If only there was something we could do...

[AK47bp]

I could care less what those assholes have to say. Why would you care Harry? Face it, a misinterpretation of a document written hundreds of years ago has us in this place..

Like the bible for example, probably billions dead by now based off that piece of shit story.

Then you got the dumbasses wearing magic underwear and another group of dumbasses thinking you get Virgin pussy in paradise if you die killing another group of dumbasses.

Then you got these newer dumbasses that read a book and think our gods are aliens.

Never ending cycle of dumbasses.


Thanks a lot Gutenberg.






Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[From_the_NEK]

Not exactly sure where to put this but WTF is wrong with people?

https://www.wcax.com/2023/02/08/poli...cross-vermont/

[sb]

Moar school shootings, who might that benefit?

[J. Barron DeJong]

I’m interested in hearing more about who the winners of school shooting are…

[SumJongGuy]

I’m interested in hearing more about who the winners of school shooting are…

Smith and Wesson, Rock Island Amory, Remington, Bushmaster, NRA and Russia..

[Bunion 2020]

Answer. No, there is not as long as we keep electing people like this.

Missouri’s GOP-majority House on Wednesday voted against introducing a ban on children carrying guns without adult supervision in public. Just one Republican supported the proposal that was rejected in a 104-39 vote. Democratic Rep. Donna Baringer said authorities in her district wanted the ban so they could stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.” She added that police were powerless to do anything until the teens “actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent.” Conservative lawmakers saw the proposal as an unwarranted restriction on gun rights. “While it may be intuitive that a 14-year-old has no legitimate purpose, it doesn’t actually mean that they’re going to harm someone. We don’t know that yet,” Republican Rep. Tony Lovasco said. “Generally speaking, we don’t charge people with crimes because we think they’re going to hurt someone.”

[riser4]

Answer. No, there is not as long as we keep electing people like this.

Should 14 yo be allowed to hunt by themselves?

[::: :::]

Should 14 yo be allowed to hunt by themselves?

On private land? Sure

[Bunion 2020]

Should 14 yo be allowed to hunt by themselves?

Well, I was and I didn't shoot up any places, but that was a different time. And this wasn't really about hunting.

[CarlMega]

Should 14 yo be allowed to hunt by themselves?

Pretty soon, we're going to hear about prenatal gun rights. The 2A rights of the unborn shall not be infringed!

[riser4]

Don't get me wrong, I think "open carry", ie carrying a gun in a public place for no reason other than to display the weapon is "Menacing with a deadly weapon" and should be a class 3 felony. I also believe that kids of an appropriate age with appropriate training should be allowed to hunt without direct adult supervision. I bring up hunting because I would not want a remedy for the first case to be overly broad.

[toast2266]

I'm sure those 14 year olds in St. Louis are hunting snitches and bitches, so it's fine. Should probably encourage them to take a hunter safety course though.

[The AD]

Three dead and five injured at Michigan State University. This one strikes close to home because I'm an alumni.

[subtle plague]

So what’s the timeline on the UK and AUS before they start killing off a significant fraction of their population?

3months tops. Soros is already building death Camps!

[The AD]

I just read interviews of the MSU shooter's sister and father. Both talk about him really starting to go off the edge following the death of his mother in 2020, but more or less powerless to do anything about it. He wouldn't take the help that was offered. People often see the warning signs, but seems like most of them never act or are unable to.

[Bunion 2020]

Even if they act, what can they do? To force an adult to get help is not really possible, is it? Our mental health system is as broken as everything else.

[The AD]

Even if they act, what can they do? To force an adult to get help is not really possible, is it? Our mental health system is as broken as everything else.

Agreed. That's part of the problem for sure.

[hikesalot]

I just read interviews of the MSU shooter's sister and father. Both talk about him really starting to go off the edge following the death of his mother in 2020, but more or less powerless to do anything about it. He wouldn't take the help that was offered. People often see the warning signs, but seems like most of them never act or are unable to.

Also read that his family had called police to do a welfare check on him last week. Not sure if that’s true.

I know a few people who have kids at MSU. Was texting with them - it was really rough for them. Holding breath all night.

