Guns - Killing Innocent people and gun laws !

8/24/2012

It seems not a week goes by and some nut uses a gun to kill several people

or wound innocent people like today at The Empire State Building.. We need

strong gun laws , what is your opinion ?......Mine make it more difficult to buy

a weapon...Today the nut in Norway only got 22 years for murdering 77 people..



Cheers....Joe....

I agree with you, Joe . Most folks don't need a gun.

8/24/2012

All you need is a big dog or an alarm system...

Cheers..Joe..

Dear Joe,

The truth is that people do not need a gun to hurt people. People do it thousands of times a day with their words, their actions, their snide remarks, a snicker behind a hand. In fact, these hurts can last a life time. Perhaps we should have a word police??//? a bully police . . . How can society be regulated to be kind and respectful of the rights and dignity of other people. How can the person who is lacking is self esteem have his mind regulated so that his idea of being a superman is under control and it is not an option to act out his insanity and delusion.

It cannot happen, not as long as people are human and the brain is the human brain sorting and storing all the images and information it recieves from birth. No gun required.

Love,

Betty

Or a good deadbolt lock on your door and a baseball bat.
We sleep with our master bedroom door locked. At the first sound of a break in, Dave will move the chest of drawers to block doorway. While he does that I will call 911 and tell them to come quickly so as to prevent a murder.

Saw your kind comments, Betty and I wish we could do as you suggest.

Quote :

How can the person who is lacking is self esteem have his mind regulated so that his idea of being a superman is under control and it is not an option to act out his insanity and delusion.

That's what it comes down to, isn't it?

Ann

8/24/2012

How come England has very strict gun laws, no one

has a gun except for the police and even then they

only use it on a manhunt. We need laws so strict it

would take a year to buy a weapon......



Cheers.Joe.....

When an individual is so desperate and feels that powerless, it won't matter. If a gun isn't available, a baseball bat will do.

I am not opposed to gun control, in fact, I favor it, but it seems more important to treat the hopeless frustration that drives people to commit senseless, violent acts.

When we get rid of our fear, we have no need for weapons.

Just me.

Ann

How do we get rid of our fear when nuts abound?

Your fear isn't the problem. You are basically a pretty courageous person. It's the irrational fear, driven by a lack of hope or trust.

A fear of scarcity.

That fear drives people who have to hoard and grab more while the ones who don't have enough turn to violence.

Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock, wrote of three forms of power: violence, wealth, and knowledge.

Others have written of two kinds of power: power over and power within. Knowledge could be identified with power within - an inner sense of security that informs an individual of an ability to survive challenges, and a feeling that there is enough stuff to go around.

Both violence and wealth are forms of power over, which comes from an inner sense of lack that leads to a fear that drives people to gain wealth. When wealth is not available - or more importantly an individual believes it isn't, all that individual is left with is violence.

Just think how much would change if we all were to realize, and believe, that there is enough to go around for everyone.

Ann

This subject has been around often and there seems to be no consensus about dealing with it. Our perspectives on gun ownership have much to do with our upbringing and the conditions that existed at that time. I always owned guns until I moved to my current residence and then my attitude changed. Our environment has much to do with how we feel on a range of issues.

I don't think there is any law that will solve problems of violence nor is there a law that will eliminate fear. We do what we feel is necessary to control our fears, if the fear persists.

Courage is required in the face of fear. In the absence of fear, courage is not needed.

Work on the fear factor. As Roosevelt once said, "The only thing to fear is fear itself."

Perfect timing from Ralph Marston's Daily Motivator at GreatDay.com:

http://greatday.com/cgi-bin/jsenter.pl?3314k07HGucc

Ann

Good stuff,Ann. The timing was good.

Courage and Fear as it was once explained to me.

Let’s assume you are a frontline soldier and you are asked to cross an open field and destroy a machine-gun nest. You are seized with fear and it takes courage to act and carry out the order. Let’s further assume that you knew you could cross the field and take out the nest without anything happening to you. In this case courage would not be required. Knowledge eliminated the fear.
Knowledge eliminates fear. In the absence of knowledge, it requires courage to act.

