According to initial television reports, two are dead (possibly including the shooter) and six or more people are injured after a shooting in The Grand Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana during a screening the movie ‘Trainwreck’. From CBS News: “Multiple injuries were also reported by the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, but the severity of the injuries was unclear. There was no confirmation that a suspect was in custody. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he was monitoring the situation.” Remember that the initial story changes significantly as time goes on in these situations. More as the story becomes clear.
UPDATE: From local paper theadvertiser.com:
Katie Domingue of Carencro was at the 7 p.m. showing of “Train Wreck” with her fiance’, Joshua Doggett. About 20 minutes into the movie, Domingue said, she heard a loud noise.
“We heard a loud pop we thought was a firecracker,” she said.
She saw “an older white man” standing up and shooting down, not in her direction.
“He wasn’t saying anything. I didn’t hear anybody screaming either,” Domingue said.
She heard about six shots, then she and Doggett ran to the nearest exit, leaving behind her shoes and purse.
SECOND UPDATE: Fox New now reports three dead including the shooter with eight transported to local hospitals. Once again, these situations are fluid and reports almost always change in these unfortunate situations. More as we receive it.
THIRD UPDATE: According to the local chief of police, the shooter, a white man in his 50s who used a handgun, committed suicide.
That damn Louisiana state flag! Ban it, ban it I say.
You jest, but they actually have been talking about removing the Fleur-de-lis for similar reasons.
Isn’t it so timely that Obama wants to take guns away from senior citizens and here we have a senior citizen involved in this mess. Coincidence, I don’t think so.
easy now you’ll wrinkle your tinfoil.
Cognitive dissonance, look it up.
Is 50 a senior citizen?
It is to anyone in their 20’s…
Theaters are usually posted gun free, we must mount up posse and stand guard to keep our moviegoers safe. When will they change the laws to allow our movie watching men and women to carry firearms. They watch for our freedom, it’s the least we can do.
The one here in Spokane that I go to occasionally is gun free. I ignore it.
I guess it isn’t “gun free” then, is it?
Maybe you should tell them their magic sign is broken, as it’s somehow not preventing you from carrying an object into the building.
@ Mark: In the off chance you aren’t aware, in WA “no guns allowed” signs do not carry force of law except for in specific places where you cannot carry sign or no sign (these places starting on page 2: http://www.handgunlaw.us/states/washington.pdf)
How many washingtonians here anyway?
The movie theater I go to isn’t “gun-free”. Of course, that being my living room, I don’t have to pay $20 to hear overly-loud and obnoxious teenagers out past their bed time. Also, the liquor is cheaper.
I’m glad we have the Drafthouse in Texas. If you talk during a movie, you get ejected without a refund.
Is that the place where you are “free to text in a thee-ater” because it’s the “magnited states of america!”?
Concealed means concealed.
I am sure they will blame the GOP for this. . . .
NO0the NRA dirk…
I’m pretty sure it’s the confederate flag that did this…
Oh wait…or could it possibly have been the media? blasting away about how EASY it was to go to a theatre, school, GFZ and do something like this. No wait…it was the guns fault….
No no no.
It was a GOP NRA-member Confederate!
Clearly it’s Trump’s fault.
Disarmament, total and complete disarmament!
I see your brain has already been disarmed – unless your comment was meant to be sarcastic. Liberals are too damn dumb to accurately interpret sarcasm.
How’s that gun-free zone working out? R rated movie I see. Hopefully no kids. Prayers for the victims…
I’ve seen stupid parents bring their screaming brats to R-rated movies.
One of the victims in Aurora was 6-after midnight. Yeah I know batboy wasn’t R…
Still not a movie for a 6 year old.
If American Sniper had been playing this would never have happened.
I’m all about concealed carry, but from the sound of it this guy just randomly started shooting and killed himself right away. No amount of realistic situational awareness could have stopped this guy. Now that being said, I’d rather be armed than unarmed in this situation but unless things went drastically different it may not have mattered
There’s truth in what you say. In what I’ve read and is now the opinion I hold, a theater shooting is a worst case scenario. So many factors go against an armed citizen trying to directly confront the threat in this case. Best you can do is go defensive, protect those in your direct responsibility and get them to safety first and foremost.
Another act of “gun-right” sponsored-terrorism committed by the “law-abiding gun community” and the folks of the NRA, TTAG, gun Lobby and the gun manufacturers.
Meanwhile in reality (Aka the civilized safe gun-control world.), Everyone in Europe, Australia and Japan our doing fine without the fear of a “gun-rights” nut threatening the life and safety of the public.
Sorry gun-nut terrorists…
“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Correction. Only the police and the outlaws will have guns. The police can be easily identified by their uniform. The outlaws by the fact that they carry guns. An identified outlaw is an arrested outlaw, as he is identified as an outlaw by carrying a gun.
