Gun Control

Trump Worshiper who helps facilitate Mass Murder of School Children wrote:

[i]I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
And we're just the guys to do it.
Let's do it.

From the Department of How can I inspire even more people to speak out in favor of gun control....
Rick Santorum says students should take CPR classes instead of pushing gun control

Quote :

Former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum on Sunday suggested students protesting for gun control legislation would be better served by taking CPR classes and preparing for active shooter scenarios.

"How about kids instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that," Santorum said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Considering the general ignorance regarding guns that has been displayed in this thread, I would hope that some of the participants take the time to read and digest this article.
You might learn something.
(I am not employing the word 'ignorance', in this case, as a disparaging term, but some of the things that have been posted here have just been so wrong that it is apparent that the posters, rather than having some sort of agenda, actually do not know what they are talking about. There is no shame in asking the right questions in order to get the right answers. All it takes is the humility to add to one's vocabulary one very simple phrase - 'I don't know.').

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/in-defense-of-gunsplaining/

In Defense of ‘Gunsplaining’

By David French

March 26, 2018 3:19 PM

Ignorance is the gun-control movement’s Achilles heel.

It’s become popular on the left — thanks in part to a widely-shared Washington Post op-ed by Adam Weinstein — to scorn so-called “gunsplaining.” Weinstein defines the term as the habit of gun-rights advocates to “bully” gun-control supporters with technical jargon. Think the “AR” in AR-15 stands for “assault rifle”? Then you’re too dumb to talk about gun policy. Did you confuse a magazine and a clip? Then you’re too ignorant to talk about background checks.
There’s a kernel of truth in Weinstein’s critique. There are gun-rights supporters who revel in jargon and belittle those with inferior knowledge, but the problem of “gunsplaining” pales in comparison to the mass-scale ignorance of the gun-control movement and — critically — the mainstream media. It’s an ignorance that contributes to bad policy proposals and threatens constitutional rights. It’s an ignorance that has the potential to empower criminals while rendering law-abiding citizens more vulnerable to foreseeable threats.
This ignorance manifests itself in multiple ways. First, it’s common to see activists and marchers consistently say things that just aren’t true. You could see examples of this all over the March for Our Lives this weekend. Signs said ridiculous things like, “It was harder to buy this poster board than an AR-15” and “I want to live in a world where guns are harder to get than Hamilton tickets.” People routinely pretended that gun sales are virtually unregulated or that even “machine guns” are somehow easy to purchase.
Second, they’ll advocate “solutions” that won’t make a dime’s worth of difference to mass shootings or to gun violence more broadly. Our nation’s gun-violence problem is highly concentrated in a small percentage of the American population: people with prior criminal records who largely obtain and possess their guns unlawfully. Even if you focus on mass shootings — as a famous Washington Post fact-check noted — various “common sense” gun-control proposals would not have prevented a single modern massacre.
Third, the proposed solutions betray an extraordinary ignorance of the realities of gun ownership. Let’s take, for example, the common proposal to ban “high-capacity magazines.” That’s often defined to mean any magazine capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition. In reality, though, a ban on ten-round magazines is a ban on the standard-capacity magazine in tens of millions of guns that Americans use for self-defense. I often carry a Ruger SR9, and it came with a 17-round magazine. Dozens of other popular guns also come with magazines of similar sizes. Police carry guns with similar magazines, and — critically — criminals often do as well.
Activists can play funny games with language. The phrase “high-capacity magazine” implies something unusual, something you don’t normally see — like, say, a drum magazine on an AR-15. In reality, given the definition, they’re purporting to ban the norm. They’re telling law-abiding citizens that they should have less firepower than the very criminals who present the reasonably foreseeable threat.
Current gun-control proposals can sound interesting and compelling — until you hear that they’re likely ineffective, or especially if you hear that they would burden your own right of self-defense.
And why should law-abiding Americans have less firepower than criminals? Because — and this is where the gun-control movement truly loses its authority — they say we don’t “need” anything more than ten rounds to defend ourselves. That’s right, the very people who time and again demonstrate their profound ignorance about firearms purport to tell law-abiding, gun-owning American citizens — who possess far superior knowledge — exactly what they “need” to keep their families safe. It’s extraordinary. I’d rather take my self-defense advice from actual experts than from politicians and activists who don’t know what they’re talking about.
In an insightful piece for the New York Times today, Margot Sanger-Katz writes that “Political consultants who have worked on ballot measures say that it can often be easy for opponents of gun laws to chip away at very strong initial public support for a given policy.” She talked to David Farmer, who helped lead a failed Maine effort to impose universal background checks. He attributed the loss to gun owners’ ability to persuade:
“We know for a fact we lost the argument at the kitchen table and the bar and the bowling alley,” he said. “The gun enthusiasts were talking to their friends and relatives and neighbors. They felt about it in a way that was so passionate that they won those one-on-one encounters, and they were very successful in bringing in people to their side.”
Gun-owners aren’t just enthusiastic, they’re informed. Current gun-control proposals can sound interesting and compelling — until you hear that they’re likely ineffective, or especially if you hear that they would burden your own right of self-defense.
The media’s persistent and enduring gun ignorance is mystifying — as is its seeming willingness to actively mock or scorn actual expertise. Imagine if pro-life citizens wanted to limit abortions by banning or heavily regulating the instruments used to kill unborn children. Would counter-arguments that the regulations would adversely affect other, life-saving procedures be scorned as “devicesplaining”?
One gets the impression that all too many members of the media and all too many activists don’t want to know anything more about guns. They’ve made the decision they need to make — guns are bad — and the rest is a distraction. To them, the gun-control argument isn’t a technical argument at all. It’s fundamentally a moral argument, and in this moral argument the actual effectiveness of any given law is less important than its intent — or at least its ability in some way to chip away at American gun culture.
Yet Americans don’t give away their freedoms so willingly. And they’re especially unwilling to limit their liberties in response to arguments based in ignorance, sprinkled with condescension and moral superiority. So law-abiding gun-owners respond by “gunsplaining,” and they find that when they gunsplain, they tend to win. Ignorance is a plague, and the gun-rights community is eager to provide the cure.

