Assault Rifles won't be going away anytime soon.

This goes back to the joke about the World Famous French lover who was on a game show as a lifeline. The punch line is that he wouldn't have done anything the contestant suggested. The "gun violence" situations is really like that. With pretty much everyone knowing that the US needs to rein in the weapons.

Yet nobody is doing anything about it.

Come on! You are worried that assault weapons are going to be banned whether you are "pro" or "anti". The pro-AW crowd is hording the things knowing that there will be a huge rise in their price the next time they get banned. That is if the current ones aren't removed from circulation. But I doubt that will happen.

I think the ones in circulation will be "grandfathered" and remain in circulation.

Any gun buyback would cost a lot in the US because the situation was allowed to get out of control.

And the current situation of US politics has ensured that guns will be a problem.

This is worth a read since it gets into the problems this issue raises:
https://www.thetrace.org/2018/09/how-many-assault-weapons-in-the-us/

Gun Violence is a Public Health Issue

The following article appeared in the STrib over the weekend, from the AP. It compares gun violence to problems in our society from tobacco, auto accidents, alcohol, unwanted and teen pregnancy, and viral illnesses.  When this many people are killed or injured, gun violence becomes a legitimate public health issue  rather than ONLY an issue of individual rights.
Whenever a substance or a product as much as any microbe is a problem resulting in death and serious injury or illness, it appropriately belongs in the sphere of public health as the target for public policy.  The reason? Because as much as it may appear to be something which strictly involves individuals on a person by person basis, the actual costs and impact goes far further, in a ripple effect. Another example would be when individual parents choose not to vaccinate their children, resulting in epidemics of preventable diseases, which is increasingly a problem.  Not only are the unvaccinated children becoming ill and even dying at an unprecedented and completely avoidable rate, but the more virulent muttions of those illnesses become a greater threat to the immunity of those who are vaccinated, and place a greater burden on our schools, and on our community health resources.
When working people are ill, for example, they affect others in the workforce, their absence or an inability to perform at optimum level affects the labor force generally and their employer specifically.  That is as true of the effects of firearm violence as it is the flu. So that general welfare concept in our U.S. Constitution has a capitalist facet.
Absenteeism is extremely costly to our economy, for example:

American businesses lose an average of 2.8 million work days each year due to unplanned absences (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). In dollars, these absences cost upwards of $74 billion.   

'Presenteeism' is the "impact of at-work lost productivity.  Off-task workers cost businesses an average of $250 billion a year, or approximately $2,000 per worker.

When businesses have  these kinds of economic issues, we have less growth, and we are less competitive in the global economic market.  It affects tax bases, it affects so many other aspects of our society generally in terms of very real costs, and our economy and governments very tangibly.  That ripple effect that goes far beyond the individual or family is the reason for the U.S. Constitution to have MULTIPLE references to General Welfare in the context of not only federal government, but the term also occurs in charters and constitutions of state and local governments in the United States.

Notably the preamble of the U.S. Constitution declares:

"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

and Article I, Section 8 states:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; 

So clearly there was an understanding and awreness of how are success is interconnected, and should be regulated, and that there should be nationally funded efforts on the part of our government, as conceived by the founding fathers to promote and ensure that larger welfare of us as a larger group entity rather than to treat us ONLY as separate, unconnected individuals.  Gun violence harms all of us, without any upside other than empty claims that we are free.  The u.S. Constitution was never intended to be a suicide pact, it was never intended to enact the 2nd Amendment to kill and injure our citizens in such enormous numbers, or to make it so easy for convicted criminals, drug users and abusers (including alcoholics), domestic abusers and stalkers, those who as members of hate groups are a violent danger to their fellow citizens, or those who are known to those around them to be dangerously mentally ill and a danger to others or themselves. 

More than that, given the beliefs of our founding fathers, there is on doubt that they never would have accepted the rate of suicides we have in this country from firearms; clearly numerous studies have documented that firearms suicides are more lethal, and far more a weapon of impulse than any other method of self-destruction.

As a nation, we desperately need a rational and pragmatic approach to firearms, rather than the prevailing very destructive and unsuccessful emotional basis for how we deal with firearms and firearm violence.  We especially need to end the exploitation of the highly emotional attitudes towards firearms that takes place by those who profit from that gun violence.

