Comments on: Will More Gun Laws Tame The Wild West?

By: BillH

BillH — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:28:55 +0000

By the way, for my readers who don’t live in SW Idaho, and might not have seen the last couple of Weeklys, Nate Hoffman has a long, two part article about the Moscow shooter and his history. He did a ton of work on it, and it is worth reading for yourself. He spells out a long history of criminal behavior, multiple run-ins with the law, including continuing domestic violence problems. On top of that, there is a long and serious history of drug abuse from pot to meth, what some might call “doctor scamming”, as well as what looks to be alcohol issues. Nate has raised some very serious social, justice, and mental health issues with his article.

My response in this post is to his editorial. I still believe that writing new laws against guns, or taking them away from everyone, is the feel good easy answer, and it is the WRONG answer. As long as we as a culture do not have the guts to address a situation where there is a nearly twenty year history of criminal activity, domestic abuse and violence, and serious longstanding drug and alcohol issues, instead blaming guns and gun owners, or worse yet, some mythical “gun culture”, we will continue to see these kinds of tragedies.

By: BillH

BillH — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:19:56 +0000

Thanks for stopping by Nate, I appreciate it. And now, all seriousness aside,

Careful of that musket though… you know, just having one of those things in the house is liable to make you flip out and go crazy someday, maybe shoot up your place of employment or something wacky like that. And don’t let your family know you’ve got it, or they’ll think you’ve joined the supremecists. Don’t wear any camo either, or they’ll be on to you like that!

By: Nathaniel Hoffman

Nathaniel Hoffman — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:40:20 +0000

Hey there - Thanks for the thoughtful response… I had one comment back:

I have nothing against Nampa. In fact, that is where I bought my musket. With cash. Out of the back of a guy’s pickup.

Thanks -

Nate

By: Sailorcurt

Sailorcurt — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:06:39 +0000

Notice also, as I did immediately upon reading the article, that not one statistic is cited. They have to rely on an individual anecdote to support their claims that gun laws are too week because, when looking at it in terms of overall danger and risk, their hysterics fall flat.

It’s much harder to convince the public that something needs to be done when the totality of your evidence is the less than one tenth of one percent of gun legal gun owners who commit crimes with their legally owned guns.

“We MUST enact these controls so we can reduce crime rates by approximately 0%…we must do this TODAY.”

Not a very convincing argument.