Clearly, the law should be repealed.

Thanks for the assist.

Here’s the issue. Imagine if someone began a discussion regarding mothers’ rights, proposing very specific reforms that would have a big (negative) effect on mothers. Worse still, it becomes obvious that the person does not merely disagree with you on the best way to do positive things for mothers, but that they don’t have command of the most basic facts. They operate from a position of such ignorance that you spend your time trying to get them to understand that they are making proposals that will affect a great many people on the basis of flat out wrong information.

That is what happened, Jason. Pompous fools and actual abusers flooded into the legislatures of every single state and the feds as well and stood up saying just anything and they had the floor and they got respect and they got legislation all over the place that put mothers and children in danger and got a lot of mothers and children KILLED and I saw it go down. They knew NOTHING. meanwhile the Public Health Service was riding me all over the mid-Atlantic States to talk to providers about issues they wanted to know about and I would do a three-day conference in which I spent 19 hours of every single day WITH FOLKS doing either workshops, private debriefings or planning sessions, focus groups you name it and it all came to nothing because those folks were doctors, nurses, psychologists, cops, teachers, day-care operators and social workers and they were doing work, not wielding influence, and they were without funds and power to get stuff done in Congress or any of the state legislatures OR the military or even the Public Health Service itself. So I feel perfectly fine taking the liberty to express my opinions where I think my opinion can add something positive to the mix and anyone who opposes it can come in and testify to whatever they want when my three minutes are up.

If I were to discuss with you the three issues you cited, issues that I know relatively little about, my half of the dialogue would mostly be questions rather than game changing proposals. That’s not what happens on the gun issue. People like myself spend a great deal of time trying to talk about the serious part of the issue while swatting down:

Well I’m not trying to take away from you any of the excellent testimony you want to give or the absolutely correct opinion you want to express. I know a little something about a little something and as ignorant as you think I am, maybe a lawmaker SHOULD hear that I think it inappropriate that a George Zimmerman was able to legally tote around a gun filled with hollow-point bullets AFTER he had done enough wrong in the public world to be coming up on the radar screen with a big OOPS on his name. Maybe I think there should BE some attention paid to policy-making that addresses the issue of the Zimmerman Factor with respect to deadly but casual weapons because as wonderful as the policy is that supported Zimmerman in his possession and use of that hollow-point bullet, it is a little less wonderful in effect on the still-beating hearts of Trayvon Martin’s parents.
xxx

*They aren’t “clips”, they are magazines.

This makes a big difference in determining what is a rational policy for the arming or regulation of Americans?

*”Assault weapon” is a made up term while “assault rifle” means something specific and is not the type of gun that is being used in these mass attacks.

So what prevents a munitions expert from informing the committee (whichever committee hears the public concerns expressed) on that technical information? Why does Malisha have to know that in order for Malisha to express her concerns?

*Legally owned machine guns, aka fully automatic guns, are not being used in these attacks, are strictly regulated, and have been used in something like two crimes in over 60 years.

So I have the “naming of parts” wrong so because I called something a machine gun instead of whatever the hell it was those 20 or those 35 or those 14 people are not really dead? Who cares what nomenclature I butchered if I am expressing a concern that can be understood? Ever see the comedy routine of Lenny Bruce where he asks, “Have you ever blah-ed a blah blah?”

*The guns being used in these crimes aren’t “high powered” (in some states you aren’t allowed to hunt deer with .223 or 5.56 because it is considered not powerful enough).

OK. Other than showing me how much I don’t know about guns, why would that mean to my elected official that my opinion about the craziness of the GUN CULTURE is invalid?

*The type of guns being used in these crimes are used in less than 5% of all gun murders; more people are murdered with bare hands.

It may surprise you to learn that I have testified in cases that have to do with the murder-by-bare-hands issue, Jason. Many many times. The murder of the adopted child in New York by Joel Steinberg, for instance. And probably three dozen more like it. I have been all over the country on Greyhound buses speaking to policy-makers about safety from those who are obviously being empowered BY OUR GOVERNMENT to kill with their bare hands. I think it’s one of the biggest problems we face and I have never been silent about it.

*Hollow points have a safety purpose, and whether you carry a gun or not, you should want everyone, police or civilian, to use them.

Please don’t tell me what I should want. I do NOT want everyone, “police or civilian,” to use them. YOU can go testify that YOU want everyone, “police and civilian,” to use them, OK? If I try to convince a legislator that they shouldn’t be used and you go and convince that same legislator that they should, you and I have both done our work as citizens. Don’t restrict yourself and don’t instruct me on where I stand on that issue.

