Who's winning the hearts and minds in the gun responsibility debate?

Second Amendment supporters:

The "armed intelligentsia" at work.

Gun responsibility supporters:

And if it's true that Jared Loughner was openly carrying for at least 15 minutes prior to the Tucson mass shooting, then people carrying guns might not be a good idea.


When the "gun rights" crowd can't pull their sock puppetry, it's pretty obvious the movement is a flop.

Remember?

Operation American Spring falls flat: ‘This is very disappointing,’ Texan says

And if that source says it was a flop, it was a serious flop.

Kroger likes to think of themselves as apolitical. They need to realise that a prohibition on open carry isn't a political statement, rather it is in the best interests of customer safety.

More here:

• www.local12.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/gunpolicy-protest-outside-kroger-shareholder-meeting-19893.shtml
• www.wlwt.com/news/group-against-open-carry-in-kroger-to-take-concerns-to-investors/29401128

Maybe it's because of all the baseball bats...

The only things getting assaulted were baseballs, and the only things stolen was bases.

OK, assume this is correct.  How does this effect the "shootings happen in gun free zones?"

Conversely, it has been said that Jared Loughner openly carried his weapon for at least 15 minutes prior to when he went on his rampage in the parking lot in Tucson.

Why should people be forced to decide who is a "good guy with a gun" and who is a potential threat?

Not good

The first step in dealing with a problem is admitting you have a problem.

Mass shootings, as American as apple pie?

You would hate to think that mass shootings are incredibly common in the US.  After all, it seems that only the biggies seem to make it to the press these days since the topic is beginning to seem like an Onion Article: "we'll only cover them if 20 people, make that 30 people, no 50 people died".

I thought there actually was a definition of this term, but there doesn't seem to be:

Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.

Generally, there are three terms you'll see to describe a perpetrator of this type of gun violence: mass murderer, spree killer, or serial killer. An FBI crime classification report from 2005 identifies an individual as a mass murderer if he kills four or more people in a single incident (not including himself), typically in a single location. (The baseline of four fatalities is key) Source

That may be why there is a "mass shooting" where 12 people are shot, but they don't die.  It doesn't really make the news either.

If we are going to come up with a number, there is this site which comes up the the number 200 for the period from 1 Jan 2014 to 17 Aug 2014.  I'm sure that number will be questioned, but it is a lot.

Part of the issue with the open carry movement is how much does it prevent or promote the occurrence of mass shooting in the US?  Actually, we can say that for either open or concealed carry since the big argument for more permissive carrying of weapons is that they somehow stop crime.

On the other hand, if it ends up enabling mass shootings, is it such a great idea?  And let's face it: there is a lot of gun violence in the US.

One thing I've been see a lot in the comments on Kroger's facebook page are the pro-gunners saying that a business could be sued if it is a gun free zone and there is a mass shooting.  Their claim is that the business is liable if an armed civilian could have stopped the shooting.

But, the whole matter hinges on how foreseeable the event would be.  As U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said in regard to the litigation around the Aurora Cinema shooting "I reiterate that this court is in no way holding as a matter of law that Cinemark should have known of the danger of someone entering one of its theaters through the back door and randomly shooting innocent patrons."

Wouldn't the issue be if the business made it easier for a mass shooting to happen by allowing the instrument of destruction onto their property If the matter hinges on foreseeability?  In other words, if a business allows a person to bring a weapon of war onto their property and a mass shooting happens because of that--it would then be liable for what happened.

Likewise, one would have to be able prove that an armed civilian would have actually stopped the event, which hinges on both the foreseeability that an armed civilian would have actually been present and the actual ability of armed civilians from stopping mass shootings in the past.

Given situations such as the Columbine Shooting where the shooters engaged an armed Jefferson County Sheriff's deputy and other mass shooting incidents where armed citizens were present, yet did nothing to stop the incident (e.g., the shooting in Tucson where Gabby Giffords was shot).  There seems to be a significant evidence problem in proving that an armed civilian would stop anything: even if they were present.

Colion Noir on Mass Shooters and Gun Free Zones

After that ridiculous pick-up-basketball game metaphor, he went on, in his strained way, to push one of the most tired themes of the pro-gun crowd - mass shooters are attracted to gun free zones.

It's funny because this oft-repeated nonsense has never made much sense. The proof is that our own favorite gun-rights extremists who comment here have all agreed it's not valid.  Of course that took some doin'.  I had to explain several times how maniac spree shooters normally seek out the venue of their grievance, real or imagined, for their venting.  They do not consider its gun free status. Even our most contentious and dedicated pro-gun commenters have acquiesced to my logic.

But not poor Colion.  I'm afraid his rising celebrity has blinded him to even the most basic self-examination. Or perhaps he's simply spending too much time reading and associating with fellow gun nuts instead of expanding his world view a bit.  Or maybe he went with the theme of this video solely for the opportunity to use that overblown example of the sexual predator in "the on-line pre-teen chat room." That was really cute. The only problem is, of course, it's completely wrong.

