Gun Control, My Ass

In 2002 a foreign born student went to his college and starting shooting people. he was taken down by armed students. So much for “Gun Free Zones”.

When Odighizuwa exited the building where the shooting took place, he was approached by two students with personal firearms.

At the first sound of gunfire, fellow students Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, unbeknownst to each other, ran to their vehicles to fetch their personally owned firearms. Gross, a police officer with the Grifton Police Department in his home state of North Carolina, retrieved a bulletproof vest and a 9 mm pistol.[ Bridges pulled his .357 Magnum pistol from beneath the driver’s seat of his Chevy Tahoe. As Bridges later told the Richmond Times Dispatch, he was prepared to shoot to kill.

Bridges and Gross approached Odighizuwa from different angles, with Bridges yelling at Odighizuwa to drop his gun. Odighizuwa then dropped his firearm and was subdued by a third student, Ted Besen, who was unarmed. Once Odighizuwa was securely held down, Gross went back to his vehicle and retrieved handcuffs to detain Odighizuwa until police could arrive.

Police reports later noted that two empty eight round magazines belonging to Odighizuwa’s handgun were recovered. When Odighizuwa dropped his gun, it still had a magazine holding three rounds of ammunition within it.

Contrast this story with the one at Virginia Tech which has a “gun free zone”. No one was armed and able to fight back.

In the Virginia Tech case, the first killing was two hours before the mass slaughter. Where were the police? Why weren’t they sweeping the school looking for the killer? Why didn’t they lock down the school?

The police can’t protect you. They can only clean up the bodies. This is why you should have the right to bear arms. Not everyone wants to carry a gun, but as long as some people do, there’s a chance they can stop a killer like this if they are caught in the same situation.

So, over the past 48 hours I have switched my stance on gun control…I think.  i will let you guys be the litmus test as to which side I stand on.

So, after thinking a little bit on gun control, I realized that it is impossible to abolish guns in the US.  To remove the right to bear arms, guns will simply go underground.  I firmly believe that a war on guns would be about as successful as the war on drugs.

So, like the atomic bomb in modern warfare, guns are here to stay.  No one wants to disarm in fear of giving the other an advantage.  The only way to abolish guns, would be to disinvent them.

But I do feel that two week waiting periods are very important.  I also think that you should need a license to carry any gun.  And to get that license, you should have to go to a class of some sort. The process to be able to carry a gun should be more like the process of getting a drivers license rather than just buying a knife.

I also think that fully automatic weapons, armor piercing bullets, grenade launchers and silencers should be unilaterally illegal.

However, if you take the class and get a permit, you should be able to carry what ever gun does not fall into the above category.

So, I guess here are elements of both pro/anti gun control in my stance. Like most things, the more I think on a subject, the more moderate I get.

Now, here is my question for handgun owners on this board.  Is what I listed above the current process? 

I know it varies from state to state, but did you need to take a class and get a permit for your guns?

Can one get a hunting rifle the same day without any permit?
Do you think these rules, (waiting period, licensing, restriction of certain guns and ammo)are effective?

Do you see any serious flaws with our current gun control laws?

THanks for you help folks.  This is an issue I am trying to catch up on and most web resources are so extreme in their views that I don’t trust them.

Posted by  on  04/18  at  05:35 AM

I live near where both incidents occurred.

There is another incident that took place near here shortly after Columbine. This incident was not highly reported.

A student walked into a high school class in McDowell County, WV with loaded guns and began firing. Before anyone could be seriously injured, several of the boys in the class rushed the assailant, disarmed him and, well, literally beat the crap out of him. When asked why they fought back, the boys said “Well, we figured he was gonna kill us anyway so we’d hurt him before he killed all of us.”

Last summer, in Logan County, WV, an armed assailant took hostages in a Rite Aid pharmacy. Again, the assailant was stopped when the people in the store fought back. And again, the assailant was beaten badly.

No lives were lost in either case.

When did we stop fighting back? When did we allow others to take control of our lives?

Posted by joy  on  04/18  at  05:59 AM

(NC, and I believe VA also)

Is what I listed above the current process?
No.

I know it varies from state to state, but did you need to take a class and get a permit for your guns?
Not for rifles or shotguns, but you need a permit for a handgun, and a class to conceal carry, though you can open carry without one.

Can one get a hunting rifle the same day without any permit?
Yes.

