Guns don't kill, people kill. The crime rate is high in New York city, home of the Yankees. Same too for the gang problem in Los Angeles. Stop picking on the country folk. Seems to me, it is mostly minorities(e.g. gangs) that are doing the killing in LA and NY. May be we need to have ICE do their job.

A few points:

1. Three of the gentlemen pictured in the photo for the story on the NSSF website happen to be friends and teammates of mine on the Skeet and Trap team at Yale University. I find it strange and rather offensive that you would try to in any way conflate those wonderful people, and the other young athlete-scholars who participate in collegiate shooting sports with the maniac at Virginia Tech, or try to connect a fun, safe event like the ACUI Intercollegiate Clay Target Championships with the tragedy that occurred in Blacksburg.

2. That story has been up since April 9th, as is clearly stated at the top of the page. Why should they take it down? Are you suggesting the two events are somehow related? If not, what exactly is your point?

3. The statement you highlight is completely factual. Competitive shooting sports are gaining in popularity at a tremendous rate. We had to turn away many qualified people for the Yale team simply because we could not handle the huge team that would have resulted if we took all qualified comers. And that is here in Connecticut, a place not known for strong interest in shooting sports, hunting, or guns in general. In other parts of the country, where gun ownership is well-established, it is simply exploding.

4. Directly above the story you mention, is a letter from a NSSF member in support of an ATF program to reduce straw purchases.

5. Federal tax dollars should not be spent to promote the NSSF in schools. Any promotions the NSSF does should be paid for via privately raised funds. However, I would love to have had the opportunity to shoot competitively in high school.

If it weren't for time, we wouldn't have the fine opportunity to have a life.

Aside from other points, maybe the webmaster didn't find it necessary to hawk over some web site created to inform people about established ideas and plans.

No one attacks the ones they love, so maybe the word of he year is community.

If someone reads this within' then next 24 hours, I'd be surprised, because I could hope said DJ is enjoying their day.

Doesn't take long for the gun obsessed to fan out to every web site they can every time something like this happens.

This tragedy will change nothing. This sick country is so obsessed with owning guns and [expletive deleted] killing things that nothing will change. As long as these sick people stick to believing they have the right to own things made for no purpose other than to kill, tragedies will keep happening and nothing will change.

All of you gun nuts bear responsibility every time something like this happens. You won't even allow reasonable gun restrictions like limiting handguns and automatic weapons.

Ae, there is no need to use profanity(F word) in making your point. Profanity by a blog poster can indicate a lack of education which contributes to the low rating of blog sites-see the article, "Watch the Daily Show, Read Blogs, not so smart"

Thanks for the lesson Prof. I'm angry, not uneducated.

The Student Shooter could have benefited from an anger management class. The University Administration needs to be more sensitive to problem students. The Administration needs to weed out the misfits of society. They do not belong on campus. Send them to the military.

Citizens cannot be trusted to own weapons. how does owning a gun make them any safer? ... {well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.]
It seems obvious that the authors of this document intended this amendment to be used to supply guns to the Army. At no point does it suggest that the average man off the street with no military training should be permitted to own a gun!

Nevertheless, many right-wing members of today's United States have interpreted this amendment to mean that every citizen has the right to "keep and bear arms." Absurd? NUTS!. But uneducated people in our society (such as members of Congress) can still be fooled into believing this absurdity.

even water guns should be banned. I've seen children as young as eight and eleven running about with these water guns and parents are allowing their kids to use them. They should be banned.they teach the kids that gun are ok.

"{well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.]"

Ooh, nice try Bigbenr, but no. Try reading it again. There's a little part you left out:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Catch that "right of the people to keep and bear arms" part? Good try though. Pretty slick on your part to leave out the "of the people" part. Fortunately, the actual Bill of Rights is a little harder for people like you to edit to suit your wishes.

By reposting this same argument over and over, while ignoring those who present well-reasoned arguments and evidence which contradicts your rather tortured interpretation of the language, does little to advance your side. In fact, it is detrimental to it.