And now thank’s to this joke of a “right” called “open carry” has have moronic untrained idiot with guns running around playing action hero….they are more likely to shoot each other or an innocent bystander before they’d ever hit their intended target.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c
Is there a single original thought rattling around in your skull, or is it always the same moronic slogans you trot out that gave been disproven a thousand times before?
Sorry Zod, But Kneel before facts, my claims are based on and grounded in reality and not stockpiles of Gun lobby propaganda. It’s been proven fact many times that more guns causes more crime and the fact that a gun in the home is more likely to injure or kill you or a loved one than stop an attacker and your “pro-gun” myths were debunked many times by international sources.
And now we have another gun avoidable tragedy caused by ammosexual sheep such as yourselves that delude yourself that having guns would reduce crime rates when it’s proven time and again it does not.
TTAG, The NRA and the Gun lobby are nothing but the propaganda arm of the gun makers as they are the one lobbying for all these stand you ground laws that have let criminals escape prosecution in Florida: want even mentally ill people, teachers and guns in bars (of all places, remember the true stories of the old West? Most towns confiscated guns from “strangers” until they left unlike what is shown in the old westerns. That was a major point of controversy in the O.K. corral incident). they also have people from those same gun companies on their boards.
*fweeeet!*
Illegal use of “ammosexual” cliche, 25-yard penalty!
“Sorry Zod, But Kneel before facts, my claims are based on and grounded in reality ”
Like your ‘fact’ that “The police can be easily identified by their uniform.”?
Undercover cops don’t wear uniforms.
“my claims are based on and grounded in reality ”
Obviously a highly altered reality.
Whatever you’re smoking ‘willie’, can I have some from your bag?
Dance, troll.
the irony here is that you’ve not used an original talking point that we havent already debunked a billion times
oh well, ignorance is bliss i spose.
must be nice
“More guns causes more crime” — sure, just simple math will prove that. The same “simple math” in:
If a woman takes 9 months to give birth, we will assign 9 women to the task and complete that project in one month”.
Sorry, Willy, but you’re going to have to take your own advice and kneel before the Altar of Truth.
Your claims are based on racist, classist, and sexist anti-rights propaganda. Ours are grounded in reality. It’s actually been proven scientifically and many times over the last quarter-century that more guns means less crime, and a gun in the home is over a dozen times more likely to be used to stop a criminal that to cause harm. Your anti-gun myths have been debunked dozens of times by domestic and international sources.
And now we have yet another avoidable tragedy deliberately facilitated by you racist, classist, and sexist anti-rights bigots such as yourselves that delude yourselves into thinking gun control reduces crime, when time and again that’s been conclusively proven not to be the case.
You, the gun control lobby, and anti-gun politicians of every stripe are nothing but a propaganda arm of the KKK, as they are lobbying for all these gun control laws that have let criminals have their way in our inner city neighborhoods. Remember that the Old West was less violent than the lower-east side of NYC of the same era, and that the town ordinances barring arms within posted city limits was purely pro forma and a tool of selective enforcement targeted only at those considered to be drunk and disorderly? The gun control lobbying arms such as Mayors Against Illegal Guns have people either rotting in jail or on trial now for harassment, sexual harassment, purgery, extortion, solicitation of prostitution, rape, robbery, assault and battery, obstruction of justice, assault on a police officer, bribery, corruption, child molestation, embezzlement, and the list goes on and on.
THAT is the face and legacy of gun control right there.
Wrong on so many counts. Research Kennesaw GA and the mandate that all adult males be armed in Kennesaw GA.
The New American magazine reminds us that March 25th marked the 16th anniversary of Kennesaw, Georgia’s ordinance requiring heads of households (with certain exceptions) to keep at least one firearm in their homes.
The city’s population grew from around 5,000 in 1980 to 13,000 by 1996 (latest available estimate). Yet there have been only three murders: two with knives (1984 and 1987) and one with a firearm (1997). After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982.
Next ignorant, unsubstantiated bullshit assertion please so I can disarm you faster than lightning with facts instead of lies.
And the sad thing is, despite the complete and total (and repeaeted) debunking of your “facts” – most of which are simply opinions stated as though they were truths – you still will not learn. You have my pity, Willy. Because you kneel before lies and fear.
I’d say don’t feed the troll, but it looks like willy brought his own lunchmeat.
I found a self-portrait of Wille:
https://www.facebook.com/willie.lunchmeat.7
If that’s really Willy, then I have a pretty good idea of how he arrived at his logical position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia
gun control sure is working out in australia
Hey it worked in Austria……..oh wait a minute…
In those places, homemade flamthowers, pipe bombs, and other flame/explosive based devices can and in some cases have been used to kill a whole lot of people. Ban chemists! Sarc/
For real though, rogue governments are far more dangerous than the occasional nut job. I hate that nut jobs happen, but for the past century, over reaching governments have killed 2.6 million people annually on average. You do not want to relinquish freedom by getting a sexually frustrated pet tiger (big government) to protect you from the neighbor’s moody pit bull (nut jobs).
