Points are being missed but your insistence on your point of view as reality places you as defendant. Did you read or comprehend any of this post?-
...we continue to look at symptoms and diagnose from conflicting indications rather than looking holistically at the sickness. That's why people point fingers at the NRA, the celebrities, the politicians, the guns themselves. Take a page from the "House" philosophy. One, all patients are liars. Two, look in the environment of the patient for evidence of the cause of the symptoms. Then you can diagnose and treat the disease.
To wit:
-We are plagued with drug driven populations. Bears repeating. We have drug problems. Fosters mental illness.
-We have to endure unequal opportunity for success, education and justice. Money buys easy access to those critical elements. That leads to wildly disparate and concentrated wealth the rest of the first world countries don't have to cope with.
-Our population is easily swayed by stupid leaders who are bought and sold. The result is more prisons, more violence, less public education support, more gambling (both in casinos and in Wall Street) and emphasis on "simple" solutions.
-And most importantly, we refuse to recognize the reality of this environment I described. Its a mental illness when what you see, does not represent what is real. Its tragedy when the rest of your life is based on those false perceptions. That's why we can't reach agreement on fiscal problems, social change and science.
Insisting that a (as you said probably drunk) guy with a pistol ambling around town shooting things up is analagous, comparable or even similar to a well planned, well armed mass shooting is just not right. It demeans and distracts from your arguments for gun rights. Keeping hundred round clips and military weapons regulated is an effort to limit the damage done. A tactical effort. Your restaurant/theater shooter would have done much more damage with one of those guns. Am I shooting too high?
Yes. Read and comprehended. And I agree with pretty much all of it - and hadn't addressed/replied to it until now. And you made my point precisely with the first paragraph. "...we continue to look at symptoms and diagnose from conflicting indications rather than looking holistically..."
As for the "guy with the pistol" - he had made a plan. And was executing that plan. Just because he was not very good at it is a wonderful thing! Would that they were all so incompetent! No telling if he was drunk...no one has said anything about that - it was a snarky conjecture I came up with to illustrate the contempt I have for his mental capability and state, and his overall disgusting existence in general.
We are pointing fingers at every symptom possible without addressing the root cause. As shown by deranged minds, demonstrated by examples mentioned here, ranging from 1927 to now, the gun is not the problem. When a gun is inconvenient, a bomb will do. (Think 16th Street Baptist Church)
The elimination of 100 round clips*** and keeping military weapons regulated - which weapons in reality ARE regulated and have been for many decades...the FACT of which you and others continue to just slide right on by - have been done in the past. And most of which have been shown to have NO credible evidence of making any kind of difference (remember the so-called "assault weapon ban" which didn't stop any gang violence whatsoever?), since another fact the continues to be ignored is the fact that criminals do NOT obey such rules, and still are able to circumvent those rules relatively easily by criminal elements. And it still presents an intrusion into the law abiding citizens rights, life and enjoyment of a shooting sport.
So, why not do like you seem to be recommending...looking holistically at the sickness... that would be the rational starting point in this process. And it is one we abandoned at least 40 years ago. Instead we bleat "gun control".
I submit that these clowns are seeing the publicity received when these events occur and are getting it in their mind that they, too, can be famous (or infamous) and even though they go out in "a blaze of glory"...if they can kill enough, their name will go down in history. So, all we have to do to short circuit that "massacre by example" motivation, just don't let the press report the story - the founders certainly didn't mean for the 1st amendment to let newspapers or worse, TV, glorify criminals. Keep it out of the headlines; there is no notoriety and possibly even no memory of the event - take the "famous" out of the equation. Gives the notion of shouting "fire" in a crowded theater a whole new context, doesn't it?? We can stop this with just a little bit of careful, judicious censorship. Certainly no thinking person would be against something that has such obvious benefits to the greater good.
Who would have remembered the school bomber in 1927 if it had not been for the "sensationalization" of the event in the newspapers of the time. The real problem is the hype surrounding these events and the treatment the press gives them - and you know there are agendas. Everyone has an agenda - don't show naivete by poo-pooing the idea of an agenda.
What I am more than willing to do - as is the NRA for that matter - is to let my agenda be known right up front with NO ambiguity or distortion or any question whatsoever. My agenda is to work to preserve the 2nd amendment as relates to the exercise of my rights to own firearms and enjoy a variety of shooting sports. CNN, CBS, NBC, and others are being dishonest in the fact that they claim to be unbiased reporters of news - they are exhibiting their agenda in detail in recent weeks. They are doing exactly what Fox does in the other direction. It is dishonest when either/any of them do it.
And people who say things like "I used to be <fill in the blank in favor or against>, but now I am <fill in the blank against or in favor> are being intellectually dishonest with themselves and anyone/everyone they talk to. They were not one, then changed to the other. They may have been "in favor" much like Rosie O'Donnell is "in favor" of gun control and allowing no one to have one, until it comes to her personal situation, where she wants a guy to be around with a gun to protect her and her kids. Intellectual dishonesty on two levels - first the 'do what I say, not what I do' aspect, then the abominable notion that she and hers are justified or somehow more worthy in having the means to defend themselves while the rest of the unwashed masses should not have the same right. She's not the only one who exhibits that type of hypocrisy, but is a well know example.
*** I have shot 50 round drum magazines in Thompson machine guns before and while there are 100 round mags available, anyone who uses either is just kind of fooling themselves. They really aren't very dependable, and if one has mayhem in mind, would be much better served by carrying several 20 round stick magazines. Goes to a distributed risk analysis. If you have one 50 rd mag, and something "hangs", you are done. If you have four or five 20 rd mags, then pull the malfunctioning one out and put in another. Am pretty sure none of these clowns has used a 100 rd magazine...
