TOM THE DANCING BUG: The Last Comic Strip About a Mass Shooting Tragedy You'll Ever Have to Read

boing
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And yet @PhasmaFelis is bringing up friggin’ bolt-action rifles which is entirely my point – the rate of fire simply isn’t there to kill all those Newtown children so quickly, like the AR-15 did.

Assault rifles have a unique combination of extremely high velocity, physically large rounds, high capacity mags, and rapid fire. Which results in, well, this:

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You hear stories of people surviving multiple handgun wounds all the time. It’s common. But if you get hit even once by the massive kinetic energy behind the ‘as fast as you can pull the trigger’ semi-auto assault rifle, you ain’t going anywhere but the grave, pal, tout suite.

So yeah, carry around all the bolt action rifles, pistols, and shotguns you want. Be my guest. Use them for whatever civil liberty enforcement and militia regulation deemed necessary, you magnificent bastards.

Just get rid of the assault rifles.

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I never really understood the dogmatic view that some law or right or privilege or freedom etc is unchageble. If a old law says something that isn’t pratical or doesn’t ably anymore then just change it.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” -L. P. Hartley

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Race-baiting? Good lord, that’s hilarious. And evidence as well that you’re the one who’s got nothing.

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I understand the concern of the potential the AR-15 etc, but given the actual facts that they are rarely used in crimes, isn’t the fear of them a bit exaggerated and irrational?

Also - you do realize that the results shown in the clay from the rifle round is not what would happen to a person’s body. There is no cavernous, gaping hole. There is some trauma caused to soft tissue, but the wound channel itself is fairly small. If you look around at hunting pictures, you will see deer shot with much more powerful .30 caliber bullets, with hollow points made to expand, and the wound is very small, sometimes it looks like just a spot of blood.

It’s also important to note that the 9mm round on the left was stopped by Kevlar. The rifle round was not. While the 9mm wouldn’t do as much damage as the rifle round, it would have done more than put a dent in the clay had it not been stopped by the Kevlar.

Ironically, since nearly its inception, the 5.56mm round has been criticized as being under powered. In the field it has been reported as unsatisfactory by some by not being able to incapacitate someone with one shot.

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Mmhmm - I don’t know what else to call it when one brings up unrelated slave revolts in a discussion about gun control.

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All the other developed nations don’t exactly seem like totalitarian regimes merely because sane people recognise the fact that a gun under every pillow is actually a pretty stupid idea… I’m 39, and the number of occasions where I’ve thought, ‘what I really need right now is a gun’ I could count on one hand. And in retrospect (not to mention generally), I’m rather glad one would’ve been difficult to obtain.

You want to talk about freedom? Who gives a flying fuck about the supposedly inalienable right to pack deadly force in your pocket on a whim next to the mind-boggling reality that it’s virtually impossible to communicate without being spied upon?

This, from the nation that fancies itself Leader of the Free World… give me a fucking break.

I’ll tell you how to get past that crap - put your brains in gear and realise having anything better than a vague and inconsistent idea of some harmfully half-arsed approximation of reality requires you to ditch the simplistic absolutism and consult some bloody evidence.

I’m pretty close to the anarchist/libertarian end of the spectrum, but I still reckon allowing any random fuckwit to wield a firearm is just obviously retarded.

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Not being steeped in propaganda like an American seems to have a lot to do with it…

To most of the rest of us, this ‘gun as a birthright’ business seems a bit strange, like a ‘right to kill’ or something.

‘Oh but it’s only for self-defence’ goes the refrain…

Look at the evidence. How many of these weapons are ever successfully employed for self-defence compared to the number used in anger or by toddlers or accidentally or stolen by crims and so on? Perhaps even killing its owner…

And who are you defending yourself against? The government? Don’t make me laugh. So we’re talking about other individuals here, and why do you need a gun? Oh, because they probably have a gun. Are you starting to see the problem here, or is it still woods/trees?

As a parting shot, consider how much more likely people in America are to be shot by cops simply because you have this idea about the right to gun ownership. Oops, he was just going for his wallet.

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On the subject of defending oneself and one’s liberties from the government (and its owners), any libertarians or other like-minded types reading this should see what they think of this idea:

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I guess I’m not that bothered by US control laws as long as they prevent private citizens from owning anything that can hit me on this side of the Atlantic.
The US military on the other hand…

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I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one; you may well be talking like you don’t know what you’re talking about (and avoiding the real point of my initial comment as you do so) because you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

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Sometimes it seems like many Americans view the Constitution in a similar way to how many Christain fundamentalists view the Bible. If we could find out the true meaning of the text and decipher the intention of its original writers, we would necessarily come up with a reasonable standard for how to conduct our lives. The idea that the text itself could be outdated or plain wrong doesn’t seem to come into the picture.