To Robert: I try not to feed trolls, but I really couldn’t resist this one.
Between your vitriol, did you have anything of substance to say?
You seem to cut and past the same trolling comments. You may want to change it up.
This is good trolling. Needs some work on the vitriol though.
““When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Correction. Only the police and the outlaws will have guns. The police can be easily identified by their uniform.”
Little willie? I gots some bad news for ya…
You’re wrong, AGAIN.
Undercover police DON’T WEAR UNIFORMS.
It looks like being wrong is the only thing you manage to do well.
Do the world a serious favor and just jump off a building.
Dance, troll.
Now.
So they can shoot more unarmed black men, then?
[Citation Needed]
You’re like a parody of a human being. An entity that can form words and looks like a sentient being, but is so godawfully stupid that it can never actually be mistaken for a real human. People like you are going to turn me into a fellow fascist simply because I cannot stand the fact that subhumans like you have the same rights and an equal vote as actual humans.
That’s cute. Bring it fan boy. Do you know why no NY sheriff has tried to enforce the SAFE Act registration requirement? I’ll answer it for you. They aren’t all that eager to fill body bags with deputies stupid enough to follow that order.
** Another act of gun control sponsored terrorism committed by a de-institutionalized crazy person and the folks of the obstructionist civilian disarmament industrial complex, gun control advocates, and anti-gun politicians.
Meanwhile, in reality (a.k.a. the uncivlized, unsafe, anti-rights world), no one in Europe, Australia, or Japan is doing fine with “gun control” nuts threatening the lives and safety of the public.
Sorry, anti-rights terrorists…
“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Correction. Only the outlaws will have guns. The police cannot be easily identified by their uniforms if they, too, commonly act like criminals themselves.
And now, thanks to this joke of a law called gun control we have criminals with guns running around unopposed and unchallenged. Police are more likely so shoot each other and innocent bystanders before they’d ever hit their intended target.
Fixed that for you, bitch boy.
I have never heard of a “gun-rights nut” committing a mass shooting mass murder. Can you name a mass murderer who was a member of Gun Owners of America? I can’t even name one who was a member of the NRA, and there are plenty of Fudds and anti-2A people in the NRA, like Michael Moore. I have however heard of multiple anti-gun nuts that gone on murder rampages. Chris Dorner, one of those people you believe is morally superior and more trustworthy with a gun by virtue of getting a government job with a uniform and firing a few dozen rounds at a static target to qualify, actually wrote in his manifesto that he was outraged the firearms he was using to commit murders were legal. That’s truly a nutty thing to say.
And based upon thew logic and grammar of your comment you are mentally unarmed and should be placed in an institution for your own protection.
http://rense.com/general9/gunlaw.htm
Guess again: police have not released his identity, but they have said he had a criminal history.
Yup. A gun free zone…. from their website…
OUR THEATRE PROHIBITS
• Outside food or drink
• Smoking including e-cigarettes
• Possession of firearms or weapons of any kind regardless of whether openly orconcealed, with or without a permit
Listed under the ” Conduct Policy” tab
http://www.thegrandtheatre.com/corporate?tab=faq
I am not suprised. I wish those signs didn’t carry the force of law in my state.
Maybe the sign wasn’t big enough for the perp to see.
Yet another “coincidence” of a mass-murder in a gun free zone. I suppose it was just a further bit of randomness in the universe that Holmes was convicted in the Aurora theater shooting. That media attention did not mean a thing to this killer. No “copycat” effect here.
Tentative theory, briefly outlined; perpetrator is intent on suicide, believes that in order to have company in the afterlife they must take others with them?
I’m guessing domestic dispute. Specific target (or two), and then a suicide after the persons intervening/ around the intended victims were shot.
“In 1996 a lone gunman slaughtered 35 people and wounded another 23 at Port Arthur in Tasmania. The Australian prime minister introduced a compulsory gun buyback program and immediately changed laws greatly restricting gun ownership. There’s never been a similar incident of that magnitude again in Australia.”
In short, the TTAG, NRA and the gun manufactures are the real slime behind the wholesale slaughter of innocent Americans.
Love how these gun owners on here believe they have psychic abilities. You ‘may’ have been able to stop further bloodshed, the shooter might have shot you first, or you might have shot innocent bystanders. You had no idea a guy was going to start shooting people, so please stop with the “gun free zone” cr@p.
So which of the NRA arguments apply here gun-nuts? Was the shooter acting in self defense or protecting himself from an over reaching federal government?? Do tell…
Whenever this happens in a state which regulates guns all the NRA wackos on here jump in and whine about regulation, gun free zones, blah, blah, blah.
The Second Amendment is no longer a true representation of most Americans. It needs to go the same way as other laws that infringe upon our safety and the safety of our kids.
Thanks NRA for making sure this psycho-path could buy all the guns and ammo he wanted, at Walmart.
