I am a gun owner who actually hunts and kills critters with these guns. They are not toys. They are not used to menace people. But they do kill animals and are quite dangerous. Handling guns safely is just like learning how to handle explosives and I have used explosives in the past. Lots of caution has to be used plus one can’t be prey to wild emotional outbursts nor can psychopaths who love killing things for perverted reasons, be allowed access to firearms. We see a lot of psychopathic behavior in recent days now that the majority of Americans want some sort of gun registry and control over using high-ammo clips.
The NRA has resorted to snarling at everyone which scares people rather than persuades anyone they should be entrusted with handling dangerous weapons: Chris Christie sides with Obama saying that ‘reprehensible’ NRA ad bashing First Daughters’ Secret Service detail ‘made him cringe’ | Mail Online
‘To talk about the president’s children, or any public officer’s children, who have—not by their own choice, but by requirement—to have protection, and to use that somehow to try to make a political point is reprehensible,’ Christie said in a press conference on Thursday…
‘If all we do is talk about gun control, then we’re missing the point,’ Christie said at a town hall meeting just three hours after Obama signed the executive actions.
‘What I’d like to have a real conversation about, and I intend to start very, very soon, is not just about gun control. That’s part of it. But it’s also about violence control.’
The neocon endless wars, wildman gun waving, brutal diplomacy with a bloody baseball bat, and batty tax cuts while spending like drunks in a casino, is on full display ever since they lost the election decisively. Christie is being chased out of the GOP and I hope this plan works, the more liberal right wingers are driven out, the more the middle liberals will gain traction again.
The anti-tax conservatives who fear insurrection and lunatics with guns had this wonderful scam going whereby they would support and use the gun-crazy Southern Christians as fools who would slit their own throats giving the rich living in places like Manhattan, a gun control/no Christian rule community. So they got all the goodies of liberals while getting the Southerners to front the tax cuts for them.
Now, this is falling apart. First of all, cutting social services here while supporting them in Israel is a no-can-do proposition. Secondly, the right wing, pissed at being spurned not only by voters but by many of their own wives or ex-wives, are now snarling they will kill public services beloved of the elites who depend on police, military and social net systems to protect their own interests. Christie is Wall Street. He is one of the ‘banksters’ the far right and far left talk about. With the far right snarling about using guns, this understandably scares Christie who loves liberal policies while fighting the liberals, pretending he doesn’t adore these liberalisms he declaimed…until now.
He is scared of the Tea Party, scared of his own GOP which he enabled and controlled up to now. He will have to escape the Frankenstein monster he helped animate.
And THE JIG IS UP: Conservatives Get Soft On Debt Standoff as all of the elites begin jumping the Boston harbor ships the Tea Party has boarded. They are all swimming, like rats, to the liberal raft. But the War on Women continues, too, as Virginia Mandatory Ultrasound Law’s Repeal Blocked By State GOP. This is a life and death war that is aimed at killing women who don’t want to be forced to bear some man’s child for him against her will. Women will die because of this so it is literal war.
Guns are being used to terrorize politicians which is why Obama’s children have to be protected and this goes hand in glove with terrorizing citizens in various ways so we can’t live our lives comfortably and safely and yes, this includes forcing women to have unwanted children due to some fantasy about gods which not all of us believe in at all. In NY, our government has moved to strengthen gun laws due to fears that armed lunatics will shoot people unnecessarily: NY Gun Control Laws Anger Retired Police Who Believe They Should Be Exempted From Some Restrictions
Police officers, federal agents, prison guards, state police and other members of law enforcement are already clamoring for an amendment to the law to allow the state’s 100,000 retired officers to keep 10 and 15-bullet magazines for their guns, insisting they need the extra firepower should they ever confront a Newtown, Conn., situation.
Technically, any retired cop with more than seven bullets in a clip would be in violation of the law.
This shows how far the madness has gone. Police who are supposedly trained to use guns have to have, while retired, guns that can spray bullets all over the place to stop crime??? Huh? 99% of the time when someone draws a gun and yells, ‘This is the police, you are under arrest,’ people either run or surrender. Shooting people in the back because they are running away is not recommended but does happen.
