As expected, hateful and vitriolic.
The ad

That's a lame analogy.
I would hire guards for my kid... if my family was receiving death threats.
AND.. since a Presidents family has historically received said threats in the past AND even been assassinated...
Well... the NRA appears to be really reaching in this "ad".

Lame, schmame. We all know they have an audience segment (mostly 4th generation inbreds) that will lap it up.

what gets me is the NRA points fingers to culture of violence and away from guns, but WTH do they think they're promoting ? Guns ARE violence...
and all their mouthpieces display violent attitudes in the Press...

NRA - you have met the enemy and it's YOU. Heal thyself !!

We had a school incident yesterday in the 8th grade of one of the upper-class suburban schools--a surprise since the expectation is that this kind of thing will happen in the city schools, where it never has. Anyway, a kid brought a knife to the school and stabbed a class mate four times. The victim is in stable condition. There was another incident reported in today's paper, a shooting at a community college in KY--two dead.

The difference? The kid here had a knife, not a gun.

Yeah had a libertarian friend make the argument about how many stabbings there were; "why don't we ban knives?"... actually only 13% of murders are stabbings while 68% are firearms.

BUT beyond that . . . how many Mass Murders are done with knives?

Heard of any drive by stabbings ?

Excuses, excuses, excuses !!

Sorry to hear of the incident - I hope the student recovers quickly. The other kid must have been listening to Rush or Fox too much ! (Actually sorry for him too- he really F-ed up. )

I don't know what happened but there seems to have been a FB quarrel of some sort that turned very nasty.

Ban FaceBook!

And the people who would threaten the President and his family are probably dues paying members of the NRA.

I am a dues paying member.

I just deleted the body of this post. The NRA is a large organization with some good people and some not so good people

The end.

.

Of course that is true of all organizations. However the NRA also has a third category, the f::king bat s::t crazies. It is that portion of the org. that incites fear, anger and loathing. Both sides experience this but from very different perspectives

That is the NRA strategy to get the nutty ones more paranoid with this crap they are spreading about the government might take away your guns. The ad was disgusting using children especially Obama's in saying they have more privileges than other children in protecting them in school.

I don't think, Kate, that I'm sticking my neck out when I assume that you're among the 74% of NRA members and the 82% of gun owners who support the pillars of common sense reform.

As a member, it must be a slap in the face to discover who the leadership really supports. Once upon a time, it was you. But now, it's the industry.

I'm just sayin'...

Then the good people need to tell the not so good people to sit down and shut up. They're giving everybody a very bad image.

Yeah the GOP has the SAME problem with their "leadership" (I use that term VERY loosely!) maybe I should refer to them as "babbling bobble-heads" !

Kate, you know I was not including you in that third category. I agree with Steve.

Actually if there were no or few guns there would be a lot more knife deaths and even mass murders. Japan is a testament to that. SeverAl years ago a man broke into an Osaka elem school and killed some ten little kids with a knife. Having said that I would prefer this reality to what the US is grappling with.

Massacre

You're ignoring a key difference: Frequency.

Sure, with enough determination and — dare I say — ingenuity, one can find ways to murder a room full of people without access to firearms. But how often do such incidents happen? In the U.S., there are 32 gun deaths every day! More than 900 in the month btwn the Sandy Hook massacre and Pres. Obama's announcement yesterday. Nine f'n hundred gun deaths in one short month!

If just half of Obama's proposals had been in effect for the last three years, those statistics would have fallen by at least 25%, and probably more.

Nothing will ever end gun violence entirely. But if we can just reduce it by making it harder to accomplish, countless lives will be saved — without trampling the Second Amendment.

Kate, I'm a dues paying member also.

The NRA has done more for gun safety then any other group. They actually have experts demonstrate the proper use

As for the rhetoric the NRA uses folks on the other side use just as bad inflammatory language.


Dave

Oh I agree. I was just pointing out knife massacres can happen. I'll take the Japanese alternative any day.

