A well regulated militia

[backtoiam]

I don't support banning all guns outright, but they should be strictly regulated - background checks, registration with the police/other agency, loss of the right to own guns if you're mentally unstable, have a violent criminal record etc. Guns should only be allowed for two reasons - hunting and sport.

So self-defense is illegal? Or do you consider self-protection to be "sport" ?

In the span of time of human existence guns were just invented in the last blink of an eye and are by no means the cause of violence. Might make violence a little more convenient but you can take guns, sticks, and everything else away and people will still get their hands dirty. I had a job in the past that made it safer for me to legally conceal carry. I was on a pay phone. Several dudes ganged around me, without guns, and asked for my wallet, and told me they would "beat my head to mush." When I pulled my coat back and they saw that nickel plated shine on my hip one of them fell down and skidded across the gravel on his face as they all tried to run away. I didn't fire the gun, no reason to. Guns are not "the" problem. The problem is desperate people trying to survive because they were cleverly coerced out of a means a comfortable survival, or greedy fuckers taking for the sake of greed, mostly. This is not an issue I plan to debate at all. Just my two cents.

Speaking of "sport."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy_XYWGIBtE

[Iamwhomiam]

Wasn't sure where to place this. Perhaps I should also post it in the School Shootings thread. The article's behind a paywall I circumvent by googling the title.

Shootings become routine, as does our response

Chris Churchill
Published 8:08 pm, Saturday, October 3, 2015

Colonie

"There was another school shooting today," my wife said.

"Yeah," I replied.

Our tone sounded as if we were describing something unremarkable — the weather maybe — and we didn't say much more than that. What more was there to say?

We've been here before, so many times now. Shootings at schools, shootings anywhere, are routine. We're numb to it. What else is new?

I didn't watch any of the cable news stations following last Thursday's killings at a community college in Oregon, but I didn't need to. I could predict the coverage almost frame-for-frame — the stunned and bewildered students, the grieving parents, the police and politicians at podiums, a chagrined and weary President Barack Obama looking and feeling helpless. Again.

I could also predict what the shooting would bring: The partisan bickering over The How of the shooting.

One one hand, furious denouncements of the NRA and the calls to do something, anything. On the other, equally furious dismissals of know-nothing liberals whose laws would infringe on rights and ...

See that? We respond to a shooter's rage with more rage. And nothing ever changes.

So if you don't mind, I'm going to ignore The How of the shooting to focus instead on The Why. We mostly ignore The Why.

There's a good reason. The How is simple, probably too simple. The Why is so much more difficult to explain and understand. The Why requires us to look closely at the world we've built, to look really closely at ourselves. We're not going to be comfortable with what we see.

I'm sorry to say it, but we don't live in a society with the appropriate respect for human life and the wonder of creation.

Turn on the TV and watch the imaginary killings. Look at the video games our children play.

Hey, pretending to kill people is so much fun! Imagine how fun it would be to do it for real...

Look at the selfish way we drive, as if the lives around us don't matter. Look at those Planned Parenthood abortion videos, which should itch at consciences on both sides of the issue, so casual and callous is the talk about body parts of dead human fetuses.

The Why requires us to ask how it is that we're raising so many young men -— and it is almost always young men — who are so lost and alienated that they open fire on other human beings. Where is that anger coming from? How are we nurturing such rage?

A widely circulating statistic notes that, as of Friday, there had been 294 mass shootings so far this year, which is more than the number of days. That's if you define mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people were killed or wounded.

Many of the 294 aren't like the school shootings. They happen in inner cities. Many were gang related, no doubt.

We tend not to get quite so upset about those shootings. If nine people die at an Oregon college campus, you can guarantee that media people like me are going to scream about it with outrage and alarm. But if nine people die over a weekend in Chicago ... well, probably not. You might hear about the Kardashians instead.

Maybe those inner-city shootings are just different. I suppose The Why is easier to comprehend. We can point to economic hopelessness.

But aren't we still talking about lost and alienated young men? About people who feel unloved and unwanted, who feel as though the world around them just doesn't care?

