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27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting
Several readers sent word of a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. According to most reports, 27 people are dead, including 18 children. The alleged shooter is dead, a man in his 20s. He was armed with multiple weapons and may have worn a bulletproof vest. According to CBS, "It is unclear if there was more than one gunman at the school. Miller reports authorities have an individual in custody who investigators said may be a possible second shooter." (Investigators now say the person being questioned is not a suspect.) One student was quoted as saying, "I was in the gym and I heard a loud, like seven loud booms, and the gym teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled. And I kept hearing these booming noises. And we all started crying." Another, 8 years old, said, "I saw some of the bullets going down the hall and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom."
It is time to amend the 2nd amendment.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
The school is a gun-free campus, plus all visitors have to register at the office.
Our country makes it too easy for nutcases to have guns. I, for one, would give up the right to bear arms for everyone, and not miss it.
Bruce Perens.
You have to be the biggest fucking piece of shit to pull something like this. They should quit releasing these douchebags names as they are absolute nobodies.
... as the economy will continue to spiral down and crazy people get laid off and need to get their grudges out. The "fiscal cliff" is only the starter.
Weapon sales have been through the roof for a while now. The more, the merrier
I'm sure Fox News will try to spin this somehow
But the 2nd doesn't apply... it's a "Gun Free Zone". Isn't this what you wanted?
The cure is worse than the disease.
..don't panic
what's the core problem, here? tools that kill people? we have so many of those. just outlaw anything that could hurt people? go all 'england' as an over-reaction?
the core problem is people are crazy and act out.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
guns are not the problem.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I cannot believe that someone could target children like that. My two daughters are the same age as the dead and I will have to hug and hold them for a long while tonight. My heart goes out to those parents.
Seriously? Mentally insane people go to a k-4th grade school and start killing people, and you post how it's related to a political party's stance on something?!?
Republican or Democrat no one wants to see this happen.
You say tighten gun control, did they get the guns legally in the first place? Should we be locking up anyone who might have a breakdown, or might be outright crazy?
It's a tragedy, and as the father of 2 that aren't even old enough for school yet I can't imagine what the families are going through, but pointing fingers doesn't help here.
Guns are very efficient at killing people. Knives, garden implements, poisons, etc, less so.
Apparently the White House [1], let alone the NRA, doesn't think it's time to discuss the culture that causes these kinds of shootings - a culture where guns are not only freely available, but generally untraceable and too often get into the hands of folks who should not have them (ie, mentally imbalanced, felons, and domestic terrorists).
If the unquestioning defense of the 2nd amendment means we can't even discuss why disturbed or evil individuals who shouldn't have access to these kind of armaments have the "right to bear arms", then we're fucked as a country.
Let's not even get into the fact that the NRA and gun-lobby have effectively made the process of tracing how these weapons get distributed to the wrong hands is never questioned and the illicit channels aren't closed.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
In much smaller numbers.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
As someone posted elsewhere: "I don't want to take your guns away, but if the price of freedom is 18 dead elementary school kids 3 times a year, I don't want to be free. "Gun control" doesn't have to mean "take away guns". Stop arguing against that straw man."
Gun owners jumping right to slippery-slope arguments are not helpful.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
But the 2nd doesn't apply... it's a "Gun Free Zone". Isn't this what you wanted?
Yeah, if only those kindergartners were armed, right? FFS
No one has reported that the shooter was a parent. We have one report that the shooter was a 20-year-old male.
Is it? Having 18 little fucking children gunned down by some fucking maniac, and you're going to sit here and say that making weapons harder for fucking lunatics to possess is somehow a disease that needs to be put up with.
Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this, and it's not like gun control means fucking maniacs can't kill lots of kids (Norway comes to mind).
Still, there is a thing called unacceptable loss here.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
What is the correlation between mass shootings and the closing & defunding of mental health institutions?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
of which your post is one, funnily enough.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Gun laws do nothing in making it harder for "fucking lunatics" to posess. There in lies the logical fallacy. It makes it for "fucking normal people" harder to posess, which is incidentily the root of the problem. It would have taken one normal individual to stop this idiot.
