Nea, Nea, Nea, you know better

[neadods]

Note to self: There is yet to be a dick-swinging macho-man who is going to actually listen to a logical argument about the perils of the "let mah gun and mah bravery solve everything" mindset. Especially when the argument is coming from a woman.

On the other hand, I am learning more than I wanted to know about the number of times when some jerkwad has shot into crowds in America. Guess what: victims in the crowd HAVE shot back. Guess what else: it hasn't stopped the homicidal maniacs.

Not.

Once.

Hasn't even slowed 'em down.

And still, every time there's an atrocity, there's a whole bunch of people saying "well, if we had MORE guns, we could just solve it all by shooting back!" At least now after the initial shock, a huge chorus of people are finally chiming in re: how sane and safe it would [not] have been to shoot across a crowded, dark, smoky theater full of panicking, running people even if anyone in the audience had a weapon with them. Thankfully, some of these people are very, very pissed off gun owners who don't like being lumped in with the people who don't know the difference between a glock and their gonads.

And still, and STILL, the John Wayne wannabes are claiming that if they'd been there, and if they'd had their weapon with them, it all would have been so different... and when you call them on it, you're a coward and an idiot, and if you don't love the second amendment, get out of America.

The second amendment covered muzzle loading flintlocks and a home militia. What the fuck does a civilian need a semi-automatic for, to pre-grind the deer meat?

An armed society is not a polite society, it is merely armed.

Comments

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

The second amendment covered muzzle loading flintlocks and a home militia. What the fuck does a civilian need a semi-automatic for, to pre-grind the deer meat?

The second amendment is there to make sure that we can overthrow the government if our government becomes a tyranny. It's about having the means to fight for our liberty, if necessary.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

So I hear, but I always cynically note that even the strictest of Constitutional literalists don't limit the arms to the only kinds of armament that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with.

Also, I'm still not seeing how that means it's a good idea to put semi-automatics in the hands of civilians. I don't know the specific number of semis used for home terrorism/atrocities like Aurora, but I do know it's high. I also know the statistics for semis used in attacks against the Gov't by those who are trying to topple it: 1.

4 Presidential assassinations, 15 attempted Presidential assassinations, burning of White House, assorted attempted plane crashes into White House, smoke bombing of Congress, bomb threats to Congress, shooting in Congress. Of that last a semi was used in '48 (the one in '98 was a handgun.)

So the semi's no advantage there, either... just as it isn't used in many attacks against governments in less gun-centric cultures than ours.

So I'm still left wondering what a civilian would need one for.

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

So I'm still left wondering what a civilian would need one for.

It can be used for hunting (some of Manly's friends own them and use them for hunting.)

Remember that when the second amendment was written, muzzle-loading flintlocks were military-grade weapons. The Founders wanted an armed populace...just in case.

Having guns more than once kept people from breaking in our house when I was growing up. We lived out in the sticks and depended on those things for defense (and food), especially when my father was on the road. My brother's guns (he's a police officer; he has tons) once scared off a guy who actually made it into his house.

[starmalachite.livejournal.com]

Having grown up in a hunting family, I can testify that the less & lower-powered the ammo you have to pry out of the deer meat, the better. Cracked a filling on a fragment once.

Yeah, anyone who knows anything whatsoever about gun safety knows just how crazy shooting back in those conditions would have been. Unless, of course, taking out even more innocent lives is considered acceptable collateral damage as long as the perp is nailed, which some of the clowns making such statements really do.

Confusing glocks with gonads is actually the point: it's what these idiots hope *you* will do so you don't notice their pitiful lack of the latter. Unfortunately, this type also lacks functioning brains & hearts.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

taking out even more innocent lives is considered acceptable collateral damage as long as the perp is nailed, which some of the clowns making such statements really do

I have no words.

I don't have a problem with guns (or other armament; I was an archer once) per se. I have a hella problem with yahoos who confuse shoot-em-up games with reality, and access to the kind of weaponry that would make a shoot-em-up a bloodier reality.

One of the things that I learned about today was a shooting in a Tacoma mall. Guy comes in, swings his semi around, honest armed citizen draws his own handgun and orders the first one to drop it.

In all the macho fantasies, the "coward" holding the first gun rolls over, intimidated, or will be shortly dropped with a single bullet.

In reality, the hopeful hero was shot 5x, while another armed civilian started to draw and then reholstered because he could not get a shot clear of innocents. Both were helpless to prevent five shootings and an armed hostage situation.

There were civvie shooters side-by-side with the cops on the day Charles Whitman climbed the bell tower, too. Neither the civilians nor the cops on the ground hit him.

None of those killers were wearing battle gear either, as the Aurora shooter was.

Ah, but this is all logic. And, I've been informed by the person instigating this rant in the first place, that the only two choices were to fight back (which he would have) or sit passively and wait to die (which I apparently would have.) Try to cover, run, or help those around, despite all being actually *done* by people in that audience, were apparently not options in his mental scenario.

