Shoot a camera, not a gun

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one90guy said:
I do not know the right or wrong about what gun control would do. But I do know that about 3 years ago 3 men tryed to rob me in a remote part of a park, situation awareness saved me that time.. Since then I do carry a handgun when out and about. My wife and I visit the range every couple of months to stay sharp. Also uncle SAM give me a few lessons and practice. As far as being harmed by my weapon they will have to beat me with it cause it will be empty.
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You carry it unloaded?
 
Avotius said:
This strikes people in China very much because on the same day a man walked into a school here and stabbed 22 children with a knife. Last year for a couple weeks, almost everyday there was someone walking into a school and knifing kids. Hundreds of children.

I would gladly give up my gun if this would all just stop. Unfortunately we humans.....I just don't know what to say.
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They obviously need better knife regulations.
 
tbarker13 said:
A I've always wondered why we scream about kids dying by gun. Yet we don't seem to care as much when a child drowns. Where are the cries to enact stricter swimming pool safety laws? If I lost a child, I doubt either death would be easier to take.
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Well, as far as the public outcry goes, the fact that it is self-inflicted does doubtlessly matter - if you had 800 shooting accidents and 80 homicides, there presumably would be less public attention there as well.

Besides, I remember reading about campaigns to teach American children to swim, even here in Europe, so there does seem to be some public awareness at least.
 
tbarker13 said:
Actually there have not been many examples of people with conceal-carry licenses being involved in these horrible shootings. They tend to be among the more responsible gun owners.

On the topic of kids and guns, I just did some quick research at the Centers for Disease Control web site. 2010 data shows that a person under the age of 18 was almost as likely to die by drowning as they were by firearm.
In 2010 there were 847 accidental drowning deaths and 18 drowning homicides. (Total 865)
There were 98 accidental shooting deaths and 824 shooting homicides. (Total 922)

I've known about these numbers for a while. And I've always wondered why we scream about kids dying by gun. Yet we don't seem to care as much when a child drowns. Where are the cries to enact stricter swimming pool safety laws? If I lost a child, I doubt either death would be easier to take.
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Here's one...with the number of people killed by drunk drivers do you ever here "alcohol should be banned" ?
You would think the same people calling for banning of guns would be right there for the banning of alcohol.

Oh by the way, the church organist that was shot by her ex husband was a part of our community. He was being investigated for a pornography crime. Supposedly she knew something against her ex.
 
Prohibition does not work. We must focus on harm reduction rather than cure.

Prohibition does not work. We must focus on harm reduction rather than cure.

As we learned from Alcohol Prohibition and later drug prohibition that the prohibition model simply does not work.
If anything it will make a more dangerous situation as control of who may access weapons will go to the hands of criminals who will sell them in the black market (once again as we see with drugs).

Smarter regulation of ammunition sales and what sorts of weapons may be produced will help.
Also the general mentality of young people towards violence. I know many people who work in the gaming industry. There has long been much talk of what sort of influence "shooter" games have on young minds and, how that relates to attitudes of violence towards other humans.
Much can be done. Just having this conversation on an otherwise photography only forum can move things in a positive direction by understanding other views and reasoning. If laws and regulations are to change, it's going to be a negotiation plain and simply. We all must understand each others position to find the compromises that work.
Keep talking and keep thinking... Harm reduction.
There is no way to eliminate a complicated issue as this one.
It's one of those issues where we must not abandon improvement for "perfection".
 
Complicated Subject

Complicated Subject

I should of put this in my earlier post.

I live in El Paso, Texas, which is the safest large city in the US. Across the Rio Grande about five miles from my home is Ciudad Juarez which is perhaps the most dangerous city in the world. Mexico has very draconian guns laws which has done very little to restrict the murders in Mexico during the last couple years.

Don't have a solution as it is a very complicated problem combining access to guns, a culture of violence, a lack of mental health funding and the fact that there will always be nuts out there who fall through the crack.

There is a famous quote from Robert Heinlein, "An armed society is a polite society." By that argument Afghanistan and Somalia should be the politest places on this planet.

