This is HORRIBLE ... Time for a Change

[mrfoos]

This statistic will vary depending on where you live, but nationally your child has a 50% chance of going to a house with a gun in it everytime they spend the night with a friend. Teach your children what I have outlined above, I don't care if you hate guns.

When I was around 10 I had a friend that my brother and I use to visit during the summer when all parents were at work. One time he took all the guns out of his dad's "locked" gun safe and wanted us to play cowboys and indians WITH the real guns. I kid you not. He would also bullet in hand pretend to put bullets in a pistol, spin it, and play russian roulette with himself and us. We of course didn't want to play. We ended up threatening to leave so he quit. I kept going over there AND I never told an adult. Craziness!

[Mike Goff]

I thought that I would gently correct you Brett, before someone jumps all over you. As stupid as it seems troops are completley unarmed while on base. They stand the chance of being charged for possessing a single bullet. Eventually some group that hates Americans will figure that out and the mass killings on military bases will begin, hopefully we can educate people before that happens. There are few other things in your post that I have issue with, but what the hell, all in all you did pretty good. Some day I may even convert you to Libertarianism. Thanks for looking out!

[Mike Goff]

Every Child should be taught gun safetly, it does not matter if you own guns!

From my experience the extent of gun safety that is taught to children is, "If you ever touch that gun, I'll beat your ass!" This approach is a monumental failure. Kids are naturally curious, and this approach will in most cases feed that curiosity. I have carefully taught my daughter these 4 basic steps.

1. Always treat every gun as if it were loaded, even when you know that it is not
2. Never point a gun at anything that you are not willing to kill, destroy, or pay for, even if you know that it is unloaded
3. Never put your finger in the trigger guard until you have obtained sight picture on your target and have made the conscious decision to shoot
4. Run away from anyone who does not strictly obey the first 3 rules

My daughter and I have an agreement. She can see, and handle her rifle and any of my guns anytime she likes. All she has to do is ask. This way any and all exposure that she has to guns is under my direct supervision. This gives me priceless time with her to reinforce gun safety. The consequenses for her ever breaking this agreement is that she looses her rifle forever. She will never get it back. My part of the agreement is that if I or my wife ever leave a gun where she could get to it, she is to not touch the gun, but to immediatly tell me. At that point in time, I will give her 20 dollars. I have placed redundancy in my plan to keep my daughter safe from guns. My wife and I both have a strict routine. There are 3 acceptable places for a gun, in the holster, in the safe, or in the hand. There are no excuses for breaking this rule. I have taught my daughter how to safely handle guns. I have instructed her not to handle them, if I am not there. And if I or my wife ever do the unthinkable and leave a gun where she can get it, she is faced with a choice, she can handle the gun that she has handled hundreds of times before, or she can collect 20 dollars and have the opportunity to impress her daddy with how much she knows about gun safety.

This agreement extends to when she is out of the house. If she is ever at a friends house and a gun is made available, she will be armed with the knowledge of rules 1 through 4 and will call me to collect 20 dollars. At that point in time I will immediately go get her, have a very sober conversation with the parents and then give her 20 dollars.

This statistic will vary depending on where you live, but nationally your child has a 50% chance of going to a house with a gun in it everytime they spend the night with a friend. Teach your children what I have outlined above, I don't care if you hate guns.

[JamBam]

Many changes needed

The best discussion on this issue I have ever been a part of is thanks to Mike Goff, a friend. The facts have been allowed to stack up with 361 school shootings since 1992 and this year three shootings, all with AR15's killed 86 people, 20 of which were 6 or 7 years old. The last straw has been pulled with the children's murders.

As parents, we all have had our view of the world changed. Joe Scarbarough on MSNBC Mornging Joe is a former Republican congressman from Florida. He opened his show with a pretty frank discussion and his announcement that he has changed his view and mentioned like many others that he had an "A" rating from the NRA. That is worth lots of campaign cash to politicians and gets loyalty for the gun issues.

Before anyone says the Democrats are after your guns needs to remember that the last "major" gun law passed by congress was in 1993, the Brady Bill. Two bills Obama signed this year allowed more freedom of guns regarding colleges and national parks. The line agreed not to cross and allow restrictions at this time is fully automatic guns, machine guns. No one even thinks rocket launchers and bigger weaponry should be owned by people. But that is what it might take to start to defend against our modern weaponry if our government turned against us. The NRA has changed the Supreme Court attitude toward the 2nd amemdment to what it is today that the second part of the amendment is more important then the first part. Before the 1970's, the court was ruling that the well regulated militia trumped the individual's right to bear arms. It continues to allow less than absolute rights to guns.

