Police: Body found at US park is that of gunman

[iverglas]

105. I'll beg to differ

It is a venue where anyone can post views, ancedotes, statistics, or just news stories concerning the unique American culture of guns, and the impact of that culture on American society -- both positive and negative.

First -- and I'm not meaning to be difficult here, just clarifying -- the subject matter in this forum really is no more restricted to "American" society than in any other forum. The Feminists forum, for instance, regularly contains discussion about situations and issues affecting women worldwide.

Discuss gun control laws, the Second Amendment, the use of firearms for self-defense, and the use of firearms to commit crime and violence.

The Second Amendment is indeed a US-specific topic; all the rest are global. And restricting discussions of universal issues to the bell jar of one society would not be helpful in this case, any more than it would be in the case of, say, discussions of health insurance and healthcare policy. That discussion, as it relates to the US, has to be informed by knowledge of models outside the US; firearms policy is no different.


As someone mentioned in another thread on this forum recently the "sides" represented here are, for the most part, the extremes of both ends of the spectrum.

I seldom find "they're both as bad as each other" to be helpful, and that's how your comment strikes me, although I may well be reading too much into it. And in this instance, I just don't know what the middle would be, or whether you are suggesting it would be the right choice, for instance.

What is the extreme of the "side" I'm on? Ban all guns? And, as my co-vivant would say if asked, line up the non-compliant and shoot them? (He doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about firearms policy, let alone talking about it, everyone will be happy to hear.)

This forum really isn't populated by a lot of people who take that position; those whom one does occasionally see usually turn out to be gun militant goats masquerading as llamas, with short lives.

(And yes, I can cite cases, if anyone needs them: Joe Steel comes to mind; unfortunately I can't recall the name of the most recent, just a couple of weeks ago, and its posts have been wiped from the slate. ... Aha, I love google and having a unique name of my own for searching, and a good memory; I found the traces of that absent friend: Uncle Omar:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x481267#481551
I could also name another, still extant, who had a remarkable and rapid conversion after his first posts here ... but I won't )

So that really leaves posters like, oh, moi, to represent the "extreme" end of the spectrum found in this forum. I'm such an extremist that I advocate
- mandatory licensing for acquisition/possession of any firearm
- mandatory registration of all firearms
- mandatory safe/secure storage of firearms

Oh, and yes, a prohibition on the possession of handguns by members of the public outside of facilities where they are used for sports shooting. (This I do advocate in Canada; and I have consistently worked and voted against the present Conservative government and lobbied against its repeal of the long gun registry here.)

I fully recognize the extreme unlikelihood of any of this coming to pass in the US anytime in the near future, but will still advocate it for the US (as, in fact, do some USAmericans), one reason being that firearms policy in the US affects the rest of the world, and in particular Canada, where I am. Were I in the US and involved in electoral politics there, I would advocate potentially achievable portions of that agenda within a political party, and probably work with community groups and coalitions engaged in other non-legislative efforts to reduce firearms harms. (Here in Canada I have not been actively involved in the issue because it has never been an issue -- until this fall, and the repeal of the long gun registry was a foregone conclusion once the rabid right-wingers were elected, and frankly, sometimes one just has to be depressed, look to the next election, and try to take a long view.)

To my mind, someone who opposes licensing and registration, let alone who advocates allowing the carrying of firearms in public, is indeed an extremist. (Certainly in Canada anyone who takes those positions is part of the extreme right wing.) So I couldn't disagree with your characterization of some posters in this forum as being at the extreme of one end of the spectrum.

Anyhow, I guess what I'd be interested in is what you characterize as "the extremes of both ends of the spectrum", and what you see in this forum as falling at those points -- and I'd be curious about where you would place yourself on it, and why. Otherwise, I think it's just too easy to say what amounts to "a pox on both their houses" -- although, again, I may be reading too much into that.