Are they really so different than the young men who shoot up schools? Or churches? Or movie theaters?

What this is all about, I think, is a great disconnect — from nature, from family, from community, from spirituality. It's about people who are too isolated, who have replaced the real world of connection and humanity — not to mention grass, trees and sunshine — with a cold and angry virtual world.

Meanwhile, we all just live with this. We look warily around the mall or movie theater. We wonder if our town will be the one on the national news, if we'll be the poor grieving souls in the all-too-predictable news coverage.

We should talk about The How. The Second Amendment allows for regulation and limits, of course, and what that should include is an important and necessary discussion.

But we better not forget about The Why.

The Why is who we really are.

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5442 • @chris_churchill

http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/Chris-Churchill-Shootings-become-routine-as-6548536.php

[Iamwhomiam]

As with my last, this too, is behind a paywall. Those of us living in close proximity to urban centers seem too often to misunderstand our history and how recently our "Wild West" was indeed quite wild without policing authorities to be found anywhere near by.

The need for self-defense was a need to be armed and vigilant. Today we still have areas this remains true. I've a lot to do today and will be back later to offer my thoughts on the subject of enacting meaningful gun regulations. 90% of Americans desire mandatory FBI background checks for all sales and transfers of firearms. This I and the responsible gun owners I know personally endorse this policy change.

Gun control is steeped in American frontier
The Wild West became the setting for the country's first firearms laws

By Jennifer Tucker, Commentary
Published 3:36 pm, Saturday, October 3, 2015

A massacre on an Oregon community college campus has claimed nine lives. A shootout in the New York borough of Brooklyn last month had bystanders diving for cover and led to the death of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's legal aide. Two television journalists were killed by a gunman while broadcasting in Virginia on August 28. These, and other, incidents — and the fact that murder rates are spiking in the United States after decades of decline — have put the issue of gun control back in the public spotlight.

Sounds just like the Wild West?

Not really.

Contrary to its name, the Wild West was the setting for the passage of some of the nation's first gun-control laws.

In 19th-century frontier towns, people couldn't just walk around with guns in hand. The iconic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1881, arose because Deputy Marshal Virgil Earp was trying to enforce a city ordinance prohibiting anyone from carrying a deadly weapon in town.

Contrast that to today: This year it is projected that almost as many Americans (32,000) will be killed in firearm-related incidents as die in automobile accidents.

Not only has Congress failed to enact significant legislation to tackle the problem, earlier this summer, it extended limits on the Centers for Disease Control even researching the underlying causes of gun violence: to collect data, for example, on where killers get their guns.

Our nation's lax attitude toward gun proliferation in American towns and cities is not the result of the unfolding of history. It seems, rather, that Hollywood's version of cowboy culture and the fictional gunfighter has displaced the real historical record, as Richard Slotkin noted in his book "Gunfighter Nation" (1998), and had a powerful influence over public discourse about the place of guns in American society.

The 1953 movie "Shane" exemplifies the narrative of a "good man with a gun" — "an armed redeemer." In the movie, responding to a woman's wish that guns be banished from the valley, Shane replies: "A gun is just a tool, Marian. It's as good or bad as the man that uses it."

This notion is central to the National Rifle Association's worldview, amplified through its bumper sticker and social media campaigns. But it is a classic — and tragic — example of what Oxford professor Margaret McMillan has called "bad history," or picking out only a small part of a complex story, and burying the rest.

So let's recall the real history of gun control, starting in the Wild West.

As legal scholar Adam Winkler explains in his book "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America" (2011), no gun-control law was more common in the late 1800s — on the frontier and elsewhere — than bans on concealed weapons. The first bans on possession of concealed weapons in public were adopted in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813.

Courts usually upheld the bans, with an Alabama court in 1840 declaring that the legislature was within its power to "suppress the evil practice of carrying weapons secretly." The restrictions spread from the South to the frontier, and eventually led to the first court cases dealing with the constitutionality of gun control.

