:lol: :lol: :lol:

I'm not sure I agree with the term wealth confiscation. However, my discussion with thesloppy was in regards to peers in other countries (and not whites as a whole).

Yes, as when non land owning white men could vote in every state of the union. 75 years after the country was founded. You realize that kicks your point in the crotch?

On a side note, what opinion do you have of sabermetrics in baseball and scouts who say "I know what I see/saw"?

Then call it wealth restriction if you prefer, but the fact is 50 years of equal rights does still not equate to equal opportunity when others have a 200 year head start.

I've said this after every mass shooting and will continue until it happens. Can we atleast start by outlawing high-capacity magazines? It won't necessarily "solve" the issue, but it can help cut down on the number of deaths. I just don't see a legitimate reason to allow people to carry weapons with 20-30+ round magazines.

Yup. It's not fun to talk about, but a sizable portion of unemployed veterans are suffering from some sort of PTSD, and the last thing we need is crazy people with guns and actual military training in schools.

The craziest part about that is I guess that's a federal law, not some Floridian quirk?Attention Required! | Cloudflare Though in Florida you also apparently don't need any permit to concealed carry long guns or rifles. :eek:

Btw it is interesting that the "gun control" debate (and btw, congrats everyone, because we found a way to spin a gun control debate off into a completely new direction, discussing inherited wealth in the colonies, instead of rehashing the same talking points for once! ;) ) still gets talked about like it can only be solved nationally, but it's perfectly legal for states to ban AR-15's, high capacity magazines, etc, like Massachusetts and a couple other states do. (California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut iirc. Maybe Illinois?). The way the 4th Circuit defined them they don't fall under the 2nd Amendment, but >80% of states choose to allow them. If I was trying to effect change I think giving up on Congress and focusing on slowly pushing more states on the margins to adopt stricter gun laws would be my play.

I thought I was the only person who still referred to things as "Bad Idea Jeans".

Sounds like what we should do for anyone that is allowed to have a gun in this country... oh wait.

The problem with attacking it at a local level is what you see in Chicago. People love to point to the gun violence numbers in Chicago, where guns are banned more or less, as a reason why controlling them won't work. But there aren't walls around any of these places.

Indiana and Wisconsin have some of the least restrictive gun laws in the US. Any state that would have lax laws would be a starting point for someone to get them. That almost makes the local ordinance completely useless because it can't control the 'spillover effect.'

True progress has to be attacked at all levels, any weakness is simply exploited for the opposition narrative.

It's kind of a death spiral because the more that this is a heated social media issue (that Russia is probably fanning the flames of), gun sales just increase and increase. Well, until 2017 anyway. That was the first time gun sales didn't set a new record in many years, and it was almost definitely because we had a conservative president and people were no longer afraid of new gun control legislation.

It's not intuitive, it's not rational, but the only proven way to decrease gun sales in the U.S. is to remove the threat of gun control legislation. And once a country is really, really full of guns, you'd have to change the 4th Amendment as well as the 2nd to get them all back. If there was actually ever a real effort to seriously restrict guns - I can't even imagine the floodgates that that would open.

I took a full-day gun safety course last year to get the enhanced concealed weapon permit. Not because I needed it, it was just a social group thing. But I have enjoyed going out shooting in the desert with those people over the last few months, and due to the nature of my job I probably should have some limited firearm home protection. The class was really helpful with gun safety and becoming competent with a handgun - I had never touched one before. But it think it otherwise promoted a general gun enthusiasm. Which shouldn't have been surprising, it's generally going to be gun enthusiasts who are qualified to teach gun classes. But the tone was a little more uh, patriotic and political than I expected.

It would probably be a good thing if more people were required to take classes before buying guns, or at least handguns, or to get concealed weapon permits. I think they definitely cut back on accidents. But I'm not sure it would cut back on gun violence, and it might increase the number of gun nuts.

I chuckled on your comment on "uh, patriotic and political" than you expected. This has been my experience at my pseudo-gun "club". I love the patriotic but stay away from the political and conspiracy theories as best as possible (too many firearms around!).

For me it's great training, builds up my skills, and good fellowship.

Don't disagree, there has been substantial progress and it is getting better. I don't know when it will "equate" but its getting there.

Again, my discussion with thesloppy was opportunities re: minorities/lower class and their peers in other countries.

Beats me.

Baseball is boring.:)

Stupid question - if you own a gun but do not have a concealed weapon permit, what does that mean exactly? You have to show it to everyone while you walk around?

You can't transport it anywhere, essentially. You can have it at home on your own property.

ETA: Depending on your state, of course. And your weapon system. You don't need a CC for a long gun, just for pistols.