Trump Worshiping Gun Nut who advocates for the mass murder of school children wrote:

[b]Considering the general ignorance regarding guns that has been displayed in this thread, I would hope that some of the participants take the time to read and digest this article.
You might learn something.

What,that you need a penis extender to feel like a man"? We already knew that!

I love making a fool out of myself for Artie's Amusement wrote:

Super duper strategy denigrating the survivors of a mass casualty school shooting.

Guess where the Trump worshiping troll found it?
Alex Jones’ Infowars releases video depicting Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez as member of the Hitler Youth  Jones also played video with Adolf Hitler dubbed over David Hogg speech

Quote :

From the March 27 edition of Genesis Communications Network’s The Alex Jones Show:

Later in the show, Jones played a longer video that featured Parkland survivor David Hogg’s speech at March For Our Lives dubbed over with an Adolf Hitler speech:

Alex Jones Fan wrote:

I have posted numerous things recently in the hope of getting a discussion going

CrossDressing Alex Jones Fan wrote:

Artchel 60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Super duper strategy denigrating the survivors of a mass casualty school shooting.

Guess where the Trump worshiping troll found it?
Alex Jones’ Infowars releases video depicting Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez as member of the Hitler Youth  Jones also played video with Adolf Hitler dubbed over David Hogg speech

Quote :

From the March 27 edition of Genesis Communications Network’s The Alex Jones Show:

Later in the show, Jones played a longer video that featured Parkland survivor David Hogg’s speech at March For Our Lives dubbed over with an Adolf Hitler speech:

Actually, I got it directly from youtube.

