What you have more or less said with your comment was, “I don’t like your example, because it destroys my premise. So let’s ignore it, so I can say again what I have said many times.”

If you look at my comment of 12:26 PM, the situation I predict is likely. For the purported results you claim — for which you have no evidence — unless you’re contending that Europeans and Americans think alike, a preposterous notion — my results would still obtain.

The point of limiting handguns is to limit the access violent drug gangs have to guns. It won’t eliminate it, but it will cut the homicide rate and the incarceration rate, which is where we’re way above the average for the developed world.

You miss “s” so much you’re taking his place?

Stop being a pest, and make a contribution, or does annoying me constitute, in your mind, a contribution?

Just so you know.

Whether or not drug users are not “sane” is also arguable — they are, indeed sane, unless they are mentally ill chemical abusers, a slightly different category.

Set all that aside for a moment.

You must admit that a large number of drug offenders are addicted, and will pursue that addiction once released from prison.

Unless America is willing to abandon its stigmatizing of ex – cons and / or recovering substance abusers — not likely anytime soon — there is going to be a fresh crop of addicts hitting the streets on “Set ‘em loose” Day.

(Historical footnote: The “old prohibition” accomplished more than it gets credit for: Alcoholic related domestic violence decreased, active alcoholism declined, alcohol related injuries and accidents went down)

To let thousands of addicts hit the streets — now that’s insane!

To let them hit the streets without treatment — sadistic…

Your experiment has been tried with the mentally ill. The outcome has been awful, and while in the process of being corrected, it is far from squared away.

Their “let ‘em loose” date: NOV ’63.

Grade as of today on the success of the experiment: Maybe a 70.

The mentally ill make up a larger percentage in prison than they do in the population at large.

I didn’t check the figures, but I’m sure that least 30% of the homeless are mentally ill.

You can probably count on a great number of addicts returning to prison (muggings, burglaries, theft — unless you want drugs to be legal AND free); and you can probably count on a large number of them becoming homeless.

“Unintended consequences” and all that.

…well why not? I mean non-violent drug-offenses constitute a ridiculous percentage of our current incarcerated population. I don’t like drugs and would probably never use them if they became legal, same with alot of sane people. My making them illegal in fact, I remember reading somewhere that as a result of the Drug War’s criminalisation of Herion, it is now something like 50 times more pure than it was in the 70s. Arguably removing the criminal status of a drug like, for instance, marijuana (which is so minimally toxic that it is impossible to overdose on, unlike alcohol) would start the regulated manufacture of a product that you can safely, publically buy, which would have the secondary effect of making inner city crime less self-sustainable and thus less appealing. More room in jail for real criminals, and less imparitive to become one, what exactly is the downside of doing away with the new prohibition when the old one didnt work at all?

Only because you’re here, you narcissistic freak.

Only because you’re here.

conservatives aren’t bothered by the homicide and incarceration rates
Take away the guns!

Legalize drugs!

Let all substance abusers out of prison!

There, that takes care of your next 20 posts…

You’re not reading any conservative posts, why should we read yours?

There are gangs in Europe, and drugs in Europe, but through a combination of decriminalization of lower-level drugs, and restrictions on the gun market, the European gangs kill each other much less frequently. If you want to reduce homicide in this country, legalize pot, cocaine, and heroin, and crack down on the sales of guns. Of course, conservatives aren’t bothered by the homicide and incarceration rates because they’ve already written off what Pedro calls “AA males.”

Why are you still posting here, you sick fuck?

Well, that’s about the most casual, euphemistic phrasing for genocide i’ve ever read …

Yup, a gun can kill off the best educated. What a stupid remark.
Cherry picking at its very worst. You are a liar, too.

You two: Why pretend you are in a discussion / debate when you just lie about what another person said?

Why don’t I just say you insisted that Barack Obama killed all those people?

Pointless. Silly.

Put your money where you mouth is Ollie….99% of those gang members aren’t legally allowed to possess weapons, yet amazingly, they do!

So, now you take the guns away from all the folks that can legally own them and then, voila! In Ollies magical world the gang bangers just stop carrying the suckers…..but wait, it is already illegal for them to own them!

And the 800lb elephant in the room is that AA males have a gun violence rate 10x higher than the rest of the population (10x higher rate of being a victim of gun violence too)….if those numbers are removed, turns out that the US has a homocide rate about the same as sweden….

…12 years of education trumps a few pounds of hardware … fd10801

Yup, a gun can kill off the best educated. What a stupid remark.
The greatest threat to any American is the gun nut and his weapons.

it’s the “gun nuts” and the “gun culture” that is to blame…Jay

No gun nuts, no guns. That should be simple enough for even you to understand.

Have done. Tried to at least. Wouldn’t recommend it.

Thing is though I also see the civil libertarians point here (largely because I consider myself one) as far as infringing privacy rights, yet I still think something on that order still needs to be done, and I hate to admit but will be the first do to so that I have no idea exactly what that something would be that would be both fair and safe. I don’t think insurance companies should, for instance, be allowed to deny their services on the basis of diagnosed depression in childhood, but if they can do it, why can’t/shouldn’t gun sellers?

Problem is that thats not the debate, how to best solve both problems. The debate is between both sides arguing that only one problem exists and the other side has it. Its Rosie ODonnel saying that the right to bear arms is poisoning our culture and way of life, and its the NRA (or, in this thread, Frank) saying that gun control advocates are Nazis in disguise.

Maybe that’s because nothing outside of this context involves giving mentally ill people control of devices that are specifically designed to kill people efficiently.

The private possession of automatic and semi-automatic weapons NOT being necessary for the maintenance of a well-regulated militia (or anything else besides going on killing rampages), said possession is a privilege, not a right.

I don’t believe the government should outlaw such weapons, but it should do its best to see that as many of them as possible remain in the hands of sane and competent individuals.

Don’t you think that’s a fair tradeoff?

… taking away constitutional rights because of one tragedy… Mike

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
All the believers in the right to carry automatic weapons would not join the National Guard to do so and don’t understand the significance of introductory phrases. People who are willing and eager to give up their constitutional protections insist on having guns which lead to others giving up their very lives. The kind of people that value their weapons over the lives of their children are the real problem in society

Fine. Well-trained people who are members in good standing of what passes for state or federal ‘militia’ these days can have whatever gun they want.

But nutjob loner 23-year college students can’t walk into a store and by two semi-automatic handguns with a credit card and a five-second background check, o-tay?

Actually I another have a deal for those of you who support a president who has been busy trashing every item in the bill of rights except the second amendment:

Since we’re going with a strict interpretation of the framer’s intentions, it’s obvious that framers had no idea about uzi’s, semi-automatics, rpg’s and nuclear bombs (which are “arms”, after all) so there’s no way that they could have intended to include such weapons in the second amendment.

Therefore, why don’t we agree that what the second amendment means is that “the right to keep and bear the types of arms that existed in 1789 shall not be infringed.”

If the VT wacko has been armed with a flintlock and a blunderbuss a lot more people would be alive today.