President Obama's Arizona Daily Star editorial on gun control

[obamafourmore]

It's been more than two months since the tragedy in Tucson stunned the nation. It was a moment when we came together as one people to mourn and to pray for those we lost. And in the attack's turbulent wake, Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing, assigning blame or playing politics with other people's pain.

But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun.

He used it to murder six people and wound 13 others. And if not for the heroism of bystanders and a brilliant surgical team, it would have been far worse.

But since that day, we have lost perhaps another 2,000 members of our American family to gun violence. Thousands more have been wounded. We lose the same number of young people to guns every day and a half as we did at Columbine, and every four days as we did at Virginia Tech.

Every single day, America is robbed of more futures. It has awful consequences for our society. And as a society, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to put a stop to it.


The rest:

http://azstarnet.com/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html

[tabatha]

1. The comments make my head hurt.

[craigmatic]

2. I wish he'd do an editorial for the situation in WI.

[JoePhilly]

5. Doesn't matter what he says, or when he says it ....

some will always complain that he should have said something else.

[DesertFlower]

3. how about a ban on automatic weapons.

O’Donnell Blames The ‘Individual For The First 10 Bullets’… ‘The Law For The Next 21′

i agree.

[friendly_iconoclast]

6. Are victims of spree killers less dead if the maniac must reload?

I rather doubt it- the VT and Luby's massacres both had more dead than in Tuscon, and both shooters in those cases used

"O'Donnell Approved" magazines. We need to try and avoid 'solutions' that are simple, obvious- and wrong.

[Igel]

8. Automatic weapons are already pretty much banned.

Some were grandfathered in under the 1986 law. Few if any have been used in crimes. Nobody knows how many are still functional after all these years.

Semi-automatic weapons are still for sale. They've been for sale straight along.

It's possible to modify semi-automatic weapons to make them fully automatic. That's illegal. Doesn't mean it's not done, of course (which rather underscores the inanity of asserting that the mere passage of a law will suddenly stop bad things from happening).

Perhaps you had in mind the "assault weapon" ban, that horrible idea that "this model looks meaner than that model, so although they do the same thing we'll ban this one and not that one." Remember, it's not even a matter of form over function, it's *appearance* over form. Eh. Some like to seem; others would prefer to be.

Or maybe you had in mind a "we can't allow others to possess large ammo magazines" law. Granted, a large magazine is cheaper than two separate guns, but where there's a will there's a way.

[boppers]

11. Tripods, pistol grips, and folding stocks all have their functions.

Of course, that doesn't actually mean that such things are favored by those who know how to use them.

[boppers]

10. Automatic weapons already require a huge amount of hassle and a special permit.

Hint for debating this topic: An automatic weapon is one where the weapon can keep firing as long as you hold the trigger and have ammunition. A semi-automatic requires pulling a trigger each time you want to fire.

[frazzled]

4. Excellent editorial

If we can't get everyone to agree on this one thing--strengthening background checks to prevent unstable or criminal individuals from getting or owning guns--then we can't agree on anything. It's not a panacea, and it's not an impediment to any responsible person. It just makes sense.

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. Loughner could have been stopped beforehand with one phone call.

Nobody could be arsed to call the cops on him.

[Mojorabbit]

9. This I agree with nt

[boppers]

12. Sadly, not true:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/13/us-shooting-loughner-idUSTRE70C09820110113
http://www.ccweek.com/news/templates/template.aspx?articleid=2327&zoneid=3

The cops were called about Loughner over, and over, again.

[friendly_iconoclast]

14. I stand corrected. I was thinking of the AZ involunatry commitment law.

Known in California as the 5150, here in MA as a Section 12, and Florida as a Baker Act commitment.

IIRC no one sought one ought in Loughner's case.

[LAGC]

13. Obama should have taken his own advice.

Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing, assigning blame or playing politics with other people's pain.

And stopped himself after the first paragraph...