What also drives me nuts is those who think the children shouldn't be punished, but then say it's because children don't understand how serious their actions are. No, it's not serious. It's a pop tart. Since when has a pop tart gunned down a group of people? Of the millions of children in the world and throughout history who have played versions of "good guy, bad guy", how many become mass murdering madmen?

Cupcakes confiscated:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/school-confiscates-third-grader-cupcakes-topped-toy-soldiers-215018982.html

Even toy soldiers with tiny toy guns can set off panic & hysteria.

This is why people on both sides of the gun control debate make me crazy. One one side, we have people who think any attempt to create and enforce gun control laws is one step closer to a dictatorship, and on the other we have people afraid of toy soldiers on cupcakes. We seem to have lost all capacity for reason.

Hey, I'll give them MY cupccake when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

Seriously, though, I'm with MonicaP on this issue and many other issues. There doesn't seem to be any reasonable folks left.

Don't belittle the dangers of bubble-guns. I knew someone who was in a coma for three weeks after taking a soap-bubble to the head!

This crazy level of paranoia is unfortunately being taught to the kids. There is no way around having rules saying a picture of a gun is horribly evil without also teaching irational paranoia of a real gun.

Kidding aside, his second theory is correct. The opposition to gun control would be too great to use the direct approach and nullify the Second Amendment, so the strategy is to stigmatize even the very mention of the word "gun" so that society would be too cowed to even think about owning one.

And the stigmatization of guns isn't just in the schools. If you'll forgive a rather hokey reference, I recall an episode of "Charmed" in which Phoebe's (Alyssa Milano) demon boyfriend (Julian McMahon) lost all his demon powers, and took to carrying a gun. The girls were shocked and appalled, never mind that one of them has the power to blow things up (including people) with a gesture and another could teleport a person's vital organs to the other side of the globe. One of them took away his gun, holding it like it was soiled diaper.

I kept thinking, "So, what's so bad about him having a gun?"

Did you see the follow up about the new law, at Free Range Kids? You'll like it.

Imaginary toy guns are kind of like imaginary women who might lie about whether or not it's your kid, especially if you were crazy in love with them and they were scheming liars(!) and you knew you were never ever going to be able to love anyone else ever again because the risk was too enormous so let's just make everyone take a super-modern, inconclusive, intrusive test just in case even though this has been going on since the dawn of time and the more thoughtful and challenging solutions to the problem may well have spurred the development of our more important capacities for trust and connection.

Maybe this isn't like that exactly, but it's close. People who are afraid of gun-shaped pastries are essentially primitive man.

Sometimes people are afraid of the wrong things because of a humility deficiency.

>>Maybe this isn't like that exactly, but it's close

That's one of the stupidest things you've ever written.

Only a good guy with a Pop-Tart can stop a bad guy with a Pop-Tart.

> one of the stupidest things

Magical thinking is a fabulous way for you to live a life of terrified resentment, "Assholio."

In matters of the heart, you must believe with all your might that feminine nature is an impersonal, reckless machine, one which (by a silly oversight!) civilization has failed to constrain with intrusive, unreliable, super-modern scientific procedures for all. (How so many men rise above this hazard to build loving families will always be a mystery to you, but that's a small price to pay... Right?)

With respect to personal safety, you must by habit regard every symbol for a tool of violence —even an accidental abstraction, like a cheap pastry with a couple of bites taken— as an eager & willful summons to destruction itself, without regard to the living, breathing personalities who surround you. (How so many children have played with and used real guns in childhood yet grown up to be peaceful and loving adults will be a mystery to you, but that's a small price to pay, right?)

You must bear this in mind, I implore you... Remember at all times: Fear! Fear Fear!

Crid, I'll let you throw my tomahawk into the sun if you promise to adjust my buckskin thong in the morning.

o.O

(And I'm not kidding.)

And a proud dawn it will be!

>>Magical thinking is a fabulous way for you to live a life of terrified resentment, "Assholio." You must bear this in mind, I implore you... Remember at all times: Fear! Fear Fear!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You are one of those rare breeds, an occasionally insightful person, who usually sings a solid tune, but is able to baffle so many people with your bullshit, you think your shit don't stink. You are completely clueless to my point of view - which is totally obvious by your comments. I'd try to correct you, but you are so dense it would be pointless. Also, I don't give enough of a shit. And to drive home the point, you're not even smart enough to give me something to argue against. Nothing you've mentioned applies to me. Good job. Glad you're paying attention. Dumbass.

