2/15/2008 1:02:37 PM

Quote :

"this is the fallacy that always comes up in these discussions. solutions won't come immediately. but if handguns/assault rifles etc were taken out of the hands of most citizens over a period of time then after decades, guns will be much harder to come by."

LOL!

THat sure has worked out well for the war on drugs, hasn't it?

Been illegal for decades... that must be that, by your logic, drugs cease to exist.

2/15/2008 1:20:25 PM

see my previous posts. drugs can be grown/manufactured pretty simply. also drugs by themselves don't do harm to people other than users (save neglect for the children of drug addicts).

2/15/2008 1:26:13 PM

except for maybe pot i do not think your avg american can safely setup their own meth lab or manufacture their own cocaine.

2/15/2008 1:27:51 PM

but isn't the vast majority of meth manufactured domestically?

2/15/2008 1:29:22 PM

Quote :

"see my previous posts. drugs can be grown/manufactured pretty simply. also drugs by themselves don't do harm to people other than users (save neglect for the children of drug addicts). "

Explosives can be made pretty damned easily. Propane tank... plus fire. So we outlaw those over generations?

2/15/2008 1:34:52 PM

Quote :

"drugs can be grown/manufactured pretty simply."

drugs can also be imported from another country pretty easily...weed by vehicle through mexico...coke by airplane via south america...opium by boat across the pacific

you know what else can be easily brought in from other countries? guns

2/15/2008 1:51:58 PM

BUT NO TWISTA! THAT DESTROYS HIS ARGUMENT

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 2:03 PM. Reason : .]

2/15/2008 2:03:08 PM

yes because i'm a one-dimensional jackass who doesn't understand that no solution is going to be perfect.

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 2:08 PM. Reason : typing]

2/15/2008 2:06:38 PM

Quote :

"THat sure has worked out well for the war on drugs, hasn't it? Been illegal for decades... that must be that, by your logic, drugs cease to exist."

Wait a minute... you don't murder people with drugs! People are murdered over drugs though, with guns...

INTERESTING!

2/15/2008 2:07:40 PM

people would not be murdered with guns over drugs if the government would end its prohibition which has allowed the underground criminal run black market to exist.

2/15/2008 2:12:43 PM

I'm so sick of the legalization movement. drug legalization is a pandora's box.

2/15/2008 2:15:29 PM

Quote :

"So out of curiosity Jerry, which gun law would have prevented this one?"

I have no idea. I'm inclined to think America is so far gone that this sort of thing is simply no longer preventable. Guns and violence are just such fundamental aspects of American culture that I can't foresee any circumstances where something like school shootings (or other forms of mass murder) will become a thing of the past.

Your question is rather like asking which law(s) would have prevented the ethnic violence currently sweeping Kenya.

2/15/2008 2:20:07 PM

^^^ which is ironically the thing that Jerry Garcia thinks will work with guns... prohibition. Always works.

^ And what a fucking dumbass with no perspective on history.


He doesn't know or care to learn about the thousands killed in the wild west. In African tribes. In Indian tribes. In all cultures everywhere. The violence could even be deemed "light" right now.


[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 2:21 PM. Reason : .]

2/15/2008 2:20:27 PM

Police: Northern Illinois University shooter Stephen Kazmierczak off his meds

http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080215/APC0101/80215108/1979

How about if your brainpan's bent, you take your goddamned crazy pills?

2/15/2008 2:38:54 PM

fucking pills... what a fucking convenient excuse.

I say that if he is violent without pills and since the gov. can't guarantee he takes them without having a soldier force feed them to him, I say you put him in a ward.

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 2:47 PM. Reason : .]

2/15/2008 2:46:47 PM

remember

it might not simply be that he was "off his meds"

some meds need to be quit slowly b/c cold turkey causes mania or psychosis unrelated to the user's intrinsic mental state

iow, it could have been drug withdrawal that caused his craziness, not his original mental illness resurfacing

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 3:25 PM. Reason : ]

2/15/2008 3:23:35 PM

Quote :

"I say that if he is violent without pills and since the gov. can't guarantee he takes them without having a soldier force feed them to him, I say you put him in a ward."

2/15/2008 4:15:10 PM

Body armor for all.

That would help prevent deaths in such cases.

I can't wait until I have a diamondoid form.

2/15/2008 4:20:44 PM

even with a vest on you're yellin
because i aim for the melon

2/15/2008 4:42:10 PM

Helmets too. Visors. Bear suits. Whatever it takes.

2/15/2008 4:44:05 PM

i'd imagine 300,000,000 bear suits would cost someone a good chunk of change

2/15/2008 4:48:29 PM

Man having to wear a suit like that everyday would be unbearable.

2/15/2008 4:55:10 PM

Quote :

"Man having to wear a suit like that everyday would be unbearable."

fixed it for ya.

2/15/2008 5:30:20 PM

you found the pun.

great job.

2/15/2008 5:31:50 PM

hey thx

2/15/2008 6:01:45 PM

Guns were banned from campus, that did alot of good protecting the students that followed the law.

Guns are banned in DC, thus ending all crimes committed with firearms....oh wait.

