Police say the latest school shooter was targeting bullies.
The NRA wants you to know about this Georgia woman who shot a home intruder.
Defense Sec. Panetta orders the Pentagon to "prepare for the worst" on automatic defense cuts.
Chuck isn't sure about Chuck.
The Tea Party needs the Beltway.
Something to watch on the 11th anniversary of the first prisoners arriving at Guantanamo.
Bachmann presidential campaign staffers say they are still owed money.
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What's sad about the NRA story is you can find anecdotal evidence as well that a gun in the home doesn't help at all.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33220258/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/gun-toting-soccer-mom-found-shot-dead/
This is why we need to unblock more gun research.
It's certainly important for gun owners to have training with their firearm. You're better off with no gun at all than having a gun that you don't know how to use.
Did you even read about this murder ? The woman was shot by her HUSBAND who was a parole officer working in the justice system. Also was a former prison guard. He HAD to carry weapons and had safety training and psyche evaluations for his JOB with the GOVERNMENT. There is a HUGE difference between someone invading your home some one you know walking up to you and shooting you.
This is exactly why I believe in the right to keep a weapon in your home for protection, the .38 caliber revolver she used was more than sufficient to deter the would be rapist , murderer and home invader,
This is no way means that I believe that people should have access to military grade weapons, or to be able to purchase weapons with out a background check. I do not see the connection quite frankly,,
Even a background check can be abused and used to prevent people from their 2nd amendment rights. There should be NO laws re: guns. "Shall not infringe" is very clear.
Patricia, I understand about not infringing, but do you think our forefathers were thinking "assault rifles" when the second amendment was written? Seriously?
"Well regulated" is also very clear.
I have some moral problem with the criminal background check. It was enacted in '93 as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act
It was named for James Brady, who was shot by Hinckley when he was trying to assassinate Reagan to "impress Jodie Foster".
The :::facepalm::: part of this is that the Brady bill wouldn't have prevented Brady from getting shot. Hinckley wasn't a criminal. He was CRAZY.
We still don't do jack squat to prevent crazies from getting guns.
Since the enactment of the Brady bill, it has prevented only 1.8% of gun sales from being completed.
That being said, I don't think it's moral to deny a person who's committed a crime, repaid his debt to society, from being able to have the right to defend himself. That's just as immoral as it is to deny such a person the right to vote.
Now, if said criminal was violent, that's one thing. If the person was a stalker, or domestically violent, then that's the last person who should have a gun. But someone who gets busted for having a dime bag in their car shouldn't lose their right to protect their home for the rest of their life. That's silly.
YES ... our forefathers WERE thinking about assault weapons equal in force to the weapons the people assaulting them would be carrying. The second amendment is NOT about deer huinting. It is not about burglary, it is about your right to form resistance to a tyranical government bent on destoying the country and freedoms of the US. IT is to protect YOU from the government. And WELL REGULATED means WELL EQUIPPED !!!! Did you people not pay attention in Social studies class?
Do you know WHY we give guns to rebel insugents in other countries ? So that can defeat their tyrannical regimes. Our government simply does not want the citizens her to have the same capablities as they provide to rebels in other countries on their Good guy list.
And before you ask .... YES if the government has drones to target americans then we should have the means to protect ourselves against them. If they come down our streets in storm trooper gear to 'secure our towns' then we need to have weapons that will dter them from every trying it. ( dont think that will happen --- how many cities in the midwest have had duly elected officials removed and replaced with corporate 'city managers' ? How many peaceful protestors have been attacked by club weilding ; rubber bullet shooting, chemical spraying DOHS supplied police ? )
What is happening in the US right now is almost exactly what was happening in the colonies in the 1750's .
Laws enacted by Bush and Obama ( patriot act, NDAA, HR347, NS/EP ) allow the president and the HOHS to detain any american citizen in the world ( including Des Moine Iowa and east podunk alabama ) with out due process and with out right to trial forever. And with no over sight from congress or the courts. But they said TRUST ME I WONT DO THAT .
How about we just give every household a nuclear bomb... surely nothing bad could come from doing that.
Seriously though, if you really believe that we have a tyrannical government that is bent on taking over our towns then you're welcome to leave and move to a country where you don't have that concern. If you don't like governors passing laws that replace duly elected officials then you have a thing called a vote to try and get him out of office. There are also things called recalls, etc. that citizens can use to change things in this country.
