Let's keep our pinkies crossed for a license plate number.
Fools and their guns. God bless the NRA.

"Fools and their guns."

No one can legally own a gun in D.C., and there was a massacre there yesterday.

It is not possible to take all of the guns away from all of the people in the US of A. Making ownership illegal solves nothing.

The NRA advocates and promotes safe gun ownership, sportsmanship, and stewardship.

What's your proposal, Derek?

Taking away guns from law abiding people will not solve the problem. If that happens, the violent criminals will still have guns and those who need protection won't be able to protect themselves. The gun buy back programs are a failure in the areas where there is high crime (mainly drug related)especially. Gives more power to the gangs and idiots who use guns to commit crimes. In Chicago which has some of the toughest gun control laws, and gun buy back programs, it has not worked. They are still shooting and killing each other. Schools have metal detectors and cops which has helped some in the schools but not on the streets. They need jobs and education first and then maybe crime and guns won't be the lifestyle choice.

"Taking away guns from law abiding people will not solve the problem." You mean law abiding people like Alamo's own Thomas Bennet? Or pehaps Rodney Peairs. The childish inability to recognize that people make mistakes, and giving them the ability to make their own mistake fatal for some other "law abiding citizen" with very little effort is in fact a major part of a major "problem" is what makes gun nuts so pathetic.

The utterly stupid arguments and justifications which they seem to think make so much sense only makes it all the more scary that they think that **they** should be walking around with deadly weapons, secure in their blithe ignorance of their own limitations, and unaware of the fact that their guns are far more likely to be used to maim or kill members of their own families or an innocent friend or neighbor than to ever be used to thwart a crime.

Yes, "Diane" and "LOUISE" - I'm looking at you.

"No one can legally own a gun in D.C."

Well that is simply factually incorrect.

"The NRA advocates and promotes safe gun ownership, sportsmanship, and stewardship"
Not unless you have a time machine Diane. The only thing the NRA advocates for is the gun industry and the murder profiteers. The last time this was remotely true was before Wayne LaPierre's reign of terror began. And that was decades ago.

@Huh?, Really? and Derek - thank you! The very idea that the NRA lobby is not at part responsible for guns getting in to the wrongest of hands is both ridiculous and dangerous. It's the myth that keeps on giving and killing, time and again.

Signed - Diane from Danville (and please do not mistake me for Diane from Alamo)

Bad guys will always have their guns. They do not obey laws.
Good guys save lives with their guns. Bad guys are underground and will never be on any lists.
Putting your teenage boy on list for wisely seeing a counselor, and forever labeling, making him unable to ever get a job, doesn't accomplish much either.
BUT, the sizeable list of mental warning signs about yesterday's killer should have been at least 'noticed' by our various government agencies, and not cleared for a military base.

And don't forget, "Good guy" - bad guys always wear black hats. That's how you can tell they're bad guys. Good guys always wear white hats, and only shoot bad guys and save lives. They never screw up, get confused or depressed, drink too much, or do anything else that might result in anything but bad guys being shot with the good guys' bullets.

Life is simple and straightforward that way. There's no need to think any harder about it than that. Good guys and bad guys. Easy-peasey.

I wonder how many of the anti-gun proponents would put a Gun-Free Zone sign in front of their property? I'll bet none of them would. So if they feel that no one should have guns and that guns are not safe, then only law enforcement and military personnel will have guns. Also, lets do what they did in Germany during WW2 - they outlawed guns for citizens too. We all should feel really safe then. Oh, by the way in the last major mass shootings, over 1/2 of the shooters were mentally ill. Maybe our screening for gun permits and sales should be more thorough. Please put that sign up right now.

Louise, if your goal was to demonstrate the lack of intellectual and emotional maturity of the typical suburbanite who thinks that she really, really should be packing a lethal weapon, consider your job well done.

Name calling will not change the real issues. I just hope you and those who don't want guns around will never need one and I hope I don't either. You can take your chances and hope that your martial arts or verbal arts or just sheer luck will protect you if faced with bodily harm from someone brandishing a weapon. Good luck from a realistic suburbinite.

I am a suburbanite against guns, period .. please don't broad brush all of us. There will always be the misinformed and narrow minded amongst all communities.

How about a 2 yr ban on personal ownership of majority of weapons or really really strick background check system and lets see the outcomes. If there is no improvement then the gun nuts have won otherwise we keep the controls in place.

The good news for the NRA from Norris Estates: No one was able to convince that "law abiding gun owner" who was getting foreclosed to give up his gun before he really needed it to shoot the locksmith.

Friend of yours, Louise?

Speaking as one of the (according to Denise) misinformed and narrowminded suburbanites (I suppose this implies that she considers herself to be informed and broadminded), I don't think it's really necessary to impose a 2-year ban on gun ownership, as sort of an "experiment". There are already plenty of experiments going on across the country. Just look at how well strict gun-control laws are working in Chicago. Another example is that it is fairly universal for convicted felons to not be allowed to buy or own guns, under existing laws (I THINK that this is probably true for all 50 states, although I don't know that for sure.) But this law doesn't prevent felons from using guns to commit additional crimes. So under what sort of logic would it follow that a broader ban would be more effective at controlling the behavior of criminals?

It IS difficult to "prove" (or disprove) the effectiveness (or lack, thereof) of more stringent gun-control measures, for a variety of reasons, including the inability to differentiate the effects from other influencers of crime statistics. But if anything, the correlations tend to work in the other direction. Higher legal ownership of guns tends to correlate with less crime, not more. Even if it disagrees with your own personal beliefs.

As it turns out, I don't own a gun. Up until this point in my life, I haven't felt the need. BUT, if I ever DO feel the need to own one, for personal safety, recreational use, or whatever, I don't want my right to own one to be infringed. For those who don't like guns, I support your right to NOT own them.

For an interesting read on how things are in Switzerland (oh, those crazy Swiss!), check this out:

Web Link

If you want to suggest more stringent penalties for use of a gun in committing a crime, that might be a reasonable approach, as well as being more effective. Looking at the issues associated with mental illness also makes sense, although there are some slippery-slope rights issues, there, as well.

Boy, it sure would help your analysis if a large country with a diverse population including a lot of immigrants were to, oh, I don't know, require people to sell certain types of guns back to the government, reducing the number of households with guns by, say, half, so you could see what actually would happen under those circumstances, wouldn't it?

Web Link