Guns again

[screwtape]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/47623/the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

interesting essay on the origins of the second amendment: to protect slave patrols in the south.

[naemhni]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/47623/the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

interesting essay on the origins of the second amendment: to protect slave patrols in the south.

There's all kinds of historical stuff regarding the Second that a lot of people aren't aware of.  Early gun control laws, for example, were primarily intended to keep blacks and Hispanics disarmed.
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html

[Dante]

If I may be perfectly honest, I like guns. I like most of the people I know that like guns. And, presently, they're all law abiding, upstanding, responsible citizens. Many of these folks carry a gun on their person most of the time. Some are highly trained, some not so much. Some are ex-military, some are active military, and some are single women living alone. But, I don't fear them owning, or carrying a gun in my vicinity or my community. I'm from Colorado, with a heavy military presence, a heavy hunting and sport shooting atmosphere, and also a heavy "rugged individualist" attitude. We like guns. I've lost a respected aquaintence to a gun. I've also lost a very close friend to a gun. I still like guns.

I don't see the US enacting too much more restrictions, simply because the populace doesn't want it to happen. It's so deeply ingrained in our culture that most Americans cannot fathom a world without them. And many, and I mean a large portion, would not willingly surrender, or even register their guns, damn the consequences. We have Sherriff's offices all over the nation proclaiming that they will not enforce many of the regulations being discussed, we have states attempting to put measures on their laws to make it illegal to enforce these regulations. Much of that may be posturing and sabre rattling, to be sure, but the sentiments run deep.

I don't believe rate of fire, or magazine capacity for that matter, will dramatically reduce gun violence. Sure, some of the "massacres" may be avoided, but that's a small drop in a large bucket of blood. Mass shootings are an indication of mental illness. I can't see any way around that. If someone goes on a killing spree, whether by gun, car, bomb, or other, they're obviously not right in the head. They needed help. And yes, Mama Lanza should have realized this and taken the proper precautions. Hopefully, this incident will provide some perspective to others who may find themselves in similar sitautions.

Incidents of gun violence is what needs to be reduced, and what should be addressed. How do we reduce the murder rate in Chicago? Simply by reducing the rate of fire? Sure, maybe a few more people will live, carrying the scars of their wounds, but the problem is still not being addressed. The problem is not legal access to guns. The problem is not those people with carry permits. The problem there is criminal.

Limiting illegal access to guns is the best place to start. Gun safes perhaps should be a requirement. Punishment for straw purchases/illegal sales should be severe. Illegal possession should be severe. Use of a firearm during a criminal act should carry separate severe punishment. Federal laws, as opposed to state laws, should be a requirement. Background checks and waiting periods should be a requirement.

There are things I've missed, I'm sure. But I wanted to throw some of those things out there, so my stance would be clearer.

[screwtape]

If I may be perfectly honest, I like guns.

Me too. They're cool and fun.  But they are also incredibly dangerous.

I like most of the people I know that like guns.

Not me. I have friends who have guns and I like them.  But I know many more people who have them and most of them are assholes. 

And, presently, they're all law abiding, upstanding, responsible citizens.

All of the ones I know are law abiding.  My friends are responsible.  For some of the people I know, it is only a matter of time before they shoot someone. They have paranoid fantasies they seem to want to realize.

Many of these folks carry a gun on their person most of the time.

I live in NJ, which has highly prohibitive carry laws.  So no one I know carries a gun.  Gratefully.  Frankly, I would not feel safe in a restaurant where any significant percentage of the patrons were armed.  To be honest, I don't even like being around cops that much because, who the heck knows?  They are walking around with potential death on their hips.

The atmosphere here is obviously different.  I think that is true in any case where you are comparing sparsely to densely populated areas.  I grew up in a very rural area where practically everyone had a gun.  That was probably okay.  But in these here parts, if the same percent of the population carried guns, it would be a daily bloodbath.

I don't see the US enacting too much more restrictions, simply because the populace doesn't want it to happen.

You're probably right.  But remember, my list was predicated on me being King.  And while you might be against my ascendency to the throne based on my gun policy, you might want to consider how it balances with my Feeding-xians-to-lions policy.

