Douva

Like I said, words have meaning. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Seriously, Fox News, is this really necessary? Do the conservatives really need their own flavor of political correctness? Aren't most terrorist bombers attempting homicide? Isn't the real distinction that some of them are attempting it by blowing up themselves? Isn't that distinction the reason the term "suicide bomber" was coined in the first place? Timothy McVeigh was a homicide bomber, but he wasn't a suicide bomber. I suppose it's also possible to be a suicide bomber without being a homicide bomber. Words have meaning; quit clouding the issues with rhetoric. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

How scared are you going to be during that month? "Shit your pants" scared or just "stay indoors at all times" scared? The first half of your profile name is starting to make a lot of sense. Actually I was trying to make a point, albeit facetiously I admit. If you don't feel scared during that month when you can't carry a concealed firearm - how will that affect your position? I imagine you won't allow it to affect your position in the slightest. Your facetious point mistakenly assumes that carrying a concealed handguns has something to do with feeling scared. So why does it bother you that you can't have one for the better part of a month? Mmmkay, Kallend, did you click on the link I posted? I was making a joke at my own expense. Lighten up. So, you do feel scared. Sucks to be you. Grow up. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

How scared are you going to be during that month? "Shit your pants" scared or just "stay indoors at all times" scared? The first half of your profile name is starting to make a lot of sense. Actually I was trying to make a point, albeit facetiously I admit. If you don't feel scared during that month when you can't carry a concealed firearm - how will that affect your position? I imagine you won't allow it to affect your position in the slightest. Your facetious point mistakenly assumes that carrying a concealed handguns has something to do with feeling scared. So why does it bother you that you can't have one for the better part of a month? Mmmkay, Kallend, did you click on the link I posted? I was making a joke at my own expense. Lighten up. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

How scared are you going to be during that month? "Shit your pants" scared or just "stay indoors at all times" scared? The first half of your profile name is starting to make a lot of sense. Actually I was trying to make a point, albeit facetiously I admit. If you don't feel scared during that month when you can't carry a concealed firearm - how will that affect your position? I imagine you won't allow it to affect your position in the slightest. Your facetious point mistakenly assumes that carrying a concealed handguns has something to do with feeling scared. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

How scared are you going to be during that month? "Shit your pants" scared or just "stay indoors at all times" scared? The first half of your profile name is starting to make a lot of sense. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

At the concealed handgun license renewal course I attended today, I discovered that there is probably going to be a 2-3 week gap between the time my old license expires and when my new license arrives. Since I don't want to be defenseless for the better part of a month, I'm thinking of investing in some of THIS body armor. Do y'all think it would be a worthwhile investment? I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

I don't think they're necessarily running scared from the gun lobby, but they're definitely running scared from the issue of guns in general. I've heard it suggested by the media that many gun rights advocates tend to consider the issue of gun control a much higher priority when voting than do gun control advocates. If that's true, which I believe it is, supporting gun control is a bad career move for politicians. The gun lobby is not the all-powerful Illuminati that the media portrays it to be. The gun lobby wouldn't have any power at all if it wasn't backed (both financially and at the polls) by tens of millions of registered voters. Anti-gun organizations like to portray the gun lobby as one tentacle of the evil corporate interests destroying America from within; however, according to a March 18, 2000, article in the New York Times, the firearms industry is composed of "small, marginally profitable companies" with combined revenues of $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year, so they're not exactly big tobacco (Philip Morris, alone, has an annual revenue of about $101 billion and spends about $17 billion per year on lobbying). Allowing law-abiding citizens to own and, if trained and licensed, carry firearms is not mutually exclusive to the goal of combating urban poverty, joblessness, drug addiction, and racial divisions. I think you'll find that most proponents of gun rights place the majority of the blame for America's high crime rate on America's social problems. Not all of those gun rights proponents are interested in doing something to fix those problems, but most of them would agree that those social problems, not guns, are behind America's crime problem. If people truly concerned with the high rate of crime in this country--as opposed to people with moral or philosophical oppositions to gun ownership--would focus on the complex social issues which set America apart from many other industrialized nations and which, unlike guns, significantly contribute to the high crime rate in this country, they might see broader support for the search for a solution. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

