Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumA Deafening Silence
Education Correspondent, PBS NewsHour; Author, 'The Influence of Teachers'
Posted: 05/04/2012 6:52 am
"I want to be a veterinarian, and I want to go to Princeton University," a smiling 15-year-old girl told us when we were filming at KIPP: Believe, a high-performing charter school in New Orleans. Tell us more, we said. "I want to finish college because I want to have that pride in myself that, to know that I finished something, that I went somewhere and I finished it," Christine Marcelin added.
Watching her speak, one senses that Christine has what it takes, and it's easy to imagine her becoming a successful vet, or perhaps a doctor or business leader.
Her history teacher, Scarlett Feinberg, shared that view:
If you read that paragraph carefully, you noted that Ms. Feinberg spoke about Christine in the past tense. She won't be going to Princeton, won't be a veterinarian and won't have a long life dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans and helping others.
More: HuffPo Story
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Rittermeister
(170 posts)I say that without a trace of sarcasm. My heart would break for her if she'd been run over by a car or burned up in a house fire or strangled to death. There's not much worse than dead kids.
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)bongbong
(5,436 posts)I wonder how soon the NRA will have a pro-gun rally in New Orleans.
Rittermeister
(170 posts)They're almost as pedantic as you are 
.
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)nt
baldguy
(36,649 posts)Or haven't you been paying attention?
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)I've never heard of them holding a public rally.
Rally vs meeting.
My office holds monthly meetings, we don't hold rallies.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)rally - a mass meeting intended to arouse group enthusiasm
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rally+
rally - To call together for a common purpose; assemble; A gathering, especially one intended to inspire enthusiasm for a cause
DonP
(6,185 posts)You're probably thinking of all the rallies the Brady bunch used to hold, but stopped years ago when they couldn't get more than a few people to show up.
The NRA has one legally required meeting a year to elect their BoD. So they are able to beat the gun control people with only one meeting a year.
But I guess that's still better than no meetings and no organization or grassroots backing and a handful of hypocritical 1%ers supporting the gun control "cause" financially.
But they do have a great museum, with some real historical pieces, in Fairfax Virginia that's worth a visit. No politics in the museum, just some really interesting exhibits.
But if the NRA starts having rallies, we'll be sure to let you know. In the meantime feel free to just keep making shit up.
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)Same semantics.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)Remmah2
(3,291 posts)Where are the numerous NRA rallies?
Plenty of Tea Party people on parade in multiple cities. I see pro life and pro choice rallies. I see gay rights rallies. I see labor union marches. I see students protesting. I see civil rights marches. I see religious rallies. The multiple, that were eluded to, NRA rallies are non-existent.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)And try to re-learn your 8th grade reading comprehension skills.
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)nt
bongbong
(5,436 posts)The NRA has lots and lots of them
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)I would like to attend.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Since our interlocutor is of the "Everyone knows..." school of rhetoric, I doubt any links will be forthcoming...
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Johnny Rico
(1,438 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)
Union Scribe
(7,099 posts)The author, however, is a fool.
The girl's boyfriend got into an argument and the thugs that killed him got rid of her as a possible witness. And this guy's telling me that it's because someone knew how to get ahold of a gun that this happened. And that's it. Not because, you know, something is so fucking wrong with them that they'd even consider murdering someone, and a totally innocent third party too, for that.
A lot of us grew up with guns. Not a lot of us, then or now, decide to escalate a "scuffle" (as Merrow puts it) into multiple homicides. And if he's right that more kids are doing that now (I know the stats wars go on forever here) then there's something a lot more fucking wrong than access to guns. It's the desire to USE THEM. Why would that be? Well...he seems real breezy in dismissing the shredder that society feeds kids into, a lifetime of debt, job uncertainty, etc. In generations before, you got a degree and that was a ticket to a good job, or if you didn't you could still live a good life in manufacturing thanks to unions. And when you bought a home, it really was a win-win investment. Now?
For him to throw all that out and focus on his pet peeve is a weeeeee bit too convenient for my taste. It's the same simplistic bull I see over and over, that's about as deep and penetrating as GOP sex.
