18 killed in school shooting

[GreyGeek]

Accidents, suicides, robbers with guns! All terrible incidents, as well as the other 'real' shootings. You consider all those things normal?

You do realise that all of that is not necessary? And that with some effort, eventually the death toll could be reduced to the levels of an average European or Scandinavian country. And be free from the threat and the fear. And the cost of firearms, security measures and special training.

You apparently didn’t read the article. It points out that even with the highly restrictive gun laws in European countries the death toll rates in 11 or 12 of them were greater than America’s. So, all those regulations and “efforts” aren’t as effective as one might believe.

Being free and allowing others the same freedoms you enjoy comes with risks. Turning a country into a giant prison can certainly reduce, but never eliminate risks to life and property.

Straight jackets and padded cells for everyone except the jailers would be more effective, but who would watch the watchers? Americans have just gone through the discovery that the FBI, the IRS, EPA, ATF and DOJ, among other Federal agencies, had been weaponized against half the population, the conservative half. And you are recommending that we trust the watchers?


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[ianp5a]

No, there were NOT 18 school shootings in the US so far in 2018, but the media wants you to believe it.
When you see how they arrived at that number you will see how biased and agenda driven they are:
https://www.investors.com/politics/e...ot-even-close/

Accidents, suicides, robbers with guns! All terrible incidents, as well as the other 'real' shootings. You consider all those things normal?

You do realise that all of that is not necessary? And that with some effort, eventually the death toll could be reduced to the levels of an average European or Scandinavian country. And be free from the threat and the fear. And the cost of firearms, security measures and special training.

[GreyGeek]

No, there were NOT 18 school shootings in the US so far in 2018, but the media wants you to believe it.
When you see how they arrived at that number you will see how biased and agenda driven they are:
https://www.investors.com/politics/e...ot-even-close/

[GreyGeek]

Fact checking a common myth repeated often by anti-2A proponents:
https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/co...us-and-europe/

[woodsmoke]

I remain mute.

woodVALUESALLSTATEMENTSsmoke

[TWPonKubuntu]

GG, I like both of your videos. I do think the presentation has been "dumbed down" to reach the lowest common denominator...

The actual arguments being presented are, In My Opinion, valid. I guess there are people who can't listen to this without a cartoon running in the background. And this is from a University?

For those who are following this, Prager University has several more videos in this vein.

[GreyGeek]

[Snowhog]

Thomas Jefferson: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

It's debatable whether or not we are now experiencing tyranny, as one can, today, reasonably say that the People are in fear of the Government.

[TWPonKubuntu]

In defense of GreyGeeks comparison of our "civilian" population acting against a hypothetical US despotic government, This is what the founding fathers had in mind when the framed the 2nd amendment. They had immediate, first hand experience with such a situation and wanted to ensure that future generations retained that option.

History records that there was not universal acceptance of this viewpoint, as witness the "Tory" faction during the revolution, but there was enough agreement among the "colonists" to form the Continental Army.

I expect we would see a similar schism in today's society and in today's military. That is why the previous administration tried hard to purge the military command structure of members who did not agree with that administration.

I won't attempt to predict how successful that purge was. Only time will tell and I truly hope we don't have to test this in the future. Civilian gun ownership is both a deterrent and a threat to government. That is the balance which the Constitution was created to maintain. Hence the current attacks on the Constitution.

We live in "interesting times"...

[Bings]

GreyGeek, Just as a point of order, the Viet Cong or more accurately North Vietnamese forces had rather more than rifles and handguns. They had a full army, navy and air force as well as Soviet and Chinese backing. They were also led by an experienced military that went back to fighting the Japanese in World War 2. Yes, they were the underdogs technologically wise but not vaguely comparable to a civilian with a personal gun collection. As for the national guard, they weren't exactly the people's friends when they were murdering unarmed civilians at kent state university. I don't think it's an argument to not have guns but personal gun ownership will not stop a theoretical tyrannical ruler, either alone or being a major part of.

[GreyGeek]

In a nutshell:

[GreyGeek]

Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman


"The Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution (specifically, it is the first ten amendments) and, like any other part of the Constitution, can only be changed by amendment or by a constitutional convention. Congress cannot accomplish either of these things by itself.

Before an amendment can be added to the Constitution it must be approved by two thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and must then be ratified by three fourths of the states (which works out to 38 of the 50).

The Constitution itself says nothing about a time limit on this process, which is why the Twenty-Seventh Amendment (dealing with pay raises or reductions for members of Congress) was properly ratified in 1992 even though it had been approved by the House and Senate in 1789. States had been slow to approve it, and the number of state approvals necessary to ratify it kept increasing as more states were admitted to the union. Today most serious proposed amendments include a built-in deadline (typically five to seven years) for ratification.

An amendment would not actually remove the text of the Bill of Rights from the Constitution; amendments are simply added at the end of that document. Amendments can -- and often do -- repeal other portions of the Constitution which came before it. An example of such a change is the Twenty-First Amendment, which was ratified in 1933 specifically in order to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, which had instituted prohibition in 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment is still part of the Constitution's text, but it no longer has any effect.