And, in case you haven't been paying attention, the same people who are screaming "don't take our guns" are the same people who have been suppressing voter's rights, who have been passing laws getting rid of local governments, etc. So exactly who are you planning an insurgency against?
The latest number by the "Zero Gun Control" crowd is '6000'.
6000 people a year they say, is how many protect themselves and their families with guns.
Which is interesting. The last few days they have been shouting from the rooftops about how this woman protected her family with a gun (props to her btw).
6000 / 365 = 16.4 per day
Why is it since Newtown we've heard about almost 700 gun deaths, but only ONE situation where a gun protected a family? There should have been about 500 by now.
It has a lot to do with media sensationalism. Remember when that guy in Florida ate that homeless guy's face? The media went crazy with stories about how "bath salts" make you crazy. There were even not-so-serious stories about other "zombie" attacks.
As it turned out, face bite guy wasn't on bath salts at all. He was just a crazy guy, who'd smoked some pot, and probably had sun stroke.
But reality didn't stop the media from making the whole country think that we were under a sudden epidemic of bath salt crazies.
The media is in the business of selling their product. Freaking people out is a reliable way to sell their product. It doesn't mean that what they're reporting is true.
I'm thinking that the vast majority of those "protecting" their homes are people taking guns they left laying around from their children.
The reason we don't hear more is because it doesn't happen that often. When it happens, good for them! But what about the gun totin' soccer mom? Now her kids are screwed up for life. (Not that they weren't already messed up having parents like that....). The vocal gun nut found shot in the head near his arsenal. The simple fact is that being armed doesn't guarantee safety. If a bad guy pulls out a gun and shoots you in 1.5 seconds, I don't care what weapon you have, even if you have it out, you're not going to have much of a chance.
I just watched a video of this young guy firing a AR 15 and a AK47. After firing off each gun, the sheer joy on his face was more than disturbing.
That's the problem.
See, all you need is a six shot revolver for home protection, and we can still protect our kids from the kind of carnage we saw in CT.
And in a larger sense, if we were presented the terrible choice of no gun control where this woman lives and those 20 kids die, and absolute gun control where this woman and her kids died and those 20 kids lived...I'll take the 20 kids.
With reasonable gun control, we can have it both ways.
except it's not always just 1 guy trying to break into your house. sometimes, it's lots of guys. And they have guns too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_rz2wBYin4
I rather like this argument. If you can find an instance where a gun is used to save lives instead of taking them, then it's perfectly legitimate to own them.
I really like this argument!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-q2zHIovOE
No Alva, it's a balancing act, a compromise, imperfect and messy. And this:
If you can find an instance where a gun is used to save lives instead of taking them, then it's perfectly legitimate to own them.
Is a ridiculous mis-reading of what I wrote.
Actually Alva, I totally agree with what you wrote above, about proper training - In some ways, it would not bother me to make firearms training more widely available, including to kids. Voting and free speech are rights...and responsibilities that we teach them, too.
That said, the price we pay for the widespread availability of highly destructive weapons is too high for me. Not for you, apparently.
the fact that the "bad guy" was able to get up and leave says that no, 6 bullets weren't enough...he could have just as easily gotten up and done harm to the now unarmed woman with 6 empty chambers in her .38..
also its easy to sit back and make judgement calls about the life of the many worth more than the life of the few, but until you're presented with a real life decision like that, your "And in a larger sense, if we were presented the terrible choice of no gun control where this woman lives and those 20 kids die, and absolute gun control where this woman and her kids died and those 20 kids lived...I'll take the 20 kids." is nothing but speculative bullpocky... Life is precious... period... the death of one over another is still death..
Large, I wasn't being entirely serious. I just your argument sorta made me grin.
I think that ideally we would have a lot less guns in this country and a whole lot more people who are very knowledgeable about properly and safely handling them. The less draconian we can be about this, the better. The more lives we can save, the better. So, yes, it is a balancing act.
Shadow, you only need 1 bullet to kill an attacker. But usually you miss your target.
5 of the 6 rounds hit him in the face and neck....
Shadow, you only need 1 round to go straight in from the tip of an attacker's nose.