Please tell me how Australia, Europe and Japan never has these problems at all gun nuts…Why do you continue to delude yourselves.
You gun-sheep won nothing, There is blood on your hands gun nuts…Why can’t we ever have a sensible adult discussion about gun violence and the unfettered access to weapons in this country?
First off, myself nor anyone wants your stupid guns. But since your brothers in arms wanna keep killing people perhaps the big picture needs another look on how guns continually get in the hands of the wrong people.
Just because you are not a criminal doesn’t mean you have the mental capacity to own a firearm. secondly it is an AMENDMENT. look up the word in the dictionary you idiots.
My goodness the trailer park goons are lighting up. you hicks sure do get angry when someone doesn’t think like you do. funny thing is you gun nuts are actually in the minority. albeit a loud, angry and somewhat under-educated minority but a minority nonetheless.
“the TTAG”?!
Tsk, you must be ‘the’ hoi polloi, lololol.
http://www.ballinaadvocate.com.au/news/new-plan-unveil-tackle-out-of-control-gun-violence/1992835/
GURN KONTROL WURKS GAIZ IM SUPR CEREAL
From the government of Australia:
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
More crime after the gun ban.
Where are those facts of your’s again?
I’ll remember you whenever you get put into the obama concentration camps. More along the lines of “sucks to be that guy.”
Here are the facts since you are too stupid for your own good. 2011 Norway massacre where 77 were killed and nearly 300 wounded by one man. Contemplate that for a minute. 1996 Australia Port Arthur massacre where 35 people were killed and nearly two dozen more injured by one man. 2010 England Cumbria massacre where 13 people were killed and 11 were injured by one man. You still want to tell me gun control works? An armed populace keeps the death toll down in this country. GFY.
It’s nice that you are filling the troll void left when Mikeybnumbers left. The only problem is you are not nearly as intelligent and Mikeybnumbers. But, your trolling is enjoyable. I would give yoi a gold star if i had any to give. You hit all of the debunked false talking ponts, and you have persistence. I give you an 7/10 on your trolling skills. That leaves you plenty of room to improve and perfect the art of trolling without facts and analysis of data.
Another theory:
It is Mikeybnumbers again, but either he’s gone off his meds or the psychosis has gotten out of control.
I remember Mikeynumbers. He was just your average, brownshirt statist, content to be a tool of the state and drag everyone else down with him. This Lunchmeat guy is just psycho. I wish we had a better class of moron around here as a troll.
I beg you, never stop posting. I have a left leaning roommate who’s sort of antigun and after I showed him your posts, he shook his head and said, “I know, we have our morons too.”
You do more to make gun guys look good than any of us ever could, just by posting your insane, laughable rants. Just keep being yourself, it’s helping us greatly.
If my time in the corps has taught me anything is that you do not reason with fanatics. You shoot them. There are no “arguments” here bozo. You’re not interested in facts or reality. I’ll make it real simple.
You want to take my guns.
I tell you that you can’t.
You threaten to use force.
I am unimpressed.
YOUR MOVE
(Don’t forget, I am far better equipped to use force to make my “argument” than you are.)
There’s never been a similar incident of that magnitude again in Australia.
——————-
There had never been a similar incident of that magnitude in Australia before either.
And here’s the real kicker, there hasn’t been a similar incident of that magnitude in the United States. The Virginia Tech murderer killed 32, but not only is that less than 35, the US has a much much higher population.
Australia had 18 million people when Port Arthur took place.
The US had 301 million.
The US had 16 times the population of Australia. For an event in the US to qualify as a similar incident of that magnitude, 500+ people would have to be killed.
Ironically, just as predicted, Australia has had the same number of deaths via mass attack, it’s just that fire is more common now.
As you may know, many Australians (and people from all around the world in general) think that your country (among others) is a role model that the U.S. should follow. However, two very important studies of your 1996 National Firearms Agreement completely disagree with this statement.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buyback-has-no-effect-on-murder-rate/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html
A ten-year study, lead by Dr. Samara McPhedran and published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that the $500M AUD spent on the mass confiscation and destruction of previously-legal firearms had absolutely no effect whatsoever on homicide or suicide rates.
https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2008n17.pdf
Yet another five-year study, produced by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi from your University of Melbourne and published in the Melbourne Institute’s Working Paper series, confirmed Dr. McPhedran’s conclusions and no others.
Dr. McPhedran even testified to this fact before a recent Australian Senate Inquiry, which had looked into – among other things – banning semi-automatic handguns. Needless to say , gun control advocates were rightly and completely humiliated.
