You have made it exceptionally clear you have no idea of how the NRA operates, or how any gun shows operate.

Curses, and I thought we’d all been rather subtle…

Of course they could try to do a forced invasion, in which, some law enforcement officials would possibly be killed but the armed invaders would be shot dead long before they reached the door.

Very optimistic of you.
I too would like to think that an attack by armed attackers would be beaten off by the police, but since it wouldn’t be out of keeping to own a gun and practise using it there is a chance that any attack could be carried out by people who can actually use their weapons, which could be dangerous for all.

Now if they were truly diabolical and came with cartridges in their pockets, came in mass numbers, and were able to chamber a round or two before being clubbed to death or apprehended they might injure some one but that is all.

‘Might injure someone’? I like your optimism but unless the defence is forewarned and ready then the attackers initially hold all the cards; the shock of being under attack and panic from those trapped and under fire won’t help. There will be deaths.

Did some of you know this journalist, your rhetoric is so similar?
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2015/12/06/new-york-daily-news-column-likens-san-bernardino-attack-victim-to-terrorists-n2089541

Nope, never heard of her – but she certainly seems to be more along your line of thinking than mine…

Ah I see you are not totally ill informed.

Well, it would make sense: you don’t put dangerous weapons in the hands of bragging, testosterone saturated nutsos unless you are asking for trouble.

Witnessed a drive-by here the other day. A blacked-out and lowered Ka screamed up to someone in the street, the window was wound down and a voice screamed “******!” before they screeched off again, keeping under the 30mph limit allowed in towns. It was carnage.

A drive-by swearing? How utterly British…

You never been to a NRA show, they do not have secret gun meetings, and you blatantly know nothing of the security there, or any gun show in the U.S.

NRA officials meet at NRA headquarters or have business meeting like any other business in proper surroundings. (There is a fifty yard indoor shooting range just behind the office headquarters — EEWWWW, that is scary kids)
Your rather childish dream scenario sounds as if you are a bit annoyed your fantasy of the NRA and U.S. gun owners is only your fantasy.

You mean they are not even a little bit like the KKK, with hoods, secret handshakes and burning crosses? How disappointing.

I do wish they’d close this thread.

What a lovely idea. Close a thread just because you are having a hard time on it, or because you deem it worthless. Such a shame that this is a discussion forum, but if you do not wish to discuss this topic then I’m sure another one will be along shortly (that you can disagree with, I’m sure).

(when he’s not busy proselytizing for atheism).

Ah, moaning about people not believing in your invisible friend. How far will you go to force people to believe – suicide bombings or hacking off prisoners heads like the other fundamentalists?

We have a bunch of posters long on passion and short on understanding…so it’s just another excuse to slag on the US.
I’m about ready to cancel my FlyPast subscription just because they play host to this nonsense.

So if they don’t close this ‘nonsense’ and agree with you you will cancel your subscription? Such an empty threat.
Why not explain why absolutely nothing can be done to prevent such massacres taking place (standard domestic or terrorism, using freely available legally purchased weapons) or what you feel needs to be done to prevent them in the future. Or you could just walk away…

Unlike politicians I shed no bs crocodile tears as I am as concerned about their lives, as they are about mine.
It is a shame this happens and worse politicians try to use sorrow of others for political purposes, but such is the way of men.

I do not engage in the sad talk lie the liberals in this country pretend to have for the victims.

If you think flowers, candles, sad and self-righteous talk actually amounts to anything engage in that task but symbolism over substance is just political bs at its worst.

If I thought you cared I wouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t so I did.
It is not about being a politician, it is about being human and being concerned for those killed or injured and relieved that it was not us.

I would almost think some of you work for Pres. Obama as his speech from his Oval Office tonight about how to deal with Islamic terrorism was for him say we need more gun laws, brilliant.
Yesterday, rather than go out to San Bernardino and speak with the families, he went to visit Gabrielle Gifford, the former congress woman who wants more gun laws.
That is going to put fear in the hearts of terrorists.

Gee. More gun laws. So maybe if they had been in place it would be potentially difficult for would-be terrorists to purchase guns. But you don’t believe in that, do you. More guns, yes?

Much as I see the humour of gunmen at a gun men’s meeting I doubt that they would be allowed to carry their weapons into such conferences so that any terrorists would be disarmed as well.
Should I threaten to withdraw my subscription at the thought of such an idea being posed?

Maybe its me. but I don’t recall ever, EVER hearing RpR expressing anything about the victims of these frequent ‘occurrences’.

