rickyp wrote:fate

Why you would teach a young man like that to shoot (they regularly went shooting) I have no idea.

But you defend her right to do so.

Do I? I don't think I do or did.

She had the right to own guns, but not to teach her psychologically-impaired son to use them.

I think she was mad to do so. If she were alive, I would be asking for any possible criminal charges to be pressed on her. She would be civilly liable, but that's not enough. She was criminally negligent. She had a son who was incapable of empathy, or even of feeling pain, and she taught him how to shoot. That's like having an alcoholic and plying him with alcohol.

Neal, does it say in the Constitution "Muzzle Loaders"? No, it does not. Therefore your interpretation is to go back to 1787.

RickyP, I will not be compared to Huckabee. I would not have voted for him. I think for myself. I choose to place the blame upon evil, not a piece of metal and plastic.

still I have heard nothing but problems with guns by our anti-gun crowd here. Not a single suggestion to fix the root problem, simply doing away with guns only. Ignorance will get you only so far. The constitution needs to change? ...good luck with that, so why not TRY to actually fix the PROBLEM?

fate

She had the right to own guns, but not to teach her psychologically-impaired son to use them.

What law was she breaking when she taught her sons to use her legally owned guns?
Who would have charged and prosecuted her for teaching her son to use the weapons?
Specifically before any incident occured.
Just wondering. Because if there are no specific laws, or ways of enforcing them , before any actual misuse of firearm, .... then its all down to common sense. Which is incredibly uncommon.

I agree with you that if she had lived she should face charges. But that is another case of retribution that never prevents another incident.
The focus can't be on punishing the criminals.Of course you do that, but it should be obvious that punishing the shooters isn't effecting change.

bbauska wrote:Neal, does it say in the Constitution "Muzzle Loaders"? No, it does not. Therefore your interpretation is to go back to 1787.

And, it's pretty absurd.

The Constitution would not, according to this idea, cover the Internet or electronic communications. I'm sure there are a myriad of other follies others can think up.

RickyP, I will not be compared to Huckabee. I would not have voted for him. I think for myself. I choose to place the blame upon evil, not a piece of metal and plastic.

It's not a "dodge" to blame society.

We certainly have a long history with guns. I daresay there were far fewer restrictions when I was a child. The elementary school I went to had multiple points of potential entry. The only part that was really "secure" was the kindergarten.

Still, I can't recall reading of an elementary school having to worry about shooters.

How many high school shootings occurred before Columbine?

You may deny it all you want, but there has been a coarsening of our society and a devaluing of human life. Things are relatively common that would have been shocking 40-50 years ago. You can't have ubiquitous violence and suppose it has no effect on the mentally unstable.

tom

Not a single suggestion to fix the root problem,

I'll bite. Whats your idea of what the root problem is?

rickyp wrote:fate

She had the right to own guns, but not to teach her psychologically-impaired son to use them.

What law was she breaking when she taught her sons to use her legally owned guns?
Who would have charged and prosecuted her for teaching her son to use the weapons?
Just wondering. Because if there are no specific laws, or ways of enforcing them .... then its all down to common sense. Which is incredibly uncommon.

Read carefully, rickyp and maybe you'll learn something.

There is no Constitutional right to teach someone how to use guns.

It is irresponsible and stupid to train someone who lacks a normal range of emotions to use guns.

That is not "a law," but I never wrote that she broke a law. I said she had no "right . . . to teach her psychologically-impaired son to use [guns]" (emphasis added). There is a Constitutional "right" to own weapons; there is no Constitutional "right" to teach your child to use them.

Now, did she break a law? Maybe. If you want to research Connecticut law, feel free.

Let me use a bit of hyperbolic example to make my point. Let's say, for example, she trained a chimp to use a gun. Maybe it was amusing at the gun club. Maybe she won some bets.

Then one day the chimp got hold of the gun at the house and ran off, later shooting and killing a neighbor.

Was she criminally negligent? Maybe--again, it would depend on Connecticut law. My guess would be "yes," but I'm not going to look it up.

Was she civilly liable? You bet.

Get a grip (no pun intended or implied).

The bigger question is: must everyone surrender their rights because a few people are irresponsible? If that is the case, we will soon have no right to free speech, freedom of religion, or any other freedom.

Almost every "mass shooting" in the past decade or so has involved a shooter with noted mental issues. That is a far better focus.

GMTom wrote:still I have heard nothing but problems with guns by our anti-gun crowd here. Not a single suggestion to fix the root problem, simply doing away with guns only. Ignorance will get you only so far. The constitution needs to change? ...good luck with that, so why not TRY to actually fix the PROBLEM?

Didn't read my response to your earlier mind-blurt then?

