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Virginia Tech Report Cites Privacy Law Problems
RickRussellTX writes "A panel of Bush administration officials, including several bureau chiefs, concludes that confusing privacy laws contributed to the Virgina Tech shootings. The report claims that confusion over student privacy and medical privacy laws "has limited the ability of these officials to prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Virginia Tech.""
Or Does that translate as "We're going to review privacy policy" which is bush talk for "We're going to remove any of your rights to privacy under the name of virginia tech and anyone who complaigns is helping the murderers. Just a thought.
I know I'm being very pessimistic, but it's necessary with this goverment, they removed my rights to be anything else.
"has limited the ability of these officials to prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Virginia Tech.""
You can't prevent this sort of thing. It really is impossible. Unless, that is, you want to start treating people who haven't committed a crime but seem a bit "different" as criminally insane. But you'd have to lock them up forever, because if you steal someones life and then let them go... well, he'd be more pissed off than ever before - if he even could do something like these shootings you should bet your arse this would trigger it off.
I suspect that the response will be what we can usually expect from pretty much any government though, "this generates bad headlines, "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" generates good headlines regardless of the consequences, therefore we should do the whole think of the children thing to an even greater degree". And if they do remove a large section of privacy from people - especially if they go as far as to interfere with doctor/patient privacy - then you can expect more shootings as people who could have been stopped with help and support are forced back upon themselves.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Complicated privacy laws have left education, health care, and law enforcement officials confused about what they can legally tell one another concerning dangerous and mentally ill people, and that confusion has limited the ability of these officials to prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Virginia Tech, according to a federal report released today.
Well should everyone who acts a little bit out of the ordinary end up on some list? Should their picture be in every squad car? Sure its easy to say, hey this kid was weird and unstable and someone should have seen it, but people say that about a lot of people. Freedom is dangerous and living in a police / nanny state isnt any safer / more desirable.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The issue of prohibiting access to firearms is moot - if he hadn't had access to a gun he probably would have used a sword, or a knife, or burned a few buildings down, etc.. The point is, he was dangerous and the only reasonable form of prevention would have been to remove him from society - but the risk of false positives probably means all the hand wringing in the world will not stop another Cho.
For example, linking to a private story that requires registration with the NYTimes could make anyone violent. On the up side, at least it's FREE EXCLUSIVE ONLINE ACCESS!!!
"These kind of things just don't happen quite so often in countries that have sane gun laws, privacy laws or not."
There, fixed that for ya.
Shootings similar to but not on the same scale do happen occasionally. In most countries you can get hold of some sort weapon if you really try eg a shotgun but access to automatic weapons and ammunition helps reduce the risk of the heavily armed shooting rampage. Unfortunately this is changing situation though. Its becoming relatively easy to get hold of automatic weapons in parts of London now for example.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_massacre
Blaiming guns for crazy people is just as wrong as blaming privacy laws.
Agreed. Blaming, even partially, "privacy laws" for this massacre is just plain dishonest.
n g/ )
(if anything, the problem with privacy laws is that they're facing extinction)
Snippets from a news report written shortly after the tragedy:
"A medical examination found that (...) [Cho's] insight and judgment are normal"
"Although Cho's writings were disturbing, mental health professionals say the student's behavior didn't reach the threshold that would have demanded more aggressive intervention."
"You can't do anything unless there's imminent risk that's somewhat foreseeable to take away someone's civil rights"
(source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/19/student.counseli
Seems clear to me that no sharing of medical information with law enforcement would have helped here.
Really. What country has sane gun laws? Japan? Australia?
I am not saying US gun laws make sense 100% but in this case I think they can not be blamed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spree_killer
The first sentence of your post appears not to actually be one, at least I can't find the predicate.
But the reason I'm replying is that you seem to have an omniscient view of how to fix gun violence. You posit unlikely scenarios in place of reasoned argument. I shiver to think what would happen if government tries to "protect" everything and everybody from every imagined danger. Have you heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
I'm still marveling over the idea of an "unreloadable-by-the-owner handgun". The Second Amendment aside, how could such a scheme work in, say, New Orleans, where we can't even fix the levees properly as the violence goes up?
Privacy of gun buyers to get weapons of their choice without research into concerns about their mental health raised by medical professionals or an interview that would evaluate their need for this type of gun as well as strength of character necessary for a responsible owner. Farmers can kill, repel or immobilize wild animals by weapons that are not likely to kill humans. Guys living in a remote area and concerned about crime can own one 10-shot revolver which can not be reloaded by the owner. We need privacy laws for people's sex lives or freedom of travel, but privacy of an obviously disturb person to get guns capable of firing hundreds of shots in a killing spree is taking things too far.
i ng and everything else that can be used to make things that kill people. The problem is you don't know who is going to go crazy and want to kill people. How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice? Would it be alright for us to install cameras in your home? Based on your at times unintelligible post, maybe I think your crazy? Perhaps I should call the authorities.
Ya, and then we can do the same thing for diesel and fertilizer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_mcveigh#Bomb
Obtaining guns has nothing to do with "privacy". In fact in a lot of states there is nothing private about it, you have to ask permission to get one, then you tell the state what guns you have. Its a right to self defense granted by the constitution, or at least it was till the supreme court got involved.
And what about the "need" for a gun? What if during your "interview" to get a gun you said you wanted one in case you had to overthrow the government. I suppose we should lock those people up? But that is arguably the reason for the second amendment in the first place.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
is that this is really a VERY rare thing to occur. And yet, it is certain that W. will use this to pry open the laws to allow the feds to see more about us (think patriot act) and he will be backed by both major parties. Few will have the courage to stand up and say that this is lose of rights is not worth the numbers of freak occurrence. And yet, these same ppl will use the argument that 1000's of American lives and 100K of Iraq lives was worth getting rid of Saddam. And overall, America will fall for it. Again. Sadly, we have too many citizens who ignore history elsewhere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's because the sentence actually starts in the title, and not the body of the post. I hate it when people do that because it's almost always confusing. If you post doesn't deserve a title, maybe it doesn't deserve to be posted at all.
Anyhow, the whole 'unreloadable gun' thing... Wow. What a nightmare. It's hard to think of more dangerous things than a gun that can only be unloaded by firing it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Yes, yes... While you're at it, please take away the rest of the Constitution. Free speech can be dangerous; it may hurt someone's feelings. Maybe if someone on the campus had a gun they would have popped a cap in him and lives would have been saved. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Actually, you have it pretty close. It is House, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and other working on a bill in the house to collect medical/mental health records of ALL people, not just gun owners.
see http://tinyurl.com/23cgqn
Yup, a nice large federal database of anyone who has ever had a mental health issue.
So now anyone with a mental health issue who needs help will be forever in a federal database. This will only DISCOURAGE people who need help from seeking treatment.
How will this make us safer??????
PLEASE please please call your congress critter and let them know you appose this...
This is about your rights, stand up for them.
Thank you
Cho's treatment wasn't tracked or enforced due to Budget constraints. Privacy laws had nothing to do with it. In fact, privacy rights are only an issue now because the state panel panel investigating the tragedy wants access to Cho's records.
In other words, privacy laws only became a sticking point after the fact. Relaxing privacy laws would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy.
Once again Bush hides behind dead bodies to conceal his effort to destroy civil liberties. I swear, this man hasn't a single shred of human decency. Not a shred!!!
Really?
Would you please explain to me why, then, London England is having a problem with a rise in shootings? Guns are *far* more controlled there than in the US, so they should have no problem, right?
A proper and complete reply to your post can actually be stated in just two words...
Horse shit.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
One person out of a population of 300 Million decided to go beserk and kill a bunch of people. There is NO WAY you can prevent this kind of thing. Senseless killing has been a fact of life since Adam and Eve. 'Trying' to prevent this sort of thing will only infringe on the freedoms of everybody else in the United States. The Patriot Act has already taken away many freedoms which Congress should never have been so quick to give away. The net result of 9/11 and Virginia Tech will be the elimination of basic freedoms for all Americans under the guise of 'Security' and 'Safety'.
