The Crane Pool Forum
Spirited discussions about the New York Mets and just about everything else
LaterBreaking the data into absolute numbers, between 2004 and 2017 – the last year of our analysis – the average number of yearly deaths attributed to mass shootings was 25, compared with 5.3 during the 10-year tenure of the ban and 7.2 in the years leading up to the prohibition on assault weapons.
Starts a path? We'll see. Here's how I feel, and I've felt this way even before this bipartisan agreement was announced. If 10 Republicans are involved, it's gonna be a watered down nothing, but a nothing that'll give the GOP the grounds to say they did something instead of nothing.Edgy MD wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 9:11 pm Well, it kind of calls the pro-gun goofballs' bluff, by delivering big on mental health intervention (which likely couldn't hurt), and school security (which probably could).
I certainly understand pessimism, but it starts a path forward where there had been nothing but blockage.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... flag-laws/I trust that I don’t have to explain the problem with a program to “encourage” states to do things, especially when those states are run by conservative Republican governors and conservative Republican legislatures. Generally, history tells us, this money, assuming the state even accepts it, ends up in the general budget, and/or someone’s cousin’s concrete and asphalt business. Hell, just light that money on fire on Main Street and shoot it full of holes.
However, this pale pastel of a framework is the only kind of bill with a ghost of a chance of bringing along 10 Republicans in the Senate. And even so, the flying monkeys went predictably ballistic. Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician who claimed the former president* was the Slenderman, leaped to the electric Twitter machine to lose most of his shit.
I WILL NOT support the horrendous anti 2nd Amendment bill that’s being proposed in the Senate. It’s AWFUL! This is a MASSIVE violation of your Constitutional rights, and it MUST be rejected!
Rep. Andy Biggs chimed in with the customary paranoia:
The House’s recently passed gun control legislation would not have prevented the Uvalde or Buffalo mass shootings. This legislation is part of a broader goal to take all of our guns and erode the Second Amendment.
And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene gabble-gooble-red-flags-gobble:
There should be ZERO votes for red flag laws in the @HouseGOP. Stop helping Joe Biden and the Democrats hurt Americans. The people will not forget.
And so on.
I hope the thing passes. But I’m not going to fall for the alleged magical powers of the word “bipartisan” to turn chickenshit into chicken salad. This is a good start in the same way that making sure your shoes are tied is a good start to a marathon.
It _probably_ saves lives. Not mass shooting lives, because there's almost nothing directed at that. (the money that is directed to that might actually be harmful) But on the fringes of suicide deaths and domestic violence ones. Barely though, as the proposals now are a mere drop in the bucket of what's needed. i.e., preventing convicted domestic abusing boyfriends from getting a gun is great..but the conviction rate of domestic abusing boyfriends is pathetic.Benjamin Grimm wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2022 2:00 pm We know that it won't stop these events from happening but even if it only prevents three mass shootings, that's dozens of lives saved. Of course, we'll never know for sure if it's prevented three mass shootings, but maybe it will prevent many more than that.
Hard to argue with that.Frayed Knot wrote: ↑Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:30 pm When determining restrictions for gun ownership, I'm starting off with neck tattoos. I'll get to mental health next.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... g-remarks/Two ancillary points before we get to the most recent unfortunate exercise of Second Amendment freedoms, this one at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. First, like Dylann Roof, the mass murderer at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, South Carolina, Bobby Crimo, the “person of interest” in the parade massacre, somehow was arrested without incident or gunplay. He was not riddled with 60 bullets. I mean, Crimo was only suspected of killing six people and wounding dozens more. It wasn’t like he was fleeing a traffic stop in Akron or anything.
And, second, I don’t know who’s writing Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s material these days, but that person deserves a raise. Pritzker came to Highland Park on Monday and he said precisely what every decent human being would say, which is more than can be said for most mealy-mouthed American politicians who either are sublet by the armaments industry, or terrified by its front group. From ABC-Peoria:
“If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry. I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence. I’m furious that their loved ones are forever broken by what took place today. I’m furious that children and their families have been traumatized. I’m furious that this is happening in communities all across Illinois and America. I’m furious because it does not have to be this way and yet we as a nation, well, we continue to allow this to happen…There are going to be people who say that today is not the day, that now is not the time, to talk about guns. I’m telling you there is no better day and no better time than right here and right now.”
By contrast, Pritzker’s opponent in the upcoming election, Republican state senator Darren Bailey, blew the customary conservative smoke:
“Cindy and I are heartbroken by today’s tragedy and we pray for the victims and those grieving loss,” said Bailey. “We hope we can all come together in prayer and action to address rampant crime and mental heath issues to ensure these horrific tragedies don’t happen again,” Bailey also said.
Blah. Also, blah blah, and also, blah.
