The gun control discussion thread

Discussion Open Forum
141

[quote=“gao_bo_han”][quote=“caltonhill”]
OK, I know this is going to make me unpopular, but here goes:

There were 33 victims at VT, not 32
without in any way condoning what he did, or placing his death on a par with those he killed, it is important to acknowledge that Cho was a victim too. His life is over at the age of 23; his family have lost a loved one.[/quote]

I’m having difficulty mustering sympathy for the murderer. I’ve met people who had to go through counseling, and I know one lady who has been institutionalized twice. Mental illness does not justify murder. Even with the insanity plea a person usually has to prove he or she was incapable of discerning right and wrong at the time of the murder. But Cho was simply filled with rage and hatred…I doubt he would fit the legal definition of insane. Cho was not a victim…he was a perpetrator.[/quote]

I agree in part with caltonhill. Cho was both a victim (of mental illness) and a perpetrator (of a terrible crime). I doubt Cho was happy for much of his life. His actions were not those of a healthy, reasonable, person of sound mind making voluntary, rational choices. To a large degree he lacked control over his actions and emotions. Sure, he knew what he was doing and voluntarily went out and prepared for and committed intentional mass murder and suicide. But he did those acts because he had, for years, beeen under the grip of crazy delusions, pyschoses and madness that caused him to think and act in bizarre, anti-social and irrational ways. I too feel empathy for anyone who is a victim of madness, even if he commits terrible acts while under its grip.

Surely Cho would have been happier if he had been a completely different person, capable of ordinary social relations, interaction, activities, and conversation with others, and a stable, abuse-free sexual relationship with partners, with whom he shared common interests and aspirations, and spent his time in healthy, constructive pursuits for which he received praise, admiration and self-satisfaction. But apparently all that kind of stuff was completely foreign and unavailable to him as a result of his mental state that he was unable to control. For that I do feel compassion for him and for the millions of others who suffer from mental illness (including among my friends and family).

But I disagree that it’s wrong to refer to him as nuts or wacko. Yes, those are not clinical psychiatric terms and someone suffering from madness might feel offended to be referred to that way. But Cho’s dead. Can’t cause him any offense now. And, despite the fact that he was under the grip of a madness that he could not control, his acts were so horrific and caused such devastation to so many people, that in a way I believe it’s a little cathartic to refer to him as wacko. No longer does one need to carefully evaluate the situation to figure out “why?” Instead, totally wacko seems to be such an extreme answer that, for me anyway, it helps bring closure. No need for examining reasons; he was just totally nuts.

142

It made a lot more sense in the 1800’s and before there were semi-automated and automatic weapons. At this point, a few Apache helicopters and some tanks could handle several thousand people. And this was just after the British empire had disenfranchised the colonists and their ability to arm themselves was a key factor in the revolution.

So, to the authors of the Bill of Rights it wasn’t such poor logic. They couldn’t imagine that one kid could walk into a public place and murder 30+ people. In their time, that one kid would only be able to kill one or two people with his one-shot muskets before he was wrestled to the ground.

[edit: Imani beat me to the punch!][/quote]

I disagree that the founding fathers were so uneducated and short-sighted as to never envisage improvements made in weaponry. And I also doubt they would have agreed to stricter gun control among the citizens merely because the government’s technology was improving. That doesn’t square with what I’ve read about our founders through their letters and journals, and several comprehensive biographies. Take Thomas Jefferson for instance. In addition to being an avid gun owner and champion of the right to bear arms, he was also one of the best educated men of his day. He had a fascination with science and technology and read all of the science books and periodicals he could get his hands on. He studied physics, engineering, ship-building, astronomy and navigation, botany, and a variety of other sciences. He made several accurate astronomical predictions, including the eclipse of 1778. He helped secure funding for scientists at American universities and followed their work closely. He wrote several scientific essays. He also took an active interest in the rapidly improving mathematical theories of his day.

