Summations Only

Percy says: ...and of course, I say massacres will continue as long as humans are alive. But i agree that 100-shot magazines are more easily capable of creating shocking massacres.There is no easy way out. It's about the parents bringing up the wackos. It's about professionals in the field of psychology not identifying and informing the appropriate authorities about dangerous wackos and how hopelessly inadequate that field is today. It's about having police roaming the school halls in some gestapo-ish way. It's about making ammunition signatured and limited on a yearly basis. No easy way out. It's also tangentially about the relative risks to our children being assessed in a country that seems to suffer horribly from innumeracy, as crashfrog pointed out. No easy way out.

Faith shouts: Not the first item. The ERA still has not been ratified.As the late John Lennon said, "woman is the nigger of the world".

Tangle replies: Simple? LOLWhatever makes you think that this would be easy? Where in the world have you been? This country has wrestled over this issue ALL MY LIFE that I know of. Consider even Faith's argument that this occurred in one of the strictest gun-control states in the union. The availability of guns to be used for whacko massacres or just the daily grind of crime will still be available enough to occur as needed to fulfill the niche occupied at the negative end of the bell-shaped curve of our population statistics.Here's a "simples" for you: Just make everybody in the world nice and loving and giving and peaceful by dream-state telepathic thought waves. Tomorrow morning everyone wakes up singing.

RAZD writes: Well said!...but beware, unlike years gone yore, today this may mean a stint or three in the middle east to defend prosperous multi-national oil companies occupying the indigenous forlorn desert peoples of the region.I mean, WOW, talk about gun control....Edited by xongsmith, : last comment

Crashfrog notes: I was wondering when this would show up.The Geminids this weekend were nice to look at, but never once did I think one of them would actually hit me.I do admit I was looking for a bolide to miss me.

Hi RAZD,One of my stupidly favorite scenes in movies is from that horribly stupid movie, "Tremors", starring in a rare lead role, Kevin Bacon of 6-degrees fame. In this movie, Reba McIntyre of country-western (both kinds) fame and the father of a now-forgotten TV series are Survivalists in their bunker on the outskirts of town. The sandworm is swimming through the ground and smashes into their basement wall. They are ready for it. It finally breaks through and, in one of the greatest pan shots in cinema, the camera rotates around to the walls in the basement, revealing a cache of guns to be the talk of the town. Rack after rack of weapons cover the walls, just like your picture here. Our man is emptying gun after gun after gun after gun into the sandworm, Reba adding her equal projectile force with guns she grabs into the creature between handing him yet another gun. THEY WIN! THE WORM DIES!He barks loudly back at it "Broke into the wrong basement didncha!!"

Tangle replies: NO IT IS NOT SIMPLE. You are talking about changing the LAW. This is not an imaginary fairy with wand, no wishful thinking. I am talking about the USA reality of trying to convince enough people to limit guns through legislation as carried out by voting for those who would support such a movement. It's the CULTURE that we have to fix. BUT EVEN IN THIS CASE - in Connecticut - with some of the most stringent gun laws in the country, you will notice that this wacko STOLE the guns from his mother (a wacko already for owning such an array of weaponery), killed her, then went to her school and blew out a window in the school to get inside the building, bypassing security at the doors and still got in and killed the children.What happened here is beyond any reasonable Law you could conger up. The only way this extremely rare event could have been addressed is in the killer's childhood upbringing. The mother and the completely ignored father in the story are most at fault, in my opinion - because "fault" has to be born by those who would know better - not those who's brains are so broken by the time they walk out into the public world there is no other choice for them. Sure - shoot them to kill when they are committing the horror. But follow the dots back.Officer Krupke, you're really a square, yada yada, etc.Your desire to enact a more european-style gun law is well-taken, and in most cases I would agree, but it is similar to Bush the W invading Iraq after 9/11. It is completely missing the Newtown, Connecticut problem.

RAZD writes: Hmmm...I don't seem to recall Alabama Governor George Wallace calling out the National Guard during the Civil Rights demonstrations. Seems they were called out by Washington, D.C.?

NoNukes & Theodoric help me make my tiny point. Thanks.The National Guard is not really controlled at the state level. The POTUS actually is the plenipotentiary here. Therefore, to use the National Guard as an example of the current modern America's exercise of the intent of the 2nd Amendment to prevent the government from disarming the citizenry, as crashfrog has argued, is flawed.RAZD has made a good argument for most of the issues raised - particularly for finding a way for gun freaks to get to have their fun, but it fails under crashfrog's criterion. ....obligatory Dylan quote:
"I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.
No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks.
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks.
The National Guard stands around his door.
Ah, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more."Edited by xongsmith, : attribution props to his Bobness

Thanks, RAZD. Sorry to make you do my dirty work.Those were the days indeed.But my nitpick remains - the POTUS can take over the National Guard.

The Big 12 footer Bird writes: This still requires special equipment that could be banned. And it still seems to require a bullet. See Step 8. Where the fuck did the bullet come from? Lead can be obtained, but we're talking equipment to melt it into shape good enough for this procedure.Edited by xongsmith, : Not even close to a typo! Wow....

Hey crash, all arguments aside for the moment - do you believe there is or is not a gun problem in the USA?I look at your Message 19 and think so. I look even more at your Message 307 and think so.But if not, bye bye. But I somehow think you do think there is a problem. Therefore, assuming you do, what do you think would be cool to do now to implement the points you make in Message 307?Does this get back to the filibustering issue in the Senate?Your friend,

Rahvin argues: You shoot your own foot here! The fact of 300 million guns in a country of 360 million means that the potential home robber would intelligently have TO WAIT until the gun-talented people in the house are gone (like on vacation). Or else he's already berserk and doesn't care to live so much. He NOT going to take a chance that this house is unarmed, like he would in Britain, perhaps. He might be totally wrong in his calculations, but he will still calculate to NOT try. That is all that matters. An NRA sticker on the window - regardless of whether there are any actual guns inside - may be all he needs to move on down the street to the next house he has been casing.

Crash - you have to enlarge to salient points of the graph. You cant get away with white non-grided graphs. You should be ashamed of yourself for foisting this stupid graphic on us. Ashamed!Edited by xongsmith, : okay typos hit me baqd here

Crash wonders: Maybe we were preoccupied with staggering back in aghast?