Or just make it legal already.

But 123... the NRA would never allow that. 

It's good for business.

Yep legalize it and tax it, it's going to happen anyway so we may as well use it to fund schools and cut the deficit...

Think you need to read posts a tad more carefully Mike.D34

That's because he didn't have a Bushmaster, if he did there of would been policeman funerals to start off the New Year.

Yawn

Suspect got a gun from a cop inside of a police station. Cops returned fire. Not exactly the same thing, Eddie.

I have to question, with all the shootings in this country for as far back as we can remember, where are all the stories of the "good guys" being there to stop a criminal shooter??? I will wait for the long list to be posted. How is that "good guy" theory working out for ya?

@ TFNJ

You know the good guys with guns, you know the law abiding people with concealed carry permits, aren't nearly as numerous as you might think. The numbers I've seen put permit holders at 3+ million in 'shall issue states'. Of course there are states like Vermont that don't require any permits to carry firearms, so that would add to the numbers of people with concealed firearms.

However, if there are only 3 - 4 million good guys with guns/permits out of a nation of 315 million people that isn't very many. In addition:

1. Not all permit holders carry a gun at all times

2. What are the odds 1 of these good guys will be at the right place at the right time

3. Many places/business ban/restrict carrying a firearm even for people who have permits

Besides, people with guns/permits aren't carrying so they can protect you from a bad guy. They are carrying so they have a fighting chance to protect themselves should they ever be attacked, instead of hoping that somehow the police will magically show up to rescue them in time.

How selfish of them to mainly be concerned about protecting themselves, right? LOL

Oneslackr, replace my name with EddieSteves, and you have proven my point for me, and counters the silly view of:

I hate to agree with him a lot of the time but I guess LaPierre is right a "good guy with a gun" stops "a bad guy with a gun." after all. Hey Jersey? How's all that gun control workin for you?

TFNJ: Because when a good guy ends a rampage before it starts, its a non-story for the likes of NBC news. And more than likely its because no one but the criminal was killed.

How many times does the news report fatal motor vehicle accidents but never tell you that someone else was saved by the bravery of good samaritans? And now you have your answer.

I do? Because you said so? Nice dream world you live in. What's next, I should believe what the bible tells me?

Ok hold on I'm going to hold my breath waiting for an example of this mythical "good guy" who killed the rampaging shooter. Here I go.... Whhooosh

@ TFNJ

While this isn't exactly a good guy shooting & taking the bad guy out there was a good guy with a gun at the resent mall shooting in Oregon.

News Channel 8 KGW – Portland, Oregon

PORTLAND -- Nick Meli is emotionally drained. The 22-year-old was at Clackamas Town Center with a friend and her baby when a masked man opened fire.

"I heard three shots and turned and looked at Casey and said, 'are you serious?,'" he said.

More: Gunman, two dead in Clackamas mall shooting

The friend and baby hit the floor. Meli, who has a concealed carry permit, positioned himself behind a pillar.

"He was working on his rifle," said Meli. "He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side."

The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.

"As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them," he said.

Meli took cover inside a nearby store. He never pulled the trigger. He stands by that decision.

"I'm not beating myself up cause I didn't shoot him," said Meli. "I know after he saw me, I think the last shot he fired was the one he used on himself."

Photos: Clackamas Town Center shooting

The gunman was dead, but not before taking two innocent lives with him and taking the innocence of everyone else.

"I don't ever want to see anyone that way ever," said Meli. "It just bothers me."

I bet no one can name one of these rampage shootings in recent memory where the police arrived in time to prevent the killer from executing everyone that they wanted to. So it seems police aren't anymore effective at preventing/stopping these shootings than a civilian with gun/permit.

@ TFNJ

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.

* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4

* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606). And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high.

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."

B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime

* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.

* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:

* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;

* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.

* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission... without paying a fee... or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for ten years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the top-five, safest states in the union -- having three times received the "Safest State Award.

* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the fifteen years following the passage of Florida's concealed carry law in 1987, over 800,000 permits to carry firearms were issued to people in the state. FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 52% during that 15-year period -- thus putting the Florida rate below the national average. 14

* Do firearm carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.

