Thoughts and prayers, y’all. Thoughts and prayers.
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Wow. When I was a kid we had fire drills. Are gun drills an American thing or just a 21st century thing?
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Just back the truck up and keep dumping, guys.
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American thing, obviously. Have you seen this anywhere here in Taiwan, because I sure haven’t.
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There’s even a special sanitised name, active shooter.
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Guns and a pervasive death culture are a recipe for disaster in slow motion.
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Here are all the school shootings so far in 2018:
January 3: A 31-year-old man shot and killed himself in the parking lot of his former elementary school in Michigan.
January 4: Shots were fired at New Start High School outside Seattle. No one was hit or hurt.
January 5: A bullet from a pellet gun shattered the window of a Forest City, Iowa, school bus full of students while in transit. No one was injured.
January 9: A 14-year-old male student killed himself in the bathroom of an elementary school in Arizona.
January 10: A bullet hit a building at California State University, San Bernardino. No one was injured.
January 10: A student at Grayson College in Texas accidentally fired a bullet during a gun training session with an instructor. No one was hurt.
January 15: Police in Marshall, Texas, responded to reports of gunfire just after midnight on the Wiley College campus. A stray bullet entered one of the dormitories, but no one was hit.
January 20: A Winston-Salem State University football player was shot and killed during an event at Wake Forest University.
January 22: A 16-year-old shot and injured a female student several times at Italy High School in Texas.
January 22: Someone in a pickup truck fired at a group of students gathered in front of Net Charter School in New Orleans. One boy was injured.
January 23: A 15-year-old student at a high school in Kentucky shot and killed two students and injured 17 others.
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This is one of the reasons we left the USA. Even low crime areas aren’t really low crime.
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Taiwan has a better chance at being recognized as an independent state by Beijing, and getting a seat on the UN security council, than any meaningful gun restrictions getting passed in the US.
The argument against will center around the notion that any gun restriction will not end crime or shootings, in the same vein that seatbelt and helmet laws to not prevent people dying in car or motorcycle accidents. Or it will just fall straight to the 2nd amendment with many arguing that the 2nd amendment is absolute and any weaponry restrictions are unconstitutional.
Or the next Democrat president could just appoint some Supreme Court justices who declare the 2nd Amendment unconstitutional. After all, what’s stopping them?
What? It is not in the scope of the USSC to make that declaration. An amendment can only be repealed by either consensus of 2/3rds of both chambers of congress, or convention of 2/3rds of the states.
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The Constitution is a “living document”. Haven’t you heard? That means justices can and do declare anything they want “unconstitutional” if it violates the “living Constitution” as opposed to the dead one.
I do believe the document is a living document. I believe that from my interpretation of what is written within the document concerning “due process” and the amendment process. Laws can be made and then upheld or shot down, depending on the interpretation of the document. That is fine, as long as due process is adhered to. Upholding, reversing, or dismissing a ruling or law based on popular opinion, or for the sake of it, is -in my opinion, wrong.
With this is mind, I believe that the gun debate is not so much a constitutional debate as it is a moral debate. I think populism is wrong and no laws should be passed, or judgements made based on such. I agree that no meaningful gun restrictions will arise from any mass shooting. For one thing, I think it is a knee-jerk reaction. Second, the populist debate against it is too strong. I do believe those who commit a crime involving a firearm, or any weapon, and convicted of said crime by a jury of their peers should be handed a stiffer penalty than those crimes that did not involve weaponry.
Declaring the 2nd Amendment unconstitutional. Not a problem.
You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
— Former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall
That’s the strangest knee-jerk reaction I’ve ever heard of. Week after week, year after year of senseless slaughter of innocent people and somehow it causes a “knee-jerk reaction” of “oh we might have to look at the laws on this one”.
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Sorry. I was a little too ambiguous in that.
What I was getting at was after a shooting and all the talk of new or tougher laws, anything that would get passed may be based solely on populist sentiment, and not of constitutionality. This would most likely lead to any legislation being tossed by a SC ruling.
I wonder why no-one has stepped up to propose more guns for teenagers yet. Don’t they have the right to defend themselves? 
Is that a serious suggestion? (It’s hard to tell with you, Comrade Politbureau.)
You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
— Former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall
Was former Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall serious?
True feels safer in Taiwan crime wise, but sadly you have a 10 million percent increase of getting killed as a pedestrian crossing the street or standing on a side walk and who doesn’t drive drunk here?.
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