New York, Boston Mayors To Push Gun Control During Super Bowl

michael reynolds

February 4, 2012 at 1:08 pm

Thank God you were warned in advance, Dodd, so you can avoid being exposed to any unwelcome idea.

Tillman

February 4, 2012 at 1:13 pm

Blah blah free speech blah blah.

superdestroyer

February 4, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Both mayors love the idea of banning the private ownership of guns. Of course, they are accompanied by armed men anytime they are in public and on an official capacity.

My guess is that the hypocricy is lost on the men.

Dodd

February 4, 2012 at 1:24 pm

Personally, I’ll probably use Madona’s stage time for a bathroom break–I wouldn’t miss this one for anything. It’ll probably be far funnier than whatever Doritos can come up with this year (albeit unintentionally).

Obviously, I would not for one second deny or disparage the right of Bloomberg and Menino to waste their money trying to convince football fans that guns should be illegal.

Likewise, I have every right to point out that they ought to be more concerned about the fraudsters, perjurers, batterers of policemen, embezzlers, child pornographers, child sexual abusers, extortionists, corruptocrats, money launderers, and other assorted felons and alleged felons in their own group.

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 1:26 pm

1. Number of madmen in US?…2% or 6 million? (At least, given that 50 million are on anti depressants)

2. Estimated number of guns in circulation?…350 million (which are much easier to obtain than a driving license)

3. Gun homicides per 100,000?….UK 0.2…US 4.0

4. Nanny Bloomberg considers these numbers statistically significant (perhaps that’s why he’s worth $22 billion and Dodd isn’t)

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 1:29 pm

@Dodd:

Likewise, I have every right to point out that they ought to be more concerned about the fraudsters, perjurers, batterers of policemen, embezzlers, child pornographers, child sexual abusers, extortionists, corruptocrats, money launderers, and other assorted felons and alleged felons in their own group.

Yeah……after all this is THE ISSUE with national gun violence

OzarkHillbilly

February 4, 2012 at 2:10 pm

@Dodd:

Likewise, I have every right to point out that they ought to be more concerned about the fraudsters, perjurers, batterers of policemen, embezzlers, child pornographers, child sexual abusers, extortionists, corruptocrats, money launderers, and other assorted felons and alleged felons in their own group.

Just out of curiosity, got a link?

Tano

February 4, 2012 at 2:20 pm

a criminal conviction rate an order of magnitude higher than CCW permit holders.

Isn’t the CCW permit process meant to filter out criminals? What is an order of magnitude greater than zero?

OzarkHillbilly

February 4, 2012 at 2:23 pm

And seeing as this is an issue of such great concern for you Dodd, I am quite sure you are pushing for the NRA, the Tea Party, and the Libertarian Party to also institute criminal back ground checks for all their members? Existing as well as new???

Turner

February 4, 2012 at 2:28 pm

I think it is fine for these mayors to speak up for gun control in their cities – as long as they inform citizens it is still their right to purchase and own firearms; that they can get free training and lessons, and they will get a free sticker to put on their front door that states: “We don’t call 911”

michael reynolds

February 4, 2012 at 2:42 pm

@Turner:

“We don’t call 911″

Who they call when their son finds their gun and accidentally blows a hole in his sister’s head?

Dodd

February 4, 2012 at 3:07 pm

@OzarkHillbilly: This guy with the unfortunate avatar compiled a handy list of the more egregious offenders which is easy to find on Google. Should you wish to crosscheck his work (which took me about five minutes on Google), you’ll find it accurate as of the date it was posted. Well, except for the rather startling omission of MAIG member Frank Melton’s having plead guilty to 2 misdemeanors for carrying a weapon into a church and a park and no contest to a reduced charge on what had been a felony count arising from carrying a gun onto the grounds of the Mississippi College School of Law. Now, I don’t myself think any of those things should be illegal, but an elected official pushing gun control really ought not be breaking those kinds of laws, now should he?

@OzarkHillbilly: I tell you what, you find some evidence that any of those groups’ members have anywhere near as high a propensity for feloniousness as MAIG and I’ll happily write a post suggesting they police their own membership better before trying to tell other people how to handle their business. Of course, the thing those groups have in common is what they actually want is the exact opposite of telling other people how to live their lives, so that may be difficult.