Just to clarify -- are you saying this restriction should be applied to everybody, or only to those who have are diagnosed as mentally disturbed?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The idea of an 'unreloadable by the owner' gun is ludicrous. For one thing, how on earth are you going to expect the owner of this 'wonderful' piece of technology to be able to get enough practice to be able to reasonably hit what he needs to? After all, he's only got ten shots before he has to go back to town!
That and, if it's only reloadable by a factory/technician/expensive-and-heavy machine... how do you unload it to render it safe, perhaps for storage? If you're going in to town because you used it to shoot a fox that went into your hen-house, and you fired two rounds, do you just blow off the other 8 (yay, practice!) before driving to town with it?
While guns can indisputably make killing people easier, they are, in the end, merely tools. It's much easier to kill someone with an AMC Gremlin than it is with your bare hands. Sort of. Crazy people are the problem, and a lack of education and control. Many violent firearms-related crimes are committed with weapons that are obtained illegally - you don't think that the gang-bangers pick up their AKs at Wal-Mart after a 10-day waiting period, do you?
Everyone and their brother having access to guns isn't the problem as much as everyone and their brother having access to guns without any education about or respect for them. Belt-fed, 40mm grenade launchers? No, I can't really see any logical reason to have one of these unless you're, you know - the military. Nevermind the fact that I can only imagine the cost of shooting the thing. But it seems to me that there are as many arguments against 'gun control' (say more clearly, gun restriction - because illegal weapons are still every bit as available and out of control) legislation as there are for it. Statistics from both sides can be brought to bear with alarming facility.
But there's one thing we all ought to be able to agree upon: crazy, disturbed individuals are more dangerous than any 'assault weapon'. I can't find a citation at the moment, but a guy in the UK went into a church and killed a bunch of people with a SWORD. Guess he really meant to get all 'old school', but it certainly proves that if you're disturbed, you don't need a gun to commit multiple murder.
Let's ban crazy people! Just don't worry too much about who gets to define what 'crazy' is. Is disagreeing with the current administration's position on the 'war on terror' crazy?
Evolution ceases when stupidity can no longer be fatal.
I'm not a gun person, but if the founding fathers had only had the guns the government deemed that they needed then we wouldn't have one our independence. In this country people have a right to bear arms, and it's not to hunt, it's to form militias if so desired. If we want to change this sort of thing, step 1, is to change or remove the 2nd amendment. Which makes sense because militias are no longer used in law enforcement and there has become such a huge disparity between the stuff the military has and the stuff the populace has that we could never succeed in a revolt against an illegal tyrannical government anyway.
as well as strength of character necessary for a responsible owner.
Wow. You really want to go there? Because I'm pretty sure that having not accepted the flying spaghetti monster as your own personal savior, you don't have the strength of character needed to responsibly do anything important, like vote, or speak freely.
Farmers can kill, repel or immobilize wild animals by weapons that are not likely to kill humans.
a lot of the dangerous wildlife out there is dangerous because it is big enough to be, which often means harder to kill then a human.
You're right. Over here, where we have sane gun laws, kids just cook up home made bombs instead.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
A group of Bush administration experts have been given limited press exposure on their
theory that somehow "confusing" privacy laws contributed to the Virgina Tech shootings. They claim vaguely that "confusion" over student privacy and medical privacy laws were to blame for "limiting" the ability of officials to prevent the kind of violence that occured at Virginia Tech.
I'm glad I'm not American, because your patriotism is just plain frightening, you may argue that gun control has nothing to do with this, that criminals will always get guns anyway, a lot of idiots will say that it's better to have a gun and not need it than to not have one around when the next maniac strikes.
That is all completely bullshit, when somebody snaps and goes on a rampage, over in the USA they can reach for a gun, if they don't own one they can go and buy one without any problems. Over here the chances of them having a gun in the first place is low, and to get a gun you need to go through a months long process, by that time it would be obvious they're not mentally stable enough to own a gun.
That leaves them with few options, a knife? a really big knife? How many people do you think a person can kill with a knife? Will they be able to blast their way into a room with a knife? I don't think so. It's quite simple really, killing someone with a gun is easier, the body count is lower if there is no gun.
Also I feel much safer walking down the street knowing that nobody around me is carrying any guns, for pretty obvious reasons I would say.
You're not "free" by carrying guns around, you're fucking delusional.
I know this post means nothing, but it sure feels good to rant sometimes.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
I think what this incident reveals is the disastrous state of Mental Health in the United States. Mental illness is poorly understood by the public at large and trying to get access to health care for treatment is very difficult. Cho had many of the symptoms of a major mental illness yet he did not receive proper treatment. If anything his peers and teachers only worsened his condition by isolating him and feeding his paranoia.
Also if a person is eventually diagnosed trying to get the right medication and therapy without health care insurance can be a daunting task. While many of these people need immediate care, applying for public services is a very difficult and long process. Sadly I think this report will not result in a better Mental Health system but rather a system that profiles and stigmatizes those who suffer from mental illness.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Yes ! The lone hero would have shot the crazy gunman, just like in the movies !
On the other hand, if there had been dozens, or hundreds, of terrified and confused people with guns on the campus, the shooter wouldn't have had to shoot anyone himself. Just create a scare and watch everyone shooting anyone else who has drawn their gun (or whom they suspect to have drawn a gun, or might draw a gun).
Yes, the fine article talks about privacy laws. It also states that because of "budget constraints" the state mental health system can't handle the number of patients it needs to handle, with month-long waiting lists for counselling and "local health agencies" that don't follow up on patients. So Cho was a mentally ill man, far away from home, with a possibly history of untreated mental illness for several years.
/. summary is basically the first paragraph about privacy laws? Congratulations in promoting the culture of knee-jerk response!
Also from the article, the state of Virginia never passed on the information that Cho had been "adjudicated as a mental defective" to the "National Instant Check System", but it seems the state was not funded for its part in keeping this system up to date - the proposal is now to fund this activity.
So... all of this in the article, and the resultant
How the hell are you meant to make a ten round revolver??? The thing would be massive, and totally impractical.
kill all the fucking niggers
Ah this is one of those put your feet up, grab some popcorn moments when you watch slashdotters' collective heads asplode as they are compelled to confront their desire for privacy against their other mantra of "information should be free." Of course, some will claim that there is no contradiction, others will tell me that slashdot is not one monolithic think-block, and others will just blame bush. Tell me again why "personal" information should not be "free" as in speech? No really.. i want to know. / citizen of louisiana? your tax dollars are hard at work on ads at slashdot as if somebody will actually choose to relocate to louisiana because of an ad showing two male ends of patch cables coming together.
this is not a blind alley... we emerge from this alley into a place called INSIGHT... of course people who aren't criminals have guns, but a higher gun / owner ratio evidently leads to more gun related violence (well obviously... it's not like owning weapons makes people more placid) Does it really matter if you can get an uzi in germany? Such a weapon has a greater capacity to harm, but in providing any weapon/gun you provide the means to a motive. Relative to other weapons, guns offer an easy way to harm people and hence nutcases etc. are more inclined to use guns (if there weren't guns, would such people act? In using other weapons, such people would be more easily overpowered i.e. less injury/harm to others) The issue of privacy in such a context is (largely) irrelevant - what you are trying to do is stymie a relatively high gun violence trend. more gun control =D
I am not saying US gun laws make sense 100% but in this case I think they can not be blamed.
I agree... US gun laws are not to blame for these murder sprees, they have them in other countries. US gun laws are to blame for the thousands of other yearly deaths.
But this specific handful at VT? No, you are right.
Well, don't happen often anyway. I would suggest that the USA has more school massacres than the rest of the world put together.
You will of course note, the PA massacre in Australia was only possible with semi-automatic weapons, which are illegal :)
The way America seems to work is that if there are enough guns around, someone should be able to take down the crazies before they kill too many. Maybe each teacher should have a m4 behind their desk, loaded, round chambered, safety off.... just in case.
Please, think of the children.
Arm the teachers!
...
Were the laws really unclear, or were they just "inadequate?"
It's one thing if the laws are unclear or ambiguous. Clarify them so the original intent is clear.