I suggest answering those who have challenged your view in the first thread on this topic, "Virginia Home to Lax Gun Laws" rather than repeating this canard over and over. We heard you the first time, and no one who wasn't already convinced had their minds changed by your unsubstantiated claim. The subsequent repetitions didn't change that.

"But uneducated people in our society (such as members of Congress) can still be fooled into believing this absurdity."

I am a few months shy of completing a Master's from Yale and have undergraduate degrees in philosophy and microbiology, and yet I believe that the language of the 2nd Amendment, particularly when viewed in the context provided by the 9th Amendment, grants an individual right to keep and bear arms. (For more detail, see my comments in the "Virginia Home To Lax Gun Laws" thread. Unlike some here, I don't see the utility in reposting the same argument over and over again in every possibly related thread.)

Amazed yet, Bigbenr? Get this: there are those a good deal more educated than myself who are also advocates for private gun ownership. Please, though, wow me with your wonderful education that allows you to declare a crucial piece of our nation's founding document absurd, and those who don't see things your way to be self-evidently stupid.

No, really. I'll wait right here.

"The Student Shooter could have benefited from an anger management class."

Maybe, maybe not. Do you have data to support the claim that anger management classes actually prevent troubled individuals from acting on whatever drives people like Cho Seung-Hui (voices in their head, class hatred, etc.)? I'd like to see it.

It would be nice if there were good tools to 1. screen troubled individuals likely to commit a terrible act of violence like this one and 2. intervene in such a way that both helps the troubled person exorcise their demons and prevent them from carrying out acts of violence. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that such tools exist right now.

"The Administration needs to weed out the misfits of society. They do not belong on campus."

Whoa, there, thought police. I bet you have some ready made (and of course 100% objective and scientifically validated) "misfits of society" criteria all ready to go for us to identify and "weed out" these bad types. Come on, people, let's get with the mohawk = gulag program here!

Of course, none of the great intellectuals who spent their lives in academia would be considered "misfits of society". Certainly no one would ever consider Einstein, Feynman, or Kary Mullis misfits.

"Send them to the military."

So you want to take someone whom you've identified as too dangerous to be physically present on a college campus, and give them access to fully automatic weapons, hand grenades, tanks, Apache helicopters, etc? Ok, yeah, that makes sense.

At this point, I'm sincerely hoping that Emily Howe isn't really a professor.

Bubba,

I just noticed you spreading your rumor on this topic as well. New York City has the lowest violent crime rate of any large city in the country. It is also lower than many mid-size and smaller cities. So, if you feel unsafe in New York City, that comes from within your own mind, not from any knowledge of this city. If you have a point to make, make it, but do so with real information.

Thanks.

Oh, and did you really mean to say "guns don't kill, people kill"? That's literally a characture of a line. Archie Bunker said it on All in the Family, the once popular 70s TV show. His character was given the line precisely to look like the characture of the hard line conservative. I think you may want to pick a more intelligent sound bite in the future.

"...these sick people stick to believing they have the right to own things made for no purpose other than to kill..."

I find it a bit ironic that the claim that guns are made "for no purpose other than to kill" is being made as a comment on a thread that directly refutes said claim. This thread, remember, is about how Clara Jeffery finds it somehow wrong for the NSSF to have a story about how intercollegiate shotgun sports are gaining in popularity. The very subject of the thread is about how people are using guns for a sport that, last I checked, doesn't involve anyone or anything getting killed.

Your claim is somewhat akin to saying "baseball bats are things with no other purpose than to bash people's heads in" in response to a post about the college baseball having an excellent recruiting year. Not only is the claim wrong, the evidence that it is wrong is contained in the very post you are commenting on!

"You won't even allow reasonable gun restrictions like limiting handguns and automatic weapons."

Automatic weapons are heavily regulated and restricted, despite the fact that they have rarely been used in violent crimes. Amazingly, madmen killing people in crowds did not end when strict regulations on fully automatic weapons were put in place.

