Guns should be banned.
The manufacture, the selling, the owning of a gun should be illegal. You say guns don't kill, people do? Well tell me something I don't know, moron. So why give killers guns?!Ok, back to reality here; there's no way we'll ever be completely without guns. As wonderful as it would be, guns will forever be a part of our society. But we need to make it as difficult as possible to get a gun. And don't start with the Second Amendment and how the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, because that was meant to guarantee the private sector's ability to participate in a militia. A four year old child could read it and understand that. The era for the militia is gone, with the only remaining people who believe in the need for an active militia being either authority-bucking jerks that want to break the law with impunity or anti-government fruitcakes that believe the commies will still rise up to take over Uhmurikkka.
I'm all for the multi-point attack on this one:
First, we outlaw ALL assault style weapons.
We'll define these loosely as anything that takes a clip or magazine that accepts more than 9 rounds. Does that seem a bit heavy handed? Well so does any man-made object capable of killing and/or maiming 10 or more people.Second, we don't require a permit, we require a license, just like on your car, with an annual registration fee.
You want to own a gun? Fine, but you have to pay annually to legally own the damn thing. Your money will go to offset the medical expenses of those injured or bereft as a result of the power of the gun.And last, somehow pass a law preventing PACs like the NRA from functioning.
Talk about evil. In the face of people that have lost their spouses, parents that have lost their children, children that have lost their parents to some SOB with a firearm, these monsters pretend to protect America by pouring god-awful amounts of cash into legislator's pockets.I just recently found out that guns can be bought and sold at gun shows with no background check. Can you believe it? Something should be legislated that says that the person that sells a gun to a felon should have to serve the same prison term that the felon does if the felon uses the weapon in a criminal fashion.
Do I own a gun? Yeah, matter of fact, I do. A five-shot .38 pistol. The bare minimum I could acquire and the very maximum I could stand to own. It's enough to put small holes in someone and convince them they came into the wrong house, but not enough to go out and take out an office building with. Or a McDonalds. Or a shopping mall. Or a commuter train. There's got to be serious limits on the amount of firepower one person can have access to. We have to draw the line...
April 20th, 1999, Columbine High School, Denver, Colorado
Geez, did anyone really need an example this horrific and vivid of why we need serious controls on weapons? Forget the pipe bombs -- you can get a multitude of descriptions of how to build those on the Internet. I could make 10 different types of bombs right now using various ordinary materials in my house. Focus instead on the guns. 25 people dead, and every one of them had bullet holes in them. 20 more people were injured seriously, some of these due to shrapnel from the pipe bombs, but most from gun shot wounds. The social outcasts in black trench coats came loaded for bear and they bagged nearly an entire classroom of kids and school staff. And how did they get the artillery to do it? I'm going to guess:
1. A relative that is a gun collector.
2. Classified ads.
3. Gun shows.
I don't recall the last time a private individual was allowed to collect hand grenades or dynamite. These are controlled items. Why are guns so freely available in our society?
And to the person that's going to write me to say we need stiffer gun control laws, keep this in mind: there are 2200 federal laws that mention in some part illegal gun ownership and usage. What good do they do? These laws don't prevent deaths. They would attempt to penalize the offender after the fact.
That's not good enough.
It's time to severely limit not only the types of guns allowed in this country, whether manufactured here or imported from another country, we also need to shut down alternate methods for obtaining weapons, including gun shows and classified ads. If a gun is not accessible, the individual with murderous intentions will have to find another weapon. Hopefully one that is less effective and less exact. This won't stop people from killing each other, but it will definitely put a damper on mass murders like this one.