What A Difference A Gun Makes

[jpak]

http://www.blackvoicenews.com/news/news-wire/47688-what-a-difference-a-gun-makes-.html

By Marian Wright Edelman

On April 16, 2007, our nation suffered its deadliest shooting incident ever by a single gunman when a student killed 32 people and wounded 25 others at Virginia Tech before committing suicide. Five years later, have we learned anything about controlling our national gun and gun violence epidemic? A look at just a few of the sad headlines across the country so far this year suggests we haven’t learned much or anything at all.

In February 2012, a 17-year-old high school senior, who other students described as an outcast who’d been bullied, shot and killed three fellow students and injured two more at Chardon High School in suburban Ohio. Would this have happened without a gun?

In Washington state, three children were victims of gun violence during a three-week period in February and March 2012. A three-year-old died after shooting himself in the head with a gun left under the front seat of the car while his family stopped for gas. The seven-year-old daughter of a police officer was shot and killed by her younger brother after he found one of their father’s guns in the glove compartment of the family van. And an eight-year-old girl was critically wounded at school when her nine-year-old classmate brought in a gun he found at home that accidentally went off in his backpack. Would this have happened without a gun?

In Chicago there already has been a rash of shootings this year including the especially violent weekend in mid-March when 49 people were shot and 10 were killed. One of the victims was a six-year-old girl who was sitting on her front porch with her mother getting her hair brushed before a birthday party when she was killed by shots fired from a passing pickup truck. Would this have happened without a gun?

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[AH1Apache]

1. And this has to do what with legal gun owners

You do realize that there are appox. 3,000,000 guns and appox. 80,000,000 gun owners in the country, and the overwhelming majority of us are responsible law abiding citizens?
So you think just because POS criminals misuse firearms means that my 2A right should be taken away?
Unfuckingbelievable.

[jpak]

2. Where do criminals get their guns? Ultimately, from "law abiders"

yup

[AH1Apache]

3. Still

doesn 't justify taking away our 2A rights.

[jpak]

4. Your Holy 2A rights do not exclude sensible gun laws - too bad

The backlash is here.

yup

[AH1Apache]

6. The backlash is here?

Where? All I've seen are more and more states relaxing their gun laws.
Define sensible gun laws.

[Common Sense Party]

22. Yes, the backlash against all of us INSANE gun owners,right?

You're still holding to your fantasy that hunting is the ONLY sane reason anyone should ever own a gun?

[bongbong]

7. the 2nd amendment

The 2nd Amendment is about militias, not laissez-faire gun ownership.

[rrneck]

9. The second amendment

is the very definition of laissez faire gun ownership. It specifically protects it.

[bongbong]

18. Wrong

I know what NRA members imagine the 2nd Amendment says, but there's those pesky words about militias. Words that were considered as very important by most SCOTUS decisions, up until the right-wing super-conservative current radicals ignored precedent & made the travesty Heller ruling.

[PavePusher]

19. I've asked you before, and I'll ask again.

Please cite to evidence that "right of the people"="right of the militia".

[rrneck]

21. *sigh*

"...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

http://m.dictionary.com/d/?q=laissez%20faire&o=0&l=dir

laissez faire les-ey - noun 1.  policy of non-interference in trade, others' affairs etc-

http://m.dictionary.com/d/?q=infringed&submit-result-SEARCHD=Search

in·fringe in-- verb (used with object)-fringed-fringing 1.  to violate- verb (used without object)-fringed-fringing 2.  to trespass or encroach on

Partisan hyperbole doesn't help your case.

[AH1Apache]

12. You just keep repeating that

someday someone might believe you, meanwhile we have the SCOTUS, constitutional scholars, and yes, even the POTUS saying it's an individual right, I think I'll go with their opinions, not yours.

[Lizzie Poppet]

15. Don't quit your day job.

That professorship in linguistic analysis will forever elude you.

[GreenStormCloud]

20. That horse is dead. You can quit beating it.

Your side lost. Live with it.

[rl6214]

24. AAAAAAAhahahahahahahahaha

We don't have a beating that dead horse smilie so this one will have to do You do get spanked on this issue so often.

[gejohnston]

11. Not always

often not at all. They could get them from NYPD, or they could be smuggled in or be made in illegal clandestine factories.

[rl6214]

23. Like this law abiding anti-gun zealot, who advocates allowing her husbands guns being stolen?

HockeyMom (8,211 posts) Profile Journal Send DU Mail Ignore

16. Whose rights trump whose?

Mine, or my gun toting, life NRA husband? Answer that one? I don't have a right to flee, let a burglar take HIS guns? You do know that I would do that and let them take HIS guns? My feeling? Better to no have them in the house AT ALL. Don't look to ME to protect YOUR guns.

[Hoyt]

8. Unfortunately, the ranks of gun carriers include too many like Zimmerman, Loughner, etc.

I know you try to overlook that, as well as the millions of right wing bigots that carry.

The fact is, to keep you in guns for whatever reason you need them, we have to allow reprobates to carry too. I don't think that was envisioned in the "well regulated militia" clause.

[AH1Apache]

13. Your a riot Hoyt.

BTW, got any links yet to the statements you claim I made yet?

[lastlib]

25. All of those perpetrators were "legal" gun owners.

Not ONE of them should have been able to possess a gun.

[oneshooter]

26. So don't just sit on your fat arse bitchin about it!

get up and DO SOMETHING!!! Join the Brady group, get a petition started, picket a gun shop. Just sitting there doing NOTHING aint a gonna do a thing.

Well it will do one thing. It will show your true hypocrisy to the world.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[lastlib]

29. I ALREADY HAVE, dipsh1t

You don't know what I do, so kiss off!

[AH1Apache]

32. If you really have

then you are one of the very few here.

[AH1Apache]

27. So what are you doing to amend or repeal the 2A?

I mean besides bitch and moan about gun owners.

[lastlib]

28. If that's what it takes to stop the killing, yeah, scrap it

[gejohnston]

30. Well, it won't

Hate to break it to you.

[AH1Apache]

31. Stops the killing?

You mean to tell me that there were no killings before guns were invented?
Learn something new every day.
So get a petition going to either:

1. Amend the 2A, or
2. Repeal the 2A
You just let us know how that works out for you.

[ManiacJoe]

5. The old "do it for the children" canard.

Maybe Ms Edelman should look at the actual changes to the system that were made since Virginia Tech instead of getting worried about the sensationalized news headlines.

[hack89]

10. Epidemic = historically low levels of gun violence? Levels that are still declining?

funny definition of epidemic.

[Lizzie Poppet]

16. OMFG, it's an epidemic! Everybody panic!!!

[ileus]

14. Gun free = target rich

It's true...what a difference a gun could have made.

The best personal safety device you can carry....did you happen to see the new S&W shield released last week. The single stack market is Hot Hot HOT right now.

[Atypical Liberal]

17. We aren't going to let the actions of the .5% drive policy.

Bad people will always have guns. This is not an excuse to take them away from law-abiding people.

Every year there are about 1,300,000 violent crimes in the United States. About 26% of those are committed using firearms - roughly 340,000 firearm-related violent crimes.

There are 40-80 million firearm owners in this country. That means that 99.15% - 99.58% of firearm owners aren't involved in firearm-related violent crimes every year.

We aren't going to let the actions of less than 1% of firearm owners drive punitive policies against the rest of us.

Occupy the Second Amendment!