Handguns are used in crimes, but they also represent the best means of self-defense for average citizens to protect themselves from violent crime. So clearly you can see the dilemma. The solution, it seems, is to put more guns in the hands of the law-abiding and mentally stable, and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the insane.

Again, anyone who has a proposal for that type of gun control legislation has my undivided attention.

1.The Second Amendment only protects the "collective" State right to maintain a militia, not an individual right to keep and bear arms. 2.Guns are dangerous and should be banned.The sooner the better.Guns are just the recipe for disaster and chidren die. Nearly all childhood unintentional shooting deaths occur in or around the home.
In 1999, 6,134 people (many of them children) were killed accidentally or unintentionally by firearms. (
gun-owning households with children do not regularly make sure that guns are equipped with child safety or other trigger locks.
This is a subject that can't be taken lightly. If your child is invited to visit a friend after school be sure that you have personally gone to that home and asked that tough question: "Do you have a gun?" This genocide must stop!

The Democrats control all the big cities and the gangs are out of control with the gang banging. Let's get real. The drug trade and etc. is too powerful to control by liberals. The USA border is wide open for illegal activities. Instead of you egghead liberals getting all worked up about guns, why don't you get one and learn to defend yourself. The cops won't, because we sue them. Look at Frisco,(excuse me, I mean the "City")the people don't go out walking the street at night, at least not on Mission, we control those streets as soon as the sun goes down. Got to run.

We should reinterpret the Constitution to suit your faddish views?

Response to Bigbenr, Bubba, et al...

The word "guns" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. The Second Amendment is not limited specifically to guns or firearms. The Second Amendment uses the much broader term of "arms", which did not mean the same thing as "firearms" to the framers of the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson owned his own private cannon, equivelant to owning a nuclear bomb today in terms of it being the largest military weapon available at the time. The term "arms" at the time of the drafting of the Second Amendment included anything used in warfare.

Toady, that would include nuclear and conventional bombs, all manner of chemical and biological weaponry and soon to be, space-ray weapons. Either the NRA and the other gun lunatics of America are going to allow Haliburton and similar crooked companies to possess their own private space-ray weapons, owners of private jets to mount their own private nuclear bombs under their wings and allow their own next door neighbor to manufacture Anthrax whenever they wish, or they are going to restrict the Second Amendment.

There is no middle ground. Using the Second Amendment as a shield to allow unregulated ownership of modern firearms is clearly, totally insane and has no more constitutional logic than allowing individual Americans to personally own and possess unlimited nuclear and biological weaponry.

And finally, if Bubba truly believes in the so-called 'logic' that "guns don't kill people, people do", then we likewise, should protect the constitutional right of drug dealers to sell heroine at our children's elementary school. After all, drugs don't kill people, people who take too many drugs kill themselves... right?

Come on, what's the harm of allowing a little cocaine or meth to help our children cope with those ACLU-washed down boring monkey-brained fairy tales posing as 'science' lessons they force on them nowadays? After all guns don't kill children, modern 'educators' posing as scientists and other drug dealers do... right?

Whoa, bud. You can make any idiotic claim about the Constitution guaranteeing your right to 31 round clips, but really, if you believe the Second Amendment makes us all an armed citizen army, constitute the militia and get your scrofulous ass to Iraq defending the country full time. Over there, so they don't follow us over here? Thirty-one rounds, but that was banned by the Brady Bill, but the Pretzeldent thought that impinged on 2nd Amendment rights.

Still. Calling somebody pulling the trigger on an over-under an athlete is just beyond comprehension. Golf may or may not be a sport. Shotgunning that doesn't involve large brewskies and
jack daniel certainly is not. This shotgun business sounds like idiot made-up crap. Honest to God. Student athletes? Randy Newman had a term for this sort of idiot. "Jesus, what a jerk."

Is this some tail-gate campaign to get Cheney some sort of prize? I mean he hit the idiot that went trap-shooting with him right in the Goddam face. Ain't that an All-American? Real athletes use ladies' guns too.

