23 Comments

Thom, thank you for showing us, we the people, the histirical record of LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE to regulate killing machines. A written legacy that I can send to ALL my congressional representatives. Because that’s what I intend to do. I may make it just a list - then give you credit for having gathered and shared it. Knowledge is power. Thank you

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Laws are fine, but how do you get those who don't like them (in this case, Republicans, some gun owners, gun organizations, and certainly gun and ammo providers) to help enforce them?

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Why are we not posting pictures of all our brave Congresspeople who proudly wore an AR-15 pin in their lapels!!???? Don't they want to show solidarity with the shooter!!??

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Dude, I just moved back to Marietta, GA; nothing has changed since the '80's. Typical, 55+ white male, for instance; owns 13 guns, 4 of which are loaded semi-automatic Glocks placed in nightstand, car and carried, 1 fully loaded sawed off shotgun, along with a snub-nosed 357 Magnum (I think) hidden in a shelf that opens electronically with the pass of a key card, Several AR-15's, 2 rifles.... Just your garden-variety, former Marine, Harley rider in his late '60's who would love to shoot someone in a road-rage incident - they are everywhere here. Addicted to guns.

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Yes, plus I'd suggest Congress update the law (if not already done) to include Article 3.2.2 protection from Scotus review. This Scotus has 6 activist judges who could target the 1934 law for destruction. Meanwhile, I remind 2nd amendment zealots,

"Machine guns are outlawed, outlaws don't have machine guns."

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We arbitrarily ban everything ranging from machine guns to satellite guided nuclear missiles. It is laughable they think they have a chance against this arsenal. Might as well ban all semiautomatics while we're at it.

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We ban those things (along with tanks, bombs and poison gas) because they are acknowledged to be dangerous - so how many innocent Americans have been killed in the last 25 years by those "dangerous" weapons?

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So , we have the laws , we just have to enforce them. Amazing . All this tragedy , loss of many young lives. The fear of many young ones about going to school or venturing into the public domain.

Covid and the abuse of scientific policies by trump and his militantly ignorant followers . Insisting on fake treatments .

Attacking science at every level. Attacking Scientists at every turn. Refusing to wear masks.

Everything is so chaotic thanks to the reverse intellect pushed by Trump and his Magats.

But this automatic gun thing is beyond crisis.

Thom it is , as usual , great information .

I hope we can do it .

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Thank you,Thom, for again showing us the way.

Are there any organizations you’d recommend joining, as volunteers, to try to help stop this insanity?

Larry Price

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The only effective and reasonable home defense weapon is a baseball bat,keep one or two r three near the doors, your bedroom , front door, back door.they are cheap and easier to get two in a moment of panic.

If you think you have time to get to a firearm, and mostly you don't, a double barrel 12 gauge with bird shot, will do the job.

Pistols not so much, having qualified with the .45 and .38, the average person can't point and shoot. I still have my 380 semi automatic belly gun, and it is called such that it is only effective if the person is close and you can shoot him or her in the belly, as someone who was a special operator and trained in many weapons, I couldn't hit the target in an indoor range, because the accuracy dropped off.

Movies and TV shows showing cops and criminals taking out people at distance, and never missing are pure fiction. There is a reason that trained professionals use two hands to fire a pistol, they want to hit the target, the longer the barrel, the greater the accuracy (goes for cannons and howitzers as well)

The only purpose of a weapon is to kill people. Hunting is not a sport, because the opponent is not equally armed and in fact it is cold blooded murder. We don't need to kill to east, there are supermarkets and butcher shops. I would like to see stats as to how many hunters are killed or wounded by other hunters (recall Dubya shooting his friend in the face while duck hunting).

If one absolutely needs to fire a weapon for "fun", then there are shooting ranges.

But the real motive behind gun ownership is voiced bythe gun owners, it is to protect themselves from what they see or claim is an oppressive government, or a government that will not bend to the willof the fascist.

If the Republicans take over the government in 2024,thanks to SCOTUS rulingin Moore v Harper,liberals will rue their opposition to guns.

Regardless of laws passed, there are more guns in this country than people, and laws will not motivate them to turn them in, and I don't see federal agents going house to house (an impossible task that would take years)

Being a student of history, When the communists took over Hungary, they passed a law that no one could own a rifle, without permission of the state. So the gun owners, covered their weapons with cosmoline or oil, wrapped them in greased paper and buried them.

When the revolution started they went into the fields and yards and dug up their weapons.

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Go hunt Grizzlies or lions with a bow and arrow, or go at it with another AR-15 shooter .... now, that situation - where your adversary has an equal chance - would be a sport. Shooting unarmed people or docile animals with the AR -15 or a twin is only Republican or NRA sport.

