Do these people bear any responsibility for the recent mass killing in the USA?

Where, in any of this whole discussion, did anyone mention dis-arming everyone?

Joe(don't be pathetic or sympathetic to G-snake. )Nation

Align yourself with whoever you like, David,

in this case I think you do yourself a dis-service.

No one mentioned dis-arming everyone or even a lot of people until Gunga pops his picture up and you,
now sidetracked from the actual subject, chime in.

Really sad.
Joe(really. led around like a puppy on a string)Nation

David,
Please, this thread, though it seems to have passed through your notice like grease through a goose, is about people KEEPING their guns while making sure that the people, who in anyone's common judgement, ought to not to able to acquire weapons, not acquire them, in order for both the gun community and the community at large to remain safe.

I know you think the set of such people is zero, but you are wrong.

Joe(It's not legion either, but there are more than a few)Nation

It is the community of gun owners who owe themselves and the community of those who do not own guns the chance to be safe in an increasingly unsafe world.

It is they who own the guns who must look around, to look outside themselves, to decide who should not be in the gun community.

How they do it is their (and your) concern. I don't care how they do it but do it they must.

That is if they are to be held in any sense of esteem by the greater community of humans.

This has been a good conversation so far.
So far though, a total avoidance of making any connection between what seems to me to be parts of the same set. I'll say it again :

Quote:

I would argue that the current crop of gun owners are cowards about coming forward, personally or legally, to confront those who should not have guns in their possession.

It is the community of gun owners who owe themselves and the community of those who do not own guns the chance to be safe in an increasingly unsafe world.

It is they who own the guns who must look around,
to look outside themselves, to decide who should not be in the gun community.

How they do it is their (and your) concern.
I don't care how they do it but do it they must.

That is if they are to be held in any sense of esteem
by the greater community of humans. [Represented by YOUR opinion, huh ??? David]

In other words you view people who own firearms for whatever reason as freaks who owe it to the normal people of the world to provide the world with safety from misuse of firearms, or at least any reasonable person would interpret that little screed as such.

It's hard to even pick a place to start with that one but the best place might actually be the case of the two D.C. area snipers (Malvo/Muhammed) who terrorized the capital area for two or three months in 2002.

They were using an M16 with no full-auto mode which libtards generally call an assault rifle but, funny thing, the WAY they were using it, one shot and peel out and scoot, it could as easily have been a flintlock.

George Washington could have made any of the shots they made with his third best rifle. In fact pretty much everybody who was ever killed with a firearm prior to around 1890 or thereabouts was killed with blackpowder weaponry. Do you have any idea how easy it is to purchase black powder weapons?

http://www.gunbroker.com/Black-Powder-Muzzleloaders/BI.aspx



For that matter, anybody with the tiniest bit of ingenuity could make his own black powder weapons or even his own black powder, the basic ingredients are charcoal, sulfer, and bullshit.

The ONLY protection there is in the real world from all of the grief which bad people perpetrate with firearms is more normal people carrying firearms around and there is one other possibility which is worth considering which is Charles Krauthammer's claim that we need more lunatic control and that at least some of the recent tragedies could not have happened in 1970 when we actually did have more lunatic control. Krauthammer was chief resident for psychiatry at Mass General in those days.

What the gun shop owner needs is the backing of the gun community.

Presently he is basically told by gun owners,
"Hey, not your problem, bro. Let the cops sort it out. That's their job."
Shrug.

When Mayor Bloomberg shows conclusively that hundreds of small arms are being sold over the counter in Virginia and are transported and resold on the streets of the Bronx and Manhattan, he doesn't get the backing of the gun community.

They ought to be outraged that lethal weapons are entering the community as a whole, endangering us all, instead they are outraged that the Mayor is 'messing with a private business."

Does anybody else see how odd that is?

It seems to me that present members of the gun community,

especially like the ones pictured on the porch ~regular folks who,
like my father who liked to shoot peasant

with his buddies, own a shotgun or two and maybe a handgun in the bedroom drawer~ ought to be trying to make it as difficult as possible to own a gun or get a license or both.

Instead, they are willing, as David is,
to sacrifice at least part of the peace and freedom of the community
as a whole in order to protect their own personal sense of freedom.

Am I using ESP here, Hawkeye, or isn't that self-evident?

There were eight shootings in New York City a few nights,
more than average for one evening; there was mention of it
in the press because it happened on a particular night.

Police states can defeat black markets, though they do not fully. Dear Leader got himslef into a heap of trouble a few years back by going too far when he converted the currency. Sonny will not make the same mistake.

Looks like there's more firearms than brain cells in that photo