Bob Costas

[HomeInspect]

Anyone see this fool's rant on SNF last night. Ya' think he would be fired if he aired the opposite message on gun control after this tragedy in KC ?

 

[Pogo]

It wouldn't be possible to air "the opposite message on gun control" unless you first aired a first message on gun control. Costas never mentioned it. Neither did Whitlock. What they did mention was gun "culture" (I prefer 'fetishism') which is (a) a dialogue this country sorely needs and (b) an entirely different thing.

I suspect the fetishists would prefer the dialogue to stay complacently on the idea of 'control' rather than the stickier wicket of what it was actually on.

 

[Mad Scientist]

This just gives me another reason NOT to watch that Staged NFL Reality Show.

 

[waltky]

Gun ownership is a matter of public record...

How to Find Out If a Person Has a Registered Gun in California
When looking to find out if someone in the state of California has a registered gun you will have to make a public records request through the California Department of Justice. Every citizen of the state of California has the right to access public information such as who owns a licensed gun within the state.

Instructions

1 Decide how you will send your public records request. You can email your request at: PublicRecords@doj.ca.gov or mail you request to: Attorney General's Office, Public Records Ombudsman, P.O. Box 944255, Sacramento, CA 94244-2550. As well, you can call at (916) 445-4069 to get answers to some basic questions from the Ombudsman's office.

2 Form your request by identifying that you wish to know if someone has a registered gun by providing your name and contact information as well as the name and home address of the person in question.

3 After you send your request, you will be contacted as soon as possible by phone or mail regarding your public records request. You may be charged if you want copies of your request sent to you by mail. If you wish to review the information in person at 4949 Broadway Sacramento, CA 95820 you can see the paperwork for free. However, you will still be charged if you want copies of certain documents to keep for your personal records.

Read more: How to Find Out If a Person Has a Registered Gun in California | eHow.com How to Find Out If a Person Has a Registered Gun in California | eHow.com

See also:

Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?
Dec. 22, 2012 | The map indicates the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. Each dot represents an individual permit holder licensed to own a handgun — a pistol or revolver.

The data does not include owners of long guns — rifles or shotguns — which can be purchased without a permit. Being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location owns a weapon, just that they are licensed to do so. Data for all permit categories, unrestricted carry, premises, business, employment, target and hunting, is included, but permit information is not available on an individual basis.

To create the map, The Journal News submitted Freedom of Information requests for the names and addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam. By state law, the information is public record. Putnam is still putting together its records and could not immediately provide any data. The map will be updated when that data is released.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY

This map shows pistol permits registered with the Westchester County Clerk's Office. Residents are required to renew the permit every five years. Zoom in and out for more information and click on a dot to see details of a permit.

MORE

 

[Pogo]

Sensible gun control - let's go back to one-shot pistols and muskets, the weapons technology of the day when the 2nd amendment was written.

Good idea. It's what the Second Amendment was written for. The creators of the Bill of Rights spoke of the world they knew; they could not have imagined what technology has "advanced" (degraded) to. Not even the Minié ball had been invented yet.


I just now noticed that the OP's signature line mentions "naïveté" -- ironic considering his misread of Costas' commentary. Bob was proven right, even prescient.

 

[HomeInspect]

The mindless thinking that making certain guns illegal, or even harder to get, will somehow prevent their usage and tragedies that come with them. Look how good that works with drugs.

 

[Pogo]

The mindless thinking that making certain guns illegal, or even harder to get, will somehow prevent their usage and tragedies that come with them. Look how good that works with drugs.

Again this is getting off the described topic, since Bob Costas said nothing at all about gun control or bans or anything of the sort.

However, if we entertain that tangent for the moment...

Did the 1994 law have loopholes? Yes, lots. Even after the ban took effect, it was not difficult for someone to get their hands on an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine.

A 2004 University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice explained why. For starters, only 18 firearm models were explicitly banned. But it was easy for gun manufacturers to modify weapons slightly so that they didn’t fall under the ban. One example: the Colt AR-15 that James Holmes used to shoot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last summer would have been outlawed. Yet it would have been perfectly legal for Holmes to have purchased a very similar Colt Match Target rifle, which didn’t fall under the ban.