"You can make any idiotic claim about the Constitution guaranteeing your right to 31 round clips, but really, if you believe the Second Amendment makes us all an armed citizen army, constitute the militia and get your scrofulous ass to Iraq defending the country full time."

I made no claim about the 2nd Amendment making us all an armed citizen army. I know, what I actually wrote is way too hard to deal with, arguing with the people in your head is much easier.

"Calling somebody pulling the trigger on an over-under an athlete is just beyond comprehension. Golf may or may not be a sport. Shotgunning that doesn't involve large brewskies and
jack daniel certainly is not. This shotgun business sounds like idiot made-up crap."

There are sports that involve strength and speed (Skeet and Trap actually do involve the latter), and those that involve skill, particularly concentration, aim, and hand-eye coordination, which Skeet and Trap have in spades. I consider golf a sport for the same reason, although I don't play. Good to know that you consider pounding alcohol a sport though. Unfortunately, it seems your chosen sport has taken a toll on your brain.

Skeet has been around since 1915, by the way. I suppose in a sense it was "made-up," but then, all the other sports were at one time or another made up as well.

"Randy Newman had a term for this sort of idiot. "Jesus, what a jerk.""

Ah, yes, that wise sage Randy Newman. Who wouldn't take something said by a half-assed "quirky" pianist about someone completely unrelated to apply to this post? Oh, that's right, smart people.

"Is this some tail-gate campaign to get Cheney some sort of prize? I mean he hit the idiot that went trap-shooting with him right in the Goddam face."

I'm not sure what a "tail-gate campaign" is, but Cheney was not trap shooting when he shot his friend, he was hunting quail. Distinguishing between the two apparently takes a few more working brain cells than you have in operation right now, michaelj, so why don't you just focus on using the ones you do have to disabuse yourself of the strange notion that highly trained shooters want to give a prize to Cheney for making an egregious gun safety mistake that resulted in someone getting seriously hurt, mmmkay champ.

more gun laws...sure, that is exactly what will prevent these things. Are you anti-gun people out there aware that the 18 year-old female straw purchaser and the gun dealer who both knew what the 2 wackos at Columbine were up to have not, I repeat, not been charged with a crime! Why don't you ask your "representative", lawmaker, slimebag politician about that.

We have more regulations dealing with tobacco and alchol than Firearms.

If students want to participate in a clay target shotout let'em. Whether it is called a sport belongs
to the shooter.

I'd like to know WHO's rights we would be infringing upon to outlaw the ownership of semi & automatic handguns/weapons in this country?? I couldn't believe that the 1st knee jerk [ridiculous] response to this [most recent] massacre, was that everyone should have been armed in order to protect themselves...that would really make for a cozy campus wouldn't it?... knowing that there's a handgun in every backpack! but i guess it would have made the event even more sensational, for many more to have been killed in the cross-fire, huh!? i guess those of you w/this philosphy don't care if you go down, you just want to go down shooting?! but somehow i doubt that anyone would have had time to respond in kind.

The fact that the killer lied on the questionaire when he purchased the handgun about ever being in a mental institution, etc. & there was no background check, shows just how LAX our gunlaws are. Since there are only 2 purposes for guns - sport & killing - it seems that we could deduce by now [from the accidental & intentional deaths that have resulted from their possession & use], that we should make the purchasing of them ALOT more strict [like maybe assume that someone who is buying a gun might just lie to get it, duh!] & if you have good intentions [like shooting skeet], the restrictions & checks shouldn't be a problem, right? For example, if the prospective purchaser goes to a college, they should be notified & if the student isn't enrolled in one of the sportshooting classes &/or hasn't taken a gun safety course, the school would be forewarned that 'a quiet guy w/some mental problems' might be about to do himself or others in & JUST SAY NO! [to his purchase of a gun]...but this would be way too sensible & might just save some lives, BUT would infringe upon the rights of a natural born killer [which we're raising too many of today!].

All i can ask now is: Where are the 'MOTHERS AGAINST GUNSLINGERS????? How many kids are going to have to die for us to begin such a movement in this country?? We are raising a generation of kids who play violent video games every minute of every day & are becoming totally desensitized to killing period...then we wonder why tragedies like this happen - when they can so easily get a real gun!