I hope you'll excuse me for being brief, but I have to leave in a few minutes to re-qualify for my concealed handgun license. I had to skim the last few paragraphs. 1. In 2004, the last year for which CDC statistics are available on the CDC website, 2,045 individuals (5.6 per day) under the age of 19 died of gunshot wounds. Only about 69% of those were homicides (1,291) or gun accidents (121). So that's roughly four people under the age of nineteen dying in gun accidents or gun related homicides every day. According to FBI crime statistics, well over half of those individuals are involved in gang activity at the time of their deaths. 2. The statistic "A gun in a US home is 22 times more likely to be used in an accidental shooting, a murder or a suicide than in self-defense against an attack" is misleading for several reasons. A. It includes suicides, as if people couldn't find another means to kill themselves (Japan's suicide rate is more than twice the U.S. rate; yet, they have an almost absolute prohibition on the civilian ownership off firearms). B. As in my first point this statistic involves households involved in gang or other criminal activity. C. This statistic compares gun DEATHS to defensive DEATHS, not gun DEATHS to defensive USES. Some studies have found that as few as 1 in 1000 defensive uses of a gun result in the death of the criminal and that the gun is fired in less than 1% of those instances. I wish I had time to say more, but I have to go shoot. Later. 3. The homicide rate in America is 35% lower than it was 25 years ago. The 2007 homicide rate was down from 2005 and 2006. "Gun deaths" don't constitute the whole story. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

The fact that one safety-oriented infringement on personal rights saves lives does not mean that all proposed safety-oriented infringements on personal rights will save lives. And aside from seatbelt laws and gun control laws both being safety-oriented infringements on personal rights, there are few correlations between the two. I'm glad you liked it. The nuances and effects of the various systems of gun control throughout the world make for interesting reading. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

When quoting gun crime statistics from other countries, gun control advocates like to point to nations that have very different governments and judicial systems and that lack the gun culture and open borders of the United States. It's easy to point to the low crime rates in Japan or England, two small island nations with easily controllable borders, no significant gun culture (in part because they lack the frontier past of the United States and because they offer very little big game hunting), and judicial systems which afford citizens fewer rights than in the U.S. The British and Japanese definitions of "due process" are very different from the one Americans know. And the British and Japanese systems of government are more totalitarian than the U.S. system. Residents of Japan and England are treated more like subjects than citizens. Actions such as government censorship and warrantless searches, which would never be tolerated in the U.S., are deemed acceptable, under certain circumstances, by the people and governments of Japan and England and, to a lesser degree, Canada. England never had significant gun crime, even before the implementation of gun control. Gun control was first implemented in Great Britain not because of any great need to curb gun violence but because, in the early 1920s, the British government feared the possibility of a working class uprising, similar to the Bolshevik Revolution that had just occurred in Russia. Gun controls were strengthened in the mid-1960s, as a way of appeasing public outcry for a reinstatement of the death penalty, following an incident in which three police officers were murdered with illegal revolvers. Because the revolvers used to murder the officers were already heavily regulated, the British government chose to respond to this crime by implementing shotgun control (despite the fact that recent studies had indicated that gun crime in Great Britain was under control and that shotgun controls would have no practical effect). The current gun control laws now enforced in England--virtually banning civilian ownership of firearms--were implemented in the late 1980s, following a mass murder in which a licensed gun owner killed eighteen people with a handgun and a semiautomatic Kalashnikov (AK-47) rifle. Because England lacks the strong gun culture of the United States, a strong media outcry for stringent gun control was met with little resistance. Though this massacre was the first and only time a centerfire, semiautomatic rifle was used to commit a murder in England, it led to the confiscation of every centerfire, semiautomatic rifle in the nation. The only protest from what passes for a gun lobby in Great Britain was an insistence that the government pay the owners of confiscated guns a small fee (a fraction of the actual value of most of the guns) for each firearm confiscated. Gun control advocates tend to focus on the NUMBER of GUN crimes in countries with strict gun control, rather than focusing on the RATE of VIOLENT crimes in those countries, for two very simple reasons. First, focusing on crime numbers, rather than crime rates, allows gun control advocates to give the appearance that there is a much greater disparity than there actually is between the level of violent crime in America and the levels of violent crime in much smaller nations, such as England. Also, focusing on the low numbers of gun deaths in countries with strict gun control allows gun control advocates to avoid mentioning that many of these countries, such as England, have actually seen an increase in their overall homicide rates, since the implementation of strict gun control laws. And most of the countries, like Australia, that have seen a decrease in their homicide rates, since the implementation of strict gun control laws, have not seen as sharp a decrease during that time period as the United States of America, where gun control laws have remained virtually unchanged. In the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, the homicide rate in England was 1/10th the homicide rate in the United States. In 1987 English citizens were shocked by a mass shooting at a public market. In 1989 American citizens were shocked by a mass shooting at a fast food restaurant. England responded by implementing the strict gun control laws currently in place. Americans chose not to implement stricter gun control. By the early ‘90s, the homicide rate in England was 1/8th the homicide rate in America. Today the homicide rate in England is 1/4th the homicide rate in America. Since the implementation of England’s strict gun control laws, England’s homicide rate has gone up; whereas, America’s homicide rate has gone down. In 1989 the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice published a report showing that the Canadian homicide rate remained, for the most part, stable in the decade following the passage of the 1977 law requiring citizens to receive a Firearms Acquisition Certificate from police before purchasing a firearm. If you compare 1976 homicide statistics to 2006 homicide statistics, both the U.S. and Canadian homicide rates have declined by 33%. Strictly based on those numbers, there is no evidence that the Canadian gun controls implemented in 1977 have accomplished anything. Gun control advocates never mention countries like Mexico and Russia, in which gun control laws are VERY strict and murder rates are three to four times higher than in the United States. In truth, you can no more compare the United States to England, where virtually nobody has a gun and the violent crime rate is very low, than you can compare the United States to Switzerland, where virtually everybody has a gun and the violent crime rate is very low. For more information read The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies, by David B. Kopel. The introduction can be read HERE. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

