This country was founded on and credited with VIOLENCE as the panacea to everything.

In fact, violent offenders get virtually little punishment if any where as non-violent offenders are jailed with very little possibility of parole. Out here in VA Beach, violent offenders from drunk drivers to felons assaulting police officers are not only given parole after a few months but are even dismissed for "good" behavior. In contrast, non-violent offenders are lucky to get even a parole in ten years and we're not talking about Big Business crooks who are filthy rich to begin with.

And another thing, remember the "War on Drugs" ? Yeah, you know, Big Pharma gets to poison the public with its "legal" crap whereas you'll be sent to jail for smoking a harmless plant CANNABIS ! And don't forget that are currently RIGGED market called "free" lopsidely favors VIOLENT products and solutions ove PEACEFUL ones.

I can hardly wait to see the overblown gun toters ramble the typical rightwing BULLSHIT.

In the presidential election of 2004, Nebraska did not have a single "blue" county, according to the after-election map then printed by U.S. News & World Report.
Every last county went for Bush, even the metro area of Omaha and the state capital/university town, Lincoln, (where at least some should have known better.) Guns rule in such places. Oklahoma was similar.

I am sorry this shooting happened, and wish it hadn't.
But I do hope that, since it did, some of the rural hunters will ask themselves why they really think the assault-weapons ban was so bad. Right there in middle-America at the Omaha mall, now, one kid who didn't need an assault weapon got one anyway and shot a bunch of people. And the whole state voted last time for his right to own such questionable firepower.

It is interesting you mention the "War on Drugs". Hmmm, if laws barring the LEGAL production and distribution of certain substances don't keep them out of the hands of those who want them, who would a similar policy towards guns keep them out of the hands of those who want them?
Also, Daniel, is it sure that he 'owned' it or that he stole it?

One of the reasons I left for Canada. Gun lovers will claim that you can't stop them, that restrictions only impact law-abiding owners, yada, yada, yada, yet countries with tough gun laws consistently have LESS violent crime, which here in Canada, is about 50% less than in the gun-loving US, where the proponents say widespread gun ownership serves as a deterrent. Go figure.

As someone who has hunted, I've never seen the need for allowing assault rifles, armor piercing bullets or the large magazines. Why doesn't the gun lobby see that and arrive at some reasonable compromise to keep these events to a minimum.

We love violence don't we?
That seems to be one of the main themes to our media products: Violence is the way to solve your problems.

Honestly I am surprised it doesn't happen more often than it does; and I am sure it does just in places where that stuff is generally underreported (non white demographic).

I have never been pro gun, but I can't say that I want more gun control laws, in fact the opposite.
Considering the direction this country is going, rounding up the guns is scary. I am more afraid of cops and National Guard occupation types than I am of the random, loose wing nut shooting up malls.

Well, as Leo Tolstoy, the hunter turned vegetarian said: you will always have wars as long as you have slaughterhouses.

What is truly warped is that a lot of times they say they cant change gun laws because they dont want to upset hunters.

NOt people who want a gun for protection--no, hunters. So apparently, its ok that humans get killed because someone MUST have the right to shoot wildlife for no good reason.

Its no coincidence that Dick Cheney loves hunting.

Plus--there are many cases of hunters shooting other hunters(who cares-thinning the herd) but they also shoot non hunters. People standing on their porch, watching tv, etc. And they rarely get charged.

BTW
Canada has had gun massacres-and I know from people in Ontario that hunters there can be real pricks. They will insist on setting up in front of someone's property regardless of whether they get permision or not.

Kudos to Harrison Ford for not allowing hunters to shoot elk on his land.

Daniel David wrote: I do hope that, since it did, some of the rural hunters will ask themselves why they really think the assault-weapons ban was so bad. Right there in middle-America at the Omaha mall...

I doubt it. The typical pro-gun activist will use the tried-and-true Republican reason of "There is a bad apple in every bunch. Now praise the Lord and pass the damned ammo."

Just think. If that demented person had been Muslim, he would have been labeled a terrorist. They never talk about home grown terrorism, unless they are environmental activists, who haven't killed anyone. There's some cognitive dissonance at work here.

War=Peace, I think as the economy sours, you will see more "random wing nuts" shooting up malls and post offices. Years ago, my oldest son observed a direct correlation between the crime rate and unemployment rate. But at present, we are living in a time of the rich plundering our economy and stealing our elections.

