I happen to agree with you on this one. In fairness though, not all or even most Republicans are in favor of it. You may have noticed that Sen Marco Rubio, who showed a lot of courage in attending that very biased, highly charged "town hall" arranged by CNN providing some obvious reasons it wouldn't work, such as a swat team arriving at a school with at least one shooter and various other people armed inside a building with the police left to determine who is who. Rubio also announced he is moving a bit on his previous position on gun control.
Everything else you listed is valid. Arming teachers is a bad idea. However, it is one of a few idea's the President is considering. I'm expecting some kind of proposal from him containing a strengthening of background checks, placing restrictions on the purchase of guns and what I'm in favor of - dealing with mental illness, and maybe more.

We may not get the legislation, but at the very least Trump will put forward a plan.

The psychology behind MAD was truly mad.

And yet here we are. No one bombed anyone with nukes. Why is that???

Who would use this massive weaponry if it was certain that the use of those weapons would result in the massive retaliation by the enemy with bigger and badder weapons.

Ah Ha!  There is the answer...which just gutted your whole argument against gun control!  You just admitted that any criminal would think twice about opening fire if they know they would be outgunned. You just argued FOR the semi-auto's being DE-regulated!

Big picture, the CNN special last night probably did more to spur gun sales than anything in recent memory. Booing a rape survivor who supports the second amendment and a likening a moderate like Rubio to a school shooter and all the other mob with pitchfork behavior demonstrated to any gun owner watching just how unhinged the left is on the subject. 

I don't own a gun and have no desire to do so. Watching that rabid crowd act like something out of the French Revolution definitely made the idea more attractive though. 

Even Antonin Scalia in the Heller decision was clear that the state has a manifest right to limit the rights to gun ownership if that limitation is in the public interest

I can't really tell what you are arguing, but if you believe Scalia's Heller decision stands for the proposition that the State can ban ownership of an entire class of guns merely be claiming it's in the public interest, you are sorely mistaken. In fact, a significant portion of his opinion is an attack on Breyer for arguing that's a permissible way to handle a Constitutional right. 

Scalia stated the State can impose  reasonable licencing restrictions (age, criminal background etc) and restrict where guns can be carried, (schools etc..) but the entire point of Heller is that the State cannot ban an entire class of popular weapons (handguns, semi-automatic rifles) etc., merely by claiming it's in the public interest to do so. Ownership is a Constitutional right, and just like other Constitutional rights such as free speech, it can't be limited merely because the government announces  it's in the public interest.   

Let's take deceased J. Scalia, at his court opinion. Justice Scalia did open up nearly all types of weaponry (guns/knives) for purchasing, and he cleared "Open-Carry." But, then after all his "clearances" for those devices he stopped short with a "No Gun Policy" for a few select places—courthouses, state houses, schools, churches, etceteras. When I read this portion of the Heller opinion, I saw J. Scalia as a demonstrative hypocrite!

If J. Scalia was going to drill down through history and come all the way back up with a gun in both hands, the least he could do is face down people with guns in his own 'house': The Supreme Court!

I say this: Let Americans take their guns everywhere, into homes, bars, schools, shopping centers, statehouses, governor's mansions, courtrooms—including the Supreme Court's "cone of protection," churches, and last but not least, the White House. Okay, we ought to have enough guns to cover all this!  If not we can make more!! Then, we can all sit back and take notes on how fast Scalia's legacy gun opinion will be reconsidered by the High Court and thrown down!  (/sarcasm.)

Watched Wayne LaPierre speak at the CPAC today ( who I thought was not going to show up, but did ) with a message not so heavy on guns and very heavy of politics.  "European Socialism" being forced on America by brainwashed kids was part of the theme.  He named names. 

I wonder, is the next phase of the NRA drifting towards being America's SA?  After all, the white robes of the Ku Kluxers are vanishing in their number, being replaced by the standard khaki.

And the CPAC was rabid.

I wonder, is the next phase of the NRA drifting towards being America's SA?

I have little doubt about that and I'd argue that they're really been there since 1967 in reaction to the Black Panther protests at the CA statehouse.   

theatlantic

.

