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Phil, I was apparently imprecise on the topic. To be clear, I am a strong advocate of gun ownership laws. I also am an advocate of home defense to where I've explained my choice of weapon and why on these pages. I think AR "platform" guns are useless for both hunting and self defense and should be controlled or banned. Same with high capacity magazines. Further, I think one of the dumbest things we have ever done in America, against stiff competition mind you, is outfitting our patrol police to look like special forces. I could go on but please do add me to the list of those who want gun ownership to be available but are ready to accept regulation.

One of the parents was put in cuffs and detained for urging law enforcement to do something. When she convinced the cops to let her free, she jumped the fence and got into the school and got her kids out. She was able to do that cause cops were too busy pepper spraying parents. Uvalde spends 40% of their city budget on policing AND the school board has an extensive safety plan. The shooter spent 12 minutes outside shooting before getting into the school. 12 Minutes in a state with some of the laxest gun laws and highest gun ownership. Then it took 1 hour to get enough competent people together to neutralize 1 inexperienced teenager. Then the Republican and Libertarian brainpower tells us that the only answer to all of this is to stop the democrats' gay agenda and build schools with one door which can only be attended by kids with gun racks in their trucks.

Yep, that is very true. It is worthwhile, IMO, to change our culture so we do not have the highest number of school shootings in the world. Y'know, I hear this over and over. There was an armed guard patrolling this school. He didn't stop the shooter. Two armed police officers didn't stop the shooter. In fact they regrouped or retreated or planned or something for 40 minutes before taking action, and another poster here explained why that was a good decision on their part. Adding a bunch of less trained armed people to that mix would not have made things better. And if you add more trained people, and their good decisions mean they don't engage the shooter, that means that doesn't work either. The "just add more guns" doesn't work. We keep adding more guns and the death toll keeps going up. At some point you have to admit that it's not working.

Hey Porpoishead A minigun and 30 ARs? That's what I call "all in." I own an AR as well as a semi auto pistol. I don't think I need them. I have never carried concealed and every time I have carried one in my car on a trip I have regretted it because it's a big responsibility that I don't want. As a general rule, I feel safe without them. The problem is not your guns, or my guns. The problem is the number of guns that are in circulation and the ease with which a person can get their hands on one. I won't quote any statistics. I'm sure you already know them. Another issue is not just the number of guns, but the mix of the types of guns that are in circulation. More and more of the American civilian stockpile are AR type rifles and semi auto handguns. Although any gun can kill a person, some are more effective than others. The other day, I heard a guy from Palmetto State Armory say that they ship something like 2,000 ARs or AR kits every day. That's a lot of black rifles. Add to the mix the issue of people that have mental health issues, either openly apparent, or in the case of Billy, hidden. Maybe Billy didn't even have any mental health issues until the day he killed his family. Who knows? How many others are like him? I think that problem is getting worse, not better. You say you are surrounded by evil? Wouldn't you prefer that Evil didn't have the most effective killing tools in existence? Wouldn't it be better if you had the guns and Evil did not? With that in mind, don't you think that we should at least take better measures to assure that the bad guys don't have guns? The measures we are taking now are not working. Guns are approaching the status of a religion. Let's see if that is not confirmed this weekend at the NRA convention. I'm sure the politicians speaking there are going to sound like preachers in the pulpit. I don't want you to give up your impressive collection. More power to you, but mark my words, this is going to end with nobody (legally) owning guns.

Self explanatory. A sick society, and the symptoms are right here in this thread.

I rest my case

I have no idea who you’re addressing this to. The quote function is not a requirement, just as good grammar and spelling aren’t (yours are just fine). But all of them are a huge help in comprehension, and show that you consider the people you’re speaking to to be worth making an effort for. Which is reflected in the amount of thought vs noise in the posts, usually I get that this is difficult, and in very contradictory ways, what with your knowing Billy, thinking (as far as I can tell) any breathing person without a severe mental problem or felony conviction should be able to buy guns, and the incontrovertible evidence that it wasn’t a good decision for Billy. Wendy P.

Ahhh yes. Of course. You are special.

Early stage, not early onset. He was too old for that.

Do you ever get tired of lying?

I had the same discussion with my sister. She is in 1150 sq ft with a full basement so 2300 sq ft and is single. I'm single in 2400 ft. sq. Its ridiculous. Sometimes people just don't know how good they have it.

She's a piker. The words “I don't remember,” or their equivalents, occurred at least 124 times in Reagan's eight hours of sworn testimony.

