Burtzy wrote:
You are wearing blinders if you think there is NO WAR in this country. The left and the right are at war. The two side are at war to the point that there is serious talk in the political community about southern states again wanting to secede from the union. And in case you haven't noticed, it isn't the liberal left who are doing the shooting. It is the gun toting extreme right white nationalists who are taking the lives of those with whom they disagree. I am a gun owner but I recognize the need for controls on weapons of war. No one...and I repeat, NO ONE needs an automatic rifle or even a semi-automatic rifle to stalk and kill a deer. NO ONE needs a bump stock to take down a rabbit. NO ONE needs a high-capacity magazine to kill game. Those are designed for one use and one use only...to take lives in a war. They are being used in this country right now. And if you can't see that, then you are being blind to the obvious.
You are wearing blinders if you think there is NO ... (
show quote)
The best example of “political warfare” that I am aware of was against a US House Member, a Republican, who was hit by gunfire from a truly crazed liberal while playing softball in a DC suburb. I believe two other Republican staffers died. There are several well documented violent events emanating from both right and left leaning protesters. No one with a radical agenda can really take the high ground, on either side.
As for the use of rifles for murder, you ought to look up the FBI statistics. Rifles, including AR15 semiautomatic assault style rifles, kill relatively few people. I agree that one is too many. They simply are a symbolic item to rail against. Pistols are the big killers, particularly semiautomatics. A Glock or Sig or MP is easy to hide, deadly at close quarters. A Glock at close quarters requires almost no skill to fire off deadly rounds.
If you want to effectively intervene, it unfortunately cannot be race or sex neutral. Black males as a percentage are up to 15 times more likely to kill and be killed depending on the region, although slightly more Hispanics and whites are murdered and murder every year in raw numbers across the country. White Supremacists certainly are disturbing and occasionally are violent, but the whites that are responsible for most of the violent deaths are those who use illegal drugs. Users tend to be suburban, middle and upper middle class with another concentration in poorer neighborhoods, particularly areas with high concentrations of blacks. Unfortunately, rural America is not left unscathed by drug addiction, particularly meth. Drug traffickers, and hence drug users, are also predominantly responsible for the huge numbers of murders in Mexico and Central and South America.
The social solutions to cure the desperation and violence in our inner cities have eluded our country, and other countries as well. Political corruption certainly plays a role. Having seen and experienced the problems of America’s inner cities up close and personal, I am quite certain that government is only modestly effective intervening and that nonprofit and religious organizations are needed. These require volunteers, people getting their hands dirty. It’s scary to get involved. But assuaging conscience by railing against the Right but behaving indifferently is far more destructive than any white supremacist IMHO. The irony of Donald Trump is that his tax cuts have raised revenues and may well have, along with removing regulations, been responsible for the lowest rate of Black unemployment in history. Getting a job is an essential for overcoming the problem of black inner city poverty. BTW Wall Street Journal has a great article on the problem of gun violence tomorrow.
Guns are used for more than hunting deer or self protection. They are a major source of recreation. I now live in the wide open west where guns are as much part of the culture as professional sports are on the coasts. Professional sports, however, don’t carry a constitutional protection. Whether shooting clays, killing paper targets on a range, long range shooting, SWAT style shooting ranges, cowboy style contests or actually hunting, guns can be a lot of fun.