5 year old boy shoots his sister with his own rifle

Sparks wrote: »

You know that the kids can't buy guns on their own, right?
That it has to be a parent who buys them?
I mean, the gun laws in most of the US are less draconian than here, but they're not exactly anything-goes either, regardless of what the saturday morning cartoons Irish press say.


Having trained a few hundred kids to shoot safely, I think I can say with a little bit of experience that this is utter horse droppings. You can guarantee you'll always be at their shoulder when they're shooting, it's downright easy to do so.


That's a very nuanced and informed opinion, obviously based on deep experience and widespread gathering of relevant social and cultural information as well as deep research into the immediately relevant facts.

NRA doesn't pay off politicans? I'm not even going to bother to link to an article there is so many.
Guns are not marketed to kids?
The deep south does not have a prevailing tendency toward gun use and a bad history in terms of education and schooling for its populace. Having spent a year in Arizona and having taught alongside Teach for America teachers I have quite a bit of knowledge of the southern states.

*yawn*


This thread has degraded into back and forth arguing now.





*unfollows*

MadsL wrote: »

This is relevant.

http://i.imgur.com/drOXEEz.jpg

But then labelling a nation of 320 million people as 'Imbeciles' is acceptable on AH for some reason.

Ironically enough it is right wingers who have been responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks since 1995 in the states.
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/unaddressed-threats.jpg

Manic we will have to agree to disagree.

stoneill wrote: »

NRA answer - if only the 2 year old had a gun.

Cos that hasn´t been said 5 times..

Sparks wrote: »

NRA's actual answer, which they've been saying since 1988 with a little bit of success is:


But hey, that's just one of them pesky fact things, don't let it derail your train of thought.

Don't sell guns to kids! Kinda puts a big hole through the centre of the message.
BULLSEYE!

(an internet-bully takes a bad, bad beating.)

A Connecticut gun lobbying group on Wednesday personally attacked the father of a Sandy Hook school massacre victim, accusing him of "profitting off of the tragedy" and saying a decade-old drug arrest makes him a "poster boy" for background check ineffectiveness. Link

Once again American gun lobbyists showing their true colours. Absolutely vile. Dragging the man's name through mud and lying about him after his son has been murdered. Great way to argue a point.

Sparks wrote: »

Speaking of, what has a fairly nasty statement made in reference to a completely different incident and relating to a completely different aspect of the law have to do with this accident? Or are we now saying that the 5-year-old had mental health issues and stole the rifle and deliberately shot and killed his sister?

Highlighting an example of what lobbyists have resorted to in the face of the various atrocities which are taking place as it has been brought up in this thread more than once. I could start a new thread and highlight it but I don't see the point.

Sparks wrote: »

In other words, you're evaluating the argument based on some of the worst examples of behaviour of a minority of the people arguing it that you could find. As opposed to, say, evaluating the argument based on the logic and evidence contained within the argument. You'd almost wish there was a term for that...

This was the most recent attack. Hold on do I have to put together all the different articles in which gun lobby groups attacked Sandy Hook and Newtown victims' families as there has been quite a few? See I could have done that but you would have said I'm dragging up the past. You like guns we get it. If you are not in favour of increased backgrounds checks that is a different story.

BattleCorp wrote: »

I can't speak for Sparks but I seriously doubt that Sparks has a problem with background checks.

Us shooting enthusiasts here in Ireland don't have a problem with background checks. I certainly don't. In fact, I am all for gun control. That's making sure that the guns end up in the hands of people who are safe and responsible with them. So yes, background checks are a must in my opinion.

Just remember though, there's no law that can account for dumb ass parents. Leaving a gun where a child can get access to it is plain stupid and irresponsible. And downright criminal too I reckon. It is here in Ireland anyway.

The US is a very different kettle of fish though. They have different beliefs when it comes to civil liberties and gun ownership.

Manic Moron didn't agree with the previously legislation that was shot down by gun nuts in the Senate. So I am unsure of Sparks' position. My issue is with guns being marketed to kids. This in itself contributes to these sorts of problems. Even Coca Cola has the decency not to market directly to under 12s.

Sparks wrote: »

Which wasn't the same thing as disagreeing with background checks. Disagreeing over 2% of a policy is not the same as disagreeing over 100% of a policy and only a fanatic would think so.It's that the 5-year-old didn't have a background check, didn't have mental health issues and didn't shoot up a school, so bringing in to this thread what you just brought in is not actually an argument, it's just muckraking.