Leaders of frontier communities wanted to promote their towns and cities as safe places for settlers and commerce. According to historian Robert Dystra, author of "The Cattle Towns" (1968), a visitor arriving in Wichita, Kan., in 1873 would have seen signs declaring, "LEAVE YOUR REVOLVER AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS, AND GET A CHECK." A street sign in Dodge City, Kan., in 1879 warned: "The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited."

At that time, there was a clear understanding that civilized people did not walk around America's towns and cities carrying guns — and that on the American frontier, there were guns — and there was gun control. In fact, until recently, few seriously questioned that the Second Amendment applied only to keeping and bearing arms for military purposes.

As the retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained last year in The Washington Post, "no judge or justice expressed any doubt about the limited coverage of the amendment" for the first 200 years after the Second Amendment was passed.

Fast forward to the 1980s, and laws liberalizing concealed-carry laws swept the land. Two profoundly important changes in the law occurred in 2008, when the Supreme Court decided in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects a civilian's right to keep a handgun at home for purposes of self-defense, and in 2010, when the court decided in McDonald v. Chicago that the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment limits the power of Chicago to outlaw the possession of handguns by private citizens.

In other words, our "gun industrial complex" is not the inevitable outcome of over two centuries of American gun-possession; it is the direct result of changes in the law and cultural attitudes that have occurred over the past couple of decades, as explained by the political scientist Kristen Gosse in her 2008 book, "Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America."

Where has all this gotten us?

Today, 36 states have adopted "shall-issue" laws that enable almost anyone with a clean record to get a permit to carry a hidden gun in public.

Texas allows unlicensed people to openly carry semiautomatic rifles in public places. Last June, Texas lawmakers passed a bill that would allow faculty and students to carry concealed handguns on university campuses. In May, the National Rifle Association fought the efforts of Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin to restrict guns at parks, fairgrounds and recreational areas. And with a proliferation of guns being kept in American homes — which is associated with a twofold increase in the risk of homicide — 2013 saw 1,670 children die by gunshot and an additional 9,718 injured.

One fact stands out: Guns might not kill people — but guns get people killed.

Gun owners could become more involved in setting of basic limits on the proliferation of firearms that would help reduce the numbers of deaths and casualties of firearm-related violence in America today. They should familiarize themselves with the true history of the American frontier, where gun restrictions were seen as conducive to a healthy nation.

And gun regulation advocates should make more of the fact that history is on their side.

Jennifer Tucker is associate professor of history of science at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Gun-control-is-steeped-in-American-frontier-6548072.php

[Iamwhomiam]

Paywall!

Inaction wrong after another mass shooting

RUTH MARCUS
Published 3:36 pm, Saturday, October 3, 2015

A confession: When the news of Thursday's mass shooting in Oregon broke, it did not occur to me to write about it.

I was thinking about Planned Parenthood and Benghazi; about Bernie Sanders' fundraising and Hillary Clinton's emails; about Putin and Syria. Another shooting is tragic, but what is left to say? What is the point of saying anything when it will change no minds?

Nothing else was working, so I took the dog for a walk, during which Twitter erupted — first, with news that the president would be making the inevitable briefing-room statement; next, with the criticism that he was seizing the moment to change the subject away from the mess in the Middle East. He's the president of the United States. If he didn't speak out, he'd be slammed for uncaring silence.

Obama's grim words shamed me into writing.

"Somehow this has become routine," he noted, bristling with anger and frustration as he made his 15th such remarks. "The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this."

Or perhaps simply despairing. The saddest interview I ever conducted was with three of the mothers whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. We sat under the cherry blossoms outside the U.S. Capitol, four months after the killings.

They cried, I cried, as they described the anguish of losing their babies, and the determined lobbying, complete with glossy postcards of their impossibly beautiful murdered children, that had managed to dislodge the usual gridlock and propel a measure to expand background checks for gun purchasers to the Senate floor.

Not to limit the size of ammunition magazines, or to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Just to apply the existing background check requirement to gun shows, in-state gun sales over the Internet and other commercial transactions. Not transfers from fathers to sons, or buddy to buddy. Just commercial transactions.