[::: :::]

Holding breath all night.

as the campus locked down, one wonders if the students thought "I wish I had a gun" or "fuck this everyone-has-a-gun shit"

[SumJongGuy]

as the campus locked down, one wonders if the students thought "I wish I had a gun" or "fuck this everyone-has-a-gun shit"

More like "it's a good thing I've got some weed".. Or, "Damn, I wish I had some more weed". Not a good look for everyone on a college campus to be armed with the amount of alcohol they're drinking there. But, it's probably happening already. Didn't some colleges already float the idea of allowing CCW/CCL in campus buildings?

[::: :::]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/o...th-health.html

Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. A gunman at Michigan State University killed three students late Monday and badly injured five others, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives?

This essay originally was published in January after two mass shootings in California claimed 18 lives. But the issue remains tragically relevant, and it will continue to be until America adopts smarter policies for firearms. This toll from our guns — by our inaction, we make it our choice.

For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a problem to be solved — and this has gotten us worse than nowhere. In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let’s try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes.

Harm reduction for guns would start by acknowledging the blunt reality that we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people. We are destined to live in a sea of guns. And just as some kids will always sneak cigarettes or people will inevitably drive drunk, some criminals will get firearms — but one lesson learned is that if we can’t eliminate a dangerous product, we can reduce the toll by regulating who gets access to it.

That can make a huge difference. Consider that American women age 50 or older commit fewer than 100 gun homicides in a typical year. In contrast, men 49 or younger typically kill more than 500 people each year just with their fists and feet; with guns, they kill more than 7,000 each year. In effect, firearms are safer with middle-aged women than fists are with young men.

We’re not going to restrict guns to women 50 or older, but we can try to keep firearms from people who are under 21 or who have a record of violent misdemeanors, alcohol abuse, domestic violence or some red flag that they may be a threat to themselves or others.

There is one highly successful example of this harm reduction approach already in place: machine guns.

It’s often said that machine guns are banned in the United States, but that’s not exactly right. More than 700,000 of these fully automatic weapons are in the United States outside of the military, entirely legally. Most are owned by federal, state or local agencies, but perhaps several hundred thousand are in private hands. With a background check and permission, members of the public can buy an Uzi submachine gun or a mounted .50-caliber machine gun made before 1986 — even a grenade launcher, howitzer or mortar.

To buy a machine gun made before 1986, you need a background check, a clean record and $200 for a transfer tax — a process that can take several months to complete. Then you must report to the authorities if it is stolen and get approval if you move it to another state. To buy a machine gun made after 1986 is more complicated.

None of this is terribly onerous, but these hoops — and stiff enforcement of existing laws — are enough to keep machine guns in responsible hands. In a typical year, these registered machine guns are responsible for approximately zero suicides and zero homicides.

So let’s begin with a ray of hope: If we can safely keep 700,000 machine guns in America, we should be able to manage handguns.

Keeping Guns Away From Risky People

In many facets of life, we’re accustomed to screening people to make sure that they are trustworthy. For example, consider the hoops one must jump through in Mississippi to vote or adopt a dog:

How to vote
1. Have your Social Security number or driver’s license
2. Complete six-question voter registration form
3. Mail or hand deliver
4. Do this at least 30 days before Election Day
5. Go to polls
6. Produce a photo ID
7. Vote

How to adopt a dog
1. Fill out 64-question application
2. If renting, landlord is contacted
3. In-person meeting with entire family
4. Yard fencing and security assessed
5. Sleepover visit with pet
6. Pay $125 adoption fee
7. Adopt the dog

And now consider what someone in Mississippi must do to buy a firearm. For a private purchase from an individual, nothing is needed at all, except that the buyer not be obviously underage or drunk. For a purchase from a gun store, here’s what’s required:

How to buy a gun
1. Pass a 13-question background check
2. Buy a gun


[Note: Question counts exclude basic demographic details and contact information. Sources: Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office and Vote.org (voting); Desoto Animal Rescue (adoption); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (gun purchase)]

Why should it be easier to pick up military-style weapons than to adopt a Chihuahua? And why do states that make it difficult to vote, with waiting periods and identification requirements, let almost anyone walk out of a gun shop with a bundle of military-style rifles?

If we want to keep dangerous products from people prone to impulsiveness and poor judgment, one screening tool is obvious: age. We already bar people from buying alcohol or cigarettes before they turn 21, because this saves lives. The same would be true of imposing a minimum age of 21 to buy a firearm, even in private sales.