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 4:14 pm

@Dodd:

This is what is called a non sequitur. Since you’re a lawyer I assume you’re familiar with this term. None of it has anything whatsoever to do with Bloomberg or Menino’s desire to reduce gun violence in their cities by making it harder for criminals to obtain guns. One is a matter of public policy the other is ragbag of personal matters involving people who may have some connection with them. Does the fact that a leading member of Walker’s administration in Wisconsin has just been found guilty of election fraud invalidate any efforts he may be making to limit union bargaining rights within the state?

Dodd

February 4, 2012 at 5:11 pm

@Brummagem Joe: Sorry, no, it is most certainly not a non sequitur. It is, rather, just another disgusting example of the very same sort of “laws are for the little people” attitude that got us tax cheat Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. A guy who won’t pay his taxes being given that job undermines the very foundation upon which laws must operate: Respect for the law. And when, everywhere we turn, the people proposing, drafting, and enforcing the law routinely treat it as something optional for themselves, no rational person would expect the “little people” to respect the law, either. The very same logic that leads us to require judges to recuse themselves when there’s an appearance of a conflict of interest also requires that elected officials trying to promote gun control not have to plead No Contest to reduced charges to avoid felonies for illegally carrying guns.

So, even assuming, arguendo, that Bloomberg’s actual goal is to “reduce gun violence in their cities by making it harder for criminals to obtain guns” they’ve chosen not only a failed policy approach (NYC has pretty restrictive gun laws and a much higher gun crime rate than less constitutionally infirm jurisdictions) but a hopelessly broken group to push it. Even if their proposed policies had a track record of success, it takes a special kind of willful ignorance to think that the already criminally inclined will abide by restrictions on gun ownership when the very people pushing that policy don’t.

Not that that was the point of the post. This is an organization whose only cognizable “accomplishment” is that, despite being officers of public trust, they’ve racked up crimes at a rate that would shame the law-abiding people whose constitutional rights they want to strip away. And they do–they aren’t about reducing illegal guns so much as creating more classes of them so fewer people can exercise their enumerated rights. It’s laughable and pathetic that they’re going to throw perfectly good money away hectoring people watching a football game in an attempt to promote their (manifest failure of an) agenda.

I can’t seem to find any actual convictions the Wisconsin issue you raise (and you didn’t provide a name or link). But, if the charges I did find are proven and those people broke the law, they should be punished. Their lawbreaking during the election campaign does indeed raise the same issues that Geithner’s and Melton’s do since they now appear to be (or to have been until recently, anyway) public officials. So, no, while election law violations by people who later become political appointees are not directly relevant to the policy issue of public sector union bargaining rights, it would not be a non sequitur to question those persons’ fitness as vessels for promoting a policy aimed at improving government. Suggesting otherwise would be as nonsensical as saying Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton would be good messengers for a campaign to promote marital fidelity.

Of course, I didn’t argue that, say, MAIG member Richard Corkery’s indictment on 28 counts of possession of child pornography is indicative of the soundness of MAIG’s policy proposals (the facts of gun control as actually implemented do that for me). My making fun of MAIG for being such a woefully poor set of messengers for their agenda (whatever its merits) doesn’t even hint at such a conclusion. So I suppose you are correct that it would be non sequitur to suggest that election law violations by people who late became his aides in office “invalidate” Walker’s union bargaining rights reforms.

matt

February 4, 2012 at 6:02 pm

@michael reynolds: I imagine their dangerous behavior extends well beyond their terrible and improper storage of their gun. I grew up in a household with guns and so did most of the people living in my town and area yet no one “accidentally blew a hole in their sister’s head”. How? Well because the parents were responsible adults who stored their guns properly and who also properly taught their kids of the dangers of irresponsible gun usage. Take a look into biometric based gun safety and such sometime (or even trigger locks). There’s quite a few ways to safely store a gun while still having the capability to utilize it in a self defense situation during a home invasion.