Also remember, despite what the NRA wants, an overhwleming majority of the populace wants some kind of better control over guns.

It's so deeply ingrained in our culture that most Americans cannot fathom a world without them.

Maybe we need to work on doing something to diminish our gun culture?  I think it affects our whole outlook on life.  I think it is partly responsible for our general acceptance of war as foreign policy. 

I don't believe rate of fire, or magazine capacity for that matter, will dramatically reduce gun violence.

I think we are looking at it from opposite sides.  I think those who want it should have to justify why it is needed in the first place.  If I understand, you want  a justification for banning it.  And while you don't believe it will do anything, we won't have actual data unless we try it.  I don't think I'm an ideologue.  I want to do what works.  So if we try some approach for five years, study it and find it to be pointless, then I would be willing to cease doing it.

Sure, some of the "massacres" may be avoided, but that's a small drop in a large bucket of blood. Mass shootings are an indication of mental illness. I can't see any way around that. If someone goes on a killing spree, whether by gun, car, bomb, or other, they're obviously not right in the head. They needed help. And yes, Mama Lanza should have realized this and taken the proper precautions. Hopefully, this incident will provide some perspective to others who may find themselves in similar sitautions.

I agree.  That was my stated goal.

Incidents of gun violence is what needs to be reduced, and what should be addressed.

Agreed.

The problem is not legal access to guns. The problem is not those people with carry permits. The problem there is criminal.

I do not know that that is the case.  I've heard this said, but I have not seen data.  Either way, I agree with the items that followed.

[Dante]

If I may be perfectly honest, I like guns.

Me too. They're cool and fun.  But they are also incredibly dangerous.

Sounds like motorcycles.

I don't see the US enacting too much more restrictions, simply because the populace doesn't want it to happen.

You're probably right.  But remember, my list was predicated on me being King.  And while you might be against my ascendency to the throne based on my gun policy, you might want to consider how it balances with my Feeding-xians-to-lions policy.

Tempting, I must admit.

Also remember, despite what the NRA wants, an overhwleming majority of the populace wants some kind of better control over guns.

Yes, some. But, methinks, not as much as is currently being tossed about on forums, blogs, and social media. I could be wrong, but at this point, I'm trying to be a realist, and pragmatist.

It's so deeply ingrained in our culture that most Americans cannot fathom a world without them.

Maybe we need to work on doing something to diminish our gun culture?  I think it affects our whole outlook on life.  I think it is partly responsible for our general acceptance of war as foreign policy.

No doubt. And I have to wonder what role religion plays, because I wouldn't be surprised it's significant, given the close ties of the GOP and believers.

I don't believe rate of fire, or magazine capacity for that matter, will dramatically reduce gun violence.

I think we are looking at it from opposite sides.  I think those who want it should have to justify why it is needed in the first place.  If I understand, you want  a justification for banning it.  And while you don't believe it will do anything, we won't have actual data unless we try it.  I don't think I'm an ideologue.  I want to do what works.  So if we try some approach for five years, study it and find it to be pointless, then I would be willing to cease doing it.

Fair enough, which I think is part of the reason that the 1994 Assault Weapon ban was only slated to last 10 years. However, even if the new ban were more restrictive, and had loopholes closed, there are still millions of high capacity magazines already out there. Were we to somehow round them all up and destroy them, there's virtually no chance of ever getting them back, even if the law banning them proves unsuccesful in reducing gun deaths.

That being said, I don't have a well thought out justification for keeping them. I never have.

The problem is not legal access to guns. The problem is not those people with carry permits. The problem there is criminal.

I do not know that that is the case.  I've heard this said, but I have not seen data.  Either way, I agree with the items that followed.

I'm out of time today, but I'll work on looking for that data later this week. I may not be able to find national reports that haven't been tainted by the NRA, but merely local reports from law enforcement agencies. Fair?

[3sigma]

According to the FBI there were 12,664 murders in the US in 2011.  8,583 were by firearms. That's 68% of all murders.  It does not include the people shot by police.  Those numbers are not collected anywhere.  I also did not find data on how many of the murder weapons were acquired illegally.  I suspect a tiny percentage.

