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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:25 pm
by KatyBr
I really believe that if we didn't have "The right to bear arms" we'd be living in a socialist state and paying 1/3 of our income in taxes so that only the ruling class had anything, and we'd have the cr@ p p y socialized medicine where people clog the emergency rooms with splinters.

Katy
I don't remember who said it but I read somewhere that "The only reason our government doesn't just take us over is the fact that they know we all might have a .22 in our hall closets."

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 4:49 pm
by Apoclima
Guns have been a part of the culture of the United States since it's inception, both for self-protection and for hunting. Many Americans grew up in a culture (most likely rural) where bringing guns to school was not even noticed, because it was understood that there were to be used for hunting on the way home. Why have things changed? Instead of looking at guns as the cuprit, why don't we look at the persons who are perpetrating the horrific crimes, such as school shootings:

Houses Built on Sand
No one is against devices to prevent accidental discharge of a loaded weapon or against keeping guns out the hands of children. But not even the most ardent gun safety proponent believes laws and regulations will prevent the availability of guns to those who are intent on obtaining them. Until we recognize the underlying dysfunctions as described above, it is unlikely that any successful programs will be mounted to solve the school violence problem we are facing. The children committing school violence are certainly cause for concern, but they are symptoms, not the cause, of a larger societal problem.
School Shootings Linked to

Psychotropic Drugs Such as Prozac, Ritalin, Luvox, and Paxil


"SSRI's Linked To School Shootings- Many Shooters on Anti-Depressants"
Instead of spending time and money on the vehicle of violence, the gun, we should be investigating the cause of the violence, which very well may be the prescribing of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin, Luvox, Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac to the young people of this country!
What I really hate about this problem (of drugging our children) is the plausible deniability factor! "Well, these kids were troubled anyway!" But kids have always been troubled during their teen years, why this problem now?

Apo

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:24 pm
by KatyBr
As long as we provide our children with everything BUT ourselves, we give them all the goodies and no discipline, we'll have teens who rebel violently. When we give huge allowances and ask for nothing in return(respect, work, oh yes work it's good for the little baggers) we teach self-centeredness. We help them out of every painful lesson their own conduct gets them into, we teach them to be lawless. We let daycare raise them, with it's ideas of time-outs and no cookie after the nap, to keep them in line, we teach irresponsilility.

Life is real, why sugar-coat it? For every action there is a compensurate reaction, why give kids the idea that they are never wrong, by covering up their mistakes. Drugging kids is awful. NO one knows what probems lie in that body's future when it's formative years are drugged up?

well, that's it for my soapbox pontificating for the day.

Katy

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 8:17 pm
by gailr
Why have things changed? Instead of looking at guns as the cuprit, why don't we look at the persons who are perpetrating the horrific crimes, such as school shootings:
This is sensible; and yet, how does one know who they are until after they have shot someone? Moreover, there is absolutely no reason for a contemporary western child to be packing a gun to and from school on the premise that they are hunting the family dinner on the way home.

Consider a far less serious situation: being asked for ID when writing a check. How many people have you observed (I hope you are not one, yourself) who become visibly upset and begin venting their spleens upon the sales clerk?

People are only too eager to take umbrage when asked to help prevent a problem, and even more eager to scapegoat the person(s) responsible for "screening" when the problem occurs anyway.

gailr

Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 8:49 pm
by KatyBr
Ok, then Gailr, how do you stand on showing your ID to vote? I'm in favor of everyone being responsible for themselves and to prove they are who they say they are boith when cashing checks and when voting.At least we don't have to show a passport whenever we go on a 100 km trip.

Katy

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 2:39 am
by M. Henri Day
As a matter of fact, W, I do find the distinction between violence in which weapons are used and that in which they are not of great relevance. The fist fights we engaged in as boys over half a century ago rarely ended in anything more dire than a black eye, split lip, and a new arrangement of the pecking order ; had we had firearms at our dispostion, things might well have ended very badly, indeed....

Henri

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:31 am
by Garzo
Agora discussion about Latin turns violent!

Shooting people is easier than knifing them or biffing them on the head with a rolling pan. I think violence should be kept violent: it's probably far too easy to pull a trigger: hand-to-hand combat requires much more dedication. That's why I believe that guns are bad for anyone who is not a soldier. There will always be enough soldiers ready to disobey the order to turn their guns on innocents to prevent the misuse of that limitation, I hope.