*Things are not worse than they’ve ever been. Gun homicides have been in free fall for twenty years; the gun murder rate is the lowest it’s been since 1963 and the raw number of gun murders is at its lowest since 1968, despite there being 111 million more people.

I am not satisfied with the gun murder rate here, now. Not at all. If it had dropped another percentage point the day before Trayvon Martin was killed, and that statistic had prevented his murder, well, that would impress me. But as it is now, that statistic leaves me very cold indeed.

And on and on and on.
I’ll go with this, Jason. You can go on and on and on, and I can, and we would be on two different sides, respectfully, on this issue. You might know a lot more about the particular guns and the particular uses and you might even know more about the social engineering (I don’t know) but you wouldn’t know more about what my reasoning is until after you heard my views. And I don’t need a certain degree before I’m going to feel free to express them.

The result is the extremists on the issue dig in and no one from either side addresses the disease, just symptoms. Go after types of guns/give teachers guns, high capacity magazines/video games, etc.

At no time at all did I ever suggest, nor would I ever suggest, that there is only one way to address any of our problems and although I don’t consider myself an extremist (because I can see various sides of lots of issues), if I fit into that category in some respect that is also OK because I’m not killing anybody about my extreme views; I’m just expressing them, and trying to persuade folks to my views.

We hear no discussion from policy makers about ending the drug war, which probably drives more crime of all types than any single factor.

I have in fact lectured on this very topic although it is not my forte. I have said that the operations of the drug war have become a war on the poor, on mothers and children, and on the most vulnerable. I have woven that very issue into probably 100 different presentations. And get this: I don’t know heroin from Ecstasy. So there’s another example where someone could come in and say “Malisha is profoundly ignorant and should not be allowed to express her position on the drug war.”

We hear no talk about a public education system that punishes kids for being born to poor parents in an area with shitty property values.

I have not only spoken on this issue, written on this issue, and worked hard on this issue since 1992, but I have used my time and money to write, produce and direct plays that are performed in inner INNER INNER city schools to improve education and understanding — at the grassroots level — of the meaning of the life interest and the history of our nation and our US Supreme Court with respect to the life interest. And as an example, a student who played Dred Scott in my play in Merritt Elementary in Washington DC went on to graduate on full scholarship from the most exclusive and expensive private high school in DC and went on, again on full scholarship, to Harvard. His parents were both in prison when he starred in his first performance as Dred Scott and he workshopped the part like a pro.

We don’t hear about a penal system that puts non-violent offenders behind bars for extended stays but lets a man who beat his grandmother to death with a hammer out after 17 years.

I’ve been there too. I have written clemency petitions for innocent men on death row who have now already been killed. I have written to parole boards and to wardens and to legislators and I have visited prisoners and sent cards and money into jails and prisons and accepted collect calls. And I have done research that has been incorporated into amicus briefs on plenty of these issues and I am on a list-serve called Patrick Crusade that deals with all of this as well. I have blogged about it extensively.

We already know what inane crap is coming from the NRA, and I guarantee you we won’t hear anything deeper from the Biden Commission (or whatever it’s called).

I agree with you 100%.

And it’s not as if there are no gun specific policy changes that could help. Why aren’t we putting enforcement emphasis on illegal gun sales? On straw purchases? On gun theft? These are the means criminals use to get guns. If we put the same resources busting illegal gun dealers we put into going after pot dealers that we do on , there might actually be an impact.

I agree with you 100% here too. I was discussing these things today with my son, who owns guns. I asked him if he wanted to grab a screen name and blog in here and he said he would if I wanted him to, but then I dropped it because it’s not about what I want. I can speak for myself. If he wanted to he would do it without asking for my vote.

So that’s where I’m coming from, Jason. I appreciate your rant. I said either upthread here or somewhere else that one purpose of legislation is simply to speak to the people about what is the society’s expectation, what is the society’s belief, the society’s approval and disapproval. I used the example of one of the Scandinavian countries where spanking was declared illegal. There was no punishment provided for spanking; it was simply forbidden. So the society was saying: “We do not approve of grown-ups hitting children.” It was not saying, “We will punish grown-ups who hit children.” But it was a very important and valuable thing.

If perhaps there were enough meaningful regulation of guns that people who bought them were given to understand what a heavy responsibility they carried when they carried, if the laws actually said, “this kind of behavior is respectable and that kind of behavior is NOT,” if a guy who witnessed an armed man shoot an unarmed kid registered by his word and deed an intense feeling of horror and condemnation instead of a chatty “Hey what kinda bullets didja use to bag that guy?” demeanor, we would have taken a step — perhaps a baby step, but whatever — toward getting control of something that is presently out of control in a very negative way. And who knows? If George Zimmerman thought he would LOSE people’s respect if they knew he carried a loaded gun, rather than GAINING their respect, would that evening had come out differently?