It would be helpful to know how many of those firearm murderers were gun owners using their own gun. I think it is likely that a high percentage of domestic violence gun murders are committed by legal gun owners using their own gun. There are around 30,000 gun deaths in the US each year (murders, suicides and accidents). Most of those are suicides and I’m guessing most of those people used their own guns.

So, here is a question for everyone here. How many of those gun deaths where the shooter is a legal gun owner would be prevented by the measures suggested by people here so far?  Are gun safes, trigger locks, registration, insurance, training, magazine size restrictions, etc. going to reduce significantly the number of gun deaths where the shooter is a legal gun owner? I don’t think so.

What measures would reduce the number of gun deaths caused by legal gun owners? The obvious answer is to reduce the number of guns available.

[Graybeard]

Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

Overall, Branas's study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot, it may be that guns give a sense of empowerment that causes carriers to overreact in tense situations, or encourages them to visit neighbourhoods they probably shouldn't, Branas speculates. Supporters of the Second Amendment shouldn't worry that the right to bear arms is under threat, however. "We don't have an answer as to whether guns are protective or perilous," Branas says. "This study is a beginning."

For more on the perceived difficulty of relating statistics to deaths, see [wiki]Arthur Kellerman[/wiki]

[ParkingPlaces]

The hard part is getting people to connect death with the problem. The NRA does not seem to see dying as an issue. They can sort of concede that some innocents will indeed die every year, but the important part is that tens of thousands of gun owners will get to shoot other human beings out of season, and that is the more relevant factoid.

If you are a gun owner, you get to picture yourself as a hero, and as you read the monthly columns in the gun magazines that detail all those wonderfully gory details regarding perfectly innocent gun lovers and their success at aerating bad guys, they get to live that exciting lifestyle vicariously. And you get to hope that you too will get to shoot some black dude walking down the street looking suspicious. What higher aspiration could any human have than to kill a bad guy or someone else who isn't like you. Its right up there with being born again, but the monthly dues are a little smaller. Though ammo costs negate that advantage.

Being kind and considerate of other humans is all well and good as long as it is convenient. Like in a chick-flick or something. But this is real life, where everyone is your enemy and danger is around every corner.That is, if you can manage to make enough enemies and irritate enough folks around the corner.

This paranoia stuff isn't as easy as it looks. Sometimes you really gotta work at it.

[jaimehlers]

Honestly, I have no objection to gun ownership as a matter of principle.  My concern is primarily about responsibility.  Gun owners who are responsible, who keep their guns locked up when they're not using them, who practice proper gun safety, nothing wrong at all with them.

The problem is everyone else.  Someone who sees a gun as a toy to be played with.  Someone who thinks it makes them tough, or cool.  Someone who's careless with what is, after all, a deadly weapon.  There are plenty of examples of ways in which people can be, are, stupid with guns.  So I think regulations and restrictions to keep guns out of the hands of people who have no business using them are not a bad thing.

@ParkingPlaces:  I'll bet most of those people - including the ones who write those columns - have never actually killed other human beings.  If they had, they wouldn't be acting like it's a game.  You don't see soldiers who served in combat duty in a war - and who shot other soldiers for their country - acting like that.

[ParkingPlaces]

@ParkingPlaces:  I'll bet most of those people - including the ones who write those columns - have never actually killed other human beings.  If they had, they wouldn't be acting like it's a game.  You don't see soldiers who served in combat duty in a war - and who shot other soldiers for their country - acting like that.

Agreed. Like all fantasies, they sound much better on paper (or in the mind) than they ever are in real life. I've had real girlfriends, so I know. 

[Dante]

Can you guys agree that since you've never killed another person, you have very little room for your prejudice? Or shall we presume you actually have experience?

Either way, it's a non sequitor, and I expect so much more substance from both of you.

But don't let my opinion stop your rhetoric. Heavens no.

[Nick]

Well, at least the latest school shooting was different.  This time it was 2 armed guys shooting at each other.  I guess as more and more of us arm this will become so common it won't even make the big time news.

[jaimehlers]

Can you guys agree that since you've never killed another person, you have very little room for your prejudice? Or shall we presume you actually have experience?

