Ceiri

Yah I can't help but notice it's been over two days and Gigs didn't come up with anything.

Lewis Luminos

Whats really scary and insane is that it's legal for these people to carry guns.

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Sooz Pascale

First thing: those people are, and have to be, scary lunatics. There is...NO...REASON...WHATSOEVER...to carry a weapon, especially a firearm, of any kind to an event of this type, period. I am an avid and vocal defender of our Second Amendment Rights, but good God, some common sense has to prevail. All this was is a grab of attention and an attempt to indimidate others. I find their actions disgusting.

For our Eurpean friends, especially those in the UK, you must understand that our culture, history and heritage, while sharing much common ground is different. The US started as a nation on the frontier, and self reliance was the only way one could survive. In many ways, it is the same now. Predators abound and people have an inalienable right to
DEFEND themselves - against both societal predators and our government, if need be. I am not interested in changing the laws in other nations, I regard that as their business and if other countries want to outlaw the private ownership of firearms, I figure that is their business and none of mine. The very spark that lit the American Revolution was gun control and confiscation, by the way. The British Commander in Boston, General Gage, decided to disarm the colonists, so he sent a force of British soldiers under one Major Pitcairn to the village of Concord, where the colonists were reputed to be storing barrells of gun powder and flints for their flintlock rifles. Paul Revere, William Dawes and others, rode through the countryside and farmers, merchants, mechanics and the like took their rifles and assembled at Lexington and at Concord. Shots were fired at Lexington Green and a few Americans were killed, before dispersing and running away. The British met a stronger force at Concord, at a bridge over a river. Shots were fired there too, and both Americans and Redcoats fell. Then something odd happened. The FINEST Army in the world, retreated away from this motley force of very stubborn farmers and tradesmen who sniped them from the sidelines all the way back to Boston.

That was in April of 1775. In July 0f 1776, Independence was declared. During that time, a popular diversion was to pull down the statues of King George III and melt them down to make bullets out of them.

History lesson aside, the lunatics who bring firearms to the event such as the one in AZ should be dealt with and if possible incarcerated. Responsible gun owners have NO SYMPATHY for those people. I would like to bitch slap some sense into those knuckleheads myself.

End of rant.

Sooz

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jacqueline trudeau

We also started as a nation that deemed certain people only 3/5s human. Attitudes change... slowly... Fast forward to present - those Costco parking lots out on the frontier are scary places and the settlers there are in need of armed protection.

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Gigs

What do you want me to say? I don't really support the far right.

I was just pointing out it's not the first time that a fringe group has used this tactic.

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Colette Meiji

The 3/5 compromise was actually the OPPOSITE of how you characterize it here.

The Southern representatives, who owned the slaves wanted them to count as Full persons. Thus giving them more representation in the House.

However the Northern Representatives knowing the Slaves were not allowed to vote .. felt that this would give the Southern States Representation out of proportion of their actual constituency. They wanted the Slaves to not count at all.

The 3/5 compromise was the end result .. allowing the South some out of proportion voice in the House (remember the Slaves could not vote so each Southern representative counted for more than the Northern representatives. This included their voice as far as electing the President)

But limiting it from full accounting. LIMITING the south's power more than a full accounting of the slaves would have.

Thus if each Slave had counted as a Full Person ... it is very possible that Slavery would have lasted for Decades Beyond 1860.

Ceiri

And I pointed out how your comparison was intellectually dishonest.

Samantha Fuller

The problem with this is that city critters have a diffirent attatude toward guns than Arazona country people, and easterners view them with still more alarm and people from Europe yet more. This means that it was not the smartest thing to do because there was likely to be a mix of ranchers, city critters and eastern European city critters who would like view the tactic with varying levels of alarm from mild amused annoyance to gut wrenching fear present, making for a potential leathal misunderstanding. The fact that they informed the Sheriff first meant that they suspected some off the people would be intentsly bothered but it is likely they don't really know on a gut level how people from the east might view it.

Secret service people were probably the least likely to overreact because they are smart cookies who can tell the diffirance between a proffesional assasin, a lunitic, a mob that is about to turn ugly, or a few protesters who want to appear more dangerous than they are.

Finally a real right to bear arms means that if me carrying a gun makes you feel uncofortable then thats to bad. Most of the remarks made here simply mean that you don't really believe in the right of citizens to bear arms.

Charles_D

I'm in favor of gun ownership.

You won't see me carrying a rifle in the vicinity of any government function -- which is several levels of stupid. From giving fellow gun owners a bad name as loonies all the way to risking getting shot by one of Phoenix's finest.

I might not even carry my concealed piece near a government function -- I'm not exactly the most outstanding-looking of individuals, so why ask for even more hassle?

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Mocksoup Graves

This crap is what angers me the most about gun rights. This kind of fear mongering is enough to get people up in a tear about strict gun control. And manage to get a Constitutional Amendment passed because of people putting on a front of aggression.

I was taught that you don't take a knife to a gunfight, and you NEVER take a weapon where you don't intend to use it. Did those people feel unsafe there? Why? Did they think they were going to have to use their weapons or were they simply showing off?
Anyway you slice it, it's lame.

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jacqueline trudeau

And further advertising to the world one of the pillars The United States was founded on.

That was my point in my reply to Sooz. Not everything the founders did holds up in the modern world.

jacqueline trudeau

So people from "the west" need to brandish their firearms inappropriately for what? Fighting off varmints in the Walmart?

BTW, the first gun nutter at a presidential event took place in New Hamsphire. I'm not sure if it was the eastern or western part.