Sure you did. Yeah,we believe you.   Honest we do.  Really

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/08/rant-second-amendment-repeal/

An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment

By CHARLES C. W. COOKE
August 27, 2015 7:30 PM

Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.

Editor’s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by NRO editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens’s call to repeal the Second Amendment.

A few hours after yesterday’s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:

The @NRA & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a FUCKING BOY’S COAT. pic.twitter.com/cKR0Nk4Uwm

— rob Delaney (@robdelaney) August 26, 2015

For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation in full (it’s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

We should be absolutely clear about what Delaney is arguing here: He is a) agreeing with Jefferson that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,” b) contending that “progress” suggests that the individual right to keep and bear arms is now counterproductive, and c) concluding that it is time therefore to make a “change in law and constitution” — in other words, to repeal the Second Amendment. This, it is true, is not a mainstream position on the American Left — at least, it is not one that is argued openly. But it is a reasonably popular one on social media, it has strong support within the more leftward-leaning parts of the political commentariat, it is often implied by the casual manner in which progressives such as President Obama refer to “Australia” and other heavily regulated nations, and it enjoys indirect approval from around one quarter of the American public. When the likes of Rob Delaney and Bill Maher and Keith Ellison say that we need to get rid of the Second Amendment, they are not speaking in a vacuum but reflecting the views of a small but vocal portion of the American population. And they mean it.

That being so, here’s the million-dollar question: What the hell are they waiting for? Go on, chaps. Bloody well do it.

Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don’t fall back on excuses. Don’t play cheap motte-and-bailey games. And don’t pretend that you’re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you’re just appalled by the Heller decision. You’re not. Heller recognized what was obvious to the amendment’s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That “right of the people” means “right of the people,” as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller “interpretation” wouldn’t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution.

It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take.

This will involve hard work, of course. You can’t just sit online and preen to those who already agree with you. No siree. Instead, you’ll have to go around the states — traveling and preaching until the soles of your shoes are thin as paper. You’ll have to lobby Congress, over and over and over again. You’ll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown in your direction. You’ll have to tell anybody who will listen to you that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they’re childish and beholden to the “gun lobby”; that they don’t care enough about children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only because their penises are small and they’re not “real men.” And remember, you can’t half-ass it this time. You’re not going out there to tell these people that you want “reform” or that “enough is enough.” You’re going there to solicit their support for removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake: It’ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he’s not as well endowed as he’d like to be. It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.
And don’t stop there. No, no. There’ll still be a lot of work to be done. As anybody with a passing understanding of America’s constitutional system knows, repealing the Second Amendment won’t in and of itself lead to the end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next, you’ll need to craft the laws that bring about change — think of them as modern Volstead Acts — and you’ll need to get them past the opposition. And, if the federal government doesn’t immediately go the whole hog, you’ll need to replicate your efforts in the states, too, 45 of which have their own constitutional protections. Maybe New Jersey and California will go quietly. Maybe. But Idaho won’t. Louisiana won’t. Kentucky won’t. Maine won’t. You’ll need to persuade those sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do what’s right as defined by you. Unfortunately, that won’t involve vague talk of holding “national conversations” and “doing something” and “fighting back against the NRA.” It’ll mean going to all sorts of groups — unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues — and telling them not that you want “common-sense reforms,” but that you want their guns, as in Australia or Britain or Japan. Obviously, the Republicans aren’t going to help in this, so you’ll need to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you’ll need their presidential candidates on board. That means you’ll need to make full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That means you’ll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to back away if it gets tough. And if they won’t, you’ll need to start a third party and accept all that that entails.
And when you’ve done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment, you’ll need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby, eh-we-don’t-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I mean enforce it — with force. When Australia took its decision to Do Something, the Australian citizenry owned between 2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe three-quarters of a million of them — somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. That wouldn’t be good enough here, of course. There are around 350 million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked up one in three, you’d only be returning the stock to where it was in 1994. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8 million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American people, it’s that they do not go quietly into the night. But the government has to have their guns. It has to. The Second Amendment has to go.
You’re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants — and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won’t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item — let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it’s slightly odd that you think that we can’t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that’s just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to be done: For the children; for America; for the future. Hey hey, ho ho, the Second Amendment has to go. Let’s do this thing.

