Gun nuts intimidate mothers in parking lot

[Pogo]

People who live in open carry States do not have a problem with law abiding Citizens who carry their guns in public.
We who are exposed to it and see them around all the time, feel safer with them around.

The trouble with that is -- the observer doesn't know which is which --- between the law abider and the thug, between the stable citizen and the nut job. The only thing the observer can be certain of is "I see a gun and I know what it's capable of". You'd have to be either insane or in complete denial to not know that by now. And with an open carry law, the thug/nutjob has no incentive to hide his piece because he becomes part of the background.

That probably is more of a point on the wisdom of open carry laws though.

Does that means we need to treat people like criminals and lock everybody up? That would solve the problem of no one but cops having guns, but it would totally destroy your precept that you are pro freedom.

It doesn't mean we "should" do anything. It's an answer to the thread it was an answer to. This cigar is just a cigar. No need to make it into a penis.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I live in a open carry state (Arizona). I find it ironic that virtually every place of business in California has a "No smoking" sign out front, while virtually every place of business in AZ has a "No firearms allowed" sign out front... I'm watching macho guys everywhere taking their guns off and putting them in their glove boxes before they go into stores. It's kind of amusing watching them put them back on after they return to their car, just in case they get ambused on the way from the 7/11 store to where they pick up junior from school.

While I strongly support the "No Smoking" policy of the California stores, what purpose do you feel is served by the "No Firearms Allowed" policy in the Arizona stores?

Smoking is offensive. It is physically harmful and to a non-smoker it stinks! But I find nothing offensive about someone strapped with a handgun, or for that matter an M-1 Garand slung on his shoulder. I might consider it unusual, or redundant, but it would neither offend me nor frighten me. That is mainly because I know how easy it would be for a screwball with mayhem in mind to have a fifteen-shot automatic pistol concealed under his shirt or jacket. So essentially I am more concerned with what I can't see than that which is open to view.

If you don't mind the extra weight and discomfort imposed by being strapped, that's your business. The upside to it is you possibly could be my salvation if some screwball decides to start shooting up the place. Because it seems that an outstanding problem in every example of a screwball shooting is there are no armed citizens nearby to take the shooter out.

He is actually lying, most business don't signs. The ones that do cater to the artsy crowd that most sane people avoid anyway.

 

[Pogo]

No. What I'm saying is what we've been doing, which is passing a lot of clearly ineffective laws which attempt to attack the problem from every possible angle, isn't working. So it's obvious we need to try something else.

What do you suggest?

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

We do not have a culture of violence, only a drooling idiot would even attempt to argue that we do.

Your fear does not control me, so keep it to yourself.

Of course we don't. Aurora, Sandy Hook, DC, Powell, Oak Creek, Webster, Lancaster, Kileen, Binghamton, San Diego, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, San Ysidro, Edmond, Stockton, Virginia Tech, Iowa City, Olivehurst, San Francisco, Garden City, Jonesboro. Atlanta, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Wakefield, Santee, Meridian, Red Lake, Salt Lake, Omaha, DeKalb, Fort Hood, Manchester, Austin, Seal Beach, Oakland, Minneapolis, Brookfield, Santa Monica, DC (again) and Columbine were all accidents. The gun misfired.

Yeah, that's it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Uh--- that's everybody's perception. Without that perception, neither this thread nor the story in the OP even exists, because it means no more than another leaf falling off the oak tree.

Regardless of our foggy memories of the '50s, we don't live in them; we're in 2013. Therefore we all behave in ways that address the sensibilities of 2013. If the purpose had been so innocuous, then the women, the restaurant manager, the passersby, all would have shrugged it off and ordered their dessert. And that would have made the venture of these twenty people pointless and therefore they wouldn't have bothered.

Sorry but the fact that they showed up brandishing weapons doesn't allow this kind of wiggle room. They had an emotional purpose, and they achieved it. And they achieved the backlash that came with it. Which, again, they knew would be coming. IOW they got exactly what they came for. To suggest "there was no intimidation" is not just blatant denialism, it suggests that the group failed at their objective. I don't think they failed at all. If they did nobody would be talking about it.

The overwhelming perception of the people in this thread is that there was no intimidation on the part of the gun owners. I guess that makes you an asshole, again, and wrong.

The overwhelming perception of humans was once that the earth was flat. I guess that means we're all descended from assholes.
Where do you see this poll by the way?