Terrorists be damned! The biggest danger to Americans today is other Americans! More Americans are killed and maimed by gun violence in America in 3 months than in the entire war in Irak.

Daniel David___ Good points you made there, but realize that in RED Nebraska we can now carry concealed weapons legally and if only most of those folks had been carrying their six shooters someone could have blown that kid away. Of course, thay might have lost their cool and got a few others too, but the NRA says we are safer with more guns. Like War=Peace, however, I have changed my mind a bit on gun laws, since our government may become our enemy the way things are going. Sadly, violemce has become the name of the game in our nation.

I hope this guy gave a lot of other people ideas.

Let's Go Shopping Everyone!!!

My apologies.

Couldn't resist.

Stay safe, and save everyone.
And Merry Christmas, in the truest, most original sense of the words.

Love
Zero

WTF is right. The US is engaged in an internal arms race.
The rationalization for assault weapons is that the good guys need assault weapons to protect themselves from the bad guys that have assault weapons.

The hunters are less to blame than the uniformed officers who are members of every police force in the US. You frequently read about the local "Chief" (of Police) complaining about how threatened his officers are by the repeal of the assault weapons ban. Rather than make any effort to reinstate the ban, the "Chief" just submits a larger weapons budget for next year to provide more firepower to fight the bad guys.

Nearly all police officers in the US are unionized. If they got together and went on strike until the assault weapons ban was reinstated, Congress would pass that legislation in the wink of an eye.

well after the shooting, i knew yet another article like this would be on here. but is it any wonder in the same country that produces filth like "Saw" and "Texas chainsaw massacre" that we will have this kind of violence?

too bad someone else wasn't armed there so they could have stopped this lunatic sooner. Of course being pro-2nd amendment i will most likely get flamed on here. Now we'll get the usual calls for more gun laws, no doubt.

"Mass domestic slaughter by firearm (automatic or otherwise) is a growth industry. With the political clout of the National Rifle Association and its distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, plus the adherence by millions of Americans to the mythology of the gun as the ultimate instrument of self-protection, there is no practical way to reduce the number of firearms, or to significantly reduce their lethality (such as by regulating ammunition or controlling the distribution of automatic weapons)."

well i'm a member of this evil terrorist group, NRA but hardly ascribe to their politics. I'm glad to see some people have sense enough not to trust the government as being the soley armed entity.

"I can hardly wait to see the overblown gun toters ramble the typical rightwing BULLSHIT."

and it won't be long to see the naiive liberals spout their usual left wing bullshit, about how we should have only the police and military be armed.
Amazing how NO stories of people who have been saved or families saved from harm because of the presence or use of a firearm every make their way onto here. Not even one. How can liberals claim they are any more fair than right wing wackjobs?

Typical contemporary progressive logic: The reason for our occasional psychotic slaughter is found in the material means of the slaughter. "Guns" are the cause of lunacy as though the hammer were responsible for the injured thumb rather than aim of the swinger. It is easy to call for more restrictions on fellow citizens on a matter that has little significance to one's self. Politicians love it as it costs them nothing to pass one more restictive law and then they can bloviate about their social conscience. Personally, I would look to our disfunctional health system as the root of this problem. Canada has a comparable per capita ownership of guns as the United States, yet a small fraction of our violent crime. I expect that the regular and routine availability of health (and mental health) care from infancy can easily explain this disparity in violence in each of our societies. For instance, I wonder about the possibilty that, in the instance of school massacres, the common use of drugs to contol overactive or inattentive students results in, with poorly managed programs and a medical system that is non-funtional for many, a percentage of the sudent population that is going though drug withdrawal and perhaps psychotic depression. Gun registration is a very devisive issue in this country and one of the few left that our right wing politicians have. With a lot of effort it may be possible to attempt to register guns but it will solve nothng; they will still be available to psychotics. Save your political energy for the root cause of the problem and let us have a single payer health care system that truly cares for all. Please try to remember that gun owners are fellow citizens and a significant national group that we want to vote with us on health care.

skippyagogo41, you're so right. I'm a Yank and it stings a little to agree, but you're right.

And I second the head-shaking at anyone who (still) thinks trashy cinema/music/video-games/painting/sculpture/interpretive dance had anything to do with this.

