I wish gun owners against regulations, controls and bans on certain weapons were at least honest enough to say “I don’t CARE that children are killing other children in schools, hands off my semi-automatic.”
Instead we get all kinds of semantics excuses and pseudo-science. We live in a violent, uncivilized society. We have the money to be called a developed nation (well, at least some of us do) but our mentality is that of 19th century wild West. (With apologies to 19th century wild West.)
Bottom line: a shocking percentage of Americans – who naturally think of themselves as good people – are perfectly OK with the idea that we will have more murder of children, perpetuated by other children, in our schools. Land of the free. Indeed.
Gee… I don’t think “worst in the world” is true. We aren’t top of the 1st world nations, but we are stil pretty far up the list of 197 countries in the world. And if it WERE true, shouldn’t we be funding it instead of trying to cut funding for it? Oddly, the same group that wants less gun control also doesn’t want to pay for health care. Nothing but a strawman argument there. Some people will say anything to distract.
I saw an article today that said a local reporter got to the school and found out that the shooter was her son. I can’t even imagine… a different kind of heartbreak than that of the parents who lost kids or had them seriously wounded, but still horrible.
Kids drown every year as well. By this same logic, should people be honest enough to say: “I don’t CARE that children drown, hands off my swimming pool.”
Oh please. Ever read about laws and regulations having to do with private swimming pools? I’m shocked you even bring this up as an argument. Fact is, you can protect a child by teaching her how to swim should she find herself suddenly in a swimming pool. What are you going to teach her about self-protection when she finds herself SHOT?
Have you ever read about the ATF? We already have lot of laws and regulations having to do with firearms.
This misses the point. In the real world, not some hypothetical universe, people drown every year and fewer people would drown if swimming pools were illegal. Even if you can teach your kid how to swim, you can’t teach everyone’s kids how to swim.
There are all kinds of regulations around swimming pools. For example, around drain covers, which often cause injury if they are missing. And if a homeowner doesn’t keep a lock on their fenced pool area and a neighborhood kid drowns, the homeowner is liable. Yet we don’t seem to be able to hold gun manufacturers or sellers liable in the same way. Your analogy is flawed.
We used to have a pool. We had to get an inspection and permit to put it in. We were required to have a locked fence around it. We were responsible if anyone was swimming in it.
Fewer children die when these regulations are followed.
By the way, pools have a purpose other than killing. Guns do not. Guns are MADE to kill. Pools are not.
@roethlisburger – again: swim lessons. They can be started when the kiddo is an infant, long before they’re mobile enough for an ungated pool (illegal, btw) to pose a problem.
How are you going to teach your child to save his or her life as they’re being SHOT?
I want to hear your answer to that. Or do you send your children to school armed, so they can shoot back?
Unless there was a manufacturing defect, we wouldn’t hold the manufacturer of the swimming pool liable, so if we treated gun manufacturers the same way swimming pools got treated gun manufacturers wouldn’t be liable. Nor would the seller be liable unless there was some manufacturing defect or installation error, so if we treated guns like swimming pools, the seller wouldn’t be liable either. As to the attractive nuisance theory, that might make sense if a gun was left outside in a unlocked case, but I’ve never met a gun owner who did that. If some strange hypothetical gun owner was stupid enough to leave a gun outside, I would assume they could be held at least liable in a civil court for a judgment that would go against their homeowner’s insurance.
Pool owners can dramatically lessen the danger of their backyard pool with swim lessons in which a child – even a baby a few months old – will learn the skills to save their life when they’re suddenly thrown/fallen into a pool.
What lessons will dramatically lessen the danger of a child being shot at by another child in her school?
No answer. As usual, in these instances. A stone cold silence as children murder one another. And the adults around them lack the humanity or the balls to do anything about it.
@intparent, I was listening to the local NPR station on Tuesday morning and heard this version of the story, which I have also read somewhere since then (can’t remember where). The local station sent a reporter to the scene immediately and began interviewing people, one of which was a woman who claimed to have been standing next to shooter’s mom when she got the news that her son was the perpetrator. The mom began throwing up and the woman interviewed was sharing how she held this mom’s hair while she was nauseous from the shock of realizing the young man had stolen the gun from her closet and brought it to school. This audio clip was hard to hear.
I have also heard that the shooter shot his victims and then ran to an interior room (locker room?) and called his mom to say he was scared because someone was shooting in the school. It’s as if he disengaged from the incident immediately after it happened. I don’t know this to be absolute fact, though.
“The mom began throwing up and the woman interviewed was sharing how she held this mom’s hair while she was nauseous from the shock of realizing the young man had stolen the gun from her closet and brought it to school.”
I feel for her. How do you live with the idea of being complicit in the death of two teens, and the injuries to more than a dozen others? Her gun, in her closet, used by her son.
I personally don’t know how NRA supporters live with being complicit in the death of thousands of people every year, and of being complicit in events like Sandy Hook. I will never understand how their “personal freedom” trumps the freedom of people in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, churches, movie theaters, malls, or concert venues to be free from fear of some whacko easily getting their hands on a weapon capable of hundreds of shots in seconds. There is no justification. The rest of the world never or very rarely sees these incidents. It is just the US with it’s ridiculous chest-thumping “I’ve got mine, so what if innocents get slaughtered?” attitude toward guns.
I guess I don’t understand why some states still have, what I will term “stupid” gun laws on the books. An example: in Iowa the blind can legally own a gun.
I don’t get the point you’re trying to make here. This is a little like saying if all drivers followed all the traffic laws all the time, there would be fewer car fatalities. True, but it’s how people actually drive, not how they could or should drive, which is relevant to the CDC cause of death statistics.