Seriously dude, you are making dog shit look like Einstein and Hawking's love child.

The only people that thought the world was flat were the people that make rabid dogs look intelligent. Anyone that has ever traveled can plainly see that the Earth is round, and they even figured out a way to measure the diameter. Then again, you think reading a book makes you an expert, so I doubt you have even looked at the horizon to see the curvature of the Earth.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The trouble with that is -- the observer doesn't know which is which --- between the law abider and the thug, between the stable citizen and the nut job. The only thing the observer can be certain of is "I see a gun and I know what it's capable of". You'd have to be either insane or in complete denial to not know that by now. And with an open carry law, the thug/nutjob has no incentive to hide his piece because he becomes part of the background.

That probably is more of a point on the wisdom of open carry laws though.

Does that means we need to treat people like criminals and lock everybody up? That would solve the problem of no one but cops having guns, but it would totally destroy your precept that you are pro freedom.

It doesn't mean we "should" do anything. It's an answer to the thread it was an answer to. This cigar is just a cigar. No need to make it into a penis.

Are you saying that you lied when you argued that the fact that no one can tell criminals from good guys is proof of something?

Why am I not surprised?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

We do not have a culture of violence, only a drooling idiot would even attempt to argue that we do.

Your fear does not control me, so keep it to yourself.

Of course we don't. Aurora, Sandy Hook, DC, Powell, Oak Creek, Webster, Lancaster, Kileen, Binghamton, San Diego, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, San Ysidro, Edmond, Stockton, Virginia Tech, Iowa City, Olivehurst, San Francisco, Garden City, Jonesboro. Atlanta, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Wakefield, Santee, Meridian, Red Lake, Salt Lake, Omaha, DeKalb, Fort Hood, Manchester, Austin, Seal Beach, Oakland, Minneapolis, Brookfield, Santa Monica, DC (again) and Columbine were all accidents. The gun misfired.

Yeah, that's it.

Even if every school in the country had a shooting on a daily basis you wouldn't be able to argue that we live in a culture of violence. Since we don't even have one a month you have about as much chance of making that argument stick as you do of convincing me you don't have your head up your ass.

 

[Pogo]

Does that means we need to treat people like criminals and lock everybody up? That would solve the problem of no one but cops having guns, but it would totally destroy your precept that you are pro freedom.

It doesn't mean we "should" do anything. It's an answer to the thread it was an answer to. This cigar is just a cigar. No need to make it into a penis.

Are you saying that you lied when you argued that the fact that no one can tell criminals from good guys is proof of something?

Why am I not surprised?

Why are you not honest?

The overwhelming perception of the people in this thread is that there was no intimidation on the part of the gun owners. I guess that makes you an asshole, again, and wrong.

The overwhelming perception of humans was once that the earth was flat. I guess that means we're all descended from assholes.
Where do you see this poll by the way?

Seriously dude, you are making dog shit look like Einstein and Hawking's love child.

The only people that thought the world was flat were the people that make rabid dogs look intelligent. Anyone that has ever traveled can plainly see that the Earth is round, and they even figured out a way to measure the diameter. Then again, you think reading a book makes you an expert, so I doubt you have even looked at the horizon to see the curvature of the Earth.

That's all you can think of?

Where's the poll?

 

[Pogo]

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

We do not have a culture of violence, only a drooling idiot would even attempt to argue that we do.

Your fear does not control me, so keep it to yourself.

Of course we don't. Aurora, Sandy Hook, DC, Powell, Oak Creek, Webster, Lancaster, Kileen, Binghamton, San Diego, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, San Ysidro, Edmond, Stockton, Virginia Tech, Iowa City, Olivehurst, San Francisco, Garden City, Jonesboro. Atlanta, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Wakefield, Santee, Meridian, Red Lake, Salt Lake, Omaha, DeKalb, Fort Hood, Manchester, Austin, Seal Beach, Oakland, Minneapolis, Brookfield, Santa Monica, DC (again) and Columbine were all accidents. The gun misfired.

Yeah, that's it.

Even if every school in the country had a shooting on a daily basis you wouldn't be able to argue that we live in a culture of violence. Since we don't even have one a month you have about as much chance of making that argument stick as you do of convincing me you don't have your head up your ass.