Again, a complicated subject on which reasonable people may disagree. As a former federal law enforcement agent and primary firearms instructor for US Customs, I can and do carry concealed.
 
The other problem I see with this is that there is a certain amount of hysteria brought on by the horrific nature of this crime. We can lose perspective.
Just visited the FBI UCR crime reports. The simple fact is that the murder rate in this nation has been dropping for years.
In 2010, the homicide rate was 4.8/100,000.
The last time it was that low was in 1963. It peaked at 10.2/100,000 in 1980.

So this notion that gun killings are spiraling out of control just isn't supported by reality.
 
tbarker13 said:
We had a case here last week where a man walked into a church and shot his wife (the organist) and then left. About 5 minutes later, he came back in to make sure she was dead, shooting her a couple more times. The police had been called, but did not arrive in time. And no one in the congregation was armed and able to save the woman's life.
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This event is outside the coverage area my paper covers (but my company owns the paper in that town, where I had my internship). In the borough of Potter County, Pennsylvania, there are two police forces with jurisdiction: the borough cops (not a 24-hour office) and the state police. The state police barracks is about 9 miles away (or 15 km) down U.S. Route 6.

BTW, word on the street is the motive was a pending investigation (the police searched his home and took his computers, so you can probably guess for what) and she was going to testify against him.

Peter_wrote: said:
so you think, that people, who want stricter laws, don't want to defend themselves? that's an assumption.
they just think, that it is safer to live in a secure environment unarmed, than to live in a dangerous enviroment with having a gun.
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That's what we call a "Straw man" argument. It's a logical fallacy. It's the same as "You don't support armin teachers? You have blood on your hands!"

Peter_wrote: said:
it would have saved her life, if that man hasn't been able to buy a gun ( and i am quite sure, he bought it legal)
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WRONG. There was an order of protection in place. Under federal law, if there is an order of protection (also known as a restraining order), you MAY NOT legally possess a firearm.

This is the list of people who cannot legally own firearms ANYWHERE in the U.S.:
® Those convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors except where state law reinstates rights, or removes disability.

® Fugitives from justice

® Unlawful users of certain depressant, narcotic, or stimulant drugs

® Those adjudicated as mental defectives or incompetents or those committed to any mental institution and currently containing a dangerous mental illness.

® Non-US citizens, unless permanently immigrating into the U.S. or in possession of a hunting license legally issued in the U.S.

® Illegal Aliens

® Those who have renounced U.S. citizenship

® Minors defined as under the age of eighteen for long guns and the age of twenty-one for handguns, with the exception of Vermont, eligible at age sixteen.

® Persons convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence (an addition)

® Persons under indictment for a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year are ineligible to receive, transport, or ship any firearm or ammunition.

In Connecticut, the guns were stolen. At Columbine, the kids were under the legal age to possess firearms. In Tuscon, the shooter was a user of marijuana, and therefor unable to legally own firearms. There seems to be a trend here...

Something else I have noticed is the top cities for murders and homicides SHOWN HERE are NOT tied to EITHER extreme of gun control laws. Six of the top 10 cities are in states which rank high on the Brady Campaign's scorecard, while the other four are very, very low. Most murders are by people a) who know each other, and b) are committed during other crimes, like robbery or drug dealing.

That said, there are many good ideas about new gun control laws, but I don't see any — other than an out-right ban — which would even theoretically prevent violence based on historic trends (and we all know how well this country's "war on drugs" is going).
 
ktmrider said:
I should of put this in my earlier post.

I live in El Paso, Texas, which is the safest large city in the US. Across the Rio Grande about five miles from my home is Ciudad Juarez which is perhaps the most dangerous city in the world. Mexico has very draconian guns laws which has done very little to restrict the murders in Mexico during the last couple years.

Don't have a solution as it is a very complicated problem combining access to guns, a culture of violence, a lack of mental health funding and the fact that there will always be nuts out there who fall through the crack.