And as for blaming law enforcement for not responding fast enough or in the appropriate manner to such an event...how in the world would even Superman respond quickly enough to thwort a crazed gunman on a rampage w/an automatic weapon??

I am very disheartened that people [in this country]just don't seem to 'get it' & if we don't get to the root of the problem, rather than applying the band-aids (like we always do), this event won't be 'the largest massacre in this country' for long & we can just blame ourselves for every future massacre we contribute to by not making it harder to have/own a weapon, of this magnitude, in the 1st place.

PS>i just can't believe that we're harder on alcohol & cigarette use than on guns...if you'd check the laws of other countries that have a very low crime rate, it's the opposite! But we Americans REFUSE to learn from other older, wiser, SAFER countries & my prediction is that if we don't, we'll continue to pay the ultimate price!

"I'd like to know WHO's rights we would be infringing upon to outlaw the ownership of semi & automatic handguns/weapons in this country??"

Those of law-abiding, legal gun owners who would be made criminals-by-default.

Ownership of automatic weapons is already heavily regulated and restricted, by the way.

"i guess it would have made the event even more sensational, for many more to have been killed in the cross-fire, huh!? i guess those of you w/this philosphy don't care if you go down, you just want to go down shooting?! but somehow i doubt that anyone would have had time to respond in kind."

I can draw my gun, take aim, and fire accurately in about three seconds. It took the killer quite a bit longer than that to line up and kill 32 people, stopping to reload multiple times. If someone there had a firearm and that level of skill (which is by no means unusual or outstanding), he might have gotten a few...but not 32.

And yes, I actually do think it's better to go down shooting than to watch people in front of you get massacred, helpless, police outside doing nothing, waiting for your turn to die. Call me crazy.

In fact, I'm so nutty, I think it would have been a good thing if the young lady from this story:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/student.torture.ap/index.html

had had a gun in her purse to pull out and shoot the bastard (who is still on the loose) instead of being raped, tortured and almost killed.

"We are raising a generation of kids who play violent video games every minute of every day & are becoming totally desensitized to killing period"

I'm not a gamer myself, but do you have any actual evidence that playing violent video games leads to real-life violence? I doubt it, because no such evidence exists.

This is histrionics, plain and simple. "Ban guns!" "Ban violent video games!" "Ban sharp corners on coffee tables and cracks in the sidewalk!" "Ban anything and everything that could possibly be unsafe! Sacrifice any liberty and any Constitutionally protected right to gain an increment more safety (screw that Ben Franklin guy)!"

Knee-jerk reactions huh? You seem to know a little something about those.

"The fact that the killer lied on the questionaire when he purchased the handgun about ever being in a mental institution, etc. & there was no background check, shows just how LAX our gunlaws are."

I agree with you here. There should be a real background check for mental illness, not just a checkbox on the form. If that means waiting an extra day to pick up your firearm, so be it.

"if you have good intentions [like shooting skeet], the restrictions & checks shouldn't be a problem, right?"

That's right.

"For example, if the prospective purchaser goes to a college, they should be notified & if the student isn't enrolled in one of the sportshooting classes &/or hasn't taken a gun safety course, the school would be forewarned that 'a quiet guy w/some mental problems' might be about to do himself or others in & JUST SAY NO! [to his purchase of a gun]"

I actually don't think the idea of having a mandatory gun-safety course before being allowed to purchase a weapon is a bad idea at all. I'm not sure it would have prevented this particular slaughter, as the killer seemed incredibly determined, but just for the general safety of those buying the guns and those around them, it seems reasonable that they should have some training.

"I'd like to know WHO's rights we would be infringing upon to outlaw the ownership of semi & automatic handguns/weapons in this country?? I couldn't believe that the 1st knee jerk [ridiculous] response to this [most recent] massacre, was that everyone should have been armed in order to protect themselves...that would really make for a cozy campus wouldn't it?... knowing that there's a handgun in every backpack! but i guess it would have made the event even more sensational, for many more to have been killed in the cross-fire, huh!? i guess those of you w/this philosphy don't care if you go down, you just want to go down shooting?! but somehow i doubt that anyone would have had time to respond in kind."