2/15/2008 6:39:46 PM

i mean really we are adults. perhaps aside from a ban on guns in university housing ie dorms; i really do not see why any 21 year old (min age in nc for a pistol?) can not carry his sidearm if he has the proper concealed weapons permits anyway.

2/15/2008 6:49:52 PM

Quote :

"from David Calderwood - a businessman, artist, and author: I’ve been to NIU’s campus many times over the past six years. One notable fact was the ubiquity of armed campus police officers. For a person who attended a small Midwestern university thirty years ago where the three campus policemen didn’t even carry guns during the school year, it took some getting used to, having armed cops hanging around in every dorm and seemingly on half the street corners I drove past. The head of NIU’s Campus Police stated that officers arrived at the lecture hall within two minutes of the shooting. By then the shooter had killed himself, leaving an obvious tragedy in his wake (six dead victims as of this writing). As Greg Perry noted in an earlier LRC column, "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away." What is there to make of these events? The first thought I consider of course, is that a halfway decent shooter (someone like me) with an accurate and easy-to-shoot-accurately-gun like a 1911 (here’s a fine example) would have a good probability of stopping such an event while the body count was significantly lower. If there had been one or two of such people in the room… Oh, wait. This is Illinois. There are no approved ways for a citizen to legally carry a gun…period. Further, that’s about as likely to change as pigs growing wings and flying out Chicago mayor Daley’s lower gastro-intestinal tract. While the knowledge that someone in the "intended victim population" might be armed appears to deter suicidal shooters from attempting such acts, the consensus remains that it’s better to accept these occasional spasms of horror and teach us all to run and hide than to let motivated people see to their own and the common defense. We’re told to leave it to the professionals (tax-paid to a man) because we’re too unstable to be entrusted with such power. This is a form of utilitarianism, where a few random people are sacrificed in order to promote the overall welfare of the herd (presumably by limiting the carrying of guns to people who work for certain government agencies, a dubious, irrational and illogical proposition with which we’re nauseatingly familiar). This view is collectivism at its worst, viewing people not as individuals with unique worth but as interchangeable sheep grazing a pasture. It’s sickening to accept this, and calls to mind la Boétie’s view "that all servitude is voluntary and the slave is more despicable than the tyrant is hateful." I don’t want to be a despicable slave. What do I do? When my son goes back to NIU next fall for his next academic semester, I suppose I could hand him that 1911 and encourage him to carry concealed…but the odds of another shooting like this occurring there, much less involving him, are next to nothing while the odds of getting caught with a handgun, expelled, prosecuted, and jailed (thus obviously ruining his life) would be several orders of magnitude greater. If he wishes to continue his studies at NIU (and he does) then he’ll have no choice but to accept the small but very real chance that he’ll be a sitting duck for a nut case or common criminal. I don’t like it, and I truly do blame my fellow citizens for demanding we share their folly. Like paying taxes (extortion by any honest view), this is yet another time that self-preservation requires us to play by the contemptible rules dictated by the slaves who surround us. It may be an inevitable part of the human condition (la Boétie’s observation was made over five centuries ago and nothing’s changed), but I don’t have to like it."

"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

2/16/2008 11:01:19 AM

2/16/2008 11:32:02 AM

^To answer the first comic, it would probably be something along the lines of "Oh, god, holy shit, I hope he doesn't see me"

2/16/2008 12:04:03 PM

^ Okay. . .and then "I wish I had a gun."

2/16/2008 11:15:32 PM

or "i wish that guy didn't have a gun"

2/17/2008 12:08:06 AM

A) clearly, this person lacks problem-solving skills! [something you can't control]

B) what we need are more gun control laws! [something you (as an individual) can't control]

C) I wish I had a gun! [something you can control, assuming unjust gun laws don't interfere]

D) oh, god, holy shit, I hope he doesn't see me! [something you might be able to control, if you're lucky]

E) I wish that guy didn't have a gun! [something you can't control]

2/17/2008 9:45:04 AM

the problem is those choices are immediate solutions. in the long run, other solutions would turn out better.

2/17/2008 10:21:03 AM

there's no such thing as "the long run"

I, and everyone else, live today

people don't get robbed or mugged "in the long run", they get robbed or mugged IN THE FUCKING PRESENT



"the problem is", people like you are fucking dreaming that guns could ever be banned in the us

even if guns were banned, corruption, crime & the black market would be worse than during alcohol prohibition!

(there isn't even an amendment in the bill of rights that protects alcohol, and look what happened there)

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

Quote :

"When Seconds Count, the Police Are Only Minutes Away"

2/17/2008 10:54:27 AM

funadamentally right i could see other issues arriving if anyone could carry their gun wherever they wish. Honestly i'd never carry a gun in my car b.c i know it would only be a matter of time before i'd get road rage during rush hour and pop some mother fucker for cutting me off

2/17/2008 1:43:10 PM

i carry my Sig EVERYWHERE I go, but I am a cop. I respect the rights of HONEST citizens to carry as well, I wish the laws were not as restrictive.

2/17/2008 4:41:38 PM

Why is it the only amendment "conservatives" care about is the 2nd amendment. "you can take errr freedums but ye can't tuk er gunzzzz.!!!"