Rittermeister
(170 posts)the murder rate is at something like a 40-year low. Perhaps media is just more sensationalist than they've ever been.
Horse puckey guns are more available. My dad was tromping around the woods with a semiauto shotgun when he was twelve. My grandfather was shooting crows and squirrels with a .22 when he was seven. Unsupervised, mind. In the rural south, guns were like shovels - household tools that nobody really thought all that much about.
Callisto32
(2,997 posts)it's still that way.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)The speculation is that Brandon got into a playground scuffle a day or two before
young sociopaths? It sounds like without a gun, this oped would never be written. They girl still would have been murdered. These kids did not go to the gun store to buy a gun. In fact they were violating the Brady Bill (one of four federal gun control laws) by possessing it.
This one begs the question: Before the Gun Control Act of 1968, anyone with the money could mail order a handgun and have it delivered to their door. No background checks, no ATF form 4473, or any of that other stuff. Yet, the writer just said previous generations were not shooting each other. WTF? Can someone explain that to me? Was it a problem in 1967 or not? Street gangs usually used knives, tire chains, homemade zip guns, but not Smith & Wessons. Yet they could buy one out of a Sears catalog.
This guy perhaps puts it better.
107 Fans
08:28 AM on 05/07/2012
"This is not happening because today's kids are different. Adolescents are no more volatile, insecure, energetic and full of doubt than any previous generation. What's different is that guns are available"
Total nonsense. Guns are harder to get now then they have ever been in America. Prior to the 1970's, guns were available through mail order and in most hardware stores. Background checks and bans on felons, domestic abusers, and the mentally ill from buying guns were minimal to non-existent.
Prior to 1934, it was easy to own machine guns. So why weren't there any incident at schools involving Johnny getting a hold of his dad's Tommy gun or granpa's Browning Automatic Rifle?
iverglas
(38,549 posts)You and whoever you're quoting sure do spout some.
You:
Can you give me next week's Lotto 649 numbers please?
If the girl was killed because she has a witness, she would not have been killed if the first murder had not been committed. Now tell us that the first murder would have been committed if no gun had been available. I'm sure you know.
Ohio9, whoeverthehell that is:
That doesn't qualify only as nonsense, it qualifies as dishonesty and deceit. If anyone had been talking about getting guns LEGALLY, which is what this Ohio9 is talking about, then they would have said so. They weren't, so they didn't.
The statement that guns are harder to get now than they have ever been in the US is quite simply false.
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)Finding somebody to sell you a gun illegally, paying a far higher price for it, and risking several felony convictions merely for possessing it (today) is easier than walking into a hardware store, paying MSRP or less, and walking away squared with the law (yesterday)? Remember, in our recent past, kids openly brought rifles and pistols to school for various reasons, and didn't get in a bit of trouble.
Criminals must now buy their guns furtively and illegally. In the past, they could buy them openly and legally.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)That seller is, legally and ethically, equivalent to a guy selling pistols with obliterated serial numbers out of a car's trunk. It is still illegal to sell to somebody that you know, or should reasonably suspect, is not legally able to buy a firearm. Some dealers are crooked and lazy, and they are conducting furtive, illegal sales.
On a related subject, it's not simply that private sellers are "not required" to perform a background check. They are forbidden from performing a background check using the NICS system. This is a flaw that needs to be corrected, in the interest of public safety and for the benefit of private sellers.
DragonBorn
(175 posts)This story is a tragedy but are we simply going to say the gun made them do it? No other factors? I'm sorry but normal children don't go around murdering other children and then potential witnesses. I wonder if any of these kids are in a gang. If the only thing you take away from this story is that a gun caused these crimes; your being willfully ignorant.
How about lack of parental responsibility? I wonder how active and involved these children's parents are. How did that child get a firearm? A parent or a fellow gang member? How about lack of upbringing? I knew in kindergarten that hitting people was unacceptable, how does a child come to think murder is even an option? Do any of these cross your mind? Normal children don't go around murdering other children, something must have gone very wrong before that even for this to come to be. Will you acknowledge that?