"Altar of Principle, accept these sacrifices."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It looks like the first few comments have already been about guns and the second amendment, so I want to throw this out there. There have been spree killings all over the world, even in countries with more restrictive gun laws than the USA. Most of these killings were done with firearms, but many were done with other weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers
I think that rather than arguing about gun-rights in general, we would be better served by working to identify the kind of people that feel they need to resort to this type of violence and getting them the help they need before they snap.
That's the problem with people - complete lack of empathy.
The GP believes that he would have been there with his own firearms and gunned down these people. Or if all of the teachers had concealed carry he would have been taken out immediately. Or that if every child had had a gun, he would have been stopped before he even got his firearm out.
Many a gun proponent has been turned by having a spouse or child killed. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The worst mass school murder in American history took place on May 18,1927 in Bath Township, Mich., when a former school board member set off three bombs that killed 45 people.
Because some crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be much better.
Maybe a better answer is that we need to treat our crazy people. It's not a matter of expense; either you pay money to treat mental illness, or you pay money to clean up after them. I'd rather spend on getting them help than in burying our children.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Our culture is crashing. What is going on is just unimaginable.
I would rather see resources put into identifying and helping the lunatics. That is the elephant in the room.
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
Yes they do.
Do guns serve a purpose other than cold blooded murderin'?
Yes they do.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
So it allows someone who is not an assassin, a trained killer, or physically strong the ability to defend themselves. I'm ok with that. This is the purpose guns serve. I do believe, however, that anybody owning a firearm should also be required to know how to use it. Which is easier than knowing how to kill with an arrow, a knife, your hands, etc. Again, the point of guns is to level the playing field when it comes to defending one's self.
No, this happened just today in China. No Guns involved. 22 children attacked: Knife attack at Chinese shool.
That's not quite the case. While a maniac could do a helluva lot damage with a meat cleaver, guns, particularly semi-automatic and automatic weapons, allow for very large rampages. As well, one has at least some hope of survival standing up to someone with a knife. A guy packing an arsenal can pretty much kill most people who get in his way, unless they're packing as well, but in any kind of civilian setting, having two or more people firing at each other is going to lead to pretty substantial collateral damage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I only use my guns to shoot targets, an activity i enjoy thoroughly.
Do guns & bullets serve a purpose other than murder?
And yet, no one died in the knife attack. Is the difference really that hard to understand?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
[...] but if they were armed, do you think as many would have died in this incident?
Irrelevant. There would be far, far more OTHER incidents (kids getting hold of the guns, teachers unable to cope with the stress of teaching and seeing an easy way out, etc) which would have led to MORE deaths.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
So, where do you draw the line in regards to things that are lethal weaponry? What is the purpose of a gun? They were designed to kill living things. Why stop at allowing people to carry guns? Why don't we allow people to carry grenades? Or RPGs?
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
What are 'arms'? Isn't a SAM 'arms'? Why can't people carry them around? Oh yeah, because they can inflict mass casualties, that's why. So why doesn't at least a multi-fire assault rifle fit this definition, because it sure looks to me like that's what happened here.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Gun crime in England and Wales has been steadily declining for years. In 2010/11 there were fewer than 12K recorded offences, and that's including crime involving air rifles and imitation guns.
No, they aren't the entire problem, as other countries have proven it's possible to have widespread gun ownership without widespread gun crime. However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I can go into a store today and buy everything needed to blow a building to bits. Remember Oklahoma City? If you don't want a big boom, you can always go the bleach and ammonia route. If you want to kill or maim people in mass quantities, you don't need a gun. You can use a car. Or a plane. I suppose banning planes is next?
This is a frequent misunderstanding of the European approach to weapons from your American understanding. You are simply indoctrinated by the gun lobby that Europe is wrong. There is NO shortage of weapons here in Europe. That is a blatant lie that your gun lobby tells you.
