The pro-gun lobby is predictably using the recent school shootings as an opportunity to ask, “What if the teachers and students had been armed?” That is the wrong question.

The right question is, “What if the perpetrator had NOT been able to obtain those firearms? How many lives would have been saved?” Instead of asking what the U.S. would be like with more guns, shouldn’t we be asking what our country would be like with fewer guns? Guns do not solve problems, they create problems. A handgun is designed for the sole purpose of taking human life.

Michael Beard
April 21, 2008
The Wrong Question
[In answer to the question “What our country would be like with fewer guns?” The answer is that those with evil intent and willingness to break the law will always be able to acquire a firearm. And it will never be more difficult that it is to acquire illegal recreational drugs. Which, in case Mr. Beard doesn’t have the social awareness or intelligence to answer for himself, is so easy that any, and most, high school dropouts can acquire within a few minutes any hour of any day in any city in the country. And therefore if people with evil intent can easy get a gun then those not willing to break the law will be the ones without the skills and the tools to defend themselves from evil.

Gun do solve problems. I like R. A. Lafferty’s response to people who come with things like Beard’s asinine assertion.—Joe]

Allowing anonymous gun purchases makes as much sense as allowing anonymous anthrax purchases.

Sten Deadio
February 2014
Comment to Supreme Court rejects NRA appeals
[Anthrax possession is not a specific enumerated right unless you consider it a form of arm in common use.

Their analogy is just as invalid as it would be if you were to substitute any of the following for “gun purchase”:

• “book purchase”
• “printing press purchase”
• “computer purchase”
• “association meetings”
• “religious meetings”
• “speech”
• “voting”
• “homosexuals”
• “Jews”
• “Catholics”

As is usual, this anti-gun person has no comprehension of principles.—Joe]

Essentially, gun advocates in 2014 are of the same mindset as cigarette smokers in 1964—just deny, blow some smoke in a rationalist’s face, and toss a butt on the street as though you own it.

Reasonable gun control will happen in the US, but it will require about fifty years of education, needlessly lost lives, price increases, lawsuits, and the same social/sexual shunning that have made smokers a powerless minority.

In the future, gun ownership will be rare and expensive.

Lee Viola
March 28, 2014
Comment to The Gun-Control Conversation Happened—and the NRA Won Again
[Apparently he hasn’t been paying attention in his gun political history class. He has it exactly backward and the time frame wrong. Rational arguments, taking new shooters to the range, court decisions, and political action is driving anti-gun people into political oblivion. At the present rate of advance we can expect that in 25 years we will have constitutional carry in all 50 states and “full auto” will be a selector switch option on nearly all new detachable magazine and belt fed firearms. Gun ownership will be as common as cellphone ownership today. More so if you count the number of guns owned per capita. The average gun owners has more guns than the average cell phone owner has cell phones.

He does have one thing right. Fifty years of mandatory government education could have the effect he desires.—Joe]

… essentially a useless right that simply clutters up our Constitution and confuses people to no end because all it does is give violent right wing zealots a constitutional basis for inciting their emotional hyped up masses to form insurrections against enemies that do not exist, to promote idiotic gun laws that defy rational thinking and to quite literally turn our country into a seething cauldron of squabbling factions who have neither the intellect nor the patience for a civil discussion of the pros and cons of gun ownership. The most odious of these factions are the ones who hold to the lunacy that the right to own guns has the ultimate purpose of arming citizens against a tyrannical government, as if we do not have a professional military and law enforcement system to enforce the laws and keep order. What these factions want is what we had under the Articles of Confederation–mindless, lawless, anarchy in the streets.

jaxas4
February 2014
Comment to Supreme Court rejects NRA appeals
[“Squabbling” is something to be suppressed in the name of law and order?

This is what they think of the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment in particular. —Joe]

Nobody is coming to take your guns and weapons. The National Rifle Association, which lays its roots as an off-shoot of a faction of the Ku Klux Klan, wanted you to think so, didn’t they? … In fact, no piece of federal legislation was ever presented in regards to gun restriction in Washington, DC under President Obama that limited gun ownership.

Dustin Pardue
March 10, 2014
Editorial: A pragmatic look at gun control
[Wow! Nearly every sentence in this guys editorial is opposed to the known facts in my universe. I have always discounted the possibility of those sci-fi plots with everything being the opposite of our universe. I always figured that as soon as a few major things are different the universes would radically diverge. In a short period of time, like in a decade or ten, there would be little resemblance between the two universes. But here we appear to have evidence to the contrary.

In Pardue’s universe the NRA was apparently formed by Confederate veterans instead of Union vets and helped supplied arms to the KKK instead of the victims of the KKK such as Robert Williams.

And in his universe Senator Feinstein never introduced the Assault Weapon Ban of 2013.

The divergence from our universe just goes on and on in this guys post. Another example is where he quotes the what in our universe is the 1875 Cruikshank decision but in his occurred in 1876:

The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.

In our universe there is more to the quoted sentence which changes the meaning:

The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.

So, I wonder if this is sufficient evidence to confirm the existence of alternate universes. I almost wish it were true. I could use the money from a Nobel Prize in physics. But I suspect the truth is this guy is just another passenger on an overloaded crazy train and there isn’t any money to be had from identifying the existence of something as common as crap for brains.—Joe]

The constitution is supposed to protect the government from the people. I can’t see how this will help.

jy151310
February 13, 2014
Comment to Ninth Circuit holds Second Amendment secures a right to carry a gun
[Sarcasm?

Maybe. But I know people that are mentally messed up enough to believe that and yet they are professionally functional.

I believe that people like this actually exist and this is part of why we have the IRS, NSA, and TSA routinely abusing their power.—Joe]

Update: It’s sarcasm.