I don’t know. But it’s worth discussing. And I’m worth discussing it.

Malisha-
I agree with all of that. Here’s the issue. Imagine if someone began a discussion regarding mothers’ rights, proposing very specific reforms that would have a big (negative) effect on mothers. Worse still, it becomes obvious that the person does not merely disagree with you on the best way to do positive things for mothers, but that they don’t have command of the most basic facts. They operate from a position of such ignorance that you spend your time trying to get them to understand that they are making proposals that will affect a great many people on the basis of flat out wrong information.

If I were to discuss with you the three issues you cited, issues that I know relatively little about, my half of the dialogue would mostly be questions rather than game changing proposals. That’s not what happens on the gun issue. People like myself spend a great deal of time trying to talk about the serious part of the issue while swatting down:

*They aren’t “clips”, they are magazines.
*”Assault weapon” is a made up term while “assault rifle” means something specific and is not the type of gun that is being used in these mass attacks.
*Legally owned machine guns, aka fully automatic guns, are not being used in these attacks, are strictly regulated, and have been used in something like two crimes in over 60 years.
*The guns being used in these crimes aren’t “high powered” (in some states you aren’t allowed to hunt deer with .223 or 5.56 because it is considered not powerful enough).
*The type of guns being used in these crimes are used in less than 5% of all gun murders; more people are murdered with bare hands.
*Hollow points have a safety purpose, and whether you carry a gun or not, you should want everyone, police or civilian, to use them.
*Things are not worse than they’ve ever been. Gun homicides have been in free fall for twenty years; the gun murder rate is the lowest it’s been since 1963 and the raw number of gun murders is at its lowest since 1968, despite there being 111 million more people.

And on and on and on.

The result is the extremists on the issue dig in and no one from either side addresses the disease, just symptoms. Go after types of guns/give teachers guns, high capacity magazines/video games, etc. We hear no discussion from policy makers about ending the drug war, which probably drives more crime of all types than any single factor. We hear no talk about a public education system that punishes kids for being born to poor parents in an area with shitty property values. We don’t hear about a penal system that puts non-violent offenders behind bars for extended stays but lets a man who beat his grandmother to death with a hammer out after 17 years. We already know what inane crap is coming from the NRA, and I guarantee you we won’t hear anything deeper from the Biden Commission (or whatever it’s called).

And it’s not as if there are no gun specific policy changes that could help. Why aren’t we putting enforcement emphasis on illegal gun sales? On straw purchases? On gun theft? These are the means criminals use to get guns. If we put the same resources busting illegal gun dealers
\we put into going after pot dealers that we do on , there might actually be an impact.

Anyway, I told my kid I would ask my legislators to promote more and better gun control and he actually agreed with me. He says guns should be controlled more than cars and there should be laws in place to deal with operator standards. He does not have or want a CCW license. He says he might agree or disagree with me about hollow-point bullets but would like to know more about what’s influencing my thinking.

See, that’s how I think a society should go about figuring out how it wants to govern itself. You’d listen to people like me (intelligent but not infallible) speak about things I have no expertise in (hollow-point bullets) and things I do have expertise in (the details of the evidence released so far in the Trayvon Martin killing) and things I actually have lots and LOTS of expertise in (mothers’ rights, child welfare and the public health system, and the vicissitudes of the state social services agencies in the US) and you’d make decisions, often tough ones, sometimes flawed ones, after such listening.

And you’d hope that the mistakes would be few and would not lead to horrible irreversible tragedies such as the death of Trayvon Martin.

You say “they didn’t see their government as their enemy”. I think by 1933 they had clue.
At what point should they have gotten together and decided to shoot and at whom should they have decided to shoot? Armchair theorizing is all well and good but visualize yourself with your neighbors, some of whom will agree with you to become violent and assertive/maybe aggressive, some who will not, and a few of whom might be nazi sympathizers or informers.
Seeing the government as the enemy, when their neighbors were often also the enemy, makes it hard to figure out if and when you should pick up a weapon.