Helen would like you to know that an unarmed teacher talked down the latest school shooter and took his weapon
The teacher, Ryan Heber, and a campus supervisor who showed up at the classroom during the incident engaged in a dialogue with the shooter – giving other students a chance to leave the classroom and ultimately leading the gunman to put his weapon down.
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/state&id=8947742
Helen, the story you linked says that the child was bullied... not a reason to shoot anyone, but it can be rationalized.. he wasn't there for mass murder, he was there to stop the bully... hence the one person shot...
Not to detract from the teacher standing there and talking him down, that act was heroic, but if the kid was there just to kill everyone, the teacher would be dead as well..
"Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Then more guns in schools won't help, and we just need more people in schools. But then:
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Or a teacher that talks the shooter into putting down their weapon (@Taft). Or someone without a gun that tackles the shooter when they're trying to reload (@Tucson). Or...
Soundbytes, superstition, and opinions are not facts. I'll have to agree with gss - we need to be able to ask questions and get real-world answers.
You know how you stop 100% of all school shootings in America? Ban all schools.
No, ban all guns! That is a 100%solution...whether you like it or not!
Ban people.
The Tea Party "needs the Beltway?" Of course, they do! They are a product of the Beltway! They were never a "grassroots" organization. Rachel coined the term AstroTurf when she referred to them. This is why the fizzled so quickly. They were an attempt by the Republican establishment to create a new brand when they were so badly beaten in 2008. No one at the time wanted to be labeled as a Republican so the Tea Party was the substitute. It worked, at least, in the Congressional elections of 2010. That's sad because of the reapportionment that occurred after that election. The problem for their Republican and corporate handlers was that they discovered that they had created this group that they couldn't "handle." The Tea Party refused to fall into line and did crazy things that really hurt business like the "Fiscal Cliff." They took away the power of the "Speaker" by being totally anti-earmark. They have thrown the Republican Party into disarray. I heard Marjorie Hershey, a Political Science professor from Indiana University, speak on a postmortem of the 2010 election. She said that this was not the first time that that a movement like the Tea Party appeared when the electorate was economically frustrated. She said, historically, the Democrats would lose the Senate in 2012. They didn't because the Tea Party is AstroTurf and the people behind it quit supporting it.
After serving 21 years in the Army, going thru weapons training one thing remained clear to us....your M16 was your WEAPON not ur gun. NRA is constantly crying about the 2d Amendment that all Americans have the right to bear arms. Well during the time that this amendment was created we had come under attack by Great Britain and there was NO formal Armed Forces so untrained civilians were allowed to keep their guns in case they are called upon to fight at a moments notice, hence the name "minute men". I'm not against responsible gun ownership and the woman who used her gun to defend her family did exactly what she was supposed to do. To my knowledge she didn't have a semi-automatic weapon. My opinion is this, you don't need an assault weapon if you're just defending your home unless you expect Canada to invade. You don't need an assault weapon unless you are on the battlefield defending the United States of America. You don't need to own a weapon if you have severe anger issues (i.e. bipolar). You don't need an assault weapon to hunt. Seriously, how many times can you shoot a deer? How many NRA members are retired veterans who was in a war? How many NRA members saw up close and personal the results of irresponsible gun use? My memory is a little fuzzy but wasn't it a member of the Bush Administration that accidentally shot someone in the face during a hunting event? Yet the NRA calls for more guns! I do not own gun, however my father owns several rifles for hunting and they are securely locked away to prevent an accident. I've added my two cents for today, thank you for listening.
Amazing. These people see no problem with jumping through hoops getting all kinds of paperwork in order to get the correct ID to vote yet don't see a need to have any ID or background checks to buy a firearm.
Amen to Phenner! If we are all in favor of having to prove, sixteen ways to Sunday, that we are truly entitled to vote, why aren't we in favor of requiring various rules for firearm ownership. I believe that we should enact insurance laws for guns. Depending on what type of gun you own, will determine the cost of said insurance. Now this is liability insurance. Guns must be registered, provided for semi-annual inspections, and the owners must carry liability insurance. So the cost for owning a small gun or a simple hunting gun would be fairly low - kind of like owning an older model, basic car with a really good driving record. The cost of owning an assault weapon would be outrageous and we would know who owns what. And if a teacher has a gun in the classroom, parents should have the right to request that their child not be in that room, or vice versa.
Why did this woman call her husband rather than the Police? The intruder rang the bell, when nobody answered he went to his car to get the tools to break in. if she had called the police then they would have been there to stop him.