[fyrdrakken]

One of the things I learned over the weekend that I hadn't known about was the armed civilians who were trying to help the cops take down Charles Whitman actually became more of a danger to the cops storming the tower than their intended target, as they kept shooting at anyone they could see up there even after the cops had gone in.

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

Did those jerkwads miss the memo where the shooter *planned* for that possibility and WORE BODY ARMOR???

So shooting back? NOT SO FUCKING HELPFUL and would have just pissed him off more.

How how how how how do people not get that part?

[edited for icon-fail]

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Ha ha exactly! He wore a bulletproof vest! Part of the ridiculous package he was able to go out and BUY as a 24-year old which included 4 guns and 6,000 rounds of ammo. Ugh.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

How how how how how do people not get that part?

Because they aren't *thinking* about the actual events, just shoehorning their favorite talking points into it. Just like Falwell and Robertson -- the true "blame America first" crowd -- howling about school prayer, feminism, and abortion while the remains of the towers were still smoking.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I'm not reading much about this latest gun massacre. It's just... oh, another one? I'm sorry for the victims and their families and the wounded, some of whose bodies and lives will never be the same, but these things are going to happen again and again and again as long as our Congress has been bought and paid for, or scared shitless, by the NRA.

It seemed a reasonable idea at the time, but the Founders did us no favors by setting up a Senate (and ultimately an electoral college) that gives low-population states an influence way out of proportion to their number of voters. I think you could choose half the Senate and they'd represent only 11% of Americans... red states, I need hardly say. This is what's blocking sensible gun laws.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Worse, that the NRA itself is hostage to its own worst members - not the safe and sensible shooters, but the ones who peddle the piddle that [insert name of Democratic President here] is "Gonna come for our guuuuuuuns!" and think that gun checks/limits/registration = [fill in Nazi/fascist metaphor of your choice].

Congress needs to stop pandering to the NRA, and the NRA needs to stop pandering to the percentage of its membership that makes it come across as ammo-crazed knuckle draggers.

I don't mind the size of state representation. I mind deeply states that send mouth-breathing morons like Bachmann to represent their state. Sanity checks should start with Congress members!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

The second amendment is the main reason I'd never want to live in America...

We don't have the right to bear arms in the UK - so guns are harder to get hold of, and consequently gun crime is a much less frequent occurrence.

(I'm not saying we're perfect - knife crime is pretty rife over here, especially in London. But knives do a lot less random damage to innocent bystanders since you can only stab one person at a time.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying we're perfect - knife crime is pretty rife over here, especially in London

Well... that's the thing. People who want to hurt other people will find a weapon - a gun, a knife, acid. People who want to hurt LOTS of other people and can't get a gun will set bombs. (And sometimes if they can; we've got lots of bomb threat/bomb terrorism here too.)

That's why I'm not anti-gun as a concept, knowing that killers will find a way, and knowing that there are plenty of safe, responsible gun owners who never get in the news because they're safe and responsible.

But putting the armament of a soldier in the hands of a civilian, going from owning nothing to owning an arsenal of armor, ammo, and explosives without triggering a red flag - that I have MASSIVE problems with, because that path leads directly to tragedy.

I also want to know what failures of the social safety net meant that this guy went so far off the rails without help. He's said nothing, but when his parents knew instantly that he'd done something...

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Wow! I love every bit of this post. Except of course, the part where you have to HEAR this sort of crazy and process it.

if they'd been there, and if they'd had their weapon with them, it all would have been so different...

Jesus, that's stupid, isn't it?

[neadods.livejournal.com]

YES IT IS

[suze2000.livejournal.com]

My favourite one is "if we make guns illegal, only criminals will have them". Well that's why we have POLICE. And they have guns.

TBH, will I feel bad for the victims, I haven't been watching/reading anything about it, except to roll my eyes at the stupid Americans killing each other again. (apologies to the not-stupid Americans)

The worst thing though was how the FBI profiler characterised the killer as a "dark, trekkie type". EXCUSE ME?! Trekkies are not dark killers.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Well that's why we have POLICE. And they have guns.

And the vast majority of which use them thoughtfully and responsibly. As do the vast majority of hunters and soldiers.

the FBI profiler characterised the killer as a "dark, trekkie type"

WHAT THE FUCK?

OMG, I hope all the fans at the FBI -- and it's full of them -- are kicking his ass from here to the moon for that. There's no evidence that this guy was a fan at all, none. He chose that movie and showing because it gave him the biggest killing field, emptiest parking lot, and opportunity to wear out of the ordinary clothing.

That's tactics, not fandom.

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

Well that's why we have POLICE. And they have guns.

And that makes me wonder yet again why gun violence is so rife in the US - and whether an armed police force perhaps contributes to it. In many European countries, and in Canada, the police are not routinely armed (one thing that instantly throws me out of a Sherlock or Lewis fic is when Lestrade or another police officer who is NOT part of an armed response squad draws a gun).

In the UK, most guns are banned, unless your occupation requires you to own one. In Canada, it's possible to get a permit to own a gun. The police are not routinely armed. In neither country do we have gun massacres on the scale or frequency as in the US. Yes, there was a massacre in Toronto last week, but the rarity of this sort of thing here means that it is likely to go down in history in the same way as Dunblane did in the UK.