@Brummagem Joe:The murder with guns rate is only part of the story. Look into home invasions and such and you’ll see a different picture. Despite making about every gun illegal somehow there’s still gun violence with illegal guns.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

None of it has anything whatsoever to do with Bloomberg or Menino’s desire to reduce gun violence in their cities by making it harder for criminals to obtain guns.

Their goal is to make it harder for legal law abiding citizens to posses their legal guns. The hope is by making it harder to legally possess a gun they’ll make it harder for criminals to get a gun. By far the majority of guns used in crimes are already illegal (SN scratched off unregistered etc). Take for example a murder that I read about in Chicago before I moved. The gun was illegal and it was illegal to have a handgun in Chicago at the time and the person using the gun was a convicted felon which meant he was doubly illegal and yet for some reason he still used the gun to commit the illegal act of murder.. Maybe if we throw another couple laws in there the gunman might of stopped and been like “woa I’m breaking too many laws here”??

I now live in Texas and surprisingly most of the murders here are actually stabbings because a knife doesn’t leave a casing behind for fingerprints or a bullet behind for ballistic testing or make a loud noise that attracts extra attention.

OzarkHillbilly

February 4, 2012 at 6:13 pm

@Dodd: Dodd, I can sniff bullshit a mile away, why can’t you?I

tell you what, you find some evidence that any of those groups’ members have anywhere near as high a propensity for feloniousness as MAIG and I’ll happily write a post suggesting they police their own membership better before trying to tell other people how to handle their business.

I tell you what Dodd, you find evidence that they are totally and completely innocent, and I will stand next to you. You pull bullshit out of your ass, I ask you to pull the same bullshit out of my ass. You can’t.

I love it… a so called “Libertarian” calling for criminal background checks….

Dodd, you are a Libertarian by convenience

michael reynolds

February 4, 2012 at 6:26 pm

@matt:

Well because the parents were responsible adults who stored their guns properly and who also properly taught their kids of the dangers of irresponsible gun usage.

Someone about three degrees of separation from me had a teenage son and guns in the house. The kid used the gun to shoot his father, mother and siblings. He’s a lifer now with very few people coming around on visitor’s day

I was held up at gunpoint.

My wife was pistol-whipped in the course of an attempted rape.

I fired a gun accidentally in my home with my girlfriend, sister and uncle in the room.

So spare me the NRA bullshit.

This is a fetish that Americans have. It’s creepy. And it gets a lot of people killed.

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 6:43 pm

@Dodd:

Sorry, no, it is most certainly not a non sequitur. It is, rather, just another disgusting example of the very same sort of “laws are for the little people” attitude that got us tax cheat Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

Er…this is another non sequitur.

I can’t seem to find any actual convictions the Wisconsin issue you raise (and you didn’t provide a name or link).

You couldn’t have looked very hard it’s a big news item. Either way his personal misconduct is totally irrelevant to public policy issues just as is the conduct of folks who have some connection with Bloomberg. That’s the point

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 6:47 pm

@matt:

Look into home invasions and such and you’ll see a different picture.

Er…. how many of these home invasions result in murders with firearms or any other weapons. Are seriously compaing breakins and theft of TV sets and knick knacks with thousands of homicides.

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 6:52 pm

@Dodd:

Indiana SoS convicted on seven charges of election fraud

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012120203035

See not too difficult

Brummagem Joe

February 4, 2012 at 6:55 pm

@michael reynolds:

A woman who used to work for me (at some distance) had the misfortune of her son shooting and killing his estranged wife, her new boyfriend and his child and then himself.

michael reynolds

February 4, 2012 at 7:09 pm

@Brummagem Joe:
It catches your attention when it’s people you know. Or even people that people you know, know.

Racehorse

February 4, 2012 at 7:13 pm

Outlaw criminals, not guns

Boyd

February 4, 2012 at 10:25 pm

The intellectual dishonesty of the gun control fetishists would be astounding if we hadn’t been heating the same lies and cherry-picked “statistics” for decades.

michael reynolds

February 4, 2012 at 10:55 pm

@Boyd:

What I said was:

Someone about three degrees of separation from me had a teenage son and guns in the house. The kid used the gun to shoot his father, mother and siblings. He’s a lifer now with very few people coming around on visitor’s day

I was held up at gunpoint.