Either way, it's a non sequitor, and I expect so much more substance from both of you.

But don't let my opinion stop your rhetoric. Heavens no.

What was the point of this post?  The way it comes across, it sounds pretty insulting, so I'd prefer that you explain it rather than me jumping to conclusions.

Like it or not, some gun advocates do actually pull the kind of crap ParkingPlaces and I were talking about.  It's not just rhetoric.  It isn't most of them, but it doesn't need to be.

[Chronos]

I live in NJ, which has highly prohibitive carry laws.  So no one I know carries a gun.  Gratefully.  Frankly, I would not feel safe in a restaurant where any significant percentage of the patrons were armed.  To be honest, I don't even like being around cops that much because, who the heck knows?  They are walking around with potential death on their hips.

The atmosphere here is obviously different.  I think that is true in any case where you are comparing sparsely to densely populated areas.  I grew up in a very rural area where practically everyone had a gun.  That was probably okay.  But in these here parts, if the same percent of the population carried guns, it would be a daily bloodbath.

New Jersey is like that. It's basically Texas, minus armadillos, plus Italian restaurants. Oh, and neighbors are only 2 feet away, sometimes less.

[Chronos]

Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed.html

But carrying a condom doesn't increase the chances of getting fucked.  Why is that?

Nevermind, I digress ...

[Chronos]

The hard part is getting people to connect death with the problem. The NRA does not seem to see dying as an issue. They can sort of concede that some innocents will indeed die every year, but the important part is that tens of thousands of gun owners will get to shoot other human beings out of season, and that is the more relevant factoid.

It's the far right's Second Amendment Solution to end entitlements for Social Security and Medicare ...

[Dante]

What was the point of this post?  The way it comes across, it sounds pretty insulting, so I'd prefer that you explain it rather than me jumping to conclusions.

Take it however you like, but I thought the message was fairly clear. Disregard it if you don't feel it carries any weight.

Like it or not, some gun advocates do actually pull the kind of crap ParkingPlaces and I were talking about.  It's not just rhetoric.  It isn't most of them, but it doesn't need to be.

Duly noted.

[jaimehlers]

Don't presume to judge others for their attitudes until you know the reasons behind them, Dante.

My father was accidentally shot and almost killed when he was a child, by some other children being careless with a gun they'd found left out.  If he had even been a few years older, he would have died.  All because the adult who owned the gun couldn't be bothered to make sure it was secured, and because some kids didn't respect the dangerous nature of the weapon they were holding.  They didn't take it seriously, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were playing something like "shoot the bad guy".

The idea of a person writing something which glorifies the slaying of another human being, simply because they're a "bad guy", is pretty infuriating to me.  It's bad enough when such things are written by people who have actually killed other people, but it's worse when you get that kind of "cowboy mentality" from someone who has shot and killed another person.

[Nick]

1,136 killed with guns in the US since Sandy Hook and counting.

[Brakeman]

Don't be silly, the point of the discussion was that armed men protect the president's daughters yet he derides the Idea of armed men guarding the public's children. The argument of "Who" enacted the legislation is a dodge of the question.

Armed men protect the President and his family because past presidents have been assassinated.  It works because they have a limited number of individuals to watch, have multiple personnel to guard each one, and can dictate that their security arrangements take predicence.  That solution won't work very well at a school.

So they guard them with guns because there have been attacks on them but that's different because school children have never been attacked? When the presidents kids are in school, do you think the SS sits beside the kids in each class or in the back of the room and at the doors of the school? No, I don't think its a good idea either to add guns to the school except one patrolman perhaps to guard entryways. I don't think criticizing the NRA's remarks as insane is accurate, but I don't agree with all of them.

Not true. Under proposed laws on semi-automatic rifles that look "militaristic-y" enough to be called assault rifles, these rifles would be removed from homes upon the passing of the grandfathered owner. Under it, if I died, my family would have to remember to surrender my weapons to the cops or face a swat team. I could not pass the guns down to my children as is customary.
http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/175785/tentative-gun-control-bill-would-require-rifle-registry/

The article you cited says nothing about rifles that look "militaristic-y".  It says, specifically, that specific characteristics (such as a telescoping stock, a bayonet mount, or a pistol grip) on a semi-automatic rifle would qualify it to be banned.  Surprise, surprise, they don't mention swat teams raiding the homes of families who don't turn in their guns either...

