Wayne College Shooting

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

With guns and guns and guns and guns, aroo, aroo...

-- Quote from "Johnny I hardly knew ye" (the original of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)

 

Freedom to bear arms does not include the "right" to use them to settle scores, however severe.  Punishment for gun crimes of any kind in the U.S. needs to be jacked up to a serious incarceration.

[hym 358]

With guns and guns and guns and guns, aroo, aroo...

-- Quote from "Johnny I hardly knew ye" (the original of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)

 

Freedom to bear arms does not include the "right" to use them to settle scores, however severe.  Punishment for gun crimes of any kind in the U.S. needs to be jacked up to a serious incarceration.

 

 In general, they already are.  While definitions can vary by jurisdiction, when you attack someone, it is usually referred to as "assault" and is often only a misdemeanor charge.  When you attack someone with a weapon, which a gun qualifies as, it is usually classified as "aggravated assault," and it is usually prosecuted as a felony.

[SteveMSim 275]

Some of these NRA backers believe that God created guns and gave them the right to carry them anywhere they wish, to use as defense from a tyrannical government trying to take away those rights.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Bearing arms, the U.S. constitution notwithstanding, is a privilege.  People who abuse these privileges should be subject to more than ordinary prosecution because they have done something that is not only against the criminal code of their jurisdiction, but is really a crime against the mores of society in general.

 

The point of the "right to bear arms" was originally designed to prevent a tyranny in the government of the United States.  Well, you now have a tyranny of the industrial classes, and what is being done about it?  Arms are not the answer when big money can just run roughshod over the nation. 

 

Wasn't it Thomas Jefferson who said "A little revolution is good once in a while"?  People should listen to the probably brightest of the founding fathers.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

In most places in the U.S. even pointing a gun at someone, or threatening them when you have a gun, will put you in jail.  It's a mental health problem when you've got people hurting other people.  Although the prisons are way too overcrowded and they let some people go too early.

 

A black guy actually walked past me today on campus open-carrying a handgun.  I was a little surprised, as I thought guns were discouraged on campus; maybe he was a plainclothes officer or something.  But there's certainly lots of guns around, even at college apparently, that aren't being used to shooting people.

[Meg 368]

We already have a thread for this debate.   Duke, where is it?

[hym 358]

 

Further discussion on the Wayne College shooting may continue here, but any further discussion on the merits of gun rights, gun bans, etc. needs to happen in Second Amendment/Gun Ban thread.