To claim that our founders, particularly men like Jefferson, were incapable of predicting advances in weaponry is completely stupid and belies a total ignorance of the kind of men our founders were. They were not uneducated bumpkins caught in some intellectual time warp. They were men of the Enlightenment who believed in, promulgated, and took an active role in scientific progress. Heck even in their own day there were significant improvements made in rifling, cannonry, and ship design. I’m curious to know on what people base their claims our founders believed muzzle loading muskets were the end all, be all of weaponry. I’m guessing it isn’t an active interest our founders’ writings and history in general.

On to the “well-regulated militia” clause of the second amendment and the individual rights versus collective rights issue it raises. There is a mountain of case law, including Supreme Court decisions, that affirm the second amendment applies to the individual. The Dick Act of 1903 specifically defined the National Guard as the “organized militia” and all other citizens as the “unorganized militia”. Also, the majority of the original 13 states included the right to bear arms in their constitutions (which were written before the national constitution), and the language of their constitutions was individual-specific. And finally the writings of our founders clearly indicate they DID NOT believe that only certain groups of citizens would have the right to bear arms. And don’t forget that guns were constructed, bought, and sold freely in all of the 13 states prior to ratification and continued to be so after ratification. That did not change. If our founders really did intent for only certain groups of citizens to be armed, then why was there NO EFFORT WHATSOEVER made to create this situation. Why were citizens buying and selling guns and ammo all across the states and territories, without any intervention or regulation by the government? Why would this not have been mentioned in the founders letters and journals, not to mention their successors? Face facts people…the second amendment was intended for the individual, has been interpreted by state and federal courts to mean such, has been reaffirmed by legislation, and has always been the reality since the law came into existence.

143

You don’t need to justify anything when you are a fruit loop and bump of a few unlucky strays who just happen to be around on a bad day.

No amount of laws or discussions on mental illness will address this fact. Do you think a mentally ill person gives a rats arse what other people are going to think about their actions?

Damn, goot go time to watch a re-rerun of the original Psycho thriller. Of course if the author was writing that in his creative writing class in the USA today they’d be getting their heads examined by the thought police.

144

[quote]June 11, 2007

A shooting inside a Wisconsin home killed six people, and a toddler was found in a nearby vehicle with a gunshot to the chest, a police chief said on Sunday. . . Delavan is a bucolic community of 8000 people about 65km south-west of Milwaukee.[/quote]

link

145

“Guns don’t kill people, people do.”
Uh-huh. But guns make it a whole lot easier.

“If someone’s really determined, they’ll just use a knife.”
Uh-huh. But it’s a whole lot more difficult. Sometimes much, much more difficult.

146

[quote=“Jaboney”]“Guns don’t kill people, people do.”
Uh-huh. But guns make it a whole lot easier.

“If someone’s really determined, they’ll just use a knife.”
Uh-huh. But it’s a whole lot more difficult. Sometimes much, much more difficult.

On the topic of out of control geriatrics with guns … :wink:

[quote=“NYC granny shoots mugger with .357 Magnum”]

A wheelchair-bound but hardly defenceless Harlem granny is being sued for $5m after popping a .357 Magnum cap into an alleged mugger, the New York Post reports.

Margaret Johnson, 59, described as “a retired city bus driver who has a dislocated hip and a ruptured disc”, was sitting in her motorised mobility scooter in September 2006 when Deron Johnson, 48, “tried to snatch her purse and gold chain”.

This turned out to be a bad move, since Ms Johnson’s grandfather was Harlem crime boss Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, a no-messing-about character who once battled with fellow gangster Dutch Shultz for control of the Harlem numbers racket.

She said of grandpa, immortalised as Bumpy Jonas in the 1971 blaxploitation classic Shaft: “He raised me like his daughter. I wanted to be just like Daddy. It made me a strong woman.”

To prove the point, she shot the would-be robber in his left elbow, and he was quickly detained by cops. He was acquitted at trial, however, after claiming in his defence that he’d simply kicked his alleged victim’s Shih Tzu, (named Malika, for the record), after it attacked him - an act of self-defence which provoked granny to whip out her piece. [/quote]

Being that this is America, the asshole mugger is suing not only her but also the landlord based on the idea that somehow it’s the landlord’s responsibility to check to make sure his tenants don’t have guns. Here is the link to the NY Post article including the granny posing with an Uzi submachine gun.