Is this a good time to mention that Ron Paul is a pro-NRA guy?

The extraordinary number of weapons that have disappeared from the military should be an alarm, but of course that would require real investigations.

Tony, yes, many gun owners are responsible. But our culture and politics have fetishised them as well. Have you seen a copy of the Rifleman (NRA main mag), or Leatherneck (Marine mag)?

The level of weaponry is not what the Second Amendment is about. Then again, it's for a well-regulated militia.

A gun in the late 18th Century was also for hunting food. Canons would not have been considered guns under the 2nd Amendment.

Years ago, it was found that of recovered guns from criminal activity, about 40% of the guns confiscated in NYC and Washington, DC came from Virginia. In the early 90's I believe, even the Wall Street Journal reported that gangs and criminals were going to swap meets in VA to get their guns. No shit Sherlock!

We need to deal with violence in America. And yes, American foreign and domestic policies have tons to do with it.

great post TonyVodvarka and you really put thought into it.

"Please try to remember that gun owners are fellow citizens and a significant national group that we want to vote with us on health care."

yes and gun owners also share many of the progressive values on here, so it's time to stop alienating them. I see on here constantly about "how we don't band together", yet so many progressives seem to be as intolerant as the conservatism that they hate so much. I'm very pro 2nd amendment yet also agree on the single payer issue and a lot of other progressive ideals.

And of course there's hardly any discussion ever of America's violent entertainment industry. Many actors/actresses are anti-gun yet have no problem with their "shoot em up" films. what incredible hypocrisy.

Progressives will always drive gun owners into the hands of the right with their extreme anti-gun attitude.

Yep, yet again there's some who argue that it's the movies that cause the violence; We canucks see the same movies and kill fewer of our own citizens with firearms. We also have the same theories you use with mental health, our forced confinement mental hospitals have mostly been closed. We too use our jails to house the violently mentally ill.

Yet again there's the flakes who argue about the lack of stories from those who use guns to 'save' their families; couldn't be because that's a damnable myth, has been for years. It's far more likely that the guns you have in the home will be used by junior to blow his own head off. A burgler might find your guns before you do, or if you're not willing to kill them you get shot when said crook returns fire.

Then there's the fools who argue that if everyone had been armed, the gunman would have fallen in a hail of gunfire. Nut! If even three people had taken out their own guns and opened fire they'd not only have hit the gunman, but other people as well. If you saw 4 people with guns blazing away what would you expect the cops to do? I'd expect the cops to kill each of them, or arrest them all for endangering the public.

You think you need guns to protect you from the big bad government? Idiots! All of you. The gov't has an arsenal of every weapon from nukes to handguns as well as soldiers, airmen and marines trained to operate in groups in order to kill opposing armies, they'd spill your guts over your own property before you could organize a revolt. Didn't Koresh have a few hundred firearms and people to use them? What happened to him? Ask the people of Iraq how well using firearms against the us army is going for them. A million dead Iraq citizens against less than four thousand us soldiers.

Yah, but the second amendment protects you, hah right sure it does. Funny how that's the only part of the constitution the Repukelacons are willing to respect.

The mayor of Omaha called the gunman "cowardly." Not much reflection behind a snide comment like that. Rather, it's as detached and dismissive as the gunman himself must have been at his worst moment in that mall. Gun proliferation is a big problem here and everywhere, but the growing individual disconnection in our society is far and away the bigger story. Don't hold your breath waiting to hear about that on the nightly news (except in all the drug commercials in-between).

I'm not as anti-gun as I used to be. After the last 6 years, I can see the people really may need their right to bear arms and form militias after all. Of course an urban/suburban liberal militia movement would immediately have the rural/suburban right-wing gun nuts calling for keeping guns out of the hands of left-wing law-abiding citizens.

Regarding the mountain of dead people caused by firearm violence in our civil society, take a look at this citation from Bob Herbert's article "Hooked on Violence," New York Times, April 26, 2007:

"…since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That's MORE THAN THE COMBINED U.S. COMBAT DEATHS IN ALL THE WARS IN ALL OF AMERICAN HISTORY" (emphasis mine).

Might there be a low-level civil war going on in our midst?

skippyagogo41: "You think you need guns to protect you from the big bad government?"

And sourcing arms for revolutions can always wait for the appropriate moment. No need to hoard them for years 'just in case.' That'd appear doubly kooky.