This is the "good guy with the gun" with his taser ready to stop parents from interfering with an active shooter.

If he can't do his usual BS to put this off for 10 years, this could be his downfall. Because any questions he answers under oath will contain lies, and that's perjury. And that will lead him deeper and deeper into the court system - and the more of his material comes under scrutiny, the more laws he will find himself afoul of.

That might be an unwarranted assumption. I think some politicians operate like Trump did - they have sort of a basic instinct of what "their people" want to hear, and that's what comes out of their mouths without much additional processing. So that comment on a single door is probably something that checked all the boxes for his instinct - it's a fast answer, it sounds smart if you don't think about it, it diverts the discussion away from guns, and his supporters can focus on that instead of the issue of gun violence. Look for a walkback in a few days, along the lines of "I didn't mean that .. . ." and "look, guns don't kill people . . ." and "it's all that CRT that they are teaching that makes kids want to kill."

I think it implies that all he needs to do is provide his constituents a stupid talking point so they don't have to feel guilty voting for him again.

Hi Sky, For a short period in my life, I was a local firefighter. I can assure you that once again the GOP has come up with a very stupid solution. They are getting real good at it. Jerry Baumchen

People with mental health issues often don't think they have them. Very often. Wendy P.

By everyone's favorite sort of tax - a tax on someone else.

For obvious reasons - they destroy your claims.

And hence the problem. Change will only come gradually. There are loads of things that could be done to restrict firearm usage and availability in the US without an outright ban coming anywhere near the table, however the argument against is always "they are coming to grab your guns - resist at all costs!". Nothing is going to solve the problem overnight - that genie was out of the bottle decades ago, but small changes, well implemented, could slowly (very slowly) reduce the toxic, fear driven gun ownership culture you have.

You're not hearing me. Need is irrelevant. You can have your guns, need them or not. You don't need to defend whether or not you should own guns as an individual. I'm saying that as an entire society, we have let this get out of control. Way out of control.

I wonder why.

If you suspect that you or someone you know has a mental health issue please reach out and attempt to help.

Let's check: Nope, you haven't figured this thing out.

Agree. There is a chasm of thought in America alone. White males like Brent and Alex think only of themselves.And its exclusively white males. If the constitution and their upbringing codified drunkenness. They would be drunk 24/7. Its not as if they are banned from shooting sports or hunting. But that their American and personal identity puts guns as a core component as to who they are. They refuse to admit that. Personal protection, constitution, rights, etc. are all just the memes that they are brought up with. The country, "America" is just a phrase. Even for someone like Brent that has served in the military. Its not about what is best for the country. Best to make America the greatest and best. To protect the weak, young and vurnable in America. Its I must have my Glock and my Ar-15. Its sad.

You might want to think about getting a mini-gun. you know, just to be safe.

Most people don't think that way. People buy things all the time that have rebates and discounts after the fact - and they do indeed see that as a real, lower price. Hence the real, final price you pay is $19,900. And I had an even earlier Leaf for a long time. If your goal is transportation - you want to get to work and school, shop and pick up your kids - they are great cars. They are reliable, cheap and they work well for what they are designed for. But if you want a large masculine status symbol with a loud exhaust and a really big grille, then feel free to pay for it.

Gotta be able to get as many rounds as possible into a target that you can't see well eh?

Hi Alex, Re: I for one am open to the discussion. Re: it’s foolish to try and tell me if I should or should not be armed Sorry, but I don't buy it. Jerry Baumchen

No worries. The administrators developed a perfect solution for just this sort of thing.

You are fantasizing, plain and simple. Also, just to make things easier could you please collect your thoughts into a single post instead of several? And, as this is a public forum it would be nice to know to who or what you are directing comments.

There are lots of responsible gun owners in the US and Alex is likely one of them. BIGUN is the only pro-gun advocate that ever suggested compromises in ownership laws. At least as far as this forum is concerned that I've noticed. The problem arises from the hundreds of millions of them. Combined with the easy access to them that criminals, children and the deranged seem to have. Then make use of. This shooting will unfortunately drive more gun sales not less. A small percentage of those sales will kill more innocent Americans. Because a percentage of all legal sales always ends up in the hands of the aforementioned criminals, children and the deranged. A refusal to compromise is why in part I believe there is no hope for change.

Hi Doug, And, let us not forget that they are being replaced. Jerry Baumchen

You're wearing a fullface helmet and sunglasses. Is he supposed to be able to tell you have a feminine nose in a picture that's an inch wide?

???? How was I to know you were female?

