There already are more guns in private hands in the USA than people. How many assault rifles? I have not done a search. But sure. Unless Trump is signing over his Presidency to Putin, we don't need assault rifles readily available. On a more interesting subject, note that JEFFREY EPSTEIN IS ALLEGEDLY DEAD BY SUICIDE. Let's see the body and then pursue his many customers and accomplices.

A ban and outlaw them. Offer buybacks. If caught with illegal firearms, pay the cost in hard jail time.

Perhaps offer a "collectors waiver": each gun licensed, insured, inspected, annual renewal of all licensing and insurance mandated, storage inspections, etc..

The fees will be high, of course, the gun collectors should pay for his emotional weaknesses that require a long gun. Must join a militia and be tracked.

Obey the law, be well-regulated.

God Bless the American Constitution.

Thank you, supervisors, for getting started on common sense safety laws. Our children thank you.

Who's going to tell the criminals they all need to turn in their guns? The federal and state governments should show and prove at the very least that they first can clean up all the weapons on the east sides of Chicago, LA and Oakland before asking any law abiding citizen to relinquish their rights. Once that's done and been proven, only active duty, reserves and retired military (or the militia as referred to in the constitution) should be allowed to be armed to the teeth for life as an additional deterrent to counter the criminal and nut jobs who will still find and use assault weapons. Recruitment for the military will never be a problem again.

Gee, that took me all of two minutes to come up with.

"Gee, that took me all of two minutes to come up with."

And it shows!

Assault weapons are already banned (by definition, they are capable of fully-automatic fire, i.e. a form of machine guns). Regrettably, many journalists writing about gun issues don't understand any gun basics at all, therefore use misleading pop-culture nomenclature ("bullets" when they mean assembled ammunition, "clip" when they mean a removable magazine, etc.).

Many crazy-shooter incidents (including two of the recent three) already entail firearms that are in some way illegal under existing laws, making clear already that mere outlawing doesn't prevent these incidents. It's also clear that the impulse to ban what the gun-ignorant call "assault weapons" (a more defensible phrase is "assault-style" weapons, which is appearance-based) is an attempt to attack an object symbolic of mass shootings -- but one that also is overwhelmingly owned, in a ratio like a million to one, by law-abiding citizens who never perpetrate any such crimes. Throwing the baby out with the bath may not bother people who have no personal use for guns, but it's certain to have side effects even they would dislike. It's also very certain not to end mass shootings, as long as any guns remain available, which is basically inevitable per US Constitution. After all, the very latest mass killer -- in Orange County -- didn't even use a gun.

> as an additional deterrent to counter the

When have those individuals ever been proven to be a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals? And how often have their guns been used in crimes such as domestic violence, suicide or been stolen and used in other crimes?

So wonderful that those so emotionally attached to their guns are now here to deflect from the issue of gun violence and deaths (look! definitions! the false reading of The Constitution, other falsehoods such as "a million to one") etc..

School shootings in US, Europe since 1988.

US: 421
Germany: 5
Finland: 3
Russia: 3
Netherlands: 2
UK: 2
France: 2
Spain: 1
Norway: 1
Denmark: 1
Greece: 1
Estonia: 1
Hungary: 1
Ukraine: 1
Azerbaijan: 1

USA - 421 school shootings

Please keep telling us about how important definitions are - y'all been doing that for years as schools get shot up. As kids get emotionally crippled by being forced to practice playing dead, hiding in corners, etc.. As 30,000 to 40,000 Americans get blown away every year. As hundreds of thousands of families are impacted by gun death, gun injury, suicides, gun related domestic violence, etc..

Please keep talking about 'definitions' while you hide emotional shortcomings behind a big ol' gun. Seriously, just go buy a red sports car. We all get it.

Thank you, supervisors.

Just to provide some facts behind the typical ignorance of politicians and news media:

"Simitian and Ellenberg argue that"
"But as the tragedy in Gilroy reminds us, our safety extends only as far as our state's borders when an individual can simply travel to Nevada ... and buy a weapon of this type."
"the perpetrator in Gilroy reported purchased his gun legally in Nevada."

The only reason why that killer was able to buy legally in Nevada, was that he was still considered a legal resident of Nevada and had proper ID to prove it.