On the other hand if you are trying to "close loopholes" remember those "loopholes" are there for a reason.
If a few dozen deaths every few years is the price for medical privacy for the millions who have mental illnesses, it's worth it.
To put things in perspective, many more people are killed each year by drunk drivers, yet there's no move to ban recovering alcoholics from driving. As any AA member will tell you, tomorrow could be the day they fall off the wagon.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I find it amusing that you think the point of having access to fire-arms is moot. How many people do you think he could have killed with a sword? Let me tell you: One, and he could have injured a couple more. Consider the time and effort it takes to actually kill someone with a sword. It is damned hard.
We had a madman going into a RFSL-clinic (an organisation for the equal treatment of gays and lesbians) and attacking a woman with an axe (she got hit in the head). The woman survived. Do you honestly think she would have been the only victim if he had had access to a handgun of any sort? Do you think she would have survived?
Having access to guns doesn't make a person a murderer. But a murderer with access to firearms (or other kinds of similar weapons, grenades, explosives, poison gas) will be way more effective than one without them.
Also, the old "If everyone had guns they could have defended themselves" NRA-rhetoric is also stupid. Would you have wanted to be in a classroom full of scared kids with handguns when the rumors of a madman going from room to room killing kids gets going? It would be a massacre of biblical proportions of people shooting each other by mistake.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
I certainly don't percieve a large amount of interest in the "freedom" of personal information on slashdot. Here are some ideas I see expressed regularly:
I do not necessarily agree with the above, but these seem to be common ideas in slashdot discussions. There are some people who would disagree with some or all of the above, but that's okay because we're all individuals and we have a forum here to debate these issues!
It barely talked about privacy. More about budget constraints. Little follow up after initial treatment. And short of putting this guy behind bars, I fairly doubt that therapy would have helped this kid.
I really feel for VaTech. I was at Penn State's main campus when some nut went nuts and shot at a bunch of people. Luckily it was done in the biggest open area at PSU (HUB lawn) and it was around 6 AM or so. We (Penn Staters) got lucky. VaTech didn't.
There are privacy laws, but I believe almost all of them if there are indications of suicidal or homicidal behavior in the subject. The article mentioned that this guy had already tried to commit suicide. To me, it seems that overburdened "officials"/"therapists"/whatever just pushed him through the system just to reduce backlog. Of course, there is not a lot of background yet, so.... I dunno.
But why does the Prez and Congress need to get into this? Why, PUBLICITY and PROTECT THE CHILDREN! (asswipes, politicians, not the children) Big national event, now it is time for the useless slugs in DC to mug for the camera. Apparently a whole bunch of different people knew about this wacko, but no one did anything about it. So if they (medical folks) had a big pow-wow, they would have a big "Oh geez, he may need help" ("but is it in the budget")? As if any single one of them couldn't figure out he probably needed a bit more help. You have to have a single point of saying toss him into an institution. Ever watch a trial? 2 shrinks, 1 on each side, opposite opinions. How is communication between groups going to help? They'll spend even MORE time arguing with each other. And probably more for ego than actual disagreements.
Anyway, to summarize, this really has nothing to do with privacy, all about how the health field is overburdened, how the field is pushing poeple through, and all about politicians wanting to puff their chests.
But, hey, just my 1/4 of a hogshead.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Of course, it's impossible to prove, but it is certainly possible that American independence could've happened without armed revolution.
Is it acceptable to live in a world
where some people go insane ?
or is it better to give up unrestricted and
unsupervised powers to authorities ?
Powers and data
which will be used outside of security scope.
Will later be stollen or
sold to benefit corporations ?
Do you accept
these data to be accessed without your control and consent ?
Also where is the real problem with this shooting ?
Is it restricted communication or
far too easy access to weapons ?
There is no such carnage in europe
because weapons access is more limited.
Do not let confuse yourself.
Weapons lobbies prefer pointing at the lack of communication
instead of pointing at too many weapons in the hands of teens.
And they are backed up by security lobbies
that want more tools to control people.
And they are supported by IT industry
that urge to sell new datamining tools.
People should watch movie (or read comics) "V for Vendetta".
An insightfull story
describing how democracy can shoot at its own privacy
and freedom.
Besides as Coran writes
"We have leaders we deserve".
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
"These kind of things just don't happen in countries that have sane gun laws, privacy laws or not."
I live in a country with fairly strict gun control laws. It doesn't seem to stop criminals who want them from having them.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Allow me to dismiss that as an exception. There are always going to be exceptions. What counts is the number of deaths prevented. It seems common sense that you try to prevent these kind of incidents by prevention, not vigilante damage control.
What I don't get is what the pro-gunners are so afraid of. All you have to do is maintain a licence to use a gun. What scares you so much?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Guns have little to do with motive
No matter how much motivation I might have to shhot someone, I am unlikely to do it because The last time I handled a firearm, I was wering army uniform. I am less likely to be shot becausel ess people around me have guns than I understand is the case in the USA.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Places where you have to try really hard to get guns if you want them? Sadly there are mentally unwell/ emotionally distressed people all over the world but they really shouldn't be able to just walk into a shop and buy lethal weapons. That would reduce a certain percentage of crimes of passion ending up in multiple deaths. It's harder to go on a rampage like that when the most lethal thing your local Wal-Mart sells are chef's knives.
I know you guys are keen to keep hold of guns because the Founding Fathers of your country said it was your right to do so, but times change you know. They were quite happy with the idea of slave ownership, and didn't think women should vote. You've changed your minds on those issues. Really, we (the UK) are not going to come and try and invade any more. We're ok with you running your own country these days. Honest. You don't need a handy militia to stop Prince Charles coming over the horizon at the front of a cavalry brigade....
Jokes aside and my political bias up front, can you get right down to the core of it, why do you think gun ownership is such a big deal? is it the philosophical bed rock identifying characteristic of being an American citizen, or is it just practicality - there are so many million guns in your society that you just couldn't bring them all back in? (or perhaps a combination of the two?)
cheers
That's *only* 300 9/11 attacks, or just over a single work from the Library of Congress per kill. I wonder how many football fields...
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
> You can't prevent this sort of thing. It really is impossible.
You can prevent it if you know its cause. Unfortunately it is hard to make people understand something when their jobs depend on not understanding it.
After a school in Russia was attacked by terrorists in 2004, Putin announced he would implement measures that would directly prevent another such tragedy from occurring: He changed election laws so that he would appoint regional governors directly instead of letting people vote for them! Problem solved?
... But speaking seriously, in order to prevent America from becoming like non-Soviet Russia, we must watch carefully what reforms are suggested in this case.
Sooo, at least Bush hasn't done that, yet.
What country has sane gun laws? Japan? Australia?
- rapid-decline-since-buyback/2006/12/13/11656857524 21.html
a -gun.html
/ 12/6/365
If you care do do a bit of research you'd find that Australian gun laws changed after the Port Arthur Massacre, and semi-automatic weapons were banned. The results? No mass shootings since 1995.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-deaths-in
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/14/australi
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/short
http://www.physorg.com/news85298565.html
Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.
Blank until
These kind of things just don't happen anywhere near as often in countries that have sane gun laws, privacy laws or not.
Fixed the defect introduced in the patch.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
If only professors were allowed to carry concealed weapons (pending background checks and the usual hoop jumping), Cho wouldn't have squeezed more than a couple shots off before he was taken down.
Give teachers weapons, and expect classrooms of students to be killed once in a while. Should we give weapons to the students too, to counter this?
Don't you SEE? IT'S THE GUNS, STUPID.
And I say that as a gun owner.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Highly unlikely, especially for that day and age. Remember, true modern democracy was practically unheard of, and what the Founding Fathers were doing was considered treasonous at the time. It wasn't the 20th or 21st century, where democracy was expected and encouraged.
As was mentioned earlier ... incrementalism. You end up with a DC style laws that says private firearms ownership requires a license and then the government refuses to issue licenses. So who has firearms ... the Police(who are not obligated to protect you) and criminals who don't care about laws.
Thank you for not posting AC for this unintelligent drivel, so you could be properly modded down.
