Originally
posted by
tellarion:
Obama had a pretty spot on point in his response. There are roughly as many guns as people in the US. How the fluff is MORE GUNS the answer to this issue? We've got more than enough guns already!
Let's face it; your precious second amendment rights are being twisted by one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the US. Why? MONEY. I don't think having one gun for every single man, woman and child was what the founders envisioned when they added the second amendment.
1) Obama was not spot on point. He went on and on about how congress has failed to act over the years and shifted this blame to them, for failing to enact legislation to mandate background checks and the like. He threw very intentionally misleading generalizations about gun crime in there as well as part of his ploy to politicize this tragedy.
The fact of the matter is, even if all of the gun control measures had been passed as they were introduced to congress, they wouldn't have prevented this lunatic from getting his handguns. Why?
First - All of the guns he had (on person and at his home) were legally purchased by him or his family by licensed dealers and all went through background checks and cleared them.
Second - The bills that "them damn libruls" were trying to pass were 100% hard-on for rifles and "military style weapons" and did nothing to address the main weapons used in gun violence : handguns. none of the 150+ varieties of guns proposed to be banned were even on the top 10 list of guns used in the US to commit gun crime. additionally there are numerous identical guns by a different manufacturer on that list that because they didn't have a "pistol grip" were deemed okay, exact same model gun, exact same firepower, capabilities and everything. Additionally the gun show loophole wouldn't have applied in the recent cases we have seen because they guns were all legally purchased by dealers who put them through background checks anyways.
Why do we not talk about handguns yet obsess over "assault" rifles?
285 - number of people killed in 2014 in all of USA with any style rifle
353 - the number of people killed this year so far in Chicago alone via handguns. Chicago, and its surrounding area has a complete gun ban in public, even with the proper permitting, it is the strictest gun control in all of the US. (A gun ban which has been recently ruled unconstitutional.)
2) It is not simply "your precious 2nd amendment" this is a MAJOR part of what the country was founded on. I think the founders 100% envisioned a country of people armed enough that should they need to use the weapons and form an army to combat an oppressive government, they should have the arms needed. I think this because that is exactly what they had to do to establish this great nation. A rag-tag group of marksmen armed with everyday guns far inferior to what the oppressive government had, defeated them, because they were armed when they needed it.
Additionally, a number of the founders believed that, yes, every citizen should at the very least, be taught how to use a gun while they were young, for in the event they ever should need to use one. they know how. This is well documented. I don't understand how it has ever been and frankly still is a thing that people question the reasoning behind the 2nd amendment and what they meant for it to be.
I don't think I need to list off the government lead genocides over the years, we all know them. They all basically started with the same theme - disarm the population and then rule by force. To sweep that aside as "put on your tin-foil hat, that wont ever happen in this country" is to be naive of history. Our government has slowly been perverting itself over the years to the point that a sitting president openly promised congress that he would work around them with executive order at a State of the Union Address because he didn't agree with the parties in control of the senate and the house, and members of congress actually stood and cheered him stating that he was treating them as a constitutional anomaly.
If you think that is could never happen here, you are correct, because we have a 2nd amendment in our constitution and an armed population, thank the founders for that.
The root of the violence issues in these shootings are and will continue to be until we address them, mental health issues that could and should be addressed with common sense legislation. But that doesn't have nearly the same sex appeal as OMG ASSAULT WEAPONS!!!!!
I know the pharmacists here wont like this but look at the relation between mass killings in the US and anti-depressant / anti-anxiety drugs. It is undeniable that these kids were in need of help and attention and carried out actions that we did see coming as society and instead of dealing with it before it was too late we turned the blind eye and kept shoving them pills and moving them on their merry way. After the fact, we blamed the guns and the NRA instead of really looking into what went on. In this case, the President already made up his mind before he spoke about what he was going to tell us, even if it didn't apply to this case at all, which it didnt. We are better than that as a nation. Let's start acting like it.