I like Flynne's response better, but you shouldn't try it.

>>I like Flynne's response better,

Who wouldn't?

This is why people on both sides of the gun control debate make me crazy. One one side, we have people who think any attempt to create and enforce gun control laws is one step closer to a dictatorship, and on the other we have people afraid of toy soldiers on cupcakes. We seem to have lost all capacity for reason. -- MonicaP at March 12, 2013 10:12 AM

One one side, we have people who think any attempt to create and enforce gun control laws is one step closer to a dictatorship

Monica,

I'm very pro-2A, member of the NRA, and other similar organizations. I have no objection to gun control laws that actually work.

Some of "new" proposed laws:

(1) Restrict the size of standard magazines.

There have been numerous suggestions about this. Only seven in the magazine under the new New York Law. Did the legislators not notice that the cops in the state carry a firearm that has 15 rounds in the magazine?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cJAV8ce-j0&feature=share&list=UUZ-qxagOkAmCEP-Tu6YliUQ

(2) A ban on Assault Weapons?

That was done September 13, 1994, for 10 years. Somehow Columbine happened in the middle of it. It really works. Then of course the stats that say there was no difference in deaths pre, during and post from "Assault Weapons".

(3) Did you know that AR stands for Armalite?

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/on_air/links_on_tv/special-report-firearm-facts

(4) Sandy Hook could have been stopped if we banned the AR-15.

No AR-15 was used at Sandy Hook.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CDHLBfKusU&feature=share&list=PL271C027C7345BD79

(5) Gun free zones work.

www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/8291

(6) What laws don't work?

Well the states and federal government have the Brady background checks. But for some reason there is not a paper chase to get anyone who fails the background checks. The prosecutions are effectively zero (0)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSjvjSGAEEY&feature=youtu.be

(7) I don't quite know where to go from here.

If you just listen and follow the links and other videos, you will learn that none of the proposed law changes make a damn bit of difference, if you have a rational cogent thought.

and on the other we have people afraid of toy soldiers on cupcakes. We seem to have lost all capacity for reason.

I won't disagree with that sentiment.

The 16-year-old Cypress Lake High student in Fort Myers, Fla. told WFTX-TV there was “no doubt” he saved a life after grappling for the loaded .22 caliber revolver being aimed point-blank at another student on Tuesday.

“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the suspended student, not identified by WFTX because of safety concerns. “Not taking no pity.”

The student said the suspect, a football player, threatened to shoot a teammate because he had been arguing with his friend.

What The Fuck was that school administration thinking?!?!?!?

I'd be giving the kid the key to the city!!

www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/02/high-school-student-disarms-gunman-gets-suspended/
=============================

So to summarize:

I don't have a problem with reasonable gun control laws that work. But every time the 2A supporters have given the anti-gunners the tools they ask for, they haven't worked for some reason.

Maybe it's because they don't work in the first place? Or because they won't and don't use the tools that will work because they want the control and not the guns?

Jim, you forgot one:

(0) Government, DO SOMETHING!!!1!!!!11!!!

To which the government responds: "OK, we'll round up the usual suspects."

(0) Government, DO SOMETHING!!!1!!!!11!!!

To which the government responds: "OK, we'll round up the usual suspects." -- Cousin Dave at March 13, 2013 10:22 AM

Oh, I agree. The "Do something" crowd is a yell at politicians that circumscribes rational thought.

I know you have seen my rant about the TSA. The only people who have tried to say I am wrong are the TSA apologists and even they have shut up since I added the part about bombs.

The federal government is so extra-constitional, bloated and wasteful that I can't it would take several volumes to describe what the laws that aren't constitutional.

The only three, as the founding fathers wrote it were Treason, Counterfeiting and Piracy. I will agree that Constitutional Amendments did change that.

But I still want to see where common murder of a private individual is a federal case? Even as tragic as the Matthew Shepard case was, I still am trying to find the federal level murder, hate crimes and the rest of the charges in the Federal Constitution.

I'm not trying to be facetious. I'm trying to point out that short short of the District of Columbus and maybe laws about the murder of elected government officials, the U.S. Constitution is actually mute and moot on a murder occurring in Wyoming.

Once people get that the Tenth amendment meant that each state has a choice on how to treat a murderer.

I agree with gun bans as a rule, but this is just stupid. What happens with potato cannons in science class?