Guns in the home have a value albeit limited as compared to the carnage they cause. From what I have read nobody has proposed anything that would have deprived this family from keeping a gun in their house. So why is the NRA so excited?
http://chucksmomentoftruth.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/whos-afraid-of-the-nra-congress-thats-who/
The 2nd amendment people want the right to own guns without the responsibilities.
The NRA uses the woman who shot the intruder as an example. The guy was scared away previously from burglarizing a home when confronted by the occupant of the house. He had burglar tools not a weapon. He rang the doorbell several times...my guess to see if anyone was home. Had she indicated through the locked and front door that someone was there and called 911 at that point if the burglar persisted at ringing the doorbell. Instead she says the burglar went back to his vehicle and to get something. Still time to call 911. Instead she took time to open the safe and get her gun. Then the burglar broke into the front door. At which time I believe he thought no one was home. He was wrong and probably will cost him his life. We all have to make choices. I chose to get rid of my hand guns and rely on 911 call when I questioned in my own mind as to whether I was ready to take another human's life for stealing my TV. I did however (when I was single, no children in the house, and kept a loaded .38 under the bed easily assessible) use the .38 I had when a burglar attempted to enter my house at night through a window. I had old wooden screens, it was summer, and I awakened in the night at the sound of someone cutting the screen at the window furthest from me. There was a window next to my bed. I quietly unhooked the screen, aimed the pistol at the ground, and awaited until I saw on foot and leg enter the window... then fired 3 shots into the ground. I heard wild running down the sidewalk ... and hopefully he had to clean out his underwear. I can see both sides of this attempted burglary and we each make our own choices. I personally prefer no weapon and relying on 911... I am not prepared to shoot someone for taking anything I own... I realize to some property is of greater value to them and they are prepared to take a life to protect it...their personal choice and laws are written so that they can protect their property by taking another's life. If my life were threatened would I take another's life ..yes. Do I want a gun... no. I have grandchildren and never want an accident that I would regret for the rest of my life.
I found this on Facebook, It scares the hell out of me that assault weapons are in the hands of the crazy SOB and that there are enough crazy people out there to follow him in organizing an army. http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/10/gun-company-ceo-hints-at-assassinating-obama-murder-may-be-necessary-video/ We need stricter gun laws to get them out of the hands of mentally unstable people like this.
Karl Rove and the NRA,, "Fear Sells",,, and the sheep buy.
The NRA people scare me more and more every day. It doesn't appear there's a rational, informed thought in the group (at least among those who are allowed to speak).
If they scare you, then you should buy a gun. When you're able to protect yourself, you've got no worries.
The orbiting Kepler exoplanet observatory is discovering planets nearly everywhere it looks. (NBC story on the Kepler from last year here). Tuesday, Kepler planet KOI 172.02, the most earthlike was announced Tuesday by astronomer Natalie Batalha of Nasa Ames at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The KOI 172.02 is orbiting in the "habital planet" zone and only 1.5 the diameter of the earth. 172.02 is only a candidate planet and has not been confirmed by additional observations. Further, it is at a considerable distance (2000 light years by one estimate).
The important thing is that that the volume of these discoveries supports the estimate by astronomers that there are at least 17 billion earth sized planets (source) in our galaxy alone. Many of these are not habitable- for example Venus and Mars are near earth sized but other characteristics such as imbalances of gases, lack of a protecting magnetic field and so on make life improbable. Still, the volume of planets being discovered significantly increases the likelihood that there is nothing particularly unique about life in the universe.
On December 19th, it was announced that there is a planet orbiting Tau Ceti within the habitable zone. What's cool about this particular star is that it is only 12 light years away. It would take a probe about 50K years to get there using current technology (Helios II speed record is 70Km/s or 1/4000 lightspeed) , but if Tau Ceti e has lifeforms with technology as advanced as ours, we can conceive of establishing communication via high powered lasers within our lifetime.
I expect they probably will use the bandwidth for a Wikipedia download.
But the lady did not need a assault weapon to protect herself. No body is proposing banning all guns. According to the ATF most criminals, if the carry a gun at all,commit crimes with ordinary hand guns not military style assault weapons. No body needs assault weapons to defend themselves or to hunt with and the fun of shooting assault weapons is far outweighed by the danger that assault weapons pose to society.