Texting during a mass shooting

You should be proud at the level of carnage in the US since that it how your "Second Amendment Right" is expressed (mine would be that you all get to do drill and spend time on a military base).  Anyway, someone said the number of school shootings is around 35, but that is only what gets reported in the news.

BTW, I know people text their families and friends during active shooter incidents, but that as this points out--that doesn't fit your idea of how these incidents go down.

2 Dogs killed in latest US mass shooting

Come on people, if you are so heartless that 20 little kids getting pureed by a person with an assault rifle that you realise the US has a gun problem, maybe nothing else will get you upset.

Except there was a mass shooting in Phoenix, forget about the human victims since they are human and human life in the US is pretty valueless in the US.

TWO DOGS WERE FOUND SHOT DEAD!

I don't know about you, but I think it is disturbing that US mass shooters have now moved on to killing dogs.

You lot can't be that heartless and selfish, or could you?

The Sparks Shooting and How Americans are Used to Gun Violence

 Everybody else gets it. Even the official US gets it with VOA posting something called Experts: Gun Violence Is Public Health Crisis in US. Yet, there are lots of people who are in denial that there is a problem and that the current course of action is the wrong one (so, where the evidence of those 3 million DGUs the gunloons keep talking about?).

Unfortunately, the US has a serious case of denial.  It is a nation that has a gun addiction.  The gun lobby enables the addiction because it means more money for them: screw the cost to society.

Anyway, people stage an intervention when someone has a serious problem and they are in denial.  It's time for the US to have a serious intervention with its gun addiction.

Either that, or the US hits rock bottom, which I hate to think about since 20 six year olds aren't enough to get people to show some compassion.

La Pierre Predictably Says We Needed More Good Guys With Guns at the Navy Yard

Wayne LaPierre appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday. 
Photograph: Rex Features

The head of the National Rifle Association said on Sunday "there weren't enough good guys with guns" to confront the gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington navy yard on Monday. Wayne LaPierre, theNRA's executive vice president, called for more armed guards and better security at military bases.

LaPierre's comments, in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press, echoed his response nine months ago to the Newtown school shooting, in which Adam Lanza killed 20 young children and six adults. Following Newtown, LaPierre's response was to call for an armed guard in every school, saying: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

On Sunday, LaPierre criticised what he said was a flawed security system that meant the navy yard had been "largely left unprotected". He also called for active duty personnel on military bases to be armed.

"There weren't enough good guys with guns," he said. "When the good guys with guns got there it stopped."

Old Wayne is conveniently overlooking the fact that Aaron Alexis WAS  a good guy with as gun just like Loughner and Holmes and Lanza and almost all the mass shooters.

The last thing we need is more good guys with guns.  In each of these cases we needed just one fewer.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

The mass shooting template

Let's face it mass shootings have become so commonplace in the US that they don't get much coverage unless it is something seriously horrific or shocking.  In fact, I've has my suspicions confirmed that the numbers have been twiddled since there are so many of them:

The FBI defined mass murder to distinguish it from serial murder. That definition provides the basis for the unofficial definition of mass shooting that has gained use in recent years. Mother Jones explained the definition in an extensive "Guide to Mass Shootings in America," writing that mass shootings typically involve a single episode in a single location, usually a public place. The Mother Jones definition of mass shooting matches the FBI definition of mass murder in that it includes single incidents that kill at least four victims.
Over on Reddit, the Guns Are Cool community has compiled a list of every mass shooting in the United States this year. The moderators of the subreddit, which doesn't actually appear to be of the belief that guns are cool, use an expanded definition of mass shooting, listing every event in which "four or more people [including the shooter] are shot in a spree." Under the Reddit definition, a shooting spree that wounds at least four people, but doesn't kill them, is still a mass shooting.
Including Monday's mass shooting, the Reddit list for 2013 is nearing 250 incidents. That's an average of one mass shooting almost every day.
With so many mass shootings, even those that fit the frequently used definition rarely prompt a presidential response. Perhaps it's not surprising that many of the violent acts cataloged by Reddit escape national attention.

Let's just make it easy for ourselves, and use this template from now on.

If the above doens't work for you, there's always this one:

The Death Penalty for Nidal

Even if Army Maj. Nidal Hasan gets the death penalty -- which many believe he wants -- for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting massacre, he could have a decades-long wait to realize his martyrdom.

The military rarely hands down the death penalty, and it is even rarer for it to be carried out. The last service member to be executed was Army Pvt. John A. Bennett, who was hanged for rape and attempted murder in 1961. There are currently just five service members on the military's death row, one of whom has been awaiting his execution -- and fighting it -- for 25 years.

Hasan's death could come sooner if the self-professed "Soldier of Allah," who killed 13 and injured 30 in his Nov. 5, 2009, rampage, truly wants to die for his twisted cause and elects to forgo appeals. But even so, he could languish for years on the military's death row, in Fort Leavenworth.