This may be more politically feasible than some other gun safety measures. Wyoming is one of the most gun-friendly states in America, but it establishes a minimum age of 21 to buy a handgun.

Federal law already bars felons from owning guns, and we should go a step further and bar those convicted of violent misdemeanors from possessing guns. Stalking, domestic violence and alcohol abuse are particular warning signs; sadly, only 10 states bar someone from obtaining a gun after conviction of a stalking offense, according to the Giffords Law Center.

To keep ineligible people from buying firearms, we need universal background checks. (One study found that 22 percent of firearms are obtained without a background check.) But the even bigger problem is that there is no comprehensive system to remove guns from people who become ineligible. If someone is convicted of stalking or becomes subject to a domestic violence protection order, that person should be prevented from owning or having access to firearms — but that rarely happens in fact. California has some of the better policies in this area, and its overall smart gun policies may be one reason — despite the recent shootings — its firearms mortality rate is 38 percent below the nation’s overall.

A pillar of harm reduction involving motor vehicles is the requirement of a license to drive a car. So why not a license to buy a gun?

Some states do require a license before one can buy a gun, and researchers find this effective in reducing gun violence.

In Massachusetts, which has one of the lowest gun mortality rates in the country, an applicant who wants to buy a gun must pay $100 for a license, be fingerprinted, undergo a background check and explain why he or she wants a gun. If the permit is granted, as it typically is after a few weeks, the bearer can then go to a gun store and buy the firearm. There is then an obligation to store it safely and report if it is stolen.

In effect, Massachusetts applies to firearms the sort of system that we routinely use in registering vehicles and licensing drivers to save lives from traffic deaths. Gun registration unfortunately evokes among some gun owners alarm about jackbooted thugs coming to confiscate firearms, which is another reason to work to lower the temperature of the gun policy debate.

cont...

[Danno]

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

[::: :::]

Learning to Live With GunsHarm reduction will feel frustrating and unsatisfying to many liberals. To me as well. It means living with a level of guns, and gun deaths, that is extremely high by global standards. But no far-reaching bans on guns will be passed in this Congress or probably any time soon. Meanwhile, just since 2020, an additional 57 million guns have been sold in the United States.

So as a practical matter to save lives, let’s focus on harm reduction.

That’s how we manage alcohol, which each year kills more than 140,000 Americans (often from liver disease), three times as many as guns. Prohibition was not sustainable politically or culturally, so instead of banning alcohol, we chose to regulate access to it. We license who can sell liquor, we tax alcohol, we limit who can buy it to age 21 and up, we regulate labels, and we crack down on those who drink and drive. All this is imperfect, but there’s consensus that harm reduction works better than prohibition or passivity.

Likewise, smoking kills 480,000 Americans a year, about 10 times as many as guns do, including 41,000 people by secondary smoke. You’re twice as likely to be killed by a smoker as by a gunman.

So we regulate tobacco, restrict advertising, impose heavy cigarette taxes, require warning labels, ban sales to those under 21 and sponsor public education campaigns warning young people against cigarettes: “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” All this has cut smoking rates by more than two-thirds since 1965; this graphic demonstrates the progress:

Long arc of smoking-related deaths

Smoking deaths have declined as cigarette warnings, taxes and public health restrictions have reduced tobacco use.


Female

Male

90

deaths per 100,000

70

Lung and bronchus cancers

50
30
10

1946
1962
1978
1994
2010
1946
1962
1978
1994



2010

Source: American Cancer Society


Likewise, we don’t ban cars, but we impose safety requirements and carefully regulate who can use them. Since 1921, this has reduced the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven by about 95 percent.

Alcohol, tobacco and cars are obviously different from firearms and don’t have constitutional protections — but one of the most important distinctions is that we’ve approached them as public health problems on which to make progress incrementally. Historically, cars killed more people each year than firearms in the United States. But because we’ve worked to reduce vehicle deaths and haven’t seriously attempted to curb gun violence, firearms now kill more people than cars:

Deaths from firearms versus traffic accidents

25 deaths per 100,000
20

Motor vehicle deaths

15
10

Firearm deaths

5

1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
2020

Source: C.D.C. Wonder

How to Work With Gun Owners
One advantage of the harm reduction model is that done right, it avoids stigmatizing people as gun nuts and makes firearms less a part of a culture war.