Before that same Senate Inquiry, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Julian Slater had freely admitted that not only do they have no clue what exactly what kinds of contraband were getting through, but they only know about what manage to intercept. As I’m sure you may be well aware, and even if you’re not you will be now, Australia’s porous borders and low population density – coupled with deeply corrupt postal and customs services – make it a veritable smuggler’s paradise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPEdEaS8eY
More analyses of U.S. domestic and Australian gun control laws have been done besides the brilliant work of Dr. McPhedran, and Wang-Sheng and Saudri, on both sides of the Atlantic. Their findings match those of the former researchers almost exactly.
http://www.smh.COM.AU/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/revealed-australias-suicide-epidemic-20090820-es3p.html
aph.GOV.AU/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/2008_10/suicide/submissions/sub42_pdf.ashx
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-31-criminal-target_N.htm
A Deputy Director fro the Australian Institute of Criminology also testified before the Senate Inquiry, and explicitly stated that only 5 of the 48,000+ handguns in the Australian state of Victoria had been stolen. To complicate matters further, the AFP even admitted they had not even bothered to examine the AIC’s report on gun thefts at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P3Etjp_WK0
After the Port Arthur shooting, there were also the Quakers Hill and Childer’s Palace arson attacks, the Black Saturday Brush Fires – which were deliberately lit in case you needed a reminder, the Cairns Stabbings, and the Monash University Shooting. The 1996 NFA didn’t stop the massacres from happening, but only changed the methods in which they are carried out. Especially not when many thousands of guns handed over to the government for destruction in 1996 were then illegally resold to criminals – many of which have still never recovered, and have very likely been used in crimes since. Some were indeed recovered though, in the private collections of police officers.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-big-sting/2007/02/09/1170524303995.html?page=fullpage
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ravenshoe-police-sergeant-resigns-after-discovery-of-surrendered-guns-in-his-private-collection/story-fnihsrf2-1226705185355
Guns are taken from Melbourne’s own ‘Red Zone’ every two days – all from “prohibited” persons – and by the thousands every single year — and that’s just one metropolitan area in one city.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gun-found-every-two-days-in-melbournes-red-zone-20150618-ghrak9.html
Even police and military armories are broken into with mind-boggling regularity, to the tune of dozens of times – and that’s just in the state of Victoria and the port of Sydney.
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/local/melbourne/2015/05/12/vic-gun-thieves-eavesdrop-on-cops.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/no-sign-of-stolen-rocket-launchers/story-e6frg6o6-1225787746734
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-30/navy-base-security-breach-larrakeyah-darwin/4400646
Isn’t it any wonder that the states of Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania were excluded from all crime statistics reports by both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology from 2010 onwards, and around that time there begins an appreciable drop in Australia’s violent crime rates across the board?
Indeed, wonders never cease. Especially when criminals receive hundreds of pistols at a time through the mail and several times every year, made especially easy by Australia’s institutionalized corruption of its Customs services – not to mention that of individual officials, as well.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/guns-imported-through-sylvania-waters-post-office-linked-to-crimes-in-sydney/story-fnpn118l-1227252669241
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/customs-staff-charged-over-alleged-drug-smuggling-ring/story-e6frg6nf-1226576397568
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/03/24/cocaine-customs-cop-caught/
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3675337.htm
Even if criminals couldn’t receive their guns through the Sunday Post, they can just as easily make them or have them made-to-order. These aren’t those shoddy rusticles of zip-guns you’d expect to find in a jail cell, either, but finely machined MAC-11 sub-machine guns – complete with 32-round magazines and silencers.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/homemade-gun-factory-shutdown-by-police-in-sydneys-southwest-20140618-zsd4a.html
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jeweller-angelos-koots-admits-to-making-submachine-guns-at-his-seven-hills-home-and-supplying-them-to-bikie-groups/story-fni0cx12-1226760983916
In conclusion, Taniesha, no, America would not benefit from Australia’s gun control laws. (Even Australia didn’t seem to benefit from them.) This is for a wide variety of reasons. Given the level of sophistication of the criminal enterprises that were created by Prohibition in the U.S., and now during the morbidly hilarious failure of the “War on (Some) Drugs” around the world, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn about a prohibition on guns – which is what you have by-and-large in Australia – is that equally large and sophisticated criminal enterprises will arise to fulfill the demand for guns. This can, as quite thoroughly demonstrated above if I do say so myself, can and will be accomplished in a number of ways: clandestine domestic manufacture, surreptitious importation from abroad, and widespread theft.
Australia is plagued by the first and the second. America is plagued by the second and third.
To give you an example of the futility of banning an item to which is attached very high demand, some 1.6 million pounds of marijuana was seized by the U.S. DEA in 2010 – and that’s only a very small percentage of what is believed to have made it across the border. It is reasonable to assume that the shear amount of arms, ammunition, and accoutrement that can occupy the same space as 800 tons of plant matter is quite sufficient to arm a significant portion of the U.S. criminal element.