So, as Michael Moore asked in (I think) Bowling for Colombine, why is the US different?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I wish the phrases "an armed society is a polite society" and "a duelling society is a polite society" would die in a fire. What they are code for is "having groups of people intimidated into silence by fear of violence is a good thing." I was most shocked by someone I certainly thought should have known better trotting out the duelling variant when some arsehole of a Republican bigwig implied - none-too-subtly - that Obama was a liar. Yes, because the code duello in the antebellum South did so much to inhibit racially-motivated insults.

Speaking, of course, as a complete outsider and foriegner, even the official explanation for the Second Amendment seems dotty to me: "We enshrined a constitutional right to bear arms because every Government needs to be kept in check by fear of an armed coup."

[neadods.livejournal.com]

What they are code for is "having groups of people intimidated into silence by fear of violence is a good thing."

Yup. Mind you, all the people who say them live comfortably in the fantasy that they'd be on the bullying side of things and not the bullied. Because we all know Lincoln that Kennedy well-off Reagan powerful Giffords white folk don't NEVER get shot 'round here!

That made me twitch to type.

even the official explanation for the Second Amendment seems dotty to me: "We enshrined a constitutional right to bear arms because every Government needs to be kept in check by fear of an armed coup."

*grim sigh* That's one of the biggest interpretations, but to be honest? Something of an urban legend. The Second Amendment was written *after* the Constitution, which itself defines treason against the United States in Article 3, Section 3. Now how the hell someone can commit an armed coup against the duly elected Government (election procedures taking up most of Articles 1 and 2) without "levying War against [the United States]" I do not know. As the Confederacy and multiple mini-militias have discovered.

The text of the 2nd is relatively straightforward: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The idea that "security of a free state" means "overthrow the state" vs "We will probably need an army at a moment's notice, so our people should be able to have and use guns" takes a wrench and some grease to fit in.

A year later Congress spelled it out far more clearly in the Uniform Militia Code, which boils down to "if y'all are a white man between 18 & 45, you're in the militia and are expected to own and know how to use and maintain this specific armament." It would have probably helped a lot to put the Uniform Militia Code wording into the Constitution.

(Can you imagine what it would be like to have a citizen militia take over? It would be the equivalent of government by Torchwood, and likely just as efficient and safe.)

Interestingly, recent studies have shown that many of our best soldiers today are folk who grew up hunting for food - them and those who grew up in gang-ridden inner cities (i.e., the hunted.) Apparently both groups pay far more attention to their surroundings and notice changes more quickly than their suburban peers. But now I'm really wandering off topic.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that the dead included at least three servicemen whose (presumably trained) reaction was to get their heads down and protect others by forcing them down, too. But then, the mall ninjas who are coming out with the crap you're talking about presumably don't actually get trained in how to assess a dangerous situation.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

the mall ninjas who are coming out with the crap you're talking about presumably don't actually get trained in how to assess a dangerous situation.

God, no, it might put a cramp in the idea of them as the big hero. As did the guy who started this rant, with his binary view of himself as the swaggering hero and everyone else as a passive victim just sitting there. Which is a really active avoidance of reality, considering that as far as I can tell, nobody just sat in their seat once they realized what was happening. They tried to flee, they tried to cover themselves or others, they tried to help the wounded, but they didn't just *sit there* waiting for John Wayne to swish in and rescue them.

I haven't seen the news today, and hadn't seen the list of the dead. Oh that's heartbreaking.

But you're so right. Two branches of the military in there, people trained in tactics, fighting, and weaponry. And not only don't they make foolish John Wayne choices, but the armchair ninjas are now implying that these men, these who died trying to save others, were somehow weak or foolish.

I think I'm angrier now at the guy who started the rant than I was when I typed it up. How. Dare. He! How dare he imply that these men didn't do the right thing?!

Well said, Well said!

[olivia-sutton.livejournal.com]

Well said, Nea, well said!!! NOBODY goes deer hunting with either a handgun or a semi-automatic sub-machine gun. It is STUPID that because the NRA is one of the single biggest lobbies in America, we all must live under the gun, literally. When the framers of the constitution wrote the 2nd Amendment - allowing people to have guns meant "you have the right to go out and shoot your own dinner". No one, absolutely no one in the US in this century kills their own meat on a daily basis. No one. Not even hunters.
Guns don't make you safe -- they cause more violence and deadly violence. 'Nuff said.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to comment on the gun law thing, though I have my personal views.

But I do wonder this - if every news station, and every paper, and every website, decided not to give these incidents anything beyond the most basic publicity - not to engage in speculation on "why did he do it?", interview locals and film grieving vigils, it just might stop the next crazy publicity-seeking jackass who thinks he's a nobody from trying this stunt, so he goes out in a blaze of glory.

Maybe it's time for a journalistic code of practice. Voyeuristic journalism costs innocent lives.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Voyeuristic journalism costs innocent lives.

YES.

Especially as it seems quite obvious that he planned to make as big a splash across the headlines as possible.