Try going back and maybe getting some education on guns before you do this again, it would do you and everyone else a favor. Guns cause such an emotional reaction from both sides of the aisle that it becomes VERY hard to have intelligent discussions on the matter.
No, these kind of things don't happen where students and/or professors are given the ability and permission to defend themselves. How many teachers, I wonder, who are somewhat pro-gun, now keep a gun hidden away just in case? I considered it when I was a grad assistant.
Nah, the revolvers they use are the basic 6 or 5 round type. But they invented the magic instant autoloader.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"countries that have sane gun laws"
You mean like a law prohibiting a person that has been involuntarily committed to a mental health program from legally purchasing a firearm?
Exploiting this tragedy as an example of why we need more gun control is just ridiculous when we already have laws on the books which, if properly enforced, would have prevented it.
New York City: 6.9 murders per 100,000 people (2004)
London: 1.7 murders per 100,000 people (2005)
The cities are comparable in size, population and prosperity.
1. Gunman comes to your location and squuezes off a few rounds.
2. Random student A sees this happens.
3. Random student B is around the corner and only hears it happen.
4. In the name of pubic service random student A whips out his large caliber hand gun and squeezes off a shot at the Gunman, wounding him/her
5. Random student B now comes around the corner with guns drawn and sees both Gunman and Random Student A with smoking handguns in their hands, and the Gunman suffering from a wound.
Questions:
1. Who does Random student B shoot at?
2. Whats sort of lawsuit would Random Student B face for killing Random Student A?
3. Students A and B are teenagers. How excitable are teenagers?
4. How does the response scale up from 1 Gunman and 2 Random Students, to 1 Gunman and 50 Random students running around with guns? Note that the majority of the students will be acting independently, but multiple students acting together has been a tactic used in a previous school shooting.
5. What does law enforcement do when confronted with this situation? (Hint: See question 2)
6. Given studies have shown that even trained soldiers can have trouble firing at living humans, why should non-military trained civilians suddenly be able to throw aside all qualms about doing so? Or should first person shooter games be required study when getting a gun license?
7. Assuming that all people now carry guns to protect against rare forms of crime (ie school shootings), how will turning all civilians into people wth no qualms about killing change society? In your reply compare/contrast shootings with other more common forms of anti social behaviour such as "road rage'.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Seriously, what is more important? Power that is granted through a judge (and thus can be taken away at any moment), or power that you give yourself? The founding fathers knew this, which is why we have the 2nd amendment. Now, in today's digital age, I think we need better privacy laws, but not at the expense of the 2nd amendment.
The fact of the matter is that when Cho went to the gun store and they ran the *required* background check on him, the background check came up clean. It *did not* say that he had mental health problems, but it should have. This was a loophole that even the NRA supports fixing: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19209310/.
I'd call you a sane man. The starter of the thread is obviously not quite so sane. Pitching the discussion as something Bushish is the first clue. You can bet that any administration would have asked for the same sort of look at the situation, but giving it as "Bush Administration officials" just taints the discussion which is already tainted enough by the gun-meme. The story, if you read it, states that the report was prepared at the behest of Bush and you can bet that career Washington types (Not Bushites) looked at it and prepared the report at the request of the president. This would be the same in any administration and the results would have been the same. The article states: "It calls for new federal guidelines to clarify how information can be shared legally under federal privacy laws, and for the Department of Homeland Security to finance joint training exercises among state, local, and campus law enforcement agencies." It seems to me that a little more clarity is exactly what's called for in this situation. It doesn't call, from what I read, for NEW and more restrictive laws, but for a process to be initiated and for some sort of co-ordination to take place. This constant paranoid glancing over the shoulder to see what the evil Boosh is doing to "liberties" is almost as tedious as casting every action by the government as somehow snatching liberty away.
I wish that we lived in a world where people sometimes realized that hey...there is no one SINGLE reason that those shootings happend.
It is impossible (or at least complete stupidity) to blame any one thing or person over another. It was a large combination of mistakes made by a very large number of people. It's not like "Oh, if only this [insert one thing here] had been done differently those kids would be alive!"
No, you fucking cunt-scabs. It was a lot of people making a lot of mistakes. You can't blame any one person or any one thing.
Living With a Nerd
What protects freedom of speech (and all the other rights)?
t m
In Mao's words, power comes from the barrel of a gun. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees an INDIVIDUAL right to "keep and bear arms" basically to prevent the government from having too much power over individuals.
Oh, as for gun control lowering crime? One is a helluva lot more likely to be robbed or assaulted in London than one is even in the worst parts of DC or Detroit. And never mind the number of home break-ins documented to happen in the UK. That doesn't happen in the US that often - because the crooks know there's a really good chance they'll get their ass shot. And last I looked, the murder rate in Ireland (no guns) was higher than the murder rate in the US.
Oops. Sorry to deflate your vision with facts.
There's no cross-societial evidence that correlates levels of gun ownership with crime rates, or even shootings. Guns are quite prevalent in Switzerland, for example. How about Finland?
Here's some real numbers for you to chew on:
http://www.uncjin.org/Statistics/firearms/index.h
One does wonder what ever happened the that "final study" that commission was supposed to produce, oh, about 8 years ago.
Do you think maybe it got swept under the rug because it didn't support the "guns cause crime" knee-jerk reactionaries?
Of course you can kill people by other means. But not in these numbers. Ever tried to murder 40 people with an axe or a kitchen knife? Does not sound to probable, does it. People can fight back successfully against other weapons, they can gang-up on the weapon wielders, police can immediately go in to stop the attackers (they have guns after all) and it takes real effort to kill somebody with other weapons.
Guns make it possible for people without commando-training to kill a lot of others in a short time and with little effort. Because of this amplification property, guns are direcly responsible for, say, 80%-90% of the deaths in mass shootings. Maybe more. This fact is conveniently glossed over by the gun nuts. Sure, "Not guns kill people, people do". Exactly right. But guns make it far, far to easy to do it in the large.
Of course guns are not the only problem. If you marginalize a large part of your population, many will kill themselves, and some will just decide not to go alone. There is a price to pay for dropping those that have bad luck or are not too capable like trash, as US society does.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The point is that when there's no guns for civil use in circulation, it gets really difficult to get hold of a gun, even for criminals. If you happen to even see a gun, it will get a lot of attention, and the police will work real hard to get you, knowing that you're most likely a hardened criminal already.
c++;
If you look at the reelection rates in the US, you'll find that they're north of 90% in most years, dropping to about 85% in "contested" years. The vast majority of legislators in the House of Representatives and the Senate have been there for decades. These people know that they're *not* going to be voted out.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
In the end, anytime you ban guns you actually increase the net firepower available to those who wish to commit mayhem. For example, when Marcos banned guns in the Philippines a left wing bunch of assassins nicknamed "the Beatles" took to carrying full automatic shotguns. That is to say, a shotgun that shoots like a machinegun. They got the nickname because they carried em in guitar cases. (Talk about a cliche!) Those machineguns in London are another case in point. Before the Snowdrop people got their way, the worst that a cop had to worry about was the occasional shotgun, old Webley or Enfield revolver or a war trophy Luger.
Afterwords you got MAC-11 submachineguns manufactured in underground shops and the London Metropolitian Police upgrading from Heckler & Koch MP5A2s to H&K G36 assault rifles because they figured themselves to be undergunned for facing machinegun armed Yardies. (Reading about that brought some chuckles over here.)
Here's the thing that people miss. Your typical legal semiauto is limited in the damage that it can do. But since it's easier to produce submachineguns using wartime techniques like the Sten or the MAC-11 or some others, (I can make a dozen in the time that it would take me to replicate my old service revolver which is a far more complex problem manufacturing wise) you'll see more of those. You'll also see more bombings. In most places in the world, a drive by isn't some clown spray firing from a speeding automobile. Instead it's two clowns on a motorbike and the guy in the back heaves a nailbomb into the crowd. That's a lot worse. You can dodge a drive by if you keep your wits about you and they're using a gun. With a bomb, you haven't got a chance.