Be one person when you think about what you “should have done” had you been one Jew in Germany in 1933. Should you have stockpiled weapons and begin attending military training in the neighbor’s basement? Or should you have participated in the political process that was needed to reverse the wrongful things that had taken place. Well, how do you decide? FIrst of all, who ARE you? If you’re the daughter of a man who served in the German Army in WWI, for instance, you might decide to go into some military training. So you perhaps ask your dad for one or more of his guns. He doesn’t go along with your idea and calls you paranoid. Then…then, actually, blah blah blah. And this blah blah blah is part of the human life and daily experience of each and every “one person” in that situation in 1933. Einstein’s relatives. The unknown Mrs. Goldman’s relatives too. Some of Vladimir Nabokov’s relatives, obviously. None of them being able to imagine what actually took place. None of them thinking they had to second-guess their own Jewish leadership. None of them imagining that Jews in other countries all over Europe and all over the world would be unable to convince their OWN governments to make credible threats to Germany’s renegade “government” to deter it from destroying a well integrated minority within their borders.

None of this is in the least way analogous to the decision of an American living in the suburbs to purchase, use, and supply with magazines filled with 30 bullets each a semiautomatic that can kill 20 children in a few minutes’ time. It has, in fact, nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

Five and a half million Jews (conservative estimate) and about ten million other people lost their lives in WWII in situations that people now liberally misinterpret to bolster their arguments about policies that are inapposite to what took place during Shoah. It is as if Shoah has become a useful all-purpose Hallmark Card example (“The Jews should have…”) of how to substantiate any kind of hostile, blustering, self-aggrandizing example of what any particular self-appointed super-hero feels should be his thrilling self-defensive invulnerability. Even the TV guys who go in with guns blazing can be shot in the head from behind; happens every day. And no particular number of well-armed Jews in Europe could have done more than what various particular numbers of well-armed Jews of Europe DID DO. Ever hear of the underground? It prevented a world disgrace from being a worse world disgrace, and it wasn’t easy. And it was an integrated underground. So what the Jews should have done, Jews AND OTHERS actually did. More people should have helped them do it.

If NBC’s lawyers tell any NBC employees to not speak with the police, that would run afoul of the conflict of interest rules of professional conduct, seeing that their client is NBC, not its employees.

NBC is of course free to refer inquiring employees to other lawyers for advice, and even to pay such lawyers so long as the employees get to choose any lawyer they wish.

“Meet the Press” host David Gregory is in hot water after brandishing a 30-round magazine for an assault rifle on national TV last Sunday while interviewing NRA head Wayne LaPierre, apparently unaware that the District of Columbia, where he filmed the segment, bans such equipment. Other journalists have scoffed at the controversy and even the NRA has dismissed it as “silly”, but D.C. police are apparently taking the matter seriously, saying they are investigating the incident.

“I really think what David Gregory did while he was inadvertently flouting the law was illustrating in a very graphic, perhaps not intentionally, but in a graphic way just how silly some of these laws are,” NRA President David Keene said yesterday. We don’t often say this, but the NRA is absolutely right.

The Gregory case incident highlights the problem with the country’s gun laws, a patchwork of state, local and federal regulations that make it almost impossible for a jurisdictions that wants to enact stricter regulations to do so with any kind of effectiveness.

Gun advocates often point to crime rates in Chicago, Washington and New York City — which have some of the country’s most robust gun control laws — as evidence that gun restrictions don’t work to deter crime. But the problem is that, in the absence of a robust national law like the Assault Weapons Ban, it’s incredibly easy for someone to simply go to the next jurisdiction over to buy a gun or ammunition banned in their hometown.

While it would have been impossible for Gregory and his staff to purchase the magazine he used in the District of Columbia, they could have easily visited one of the many stores ringing the city in its Virginia or Maryland suburbs, all within just a few miles of their studio. Or you can simply order high capacity magazines like the one Gregory used on eBay or off a dozen other websites.

“Don’t wave Chicago because where are Chicago’s guns coming from? We trace the weapons that come into my city. They’re not coming from [Chicago],” Newark Mayor Cory Booker said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday after Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan raised this exact point. “They’re coming from places that have free secondary markets where criminals and gun runners can easily buy weapons and pump them into community like mine, where it is easy for a person who is a criminal to get their hand on a gun.”

And as Gregory’s predicament demonstrates, the laws are so weak that you don’t even have to be some kind of master criminal bent on breaking the law to do so. The problem is that it’s so easy to flout them, that Gregory and his team at “Meet the Press” may have done. He was just unfortunate enough to display it on national TV, something most people will never do with their illegal guns.