A constitutional convention would have broader powers and could theoretically decide to scrap the Constitution entirely and replace it with a new one. (Many of the founding fathers expected this to happen periodically, and would be quite surprised to learn that the original Constitution remains in effect after 217 years.) The Fifth Amendment requires Congress to call a convention upon the application of two-thirds of the states, though this has never happened. Like the usual amendment process, the changes proposed by a convention would only take effect upon ratification by three quarters of the states.



Interestingly, the President has no role in either of these processes. His political influence will often make a big difference in a proposed amendment's fate, but his approval is not required. Governors likewise have no role to play; only state legislators can ratify an amendment or request a convention."

Bottom line: The Anti-2A crowd does NOT have 2/3rds of the votes in both houses, and certainly does not control enough state legislatures to muster 38 states to ratify a proposed amendment to nullify the 2A. A Constitutional Convention faces the same hurdles. That is why, over the years, the Democrats (who have essentially co-opted the Communist Party of America political platform) have settled for cutting fringes on the edge of 2A, an act which itself is forbidden by the 2A and a violation of the politician's oath of office, but most politicians succumbed to emotional "do something" arguments.

Firearms are by any accounting NOT the worst harbinger of death in the USA, and because Americans are heavily armed, a government like the Marxist Murado, in Venezuela, has set up would not be successful here. Remember, the very first document relating to "Terrorist threats" in the USA released a couple months after Obama took office listed among those groups: Christians, Libertarians, Pro-Life folks, returning Gulf War vets, "Constitutionalists and other conservatives, which they lumped together with the KKK (a group created by the Democrats) and other Far Right groups. NOT ONE group on the Far Left with a history of blowing things up and shooting people were mentioned. The outcry forced the DHS to release a second terrorist list including those on the Far Left a couple months later.

Doubters claim civilians armed with mere rifles (suddenly they are not "assault" weapons?) and hand guns wouldn't be able to stand against the armed might of the US military. Why not? The Viet Cong did. There are National Guard and military airbases and armories in each state and scattered around the country. Many of the soldiers AND their commanders in those bases would fight any attempt to repeal the 2A or any other of the basic human rights listed in the Bill of Rights, and they would bring their planes, tanks and heavy weapons with them. MOST of the folks in America who are armed were also trained by the military in weapons and tactics, so it wouldn't be a bunch of country rubes going against a professional military. This is why Obama replaced almost 4,000 key military officers with his own picks, and why he had the DHS purchase more than TWO BILLION rounds of ammunition during the end of his first and the beginning of his second term. IF he couldn't take the guns he'd take the bullets. He failed. Most gun owners keep at least 10,000 rounds of ammo on hand, and Obama has been the best gun salesman since Bill Clinton.

I'm 76. My first presidential election was Goldwater vs Johnson, in 1964. I was told that if I voted for Goldwater there would be war. I voted for him and there was war. Johnson started it by lying about a "gulf of Tonkin" incident. It never happened, but it was the excuse for a war which cost the lives of 50,000 Americans. Over the years I have observed many presidential campaigns. However, THIS WAS THE FIRST where ALL the major news outlets sent their star talking heads to a dinner given by John Podesta, the campaign manager of Hillary Clinton, to talk about how the reporters were going to "coordinate" their reporting with Hillary's campaign!
And coordinate they did. Hillary seemed so smooth and polished at the debates because she had been given all the questions in advance, a decided advantage! She had the super delegates bought and paid for before Bernie even ran. Her campaign staff is recording saying that they had voted in each state they campaigned in, which is a violation of Federal law. Undercover video recordings captured campaign staff bragging about hiring thugs to provoke discord at opponents campaign events, which would be covered by the media in such a way as to imply that the victims were the aggressors.

Despite that and much more, Hillary Clinton still lost. It has been a constant wet dream of the Left that American would be overthrown by a violent revolution. Saul Alinksy thought it was going to happen at the time of the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago and he and his close friend spent every weekend at a firing range shooting their pistols, practicing to be ready. A fact he mentions in his book "Rules For Radicals". AntiFa is doing the same now, in anticipation of their wet dream coming to fruition. Had Hillary won they may have gotten their wish.

[Snowhog]

I think we must agree to disagree on this topic. Flame wars (which we are NOT doing) are not productive.

Agreed. Each of has an opinion on this subject, and while we may not agree with each other, each of our opinions are valid and should be respected.

[TWPonKubuntu]

I point at Venezuela as the current example of why gun bans are a bad idea...

I think we must agree to disagree on this topic. Flame wars (which we are NOT doing) are not productive.

Look at who is pushing the legislation and ask what they have to gain from it. I don't get a sense of honesty or concern for the people of any country. It is politics and money driving this brain meltdown.

[ianp5a]

So it's high time to change then. Urgently.

Especially as people owning guns hasn't prevented any of that.

Unless the death toll is acceptable to you.