My wife was pistol-whipped in the course of an attempted rape.

I fired a gun accidentally in my home with my girlfriend, sister and uncle in the room.

Which part of that was, the same lies and cherry-picked “statistics”

de stijl

February 4, 2012 at 11:25 pm

@Racehorse:

Outlaw criminals

What does mean? They’re criminals – who’ve committed crimes – which are against the law. If we outlawed criminals, I’m pretty sure that would mean that crimes would now be legal.

Whoa, dude. I’m totally peaking.

Just nutha ig’rant cracker

February 5, 2012 at 4:01 am

@Dodd: I know you won’t agree with me, but can you say “sweeping generalization?”

Just nutha ig’rant cracker

February 5, 2012 at 4:12 am

@michael reynolds: I agree Michael. While I also know many parents who are very careful with guns, my personal experience with both sides of the coin runs about 50-50, way too high to suit me.

But I will agree with your opponent that people who buy guns should be required to take shooting and firearms safety instruction from qualified personnel (as opposed to the boy scout leader that didn’t even own guns that I took mine from as a middle school student). I wonder if he really believes it or is just using it as an arguing point?

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 8:30 am

@Boyd:

the same lies and cherry-picked “statistics” for decades.

What cherry picked stats would these be? Gun deaths in Europe where there are tight controls are generally well under 1/100,000 whereas here they are 4/100,000. Even Canada which has a similar gun ownership per capita to us but tight controls has a figure of around 1/100,000. There’s only one liar here and it isn’t me.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 8:37 am

@Racehorse:

Outlaw criminals, not guns

What do you plan to outlaw next? SEX? Criminals like the poor and taxes will always be with us, but that doesn’t mean we have to conveniently provide them with the means of killing people quickly and efficiently.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 8:46 am

@michael reynolds:

Or even people that people you know, know.

This woman worked for someone who worked for me. She had a nervous breakdown and you can imagine the damage it inflicted on the family. One has had these gun debates so often and the opponents invariably trot out the same stuff (the stats are faked, non sequiturs, etc etc). I even had one guy arguing that 11-12,000 gun homicides a year was an acceptable figure given our population and comparing it to auto accidents and cot deaths.

JKB

February 5, 2012 at 8:58 am

It’ll be interesting to see what lies they have in the commercial. I suspect we can be sure they won’t show the 18-yr old mother who was forced to use deadly force to defend herself and her baby from two men who broke down her door after she’d been on the line with 911 for half an hour. Or this instance where a 14-yr old boy had to man up to defend himself and his sister from 4 intruders who broke into the house.

I also expect we won’t hear about in Chicago where a woman had to call her alderman to get the police to respond to her 911 call.

No, I suspect well hear about how we need to disarm the law abiding public because criminals break the law. Now it will be curious how they expect to get illegal guns off the street when the Department of Justice orders gun the selling of guns to known traffickers and drug cartel members for illegal export/importation to Mexico, who then return them to the US for use in planned killings of Border Patrol agents and other crimes.

JKB

February 5, 2012 at 9:00 am

@Brummagem Joe: that doesn’t mean we have to conveniently provide them with the means of killing people quickly and efficiently.

It does if you are the Attorney General and the ATF.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 9:12 am

@JKB:

Well that’s just another meaningless non sequitur. The ATF were engaged in an operation to try restrict the movement of guns into Mexico. They are occasionally incompetent as are most human organisations. What else is there to say?

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 9:19 am

@JKB:

Tell this to Gabby Giffords and the six people gunned down in that shopping mall by that madman. We can trade this sort of bs all day it’s doesn’t alter the overall picture that here we have little gun regulation and are killing people people at 20 times the rate they do in the UK where there is tight regulation.

michael reynolds

February 5, 2012 at 10:24 am

Criminals, madmen and hotheads exist. Always have, always will.