Please don’t mistake discussion about selecting a tool and the best way to use it with a desire to kill or a cavalier attitude toward life. I know that people who kill in self defense, rare as it is, usually suffer emotional scars for the rest of their lives. I don’t think I would be any different, particularly if it was a relatively young person who might still have time to get his life back on track. Thankfully, the odds are excellent that my gun will never put holes in anything other than paper, and that is comforting. But the stakes are too great to not plan for this unlikely event (and you get a fun hobby out of it as a side effect). We all take many precautions for events that are unlikely to happen.

The police will be wasting their time to seek a prosecution so long as those at NBC refuse to talk with the police and so long as the magazine is not recovered. Of course, nobody at NBC may advise anyone not to talk, lest the adviser get charged with obstruction of justice.

Unless the police recover the magazine displayed by Gregory, who is to know whether this was but a replica magazine that cannot even hold bullets, thus falling outside the DC criminal law’s magazine definition.

Be well.

We had two (2) such incidents in the past year here in our county. Both involved elderly gentlemen in their 80s versus twenty-something methhead home invaders. Both homeowners were armed with 12 gauge shotguns.

In the first instance, the home invader tried to attack the octogenarian homeowner only to be met with a single round of buckshot to the middle of his chest, with the inevitable result.

The second incident is much more interesting, in that the home invader lived to tell the tale, not that he will want to. The older of my two daughters is handicapped and fell. She was taken to the local Level I trauma ER by ambulance, and called me to tell me where she was. While on the phone, she said she did not know what was going on, but the corridor outside her exam room was full of police officers, and somebody in the exam room next door was hollering a lot. There was a long pause, and then she said, “Oh. My. God.” Seems a nurse came out into the corridor to show the police Lieutenant a major piece of evidence. Nurse was holding up a pair of trousers covered with blood, and with the whole crotch missing. Seems the elderly homeowner took care of the Darwin Award matter by removing the guy from the gene pool without killing him.

Wow. It’s something you’d think every old woman would have learned long ago.

All of this is academic for the time being. I don’t have an AR and now is the worst time to buy. So my carry gun doubles as my HD gun.

I support rational gun control; I believe that includes not only either banning hollow-point bullets or making it so hard to get them that only those people who have a real, non-paranoid need for them can get them, and then have to report on their use, that is what I will back and support and advocate. I will write to my elected officials and speak about that. If they have arguments they believe are important to show me that my position should change, or if they vote in a way other than I advocate and they want to write to me to explain why they did so (and that has happened in several cases already), fine, but not one of them is going to try to tell me, “Malisha, you’re no weapons expert and you don’t know how to kill anybody so stop telling me what you think is right and wrong.” See, and neither are you. Here’s what I think about your strenuous defense of your strong attachment to hollow-point bullets: Ugh, creepy.

A hollow-point was undoubtedly the best way to kill a kid in a residential neighborhood on a drizzly evening on 2/26/2012 in Sanford? You can probably prove to me that yes, it was indeed the best way to kill that kid in that neighborhood that night. Indeed, the gunman (who undoubtedly knew more than me about hollow-point bullets) chatted with a neighbor after the fact, about what kind of bullet he used to “bring down” his dangerous assailant/alias “the kid.” So these two upstanding citizens knew a lot more about hollow-point bullets than I know, so their superior knowledge should win the day, right?

One of them is a gunman, a killer, and an accused murderer. The other is, I believe, a witness who changed his story three times and has yet to be placed under oath to try to explain himself. They know a lot about those bullets, even chit-chatted about them over the bleeding corpse of “the suspect” who had done no threatening of anyone, and who is still being preached against as if he was the devil incarnate by the likes of BarkinDog and various others who value their weapons more than the remnants of their social responsibility.

So I say get used to ignorant people like me telling you what I think of your need for hollow-point bullets. If you think my ignorance of the killing technology should dissuade me from expressing myself at least this well or, I hope, much better, think again. I’ll take my ignorance, see you your macho know-more intimate knowledge of bullets and raise you 25 I.Q. points, and yes I will express my opinion that our citizenry can damn well do without hollow-point bullets even if it makes folks like you and Fabien really really mad.

Do I think “sensible gun control” and limitations on the use and ownership of hollow-point bullets will win in this political, social, and economic climate? Frankly, no I do not. I think the gun-ho-gung-and-dung-gang has a lot more voting power than the “cease fire” crowd any day. Fortunately, I won’t live long enough to see where all this ends up in another 40 years because it’s already so nauseating to me that I over-use some generic medications. But I will certainly express my ignorant and emotional opinions at every opportunity and blog them whenever I feel like it.