However, what we don't have here is weapons aimed primarily at killing humans - like pistols and automatic weapons. You can own guns for hunting. Owning a rifle for hunting is common. You can also own a pistol for shooting in competition but you have to be a registered sportsman - you have to join a gun club and actually compete.
You can even actually have a fully automatic assault rifle at home - but you have to join the voluntary armed forces.
This system works and take out the crackpots. Selling pistol to anyone who wishes to have one doesn't.
I always find it odd how when things like this happen it's "not the appropriate time" to discuss stricter gun laws, yet it's perfectly acceptable for every dude with a John Wayne fetish to suggest that had *he* been there with his gun, things would have turned out differently.
I'm not particularly in favour of liberal gun laws, but in China there are an ongoing spate of mass stabbings in schools, for example here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7710196/China-suffers-eighth-child-stabbing-attack-in-a-month.html
The latest attack resulted in 22 stabbings. The problem doesn't seem to be the guns in and of themselves, its the culture and how it is dealing with problematic individuals. Or something else, I don't know, but its definetely a social issue first and foremost.
Yes. Aside from target shooting, guns are made to kill. I somehow doubt if someone was attacking you or someone you care about you would have a problem with killing them in order to get them to stop. If you are starving, I somehow doubt you would have a problem with killing an animal with one even if you are a vegetarian. Sometimes killing is justified.
Didn't you know? Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Sometimes I wish Obama would do really want the right wing is scared about: implement and enforce some sensible gun control laws. Those living in middle of Kansas farms can keep their guns to stave off the zombies (and their sisters). The rest of us living in civilization would like to see some gun control.
http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy.jpg
That's from two massacres ago.
Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
My thoughts are with those unfortunate parents whose grief must be too hard for anyone to bear
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
But the 2nd doesn't apply... it's a "Gun Free Zone". Isn't this what you wanted?
Yeah, if only those kindergartners were armed, right? FFS
Yea! I mean, it's not like there's a single adult in an elementary school, right?
Sheesh...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
To put things into perspective: over the last twenty years, there have been fewer than 200 fatalities in school shootings (including colleges and universities) in the United States. By way of comparison, during that period in the US there have been about 1000 deaths due to lightning strikes, 25 due to (unprovoked) shark attacks, 3000 due to international terrorism, and 200 due to domestic terrorism. So we really ought to be more concerned about lightning and box cutters than about handguns.
of cowardly, fractional men.
The gun make it a lot easier for a bad guy to kill a lot of people. That's the difference.
Imagine, if you will, a maniac runs into a school with a sword and starts attacking people. We'll even say he knows what he's doing with one beyond "the pointy end goes in the other guy". There's no question that a few people will get killed. But everyone there will also have a much easier time running away, throwing things at him, putting barriers between him and themselves, using improvised weapons like mop handles to slow him down, etc. So you're now dealing with a situation where, say, 3-5 people are dead instead of 26.
Or if a maniac uses a crossbow instead, his targets can make effective use of potential shields like garbage cans and desks, have a better chance of dodging, his rate of fire is much much slower (about 1 per minute) which enables defenders to tackle him while he's reloading, and his ammunition is heavy and cumbersome.
I am officially gone from
injured vs dead
Perhaps you should consider the Akihabara massacre.
To quote Penn and Teller, "You can stop insane people from doing insane things with insane laws. It's insane!"
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
target shooting? hunting? both seem like amusements that maybe we could afford to lose in the name of safety. (How many people really need to hunt for their food in this day and age?) Also, they might not have to go - the restrictions could be on firearms ill-suited to those activities, not to mention forms of those activities without firearms.
If it's something else you'd miss, sorry, but those are my best guesses.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
these "fucking lunatics" get their guns the same way so called sane gun nuts do.
I see a lot of posts in here about banning guns. They are far more controlled where I live (Canada), but rest assured shootings that happen in Canada are always with black-market guns. It's not the people who legally purchase and register firearms doing these things, it's those who obtain them illegally.
You may argue that making guns harder to get, like here, reduces this kind of thing. That may be correct. But no matter what, people can get anything, and they will, if sufficiently demented, do something bad.