A legal resident of California may not legally buy any type of firearm (made after 1889) IN any other state. If a type of firearms is legal in California and legally for sale in another state, then the person may use a California gun store to broker such a legal transaction. But all firearms transfers of any type requires a background check and waiting period.

Background checks might be helpful (but not nearly as much as politicians and the media claim) if all law enforcement agencies across the nation actually complied with the federal laws about reporting all required data to the FBI. Even today, most of the data that federal laws require states to report are in fact not reported to the FBI.

dontnamethem dot com has a real solution.

"Joe Simitian and Supervisor Susan Ellenberg announced Friday that they are... urging Congress to pass legislation banning assault weapons commonly used in mass shootings. "

The only reason why such killers even choose these types of firearms is that the politicians and news media have chosen to bestow ultimate fame on anyone who chooses this type of firearm.

There was a time when the media demonized "cheap" handguns and called them "Saturday Night Specials" and made a big splash in the news every time anyone used such a firearm. Just FYI, that well-worn term was actually a highly racist term, which I wont explain, but you can look it up yourself on the internet.

The whole motive that drives these killers go to public places and try to kill people is because they want fame and they know that the news media and politicians will grant these killer lasting fame if they do such things.

Every time one of these people commit one of these crimes, the politicians and news media dig into and publish every little detail of the killers life and endlessly repeat their names all across the nation and even internationally. The media assures anyone who is willing to do such crimes that they will always be famous and always remembered and that everything about their lives will become common knowledge.

The media has created the ultimate reward they can bestow on any person, lasting fame.

There is a movement trying to convince the media to never publicize the names of these people and not to publish the details of their lives. The movement wants the media to remove the incentive of fame and instead assure any such people that they will be forgotten and only the victims will be mentioned by the media.

It's called dontnamethem dot com

Far more effective than any of the laws being proposed at preventing mass shootings.

@home of the brave

"When have those individuals ever been proven to be a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals?"

When has any gun-control law ever been proven to be a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals?

Not to mention the utter failure of drug-control laws for the exact same reason.

Only one gun-control law, if it were actually enforced, has shown significant benefit in deterring typical criminals from using firearms in violent crimes. The rarely enforced portion of the Gun-Control-Act of 1968 that mad it illegal for known criminals and court adjudicated mentally ill from possessing any type of firearms. The law, if consistently enforced, has shown to substantially reduce the criminal mis-use of firearms.

According to the Obama administration, the background check system has prevented millions of known criminals from completing firearms transactions. Each of those examples is a FEDERAL FELONY which carries a federal sentence of 5-15 years. A felon trying to buy a firearm is also a state felony in every state and also carries serious jail time.

However, according to the Obama administration, only a few dozen felons were even arrested and only some of those were prosecuted for that new felony. The situation in the states varies widely.

California rarely bothers to prosecute known felons for attempting to buy a firearm, some other states are really serious about arresting and prosecuting, but even the most aggressive states only arrest a small fraction of the cases where the background check system caught a felon trying to buy a firearm.

"And how often have their guns been used in crimes such as domestic violence, suicide or been stolen and used in other crimes?"

According to the official statistics from the Obama Administration, lawful civilian use of a firearm for defensive purposes out numbers the criminal mis-use of firearms by at least an order of magnitude. And the FBI determined that lawfully armed civilians lawfully kill about the same number of violent criminals as police do for defensive purposes.

Of course, these conclusions were not exactly what the Obama administration expected to be discovered when they ordered the federal examination of the question and they were not at all happy, but the facts don't care who likes them or who's political agenda is helped or hurt by the facts.

Gun-control laws targeting law-abiding citizens have no value in reducing violent crime or the criminal mis-use of firearms. Only laws targeting the criminals has shown to be of real value.

> When has any gun-control law ever been proven to be a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals?

These gun laws have been a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals: Australia, China, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, and on and on and on and on.

Only America.

What part of the school shooting training that emotionally cripples kids do you like most?
- the children being forced to practice playing dead
- children cowering in corners
- children crying in fear

Or another aspect of their terror? Yet you trade all that to fill some emotional void in your life, something only a gun can help you with?