If I said the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, you would argue with it, so whatever dood. I post for those open to ponderation, not for some dullard contrarian to dismiss the point out of hand and get his time on the contrarian exercise bike.

 

[KGB]

Fatalistic. You're saying, "oh well, what can we do, let's just throw up our hands and give up".

No. What I'm saying is what we've been doing, which is passing a lot of clearly ineffective laws which attempt to attack the problem from every possible angle, isn't working. So it's obvious we need to try something else.

What do you suggest?

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

and here we go folks, another liberal paradise facade. How about you get back into the real world? You are talking about a force that has been with us since Cain & Abel were strolling around. I can substitute any platform you want, gun, knife, car, hands, the evil remains. Yes, you are right, we have to change it. But the difference is, people who defend to the 2nd Amendment, understand it can't be changed. Why? It's not in our nature to do so. As a species, we are hard wired for violence. We are an aggressive lot & it will take a miracle to change it. Until that day comes, those of us who live in the real world will arm & defend ourselves from the scum of society that would prey on us. I suggest you look at the world for how it is, not what you want it to be....

 

[KGB]

No. What I'm saying is what we've been doing, which is passing a lot of clearly ineffective laws which attempt to attack the problem from every possible angle, isn't working. So it's obvious we need to try something else.

What do you suggest?

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

We do not have a culture of violence, only a drooling idiot would even attempt to argue that we do.

Your fear does not control me, so keep it to yourself.

we do have a culture of violence, but that is humanity as a whole....

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Of course we don't. Aurora, Sandy Hook, DC, Powell, Oak Creek, Webster, Lancaster, Kileen, Binghamton, San Diego, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, San Ysidro, Edmond, Stockton, Virginia Tech, Iowa City, Olivehurst, San Francisco, Garden City, Jonesboro. Atlanta, Fort Worth, Honolulu, Wakefield, Santee, Meridian, Red Lake, Salt Lake, Omaha, DeKalb, Fort Hood, Manchester, Austin, Seal Beach, Oakland, Minneapolis, Brookfield, Santa Monica, DC (again) and Columbine were all accidents. The gun misfired.

Yeah, that's it.

Even if every school in the country had a shooting on a daily basis you wouldn't be able to argue that we live in a culture of violence. Since we don't even have one a month you have about as much chance of making that argument stick as you do of convincing me you don't have your head up your ass.

If I said the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, you would argue with it, so whatever dood. I post for those open to ponderation, not for some dullard contrarian to dismiss the point out of hand and get his time on the contrarian exercise bike.

I wouldn't argue, I would laugh, and point out that it has rose in the East for as long as man has walked the Earth.

But, please, feel free to point out how stupid I am for not agreeing with you.

 

[Pogo]

No. What I'm saying is what we've been doing, which is passing a lot of clearly ineffective laws which attempt to attack the problem from every possible angle, isn't working. So it's obvious we need to try something else.

What do you suggest?

I agree about the laws. We should have remembered this from Prohibition.

As you noted already we have a deeply embedded gun culture; I would extend that to say a culture of violence generally. Without getting too deeply tangential, we take the attitude that the way to address any obstacle is to blow it up, shoot it, eliminate it. I call it the Lobotomy Mentality.

What we see in the endless torrent of gun violence is the fruition of that underlying drive, and the firearm is the instrument that makes it easy for Everyman to be the next Loughner, just as the automobile made it easy for Everyman to travel. But underneath is the culture of violence and the gun fetish that it centres on. Without that particular set of values, gun violence just doesn't happen.

That's what needs to change. We once had, for instance, a culture of slavery. To rationalize that we told ourselves there was a class of species not quite human. We got over ourselves on that. We had (recalling your incarnation of the 1950s) a culture of cigarettes. It was fashionable, cool, desirable. Doctors smoked. We got over our delusions on that too.

Bob Costas had it exactly right on his Monday Night Football commentary almost a year ago. I spent a day on a sports message board refuting the whizbangs who were posting all day about Costas' "gun control rant", pointing out that that wasn't his point and he never mentioned gun control or laws at all. That's a case of meme propaganda being pushed and parroted without anyone bothering to stop and see if it holds water. Anyway I had no desire to stay on a sports message board and that's when I came here, to make the same point.