Do you think these rules, (waiting period, licensing, restriction of certain guns and ammo) are effective?
No more than the drug laws.  All drugs should be made available free from pharmacies. This would get rid of all the related crime and be much cheaper than trying to enforce such which will never work in a more or less free country.

Do you see any serious flaws with our current gun control laws?
They aren’t worth the paper they are printed on, just like the drug laws.

Posted by  on  04/18  at  06:04 AM

“All drugs should be made available free from pharmacies.”

We cant tax ‘em if they are free.

Posted by  on  04/18  at  06:21 AM

T,

I don’t like restrictions simply because we went along fine without them for 200 years. It’s only in the last 30 a lot of these restrictions and bans have gone down.

I think the waiting period isn’t bad, just annoying. It also didn’t stop Cho Seung-Hui from killing people, he bought is guns and waited like everyone else. It might be good for hotshots, but of they are that emotional, they’d blow up at some other time, so I don’t think it’s all that effective. And I really hate the government restricting me in any way, if I haven’t done anything to deserve it.

The problem with licenses is, criminals aren’t going to get one. Licenses allow the cops to trace a gun to the owner. There is already a paper trail if you buy a gun from a store.

But I’m glad you’ve come around to realizing th futility of gun control. As I have said for years, drug control hasn’t stopped people from illegally using drugs. Prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  04/18  at  07:17 AM

Joy,

I think the answer is, since the post feminist period where they tried to neuter men. There has been this effort to basically attack maleness at every turn. Some of us aren’t effected by it, but the younger generations are brainwashed from birth.

Men are naturally aggressive and in an attempt to try to neutralize those instincts we become a society of wimps.

Feminism went way too far, but I’m sure the pendulum will swing back at some point. Mother nature isn’t a feminist. And she can’t be denied.

Posted by James Hudnall  on  04/18  at  07:23 AM

I don’t know, Hud. That may be part of it, but I think there’s more going on than just that. I was raised in a very traditional setting, albeit one where women were just as tough as men, especially when it came to survival.

I can’t help but think a good part of this is that our current society has done a great disservice to its children through almost a century of socialistic nanny-ocracy. We have forgotten how to survive and we’ve forgotten to teach our children to survive.

Posted by joy  on  04/18  at  07:48 AM

There’s that, too. Yes.

I agree.

Posted by  on  04/18  at  08:24 AM

A friend’s son is at college, another friend of his visited campus and left a 3” pocket knife there by mistake.  He was “caught” with that in his dorm room and was raked over the coals for it.  This kid is an Eagle Scout, certainly knows safe handling and purposes of a knife, and the knife wasn’t even his, but he had a whole inquisition about this “dangerous weapon” in his possession.  It was taken away and he was put on suspension or something. Totally ridiculous.  Now it was not at Virginia Tech, but I’m sure most campuses have similar rules and procedures.  The Eagle Scout can’t have a pocket knife for fear of suspension, but the psychopath who clearly exhibited signs of being dangerously disturbed does not get suspended.  It’s a strange world.

Posted by Laurie  on  04/18  at  06:53 PM

Now to answer Testify’s questions:

-I know it varies from state to state, but did you need to take a class and get a permit for your guns?
In NY you have to get a permit for handguns which is a long drawn out process. Demonstrating need, purpose, along with notarized character statements, background checks and a Judge must approve it all. It takes at least 6 months.  Oh, and not to mention a hefty fee to all the various governmental agencies along the way.

-Can one get a hunting rifle the same day without any permit?
In NY you do not need a permit for rifles or shotguns.

-Do you think these rules, (waiting period, licensing, restriction of certain guns and ammo)are effective?
Some of these rules are not a bad thing.  However, it is not the answer to ending all senseless violence, because as it has been demonstrated time and again…. these rules do not apply to criminals, only law abiding citizens.

-Do you see any serious flaws with our current gun control laws?
Yes, mainly the fact that the people you do not have to worry about becoming a problem are the ones that are restricted, while the criminals are not.  But it is not only the gun control laws you have to look at, it is the enforcement of already existing laws.  Do you know how much crap legislation is introduced all the time in NY trying to restrict this or that, when it is already illegal?  There are so many knee jerk reactions, calls for banning “automatic weapons” that have already been illegal for years.  And the fact is most of them don’t know the difference between one kind and another.  It drives my nutty listening to the political rhetoric.

Posted by Laurie  on  04/18  at  07:08 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages

<< Back to main