In my state, until they got rid of the permit requirement last year, it meant you had to either display in on your person, or leave it at home or at your place of business (and you could conceal a weapon at either place without a permit). And if it was in your car, it either had to be displayed in plain view, or unloaded, or secured in a case.

It's funny you mention this because Remington just filed bankruptcy and one of their reasons for it was that Trump got elected. Their business model relies on scaring people into thinking their guns will be taken any day now.

It's always been a bit of irony in the gun industry. Manufacturers want to portray Democrats as evil beings who will take their guns away, but they also really want them to win.

It's not a perfect solution, but ignoring it because it will still have loopholes is a worse answer. Massachusetts has some very strict gun laws and the lowest gun homicide in the country. Is that why? Not entirely, there are definitely cultural factors at play too, but it certainly helps. And yes, of course progress should be pushed for at all levels, but I think the messaging is much easier and the actual effects are easier to put into law at state levels than federally.

Out of state purchasing and transporting across state lines is something the government actually tracks pretty obsessively (as CUTiger can tell you!) Indiana requires shipping back to an FFL in a purchasers home state. I assume Wisconsin does too, but I can't get their site to load right now. Chicago's issue would be that downstate people in Illinois want much less restrictive laws (and also that it's so far gone in that part of the city at this point it's borderline impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.) I also doubt very many of the guns used in Chicago homicides were legally purchased and registered - that's a different issue than a crazy 18 year old potential spree killer being allowed to legally walk into a store and walk out 15 minutes later with an AR-15.

Looks like the FBI received multiple warnings about him and did nothing. Maybe if he had a Muslim sounding name.

F.B.I. Was Warned of Florida Suspect’s Desire to Kill but Did Not Act - The New York Times

I've made this point before but I have to wonder how many of these tips the FBI gets every day and how many turn out to be nothingburgers.

ETA: I bet this FBI angle is a boon to Trump supporters that currently hate the organization.

This varies by state, but it doesnt mean leave it at home anywhere.

Regarding handguns - states with "constitutional carry" laws you can carry it in a side holster in plain site You just cant "conceal" that you are carrying.

In some states for example you have to lay a pistol on the dash, and it can be loaded, if you dont have a CCW which is a great law :rolleyes:

For example in SC in my personal vehicle I do not need a CCP as long as my gun requires "3 distinct movements to access" defined as
1. Take hand off steering wheel.
2. Open Center Console/glove box
3. reach into console/glove box and retrieve.

Trump endorses guns for teachers to stop shootings - BBC News

he and everybody else suggesting this can't be serious, right ? (a parent made the suggestion which is why i am putting it here and not the Trump thread). There's two terrible ways this plays out, imo:

1) You get people that grew up with weapons and made it their profession in some way, shape or form (because just doing a few practice sessions will not prepare anybody to act decicively and shoot an attacker) in which case you will have professional mercenaries and/or veterans who take up teaching. Great, sure they are all gonna be super good at teaching.

2) You have teachers try and play at being security personell and at best create aditional panic and at worst open the door for a few scenarios: 1) mistaking a student's actions and shooting them (if it happens with police officers, there is no way it doesn't happen with teachers) or 2) an attacker not even having to get a gun beforehand, but just take it off the teacher instead.

If you wanna do anything along these lines, why not have 1 member of a military service and/or 1 policeman be at each school during active hours. From what i could find there are about 150 thousand schools and colleges in the US, while there are about 1 mio police officers (federal, state or local) and 2 mio active or reserve military personel. Of course, you can get into the economics and it is a crazy idea in itself, but it sure seems more sensible than arming amateurs to me ...

Either you are a teacher or you are law enforcement/security/whatever.

I mentioned earlier that most schools have 1 to 2 armed guards on duty. The school this happened at did. Heck even Columbine did back in the day.

Now Gingrich and others are pushing a plan to have at least 6 armed teachers at every school. There are around 200,000 public schools in the country.

So now you have to train, arm, and secure weapons for at the bare minimum 1.2 million teachers in this country. Mind you that we have states that can't even afford to have school open 5 days a week. But we're going to somehow come up with billions of dollars each year to do this even though it likely won't do much.

And some of these shooters are coming in with full tactical gear, vests, and an AR-15. Unless we're planning to do the same for the teachers, they are way outgunned.

Definitely against arming teachers, but really happy the GOP has just admitted there is a shit ton of money lying around that can be thrown at schools.

Outfit all teachers with ballistic shields and have them point a loaded AR-15 at the students for the entire duration of class, seems obvious to me.

Also I'm sure that none of these teachers will ever leave the gun unattended.