Because mass shootings are relatively rare, it’s difficult to tell whether this was just a random blip or caused by the ban. Still, the number of mass shootings per year has doubled since the ban expired. That’s suggestive, at least.

... Would it be possible to tighten the law? In theory, yes. Back in 1996, Australia imposed a much stricter version of the assault weapons ban after a mass shooting. The Australian version avoided many of the loopholes in the U.S. law: Not only did the country ban all types of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, but it also spent $500 million buying up nearly 600,000 existing guns from private owners.

As Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff pointed out, Australia’s law appears to have curbed gun violence. Researchers in the British Medical Journal write that the ban was “followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides.”

(WaPo Wonkblog)

IOW as long as we've got the heavily-funded NRA lobby standing up for the rights of the James Holmses and Adam Lanzas (and for themselves to profit), we can depend on them to water such bills down to little more than a technicality. And as this article goes on, without the gun-removal program Australia included, it can hardly make a dent with all the assault weapons already out there (and growing due to NRA paranoia-sowing). It's like finding out Chevrolets cause cancer, therefore we won't make Chevys any more. Might be a factor in fifty years, but not a great big impact on the here and now.

So much for the tangent on government action, but to return to the Bob Costas commentary, which was entirely about cultural attitudes, it seems clear that wrapping up a Christmas present for ourselves of a ban on whatever instruments of death we might designate, even if the list is not watered down, isn't likely to work in a vacuum, and amounts to the same kind of treating-symptom-instead-of-disease as is the flawed idea that the antidote to gun violence is more gun violence. Both of these fallacies ignore the root causes -- which is what Bob Costas was talking about. As is often pointed out, guns don't kill, people do. And people don't kill without motivation to do so.

Every way I look at it I can't help but see the Bob Costas/Jason Whitlock commentaries being twisted into something they're not, in order to specifically avoid discussion of these root causes. For a crowd that likes to hide behind guns in a false show of force, that's a deep degree of cowardice.

Ironically this twisting of Costas' message has been attended by calls for his "firing", i.e. silencing a voice some don't want to hear. That's in effect the same obloquy foisted on the spirit of the Constitution (see: First Amendment) as that mindless petition to get Piers Morgan deported. And equally cowardly.

 

[waltky]

Granny says too many lil' kids gettin' shot...

Young children are often victims of gunfire in US
Wed, Dec 26, 2012 - Before 20 small children were massacred at school by a gunman in Newtown, Connecticut, Luke Schuster, 6, was shot to death in New Town, North Dakota. Six-year-olds John Devine Jr and Jayden Thompson were similarly killed in Kentucky and Texas.

Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6, died in a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, while six-year-old Kammia Perry was slain by her father outside her Cleveland home, according to an Associated Press (AP) review of 2012 media reports. Yet there was no gunman on the loose when Julio Segura-McIntosh died in Tacoma, Washington. The three-year-old accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a gun he found inside a car. As he mourned with the families of Newtown, US President Barack Obama said the US cannot accept such violent deaths of children as routine. However, hundreds of young child deaths by gunfire suggest it might already have.

Between 2006 and 2010, 561 children aged 12 and under were killed by firearms, according to the FBI’s most recent Uniform Crime Reports. The FBI’s count does not include gun-related child deaths that authorities have ruled accidental. “This happens on way too regular a basis and it affects families and communities — not at once, so we don’t see it and we don’t understand it as part of our national experience,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. In response to what happened in Newtown, the National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s largest gun lobby, suggested shielding children from gun violence by putting an armed police officer in every school. “Politicians pass laws for gun-free school zones ... They post signs advertising them and in doing so they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said.

