One of the cliches that the people who don’t want any gun control constantly repeat is that an armed society is a polite society. And while that’s always struck me as not something we need to achieve, we at least know what they mean. If you’re worried the stranger might be someone with a gun, you’re less likely to be rude to them.
But today puts the lie to the general premise. Whatever curt words and gestures were avoided by the possibility that guy might have a gun pale compared to today.
A society that can’t prevent someone from opening fire on an elementary school loses its right to be called polite.
A society where a Sikh temple or a Unitarian church have to deal with people murdering their congregants isn’t a polite society.
A society where people watching a movie have to run in horror because someone is shooting the place up isn’t a polite society.
Cafe Racer was a great place for society, until an act of horror levels beyond impolite shattered that for the people there that day.
No, there are a lot of things arms do to a society. Making it polite isn’t one of them.
Totally agree with all of this, except: Cafe Racer is still a “great place for society.” And the grace with which their owners and staff handled an unspeakable tragedy only reinforced that.
That whole “polite society” argument never made sense to me. If it were true, gangs would be the most polite groups in the world.
@1,
Fair point. I’ve updated it.
You guys are missing the point: they’re aren’t enough guns in the hands of private citizens. When wacka-doodles realize they will meet their death at the hands of armed citizens because of bad behavior, then the whack-jobs will behave themselves. Or, at the very least, there will be far fewer of them.
More guns = less crime
Dumbass… Is the perp who killed all those kids in CT alive or dead? Who the F shot him?
This has got to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever written – in a long line of stupid stretching out over the years.
@4
Sorry PI, this is bonkers.
To underscore how spectacularly stupid this point is, the shooter today didn’t just show up to an elementary school with several guns. He showed up wearing a bullet-proof vest. In other words, he expected to be shot at. And it didn’t deter him one bit.
You know I’m not a big proponent of gun control, and I’ve been on Twitter arguing that there’s no realistic law out there that would’ve stopped this from happening today. But saying that more guns means less crime isn’t supported by actual evidence anywhere. Every study that has purported to show it has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, there’s a mountain of evidence showing that for certain crimes (murder-suicides and mass killings are two of them), there’s a very clear correlation between the amount of guns and the amount of those crimes.
Here’s a good place to start if you want to dive into some real statistics rather than making shit up.
@4 “Politically Incorrect”
You are a HorsesAss and would do yourself and the world a favor if the next time you think you have something to say you’d just STFU.
Carl, great post.
With regard to PI @ 4, I’m not sure he’s not just playing to his name. The boy might be a bit sarcastic. More guns! Let’s have more guns per capita than the Yemenese! Yes!
@9, Life and death is not a game to be played, and today is not the day to be to be posting half assed comments about gun proliferation.
@4 PC, you’ve been wrong about many things during your HA posting career, but in your whole life you’ve never been more wrong about anything than you are in this comment. I hope you will realize — if not now, then someday — that you fucked up when you posted this comment. You just destroyed what little credibility you still had left on this blog.
Polite society my ass.
More guns create a more fearful society. A society is which the most belligerent and bellicose control the conversation. A society in which those most comfortable with the notion of coercing their peers with the biggest weapon drive the discourse. A society in which logic and science are trumped by fear and violence.
Guns creating civility is as crazy as the fear of hell creating good behavior.
Be good for goodness sake.
A murder trial in Florida is likely to put that state’s “stand-your-ground” law under further scrutiny. The defendent in this case is accused of having complained to the occupants of an SUV about blasting their stereo, and when the conversation became heated, pulling his pistol out of the glove box of his car, emptying the clip at the SUV and then driving off. Somehow, that doesn’t sound very “polite”.
“Polite society?”
What’s that?
Sounds like some neo justification for stripping individuals of their rights. All in the name of “a more polite society”
I mean, why not just create “murder free zones”, or “rape free zones”.
That will certainly hasten the progress of a polite society. Right?
Clearly creating gun free zones, where only criminals have guns works brilliantly. Or is it, “you can’t stop crazy”
CT has plenty of laws that would prevent this type of individual obtaining firearms. How did he get them? Not legally. So legal gun ownership is not the problem as he is not able to purchase/own them. How didn’t get them? Is this individual “typical” or “standard profile” a legal, responsible gun owner?
I have kids in elementary school. This hits very close to home.
We can try to mitigate disaster all we want, sometimes evil people do evil acts. If not guns, there are any number of ways to mass murder innocent folks. Outlaw guns all we want, criminals will still have them.
I’m sure it does to a paranoid clown like yourself.
Did you bother reading the post? The term ‘polite society’ is a riff on the gun nut cliche about an armed society being a polite society. You know, bullshit.
