Here We Go Again. Another Shooting. Another Cry for Curtailment of Freedoms.

Another shooting by someone who should never have laid hands on a gun.

First off, from the Washington Post:

"Roof lived about 15 miles southeast of Columbia, the state capital, in Eastover, court records show. He was arrested twice earlier this year, once on a drug charge and later for trespassing, records show. Both arrests occurred near Columbia."

In one sentence, the CNN report says:

"It's uncertain who bought the gun Roof used."

In the very next paragraph the same report says:

 

"A senior law enforcement source told CNN the suspect's father had recently bought him a .45-caliber gun for his 21st birthday in April."

Followed by: 

"But Roof's grandfather says it was just "birthday money" and that the family didn't know what Roof did with that money."

A young man, recently arrested for drugs - not clear whether it was 'simple' possession or if he was dealing or trafficking - and daddy gives him a gun. Or maybe he bought it, as grandpa suggests.

In either case, this rat-ass punk needs to go down - hard and for a long time. Preferably permanently, in my view.

In this case, if his father provided him that gun, knowing his son uses drugs, the father should be charged as an accessory before the fact, and he should face precisely the same charges as the perp.

In this case, it seems that the dealer who sold the gun did not do the appropriate background check which should have turned up the pending drug charge. That would have knocked this moron off the eligible list for ownership - if he bought the gun, himself.

But let's go back to daddy. Did he buy the gun? Did he give it to his son, the one with the drug charges? If he did, see above. Charge the bastard as an accessory.

I got diverted, sorry. Now I'm really going to let loose because I'm tired of all this. Because I own guns I am, apparently, evil. I just posted this on Authonomy in response to a post there:

Good idea. Let's pillory everyone who owns a firearm. Completely ignoring the vast majority of gun owners who don't do evil things.

The fact that this moronic punk's idiotic father gave him the gun? Ignore it!
The fact that this moronic punk was arrested earlier this year on drug charges (still pending) and this punk's idiotic father overlooked that little titbit? Ignore it!

Pillory all the fucking gun owners who have never caused harm to another human being. Blacken us all with the same brush. We're all evil. Just little Satans waiting for our turn.

Oh, and while we're at curtailing the freedom given by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - which is there for good reason if you read history (it's to ensure that the people have the ability to protect themselves and to protect their country, if it comes to it) - let's get rid of cars, too. Far too dangerous those things. Look at how many people are killed in this nation of 350M+ each and every day in car accidents.

Look at this: 2013 Traffic Deaths

There were 30,057 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2013 in which 32,719 deaths occurred. This resulted in national motor vehicle crash death rates of 10.3 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.11 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.

About the same as those who die by gunfire except that about 20,000 of gunfire deaths are deliberate and self-inflicted. If someone really wants to kill themselves, they don't need a gun to do it. With 11,000 gun murders … why that's three times fewer gun murders than fatal car accidents, meaning cars are three times more deadly than guns.

So yes, we need to ban cars. Immediately. Oh! And, they contribute to global warming or climate change (which ever is the term du jour), too. Their effect on the environment will cause far more death and destruction than guns when the seas rise and Florida gets inundated.

Let's ban drugs, too. All drugs. Not just the street drugs. Watch American television and see the ads from the ambulance chasing lawyers about ‘bad drug call so-and-so’. Drugs are bad. Drugs that are supposed to be good for you, to help you live, are bad - ban 'em. Every single one of them.

Doctors and hospitals - healthcare workers of all stripes need to be banned. Look at how many people die in hospitals due to preventable errors:

2014 Preventable Medical Deaths

It's a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year.

Why my god! These people go to medical school. They're trained and spend years learning their craft - but end up killing 400,000 people each year! Ban ‘em. Ban ’em all. Take away their medical licenses and if they practice, throw ‘em in prison.

They’re more than 300x more dangerous than a gun owner. Ban 'em all, I say!

Okay, rant over. All I ask is that people be reasonable. If this dumbass had deliberately driven his car into a crowd of black people, running over as many as he could while screaming racial epithets would we be talking about banning cars? No. We would be talking about what an evil person this man is.

Back to life, back to living and earning my keep.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

The Scraping Sound You Hear Is...

My soapbox being dragged from the closet.
 
Ironic, isn't it? Just yesterday I said that I will write and post about things that interest me, but I'm not a torch carrying standard bearer. Aside from that being too dangerous - after all, if the torch you're waving ignites the standard you're carrying, where are you? - the interweb is full of people proselytizing.

Then, just yesterday, I came across something someone posted over on Authonomy (we have torch carrying standard bearers there, too) that just dropped my jaw. I'm still scratching my head over it this morning.

Straight-up, dead honest, I am a gun owner. I grew up in a house with .22 caliber rifles. For almost thirty years, on virtually every Saturday morning, my dad taught hunter safety for the California Department of Fish and Game. Through his classroom passed, literally, thousands of people who learned the fundamentals of safe gun handling. Including me. I took the course when I turned thirteen - the earliest age at which I was eligible to participate. I learned certain fundamentals:

• Never point any gun, toy or real, at any human being.
• Be sure of your backstop. Be Sure of your target.
• A safe weapon is an unloaded weapon. Do not give or take a weapon on which the chamber is not open.
• Use the safety and make sure it's on if you are handling a gun.
• Never store a firearm with a round loaded in the chamber.
• Keep ammunition stored separately from the firearm.
• Guns and alcohol do not mix.

It's all very basic commonsense kind of stuff.