Webster said children are more likely to die by gunfire at home or in the street. They tend to be safer when they are in school, he said. None of the 61 deaths reviewed by the AP happened at school. Children die by many other methods as well. However, the gruesome recounts of gun deaths, sometimes just a few paragraphs in a newspaper or on a Web site, a few minutes on television or radio, bear witness that firearms are cutting short many youngsters’ lives. One week before the Newtown slayings, Alyssa Celaya, 8, bled to death after being shot by her father with a .38 caliber gun at the Tule River Indian Reservation in California. Her grandmother and two brothers also were killed, a younger sister and brother were shot and wounded. The father shot and killed himself.

Delric Miller’s life ended at 9 months and Angel Mauro Cortez Nava’s at 14 months. Delric was in the living room of a home on Detroit’s west side on Feb. 20 when someone sprayed it with gunfire from an AK-47. Angel was cradled in his father’s arms on a sidewalk near their home in Los Angeles when a bicyclist rode by on June 4 and opened fire, killing the infant. Gun violence and the toll it is taking on children has been an issue raised for years in minority communities. The NAACP, a civil rights group, failed in its attempt to hold gun makers accountable through a lawsuit filed in 1999. Some in the community raised the issue during the campaign and asked Obama after he was re-elected to make reducing gun violence part of his second-term agenda.

More Young children are often victims of gunfire in US - Taipei Times

 

[HomeInspect]

"Sensible gun control - let's go back to one-shot pistols and muskets, the weapons technology of the day when the 2nd amendment was written"

That would be fine if the bad guys only had access to the same hardware (which makes your point silly)

 

[rightwinger]

Bob Costas made the gun community look like idiots

Guess who ended up right all along

 

[waltky]

Nixes NRA call for armed guards in schools...

Ron Paul vividly denounces NRA schools plan
12/24/12 - “Government security is just another kind of violence”

Outgoing Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) distanced himself Monday from a National Rifle Association proposal to place armed guards at every school, saying “government security is just another kind of violence.” He said the federal government should not try to “pursue unobtainable safety” with state-sanctioned security and claimed Democratic and Republican lawmakers have “zero moral authority to legislate against violence.” “This is the world of government provided ‘security,’ a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse,” Paul said in a statement on his website. “School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.”

He continued: “Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another.” In his criticism of progressives calling for more gun restrictions, Paul said new laws won’t dissuade or prevent a madman with a gun from killing innocents.

“Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control,” he said. “This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government ‘do something’ to protect us in the wake of national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. … But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don’t obey laws.”

Read more: Ron Paul vividly denounces NRA schools plan - Bobby Cervantes - POLITICO.com

See also:

Rev. Jesse Jackson asks jail inmates to help end gun violence
December 25, 2012 - The Rev. Jesse Jackson advocated anti-violence and gun control Tuesday during his traditional Christmas Day sermon at the Cook County Jail, where he challenged inmates to help get weapons off the streets.

Jackson has long been a supporter of gun control, including a ban on assault weapons. He called the deadly Dec. 14 shootings at a Connecticut elementary school a tipping point for the nation when it comes to gun control. “We’ve all been grieving about the violence in Newtown, Connecticut, the last few days,” he said after addressing inmates at the jail. “Most of those here today ... have either shot somebody or been shot. We’re recruiting them to help us stop the flow of guns ... We need their awareness of the dangers of more guns and more drugs.”

The civil rights leader didn’t detail his plan to involve inmates, saying only that inmates could provide insight. Jackson walked around the jail auditorium and shook hands with inmates before taking the stage to deliver a rousing sermon. Gospel singers and a band performed as Jackson covered a range of topics, including crime and guns. He encouraged the hundreds of inmates to get tested for HIV, register to vote and pray for forgiveness.

At one emotional point, Jackson called on inmates to get on their knees and ask for guidance to turn their lives around. “You want to turn your jail cell into a classroom,” he told them. “Turn your jail cell into a prayer closet.” Several inmates, with heads bowed, wiped away tears.

Jackson, 71, has delivered Christmas Day sermons at jails for years. He says the idea is to inspire and invest in inmates so they don’t return to jail. He was joined by other Chicago pastors and U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, a Chicago Democrat who also supports an assault weapons ban. Davis has attended Christmas services at jails for more than two decades. “It’s a highlight of the day,” Davis said. “I leave with a renewed spirit.”