Note that the pro-gun Bundy / Posse Comitatus / Sovereign Citizen nuttery was originally rooted in the Silvershirt movement of the 1930s - 1940s, and it's literally a fascist & Christian Dominionist reaction against the Reconstruction era (when black ownership of guns was common):

Silver Shirt leader Pelley called for a "Christian Commonwealth" that would combine the principles of racism, nationalism, and theocracy, while excluding Jews and non-whites. He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany."    Pelley ran for president of the United States in the 1936 election on a third-party ticket.

en.wikipedia

From there it morphed into the Posse Comitatus via William Gale (Christian Dominionist preacher) and Henry Beach (a member of the Silvershirts).

rightwingwatch

en.wikipedia

And the difference between 1936 when Pelley ran for Prez and today is that Trump won.    He owes thanks to his fascist and Dominionist buddies for that.

Apparently Americans weren't quite so dumb in 1936.

I have noticed that on more than one occasion, Trump referred to himself as "A movement."

This entire article is utter crap.  I can debunk each and every one of your points with comprehensive data to prove you wrong.  But I'm too fucking tired to deal with your nonsense.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll post counter arguments to each one of your failed points.

In the meantime, I suggest you take off the deep rose colored glasses you in fact are wearing that color your opinion with such inaccuracies and untruths.  It's ironic that you post one article calling for dialogue between both sides.  Remember what I said in that one?  Come to the table with truth, and the dialogue can begin.  Come to the table with this biased falsehoods, and you cannot be taken seriously.  

Unfortunately the closed mindedness always seems to be yours.. Guns and bullets appear to be a passion for you. You dispute every argument about numbers of shootings. You seem to be almost a shill for the NRA. Show me a study that shows us that anywhere we pump more guns into an environment, we decrease gun violence.

Take away the AR15s and mass casualty incidents will decrease. Plain and simple.

Show me a study that shows us that anywhere we pump more guns into an environment, we decrease gun violence.

Disarming Realities: As Gun Sales Soar, Gun Crimes Plummet

A couple of new studies reveal the gun-control hypesters’ worst nightmare…more people are buying firearms, while firearm-related homicides and suicides are steadily diminishing. What crackpots came up with these conclusions? One set of statistics was compiled by the   U.S. Department of Justice . The other was reported by the   Pew Research Center .

According to DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. gun-related homicides dropped 39 percent over the course of 18 years, from 18,253 during 1993, to 11,101 in 2011. During the same period, non-fatal firearm crimes decreased even more, a whopping 69 percent. The majority of those declines in both categories occurred during the first 10 years of that time frame. Firearm homicides declined from 1993 to 1999, rose through 2006, and then declined again through 2011. Non-fatal firearm violence declined from 1993 through 2004, then fluctuated in the mid-to-late 2000s.

And where did the bad people who did the shooting get most of their guns? Were those gun show “loopholes” responsible? Nope. According to surveys DOJ conducted of state prison inmates during 2004 (the most recent year of data available), only two percent who owned a gun at the time of their offense bought it at either a gun show or flea market. About 10 percent said they purchased their gun from a retail shop or pawnshop, 37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source.

While firearm violence accounted for about 70 percent of all homicides between 1993 and 2011, guns were used in less than 10 percent of all non-fatal violent crimes. Between 70 percent and 80 percent of those firearm homicides involved a handgun, and 90 percent of non-fatal firearm victimizations were committed with a handgun. Males, blacks, and persons aged 18-24 had the highest firearm homicide rates.

The March Pew study, drawn from numbers obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also found a dramatic drop in gun crime over the past two decades. Their accounting shows a 49 percent decline in the homicide rate, and a 75 percent decline of non-fatal violent crime victimization. More than 8 in 10 gun homicide victims in 2010 were men and boys. Fifty-five percent of the homicide victims were black, far beyond their 13 percent share of the population.

Pew researchers observed that the huge amount of attention devoted to gun violence incidents in the media has caused most Americans to be unaware that gun crime is   “ strikingly down”   from 20 years ago . In fact, gun-related homicides in the late 2000s were   “equal to those not seen since the early 1960s.”   Yet their   survey found   that 56 percent believed gun-related crime is higher, 26 percent believed it stayed about the same, and 6 percent didn’t know.  Only   12 percent of those polled thought it was lower .

The Pew survey found that while women and elderly were actually less likely to become crime victims, they were more likely to believe gun crime had increased in recent years. On the other hand, men, who were more likely to become victims, were more likely know that the gun rate had dropped.

Those gun crime rates certainly aren’t diminishing for lack of supply…at least not for law-abiding legal buyers. Last December, the FBI recorded a   record number of 2.78 million background checks   for purchases that month, surpassing a 2.01 million mark set the month before by about 39 percent. That December 2012 figure, in turn, was up 49 percent from a previous record on that month the year before. FBI checks for all of 2012 totaled 19.6 million, an annual record, and an increase of 19 percent over 2011.