And you'll have an issue the day a kid can buy a gun. Until then, your actual problem is bad parents.

Yeah, right. Or, to look at it with both eyes, they only announced that policy two days ago after having been in business since the days when putting actual cocaine in the drink was legal. The policy only applies to kids who aren't old enough to buy much coke on their own, and it doesn't say they're going to stop, just that they won't do it as much as they have been doing. And to top it off, it's a part of a PR play for the customer demographic that worries about health, because they've been noticing that diet drinks now make up 41 percent of coke's sales in the US and high-calorie drinks are on a hit list over there in the eyes of those worried about the US obesity epidemic.

It's not exactly a policy born of human decency.

Would you have been in favour of voting in said policy?

Coca have had the policy running for longer but not as strict as they have announced. Obviously it is not entirely a good will gesture as very little is in a capitalist market place. What exactly is your argument? It is acceptable to market towards kids because they cannot directly buy the gun? I thought you disagreed with marketing in general?

Manic Moran wrote: »

Moran, not moron. Subtle, but important difference

I never said I disagreed with background checks. I could, however, see avoidable issues with the method as proposed in that bill.

NTM

Apologies I didnt meant that.

Seems like the politicians are changing their minds when they realised that those that vote them in wanted it passed.

Manic Moran wrote: »

Their position seems similar to mine. They would vote for a background check if it were a different format to the one attempted.

I really don't think any politician is has ever come out and said "I do not support any background checks at all"

NTM

So as long as it means you or gun stores don't have to pay any money you would support them? If only life was as easy as that.

Sparks wrote: »

Which is more important to you - background checks or saving money?

Saving lives tbh and I thought most people who like gun sports would also be in favour of tight gun control as it makes very little difference if they only have them for sport? It seems however people who like gun sports would rather save a buck instead of a life.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Saving lives tbh

Well then why have the arguments about the details? You want background checks, stop arguing about the 2% of the details and sit down and talk with the other side of the debate like adults.

Instead, the approach being taken in the US seems to be to grandstand and pound the table over what boils down to fine detail. The only ones who win there are, well, Fox. But it's easier for most people than the unsexy-but-effective method of sitting down and working out solutions that neither side loves but both sides can live with.

and I thought most people who like gun sports would also be in favour of tight gun control as it makes very little difference if they only have them for sport?

Reasonable measures we'd be in favor of, not because we like gun sports but because we're members of the public who live in the same world as everyone else and who worry about gun crime as much - if not more - than everyone else (more, because we know more about firearms than people who've never used them).

However, from personal experience I can tell you that most of what people think of as "tight" or "effective" gun control measures just aren't; and what really does work tends to be things you can't legislate for (seriously, how do you legislate for a strong club ethos, the public perception of firearms as being just another piece of machinery instead of the mythos Hollywood's busily built up around them, or a tradition of teaching firearms safety?).

And that's without getting into the point that even the most reasonable idea for a law gets horribly mangled by the process of becoming a law. Seriously - in Ireland they started out trying to ban handguns because Jim Deasy was making fun of Dermot Ahern (and yes, that was the only real reason), and the end result is that the man sweeping the flood in a paintball company office - let alone anyone actually playing paintball - is technically breaking the law with a potential penalty of several years in jail and several thousand euros of fines. When you have that serious a problem with passing a law coherently, the Fox Network method of discussing that proposed law really doesn't help...

It seems however people who like gun sports would rather save a buck instead of a life.

...he said about the group who spend money on building ranges, gunsafes, trigger locks, licence fees, and so on.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

The same thing can be said for other sports i.e. it is the nature of the sport.

Need to give two character references to buy a hurley, do you?
Because I need to give that, and give up my right to medical privacy, and a host of other things that the rest of the public regard as civil rights; all to take part in an Olympic sport with the best safety record of any sport (including chess* ) in the country -- but if I want to take part in a sport where the last kid to die in that sport died last week, no worries, I can buy the kit anywhere with the same controls as a box of cornflakes. No licence fee. Indirect state sponsoring of the sport - and yes, hiring gardai and teachers whose holidays are suspiciously lined up with major intercounty games and whose duties never interfere with training is a form of support, as is chasing after the top names to become TDs. But that's another thread and I'm getting sidetracked.

My point is that it is not merely "just the nature of the sport".

I have said guns should not be marketed to kids.