I'm not particularily afraid of much of anything. (Well I don't like spiders and snakes, and high places are not so great either) but that's not what I'm talking about. What I don't like however, is the wave of home invasion that has swept over the country in the last few years. Thieves now prefer to come in while you're home so they can make you tell them what you have that's valuable, and show them where it is. More and more the innocent people who live in the house are being hurt or killed. The home invaders do not have the same way of looking at things as most normal people do, and to them, your pain or death doesn't matter. While we may think of the death of a person in one way, they see it entirely different. Same thing goes for those who go into a crowded mall or theater and start shooting. So, my mindset is that if someone is trying to harm me or my family or friends, then I'd rather it was them that got hurt or killed than us. With that in mind, I will use whatever is available as a weapon against them. I do know the futility of standing in your bedroom with a baseball bat, or waiting for the police to arrive after a 911 call, when there is a person in the next room with a gun and you know they intend to use it on you or your family. In that case, I much prefer to have gun of my own, so that at least I will have a chance to do more damage to them than they do to me. I could have a thousand weapons in my home and you still wouldn't have to worry about me going to a movie and shooting people. The same things applies to most every sane person. And regardless of what you think, if a person decides he or she wants to shoot someone, or a lot of someones, they will get a gun. No law is going to prevent that. Making it harder to buy a gun doesn't matter to someone who steals one. Passing such laws only apply to people who obey the law, which is most of us. I have said this before, but the fact is that if I have any choice in the matter, I won't be a victim. I will use a ball bat, a knife, a stick, a brick, but the fact is I prefer to use a gun in such a situation, because when your attacker has one, chances are he will prevail over your bat, knife, or stick. To me, it isn't about courage or gun laws or what have you, it's about common sense.

BTW Joe, it sounds really good to say that we need to make it harder to buy a gun. I have a very large Smith and Wesson .357 magnum, a handgun that will do terrible damage to whatever it hits, and I traded a golf club for it. There goes the theory about making it harder to buy one.

E.Don,

When you are right, you are so right.

If a person wishes to kill me they can do it without a gun-might be worse than being shot--such as being strangled or stabbed. In that case I would wish they had a gun.

The plain facts of the matter are WE ARE ALL GONNA CROAK SOMETIME, SOMEWAY!
Either a prescription drug will do us in, some form of cancer, a car wreck, a creep will murder us, or someone will shoot us. I ain't gonna fret it--no use.

The real issue is violence. Guns are the scapegoat people use to explain away the violent, antisocial tendencies of too many people in society that we tolerate without appropriate punishment or deterrent.

Even if the 2nd Amendment allowed for the banning of guns, which it clearly does not, guns would exist anyway, but only criminals would have them as laws do not deter criminals from engaging in prohibited activity. Moreover, even if a Constitutional Amendment could be enacted to ban all firearms, the knowledge to create them cannot be banned. I can work a lathe and milling machine and can create a gun from scratch if I wanted to. I am not alone in this. Ban guns and they will replace drugs as a favorite import of the criminal types.

Bows and arrows, machetes, swords, and baseball bats are all used to kill and maim people on a daily basis. Banning these would have no effect either, other than to prevent law abiding citizens from using them for the legal purposes for which they are intended.

The terrible violence that afflicts our society has many causes, but the loudest voices raised on this particular issue invariably attribute the violence to guns, poverty, Saturday morning cartoons or any number of other convenient scapegoats for society's ills. People who as an article of faith believe all human beings to be good and decent unless they are corrupted by society will ignore all evidence to the contrary in their search for the root causes of violence. The existence of evil as such is something that causes them discomfiture and which they can never accept. They believe in mental illness as the cause for a relatively tiny number of crimes, and attribute most all criminal activity to economic/social forces beyond the control of those who commit crimes. Right or wrong, this philosophy has deep roots since the 1960s that permeate among many other things our criminal law and sentencing guidelines. We don't seek to punish wrongdoers (the purpose of penal law from which it derives its name IS punishment). Rather we seek to rehabilitate offenders and redress the societal conditions assumed as an article of faith to be the cause of their transgressions. We don't really want to incarcerate them anyway, the cost for doing so is unsustainably high. So cases that are not plea bargained away are all too often handled by judges alternative sentencing, light sentencing and--my favorite travesty of all--concurrent sentencing (Kill ten people, get sentenced to 10 life sentences to be served concurrently--in other words, serve 15 years or so and you're done--10 for the price of one!)

Having said all of this, I don't think the 2nd Amendment empowers me to own a bazooka, howitzer, submachine gun or grenade launcher. Nor do I think a reasonable waiting period before purchasing a handgun, along with a background check, to be unreasonable restrictions.

It is nearly impossible to legally own, let alone carry, a handgun in New York City today, even for people with clean records and who can demonstrate a need for personal protection. That did not stop yesterday's tragedy at the Empire State Building and any number of other unreported ones. If the shooter were using a pellet gun or hunting knife (both also illegal in New York City, by the way) police bullets would still have killed innocent bystanders. Is that an argument for disarming police? Punish the guilty in a harsh manner. Let them pay for their crimes rather than excuse their criminal activity. That will have an impact.

Victor,

I couldn't agree more! Of course everyone here already knows my feelings on this issue.

I suppose I am a product of those 1960's, being one of the oldest of the baby-boomers, according to the book, Generations by William Strauss and Neil Howe - both self-proclaimed boomers themselves.

I am also an avid student of the work of psychologist Carl Jung and of (surprise; surprise) comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell.

I agree with both of them that all humans have a shadow side to their personalities, and that the worst thing we can do is to repress that side and pretend it doesn't exist. If we are to be able to control it, we need to acknowledge it, and even embrace it, because it is in our shadows that our ability to assert ourselves and create new solutions exist.