Firearms sellers can thank the gun-control legislation lobbies for much of this business windfall. Marked demand increases have been witnessed over the past five years thanks to the 2008 and 2012 elections of U.S. history’s most successful, if unintentional, gun salesman as president. The firearms market got a huge added boost after the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut activated a renewed legislative frenzy.

If that gun-purchasing fervor has abated with the defeat of several congressional regulation proposals, as I’m sure it has, you surely wouldn’t have known it by witnessing the overwhelmingly enormous annual NRA convention in Houston earlier this month. Attendance was estimated to be more than 70,000 people from all over the country.

Those attendees weren’t all guys either…not by a long shot. Last year, the   National Shooting Sports Foundation reported   that participation by women increased both in target shooting (46.5%) and hunting (36.6%) over the past decade. Also, 61% of firearm retailers responding to a NSSF survey reported an increase in female customers. A 2009 NSSF survey indicated that the number of women purchasing guns for personal defense   increased a whopping 83 percent .

Is John Lott, the author of   “More Guns, Less Crime”   right? Does the rapid growth of gun ownership and armed citizens have anything to do with a diminishing gun violence trend? His expansive research concludes that state “shall issue” laws which allow citizens to carry concealed weapons do produce a steady decrease in violent crime. He explains that this is logical because criminals are deterred by the risk of attacking an armed target, so as more citizens arm themselves, danger to the criminals increases.

Whether or not you buy that reasoning, and it does make sense to me, what about the notion that tougher gun laws have or would make any difference? With the toughest gun laws in the nation, Chicago saw homicides jump to 513 in 2012, a 15% hike in a single year. The city’s murder rate is 15.65 per 100,000 people, compared with 4.5 for the Midwest, and 5.6 for Illinois.

Up to 80 percent of Chicago murders and non-fatal shootings are gang- related, primarily young black and Hispanic men killed by other black and Hispanic men. Would tightening gun laws even more, or “requiring” background checks, change these conditions?

Gwainevere Catchings Hess, president of the Black Women’s Agenda (BWA), Inc., an organization that strongly advocates strict gun-control legislation, rightly   points out that    “In 2009, black males ages 15-19 were eight times as likely as white males the same age, and 2.5 times as likely as their Hispanic peers to be killed in a gun homicide.”

Those are terrible statistics, but here are some others. Today, 72% of black children are   born out of wedlock , as are 53% of Hispanic children and 36% of white children. Back in 1965, 25% of black children were born out of wedlock, nearly one-third fewer. As a result, promiscuous rappers, prosperous dope peddlers and street gang leaders are becoming ever more influential role models. It’s probably no big stretch of imagination to correlate such grossly disproportionate crime and victimization rates with comparably staggering rates of single-parent families, those without fathers in particular.

Yet in the general population, and   although the agenda-driven media hasn’t noticed , we can be grateful that gun violence has been trending downward since 1993 when it hit its last peak. Don’t want to credit a rise in gun ownership and concealed carry by law-abiding citizens for this good news? Fine. But then, don’t imagine that gun legislation is the reason or answer either. Leave that illusion to gun-control cheerleaders in the media.

forbes

In sum, though many nations with widespread gun ownership
have much lower murder rates than nations that severely restrict
gun ownership, it would be simplistic to assume that at all times
and in all places widespread gun ownership depresses violence by
deterring many criminals into nonconfrontation crime. There is
evidence that it does so in the United States, where defensive gun
ownership is a substantial socio‐cultural phenomenon. But the
more plausible explanation for many nations having widespread
gun ownership with low violence is that these nations never had
high murder and violence rates and so never had occasion to enact
severe anti‐gun laws. On the other hand, in nations that have ex‐
perienced high and rising violent crime rates, the legislative reac‐
tion has generally been to enact increasingly severe antigun laws.
This is futile, for reducing gun ownership by the law‐abiding citi‐
zenry—the only ones who obey gun laws—does not reduce vio‐
lence or murder. The result is that high crime nations that ban guns
to reduce crime end up having both high crime and stringent gun
laws, while it appears that low crime nations that do not signifi‐
cantly restrict guns continue to have low violence rates.
No. 2]   Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? 673
Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely
wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in
the incidence of murder in any particular society. Though
many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geo‐
graphic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article
provides a clear admonishment. Whether gun availability is
viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term
macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely
throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or
declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consis‐
tent international pattern is that more guns equal less mur‐
der and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think
that gun availability is an important factor, the available in‐
ternational data cannot be squared with the mantra that
more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less
death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data
consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns
equal less violent crime.  