And as I have said, that would only be an issue if (a) kids could buy guns (and no, they can't); or if (b) the kids had monumentally awful parents (and frankly, if your parents are monumentally awful parents, marketing guns to you isn't the problem we should be trying to solve).

Guns should not be given to kids under 15/16 (try giving them a book instead rather than a lethal weapon).

Sorry, but that's just plain wrong. There is nothing wrong with kids getting involved in target shooting - the safety record is better than for our national sports (again; no deaths in target shooting since records began in 1850; last death of a child in GAA was last week but you don't see us banning kids from the GAA do you?).

Kids learn too much that's good from target shooting to just ban it because people who've never done it think it's bad based on knowledge gleamed from something other than actual data.

All guns should have strict background checks regardless of cost

(a) Nobody's arguing against background checks, not even the Axis of Evil NRA; they're arguing over the fine details, like whether or not a son should need a background check before inheriting his grandfather's rifle; or they're arguing over deficiences in the current system and whether those should be fixed before expanding it; or about how those checks can be done without eliminating other rights. That's arguing over 2% of the idea, not 100% of the idea.
(b) If cost's not a problem, then just pay for it already.

however if you are using it for sport there should be a license which allows leeway on cost. If you are using it for defence well then it should be expensive. This should limit the amount of guns and slowly suffocate the culture of dependency.

In other words, only rich people should be allowed to defend themselves with effective tools even though crime impacts on poor people more directly.

I'm pretty sure that that's just an argument to legalise Batman...





*tell that to the IOC, they recognise it as one

Sparks wrote: »

Need to give two character references to buy a hurley, do you?
Because I need to give that, and give up my right to medical privacy, and a host of other things that the rest of the public regard as civil rights; all to take part in an Olympic sport with the best safety record of any sport (including chess* ) in the country -- but if I want to take part in a sport where the last kid to die in that sport died last week, no worries, I can buy the kit anywhere with the same controls as a box of cornflakes. No licence fee. Indirect state sponsoring of the sport - and yes, hiring gardai and teachers whose holidays are suspiciously lined up with major intercounty games and whose duties never interfere with training is a form of support, as is chasing after the top names to become TDs. But that's another thread and I'm getting sidetracked.

My point is that it is not merely "just the nature of the sport".


And as I have said, that would only be an issue if (a) kids could buy guns (and no, they can't); or if (b) the kids had monumentally awful parents (and frankly, if your parents are monumentally awful parents, marketing guns to you isn't the problem we should be trying to solve).


Sorry, but that's just plain wrong. There is nothing wrong with kids getting involved in target shooting - the safety record is better than for our national sports (again; no deaths in target shooting since records began in 1850; last death of a child in GAA was last week but you don't see us banning kids from the GAA do you?).

Kids learn too much that's good from target shooting to just ban it because people who've never done it think it's bad based on knowledge gleamed from something other than actual data.


(a) Nobody's arguing against background checks, not even the Axis of Evil NRA; they're arguing over the fine details, like whether or not a son should need a background check before inheriting his grandfather's rifle; or they're arguing over deficiences in the current system and whether those should be fixed before expanding it; or about how those checks can be done without eliminating other rights. That's arguing over 2% of the idea, not 100% of the idea.
(b) If cost's not a problem, then just pay for it already.


In other words, only rich people should be allowed to defend themselves with effective tools even though crime impacts on poor people more directly.

I'm pretty sure that that's just an argument to legalise Batman...





*tell that to the IOC, they recognise it as one

Yes you should have to give up them details when you are holding a weapon whose main function is to shoot bullets. Emily Wilson was warming up before training to bring her into the conversation is completely irrelevant.

Hold on now by the nature of the sport comment I meant you need gun ranges for gun sports, you need gunsafes. For football you need boots, you need a ball, you need a field. Both sports need these.

Also the constitutional right applied to militias not individual citizens so this whole rights waffle is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the constitution. However in recent times interpretation of the text has been taken to a whole new level culminating in the Heller case which allowed people to hold guns in their house, handguns no other.

If you examine the intricacies of the NRA's activities from 1999 when LaPierre seemed to say he favoured background checks you will see a history of characterised by lobbying against any sort of bill.

In very few places in America are guns an absolute imperative for survival. I've had no need for one in my time. I am not saying price them out of reach but anybody who buys one should have to shoulder they extra costs involved.

I am not talking about just the time spent at the shooting range. I'm talking about the mentality of it. The entitlement aspect which culminated in the Heller case.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Also the constitutional right applied to militias not individual citizens so this whole rights waffle is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the constitution.