Do I think banning certain guns will stop the crazy people from killing more people? NO. Will restricting the assault type help, YES. Keep in mind that our first amendment to free speech has limitations as well. Restricted speech, like time and place stuff regarding parades and protests are accepted by society. Hate speech and speech to incite violence is restricted as well as yelling fire in a theatre. Unprotected speech (1) Defamation (see section on Defamation) (2) Incitement of illegal activity (3) Commercial speech – false and deceptive advertising is not protected by the First Amendment (4) Speech by government employees. That being said, restricting the assault weapons, certain bullets, and high capactiy clips are NOT steps to taking away the second amendment rights, merely working with it to accomplish the goal of reducing these killings. The restrictions for weapons needs to include further background checks for those wanting to own them. Closing the loopholes in background checks has been fought for years.

One area that is starting to get attention is the possibility that the medications used to day to treat many of these people may have violent side effects. I have seen a couple of websites that claim that 15 previous killers were all on one of these various meds. Might be something to look into. And if I have someone in my house that is on them, further restrictions need to be in place like secure gun storage at shooting ranges.

Another point that is gaining awareness is that 80% of stolen guns are never recovered. Getting gun owners to become more responsible and secure the guns needs to happen.

Mike makes the point that his daughter is well trained in firearms. That is the biggest idea I think needs to get traction. Train every person in America a standard firearms course and then require allyoung people 10-12 yrs old to get the same training.

MIke and I have talked about the disparity of CCP, Concealed Carry Permits, across America. It is time to standarize this and have reciprocity between states. Wisconsin last year passed a CCP law with training required and back off it before it became law. Every permit needs to be a finite time with renewal or expiration, additional training, and freedom on where to carry them. Yes having more people carrying guns may deter, but don't buy the whole story that more guns truly equals more safety because all you have to do is look at the Ft Hood shooting that wounded 29 and killed 13 at a military base where everyone has extensive training and weapons. Deter will help because these cowards nearly always pick areas that have unarmed people.

Nearly all the high schools I know have police on site these days and many junior highs. The cost of manning all schools with police, including K-4 like Sandy Hook, may not be feasible cost wise. Teachers being armed is being brought up and I saw one site that it was said that teachers 1st priority is to keep the kids safe and teach second. Sorry, the school corp and admin is charged with the safety, then the teachers have an obligation. But, training teachers better safety as pointed out by Mike's great article earlier in this thread will help. Now, having principals, vice principals, maintenence, and janitorial become deputized and being able to carry on duty is an idea worth considering.

We should not forget this needs to be addressed with open minds. Too many times we have let time pass until the next deadly mass killing. It took six years to pass the Brady Bill after it was first introduced. We cannot allow emotions to run us to a hasty solution, but there are people out there who do not deserve to die because of the inability of us, and our legislators, from finding some common ground on this.

[Darkangel]

They obtained a plane by using the box cutters then used the plane to intentionally (pre-planed) kill thousands. They may have found other ways to get there final weapon but the box cutters were part of the whole plan to mass murder.

I'm sorry, but there is no way in hell some scrawny dudes with box cutters would be enough to hold me hostage. It's a like a quarter inch blade they have to be right in you to do anything you could knock him out just as easily. Still confuses me to this day but those passengers did end up being heroes.

DA

[badass]

lets not give up one ounce of freedom .

[Dreamreaper]

I don't know if you should say the sept 11 incident was worst mass murderer they didn't use the box cutters to kill they used the plane. A true mass murder would be like a serial killer or like the Virginia tech murderer who killed 34 people by shooting them.

They obtained a plane by using the box cutters then used the plane to intentionally (pre-planed) kill thousands. They may have found other ways to get there final weapon but the box cutters were part of the whole plan to mass murder.

[drfrightner]

Here in St Louis at a school not far from my house supposedly this kid made threats to do the same thing... they sent home notes to all the parents. My friend is NOT sending his kid to school that day.

This is sad and terrible that we all have to fear for our kids safety at schools. I can say this doesn't really matter what side of gun control you are on at this point something is going to happen. It just sucks it took this to be the reason this happens. WOW I'm still devastated. I watched my favorite show on TV tonight the Voice and cheered on Nick and Pope and no matter what you do you keep thinking about it.

Larry

[wickedfarmer]

But look up Yellowstone basin...

When that basin blows good by North America as we know it. It is a fabulous place to visit and everyone should see it. But it will get ugly some day. Maybe 50 years ....maybe 10,000 years....but they now know it is going to blow.

Now back to topic at hand...

Wicked Farmer

[wickedfarmer]

Will not be poking fun...