Will the teachers be required to bring their own guns and ammo like they do for the rest of their supplies or will there be an armory in the school that stores the government weapons and ammo?

My retired kindergarten teacher mother would have dropped the gun 4 times on the first day, probably committing her own accidental mass shooting.

Procured via government contracts with Trump companies of choice!

We have like a 300 page thread of hot teachers banging their students. Let's arm them to the teeth.

Who's going to be willing to tell a teacher they're fired?

Just had a scare this morning after getting to work I here from one of my team that they heard my daughters high school had an online threat from they believe a student on social media about shooting the school up. I picked her up and she talked about she was looking around to see what where she go go for cover if at any moment some one walks in with a gun. It really freaked me out and really brought it home. The authorities are taking it as a serious threat but have not found the person who made He threat so now I have to work about if o e day soon I drop off my daughter and never see her alive again. Parents should never have to worry about that in a.country as great as we espouse it to be.
9news.com | Online threat made against Grandview High School

Yeah we just had a guy in my area arrested for threatening to shoot up a school. He claimed he was only joking.

A few weeks ago a few students called the trench coat mafia at my daughters school, stood up during lunch pointed their fingers and said they were going to kill.

Yeah, they wore trench coats to school.

My wife is a 5th grade teacher so she comes home often with tales of the lockdown drills . Also, all the talking of arming teachers is crazy.

It's kind of weird but none of us really had that fear growing up. School shootings were really rare when we were younger and now they're just more common and deadly.

I don't know what that means but it has to be weird to be a generation growing up wondering if someone is going to choose their school to be the one to massacre people at.

When I lived in a small town in the late 90s, kids regularly came to school after hunting in the morning. They had their rifles in their cars.
Not a big deal. No one worried about anything. Kids respected their weapons and what they were used for.

I read an article the other day where it calculated that about 150.000 kids have now directly experienced a school shooting since Columbine (being in the targeted school at that time), which isn't counting parents, teachers and other staff.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...-shooting.html

You can only hope that those direct experiences and the interactions with others by those kids (now many of them being adults) at least start to outweigh the insane power of "feeling" and imagination. John Oliver had a terrific takedown about one blabbering idiot coming on CNN and starting to talk about how the bad "rap industry and movie industry" are now an issue whereas when they were young they went to school with guns in their car and Sheriff Andy (Andy Griffiths Show, which, yes, as a Media Science student i have watched ;) ) wearing a gun and still no school shooting (despite that), when in fact he not only rarely wore a gun on that show but actually explained why he didn't.

John Oliver - Parkland School Shooting - YouTube

(only a 3 minute clip, so even those not big fans of Oliver ought to be able to make it through to the punchline ;) )

I also assume none if them were bringing AR-15 or similar type weapons to school.

The second deadliest school shooting of the 90's also took place at Iowa's biggest university.

Looks like another shooting was foiled in the LA area:

California school shooting plot foiled, assault rifles found

Yet society overall is less violent than we were in the 80s. Go figure.

IMO gun violence in the US has been normalized to the point where a large % of people (including some of the shooters) are almost detached from it. Watching the Louis Theroux episode on gun violence in Milwaukee that seemed pretty clear to me - strangers just firing at other strangers standing on the street for no reason at all, like it's the equivalent of smacking someone with a trout in an IRC chat client.

If we're talking gun violence as a whole, and not specifically mass school shootings, the U.S. murder rate is at a 50-year low. The national murder rate was more than double what it is now in the late 70s and early 80s. And in many big cities like Boston and New York crime has decreased much more than that.

But how is our murder rate compared to other western countries? Low for us is I assume high for most others?

Oh ya, it's much higher that most western countries. I'm just saying it's a misconception that gun violence, and violence is general, is rising in the U.S. There's studies show a majority of Americans overestimate how much crime and violence there is, and believe falsely that violent crime has increased in the last few decades.

The random mass shootings are a relatively new phenomenon, on this scale at least. And it makes sense that regular Americans would react more to that kind of thing than gang violence or domestic violence.

And that reality probably makes it harder for any kind of compromised gun legislation because there's no justification to do what the Dems agreed to do in the 90s to get the assault weapon ban (hire more police officers, increase penalties for drug offenders, limit federal review of state criminal convictions, etc.) A new "tough on crime" approach makes no sense when crime has fallen. So what chips can be offered?

Edit: It's kind of ironic though, that the assault weapon ban was justified by, and got through because of, the rising crime rates of the 80s and 90s even though those weapons weren't typically used in urban or domestic crimes. NOW we have an newer issue and type of violence that certainly does specifically relate to those types of weapons, but they're not banned.