I can tell you whose rights would be infringed upon straight up. MINE. I personaly own Several semi-auto handguns and rifles.

did you know that in switzerland a law was passed that requires every able person to have a firearm in their household. Would you like to know something else? There is virtually no crime there. Hmm I wonder why...it couldn't be that a criminal would know that he might not live very long in a place like that...if he was trying to rob or kill a person. And yet guns don't keep people safe....hmm...please explain to me how that works, I just can't figure it out......

One of my friends is in Afganistan working in the US army. He has told me that in the bars over there everyone brings FULLY AUTOMATIC guns with them (and you guys are complaining about semi-autos...) and in the two years hes been over there he has not seen a single person shot in a bar (and he spends quite a bit of time in them). That is because every person in there knows if he pulls his gun out hes gonna be dead in about as long as it takes the guy next to him to pull his out and shoot. My grandpa used to take guns to school with him and no one cared. In the school parkinglot there were guns in half the vehicles out there and the doors were unlocked. School shootings were unheard of.

Blaming guns for murder is like blaming SPOONS for making people FAT.

Even if we "banned" guns it wouldn't keep them away from criminals. Do laws keep people from doing drugs? Let me answer that for you-NO-. Do you think a law would keep a criminal from getting a gun? Here I'll help you out -NO-. So yes, let's ban all guns and take them away from the law abiding citizens so they can no longer defend themselves while at the same time criminals will buy them anyways.

"Guns are dangerous and should be banned.The sooner the better.Guns are just the recipe for disaster and chidren die. Nearly all childhood unintentional shooting deaths occur in or around the home.
In 1999, 6,134 people (many of them children) were killed accidentally or unintentionally by firearms.
gun-owning households with children do not regularly make sure that guns are equipped with child safety or other trigger locks.
This is a subject that can't be taken lightly. If your child is invited to visit a friend after school be sure that you have personally gone to that home and asked that tough question: "Do you have a gun?" This genocide must stop!"

This is about the biggest load of bullsh*t I have read yet. All it takes to keep a child from picking up a gun without adult supervision is for the parent to sit down and have a 10 minute talk about it with their child. I can personaly vouch for this. In my house, right this very second, The are over 15 loaded guns. There are also three children in my house, ages 5-12 and The two youngest will not even touch a gun without adult supervision. The 12 year old will as she just finished hunters ed and has my permission to shoot whenever she likes. She even has her own Browning semi-auto .22, it was a gift from her grandfather.

Guns aren't the problem,the problem is ignorance and lack of responsibility on parents' parts.

Ben,
Let me know where you live so I can make sure I don't move in anywhere near you and all your guns, and all your armed children. I hope for the sake of your children and the neighborhood children that you have trigger locks and gun safes.
Your home is an armed camp and an arsenal of destruction just waiting to happen.

Northern Idaho, and people like you need to stay the helkl out. And as for trigger locks and safes, I don't use them because my two yougest children won't even touch them and the 12 year old is properly trained. I also have a 16 year old son who I bought a gun for when he was 4 I also allow him to run around with his friends and take out any gun he likes to go shooting.

Ben - I was born and raised in Northern Idaho, as were my brothers, my mother, and my grandmother. I'm one of those "people like" bobt and I'll be damned before I let anyone tell me whether or not I belong there.

And I'm not anti-gun, but I do believe that guns are inherently dangerous. There are good reasons to exercise reasonable caution when providing access to firearms and munitions. I certainly remember several times in my teen years when friends or relatives were injured or killed in gun accidents. I hope this never happens to your kids.

The Virginia Tech tragedy is a perfect example of the failure of "gun control." Nutcases and whack jobs won't adhere to anyone's rules.

I doubt anyone in those classrooms would have had a problem with a classmate pulling out a firearm and shooting back.