The Glade 4.0

as the gun control nuts.

Obviously violent video games and movies are the problem...

http://home.nra.org/pdf/Transcript_PDF.pdf

That said, their safety program has some merit. It will be interesting to see how that pans out and if any school takes advantage of it.

People won't understand that video games don't make people violent but that violent people often enjoy violent media. However, non-violent people also partake in violent media.

Nothing can be done about "violent" media. What are we going to do, attack the first amendment? This is ridiculous.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

The NRA is the PETA of guns.

Interesting stuff:

1) The NRA is only 4 million members?
2) The NRA is advocating the creation of a national tracking database? (for the mentally ill??)

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It should also be pointed out that Columbine and West Virginia Tech had armed deputies and police. Strange how LaPierre didn't afford them a chance to speak on behalf of how well his plan would work.

Also, sound the irony klaxon: While the NRA Was On TV Talking About the Need for More Guns Some Guy Was Walking Up and Down a Road in Pennsylvania Shooting People, including state troopers.

Sadly the NRA is engaging in the same mindset that their opponents use.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

That is pretty much exactly what the NRA is talking about as well though. Why did Gawker tie these two items together in a headline as if they are somehow related?

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Jeez, a lobbyist group is trying to exploit this tragedy to their benefit (or to avoid responsibility)?

Seriously, is anyone honestly surprised by any of this?

The NRA is most likely not at all concerned with video games with any sincerity, but rather is trying to deflect blame away from guns and onto video games.

As for the national database of the mentally disturbed... As a prtactical matter it makes more sense than almost any sort of arbitrary gun limitation. However, the inexact nature of mental health science plus the obvious privacy problems mean that it would be likely to be as bad or worse than the sex offender database.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm actually suprised that the NRA response was this tame. The media has been able to take free shots at them (and others) since the incident.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Today the NRA has changed their slogan from "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." to "Guns don't kill people. Pictures of guns kill people."

The NRA might not be so "stupid" if their opposition had not demonstrated that A) it's at least as stupid and probably more so in the opposite direction and B) that they had not already learned that no amount of gun control or compromise is ever enough for anti-gun advocates and compromising now just leads to demands for another compromise down the road.

This is one of the biggest reasons people oppose gun-control measures. The anti-gun lobby does not regard compromises as compromise; they see it as just steps to an eventual gun ban, and as soon as any restriction is in place will just start working on adding still more. Canada saw this as well, with its former prime minister calling for a gun ban as an election play, despite the fact that their long-gun registry was a costly boondoggle and eventually shut down despite howls that it would lead to <insert typical hysteria here>. New York City went through this; their gun registry was passed as a compromise on the promise it would never be used for confiscation. Guess what it was eventually used for?

There really is no reason the NRA should start being reasonable (and don't get me wrong, I am definitely not saying they are being reasonable right now) until their opponents start being reasonable.

Until the anti-gun lobby agrees that the compromise is not somewhere in the middle between "total gun ban" and "no restrictions whatsoever", but rather that things like total bans on handguns, extreme ammunition taxes, very restrictive magazine limits (and 10 rounds is definitely "very restrictive"), and limits on carry permits that reduce carry to a privilege to be dispensed at the governments pleasure (i.e. almost never) are simply off the table, the NRA and gun advocates will stay entrenched because otherwise they are not dealing with people who are trying to compromise in good faith.

This may sound unfair, but the simple fact is that the right to defend yourself is a fundamental necessity to a free society; a civilized free society cannot create a de facto license for criminals to prey on citizens, and the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental under the 2nd amendment, and is not any more subject to the whims of politicians or the will of the people than any other amendment.

Until the anti-gun crowd gets that, there is no reason the NRA should back off its extreme stance. The Dianne Feinsteins of the world simply must accept that, entitled to a personal opinion or not, the idea of a gun ban or even of very heavy restrictions, is simply not part of the discussion any more than allowing the sale of 20mm cannons to the public is.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I've said before, if someone wants you dead is it compromise to just let them severely wound you?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

There is no practicality in a mentally disturbed database. The sex offender database, as atrocious as it is, has one massive advantage over a mental illness database. Convictions. It's a black and white exactness that serves as the basis of the database. You either did, or did not get convicted of one of these crimes.

Mental illness, on the other hand, is not this way. Everyone has shades of mental illness. From me moping around for a month last year to the obvious "get him off the streets" wackadoodle.