And it seems like the cruder the weapon, the more casualties you can produce with it. Consider the Happyland Social Club fire in New York City. Some clown with girlfriend problems kills some 80 plus people. His weapon? A can of gasoline and a book of matches. And if the two idiots at Columbine had spent more time on their bomb instead of using guns, the casualty rate would have exceeded four hundred people. They tried to use a couple of large propane tanks as the core for a fuel air explosive. Those produce blast overpressures of over 200 pounds per square inch, which is equivalent to a 2,000 mile per hour wind. (See the blast effects section of The Effects Of Nuclear Weapons, by Samuel Glasstone. Blast is blast regardless of whether it's nuclear
or more or less conventional in source. It's probably the best accessible reference on blast effects available to the public.)
Bottom line here is that you can't disarm people who are intent on committing carnage, but if you don't deny them access to limited weapons like conventional firearms, they won't feel the need to upgrade to far more destructive devices. That's counter intuitive to the gun control crowd, but looking at the history of gun control elsewhere, it appears to be the way that things work.
No offense, but just because your friend likes to play armchair-shrink while conducting job interviews, doesn't mean he's more qualified to diagnose schizophrenia than professional psychiatrists with years of experience.
If multiple psychiatrists saw nothing wrong with a person, and only to your miracle friend it was obvious that it's schizophrenia... well, maybe it doesn't mean that it's the psychiatrists who are wrong. I am willing to accept that maybe one professional was wrong, but that multiple professionals were all wrong and an armchair-shrink immediately puts his finger on it in 5 minutes... sorry, that's already the realm of bad fiction. Maybe your friend shold just drop the delusions of grandeur and leave psychiatry to those actually qualified to practice it.
In particular, you're telling me there that your friend knows nothing about clinical depression, if being unfocused is his grand clue that it must be schizophrenia. I also doubt that anyone would actually say "sshhh, I'm talking to the voices in my head" in a job interview (though they might say it between friends as a joke). Your friend most likely saw someone who _is_ genuinely depressed and, as the case usually is in clinical depression, overwhelmed by dark and depressing thoughts, and invented the whole "ah, he's talking to the voices in his head" explanation himself.
Schizophrenia is a complex thing, there are several flavours of it, and there's a _continuum_ between perfectly normal and raging lunatic. There is no clear line like, say, diagnosing whether someone has a flu or not.
Unlike presented by movies and armchair-shrink trolls, schizophrenia isn't a clear-cut state where someone sees green aliens and talks to 5 different voices in their head. There are whole flavours of it which don't involve delusions or halucinations at all, and conversely there are people with an over-active imagination or with a tendency for hyperfocus, which aren't schizophrenic at all.
Some of the definitions or "symptoms" popular with wannabe armchair-shrinks aren't even related to real schizophrenia. E.g., multiple personality disorder, while pretty much a synonim with schizophrenia in popular culture, isn't even related to actual schizophrenia. (And it's something that's (A) only likely to manifest under extreme stress, if at all, and (B) so rare that even among psychiatrists a lot doubt that MPD even exists at all, because they haven't met a real MPD case in a lifetime.)
And there's a reason it takes more than 5 minutes at the psychiatrist. You must actually determine whether someone is indeed delusional (for the flavours which indeed have a delusional component), _or_ if there's some other problem with them (e.g., depression, as your friend found out), _or_ if they're just a little eccentric but otherwise relatively normal. Just because someone is a little unfocused in one day, it can just mean they had a bad day.
So basically, just tell your friend to stick to whatever he's actually qualified to do.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
H. Clinton with the powers of the Patriot Act, unitary executive, whatever, is the biggest nightmare of the right in Congress. This has been pointed out already in pundit-land. Not sure what will come of it. Probably some legislation before January 2009!
privacy law does not kill people, GUNS do...
Yeah! Let's round up all the guns and confiscate all the gun owner's licenses! They're all a bunch of toothless rednecks anyway.
...from my cold, dead hands
Hey, I know - while we're at it, we can round up all the sharp knives and anything made of wood that's over 3' in length or more than 1" around! Alcohol - that's another big contributor to crime - let's confiscate all the alcohol. Oh, and it's proven that most crimes happen after dark - a national curfew is in order!
Oh, and those damn cars...man, they kill people all the time - let's confiscate all the cars and replace them with rickshaws. People will have to get jobs that aren't as far away from their homes - hell, that's going to piss off the corporations. I know, we'll just confiscate the ownership of all the corporations and make the government one big employer so we can control that too.
yeah - I know...I'm a crank...incrementalism
- dm - The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
"One is a helluva lot more likely to be robbed or assaulted in London than one is even in the worst parts of DC or Detroit"
Stats on this please? Can I confirm, your statement is "the number of people robbed or assaulted in any part of London is higher than in any given part of Washington DC, or Detroit"?
Hmmm..... I take it you are not too familiar with the diversity that is London? I'd be surprised if the crime figures for Kew Gardens or Chelsea are the same as for 'the worst parts of DC'. I'd be interested to see a comparison of the worst parts of the UK vs the worst parts of the USA. I think they will probably be similar. Your hypothesis is that the level of gun ownership in DC and Detroit leads to a lower robbery and assault rate than in London?
I'd say for a decent piece of research we need to find a place where gun laws have changed and see what happens. Easier to make a stronger conclusion than picking different countries where different cultural issues may come into play. Take the shooting in Dublane in Scotland where a lunatic got into a primary school and killed some children. The UK reaction was that all pistols should be banned - even our Olympic pistol shooting team then had to train in another country. A very different reaction to the shootings in Columbine where we heard some US commentators responded that the solution was to arm all teachers. One poster has noted that gun crime levels are very different in Canada and the USA but ownership levels are similar. Suggests cultural factors may play a role to me.
Going back to London, in the turn of the 20th century, police would only come into East London in pairs carrying shotguns. Having lived in a so-called "dangerous" part of London for ten years (Hackney) I can only give you my own witness, that I have seen individual police walking around and without firearms. So something's changed in the last 100 years.
Regarding Mao's statement - I always find it ironic that right wing Americans hold dear Mao's sayings (though to be fair it shows an open mindedness) - and maybe it raises the question - do all countries with more limiting gun laws than the USA therefore count as dictatorships with an essentially powerless people in your eyes? How do you explain the peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe which brought down the Soviet Union in the late 80s and early 90s? The USSR could have sent the tanks in but decided not to - the unarmed people won against military might. Read up on "The Singing Revolution".
Kind regards.
Ok, I can also play the idiot. Since we need to keep owning guns legal, we should let everyone carry armour-piercing rounds. Let every one keep as many grenades and tanks as they wish. Why should only the government be allowed to have nuclear weapons? What about biological weapons?
What the hell is it that you don't understand? Is your right to kill someone more important than my right to stay alive?
c++;
say it with me... Correlation does not imply causation
You're saying the ban on semi-automatic weapons stopped mass shootings. OK just for fun I'll buy that for the sake of argument. Now that may stop the crazy people who want to go postal from taking a bunch of people out with them. However as the saying goes, now only the criminals have guns. Sure it may stop the crazies but it doesn't stop crime, and now the entire populace is more or less unarmed.
The result (for the sake of argument since again, correlation does not imply causation)? Less headlines about mass shootings (which kill what, maybe 100 people a year, world wide?) and "an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years"
How is this better? Knee-jerk reactionist politics disarm the entire population because some lunatic killed 35 people and now the criminals know that no one is packing. I don't know about you but I feel SO much safer. And in addition, the population that enjoys things like hunting or skeet shooting or just plain old target shooting, can't.
And just another thought, the chart on your first link shows that "the risk of dying from a gunshot" was already trending downward PRIOR to the ban. And at the risk of sounding uncaring, at the time of the ban that risk was at 2 deaths per 100,000 people, which by my rough calculations means you're about 100 times more likely to die of Alzheimer's than a gunshot (data based on CDC mortality rates in the US assuming a population of 300 million).
So the gun ban did practically nothing to save any lives, not that all that many lives were taken anyway in the big picture (112 people in 11 mass shootings in 10 years according to the article). All the money spent (according to the article, "a half a billion dollars") creating, enacting, and enforcing the law could have been better spent on something useful like helping curing a disease which statistically is much more likely to kill you. And it infringed on what over here is a constitutionally guaranteed right that a large number of people enjoy.
