TheProgressiveLiberal

Not surprising. There will be a run by people worried that gun laws might be tightened.

A large percentage of us grew up around guns, so we don't have a fear of them. We can do the math in our head on the likelihood of being killed in an event like this. It's so low as to not even register.

Kilbowie: I don't disagree with most of what you responded. 1. Interesting how you tout Scotland. Scotland is 96% white with 5.5 million people, so it's a decent comp to compare your murder rate to the white murder rate by US state. Wiki says Scotland was an average of 1.42/100,000 over 5 years from 2010-2014. I typed "white murder rate by US state" into Google. I found a blog post that attempted to read into the FBI statistics and figure out the number. It's not perfect and you can't break out Hispanics from Whites, but here's the results of his efforts. The numbers are from the five years around the year 2006. http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2013/01/white-murder-rates-by-state.html The following states have white murder rates lower than Scotland, despite our gun ownership: New Hampshire, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, and Wisconsin. In addition the following states are under 2/100,000: Vermont, Maine, Utah, Delaware, Ohio, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Montana, and Oregon. Of the 7 states over 4/100,000, all except Alaska have heavy Hispanic populations (Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Texas). Looking around the blogs other posts they do seem to focus on racial issues, so you can take that into account. Read the article to understand their methodology. 2. You bring up mental health care: What would you change? This guy had money. Most of these white, mentally ill mass shooters had money. How do we get them their mental health counseling. It's commonly pointed out that one of the reasons for the explosion of violence rates in our country in the 1970s and 80s was the end of most involuntarily commitment for the mentally ill. If people have the resources to get help, but won't, what should we do? 3. Thank you for mentioning Canada's gun ownership. We have a more violent culture. Always have. Look at the colonial era. Look at the Western expansion. And it remains the same today. That's what I mean about culture being important. 4. It's not just the IRA. I assume that the mafia and organized Muslim groups have access to guns if they want them. If criminal gangs want guns in the UK they can get them. Imagine how much easier it will be in the USA where there are 300 million guns and will be widespread civil disobedience to any gun ban. Getting 1/3rd of them turned in voluntarily would count as a massive victory, but even that number would probably be unrealistic.

Identify which part of my statement was wrong. You can't. Don't know what you do, but there's probably more than a 50-50 shot that I'm richer than you. Don't have any views on "racial superiority." Just think that culture / race matters on many issues more than class when it comes to behavior. This shouldn't be a controversial statement. It's backed up by facts. You think I'm an office turkey in the monkey suit? Ain't bout that life.

The other side's guns did not. It has to be brought up when dealing with the type of stats that the pro-gun control people trot out.

1. You are right about the painkiller analogy, but that's the domestic violence part of our gun crime. This was not impulsive, and almost all mass shootings are highly planned. They cannot be stopped by gun control. 2. Americans are scared of criminals because our criminals are basically the most violent people on earth. It's not like Scotland. We have to deal with our society as it is.

Most of the difference with other developed nations is due to our black gang population. Take them out and our murder rates are much, much closer to Europe. Gun control isn't going to take guns out of the hands of black gangs, just like it doesn't keep the IRA from owning guns. Organized criminals will always get guns. We have a higher percentage of our population involved in organized gangs.

Nobody advocates for allowing automatic guns to be legal. They aren't in 99.99% of cases. Haven't been for 80 years.

64 year old accountants in Scotland can't get weed or hookers. That's roughly the level of work it would take to get a gun in the US if they were banned tomorrow. And as you all should know, guns aren't the only way to kill dozens if that's what you set out to do. Again, gun control would stop domestic violence and accidents, which are a huge percentage of shootings in America. A guy determined to be a mass murderer is going to be able to do it no matter what the laws.

Demographics are different. Culture is different. This man would have been able to kill dozens no matter what law was in place if he set out to do so.

Where did you hear this? As far as I know it is not legal to even own the kit which can convert a semi auto into an auto.

No. The point is that there are 300 million guns in America now. No law is going to change that. Guns are going to be as easy to get as pot if you want to do something like this for a long, long time no matter what the law. And if you couldn't get a gun it's easy enough to build a bomb or use a truck. This type of attack cannot be stopped if someone is willing to spend thousands of dollars and invest weeks of planning, Gun control would stop some domestic violence deaths. Not terrorism, not gang shootings, and not most mass shootings. Gun control doesn't work in 99% of the world. Not in Mexico. Not in South Africa.

This is incorrect. There is a law from the 1930s that mostly banned automatic guns. The ones in circulation are highly, highly regulated. If you were one of the few who happened to legally own one before an even stricter law was passed in 1986 you could still transfer the gun legally, but it's a very complicated process.

A commentator on the ISteve blog wrote this about the right / left question and the history of Catalonian nationalism. Thought it was interesting.

You win if you had Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland in your pool for which Democrat would make the first uneducated statement about gun laws. "How high does the death toll have to get before we enact real bipartisan reforms that will make the American public safer and reduce the risks that come with allowing such easy access to dangerous weapons primarily designed for the battlefield? Automatic weapons are not needed to hunt deer or ducks; they are only meant to kill people - and they do far to often in this country." Automatic weapons have been almost 100% illegal and highly, highly regulated since 1934. These people don't even know the laws. It's always incredible because a Democrat makes this exact mistake after every mass shooting, yet they never learn. Maybe they don't even hear the mocking in their bubble. "utter failure of a country."

And we can talk about the Las Vegas shooting as well. Seeing social media videos on CNN. So many shots can be heard, but only two dead as of now.

Brooke Country High School here in West Virginia played a mostly black school from Pittsburgh called Perry High. The game had been designated as a patriotic theme for months. Their student section showed up like this. The parents and teachers from Perry High threw a fit about this being "racism." The Brooke County School leaders have apologized for a "bullying" sign. They have promised to make sure their kids are reeducated in the values of "respect and dignity for all."

If they were willing to get authoritarian, they should have just declared the referendum illegal, asked their side to boycott, and then sent in the police only if the local government tried to declare independence based on a boycotted vote. Optics are way better. Maybe in the aftermath you could level economic consequences on the individuals responsible for organizing the vote to give future people pause. Not knowing much about Spanish politics, I can only assume they are worried that letting votes on this issue happen unchallenged is a Pandora's Box they don't want to open and a precedent they don't want to set.

Why would you bring your nice dog to a riot?

I haven't studied Snowden very much, and I might change my mind if I did, but I'm inclined to support people within the government bureaucracy who reveal extreme levels of illegal activity by the government. I'm a conservative. If something has worked well for our society I'm for keeping it the way it is. I can't say what other countries should do.

The guy who standardized American English in the early 1800s didn't like the French, so he changed some of the spellings that seemed too "French." His name was Noah Webster. The dictionaries in every school are still named for him.

Yeah, I think this is a good thing. It means that he's probably good on his taxes. Think about what you're saying. You're surprised that people in the government haven't tried illegal behavior to bring down the elected President of the United States. It's amazing what our country has come to.

Sorry, that's not acceptable. It's been a week and a half. If the same thing happened in Scotland or West Virginia more than 50% or 20% of the people supposed to show up to help make sure a disaster doesn't turn into a humanitarian crisis would be there. That's the benefit of living in a first world country. As for the mayor of San Juan, the director of FEMA called her out for refusing to participate in the unified command directing the response. Hahahahaha. Amazing. What a c**t! She literally refuses to show up at the field office.

Out of curiosity, are you ok with this? http://www.chron.com/sports/highschool/article/High-school-football-kicked-off-team-anthem-kneel-12242713.php