It is now time to place restrictions on young, white, male christians, as they obviously present a danger to this country. The pattern speaks for itself - time for a roundup.

Samski

"skippyagogo41: "You think you need guns to protect you from the big bad government?"

And sourcing arms for revolutions can always wait for the appropriate moment. No need to hoard them for years 'just in case.' That'd appear doubly kooky"

You've missed my main point, using arms for a revolution in a country like the usa will not work. If you gathered an army to overthrow the gov't they'd slaughter you. If you succeeded at killing all the politicians, the police and the army would hunt you down and kill you, and what's worse than you dieing is that the politicians you killed would become martyrs. 50 years after bushie had his damn fool head shot off people would be arguing that had he not been killed he'd have pulled us forces out of Iraq. Assissinating him would grant him an honour he most definately does not deserve.

Yep SHANAZA, s you suggest, we should round up all young, white, male Christians and deport them. That will prevent this type of thing. __ Hey, was Timothy McVey a Christian? __ Oh never mind, he didn't use a gun.

All we have to do, is shut down all of the ammunition factories. No ammo and the whackos will have to use sticks and stones, knives or hatchets, a home made bomb, or an automobile perhaps, to kill a bunch of innocent Christmas shoppers. ___No matter what we do, the problem is disturbed or insane people.

We can take the hunting rifles, shotguns and hand guns away from every citizen and the killing will go on, because we have a lot of nut cases in the world and they very often are difficult to detect. Then when detected, they often are given councelling, medication, and or monitored, before they go out and kill someone or a bunchf someones.

"Yet again there's the flakes who argue about the lack of stories from those who use guns to 'save' their families; couldn't be because that's a damnable myth, has been for years. It's far more likely that the guns you have in the home will be used by junior to blow his own head off. A burgler might find your guns before you do, or if you're not willing to kill them you get shot when said crook returns fire."

well i perosnally know 2 incidents where having a gun did save lives - so much for your damnable myths. the rest of your post is nothing but insults. go on dreaming up new derogatory comments up there. you have no facts just your opinion. no doubt you'll have some insult for me.

"And of course there's hardly any discussion ever of America's violent entertainment industry. Many actors/actresses are anti-gun yet have no problem with their "shoot em up" films. what incredible hypocrisy."

"well after the shooting, i knew yet another article like this would be on here. but is it any wonder in the same country that produces filth like "Saw" and "Texas chainsaw massacre" that we will have this kind of violence?"

I hate it when people try to blame the media for the actions of people. There is no proven correlation that watching fictional violence actually makes people more violent. To me, this line of arguement is just trying to find the easy answer, someone to blame. Remember after the columbine shootings when people started to blame Merilyn Manson because the two kids liked his music.
I think that more realistically, seeing tons of violence in the media is just a symptom of our violent society, but it is by no means the cause of violence. And focusing only on the media is just a convenient way to not have to deal with the large cultural issues at hand in these types of incidences.

skippyagogo41, your point was very clear. I happen to disagree that the gov. would easily quash a revolt. It'd suffer internal revolt simultaneously. Not all in gov. are automatons that can be set on autopilot to 'kill'. Ditto the mil.

Not to diminish this loss of life, through tragic, violent means- but I wonder how many American lives were lost yesterday due to heart disease, and type II diabetes?
But you won't read any headlines about those deaths. BOTH are just symptoms of much larger problems.
...Didn't think I needed yet another reason not to enter a mall...

On the same day, approximately 150 died on America's roads. Another 150 died the day after, and every day since. Why is that not even a blip on the radar, yet some wacko goes cuckoo once every coupla years and everyone's all shocked and awed?

Imagine our reaction if one-off random spree killings piled up 40,000 bodies per year. Like vehicle collisions do. Er, car "accidents," that is. Is that why we pretend road deaths don't matter? Because we've accepted the lie that they are "accidents," and, hence, we're not responsible or something?

Tomorrow's forcast: 150 dead on America's roads.

godlessrant;

I won't insult you. I'll just ask you to google the number of people in the usa who used their own firearms to kill themselves accidently last year. Bet it's more than two.

While you're at it google your own state and find out how many news reports there are of kids who've found daddy's gun and 'accidently' killed themselves, their friends or strangers. Bet that's more than two as well.