Under US law all its citizens over 18 constitute a national militia.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

Yes you should have to give up them details when you are holding a weapon whose main function is to shoot bullets.

Bull. We got along in this country for over eighty years without that requirement and we never had a problem with legally held firearms (illegally held firearms abused by people who never gave up their names let alone character references, on the other hand, we not only had major problems with, but none of the changes in the Firearms Acts brought in over the years had any impact on them or their abuse...)

Emily Wilson was warming up before training to bring her into the conversation is completely irrelevant.

Warming up, meaning she was taking part in the sport at the time. And she's hardly the first in the history of the sport to drop dead at an age where that should be unheard of. Not to mention the accidents, the drug abuse, and everything else the GAA coaches have been complaining about.

If you want to do this "you shouldn't do X because X is unsafe" argument, do it without the "except the sports I didn't think were dangerous" appendix, would you?

Hold on now by the nature of the sport comment I meant you need gun ranges for gun sports, you need gunsafes.

Ranges, yes. Ranges built to a UK MoD standard that (a) costs €20k to get a copy of and (b) catered to 20mm anti-tank weapons, not so much. And that was what the ranges were being measured to for a few years between 2004 and 2009; and even today, the standards require enormous expense despite eighty-odd years of accident-free operation from existing ranges.

It's a matter of the detail, not the principle - tell me I need a backstop and everyone agrees, but tell me it has to be 100' tall and that's where we're going to get into a debate over how high a backstop should be.

Likewise with background checks. Tell me I need one to buy a rifle, and I'll agree with the general principle (though in Ireland we've gone too far there); but tell me my son needs a background check before I give him my old rifle so he can learn to shoot, and that that data is going into a publicly-accessible register (right after we've just seen a new york paper publish that data for the braying mob - and don't tell me that there's any difference between doing that, printing the names and addresses of every muslim in new york on 12/9/01, or shouting fire in a crowded theater), and now we're going to have a difference of opinion.

Also the constitutional right applied to militias not individual citizens

SCOTUS has already weighed in on this, so arguing that your interpretation of the constitution of the united states is more valid than that of their supreme court justices is frankly a waste of time and I'm not even going to bother - go use the search box on here if you want to play that argument through again.

If you examine the intricacies of the NRA's activities from 1999 when LaPierre seemed to say he favoured background checks you will see a history of characterised by lobbying against any sort of bill.

And if by "seemed to say" you mean "took out ads across the nation reprinting his testimony to the senate where he explicity stated he supported it", you'd be right.

And if by "lobbying against any sort of bill" you mean "lobbying against what they disagree with" you'd also be right - and describing what we all consider to be a fundamentally necessary freedom in hellenic civilisation. It's why it's protected by the first amendment of the US bill of rights.

In very few places in America are guns an absolute imperative for survival.

And in no place in Ireland are cars, alcohol, knives or electricity an absolute necessity for survival. (Well, maybe hospitals, but I'm hard pressed to think of any other). And yet, we don't ban private ownership of those, even though they all kill people every single year through accident or intentional abuse.

This "do you really need it" argument is abused too often. Do I need my olympic air pistol to survive? No. I don't need my one-year-old son in order to survive either, but if you believe that means I have no argument for keeping him, then you're woefully misunderstanding the nature of reality.

Try this question for a moment - do you need me not to have my air pistol? Does it impinge on your life in any way whatsoever (apart of course, from the benefit of around six million euro in licence fees annually that go to pay off the national debt and save a few euros from your tax bill)?

I've had no need for one in my time. I am not saying price them out of reach but anybody who buys one should have to shoulder they extra costs involved.

How much? We already shoulder the cost of purchase. How much more of a punitive cost (because that's what this is) are you proposing and how are you proposing that we enforce it on (say) the IRA? Or the drug gangs? Or is it just law-abiding people you're planning on enforcing a punitive measure on?

I am not talking about just the time spent at the shooting range. I'm talking about the mentality of it. The entitlement aspect which culminated in the Heller case.

That "entitlement aspect" arises from the hard cold fact that their entire legal system recognises their actual entitlement in that area. It's not some affected air they have, it's an actual real thing -- they actually are entitled to it. You might not agree with it, but it remains an actual entitlement nonetheless, every bit as real - and equal in legal importance - as habeas corpus, free speech, privacy, equality, freedom of assembly, due process and so on. The documents and case law that recognised those rights (note that it's recognised and not created - the right can't be taken away by shredding the document), also recognise this one.