And even this was too much for the Senate. The tears of grieving mothers could get the measure to the floor but not over the 60-vote threshold — and, certainly, if the missing six votes had miraculously materialized, not past the House of Representatives.

Since Sandy Hook: The Washington Navy Yard, 12 killed, 3 wounded. Fort Hood, again, 3 killed, 16 wounded. Isla Vista, 6 killed, 7 wounded. Charleston, 9 killed. Now Roseburg, Ore., another 9, and "another community stunned with grief," as the president said.

Of course, enacting reasonable gun measures would not have stopped all of these. Still, you tell the parents of 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, killed in Tucson, Ariz., that limits on oversized ammunition magazines are not justified; Jared Loughner got off 31 shots before being stopped when he paused to reload.

'We are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people," Obama said. "We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."

Australia, which adopted sweeping anti-gun laws in response to a 1996 mass shooting, had 1.4 gun homicides per million people in 2012, Vox.com reported. Canada had 5.1. The United States? 29.7.

More American exceptionalism: We are the only country that responds to such carnage with straight-faced proposals to make gun ownership easier. Such as the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, whose otherwise paltry policy positions include expanding concealed carry rules to make a permit from any state valid nationwide.

As Obama observed, our inaction is un-American. "When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer. When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer. When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities. We have seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives," he said.

The Second Amendment protects a right to gun ownership. It does not forestall reasonable regulation. The sorts of small steps that now appear unachievable would not interfere with the needs of responsible gun owners.

It is too soon to know how evident was the Oregon shooter's mental illness; whether he could have been stopped.

It is not too soon for all of us, myself included, to feel ashamed by our willingness to accept the status quo as bloody but immutable.

Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.


http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/Ruth-Marcus-Inaction-wrong-after-another-mass-6548069.php

[DrEvil]

I don't support banning all guns outright, but they should be strictly regulated - background checks, registration with the police/other agency, loss of the right to own guns if you're mentally unstable, have a violent criminal record etc. Guns should only be allowed for two reasons - hunting and sport.

So self-defense is illegal? Or do you consider self-protection to be "sport" ?

No, but killing someone in self-defense usually is. By Norwegian law you're allowed to defend yourself only if you have no other choice (so if you had the chance to run away from a fight and didn't you can be found liable for any injuries to the attacking party, usually with a slap on the wrist), and then only with enough force to stop the attack.

Shooting someone would in most cases be considered excessive use of force. Even the cops are trained to shoot to disable (arms, legs etc.).

Perpetrators also almost never have guns, exactly because they're so hard to get, so people don't go around being afraid of bad guys with guns, simply because they for all practical purposes don't exist (not counting Breivik, which was an extreme outlier).

See the movie 'Nokas' for a great example of how people here react to guns. It's a detailed reconstruction of the largest bank robbery in Norwegian history, involving a shootout with assault rifles. Practically everyone in the area thought it was either a drill of some sort or a movie set. It just didn't occur to people that it could be the real thing, because it "never" happens.

Tl;dr: People here don't feel they need guns to protect themselves because that kind of situation almost never occurs.

[Iamwhomiam]

Gun controls have always been with us:

According to historian Robert Dystra, author of "The Cattle Towns" (1968), a visitor arriving in Wichita, Kan., in 1873 would have seen signs declaring, "LEAVE YOUR REVOLVER AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS, AND GET A CHECK." A street sign in Dodge City, Kan., in 1879 warned: "The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited."

Always:

“A variety of laws regulating firearms were already in place during the Founding Era. Militia regulations were the most common form of laws pertaining to firearms. Such laws could be quite intrusive, allowing government not only to keep track of who had firearms, but requiring them to report for a muster or face stiff penalties. Regulations governing the storage of gun powder were also common. States prohibited the use of firearms on certain occasions and in certain locations. A variety of race-based exclusions disarmed slaves, and in some cases, free blacks. Loyalty oaths also disarmed portions of the population during the Founding Era.”

http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4021&context=flr

Since 1968 more Americans have been killed by guns than we've lost in battle in all the wars we have ever fought.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/aug/27/nicholas-kristof/more-americans-killed-guns-1968-all-wars-says-colu/


(Add another dozen or two since the paper pictured above was published.)