What's the answer to that?
LIBERALS are responsible for this. THEY are the ones who push for gun control so that good people cannot STOP insane shooters like this. This would have gone nowhere had everyone in that school had good access to deadly enough weapons to respond in kind to that shooter.
Teachers hear gunshots, grab their 9 mms, head into the hall. Blast away at the janitors who are shooting back with their AK47s. Both groups start to take casualties from the administrators firing .50 cam Brownings mounted to A/V carts. The lunch ladies lob grenades out from the cafeteria, taking out large swaths of combatants, including the third grader who set off the original firecracker.
Criminals also don't follow laws against theft, murder, etc. And?
They all survived. How many would have been killed with a firearm? How many more could the baddie have injured or killed with a ranged weapon?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Agreed. Guns are made for killing. I don't see why that's a bad thing. Sometimes people need to be killed. As long as bad guys have guns, good guys should have them too. Maybe we should improve our system of determining who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, but we definitely don't need to ban guns. That will definitely only leave them in the hands of the bad guys. Guns are a force multiplier; They can be used to level the playing field. If a 250lb guy with a knife attacks a 90lb girl, she damn well better have a gun. Unfortunately, this does mean one crazy guy with lots of bullets can do a bunch of damage. However, taking away guns doesn't fix crazy. This evil bastard probably could have done just as much damage by rigging an explosive, setting the hallways on fire, or taping a kitchen knife to a broomstick. Crazy fucks will do crazy shit. Treat the disease not the symptom.
Let us wipe this persons name from the face of the earth. Let us not speak his name. Let us and his family, friends, and anyone else forget that this killer ever had an identity. Do not speak his name.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Shockingly enough, in countries where there are strict gun laws, there appear to be less shootings by criminals than int he U.S.
This is the simple fact opponents of gun control simply cannot deal with.
Less guns mean less gun violence.
Period.
Our country makes it too easy for nutcases to have guns. I, for one, would give up the right to bear arms for everyone, and not miss it.
I am sorry, but I think that you have it wrong. While we need stronger gun laws, the last thing that I want is to give up our rights (plenty of pols continue to nibble at them).
The real issue is that we make it too easy for ANYBODY to own a gun. What is needed is better education for access to hunting and target guns, combined with psych tests for access to automated weapons. We have medicals administered to Pilots for even a PRIVATE license. Yet, giving something far more dangerous as an automated weapon and we have little requirements for it.
What I find interesting is that you even acknowledge that we make it far too easy for nutcases, but want to deny it to all. Far better to do medicals and scan against the nutcases.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ban knives too, 22 kids were also the victim of a mass stabbing at a school in china.
Guns are not the problem. Fucking nutjobs are the problem.
if someone who is unhinged wants to do mean and violent things, they will.
when we are ready to start blaming our society instead of tools it owns, then we can move to a solution.
we have a 'war on drugs' as if that does any good. we have a 'war on poverty' and that does no good. we like to declare war and have easy solutions. but the underlying causes are not readers-digest concepts and voters and lawmakers can't read more than a few paragraphs before being bored.
banning tools is rarely going to get you the result you are really after. its easy to blame tools but this won't help.
the anger with so many, runs so deep.
our country is boiling over with hate. bursting at the seams. and we seem to encourage it, if anything! look at the constant fighting with D and R in washington. look at the news. they don't report good things, those don't 'sell'. they report violence and people LOVE that shit.
our society is kind of fucked up. some serious soul searching should be done.
but it won't happen. and more like this will continue while we turn a blind eye. short-term is all we can think about. 'long-term social stability' is a forgotton concept in the western world.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
To the bastard who did this, you'll rot in hell.
I don't know where I stand on religion, and maybe this makes me a vengeful asshole, but I sincerely hope you're right and that the gunman is being gang-raped by a line of demons as we speak.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I have an IBM Model M keyboard with a 5lb steel plate on the bottom. Most assuredly I can kill someone with a computer.
Wrong, but thanks for showing us the very limited perspective you operate under.