1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.

2. And even the 155 "crimes" committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport.15

C. Criminals avoid armed citizens

* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16

* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.

* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.

Rapes averted when women carry or use firearms for protection

* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando's rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.

* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.20

Justice Department study:

* 3/5 of felons polled agreed that "a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun.

* 74% of felons polled agreed that "one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime.

* 57% of felons polled agreed that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.

The number of times a firearm is used by people to prevent themselves from becoming victims far exceeds the number of times guns are used to murder people every year.

Even if you don't believe the above numbers & think that the true figure of self defense uses of firearms is only 1/10th of what they listed above, which would be 150,000 - 250,000 times/year, it still far outnumbers the 8,583 murders committed with firearms (8,583 - FBI Uniform Crime Report 2011).

Guns can be used by bad people for evil purposes but it seems they are used far more often by good people for good purposes.

I think they were playing Call of Duty.

No, we don't.

Oh sure it could happen.....in fantasy land...why not wait for the video that all P.D. stations have of visitors in and out? or I guess they'd manufacture that to get rid of the "slapped him around part'...I love starting the day with a laugh.."maybe the police started the confrontation"...hah hah hah hah hah hah that's rich

Rick, apparently they are Relevant because they have been protecting our rights from people like you.

Carol, I hear your point. BUT, prison guards are surrounded by convicts. They are also protected by heavily armed guards that are outside the contact zone of those convicts. There is a BIG difference in your analogy.

I would not advocate arming teachers either, but your talking apples and oranges there.

The "emotional" part is the legal gun owners are alive, the criminal is dead. I feel so sorry for your little "mis-understood" criminal.

Okay...one more time it's not that LaPierre said a"good guy with more guns" he did say "a good guy with a gun."...if you are trained and it all works it only takes one of each ONE good guy with ONE gun..

WRONG....

Yeah maybe so...now his family can try to sue the police.

cant sue the police if the gun killed him. Because guns kill people. Not people.

This is all assuming that the criminals will comply. So if a criminal breaks in to a house and steals all the valuables, including all the guns, is your new system going to keep the criminals from using that gun in some unlawful manor? Bottom line... It's all easier said than done.

It is a sad fact that criminals outnumber law enforcement, so it will always be an uphill battle.

Why is it that when you don't know what you're talking about; you make the longest argument for your nonsense?

lack of common sense is my guess

Okay so here's some fact to go along with your fantasy:

"Ballistic reference"? I guess you don't understand the whole physics aspect of ; machining, metal to metal contact, rifling, and heat dissipation effected by metallic residue.

Should they be clean or fired for the first "reference"?

Why not just call for what you really profess to want under your posturing thesis...GUN REGISTRATION?

Ya see? parkour38 gets it!

parkour, I respect your oppinion. But, I need to disagree that this is NOT a gun issue.

It is absolutely a mental health issue, and even a culture of violence issue, as you say.

But, when people are killed with guns, guns are relevant to the discussion. You can't take any of the contributing factors out of the problem, and think that its not self serving and narrow minded. There are narrow minded folks on both sides of this epidemic. Some who think its ONLY about guns, and some who think its everything EXCEPT guns.

ALL of these things need to be looked at, and that does include the guns in our society.

One other point that I have to point out and disagree with you is that while we would still have the same number of violent people set out to do harm, many would still use guns. Some people will get them no matter what.

Shawn D, I see you point and, yes, guns are of course part of this but I guess what I'm getting at is are these "mentally disturbed" or "violent" people killing with guns because they have easy access to guns or a gun obsession or would they kill regardless and just happen to chose a gun for their method? I don't know but I think a huge part of the problem is WHAT is making these folks want to commit mass murder in the first place? These people exist regardless of the availability of guns. I don't believe its the guns that are making people this violent. "Very Interesting", the "take all the guns off the street" comment was a hypothetical situation where there was absolutely NO access to guns at all. An unlikely scenario in reality but it was just to illustrate that even under that hypothetical condition; the folks who wish to do harm would still exist and would still wish to do mass harm.