The Answer
I was under the impression some nutjob with a gun was responsible. Viva La Bush! for showing me the light!
No sig for you!!
IIRC, the Vtec guy should not have been able to buy a gun; he was, after all, certifiably nuts and there are I believe laws that ban this sort of person from buying a gun, even in Kentucky. I got a feeling that these are federal laws, maybe someone can verify. Accept that the gun-sellers apparently don't give a crap about compliance with even minimal laws like this, presumably because of the lack of enforcement (you can probably blame the Gun lobby for this, and the Bush kowtowing to the Gun Lobby).
So, the US has some gun-laws, they're just not enforced very well.
On top of this, the Bush response, so typical of lawyers, is to invent more laws, rather than fix the implementation of the current laws. Of course, the latter requires action and money.
IMO, more guns == more death. How the fuck a fully-armed citzenry is a good thing, I don't know. That's just a recipe for more chaos and death. But hey, it's not my country.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
The instant case isn't really about run of the mill crime. It's about nutjobs intent on doing major damage. In that line, the biggest mass murder in the modern-day U.S. was carried out by pouring a fairly small amount of gasoline on the steps at the walk-up entrance of a firetrap of a nightclub in NY. It was 1990 at the Happy Land club and the arsonist who killed 87 people was Julio Gonzalez.
Properly, then, we shouldn't even be concerned about "crime"; we should be concerned about nutjobs. I haven't actually read the legislation, but based on the news reports that the recent gun control legislatiion will provide some money to make sure that nutjobs actually get put in the instant-check database, I have to say I support this particular gun control bill.
Never in a million years did I ever think I would say I supported any gun control bill. Wow. Live and learn.
Okay, calm down, relax, take a deep breath. Making a database of all the mental health adjudications, while certainly not desirable, != making a database of everyone who's ever received mental health treatment. This applies to people who have been declared to require mental health assistance by the courts, not Joe Blow who goes to see his therapist once a week.
What I find most troubling is that they intend to create a Federal database of ALL THE CRIMINAL CASES in the U.S. Anybody here ever fought a traffic ticket in court? Anybody here ever been cited for disorderly conduct, or public drunkenness, or disturbing the peace? Did anybody fight those charges instead of settling out of court?
Well, now the Federal government will know about it.
For more on the subject, I refer you to Dave Grossman's excellent "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society"
Let's ignore the fact that he had suicidal comments where a judge ordered him to go in for outpatient treatment. This was 2 years before the incident but there's no mention of that. Privacy is an issue, when you have 5 or 6 points where people were saying "he was crazy" but no one is able to connect those dots because everyone is afraid to violate the student's privacy that's an issue.
Privacy advocates can pretend that it doesn't matter but it does. This is a case where it could have been stopped long before it got to this level, but instead because people were afraid of violating the student's rights to privacy and getting one of these groups coming down on them, they instead they felt like they were forced to say nothing. That seems like a perfect solution.
This site has some interesting viusal perspectives on the issue.
I really wonder what would have happened if we had a culture that wasn't so paranoid about guns and allowed more guns on campus.
See that's the thing: bugger all criminals actually have guns here, but certainly more than we have apathetic policemen who don't feel obliged to protect someone from a perpetrator with a gun. Here in Australia, we actually have a sensitivity to guns. If people so much as get a glimpse of a gun on anyone but those obviously meant to use it, people actually freak out. People will call the police, and they respond promptly. Why? Because they are also sensitive to guns. They know the dangers of a gun and put gun crime on very high priority. They know they can't be apathetic, otherwise a politician hoping to be (re)elected will call for a police enquiry, and their actions and jobs will be called into question. If gun crime raises just a percent, voters also freak out.
This isn't just nanny-state-ism, this is a case of the government protecting my life. I do feel safer knowing that it is much harder for a person to get a gun.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You know, with all the stats that get thrown around in these debates the one I'd really like to see is violent death per capita vs. population density in societies (controlled for socio-economic status) with both strict and lenient gun control laws.
It always bothers me when people bring up the low rate of violent crime in Canada with lots of guns, or the high crime rate in London with few guns. Hasn't sociology pretty well established that poor densely populated areas are universally more dangerous than middle class sparsely populated areas?
It doesn't even seem to me that it would be a study that would be too hard to do, but then again the outcome isn't obvious so it probably wouldn't get funded. And maybe that is the real point - neither the NRA nor the Brady backers know whether guns contribute to crime rates or death, and they'd rather keep getting donations to trot out slanted studies.
(apologies if this data is actually represented in the parent's link It doesn't look like it to me, but I'm paging though again now - does anyone have an executive summary?)
It seems like I owe you an apology. Sorry, old chap. I must confess that I read it pretty supperficially to start with, and, not being a native English speaker or even in an English speaking country, I had no clue what a Public Defender is. My fault, really. I should have googled it instead of just going with a (wrong) assumption.
That said, I only used the MPD example as just an example of one thing non-trained people call "schizophrenia" when it's not even related. But, again, that was just a random example. I didn't say your friend's clients had that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes, but how many armed robberies were commited with other weapons? Knives? Swords? Bats? Hand? etc?
Armed robbery is a really bad example for arguing that guns don't matter. It's far easier to defend yourself against someone with a melee weapon than someone with a gun -- just stay out of range. Honestly, if someone threatened bank teller with a knife, it would just be a matter of running away while the person tries to climb over the counter instead of having to freeze and instantly obey the person who could take your life with little more than the pull of a trigger.
Furthermore, how do you hold a whole bank hostage? With guns, you wander in and threaten to shoot anyone who moves. With clubs and knives, everyone just runs. Worse, it's easier for you to be taken down by skilled individuals or an angry crowd throwing things. With a gun, everyone has to listen to you or risk death without you having to take a single step.
Convenience store robbery is even more funny. There's all kind of impediments to physical assault in the form of counters and racks of goods that don't matter much when you hold a gun up to eye level that make robbing a store with a sword much harder. I mean, we've all seen amusing videos of robbers letting their guard down with a gun and getting wrestled down by tough clerks, and there's a lot less to hold back someone from defending theirselves when grabbing a weapon no longer means that it might be wrestled into a position to pull a trigger and kill you. I know *I'd* grab a sword being pointed at me long before I'd grab a gun.
Really, your argument is so silly that if I accused a gun advocate of believing it, I'd be guilty of making a straw man. Guns make certain kinds of robbery possible.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Any common hunting round round will pierce body armor. "Armour piercing" is a deceptive statement since body armor is easy to penetrate and vehicle armor can't be easily defeated with anything below a RPG.
END OF LINE.
that has the highest per capita firearm ownership rate on the planet (all males age 20 to 42 are
required to keep rifles or pistols at home) has a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000. And to date,
there has never been a schoolyard massacre in Switzerland. You can not blame a hunk of metal for the shortcomings of a society. If firearms cause violence then the Swiss would be swimming in blood... Brazil has mandatory licensing, registration, and maximum personal ownership quotas. It now bans any new sales to private citizens. Their homicide rate is almost three (3) times higher than the U.S. ...and Brazil would be as peaceful as Grandma's back yard.
END OF LINE.
So basically they are using the VT shootings as an excuse to further erode our privacy.
This is their modus operandi. Take advantage of a crisis that inspires fear to try to get legislation passed that removes the rights and/or privacy of Americans.
Too add to that: it wouldn't be as if crazy people haven't used other methods that were equally or more destructive. Yes, a guy with a gun is worse than a knife, etc... but what about a bomb?
How about if Mr. Nutcase decides he's going to find some instructions online, then grab a bunch of fertilizer and make a little home-made explosives, then plant them near a gas pipe or something else in a building full of those he dislikes (or a random target, insane people don't make rational decisions after all). Would that be better or worse than guns?
While I don't agree with reducing the privacy of ordinary citizens, it wouldn't be a terrible thing to have better tabs on those that are diagnosed as mentally unsound+dangerous, denying them firearms and perhaps monitoring them for purchases of large amounts of explosive-potential material. The problem with that is that the government would then likely be happy to have some pet freuds declare anyone who doesn't agree with their policies as "mentally unstable"
And what occurs more often? Armed robberies or mass shooting?