I have noticed that weaponry really attracts a certain kind of pre-insulted, pre-assaulted, overly defensive types. I think Zimmerman was one. I’m not speculating on how he got that way but I have seen him do what would be a parody of that kind of person if there was a really good, subtle comedy writer behind his rap. That case has a lot to tell us about our culture, and even more to tell us about how we have responded to it, and it is the case that keeps on giving.

If Zimmerman didn’t have a hollow-point bullet in that gun, it might have been a very interesting, uplifting heart transplant story, the kind they show on made-for-TV movies. Instead, the narrative of our descent.

what in FL might be called a cougar.
======================================================

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cougars

the large wild cats are called florida panthers. there is also a hockey team named “the florida panthers”, it may be possible they are as endangered as the cat but i doubt it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_panther

OK, here goes. “You have already determined that it was GZ that turned it into combat???”

Yes, I have come to the conclusion that it was GZ who turned “it” [which was actually "nothing" before it became combat] into combat. Here is my reason: George noticed Trayvon, according to his NEN call. Shortly after noticing Trayvon he said, among other things: “These a55holes, they always get away”; and “F*cking punks” [according to his own admission, although "F*cking coons" is also a possible interpretation of his exasperated expletive expression]; and “he looks like he’s up to no good”; and “He looks like he’s on drugs or something”; and “Sh*t, he’s running”; and “there’s a real suspicious guy.” These comments show animus on George’s part, against Trayvon. Yet when he is asked what is so suspicious about Trayvon, he gives, over the course of several days, various explanations that are at best vague and foolish. Essentially, what happened was that George saw Trayvon and didn’t like him. At the same time, George told the dispatcher twice that Trayvon had fled from him, after noticing him watching. So I naturally assume that if George is telling NEN the truth, he sees Trayvon, Trayvon sees him, and Trayvon runs away. Once George is out of his truck and following Trayvon, which he admits three times in the course of the next few days and then one more time on Hannity, the dispatcher asks if he is following Trayvon and he says, “Yeah.” At this point, he has shown malice and he has followed Trayvon. In return, Trayvon has seen him and run away. This places clearly in my mind the rebuttable presumption that George was the aggressor. When there is combat and one person is the aggressor and the other is not the aggressor, it is safe to assume that the one who has expressed animus and chased after the other is the aggressor. It is not rocket science, even for us ignorant, emotional girls.

Were you there????

No, and I didn’t need to be there to make the deductions and form the conclusions that I set forth above. I read George’s written statements in which he refers to Trayvon Martin as “the suspect” even though he was “the suspect” at the time that he was writing the statement, and Trayvon was “the deceased” or “the victim.” I listened to the NEN call and the interviews by Singleton, Serino, and both Singleton and Serino together. I watched the video re-enactment. I had sufficient data to come to my conclusions with the knowledge gained from these sources, analyzing them with my own intellect.

How do you know this????????

“We” do not know this, Fabien. “I” believe this to be true and “you” apparently do not or, at the least, do not want to. But I think if someone you did not know was following you in the dark and would not give you a good reason for doing so, and if they followed you first in a car and then on foot, when you were not doing anything to give them cause to want to accost you, you might very well feel threatened and even cornered. I will bet that if you were carrying, your gun would be out of the holster already as you defended your freedom.

We dnot know if TM swung on him or if GZ grabbed him and started the fight.

Actually, “We” do know. If I may take “we” to mean Detective Christopher Serino, Doris Singleton, most rational people, most people who care more about the rights of ordinary individuals to not get killed than the rights of wannabe-cop gunslingers to kill at will, and the forensic scientists who found no trace of Zimmerman’s DNA on Trayvon Martin’s hands, knuckles, shirt, hoodie sleeves or cuffs. To us, if Trayvon had “swung on” George, he would have connected, and if he connected, he would have carried away a wee bit of George’s DNA and/or blood, etc. in the process. Furthermore, “we” believe that even if he had “swung on George first,” it would have been in self-defense once he realized that George was intending to unlawfully restrain, harm or kill him, which would not have been a wild guess by the time the two were in contact.

Do you?????

Yes. I do, to the extent that this knowledge is now or ever will be in the future available to me, a jury, a judge, or anyone else. To the extent that this is a knowable thing, I “know” it. To the extent that this is NOT a knowable thing, it will never be known, but neither will it be known that any potential killer of any other potential person was the aggressor, in which case we should not bother to have these laws at all, and we should just admit that anybody who wants to kill anybody else, go for it. Everybody arm up and be prepared. If someone wants to kill you, you shoot first. And that, Fabien, is what Trayvon Martin could have done that night if he had been armed and of age to carry his weapon to the 7-11 and back. Is that where you want to live? Where you have to carry your sidearm to go to the corner store and you have to be ready to kill on the way home or be killed because someone who sees you doesn’t think YOU look right? Is that your vision of America? Oh — I mean: Is that your vision of America?????