Just go buy a bright red sports car.

Depending on measure (per-capita, as contribution to overall death rate, etc.) the United States ranks between 10th and 66th in the world for mass shootings. For example: Web Link

But that doesn't fit the agenda of people like "home of the brave," above.

I actually agree, some are emotionally attached to their guns. However, no rational discussion of these topics is even possible with people to whom all inconvenient realities are rejected from the armchair as "falsehoods" and "deflections;" to whom "definitions" have no importance (though when people don't bother to understand what they're talking about, it carries through to their reasoning and conclusions); and who claim without evidence "false reading of The Constitution" (when courts have regularly found that the Second Amendment does protect individual civilian ownership of firearms). All shallow rhetoric, in support of another equally emotional, irrational obsession.

What should be remembered about the latest atrocities is that the weapons were purchased legally! These were not hardened criminals but people who could have easily been our neighbor, living in our neighborhood, going to our schools, mixing in our restaurants, big box stores and grocery stores.

I think it is important to distinguish between criminals who acquire weapons illegally and use them in pursuit of their crimes. And those who legally purchase weapons to cause mayhem. Yes gun crime, gang crime, is bad. But havoc and mayhem caused by legally obtained guns to people without criminal histories and without apparent mental health issues have become a problem. The mother of one of the gunmen who legally obtained his weapon is reported to have said that she reported her son to the authorities saying that she didn't think he was mature enough to own a weapon. This was the gunman's mother reporting her son, probably not an easy thing for a mother to do. But, it seems the authorities took no notice of her warning.

Every gun has the potential to be used to cause harm. It may be accidental (someone cleaning the gun accidentally shooting himself in the foot), it may be neglect (a weapon not properly locked away just for a short time in an unusual circumstance and found by a child), it may be mistaken (a homeowner shooting a family member mistaking for an intruder), a family argument gone wrong, a weapon found by a family member cleaning out the home of a deceased parent, or a plethora of other scenarios.

Every time a gun is in a home it is a weapon waiting to be used. How that weapon is used varies. But in my mind the potential for it being used to cause bodily harm to someone who does not deserve it is much more likely than it being used to defend against an invading army or an unjust government.

Lmftfy

"

What should be remembered about the latest atrocities is that the weapons were... GUNS.

Funny thing about mass shootings, it's always GUNS.

Ban and outlaw them. Offer buybacks. If caught with illegal firearms, pay the cost in hard jail time.

Perhaps offer a "collectors waiver": each gun licensed, insured, inspected, annual renewal of all licensing and insurance mandated, storage inspections, etc..

The fees will be high, of course, the gun collectors should pay for his emotional weaknesses that require a long gun. Must join a militia and be tracked.

Obey the law, be well-regulated.

God Bless the American Constitution.

Can anyone actually give the definition of an "assault weapon"?

@home of the brave

FYI, my elementary school child has no problem with any of this stuff.
I guess you're pretty young since you have no clue about how prior generations grew up. Helps being old enough to remember important things.

Oh, and I can't stand sports cars or motorcycles or red cars for that matter and I don't need a mistress either.
You want to claim that my wife only bought her guns because of her mid-life crisis? Her handgun is way bigger than mine and that's fine by me.

Fun Fact: American recreational target shooters fire more than 8 BILLION (yes, with a B) rounds of ammunition per years in the USA! Not counting hunting or police or military or any others. Of all participation sports in the USA, target shooting at lawful ranges has the LOWEST level of injuries or deaths. Even children's baseball has more injuries and deaths.

"These gun laws have been a significant deterrent to mass murderers and criminals: Australia, China, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, and on and on and on and on."

NONE of those nations EVER had any issue with civilians going around shooting up places BEFORE ANY gun-control laws were imposed!
No actual improvements in safety after the laws were imposed.

China and Japan never allowed civilians to own firearms and even banned swords at times. Of course, the criminal groups in those nations have all the guns they want.

After the UK did a total confiscation of all handguns, all semi-auto rifles and shotguns and all "repeater rifles", leaving only a few types of single and double shotguns left legal, the violent crime rates went UP and the influx of illegal guns from the newly opened eastern-block countries flooded handguns into the UK.

