Joel Pett by Joel Pett

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Fairportfan said, 8 months ago

Oh, yeah. This one is gonna to bring out the wackos and nutjobs - on both sides.
believecommonsense said, 8 months ago

Is that actually true? more guns than people? and if so, is that including military guns? or only handguns? or guns in civilian population?
If it’s civilian handguns only, then there must be a slew of people with an awful lot of guns!
best to get the context correct
HUMPHRIES said, 8 months ago

fairport … afraid your’s might prove to be an understatement.
tracht47 said, 8 months ago

Don’t know what the numbers are but I’ve heard of people who think it is unfair that they have to limit gun purchases to one a month.
cdward said, 8 months ago

Only figures I have are from a 1997 study by the National Institute of Justice. “In 1994, 44 million Americans owned 192 million firearms, 65 million of which were handguns.” This is all private ownership, not military or police.

Other info from a Mercer University study: In the US for 2001, there were 29,573 deaths from firearms distributed as follows by modeo f death: Suicide 16,869; Homicide 11,248; Accident 802; Legal Intervention 323; Undetermined 231. The number of non-fatal injuries is considerable - over 200,000 per year in the US.”
claudermilk said, 8 months ago

In this case, I have to agree with Andy (gasp!). To this toon, I have to say generally: So? There’s more pens than there are people, too.

It is simply a tool; a very dangerous and easily misued one, but just a tool. The misuse is a symptom of a problem, not the cause. How many guns used in a crime do people actually think are a) legally owned by the perpetrator, and/or b) a legal weapon to own at all, and c) that the perpetrator cares?
oldlegodad said, 8 months ago

claudermilk 3 Questions no anti gun whacko ever wants to answer. Good job.
tracht47 said, 8 months ago

Why don’t we allow people to own hand grenades? After all hand grenades don’t kill people, people kill people.
motivemagus said, 8 months ago

dredpiraterobts - good points. But at least one side of this argument includes people utterly unwilling to compromise in any way - the NRA. If they respected the First Amendment the way they do the Second, I might be more sympathetic.
And funny how people keep missing that language reading “well-ordered militia…”
Tigger said, 8 months ago

Guns are incapable of this action.
dtroutma said, 8 months ago

Guns don’t kill people, it’s the bullets. As a gun owner, with a concealed weapons permit, I don’t object to registration/legitimate “restraint”. Registered cars aren’t confiscated unless the owner does something illegal with them. They also kill 43,000+ people a year, even though theoretically, drivers are licensed and “trained”, well at least to aim, if not drive a car.(A Buick with a driver on his cell phone is just a 4,000 pound S & W.) The D.C. Supreme Court decision I find logical; personal right to own, yes. Government’s responsibility to pass “sensible” levels of control within the Second Amendment, yes-that too. The NRA and others regard that pesky “militia” clause as invalid, I just see it that private gun ownership is actually a privilege, like driving. Having been in “militia” and law-enforcement, I have met folks I don’t want running around with a MAC 9.
HUMPHRIES said, 8 months ago

dtroutma: Gotta’ give ya two thumbs “up” on that post.
danielsangeo said, 8 months ago

Does everyone realize that the word “gun” does not appear in the Constitution?

P.S.: Yes, I know it says “arms”, but I was making a jab at those that also say that “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution.

P.P.S.: A suitcase nuke is an “arm”. Can I have one?
Corosive Frog said, 8 months ago

Anandy and Claudermilk have a point. The guns themselves can’t kill anyone. We need to figure out what’s the problem with the brain behind it. It’s probably more than one thing.
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

Libs who refuse to apply proper punishment for crimes are responsible for these deaths. Moronic inaction is killing people as we speak. Disarm the criminals and we will be safe.
danielsangeo said, 8 months ago

“Disarm the criminals and we will be safe.”