Why? Why do we tolerate this carnage? WE all should arm ourselves to the teeth - to be safer. Honest. Just ask these guys:

[Wombaticus Rex]

Even the cops are trained to shoot to disable (arms, legs etc.).

LMFAO! I believe you, but I'm laughing at Norway. "Shoot to disable" bleeds out mighty quick. That's terrible training, but I guess if they're never confronted by armed opposition, it doesn't matter much.

Tl;dr: People here don't feel they need guns to protect themselves because that kind of situation almost never occurs.

Must be nice! No sarcasm. Must be really quite nice.

[jingofever]

Gun control is impossible with 3D printers. The only problem with today's printed guns is that that they do not last long, but that is no problem if you just want to massacre some people.

[Iamwhomiam]

Considering that there hasn't been a 3D gun that has survived one shot, I doubt we'll be seeing any mass shootings with one of these weapons. Or have you heard differently?

[jingofever]

There was, among other examples, a printed AR-15 that could fire 650 rounds before breaking down. The government made the company take down the instructions.

[SonicG]

Can you fabricate a gun with a molecular assembler? Because we will probably see those before the arms merchants step down...All this talk of revolution, whether from the "Betas" or the right-wing gun nuts, is farcical. Lots of frustrated dick-waving because the enemy is insidious and lives inside us all. So much anger, frustration and rage that strikes out at the wrong targets...

[Iamwhomiam]

Since being unwillingly inducted, as all have in the Those with Dead Kids club, I've followed the gun control debate closely and I've become familiar with most all arguments opposing the institution of meaningful firearms regulations.

Every day that passes, it seems we who seek such legislation have another few new recruits added to our club, which not only increases our number, but also strengthens our cry for much needed reform in how people gain access to firearms. And that cry comes from the deepest grief our loss has taught us ~ No More!
Please!, no more.

Think for just a moment about how many thousands have been killed by legal possessors of firearms since my son and five of his friends were killed on March 25, 2006.

30,000 deaths each year and nearly 100,000 gun injuries per year is intolerable, as are the economics involved in caring for gunshot survivors; the costs are simply astronomical.

Our "gun problem" has become a public health issue for everyone to be concerned about. And once considered, all should work towards lowering the human and financial costs irresponsible gun ownership has brought us.

While not all pay by losing a loved one, we all pay the costs inflicted upon us by legal or illegal irresponsible gun owners.

Just today, Luther's school was or still is on lockdown due to threats of firearm violence from some person or group of people against students and or faculty they may or may not know, for who knows what reason. Be safe my friend!

Who the N.R.A. Really Speaks For

By ALAN BERLOW OCT. 6, 2015



AN angry and exasperated President Obama, speaking to the nation last Thursday after the slaughter in Roseburg, Ore., made one oblique reference to the National Rifle Association, asking gun owners to question whether their “views are properly being represented by the organization that suggests it’s speaking for you.”

It’s a fair question, and not only because the N.R.A. has single-handedly dictated the shape of the debate over guns for decades. Whether they own guns or not, Americans should understand the outsize role the N.R.A. plays, not only in thwarting sensible gun safety laws but also in undermining law enforcement by abetting gun traffickers, criminal gun dealers and criminal gun users.

The N.R.A., which claims some 4.5 million members, often professes to speak for all gun owners — hunters, sportsmen, collectors and ordinary Americans who keep guns for self-defense. But on some issues, most gun owners clearly reject the party line.

In 2012, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz found that 87 percent of gun owners supported criminal background or “Brady” checks for all gun purchases. Following the December 2012 massacre of 20 children in Newtown, Conn., another poll showed that 92 percent of Americans supported background checks for all buyers, including those buying on the Internet and at gun shows.