Source

 

[Pogo]

Nixes NRA call for armed guards in schools...

Ron Paul vividly denounces NRA schools plan
12/24/12 - “Government security is just another kind of violence”

Outgoing Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) distanced himself Monday from a National Rifle Association proposal to place armed guards at every school, saying “government security is just another kind of violence.” He said the federal government should not try to “pursue unobtainable safety” with state-sanctioned security and claimed Democratic and Republican lawmakers have “zero moral authority to legislate against violence.” “This is the world of government provided ‘security,’ a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse,” Paul said in a statement on his website. “School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.”

He continued: “Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another.” In his criticism of progressives calling for more gun restrictions, Paul said new laws won’t dissuade or prevent a madman with a gun from killing innocents.

“Predictably, the political left responded to the tragedy with emotional calls for increased gun control,” he said. “This is understandable, but misguided. The impulse to have government ‘do something’ to protect us in the wake of national tragedies is reflexive and often well intentioned. … But this impulse ignores the self evident truth that criminals don’t obey laws.”

Read more: Ron Paul vividly denounces NRA schools plan - Bobby Cervantes - POLITICO.com

What does this have to do with the topic?

 

[TruthSeeker56]

The mindless thinking that making certain guns illegal, or even harder to get, will somehow prevent their usage and tragedies that come with them. Look how good that works with drugs.

Again this is getting off the described topic, since Bob Costas said nothing at all about gun control or bans or anything of the sort.

However, if we entertain that tangent for the moment...

Did the 1994 law have loopholes? Yes, lots. Even after the ban took effect, it was not difficult for someone to get their hands on an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine.

A 2004 University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice explained why. For starters, only 18 firearm models were explicitly banned. But it was easy for gun manufacturers to modify weapons slightly so that they didn’t fall under the ban. One example: the Colt AR-15 that James Holmes used to shoot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last summer would have been outlawed. Yet it would have been perfectly legal for Holmes to have purchased a very similar Colt Match Target rifle, which didn’t fall under the ban.

Because mass shootings are relatively rare, it’s difficult to tell whether this was just a random blip or caused by the ban. Still, the number of mass shootings per year has doubled since the ban expired. That’s suggestive, at least.

... Would it be possible to tighten the law? In theory, yes. Back in 1996, Australia imposed a much stricter version of the assault weapons ban after a mass shooting. The Australian version avoided many of the loopholes in the U.S. law: Not only did the country ban all types of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, but it also spent $500 million buying up nearly 600,000 existing guns from private owners.

As Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff pointed out, Australia’s law appears to have curbed gun violence. Researchers in the British Medical Journal write that the ban was “followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides.”

(WaPo Wonkblog)

IOW as long as we've got the heavily-funded NRA lobby standing up for the rights of the James Holmses and Adam Lanzas (and for themselves to profit), we can depend on them to water such bills down to little more than a technicality. And as this article goes on, without the gun-removal program Australia included, it can hardly make a dent with all the assault weapons already out there (and growing due to NRA paranoia-sowing). It's like finding out Chevrolets cause cancer, therefore we won't make Chevys any more. Might be a factor in fifty years, but not a great big impact on the here and now.

So much for the tangent on government action, but to return to the Bob Costas commentary, which was entirely about cultural attitudes, it seems clear that wrapping up a Christmas present for ourselves of a ban on whatever instruments of death we might designate, even if the list is not watered down, isn't likely to work in a vacuum, and amounts to the same kind of treating-symptom-instead-of-disease as is the flawed idea that the antidote to gun violence is more gun violence. Both of these fallacies ignore the root causes -- which is what Bob Costas was talking about. As is often pointed out, guns don't kill, people do. And people don't kill without motivation to do so.

Every way I look at it I can't help but see the Bob Costas/Jason Whitlock commentaries being twisted into something they're not, in order to specifically avoid discussion of these root causes. For a crowd that likes to hide behind guns in a false show of force, that's a deep degree of cowardice.