When do you get started?

Yeah.
What he said.

How Stoneman Douglas students organized gun-control rallies around the world

Quote :

The teenagers brought eloquence, commitment and a determination to generate lasting change. Their adult allies contributed money and an array of skills, from media relations to event planning on a massive scale.

The gun-control rallies that seized the nation’s attention Saturday arose from an unusual combination of youthful idealism and adult professionalism, yielding events whose national impact may last well through this year’s mid-term elections.

“We are minors, for the most part,” said Delaney Tarr, one of the speakers and organizers at the Washington D.C. event. “We can’t file permits. I can’t, technically, check into a hotel on my own without an adult because I’m 17. We do need adults for those things that we’re too young for, for the technical aspect. But the heart and soul of this movement is in the youth.”

To many right-wing critics, the March for Our Lives rallies looked too slick and well-organized, with speeches that were too well-written and videos that no student could have produced – evidence that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students were pawns, not leaders.

“Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous,” the National Rifle Association said, in a widely repeated Facebook statement posted Saturday, the day of the March for Our Lives rallies. “Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.”

Hollywood elites certainly played a big role, from the millions in celebrity contributions to the on-the-ground management of the Washington event by Deena Katz, a Los Angeles television producer. The New York and Los Angeles public relations firm 42 West contributed its services. A Stoneman Douglas alumni group raised more than $100,000 to send kids to Washington.

But while the students leaned on adults familiar with the political, financial and governmental levers that needed to be pulled, they say the idea that they were being manipulated is nonsense.
March for Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C.
March for Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C. (Mike Stocker/Sun-Sentinel)

“I find it kind of amusing that the fact that we don’t want to be shot and killed makes us pawns,” Tarr said “The only reason we’re doing this is for those 17 dead and for everyone else who has died because of gun violence. But they, for whatever reason, have equated that with being pawns. My speech was my speech. It was not written by someone else for me. It was not the words of someone that I was told to say. It was true because that is what we were focusing on. We were focusing on telling our truth and our story.”

After the Feb. 14 shooting by expelled student Nikolas Cruz, which left 17 dead and 17 wounded, the national media descended on Parkland. Wendy Zipes Hunter, a celebrity booker who lives in Parkland, helped the students from the start in dealing with the press, but she said her role was advisory only.
Emma Gonzalez
Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, at the rally in Washington, D.C. (Mike Stocker/Sun-Sentinel)

“I was a mentor and a resource,” she said. “They’re awesome. What you see is what you get. They’re incredibly focused, driven and inspiring. There were some adults who were able to help where they could, and I feel fortunate to be among them.”

A prominent coordinator of Saturday’s rallies was Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-control group founded by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The organization gave $5,000 grants to more than 200 local organizers across the country and sent logistical teams to coordinate some of these events, including the one in Parkland that drew thousands of people.

For the Parkland rally, Everytown took care of setting up the stage, fencing, shuttle buses and other logistics, but the organization didn’t try to take control of the event, students said.

“They never tried to push any of their ideas,” said Casey Sherman, 17, a student organizer and speaker at the Parkland event. “When we first got on the phone with Everytown, we made clear if we had a large organization coming in to help, the kids’ voices had to come out on top. It was important that it still remained student-led. They immediately understood that. They made it clear that they never intended to take over. They were there just to give us help.”
March for Our Lives protest in Parkland
March for Our Lives protest in Parkland (Carline Jean/Sun-Sentinel)

Sari Kaufman, 15, another organizer, said it was the students who planned the program, reaching out to potential speakers such as Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the attack.

“We wrote all our own speeches,” she said. “We had one of our teachers look over them for grammar.”

