Obama's Opening Salvo Against Guns

[TomAiello 26]

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It would take a substantially longer time period than the infamous three days to acquire and construct a fertilizer bomb weapon capable of taking out, for instance, 12 of your bosses and co-workers at the post office.

I think you aren't using your imagination. In the wrong hands, an automobile is probably deadlier than a firearm. How long does it take to purchase a car?

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[TomAiello 26]

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I seriously doubt that a wacko could obtain sarin.

Of course such a thing is totally, utterly and in all other ways inconceivable.

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[quade 4]

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It would take a substantially longer time period than the infamous three days to acquire and construct a fertilizer bomb weapon capable of taking out, for instance, 12 of your bosses and co-workers at the post office.

I think you aren't using your imagination. In the wrong hands, an automobile is probably deadlier than a firearm. How long does it take to purchase a car?

Tom . . . when was the last time a disgruntled worker, out of rage, drove his car into the office and killed his boss and other employees with it? If he did manage to drive his car into a building in an attempt to commit mass murder, how effective would that really be?

I'm guessing there's probably a reason why the Columbine murderers didn't choose that as a weapon. Generally speaking it's a bitch to get up the staircase.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[futuredivot 0]

But he probably drove his car there. No car, probably no crime, break one link in the chain and all-let's get rid of cars, those mechanized satans

You are only as strong as the prey you devour

[quade 4]

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But he probably drove his car there. No car, probably no crime, break one link in the chain and all-let's get rid of cars, those mechanized satans

Fine by me. Honestly, if 10% of the GDP wasn't directly linked to cars we'd probably be better off because we could do more useful things. Cars, however, are a different topic altogether. Let's stay on this one.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 3,008]

> How long does it take to purchase a car?

You can do it in an hour or so at a dealer here in CA - as long as you show up with proof of insurance, are willing to get it registered, and have a license showing that you have been trained to drive a car and have passed a test. Would you be OK with such restrictions to allow more rapid purchase of a gun?

[DSE 5]

I would have thought Ricin was hard to get but apparently it's not. Even here in little ole' Utah.

[kelpdiver 2]

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> How long does it take to purchase a car?

You can do it in an hour or so at a dealer here in CA - as long as you show up with proof of insurance, are willing to get it registered, and have a license showing that you have been trained to drive a car and have passed a test. Would you be OK with such restrictions to allow more rapid purchase of a gun?

Uh, you can do it much more easily than that on Craigslist.

Show up, give money, take pink slip, go.

Would you be ok with that for gun sales?

[billvon 3,008]

>Would you be ok with that for gun sales?

As long as there is no law that requires a waiting period - sure. Guns are FAR less regulated than cars are.

(Note that I am not saying that cars and guns have anything in common. That would be a foolish argument, one used entirely too often by gun supporters who haven't thought through the details.)

[kelpdiver 2]

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That would be a foolish argument, one used entirely too often by gun supporters who haven't thought through the details.)

Fine, so long as you don't write those falsehoods again.

[TomAiello 26]

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> How long does it take to purchase a car?

You can do it in an hour or so at a dealer here in CA - as long as you show up with proof of insurance, are willing to get it registered, and have a license showing that you have been trained to drive a car and have passed a test. Would you be OK with such restrictions to allow more rapid purchase of a gun?

I'm not ok with those requirements to buy a car, actually.

I'm pro-choice on everything. I'd prefer that we eliminate those government restrictions on the ownership of both vehicles and firearms.

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[kallend 2,027]

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> How long does it take to purchase a car?

You can do it in an hour or so at a dealer here in CA - as long as you show up with proof of insurance, are willing to get it registered, and have a license showing that you have been trained to drive a car and have passed a test. Would you be OK with such restrictions to allow more rapid purchase of a gun?

I'm not ok with those requirements to buy a car, actually.

I'm pro-choice on everything. I'd prefer that we eliminate those government restrictions on the ownership of both vehicles and firearms.

How about airplanes? RPGs? Hand grenades? Stinger missiles? Sarin?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[ltdiver 3]

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I seriously doubt that a wacko could obtain sarin.