The problem is how do we keep assault rifles and clips out of a small group of mentally disturbed, violent people. Better funding for treating the mentally ill is probably something we should be doing anyway, but I am somewhat troubled by the idea that every time you get treatment from psychologist or psychiatrist you have to worry that this will be reported to authorities so that you can't buy guns. I doubt that mental health care professions would be happy with such a reporting requirement, patients might be deterred from getting treatment because of such a reporting requirement, and also there could be concerns that other people would get access to confidential records
There is also issue that most of these shootings have been done by people with mental issues, a lot of times these issues were not identified until after the shooting.
As far as these incidents being the result of a cultural deterioration, I would just note that America has been getting remarkedly less violent even as we have been experiencing an epidemic of mass shootings (one would expect the opposite if DF's thesis was correct)
It seems to me that the most efficient way to reduce these incidents is to ban assault weapons and large clips and to institute a buy-back program. The type of person who does these shootings is not likely to have access to illegal weapons. The only chance we have to prevent future incidents is to limit access to highly destructive weapons. There is no controversy that a citizen cannot have a machine gun or any automatic weapon. Given the damage that a semi-automatic weapon can do with a large clip attached to it, maybe it's time that we lumped such weapons into the machine gun category, as being too dangerous for a private citizen to own
(By the way, I am not suggesting we shouldn't try to keep weapons out of the mentally il, we should, but there are questions as to how we go about doing so and it will not solve the problem because a lot of the mass shooters did not get treatment and they might get access to destructive guns from other people in the household. Hence the only way to have a significant chance of stopping these shootings is to do something about guns)

Guapo wrote:Linking to an article on TNA doesn't make me a Bircher any more than linking to Huffpo makes me a liberal. I find articles on Salon, Slate, Huffpo, TNA, and wherever else there are good ones. I'm not of the mindset that one should only read publications that fit into their ideology. I found that article to be relevant and interesting. That's all.

Maybe it doesn't. But it's interesting that two 'libertarians' on here have linked to them as if what they say is something we should consider as accurate.

bbauska wrote:This is an issue of EVIL. That is what we are fighting. We are not fighting guns, or mental illness, violent video games or whatever. There are many tendrils that EVIL uses.

We can keep cutting the heads off of the hydra, but until we make gains against the root cause of the issue it will be a losing battle.

Fight evil where you are. We all need to fight and not give in. Enough is enough.

Well, when I try to fight what I consider 'evil', right wingers get angry at me. Perhaps we don't all agree on the definition of 'evil'.

For example, I consider it evil for an industry to be built up around the civilian use of automatic and semi-automatic weapons, with that industry bankrolling a lobby group (the NRA) under the pretence of upholding freedom. I consider it evil to ignore the means used in a massacre as being part of the problem that the massacre represents. I consider it evil to put a few words written a couple of hundred years ago ahead of the lives and wellbeing of people now. I consider it evil for anyone to talk about the dead as a price we have to pay for freedom as if the ends ever justified the means.

I'm not sure what it is you are suggesting, anyway. A war on an abstract noun? We are already doing that, and I'm not convinced it's working very well.

Rather that esoteric terms, or skipping responsibility back to 'evil', let's look at the actual reality, shall we? At the moment, deaths from cars in the USA exceed those from guns. However, on current trends that will not be the case in a few years' time.

We are making cars safer, and roads safer, despite the greater use of them than ever. What are we doing about guns?

We can have the right to bear arms, and include for the purposes of personal defence, without having the right to semiautomatic weapons. That still leaves a whole load of other types of firearm, or other arms that can be held.

We can have the right to bear arms and also have proper registration and regulation about how they are stored and used.

We can have the right to bear arms and restrict clip-sizes.

It's not just about whether we 'ban guns' or not. It's about whether your country is ready for an adult conversation about how you deal with them.

The second prong is mental illness. It's hard to diagnose. It's often not evident until after a significant episode. It can be temporary. Given that, only banning the mentally ill from access to guns is likely to be a case of locking stable doors after horses of bolted. But even so, that should be a minimum standard across the board. The recognition of mental illness needs to be changed, and a lot of the stigma removed. We should avoid using the simple 'pharmaceutical' solutions just because they are easy (and profitable) - too often people rely on a technological fix like it's some kind of magic wand.