For the event in the nation’s capital, gun-control groups such as Everytown and the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence contributed volunteers.

“We had busloads of people going in and places for people to get signs,” said Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign. “We hosted a sign-making party. We didn’t tell anyone what to say or what to advocate for. I was as impressed as anyone with the kids’ ability to articulate and share their messages.”

Stoneman Douglas’ far-flung alumni network contributed money and services, raising more than $100,000 for transportation, food and other expenses, said Craig Pugatch, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and one of the leaders of the alumni effort.

“The alumni came out in full force,” he said. “Our alumni are spread all across the country. We’ve got doctors, lawyers, PR teams, writers, professionals, journalists, you name it in the alumni group. And we called upon them and said, can your skills help, and if your skills can’t help we can certainly use your money, and if your money can’t help we’d like you to come volunteer.”
March for Our Lives protest in Boca Raton
March for Our Lives protest in Boca Raton (Jim Rassol/Sun-Sentinel)

The money, combined with funds from the Giffords gun-control group and free flights from Delta Air Lines, helped send nearly 1,000 Stoneman Douglas students and chaperones to the event.

Jeff Foster, the Advanced Placement government teacher who has served as a mentor to the student activists, was backstage at the Washington rally and credited the adults with much of the professionalism of the event, from the quality of the videos to the logistics of the on-stage program.

“That was done by the adults in the room,” he said. “They had a roomful of very put-together people who were running behind the scenes. They did a rehearsal the night before. It wasn’t a school drama production, that’s for sure -- not that the drama productions aren’t awesome at our school. It was professionally run.”

But the Stoneman Douglas students and the other young speakers were the soul of the rally, Foster said, with their words, their memories of the horror of that day and their ideas. He said he’s angered by the attacks claiming they were passive actors in a drama written by Democrats, gun-control groups or anyone else.

“I’m a Republican, and it’s pretty embarrassing,” he said. “I have a couple of conservative talk show hosts that I’ve spoken to that have my phone number, and they’ve texted me, saying stuff like they’re puppets for the left, and I’ve said that’s not true at all. I said just because it jibes with their beliefs, it doesn’t mean these kids are being used, but they keep saying and saying it. It’s embarrassing.”

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, at the rally in Washington, D.C. (Mike Stocker/Sun-Sentinel)

Artie60438 wrote:

 Remind us who actually disappeared. Hint:His initials were HC
Then there was Chris Christie and Bridgegate...

That's what you come back with?
     

Artie60438 wrote:

George Zimmerman gains more than 100 pounds since fatally shooting Trayvon Martin

Quote :

Murder defendant George Zimmerman, accused of killing Florida teen Trayvon Martin last year, tips the scales at more than 300 pounds, undergoing a substantial weight gain since his April 2012 arrest.

The 29-year-old, facing a second-degree murder charge, has ballooned 110 pounds since the night he fatally shot the 17-year-old Martin, a spokesman for Zimmerman’s attorney told the Daily News.

It's never too early to start bulking up for prison.

Artie60438 wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

The fix was in from the start and another murderer of an unarmed black child goes free...

Got any other predictions?

happy jack wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

 Remind us who actually disappeared. Hint:His initials were HC
Then there was Chris Christie and Bridgegate...

That's what you come back with?
     

Artie60438 wrote:

George Zimmerman gains more than 100 pounds since fatally shooting Trayvon Martin

Quote :

Murder defendant George Zimmerman, accused of killing Florida teen Trayvon Martin last year, tips the scales at more than 300 pounds, undergoing a substantial weight gain since his April 2012 arrest.

The 29-year-old, facing a second-degree murder charge, has ballooned 110 pounds since the night he fatally shot the 17-year-old Martin, a spokesman for Zimmerman’s attorney told the Daily News.

It's never too early to start bulking up for prison.

Artie60438 wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

The fix was in from the start and another murderer of an unarmed black child goes free...

Got any other predictions?

Link please