Of course such a thing is totally, utterly and in all other ways inconceivable.

These 5 men were brilliant in their field. One was a highly regarded doctor of medicine, one was an expert in Artificial Intelligence, and the other three were physicists. A bit more bright than the normal 'wackos' of the world.

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[TomAiello 26]

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These 5 men were brilliant in their field.

So was Ted Kaczynski. He didn't use a firearm either.

High intelligence and/or education are not necessarily good indicators of stable personality. Often quite the opposite, actually.

-- Tom Aiello

Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com
SnakeRiverBASE.com

[ltdiver 3]

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These 5 men were brilliant in their field.

So was Ted Kaczynski. He didn't use a firearm either.

High intelligence and/or education are not necessarily good indicators of stable personality. Often quite the opposite, actually.

However, their brilliance let them build and perform their task with accuracy and success. Most 'wackos' aren't that smart and will fail in their attempts. That was the point of my post.

ltdiver

Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

[Ron 10]

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So now you're coming to realize that there IS a difference between reality and what is claimed.

*I* have always know a difference. YOU have always just avoided answering simple questions.

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I guess you're making progress, slowly

If we could get you to answer simple questions instead of ducking them...Then maybe you would make some progress of your own.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[Ron 10]

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Your point is actually kind of moot. Shooting "sprees" aren't actually all that common at events. Individual crimes maybe, but "sprees" not so much.

If you think so...But in reality gun shows are filled with guns and ammo, yet they do not have shootings.

You can try to claim that auto shows are also not shooting filled...And you would be correct. But that does not prove your point in anyway.

Guns do not cause crime. Guns do not commit murder. Otherwise large concetrations of guns would have move violent events.

But places like schools that do ban guns have a higher rate of events than places packed with guns.

So, guns do not cause crime.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[nerdgirl 0]

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If you take away guns, all you see is fertilizer bombs being used instead, or sarin gas attacks in subways, or some other variety of wacko-ness. I submit that the underlying problem is not the mechanism (the firearms) but the wackos.

I’m going to agree w/Tom but with a caveat … sarin nerve agent is less likely candidate than improvised explosive or improvised chemical device to generate something a lot simpler (e.g., hydrogen cyanide or IED coupled to chlorine tank, e.g., used in Diyala in 2006-2007).

Personal pet peeve: sarin is not a ‘gas’. Nor is sulfur mustartd. At ambient temperatures and pressures, sarin (GB) a liquid with a noticable vapor pressure. For the numerically, inclined: vapor pressure sarin = 2.10 mm Hg compared to a vapor pressure of 17 mm Hg for water).

In the March 1995 Aum Shinrikyo subway terrorist attack, the nerve agent was manufactured from precursor chemicals the day before and diluted with acetonitrile. It was not pure nor particularly well-made. Aum Shinrikyo benefited more from lots of money, competent and trained technical folks, and the limitations of Japanese law at the time (restricting investigation of anything considered “religious.”) The March 1995 subway incident was not the Aum’s only foray into chemical terrorism. In the five years leading up to the most renowned sarin attack, the Aum executed at least ten separate chemical attacks. Four months earlier, in December 1994, the Aum Shinrikyo released 20 kg of sarin using an industrial sprayer with a commercial heater on a truck in the Matsumoto prefecture. The late night attack killed seven people and injured an additional 144. They also improvised release of hydrogen cyanide using condoms as a delivery method. They also tried to execute biological attacks with anthrax and botulinum toxin but failed.

Both right-wing, anti-government folks (e.g., William Krar) and radical Islamist terrorists have shown a tendency to improvise with chemical agents. It’s a very short distance from explosives and basic munitions chemistry to the street chemistry of improvised chemical devices.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[JohnRich 4]

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...but that is a problem with the current laws and the gun-lobby's intransigence in opposing sensible, effective laws... REALITY is that the current laws are ineffective, and effective law proposals get knee-jerk opposition from the gun lobby.