A gun helped tremendously with the rabid skunk in our driveway that I had to kill when I was 18. We didn't have cell phones back then either. We have skunks and mountain lions cruising through our property all the time. We've seen them. The dog regularly gets skunked; we're pretty sure a mountain lion got two of the chickens. Never seen a bear, but a gun isn't going to do me much good against a bear anyway. It's not always about the human's life. My son is a cattle rancher. Without a gun, it would be impossible for him to put a severely injured animal out of it's misery when he's way back on the ranch, or to kill the coyotes that are often the cause of those injuries. I accept that you have no need for a gun and that many other people have no need for one. Can you accept that many people like me DO have a need for one? Is there a place in the whole gun debate for someone who owns and needs a gun yet also supports nationwide background checks, registration, training and licensing and even a ban on assault weapons? Or is either ban guns or be a rabid gun nut? I wonder sometimes...

I agree 100%. A federally issued license that requires background checks and training prior to issuance and renewal.

You are MORE at risk in suburbia. The most dangerous animal you will ever face is another human. 8 people in the US every year are killed by animal attacks and 47,000 are injured. 21,000 people are murdered in the US every year by other people, and 921,000 are victims of aggravated and sexual assaults. It is worth noting that 80% of those murders are from gun violence. Since you live in a more rural area without neighbors, you face even less risk of a threat you can stop with a gun. And I grew up in a house in the woods where cell phones never worked at all (since no one had any.) We even had a fair number of wild, feral and escaped farm animals wander around our house. Two became pets. A few were problems. A gun would have helped with none of them. Absolutely. And in the example above, I gave an example of someone who felt they needed to skydive and carry their rig on airplanes to be safe. IMO they are incorrect. The underlying sentiment is that they WANTED to carry their rig on, which is fine. (Provided the pilot is OK with it of course.) 24,000 americans kill themselves every year with a gun. 500 of those are people who accidentally kill themselves. Compare that number of deaths caused by owning a gun - 24,000 - to the number caused by wild animal attacks - 8 - that MIGHT have been prevented by a gun. If you want guns for whatever reason - it makes you feel safer, you like guns, you think owning guns is an important political statement, you like shooting - then by all means do it. Just don't fool yourself that they are making you safer, or that you need them. They are a risk to your life, a risk you decided to take. I just said it should not be.

And most DZ's want you to have USPA or similar membership so you have insurance in place should that be needed when your skydiving activities cause damage or death to other people.

This explains it pretty decently: https://fortune.com/2022/05/17/us-infant-baby-formula-shortage-imports-fda-nutrition-tariffs-usmca/ "The U.S. imposes high tariffs—up to 17.5%—on imported baby formula. Formula is also subject to a mechanism called a tariff-rate quota, where additional duties can be placed on goods once total imports pass a certain level. As part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), negotiated by President Donald Trump to replace the North America Free Trade Agreement in July 2020, Canada agreed to impose an additional surcharge of $3/kg if the total volume of its global formula exports—not just exports to the U.S.—broke a certain threshold. That threshold is currently set at 40,480 metric tons for the current "dairy year" of August 1 2021 to July 31 2022. The new duties seemingly closed off Canada as a source of infant formula. The U.S. imported a grand total of zero tons of baby formula from its northern neighbor in 2021, yet has shipped tons of domestic formula into Canada. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S.-manufactured infant formula made up the largest component of U.S. dairy exports to Canada in 2021, accounting for 22% of all northbound dairy trade."

No, but you need a license to jump. You need a license to drive. It's insane that you don't for owning a gun.

Happy to hear the Black Russian Terrier found a way to a new home. Quite fond of that breed. Gratuitous pic of my dog with her two best friend Black Russians:

It is not my place to judge that which I cannot understand (mental illness or breakdown), but this is heartbreaking. I'm reposting my initial post when I first heard the news on Facebook: This is incredibly sad, tragic and horrific. I’m in total shock and so saddened. It’s tragic that Billy was unable to get help for himself and his family in time. Mental health needs to be a much bigger priority throughout the world, and we all need to keep our eye out on one another. Someone who has suddenly slipped into a mental delusion or psychosis is unable to help him or herself. We can only hope that with the right medications, support and therapy, tragedies like this can be avoided. May the family Rest In Peace.

Heartbreaking.

Buddy, keep it up, everything will be alright

The last group that had a legitimate complaint about being invaded by aliens was the native population. No other group has ever lost anything to immigration in North America.

I'm just freaked out that I might get short plated on fajita day.