So, until a mentally ill individual commits a crime, there's no practical way of determining what's in his head and whether to track him or not.

Further, there could be some serious repercussions to something like this. "Here, come tell us about your mental illness so we can determine whether you should be tracked and your rights restricted. Bring your kids in for analysis." This could drive people away from treatment, isolate these individuals, reinforce their view that society doesn't want them, and make problems worse.

I agree with all of that, although I wouldn't say everyone has shades of mental illness; feeling mopey isn't really mental illness any more than feeling tired or having bad gas is physical sickness. Either could be a sign of something coming on, but they usually are not. Generally, being tired = not enough sleep, and bad gas = too much sausage and baked beans.

Anyhow, what I meant by "more practical" than a gun restriction was not that a mental illness database was in any way a good idea, but rather that it did address the actual problem rather than basically saying "we don't care about mental illness until you try to buy a gun", or implementing silly restrictions like magazine limits. Really, if a mentally disturbed person goes to shoot up a school, why anyone thinks having to reload after 10 bullets would be meaningful is totally beyond me.

In that sense, the database is "good" insofar as it does attack the underlying problem rather than just trying to legislate it out of existence on the basis that any gun restriction is a good gun restriction. That was not, however, to say that it is a "Good" idea, or actually advisable or practical, just that it at least represents a practical focus on the real problem rather pretending mental illness is only a problem when someone gets a gun that holds too many bullets or looks like something the Army uses.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There have been documented cases where citizens have used reload time as the opportunity to subdue the attacker. That's the motivation for the reduction in cartridge capacity.

If by cases, you mean once. Ever.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

This. Yes, it is theoretically possible to subdue an armed person while he reloads. However, so many things have to come together right for that to happen that the restriction is really about A) creating a restriction that uninformed people think is meaningful and B) just getting some gun control out there just to have some so as to use it as leverage to get more later on.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Loughner, Tucson, Arizona
Kinkel, Springfield, Oregon
Ferguson, New York, New York
Unnamed Student, Perry Hall High School, Perry Hall, Maryland

That's off the top of my head. There's probably more.

Not arguing against either A or B, just saying that's the ->stated<- motivation.

I suppose that depends on how we want to define it. For example, Loughner dropped a magazine. That doesn't have anything to do with frequency of reload.

Regardless, magazine restrictions are simply ridiculous, IMO.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Ferguson is the only one where limitations on ammunition created the situation.

The Perry Hall shooter was not reloading the shotgun at the time he was subdued.

Loughner had 2-3 rounds remaining (33-round magazine, +1 chambered; had fired only 31 times) when he began reloading and was subdued because he dropped his second magazine and overwhelmed.

Kinkel had a second weapon and still managed to fire and injure another person after being subdued.

In 3 cases, it was the presence of an overwhelming number of people, not the need to reload, that allowed the attacker to be subdued. In the case of Perry Hall, the shooter was surprised form behind, and was not reloading at the time, although he was not in the process of firing either.

In point of fact, the need to reload isn't what creates the ability of unarmed people to subdue a shooter; it's the inability of a shooter to engage in more than one direction at once, so if he can be flanked or surprised from behind, or more people come at him than he can shoot, he will be defeated rapidly. Reloading has very little to do with it.

Sylvia Seegrist is a perfect example; she was disarmed by someone as she was getting ready to shoot him; her gun was not empty and she wasn't even trying to reload.

Unarmed citizens can disarm a shooter, but magazine limits and reloads are not the deciding factor. Everything has to fall together perfectly for a reload to create an opening for a disarm that wouldn't have otherwise occurred; foremost being that the shooter not have a second weapon ready to go. (Ferguson didn't; neither did Loughner, but Loughner decided to reload early for some reason and could ahve been overwhelmed by the number of people present anyhow) The important elements are numbers, and the willingness of those present to fight.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is contrary to reports that I have heard, although everything I have heard has been stated as "unofficial - investigation underway".

We'll see when they release the reports.

The description I saw was that he fired, then began backing up. If he only had a single-shot or 2-shot shotgun or didn't fully load it in the first place, he could have been reloading, but 1 or 2 shot limits are totally unreasonable regardless, and if he didn't fully load the weapon, that would hardly bring its capacity into play (and shotguns inherently have small limits, and are slower to reload anyhow). Either way, the article I saw indicates a faculty member took him from behind, so even if he was still firing they would have succeeded.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I believe it was a single shot shotgun, but don't know for sure until they release info.