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)
DragonBorn
(175 posts)Your willful ignorance will make you feel better. Don't address anything I said because you know you can't without acknowledging that the gun wasn't the primary contributor to these children deaths, it was the willingness of the murders to kill other children. Normal children don't kill other children. Keep thinking a piece of metal somehow influenced their thinking and that it couldn't have possibly been the parents of the murderers that share a bigger piece of the blame.
DragonBorn
(175 posts)Umm... Your silence truly is deafening. Snarky nonsensical replies but no actual comment on the factors for violence. How lovely.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)If you really and truly don't know what I'm saying, ask me.
Don't make up exceedingly stupid shit and pretend I was saying it.
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)I read your post to be saying that guns are more accessible to criminals now than they were in the past.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)as saying that guns are more accessible, period, since that is what it says.
Someone who acquires a firearm illegally is not necessarily a criminal prior to doing so. But the notion that the fact that something is illegal is a deterrent to a criminal doing it is amusing.
Forty or 50 years ago, the US was not awash in HANDGUNS. That is the particular significant difference here. Handguns to be stolen from residences and businesses and vehicles, handguns to be bought in parking lots, handguns to be bought at kitchen tables, handguns to be bought on street corners, handguns to be bought at gun shows, handguns to be bought at pawn shops, handguns trafficked onto and circulating in massive numbers in the illicit market.
Handguns are marketed relentlessly to existing and created markets, handguns are made political fetishes of, carrying handguns is a subject of right-wing hue and cry, handguns are what are used to rob and rip off and enforce and retaliate and kill in crossfire, handguns are what it's all about, Alfie. And they are a hell of a lot easier for an adolescent in the US to come by today than they were four or five decades ago.
jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)You could buy a pistol out of the Sears catalog, mail order. It doesn't get much more convenient than that in a pre-internet era.
And these things were state of the art for the time. They were the death-spewers of their day. We are much more highly regulated today.
I was given my first gun at the age of ten. It was mine. By the time I was sixteen I took it out whenever I pleased. We would sometimes take our rifles to school so we could squirrel hunt in the river bottoms after school. The only rule was we had to store them in the chemistry lab until the final bell. Can't get more accessible than that, can you?
iverglas
(38,549 posts)This is quite the "Sears catalogue!" mantra we have going here. Yes, I'm absolutely convinced that it would have been a mere trifle for a 12-year-old to order a handgun by calling up the friendly Sears catalogue order-taker lady and having it shipped to their home, and lurking at the end of the driveway with the allowance they'd been saving up for months, during school hours, to intercept the delivery man before he got to the front door (mutatis mutandis if delivered by mail), without any of the neighbour ladies seeing it all transpire from behind their curtains ...
The image you have posted says "Catalogue No. 110". Copies of it for sale on eBay identify it as published in 1900. By my reckoning, that was 112 years ago, not 50.
(oops, I had typed 1910, but it's even older, isn't it?)
were you given a HANDGUN at the age of 10?
Did your parents have a handgun in the home? Did your neighbours have handguns? Did your parents or your neighbours tuck a handgun in their fanny pack when they went to the grocery store?
jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)"were you given a HANDGUN at the age of 10? "
No, a rifle. I got my first handgun at 18. I hunted with a handgun prior to turning 18 with one of my Dad's. I still prefer a rifle over a handgun.
"Did your parents have a handgun in the home? "
Yes, quite a few.
"Did your neighbours have handguns? "
Sure, everyone did. It just wasn't a big deal.
"Did your parents or your neighbours tuck a handgun in their fanny pack when they went to the grocery store?"
No, fanny packs just weren't around. My dad, my grandad, my uncle, my great-uncle, all carried pistols daily. Generally speaking they carried them in a pocket. We were in the grocery business among other things so you are right about going to the store. As business owners, they did get robbed a few times through the years. My uncle got shot in one attempt.
The Sears catalog is an oldie. The laws regarding the sale of firearms by mail order were enacted in 1968. So any catalog page before that time would have been quite similar.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Yes, you could buy guns by mail orderfrom Sears. You didn't do it over the telephone. Long-distance calls were very expensive back in those days and there was no way to pay over the phone. If I remember correctly there was an extra charge for C.O.D. Sears did not have a telephone order department. You filled out an order blank and included a money order for the price + shipping and mailed it in. Gun was shipped by U.S. parcel post. Or you could go into a hardware store and buy a gun for cash, no questions asked.
