The Right to Carry a Gun

[knapplc]

47 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

 

Did you just equate road rage with someone who would prepare and load multiple guns, put on full body armor and walk into a theatre/school/mall and start shooting? Either you don't understand the problem or you're trying too hard to make it fit inside your narrative box.

 

Do you really believe these mass shooters don't have mental problems, that they just instantly snapped and had guns at the ready? I don't think you believe that because you're smarter than that.

 

Where we can agree is that it's entirely too easy to get guns and that virtually anyone can get one with little effort. But the core problem of mass shootings is not hero/gun worship. Certainly that plays into the aversion of adopting sensible gun laws but it has nothing to do with the person who commits the crime. I'm not saying mental illness is the only problem but it has to be near the top of a list that also contains hopelessness, irrational anger, bad parenting and failure to properly educate.

 

Edit-

Look at it this way. We’ve all experienced road rage, depression, frustration, anger, hopelessness, a pretty wide and full gamut of emotions and situations and we all have ready access to guns and we all live in this hero/gun worshipping society. But how many people have we killed? How many of us have shot even one person let alone multiples?

 

There is something happening in the minds of the people who react this way. And there is something we as a society are doing that is contributing to these people not being able to deal properly with their lives.

 

 

You are trying WAY to hard to make a big deal out of a simple analogy.

[JJ Husker]

53 minutes ago, Huckleberry Muhammad said:

My early life and work has carried me to areas of high crime, most of those crimes being gun violence.  I've known quite well many offenders.  I still visit two of them in state pens here in the midwest.   Trying to count all that I have known who have used guns illegally it looks to be about 78 or 79 over a period of the fifty some years of my 74 years being alive. 

 

I carry a gun everywhere I go that is legal to do so.  No.  Not because I fear those people.  The reasons I carry have a lot less to do with those people than with the ordinary people who drink and lose it, smoke and lose it, see a tailgater in their mirror and lose it, etc ad infinitum.  I'm a calm person by nature, and even more calm when I carry as I adhere to principles brought out in my MP military training and much more recently in my Concealed Carry Permit class here in Nebraska.  I, like almost all responsible gun carriers, react kindly to perceived slights or traffic potential hassles;  it would take a true life and death situation by another person for me to even think of my gun out there. 

 

"Mental illness" is a HUGE net that covers almost every human on Earth at some point in their lives, and some for most of their lives.  It's not a perfect indicator of who should have access to firearms (or sharp objects, or hammers, or eye drops).  Background checks help a bit with those who have already drawn attention to themselves by committing domestic violence or other violet crimes.  Those checks can fail, of course, due to overlload and time requirements on the FBI and other involved agencies. 

 

Is there any course of action that could stem gun violence in the U.S.?  In some countries it's about disallowing firearms to various degrees, some even not allowed at all.  And some countries with little to no restrictions have very low gun crime, such as some Scandinavian countries.  For us it has to be education.  I feel that the NRA has it right when it comes to that.  I part company with them, though, on their scorched Earth approach to fending off all gun laws, that's just crazy.  We obviously need gun laws.  But we have to be clever. 

 

I  think it's very much about culture and how the country was born.  Here in the U.S. it was about violent revolution, and several violent domestic wars over the past two and a half centuries (think it has been just the Revolutionary War and then the Civil War?   Nope:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_the_United_States).Guns are a big part of what shaped us and it has been often and it has been engrained in our being as Americans. 

 

I like the approach of permitted concealed carry, with classes, but I feel those classes should be longer and with more teaching on the responsibilities and mindset of a gun carrier.  I also think that those same classes should be required for the purchase of guns, not just for carry. 

 

 

I pretty much agree with this. But I do feel there are notable differences between mass shooters and the other potential gun violence scenarios you mention. I view “heat of the moment” crimes much differently than planned mass killings. I realize both are problems but my prior comments were intended strictly for the burgeoning mass shooting problems we’ve experienced.

 

Yes, gun worship and ready access definitely contributes to heat of the moment crimes. But I do not perceive those to be recently surging out of control as are mass shootings and inner city gun crime. In my mind, there 3 basic types of gun violence and two of them have shown increases with the mass shootings obviously standing out.

[JJ Husker]

39 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

 

You are trying WAY to hard to make a big deal out of a simple analogy.

Sorry. I wasn’t really trying hard at all. Just responding to what was said. I should have known you picked a bad analogy to make 

 

I’m curious, do others compartmentalize gun violence into 3 basic categories like I do?

1- General crime and gang violence.

2- Heat of the moment type things.

3- Planned mass shootings.

 

I guess I kind of view it as #1 & #3 need dealt with much more urgently than #2. Not that any life taken isn’t important but #2 just seems like it hasn’t really changed and unfortunately it’s just something that has been and always will be. And really some general crime use is the same way. I guess maybe I have 4 categories with general crime and gang use being somewhat different.