I'd also like you to try and place yourself in the crooks frame of mind, if you (as a crook) expect your victims might be armed and still decide that robbing people is a good idea wouldn't you take a gun along and fire first if you found people in the house you're trying to rob?

It will take more than one generation to get rid of 300 million firearms. All we can do now is start the process of disarmament, for the benefit of future generations of Americans. Who's game?

Yes, there will be a period in which "only criminals will have guns" (or more accurately, only criminals and the police will have guns). But that will pass eventually. Do we have the courage to endure that episode?

The second amendment was written by privileged gentlemen, to ensure that a strong federal government would not bully their local state governments. The "arms" of their day were large, heavy, single-shot, slow to reload, expensive, difficult to maintain, and wildly inaccurate.

Does anyone really believe that the authors of the Bill of Rights would have guaranteed the right to own an AK-47 or a Glock to their tenants, employees, debtors and the rest of "the rabble"?

How about we all agree to go back to hunting with muzzle-loaders? For home defense we could allow a cheap "throw-away" weapon that fires two shots and cannot be reloaded.

And which would you rather have when the Sheriff comes to evict you off your property? One assault rifle, or twenty neighbors at your side, armed with muskets?

Collective security is the only real security.

as a result perhaps of my ill-spent youth, or possibly because of being a poster here, there may come a day when some blackwater types kick my door in and try to take me away to one of those fema camps.

i've made the decision not to go, and i've put the law firm of mossberg and browning on retainer to make sure i don't have to.

do i expect to win the revolution single-handed? of course not. do i expect to survive the encounter? unlikely. but i will try my damndest to leave a few less blackwaters to attack the next house on the block, and i will die a free citizen.

BTW, the term "assault weapon" is much like the term "partial-birth abortion," chosen for its shock value rather than as a useful descriptor. all automatic small arms (machine guns which can empty their magazines with one sustained pull of the trigger) have been illegal in the u.s. since the 1930s---which is why only criminals (and a few licensed collectors) have them.

The amount of ignorance about guns and gun law displayed in this article and in the commnets is breathtaking. Just a few excerpts:

Rivkin, "there is no practical way to... to significantly reduce their lethality (such as... controlling the distribution of automatic weapons)."

Huh, excuse me? The National Firearms Act of 1934 effectively banned private ownership of automatic weapons. You have to jump through a lot of hoops and spend a lot of money to get one legally.

Daniel David, "But I do hope that, since it did, some of the rural hunters will ask themselves why they really think the assault-weapons ban was so bad. Right there in middle-America at the Omaha mall, now, one kid who didn't need an assault weapon got one anyway and shot a bunch of people. And the whole state voted last time for his right to own such questionable firepower."

Well, obviously you know what was so bad about "assault weapons" that necessitated their "ban", maybe you can tell us? What functional difference is there between an "assault weapon" and your standard semi-automatic hunting rifle? Or was it that they just looked mean and scary that got the banners so upset?

daveg90275, "As someone who has hunted, I've never seen the need for allowing assault rifles, armor piercing bullets..."

Guess what. The same ammo you use to hunt is much more lethal than the rounds used in most "assault weapons".

And armor piercing bullets? Man, that's so 80's, so 'Lethal Weapon 3'. Next you'll be talking about undetectable plastic guns and Black Talon ammo, aaaagh!

If I seem snarky, well, yes, I've been hearing the same old arguments for going on 2 decades (SSDD - Same Shit, Different Decade)now about if we just got rid of the guns, then all our crime problems would go away. Please, we have higher murder rates using hands and feet than in most other "first world" countries. (Heck, it's even higher than the murder rate from "assault weapons".)

Banning guns (or placing such onerous restrictions as to effectively ban them) is not going to solve the problem, and may well make things worse. Washington D.C. has been called the murder capital of the country on many occasions, yet the surrounding burbs, with much greater access to guns, has much lower homicide rates. Interesting, no?

Later,

i know that people have killed themselves accidentally and that crooks have grabbed guns from people. But like i said i have known personal examples of where a firearm saved a life. so i guess in those cases, the people should simply have just died, eh?