The NRA makes sure that those criminals, madmen and hotheads swim in a sea of guns.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 11:01 am

@michael reynolds:

This entire ATF screw up which Republicans are trying to turn into some scandal is a classic case of creating a smokescreen to hide the wider reality. In a country on our doorstep we’ve got a full scale war going on over the drug trade. It’s killing tens of thousands of people and destabilising the country and 75% of the guns being used to conduct this war come from here because of our lax laws. Do we really want a massive failed state on our doorstep? The ATF in a well intentioned effort to restrict the flow of these guns to Mexico mount a sting operation (which btw had been going on long before the advent of the Obama admin so it shouldn’t be political) and completely screwed up and the people at the operational level should disciplined. Period. But it’s an operational failure completely separate from the goals and issues involved. And in the supreme irony the guy leading the charge to turn this into a scandal is a former car thief. Which btw is also a complete non sequitur in the context of the wider issues but I mention as an example of the logical leaps which are being made constantly by folks like JKB to obscure what is really at stake.

anjin-san

February 5, 2012 at 11:07 am

NRA types would be a lot more credible were it not for the opposition to background checks and waiting periods, and not wanting to close gun show loopholes. Really guys, what’s the problem?

And yes, there are a lot of responsible gun owners. I have a couple of pistols in a gun safe 10 feet away from where I am sitting. Does that make the actions of an irresponsible gun owner down the block somehow less dangerous?

My oldest friends mother shot his father during a “heated marital discussion” (he survived), They are both uber-respectable, successful, politically connected and highly educated. Human nature is a funny thing, and guns are dangerous. I did not own any back in my drinking days, and that is probably a good thing.

anjin-san

February 5, 2012 at 11:28 am

@ Brummagem Joe

Given the improvement in the unemployment picture, Fast and Furious & Solyndra are about all the GOP has to go with, aside from obviously crazy stuff like Kenyan socialist jihadist. It’s a bit like the “clean coal” issue that the McCain folks thought would be Obama’s downfall last time around. The amazing thing is that people in the Foxverse actually think Fast and Furious & Solyndra are epic scandals and that the outrage is just about to boil over.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 12:16 pm

@anjin-san:

The amazing thing is that people in the Foxverse actually think Fast and Furious & Solyndra are epic scandals and that the outrage is just about to boil over.

The reason the FF saga is getting no traction and confined to page four outside of venues like the Moonie Times is that the media know this is about incompetence not criminal intent and that Holder is Mr Integrity. And I used to own a couple of shotguns but got rid of them after I gave up hunting. I’ve never owned a handgun because ultimately they cannot be secured from determined kids. How do I know this? Because when I was about 12 a buddy of mine and I used to “borrow” his father’s “secured” handgun and shoot at chimneys.

JKB

February 5, 2012 at 12:55 pm

@Brummagem Joe: Tell this to Gabby Giffords and the six people gunned down in that shopping mall by that madman.

Please explain how denying law abiding citizens the right to bear arms would have stopped this individual well known to the local Democrat Sheriff and his deputies, especially when the DOJ is purposely placing weapons into the hands of criminals. Weapons that find their way back to the US for use in a variety of violent crimes and murder.

JKB

February 5, 2012 at 12:59 pm

@Brummagem Joe: It’s killing tens of thousands of people and destabilising the country and 75% of the guns being used to conduct this war come from here because of our lax laws. Do we really want a massive failed state on our doorstep?

You are up on your propaganda but behind on your facts. In any case, now that the DOJ is supposedly no longer facilitating the arming of Mexican drug gangs, the weapons traceable to the civilian sector of the US should drop off precipitously. Those from US licensed sales to the Mexican government and military will remain high since most traceable to the US come from official sales and are then “lost” by the Mexican authorities and soldiers.

JKB

February 5, 2012 at 1:06 pm

@anjin-san:

Hey, let’s ban butcher knives. Way back when I was in Jr. ROTC, the Sergeant told us about a friend of his who got in an argument with his wife. Only she took a butcher knife to stab him with cutting his aorta, he was dead before he hit the ground. Oh, and back then, guns were much more common, even in NYC and Chicago.