There is a famous quote from Robert Heinlein, "An armed society is a polite society." By that argument Afghanistan and Somalia should be the politest places on this planet.

Again, a complicated subject on which reasonable people may disagree. As a former federal law enforcement agent and primary firearms instructor for US Customs, I can and do carry concealed.
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I agree with most of what you say, it's a complicated issue. But I've read the Mexico comparison quite a lot in the last few days and I think the problems we are talking about here are very different: a country that is basically controlled by organized crime (thus, stricter laws totally ineffective) and on the other hand a wealthy western democracy which needs to think about ways to respond to the unacceptable frequency of shootings like this one in the last few years.
 
An example of what could quickly change the message to young people.
These two pics where taken with my iPhone while in Montana this summer.
As Christian school holding a Raffle to give away an assault rifle like the one used at the school shooting.
Both the major papers in the Flathead valley (Kallispell, Whitefish area) placed the ad.
The Daily letter allowed it on the front page. The Flathead Beacon sold a full page.
What does this say to the students at this school and the surrounding community.

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f16sunshine said:
As we learned from Alcohol Prohibition and later drug prohibition that the prohibition model simply does not work.
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But the "strong regulation" model does, as evidenced by the rest of the first world. Our trouble is that this is taken as a "slippery slope" argument, that regulation proponents want all guns gone (admittedly, some do).

I'm for stronger regulation, because the correlation between "more guns per capita" and "more homicides per capita" is so very high, that it no longer matters if it's correlation or causation: fewer guns means fewer people dead from violence.

But I think the place to start would be the straw purchasers of guns, and corrupt federal firearm licensees, the two sources of the overwhelming percentage of guns used in crimes. If we could talk about regulations to crack down on both of those sources of criminal guns, we don't wholly solve the problem, but we get, I think, to a better place than where we are now.

But the gun lobby has fought attempts to legislate in this area: laws like "private citizens cannot buy more than 30 guns a month without becoming licensed gun dealers", those laws get fought tooth and nail. I can't really understand why.
 
Brad Bireley said:
Here's one...with the number of people killed by drunk drivers do you ever here "alcohol should be banned" ?
You would think the same people calling for banning of guns would be right there for the banning of alcohol.
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By following the logic, shouldn't they be for the banning of cars?
Person is impaired + kills someone with a gun = Ban guns.
Person is impaired + kills someone with a car = Stop impaired drivers? No! Ban cars!
 
hteasley said:
I'm for stronger regulation, because the correlation between "more guns per capita" and "more homicides per capita" is so very high, that it no longer matters if it's correlation or causation: fewer guns means fewer people dead from violence.

.
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Except that isn't true in this country. Gun ownership has soared in the US in recent years, while the per capita murder rate has actually fallen.
 
harry, the laws are in place to punish straw purchasers and those who sell to them. i watched an undercover buy of five small handguns by a woman dressed as an army reservist in a store near bimingham. i didn't know it at the time. a couple of days later, the store owner and his daughter were arrested on firearms violations. that's when i realized what i had witnessed had been set up. there had been rumors for years that this particular store was a source of black market firearms. the store is long gone. if i remember correctly, under alabama law, one cannot buy more than 3 handguns in a given month.
 
ktmrider said:
I should of put this in my earlier post.

I live in El Paso, Texas, which is the safest large city in the US. Across the Rio Grande about five miles from my home is Ciudad Juarez which is perhaps the most dangerous city in the world. Mexico has very draconian guns laws which has done very little to restrict the murders in Mexico during the last couple years.

Don't have a solution as it is a very complicated problem combining access to guns, a culture of violence, a lack of mental health funding and the fact that there will always be nuts out there who fall through the crack.

There is a famous quote from Robert Heinlein, "An armed society is a polite society." By that argument Afghanistan and Somalia should be the politest places on this planet.

Again, a complicated subject on which reasonable people may disagree. As a former federal law enforcement agent and primary firearms instructor for US Customs, I can and do carry concealed.
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Look up the word "Society"...😱
 
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