"I'd also like you to try and place yourself in the crooks frame of mind, if you (as a crook) expect your victims might be armed and still decide that robbing people is a good idea wouldn't you take a gun along and fire first if you found people in the house you're trying to rob?"

if i were a crook: no i'd rather go to a person's house that isn't armed, so i would be able to do the crime with much less danger. you've never experienced a violent situation in your life i am guessing. I know you mean well, but it isn't based on reality

i know that people have killed themselves accidentally and that crooks have grabbed guns from people. But like i said i have known personal examples of where a firearm saved a life. so i guess in those cases, the people should simply have just died, eh?

"I'd also like you to try and place yourself in the crooks frame of mind, if you (as a crook) expect your victims might be armed and still decide that robbing people is a good idea wouldn't you take a gun along and fire first if you found people in the house you're trying to rob?"

if i were a crook: no i'd rather go to a person's house that isn't armed, so i would be able to do the crime with much less danger. you've never experienced a violent situation in your life i am guessing. I know you mean well, but it isn't based on reality

"The amount of ignorance about guns and gun law displayed in this article and in the commnets is breathtaking"...and REVOLTING!

i agree Cicero418, but what can you do with people who get their facts from "googling"? i've heard these same rediculous arguments about as long as you have from the same old people. what can they say about DC, really? and since i know people alive today because they were armed and then i hear these armchair critics with their utopian ideas, it riles me. I've never really figured out why so many liberals hate guns? My apologies in advance to those of you who don't feel this way, but i guess that being "liberal" means that we don't get to have that particular freedom - of protection?

so perhaps if this disturbed kid didn't have a gun, perhaps he might be a serial killer instead? if someone wants to kill they'll find a way to do it.

thanks to the posters who listed the other major ways to die. perhaps we need to register food, so people don't overeat. To register sex, so people won't die of STD. hell let's register everything dangerous!

WHEN WILL THE PENNY DROP.

Like so many other cases: Columbine, Auvinen in Finland, Hawkins was on ANTIDEPRESSANTS. Heres a list of SSRI related killings:

http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?sort=date
Take a GOOD look, people. Any case of murder/suicide should always arouse suspicions of SSRI antidepressants being involved. Because until these are withdrawn and it becomes a crime to sell them, we will see more such massacres.

=============================

'Shortly after the shooting, Hawkins' mother walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal," the sheriff's office said.

KETV reported that the note left with the Sarpy sheriff's office said Hawkins wanted to "go out in style."

It also reportedly said Hawkins was "going to go out and be famous."

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A friend of Hawkins told KETV that Hawkins had been on antidepressants, staying with friends and bouncing from job to job.'
http://www.cbs46.com/news/14783006/detail.html

you've never experienced a violent situation in your life i am guessing.

Wrong. I'm male. Been raped twice, and have had a number of interesting fights none of which escalated into weapons being drawn. I do know that the presence of weapons makes it much more likely that they'll be used. If butthead went into a mall with a knife or a sword, he'd not have been able to kill as many people as he did. I get most of my news from the cbc, other foreign newspapers and from some websites like this one.

Could I please beg fellow progressives to change their tone and realize that they are addressing other fellow progressives? This is the very issue that is used by the powerful to be certain that we will always be bickering amongst ourselves. Divide and conquer and watch the schmucks quarrel.

I believe only prozac is now allowed to be prescribed to depressed teens. It shouldn't be too surprising that anti-depressants are correlated with these acts since these people are depressed. I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's all too easy to make errors of false cause-effect.

Thanks for the last note.

To me, the whole argument that this happens because guns are available just sounds wrong. Its because I grew up in a rural area where there were tons of guns available to everyone. I'm sure it wasn't everyone, but it certainly seems like every person I went to high school with had access to guns at home.

I grew up in an area where a Shotgun was a very common gift to a 12 or 13 year old boy. Usually the family, or at least the father in the family hunted, so a shotgun at that age was the introduction of a young male into being able to go hunt with his father.

This also meant that almost every home of friends I remember visiting had a gun cabinet with multiple guns in it somewhere.

All of which meant that I think just about everyone I went to high school with had access to guns if they wanted it. Anyone who was angry or depressed could have taken a gun and gone to a mall or McDonald's or whatever and started shooting.

But you know what, it never happened. Not once.

So I try to think about what's really different. What's different today than from that east Tennessee Apalachian culture I grew up in. The above post about anti-depressants might be a hint. In the mid 70's, this current trend of doping up everyone in the school on these sorts of pharms hadn't really caught hold yet.

