Re: Oregon incident.
 

559 children killed in gun related incidents this year so far... It's a phenomenal number, but hey as long as you have your "easy access", that's worth a few kids lives isn't it?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Now this is exactly the kind of claptrap that gives the NRA-supporting "pro-mass-shooting" lobby a bad name. What you are effectively saying is that it's OK for all those people to be shot and killed (the people who were going to school, or a movie, or church - not gang members) so that you can have your "relatively easy access to guns." As soon as you join a debate with the bit I've bolded and put in red, you give a fair indication that rational discourse is off the table.

If that's genuinely how you feel, then I suppose that's your right, but IMO it's a dreadful indictment of US society that anybody, let alone a well orchestrated and vocally supported lobby group, can argue that exercising one questionable constitutional freedom should trump any person's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

"I'm not racist, but ..."

"I have no problem with gays, but ..."

"It is very sad when innocent people are gunned down but ..."

Tell me if you see any difference.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

You may be right that no one on this thread has directly called for the total abolition of gun ownership. It runs into hundreds of posts and I don't think anyone is going to read them all for a "hah-hah!" moment.

I think the real problem is one of how the intentions of gun control advocates are interpreted by their opponents. Most responsible gun owners are just as concerned about keeping guns out of the hands of lunatics and potential murderers as control advocates. The problem is they see control advocates' proposal of reasonable measures as a salami-slicing technique that would end up with abolition. To put it another way, it is a trust issue because when the control advocates expand their rhetoric amongst their supporters, it always sounds like their real goal is abolition.

Perhaps the best solution would be to toss the ball into the NRA's court and ask them to propose some solutions, and then to actually support those proposed solutions if they would appear to address the problem rather than immediately declaring them inadequate and seeking to expand them. That would get support from both sides and something might get done.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

The NRA's solutions consist of open carry, concealed carry, the abolition of gun-free zones and arming teachers.

You may as well seek ISIS' guidance for what should be done with terrorists.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Again with the false dichotomy. Many "responsible gun owners" are also "control advocates." The two positions, in the minds of most people who care to stop and think about it for more than a nanosecond, are not mutually exclusive.

The sooner the NRA is reduced to an irrelevance the better, in my book. That organization is poisonous to rational debate, much more so than any advocate of increased controls for gun owners.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

"but" is a great word, isn't it?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Rather like putting a fire out with petrol, eh?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

The NRA uses what negotiator Herb Cohen described as "Soviet-style" tactics -- they take an extreme position in order to move the middle closer to them.

The solution should involve the opposite. Haggling with the NRA and the extremists only empowers them.

LIW is actually on the right track. If there are going to be changes, then hearts and minds will have to be won over. Shaming the extremists with labels is a good way to start -- dismiss the NRA as being "pro-murder", "pro-death", etc. and make it clear that they don't speak for enough people to matter.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Homicide may be going down but gun-related deaths as a whole are rising.

http://i531.photobucket.com/albums/d...n%20deaths.jpg

Dismissing everyone killed or injured by a gun as a gangbanger is ridiculous

Re: Oregon incident.
 

I've been saying the same thing, but if you demonize the chief spokes-organization for gun owners, call to have them outlawed as a "terrorist organization" (such utter, utter nonsense) - not you, but some idiot on the "control" side, and refuse to engage them in the debate, then nothing will get done, Full Stop. Perhaps that's what the outliers on both sides really want.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

It was indeed I who suggested, way back near the beginning of this thread (or was it on the one after the last mass shooting, they all seem to blend into one with the dull monotonous regularity of a nearly broken clockwork toy), that perhaps the NRA should be denounced as an organization supporting terrorism. That was before I realised that tongue-in-cheek comments were likely to be taken at face value in threads like this. Of course that suggestion was nonsense, but it seems to have worked to draw a response.

Perhaps there is some merit in the idea that the moderate gun-control folks should ramp up the rhetoric - not on their own side (it's plain how badly the "ultimate goal is disarmament" nonsense has played out) but in the way that the anti-women's-health people have positioned themselves as "pro-life" (also utter rot, of course, but the labels have stuck) so that the other side carries a connotation of "anti-life."

So let's suppose the gun-control advocates were to use the same kind of if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us black and white language so beloved of (usually right-wing) politicians talking about "support our troops, because radical Muslims". If you're not in favour of limiting access (through controls on sales, storage, transportation, whatever) to guns, then you're on the side of the mass killers. It's a short leap to NRA = pro-mass-murder.

For the avoidance of doubt, though, I should make clear that I am not really advocating that position. This is not a serious suggestion. Please don't quote it back at me, Boiler, and claim that I'm a rabid gun-banning libtard. I am not.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

You mean the NRA, the organization to which the vast majority of gun owners do not belong?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Wouldn't spokes organisation for gun manufacturers be more accurate?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Oakvillian, you anticipated, by some period of time, whatever it was, Linda Stasi (let that name sink in), a journalist or commentator writing for the New York Daily News, who urged that the State Dept. list the NRA as a terrorist organization. She must have cribbed your post so she could use it on October 3. Congratulations! :cool:
http://m.nydailynews.com/news/nation...icle-1.2384289

Someone else here expressed his view that the NRA is the spokes organization for the gun manufacturers. Well, it has over 5 million members (I let my membership lapse years ago, as I haven't fired any of mine in 25 years), so there must be a hell of a lot of gun manufacturers in this country.

I still think that if those who advocate tightening gun controls refuse to listen an organization that is able to extract membership dues from 5 million citizens and gun owners, then those advocates really prefer having a wedge issue to getting something done.