HofstraBBall wrote:

SupremeCommander wrote:I really don't understand why there is such resistance to lengthening/strengthening background checks, and I really struggle to grasp why you have to 21 to purchase booze but 18 to purchase assault weapons

Because it hurts sales figures. That is all it is about. Using the second amendment has been the most successful advertising campaign in history.

These idiots that think it's about protecting their constitutional rights should read a history book. That and walk into the present. The right to bear arms was put in place to protect the possibility of an England soldier coming back around. That and they did not have any protection against many of the threats in the new world. Including angry natives, local thieves and murderers, fake militias and everything else trying to kill your family in the wild new settlements. They did not have a police force to protect them. It was truly lawlessness.

The far right fails to understand the need to improve antiquated aspects of the constitution by further defining "Arms*. Considering "Arms" have a much different meaning in today's AR-15, bullet proof vest, 40 round magazine world. They dismiss the fact that when this was put in place we had single shot muskets.

Problem is that common sense would have to trump greedy politicians who want power.

100%

HofstraBBall wrote:

SupremeCommander wrote:I really don't understand why there is such resistance to lengthening/strengthening background checks, and I really struggle to grasp why you have to 21 to purchase booze but 18 to purchase assault weapons

Because it hurts sales figures. That is all it is about. Using the second amendment has been the most successful advertising campaign in history.

These idiots that think it's about protecting their constitutional rights should read a history book. That and walk into the present. The right to bear arms was put in place to protect the possibility of an England soldier coming back around. That and they did not have any protection against many of the threats in the new world. Including angry natives, local thieves and murderers, fake militias and everything else trying to kill your family in the wild new settlements. They did not have a police force to protect them. It was truly lawlessness.

The far right fails to understand the need to improve antiquated aspects of the constitution by further defining "Arms*. Considering "Arms" have a much different meaning in today's AR-15, bullet proof vest, 40 round magazine world. They dismiss the fact that when this was put in place we had single shot muskets.

Problem is that common sense would have to trump greedy politicians who want power.

Armed citizenry is also a bulwark against tyrannical government. And you also got the flip side when neither the police nor the national guard can do much against mass riots and lawlessness, which are still widely happening today. So, no, the 2nd Amendment is as relevant today as it was over two centuries ago.

All that and Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero too.

P.S. But not requiring extensive background checks and prior training before letting people own a gun is insanity. And the legal drinking age should be lower, old enough to fight = old enough to drink.

BRIGGS wrote:I shot a shotgun for skeet when I was 7 and never touched another 1 again. Ive always hated guns. The only people who should have guns are the police and military and in the future NO ONE. Please let a common sense prevail here no more

I have a lot of love in my heart for you Briggs, you know that. But I've also said before that talking politics here at UK will eventually end up to no good.

Above a woman in West Virginia stopped a potential mass shooter/active shooter situation by using a pistol to gun him down before he could start killing children.

Do I think an 18 year old should be able to buy an AR15? Not in the way it happened to the mass shooter in Texas, then "No, I don't"

Do I think the 2nd Amendment is important and that law abiding citizens should have the right to bear arms and exercise their Constitutional Rights? "Yes"

Would I like to see more practical gun laws, gun reform, gun training and gun restriction that offers a practical balance to allow law abiding tax paying citizens to keep their firearms but remove more weapons from criminals and high risk groups like the mentally ill? "Yes"

For anyone here who wants to blindly see all guns banned forever, would you feel the same if your child was at this party in West Virginia? On the other hand, someone could ask me if I would feel the same way if my nephew was in that Texas school house just a few days ago.

I'm not going to say every gun situation is exactly like West Virginia just like I'm not going to say every gun situation is like the one, tragically, in Texas. But you can't put the horse back into the barn again. There are over 400 million guns in this country today. There is no practical way to take everyone's guns from them. They'll be armed, lots of them. Both good people and yes even some bad people. And if the bad people come at you with guns, do you want to be the only one that's unarmed?

Lots of people are passionate and saying what they want. I'm telling you what you have. What everyone has. What can't be changed. And before anyone runs their routine on me here, I've said forever that political topics should stay out of UK because it only charges people up and divides them. I didn't start this thread, I didn't allow this thread, so if people want to start jumping on me for my opinion, then they should jump on everyone else too for their opinion. You can't just have half the opinions show up in a topic that's controversial and is likely to offend someone somewhere.

It's just not that simple. It's really not.

Nalod wrote:Back ground checks and no Automatic Killing rifles. Pretty freaking simple.