Sooz Pascale

Case in point: They can be. I am handling a civil case right now involving a woman who was shot while waiting in her car for her husband who was inside a supermarket shopping in a suburb of Los Angeles. Would she have used a gun, even if she had one? Probably not. The point is though that yes...even supermarket parking lots in Los Angeles county CAN be dangerous places.

Would the shooter have not shot her if CA had more stringent gun control or confiscation laws? Probably. People who shoot people during armed robberies in supermarket parking lots probably don't pay a lot of attention to laws of any sort. Drugs are illegal, but people still obtain them. Prostitution is illegal, but people find ways to pay for sex. Child pornography is illegal, but people manage to create and find it. I know we respectfully disagree with each other on this point, Jacqueline, but gun control, in my belief, isn't about taking firearms from criminals or lunatics, but disarming law abiding citizens like me.

Soz

jacqueline trudeau

I do beleive there are parking lots in most industrial countries, many of which whose citizens don't find such easy access to guns, for legal or illegal purposes.

Your client is another case of an innocent person injured or worse due to America's fascination (or as you put it, history) with guns.

Mocksoup Graves

We have a very robust and resilient black market because of our propensity to make everything illegal. Making firearms illegal would simply strengthen that black market and only the most hardened criminals will have access to said weaponry.

I could walk out of my door and find heroin in less than a week if I was really wanting it.The same would be said about guns if we deem them illegal. These idiots are shooting themselves in the face to spite their noses and giving strength to a movement for a Constitutional Amendment that they are so against.

Sooz Pascale

I disagree. If were guns were made illegal, people like the thug who shot my client would still have them. Law abiding citizens would not. My client is a case of another innocent person injured or worse, by our propensity to turn hardened criminals loose out on the street over and over and over again. Recently, a young woman, whose mothe ris an attorney and a homeless advocate was abducted and killed [she wasn't shot, I believe she was stabbed] by a homeless guy was recently released from custody. Due a clerical error, this guy SHOULD have been put away for life under the three strikes law, but he wasn't and killed a nice young woman instead. She was abducted just a few blocks from my office.

We need to get SERIOUS about crime in the US. We need to QUIT locking people up for stupid and harmless drug and victimless criminal offenses and concentrate law enforcement on the serious and dangerous predators who are here among us.

Disarming law abiding citizens will NOT lower the rate of violent crimes, it will NOT make us safer.

As a responsible firearms owner I certainly have no problems with enhanced penalties for people convicted of using a firearm in commission of a crime. I have no problem withdraconian penalties for felons found with firearms in their possession.

Colette Meiji

In the 1780's when the US Constitution was written, African Slaves and Indentured servitude was legal in most of Europe and their associated colonies.

So was the exploitation of indigenous peoples. Which went on long after slavery was abolished in Europe or the United States. In fact it went on full stride until after World War 2.

The "world" was either the part being exploited, had previously been exploited .. or were doing the exploiting.

How slanted it is for say the United Kingdom in 1850 to look down their upturned noses at Slavery in America ... while they were busy draining the wealth of India?

I agree you are quite right many of the "pillars" do not translate to our modern world. But most other countries of influence hands' are just as dirty.

Brenda Archer

I LOVE your posts Sooz. It is good to see you here.

RandoymRandt

As someone who left Gun Country (25% pop own guns in US) and went to one where guns are much more regulated (5% pop own in AU) I gotta say, I don't hear much about gun crime here in the news. Hardly ever.

When a quarter of the population is already packing, you're right, laws aren't gonna do crap. It's already too late.

jacqueline trudeau

I'll bet you dummy bullets to donuts the gun that found it's way to your client's assailant started life in the hands of a law abiding citizen as well. Self protection is the rationale behind yet more guns into our society. Many of which will also become tools for the lawless... Face it, Sooz, you're not going to find and lock them all up. It's a never ending escalating deadly spiral and quite the racket for the gun manufacturers on down. Despite my rhetoric, I'm not in favor of confiscation either ... it is a deadly genie that's too far gone out of the lamp, something that will sicken our American society until the end.

jacqueline trudeau

Yet for a country founded explicitly on the premise that "that all men are created equal", there was a gigantic disconnect, no?

Colette Meiji

They really only meant white men. And they were referring directly as a challenge to the idea of a superior aristocracy.

Patronage and peerage were the rule of the day in Europe .. but in America it could be different

Of course it was only the idealists who even bought into this "revolutionary" idea.

Most of those who pushed for the Revolution knew that ..

1- England didn't really have the logistical ability to prevent them from succeeding.

2- They stood to earn a great deal of money from independence.

3- Those with money and influence would still have money and influence.

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In later years though many have romanticized over the past and really believe that most of the founding fathers were idealists, AND they meant all men of all races and creeds.

Ishina

Nor will arming them.

jacqueline trudeau

Ahh, so all white men are created equal. Thanks for that - I'll make that mental addition the next time I hear a stirring recitation of our Declaration of Independence.

It further reinforces that not everything the founders, enlightened men of their age, did translates almost two and a half centuries later. I would put the 2nd amendment squarely into that category as well. I'll even throw a bone to the pro-gun crowd and accept it's about the people and not the militias.

Given that municipalities with strigent gun control laws (NYC for instance) are just as safe or safer than those where people can pack, the residual effect is merely the stroking of baseless paranoia. It is not a leap from believing you need guns to withstand your elected government's "tyranny" to rejecting any gov't effort for the common good, such as universal healthcare.