I saw recently the last speech given by Eisenhower before he vacated the Oval Office. He addressed his nation, and told them to be wary that the growing military industrial complex might make war just a matter of good business sense. Just as colour blindness often makes it difficult to distinguish between red and green, Muslims have become the new commies.

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:46 am
by Flaminius
Life is inherently dangerous. One wrong move and then you can be dead. That's how nature is build. It is, therefore, very logical that educational institutions provide pupils first-hand lessons of how they can lose their lives. Lessons in the reality of modern life include exposing the pupils to the danger of small firearms at the premises where they study.
Life is real, why sugar-coat it?
But Katy, you certainly do not follow the logic above? I entertain an opinion that any student who is caught with a gun in school deserves flogging, expulsion, torture, execution, perpetual damnation or any combination thereof.

Flam

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:32 pm
by KatyBr
Flam, I was perfectly consistant. Too many people treat their children like hothouse flowers, they coddle them , tell them the world is safe and they can have everything they want with no consequences for their actions. I believe the best answer to violence on the part of kids is better parenting. Disciplining consistantly, letting them know that the world can be a scary unfriendly place, to be upright and honest, by example, to allow their children to be punished for wrongdoing, and to love them. All this starts at age 0 and if by 2 the kids have no constant steady parent and are not "under control" it may be already too late.
We have 5 grandchildren, most of whom were horribly parented in their original homes, I'm waiting to see how good parenting will affect them.

Katy
no one should have guns nor drive til they are 30, in my opinion

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 10:42 pm
by gailr
Ok, then Gailr, how do you stand on showing your ID to vote?
I have no objection to showing my ID when appropriate (which includes non-cash purchases, registering to vote and/or voting, and with my airline ticket when attempting to board an airplane).

As for the topics of "training children_and_guns", here are links to two Landover articles. (For those unfamiliar, this is a spoof site, but one I enjoy immensely.) Vacation Bible Gun Camp and Unarmed Student Shot in the Head by a Jesus Puppet.

gailr

just decided not to say anything

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:32 pm
by KatyBr
:roll:
Katy

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 1:38 am
by Stargzer
...

So much for a society that tries to control handguns . . .
Larry, I may have become disoriented in the media whirlpool, but it is my understanding that violence in schools is no less prevalent in societies in which weapons control is less, shall we say, rigorous. Am I deceived ?...

Henri
No, Henri, I just found it interesting that a country that has tighter control on handguns than the US does has a need for metal detectors in their schools. I had momentarily forgotten which country A Clockwork Orange was set it. ;-) Some of ours have them, but fortunately we haven't yet reached the point that all schools require them.

I once knew a contractor from Canada who liked living in the US because he COULD own a handgun. I think he worked out a transfer to Arizona for even more freedom.

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 2:40 am
by Stargzer
Agora discussion about Latin turns violent!
Well, the Roman Empire wasn't built by pacifists!
Shooting people is easier than knifing them or biffing them on the head with a rolling pan. I think violence should be kept violent: it's probably far too easy to pull a trigger: hand-to-hand combat requires much more dedication. That's why I believe that guns are bad for anyone who is not a soldier. There will always be enough soldiers ready to disobey the order to turn their guns on innocents to prevent the misuse of that limitation, I hope.
Garzo, people have been killing one another since Cain slew Abel. Several years ago in our area, one man killed his roommate with a kitchen knife, another was killed during a fist-fight when a glass-front cabinet fell on him and a piece of the glass stabbed him, and a women was beaten to death by her son with a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary when she refused to give him money for drugs.

Washington DC has a ban on owning handguns, but that doesn't stop the criminals (or liberal black journalists, for that matter). You can't even carry a can of non-lethal pepper spray for defense in New York City if it's concealed in a pocket or purse.

The mass graves in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq would seem to have shattered your hopes . . .
. . . the growing military industrial complex might make war just a matter of good business sense. Just as colour blindness often makes it difficult to distinguish between red and green, Muslims have become the new commies.
No, not all muslims, just the bin Ladens and the other bin dogs. It's not paranoia when the really are out to get you.

Wasn't Shaw's Major Barbara an early form of the military-industrial complex? :)

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:30 am
by tcward
I share Garzo's view about the gun issue. Guns make it far too easy to be homocidal, by removing the gruesome intimacy and allowing the murderer to perform the act with less personal involvement with the victim.

Just my opinion.

-Tim

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2005 11:25 am
by KatyBr
It's not the guns it's the testosterone.
Literally and figuratively
Katy