But by April 2013, when the Senate considered a bill to do just that, the N.R.A. campaign to defeat it was in full swing. The N.R.A. tagged the bill as a top priority and made clear that senators who opposed it risked receiving a low N.R.A. rating, which many of its single-issue supporters use in deciding how to vote, or a flood of negative television ads.

Licensed gun dealers slated to run the new background checks would have reaped millions, as thousands of new customers would have been sent to their stores. But like many members of Congress — who cower in fear of the ratings system and negative campaign advertising — the dealers knew not to cross the N.R.A. So the measure went down, with opponents arguing that criminals don’t bother submitting to background checks.

That story wasn’t quite accurate, though. Since some background checks were first implemented in 1994, gun dealers have turned away more than two million felons, drug users, unauthorized immigrants and other “prohibited persons,” according to a report by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

When the organization’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, calls the N.R.A. “one of the largest law enforcement organizations in the country,” nothing could be further from the truth.

Consider, for example, the federal law requiring licensed gun dealers to notify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when a single purchaser buys two or more handguns within five days. The A.T.F. knows that multiple purchases are an indicator of trafficking, and that traffickers can evade the law by making a single purchase from five, 10 or 20 different gun stores. So why doesn’t the A.T.F. crosscheck those purchases? Because Congress, under pressure from the N.R.A., prevents the federal government from keeping a centralized database that could instantly identify multiple sales. Gun sale records are instead inconveniently “archived” by the nation’s gun dealers at 60,000 separate locations — the stores or residences of the nation’s federally licensed gun dealers, with no requirement for digital records.

Rather than preventing crimes by identifying a trafficker before he sells guns to potentially lethal criminals, the A.T.F. has to wait until the police recover those guns from multiple crime scenes. Then law enforcement officials can begin the laborious process of tracing each gun from the manufacturer or importer to various middlemen, the retail seller, the original retail purchaser and one or more subsequent buyers.

Meanwhile, dealers who work with traffickers are protected by another N.R.A.-backed measure that ensures that firearms dealers do not have to maintain inventories.

Think about that: A car dealer keeps an inventory to know when cars go missing so the police can track them down as quickly as possible. Why the lack of curiosity among gun dealers? Well, gun dealers must report lost and stolen guns to the A.T.F. because large numbers of missing weapons are a red flag for trafficking. Without an inventory requirement, it’s easier to sell guns off the books.

Do most gun owners want the N.R.A. to protect criminal dealers? I doubt it.

The A.T.F., which has helped convict tens of thousands of gun criminals, has of course been a perennial target of the N.R.A., and the lobbying group has worked relentlessly to limit the A.T.F.’s budget and strangle its operations.

Today’s A.T.F. operates with about the same number of agents as it did 40 years ago, fewer than the number of officers in the Washington, D.C., police force, yet it is charged with investigating violations of federal gun, arson, explosive and other laws nationwide.

Since the N.R.A. seems to loathe the A.T.F., one might think it would work to disband it or have its mission performed by an agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with its more polished and professional public image. But the N.R.A. prefers the hobbled A.T.F. just as it is, and every year it helps ensure that Congress approves legislation banning the transfer of A.T.F. operations to any other agency.

You don’t get much more cynical than that.

Since his daughter, the journalist Alison Parker, was shot dead in August while presenting an on-air broadcast, Andy Parker has been on a campaign to “shame” lawmakers whom he says are “cowards and in the pockets of the N.R.A.” Some of those lawmakers might prove to be less cowardly if they understood that the N.R.A. was no longer the voice of law-abiding gun owners, but rather a voice for criminals.

Alan Berlow, who has written frequently about the National Rifle Association, is the author of “Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/who-the-nra-really-speaks-for.html

[Iamwhomiam]

jingo, not that I doubt you, but do you have a link to that info? If so, please share it with us.

Sonic wrote,
"Lots of frustrated dick-waving because the enemy is insidious and lives inside us all. So much anger, frustration and rage that strikes out at the wrong targets..."

I agree, SonicG. Through conditioning we've evolved to be aggressive, as such aggression is useful in self defense against aggressors who for sundry reason are bent on our destruction.