Here’s what I know, Fabien: If you give a loaded gun to someone like George and he feels threatened, or he feels irritated, or he feels low, or high, or wrong, or wronged, or off, or resentful, or upset, or creeped out, or emotional, or insulted, or disrespected, or ignored, or dissed, or whatever, he might profile somebody, chase them down, and kill them, and then make up a bunch of stupid excuses which others who sometimes feel as he felt will support with all the energy they can muster.

I also know that our society can ill afford to let this become more common than it already is.

“I don’t know which kinds of guns are the perfect kinds of guns for which uses; that has never interested me”

If you have the honesty to admit that, please don’t follow it up with:

“You can stop an aggressor in your house or at your car with a BB gun, so why have overkill on your right hip when you go to the grocery store?”

Good god.

The WHO study shows that one can committ suicide without risk to others. Pill overdose is guaranteed not to harm others physically. Guns are not.

Gunshot wounds impact severely on the criminal justice as well as health care systems. Some basic statistics are important in understanding the magnitude and severity of the social and economic burden to the U.S. The subject remains contentious. (Glantz and Annas, 2009)

In the U.S. for 2010, there were 31,513 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 19,308; Homicide 11,015; Accident 600. This makes firearms injuries one of the top ten causes of death in the U.S. The number of firearms-related injuries in the U.S., both fatal and non-fatal, increased through 1993, declined to 1999, and has remained relatively constant since. However, firearms injuries remain a leading cause of death in the U.S., particularly among youth (CDC, 2001) (Sherry et al, 2012).

The rates of firearms deaths in the U.S. vary significantly by race and sex. The U.S. national average was 10.2 deaths per 100,000 population in 2009. The highest rate was 28.4/100,000 for African-American males, more than quadruple the rate of 6.3/100,000 for white males. (CDC, 2009)

The number of non-fatal injuries is considerable–over 200,000 per year in the U.S. Many of these injuries require hospitalization and trauma care. A 1994 study revealed the cost per injury requiring admission to a trauma center was over $14,000. The cumulative lifetime cost in 1985 for gunshot wounds was estimated to be $911 million, with $13.4 billion in lost productivity. (Mock et al, 1994) The cost of the improper use of firearms in Canada was estimated at $6.6 billion per year. (Chapdelaine and Maurice, 1996)

A study of firearm deaths in high income countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom (England and Wales), United Kingdom (Northern Ireland), United Kingdom (Scotland), and the United States) was conducted with data from the World Health Organization assembled by the WHO from the official national statistics of each individual country from 2003 (Richardson and Hemenway, 2011). The total population for the United States for 2003 was 290.8 million while the combined population for the other 22 countries was 563.5 million. There were 29,771 firearm deaths in the US and 7,653 firearm deaths in the 22 other countries. Of all the firearm deaths in these 23 high-income countries in 2003, 80% occurred in the US. In the US the overall firearm death rate was 10.2 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 4.1 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 6.0 per 100,000, with firearm homicide rates highest persons 15 to 24 years of age. For the US the overall suicide rate was 10.8 per 100,000, and slightly over half of these deaths were firearm suicide (5.8 per 100,000). Firearm suicides rates increased with age. In the other high income countries 2003 the overall firearm death rate was 1.4 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 0.2 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 0.9 per 100,000. Firearm homicide rates were highest in the 25 year old to 34 year old age group. The overal suicide rate was 14.9 per 100,000 with a overall firearm suicide rate of 1.0 per 100,000.

I’m sixty-six years old and have never felt the need to purchase a firearm–neither has my husband. No crazed individual has ever attacked either one of us. Neither have we been attacked by vicious predatory animals.

One of my husband’s childhood friends was killed by his brother when he was playing with a gun.

*****

Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study
American College of Epidemiology
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

Abstract
Data from a US mortality follow-back survey were analyzed to determine whether having a firearm in the home increases the risk of a violent death in the home and whether risk varies by storage practice, type of gun, or number of guns in the home. Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4). They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide, but risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death. The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). Persons with guns in the home were also more likely to have died from suicide committed with a firearm than from one committed by using a different method (adjusted odds ratio = 31.1, 95% confidence interval: 19.5, 49.6). Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.

Sounded like automatic fire to me. Legal?
Grandma in her first salvo got off at least two rounds pointed highet than the backstop.