So tell me what is so offending about a bayonet mount, or a pistol grip on a rifle? Unless you're worried about the ever increasing bayonetting murders, then yes that description is exactly a description of someone defining assault weapons as "militaristic-y" And please tell me why a telescoping stock is such a fear? Inquiring minds want to know.

I've never heard the NRA claim such a thing. Citation needed. The program that the NRA made is very mild target practice. Look at it before you bash it and give people a false impression of it.

.. No, he didn't blame just violent video games for it, but it was pretty high on his list of things to blame for school shootings.

You're right. I don't like these games, but I don't think they are direct causes of the violence. I disagree with him.

Until you can define what an "assault" rifle is without referring to pictures or "fashion," we can't even take what you say seriously. You haven't even tried to learn enough about the issue, and the only thing you've shot off is your mouth. The first ban was simply an attack against a few producer's of certain models of rifles. The firepower was not an indicator of it's inclusion to the ban list. Rate of fire was not included on the ban list. The shape of the plastic parts was the greatest indicator of a rifles inclusion on the ban list. Because of this the ban was useless and did nothing but anger the shooting public. It did not really address any issues of gun violence. Google fastest cowboy shooting videos and see if 1860 weaponry was all that slow. In one, a 13 year old boy shoots targets faster with a 1870 model lever action rifle than another man can shoot them with a machine gun. So is the 1870 45 cal henry repeater an "assault" weapon now?

I think you need to start citing sources for your claims.  By the way, seriously, you're citing a youtube video that you couldn't even be bothered to link?
By the way, you can't hose down an entire room full of people with a lever action rifle, but you can with an automatic weapon.  So it frankly doesn't matter which is better at target shooting.

So this kid couldn't hose down a mob of people with a couple of rifles.. right..

[jaimehlers]

So they guard them with guns because there have been attacks on them but that's different because school children have never been attacked? When the presidents kids are in school, do you think the SS sits beside the kids in each class or in the back of the room and at the doors of the school? No, I don't think its a good idea either to add guns to the school except one patrolman perhaps to guard entryways. I don't think criticizing the NRA's remarks as insane is accurate, but I don't agree with all of them.

A single guard isn't going to cut it.  The elementary school I went to had at least four main entrances.  And it wasn't a particularly big school.  Not counting the schoolyard and parking lot, it covered maybe two city blocks by half a block.  Larger schools have more entrances.  No, you'd need at least two guards per shift even for a school that size.  More, if you were actually serious about catching a potential shooter before they had the chance to do anything.  And each one of them would have to be armed.

So tell me what is so offending about a bayonet mount, or a pistol grip on a rifle? Unless you're worried about the ever increasing bayonetting murders, then yes that description is exactly a description of someone defining assault weapons as "militaristic-y" And please tell me why a telescoping stock is such a fear? Inquiring minds want to know.

Forgive me, I felt you would be knowledgeable enough about assault rifles to recognize that all three of those are components of an assault rifle without me having to spell it out for you.  It isn't about just looking "militaristic-y", it's about identifying what makes an assault weapon an assault weapon.  If you aren't capable of recognizing this fact, then perhaps you should refrain from this kind of inane derisiveness.  It should go without saying that if you are capable of that, then you should be able to recognize that being derisive doesn't really help your case much.

You're right. I don't like these games, but I don't think they are direct causes of the violence. I disagree with him.

Fair enough.  But that's part of the problem.  When the NRA releases an official statement which puts much of the blame on things like violent video games and movies, to the point of calling them the lowest form of pornography, then they get taken seriously by a lot of gun owners.  I hope you'll agree that that sort of rhetoric doesn't help the situation much.

So this kid couldn't hose down a mob of people with a couple of rifles.. right.

A person who is highly skilled with a lever-action rifle might be able to do so, but it takes a lot of time and training to get that good.  The majority of people are not capable of such a feat.  And in any case, whether or not it's possible to do so with a lever-action rifle is not the point.  I hope you will at least acknowledge that it is much easier for a person to hose down a room full of people with an automatic weapon, or even a semi-automatic weapon, than it is for them to do so with a lever-action rifle.