These dreadful shortcomings demonstrate a basic and willful failure of Prohibitionists to understand or even acknowledge the market forces governing anything for which there is significant demand. It is the primary reason why central economic planning has only proved an unmitigated disaster everywhere it’s been tried. More basically, they fail to realize or consciously ignore the fact that when people want something, someone will get it for them. The harsher the ban, the higher the profit motive. The higher the profit motive, the more risks criminals will be willing to take to satisfy their market. There are deeper reasons for this failure than simply flat-out flunking ECON 101. Those who trade in prohibited goods are, by definition, criminals who are engaged in a criminal enterprise without the benefits of redress the courts or any other avenue of dispute resolution or of police protection. When an enterprise can’t: take out a loan, open a bank account, establish credit, file a lawsuit, or have police respond to an alarm, it becomes necessarily more violent to protect its financial and territorial interests and to affect resolutions over contractual disputes. Essentially, prohibition of highly desirable goods can only function to increase overall violence and disregard for the law as a basic factor of prohibition. One must accept this as a basic premise and then try to reconcile the increased violence and criminality coupled with the inevitable encroachment on individual liberty with any perceived utility of the prohibition.
As the world slowly comes to the realization that prohibition of drugs, with the focus now being primarily on marijuana and cannabis, has very little if any utility in the face of extremely high demand we begin to move away from banning it.
Considering that those who smuggle, steal, and manufacture weapons and their customers will obviously still be armed, the level of violence in the wake of an Australian-style prohibition would be unprecedented. Once one factors in the unique culture surrounding guns and civil rights in the U.S., the increasingly ubiquitous support for the Second Amendment and the right it protects, and American’s historical resistance to tyranny, the violence may very well escalate into that of armed insurrection.
http://rt.com/usa/269362-assault-guns-control-ny/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3115418/posts
Mass civil disobedience is already the order of the day, and police departments are already realizing the logistical absurdity of such an endeavor in actually enforcing registration or, Heaven forbid, a mass confiscation. In fact, many law enforcement officials have already announced their intentions to not enforce such laws at all.
http://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/6435415-NY-sheriffs-We-wont-enforce-gun-laws-magazine-limits/
http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/news437.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/conn-police-refuse-to-enforce-new-gun-laws
Also given that firearms are very durable items, with many examples lasting 500 years or more with proper care and maintenance, and that upwards of 347 million (as of 2012) are already thought to be present in the hands of 124 million Americans, it’s highly unlikely that any prohibition would succeed at all as confiscation must immediately follow – as it did in Australia – to realize any utility at all.
http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/Clics2013A/commsumm.nsf/b4a3962433b52fa787256e5f00670a71/c4b73dc817da609e87257b24005ef7f8/$FILE/13SenState0304AttachC.pdf
All this having been said, advocacy for prohibition of firearms can only be seen as either ill informed (as in being simply unaware of the consequences) or malicious (aware of the inevitable and invariable failure of the prohibition and the increased criminality and violence and potential to destabilize society and government and possibly to result in violent revolution).
Americans, DO NOT be like Australians!
We love them dearly, but…
The Supreme Court recognized that the right to arms is an individual right in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894), U.S. v. Miller (1939) and U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990). In U.S. v. Cruikshank, the Court also recognized that the right pre-existed the Constitution. Most recently in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment, which forbids Congress from infringing the right to keep and bear arms, also applies to state and local governments.
Nornton v. Shelby. “An unconstitutional law is not law, it congers no rights, it imposes no duties, affords no protection; it creats no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passeed”. U.S. v. Bishop “if you have relieed on prior decisions of the Supreme Court, you have the perfect defense for willfulness”.
Cooper v. U.S. “No State Legislator or Executive Judicial Officer can war against the Consitution without violating his undertaking to support it”. Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 319 U.S. 105 “If a state converts a liberty into a privilege, the citizen can engage in the right with impunity”. U.S. v. Will. “When a Judge acts where He does not have Jurisdiction to act, the Judge is engaged in an act or acts of treason.
Maubury v. Madison establishes The Constitution of The United States Republic as supreme law of the land.
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right.” – Nunn vs. State, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243, at 251 (1846)
“For, in principle, there is no difference between a law prohibiting the wearing of concealed arms, and a law forbidding the wearing such as are exposed; and if the former be unconstitutional, the latter must be so likewise. But it should not be forgotten, that it is not only a part of the right that is secured by the constitution; it is the right entire and complete, as it existed at the adoption of the constitution; and if any portion of that right be impaired, immaterial how small the part may be, and immaterial the order of time at which it be done, it is equally forbidden by the constitution.” – Bliss vs. Commonwealth, 12 Ky. (2 Litt.) 90, at 92, and 93, 13 Am. Dec. 251 (1822)
“To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege.” – Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, at 560, 34 Am. Rep. 52, at 54 (1878)
“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” – Robert Heinlein
Heinlein’s quote presupposes a society, as in something more than just the broadest sense of the term meaning various people living in a geographic area. Somalia would qualify under that relaxed-to-the-point-of-torpid standard.
He’s referring to a somewhat advanced society where basic human rights are recognized and codified, but where enforcement could be intermittent were it not for the on-the-spot ability to repel sporadic aggressors with force. He’s not referring to lawless, illegitimate no-man’s-lands whose cultures default to violence regardless of the level or ubiquity of arms.