Uvalde, Texas - 21 killed, 18 wounded. Shooter was Hispanic and 18 years old and lived with his grandmother.

Buffalo, New York - 10 killed, 3 wounded. Shooter was Caucasian and 18 years old and lived with his parents.

Boulder, Colorado - 10 killed, 2 wounded. Shooter was Syrian and 21 years old and lived with his parents.

Parkland, Florida - 17 killed, 17 wounded. Shooter was Caucasian and 19 years old and was semi transient after his adoptive parents died.

It's not all the mass shootings, but there's a theme here. Too young to have much life experience/work experience to rack up red flags that would show up in a background check, mental health issues, loners, young, clearly lacking parent guidance especially strong male father figure guidance.

No background check in the entire world is going to get around this kind of situation. If you have practically no life history, you have no resume to use against you.

I think a fair argument can be made that no 18 year old civilian should be able to buy an AR15 off the shelf. The common legal argument is that if a young man is old enough to hold a rifle to defend his country by joining the military, he's old enough to hold a rifle period. I can see a practical age limit of 25 for AR15s. With an exemption for full time active duty military and/or sworn law enforcement. Also heavy restrictions on anyone with a mental health record. If it were up to me, I'd have anyone with a mental health record barred from gun ownership for their entire life. The problem is while some here want to make accusations of one side trying to game the system to allow too many guns/too powerful guns, there's clearly another agenda that will try to milk down what amounts to a full time ban of guns by running as close to the edge of the 2nd Amendment without trying to fully challenge it.

I don't want to live in a society where every whacked out 18 year old can buy an AR15 at will. I also don't want to live in a world where career criminals, who don't give a **** about any gun laws, to be the only ones with guns while all law abiding citizens are disarmed. Fuck the first option. Most definitely **** that second option.

So no, not simple.

Real issue is fixing families and homes and communities. Wayward young men need more support structure and guidance. What happened on The Wire, was no joke. Dennis "Cutty" Wise starting a boxing gym to help out kids without much hope and much help. Getting these kids exercising and doing sports and making an informal family with a sports team can only help. If those four kids above were wrestling, doing boxing, doing judo, doing Cross Fit, doing rock climbing, doing anything to take the edge off, might have helped.

Now some people are going to be psychos no matter what, but communities have to fix themselves first, that's the start.

All of this is way more complicated than just telling Republicans to go **** themselves. Chicago is a hotbed of young black men shooting each other with handguns virtually non stop, and there's not one hint of the GOP in that madness.

You want fewer kids shot, more kids being productive, fewer girls ending up pregnant as teenagers, fewer kids hooked on drugs, then you have to clean up families, parents, homes and local communities. After you do that, then you can legitimately say some kid was just a true piece of **** psychopath and there was no hope at all.

Blame only has so much rope in it. At some point, the energy has to go towards practical solutions.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/ValerioCNN/status/1531390399780212737

BigDaddyG wrote:

Eh, in the case of the Buffalo, there were at least one incident at his school where he threatened school violence prior and he left a number of bread crumbs on social media. Not saying I completely disagree with your initial point. I agree with a lot of it. My point is that there has been a fundamental breakdown in how this country wants us to perceive this issue. Would more access to mental health, background checks or the banning of certain weapons alleviate the problem completely? No. Would it be a big step in addressing the real issues? Yes. Uvade's law enforcement brought in their SWAT...it all proved to be worthless. I'd rather see those resources go toward identifying and nullifying the domestic terrorist threat that has been bubbling underneath the surface the past few decades. As for telling Republicans to **** themselves, can you honestly tell me there aren't those at the forefront of the party that need to be told that? There are certainly Democrats I'd like to tell the same thing too.

Gun ownership increase from 2019 to 2020:

58 percent Black Americans
49 percent Hispanic Americans
43 percent Asian Americans

40 percent of 2020 gun sale went to first time gun buyers

Firearm background checks, for people attempting to make legal gun purchases, by the FBI in America:

38,876,673 for 2021

39,695,315 for 2022

The fundamental breakdown is, of course, nearly every last single adult American sees these mass shootings as senseless tragedies. And they are responding by not clamoring for more gun laws, not most of them. A crap ton of them are responding by becoming new gun owners themselves. This is something the mainstream media won't cover, like in the third video above, where it's an older black women, a hard working law abiding tax payer, who just says she doesn't feel safe anymore.

Not just black women, a lot of African Americans in general. Also Hispanics. Asians. Across socioeconomic status. Across legal age. Across different states and different communities with different cultural nuances and previously held views on gun ownership.