From the AP by way of the STrib:

Doctors target gun violence as a social disease

• Article by: MARILYNN MARCHIONE , Associated Press
• Updated: August 12, 2012 - 7:40 PM

MILWAUKEE - Is a gun like a virus, a car, tobacco or alcohol? Yes, say public health experts, who in the wake of recent mass shootings are calling for a fresh look at gun violence as a social disease.
What we need, they say, is a public health approach to the problem, like the highway safety measures, product changes and driving laws that slashed deaths from car crashes decades ago, even as the number of vehicles on the road rose.
One example: Guardrails are now curved to the ground instead of having sharp metal ends that stick out and pose a hazard in a crash.
"People used to spear themselves and we blamed the drivers for that," said Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine professor who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.
It wasn't enough back then to curb deaths just by trying to make people better drivers, and it isn't enough now to tackle gun violence by focusing solely on the people doing the shooting, he and other doctors say.
They want a science-based, pragmatic approach based on the reality of a society saturated with guns and seek better ways of preventing harm from them.
Hargarten. He found himself treating victims of the Sikh temple shootings at the emergency department he heads in Milwaukee. Seven people were killed, including the gunman, and three were seriously injured.
It happened two weeks after the shooting that killed 12 people and injured 58 at a movie theater in Colorado, and two days before a man pleaded guilty to killing six people and wounding 13, including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Ariz., last year.
"What I'm struggling with is, is this the new social norm? This is what we're going to have to live with if we have more personal access to firearms," said Hargarten, emergency medicine chief at Froedtert Hospital and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "We have a public health issue to discuss. Do we wait for the next outbreak or is there something we can do to prevent it?"
About 260 million to 300 million firearms are owned by civilians in the United States; about one-third of American homes have one. Guns are used in two-thirds of homicides, according to the FBI. About 9 percent of all violent crimes involve a gun — roughly 338,000 cases each year.
Mass shootings don't seem to be on the rise, but not all police agencies report details like the number of victims per shooting and reporting lags by more than a year, so recent trends are not known.
"The greater toll is not from these clusters but from endemic violence, the stuff that occurs every day and doesn't make the headlines," said Wintemute, the California researcher.
More than 73,000 emergency room visits in 2010 were for firearm-related injuries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
At the same time, violent crime has been falling and the murder rate is less than half what it was two decades ago. And Gallup polls have shown support for stricter gun laws has been falling since 1990. Last year 55 percent of Americans said gun laws should remain the same or become more lenient.
Dr. David Satcher tried to make gun violence a public health issue when he became CDC director in 1993. Four years later, laws that allow the carrying of concealed weapons drew attention when two women were shot at an Indianapolis restaurant after a patron's gun fell out of his pocket and accidentally fired. Ironically, the victims were health educators in town for an American Public Health Association convention.
That same year, Hargarten won a federal grant to establish the nation's first Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
"Unlike almost all other consumer products, there is no national product safety oversight of firearms," he wrote in the Wisconsin Medical Journal.
That's just one aspect of a public health approach. Other elements:
_"Host" factors: What makes someone more likely to shoot, or someone more likely to be a victim. One recent study found firearm owners were more likely than those with no firearms at home to binge drink or to drink and drive, and other research has tied alcohol and gun violence. That suggests that people with driving under the influence convictions should be barred from buying a gun, Wintemute said.
_Product features: Which firearms are most dangerous and why. Manufacturers could be pressured to fix design defects that let guns go off accidentally, and to add technology that allows only the owner of the gun to fire it (many police officers and others are shot with their own weapons). Bans on assault weapons and multiple magazines that allow rapid and repeat firing are other possible steps.

_"Environmental" risk factors: What conditions allow or contribute to shootings. Gun shops must do background checks and refuse to sell firearms to people convicted of felonies or domestic violence misdemeanors, but those convicted of other violent misdemeanors can buy whatever they want. The rules also don't apply to private sales, which one study estimates as 40 percent of the market.
_Disease patterns, observing how a problem spreads. Gun ownership — a precursor to gun violence — can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.
"There's sort of a contagion phenomenon" after a shooting, where people feel they need to have a gun for protection or retaliation, he said.
That's already evident in the wake of the Colorado movie-theater shootings. Last week, reports popped up around the nation of people bringing guns to "Batman" movies. Some of them said they did so for protection.
___
Associated Press writer Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Violence prevention research: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp
CDC injury prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nvdrs/

Another Crazed Gunman on a College Campus

Just think how many lives we would save, how many lives would not be put at risk, how much safer we would be, and of course, last and least, how much money we would save if far fewer people owned firearms. These events are dangerous, they are costly (in every way) and they are unnecessary. It is stupid to have so many guns in our society; they are not useful in any constructive way to reduce crime or increase protection when weighed against all of the shootings - an estimated 1,000 a day, with 30,000 of them every year killing people. This was never the intent of the founding fathers, and if it had been, continuing this level of guns per capita is still stupid. The founding fathers were fallible; they made mistakes, notably slavery and not providing women the vote originally.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By NBC News staff and wire reports

