MERGED--> all Gun Control discussion

[Irvine511]

Nope, they're not my fault or problem.

do you feel the same way about people who use drugs recreationally? that drug-related violence and murder and health problems are not in any way the casual drug user's fault or problem?

 

[BVS]

I believe in proper training, I've received plenty.

Do you think it should be required? Earlier you said no restrictions.

 

[bigjohn2441]

if we legalized drugs i'd probably have to take a cut in pay

but seriously, that precisely why it wont ever happen. war on drugs = $$$$$

 

[HyperU2]

Do you think it should be required? Earlier you said no restrictions.

I think a little more training should go along with anyone interested in buying a gun. I offer it to anyone I talk to who comes to me for ideas of what gun they should buy for their first.

do you feel the same way about people who use drugs recreationally? that drug-related violence and murder and health problems are not in any way the casual drug user's fault or problem?

I don't blame my many friends who are recreational drug users with the slaughter that goes down in the cities, no. I don't blame my car for highway deaths either.

 

[BVS]

if we legalized drugs i'd probably have to take a cut in pay

but seriously, that precisely why it wont ever happen. war on drugs = $$$$$

But more than the taxation on drugs?

 

[bigjohn2441]

hey, we should have a thread about legalizing drugs vs not

but i think we all agree on that issue so it would be no fun

 

[HyperU2]

Yeah that seems to be a gimme. Who wants peaceful agreement on teh interweb?

 

[Irvine511]

I don't blame my many friends who are recreational drug users with the slaughter that goes down in the cities, no. I don't blame my car for highway deaths either.

do they bear any responsibility? do they play any part in the problem?

 

[HyperU2]

No.

 

[Irvine511]

ok.

not much to discuss then.

 

[BVS]

No.

But they aren't law abiding citizens.

 

[anitram]

do they bear any responsibility? do they play any part in the problem?

Of course not.

Their drugs aren't transported by drug mules, and no kids in the ghetto peddle them. We are talking about middle class or upper class recreational drug users not some filth down in west Baltimore, ok?

 

[Irvine511]

Of course not.

Their drugs aren't transported by drug mules, and no kids in the ghetto peddle them. We are talking about middle class or upper class recreational drug users not some filth down in west Baltimore, ok?

it would probably be better to arm everyone in west Balty so they just kill each other off. if that's how they choose to use the gun, that's neither my fault nor my problem. it's not like i'm going to drive my SUV anywhere near those neighborhoods.

 

[maycocksean]

I don't think we're talking about other countries but enjoy whatever you're there for. You've got what 65,000 people on that island tops? How many murders per year?

We're not talking about another country. Saipan (i.e. the Commonwealth of the Norrthern Marianas Islands) is part of the United States, just like St. Thomas.

I'm not sure how many murders we have each year, but I know that murders are rare.

 

[HyperU2]

But they aren't law abiding citizens.

I can't say that I obey every law.

 

[BVS]

I can't say that I obey every law.

You kept saying you were a law abiding citizen...

 

[HyperU2]

I don't think I've ever claimed that.

 

[BVS]

I don't think I've ever claimed that.

You said guns are for law abiding citizens, yours should all be taken away...

 

[HyperU2]

Well since we already have gun control in place, I don't violate any of the laws that prohibit gun ownership.

 

[BVS]

But if you're willing to break one law, who says you aren't willing to break another?

All this high horse law-abiding citizen talk and now we find out it's just a facade. Well we do have a law enforcement officer in this thread maybe he'll track you down.

 

[HyperU2]

Yay, another speeding ticket.


You lot would be happier if all gun owners were dead, so shouldn't you want us to keep them?

 

[Irvine511]

I can't say that I obey every law.

i guess this disqualifies you from credibly owning a gun then.

 

[HyperU2]

i guess this disqualifies you from credibly owning a gun then.

I think we just went through that. I speed.

 

[BVS]

You lot would be happier if all gun owners were dead, so shouldn't you want us to keep them?

Yes, in fact I think I heard that several times in here...

 

[bigjohn2441]

But if you're willing to break one law, who says you aren't willing to break another?

All this high horse law-abiding citizen talk and now we find out it's just a facade. Well we do have a law enforcement officer in this thread maybe he'll track you down.

federal officers dont write speeding tickets. we have bigger fish to fry.

dont even get me started on the subject of speeding and speed limits.

"well now, i cant sell you this gun cause i see you have a speeding ticket for 43 in a 35 zone."

seems a bit excessive to me, if thats what some of you are implying.

 

[BVS]

if thats what some of you are implying.

First of all it was tongue in cheek and secondly, when I made that post he wasn't specific as to what laws he was talking about...

 

[bigjohn2441]

i know, just saying

 

[HyperU2]

One of those things that never happens happened again.

College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader - News Story - WSB Atlanta

College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader

Posted: 4:53 pm EDT May 4, 2009Updated: 6:41 pm EDT May 4, 2009
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. -- A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones met with one of the students to talk about the incident.

“Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all,” said student Charles Bailey.

TOM JONES: College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

A neighbor heard the shots and heard someone running nearby.

“And I heard someone say, ‘Someone help me. Call the police. Somebody call the police,’” said a neighbor.

The neighbor said she believes it was Lavant, who was found dead near his apartment, only one building away.

Bailey said he is just thankful one student risked his life to keep others alive.

“I think all of us are really cognizant of the fact that we could have all been killed,” said Bailey.

One female student was shot several times during the crossfire. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Police said they are close to making the arrest of the second suspect.