What does that have to do with anything? The government doesn't make it illegal to not wear a helmet while driving, and as a result people die in car accidents every year, despite wearing their seat belts, do to head injuries. The government doesn't make it illegal to not wear a composite plastic chest protector while driving, and as a result people die in car accidents every year, despite wearing their seat belts, do to internal injuries. Okay, seriously, what WAS your point? I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Second tier candidates always have the potential to sway elections. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

This is the same issue we were just discussing on the SCCC message board. Here is what I said last night: I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

If we adopted Texas's CHL training/testing/background check requirements as a requirement for gun ownership in America, would you also be willing to adopt Texas's policy that those guns don't have to be registered, as well as Texas's policies about where those guns can be carried? If you're willing to take gun registration off the table and open up all of America to legalized concealed carry by all legal gun owners, you might actually finds some support for that compromise. But if you just want to impose the added restrictions, without the added benefits, that's not much of a compromise, and you probably won't have much luck getting legislative support. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

That can't be proven. It is, in fact, a belief that you have chosen to hold. I prefer not to live in fear. Yes, KidWicked, your astuteness continues to wow us all. For the second time in this thread, somebody has successfully pointed out that you can't prove a negative. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Yes. They have the right to bear arms until they are adjudicated dangerous or convicted of a crime. No. If they have been adjudicated dangerous or convicted of a crime, they are stripped of that right. Your poll is poorly worded. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