How do you propose we do that?
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

possess illegal firearm = go to jail for long time :^D
tracht47 said, 8 months ago

The problem is that many people who go on killing sprees have no criminal records. They are supposedly normal people who snap. Therefore they have no problem buying any type of weapon available. This notion that the people who kill are criminals and the guns they have are stolen, is in many cases simply not true.
motivemagus said, 8 months ago

dtroutma: kudos on your post.
BNT Pup: Um, no, that won’t have a great impact – assuming you could do it. Half of gun deaths in this country are stupid mistakes or impulsive attacks by legal owners (I heard 70% once, but half recently – it may depend on what you count).
danielsangeo - good point. Why have they banned the mace-and-chain, swords with an edge, and nunchuku in so many states, including mine? If we’re respecting the 2nd Amendment this completely, then I want to take out a fictional burglar with my mace! And I promise you, they won’t be getting up again…during the middle ages only nobles were allowed to carry these weapons, for good reason!
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

IMHO -I bet that most killings by handguns in the U.S., besides those directly attributable to gang and illegal drug activity, are those like these two recent shootings in my local area:
http://www.fox2now.com/ktvi-overnight-shootings-city-032209,0,5678694.story
Two parties roaming a city with nothing to do…meet in a city street and decide to settle scores using illegal hand-guns. Now you know that this “conflict” had its genesis in the irresponsible and pre-meditated actions of at least two individuals. Unless we have the stomach to punish individuals like this, I think its pointless to cite handgun murder statistics. Again, a non-issue looking for a solution by the nearest starry-eyed lib. Put the criminals in JAIL (and I don’t mean “rehabilitation”). And the problem is solved.
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

motivemagus, I’ll not accept your figures just yet - despite your obvious intelligence and wide knowledge - I know you drink the party Kool-Aid. If we use cdwards figures for 2001 we have +11000 deaths per the 350,000,000 populace. If we plug in your statement, ”Half of gun deaths in this country are stupid mistakes or impulsive attacks by legal owners (I heard 70% once,” with cdwards figures, we find that impulsive acts of legal gun-owners might not even include the 11000 homicides mentioned in cdwards figures, there being the +16000 suicides figure to account for your “half” figure.
churchillwasright said, 8 months ago

You can also go on a killing spree with a tractor, like some palestinians did in Isreal a while back {if [or when] that happens here, our brilliant leaders and MSM will haul tractor manufacturers in front of congressional hearings to defend their dangerous tractors, maybe come up with some kind of magic ignition key, etc. “We’ve got to do something about these killer tractors [for the childeren]! But I digress…)
Of course the real answer is to do something about the revolving turnstile that is our justice system, but the bleeding hearts would never hear of it.

and Motive– the reason only nobles had weapons is because if the folks had them, they’d overthrow the kingdom! (Nobility wouldn’t like that)
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

And most of those guns are inoperative and/or not likely to ever be used in a crime(example: Winchester70). Get a grip.
believecommonsense said, 8 months ago

churchill, I’d just like to share California’s experience with the “three strikes” law. After 3 felonies of a certain type, the criminals are never supposed to be released again. The state’s prisons are so crowded they’re converting gyms into prisons/jails, the state is having to pay other states to take prisoners and a lawsuit was brought against the state for inadequate care of prisoners. The whole state system is now under federal review/control.
I’m not arguing any point of view on the issue, just sharing what has happened here in CA. There aren’t enough prison beds or facilities to house them all and the costs are part of the state’s $40 billion operating deficit.
I don’t know the answer. I don’t want criminals back on the street, after 3 strikes, it’s fairly clear they’re not going to go straight. Yet we can’t just keep building more prisons and more prisons either.
cdward said, 8 months ago

Interesting discussion, and I’m not in favor of doing away with the right to own a gun (though I have no use for a handgun myself). Still motive is right that the majority of the homicides (as distinguished from accidents) are from people who know each other and with licensed firearms.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. has by far the highest number of gun deaths (especially homicides) than any other country not at war. Our gun accidents alone are higher than most countries’ total of gun deaths. So whatever we do, can we all agree that we might want to work together to reduce those numbers?
charliekane said, 8 months ago

Suggested captions:

Must assess the problem … must assess the problem …

Humans are violent. Humans are erratic. Humans are illogical.

