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..