Ironically this twisting of Costas' message has been attended by calls for his "firing", i.e. silencing a voice some don't want to hear. That's in effect the same obloquy foisted on the spirit of the Constitution (see: First Amendment) as that mindless petition to get Piers Morgan deported. And equally cowardly.

Again, you are LYING. Here is the transcript of Costas' rant:

BOB COSTAS: Well, you knew it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf-life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

"Our current gun culture," Whitlock wrote, "ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."

"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?"

"But here," wrote Jason Whitlock," is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

 

[Pogo]

The mindless thinking that making certain guns illegal, or even harder to get, will somehow prevent their usage and tragedies that come with them. Look how good that works with drugs.

Again this is getting off the described topic, since Bob Costas said nothing at all about gun control or bans or anything of the sort.

However, if we entertain that tangent for the moment...

Did the 1994 law have loopholes? Yes, lots. Even after the ban took effect, it was not difficult for someone to get their hands on an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine.

A 2004 University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice explained why. For starters, only 18 firearm models were explicitly banned. But it was easy for gun manufacturers to modify weapons slightly so that they didn’t fall under the ban. One example: the Colt AR-15 that James Holmes used to shoot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., last summer would have been outlawed. Yet it would have been perfectly legal for Holmes to have purchased a very similar Colt Match Target rifle, which didn’t fall under the ban.

Because mass shootings are relatively rare, it’s difficult to tell whether this was just a random blip or caused by the ban. Still, the number of mass shootings per year has doubled since the ban expired. That’s suggestive, at least.

... Would it be possible to tighten the law? In theory, yes. Back in 1996, Australia imposed a much stricter version of the assault weapons ban after a mass shooting. The Australian version avoided many of the loopholes in the U.S. law: Not only did the country ban all types of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, but it also spent $500 million buying up nearly 600,000 existing guns from private owners.

As Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff pointed out, Australia’s law appears to have curbed gun violence. Researchers in the British Medical Journal write that the ban was “followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides.”

(WaPo Wonkblog)

IOW as long as we've got the heavily-funded NRA lobby standing up for the rights of the James Holmses and Adam Lanzas (and for themselves to profit), we can depend on them to water such bills down to little more than a technicality. And as this article goes on, without the gun-removal program Australia included, it can hardly make a dent with all the assault weapons already out there (and growing due to NRA paranoia-sowing). It's like finding out Chevrolets cause cancer, therefore we won't make Chevys any more. Might be a factor in fifty years, but not a great big impact on the here and now.

So much for the tangent on government action, but to return to the Bob Costas commentary, which was entirely about cultural attitudes, it seems clear that wrapping up a Christmas present for ourselves of a ban on whatever instruments of death we might designate, even if the list is not watered down, isn't likely to work in a vacuum, and amounts to the same kind of treating-symptom-instead-of-disease as is the flawed idea that the antidote to gun violence is more gun violence. Both of these fallacies ignore the root causes -- which is what Bob Costas was talking about. As is often pointed out, guns don't kill, people do. And people don't kill without motivation to do so.

Every way I look at it I can't help but see the Bob Costas/Jason Whitlock commentaries being twisted into something they're not, in order to specifically avoid discussion of these root causes. For a crowd that likes to hide behind guns in a false show of force, that's a deep degree of cowardice.

Ironically this twisting of Costas' message has been attended by calls for his "firing", i.e. silencing a voice some don't want to hear. That's in effect the same obloquy foisted on the spirit of the Constitution (see: First Amendment) as that mindless petition to get Piers Morgan deported. And equally cowardly.

Again, you are LYING. Here is the transcript of Costas' rant:

BOB COSTAS: Well, you knew it was coming. In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again: Something like this really puts it all in perspective. Well, if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf-life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please, those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this? Well, a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock with whom I do not always agree, but who today said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.

"Our current gun culture," Whitlock wrote, "ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead."

"Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?"

"But here," wrote Jason Whitlock," is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."

Thanks but I don't need the transcript, or the video, or the Whitlock column. I went over all of these in detail looong before I even signed up on this board so I know them all inside and out. I don't come unprepared.

Now then -- where exactly is this "lying"?