If a madman wearing body armor is spraying bullets, you don’t need to do likewise to stop him or her. We saw this in Manhattan where cops did far more harm than any criminal in Midtown spraying bullets all over the place. This was not protecting the public.
Curious about the history of retired officers in NY using their firearms, I went to Google. From this last year: Dramatic Footage: Retired NYPD Lt. Guns Down Gang Robber Who was stealing downers from a pharmacy. He was shot while running away.
Same year, this is more along the lines of what really happens: In the Line of Duty – Retired NY Cop Wounds Another Officer, Kills Self
Barcelo for News
The scene after retired NYPD officer Cecil Ramsay shot himself in his driveway in West Babylon, L.I., after firing at his wife and her friend. He accused them of being lovers.
A retired NYPD officer flew into a jealous rage Saturday morning in Long Island, opening fire on his wife and her friend – both city cops – before killing himself, Suffolk County police said.
Not a good use of spraying bullets, no? Also from this year in Chicago: Retired police officer shoots and kills his son, mistaking him for a burglar Son and we might say, ‘Well, that wasn’t New York!’ Except from this year: Perry Police Officer Mistakenly Shoots and Kills Son | wgrz.com
A retired Rochester Police Department captain who is now a police officer in Wyoming County shot and killed his son Saturday morning after he mistakenly thought he was an intruder, according to the New York State Police.
And from two years ago: New York Police Officer Says Other Officer Was Aggressor In DJ Henry Shooting « CBS Boston
And then there is this story: Retired Police Officer Shoots Man in Yankee Stadium Lot – New York Times. The man had a knife. The officer shot him. It is not clear if the man with the knife lunged or not. In this case, the suspect ran away and was NOT shot in the back. Which means this officer was restrained in his actions and didn’t spray 20 to 50 bullets. Which goes back to the objection of the retired officers in the first place: HELLO, you don’t need to spray bullets! The accuracy of the shooting where the retired officer shot the knife out of the hand is where the action is at, this is what you guys are supposed to be trained to do.
Shoot to kill is dangerous and often leads to killing the wrong people. The law is on your side! You get to arrest people! You can call for help and help comes very fast when it is an officer in trouble. Make no mistake about this.
Most of the police I have known who died by gunfire were ambushed like the officer in Park Slope who was shot in the back of the head by a criminal who was backing up his criminal buddy who was being arrested. But this assassin which I helped ID because I was a witness, was captured, not sprayed with bullets.
Only in a very few situations do we require military-level firepower and most of the time these days, police spray bullets like any drug dealer fighting for territory. It is absurd. 
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Why would anyone want to hung and kill critters in this age?
ΩΩΩ
ELAINE: I used to have sheep and shot at coyotes.
And I eat what I hunt except the coyotes.
Elaine’s social security check and her husband’s medical problems probably do not leave much left over for food and other things. Adding a squirrel to the menu now and then is not a crime for those of us living near the edge.
Perhaps animal rights activists would be better advised to storm five star restaurants and check out the entrees and appetizers being offered to rich people every night.
The human race is usually made of omnivores.
I am Vegetarian. People who hunt at least ‘aint doin biz with the factory farms’.
The problem in the USA is that leaders / elites are becoming more and more traitorous. That drives people into buying guns and preparing for the worst. Of course occasionally someone mentally ill gets guns and goes wild with them, very ofter illegally. So laws don’t make a much difference in having guns… worst criminals in every country have guns anyway.
People who do follow the law can be disarmed, though. And I am starting to be more and more afraid of governements – since they do not obviously work for the people anymore in most countries, what will happen next? Will people just become servants for the elite or will they revolt?
And if guns get taken away first, governments can do as they please… well, people could refuse to do any work, but most of us would probably just go on with our lives, trying to survive from day to day.