You have mass shootings on one end. But you also had 2020 with all the insane rioting and looting and burning. Some cities went night after night after night for what seemed like forever. Those small business owners got totally ****ed. Many of them were minority owned. Just every day working class people trying to get by and survive. You had Defund The Police. You had lots of cops retire and some just outright quit because the job became impossible, even for many of the hard working good cops out there ( let's not pretend all cops are bad, let's not do that) . You had the pandemic. Then you had bail reform where big cities were just allowing some truly ****ed up career criminals out again and again. You have businesses just shut down and say "Fuck It" and leave certain areas because the crime rate is too high and there's too much violence. You have illegal immigrants, including criminals mixed in with just regular people hoping to be citizens and building a life for their kids, flooding the Southern Border. People can't find baby formula. People are worried they soon can't afford rent, or gasoline or food with prices skyrocketing. Dave Chappelle got attacked on stage.

A lot of people are plain terrified and I don't blame them. They might find mass shootings horrible, I believe we all do, and yet they are still going to do whatever it takes to protect their own children.

There seems to be only one universal message here - The government, whether it's the Democrats or the Republicans or the Tea Party or the Wiccans or the Jedi Order or anyone else, is just about for themselves and they don't give one damn how many innocent working class every day people get ****ed over for it. And you are on your own. No one is going to come to help you out. If that's one lesson people want to take from Uvalde SWAT sitting in a hallway for an hour and not breaching that door, then so be it.

Do most people support better mental health in this country? I'd say Yes, but do they want to pay for it with their taxes? Do most people support back ground checks? I'd say Yes but a lot of people don't want something that goes beyond function and is just another government list used to hurt innocent people. Do a lot of people want weapons like AR-15s gone for good? I'd say lots of Americans would agree with that, but that's a war that's been raging a long time and nothing has changed.

What people can do TODAY, is buy a ****ing Glock for themselves. And they are doing just that. And once you have a new gun owner, they aren't going to be too keen on more and more gun restrictions. If they are buying to keep from being terrorized or being a future victim, they will want the option for bigger and badder guns to stop any threat.

Can Republicans do much better? Yes. No argument. If a dip **** 18 year old can buy an AR-15 off the shelf like the dumb mother****er in Texas, something is wrong.

But you can't be the Party in power, the Democrats, and have the sitting President and a majority in Congress and create a culture of utter lawlessness and crime. It's not like this **** is coming from nowhere. And if you do that, you can't tell people they can't have guns to defend themselves after you've made it clear no one else is going to help them.

The country has already "voted" in how they perceive this issue. Many are just buying as many guns as they can as fast as they can. And it's not too easy to say it's just some poor country MAGA loving piece of poor white uneducated trash doing it. When you get middle class black mothers buying pink Magnums, that should tell you something about how the general population is starting to feel about guns in general.

I want what you want. We want to be safe. We want our families and the people we love to be safe. I don't want to go out in public and get gunned down by some 19 year old piece of **** because he's lonely and can't find someone to suck his dick. You are telling me what you want, I'm telling you what we have today.

BigDaddyG wrote:I think you're partially right. People are arming up for their own personal safety. The majority of the country (more than 50% of the country still feels that gun laws need to be stricter). But even with that figure, there's some nuance.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/393092/americans-recent-attitudes-toward-guns.aspx

In January of this year (2022), the percentage of Americans very satisfied with the nation's laws or policies on guns dropped from 20% saying they were "very satisfied" to 13%. An additional 28% were "somewhat satisfied," while 19% were "somewhat dissatisfied" and 37% "very dissatisfied."

I take that to mean that 87% believes something needs to be done, whether it's a tweak or a complete overhaul.
Now why are people arming up? They're scared. At some point, these people decided enough is enough, our government is failing us, and we need to do whatever. Doesn't mean they love the idea. But the government at the federal level has been a joke. You can say the Republicans would've handled it better, but we recently had four years for that to come to fruition and it didn't happen. Will this administration do better? Doesn't look like it, I'll admit it. Personally, I don't think all firearms should be banned. But there are number of firearms that don't belong out in the wild. As for the rhetoric that more restrictive gun laws don't work:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/01/05/us-bought-almost-20-million-guns-last-year---second-highest-year-on-record/?sh=700991fe13bb

U.S. Bought Almost 20 Million Guns Last Year — Second-Highest Year On Record
Joe Walsh
Updated Apr 14, 2022, 02:05pm EDT

Americans bought about 19.9 million firearms last year, down 12.5% from 2020, according to one industry estimate — but 2021 was still the industry’s second-busiest year on record, as politics and public health continue to drive interest in owning guns.