And with all those laws keeping everyone safe, how did this happen?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_sho oting
Oh and what about the 85% of gun crime in Australia is comitted with firearms obtained illegally. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Aust ralia)
When people want to get firearms, they will find a way no matter what laws are in place.
Also, here in the United States we have this little thing called the 2nd Amendment, which as far as many Americans are concerned, might as well have been an edict from God.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A1. No one. It's my opinion that when confronted with this situation RS B will either save his own skin or (at most) call 911 from his cell. You don't normally see people running to join in a bar fight and those folks have all had a couple of drinks and aren't using deadly force against each other ;-)
Q2. Whats sort of lawsuit would Random Student B face for killing Random Student A?A2. That depends on whether a reasonable person exercising due care would have killed RS A. If RS A had his gun pointed in RS B's direction it would be reasonable for RS B to fire.
Q3. Students A and B are teenagers. How excitable are teenagers?A3. Now we've moved from the sublime to the ridiculous. Who's proposed arming teenagers?
Q4. How does the response scale up from 1 Gunman and 2 Random Students, to 1 Gunman and 50 Random students running around with guns? Note that the majority of the students will be acting independently, but multiple students acting together has been a tactic used in a previous school shooting.A4. In the stated example multiple = 2 and 2 != 50.
Q5. What does law enforcement do when confronted with this situation? (Hint: See question 2)A5. Slightly More Obvious Hint: Most likely what they've been trained to do.
Q6. Given studies have shown that even trained soldiers can have trouble firing at living humans, why should non-military trained civilians suddenly be able to throw aside all qualms about doing so? Or should first person shooter games be required study when getting a gun license?A6. This directly contradicts the argument you present in Q1. Having actually been a trained solder and actually fired a weapon at another person I'd say that the scenario in Q6 is considerably more likely to occur than the one in Q1. Ever taken a college-level course in logic? ;-)
Q7. Assuming that all people now carry guns to protect against rare forms of crime (ie school shootings), how will turning all civilians into people wth no qualms about killing change society? In your reply compare/contrast shootings with other more common forms of anti social behaviour such as "road rage'.Again, the parent poster might benefit from a course in critical thinking. There's no basis for the argument that just because someone defends themself or someone else that we've turned "all civilians into people wth no qualms about killing". That's such a leap of logic I'm not even gonna entertain it - which makes the road rage question moot.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Just to drop an example, it is practically impossible to float a serious policy question along the lines of "should the federal government tax the income of individual citizens?".
Should the federal government abolish habeus corpus and hold people including U.S. citizens without trial for years? Should the federal government invade countries for no reason? Should the federal government be listening to your phone calls all day and reading your emails? Should the federal government take your political affiliation into account when deciding whether or not to prosecute you, or a corporation's political contributions into account when approving or denying its merger or acquisition? Should the federal government allow its officers to refuse to testify before Congress, or direct them to lie and obfuscate in their testimony? Should the federal government double its expenses by shedding its workers and rehiring them as contractors from politically connected companies? Should the federal government be elected in court? Should the federal government fund a war every year with an emergency supplemental borrowed from China? Should the federal government allow its corporate patrons to withhold vital resources like electricity from states with unfriendly voters? etc etc. I have to get to work. Geez next to all this stuff, the War on Drugs, the FCC censorship, and the income tax look like old hallowed traditions.
Oh well, your UK sword guy wounded 17 people and didn't kill anyone, least of all anyone smart enough to run like crazy when they see something like this happening. Sounds like those British have some good laws regarding weapon possession, although perhaps they should also be extended to swords.
:-)
The idea of an 'unreloadable by the owner' gun is ludicrous. For one thing, how on earth are you going to expect the owner of this 'wonderful' piece of technology to be able to get enough practice to be able to reasonably hit what he needs to? After all, he's only got ten shots before he has to go back to town!
He will be able to get a similar gun without armor restrictions to practice on a shooting range, under supervision of armed guards who make sure he doesn't harm others and returns it back.
That and, if it's only reloadable by a factory/technician/expensive-and-heavy machine... how do you unload it to render it safe, perhaps for storage? If you're going in to town because you used it to shoot a fox that went into your hen-house, and you fired two rounds, do you just blow off the other 8 (yay, practice!) before driving to town with it?
Hey, aren't you supposed to be a nerd? I am sure that if you are willing to accept the concept of not being able to just come to your workplace with hundreds of rounds and lock-and-load, you can come up with a good solution to this additional problem. Let say you still insert and remove a clip of ammo into the gun, but each chamber in the magazine is fused shut after a shot is fired. Certainly experienced weapon engineers would be able to create a good solution.
That, and if wildlife is your legitimate concern - you actually own a farm - you can get a weapon without ammo restrictions but, as much as reasonable, less likely to be fatal to humans. Pellet guns, tranquilizer darts and small caliber bullets come to mind.
But it seems to me that there are as many arguments against 'gun control' (say more clearly, gun restriction - because illegal weapons are still every bit as available and out of control) legislation as there are for it.
Are you saying if there are 1 million unrestricted guns in the country, it's quite as easy to get one illegally - say by breaking into a random house and searching for one - as if there are 20 million?
Belt-fed, 40mm grenade launchers? No, I can't really see any logical reason to have one of these unless you're, you know - the military.
Well, at least we agree that the idea of an armed LA gang overthrowing city government somehow sounds less appealing than glorious revolutions of the past
it becomes VERY hard to have intelligent discussions on the matter.
Do you think our discussions on slashdot would become more intelligent if we were all in the same room and holding guns?
You can do stuff like this with TinyURLs, so we at least have a clue where you're sending us. The regex used for their redirect just ignores everything after the last /.
We've already established that gun control doesn't do a whole lot to keep guns out of the hands of criminals; if you don't accept that point I've got nothing further to say. Given that, it only makes sense to allow people who are not criminals to have guns, too. They're not known as the "great equalizer" for nothing. Someone's a lot less likely to try to rob/kill/hurt you if they think they're going to get shot in the attempt.
You talk about your right to stay alive. Well when some asshole tries something with his illegal gun, your right to stay alive isn't going to stop the bullet. A gun, on the other hand, might stop him from shooting in the first place. Your rights mean nothing if you can't enforce them.
That depends entirely on the criminal.
Joe Thug isn't going to bother to go to the trouble of making a sten just to steal your wallet. Instead, he's going to put a pointy bit of metal through your gut and take it that way. Gun crime as a whole will go down.
And let's face it, most of the anti-gun crowd cares about one statistic: Gun-related deaths. It's a win to them.
Nevermind the fact that the chance you'll be stabbed or beaten will probably go up. I mean, there are slash-proof hoodies being designed for the UK market. Doesn't that tell you something?
The hardcore criminal population you mention will do exactly as you say. They'll turn to rolling their own firearms, bombs, etc. The same is true for people like the VT murderer, or the Columbine killers. They'll turn to homemade explosives, and things will be _much_ worse. Also, before anyone else argues, don't even think of trying to ban homemade explosives. They're already illegal, and any person that cares to do the research has so many ways of making something that goes boom that you'd literally have to push everyone back to stone-age technology to stop it. It isn't possible.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
How about limiting gun control first instead of this stupid law? Oh wait it's in the ruddy "well past it's sell by date" constitution. To everyone living outside America (and probably many Americans) it's blindly obvious why America has proportionality so many gun massacres.
I agree with your point about the firearm being an effective tool for killing, but the weapon is ONLY a tool. It is the ruthless intent and disrespect for human life of the person wielding it that makes it deadly.
" . . . guns are direcly responsible for, say, 80%-90% of the deaths in mass shootings."
Do you honestly BELIEVE that? Read those words a few times and really think about it for a minute. Guns are inanimate objects without free will or autonymous motives. Associating them with the concept of "responsibility" makes absolutely no sense. The person or people using the guns are responsible for 100% of the deaths in mass shootings. This isn't "glossing over" anything, it's a statement of fact.