Why do an oppressed people seek guns as comfort? Because they get screwed in the rest of their lives. And venting is healthier, but can train up insppropriate responses.

I don’t like asking for info from you as you seldom respond.
But my interest in the climate change’s effect on animal migration is a subject that I follow.

Your and Elaine’s dialogue were in her case enlivened by referrals to coyotes. Your’s notably to me, the large “kitty”, what in FL might be called a cougar. I think that we called them mountain lions in Raleigh. I have seen only tracks in AZ. But there in the Huachuca Mountains there was plenty of deer to keep them fed. He/she had used the same lookout point that I did later, deer hunting both of us.

So Elaine lives in Massachusetts. Which mountains do you live in? State?

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob93.html

Who am I to call for a ban of a commenter here, having passed so many lines.

However, this line should be considered for enforcing in the future.
People who call for “elimination, extinction, murder, or use of lethal force on others”, deter others from exercising their free speech. Neither groups nor persons or organizations should be subject to threats nor calls for violence.

I feel that Barkin’ Dog is but an analogue of all use of verbal intimidation from time immmemorable. With new examples from above, via the media, and from your government every day. Here the tyranny is oligarchal, but equally lethal to free speech.

Try reading Tony Morrisons speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Litterature for a better take. She is currently the latest American to receive the prize. Has science replaced our souls. I fear yes.

See Wiki if nothing else.

PS Violating one of my own rules again. Getting involved in a two-person fight.

NONE OF THE WEAPONS used by police are unregulated. Police are required to report every time they shoot their weapons. In fact, the weapons used by the military and the police are strictly regulated and we all know that and the soldiers and cops expect that, which is as it should be.

I don’t know which kinds of guns are the perfect kinds of guns for which uses; that has never interested me, much less obsessed me. So I’m one of those people that Fabien might think is negligent because I’m not arming myself so that I can protect my and his freedom. But that’s not the life I choose for myself; I am not a soldier and never hoped to be one. When you read a bit about the killing of Trayvon Martin, though, something becomes perfectly obvious: even if Zimmerman chose to profile him, chose to follow him, and chose to shoot him, he might have had a chance to survive if that bullet were not a hollow-point bullet. And about the chance of hitting an innocent bystander?

Trayvon Martin WAS an innocent by-stander.

It was only George Zimmerman who turned him into a combatant, by making him fight for his life, unsuccessfully. And why unsuccessfully? Because of the hollow-point bullet that was sold to a guy who did not have the good sense to check out the scene before assaulting a Law Enforcement Officer years before.

“A comment was made by idealist 707 that someone my loose their cool and nut up, that is true of law enforcement too. ”
Please go and read my comments again.

Just for the record after reading Elaine’s second source on the uprising in Warsaw, I begin to see some light in your reasoning. But if light arms, and assault rifles are light arms, what is the solution against martial force?

Bravery and suicide by military are neither a good choice.

BTW, have you tried smuggling in anti-tank weapons. A FA piece or some explosives. It would require defenses against gas. Have you bought and tested a mask yet?

Democracy, if we can recapture it is the only effective defense for us. And the only one that they will not attack now. Future? Who knows.

Your mother’s and family’s experiences are amirable. But without D-Day and the Americans, what would have been the ultimate outcome?

*****

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest gun advocates lobby, attributed the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to “school free zones,” arguing that “genuine monsters” are attracted to schools because its administrators and teachers are not armed. “Politicians pass laws for gun free school zones, they issue press releases bragging about them,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said. “And, in doing so, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre declared and urged Congress to “act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.” The lobby will create a “National School Shield Program” that will help schools respond to attacks, led by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR).

In a news conference repeatedly interrupted by protesters blaming the NRA for “killing our kids,” LaPierre shoveled out blame far and wide, going after reporters for glorifying killers like Adam Lanza, violent movies, video games, and music videos. He tore into gun safety advocates for exploiting the tragedy for “political gain,” targeted President Obama for underfunding police initiatives in schools, and said that the media demonized “local gun owners” and spread “misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next violence is a new cycle away.” “Add another hurricane, terrorist attack, or some other natural of man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization,” he said.

Only gun owners and gun lobbyists — who have spent years easing gun regulations across the country — were spared any responsibility.

First of all, they tend to shatter on impact instead of passing through the target. A full metal jacket bullet will go through somebody and then through a couple of sheet rock walls. If I shoot somebody, it is going to be for effect and the whole idea is to take them out….permanently. The whole purpose of deadly force is to be deadly.

The second thing, if they hit something like pavement or a signpost, they will shatter and ricochets will be at a minimum.