The people of those nations also have ZERO right to self-defense of any sort. When I was in London there was a case of a woman who used a criket bat to defend herself against a known multiple rapist inside her own home and she got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and charged. There are signs all over the place that showed pictures of a man or woman with a knife and without a knife for self-defense. They showed the person without a knife as unharmed, but the person with the knife was severely injured.

The Ausi case was NOT a civilian who lawfully owned an AR-15, it was a case of the MILITARY not being able to secure their own firearms! In fact, in other countries lawful gun-owners are virtually never the ones who attack public places to get mass casualties, it's always illegally stolen (mostly from the military) or smuggled weapons.

What part of the school shooting training that emotionally cripples kids do you like most?

Oh, you mean like how all children in the USA used to be required to do Atomic Bomb drills a few times a year where we were told we would probably all die anyway, but our best chance was to "duck & cover"????

"- the children being forced to practice playing dead"

Sounds like normal childhood play to me, I see it every day even in today's PC culture trying to pretend violence does not exist, kids still play cops/robbers and other play violence games.

"- children cowering in corners"

Sounds like the common experience of every child being bullied at school.
A far WORSE problem in our schools than what the media want us to be frightened of.

"- children crying in fear"

By actual Federal statistics, children should cry in fear every time they get into their parents car and get driven somewhere. Statistically, riding in their parents car is the MOST COMMON cause of avoidable (aka: adverse events) childhood deaths.

"Or another aspect of their terror?"

The ones creating the "terror" are the parents and news media.

"Yet you trade all that to fill some emotional void in your life,"

No, having my child filled my only remaining emotional void in my life and I would do anything to protect my child, including using a firearm if required to do so.

"something only a gun can help you with?"

Na, a gun is a tool for self-defense & hunting and a recreational device for the highly popular sport of target shooting.

"Just go buy a bright red sports car."

I wouldn't drive a sports car if you gave me one, nor would I ever drive a red car, they get too many tickets.

@Ignorant headline

"Depending on measure (per-capita, as contribution to overall death rate, etc.) the United States ranks between 10th and 66th in the world for mass shootings. "

First, "Mass Shootings" are mainly a red-herring and only account for a tiny fraction of the homicides in the USA.

Second, rifles of all types of "long guns" combined (all types of rifles, shotguns and smooth bores) account for about 1.5% of gunshot deaths in the USA each year.

Third, about 2/3rds of the gunshot deaths in the USA are suicides (one shot fired), but in nations like Japan and China, with a vastly higher rate of suicides, they still find a way to kill themselves without guns.

Fourth, look at nations like Mexico where guns are illegal and yet the gangs have full automatic machine guns from all over the world and all the ammo they can use against the totally defenseless civilians. No shock that drug gangs rule a nation of helpless civilians and kill vastly more people than killers in the USA do.

Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns.

@Resident

Please look up these two movements for a real solution:
NoNotoriety and DontNameThem

Also, guns are lawfully used by civilians almost 10 times more often to prevent harm than to commit crimes.

"What should be remembered about the latest atrocities is that the weapons were purchased legally!"

Meaning that unless you're going to deploy all of the Military and National Guard to go around kicking in doors and tearing apart every home in the USA to forcebly confiscate every type of firearms from everyone, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prevent people from committing these acts as long as we keep giving them the incentive to do them, by offering these killers ultimate FAME as a REWARD for shooting lots of people in public places with AR-15's.

Thanks to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, the AR-15 went from a rare oddball rifle used mainly by former military to the single most popular rifle owned by civilians in the USA today! When there were less than 2 million AR-15's maybe you could have offered people a huge bounty for turning in AR-15's back then, but thanks to Bill Clinton, tens of millions of recreational target shooters regularly use an AR-15 at lawful ranges.

Not to mention that the criminals have no problem stealing fully-automatic M16's from our military and police orgs. M16 is the military version of the AR-15. The M16 is capable of firing multiple shots in a single trigger-pull.

We have aver 350 MILLION firearms owned by civilians alone in the USA, not to mention tens of millions more that can be stolen from our military and police and tens of millions more that are made available for smuggling into the USA.