Humans are the problem.

Problem solved.
danielsangeo said, 8 months ago

“I can go on a killing spree with a tractor, but we don’t haul tractor manufacturers into court.”

No. No we don’t. And that argument is irrelevant.

A tractor’s designed purpose is to move material. A car’s designed purpose is to move people and other items. A baseball bat’s designed purpose is to hit a baseball in a sports game. A butcher knife’s designed purpose is to cut meat for consumption.

It is only through abuse do these items become weapons. None of these are weapons in and of themselves, unlike guns and other arms.

Stop this kind of rhetoric (“I can kill you with X, so should we ban X?”). It does nothing but distract and deceive.

That being said, I have no problem with gun ownership.
Corosive Frog said, 8 months ago

Same Ol’ pup,
If we just punish those who did something, that dosen’t ressucitate the victims (thought we shouldn’t letn’t let them get away with it). It’s just part of the solution. The other part is; how do we keep people from snapping and going on killing sprees?
deadheadzan said, 8 months ago

It’s very true, people are dangerous, erratic, violent and are the problem. It’s amazing we have a certain level of civilized society at all.
tracht47 said, 8 months ago

And how do you punish someone who kills and then kills himself? Obviously the death penalty or a prison sentence wasn’t a deterrent.While I’m not against someone having a gun for protection, no one, no one needs these semi automatic guns or assualt rifles. They are designed to kill a lot of people in a short period of time. Will some criminals have them? Yes. But ban the manufacture and after a period of time the numbers will go down. The alternative is to do nothing and we’ve all seen what that has achieved
churchillwasright said, 8 months ago

Actually I said that the knee-jerk reaction WOULD BE to haul manufacuters into court, but I was being facitious (?)
More to the point, I agree with you. A gun is manufactured as a weapon; it can be used as both an offensive (robbery/hommicide) or defensive (self protection) tool. It all has to do with the person’s motive.
As far as prison overcrowding– if your government doesn’t have the will to protect its citizens by building more prisons (which should be it’s top priority), then I would suggest rethinking their priorities. They could release low level drug offenders (who shouldn’t be there in the first place) and non-violent criminals before I ever let these scum out!
Personally, I’ve never owned a gun, but I’m from NYC, where only the politicians and wealthy elite have armed security/bodyguards. The average shmo depositing his business’ reciepts or jeweler walking with merchandise is at the mercy of these lowlifes. And god forgive he protects himself with a gun– he’s the one in jail.
Now that I live in a “gun friendly state”, I’ve thought of getting one– but with the economy the way it is, I’ve got less and less to protect!
curiosity1 said, 8 months ago

I’d like to briefly chime in that this is an amazingly level headed, if passionate debate. It’s refreshing to see differing perspectives on gun ownership presented and paddled about from all sides. This is the court of public discourse at its best.

My personal feeling is: I don’t like guns. Period. I am on the high end of personal pacifism. I do also firmly believe that people should be entrusted to be responsible for their own behavior - how can I expect someone else to stay out of my marriage if I won’t stay out of their gun cabinet? I do think that we could indeed be more forceful in punishing misuse of firearms, but fundamentally we have prison overcrowding nationwide. So, yes, I do think we need to balance our societal liberty with a societal investment in those areas which are breeding crime at an ever growing pace.

If all we do is buy more guns to protect our own personal properly, then we simply invite street warfare as more weapons find their way into more hands.

I wish it were an issue we didn’t have to deal with at all. But alas, I think it is one that we will continue to face as long as we wish to have a free society - a casualty rate of ‘acceptable deaths and injuries’. The alternative is the complete and total abandonment of any sense of privacy form the state - a slippery slope we started down with the PATRIOT ACT and its kin.

