Is it time to talk about guns?

To hear of ANOTHER mass shooting, in Maine of all places, further proves my point: NO PLACE today is safe; NO PLACE is immune to gun violence.

TOO MANY highly-unstable people have access to firearms; these days, you have no idea if your next-door neighbor has an arsenal in his basement that would rival any military base.

It's truly frightening.....and beyond insane.

When will this insanity EVER end?

For those who hope strict gun laws are put into effect in the near term, let me say that you have a better chance of seeing Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights again.

My deepest sympathies and prayers to the family and friends of those who are now going through so much tremendous loss and heartache...........

 

You speak many volumes, my friend, and I could not agree more.

I only go out to run errands once a week these days; I NEVER feel safe in a store (or anywhere else) these days.

I only feel safe when I get back home and lock my doors behind me.

Really sad that the average American now has to live in so much fear; public transportation, houses of worship, malls, sports events, schools.......what a way to live.

And we're supposed to be a "CIVILIZED" society??

 

Well, I'm sure he was part of that well regulated militia that the 2nd gives their right to bear swords and muskets. Boy do we ever have a big militia.

 

I keep hearing the gun fetishizers talk about our mental health crisis, and can’t help but think, isn’t a catastrophic National mental health crisis an argument *for* stricter gun control?

 

The idea that gun violence can happen anywhere and that no place is safe was recently illustrated by an outbreak of gang shootings right here in Oklahoma in Wewoka--a town of about 3,000 residents. Twenty shootings in the past month and a half!
Possible gang war in Wewoka has many frightened, officials finally talk
Wewoka sees 20 shootings in month and a half
'This Scares You To Death:' Wewoka Residents Concerned Over Rash Of Violence
Until recently, the crime rate has been below the state average. “Wewoka is usually a town where our kids can run around and have fun with each other, and right now I don’t even let my boys go outside," Jay Williams, a Wewoka resident, said.
If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere!

 

It's much better to make a decision - even if it's wrong - than not to make a decision.

 

Some vehicles can be deadly weapons too.

 

Of course. AR-15s are far more frequently used--more portable, capable of selecting individuals as targets, etc.

 

Speaking of that ive seen many near accidents in this small town. Mostly centered around convenience stores.

 

The State of New York has had a loss of population for the last few years, perhaps half a million. New York then lost a seat in the House of Representatives from said loss.

These types of loss are only driven by retail violence. Not the wholesale violence of an AR15.

Also taxes and poor government. But the shootings in our large metro areas are not from automatic rifles.

 

Your point seems obscure. I doubt New York's population loss was due to violent deaths. But violent deaths are a real and growing problem in red state, gun totin' 'Merica. If you're trying to imply that people are leaving New York because of crime and violence, New York's rate of violent crime actually seems to be lower than in my red state of Oklahoma. At least that was the case in 2019 and 2020. Fact check: Is violent crime rate in Oklahoma higher than New York? In 2020, nine of ten states with the highest per capita violent crime rates leaned Republican, while eight of ten states with the lowest rates leaned Democrat.. Fact Brief : Do red states report higher rates of violent crime than blue states? | Gigafact.

And your point is...? As for bad government, it couldn't be worse than in Oklahoma, Texas, and a number of other red states I could name. Taxes might be a factor. But don't you think it's misleading to post this on a thread about guns?

 

No

 

Why not? This is a pattern I've noticed with conservative posters: specious arguments. Either they know better and are deliberately trying to mislead us, or they lack the analytical skills to distinguish fallacy from logic.

 

The loss of population is a fact. So its time to come off of offence mode and do some self reflection on the policies driving this.

I read a lot here about faccists and nazis. Just who are intimidating Jews in New York? its not MAGA but Democrat alligned radicals.

 

The 2nd Amendment is a worse-than-useless holdover from a time when we were a confederation of states, had no standing army, and the standard-issue infantry weapon had an effective range of 100 yards and a rate of fire of four rounds a minute. We now spend more on defense than the next ten largest militaries combined and garrison a global empire. The sole raison d'être of the 2nd Amendment; to maintain “a well-regulated militia”, has been a moot point for over 100 years. More Americans have been shot to death in the last 50 years than in all of the wars in American history. Attempting to rationalize that many dead Americans by citing a legislative fossil that should have gone out with buggy whips and high-button shoes is obscene. The Constitution has been amended 27 times. To piously claim that the 2nd Amendment is somehow sacrosanct is murderously idiotic in the extreme.

 

The loss of population in New York is a fact. Your efforts to attribute it to "retail violence" is implausible and lacks evidentiary support--since there's plenty of that right here in Red State Oklahoma and other red states. Taxes would be higher on my list of causes. I've been to New York many times--NYC and upstate NY, where folks would be more to your liking. I have no trouble understanding why folks would want to stay there. My question is why they'd ever want to live there in the first place? (But I have the same feeling about Tulsa and Oklahoma City).

More on topic, I'm sure you know about the Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning New York's law prohibiting concealed handguns. Might that have something to do with the recent rise in "retail" violence?

If you read beyond HF, you might be aware of real MAGA-aligned Neo-Nazis with swastikas, uniforms and stiff- armed salutes, who engage in Anti-Semitic violence--like the National Socialist Alliance, Patriot Front (formerly Vanguard), and the crew at the Daily Stormer.
The state of the white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups in the US
The neo-Nazi plot against America is much bigger than we realize
They hate Jews and others they regard as "racial inferiors", and have a blind devotion to their Führer, who currently seems to be Trump (Although some have never forgiven him for "giving his daughter to a Jew". There is also a broader community of like -minded white supremacists and anti-Semitic groups like the KKK, Neo-Confederate and Christian identity groups. White supremacy poses increasing threats in the U.S.: ‘We are dealing with a massive movement.’ And there is a much larger web of Ideologically, they share similar ideologies of white racism, nativism (the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants), xenophobic nationalism, and populism. All also share a general belief in, and fear of, the Great Replacement (i.e., fear that the white race will be replaced by non-whites in its dominant position in this country).

Of course, not all Anti-Semites are on the political right. The so-called "Democrat aligned" radicals who are intimidating Jews in New York are from the far left, mostly students, whose gripe against Jews is not so much their race but their identification with Israel. The anti-Jewish students are motivated by sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and the anti-Palestinian students. Sadly, they engage in the fallacy of overgeneralizing from the supposed misdeeds of particular nations to all who share the same ethnicity as those nations. Ironically, most of the anti-Jewish students are from the far left of the political spectrum who profess a hatred of Nazism and fascism. They would be indignant to be called Nazis or fascists, but share with those right-wing radicals a propensity for violence, authoritarian solutions, and an "end justifies the means" approach to politics. I have no use for radicals of any kind.