Good-bye
However, killing is one of (not the only) the primary purposes of a gun. You cannot say the same of a computer.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
In much smaller numbers.
1995 - Oklahoma City, OK:
Timothy McVeigh detonates a home-made truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, 19 of which were children, and wounding almost 1000 more.
Not a single bullet was fired.
In other words, you're dead fucking wrong.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This is about the worst thing anyone can do, I mean, these are fucking children for fuck's sake! :(
Every time these incidents occur, there is a tremendous and instantaneous outpouring of these same old arguments "guns don't kill people..." "outlawing guns is not going to prevent crazy people from getting them..." The arguments never change, the politics never change, and these incidents happen again and again.
The definition of 'crazy', or one of them, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. HOW MANY TIMES do we have to hear about shooting rampages in our own schools, malls, movie theaters, workplaces, before people will begin to ask themselves if maybe their outlook is simply wrong? How many people would have to die before you, Mr. 2nd Amendment Defender, would reconsider your own viewpoint? Just do this exercise for me - say a number out loud.
Doubt is essential in a deliberative society. If you can never doubt your own viewpoint, then the freedom to discuss and debate it is worthless.
The question to ask is: if guns were freely and readily available in China, would there be FEWER deaths from these incidents?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Self defense for people who live in dangerous neighborhoods where the people who would use guns to kill them, would not think twice about using an illegally obtained gun (and would, in fact, shy away from a legally obtained one).
It is a tool to end life, but not all ending of life is cold blooded murder, or even arguably murder. Ending life is a fact of life, unless you are a plant.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun.
Largest rifle in the world.
Legal for US civilians to own.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I live in NH and we have some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation and are ranked 47th in incedences per capita of violent crime. Rampage killers don't care about gun laws, but maybe if there was better help to identify and treat this it could have been prevented. This person is a sick fuck and gun laws wouldn't change that. FWIW: I don't own a gun
Yeah, more people firing weapons with panicky children running around, what could go wrong?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The guy's already dead. Personally I think they should just never release his name or any pictures. To twisted wastes of life like this guy, infamy is all they think they can achieve. Take it away from them.
But that is hard... You are telling me that we should care about our fellow man and help him? That costs money...
As did I (in the UK around 20 years ago) - the guns were kept in a safe in the gun club, in a safe bolted to the inside of a car while being transported to a safe at another gun club, or were in use on the range. No other place. Worked fine. If you want to have a gun in a public place then it's for killing people, whether in defence or offence, can't think of any other reason (apart from threatening to kill people, which is much the same thing).
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Except we have the rest of the industrialized world that proves your point false. Look at the numbers dead from gun violence in almost any modern 1st world country that bans guns and you'll notice that per capita, we have shitloads more.
The reason why is we have the guns everywhere, legal or not.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
In the UK we had strong gun laws introduced each time a crazy did something like this but the truth is that each of those crazies had done lesser crazy shit before they went postal. The guy who did the Hungerford massacre in 1987 had take a gun into work to threaten someone and the police had not taken his guns or his license away from him. It should have been the police that were looked at for not enforcing the law as it was rather than introducing new laws. New laws will not make things better. Teachers should not be carrying guns, that is more stupid. Do you really think that teachers never go crazy? I am one and I often want to kill a student. We should have more steps to look at who, good or bad, has a gun. It should not be right, it should be a privilege that can be revoked.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
More guns will solve the problem!
Fewer guns will solve the problem!
When, in reality, each has it's own set of problems, and both sides are more interested in the idea of being right, and having things a certain way, than what is actually best.
Get the fuck over yourselves, people are hurt and you are using it to fucking proselytize. Enough playing devils advocate to a lot of this shit, pointing towards a more moderate view. You're all a bunch of arrogant bastards who don't give a damn who the fuck gets hurt, so long as you can twist it towards your pathetic agenda.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
I do. It's much more relevant now than any other time.
Criminals don't abide by the laws, but with good enforcement and harsh sentencing for criminals using a gun the chance they'll carry one (and use it) decreases.