I find myself with one foot in each camp on this issue hoping not to get shot by either side as a result ;-)
cdward said, 8 months ago

curiosity, may I give you a round of applause for a great comment?
WoodGracie said, 8 months ago

@curiosity-many excellent points. I too am a pacifist. I agree that guns are a tool to be used for positive and useful means, e.g. food procurement, self- protection from dangerous animals (real ones, the four-legged kind). I hadn’t thought about the personal lifestyle vs gun cabinet angle before. As a pacifist my “weapon” is a pen and as such useful for legislation, however, my personal life, or pen, generally doesn’t kill anyone. But when a fanatic decides he/she doesn’t like my lifestyle or the way I look, then decides to use gun violence to reflect that opinion, then I think I do have a good reason for getting into their gun cabinet. If I have to promote legislation for more strict laws to help some people be more responsible for their own behavior then I guess I have to. In a perfect world there would be no need to “make” people be responsible, but we do not have a perfect world.

I wish there was an answer to this problem, everyone here has made great points and so far it seems we are all in agreement, that there isn’t an easy answer.
churchillwasright said, 8 months ago

You just think you can go into his gun cabinet before he “decides to use gun violence to reflect that opinion”.
tpenna said, 8 months ago

Some people here have insinuated that cars and tractors can also be deadly weapons. That is true. But the argument that most anything that can be used as a weapon is morally equivalent to a gun (a “tool”, as one person put it) has one apparent shortcoming.

We must consider the intended purpose of the “tool”. Cars are made for the purpose of transportation. Tractors are made for agriculture. Handguns and assault rifles are made for the sole purpose of killing or wounding people.
This does not, in and of itself, mean that they are bad. In fact, many may argue that killing is justified in certain circumstances. But it cannot be claimed that a handgun is merely a tool that occasionally is used to kill people. Such an argument smacks of dishonesty.
churchillwasright said, 8 months ago

dpenna:
My argument is not dishonest. If I carry a gun with me, it is a tool that is continually protecting me. Hopefully I’d never have to kill anyone ever.
WoodGracie said, 8 months ago

@churchill_ It’s a little late to get in the gun cabinet after I’m dead. IMO, Trying to prevent violent acts before the acts makes more sense than to wait until after the clean-up.
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

The powers of this government are extended from the people TO our representatives. You do not have the RIGHT to infringe on the God-given RIGHTS of another person IN AMERICA, does this mean ANYTHING to you? You flippantly throw your knee-jerk Lib-whacko propaganda out there without any thought for the very framework of our society that gives you the freedom to sit around and do that; WE THE PEOPLE have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to protects us from abuse by the government and from other people; I believe that most of you people are ready to give up all your rights just so you’ll “feel” better today. If you don’t like it, AMEND the CONSTITUTION!
danielsangeo said, 8 months ago

Pup: So, I get to have a suitcase nuke?

Remember, your rights end when they begin to infringe on MY rights.
Corosive Frog said, 8 months ago

Same old pup, if guns were a God-given right, the One Upstairs would have made an AK-47 with another of Adam’s ribs. I don’t see that in the book of Genesis.
tpenna said, 8 months ago

@ churchill - You are right. Handguns and assault rifles are created for one additional purpose: deterrence. (I believe this is the point you were making.) That said, they are meant to achieve this purpose by means of the threat of death.

