Opinion of Obama's gun speech today

[Slander and/or Libel]

Whenever I hear about "responsible gun owners," I think about all of the people killed in accidental discharges, or killed when a kid gets hold of an unsecured gun. There are lots of those incidents, but not many when viewed as a percentage of the number of guns in the country. But for every time an accidental discharge kills someone, there have to be many, many times when an accidental discharge injures someone or misses altogether. For every time a kid gets his hands on an unsecured gun and kills himself or someone else, there have to be countless other times when kids get their hands on unsecured guns and don't manage to kill people.

We don't have statistics on this. We can't. But I'd bet that a whole lot less gun owners fit any reasonable definition of "responsible" than we should be comfortable with.

[Slander and/or Libel]

The mass shootings obscure the real problem with our overly lax gun laws.  I'm more concerned about the 99% of gun deaths that happen one or two at a time than I am with spree shootings that make the news.  Curbing even 5% of the non-spree gun deaths would save far more lives than if we were able to entirely eliminate spree shootings.

Since you're up on the topic of mass shootings, I assume, could the Sandy Hook shooter's mom buy a gun under the new proposed gun regs?  (not rhetorical)

I assume the regs don't let dead people buy guns.

[Slander and/or Libel]

The mass shootings obscure the real problem with our overly lax gun laws.  I'm more concerned about the 99% of gun deaths that happen one or two at a time than I am with spree shootings that make the news.  Curbing even 5% of the non-spree gun deaths would save far more lives than if we were able to entirely eliminate spree shootings.

Since you're up on the topic of mass shootings, I assume, could the Sandy Hook shooter's mom buy a gun under the new proposed gun regs?  (not rhetorical)

I assume the regs don't let dead people buy guns.

Skirting the issue, eh?  That means she probably could have purchased the weapons used had these new restrictions been in place pre-Sandy Hook.  Thanks, Figgy!

Glad to see you're taking my snarky comment as somehow authoritative on the subject of an executive order I haven't yet read in whole or in part.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I find it interesting when people who have never been around guns talk about them.  Such as your training comments Torie.  Gun culture is all about training and safety.  Never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill.  Assume all guns are loaded.  Before you shoot know what is behind you. 

Yes, this is what gun culture is supposed to be about. That doesn't stop us from reading headline after headline after headline about kids getting hold of guns, people accidentally discharging weapons they forgot to check, etc.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I find it interesting when people who have never been around guns talk about them.  Such as your training comments Torie.  Gun culture is all about training and safety.  Never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill.  Assume all guns are loaded.  Before you shoot know what is behind you. 

Yes, this is what gun culture is supposed to be about. That doesn't stop us from reading headline after headline after headline about kids getting hold of guns, people accidentally discharging weapons they forgot to check, etc.

People are going to be idiots, the same things that happen with cars or alcohol.  But the problem is trying to take those anecdotal stories as the reality. 

Those stories are certainly reality. Representative? Probably not. But they're absolutely real.

And remember, for every time we hear about somebody accidentally killing someone or a kid getting hold of an unsecured gun and shooting himself with it, there are bound to be countless examples of the same thing happening that we don't hear about because nobody died. My wife has a friend who almost killed himself cleaning a weapon he thought wasn't loaded. We didn't hear about it because he didn't kill himself. Anecdote, yes, but once again, it only stands to reason that there are several orders of magnitude more incidents of irresponsibility than we hear about in the news.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I find it interesting when people who have never been around guns talk about them.  Such as your training comments Torie.  Gun culture is all about training and safety.  Never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill.  Assume all guns are loaded.  Before you shoot know what is behind you. 

Yes, this is what gun culture is supposed to be about. That doesn't stop us from reading headline after headline after headline about kids getting hold of guns, people accidentally discharging weapons they forgot to check, etc.

People are going to be idiots, the same things that happen with cars or alcohol.  But the problem is trying to take those anecdotal stories as the reality. 

Those stories are certainly reality. Representative? Probably not. But they're absolutely real.

And remember, for every time we hear about somebody accidentally killing someone or a kid getting hold of an unsecured gun and shooting himself with it, there are bound to be countless examples of the same thing happening that we don't hear about because nobody died. My wife has a friend who almost killed himself cleaning a weapon he thought wasn't loaded. We didn't hear about it because he didn't kill himself. Anecdote, yes, but once again, it only stands to reason that there are several orders of magnitude more incidents of irresponsibility than we hear about in the news.

That is a perfect example of a person NOT following the basic rules of gun safety.  You never assume a gun is unloaded.  First time someone hands me a gun or I pick one up you work the action to unload it. 

Yes. I understand this. Nothing I said contradicts that. I'm saying that just asserting that gun culture is all about gun safety doesn't mean that everybody handling a gun, or owning a gun, is at all times following that to the letter.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I don't have a problem with making clear that gun shows and other dealers have to conduct background checks.  Probably won't make much difference, but it's possible it could save some lives without a huge downside and in that case it'd be worth it (though I do think even those who have committed crimes have some right to self-defense, particularly if it was nonviolent).     What I do have a problem with is the way these background checks have been expanded to those who have not committed any crimes or shown any propensity for violence due to their receiving certain services - this has been the case for a while with mental health services at the VA, and now it is being expanded to those who Social Security has determined are not able to manage their finances on their own.  The stigmatization and establishment of an incentive not to seek help is very troubling.  I don't know why this hasn't gotten more play.

This is actually quite a good point, and encapsulates a lot of the trouble I have with the "the problem is really about mental health" crowd. What exactly would people do about mental health that wouldn't further stigmatize mental illness and disincentivize seeking help?

[Slander and/or Libel]

Yes, obviously selling to a friend should require a background check, and it should require liability on the part of the seller if the friend would have failed the background check and goes on to do something terrible with the gun. Why should "But he was my buddy!" be a way to get out of basic responsibility about who can get their hands on guns? That seems like a loophole you could drive a truck through.