The right limits on gun rights
The deaths of 20 children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School clarifies the stakes in the gun control debate.
Newtown, Conn., was still burying its dead children when the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre admonished America it must turn its schools into armed fortresses to stop the senseless slaughter of innocents.
The gun lobby’s proposed solution to every large-scale, lethal attack is to meet firepower with firepower; flood a gun-saturated society with more guns and ammo, so no one is defenseless against the threat, which only grows as fear of it feeds on itself. It is a mad cycle.
December 30, 2012 - 7:34 AM
You`re being attacked: 1). You can cower and face whatever the assailant chooses 2.) You can raise your weapon and diffuse the situation. The choice is yours. The majority choose #2…more than ever.
@1 OR we could remove weapons from society thereby removing your entire premise.
Right, because before firearms came along, no one ever murdered anyone. Didn’t realize it was such a recent phenomenon. Also am well aware of the rousing success of other measures to ban things…Prohibition was a rousing success…we hardly ever see drugs anymore…
Yet another editorial by a liberal newspaper. We have seen the impact of a society where private ownership of guns has been eliminated- think of NAZI Germany and Soviet Russia. Conversely look at Switzerland, where nearly every household has at least one gun and the very low crime rate they experience. Not one liberal editorial I’ve read speaks to the issue of how we educate and entertain our children with violence on movies and television, not to speak of the video games that desensitize children to the brutal and often heartbreaking results of acts of violence, regardless of the weapon used.
“Yet another editorial by a liberal newspaper.”
Those darned liberal newspapers need to stop writing editorials. Only conservative ones should be allowed to express an opinion.
#1 Remember that guys, unless you own a gun, you’re a coward. The gospel according to Doto.
89Hoo, take a look back at wars before guns and then wars with more primitive guns. Now compare to the potential kill rate today. Guns are efficient weapons of slaughter. It’s that simple.
#2 – “OR we could remove weapons from society thereby removing your entire premise.”
The sooner people accept the fact that such a thing will NEVER happen, then the sooner we can come to a realistic solution.
#4 – “Not one liberal editorial I’ve read speaks to the issue of how we educate and entertain our children with violence on movies and television, not to speak of the video games that desensitize children to the brutal and often heartbreaking results of acts of violence, regardless of the weapon used.”
I’ve read several people saying how our children are not influenced by movies and video games.
Let’s see…a two-hour movie full of violence doesn’t influence you, but a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl influences you to buy a product.
Weird how that works, huh?
#6 – “Remember that guys, unless you own a gun, you’re a coward. The gospel according to Doto.”
He said no such thing, gdad. You know that, but hey…why should that stop you from putting words into his mouth?
How do you plan on getting rid of all the guns Scott? And gdad, your statement in #6 is why there is not likely to be reasoned debate about any topic. That’s not what he said and you know it. So enlighten us oh wise one. When someone points a gun at you, what options do you see?
To the writer of this article, if armed guards are so dangerous, costly and unreliable, why have they been used for centuries to protect things of value?
Well sure, let’s do look at Switzerland, “the nature of gun ownership in Switzerland is tied to the military. Switzerland has a very small standing army, and citizens are expected to act as militiamen should the country be invaded. Every 18-30 years old Swiss male between has to do three months’ military training, and many more regular refresher courses. The majority of guns are army-issued, though rules on private gun ownership are very lax compared to other European countries.
This is also a country with a population smaller than New York City. According to 2011 data from the IMF, Switzerland has a GDP per capita of $83,073, almost double that of the US, or other European countries like the UK or France. The CIA says 6.9 percent of the country lives below the poverty line, compared to 15.1 in the US or 14 in the UK.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/switzerlands-gun-laws-are-a-red-herring-2012-12
Yes, I can see that going over well in the US.
We can rightly claim that a lot of things in our society contribute to the violence people are all too willing to inflict onto each other. Millions of kids play violent video games, listen to violent imagery in music or watch it in music videos and movies and never even think about hurting anyone.
The main problem IMO is our detachment and how easily that is allowed and encouraged. Isolated, marginalized, desperate, hopeless or “different” people are most often those who commit these crimes. When was the last time someone gainfully employed, successful in personal relationships with family, friends and co-workers took a military style weapon with a huge magazine and tried to kill as many people as possible? These anti-social, aberrant mentalities are what we need to be worried about identifying and fixing before a disaster happens.
We need to see what feeds that mentality instead of helps it be overcome. We need to see what education opportunities, not armed guards, the schools can offer. We need the community to help identify these folks and see that they get the help and support that keeps them in touch with humanity not detached and angry with humanity. Normal people do not do this type of thing.
There is no denying that the gun culture that validates and glorifies the military style assault weapon to mow down enemies, the machismo that gun advocates taunt us with and the self-important notion that being armed is the key to surviving any altercation. The police disprove this but let’s not let that fact enter the equation.
The Second Amendment has been interpreted to mean personal gun rights are guaranteed. NOTHING in the Constitution, our laws or mores guarantees the right to the weapon of choice for the movie villain, video game killers, music “gangsters”, gangs, drug cartels and mass shooters. NOTHING.
As I have said in other “rights” based discussions. We lose rights due to abuse and neglect of it. Gun advocates have neglected the abuse one too many times this time. We will not turn our nation into an armed camp to secure your right to mass killing weapons.
I have no doubt that Jim Lucas, word sleuth will be all over Jeff Doto for his use of “diffuse” so I will just leave it alone.
The comments section of any editorial in the Roanoke Times about guns reflects the lack of any common sense or nuance from most readers. The Supreme Court has long upheld that citizens can privately own firearms-it has also pointed out that there are limits to this right (fully automatic weapons, rocket launchers, etc.). I don’t think “taking guns away” is the strategy to stop mass killings.
I do think some limit in clip/magazine capacity would make such rampages far less deadly and feel this upside outweighs the “right” to own clips for semi-auto weapons that exceed a certain number of rounds. The fact that the shooters in most of these shootings tend to have multiple clips makes this obvious to me. I also think buying clips/magazines should carry the same checks that handguns do. Just these simple proposals would do more to limit these shootings than proposals to put guards in schools or arm teachers.
The sad fact is that the 26 people murdered at Sandy Hook are a small part of the 10,000 plus who will lose their life in the US this year at the wrong side of a gun. Few will be killed at schools but as always perception trumps reality. This is NOT a problem that is exclusive to schools.