A man who argues for the gun, cares about it, yet appears to care nothing for his fellow man. Someone who will dispute facts about massacres in his home country, even though people are dying at the hands of deranged gunmen (a wonderfully pointed word that doesn’t make them sound in any way sexy or exciting) in acts of violence that could be cut by a huge percentage with just a little bit of common sense and guts, rather than the wide spread cowardice displayed by those scared of losing their toys. People, innocent people, who are the same as you and me and him and her, are being killed in the street, their workplace, at parties, watching films, being educated, in many different locations all over just one country; it doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world, it isn’t organised like (for example) Mexico, in fact it might be said that the only way it is organised is by those who vote for it, who are members of the pro gun lobby, who manufacture them or sell them, since they attempt to make these weapons appear positive, normal, owned by normal people for specific, normal, security purposes. Yet it is not normal people going on the rampage – it is sick minded individuals, the loners, the deranged, those who were regarded by all their friends and workmates as normal, who they cannot believe would have done a thing like that. But they did it. Their victims friends and relatives and the rest of the ‘normal’ population mourn the loss and the gun lobby dispute the figures, like normal, surprise surprise.
No wonder their answer is for all to be armed, it must make the manufacturers positively orgasm with pleasure at the thought of arming everyone in the country. Why not take away the police – that would stop them shooting whoever takes their fancy – and allow the whole country to go back to old west law, with gunfights and quick draws and the like, and withdraw from the rest of the civilised world?
At least you’d know where you stood then…

Sad, isn’t it.

Anybody? I can only conclude that our American cousins here either believe it’s not really a problem, or else it’s got to be such an unholy mess now there’s nothing anyone can do to fix it.

One usual answer is to either reduce or increase the number of firearms carried/available; a reduction should decrease the number of deaths (witness the UK) but there will obviously be disputes over what an increase would do – RpR has said there should be guns in schools, for example, yet has dodged questions about why he thinks a reduction wouldn’t work.
Background checks might have alerted the authorities to the potential for this latest tragedy, but could also weed out other, lawful, requests which would must surely infringe on their right to own guns and shoot people (I might be wrong about that last one…). The only surefire thing you will get from gun enthusiasts is that nothing should get in their way of owning guns, whereas observers from outside America will say they are way too close to the problem and that something needs to be done to sort this out.

Which reminds me, have you put yours on to boil for Christmas dinner yet? Soon it is going to be too late…

Seems to me the value of owning a gun, is more important than that of a human life.

That, I am afraid, is the truth of the matter. Given the choice between controlling the ownership of such weapons with a logical decrease in the number of gun deaths and continuing the status quo, complete with the frequent bouts of shocking deaths of innocents, the argument will be made for armed guards so that the gun-owning American doesn’t have to give up their toys.

And now another massacre has taken place using legally owned weapons. What will it take for it to sink in…?

It is the killing of the leadership and destruction of the logistics network that will weaken them. The collateral damage is regrettable. But Daesh seem pretty good at killing Muslim innocents so is that ‘acting as a recruitment sergeant’ for the UN Forces?

Is it proven that the leadership is being killed and the logistics network has been/is being destroyed? If you were under attack would you, even as a crazed religious nutter intent on killing everything, given the choice, stay where you were known to be so that you could be picked off at will?
Collateral damage is the recruiting element that IS is relying on.

You might like to ask Jihadi John’s opinion of that.

He is happy, he has his allocated number of virgins…

So your argument is that ISIS will leave us alone if we only bomb them one side of a border they don’t recognise?

They won’t leave us alone, but bombing them in Syria (or Iraq) isn’t really going to make a lot of difference to those who would be carrying out the attacks; to do that we’d have to bomb our own cities or those in neighbouring Europe, whose residents have either been fighting in the middle east or wanted to but were convinced to take their war a little closer to home.

The seven plots so far foiled against the UK seem to say different.

The problem with foiling plots is that we have to be lucky all the time whilst they only have to be lucky just once – how is bombing some corner of a Syrian province going to foil any potential eighth plot?

The ISIS attacks are being orchestrated from ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Indeed one of the Paris attackers travelled from Syria. Therefore its patently clear that command and training is being carried out in Syria by ISIS. If you wish to eliminate the structure of the group and its media operations clearly Syria is where it should be targetted

Would this be in the same way that bin Laden was behind every single al-Qaeda action? How is it ‘patiently clear’, and to whom? Has it been proven that the Paris attacker came back from Syria specifically to take part in the atrocity or is this just speculation? And what about the Belgians involved?
Surely, if we had wished to eliminate al-Qaeda then shouldn’t we have been bombing them and their heartlands into dust rather than…erm?

Generally vehicles such as the Technicals. armed pick-ups (frequently) used as ‘troop’ transport. A target for which the Tornado and its Brimstone payload is particularly suited. Preventing these from moving around openly will cause Daesh some inconvenience. Moving around openly in them will cause the occupants a world of (brief) pain.

So you are in favour of a multi million currency mission to wipe out a pick up truck (or, if they’re lucky, two) and a few IS rank and file.

A single Brimstone missile won’t come in at much under £200,000…

Well, that should match up with the odd Humvee and a few goats…

Since a knife wielding terrorist costs less than a round of 5.56 we might as well give up the army all together.

Equipping our guys with sharp sticks should be cost effective. Maybe the RAF could drop brambles or nettle patches?