Dad died of cancer when he was eighty-six. He never shot himself or anyone else. He taught my brother and me gun safety, too. When I was little, I knew that if I touched one of those guns without his permission, it was not safe. If I did and he found out I would be 'toast' as the saying is. So I never did unless he let me and stood right there to make sure I didn't do anything stupid. Like dig out the ammo, load the thing and 'play'.

So, I'm a safe gun owner. I know the rules, I understand the ramifications and responsibilities of having guns in the house. Mine are and remain locked up until I perceive that I might need them. Then they are there to be used if necessary.

I bought the shotgun not for its looks, but for the distinctive and loud snap-snap of the forestock when you chamber a round.

If someone breaks into my house, because my guns are locked up and not loaded, I'm not going to make the mistake of holding my index finger in the air while pleasantly saying, 'Can you hold on just a sec? I need to get out my gun and ammo and load it, 'k?' I am going to grab the unloaded shotgun, take it into the upstairs hallway (for the acoustics) and slide that forestock, letting it snap-snap as loudly as possible. Stealth will not be my goal. My fervent prayer in that instance is that whoever is coming through the ground floor window or door will hear it. I genuinely hope they wet themselves and flee (or flea, as Woody Allen would have it in 'Love and Death').

If not, I'll end up using it as a club when they come up the stairs because, at that point, I won't have time to dig out the shells and load it.

What got me going on this, though, is the incredible stupidity of lawmakers. Alcohol and firearms do not mix. Ever. Period. But the legislature in the Great State of Texas has decided that letting college kids carry concealed weapons on campus is a good idea.

Now, before I throw the Texas legislature under the bus, let's get something clear: Other states already allow this. Including Colorado, where marijuana is now legal - and that's a very bad mix, and Oregon (along with Kansas, Mississippi, Wisconsin...)

In Texas, the limitations are that students have to be twenty-one or older. As if that's going to carry any weight. No eighteen year old ever drinks the liquor that isn't legal for them until they're twenty-one.

Apparently, the idea behind this is campus safety. The argument being that if other students are armed and some idiot gets the idea that shooting up the campus is a brilliant idea, they can stop the whack-job before it gets very far. Virginia Tech had an on-campus shooting in 2007 in which thirty-two people died because a mentally ill student wasn't flagged as such in any record repository that a gun seller could check. Patient-doctor privilege, no doubt. In Austin, Texas there was the clock tower shooting in which a student holed up in the campus clock tower and shot sixteen people dead. That was in 1966. We all know there have been others.

The problem is that college kids drink. How many college kids end up in the ER or die because of alcohol poisoning every year? Lots. And when you have college kids drinking, and there are guns lying around (because none of these carrying students is also going to have a gun safe to hand), that is a very bad, a very bad mix.

The fact is that unless and until we get responsible as a society when it comes to guns and gun safety, this is a terrible idea.

What is interesting, though, highly interesting actually, is that other states have carry laws and I've not heard of wild campus shoot-em-ups in those places. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it hasn't yet. Which is encouraging.

However, back to guns and gun safety. I am a radical when it comes to this because the process I see that's needed is not a three day or ten day or whatever day waiting period while the gun store checks with the Feds to see if you're okay. This is something that requires fundamental changes in the way we think of guns, safety, and privacy. Here are the rules in my perfect world:

First, and foremost, anyone who wants to buy a gun must submit to a thorough background check.

Alcoholism, drug use, psychiatric problems, anything that might be an issue when it comes to that individual being safe and reasonable knocks them out. I don't want some kid who had a run-in with the law and ended up in juvenile court when he was fourteen owning a gun when he's twenty-one. That is not a good mix because, to me, it shows that he's already shown that he's incapable of living within the bounds of  acceptable behavior that society has established. I also don't want someone who's been seen by a pshrink and has been given drugs to control bi-polar or any other mental disorder owning a gun.

Second, if anyone is going to carry a firearm anywhere, they must attend and pass gun safety classes that are taught by professionals. Before they are allowed to own or carry, they must prove to the professionals teaching the class that they know how to safely handle the weapon. Tie this into applying for the purchase of a gun. If you want to buy a gun, you cannot take possession of it until the background check - psychiatric and criminal - is complete and you have taken the classes, taken the test, and proved to the satisfaction of the professionals who taught you the basics that you can be a safe gun owner.

Third, ammunition should not be a walk-up purchase. You should not be able to walk into any store that carries ammunition in this country and be able to buy it without some form of identification. Show your permit, complete a form, sign your name and pay. That simple. And that goes for re-loading supplies, too. You want to buy cartridges, bullets and gunpowder? Same deal - permit, form, pay.

As for the students carrying on campus, anyone who walks onto school grounds - be it K-12 or college, should immediately be subject to search. And this one bothers me - A LOT. It's too police state and far over the line when it comes to the Fourth Amendment (illegal search).  However, if I'm sitting in class and I have a gun in my bag and if I know that my bag might be searched and the consequences will be hard, fast and blind, I'm going to make damned sure I'm in compliance.

Any student or visitor to that campus who is not a member of law enforcement there on business must be willing to submit to spot checks of their dorm room or person. If they have a gun in their possession, they had damned well better have the permit for it, too. If they don't, out. Done. Prosecution for carrying a concealed weapon, period. Fines, 'first time' excuses simply do not exist. It's jail time because this is far too serious and too dangerous for half-measures.

So, soapbox goes back into the closet and I'll let this one go. I just hope to heaven that these guys in Texas know what they're doing. Colorado and Oregon and Idaho, etc., seem to be okay. So far. I sincerely hope it stays that way but if you visit a college campus, be polite, don't piss anyone off, and watch your back.

Best~
Philippa

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