I don’t know what would be the best solution overally. This guns ownership / legality thing, as most, has so many things and connections attached to it… The divide inside USA is also a very dangerous one, ones want more gun control and others less, among other things.
Every system everywhere becomes more and more strained each year. I wonder what will happen this year? Our best hope for longer lasting solutions come from new energy sources, we need them fast until systems break down.
A vacationing officer from Kalamazoo was asked whether he’d been to the Calgary Stampede – he made a laughingstock of himself by later claiming that he had been threatened by this friendly question from two city residents, and that Canada’s gun control laws had left him defenceless: http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/op-ed/Lakritz+Kalamazoo+police+officer+letter+editor+about+handguns+points+cultural+divide/7054368/story.html
The thing that stops tyranny isn’t guns otherwise blacks in the US wouldn’t have gotten the right to vote via shooting people. They got it politically via the Civil Rights Act.
What are politics? Once people decide to ‘vote’ with guns, we get anarchy, not government. Back when the Wild West was wild, cowboys were disarmed when they came into town in Old Tucson (by the way, the sheriff did this while my great granddad, a calvary officer, patrolled the land around the town).
The farming Indian tribes greeted the calvary as liberators because they stopped the Apache raiders, by the way.
So far, I see the NRA screaming about revolt claiming they will revolt if ANY laws they don’t like are passed…as racist. When the Black Panthers first decided to openly carry rifles in Oakland, this was big news because blacks, back then, were not allowed to do this, only white racists.
This led to the Black Panthers then deciding they wanted violent revolution, I knew Bobby Seal back then personally, up close. I watched him move from claiming the same gun totting rights whites got to going insane and waving guns while talking revolution.
The right wingers doing this today are identical to the Black Panthers back then. They excitedly talk about revolting openly, in this case, due to a black man being President, and this talk has consequences.
Think about it for a minute. This is a call to be lawless. Do you really want this? I warned Bobby about this and he thought he knew better. I am for peaceful change and educating people. A whole world of difference from calls to be heavily armed so we can butcher each other.
By the way, my life experience has shown that you don’t need to spray bullets to stop crimes and often, no guns at all. You do need to change the ‘gangsta culture’ which I despise and this gangsta gun loving culture is nearly identical to the NRA’s gun loving nastiness.
The other point is that government and the military have better weapons than guns if they have to stop armed people. Try microwave technology. The guns as safety against govt. is an old timey illusion. One they use on low info followers.
The Russian Revolution happened because the MILITARY turned against the rulers. Ditto, France. In deed, this is the case nearly universally. Nearly never has this happened due to civilians being armed except…Afghanistan!
Yes, Afghanistan. And the Tuareg, too. But then, these are fighting tribes who have fought for eons and never were ‘civilized’ in the first place.
Syria is where half the military turned on the other half while NATO poured arms into the hands of civilians who then began tribal warfare (no, this is not all about liberation).
I sometimes wonder how quickly these stone age cultures would revert to using knives if their supply of bullets ran out.
Are there factories in Mali and Afghanistan that assemble the brass, fulminate, nitrocellulose, and lead? How many of these “warriors” know enough to do this task? And are these basic materials widely available in the Sahel or Arabia? (the raw material required would be natural gas, mostly — but some assembly is required)
Elaine, I agree mostly in what you write there. I just don’t believe things will change peacefully anymore, at least in the USA. Both political parties are filled with corruption, Obama *might* have wanted to make a difference but he got exactly no one around him to support that… So what’s left?
One side of media supports democrats and other side rebublicans. No alternatives get any attention or they get quickly devoured and corrupted by either of big two (like Tea Party). Liberals cannot form united front because of differences how much government is really needed etc.
What could bring peaceful change? Elites suddenly waking up and starting to work for the country? People should just go outside and make the change… like going into general strike until real prosecution of financial frauds starts. Nothing would scare politicians more than people uniting and shoutung their opinions under some issues, not caring about party lines etc. Occupy Wall Street was a good try…
But I am afraid society breaks down before people unite – rather, there is much more dividing factors inside USA, although most of those are just illusions created by propaganda.