‘If ISIS are living amongst the civilian population, bombs and missiles won’t take them out’

How do you define the civilian population. Those from the West that have moved there with their families and are happy to for their

children to be pictured holding the heads of dead soldiers ? There is no fence around Raqqa or Mosul. The civilian population has to decide to

stay and withstand the consequences or do what millions of people have done and left the warzone. You seem to be under some impression

that everyone in the civilian population isn’t supporting the aims of ISIS.

That is an excellent point. Lets just nuke the entire area and wipe out IS once and for all. Hey, there will be civilians killed, but it is not like they are anything other than locals and the families of traitorous foreign insurgents, so that’s ok.
I wonder where all these refugees are coming from, though, if there are relatively few who don’t agree with the IS cause; obviously the ones who are still there are true believers and not unable to afford the cost or unwilling to leave behind the elderly, the sick, their family home and everything…

Every pub crawl I have been involved in hasn’t involved military training camps in Syria – hiring multiple cars – procuring explosives -having suicide belts made -co-ordinating multiple attacks -evading capture – using safe houses and shoot outs with the police.

No? Man, you just haven’t lived!!!

‘So they deserve to die, right?’

People from all over the world have travelled to Syria in order to support the caliphate . As a part of that they support the effort of ISIS through the internet -hospitals -running transportation – enforcing security -smuggling oil and weapons.

And those who lived peacefully in Syria before all this broke out – do they deserve to die too? As far as I’m aware we do not have a smart bomb able to differentiate between good and bad targets, innocent or guilty people, so our bombs will make us more enemies when we treat them all indiscriminately, since revenge is such a wonderful way of recruiting.

What do you suggest ? We should ask the nasty people to leave the houses they inhabit with the ‘population’ and ask them to gather in places where its easier for us to bomb them with our Paveway IV and Brimstone ?

Now you are just being silly.

‘With a statement like that you only prove that, actually, your morals are no better that those of the terrorists that carried-out the attacks in Paris! ‘

Pretty much condemn anyone who has dropped any weapon in anger . I guess you don’t believe in the efforts of Bomber Command or the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan either !

Are we in anger now?
Surely an angry response is the choice of the French people – they must have their revenge, whereas we are trying to claim that we are being discerning and picking our targets?

Should we just ask them to be nice and stop raping -destroying items of civilization -beheading hostages – murdering old people and pushing gay people off buildings!

However much you might want to, we cannot go to war because IS destroyed some antiquities and raped a few women. Beheading hostages and murdering people in creative ways is also a rather poor excuse, since they are not the only ones in that area who kill and torture based on a disagreement over race or creed: you going to warn Israel that some of their people are creating conditions likely to start a war at some point in the future?

Isis are just a symptom of a larger problem – the incompatibility of Islam with liberal democracies.

A problem that the west exacerbated and even encouraged in the run up to the invasion of iraq.

Not that all Islamists are extremists, of course, just the nutjobs who read what they want to see in the koran…

‘once the weapons are in France’ -ah so you discount the fact that one maybe two people travelled from Syria . Organised the attack -organised an escape for multiple people?? You feel that the attacks in Paris were incredibly unsophisticated -they were not .That one of the attackers has so far managed to evade a massive man hunt shows quite clearly that a support network was in place and there are people who offer shelter. There were a small number of attackers backed by a group prepared to assist.

The Paris attacks were not necessarily unsophisticated, but they were not exactly well planned or well carried out either. Several aspects were (from their point of view) wasted opportunities with little or nothing to show for the effort. Most (all?) the attackers were on the police ‘radar’ but we allowed to carry on with their lives because there was no intelligence showing anything imminent. Then again who would lock people up on the presumptive notion that they might carry out an attack?
If anything the Paris attack showed how useless the French intelligence service was; but then we would need to be lucky all the time so as to avoid something similar happening here, so maybe not ‘useless’ so much as unlucky?

As a country we believed Blair when he said we must go to war – would we fall for the lies of politicians AGAIN when they tell us they know what they are doing and what needs to be done? There is an inquiry into the previous war that we are still waiting to be published: should we go into a war, decided by a politician, even before the lessons of the previous one are publicised?
In addition, who might we suddenly find ourselves at odds with if we stop the supply of oil that IS have for export? Might there be not just money flowing into their coffers but other nasties that could make us think twice when they are sprung upon us (or our airmen)?
But we are looking at Syria when the potential for an attack is already within our borders, and being radicalised despite having never left this country or even being able to speak a language that would be recognisable to their fellow fighters should they try to go and fight in Syria. We need to turn their heads away from those who preach hatred to the western way of life and show them that we have more to offer than racism and disrespect.

And yet what did the Royal Navy succeed in doing in the war on Japan?
Some raids on oil refineries, patrols, task force protection, surviving kamikaze attacks, etc, but what was the most important contribution of the RN and/or the Fleet Air Arm?

(I seem to recall reading somewhere that the US high command wanted every important event to be undertaken by their military as revenge for Pearl Harbour, and that nothing of any significance was sunk by the RN – whether by surface vessel, submarine or aircraft – for the same reason)