We need to stand up to the NRA

Coombs: We need to stand up to the NRA: \\
(August 31, 2015)

It took me almost three weeks to decide that I needed to reply to this "news article" / Opinion Piece.

I'm still not sure I can do it justice, nor that I can add anything new to the dialogue.
But I feel I ought to try.

Here's the crux of the story:

It took only seconds for Facebook and other social media sites to begin their talk about gun control and most of the consensus was that more people need to carry so that these senseless murders can stop. First, there is no way that any one of the three innocent victims would have had time to pull a weapon to prevent what happened. One second they were interviewing a woman and the next second there were shots and screams and two people were dead. The shooter even recorded the murders and posted them online before being identified and pursued until he shot himself. I will never understand these arguments about how carrying weapons can prevent these quick and senseless blasts at innocent victims. The shooters clearly have no respect for any human life, including their own. They rarely do.

Typical liberal bullshit.

You posit that "We need to do something about the NRA", but you not only do not define the 'problem', you fail to posit a solution.  What a retard!



You are absolutely correct, Ms Coombs.  When someone is determined to do murder, and when his own life is not only obviously going to be sacrificed in the effort, but it part of his 'game plan' ... nobody can stop them.  (Although it has happened: witness the Clackamas Town Center shooting of a few years ago, when an armed citizen who only pointed a gun at him without shooting him caused the shooter to suicide.)

That's not the point.

On certain occasions, having an armed protector at the scene may be sufficient to .. if not STOP ALL THE KILLINGS ... at least limit the deaths.  (And your premise seems to be that armed protection will not stop, or at least limit the death toll of, assassination.  Why do you think that High Profile Targets hire armed bodyguards?  If they do nothing else, at least bodyguards make the effort more problematical for the assassins.)

You can’t stop a person like that before they have already done great damage and caused many deaths.

No .. generally speaking, you cannot.  But would you have us not even try?

 We have to start looking deeper at how these mentally ill people are getting weapons and make changes to those laws. Whether we like it or not, to protect innocent people, we have to be willing to compromise on the current system and put controls in place. The mentally ill have easy access to weapons and we have to come together to stop it.

What would you have us do?  The 'mentally ill' have rights, too, and America restricts access to mental health records much more than it does to abortion or other records.  We are at a contretemps .. do we respect individual rights more, or less, than societal rights?  What would you have us do?  Whose rights do we sacrifice?

 The NRA does not increase membership rolls and make money if some gun sales decrease. They don’t care if people are dying. They care that they have profits. A reporter and some cameraman will not stop them on their crusade to convince Americans that we are safer with more guns. We aren’t. America is one of the most violent countries in the world and of course has very few laws restricting gun control..

With all respect, Madam, I believe you have more confidence in the NRA than I do.  Either that, or you have more contempt for its goals.  I'm not sure which.  Nor do I much care.



The businesses of the NRA is not to decrease gun violence in America.  That sounds more like the duty of elected officials, to me.  The NRA is a private organization which, among its other assumed duties, teaches gun safety.  It's not a law enforcement agency of the government, which you (by the way) have elected.

Oh, and the US Government does not teach "gun safety".

(Which, by the way, I DO, on the first Saturday of each month, at my local gun club, where I am a volunteer; and I do not receive any payment for my time.  Where are YOU on the first Saturday of every month?  Getting your nails done?)

Oh, BTW .. I'm not a member of the NRA., so I have not dog in THAT fight.

 Every time I talk to someone that carries, I ask them how many times they have pulled their weapon in the interest of public safety and the answer is zero. I haven’t met a private citizen who has fired a bullet at a deranged person to stop a mass shooting. It doesn’t mean that you can’t find one, but the number of those heroes pales in comparison to the number of innocent people being gunned down daily in this country. 

And your point, apparently, is that these people should have been eager to shoot at other people?
"Mass Shootings" are very rare, even in this 'violent' country, and yet you seem disappointed that it isn't something so common that you should happen upon participants in your daily life!

DOESN'T this somewhat undermine your basic premise that "We Need To Do Something About The NRA ..."?

In point of fact, the only reason why you are so freaked out about 'mass shootings' is that every time it happens, you are inundated by the MSM with videos and hour-by-hour updates.  Aren't you just a victim of new over-glut?  (Sorry, I made that term up.)

Four months out of the year, you don't hear about this crap happening, and so you forget it.  Until the next time it happens, and then you think:  "Hey, didn't I just hear about that happening the other day over in ... oh, I forget then name of the place, but I'm sure it was just the other day!"


But who are you to say what they ... the NRA .. do and do not care about?  Obviously since they have no law enforcement powers, no judiciary powers, that organization is a bystander, much as you are.

What have YOU done lately to reduce the effects of the violence of people who have no respect for the law?  Oh, yes, you are ready to decry increasing violence, but what have your public complaints done for the victims?

I've been decrying and complaining and whining about violence in America since 2004, and nothing I have done has demonstrably changed a thing.

I give it to you, Madam, that merely decrying violence is a waste of time.  You have to take your place in the tail end of a VERY long time to make your voice heard, and the end effect of your efforts will be precisely the same as mine:  nothing.

If you want to make a difference, I suggest that you find a forum when you CAN make a difference.  Get off the public forum, and start teaching people to  .. oh, I don't know; be safe with guns?

If you can't do that, teach them to stay away from guns!  I don't mind; I may or may not agree with you, but at least I would respect you for being so committed that you are willing to give your own private time teaching people that guns are EVIL and will cause you to perform Bad Things.

Not that you will get a lot of advocates, but if you believe it, you should teach it.

BY YOUR CLASS SIZE, SHALL YOU BE JUDGED!

Whining does does not become you.