"These were not hardened criminals but people who could have easily been our neighbor,"

Correct, ANYONE who feels like a nobody who wants to get FAME has been told by the media that the best way to get ultimate international FAME is to choose an AR-15 rifle and go shot up some public place.

"I think it is important to distinguish between criminals who acquire weapons illegally and use them in pursuit of their crimes."

Because they account for about 95% of all unlawful gunshot homicides.

"But havoc and mayhem caused by legally obtained guns to people without criminal histories and without apparent mental health issues have become a problem."

This has been an OPPORTUNITY for the media to sell advertising and politicians to make themselves more important and powerful. The "problem" is that we as a nation have chosen to bestow ultimate FAME on anyone willing to use an AR-15 to shoot people in public places. That is why they keep doing it!

"The mother of one of the gunmen who legally obtained his weapon is reported to have said that she reported her son to the authorities saying that she didn't think he was mature enough to own a weapon."

I don't think Diane Fienstien is mature enough to own a weapon, but she has carried a handgun for most of her life and has a US Marshall's badge in her purse that allows her to carry any type of gun anywhere she likes, even onto air planes.

Yes, that mother was correct, but how would anyone know BEFORE the fact that she was correct?

Most of the car drivers I see on the streets show they are not mature enough to safely drive a car, and with 6.5 MILLION car crashes each year, 2 MILLION sent to the hospital, 500,000 with life-long injuries and 47,000 deaths, why don't we require more strict training and testing for a drivers license?

"Every gun has the potential to be used to cause harm."

Every gun has the potential to be used to PREVENT harm and even the Obama Administration study proved that guns are used lawfully to PREVENT almost 10 times more violent crimes than are used to commit them.

"Every time a gun is in a home it is a weapon waiting to be used."

OK, fortunately, mostly for target shooting and next for lawful defense.

"But in my mind"

There is the problem, in your mind all you know is what the main stream media wants you to believe. Not the facts, just the agenda.

" the potential for it being used to cause bodily harm to someone who does not deserve it is much more likely than it being used to defend against an invading army or an unjust government."

First, 2/3rds of gunshot deaths are suicides, so I figure that is no different from people who use other methods of suicide.

Second, people don't usually need a gun THESE days against government officials, but certainly if you asked the blacks in the South after the Civil War, they would tell you differently. Ask the Black Panthers in the 1960's how valuable it was to be armed.

Third, the most common use of firearms is target shooting and second is lawful defensive purposes. Far more often than crime.

@Jake O.

Fun Fact: The AR-15 style rifle was originally designed to be a light-weight and LOW-POWER target shooting rifle for civilians and was designed made and sold by Armalite back in the 1950's.

"Can anyone actually give the definition of an "assault weapon"?"

NO, because the sole purpose of the term was to trick the gun-ignorant public. There are even recordings and emails from Bill Clinton himself stating the effort to fool the public by using that term.

That bogus term is also why the Bill Clinton 1994-2004 AW ban did nothing but drastically increase the civilian ownership of many styles of semi-auto rifles, especially the AR-15 style, second the various AK styles.

Thanks to the AW ban, the AR-15 style of rifle is now the most commonly American-civilian-owned rifle ever made!

There is a legal definition of "Assault Rifle", but the AR-15 and various AK rifles do NOT fit that legal definition either. Assault Rifle was originally defined as any "machine gun that fires pistol ammo" later revised to include any machine guns that one person can carry and use.

The term "Assault Weapon" was invented specifically to confuse the ignorant general public to think that the AR-15 was a fully-automatic machine gun!

Even Wolf Blitzer said so on CNN in 2003 in an effort to get the AW ban reinstated. CNN put on a huge dis-information campaign to trick the public into believing all these SEMI-auto rifle were machine guns. Eventually, they goit called out for their lies and CNN had to do an on-air confession and retraction of their deliberate lies.

I hope that helps educate a few people.

Liberalguns: Thank you for the response but please note that we are largely on the same side of the arguments here.

In my last comment about worldwide mass-shooting statistics, the point (if you missed it) is that, contrary to what some people are quick to assume, the US is far from the leading country for that kind of murderous crimes, when compared on per-capita measures. The leading contenders for that sad honor are mainly elsewhere in the Americas; and depending on how you measure, even some European countries with far tighter firearm restrictions surpass the US in recent years..