One other option for the poople that I can think of is to get off from current system and start forming more local economies, trading with goods or whatever is agreed to substitute current money. Of course this too would be a very troublesome solution.
And while I can agree that black president might work as a trigger for revolution to some people, there has to be lots of pressure for that really to happen. If things were overally going good in peoples lifes, racists would not revolt for that reason alone. I’d rather feel like whole country is already at boiling point where people might just go crazy in very little aggravation.
Also, since things have deteriorated this much, I can think several legitimate reasons for people to have guns. Even heavier stuff. If society breaks down, there might be no police to protect you or your family. And if you think you cannot prevent that from happening but you can prepare, why would you not to do it? Not everyone who wants / has guns will go looting and killing with them after all, plenty of it is for legitimate self-defence.
There are a lot of nations where the police ARE the trouble… The people are terrified of them. The US is heading in that direction.
Yes, the War on Drugs means cities are shooting galleries with the cops joining in the mayhem and both the gangs and the cops destroy everything in sight.
Sheesh. Guns are NOT making our cities safer. Nor our rural areas safer. Just the other day, a crazy man just up Rt. 22 from me had a shoot out with the cops because he was unhappy and they finally killed him or he managed to kill himself.
This is a very low crime area and he isn’t the only dude to do this, a guy just up my road two years ago did the exact same thing, too. We had police helicopters here, etc.
PEOPLE ARE GOING INSANE and using guns to work out their mental health issues and this is a serious problem which the NRA refuses to acknowledge.
The man who recently murdered his own small child when he threw a loaded pistol into the cab of his truck got off scot free. No time in prison, No punishment. It is OK to murder you own children due to being stupid jerks who are careless and brainless. Gah.
The fiction that guns protect families is belied by the trail of blood…today in New Mexico, a teen butchered an entire family including small children, a mini-massacre, and this is a typical week in our country.
In any case, people going nuts can get guns anyway! If not legally, then illegally. There is simply no way to stop people from having any guns at all. And as long as there is a way to get one, criminals will have them and they will sell them to anyone.
Families can get butchered if someone goes crazy, this has happened without guns as well. There is not much society can do to totally prevent crazy people well, going amok. At least until those persons are recognized.
I remember one of your blog posts where you yourself used gun to drive off a man who came to threaten you. Defending family with a gun (without needing to kill) is NOT always a fiction. Actually very often just the presence of a gun prevents escalation, when the gun is not (or only!) with the aggressor.
Nevertheless, of course people who do have guns need to take care of them responsibly and NOT let them lay around for children to just find out.
Also, if someone does go insane and does have a gun, would you rather wait for police for 15 minutes or wish that normal, sensible people around would also have a gun, at least with some of them?
I am absolutely clear about living in the countryside and using guns. This has zero to do with a gun registry or having a head of the BATF which the right wing Congress has refused to let Obama appoint.
The NRA/GOP alliance is endangering not only innocent bystanders but also gun owners like myself. And talking about shooting the government officials is all quite inflammatory.
Guns in the city are insanity. Shoot one bullet and it goes through crowds, bystanders, walls, windows and doors. I can shoot on my mountain and hit only rocks or trees.
No, we need a sane discussion about guns and we are not getting this while the bodies pile higher and higher.
And if we are scared about crime, then we have to do something about that and crime means the War on Drugs which has gotten more and more militarist while the number of guns involved in this war shoots upwards. This is why I call for no drug laws, indeed, if someone wants to be an addict, I believe addicts should have dispensaries which hand out heroin or downers or whatever to the fools who want to be addicts.
Well, we can for sure agree on that the War on Drugs causes much, much unnecessary violence.
Just let people do what they want with their own bodies and plenty of gangster problem vanishes instantly.
Is there a problem that can be solved by civilians shooting eachother with assault rifles?
Overpopulation
@Jim R
No usually men shooting eachother makes things worse, that’s how baby boomers generations are made.
Shooting women is the answer to overpopulation.
That or then giving women better rights and education.