But that is the next step. Since 1996 UK firearm ban has been in place the number of stabbing deaths has increased significantly. With the UK government introducing legislation to limit the length of knives. If someone wants to kill they will find a tool to do it with, if a gun isn't available, then a knife, or a bat, or a tree branch, or a heavy ornament will suffice.

Do you call supporting access to ARs and high-capacity magazines for the general public "gun safety"? Do you call opposing background checks and shared databases "gun safety"? Do you call rejecting an entire body common sense policies that will make it harder for the wrong people to get their hands on firearms "gun safety"? Really, Dave?

Sure, training classes for proper gun handling and storage are a good and necessary thing. But what's the NRA's historic and present POV on who has access to what kinds of guns? One word: "NO!"

Gun safety and public safety are not the same thing. And as long as the NRA leadership continues to push back on and prevent the latter, the former does next to nothing to solve the problem of 32 gun deaths a day. Should my assumption of your membership be the opposite of my assumption of Kate's?

BTW, show me examples of poisonous and totally out of bounds anti-gun rhetoric from gun control advocates. Show me ads singling out family members of Wayne LaPierre and David Keene. Show me...

Ain't it a sick, sad thing that such options are even on the table?

But none of those are as efficient as a gun. I would bet that while stabbing incidents may have increased, the number of victims per incident has decreased. A standard clip in a Glock 9mm yields 15 victims in less than 10 seconds. Can't do that with a knife or a bat or a tree branch or a heavy ornament.

This is about deterrence and reduction. Elimination, sadly, is not a realistic goal.

And this is also a story about an uptick in violent crime, which is going to be with something besides guns if you don't have access to them.

I think I have mentioned this before, but they have a restraining device in Japan that could be used to keep a would be attacker at bay. There was one tacked to a pillar near me in my office at my old school. Try using one of these to stop someone with a gun.

Meh. Garlic breath or a good stored up fart is more effective. And much more portable!

True enough but then most of the gun deaths in the US are single kills, and not the result of mass shootings. And while I will agree that a larger magazine has the potential to increase the number of victims, 15 victims from a 15 round magazine is asking for some good marksmanship - well at least better than some headline making police districts seem to be capable of, I've heard stories of 90 shots fired with less than 10% hitting the target in some cases.

I agree.
Maybe I watched to many (criminal minds TV shows) but knife murders are very very up close and personal and carries a risk to the perp. Normally means serial killer or gang related -- gun murders are committed by cowards from a safe distance.

I think the point there is that with a mandated seven-round-clip (for example) you'd reduce that potential by almost half before having to reload ...


Which is probably 8 more than if you tried attacking 90 people with a knife (if someone was stupid enough to even try that, which is also the point ;-) ...

The NRA maybe has done beneficial for their member according to safety but their mentality towards the ad they represented was completely off the wall on their part and their thinking about protecting others with automatics are not to normal.

Literal much?

Think concept, man. Potential. Opportunity. Sure, every cast member of Walking Dead can make every round a head shot from a quarter mile away. I'm talking about suppressing the opportunity to inflict harm on a grand scale.

And as for your first point, if you consider that among all of those single victim incidents, without a gun, many of those would be injuries vs. deaths. And further, many of those assailants preferred the convenience and hand's off function of a gun over getting up close and personal with their victims. If this were true in only 10% of those cases, those are lives saved.

BTW... This is the best ever argument for NOT having guns in schools — in the hands of trained pros, or especially teachers and staff!

The best argument I heard for not having a gun in school came from a gun owning teacher - He worried less that a single shooter would enter the school and begin a spree, than he was a slighted student getting hold of the gun and shooting a bully. It's not just having a gun, it's being able to use it effectively and protect it. Of the 60 or so teachers I know, I would trust one: marksman, multi-black belt kung fu and art teacher - and today his arthritis pretty much negates the kung fu knowledge.

Here is the best argument I have heard for not having guns in schools.


Guard leaves gun on counter in bathroom at charter school.

Good to know that Japan will still hang a man for a death sentence. Wish we did too.

Wonder where the other 81 shots landed. Sheesh.

So would the Philippines where it is a death penalty.

That'll help. Not.

And that's something to be proud of?