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Wow. Talk about grasping at straws. One can read many writings of the time talking about the right to bear arms be necessary for things like self-defense, invasion, and removing a tyrannical government. You can find me quotes showing concern for state militias for slave revolts, but you can’t ignore the plethora of evidence that there were other reasons for the Amendment. Slave revolts might have been a factor in the 2nd Amendment - but to call it the “real reason” is hogwash.

Ironically, it’s the gun control advocates that enacted Jim Crow laws limiting firearms to blacks. Some of these laws are still in effect today.

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That was the best reply EVAR. You, sir, win fourteen gold-plated intartubes.

On a side note, I would like to point out that I did not get caught in the crossfire of a bOINGbOING gun argument for probably the first time in recorded history. Yay me.

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Thanks for acknowledging (even if you didn’t put it that way) that there really was a reason for me to bring up slave revolts, and that I therefore wasn’t “race baiting.”

I never wrote that it was “the real reason,” but I can see how you could misread what I wrote that way.

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First line of your linked to article, “The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified…”

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I see your point, but I think that @cpconstantine and I are on the same page.

I own a couple of guns, which I have told very few people that I own, and which are kept hidden and trigger locked. I do not allow anyone to shoot them without me present, and I first teach him or her about proper firearm safety. Therefore, I’m inclined to think that in my particular situation, there is a very small chance of my guns being used for a bad purpose. Since I am a responsible gun owner and a responsible gun user, I like knowing that I have access to my gun in case I ever need it - I’d rather be able to protect myself and my family against a violent loony. I know there’s little chance of me ever needing to, but considering my precautions regarding my guns, I think there’s an even smaller chance of them being turned on me or someone else.

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There’s a relevant story going around that seems to originate from the Daily Mail. An ex-Royal Marine who lives in Kenya apparently saved 100 people by repeatedly going into the mall and getting people out. The fact that he was pictured with a handgun tucked into his jeans has predictably become the focus of the article (and those of the many other conservative websites linking to it), although there’s no evidence that he used the handgun at all or that it played any part in the events themselves.

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Dear Mister44,

As you no doubt know, the Second Amendment says, in full –

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.

Since you’re clearly a proponent of this amendment, I still would like to know – of which militia are you a member?

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I am not an active member of a militia, and I suspect that @Mister44 isn’t either. But if you want to really scrutinize the wording of that sentence, it doesn’t say that the right to keep and bear arms is only protected if you are in a militia. To me, that sentence means that no citizen’s right to keep and bear arms shall be infringed, because everyone is a potential member of a militia if there is the need. Today, I’m not a member of a militia, but if tomorrow, Canada invaded (just a silly example), I would probably join up with a militia to defend my state. And if tomorrow, I join a militia, then it’s probably a help to that militia if I can supply my own arms.

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Thanks, but yeah, your example is a silly one, as is any other that a gun advocate could come up with to defend the right to bear arms as that right is actually defined in the Constitution. In other words, it’s interesting to me, and dismaying as well, that today’s gun owners almost always totally ignore the actual purpose in the Constitution of the right to bear arms. We just don’t need “militias” anymore; ergo, we just don’t need the right to bear arms any more, as that right is actually defined in the Constitution.

If people want to argue that they “need” their guns for other reasons, then they should argue for a change in Constitutional wording.

And FFS, those who think American control of guns is too loose and dangerous should focus more on what the (highly outdated) Constitutional amendment actually says about them, and not allow those (like the NRA) who seek to distract us from those actual words control the terms of national conversation and debate.

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Sir, it wasn’t me who brought up the applicability of the Constitution to gun rights, and it wasn’t @Mister44 either; it was you. I was just giving my two cents on how I think that the Second Amendment still applies to a situation that could still happen today.

I think that the ability to form a militia is still important today, and always. Not because I think that there will be a “call to arms” anytime soon, but because I think that just as there is a system of checks and balances between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the federal government, there must be checks and balances between the state and federal governments. If the federal government has a standing army and the state government has no ability to create one, I see that as an imbalance.

I have no reason to argue for a change in the Constitutional wording, as the justification therein for the right to bear arms is enough for me. If it’s not enough for you, then you should argue for a change to the Constitution.

I’m not a member of the NRA, and I do not know what the organization’s agenda is. My views are my own.