All the current laws were at one time somebody's idea of "sensible effective laws". So the fact that all those thousands of laws on the books now haven't done any good, ought to give you some clue as to how well your own idea of "sensible effective laws" would work out.

But I guess you think you're smarter than all the thousands of people that have come before you, over many decades, in crafting previous gun laws. Yeah, kallend's will work!

[JohnRich 4]

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I have managed to survive 63 years (31 working on the south side of Chicago) without needing any gun toting vigilante to rescue me from the local thugs.

It's amazing that someone as intelligent as a college professor can take his own personal life experience, extrapolate from that to represent the needs of 300 million people, and considers that valid statistical logic.

[akarunway 1]

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I submit that the underlying problem is not the mechanism (the firearms) but the wackos.

Yes, we should have more effective laws to make it much more difficult for wackos to get guns. Current laws are toothless.

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Regardless, I think my real point is the original one--take away guns and instead you've got sarin gas in the subways. .

I seriously doubt that a wacko could obtain sarin.

A junior chemist can make the shit. And guess who's making it? http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/appgb.html#General%20Information I wonder how it got to Iraq also.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[JohnRich 4]

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If a person is slowed from committing a single victim crime of passion that also applies to multiples.

I guess it's time again to trot out one of the studies about the ineffectiveness of cooling-off periods.

From "Point Blank, Guns and Violence in America", Gary Kleck, pp. 333-335, ISBN 0-202-30419-1:

"For a killing to have been prevented by a waiting period, a number of conditions must have existed. (1) The killer used a gun that was the only gun that he owned, (2) The killer purchased the gun from a source that could realistically be expected to comply with waiting period regulations, (3) The gun was purchased within a span of time before the crime equal to or less than the waiting period minimum, i.e. 3 days, (4) The killer would not have repeated the act or waited until after the waiting period elapsed, i.e. the act was a one-time only incident rather than the product of some on-going relationship accompanied by repeated, serious assaults...

"A 1982 survey of Florida prison system inmates found that of 342 felons who had committed handgun homicides, only 3 (.9%) had owned only one handgun, had purchased it from a retail dealer, and had done so within 3 days of the killing. (Mannelli 1982, pp. 7-8) Thus, fewer than 1 in 100 handgun killings were even hypothetically preventable through a 3-day waiting period...

"However, for a number of reasons, even this extremely small number overstates the fraction of gun killings that were potentially preventable... about .37% of handgun killers bought their only
handgun from a retail source within 3 days of the killing... about 1 in 200 handgun killings were potentially preventable by a 7-day waiting period.

"...even this figure still exaggerates the violence-preventative potential of waiting periods, because it fails to take into account four possibilities. First... some of the few killers who otherwise seemed "preventable" either also owned a long gun or could have acquired one... Second, some of those who were successfully denied a gun might still have killed with a different kind of weapon. Third, many of the killers had ongoing relationships with their victims, prior confrontations with them, and continuing reasons to attack them long after any waiting period... Fourth, some of the few otherwise "preventable" killers could have obtained guns through other channels, besides retail purchase, that most criminals use...

"This suggests that is highly unlikely that waiting periods, by themselves, could prevent even as many as 1 in 200 gun killings. Although criminal records checks may have beneficial effects, the
waiting periods that often accompany them are probably superfluous."

[billvon 3,008]

>Fine, so long as you don't write those falsehoods again.

As I have not, I don't think that will be an issue.

[kelpdiver 2]

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>Fine, so long as you don't write those falsehoods again.

As I have not, I don't think that will be an issue.

your own words: "You can do it in an hour or so at a dealer here in CA - as long as you show up with proof of insurance, are willing to get it registered, and have a license showing that you have been trained to drive a car and have passed a test."

All 4 of the requirements you list are false, in CA.

[mnealtx 0]

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Because registration is seen as a step on the path towards confiscation. They can't take away what they don't know you have.

I think that is a bogus fear based on the recent SC decision.

Your supposition is incorrect. NY, DC, New Orleansk, California... all have used registration info to confiscate firearms.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706