[naemhni]

So tell me what is so offending about a bayonet mount, or a pistol grip on a rifle? Unless you're worried about the ever increasing bayonetting murders, then yes that description is exactly a description of someone defining assault weapons as "militaristic-y" And please tell me why a telescoping stock is such a fear? Inquiring minds want to know.

Forgive me, I felt you would be knowledgeable enough about assault rifles to recognize that all three of those are components of an assault rifle without me having to spell it out for you.  It isn't about just looking "militaristic-y", it's about identifying what makes an assault weapon an assault weapon.

I think you missed Brakeman's point.  He was asking you to explain what, specifically, about a telescoping stock, bayonet mount, or pistol grip makes a rifle more dangerous, and/or less "appropriate" for private ownership, than a rifle lacking those features.

I don't really understand this myself.  It isn't as if mounting a bayonet on a rifle is a common practice.  A pistol grip serves only to make the rifle more comfortable to hold.  And a telescoping stock's only purpose is to allow people of different sizes to be able to fire the same rifle comfortably -- I'm five foot eleven, for example, and would probably want the stock fully extended, while my (now ex) girlfriend, at five two, would probably prefer that the stock be shorter.  None of these things (with the possible exception of the bayonet mount, although even that is pretty questionable in my opinion) makes a rifle any more deadly than a rifle that doesn't have them.

[Chronos]

My father was accidentally shot and almost killed when he was a child, by some other children being careless with a gun they'd found left out.

I'm glad he survived. I was almost killed by my brother when I was a toddler. He returned from a hunting trip and brought a rifle into the house that he thought was unloaded. It went off into the ceiling coming up through the floor next to my bed. The hole is still in the floor to this day.

[naemhni]

I'm glad he survived.

Me, too.  Ugh.

I was almost killed by my brother when I was a toddler. He returned from a hunting trip and brought a rifle into the house that he thought was unloaded. It went off into the ceiling coming up through the floor next to my bed. The hole is still in the floor to this day.

I'm sorry to hear that... unfortunately, that's not as rare as it should be, even among properly trained people.

A friend of mine is an ex-Marine (veteran of Gulf War I), and he told me that during boot camp, they had a routine for clearing a rifle prior to stowing it and locking it up.  You had to go over to this big metal barrel full of sand, then pull out the magazine and empty the chamber of the rifle, all the while keeping the muzzle pointed directly at the barrel of sand.  You might think that after all that training about safe handling and so forth, there wouldn't be any bullets in there if you were to sift thru the sand.  You would be wrong.

[jaimehlers]

I'm not sure that I would consider those components of an assault rifle either.  But my point was that instead of complaining about proposed laws which would incorporate those things into assault rifle bans, he should have pointed out why you shouldn't use those to define what an assault rifle is.

[naemhni]

I'm not sure that I would consider those components of an assault rifle either.  But my point was that instead of complaining about proposed laws which would incorporate those things into assault rifle bans, he should have pointed out why you shouldn't use those to define what an assault rifle is.

Ah, I understand... got it.

[Chronos]

I'm sorry to hear that... unfortunately, that's not as rare as it should be, even among properly trained people.

My father was very safety oriented, but still the accident happened. I can only imagine what stupid things people do when they intend to fire but something else goes wrong.

[Nam]

I dislike it in films when they say "Drop the weapon", I heard a back-stage commentary by a gunhandler who said, "Never ask someone to drop a gun unless you know 100% the gun isn't loaded. Dropping it, especially on a hard ground can make it go off." [paraphrased]

-Nam

[Brakeman]

You're right. I don't like these games, but I don't think they are direct causes of the violence. I disagree with him.

Fair enough.  But that's part of the problem.  When the NRA releases an official statement which puts much of the blame on things like violent video games and movies, to the point of calling them the lowest form of pornography, then they get taken seriously by a lot of gun owners.  I hope you'll agree that that sort of rhetoric doesn't help the situation much.

Again I agree with you, but I have heard the same rhetoric about games and movies from both sides of the gun question.

