MASSIVE Elementary School Shooting in CT *12-24 Maybe be dead

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by bigdaddy, Dec 14, 2012.

  1. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    That's a fascinating anecdote about your early life on the Ponderosa there, Hoss, and while that is all good advice, that advice plus keeping your guns locked up around children like a responsible adult is even better.
     
  2. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    The poor ass way the American revolution is taught is a great help to the delusional sense of citizens with arms is of necessity. The mythologizing of the power of citizen arms comes greatly from the Revolution, but really the militia elements were militarily useless for the most part. The distance over which the British had to fight and the size of the land they were trying to quell in short order were of far more reason for the British failure to crush the revolution. The militias were always under funded and of low morale when fighting away from their home territories. Yet, today the myth of Concord and Lexington has long over shadowed the truth that they were insignificant on the field and overall, lacking a Continental Army, the colonies would have fallen to the British forces in pretty quick order.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2012
  3. indranee

    indranee Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Interesting. I just find that verbiage interesting.
     
  4. Data Holmes

    Data Holmes Admiral Admiral

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    Over thought it, then edited it into a mess...
     
  5. indranee

    indranee Vice Admiral Admiral

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    No, I meant that as children to know that this is a lethal weapon that you can only point at and use at someone you may want to kill.

    That whole idea of knowing that you may WANT TO KILL.

    I mean, we *are*, after all, a naturally carnivorous, hunting species. And you can see that tendency to "eliminate" in even babies.

    I just found that directive you had as a child interesting and illuminating.
     
  6. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Speaking from my own experience as a kid in the eighties, my parents allowed me to have toy guns and play "war," "Special Forces," and "hunt the enemy" to my heart's content whenever I felt the need to get together with friends or my cousins and do so....act out the whole "boy with toys" thing.

    However....

    They countered the plastic rat-a-tat-tat plastic Uzis, M-16s and pistols they allowed me to have with constructive learning toys, books, art supplies and video games (Atari, Colecovision, the earliest Nintendo system) so as to encourage (mostly) peaceful creativity, thinking and problem solving skills. Yes I pointed my trusty plastic Uzi that made the loud rat-a-tat-tat when you pulled the trigger at my cousins and shouted "gotcha! Fall down, I nailed you!" But when that was done I came inside and drew. Sketched. Wrote short stories. Read books. Comic books. Learned history and geography. Played video games (the most violent of which in 1985 wasn't even as raunchy or bloody as two seconds in one of the Grand Theft Auto franchise). Watched PBS. Studied insects.

    The point: my parents knew real guns were not to be trifled with and I was taught that "you don't point a gun at someone unless you really mean it" and most violence in the real world was brutal and pointless, but they taught me context and counterbalanced the rough-and-tumble war and shooting toys and games of the '80s with things that were creative and intellectual in nature.

    I think that's always been the problem with many parents whether they mean well and just don't know how to handle their kids or are just damned lousy moms and dads who have no real business having offspring: correct context and balancing their children's roughhousing and play violence with things that are more constructive and creative. Let them be kids and be prepubescent and pubescent males, but temper the rambunctiousness and shoot-'em-up with pursuits that allow them to express their own individual talents.

    You can't really stop most little boys from being little boys, but you can show them that there's a whole lot more in this world than guns and violence.
     
  7. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    @neiltyson:

    In Walmart, America's largest gun seller, you can buy an assault rifle. But company policy bans pop music with curse words.
     
  8. SmoothieX

    SmoothieX Vice Admiral Admiral

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    This is similar to the approach my folks took. My mom used to hunt with her old man quite a bit growing up, and had a shotgun in her closet. She made no secrets about it. It was also disassembled and the bullets were kept somewhere else.

    My grandparents had a good sized piece of land in the Catskills, so occasionally our family and my uncle's (her brother) would visit for the weekend. The two of them would get together and shoot tin cans off a fence post. They dragged me and my cousin (the one noted above, to no avail I guess) out a few times and demonstrated how to safely handle things. It was very slow and deliberate. When I started learning how to shoot last summer, it was on an air rifle (you'll put your eye out!) for crying out loud.

    My parents didn't care if I played Laser Tag or Super Soaker or anything like that, but they too disapproved of authentic looking toys or shoot 'em up games.
     