I routinely purchased ammunition for my shotgun when I was 11, no questions asked. However I must also add that my town was tiny and everybody knew everybody. The merchant knew my father and knew that I had Dad's permission.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)Toledo Blade - Nov 30, 1963
Sears Withdraws Handguns From Stores And Catalogue
The timing was coincidental, per Sears.
The person at Sears who confirmed the decision was Ernest Arms.
jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)PavePusher
(15,374 posts)Yeah, don't steal her favorite tactic. I think she gets a royalty or something...
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)iverglas
(38,549 posts)Did drug trafficking in the US in the 1960s, let alone the 1950s, commonly involve adolescents? Shall we say ... No?
Did the economy in the US in the 1960s offer opportunities for education and employment to a significantly larger proportion of the population, and in particular certain segments of the population, than it has in recent years? Maybe yes?
Were many people who are posting here over the age of, oh, 12, in 1968, when the age 21 restriction was imposed on handguns in the US? That would put them in their late 50s and beyond now. Is that most people here? So are all their dreamy reveries about the good old innocent days really of much relevance?
Did many households have handguns before the 1960s in the US? I'll answer that one for you: No.
And here's a tricky one: what kind of firearm is used in a large majority of crimes, homicides, gang shootings and so on in the US today?
I'll let you answer that one. You might even be able to give us a reason or two for the answer. And maybe even what some of the implications of that answer might be.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)Did the economy in the US in the 1960s offer opportunities for education and employment to a significantly larger proportion of the population, and in particular certain segments of the population, than it has in recent years? Maybe yes?
iverglas
(38,549 posts)I know it because I've taken the trouble to do the research. I've published summaries of and references to it more than once in this forum. I don't actually feel compelled to do it all over again every time somebody asks how I know something they would know themself if they bothered to find out.
A child in the 50s and 60s did not live in a culture in which handguns were commonplace, glorified, played with, stored in shoeboxes in closets or in nightstand drawers, kept under the counter at the corner store, shown off in the schoolyard, carried around in public by ordinary people. A kid in the 50s or 60s who was in contact with firearms was a kid whose parents or grandparents used firearms for hunting or for pest and predator control in rural areas, or possibly participated in shooting sports through school (a situation I suspect was less common than all the reminiscences we see here would suggest). No handguns involved. No handgun culture.
No likelihood of it ever occurring to the vast majority of adolescents to attempt to procure one. No other kids with guns to worry about, and yes, no significant adolescent involvement in organized crime like drug trafficking. Kids today live in a different world, very unfortunately, and it's one where handguns are widely available to them and seen by them as necessary for a variety of reasons.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)iverglas
(38,549 posts)If YOU are going to speak to issues like this, YOU do what it takes to know what you're talking about.
Information about historical firearms ownership patterns in the US is out there. I found it. I suggest that you at least try. If I find myself with a spare hour sometime, I'll find what I posted in the past and let you know.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)that is like a DA and the cops telling a defendant "it's your job to prove your own guilt."
I'll try. I'm guessing it is from some gun control group? Please do.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)You will be wanting testimony from someone who has orbited the earth.
Actually, the data that are coming to mind that I cited at this site, those not being the only data, were published a hunting/shooting/outdoor life publication, as I recall. Nice guess, but no cigar.
gejohnston
(17,502 posts)(you see the mast first) and from photos from space.
I'm not saying your info is completely wrong, just that it is not true to the same degree that you think. If anything it would vary by region. Based on my experience, the mountain west would have more pistols than the south for some reason. I got my first rifle when I was eight and my first handgun at 16. Before then, I used a family revolver my brother bought in Hamburg (I have yet to see the make or model anywhere in the US.)
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)I'd rather look at which kids choose to illegally possess guns, and why. There are deeper social and economic problems at work here, and removing one particular means of expressing them isn't going to do the trick. All it'll do it create unreasonable burdens on the law-abiding, while attackers use knives, clubs, chemicals, fire, vehicles, falling objects, fists, etc. to inflict damage. Murder is a crime, not a technology.