[knapplc]

52 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

Sorry. I wasn’t really trying hard at all.

 

Clearly. Trying a little harder to understand would benefit the conversation.

[jsneb83]

13 hours ago, knapplc said:

There are mentally ill people all over the world.

 

There aren't gun massacres all over the world.

 

It's not mental illness. Stop believing the propaganda.

Most of the rest of the world also has better/universal healthcare

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, jsneb83 said:

Most of the rest of the world also has better/universal healthcare

 

 

Mental

Illness

Is

Not

The

Culprit

To

This

Problem

[jsneb83]

3 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

 

Mental

Illness

Is

Not

The

Culprit

To

This

Problem

I'm not saying it is or isn't, I'm just saying other countries actually give them the healthcare they need

[commando]

kk..not sure about this so someone will probably jump in and tell me i am wrong....but doesn't the untied states have both the least restrictive gun laws in the world and also the highest rate of mass shootings in the world?   if that is true i believe that there just might be a correlation there.

[knapplc]

2 minutes ago, jsneb83 said:

I'm not saying it is or isn't, I'm just saying other countries actually give them the healthcare they need

 

Other countries use the metric system. But, like mental illness, whether a country uses the metric system or not is irrelevant to a conversation about America's rampant gun violence.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, commando said:

kk..not sure about this so someone will probably jump in and tell me i am wrong....but doesn't the untied states have both the least restrictive gun laws in the world and also the highest rate of mass shootings in the world?   if that is true i believe that there just might be a correlation there.

 

We're in good company.

 

Only 3 countries in the world protect the right to bear arms in their constitutions: the US, Mexico, and Guatemala

[Huckleberry Muhammad]

1 hour ago, JJ Husker said:

 In my mind, there 3 basic types of gun violence and two of them have shown increases with the mass shootings obviously standing out.

 

I grieve over those, as we see students and other innocents scatter in fear of some twisted up person.  What wrecks my efforts to focus on that as the major violence with guns problem in our country, though, are the numbers:  Thousands are dying and being severely injured in our mostly African American inner cities, by the dozens every single day.  Yes, we can't ignore those mostly white grinning freaks with assault rifles firing at our children and concert goers, etc.   We probably need to find out what they have in common as to many things other than mostly being white males.  Perhaps they've felt left out, bullied, etc.  I don't know.  But there's a holocaust going on in East St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore.  Sometimes it's 40 or 50 people shot on one weekend. 

 

None of it can be ignored by thinking and caring people, but all of it seems to be ignored by the gun industry;  they're into sales.  Can we go to them for help?  Hell no, they begin the "mental illness" mantra instantly.  We can't do analogies about drugs being controlled, because they then just turn the conversation to people like me and you:  law abiding citizens who should not be "punished" by new gun laws.

 

 

[knapplc]

2 minutes ago, Huckleberry Muhammad said:

We probably need to find out what they have in common

 

Speaking specifically about the inner cities, there's a whole host of issues they're dealing with that have very little to do with the kind of person that shoots up a mall or a concert.

 

But the one thing they all have in common is easy access to guns. It really is as simple as that.

[Moiraine]

The correlation between mental illness and gun violence seems weak to non existent to me. Mental illness rates are somewhat high in the U.S., but it is also high in Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada as well.

 

This tells me there is either no correlation at all, or these countries with high rates of mental illness and few gun violence issues have few gun violence issues because of their gun laws.

 

And let’s say there is a weak correlation - shouldn’t we take both approaches? Make it a bit harder to get a gun, and easier/cheaper to get treatment for mental illness?

[commando]

7 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

The correlation between mental illness and gun violence seems weak to non existent to me. Mental illness rates are somewhat high in the U.S., but it is also high in Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada as well.

 

This tells me there is either no correlation at all, or these countries with high rates of mental illness and few gun violence issues have few gun violence issues because of their gun laws.

 

And let’s say there is a weak correlation - shouldn’t we take both approaches? Make it a bit harder to get a gun, and easier/cheaper to get treatment for mental illness?

the NRA now hates you for saying that.   

[knapplc]

7 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

The correlation between mental illness and gun violence seems weak to non existent to me. Mental illness rates are somewhat high in the U.S., but it is also high in Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, Denmark, France, Spain, Australia, and Canada as well.

 

This tells me there is either no correlation at all, or these countries with high rates of mental illness and few gun violence issues have few gun violence issues because of their gun laws.

 

And let’s say there is a weak correlation - shouldn’t we take both approaches? Make it a bit harder to get a gun, and easier/cheaper to get treatment for mental illness?

 

For the sake of the mentally ill, yes, we should obviously make it easier to get help/treatment. That's the simple, humane thing to do.

 

But for those expecting that to have any impact on gun violence, they're going to be disappointed. But at least some good would come out of that disappointment.