Revisionist history in that it’s not the roots of modern gun control. We do not live in the Reconstruction Era or the era of militant Black Panthers.
JustOneDad, I think you are missing Hunt’s and Jazzymom’s point.
And by the way, the Black Panthers were largely peaceful, until they were targeted by the Hoover Boys and local police (violently), particularly in Oakland, CA.
Getting back to the main discussion; just saw the madman Merced’s father interviewed on CNN. Blessings to him for his very reasonable and sober comments. He wants to know how his son amassed FOURTEEN guns! Someone upthread said that the divorced mother was essentially a gun nut. Well, there you go.
FYI
A summary of how the shooters in the 14 latest mass shootings acquired their guns:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Well, yes, that’s exactly what I said only a few posts ago.
AW,
Speaking as one who has never had a “government bureaucrat” show up on my property for any reason (oh wait, I think a tax assessor rang the bell once, does that count?), I’d probably be embarrassed and mortified if one ever did. I find what comes across as a “brag” that your dad told this individual where to get off and your implication that your dad might have been armed, quite disturbing. The implication is that your dad demanded a search warrant. Just curious-- what were they looking for? A person brandishing a weapon with a “get offa my land” attitude/tone could have had a very different outcome.
“I think you are missing Hunt’s and Jazzymom’s point.”
Maybe now it would be Muslim’s open carrying who could move the needle.
On another thread someone posted the different reaction of LEO when a white person was carrying a semi-automatic on a street and a black person. Guess which one was treated like a criminal? I doubt very few blacks would ever open carry given how they are treated by police versus caucasians, unless they have a death wish.
Oh, I get it now.
Maybe if I had a deep-seated fear of Blacks or Muslims it would have been more readily apparent what they were trying to say.
It was obvious to me.
Me, too.
I don’t have a problem with people owning a number of guns. That describes a number of friends: they collect them; are interested in the differences between them and how they fire and feel in use. This is true for handguns and long guns. 14 guns is not a huge amount.
I distinguish owning guns from the idiot behavior of rushing out after each mass shooting to buy more assault rifles, etc. because of absurd fears the government will somehow come to take them away.
Yeah. Right. Police competence and good judgement with weapons can be taken for granted.
Why do you think those “Good Guys With Guns” didn’t bother to go in?
@sorghum Critical Reading exercise here.
Examine the equivalence of “much less likely” and “can be taken for granted”.
Make your points if you want to, but don’t associate mine with them, especially if that’s not what I said.
^ My point is clear. Any form of praise for police training seems dubious.
Who here is in law enforcement?
The shooter’s mom is black, and it sounds like she lawfully open-carried. I imagine single women living out in rural areas probably feel more vulnerable than most, which might lead them to own guns.
It seems to me that if large numbers of law-abiding urban young African American men started lawfully open-carrying, two things would happen:
(1) some white people would be upset and frightened, and would call for regulation
(2) some of these young men would be shot by police for imaginary threats
But I don’t imagine many posters here would volunteer their sons for this experiment.
Which urban areas allow open carry?
Hunt wrote:
My sad conclusion is that the only way we’ll ever see any additional gun restrictions in this country would be if a lot of black people began to open carry where that is lawful.
I’ve got no inkling whatsoever as to where that is going.
Just one dad wrote: How would that encourage the adoption of gun restrictions?
Very simple, if blacks practiced open carry, many of the pro gun lobby would get scared, because many of them are also the type that will tell you that crime is caused by blacks, and would see a black person carrying a gun openly as a threat to be robbed or shot, even though they were legal. It is kind of ironic that when the gun owner types talk about crime, they talk about the big, bad cities (which tend to have large concentrations of minorities), when they often have violent crime rates and murder rates and such less than the rural areas where these people live. Texas has one of the highest per capita violent crime and murder rates in the country, yet people there will talk about Chicago, New York and DC.
I also want to comment on how the high crime/high gun ownership places, like Texas, Alabama, Georgia and so forth, and how that is culture, not just guns. That may be so, but it also points out something, if guns are such a deterrent to crime, why is it that these states should have low crime stats, but they don’t, if guns, as argued by pro gun types, are really a deterrent to crimes, if they keep the crime rate down, how come it doesn’t work, how come those states have some of the highest crime stats in the country? I remember reading a link claiming that when Florida relaxed open carry laws and the like, how it reduced their crime rate, yet they are among one of the higher crime states…so that argument.