CONCLUSION
This Article has reviewed a significant amount of evidence
from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual
portion of evidence is subject to cavil—at the very least the
general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific
evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of
conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the bur‐
den of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal
more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, espe‐
cially since they argue public policy ought to be based on
that mantra.149 To bear that burden would at the very least
require showing that a large number of nations with more
guns have more death and that nations that have imposed
stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions
in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are
not observed when a large number of nations are compared
across the world.

law.harvard

(You should really read this whole study)

As of 2010 the pattern continues. American gun ownership is now estimated to exceed 300 million guns. As of late-2010 the just-released FBI crime analysis for 2009 finds another 5% decline in crime generally with a 7.3% decline in murder and an 8% decline in robbery.

Thus a quintupling of guns since 1946 has been accompanied by not just no increase in violent crime over the entire 50+ year period but a substantial reduction. (See generally Don B. Kates, "The Limits of Gun Control: A Criminological Perspective" in Timothy Lytton, ed., SUING THE FIREARMS INDUSTRY: A LEGAL BATTLE AT THE CROSSROADS OF GUN CONTROL AND MASS TORTS (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2005).

buckeyefirearms

Do I need to post more?  What other point do you want me to debunk?

Oh, and I'm not a member of the NRA.  I am a Cold War Veteran, Submarine Force, and served on FBM's.  Part of the Triad of MAD, a policy that worked.

I have not only read the entire study, but have used it as an example of what "non-peer reviewed", student "research is. Below is a summary from SNOPES concerning this study and just how flawed both the methodology and conclusions were. It is the type of paper that would have brought a first year graduate student in front of his advisor to defend his/her shoddy research methods.

