A Very Disgruntled Employee...

[Econoline]

I've quoted this before, and I don't have the exact quote or the source with me now, but it bears repeating: once we've decided that slaughtering little children in their school is an acceptable price to pay for gun rights, there really isn't any chance that anything will change this nation's mind about guns.

[dales]

The problem is NOT firearms, it lies within the human heart.

[Lord Jim]

It's kind of depressing, (but oh so predictable)

Everytime we have a discussion about this...

From the left end, it's always about how the "guns" somehow magically engaged in "gun violence".....

Not "gang violence", or "criminal violence"...(which is what's actually taking place)

But "gun violence"...

As though the guns suddenly came to life and committed crimes on their own...

(Like some bizarre version of The Nutcracker Suite...)

[wesw]

guns save us when our govt does not.

when they release dangerous aliens into our midst and surrender control of our borders and when they surrender our cities to the gangs and the thugs would you have us be defenseless?

yes sue, less guns means less gun violence, maybe, unless the bad guys who keep their guns decide to go on a rampage once you have disarmed people .

bah. enough of this. you know my position.

[wesw]

fewer

[Beer Sponge]

Perhaps all would be better if your government made sure every man, woman and child had a gun. Safety first!

[Joe Guy]

[wesw]

caption for above photo....


no mother f******, I don t want any candy.

[Econoline]

The problem is NOT firearms, it lies within the human heart.

Well, within the American heart, anyway...

The U.S.A. is very, very special, and nobody's gonna take that away from us.

Thank the Lord that handguns are so readily available! The Second Amendment makes us all safe!! America, fuck yeah!!! U-S-A-!!! U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!!

[wesw]

[Guinevere]

http://mic.com/articles/123049/19-years ... -australia

Nuff said...

It should be, but not here in Amurika, where we care more about individual rights and bogeymen, than the safety of our communities and our citizens.

[Guinevere]

It's kind of depressing, (but oh so predictable)

Everytime we have a discussion about this...

From the left end, it's always about how the "guns" somehow magically engaged in "gun violence".....

Not "gang violence", or "criminal violence"...(which is what's actually taking place)

But "gun violence"...

As though the guns suddenly came to life and committed crimes on their own...

(Like some bizarre version of The Nutcracker Suite...)

Oh please. Again, in the face of Incontrovertible evidence that other nations which have restricted gun ownership have reduced violence committed with guns, you resort to "guns don't kill people." Thats so helpful.

[wesw]

that s it. I m giving out guns for Christmas presents.

...I wonder if Go Fund Me would allow me to start a fund....

[Econoline]

From Wonkette:

Also, let’s have a respectful period of not talking about guns. Perhaps we can talk about guns after the next horrific shooting. Or the one after that. Or how about never? Does never work for you?

[Gob]

Don't like firearms, don't buy any.

get shot anyway...

[rubato]

I was waiting with this one. I knew it wouldn't take long.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-ne ... ds-n409356

More Police Are Killed in States With More Guns, Study Finds

by Maggie Fox
Image: Elmer Buddy Christian


Police officers are most likely to be killed in states where the most people own guns, a new study finds.

The report is sure to be controversial, but it adds a new dimension to a conversation that's recently been focused more on police shootings of unarmed Americans.

This study looks at who's killing the cops, and it's overwhelmingly people with private guns, David Swedler of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health found.
""Officers are three times more likely to be murdered on the job in high gun ownership states in comparison with low gun ownership states. That was the big wow for me.""

"If we're interested in protecting police officers, we need to look at what's killing them, and what's killing them is guns," says Swedler.

Swedler's team used the FBI's Uniformed Crime Reporting database to check on all homicides of law enforcement officers between 1996 and 2010. They used a giant survey called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to get data on gun ownership.

Their findings: The No. 1 cause of on-the-job death for police is motor vehicle accidents. But gun deaths came second, they reported in the American Journal of Public Health.

"We were not surprised to find that firearm ownership is associated with homicide rates," Swedler told NBC news.

"The big surprise finding to me was the differences in homicide rates among officers in states with the lowest gun ownership compared to states with highest gun ownership," he added.

Obama still pushing for gun reform at fundraiser 0:34

"Officers are three times more likely to be murdered on the job in high gun ownership states in comparison with low gun ownership states. That was the big wow for me."

Police and sheriffs' organizations disagree on gun laws, gun control and gun ownership and whether limits would help reduce crime.