Did you get your kids their new

* bullet-proof backpack *

as you did the back-to-school shopping?


So, as 'liberalguns' and other emotionally attached gun lovers spew out thousands and thousands of words above, think of children in schools:

- being taught to play dead
- cowering in fear in dark corners in drills
- thinking a bullet-proof backpack might save them
- being emotionally scarred for life, similar to the gun lovers themselves

And always recall: guns in the home are 11 times more likely to harm a loved one than be used for defense.

But they might fill some emotional void for a gun lover. Maybe.

@ and Toto

As is typical, you want to attack the messenger when you don't like the message. The fact is, more citizens are saved by guns than ever get reported in the news. The funny thing is, the media doesn't have a lot of interest in the people who survive because they had a gun. Living people aren't "news" to journalists who have an agenda. They are just interested in body counts when some whacko shoots up a gun-free zone.

Glendon Oakley, the young man who used his GUN to save lives and help stop one of these shooters isn't getting anywhere near the press that these killers are getting. The same about the Texas church shooting where the killer was tracked down by armed citizens. Those live people just don't interest the press very much.

Oh, and by the way, they didn't use any guns to blow up that building in Oaklahoma City. They didn't use a gun to kill people on that bridge in London. There were also no guns needed on 9/11. You are also not talking a lot about the hundreds of knife and acid attacks happening in London. Are you concerned with the killing or are you just concerned with the method? I assure you that a murderer will kill with or without a gun. They are armed with hate. They are perfectly able to kill without a gun.

You are more than welcome to not have a gun in your own home. What you are NOT welcome to do is determine whether or not I need one in MINE. I still get to decide how best to protect me and mine. Your input is too dangerous to consider.

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

@and Toto too

Killing a total stranger who is physically attacking you is NOT the only legitimate and lawful defensive use for a firearm, in fact, is the LEAST common type of defensive gun use.

Normally, all you have to do to defend yourself with a firearm is to let the attacker see the gun you have or hear you cocking the mechanism and they will run away. That happens hundreds of thousands of times each year by ordinary armed civilians.

According to a study ordered up by the Obama Admin, firearms are lawfully used at least an order of magnitude more times for lawful defensive purposes than for any and all types of criminal mis-use plus suicides plus accidents combined. Granted, Obama and the gun-ban crowd were highly unhappy about the results of the study, but it was and is still true.

Armed civilians, police, military, properly use guns for defensive purposes all the time, most of the time, without actually firing a shot and even when they do fire a shot, they usually don't hit anyone, let alone kill anyone.

"And always recall: guns in the home are 11 times more likely to harm a loved one than be used for defense."

Never was true. The gun-ban crowd is always revising that number downwards. The first time I heard it the number was something like 57, then it was revised into the 40s, then 30s then 20s then 11, I think the latest claim was even smaller than that.

The way the gun-ban people come up with that is they will only accept as a "good" defensive use of a gun when a lawful gun-owner lawfully kills a total stranger with a gun lawfully possessed.

So, if your neighbor breaks into your home with a knife and stabs you repeatedly and you use your gun to kill him, the gun-ban people don't count that case as "good" because the attacker was not a total stranger. They actually count that as a "bad" case because you knew your attacker.

If a woman is being raped by a total stranger in her own home and she manages to get a hand loose and grabs her hidden handgun and shoves it into the ribs of her attacker and tells him to leave or she will kill him and he leaves alive, then the gun-ban people wont count that case either because the total stranger left alive.

Or, lets say a person forbidden from possessing a gun were to happen across a police officer fighting for his life with a larger attacker. The forbidden person sees that the officers gun has been tossed far from the life or death struggle. The forbidden person picks up the officers gun and uses it to stop the attacker and saves the officers life.

The gun-ban crowd wont count that case either because the person who saved the cops life was not lawfully allowed to touch a gun.

FYI, that last one is a specific case I have read about from many years back. The forbidden person had a felony record for an assault in a bar fight decades prior and he knew he was not allowed to touch a gun. He risked going back to prison to save the cop. He was arrested for the possession charge and eventually, after he spent a while in jail and had to get a lawyer, a judge threw out the case against him.