The only "entitlement" I can see here is from you, frankly, because you're happily decrying something you don't understand and calling for its abolition and are implicitly saying some rather nasty things about people who are involved in it. Just a few posts ago you talked about my "condescending tone" - I've spent my entire adult life shooting, training people to shoot, organising shooting sports and helping draft firearms legislation. It's not condescention you're hearing, it's experience; but that doesn't seem to be valid in your eyes when compared against your uninformed "common sense" - despite all the research ever done into "common sense" showing that it's a terrible means of making decisions compared to evidence-based reason and is almost always wrong.

Mardy Bum wrote: »

It also applied to when the British were in town.

Is everything you post going to be misinformed?

Currently, 23 states and territories have modern militias. As of 2005, these militias had a force strength of approximately 14,000 individuals nationwide.[1] Most commonly known as State Defense Forces (SDFs) or state militias, these forces are distinct from the Reserves and the National Guard in that they serve no federal function. In times of both war and peace, SDFs remain solely under the control of their governors, allowing the governors to deploy them easily and readily in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. Source

Here's my local militia;

http://www.nmsg-mil.org/

There are also many other civilian militias operating and training in NM.

Sparks wrote: »

Bull. We got along in this country for over eighty years without that requirement and we never had a problem with legally held firearms (illegally held firearms abused by people who never gave up their names let alone character references, on the other hand, we not only had major problems with, but none of the changes in the Firearms Acts brought in over the years had any impact on them or their abuse...)


Warming up, meaning she was taking part in the sport at the time. And she's hardly the first in the history of the sport to drop dead at an age where that should be unheard of. Not to mention the accidents, the drug abuse, and everything else the GAA coaches have been complaining about.

If you want to do this "you shouldn't do X because X is unsafe" argument, do it without the "except the sports I didn't think were dangerous" appendix, would you?


Ranges, yes. Ranges built to a UK MoD standard that (a) costs €20k to get a copy of and (b) catered to 20mm anti-tank weapons, not so much. And that was what the ranges were being measured to for a few years between 2004 and 2009; and even today, the standards require enormous expense despite eighty-odd years of accident-free operation from existing ranges.

It's a matter of the detail, not the principle - tell me I need a backstop and everyone agrees, but tell me it has to be 100' tall and that's where we're going to get into a debate over how high a backstop should be.

Likewise with background checks. Tell me I need one to buy a rifle, and I'll agree with the general principle (though in Ireland we've gone too far there); but tell me my son needs a background check before I give him my old rifle so he can learn to shoot, and that that data is going into a publicly-accessible register (right after we've just seen a new york paper publish that data for the braying mob - and don't tell me that there's any difference between doing that, printing the names and addresses of every muslim in new york on 12/9/01, or shouting fire in a crowded theater), and now we're going to have a difference of opinion.


SCOTUS has already weighed in on this, so arguing that your interpretation of the constitution of the united states is more valid than that of their supreme court justices is frankly a waste of time and I'm not even going to bother - go use the search box on here if you want to play that argument through again.



And if by "seemed to say" you mean "took out ads across the nation reprinting his testimony to the senate where he explicity stated he supported it", you'd be right.

And if by "lobbying against any sort of bill" you mean "lobbying against what they disagree with" you'd also be right - and describing what we all consider to be a fundamentally necessary freedom in hellenic civilisation. It's why it's protected by the first amendment of the US bill of rights.


And in no place in Ireland are cars, alcohol, knives or electricity an absolute necessity for survival. (Well, maybe hospitals, but I'm hard pressed to think of any other). And yet, we don't ban private ownership of those, even though they all kill people every single year through accident or intentional abuse.

I've said from the outset I do not frown upon gun sports. Hunting is also important in places. The IRA and drug gangs don't pay taxes either so they do not come into the equation.

You seem to be arguing in an Irish context.There is no problem with guns in Ireland. Irish citizens do not feel the need to purchase AR15s or start printing 3D guns or march on Washington. Quite a few American citizens do however, it may be a minority however there are a considerable number regardless.
Do you think America has a problem with guns?
Do you think there is a similar attitude surrounding guns in Ireland? And if not why is that?

Manic Moran wrote: »

A firearm is never imperative for survival. Until you need it. Then it becomes quite important. Even if you're the first person in three years to be the victim of a home invasion in your town...

Points noted.

Do you think then that increased background checks may curb criminals from attaining such guns?