 

[Irvine511]

How gunshot survivor became first to receive face transplant


Doctors chose a woman who survived a shotgun wound to her face as the first recipient of a face transplant after treating her for nearly four years.
This image projects what Connie Culp, 46, may look like two years after the face transplant.

Connie Culp knew of the Cleveland Clinic's interest in face transplants and approached the medical staff, doctors said at a news conference Tuesday.

Dr. Maria Siemionow, the Cleveland, Ohio, hospital's director of plastic surgery research and head of microsurgery training, had more than 20 years of experience in complex transplants. By 2004, Siemionow was looking for the right candidate for a face transplant who wasn't doing it for vanity.

"They are not looking to go out on the street and be beautiful," Siemionow told CNN in a 2006 interview. "Some of these patients, when they were interviewed just said 'I want to walk on the street and just make sure I am not sticking out.' They just want to have a normal face."

The doctors examined the patient's history, motivation and ability to understand the risks of the transplant. And they found Culp to be an ideal candidate.

Five years after a gun blast shattered her nose, cheeks and upper lip, she had a band of scar tissue extending across her face.

"The most devastating of all was the fact that society had rejected her and children were afraid of her," said Siemionow, who led the December 10 transplant operation.

Culp, a mother of two and a grandmother, told her doctors she could understand that some adults would shun her.

"But what really bothered her the most were children -- the children that shied away from her," said Dr. Frank Papay, the chairman of Institute of Dermatology and Plastic Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. "That sense of innocence, and her not being able to see that innocence really, really affected her."

The shooting

In September 2004, Culp's estranged husband shot her in the face in an attempted murder-suicide outside a restaurant in Hopedale, Ohio, according to CNN affiliate WTOV in Steubenville, Ohio.

Culp was 8 feet away from her husband, Thomas Culp, when he pulled the shotgun's trigger. He then turned the weapon on himself, according to local news reports. They both survived. Thomas Culp was sent to prison.

Despite her wounds, she told WTOV in 2008, "I'll always love him. He was my first love."

At the same time, Culp said, she felt angry. "I wouldn't be human if I didn't. I forgive him, but I have to go on, you know?"

After the shooting, Culp recuperated in a hospital and in a personal care home for two years. Culp told WTOV she had vision problems and was learning Braille.

Her approach to life was to "keep motivated. Don't sleep your life away -- that could have happened. I could be depressed. I'm not." As she spoke, her breaths emitted a small whistle from her tracheotomy tube, which protruded from a surgical opening in her neck.

"I cannot smell. I will never be able to smell," she said in the interview.

Culp was wrong.

How doctors transplanted a face

The doctors at the Cleveland Clinic analyzed Culp's injuries using CAT scans and developed plastic models of her skull. They practiced face transplant operation on cadavers several times.

Culp met with the hospital's surgeons, ethical committee members and psychiatry and psychology specialists who determined that she was an ideal candidate for the surgery. Then, the wait for the right donor began in 2008.

"We thought we were going to wait a long time because we had to find a Caucasian female in her mid 40s to match Connie, so we expected a year before we were able to find a donor," said Papay, who is also head of craniofacial surgery. "Well, three to four months later, I got a call at around midnight from Dr. Siemionow saying 'I think we have a donor.'"

The family of a brain dead woman granted permission to use her face.

He likened the preparation for the December transplant to a rocket launch, saying, "Everything was prepared beforehand very, very, very carefully."

Surgeons sheared out the donor's mid-facial area including the lower eyelids, cheekbones, the nose, some of the sinus and the whole upper jaw, with the blood vessels.

When it came time to move the donor's parts to Culp, they had to see that the donor and recipient parts aligned.

"One of the ways you can tell that is how your upper teeth fit to the lower teeth," Papay said. "We knew it was like a hand in a glove, exactly where we needed to be."

They secured the bones into Culp's face using titanium plates and screws. Then the microvascular surgeons attached the vessels. They tucked the scars around Culp's ears or underneath her eyelid, where they would not be visible. How the doctors operated »

Doctors added more skin than needed in case of tissue rejection. After monitoring Culp's progress, doctors say they will remove the excess tissue and tighten her jawline in future surgeries.

Contrary to science fiction and movies, the surgery did not make Culp look like the donor.

"If you just took the skin and transplanted it to the other patient, the bony structure is different," Papay said. "If you took the bony structure and transplanted it on the other side, it ends up being a composite. So, it doesn't look like the donor. It doesn't look like the recipient. It ends up looking like someone new."

Recovery

At this point, all the transplanted parts of Culp's face are functioning except for her facial nerves, which are growing about an inch a month. Doctors anticipate Culp will be able to have full facial function -- and more expression -- by this winter.

In physical therapy, she learns to train her nerves, make facial expressions, smile and purse her lips, doctors said.

"If you cry or you laugh or you smile, it's not like you think about it. You just emotionally do it. So that's a wait and see for us," Papay said. "As far as the emotional one, that's really the key issue. A far as when she laughs, cries and grimaces and gets angry at you...what's her face going to look like? That's the exciting part about it."

Five months after the first face transplant in the United States, Culp lives at home. She has checkups with the medical staff once or twice a month and will do so for the next year, her doctors said.

Initially, Culp used immunosuppressants that transplanted kidney, liver or heart patients would normally take. Transplant patients must take immune-suppressing drugs throughout their lifetime to prevent tissue rejection. But she showed improvements that enabled the doctors to reduce her regimen to one medication, doctors said.

"She's taking her medications," Siemionow said. "We know she is compliant. She cares about how she looks. She has her hair done in a new color...She is full of life. She does her push-ups. She's on the treadmill. What else can I say?"

 

[bigjohn2441]

yeah i saw that this morning