US Gun Laws, and another mass shooting.

[nigel-harps1954]

Dallas today the latest to come under attack. 5 Police Officers dead and another 7 injured by a sniper at a Black Lives Matter protest in the city centre.

Three people in custody and another has shot himself dead at the scene.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36742835

What in utter jaysis is happening over there this past while?

[NeverFeltBetter]

A friend of mine worked in the US as a school teacher for a few years, in the Boston area. He came home right around the time of another few mass shootings - though, depending on your definition, mass shootings have been common for a long, long time now - and I asked him what he thought about it, from being over there. And he said, if I can be excused some paraphrasing, "People here don't understand it. There is a huge chunk of the American population, in all four corners, who believe that literally the only thing between them and a totalitarian dictatorship is their personal firearms. And any attempt to reduce the amount of guns in the country was tantamount to trying to establish a fascist police state." Meanwhile my uncle, who has lived in New Hampshire for decades, is a perfectly reasonable man, but insists that the only thing that lets him sleep soundly at night is the loaded handgun in his bedside drawer. "You have to keep your family safe". From what? Home intruders with their own guns, apparently.

When you have that kind of mentality among enough people, incidents like Dallas, that nightclub shooting, Sandy Hook, they become an irritant to be tolerated in service of the greater good of resisting tyranny. It's not like Australia which so famously reduced gun ownership. An obsession with needing guns to be safe - from the government as well as criminals - is so inherent in American politics, law and culture, that what we are witnessing now is the new normal.

[TheBoss]

The excuse many use for having a gun is protection as NFB partial mentions is in the case someone burgles and intrudes into their home but that argument is flawed. People who burgle/intrude do so to steal things and sell them on as they are generally people of poor backgrounds trying to make their way in life. If these guys could afford to buy a gun, they would not be trying to burgle your home.

Another reason we hear is 'constitution argument' even though it was an amendment which by definition can be changed. That amendment was adopted in 1791, 225 years ago. They are insisting on keeping a law that is nearly a quarter of millennium old, its just crazy. What type of guns were available then compared to now, this law is obsolete and certainly does adhere to modern times. Imagine Mozart died 10 days before this law was adopted!

Their needs to be a referendum on this at least, let the people have their say, not the NRA.