Religious School---People Killed

[Gene Scarborough]

[Tim Bonney]

[ET]

[Gene Scarborough]

I like the reasonable discussion thus far!

I disagree with Timothy that the basis of a conservative Christian school is behaviour somewhat close to that of Christ. We can always have pretenders, but not as much as we seem to have them today----SO---why so much pretense???

For ET---I am a hunter and deadly shot. I do not want my guns restricted from me due to crazies using them for crazy. The problem, in my view, is military grade automatic weapons whose only purpose is to provide an arsinal to an individual.

The real problem is in towns and cities where drug gangs outgun the police. An Uzzie is hardly made for hunting and has no place in anyone's hands except the Military or Police.

What would you guys offer as a solution?

[Neil Heath]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]

[ET]

[ET]

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

[Gene Scarborough]

Guns have been a part of American society from the frontier days. It was important when we were camping in the woods, but in urban areas the wild animals seem to be drug and crime addicts---which makes them important again.

It's not the gun that kills, but the one who is holding it.

I taught my son the importance of being careful and realizing that anything that gun points toward is a target. Our first real adventure in shooting involved me taking a water-filled milk jug and setting it on a stump. We stepped 10 steps back and I let go of my shotgun on that jug. It splattered!

Then I told my son that if it was someone's head they would be dead and it would be a mess and the one holding the gun was responsible. Nuff said!!!!!

[ET]

[Tim Bonney]

[Ed Pettibone]

Tim Bonney wrote in part "I get tired of the trite "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The truth is that people couldn't kill people in such massive numbers without guns. Some guy with a knife isn't likely to kill dozens of people before he is caught like someone with a gun. Yes, the individual does the killing. But the death toll rises because the guns are available."

Ed: Tim I agree that the founding fathers had no idea of the types of weapons that are available today and I believe there needs to be restrictions on automatic weapons and perhaps more stringent limits on who may have guns. But I do believe the constitutional right of citizens to bear arms is important.

Keep in mind that the greatest mass murders in the U.S. involved neither guns or knives. The World Trade Center was destroyed with two air planes and in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh Used a rental truck loaded with agricultural fertilizer. Also across the country arson is the chosen method in many homicides each year. you may want to rethink your reaction to the ""guns don't kill people, people kill people" cliche.

[Tim Bonney]

No, the statement still applies Ed. Most people don't have the where with all to create large fertilizer bombs or hijack and airplane but almost any idiot can get his hands on a gun. Here is another article that points to the tragedy of someone carrying a weapon into a restaurant and then killing his family including his ten year old daughter during the argument. If he hadn't had the gun likely less people would be dead.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... -ohio?lite

So as you've suggested, there is nothing wrong with restricting the access to any of those weapons to the general public. As far as I'm concerned if the 2nd amendment as it is written is obsolete and needs revision. Again, it isn't holy writ.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Gene Scarborough]

Why can't we just say: "People are sometimes crazy---and crazy with a gun it not good!"

[ET]

[Hal Eaton]

I'm really inspired when I read quotes from the intelligentsia in defense of allowing everyone (who so desires) to be armed with a deadly weapon at all times. (After re-reading this, I'd better add that i was being sarcastic.)

Here's Newt Gingrich, speaking to the NRA (which he describes as being "too timid"):

"A Gingrich presidency will submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet because every person on the planet deserves the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, those would exploit them, rape them or kill them."

Of course, those who would " oppress. . ., exploit, rape, or kill . . ." would be armed, too -- in every case. Try to imagine the number of shoot-outs that would occur every day under such a regime . . .

As to the problem of religious right organizations being attacked by gun-bearing fanatics, please recall the words of Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

IMO (A designation seldom added to most O's.)

[ET]

I was not aware we had a "problem of religious right organizations being attacked by gun-bearing fanatics". Just who is promoting that idea or fear...or are you just making it up or being silly for the sake of argument?

[Hal Eaton]

I was suggesting that religious right organizations -- like the NRA, for instance -- and many of the religious-based militant survivalist groups in the USA -- mix their fear of being attacked with a belligerent philosophy of how-to-handle
differences of opinion.

Ed: Tell me more about your attitude toward the principle of allowing everybody to carry a deadly weapon.

Should you get laws passed to allow such gun-bearing legality, I, for one, would move elsewhere, for fear that some grandmother (ala your noted proof-text) would target me for bumping her cart in Wal-Mart.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Gene Scarborough]

Stupid question, Ed---he asked a real one and your give a cheap diversion