Iraq is not a polite society. Afghanistan is not a polite society.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan are even societies. They are both amalgams of warring factions in conflict based on very long-standing enmities. This has been true for many centuries. The era of feudal war lords never ended in Afghanistan. The era of murderous conflict between Sunni, Shia, and Kurd never ended in what is today called Iraq, a name and pollity owing more to Winston Churchill’s pencil than any political sense.
Japan? Japan is a very polite society.
Japan is very polite in a purely formal way because the military servants of the upper class did, for more than 400 years before the Meiji restoration in 1868, freely behead any commoner who dared to be rude. We could achieve the same result in New Orleans, but it would be (to say the very least) wildly unpopular. Japan is so polite that given a chance it will enslave the Koreans and the Chinese in the most brutal manner possible given half a chance of success. Japan is only selling us cameras and robots today because it did not manage to enslave us in the 1940′s as any survivor of their brutality would readily tell you.
Disarming the courts of Europe never happened until a stable power structure fell into place as the result of much violence. I absolutely break out laughing when I read of Dodge City or Tombstone as examples of violent places or of gun control. Weapons were not prohibited riding into or out of town, and everyone knew it. The regulation was purely pro forma, enabling the sheriff to lawfully disarm those who were drunk or disorderly. It was a tool of selective prosecution, if you will. Of special note, cities like Tombstone and Dodge counted homicides on one hand for any given year during the so-called “Wild West” period.
The violence in the ‘old west’ was nothing, in the 19th century, compared to the massive endemic of violence in New York City’s lower east side in the same era. And that lower east side violence was nothing compared to the wars of the era in Europe (the Napoleanic Wars) and the US (the Civil War) organized and advanced by the civilized governments and strata of society of that era.
The people committing the murders in cities like New Orleans and NYC reject the norms of the surrounding society, and behave like animals. The so-called peace in Japan is and always has been imposed from the top, while the top itself continued to wage state violence on a massive scale when it had the opportunities.
While the word ‘society’ is certainly somewhat vague, it does refer to “the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations.” -Oxford Dictionary of American English.
Competing war lords do not share laws. Shia, Sunni, and Kurd do not share customs or organizations. South Chicago hoodlums are outlaws, intentionally breaking with the general society of the north end. The criminal outlaws in NOLA have rejected the laws and customs of New Orleans and formed their own society with different customs and their own wild law. I would strongly disagree that Chicago is an armed society. It is a disarmed society that contains an element of armed criminals… and cops.
I do not agree with those who think Heinlein’s apothegm is some sort of universal rule, or that the kind of politeness he refers to is that toward which a civil society should strive. Rather, Heinlein refers to a minimal sort of politeness, that brought on by caution, the necessary politeness as a first remedy for violent rudeness. This same point was made deeply by Nietzsche, who pointed out that the ancient Greeks treated each other with fine but superficial manners: This, he said, was because they recognized the volatility and power of deeper emotions and antagonisms in others, and strived not to engage them.
Certainly Heinlein’s statement only refers to a society in which nearly everyone is armed. If only the thugs are armed, as in many US cities with inadequate money for policing and restricted CCW, there is no reason to expect a decent level of consideration to be shown. When only the government have guns, it always becomes the case that the politeness of the people is merely the politeness of cowed peasants wishing to keep their heads. Or so I suppose. I do not intend an overly personally debate: It is enough to differentiate what the actual positions of the comment-writers are.
Heinlein’s statement also presupposes equal availability of arms. Where only some groups are armed, those groups do not run the risk of having to defend their manners with their lives.
Politeness of a sort that is worth having has to be built from the bottom up, for it is out among the millions of citizens that crime occurs and must be discouraged. The chance of considerate behavior propagating from ‘the top’ is about zero. From the top only comes periodic terror to scare the masses into submission. Whether you look at the PRI/Cartel partnerships in corruption in Mexico, the historic cooperation between Chicago mayors, judges, and cops in sharing the high wages of crime, or examine the participation of Soviet and Maoist politicians and police in crime, your dream of a peaceful society without empowerment of the ordinary citizen is a fairy tale oft told by dictators. Your argument, earlier, from Locke and Burke leaves out the remarkable reality, that the Lockean social contract required the liberty of self-defense, not only a central government restrained by checks and balances. Sociologists might agree with you, especially if they lack experience in government. Few political scientists would agree.
We use criminal records and involuntary mental-health commitments (those not successfully appealed) to sort out the wheat from the chaff. It works rather well, as you’ll observe by looking at the rate of unjustified homicides committed by the general public versus the rate for CCW holders. We do not simply take a person’s self-evaluation as a fact. Fortunately, though, we increasingly have “must issue”, so that we don’t have to take a local police chief’s or politician’s evaluation as a fact, either. In the western hemisphere the ghastly violence is actually centered more in Mexico, Central America, and South America. It rages in states in which the right to carry a gun is severely curtailed, except for those in the current party in power and their demi-monde partners. I find it sufficient unto the day to compare the structure of US gun law and enforcement with that of Mexico, Honduras, Guatamala, and Brazil. I think we have clearly established our current ethos as workable.
