The NRA Responds to the Batman Shooting
The first words from the Twitter account of the National Rifle Association had this to say:
“Good morning, shooters, Happy Friday! Weekend plans?”
I’m sure this was an honest mistake. What you’ll probably hear next from the NRA is something like this:
“If we had an armed and locked NRA member in the front row of the Colorado theater something like this could have been prevented. Our condolences.”
There will be much chatter in the next few days about how to prevent similar horrors, but the NRA will probably have its usual way with our timid politicians, and after much hand-wringing, little will change. You might see a call to require warning alarms on theater exit doors.
What do you think?
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ceaser
July 20, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Good to know. Very good to know.
Ron Greene
July 21, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Considering that existing laws apparently would not have stopped the Colorado shooter from acquiring the weapons and ammunition that he used and that he was able to wound and kill so many because he used an assault rifle with an over-sized clip,I think it’s a good time to press for a renewed ban on assault rifles and a new ban on over-sized ammunition clips.
Gabe Gesmer
July 20, 2012 at 5:25 pm
I agree, but remain pessimistic that anything of substance will come out of this. Still, it certainly is worth a try, and I would love to be proved wrong on this one.
Ron Greene
July 21, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I agree, Gabe. But as fewer Americans want stricter gun control now than some 30-odd years ago, Ron’s pessimism seems justified. Maybe a social approach would work better than a legislative one. If everybody could calm down over differences of opinion, it might lower the general temperature and make the gun problem irrelevant. How can we learn/teach this? Or maybe once a society starts down this road there’s no turning back?
Scary picture, Ron: those cold blue killer’s eyes.
I read all your posts but don’t usually have much to say. For example, I enjoyed the Gaultier piece but didn’t burble about it because it’s not really my thing. And I once wanted to ask how you got the sweet pink shoes in a b&w photo but decided I wouldn’t understand anyway.
Suzanne Miller
July 21, 2012 at 6:24 pm
About the “sweet pink shoes” photo, I used Silver Efex software to turn the color file into b&w. The software didn’t actually throw away the color information in the file, just hid it. After I converted the photo, I “brought back” the color to the shoes. They really were pink in the original picture.
Ron Greene
July 22, 2012 at 3:09 pm
The laws are being enforeced but are very weak. Most restrictions pertain to sale of new guns, magazines, ammo etc. There are many thousands of guns and ammo and magazines that are legally in the country and legally possesses by law abiding citizens and criminal typs alike. Therein lies the problem. If criminals have easy access to these weapons and magazines (which they clearly do) then it would require a massive “confiscation” effort on the part of the government to make any kind of direct impact on the problem of having the actual “hardware” around and available.
Since most people agree that this would be a monumental if not impossible task, it appears that the guns ammo and magazines will remain available and be easily obtainable by the criminal types–even if all the law abiding citizens turned their guns and ammo into the govenment. There would never be a shortage of these weapons and accessories that would not be easily available to the criminal types. Additionally,with our “open borders” policy, smugglng into this counrty just about anything of this nature is not very problematic.
So we are facing a situation where most anyone can get an assult weapon, ammo and a high capacity magazine with relative ease. The congress isnt going to pass a law that orders confiscation of these things becasue it is not possible to enforce any such law with the number of guns and magazines etc currerntly privatley owned. Additonally the polititions
consider
this to be a losing proposition right now and no one (not even the Democrats) are going to touch that issue with a 10 foot poll, especially not now.
That leaves us with the prospects of raising the “penalty” for committing any crime involving a gun of any type to the point of being a real “dis-incentive” for the perperator. That has it’s obvious drawbacks.
The sad truth is that there is probasbly nothing that anyone can do to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Nothing. As much as we want to react and do something positive to fix this so it never happens again, we cant….really.
There will always be crazy whako people that will always be able to find a way to do this kind of thing. This is a sad reality. We live in a dangerous world along side criminally insane people. All we can do really is hope they do not cross out path.
Steve Johnson
Steve Johnson
July 24, 2012 at 2:13 pm
The problem is not going to be solved completely, but that doesn’t mean we can do nothing to reduce the number of weapons and ammo in the hands of people who are likely to abuse them. Determined gun abusers may always find weapons, but why not explore ways of slowing them down without impinging on the rights of law-abiding citizens?
Ron Greene
July 27, 2012 at 8:37 am
Turning up the heat on assualt type weapons and ammo and greatly regulating it far beyound what is now done is a start. We dont need any more regulartions for “regular guns”. But to pretend that all guns are equal and derserve equal protection is moronic. Yet that seems to be the argument….espectially from the far right. It is like the racially profiling issue. To pretend that all guns are equal is like sayng that all terrorist suspects at an airport are equally suspecious from the 3 year old child to a nun in a wheel chair. A little common sense here would go a long way to isolating the most likely source of the problem, at least for preliminary screening purposes.
If you buy an assault type weapon and lots of ammo you must fully register and submitt to extreme scrutiny. Simple.
Steve Johnson
July 27, 2012 at 12:32 pm
You’re making sense to me. Buying big weapons and lots of ammo should raise a few red flags.
Ron Greene
July 27, 2012 at 2:46 pm