as the source of the problem – the rest of us, we’re just fine! – that isn’t going to work.
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normally I don’t imagine the looks of random commenters in the interwarbs, but I will make an exception for you
(I know, cannibals. but my brain is weird)
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