We DO have a gun culture, and it's a detriment, and it's costing us just as cigarettes did. It's glorified and trivialized every hour of every day in movies, TV cop shows, video games, even child's toys. Again, that doesn't mean reacting through law-- it doesn't mean censoring movies or banning video games. That doesn't work anyway -- Japan is a noted example where violent video games are at least as popular as here, yet that country has a tiny fraction of our gun violence. Or take the case of punitive drug laws-- does it diminish the use of cannabis to call it a "narcotic" and toss users in jail? Not at all. You don't change behaviour by banning things. It's been tried, and it fails because human nature doesn't work that way.

What needs to disappear is the drive, the desire, the lust for the detrimental factor, whether it be a drug or a cigarette or a firearm mentality. It requires not a legal solution but a social/spiritual one. It requires that we stop and examine our values as they are and assess which ones are working against us. We didn't need to ban tobacco for its use to plummet; we used a social pressure. That can be far more effective for a problem than throwing laws at it. And in this case, far more effective. The problem isn't the firearm; it's the mentality. It's the value we attach to it; a value of destruction.

It won't happen overnight or this year or this decade. But the longest journey begins with a single step.

and here we go folks, another liberal paradise facade. How about you get back into the real world? You are talking about a force that has been with us since Cain & Abel were strolling around. I can substitute any platform you want, gun, knife, car, hands, the evil remains. Yes, you are right, we have to change it. But the difference is, people who defend to the 2nd Amendment, understand it can't be changed. Why? It's not in our nature to do so. As a species, we are hard wired for violence. We are an aggressive lot & it will take a miracle to change it. Until that day comes, those of us who live in the real world will arm & defend ourselves from the scum of society that would prey on us. I suggest you look at the world for how it is, not what you want it to be....

And I suggest you live in a comic book full of "evildoers" and superheroes in spandex. I mean, your avatar alone tells me that.
Not for me, thanks.

This is just reverting back to the fatalist throw-up-our-hands-and-give-up mentality. Yet strangely enough in the middle of the same post you agreed: "Yes, you are right, we have to change it". Let me know which of you wins.

By the way this is not a "liberal" (or political) idea; it's a sociological one. The liberal part is where we agree that throwing laws at the problem doesn't fix it. And that's exactly why we move to another solution.

As noted, we got over tobacco, we can get over this.

And no it's not a "human nature" default; it is specific to this country.
Even though you gave no evidence for your position, you want evidence of mine?

I give you two cities, split by a river, kinda like Minneapolis and St. Paul are but this is a different pair of cities.

Obviously being next to each other, these cities have much in common regionally, climatically, industrially and so on. They are less than a mile apart, connected by a bridge and a tunnel. But the two cities show a stark difference in one area.

The city to the west recorded 377 total homicides in 2011 and 327 in 2010, according to police statistics(1), carrying a homicide rate of around 50 per 100,000 people

Across the bridge in the same time period, there was a total of one. For both years put together. A rate of 0.30. From September 27, 2009 to November 22, 2011 in that city, there were no murders at all. Zero.

What's going on here?

One of them is in Canada. The cities are Detroit and Windsor.

... I haven't determined how many of those homicides were committed by firearm, but for a guide, out of 386 Detroit homicides in 2012, 333 were by firearm. Over 86%. (1)

And the one murder that finally broke the 2011 streak in Windsor? It was a stabbing.

People in his city of about 215,000 have a saying, Blaine said Friday afternoon: "In Windsor, when a 7-Eleven is held up, it usually is a knife. In Detroit, it is an Uzi."
It's not that there's no crime in Windsor, an industrial city that has seen its own economic challenges. "We're no different than any other major metropolitan area," Corey said. (here)

704 to 1 in homicide; several hundred to zero in gun deaths.
Detroit: at or near the highest murder rate in its country; Windsor: lowest in its country.

Less than a mile apart.

What's driving the difference? Gun control? Or gun culture? Discuss.

Resources/further reading:
(1) 2012 Crime/Homicide Stats

(2) Freep.com 1/3/13

A Tale of Two Cities

Murder-Free Two Years

Is that country-specific enough for ya?

 

[Vandalshandle]

Well, I saw the poll, and I told them that I agree with the immortal words of Walt Kelley, when he said:

"As Maine go o so Pogo go Key Largo,
Otsego to Frisco go to Fargo,
Okeefenokee playin' Possum on a Pogo
Stick around and see the show go over

Landalive a band o' Jive will blow go Pogo
I go you go who go to go Polly voo go,
From Caravan Diego, Waco and Oswego,
Tweedle de he go she go we go me go Pogo.