What is the root of the problem? Society mostly, human life has no value to far too many. TV, Music, Movies, Gang Culture, Drugs, even single parent homes all contribute to the problem. Why is it some here have absolutely no problem with taking away one freedom (the right to bear arms) but would not accept other freedoms to be infringed?
We could tighten the gun laws already on the books, crack down on illegal gun ownership, maybe make "minor" drugs legal to lessen drug issues related to gun violence and allow law enforcement to concentrate on harder drugs or gang problems? Possibly have stricter TV and Radio requirements? Tougher movie ratings/enforcement? Go ahead and ban assault weapons, Allow law enforcement to do their jobs, allow the border patrol to do their jobs,. Reduce military spending and put that into law enforcement. Just some rantings off the top of my mind.
FYI, a bit unrelated ...this shooter had Asbergers, that alone was not the main issue, people who suffer this are almost always the victims of violence and seldom the aggressors, this was pretty unheard of as far as that disorder goes and the Mother may not have been criminally responsible for teaching him to shoot, this particular person is an obvious exception and the mother maybe should have known better for HIS situation but simply having Asbergers does not make her irresponsible I do not believe, such a blanket statement is not appropriate here, more would need to be known about this individual not just his suffering from this condition. (and some problems might be due to the medications he was on? I have not heard anything from this angle yet)

I consider it evil for anyone to talk about the dead as a price we have to pay for freedom as if the ends ever justified the means.

then surely you want to do away with freedom of religion and the right to assemble, the rights of free speech? Those rights most certainly do lead to a few deaths that would otherwise never happen. We most certainly have a price for such freedoms and the ends do justify the means! That statement is pure drivel at it's best!

Tom

Those rights most certainly do lead to a few deaths that would otherwise never happen

really? Then you have corroborated and documented examples of that you can point us toward?
And do they compare to the costs of gun ownership, as currently enjoyed in the USA?

http://www.bradycampaign.org/
Go to this site and click on More than 70 Mass shootings

We lose too many Americans to gun violence, day in and day out.
There have been more than 70 mass shootings since the January 8, 2011, massacre in Tucson, Arizona.
We lose on average 32 people a day to gun murders in the U.S.
The homicide rate in the U.S. is 6.9 times higher than 22 other high-income, high population countries, combined.

» Click here for a list of mass shootings since 2005
» Click here for a list of school shootings since 1997
» Click here to see a fact sheet on daily and yearly gun violence

Then lets compare what you come up with for the cost of free speech or religion.....

There is no other factor other than a high rate of gun ownership that creates the destruction that guns create.
Other western nations have the same levels of exposure to societal and media factors, and similar religious freedom that the US enjoys. Indeed the tolerance for violence and sexuality in media is perhaps greater in many societies. But they don't have the guns.... And that is the difference.

fate

There is no Constitutional right to teach someone how to use guns.
It is irresponsible and stupid to train someone who lacks a normal range of emotions to use guns

The constitutional right to bear arms, means that stupid and irresponsible people have access to arms, and will do what they will.The constitutional right protects everyone's rights, including the stupid and irresponsible.
Unless you can point to actual laws that Mrs. Lanza was breaking your bleating about "she had no right" is the same meaningless chatter that is intended to distract from having to acknowledge that the "right to bear arms" and the inability to restrict that right with any effectively enforced laws dooms more school children to death from firearms. More movie goers, more mall shoppers, more postal workers ... more people generally.

Effective restriction would reduce for everyone, access to powerful weapons with only one design purpose. That would include the mentally ill especially.
I recognize the cost of that is a restriction of a specific freedom.
Do you recognize that the unrestricted freedom comes with the cost of 100,000 deaths and injuries a year?
The question is, which cost is more important to most American citizens? Apparently the deaths of 20 school children is required to actually focus the debate on this simple equation...
And even then people want to blame any fool thing to avoid confronting that simple equation.

First, let's not lump the Second Anendment with rights like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom to assemble, due process rights, etc. These rights are hallmarks of a free society...the Second Amendment is not necessarily so
Every right had some limitation associated it as it gets applied to the real world (freedom of speech is limited by the fact that you can't yell fire in a movie theater and you can't incite people to revolt; the right to be free from search and seizure without probable cause does not apply to DUI checkpoints or entry into the country,etc.
The NY Post, a conservative newspaper says the Second Amendment is outdated. It was originally passed in the 18th Century when a group of milita with some muskets could defeat regular soldiers. The one time in our history since the Second Amendment the purpose of the Second Amendment could have come into play, The Civil War , technology had already passed it by. Militia in that war, when called out, had no chance against regular soldiers. The South equipped its soldiers, trained them and made into armies (not militia)
Now we are very far removed from the original intent of the Amendment. The main part that we have now, is the right to protect your home. And I don't see how sayin you need guns that shoot hundred rounds in a few minutes to do that. I also don't think there is a rational distinction to be made between automatic weapons and semi-automatics with large clips--both are too destructive for the average citizen to have.
In the 18th Century a musket fired a bullet a minute so no one worry about mass shootings. We live in a different time, with different technology, and so we have to adapt the Second Amendment to changing realities.