RW, what I agree with you on is the fact that something has to be done about these shootings. But, where we disagree about this is the fact that because we do not have anywhere to put them, the criminally and mentally insane walk around and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Apparently, it is against a persons 'rights' to make them take their medicine when they are hearing voices telling them to 'kill everyone' in sight. I would ask if something applies to guns, why does it not apply to these people who pose an obvious threat? You can't make them take their medicine or put them into an asylum based upon what they 'might do', but you want to take guns away from people who have never done anything, based upon what someone 'might do' with them? That makes no logical sense to me.
Guns are a tool, and like other tools they can be used for recreation, sport, good or bad. It's up to the person who wields that tool as to how it is used. Society has gotten worse. In 1965 you could buy a rifle through mail for about $50.00 and didn't have to prove anything. Before Charles Whitman and the Texas University tower shootings, mass murders were few and far between.
In Tulsa, there is a guy who stands on First Street downtown and screams and yells at passing cars and pedestrians about how he is going to 'kill' them. The cops say that the guy has been committed several times and there's nothing else that they can do with him. He has medicine and refuses to take it. Until he actually carries out one of his threats, he is free as a bird. Want to bet what will eventually happen?
No, these shootings are a symptom of something else far more dangerous. Guns are an easy target for the focus of those who want simple solutions when the solution may be far more complex. Especially when you don't want to look in the mirror and see what progressive policies are doing to society as a whole.
I have no issues with legal, responsible gun owners
However, I am sick and tired of crazies, who after they shoot up a school or movie theater, everyone says......I knew that guy was crazy, it was only a matter of time
Why can't we keep guns out of their hands?
The guy who shot up the school and killed all those children. His mother was a lawful gun owner. There are two ways you could have prevented that massacre. First, you could make the ownership of weapons for that woman unlawful. Up until the point those poor children were killed, she hadn't done anything wrong at all. Or, you could have given her the ability to put her troubled son 'into a system' that would have possibly committed him against his will BEFORE he committed that atrocity, forced him to take his medicine against his will, and made local authorities aware of his issues AND (I support this even as a member of the NRA) made it unlawful for him to be around or in possession of weapons. But even she remarked to neighbors before he killed her, that there was nothing that anyone would do with him even though she tried.
Why does it make sense to say to Joe Six-Pack, 'Hey, you can't have these weapons and we're going to make it harder to have any weapons' when it's not Joe's weapons that are the issue. It's the crazy nut walking up and down the street in the tin foil hat screaming that neo-cons just contaminated his sperm (you know, RDean).
Guns have been in my house, in my father's house, in my grandfather's house and as far back as anyone knows. They are tools and we use them as such. I submit that it is the person using that tool that is the issue, not the tool itself.