To me, it comes down to respect and hope. Especially hope. Yeah, we are talking Appalachia, and the local economy wasn't exactly vibrant. But it seems like everyone had some sort of plans for some sort of life after high school. People got upset over school and jobs and cliches and friends and girls and all the usual stuff. But this feeling of hopelessness that I sense from the above, that I don't remember.

But, the antidepressents make sense. Never been on them myself, so I don't know what they do to a mind. But you get the impression that people get more obsessed with stuff and lose sight of the big picture.

Maybe if we live in a crazy, hopeless society with everyone drugged on dangerous anti-depressensts, we should look at trying to get some of the guns under control. Although I don't know how you'd get there from here. But in a bigger picture, lets not imagine that its the guns that are the cause of the problem. And if the world stays a crazy, hopeless place where everyone is doped on pharms, then if you get rid of the guns, you may just find that the next depressed and doped up kid just makes a gasoline bomb and sets it off. Don't imagine that you got to have a gun to do something crazy and kill a lot of people. And if you don't go to the real cause, it still is going to happen somehow.

Would anybody like to bet that the kid was on Ritalin before (or maybe while) he was on Prozac?

Just say "No" to drugs, unless some authority says it's mandatory.

i'm sorry to hear of your assaults. i am glad you survived them and even without the use of weapons. for the cases i know, the people would not have survived without them. in an idea world there would be no weapons, no violence but then we're FAR from ideal.

Just FYi to the above. If I remember the political spin of the time, it was the use of automatic weapons by gangs that got the banned. The hunters objected, for reasons I never quite understood as the hunters I know are proud of making their kills with a single shot in a place that doesn't spoil the trophy. Picture a deer head mounted on a wall after that deer's been blasted with a blast of rounds from an automatic weapon, and you can pretty quickly see why most hunters wouldn't really do that.

Naw, if I remmeber correctly is was all the "Tech-9's" and "Uzi's" and the like being used by gangs that was the driving force behind getting them banned.

Typically, the 'kits' that turn a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic rifle seem to be pretty easily available. I'm not a gun person myself. Never had one. And my mom in east Tennessee when I grew up wouldn't let even a pellet gun in the house. But just from being around, I feel like I've heard of these kits to make a weapon fully automatic.

"or more accurately, only criminals and the police will have guns"

Given the current trend towards fascism in this country, why doesn't that scare the left more than it does?

Remember the actual history of the start of the American Revolution. The British had indeed banned guns. The very reason that the Redcoats were marching on Lexington and Concord was because they had 'intel' that the colonists had stockpiles of guns and powder in those places and the Redcoats were going there to seize them.

One of the basic concepts of this country was to break the system where the government had a monopoly on power. Thus the system where instead power was in the hands of civilian militias. If the local sheriff or governor or even the President wanted to use force to solve a problem, he had to call out the militia ... or think posse in terms of the sheriff.

This put a democratic control on the abuse of power by officials. Because the citizens could vote with their feet and not come out as a militia if they thought the sheriff or governor or president was abusing his power.

That's some of the reasoning as to why the American people of the late 18th century INSISTED on the 2nd amendment before approving this constitution. The whole system was a check on the abuse of power by officials. It kept the firepower of the state under the control of the citizens.

Yes, the world has changed a bit since then. But we see today the perils of a President with a standing army and mercenaries at easy reach to carry out his insane orders. Which is one reason why I'm a little reluctant to change what a bunch of revolutionaries put into place based on their own bitter experiences with an imperial abuse of power.

Ha! I love it (well, not really).

jjohnjj, "The second amendment was written by privileged gentlemen, to ensure that a strong federal government would not bully their local state governments. The "arms" of their day were large, heavy, single-shot, slow to reload, expensive, difficult to maintain, and wildly inaccurate."

Oh look! jjohnjj claims that the Second Amendment only applies to 18th century weapons! That the Founding Fathers would never have envisaged automatic weapons, or tanks, or nukes, and so they aren't protected! Heavens to Murgatroid, I've never heard this argument before!

So I guess newspapers produced with hand-cranked printing presses from the 18th century are the only ones protected by the 1st Amendment, yes? Let's hope you don't keep any of your financial or legal files on a computer, since they aren't covered by the protections of your person and papers. Or belong to a religion that didn't exist in the 18th Century. (Although this might be the way to get rid of Mitt Romney, eh?)

Later,