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Originally Posted by MT2008
Is there any chance we could acknowledge that maybe, in fact, there are some gun control measures that are actually reasonable responses to a massacre such as this? Even if we agree that calling for another AWB would not be one of those measures?
At times like this, what I'd like to see is actual dialogue between gun owners and gun controllers, rather than the usual demonizing of each other that tends to inevitably follow. The more you guys spout the usual BS about how we need more lenient conceal-carry laws*, and how those who support gun control are freedom-hating socialists, the more you're just going to keep digging your own graves.
*As with Aurora, I really hope that nobody believes conceal-carry laws would have made a difference in Newtown. When the perp has an AR-15 and body armor, he'll outgun anybody carrying a concealed sub-compact Glock or .38 snub.
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I've always been willing to discuss the issue, but in the past we've never been invited to the table to really participate in the discussion. All they've done is villify gunowners and then push for more and more restrictions. I thought that maybe the AWB in 94 would be enough, but it wasn't. They kept pushing for more and more and the other side engaged in simplistic sterotypes of gunowners.
I am a father of two teenagers. Don't think that the shooting hasn't horrified me as well. The anti's trying to take that moral high-ground isn't going to work on me or many others.
As a police officer I've attended more than a few autopsies of young people who have been murdered (to include an infant) and I've been to more than a couple gun realted homicde scenes. I even helped the coroner put a man's body into a body bag. He blew his skull apart with a .44 magnum. I have experience with the reality of firearms violence. I've pointed guns at people and I've had them pointed at me.
Yes I'm willing to work with the other side, but they need to work with us as well. Just stating that you want to have some type of dialogue and then never extend the invitation is hypocrisy. Both sides need to meet in the middle. But so-far that hasn't happened. The NRA seems to be offering feelers, but they are feelers that come from strength. Unlike situation for British and Australian gunowners in 96 who had no strength. No organization and no voice.
Just for the record I don't own any hi-cap assault rifles. I own a Glock 26. All my other firearms hold ten or less, but that doesn't mean I'm okay with a ban. And when the extremists start talking about confiscations I dig my heels in. Also why does it have to be all about gunowners. Why are we so easy going with the mentally ill now?
Here in my city we have several mental folks (autistic, retarded, bi-polar, schizophrenic, so on and so forth) that we deal with all the time. They come into the hospital they go out of the hospital. Liberals will tell you we don't have enough mental health services and conservatives will tell you we molly coddle them too much. All I can tell you is that the system is broken (I'm not sure it was ever working) and I have absolutely no idea how to improve it. Some of them are dangerous and most of them are just wrecks. And that is how it is in the United States.
In the past year it's been the mental cases who have been using the firearms to create the carnage. We need to also look at that situation as well.
Dialogue? Sure. I'm okay with that. But I want us to be able to participate in the dialogue and negotiations. Not just have things thrown onto us like the old school European nobility did to the peasants. That won't fly.
So I am sending the NRA fifty dollars becasue the NRA ensures that we are able to talk and negotiate from a position of strength. Not weakness.