I agree with them, and with other psychologists including Rollo May, that the biggest problem for us today is the lack of a guiding mythology, and that, without it, we cannot effectively form a viable morality and sense of ethic. The old institutions may have valid roots, but they do not work in the modern world. There has been too much change, and the institutions have not kept up with that change.

As a result, we run back and forth between polarities, and have trouble finding a balanced center from which to operate.

Punishment, in these circumstances is a very ineffective means of controlling the actions of others.

Finding ways to shed light on the causes of their behavior and designing ways to help them come to terms with their responsibilities hold far more promise.

Just me being me again,

Ann

As mentioned before, I have no problem with gun ownership, the problem is with gun control and making sure the owner knows how to store and handle a gun.

A rough draft of an Application to own a gun.

APPLICATION TO OWN A GUN

Reason/purpose for owning a gun.

Check all that apply and provide explanation.
( ) 1. Protection of my family. Family is in danger because ______________________
( ) 2. I am a coward and require an equalizer
( ) 3. I carry large sums of money and require protection from theft
( ) 4. I live in a dangerous neighborhood
( ) 5. Other (Please specify)

Are you trained in the use of a gun?
Yes ( ). If yes, please provide evidence of training.
*No ( )

Are you trained in gun safety?
Yes ( )
*No ( )

Have you used a gun to kill?
Yes ( ) Explain.
No ( )

Type of gun to be licensed.



*Training required before license will be issued.

Abe, do I touch just a tiny bit of your tongue sometimes edging into your cheek?


I do sense from what I read, that you might agree that the type of gun available to the public could be limited.

Home protection would not likely require and AK-47?

Ann

Yep.

Ann,

Whatever the root cause of crime and violence, nurture, nature or a combination of the two (my vote is for the latter), the main concern for a society should be the protection of its law abiding citizens rather than teh protection of career criminals.

The policy of excuse-making that underlie our current system clearly do not work. Letting someone know that committing five crimes will be punished exactly the same as committing one clearly provides no incentive to refrain from committing crimes. If crime pays (which it does, at least in the short term) why not engage in it?

One answer is ethics. But that too has been diluted in the post 1960's world where there is no foundation for ethical conduct. Religious and secular theories of formalism have been thrown out wholesale thanks to the efforts of the intellectual elites and the quasi intellectual elites (e.g., Hollywood and the popular media). Anyone who adheres to traditional notions of right and wrong based on Deontology is dismissed as a fanatic, a member of the "Christian right," a Tea Party troglodyte or simply a Republican. (I'm just a Neo Platonist myself, but few even know what that means these days, so just lump me with the rest of the diluted antediluvian relics--any category will do as they all mean "NON RIGHT THINKING PERSON IN NEED OF RE-EDUCATION.)

There are no standards, no right and wrong, and Teleology or ethical relativism is the ONLY philosophy that ENLIGHTENED people are allowed to have. Property is theft, decried the French Anarchist Proudhon. Chavez, Castro, Lenin, Mao, and all other Marxists past and present would agree with the sentiment, while stealing all personal property, lining their own pockets and doling out the fruit's of their individual versions of the Workers' Paradise,"to each in accordance with her party affiliation . . ." I mean need, of course, yes, that's it, need. Is it any surprise that we don't feel obliged to respect any laws we find inconvenient when law itself is an arbitrary or capricious act of government that we feel free to filter through our own (self-serving) philosophy? Stealing is not necessarily wrong--it depends on our motivation for the act. If we steal a loaf of bread to give to a starving child, it is a heroic act for which we can gladly and proudly be arrested. If we steal because our selfish neighbor has more money than we do and we have more hungry mouths to feed, it is not theft but the "liberation" of our rightful share of the communal pie. If a sitting president does not like the immigration laws duly enacted by Congress, he is not only justified but required as an act of conscience to instruct the immigration authorities that they are NOT to enforce the law. And is anyone yelling "impeachable offense?" of course not. The oath of office that requires upholding the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies foreign and domestic does not have a footnote that reads "The constitution as interpreted by you as guided by your conscience which supersedes Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court."

I know this will ruffle feathers. I know that people of good conscience with minds greater than mine (including my wife, my best friend, and many, many more people whom I greatly admire) will disagree. I know I may be rambling. But it is all related--all part of the same, predictable harvest that we reap when we sow seeds of ethical relativism and refuse to pass judgment on anyone or anything for fear of giving offense or for fear of not fully understanding circumstances that motivated people to take actions that on their face may seem inappropriate (e.g., murder, rape, incest, theft, aggravated assault, etc.).

Here is one politically incorrect thought. At the heart of most criminal actions, when we peel back the layers upon layers of the onion and cast away through our tears one by one the obscuring excuses, the rationalizations, the personal stories and the downright lies, we will most often find actions motivated by one or more of the seven deadly sins or, if you prefer, the seven deadly human frailties.