Those of us who have had many of our needs met while maturing seem to have little trouble withholding our anger under what some would perhaps call inciteful aggression from others.

Having every need sated while maturing too, can lead to an adult without coping skills.

Every family imbues its children with its gifts or their damage and all the variables between; We all are different, with different abilities and different disabilities, and we all cope according to whichever prevails at the moment.

To take suicides, as the largest number of gun fatalities are, for example. Having access to a firearm allows a momentary irrational decision to become instantly fatal, irrevocable, as most attempted suicides using a firearm succeed.

It is the ease of access to firearms to anyone that is the problem.

The failings of our public health system, our mental health system, is an entirely separate issue from firearms regulation, and is a virtual red herring when it comes to a discussion about gun regulation, and intentional or not, it distracts away from the topic.

And I'm all for limiting firearm ownership to competent, well trained adults without criminal histories, (with certifiable, ongoing yearly training), as do most of my friends who legally and responsibly own firearms.

Persons under treatment with antipsychotics would be denied ownership, though after some time period (2yrs?) after certifiably leaving treatment they could reapply.

I also believe if one should wish to legally own a gun, one should maintain liability insurance for each weapon they own. Today, no insurance company in the US writes policies covering firearm liability - they are covered only under homeowners' policies as a possession and their loss reimbursable.

Ain't I the irrational one!

Sure wish my kid was alive and some kid left had his guns and troubles in Montana. Sure wish the kids who will die before meaningful gun legislation is instituted nationally didn't have to. I'm so crazy, huh.

[DrEvil]

Even the cops are trained to shoot to disable (arms, legs etc.).

LMFAO! I believe you, but I'm laughing at Norway. "Shoot to disable" bleeds out mighty quick. That's terrible training, but I guess if they're never confronted by armed opposition, it doesn't matter much.

As far as I know the cops here have only killed one person this year (a woman trying to stab a child), but the few times they do shoot people (3 times in 2013, not sure about 2014 and this year) it is because those people are armed and/or an immediate danger to their surroundings/the cops.
The cops have had about 10 times as many locker room misfires as actual shootings of perps this year.
It's an ongoing scandal in the local media who gleefully report on every new misfire.

This also coincides with the cops being "temporarily" armed since last spring due to an unspecified "terror threat", and of course has nothing to do with the conservatives wanting the police permanently armed (it's part of their political platform).

Tl;dr: People here don't feel they need guns to protect themselves because that kind of situation almost never occurs.

Must be nice! No sarcasm. Must be really quite nice.

Yeah, it is.

I get that this will probably never happen in the US since A) There's so many guns floating around, and B) You would probably have a small insurgency on your hands if you tried to rein it in too much. It's just so damn depressing watching it happen over and over and over, and nothing is done about it.

Btw: Here's a list of mass shootings so far in 2015. 297 and counting.
http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015

[Wombaticus Rex]

Undeniably, good thorough professional training makes a huge difference. Still, roughly 3:1 odds also...sounds about right for a limb shot. The key is not taking the shot for as long as possible. And having a lot of course & field experience before engaging at all.

Man, the past five years have been a dizzy-ass spiral of weird stories on police / Fed LEO training -- on terrorism, on Juggalos, on The Islams, on #OCCUPY -- and as much as those stories are an "outrage," it's the shitty content that really amazed me. Massage schools have more rigorous curricula. RIP to the fallen, though, we just had a state cop in the 802 die during a training exercise.

The decades-long convergence of increasingly militant rural conservatives and increasingly militarized law enforcement is pretty inexorable. There's no way to opt out of ubiquitous social/mass media culture and that's make primates of all persuasions itchy, itchy as hell.

I do think restoring a military draft would bridge all of those cultures. It works in Israel -- which is to say, a huge part of why Israeli culture persists is the bonding ritual of mandatory service. A number of the socialist democracies with nearly total gun control policies who get invoked as potential examples for the United States have mandatory service: Finland, Norway, Switzerland, no?

The Atlantic is mostly trash, but this was worth it:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ft/383500/