As I understand the notion of a free society, the people are not to be denied a right unless there is empirical evidence that granting that right will infringe upon the rights of others. As I have clearly shown, there is little to no fact-based evidence suggesting that allowing concealed carry on college campuses would increase the rate of violent crime on college campuses or make things worse, in any other way, on college campuses. So if there's no real evidence that it will hurt, and if it has the potential to help, what is the justification for prohibiting it? I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm not considering Florida to be an independent society. Yes, numerous states have seen declines in crime after implementing concealed carry; however, whether those declines were a result of concealed carry or merely part of a larger trend remains to be shown. What has been clearly shown, however, is that concealed carry certainly doesn't make crime any worse in the places where it is allowed. The preceding points are covered in the interview I linked to in the first post in this thread. Technically, they didn't loosen gun controls in Kennesaw, Georgia; they simply ordered everyone to abide by the current controls and obtain a gun. And again, it's hard to say for sure that the decrease in crime was a direct result of ordering every household to keep a gun. Technically, gravity is still a theory too. There are still differing views on why exactly skydivers go down when they jump out of a plane, but that doesn't mean there is credible evidence suggesting they actually go up. (And so help me, the first smartass who says, "What about wingsuit jumpers?" is getting a skysurfing board in the ass.) Though it's theoretical that allowing concealed carry on college campuses might actually save a life or stop a mass shooting, there is no credible evidence that it would have the opposite effect, so why not allow it? That's been the crux of my argument all along. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

These threads seem to degrade faster than they used to. It seems like there was a time when we'd get at least a couple of days of intelligent discussion out of a gun thread before people started resorting to name calling. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Who cherry-picked the locations? Armed madmen with no regard for the rules. Right - arming madmen is a serious mistake. Unfortunately our society makes it easy for madmen to get firearms. That needs to be fixed. If that's true, name a few societies that have significantly reduced violent crime by disarming everybody. Who suggested disarming everybody? Nice strawman if it weren't so bloody obvious. I suggested making it harder, much harder, for madmen to get guns. Okay, let me rephrase the request: Name a few societies that have significantly reduced violent crime by implementing much stricter gun control laws. Can you name a few societies that have reduced violent crime by implementing less stringent gun control laws? Can you name any societies that have implemented less stringent gun control laws? I can't. But I can name a number of societies that have implemented more stringent gun control laws, and none of them have seen a significant decrease in violent crime; therefore, Kallend's argument that we need stricter gun control laws to curb violent crime is baseless. Actually, there is a great argument, based on numerous examples, supporting my assertion that gun control doesn't reduce crime. And the success of concealed carry in America, over the past two decades, shows that loosening restrictions doesn't make things any worse. Because studies by numerous independent researchers and state agencies have found that concealed handgun license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes; because no other type of location—from office buildings to churches to movie theaters to shopping malls—has seen an increased rate of violent crime since concealed carry became legal there; because the eleven universities that currently allow concealed carry on campus (and have done so for a combined total of over sixty semesters) have not seen any resulting incidents of gun violence, gun accidents, or gun thefts; and because of all the other reasons listed HERE, I'm pretty certain. My "insistance [sic] on being correct" and how I "come across as 'all knowing?'" It's called being an authority on a subject. It comes from lots and lots of research. You should try it sometime. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

I'm not trying to get into a pissing contest with anybody. You asked, "who would get to say who could or couldn't carry?" Both the radio interview and website clearly state that our objective is to see individuals with state issued concealed handgun licenses granted the right to carry concealed handguns on campus. What is unclear about that? I'm sorry if my response came across as curt, but I have a hard time seeing how you could not understand who would be allowed to carry, if you listened to the interview and checked out the website. PS. That commercial that played while I was talking was a technical glitch. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Who cherry-picked the locations? Armed madmen with no regard for the rules. Right - arming madmen is a serious mistake. Unfortunately our society makes it easy for madmen to get firearms. That needs to be fixed. If that's true, name a few societies that have significantly reduced violent crime by disarming everybody. Who suggested disarming everybody? Nice strawman if it weren't so bloody obvious. I suggested making it harder, much harder, for madmen to get guns. Okay, let me rephrase the request: Name a few societies that have significantly reduced violent crime by implementing much stricter gun control laws. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Who cherry-picked the locations? Armed madmen with no regard for the rules. Right - arming madmen is a serious mistake. Unfortunately our society makes it easy for madmen to get firearms. That needs to be fixed. If that's true, name a few societies that have significantly reduced violent crime by disarming everybody. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.

Who cherry-picked the locations? Armed madmen with no regard for the rules. I don't have an M.D. or a law degree. I have bachelor's in kicking ass and taking names.