Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

 
 

View User's Journal

Deltas Journal
A random collection of my thoughts
News on the shootings
In the wake of Portland and Connecticut there has been a lot of talk of gun control. I can't post anywhere online without seeing it being discussed. I don't really want to argue it. I have my opinions, you have yours, if we disagree chances are we won't change each others minds. I feel strongly for my beliefs but I get so tired of the same arguments over and over.

Something I want to say is that this is definitely a tragedy and now everyone wants someone to blame. It is important to know who is responsible, but it seems like more time is focused on finger pointing than actually remembering the fallen.

What I really want to cover is news coverage. When the shootings happen there will be a lot of misinformation. In the Connecticut shooting for the first few hours all I saw was that a couple handguns were used and that he had a rifle but he left that in the car. Now I'm seeing he used the rifle as his primary weapon. At first his mom was a teacher at the school and he killed her in the classroom. Now I find he killed his mom at her home. At first I hear the guns were his that he bought legally. Now I hear his mom owned the guns and he stole them from her when he killed her. Information keeps changing so you shouldn't believe everything you hear on the news especially in the early hours of the tragedy.

Secondly journalists aren't trained to understand guns. Terms like "assault rifle" and "fully automatic" get thrown around a lot when they don't know what they're talking about. This video will teach you the difference between semi and automatic and how you can't always tell the difference just by looking at a gun.


My grandpa for example is a strong supporter of gun ownership, but he supports the idea of an assault weapon ban because he doesn't think civilians should have assault weapons. Some 50 years ago he had an M1 carbine which is a semi automatic rifle so I used that as an example to him. He wishes he had kept the rifle because it was a good rifle so I asked him why it's good to own an M1 carbine, but bad to own an AR-15 since the latter is the "evil assault weapon" you keep seeing in the news. He told me the AR-15 is fully automatic and civilians don't have any use for fully automatic weapons.

1. This shows that because the news says an AR-15 is fully automatic he believes that is true. The M16 and M4 used by the military are full auto variants of the AR-15 platform, but most AR-15s out there are semi auto. The National Firearms Act states that civilians can not own fully automatic weapons manufactured after 1986. There are still factories manufacturing these rifles for civilian use so they have to be semi auto.

2. This also shows me he is judging what the legislation will do simply by the name. He defines assault weapon as fully automatic so he assumes the law makers and the media also consider assault weapons to be fully automatic so by looking at the name and completely disregarding the actual content he could be potentially endorsing a ban he really doesn't want.

Once again I must repeat that everyone has their own opinions and I don't expect you to agree with mine when it comes to gun control. My point here is the truth and accurate details.





 
 
Manage Your Items
Other Stuff
Get GCash
Offers
Get Items
More Items
Where Everyone Hangs Out
Other Community Areas
Virtual Spaces
Fun Stuff
Gaia's Games
Mini-Games
Play with GCash
Play with Platinum