Discussion for article #243426
The democratization of weapons is a horrible idea that continually haunts our society.
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Jay Dickey, now 75, wishes he never authored the NRA-initiated bill that blocked gun violence research 20 years ago. Now that he’s out of Congress, the NRA has no leverage over what he says. This from today’s NY Daily News:
"Former Arkansas Rep. Jay Dickey, who spearheaded efforts in 1996 to block the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s gun violence research, is calling on Congress to repeal the amendment that carries his name.
“It is my position that somehow or someway we should slowly but methodically fund such research until a solution is reached,” he wrote in a letter released through the office of U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson. “Doing nothing is no longer an acceptable solution.”
After the measure passed, the $2.6 million — the amount the agency had spent each year on gun research — was redirected to the study of brain injuries.
“It is not a public-health threat,” Dickey said at the time about gun violence.
The former GOP congressman, 75, reached at home, said “political purposes” should have never gotten in the way of the issue. He concedes that he “should have done something” to see that the research continued.
“Research will lead us to a solution,” Dickey said. “I have no idea what it’s going to be. I just couldn’t stay quiet any longer. It doesn’t look like anybody else is trying to get a solution.”
Dickey compares gun violence to car accidents. Highway regulation and research aren’t meant to deter car ownership — they’re meant to make roads safer for drivers and pedestrians, he said.
“[Gun violence] is an insidious social problem that we have in America, and it’s getting worse, in my opinion,” he said."
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I often wonder if we had to look at pictures of the carnage of gun violence if people wouldn’t show a bit more common sense when it comes to guns. It’s not that I want to see pictures, but the people of Congress should have to look at the pictures of every one of these victims. Maybe that would penetrate their stone cold hearts.
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Eh, we’re still animals.
Sorry to say.
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Blood on his hands and it sounds like blood in his heart.
Fuck him in the ass for ever acting like an asshole for the promise of money.
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Under no circumstances could I look at the images, but I think it would do this country a whole lot of good if, with permission and unanimous agreement from the families, the Sandy Hook pictures were released to the public. You couldn’t pay me to look at them, but I imagine it might force some folks to get serious about this issue as they imagine their own babies strewn apart in a classroom.
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Right. Methinks he doth recognize his guilt too much, but it would have been courageous to stand up to the NRA when it mattered to them not when it matters to him.
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If it was up to me, any politician elected to any office that has any say over gun regulation would be required to view all the gory photos from every one of these mass shootings. If their eyes need to be propped open with toothpicks, so be it.
Once they’ve made it through that ordeal, the mandatory meetings with family and friends of the victims would begin.
At any point in the process, the politicians could “opt out” by pledging to support banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines nationwide, closing the gun show loophole, enacting tough federal penalties for straw buyers, requiring thorough background checks for all gun purchases, supporting federal research into the causes and potential solutions to gun violence, and supporting increased funding for mental health programs.
Yeah, I know.
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This one strikes close to home. My wife has a co-worker whose daughter was in the room when the shooting started, and whose car-pool partner was killed.
I know the location of the shooting quite well.
The people who were attacked represented the San Bernardino County Public Health Department, who were holding their annual party.
My wife works for the neighboring Riverside County Public Health Department, who would have been holding their party in a few days.
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With a freshly-broken glass bottle, sideways.
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Shove them under Wayne LaPierre’s nose with the cameras rolling.
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What other animals kill more than they intend to eat at that time?
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Shakespeare apparently got it wrong: The quality of mercy is 'strained.
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Many do, actually. Cats for one, even in the wild.
was unspeakable, the carnage we were seeing, and the fear and panic on people's faces," Madden said in a press conference
Hi, First Responder Madden: welcome to the USA.
Where mass murders are now greeted with a shrug, and someone saying to you: “Oh, yeah, THAT happened where you live, but the rest of us have forgotten about it, by now.”<–Actual words to me.
So bummer about all those dead people, and that carnage you mention. Get some help with the ptsd, and, I dunno, think about the gun laws in this country. Be well, in honor of the 14 people who cannot be well, ever again.
Signed,
A Sandy Hook resident.
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“Unspeakable”. Why don’t you get some of those “unspeakable” pictures developed and send one to every Senator and Congressman in the country that has been blocking any meaningful reform. Apparently they are having a hard time visualizing what happens in these situations. Maybe it will make them do more than “say prayers” for the victims.
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I feel the same way about public airing of executions.
If they’re going to do it in the name of The People, then the least they should do is preempt TV so The People can see what they have wrought.
But that might make The People have a sad, and not want there to be executions anymore.
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“and to think that there are old school Twilight Zone episodes that wished for that type of regret.”
its been an acceptable solution for the modern day Republicans for a good while.
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A sane society would not sell those rifles to anybody who can walk into a gun store with 800 bucks in his pocket and no felonies to his name. They’re made to help you prevail on a damn battlefield, against a horde of similarly armed opponents. In roomful of people having a party, in a movie theater, in a school, it’s going to make a troubled person’s darkest fantasies very, very real. We’ve made those dark fantasies into a commodity and the people profiting by it are sick enough themselves that the real-world body counts don’t matter.
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