A standoff with an armed man at the University of Connecticut in Groton that forced the evacuation of the campus is over after the man committed suicide, according to local reports.
Police had been negotiating for hours with the man, who had crawled beneath a dock on the premises.
“As the subject was pointing the weapon towards himself and towards others,” Connecticut Police Lt. Paul Vance said, “troopers deployed less-than-lethal equipment in an effort, again, to disarm the subject. Again, it was not successful.”
They attempted to stop the gunman by talking to him on his cell phone and tried to distract him by using bean bags, flash grenades and a tactical vehicle, NBCConnecticut.com reported.
The man’s family had called Groton, Conn., police around 5 p.m. Monday, saying he was despondent and armed, police said. A few hours later, he drove his Jeep onto the university campus.
Police spotted the gunman just after 10 p.m. ET Monday, threatening to hurt himself.
At around 2:15 a.m. ET, police said they had set up a perimeter around him.
Police ordered an emergency evacuation of the entire campus, and a brief emergency alert was sent out and posted to the university’s website.
“He doesn’t appear to be a threat to others, but we want to secure his safety,” University of Connecticut spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz said during the standoff.
Police said the man was 30 years old, and they won’t release his name until the family is notified.
A group of high school students was on the campus for a summer program, but the students remained in another building on the opposite side of campus during the standoff. Reitz said very few people were believed to be on campus because of summer vacation.
The school reopened at 8 a.m. ET Tuesday, but the investigation continues.
NBC Connecticut and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Failed Gun Culture, Failed Argument

The reality is, guns DO kill people.  It is a specious argument to say guns don't kill people, people kill people.

People USING GUNS kill people. 

They kill people more effectively than other means of violence, including as a means for people acting impulsively to kill themselves. 

We have a lot of mass shootings in this country, compared to other countries where they have more reasonable, more restrictive gun regulation.  Clearly, these mass shootings are significantly avoidable, if not entirely avoidable.  Nations like Australia and the U.K. or Norway rarely have a problem with mass shootings once every 10 to 15 ears or more.  Canada has had a couple, very recently; they blame guns coming over the border from the U.S., falling into the wrong hands, circumventing their gun laws.  It happens in Mexico as well; we are a bad neighboring country with which to share a border in that regard.

We are not more free because of gun ownership. We are not more safe because of more firearms either.  Ballots, not bullets make us free.  People being people, not corporations being people make us free.  The right is wronging this country, and demonstrating failed reason as the so often do, in not limiting easy firearms  to both legal and illegal possessers, but instead trying to prevent legal voters from having easy access to the ballot box, on the pretext of non-existent voter fraud.

It might be different - MIGHT be a different story, IF there were actual significant voter fraud; there isn't.  Speculating there might be, if someone cannot prove it to exist -- and if voter fraud DID exist sufficient to alter election outcomes, more instances would be provable (if not all) than show up now.

Here are a couple of editorial cartoons that highlight important issues:

Vigil against Violence

These are shocking numbers. We have too much violence, particularly gun violence. Other civilized, developed countries do not have this kind of problem because they institute sensible gun regulation.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gun Violence Is NOT Funny, Congressman

I took some heat in an email to the penigma account recently, from a year ago when I wrote about the connection between the position promoted by failed Senate candidate and right wing extremist Sharron Angle who advocated that if the right didn't get their way in the 2010 election, they should resort to the ammo box instead of the ballot box to correct what was, to their minds, a mistake in the election.

The shooting the following January 2011 of Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords by a schizophrenic gun man who was motivated in part by right wing extremist propaganda put Angle's words into sharp contrast with the reality of shooting people who we elect.  The recent email complained that the person did not feel I had adequately exonerated Sharron Angle from responsibility, presumably because of the finding that Loughner was insane, too insane so far to stand trial.

While it is of course true that there is no direct link between Sharron Angle and the Giffords shooting - and I don't claim there is a direct or proximate cause between the violence advocated by Angle, and the violent act perpetrated on Gifford - I still DO very much fault the position of Angle as terribly wrong, horribly bad, as anti-American and un-patriotic. And sadly, it is still very much the attitude of the far right extremists running for political office, and in at least one recent case, IN political office.  We can only hope that person might find himself back OUT of office this November.

Who is the latst Angle-like advocate for gun violence against our lawfully elected representatives in government?

Like Angle, this poster-child for bad gun culture excesses is from a southwestern state.  Angle was from Nevada, this is Congressman John Sullivan, from Oklahoma.  Sullivan calls his comments a joke - although he didn't appear to do so until AFTER he got blow-back from saying it, which makes his disclaimer seem a whole lot less sincere.

So for the nice man who very politely emailed me this week at the blog email - this is for you.

No, Sharron Angle clearly did NOT influence Jared Loughner, as it turned out.  But that doesn't make her advocating shooting people any less objectionable.  Unlike Republican member of Congress, Representative Sullivan, she never properly apologized either - and she lost, because people did NOT like her views.