I really don't intend to be snarky, honest, but I'm not aware of any statistics on historical handgun ownership. Do you recall off the top of your head who maintained them, or any tips for finding them? My goog-fu is failing me.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)Why, I've never heard that in over a decade of posting in this forum.
Unreasonable burdens, blah blah blah blah.
A crime and not a technology? Actually, quite the opposite is true to a very large extent. Homicide -- many "murders" are in fact NOT planned beforehand -- is very much a matter of technology in very many cases. Absent firearms, they simply would NOT have occurred.
And no, I don't really feel called upon to lay out the entire case for that statement. Not least because I'm sure you and assorted others really are aware of what it is.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Rittermeister
(170 posts)if this is true, the murder rate is at the lowest it's been since the early 60s. For the record, a sawed-off 12 gauge is a hell of a lot more deadly than a .38.
iverglas
(38,549 posts)You come here in February 2012, and you ask me today, with your 87 posts, what I, in over a decade of posting in this forum, have "yet to explain"?
Really?
Quite apart from whatever the fuck what I have yet to explain has to do with anything I said, which is pretty much precisely nothing.
Response to iverglas (Reply #38)
Post removed
ileus
(15,396 posts)Have a decade of specialism...
Get back to us in 2022 or when you're antigun.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Is there anyway to use only RKBA posters as jurors in our group?
DonP
(6,185 posts)... there's a feature where you can exclude I think it's up to 6 people(?), by screen name, so they never are allowed to sit on a jury about one of your own posts.
It's a very nice feature of DU3.
I go back regularly and change the names as some of the gun control people get crazy, lose it totally and wind up tombstoned.
ileus
(15,396 posts)
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)Stay in your class, things are more orderly that way.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Meiko
(1,076 posts)It is always a tragedy when someone is killed for no reason. The only bit of information I would like to see, but is almost always missing is...where did the guns come from? Who sold them or gave them to the kids involved. This a critical bit of information if we are to stop these types of crimes. My feeling is that the cops don't give a shit. They have the gun(s), they have the shooter(s) and they have a body, case closed..oh yea, they have the NRA to blame it on.
I know it is sometimes hard to trace these guns used in crimes but it's not impossible. If we weren't wasting resources busting pot smokers we might have funding to dig into these types of killings just a bit further.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Basically another "all gun owners are criminals" hit piece.
Where's Mike when we need him?
DonP
(6,185 posts)jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)People rarely murder just for the heck of it. I'm really curious about why Brandon Adams was murdered.
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)Interesting the article demonizes guns and the NRA yet fails to discuss the shooters.
HuffPo certainly has a motive.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Remmah2
(3,291 posts)nt
DonP
(6,185 posts)Since all gun owners are just "Zimmerman wannabes", according to some folk here.
jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)Rude toters enabled by a death spewing bullet hose that they bought at a gun show along with a couple of grenades and some beef jerky. Or not. We probably won't know unless NOPD actually catches and charges them with something.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)From a brief peek, it looks like her boyfriend got into a dispute during school with some gang members, and then the gang members (several days later) killed him. And then killed her in case her boyfriend had mentioned any names to her.
jeepnstein
(2,631 posts)sarisataka
(18,494 posts)So we really don't know who did it, why they did it or even if the deaths are connected.
Even though he just spent a third of the article bashing these "wackos"
Yet it is the fault of university Deans for spending too much time fundraising rather than morally guiding the country?
I'm confused.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,476 posts)How on Earth could you be confused? In response to shootings, some of high profile targets and some not, the US spends the better part of a hundred years as follows:
1. shooting(s)
2. media circus
3. politicians denounce the crimes
4. new laws are passed removing certain (or most) firearms from citizens never involved in this or any other crime
5. police pursue the assailants and enforce the NEW gun laws
6. assailants are tried on assault/murder but can't be tried on the basis of the new laws which they inspired as it is unconstitutional to pass a retroactive law
I've discovered a new oxymoron: political logic 