  9. propita

    propita Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    But if it was, could we tell the Congressman that this was their way out of town for the holidays? It'd make for interesting reality show!
     
  10. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I wouldn't object to super crocs getting some members of Congress because of this whole embarrassing Fiscal Cliff fiasco.
     
  11. E-DUB

    E-DUB Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Typical gun control argument. The antis say "Criminals will always be able to get guns. The pros say "We gotta do something and the guns (or maybe the clips) seem the logical place to start.

    The problem is that there is no typical case. The Newtown shooter got his guns at home. The Aurora shooter, who had no criminal record, got his at a sporting goods store.

    Nobody with a gun stopped the Tuscon shooter, even though Ariz is, as far as I know, an "open-carry" state. He was tackled as he paused to reload.

    I think that if any of these loonies had to buy on a "black-market", the actual criminals behind those enterprises would have kicked their butts and stolen their money.

    By the way, there was recently a shooting at a police station. Maybe they should post armed guards there, oh, wait a minute.

    There has also been talk here of allowing people with guns into libraries, libraries for crying out loud. No word on if the library could at least mandate use of a silencer.
     
  12. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    (*Rimshot*)

    So where do you stand on the matter? Pro? Anti? Undecided?
     
  13. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Criminals will also always be able to get explosives, or even create them themselves. And if they can't create them themselves, they use airplanes. Is that the reason and excuse to legalize explosives and make them available for the average Joe? Perhaps at Walmart?
     
  14. cooleddie74

    cooleddie74 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The "if we restrict or outlaw something only criminals will get it" argument wears incredibly thin after a while. We're not talking about Prohibition-era alcoholic beverages or modern day narcotics where most of the danger to the human being is to themselves by abusing the substances.

    Guns aren't booze and they aren't weed. They can kill dozens of innocent people in a matter of seconds and the corollary that if we ban high-capacity clips, magazines and ammunition drums or assault weapons that "only the criminals will have them and then things will only get much worse" is palpable crap.

    Even Larry Pratt of the gun lobby admitted that gun crimes with outlawed weapons fell by a full two-thirds in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Assault Weapons Ban in the '90s (though I don't think he really meant to admit that on television in front of an audience of millions....it was a rare slip-up from one of the "arm everybody and sell more guns" crowd).

    The "only criminals will have this-or-that" counterargument is just a tactic used to try to stop the debate and it does work with some people who are more prone to just give up and feel there's no point and that nothing concrete will ever get done.
     
  15. propita

    propita Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    So this guy who started a fire to lure the firemen over, then shot them because he "likes to kill people" got his guns through a now-arrested neighbor. She KNEW he was not allowed to buy guns, so she bought them, signed the forms that they were for HER, and promptly delivered them over to this asshole.

    Laws allowing the sale of such guns will not stop the wrong people from getting them. Laws disallowing the sale of such guns MAY at least make it that much harder. I think most people can understand those who wish/need to hunt or protect themselves or peacefully collect (with adequate security measures).

    It's the weapons which cannot really be used for hunting or self-protection which should be controlled/regulated/banned/monitored/pick-one. I mean, who would fire 10 shots in 1 minute into a damn deer and then eat the deer? Such guns are not used for hunting and usually are less useful for protection.
     
  16. warriorsfan

    warriorsfan Admiral Admiral

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    Machine guns are largely banned, except for some pre-ban guns that are heavily regulated and registered. Now, when's the last time anyone here read a story where a bad guy used a fully-auto machine gun to commit a crime or a massacre?

    So the mantra of "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" would seem to be disproven using that example, now wouldn't it? We banned machine guns...and criminals no longer had a supply of machine guns in civilian hands to draw from (either through theft or straw purchase). Fancy that.
     
  17. Data Holmes

    Data Holmes Admiral Admiral

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    Tannerite is a legal binary explosive you can purchess straight from the manufacture, no special requirements.

    For anything else, you need to get an FEL, link.
     
  18. Captain Ice

    Captain Ice Cookie Constructor Admiral

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    You wouldn't happen to live in Arizona, would you? There is or was a bill before the legislature here earlier this year that would have allowed people with concealed carry permits to carry their guns into public buildings (including libraries), schools, and bars.

    Strangely, there has not been any mention of this bill in the last couple of weeks....