Hey, Kevin Forestieri, want to go target shooting, my treat?

Don't worry, I'll start you off with small caliber .22LR.
It takes some experience to work your way up to my wife's .44magnum long-barrel revolver.

And no, we don't own an AR-15 or anything similar, but I'm sure I can find someone willing to let a reporter try one out.

No reporter has ever taken me up on my offer to get educated about firearms, I wonder why?

Also, if you're willing to learn some facts as well, I will be happy to explain the mis-information your paper has been printing.

Has any reporter ever actually been willing to risk their negative beliefs about guns?
Has any reporter learned about the proper use of firearms first-hand?
Has any reporter allowed new positive information about firearms and their owners to change their mind about their gun-ban agenda?

None that I have ever heard of.

@Liberalguns

I encourage you to email me at kforestieri@mv-voice.com if you believe there are factual inaccuracies or misleading statements in this story (or in any story, really). You can also email us with feedback on the gun control debate, gun terminology, etc. to your heart's content. I don't believe the comments section of an article posted 12 days ago is the appropriate place for this conversation.

@Kevin Forestieri

Sorry for the delay, sometimes family needs pop up and keep me very busy.

I don't object to your suggestion, but been there done that many times and it's always been a waste with reporters. They value plausible deniability above true verifiable facts and are not willing to consider that they may be on the wrong side of the firearms issue.

"@Liberalguns
I encourage you to email me at kforestieri@mv-voice.com if you believe there are factual inaccuracies or misleading statements in this story (or in any story, really)."

Over the past 25 years, I have been down that same road you are suggesting several times before with reporters. Not that I am objecting to going down that road once again, but reporters all seem to read from the same scripts.

What normally happens is either the reporter pointedly does not hold up their end of the discussion and really provides nothing in the way of his/her own opinions/beliefs.

Or they just spout some carefully crafted quotes from groups like "The coalition to ban all handguns" or "Mothers against semi-autos" or "Everytown for gun safety" all funded by billionaires who are all surrounded by fully armed security guards for protection. The wealthy trying desperately to maintain their privlidge to hire armed guards for their protection while they try to outlaw self-defense for us little people who cannot afford to hire armed guards.

Then, when the reporters recognize that their pet beliefs are being torn to bits by information they were not aware of, these reporters throw up their hands and start to back pedal on having any responsibility for what gets printed.

Reporters always end up claiming that as long as they accurately print anything that these biased and "politically correct" gun-ban groups say, then the reporters have zero responsibility to research deeper to learn the truth and then publish facts and opinions that the gun-ban groups don't want the public to know about.

Reporters always end up choosing not to make any effort to honestly educate the public about guns and make excuses for this failure.

"You can also email us with feedback on the gun control debate, gun terminology, etc. to your heart's content."

In the past no reporter has ever demonstrated any willingness to risk learning something that challenges their dogmatic propaganda beliefs.
Reporters prefer to maintain plausible deniability when the issue is firearms.

"I don't believe the comments section of an article posted 12 days ago is the appropriate place for this conversation."

It does have the advantage of the public being able to see your efforts to avoid responsibility and to run away from new information when facts start to endanger your preferred beliefs.

Mr. Forestieri,

Control the use of words, control the people. 1984

I guess I should ask which type of "journalist" you see yourself as?
Original intent of First Amendment "Freedom of the Press":
One type of journalist believes that the public has a fundamental right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, even when the truth flies in the face of what is "popular belief" or "politically correct" or "Sells more ads", or "appeases the personal beliefs of your editors", even when the people wish to be lied to instead. This is based on the concept that the public is mainly made of up adults who can learn and make up their own minds and make their own choices and live their lives as they see fit.

1984 Newspeak type journalist:
The other type of journalist sees themselves as more like "Social Engineers" trying to alter human behavior "for their own good" by manipulation, mis-information, outright lying, garbled mis-use of statistics and terms to mis-lead people. Thus treating adult people like preschoolers who need to be tricked into eating their vegetables "For their own good". These journalists mis-use words and terms to make them mean something other than what they really mean, like in the book 1984.