Gun purchases didn't catch up to 2020’s record-breaking 22.8 million sales, but easily surpassed the pre-pandemic record of 16.7 million in 2016, according to Small Arms Analytics and Forecasting, which uses FBI background check data to estimate sales.

Last year, the firearms industry sold about six guns for every 100 Americans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/gun-manufacturing-atf.html

U.S. Gun Production Triples Since 2000, Fueled by Handgun Purchases
Glenn Thrush
May 17, 2022

WASHINGTON — The United States is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal tally of gun commerce in two decades.

The data documented a drastic shift in consumer demand among gun owners that has had profound commercial, cultural and political implications: Starting in 2009, Glock-type semiautomatic handguns, purchased for personal protection, began to outsell rifles, which have been typically used in hunting.

Embedded in the 306-page document was another statistic that law enforcement officials find especially troubling. The police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost guns,” in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016. Law enforcement officials say that has contributed to the surge in gun-related killings, especially in California, where ghost guns make up as many as half of weapons recovered at crime scenes.

The numbers released Tuesday revealed an industry on the rise, with annual domestic gun production increasing from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020. A relatively small percentage of guns produced domestically are exported overseas, so those numbers are an accurate reflection of gun-buying habits, according to A.T.F. officials.

Add in the 6 million in legal firearm sales for the first four months of 2022, that's

23 million in 2020
20 million in 2021
6 million for the first third of 2022

49 million firearms sold in the last two and a half years.

There are 400 + million guns estimated in America today.

That means over 12 percent of all legal guns in the entire country were sold in the past two and a half years.

Look, you've got your statistics and polls. But I've got raw sales. And that number doesn't include all the private sales done in person or untracked or 3D printed firearms or guns built from kit systems and cobbled together.

That's a staggering number. That's guns moving at a historic rate. That's production numbers at a historic rate.

And here's the thing, we are only a year and a half into this Biden Administration. We have two and half more years of his reign. And if the back half is as ****ed up as the first half, how long before even more of those on the fence people will just start buying guns?

Parents who think their children aren't safe don't give two ****s about what politicians have to say about guns if they believe they will call the police and call the government and no one will help them. Lots of working class people, both Republican and Democrat alike, feel totally abandoned.

They aren't just going to roll over and die.

"Restrictive" gun laws are pointless if the masses of people are buying them faster than gun makers can produce them. If the Democratic Party keeps creating more crime by bail reform and Defund The Police plus **** them with inflation, people are going to stop voting for them. And once Republicans take power and have majorities, you know where guns laws will go.

If some of you want stricter gun laws, you need Democrats to win a **** load of elections. You can't win them if they keep pushing that no bail bull**** where career criminals just waltz out of jail and go right back to ****ing over and terrorizing working class people. You can't push this crazy Defund The Police bull**** where lots of every day people believe your Party took cops off the streets and now there is no one to protect them. If you demonize cops, you aren't just punishing the bad ones, you are punishing all of them. That's a hard enough job as it is, do you want to see them demonized to the point where no one competent wants to do the job? You can't demand more competent police and set up a system where no one with talent and options is going to want to walk into a perpetual daily **** show.

Some of you want to **** on all Republicans, so that's that. I can't change that. But you have to ask yourself if the current Democratic Party is doing it's part to put itself in the position to push forward and actually get the kind of gun legislation some of you clearly want.

ToddTT wrote:

A lot of respect to this man.

Steve Kerr can have any opinion he wants. But when he goes to work, he's literally surrounded all the time by armed security, private security that works for the Warriors, local law enforcement and NBA's own Global Security.

The guy in the video above, the veteran, do you think he can say the same thing?

Kerr gets to fly on customized charter jets, stay in top tier hotels and accommodations, eat gourmet level food prepared for him by a team chef, gets the best medical care in the world, has unlimited access to all kinds of things that working class people will never see, and do you think he's living in a working class neighborhood where crime might be a day to day reality?

Do you think if he or his kids are victims of a crime they'll be treated like everyone else?

Kerr is a great coach. He's had a great career. And he has the right to whatever opinion he wants. But it's easy for him to say what should or should not happen when his reality is not anywhere near the same as most other working class every day Americans.

But hey, he's another famous celebrity ****ting on all Republicans on national TV. So all must be forgiven.

The entire gun issue is incredibly complex. Kerr has a point. Many actually. But his points are NOT the only points out there worth hearing.