Dodd

February 5, 2012 at 1:07 pm

@OzarkHillbilly: I love it… a so called “Libertarian” calling for criminal background checks….

I did no such thing. Your reading comprehension needs work. You may need to reread my comment, reading only the black parts and ignoring whatever you think you see in the white parts.

Dodd

February 5, 2012 at 1:12 pm

@Brummagem Joe: You couldn’t have looked very hard it’s a big news item. …. Indiana SoS convicted on seven charges of election fraud

That I knew about. But, in a weird twist of fate, Walker is not the governor of Indiana so I didn’t think you were trying to say that an Indiana elected official was one of his aides.

anjin-san

February 5, 2012 at 1:27 pm

@ JKB

Perhaps you can show were I called for banning guns. Can’t? Oh, wait, I forgot you are a hack.

anjin-san

February 5, 2012 at 1:32 pm

@ Brummagem Joe

No kids here or I might feel differently about having guns in the house, even in a safe. My dad taught me to shoot when I was pretty young, but it was a different world then, and he had actual expertise in firearms instruction.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 3:03 pm

@Dodd:

That I knew about.

Oops sorry senior moment there I should have corrected. But it doesn’t alter the basic point the personal misdeeds of this guy are irrelevant to Daniel’s public policy initiatives and even if I disagreed with them I wouldn’t dream of attacking them on the grounds that his SoS had been convicted of election fraud. It’s irrelevant.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 3:10 pm

@JKB:

You are up on your propaganda but behind on your facts. In any case, now that the DOJ is supposedly no longer facilitating the arming of Mexican drug gangs, the weapons traceable to the civilian sector of the US should drop off precipitously

.

Where’s the propaganda? Is there a major war going on? is it destabilising the country? are 75% of the weapons coming from here?….These are facts but obviously facts don’t play too big a role in your value system is you think the DOJ is responsible for the tens of thousands of guns that are finding there way there from the US or are being lost by the Mexican military.

Brummagem Joe

February 5, 2012 at 3:14 pm

@JKB:

Hey, let’s ban butcher knives.

There they go again the

reductio ad absurdum

Why not include screwdrivers and corkscrews on your list. Because they’re not designed for killing ten people in ten seconds that’s why.

matt

February 5, 2012 at 4:09 pm

Someone about three degrees of separation from me had a teenage son and guns in the house. The kid used the gun to shoot his father, mother and siblings. He’s a lifer now with very few people coming around on visitor’s day

Someone about three degrees of separation from me had a toddler son and a lighter in the house. The kid used the lighter to burn down the house killing his family. He’s a life now with very few people coming around on visitor’s day. We should ban all lighters and matches.

Where I grew up a teenager is taught right and wrong. Obviously this “kid” had serious issues that would of manifested sooner or later in a horrible way.

I was held up at gunpoint.

Funny you should mention that because I too was robbed at gun point once… In fucking downtown Chicago complete with by passers. Keep in mind that was back when Chicago had laws keeping me from legally owning handgun but obviously the punk aiming one at me didn’t give a flying fack..

My wife was pistol-whipped in the course of an attempted rape.

So you’re blaming a pistol when dude obviously wasn’t even using it as a gun but as a bludgeon weapon? Hell he would of been just as effective with a baseball bat or a knife. I really hope that punk got what was coming to him and that your wife hasn’t had any lingering mental affects. Something like that can be hard to move on from.

I fired a gun accidentally in my home with my girlfriend, sister and uncle in the room.

I am exceedingly glad that you don’t own guns then because it’s readily apparent that you are very terrible at gun safety and shouldn’t be handling weapons. RULE # 1 of gun handling is to make sure the gun is unloaded and the chamber is clear. Seriously I cannot believe that you were so inept as to fire a weapon in your house. I always pegged you as a rational intelligent being but apparently that doesn’t extend to all aspects of your existence. Like I said earlier my family alone has over 100 years of gun ownership and hunting without a single accident. I can list off thousands of people from my town and area who have had guns in their family for as long as their family has been there and NOT a single one has ever had an accident.

So spare me the NRA bullshit.