 

[HomeInspect]

A long time ago, there were no guns. Interesting though, when there were no guns, people killed each other at a higher rate per capita than they do now. The gun "culture" that Costas' mentions, is not just a culture with guns. It is an entire culture of single parent families, teenage pregnancies, drugs, unemployment, frustration, government dependency, and entitlements. The gun is just a tool used in the culture.... it's not a "gun culture"

 

[Pogo]

A long time ago, there were no guns. Interesting though, when there were no guns, people killed each other at a higher rate per capita than they do now. The gun "culture" that Costas' mentions, is not just a culture with guns. It is an entire culture of single parent families, teenage pregnancies, drugs, unemployment, frustration, government dependency, and entitlements. The gun is just a tool used in the culture.... it's not a "gun culture"

Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --

(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"

For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.

People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.

On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.

When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.

Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.

 

[HomeInspect]

A long time ago, there were no guns. Interesting though, when there were no guns, people killed each other at a higher rate per capita than they do now. The gun "culture" that Costas' mentions, is not just a culture with guns. It is an entire culture of single parent families, teenage pregnancies, drugs, unemployment, frustration, government dependency, and entitlements. The gun is just a tool used in the culture.... it's not a "gun culture"

Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --

(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"

For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.

People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.

On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.

When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.

Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.

To say it's a "gun culture" is the false part. The gun is just a tool used in the culture

 

[Pogo]

A long time ago, there were no guns. Interesting though, when there were no guns, people killed each other at a higher rate per capita than they do now. The gun "culture" that Costas' mentions, is not just a culture with guns. It is an entire culture of single parent families, teenage pregnancies, drugs, unemployment, frustration, government dependency, and entitlements. The gun is just a tool used in the culture.... it's not a "gun culture"

Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --

(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"

For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.

People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.

On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.

When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.

Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.

To say it's a "gun culture" is the false part. The gun is just a tool used in the culture

One line. Thanks for putting such deep thought into a complex issue. My head swims.

 

[HomeInspect]

Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --

(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"

For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.

People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.

On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.

When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.

Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.

To say it's a "gun culture" is the false part. The gun is just a tool used in the culture

One line. Thanks for putting such deep thought into a complex issue. My head swims.

hmm.. you are making it complex. Thank goodness I didn't post more than one line. Think of what your head would do then !!

 

[rightwinger]

A long time ago, there were no guns. Interesting though, when there were no guns, people killed each other at a higher rate per capita than they do now. The gun "culture" that Costas' mentions, is not just a culture with guns. It is an entire culture of single parent families, teenage pregnancies, drugs, unemployment, frustration, government dependency, and entitlements. The gun is just a tool used in the culture.... it's not a "gun culture"

Sure they did, but just as in the incident that prompted Bob Costas' commentary, the fallacy here is the assumption that such killers work in a logical progression --

(1), "I'm going to kill Jane"; (2) "how shall I do it?"

For a straight intentional murder, it's reasonable to assume that's how it works. But with gun slayings, especially mass slayings, that's not what we're talking about. We're conflating murder with what the Newtowns and Auroras and Columbines really are-- carnage.

People who murder have a specific target and a specific reason -- jealousy over a jilted lover, insurance fraud, eliminating some business rival... there is some cause and effect. They're settling some perceived score, however flawed that perception is.

On the other hand gunnists who burst into a schoolroom or a mall or a movie theater gunning down people they don't even know, cannot possibly have those motives. They're not settling scores and they're not there for that reason. They're there for the carnage. The blood flow, the wailing of helpless victims trying desperately to get out of the way. It's no more about murder than rape is about sex -- it's about power. ALL of these mass shooters --I know not a single exception-- had some kind of power issue. Fired, outcast, enraged by something.

When you go to murder someone you have all kinds of tools: bludgeoning, poisoning, accidenting, stabbing, they all accomplish the goal of murder. But when the goal is visual carnage, the gun is the only way to go.

Let's first get real about what's going on and how this works and quit the false equivalencies.

To say it's a "gun culture" is the false part. The gun is just a tool used in the culture

It is a culture built around a tool