So, in case there was any confusion on the subject, let me be very clear here.  Advocating shooting members of Congress, either the House or the Senate, advocating shooting governors, or the President or Vice President, or hell - advocating shooting ANYBODY is just plain completely and totally UNACCEPTABLE.

It is not funny, it is not clever, it is not amusing, and it should not be done, but least of all should it be done in the context of politics and government.  Because comments, including those made by right wing media that influenced the murder of Dr. Tiller, and the murder attempts by Charlie Wilson, in Washington to shoot a senator that was influenced by the right wing extremist idiot Glenn Beck, those rants, those stupid, ugly and violent admonitions --------those are not funny, and sometimes they have deadly consequences.

So, I hope our readers will be moved to oppose, criticize and condemn such speech, instead of nit picking it.  Because - you SHOULD.  Because people like Angle, Coburn, Sullivan, and the right wing media and blogosphere need to learn to self-regulate themselves not to make these inappropriate and unacceptable comments, and they aren't going to do so without outside help.

Frankly, if the congressman is this irresponsible in his speech, maybe he shouldn't be allowed to own a gun, due to his stupidity and poor judgment.  The right are fond of stating that guns don't kill people, people kill people.  The reality is that stupid and violent people WITH GUNS kill people; it's possible the congressman fits that description, because otherwise the idea wouldn't be amusing to him.  Clearly, he isn't the only one who doesn't get how inappropriate and just plain wrong joking about gun violence towards our congressmen and women, and our Senators is; it appears to be endemic on the right as a problem.

And if Congressman Sullivan, and Senator Coburn don't like the way the current budgets or other legislative battles are going, maybe they should persuade their party to be less belligerant, intransigent, and obstructionist.   As to Sharron Angle, she should just go seek professional help to become a nicer, saner human being than she is now as a violence advocating delusional tea party extremist.

From the Huff Po - here is the John Sullivan story:

John Sullivan, GOP Congressman, Apologizes For 'Killing' Comments

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma congressman apologized on Friday for suggesting that "killing a couple" of U.S. senators may be the only way to get a budget passed through Congress.
U.S. Rep. John Sullivan made the comments Wednesday during a town hall meeting in Bixby. When asked about federal spending, the Tulsa Republican expressed his frustration with the Senate for its failure to approve a budget.
"I'd love to get them to vote for it," Sullivan said at the event. "Boy, I'd love that, you know. But other than me going over there with a gun and pointing it to their head and maybe killing a couple of `em, I don't think they're going to listen unless they get beat."
Sullivan's comments were first posted on the political blog Talking Points Memo.
Sullivan spokesman Vaughn Jennings said Friday that the congressman was speaking off the cuff during the town hall meeting and sincerely apologized for his remarks. Jennings added that Sullivan also spoke during the event about the importance of civility in Washington.
"The congressman offers his sincere apologies to anyone he offended and for using a poor choice of words to make his point – which was that Senate Democrats are refusing to pass a budget or even vote on the 28 House-passed jobs bills," Jennings said in a statement. "Millions of Americans are hurting – the Congressman feels their pain, and does not want his comments to deflect attention away from the serious issues our country faces today, and he certainly does not condone any form of violence as a means to fix what is broken in Washington."
Jennings said the congressman has not been contacted by law enforcement about his remarks.
Sullivan's comments drew criticism from U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., a longtime proponent of stricter gun laws whose husband was killed and her son severely injured during a mass shooting on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993.
"Mr. Sullivan's remarks show a staggering insensitivity to the families of 30-plus Americans that are killed by gunfire every single day," McCarthy said in a statement. "This kind of rhetoric helps illustrate just how hard it is to pass sensible laws to reduce gun violence in the Republican-controlled House."
The vice chairman of the Tulsa Democratic Party said Sullivan's comment "exceeds the limits of poor taste by miles," particularly in the wake of a January 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Sullivan's former colleague U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head.
"Metaphor or not, your words suggested to the community that violence is a solution if you do not agree with an elected official's point of view," Michael Whelan wrote in a letter to Sullivan. "While the political discourse in Washington may be ugly these days, it is incumbent upon our leaders to set the example and to calm the toxic firestorms brewing within their perspective parties. Your statements poured fuel on that fire."
It's not the first time an Oklahoma lawmaker has faced criticism for remarks about guns. At a town hall meeting in Langley in August, U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, in describing his frustration with Congress, said: "It's a good thing I can't pack a gun on the Senate floor."
Coburn's office quickly issued an apology on the senator's behalf, but Coburn himself told his critics to "get over it."
"Political correctness is B.S.," Coburn told The Associated Press at the time. "Tell `em to get over it. It was a joke and everybody laughed. That's all I have to say about it."