To Gavin Newsom’s credit, at least when he interrupted his vacation to say something about the mass shooting in Sacramento, he didn’t offer ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the families and friends of the people who were gunned down. On the other hand, he made a point of saying that obviously California didn’t have enough laws to keep guns out of the ‘wrong hands.’
California happens to have more gun-control laws than Carter has little liver pills. So, I have a good idea. Let’s give everybody a gun which they can use to defend themselves and pass a law which requires everyone to go around at all times and in all locations carrying their self-defense gun. That will surely end the problem of gun violence right then and there.
I stopped carrying a gun because a) it was a pain in the ass to keep the gun concealed, and b) I really didn’t want to shoot anyone with my gun. If I did shoot someone and didn’t run away, there would be all kinds of paperwork and legal bullshit that would keep me busy for years on end. And when you get to my age (78 y/o in August) the last thing you want to deal with is paperwork, particularly paperwork tied to regulations and/or laws.
But seriously, what’s wrong with requiring everyone to walk around armed? We’ll set the minimum age at 16 and the max at 75, a spread that right now covers about 250 million folks, give or take a million here or there. Let’s deduct several million in jail, another several million in loony bins and another several million in what they politely refer to as ‘rest homes.’
That brings us down to around 240 million guns that would be needed to arm every law-abiding m-f in the United States. It might take them a couple of years, but between Smith & Wesson, Glock, Sig, and a couple of other gun makers, together they could produce the guns and make a buck even if the government bought them for $300 apiece.
That adds up to a grand total of $50 billion and change. Which is no biggie and let’s not forget that it’s a one-shot deal. Hell, we spend more to cover the medical, social, and legal costs of gun violence every year. So, under my plan, by the third year we would be way ahead of the game in financial terms, right?
Oops! Forgot one thing. After we give everyone a gun, we also have to make sure they get trained. Now the last time I looked online, I saw all kinds of gun-training courses being offered for somewhere between fifty and a hundred bucks. So, let’s require that everyone pay for a training course which they can deduct from their income tax bill as a medical expense.
Back in 1994, our friend Gary Kleck published an article in which he claimed that people who defended themselves with a gun were responsible for preventing somewhere around 2 million serious crimes every year. But Kleck assumed that only 40% of Americans had legal access to a gun. Since there were 2.5 million crimes committed in 2020, if everyone could defend themselves with a gun, crime would disappear.
You might want to believe that what you have just read in the last 550 words represents an exercise in hyperbole, sarcasm, or fluff. Not true. Not true at all.
The point of this brief essay is to demonstrate how the two sides in the gun debate make arguments after every mass shooting that are completely removed from any reality at all.
You don’t and can’t end gun violence as long as any law-abiding individual can walk into a gun shop and buy a gun that was designed only for the purpose of killing a human being, whether the human happens to be the person who bought the gun or anyone else.
Sorry folks, it doesn’t work that way.
Is there a single state in the United States that doesn’t impose speed limits on every road where you might drive your car? Cars aren’t designed to kill people, but fatal accidents happen every day. So, if guns are designed to kill people, you’re going to pass a law which prevents such killings from taking place?
And please, please don’t give me that nonsense about how the 2nd Amendment protects gun ‘rights.’ The last time I looked, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about who is or who isn’t allowed to pick up a gun and use it to shoot themselves or shoot someone else.
Apr 05, 2022 @ 12:58:46
Someone tweeted about CA needing more gun laws the other day and my response was similar to yours. CA changes its gun laws faster than I change the litter in Maile’s litter box. And that is pretty often, otherwise Maile starts using kitty turds as soccer balls and kicks them around the bathroom.
Yep, we have speed limits, laws against texting while driving and laws against DWI, right of way laws, crosswalk laws, and all that stuff. Know what? We are killing people in traffic at a faster rate. We need more traffic laws, right?
Some people don’t care about those laws. All I have to do is look out the window of my study and see people flying down the street, speeding and texting and then sweep up the mini booze bottles from Friday night. And it all comes at a cost. Especially when car companies are allowed to market vehicles with very high and vertical front ends (esp. SUVs and light trucks) that are especially deadly when plowed into a person crossing the street at 10 mph over the speed limit. I suppose the only reason to own a Dodge Ram is to kill as many pedestrians as possible as fast as one can without refueling.
So sure, if people ignore gun laws as often as they do traffic laws and if guns are specifically designed to shoot holes in people rather than fetch the groceries, guess what? Frankly, given the difference between cars and guns, I think gun owners, by and large, are far more law abiding than motorists.
Mike, you and I could fill a tractor trailer with all the studies that show us the kind of people who shoot up the place, and apparently, Sacramento was no exception. So unless you can control how a gun gets from Fred’s Firearms and Fishing Supplies to the testosterone-soaked fools who start a fistfight that turns into a gunfight, get pissed off at their wife or their drug dealer, or mad at their boss, you are S-O-L. Or, like my parents did to me when I clocked a kid over the head Moe Howard style, they took away the TV so I couldn’t watch the Three Stooges.
I got an idea. The anti-gunners are saying guns should have a little personalized gizmo that only allows the authorized user to fire it. Let’s go one better. That chip in the gun is remotely connected to a chip in the authorized user’s brain and when the brain chip beeps “homicidal thought”, the gun shuts off until the thought subsides. All guns retrofitted or replaced. Any takers?
Apr 05, 2022 @ 15:08:45
Start in the home.
Even Inspector Harry Callahan can forget. “I know what you’re thinking: “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself.”
I believe one can forget the ages of their grandchildren. It’s understandable with all this excitement and the possible death of one of your children, but to forget the number of children your son has…? “Mothers always know…”
Maybe a good place to start for “Gun Control” is in the home.
Many have heard the interview by a Sacramento, CA news station, ABC10, the morning of April 3, 2022 of a mother of one for the victims, Sergio Harris. Starting at the 2:25 minute mark Sergio’s mother says “mothers always know when something is not right” then around the 3:30 minute mark Sergio’s mother said that her son has 2 daughters. It’s now being reported by many news outlets and web sites like theancestory.com that Sergio Harris is a father of three children and the husband of Leticia Harris. Sergio lived with his father, mother, and wife.
Yes, Sergio Harris was a victim, but when mothers don’t know how many grandchildren they have, how involved are they in their own home and what does this say about our society?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XjgAC2-gYYg
Apr 18, 2022 @ 16:01:59
Documents filed last Friday by Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office show that three of the six people killed may not have been victims after all. The documents indicated that Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, Dvazia Turner, and Sergio Harris were affiliated with gangs.
I’m sorry that Pamela Harris lost her son, but it doesn’t matter if your son is “fun to be around, liked to party, have fun, smiling all the time” when you bring a gun to a gathering of rival gangs, bad things happen.
Maybe focusing on gangs would be a good idea for Gun Control.
Apr 09, 2022 @ 01:09:48
Our lapdog media continues to call this a mass shooting.
What an embarrassment. This was a shootout of career criminals with a high body count and injury rate of how many innocent victims? Three arrests have been made and there were at least two other shooters. It’s likely some of casualties were active participants in this ‘mass shooting’.
The three in custody are forbidden from possessing firearms.
Our ‘enlightened’ DA’s in California seem to think violent criminals should not serve their full term in prison and let them out early.
The real problem is obviously ‘ghost guns’ and preventing people from possession of such weapons will solve the problem. Because a criminal prohibited from owning a firearm wouldn’t dare break the law and build one of these ‘ghost’ weapons.