Yes, let’s all throw up our hands in surrender, let’s all wail and cry and wallow in helplessness. Obviously there’s nothing we can do to change an aspect of our society that many (most?) find unacceptable. That’s up there with ‘nobody could have predicted….’.
You show up around here, it seems, whenever there is a discussion of guns, last time being Aurora. You were full of shit then, and you’re full of shit now.
I don’t know what you mean by so called assault weapons. I have a lot of gun. I have AR15’s (M16 semiauto for civilians), AR 47’s(Russian), SKS(Chinese), M1A (semi auto M-14), and the semi-auto Thompson. I like them, I wanted to collect all the weapons I used during my military career including the semi-auto M1 Garand, the bolt action O3A3 (WWII rifle), and the 0303 (WWI rifle). The last two were used as parade rifles. I also have hunting rifles that are semi auto. These hunting rifle’s have caliber of bullets that are much more powerful than any of the so called assault rifles, and there are magazines for these hunting rifles that can carry thirty or more bullets. So to make weapons illegal because of cosmetic reasons (assault rifles) doesn’t make any sense at all. In fact the people who complain the most are the most ignorant. They call these weapons automatics, which they are not, and they want to make auto weapons illegal, which is already the case, unless you have federal permit. No one who has a federal permit for fully auto, as ever commented a crime.
It really makes me upset when someone uses guns to kill people, and the news media glorifies it by repeating the story over and over again. Thus copy cats who want their monument of fame copy the last mentally ill killer. Until we have a National Health care that can take care of mentally sick people we will continue to have killers. Timothy McVeigh didn’t need guns, he used fertilizer, diesel oil, and blasting caps to kill a lot more people than he could have with guns.
I’m a liberal with guns, like Roger Rabbit use to brag he was, but is to scare to now, or Bartcop, or the late Mike Webb.
@16
AK 47’s and SKS’s have about the same balistics as a .30-30.
An M1A is typically a .308 which is also a damn good deer rifle caliber.
M1 Garand’s are .30-60’s…
As we’ve seen from far too many shootings here in America that .223 round (legal for deer in some states) is plenty capable of killing people. The fact that there are more powerful rounds out there is meaningless.
Please, STFU, before you make yourself sound any stupider.
@17, if anyone is sounding stupid it is you, with your ignorant knowledge of weapons. You shoud just stfu up yourself. With your ignorants you play into the NRA’s goals.
Besides, 30-30 isn’t very powerful, I’m talking about 300 magnum, 338 lupua, or even more poweful rounds. But then your are too ignorant to know those things. You sound like a Republican, how’s the goat fucking going for you?
@18
What exactly is it that you find “ignorant” @17?
@19
Um… You said
All I did was point out that many “assault rifles” are medium power .30 caliber rifles, just like many hunting rifles.
That you think the gun is the problem when the violence in this country is the problem. From video games, to military rah rah, to the media’s constant glorifying of these mentally ill people with their never ending blah blah about the attack, so that copy cat nut jobs want to copy the last nut job.
That makes it so that ignorant people like you want to take away from people who are not mentally ill their right to display non-automatic weapons that they enjoyed or used during their military career or target shooting.
I did not say, THAT CALIBORS MEAN ANYTHING, but that health care for mentally ill people do. What do you propose for people like McVeigh who didn’t use a gun to kill a lot of people? That’s what I’m saying.
Where did I say that? I’ve posted several things about mental illness being a big problem and the mentally ill being able to get ahold of guns is a problem. However, if they were properly treated and stable then the mentally ill getting ahold of a gun wouldn’t be such an issue would it? In fact, they’d be more likely to say they need to talk to someone and a little help because they’re thinking about guns and killing, than to get a gun and kill someone.
Sounds like you’ve got your own issues and maybe you need to talk to someone. The media isn’t glorifying this.
Where have I ever said I want to take firearms away from people that aren’t mentally ill? I’ll help you out a bit. You can’t find that statement, because I’ve never said it.
I guess we can agree to disagree on this one, it sure seemed to me like you did. But, whatever.
What you did was made several disjointed and erroneous claims.
This is you:
This is also you:
These claims counter each other, yet you claim they’re both true of me. Nothing you’ve written tonight makes any sense. Maybe you should take your meds or sober up and go to sleep and try again in the morning.
Tim McVeigh was a member of a terrorist cell who along with Terry Nichols and a few other suspected, but never charged, folks committed a bombing. This has nothing to do with our recent string of mass shooting by mentally ill young men.
Please get some sleep. You’re not making anysense
@16 If you used a World War 1 rifle during your military career, I salute your longevity.
I’m about your age, or maybe a little younger. During the 1960’s & 70’s the Navy used the Springfield 0303 and 03A3 as parade rifles during Bootcamp. They had pins inserted through the barrel probably so that some idiot couldn’t have 30-06 ammo sent to him to shoot his Company Commander.