Gun crime in America is ghetto and drug addict crime. Of course, many of us exercise the right to be armed. And of course many like you, having had four decades to prove your failed theory of “no guns for honest citizens makes a safer world” should admit that the brazen violence by petty thieves is your doing. Own it. Your theory is broken and the facts show it. When the response of armed citizens tames the criminals then we can carry less often, save money on policing expense, and enjoy the peace that comes from changing the incentives that criminals perceive. The police in big cities and nations (Mexico) have utterly failed at a job the ordinary citizen can slowly accomplish.
If there was a star button for posts here you would get one.
willie?
Here’s your song…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmbEuRzlhIs
Go put your head in a paperbag…I belive you are hyperventilating from all of your unfound, uninformed, and downright dishonest ranting and raving.
“There’s never been a similar incident of that magnitude again in Australia”
35 dead? Good grief, America has guns coming out of its pores, and we’ve never had a mass shooting that bad, before or since. Unless perhaps you count the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, an instructive example, to be sure.
Number of mass public shootings occurring in the USA outside of mandated gun-free zones since 1934: 2
As for the meaning of amendment, I say, So what?
You do realize that the bill of rights does not state what the people have permission to do, it states what rights the government shall not interfere with, right?
Oh wait, I guess you don’t.
How come when I call any of these trolls what they are, I get moderated to [FLAME DELETED] but they can call us every cliché name in the book?
Governor Jindal just said on CNN that one of the victims pulled a gun and opened fire on the shooter. The same person (a female teacher) jumped on her friend to protect her.
got a source?
I watched it live on CNN.
Edit – It was the 2nd statement I saw. I believe he was outside the hospital. I will monitor YouTube. It’s bound to be posted.
that’ll be a quick end int he media if it gets out lol
I keep reading about “pulling an alarm”. Maybe I misheard “pulling a gun”.
Here we go again.
I also wish the media would stop counting the dead killer in their casualty report lumped along with victims. That’s like someone cutting open his veins to kill himself and the news report saying “One dead in stabbing attack.” But hey, gotta rile up the feeble minds somehow.
I noticed in the fox news clip that the local law enforcement representative was actually careful about that, saying that there were 7 injured, two killed, and the shooter is deceased. I think he was trying to be careful how he said it.
Blaming the 2A supporters generally doesn’t go far when the end product is suicide.
Confirmed. Theatre was a gunfree zone. Says so on their website.
Hey it’s an Amy Schumer movie. He prob thought he was cleaning out the gene pool.
I too thought about cracking a joke about the movie, but I’m not so crass, tasteless, and completely without tact.
I think we all thought it, so it was bound to be said by somebody
Would we be even hearing about this beyond local news stations if a knife was used? Or a car? Or a crossbow? Just shows how politicized guns are. Drunk driver killing four people in a van is a five second airtime, but this will be circulating and eaten up for however long the blood can be used by the left.
People are such mindless tools. No wonder I was rooting for Ultron.
If I ran a theater I would give customers a dollar discount on the price of their ticket if they present a valid membership card to a decent gun-rights organization. I would welcome the patronage of gun owners and responsible concealed carriers (lawful or not, I’m not asking what’s under your clothing) with open arms.
I bet Willie does a lot of kneeling.
Yes no doubt worshipping Obamas bleached butt hole.
And cue long list of prescribed meds in 3……2…….
Irrelevant. The gun kept out of his pants and shot everyone. Ban all guns!
…followed almost immediately by the media’s complete lack of interest in following up about said meds. Funny how quite a few of these shooters are on psychotropic prescriptions, and how it’s almost never discussed. If a mass murderer played Dig Dug once in 1985, they’ll say he was addicted to violent video games, but if he was on a cocktail of poorly-understood brain-altering drugs given to him by a doctor, it barely rates a mention.
Another White lone gunman! Was I surprised to learn that he ” then turned the gun on himself” I was thinking, hmmm! What are the odds of him being ” Bi polar”,with a history of mental illness?
Hmmmm! What if statements from family and friends point out that he was dangerous?
Then the reports came in! Wow! Jackpot!
Mental illness, past history of problems- you know the routine: Scrap the 2nd amendment, take away the confederate flag and everybody’s guns!
Oh and he may have had an eating disorder! Outlaw forks!
What does not get national attention
The horrendous shoot outs in Detroit, St. Louis, MEMPHIS and NYC ( A Few places Will suffice to make my point)
Why? Because the killers are black, you crackerheads!
How many gangs in New York? 42 pages, dude, count’em!
Any body want to cover that, CBS,CNN,FOX, Anybody?
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