CLAIM
A 2007 Harvard University study proved that areas with higher rates of gun ownership have lower crime rates. See Example( s )
EXAMPLES
Collected via e-mail, October 2015
I am suspect of this article being circulated by "Beliefnet" about Guns and Violence. I would like to know if there was actually a study done by Harvard University on this or is this a total fabrication.
RATING
FALSE
WHAT'S TRUE
Gun rights advocates Gary Mauser and Don Kates jointly authored a 2007 paper in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy arguing that higher rates of gun ownership correlated with lower crime rates.
WHAT'S FALSE
The paper in question was not peer-reviewed, it didn't constitute a study, and it misrepresented separate research to draw shaky, unsupported conclusions.
ORIGIN
Following the Umpqua Community College shooting in October 2015, an undated article on the web site BeliefNet titled “Harvard University Study Reveals Astonishing Link Between Firearms, Crime and Gun Control” attracted significant traction on social media. The article (split up across six pages) didn’t lead with the name of the study it referenced, and without ever once linking to the document on which it was based, it maintained:
According to a study in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, which cites the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the United Nations International Study on Firearms Regulation, the more guns a nation has, the less criminal activity.
In other words, more firearms, less crime, concludes the virtually unpublicized research report by attorney Don B. Kates and Dr. Gary Mauser. But the key is firearms in the hands of private citizens.
“The study was overlooked when it first came out in 2007,” writes Michael Snyder, “but it was recently re-discovered and while the findings may not surprise some, the place where the study was undertaken is a bit surprising. The study came from the Harvard Journal of Law, that bastion of extreme, Ivy League liberalism. Titled Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?, the report “found some surprising things.”
While identifying details were curiously absent on the five pages that followed, it was clear the “study” in question was an item titled “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?” originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (Volume 30, Number 2) [PDF].
Of primary importance is the subsequent, widely misapplied label of the word “study” with reference to the 2007 item in question. The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy describes itself as “one of the most widely circulated student-edited law reviews and the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” Papers published in that journal are (while perhaps competitively sourced) in no way equivalent to peer-reviewed research published in a credible science-related journals as “studies.” Use of the term “study” to refer that 2007 article dishonestly suggested that the assertions made by its authors were gathered and vetted under more rigorous study conditions, which didn’t appear to be the case.
The paper was credited to authors Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser. A profile for Kates (a gun rights enthusiast [PDF]) describes him as “[one of the] foremost litigators, criminologists and scholars on the Second Amendment and the fundamental right to self-defense and the individual right to keep and bear arms in the country.” Kates was prominently featured in a March 2013 Washington Post article about gun lobby efforts to infiltrate law review publications, and Mauser’s web site biography reads:
His interest in firearms and “gun control” grew out of his research in political marketing. He has published two books, Political Marketing, and Manipulating Public Opinion and more than 20 articles. For the past 15 years, Professor Mauser has conducted research on the politics of gun control, the effectiveness of gun control laws, and the use of firearms in self defense.
In a document dated June 2009 [PDF], Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center Dr. David Hemenway addressed the 2007 article’s flaws in correlating higher rates of gun ownership with lower crime rates thusly:
The article appears in a publication, described as a “student law review for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” It does not appear to be a peer-reviewed journal, or one that is searching for truth as opposed to presenting a certain world view. The paper itself is not a scientific article, but a polemic, making the claim that gun availability does not affect homicide or suicide. It does this by ignoring most of the scientific literature, and by making too many incorrect and illogical claims.
Incidentally, Hemenway is named as a researcher on a 2007 Social Science and Medicine study titled “State-Level Homicide Victimization Rates in the US in Relation to Survey Measures of Household Firearm Ownership, 2001–2003.” That research (carried out by researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center) found:
Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence. Overall homicide rates were 60% higher. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.
Hemenway’s 2009 writing pointed to weak points in the 2007 paper, such as a highly misleading excerpt that misrepresented two then-recent public health and policy studies. Immediately following a citation of Kates’ own prior work (his 1979 book Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out), the authors posited that two large government-backed studies had failed to conclude gun control measures affected crime rates:
In this connection, two recent studies are pertinent. In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of then-extant studies.1
The first referenced item, Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review (2004), pointed to a lack of sufficient data with respect to gun policy (not a failure to conclude that gun control reduced crime):
In summary, the committee concludes that existing research studies and data include a wealth of descriptive information on homicide, suicide, and firearms, but, because of the limitations of existing data and methods, do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide. The issue of substitution (of the means of committing homicide or suicide) has been almost entirely ignored in the literature. What sort of data and what sort of studies and improved models would be needed in order to advance understanding of the association between firearms and suicide? Although some knowledge may be gained from further ecological studies, the most important priority appears to the committee to be individual-level studies of the association between gun ownership and violence. Currently, no national surveys on ownership designed to examine the relationship exist. The committee recommends support of further individual-level studies of the link between firearms and both lethal and nonlethal suicidal behavior.
Similarly, the actual wording of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s cited report more explicitly conflicted with the authors’ assertions that a conclusion had been drawn:
The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes. (Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.) This report briefly describes how the reviews were conducted, summarizes the Task Force findings, and provides information regarding needs for future research.
In short, the purported 2007 Harvard “study” with “astonishing” findings was in fact a polemic paper penned by two well-known gun rights activists. Its findings were neither peer-reviewed nor subject to academic scrutiny of any sort prior to its appearance, and the publication that carried it was a self-identified ideology-based editorial outlet edited by Harvard students. The paper disingenuously misrepresented extant research to draw its conclusions, and researchers at Harvard (among which Kates and Mauser were not included) later objected to the paper’s being framed as a “study” from Harvard (rather than a law review paper). The paper wasn’t “virtually unpublicized research” (as BeliefNet claimed); rather, it was simply not deemed noteworthy at the time it was published due to the fact it was neither a study nor much more than a jointly-written editorial piece representing its authors’ unsupported opinions.

You're credibility just hit rock bottom when you relied on Snopes.

I noticed you didn't say anything about the others.  I can provide more.  But I think I've made my point.  You're wrong.  If John Russell had his way about keeping fake news off this site, this article would be deleted.

Take away the AR15s and mass casualty incidents will decrease. Plain and simple.

No they won't. If they can't obtained legally, then the perp will obtain them somewhere else illegally. The only thing plain and simple your thought process.

Please just stop, clearly English is not your first language. 

Take away the AR15s and mass casualty incidents will decrease. Plain and simple.

bs,  they will just use a different gun so you have something to ban next year.

which is why you are not going to see a gun ban of any kind.

here are your options

• school security,
• restrictions on 18-21 buying semi auto's
•  mental health screening, anyone on psychotropic drugs - no buying guns

This is about as good a place as any to post this, I guess. I have several questions:

1. Is the NRA engaging in political coercion when it "threatens" Republican lawmakers with its "A+"  (or less) rating system?
2. Can Congress ban 'heavy' lobbying groups, like the NRA's lobbying arm, from giving campaign donations to any congressional member?
3. If NRA President LaPierre is responsible for setting this nation's gun policy/ies (see his "policy" speeches), why are we asking Congress for a fix?

I am not saying any of  this should happen. But, the time has come to consider what's possible!