Atascadero Wheeler Barrow, Some place in Mexico
Delaware Ohio and you Don't need the text to go.
Wheeling, West Virginia With ev'rything that's in ya.
Down the line You'll see the shine
From Oregon to Caroline,

Oh, eenie meenie minie Kokomo go Pogo.
Tishimingo, sing those lingo, whistling go.
Shamokin to Hoboken Chenango to Chicango
It's golly, I go goo goo goin' go go Pogo.

(solo)

Atascadero Wheeler Barrow, Some place in Mexico
Delaware Ohio and you Don't need the text to go.
Wheeling, West Virginia With ev'rything that's in ya.
Down the line You'll see the shine
From Oregon to Caroline,

Oh, eenie meenie minie Kokomo go Pogo.
Tishimingo, sing those lingo, whistling go.
Shamokin to Hoboken Chenango to Chicango
It's golly, I go goo goo goin' go go Pogo! "

(don't let QW get you down. Personally, I find that I like him a lot better since he has been invisable!)

 

[Pogo]

Walt Kelley lyrics. I am humbled at the musings of my muse.

I wouldn't want Windbag invisible. He's such a handy tool. I think of him like a Dremel, only more masochistic.

 

[Zona]

Good. Their intimidation was met with a higher level of intimidation. That's excellent. I'll intimidate anyone who tries to restrict my Constitutional rights.

Why do you fools insist on saying stupid crap like this?

This gang of heavily armed thugs in a parking lot outside a restaurant restricts other people's right to safety. Look at that photo.

The people who want to eat there as well as the owners of the restaurant and any passersby have the right to be safe from gangs of armed thugs.

OTOH, at least they have the gumption to open carry so people can choose to get to a safer place.

What's funny to me is that if they were all black, you hypocritical nutters would be screeching a different tune.

Impressive you've managed to infuse your usual stupidity and faux outrage with strawman argument and even the race card.

You're still dumber than a bag of hammers.

But the point is, if things were different and they were armed black guys, things would have been different. remember when the Black Panthers tried to play that ...its my right thing...

Do you need a history lesson on when they tried this?

Shut the **** up with this "its my right" crap. these ******* idiots tried to scare those women and everyone else who is asking for common sense gun control.

Bunch of thugs. Screw them, they are cowards.

 

[rightwinger]

Mommy?

Are those men going to shoot us?

 

[Kondor3]

Mommy?

Are those men going to shoot us?

"No, dear, they're here to crash our meeting, 'cause Mommy was a stupid cow, and pissed them off by crashing their meeting last month."

 

[Pogo]

Mommy?

Are those men going to shoot us?

"No, dear, they're here to crash our meeting, 'cause Mommy was a stupid cow, and pissed them off by crashing their meeting last month."

Mommy -- did you take guns?

And by the way Mommy, how come you never bring a fuckin' link?

 

[Kondor3]

Mommy?

Are those men going to shoot us?

"No, dear, they're here to crash our meeting, 'cause Mommy was a stupid cow, and pissed them off by crashing their meeting last month."

Mommy -- did you take guns?

"No, dear, because we are against guns.

But we stupid enough to piss-off people who belong to a gun-carrying club, and were arrogant enough to think we could harass them at-will without there ever being any consequences to worry about."

And by the way Mommy, how come you never bring a fuckin' link?

"...At a gun rights rally at the Alamo in San Antonio last month, Moms Demand Action held a counterrally nearby and, gun advocates said, sent their supporters into the crowd to take pictures. “They crashed our Alamo event,” Mr. Grisham said. “Let’s crash their event...”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/us/a-face-off-outside-dallas-in-the-escalating-battle-over-texas-gun-culture.html?_r=0

...embedded within the OP itself, actually.

 

[Pogo]

"No, dear, they're here to crash our meeting, 'cause Mommy was a stupid cow, and pissed them off by crashing their meeting last month."

Mommy -- did you take guns?

"No, dear, because we are against guns. But we stupid enough to piss-off people who belong to a gun-carrying club, and were arrogant enough to think we could harass them at-will without there ever being any consequences to worry about."

So what you're saying is "might makes right", huh Mommy?