Just another sad argument for gun control

[Flashermac]

For who knows what reasons, the US has become a more violent place. In the years before WWII, the US was largely rural and every boy grew up with a .22 rifle to plink targets or bring home dinner with. My grandfather's little brother told me how he and his brothers used to go hunting with their dad in the early 1900s. They would have fancy pump action or lever action shotguns, but great granddad chose an old double barrel. My uncle told me that he and his brothers would bag more quail, but that their father would have more birds per shots fired. He just didn't miss.

 

But people didn't go crazy in the 1920s, '30s, '40s or even '50s and murder groups of people at random. No one went to school and started shooting. So why are the loonies doing it now? Strange that folks don't seem to be interested in finding out.

 

 

[chuckwoww]

The underlying factor seems to be rage. There's an awful lot of suppressed anger out there. Maybe social and population pressures have something to do with it.

[Bangkoktraveler]

Ritalin?

[Flashermac]

What did I just say?

 

 

Violence

[thalenoi]

Lets ban cars too--in the wrong hands of drunks kill hundreds yearly --if I were a yank i'd be armed to the hilt, so many bad guys have em' and will never give them up, using colourful language in the event of a home invasion wont help protect your family!!

 

Indeed, one of the dumbest inventions ever, together with guns.

 

No cars, no thousands of deaths and disabled on roads any more.

 

We have invented better transport means.

 

[tomc12]

There have been mass murderers throughout history in just about every country. Guns, poisons, bombs-take your pick.

Gun-related deaths pale in comparison to alcohol- or tobacco-related deaths, so should we ban them also?

 

[Flashermac]

The US tried banning alcohol once. It didn't work out to well.

 

Tobacco may well be banned one of these days though. Gotta stop folks from driving under the influence of tobacco.

 

 

[Julian2]

For who knows what reasons, the US has become a more violent place. In the years before WWII, the US was largely rural and every boy grew up with a .22 rifle to plink targets or bring home dinner with. My grandfather's little brother told me how he and his brothers used to go hunting with their dad in the early 1900s. They would have fancy pump action or lever action shotguns, but great granddad chose an old double barrel. My uncle told me that he and his brothers would bag more quail, but that their father would have more birds per shots fired. He just didn't miss.

 

But people didn't go crazy in the 1920s, '30s, '40s or even '50s and murder groups of people at random. No one went to school and started shooting. So why are the loonies doing it now? Strange that folks don't seem to be interested in finding out.

 

There was still plenty of action with guns in the 20s and 30s Flash, unless the Untouchables and Bonny and Clyde movies were all fiction.

[Flashermac]

That was cops versus bank robbers, feds versus the bootleggers. Ordinary folks stayed out of it.

 

p.s. I know Bonnie Parker's nephew, in his late 70s now. Bonnie and Clyde arrived unannounced one day at his family's home in Oklahoma. He was a kid and thought it was great, but he noticed his parents were decidedly nervous. Clyde Barrow sent his father in to town to buy them supplies, keeping a careful watch that he came back alone. After a couple of days, they left. That was shortly before Bonnie and Clyde were shot to death by a posse in Louisiana.

 

 

[Flashermac]

How he slipped by:

 

State, Feds Out of Sync on Handgun Database

ABC News

21 April 2007

 

 

McLean, VA - Virginia authorities have submitted the names of more than 80,000 mentally troubled people to federal investigators who ensure they cannot ever buy firearms.

 

But some wonder if a technicality in Virginia courts documents could have let Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho access guns.

 

Virginia State Police feed the names of those deemed mentally disturbed to the FBI, after state courts provide them to them. But while federal law bans handgun purchases by all judged "mentally defective," Virginia law bars handgun purchases to those judged "mentally incapacitated".

 

That means they need not have given Cho's name to federal authorities, even though a judge ruled in 2005 that he was a danger to himself because of mental illness. He did not meet Virginia's definition of incapacitated - usually exercised if someone has been committed to a mental institution.

 

Cho never was.