...at you Mike. Hope we can breath a sigh of relief. News called me today as we did a mayan theme for the maze. He asked me what I was doing friday....so Wicked me strung him along. "I am headed to Yellowstone. The basin has been rising about a half inch every year beacuse of the magma rising under the worlds largest volcano. When the planets line up it will blow from increased pull from other planets. I want to be there to see it blow if we all die anyway." I let a few seconds of silence pass and told him i was kidding...but Yellowstone basin is rising but we probably have 10,000 years yet. Yeah there will be loonies out that day. Just hope they are noit destructive loonies.

Wicked Farmer

[Mike Goff]

I know, I said I was done, and I am

I would not be able to sleep tonight if I did not pass this on. As I said, I have studied this type of thing for a long time, too long. Many times these things happen in spurts. This Friday is the end of the Mayan calendar. Don't even get me started, no the world will not end, but there are crazy people who think that it will. I have many reasons to believe that Friday is a bad day to let your kid go to school, I would rather not go off on a weird tangent. I sincerely hope that Friday night all of you are poking fun at me, and you probably will. I do not have any concrete evidence to support this concern, but I am concerned.

[Jim Warfield]

This Morning on BBC..

There was a massacre in Austrailia years ago and then that country bought-back rifles and other guns from owners (the video of the massive pile of guns being scrapped is incredible! $!$!$!$!?)
Maybe someone is just playing with numbers , but the number of gun related deaths since the massive buy-back there is almost "0", according to that program broadcast today.
The Newtown shooter had his own school psychiatrist assigned to him, which did no good at all, obviously.
His Mother was begining paperwork to have him commited, the school adult victims were some of her friends, as were the class of little kids he went after with such a vengence.
The AR15 was his weapon, he did break into the school....the information the first day or two was wrong so often, we just stopped listening for awhile.
Someone keeps saying the USA is the ONLY modern country with such a horrendous track record of gun violence, no it is not, search the internet, mass killings in Germany, Scotland (school children) Austraila , but the social situations do contribute greatly to the level of mistrust between the classes and ethinic types and I believe crowding people into a smaller area also affects this too.
Add unemployment and a scary unpredictable future for many who thought they had it all bought AND paid for and bad things seem to happen more often.
Giving psychological tests to new gun owner wanna-bees might help sometimes, but things in our lives do change, and we don't want that to happen sometimes, like marriages failing, businesses failing , create whole new situations which can render a previous psych. screening null and void, unfortunately.
I am 63, my generation grew up watching cowboy shoot-outs, which maybe spawned the computer shooter games with more and more realistic scenes before young eyes. Take a toy gun away from a boy, he quickly picks up a nearby stick and keeps right on "Shooting"!
When I was a kid this country was still on a "High" of weaponry from WW2, (Since we won)
Allowing movies and TV to babysit our kids is probably not a really good practice some have discovered when it comes to those times a good choices must be made in real life.
If only my Dad would have bought me a Sherman tank that day... there were 100s of them lined up neatly in a farm field waiting to be melted down into wire and nails just 35 miles from us. I would have liked to see that at work, I was told 5 Shermans would fit into the huge ladel at the same time! Melted via electricity!

[twinlocust]

Pre Clinton AWB, during Clinton AWB, After Clinton AWB there was no significant change in murder involving these weapons. Connecticut is among the five U.S states with the most strict gun laws, nearly identical to the standing federal laws in Canada. These laws did nothing to stop this crime.

The mentally ill and evil people will find a way to do bad things.

Attacking the weapon side of the equation in the U.S. is tantamount to pissing on a house fire.

Addressing the mental health side is reasonable and worthwhile.

Even addressing mental health as it relates to purchasing or possessing a weapon - lowering the bar on what
is mentally ill, may be reasonable.

The idea of banning weapons is for weak fools that know little about the way the world works.

[Darkangel]

One more thing to ponder. Kennesaw, Ga has an ordinance that REQUIRES each household to own a gun. You never hear about crime in this town for some reason...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/...19257620070418

Out of curiosity, what is the demographic of the people in that area? That probably tells the true story. Don't hear of too much crime out of Salt Lake City either do you?

[mrfoos]

Hey Mike,

Thanks for all your historic and educated perspective here. I was already firmly on your side of the debate but it was simply from my opinion that the best answer is always MORE freedom... not less. I feel a little more educated on the debate now.

And I'm sorry to hear your veteran story. I've heard it many times before. I'm sick of how this country as a whole elevates our cowardly and self-serving politicians to the status of hero and name our buildings, bridges and roads after them... and then treat our real heroes like this.

Ironically every time the gun control folks start talking gun, bullet, and license to conceal sells go through the roof. What they don't understand is they can't win this debate with votes... because WE'RE the ones with the guns and bullets.