If you want to do something constructive to address this problem, support the candidacy of Ron Paul for president. Go to the meetup web site to find a group near you.
Give me a f*cking break.
Gun laws in the UK have steadily become more strict since 1969.
Gun laws in the US have arguably, on average, become less strict since 1969 (a few states have asinine "Assault Weapons Bans" that demonstratably accomplish nothing, but now nearly 40 states allow for a leagal means for any law-abiding civillian to carry concealed deadly weapons, where very few allowed such a thing in 1969).
The homicide rate in the UK today is more than double what it was in 1969.
The homicide rate in the US today is much lower than what it was in 1969.
In 1969, the homicide rate of the UK was only one-ninth the homicide rate of the US.
Today, the homicide rate of the UK is one-third the homicide rate of the US.
Please don't pretend that you're making a valid point about gun control when you compare apples to oranges.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.
No, but obviously the effect it did have was to place more guns into the hands of criminals. Gun owners often see guns as an investment, as a measure of wealth. Unless the government is willing to pay fair market value (which they never do during these grabs), then making guns illegal in a society that already has them is pretty much a guarantee that you're going to have increased crime. And this pattern has repeated itself countless times, all across the world.
Mass shootings get a lot of press, but they're really quite rare and in reality, very difficult to prevent. Armed robberies affect far more people and as such, our focus should be on preventing those instead. I live somewhere where all you need to do is show a driver's license to buy a gun and in my 34 years, I've never known a single victim of an armed robbery. The only people who've ever pulled guns on me are cops (once for simply asking directions (which he eventually gave)) and I'd be happy to see them disarmed.
Other Western countries baffle me. They constantly complain about all the horrors the US government inflicts upon the world and then they come back and insist that only that same government should be permitted to control the weapons and that those who oppose their evil should have none. Make up your minds. Outlaw guns in this country and you give free reign to those who are tearing this world down.
The government is populated by well-meaning bumbling idiotic bureacrats
If they are just screw ups, then how come they've yet to screw up in my favor even once in my 34 years on this planet? Shouldn't that be statistically impossible?
We would definitely be a heck of a lot more careful about what we said.
there has become such a huge disparity between the stuff the military has and the stuff the populace has that we could never succeed in a revolt against an illegal tyrannical government anyway.
The US Military's record when it comes to fighting against guerrilla forces in foreign countries is abysmal. Remember Vietnam, the current Iraq war, even Afghanistan could be going better. If the US Military cant handle these small countries how do you think it would do against a guerrilla force of millions of its own people?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
In the same way that if the odds are acceptable, I'm willing to increase my odds of dying from X to >X for the privilege of driving, if the odds are acceptable I'm willing to increase my chances of getting shot by a kook for the privilege of knowing that if I or any of my family become mentally ill we will still have privacy.
It's a numbers problem:
If a high number of people will benefit from privacy and a low number of deaths will result, then privacy wins.
If a low number of people will benefit from privacy and a high number of people will die as a result, then privacy will be sacrificed.
It's also a political problem:
Who gets to decide how low is low enough and how high is high enough?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
s/guns/availability of guns/
There. Pretty obvious what I meant, I would say.
Furthermore my argument is not about moral responsibility, but about creation of a capability. Gun aavailability creates the capability for relatively easy to do mass shootings.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Almost all incidents of Armed robbery in Australia are committed with (was always committed with) handguns or small rifles/shotguns, such as the four-ten made famous by Mark "chopper" Read. These weapons can be still obtained legally. even with Guns what kind of clerk will fight back against a robber, I mean a 17/18 yr old will fight an armed robber for a store that isn't theirs, hell no the crim is caught on tape and arrested later, clerk lives crim in custody and everybody wins as opposed to fire fight crim can fire first as he already has his weapon drawn, clerk dies. It's standard operating procedure anyway for a staff to give a robber what he wants weather its a bank or a service station, a few dollars is not worth risking a life for.
I can also tell you that as an Australian I do feel so much safer in the knowledge that if someone attacked me I could either, fight back against an unarmed opponent or run as I am safe if he is more than a few feet away. To kill someone with a knife you need to be very close and very accurate with your stabs, try doing that when someone is fighting back.
Interesting that I should bring up Chopper, one of Australia's most indiscriminate murderers of recent history. Scholars will note that most of Mark "chopper" Read's victims were also criminals themselves as he began his carrier in crime by robbing drug dealers. Chopper himself said it best "the average man on the street has nothing to fear from chopper", this is pretty much the same for Australian crime, if you're not involved in crime you are less likely to be involved in violent crime. Here's the wikipedia page.
The majority of crime in Australia is non-violent crime, the vast majority of robberies are committed when the owner is not in the house. Many Americans bring up the old "without guns how can I defend against $YOUTH hopped up on $BAD_DRUG trying to bash down my door" and I cant help but think that this never happens here in Australia our criminals are cowards maybe a lack of guns has to do with that. The average unarmed crim has at best a 50/50 chance against my favourite piece of sporting equipment if he's dumb enough. The strongly enforced gun laws also blow the "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns" maxim out of the water as over 90% of the guns confiscated by police have legitimate (read licence) owners.
Also gang warfare is very different over here (Australian city's have gangs too, just not gang shootings) as these are the most often violent offenders who are unable to acquire guns legally and typically too poor or too poorly connected to acquire guns illegally most gang wars are conducted with knives, bats and fists which decrease the amount of violence as well almost eliminate innocent bystanders from getting killed. The only Australian criminals that routinely carry guns are the organised one's (read Bikie's).
I also suggest that you read up on Australian gun laws, as an Australian gun owner I can tell you that my "right" which I call a privilege to own a firearm is not infringed upon at all. It is a privilege to own a weapon, it is a right to live. I'd rather restrict the privilege than destroy a right. Gun crime across australia has reduced dramatically as people in Australia who own guns also have jobs and lives and don't want to put those in jeopardy by doing something stupid.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Take HIPPA for example.
In order to get my employer-subsidized insurance, I have to waive my HIPPA rights. (Why is this even possible?) The insurance company can thus do damn near anything with my most private health information. I think they could post it on the front page of their web site, bulk mail it to everybody, and so on. At the very least, they could leave it on a password-free server for every employee to see.
Meanwhile...
My kids can't examine my records for inheritable defects.
My wife can't ask about the billing records.
My wife can't ask about STD treatment.
People living with me can't ask about tuberculosis.
This is absurd. The law hurts people more than it helps them.
The typical criminal won't home roll his Sten, but he's quite likely to buy something like a MAC or a simplified Mini-Uzi from an underground supplier and those will become available just because they're easier to make. About 20 years ago, they used to have machinegun magazines in this country before the Volkmer-McClure Act banned new manufacture, and you had people building em from scratch as well as modifying existing guns. From time to time, I see badly xeroxed copies of those articles floating around, including one very interesting one in an old magazine called "Firepower" where they built the old Minuteman SMG, (in the early sixties it was claimed that you could cobble one together for about seven bucks-- the bolt was interesting because it could be done entirely on a lathe without the usual milling of the cutout below the bolt face where it's cut down to accomidate the upper portion of the magazine) and they made some useful changes. My guess is that a ban would cause these to show up on the streets. I think that our biggest problem is that the gungrabbers are trying to dictate policies about a technology that they don't understand. It's just like the current hysteria about .50 rifles. Aside from the fact that they're too expensive, they're overhyped. The reason that people like Feinstein and Blagojevich want em banned is because they can penetrate an armored limosine, which is true. What they don't realize is that they have around 75 percent chance of surviving that hit. If the shooter turns to something else like a Galitsky mine, (essentially a zipgun that shoots a big rifle grenade and set off by a MUV type pull fuze) the home-made HEAT round will kill everyone in the car, and if somebody hits the fuel cell, the fuel will mist and then explode-- like a fuel/air bomb. So by virtue of banning a weapon that's both too expensive for most people to buy and which is really not suited for shooting at a moving target, they actually decrease their personal security by turning people to more attainable weapons with a better chance of killing them. That's downright weird, but then again our political system selects for the stupidest people we can find and therefore, the stupidest people are what we get.
Colloquialism
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!