I’m writing this essay on the Oregon farm where I grew up. As I write this, my 12-gauge shotgun is a few feet away, and my .22 rifle is in the next room. (Both are safely stored.)

These are the kinds of firearms that Americans traditionally kept at home, for hunting, plinking or target practice, and the risks are manageable. Rifles are known to have been used in 364 homicides in 2019, and shotguns in 200 homicides. Both were less common homicide weapons than knives and other cutting objects (1,476 homicides) or even hands and feet (600 homicides).

In contrast to a traditional hunting weapon, here’s an AR-15-style rifle. The military versions of these weapons were designed for troops so that they can efficiently kill many people in a short time, and they can be equipped with large magazines that are rapidly swapped out. They fire a bullet each time the trigger is depressed.

[video]

It’s sometimes said that the civilian versions, like the AR-15, are fundamentally different because they don’t have a selector for automatic fire. But troops rarely use automatic fire on military versions of these weapons because they then become inaccurate and burn through ammunition too quickly.

In one respect, the civilian version can be more lethal. American troops are not normally allowed to fire at the enemy with hollow-point bullets, which cause horrific injuries, because these might violate the laws of war. But any civilian can walk into a gun store and buy hollow-point bullets for an AR-15; several mass shootings have involved hollow-point rounds.
Now here’s what in some sense is the most lethal weapon of all: a 9-millimeter handgun. It and other semiautomatic pistols have the advantage of being easily concealable, so are more convenient for criminals than assault rifles are. In addition, there has been a big push toward carrying handguns, concealed or openly — and that, of course, means that increasingly a handgun is readily available when someone is frightened or furious.
[video]

cont

[skaredshtles]

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

"We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas."

[::: :::]

I still believe in tightly restricting AR-15-style weapons and large-capacity magazines, because they play a significant role in mass shootings, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that handguns kill far more people — and of the need for a broad public health strategy based on evidence.

Fourth, we liberals haven’t adequately pursued approaches to reduce firearms violence that have nothing to do with guns. Curbing lead exposure in infants today appears to reduce violent crime 20 years later. Violence interrupters working for initiatives like Cure Violence can sometimes break cycles of revenge shootings. Youth programs like Becoming a Man help as well by producing more mature young men who do better in school and are less inclined to settle an argument by reaching for a .38. Research finds that even better street lighting and the conversion of vacant lots into green areas seem to reduce shootings. Counseling and intervention strategies reduce suicides, which constitute a majority of gun deaths.

Fifth, we haven’t been as evidence-driven as we should have been. One problem with gun research today is that it’s frequently pursued by people with strong agendas, either pro-gun or anti-gun. Liberals sometimes leap on poorly designed studies if they support our conclusions, in ways that discredit our side. The liberal impulse has sometimes also been to delegitimize all policing because of a history of racism and abuses; in fact, law enforcement contains multitudes, and some police strategies such as focused deterrence, targeting those most likely to use illegal guns, have reduced violence.

So let’s learn lessons, for gun violence is at levels that are unconscionable. Just since I graduated from high school in 1977, more Americans appear to have died from guns (more than 1.5 million), including suicides, homicides and accidents, than perished in all the wars in U.S. history, going back to the Revolutionary War (about 1.4 million).

We can do better, and this is not hopeless. North Carolina is not a liberal state, but it requires a license to buy a handgun. If we avoid overheated rhetoric that antagonizes gun owners, some progress is possible, particularly at the state level.

Gun safety regulation can make a difference. Conservatives often think New York is an example of failed gun policy, but New York State has a firearms death rate less than one-quarter that of gun-friendly states like Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana and Mississippi. Gun safety works, just not as well as we would like.

Harm reduction isn’t glamorous but is the kind of long slog that reduced auto fatalities and smoking deaths. If only gun policy can become boring, that may help defuse the culture war over guns that for decades has paralyzed America from adopting effective firearms policies.

The latest shooting was tragically, infuriatingly predictable. So let’s ask politicians not just for lowered flags and moving speeches but also for a better way to honor the dead: an evidence-based slog that saves lives.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Nicholas Kristof joined The New York Times in 1984 and has been a columnist since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can follow him on Instagram and Facebook. His latest book is “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope.” @NickKristof • Facebook

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