Reply #74

...can shoot dozens of bullets in seconds?

The lethality of the weapons that this shooter legally purchased gave the victims--a packed theater audience--little chance to escape or evade, and of course, no chance for those who died and will die from their injuries. His ability to kill many people quickly is why there are so many dead and injured.

It seems to me that--given a real democracy, not this "TRADE SECRET" code-in-all-the-voting-machines, corporate-run sham we're looking at--this could be the basis of a compromise as to regulating guns. You don't need an assault rifle to kill a deer. And you don't need multiple, high-powered weapons to defend yourself.

I've been in despair about this issue since I lost a loved one in the first such "senseless" mass shooting in this country--the Texas Tower sniper in 1966. NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE to prevent such horrors happening again and again--not as to the availability of mass murder weapons, nor as to health care especially for the young, nor on any other front including government/corporate fostering of a climate of fear, alienation, militarism and war, with the war on Iraq the most obvious example but perhaps the "war on drugs" the most sneaky--and yet more socially destructive--aspect of this propaganda.

Anyway, I put this forward as a basis for discussion, and--if we ever get our democracy back--a basis for serious, anti-mass murder regulation, between gun advocates and gun haters. I am in the latter camp. I want all guns and all weapons--and of course war--banned worldwide. But I have had at least one family member who disagrees (he lived in a violent urban area) and I live in a rural area where hunting is part of the culture for some and I cannot say that hunting with bullets is immoral and leads to mass murder although I wish they would use bows and arrows and other skilled means that give their game a chance. Why assault rifles? Why high-powered, mass killing cartridges? Why multiple, high-powered guns and rifles? Why scopes and other sophisticated technology that give the hunted no chance?

I also have some sympathy with 2nd Amendment arguments, although I think that our Founders would be absolutely appalled at what their approval of a "citizen militia" has turned into--the loss of civilization itself. They did not intend THIS.