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Why would I would want to hunt grizzlies or lions? To prove my manhood. I leave that to Don Jr and Eric, of course they only kill chained animals or in an enclosure.

I did take my team on a hike down the Resolution trail in the Kenai peninsula. Every other man carried an M-16 (not an AR-15, it was a 40 mile forced march. Never saw a grizzlie though, actually that don't bother you unless you surprise them or it is a mother with cubs. So make noise.

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To answer your question, you wouldn't - that's the point - because that would give your quarry (or opponent) a fair chance against you.

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I didn't realize that right wing gun fetishists actually read Thom Hartmann.

Nice try at turning the question, but pure transparent sophistry.

Has nothing to do with quarry, because I don't have quarry. I have absolutely no desire to kill anything, except in self defense, and in America by the time I would get around to defending myself, it is too late.

By the way I didn't raise a question, hence your response is full on sophistry.Sophistry and logical fallacies are hallmarks of right wingers, in my experience.

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Comment was aimed at those who consider hunting or shooting defenseless people with AR - 15 (or its like) as a sport; sorry you took it personally.

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It is the internet. Been on it since before Netscape 1.0 when it was 2400 baud dial up, and phorae were limited to the likes of the Whole Earth Lectroic Link (Well), and posts were made by FTP and you had to download and print on a dot matrix printer, then came Netscape Navigator 1.0 and the wold changed. Learned pretty early that comments had to be precise and that there were no such things as emoji's, and you had to use ASCII to convey emotions or keyboard like/s for sarcasm.

Without face to face communication it is difficult and some times hazardous to communicate.

And being precise takes a lot of work,not everybody is keyboard adept, and these days it seems that most people use a cell phone and it is a chore to type even 140 letters with your thumbs on a cell phone, so comments are abbreviated and minimized so misunderstandings arise, and if one tries to be clear and precise, you wind up with TL:DR.

With technological advances and social changes, old fossils like me, fall behind.

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A very impressive and moving piece showing how ridiculous our situation is on so many levels.

The Harvard law review explained the entire landscape of 2nd amendment in 1915 which had at that point not even a question about any form of a right to armed rebellion. All tgat came later, after the nra and the strategies set up to overturn longstanding American democratic principles.

Was always wondering how someone practically could act as a private detective and never knew there were state licenses - so thx for that bit of info!

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After the Newtown massacre in 2012 Barack Obama was asked if he would push forward his promise of gun control legislation. His response was "now is not the time." He had a supermajority for several months and refused to acknowledge requests regarding the urgency of at least renewing the assault weapons ban. During the 2016 presidential campaign Democrats had a sit-in for a few hours on the floor of Congress while Elizabeth Warren brought some of them Dunkin' Donuts. Prior to the presidential debate in South Carolina, Obama had a press conference announcing several meaningless gun control executive orders to call attention to the only issue that Bernie Sanders could be perceived as to the right of Hillary Clinton on. Almost all politicians play the "thoughts and prayers" game, and while Democrats campaign on the issue as we can see they have done precious little about it At this point, an assault weapons ban is almost meaningless as there are so many millions circulating amongst us, and nobody will address the curse left to us by our floundering fathers known as the Second Amendment.

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People crossing the border looking for a safe place to raise their kids has become a joke.

We should try any avenue available to stop whatever portion of the violence we can. This should be topic number one in the Presidential debates. No more all or nothing discussions. We have to wade through the moronic ideas on the far right to get through to the people that have no party. Make sure they see the Christmas cards and ads that perpetuate this horror.

We don't have the luxury to not talk about the perps. We have to put some professionals into the limelight to analyze and explain to people about specific profiles. Above all else, we need to start figuring out what to do about violent men and boys. I think some sound red-flag laws besides the National Firearms Act is another way to cut back on the murders.

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The amount of guns in this country is a bit of a misconception. Only a quarter of the population actually owns any guns. It's just when people do own guns, they tend to own more than one. 3% own ten or more. Great comment as usual though. Nice to see another veteran here. Air force 60 AMXS 2006-2011.

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Thank you for this interesting approach to getting these killing machines out of general usage and away from the crazies.

Texas, lime so many other states, seems to be a lost cause. You would think that after the Uvalde shooting something would have moved the marker forward toward controlling these weapons of mass destruction. But no. Five months after the shooting, the citizens of Uvalde doubled down and voted red, more so than in 2020.

So thoughts and prayers Texas, thoughts and prayers.

No meaningful fun reform, thoughts and prayers.

More people killed and maimed and traumatized. More families bereft.

But thoughts and prayers.

As Rep Self said, “The Almighty has a plan”.

I agree. The Almighty has given you the tools to stop this carnage. Use them! Hint: the tools include legislation, not

Thoughts and prayers.

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Small point It's .222 not .322

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author

Fixed it online...

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