Again, I do not here dispute that this is legitimate. But this puts it in a completely different moral category from a car or tractor.
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

It’s more than guns…its about your sovereignty- I started this whole gocomics thing six months ago explaining to CorFrog about the “social contract”. If you don’t know where your rights come from get ready for someone to step in and take them…Today its Geittner and the government socializing the free-market, tomorrow - who knows?. Do you want un-elected groups of elites making all of your decisions for you? Do you think that’ll work out for you - whether conservative peon or lib hippie freak living in a tree and smoking pot?
Some companies might have to be socialized - but the less the better.Our aerospace industry is quickly converging into one company running everything in order to compete with Europe(airbus…etc.) with Boeing making deals with China you may wake up to find your next Air Force fighter-jet made in China…
Danny I do not have a suitcase nuke and your absurd argument does not change the facts of the situation we have to deal with.
{No, Fennec - I’m not that stupid.}
tpenna said, 8 months ago

Admiral, I have nothing whatsoever to say about your argument. I’d just like to point out that I LOVE your screen name! :-)
Corosive Frog said, 8 months ago

Sooky Rottweiler says;

Are you really the admiral or the admiral’s pup (sniff sniff sniff) ‘cause you smell like my old pal the Puppy.

Wether or not God gave us our rights is a metaphysical question, it’s up to faith.

IMHO, I think guns is not a god given-right because guns are not made by God but by man. Therefore, he has nothing to do with it.

Now, freedom, food, life, conscience, those are God-given things (I think). The right to defend onself in case of attack, is another question but guns themselves were not made by God.
fennec said, 8 months ago

I think the Admiral-Pup needs to do a bit more study on the concept of “social contract”. Check out even something as basic as Wikipedia on this topic to on this topic. He is confusing his warped concept of “socialism” with an imperfect understanding of “social contract”.
From Wikipedia (overview):
According to Thomas Hobbes, human life would be “nasty, brutish, and short” without political authority. In its absence, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms, including the “right to all things” and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten our own self-preservation; there would be an endless “war of all against all” (Bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men establish political community i.e. civil society through a social contract in which each gain civil rights in return for subjecting himself to civil law or to political authority.

Alternatively, some have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so; this alternative formulation of the duty arising from the social contract is often identified with arguments about military service.
WillBerry said, 8 months ago

The reality is that the cartoonist used BOGUS Numbers - there are NOT 350 Million guns, and HE CAN’T EVEN DRAW A DECENT GUN!!! Btw - I only own a pellet rifle to help deter the squirrels from overrunning our garden and bird-feeders - I doubt I could kill ANYONE with it, unless I hit them over the head with it!!
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

The last time Americans got together and agreed how things would be ran it was ascribed to inalienable rights measured out to all men by God or Nature’s God…That is what makes us Americans - not a Pre-mature study about suicides by gun deaths and outrage kicked up by popular political frenzy…My social contract knowlredge is limited to what I learned in a Lib-Arts Seminar curriculum I dropped out of…and Jr. College History courses. I believe Thomas Hobbes is only one of the Age of Reason Philosopher’s and thinkers…so I wouldn’t consider him the only source but your memory is better than mine. All I know is ; is that one skinny parchment document is all that insures We The People get to exercise authority instead of some junta or cabal, or some other tyrant(s).

We would have to go farther than I want to right now Cor Frog to determine who should have the right to what…Suffice to say that the majority of Americans interpret the 2nd Amend. to mean their guns (and even if they didn’t it would be up to nine justices, ultimately) are protected from seizure. So Libs should search for some other “scare” to counter the opposition with.
Why do Libs always test the bounds of their authority? Because they want more!
LLeRay said, 8 months ago

Americans never agreed about how things should be done. We agreed to disagree about many things, including the most basic principles of governance.

I’d be happy if every gun technology available when the Second Amendment was passed is legal, and everything afterward is subject to sane regulation. After all, I don’t want that still functional Soviet era warhead in my neighbors shack to be freely traded as ‘arms’ under that amendment.
NoFearPup said, 8 months ago

What’s insane about the current gun laws, LLeRay?

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About Joel Pett

Joel Pett is a three-time finalist for Pulitzer Prize for cartooning. He won the award in 2000. He joined Lexington Herald-Leader in 1984 and USAToday as contributing cartoonist in 2002.

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