Swerdler's one of a group of researchers who want to see what the data shows, and who consider gun ownership and gun laws matters that can legitimately be studied and debated as public and occupational health issues.

"To me, an officer is a worker just like any worker in America. Workers have the right to come home from work at the end of the day," Swedler said.

"We in occupational health and safety look to protect the lives of workers."

His team found 782 homicides of police officers over the 15 years they looked. Of those, 716 were committed using guns and 515 of those with handguns.

On average, 38 percent of U.S. households have at least one gun, ranging from 4.8 percent of homes Washington, D.C. to 62 percent in Wyoming, the researchers found. This fits in with other studies.

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi and Montana were the states with the highest rates of both gun ownership and for law enforcement killings. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had the lowest per-capita rate for both.

It's important to calculate the rates by per capita, said Swedler, because large states have more killings and more guns simply because they have more people.

Swedler said his team also made sure that police killings were not related to violent crime in general. ... "

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Stupid is as stupid does:

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gu ... statistics

America has 4.4 percent of the world's population, but almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world

States with more guns have more gun deaths

Using data from a study in Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mother Jones put together the chart above that shows states with more guns tend to have far more gun deaths. And it's not just one study. "Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide," David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center's director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.

States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths

When economist Richard Florida took a look at gun deaths and other social indicators, he found that higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness didn't correlate with more gun deaths. But he did find one telling correlation: States with tighter gun control laws have fewer gun-related deaths.

It isn't rocket science. We need to regulate gun ownership more effectively. Or we need to be honest and say we are ok with killing more civilians, children, and police with guns than anyone else in the first world because we worship guns. And the political party that sucked up to racists for their votes is sucking up to the gun lobby and cares more about votes than saving lives.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

This is purely a practical problem and we could fix it. We have made huge improvements in many other problems once we admitted that it was right. It is our problem. And we need to focus energy on it.

Drunk driving deaths have reduced in absolute numbers by 1/2 since the beginnings of MADD and the percentage reduction has been even more.

Smoking rates have been reduced in Calif. from 26% to less than 10%.

But we have to make it clear to legislators, primarily Republicans but some Democrats too, that we know that gun deaths are our faults because we could prevent most of them and just don't. Allowing the legislative agenda regarding firearms be driven by paranoid idiots has gotten us into this mess. We need to get them out of it.


yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

[Lord Jim]

Meanwhile, back at the actual topic:

Gunman in deadly on-air attack dies after manhunt

MONETA, Va. -- A TV reporter and cameraman were shot to death during a live television interview on CBS Roanoke affiliate WDBJ-TV Wednesday by a gunman who recorded himself carrying out the killings and posted the video on social media after fleeing the scene.

Authorities identified the suspect as a journalist who had been fired from the station in 2013. Hours later and hundreds of miles away, he ran off the road and a trooper found him with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He died at a hospital later Wednesday.

Virginia State Police Sgt. Rick Garletts said a license-plate reader alerted troopers to the suspect's vehicle.

The shots Wednesday morning rang out on-air as reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were presenting a local tourism story at an outdoor shopping mall. Viewers saw her scream and run, and she could be heard saying "Oh my God," as she fell. Ward fell, too, and the camera he had been holding on his shoulder captured a fleeting image of the suspect holding a handgun.

WDBJ quickly switched back to the anchor at the station, her eyes large and jaw dropping as she said, "OK, not sure what happened there." The station later went live again, reporting on their own station and staff as the story developed.

Parker and Ward were killed as the gunman fired about 15 shots. Their interview subject, Vicki Gardner, was in stable condition later Wednesday after surgery for her wounds.

The gunman was Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, of Roanoke, who appeared on WDBJ as Bryce Williams, authorities said.

In an interview with CBSN, Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ's president and general manager, said Flanagan's name came to mind "instantly" when this happened.

"He left here in a cloud ... We asked him to leave and that itself was difficult," Marks said.

Marks said Flanagan had to be escorted by police out of the station when he was fired. Marks described him as "an unhappy man" and "difficult to work with," always "looking out for people to say things he could take offense to."

"Eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. He did not take that well," Marks explained.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/virginia-po ... ws-report/

Apparently the killer was also fired from two other TV stations, (one in Savannah, the other in Tallahassee) with basically the same story....

If you can't get along some place, then the problem may be with the other people there...

But if you can't get along any place you go, the problem is definitely with you...