So this kid couldn't hose down a mob of people with a couple of rifles.. right.

A person who is highly skilled with a lever-action rifle might be able to do so, but it takes a lot of time and training to get that good.  The majority of people are not capable of such a feat.  And in any case, whether or not it's possible to do so with a lever-action rifle is not the point.  I hope you will at least acknowledge that it is much easier for a person to hose down a room full of people with an automatic weapon, or even a semi-automatic weapon, than it is for them to do so with a lever-action rifle.

Having shot lever action rifles for years, I disagree with you. While in Mississippi I used to take some of the Korean college students shooting at a range not too far from the university. I taught them how to fan with a six shooter and spray with a lever action.  They loved it! A guy who had never shot a gun in his life was shooting only a second or two slower than that boy. What separates that 13 year old from any joe that's had the gun in his hands is merely fractions of a second per shot group. What makes him really good is that he can consistently hit a small target while doing it. It takes no aiming skills to hit someone in the same room as you. I could teach anyone on here to shoot 13 shots in less than 5 seconds easy, probably 4 seconds for most. Empty 2 rifles in less than 10, without a problem, all within a day.
Sadly, it's a fool's game to rush anybody whose mind is on the moment trying to kill without emotion. That 13 year old boy isn't old enough to have had years of training, his arms have probably only been long enough to shoot that rifle for a couple of years.

I'm NOT a NRA member. Also, I have complained about the "Crazies in the "gun culture"" probably longer than you.  I was raised in a very gun loving area in the mountains of East Tennessee and I grew up loving shooting. I started reloading my own bullets at the ripe old age of 14 because my dad wouldn't buy me the quantity of big bore rifle cartridges that I liked to shoot. We didn't have a mall or other city fun, so me and my friends would shoot. We'd shoot just about anything whether it moved or not. (Although I've never shot a deer in my life) We even hunted butterflies with BB guns and 22's just to improve our quickness of aim, and yes, I'm talking in flight.
Me and two of my neighborhood boys would shoot in the daytime and reload at night all summer long.
I used to reload for lots of my friends too so I have a pretty big collection of bullet reloading equipment.
All that being said, the guns and rifles to us were fun, like our bicycles, but we didn't worship them. We didn't try to take them with us anywhere they didn't belong, and we never really thought much about hurting anyone with them. We never shot "body" silhouettes until our very late teens or twenty's. We much better liked shooting eggs or anti-acid tablets. We hunted occasionally but had great empathy for the animals. I shot a rabbit once while hunting with a friend. I shot the rabbit on the run with a 45 LC rifle, and while my friend ooh'd and ahh'd over my shot, I got sick because I didn't really want to kill it. I never went rabbit hunting again either. So as you may be able to see, I had the "gun nut" love of guns, but I did not like their love of killing that you find in today's hunter community and I did not like the "make my day" type of guys that you often find in the "self protection" community.

As I've gotten older and the quiet neighborhood that I grew up in disappeared into suburbia, I realized the world will never be the same as during my childhood. I am not like the people that I see nowadays frequenting the gun ranges, we are not from the same cloth anymore.

In the same light, I see inner city kids with nothing to live for who have access to guns.

I read in the papers about drunks shooting guns, a practice that is all to familiar in rural society.

I too see the need to stem gun violence. I have written my congressman and several gun enthusiast websites to promote simple locking up of the guns in gunsafes and have been met with thundering apathy or totally off the wall rants. I am beginning to think that neither side wants to solve anything, they just want to hate and be angry.

I hope that this community will use their critical, skeptical thinking skills while reading and thinking about both sides of the gun issue just like they do about the god issue. The blind men swore their truth about the qualities of an elephant because of the side of the issue they were exposed to and were acquainted with.
I really don't have an axe to grind too much. While I do own a Chinese SKS which some may call an assault rifle, and a 45 Thompson which others might call an assault rifle, they are the least favorite of my collection and I haven't shot either in many years.  I won't sell them because I don't ever want one of my guns falling into the wrong hands. So if my daughters don't marry a great responsible guy or if my one grandson doesn't grow up to be exceptionally stable, I'll probably weld them up or bury them with me.. I don't know which..