Summations Only

"Dog bites man" isn't news. Why do they even bother to report mass shootings in the US?

A melee/shootout in a darkened movie theater is a horrifying thought to most people. Apparently not to presidential candidate Perry. On the other hand, the suggestion of armed citizens packing in a mall is standard gun nut fantasy. The idea is only scary to those already persuaded that there are too many guns.

One more month, and "open carry" is legal here in Texas.In our last safety meeting they were talking about "dangerous states," but I'm pretty sure they meant states of mind, not geopolitical entities.

I wonder how many guns will be stolen right off the side of an open carry gun carrier.

Probably not too many. How many police have their gun stolen right off their side?

Well according to this site, 57 officers have been fatally shot by an unarmed suspect that took their guns since 2000. This FBI site table lists 46 officers killed by their own gun from 2002-2011. I'm haven't yet found the statistic about just having their guns taken or grabbed.

So as suspected, simply not something to worry about.

This whole gun-conversation is so odd that my head hurts. While I do (at least pretend to) understand the historical background of the right to own weapons, justifications for it beyond the 19th century are beyond my understanding.We all have a want and need to carry our everyday affairs in reasonable safety and predictiveness. We parents send our children to school knowing that they'll come home in the afternoon. How on earth does adults armed to their teeth support that?IMO handguns are 100% unnecessary. There is absolutely nothing good in them and they serve no positive purpose. I just cannot comprehend the love for guns or the arguments of the likes of NRA etc. It is beyond hope to wish that handguns were eliminated but why is it even impossible to discuss the possibilities of not arming psychos...?

Where is it impossible to discuss the possibilities of not arming psychos? In fact there are already laws on the books in most countries including the US making it illegal to sell a gun to a psycho.But bad folk do not obey laws.

Hi jar.What I meant that in the US basically every restriction is met with the 2nd Amendment. Background checks were seen as unconstitutional as well as waiting periods.Sorry if I'm oversimplifying but to me it seems that you love guns more than people. Why is it almost a necessity for a person to acquire a handgun? Using the bad people -defense seems almost naive - there hasn't been many cases where "a good armed guy" has been able to stop the attacker but plenty where the good guy has accidentally killed people.

Many things are seen as unconstitutional and it is right to test the issue when there are doubts. But both waiting periods and background checks were found to not be unconstitutional.But there is an issue in the US.We have no way to check many of the things needed to be checked. There is no such thing in the US as a registry of citizens. There is no way to check to see if someone is a psycho or potential psycho. There is no database of who has been treated for mental illness or even been hospitalized for mental illness. It isn't and in fact most Americans don't own a handgun. I try to make up for that though by owning more than one handgun. Even if that were true it is irrelevant to anything. The fact is that bad people do not obey laws and that includes the existing gun laws.There are serious problems in the US, one of the biggest is a seemingly innate disregard for the laws whether it is speeding or jaywalking or littering or resorting to violence.

People are people the world over. There is nothing that makes one set of people in one region any more or less likely to obey laws than any other region. The variable is circumstances, and the one most significant circumstance that exists in the US (firearm homicide rate 3.55 per 100,000) that doesn't exist in other western style countries like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. (firearm homicide rate much less, maybe an average around 0.5 per 100,000) is the easy availability of guns.--Percy

Yawn.But again, what relevance does that have to anything?Why are gun deaths an issue when they are so small compared to other deaths like traffic deaths?

That you're not disputing that the widespread prevalence of guns is responsible for the higher rate of gun deaths is small comfort, but anyway, there were 8855 firearm related homicides in 2012 in the US. How many needless deaths is too small to be a concern?And so many are children. This CDC Study reports that the death rate for children in the US is far higher than for other industrialized nations:

quote:

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The homicide rate for children in the United States was five times higher than that for children in the other 25 countries combined (2.57 per 100,000 compared with 0.51)

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--Percy

Well, not sure they were all needless deaths but that too is irrelevant. Not one gun killed anyone, it was people not the guns.And again, the issue with children is not the guns but education.Sorry Percy but I am far more concerned about bigger issues, ones we are NOT addressing.