I’m not a member of the NRA and I don’t need them to defend my childhood and heritage. While I do support their gun safety classes I cannot bring myself to donate to them due to their rabid lobbying.

This is a fetish that Americans have. It’s creepy. And it gets a lot of people killed.

Yeah I don’t understand why we’re so obsessed with cars either. They pollute our environment and kill around 12 people daily on average.

Er…. how many of these home invasions result in murders with firearms or any other weapons. Are seriously compaing breakins and theft of TV sets and knick knacks with thousands of homicides

THose home invasions also result in the murdering raping and abuse of innocents who are legally incapable of defending themselves. That’s my problem not the TVs etc being stolen.

Tell this to Gabby Giffords and the six people gunned down in that shopping mall by that madman. We can trade this sort of bs all day it’s doesn’t alter the overall picture that here we have little gun regulation and are killing people people at 20 times the rate they do in the UK where there is tight regulation.

Frankly if you look at the big picture of crime statistics you would notice that there’s far more going on then just gun ownership. Even if you remove the gun crimes we’re still a far more violent country than UK. So much so that it’s not even valid to compare the USA to UK as there’s just too many differences. The size of the countries the cultures of the countries the geographic makeup of the countries the history of the countries. There’s actually very little in similarity between the UK and the USA. Hell we don’t even use the same words and pronunciations..

I could respond with well tell that to Joyce Cordova and then we could get into a near infinite loop of victim of vs saved by.

75% of the guns being used to conduct this war come from here because of our lax laws. Do we really want a massive failed state on our doorstep?

Made up number. I guarantee you the Mexican drug cartels aren’t getting their missile launchers, grenades, and automatic weapons (including M16s)from gun stores in the USA. The reality is that their heavy weaponry which includes automatic weapons (which are all illegal here) are coming from the Mexican military (who of course are getting the weapons from the USA government) and south America. I live near the border and I have friends who have family in Mexico that they visit. Most of the time when a weapon is left behind it is traced back to the military. Being in Mexico is almost like being near war zone sometimes with all the gunfire in the distance and sometimes not so distance.

NRA types would be a lot more credible were it not for the opposition to background checks and waiting periods, and not wanting to close gun show loopholes. Really guys, what’s the problem?

I have no problem with any of that. Hell in Illinois you had all that and people were still killing each other in Chicago. Hell even here in Texas on the border I have to submit to a background check even at a gun show. I do have a problem with people pretending that those regulations don’t exist. There’s even a national federal background check service available for use. The loopholes only existed in one state but it was used to smear everybody..

The terrible reality is that of the few murders in my hometown over the last 50 years were all committed with knives. This fact despite the large amount of guns in the area.

Why not include screwdrivers and corkscrews on your list. Because they’re not designed for killing ten people in ten seconds that’s why.

I could easily kill you in under 10 seconds with an screwdriver..

matt

February 5, 2012 at 4:11 pm

@Brummagem Joe: That’s funny but there really is a push to mandate stab proof knives in the UK along with banning all swords. What’s funny is people seem to forget that slitting someone’s throat is actually a quicker kill then stabbing..

My main comment is in moderation and i”m guessing it’s due to some language.. if a moderator would like to censor the language or whatever is the issue I’d appreciate it.

Lomax

February 5, 2012 at 7:22 pm

One way to deal with all of this crime is to lock up the career criminals and lose the keys. No more revolving door courts.

matt

February 6, 2012 at 8:04 pm

@Lomax: Alas that too is more complicated then just that. MOre then a few non violent offenders went to jail to learn how to be a professional criminal. There needs to be a general overhaul of our justice system including our sentencing.

MarkedMan

February 10, 2012 at 5:02 am

Wait. You were robbed at gun point and think the outcome would be different if you were carrying? One of three things would have happened:
1) The robber would have gotten the gun. As any cop will tell you – the most valuable things most crooks steal are the guns people bought to protect themselves.
2) The robber would not have noticed the gun and gotten away with your wallet.
3) You would have tried to draw with a gun pointed at your head and wouldn’t be writing into OTB nowadays.

Perhaps you were hoping for #2 and then you could chase after the robber firing bullets into a crowd?