Bush has shown he does not give a fuck about the 1st, 4th, 6th, or 10th amendments but he is quick to jump on the band wagon to tell rednecks that he cares about the 2nd and is not going to take our guns.

Personally i would feel a lot better knowing the gov't was not wiretapping my calls, peeping when it chooses at my e-mails, torturing random people abroad, eliminating due process and habeas corpus for anyone that can smack the terrorist label onto (regardless of evidence).

2/18/2008 9:53:45 AM

^There isn't actually a Constitutional amendment that supports privacy. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Don't get me wrong, though, I fully understand where you're coming from, and I typically agree with the stuff you're saying about Bush shitting on our rights... but some legitimate interpretations of the Constitution do not include an implied right to privacy.

2/18/2008 9:59:19 AM

^^ i agree pretty much with what you said but the reason they care so much about the 2nd amendment is that once that is gone what is going to stop the government from doing whatever in the fuck they want? just look at countries in the past that have enacted gun control. once the citizens lose their right to bear arms there is really nothing they can do if someone gets too much power.

but just because our other rights are being shit on doesnt mean we should just shit on the rest too

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 10:03 AM. Reason : .]

2/18/2008 10:03:26 AM

what u are saying make sense but a few rednecks with their shotguns, hunting rifle, or 9mm pistols is not going to even shake up the federal government.

However, if it makes Billy Bob feel good that the government is never going to oppress him as long as he has his 12 gauge stashed in his closet then so be it.

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 10:17 AM. Reason : a]

2/18/2008 10:17:26 AM

Quote :

"There isn't actually a Constitutional amendment that supports privacy."

Perhaps...but I still like what this guy said....

Quote :

"Supreme Court Justice Brandeis's dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928): "The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man's home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man's spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect.""

2/18/2008 10:24:01 AM

Quote :

"you can take errr freedums but ye can't tuk er gunzzzz.!!!"

HUR

Can you try to lay off that stupid fucking shit for a while? Seriously--please?

BTW, to all:

Lowercase constitutional in all uses.

2/18/2008 10:59:07 AM

Quote :

"what u are saying make sense but a few rednecks with their shotguns, hunting rifle, or 9mm pistols is not going to even shake up the federal government. However, if it makes Billy Bob feel good that the government is never going to oppress him as long as he has his 12 gauge stashed in his closet then so be it."

are you kidding me? do you know how many gun owners there are in this country? it isnt like they would have a typical revolution if anything happened but it would be very hard to pull something like the holocaust in this country without disarming the citizens first (i know i know i shouldnt bring hitler into a political argument but substitute anything else you would like). any politician that tried to gain too much power and oppress the citizens could be taken out if citizens still had the right to bear arms but without that there is really nothing anyone could do.

not to mention the fact that when guns are taken away that the honest man has no way to defend himself. say they pass gun control and honest citizen joe turns in his guns and then someone with an illegally acquired firearm breaks into his house and kills him and his family. he had no chance to protect himself and his family because the police could not arrive in time and he had no weapon that would stand a chance against an armed robber.

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."

---Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).


[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 11:33 AM. Reason : .]

2/18/2008 11:26:40 AM

well the problem is the gun touting citizens in this country tend to favor the "national security" candidates whose policies borderline on turning america into a police state.

Quote :

"not to mention the fact that when guns are taken away that the honest man has no way to defend himself. say they pass gun control and honest citizen joe turns in his guns and then someone with an illegally acquired firearm breaks into his house and kills him and his family. he had no chance to protect himself and his family because the police could not arrive in time and he had no weapon that would stand a chance against an armed robber."

don't be dense. i clearly said i support gun rights. However, any thinking that american citizens will "storm the bastille" if the gov't got to power hungry is only fooling themselves. More Americans voted in the last American Idol vote then the actual 2006 federal elections. I am sure Duke could provide us with some insight on how a revolt of untrained americans armed with rifles, shotguns, and other small arms would fare against an unleashed marine or army suppression force.

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 1:14 PM. Reason : a]

2/18/2008 1:08:42 PM

Quote :

"what u are saying make sense but a few rednecks with their shotguns, hunting rifle, or 9mm pistols is not going to even shake up the federal government."

The US has the highest per capita gun rate at 90 per 100 citizens. As it is, it would be very difficult for the government to control the masses if the masses were unified against it.

And that's the way it should be.


The government should be scared of its people, not the other way around. Take guns away and the government is in full control.

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 1:40 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2008 1:39:43 PM

Quote :

"how a revolt of untrained americans armed with rifles, shotguns, and other small arms would fare against an unleashed marine or army suppression force"

see: Vietnam, Iraq, etc

2/18/2008 1:58:21 PM

Vietnam and Iraq in the fact that they were taken over, governments toppled and were fighting a foreign occupation force. If the US were invaded by a foreign government I would expect roughly the same thing to occur. However I doubt much would change if the government simply 'clamped down' on its citizens because there was an 'imminent terrorist threat.'

2/18/2008 2:12:43 PM

see: Colonial American States, c. 1770

see: Poland, 1990s.

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 2:31 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2008 2:31:14 PM