Britain has harsh gun laws: it's pretty much an automatic minimum-five-year jail sentence if you handle a gun without a license. Shootings are rare, mass-shootings + suicide far rarer, and accidents (child getting gun, etc) very rare too. Knife crime is possibly more common that the US (I haven't checked), but I prefer it that way.
Some criminals have guns, but they're careful with them. They're kept hidden somewhere (hidden in a relative's house, and carried to and from the scene by a young gang member in an attempt to avoid the penalty for possessing a gun).
For example, 12 years for possessing a firearm, ammunition and knives with intent.
Or 18 months for a 13-year-old holding a gun for an older gang member.
The rest of us living in civilization would like to see some gun control.
Would you also like periodic, systematic door-to-door, room-to-room searches with backscatter X-ray machines? Because that's what it'll take to get all the guns out of the cities if you don't take them out of the country.
It has been conclusively shown again and again that the purpose of the second amendment is not to fight zombies, but to resist tyranny. Banning guns from where the population is centralized will have the opposite effect. Many of us own guns without shooting up schools, and while suicide is very very low on my list, shooting up a school isn't even on it so I have what I consider to be a healthy self-regulation mechanism; I would remove myself from the equation long before I would ever do anything so abhorrent. But it might be worth mentioning that having my right to defend myself taken away from me is also not on the list of things to do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
citation provided asshole
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Except European countries have very low amounts of gun violence precisely because they strictly control guns with laws.
The trope that if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have gun implies that mass amounts of outlaws will have guns.
The facts are that this is not the case; Europe does not have mass amounts of people going around shooting people wile defenseless citizens do nothing.
face it: Less guns= less gun violence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
guy blew up a school over taxes.. no guns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing
169 killed..no guns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
3000 killed.. no guns..
Yep.. some more laws will make us safe!!
I have to return some videotapes...
You Sir are an idiot. Computers have multiple primary uses that are indispensable for the life of everyone. Hacking a computer to kill somebody requires significant skill and fair amount of luck. In contrast beneficial use of guns in our society is extremely limited. Apart from law the enforcement and army, they are used exclusively for entertainment (hunting, target shooting, propping the confidence of people with small dicks). Yet they do not require any skill to kill anybody you wish to, particularly random by passers and elementary school kids. So spare us the stupidity of the "guns are tools, guns do not kill people, etc". So people should have access only to the armaments they have a reasonable use for. They should be licensed, and inspected regularly. We do this for cars, why aren't we doing this for guns?
fallacy.
1) Gun laws aren't an oxymoron by any definition.
2) Being a criminal does not equate to getting a gun.
3) Gun laws make it harder for criminal to get guns,. And it keeps getting harder.
4) Crime drops when gun laws are enacted.
5) If having a gun was illegal, you would have an opportunity to know someone was going to kill people when you found them with a gun.
6) Same thing if someone was getting Ammo.
7) teacher firing a someone one in a panic situation means more people would have been likely to die.
8) How many gun deaths are their in Japan?
All the evidence shows, overall, people are safer with very strict gun laws. You can make trite logical fallacy all you want, becasue that's all you have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Irrelevant. There would be far, far more OTHER incidents (kids getting hold of the guns, teachers unable to cope with the stress of teaching and seeing an easy way out, etc) which would have led to MORE deaths.
Oh, so now teachers are the sociopaths and we don't know how to make a working safe? Lovely.
The hard data shows far more crimes prevented by guns than caused by them. There's nothing to indicate that this would be any different in schools, and quite literally - we have most massacres occurring at schools. It does not take a genius to see that madmen are incentivized to rampage where they can expect no return fire.
Sorry that reality doesn't fit your fear conditions, but we ought not base policy on your misunderstanding of how the world works. Especially a policy that takes away a teacher's right to self (and mutual) defense. I, for one, would be much happier if my kids' math teacher had a gun (in a safe) at school (I know he's an excellent shot). I'd gladly contribute to the school armory fund.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Soooo wrong.
The question is: what kind of guns should what kind of people be allowed to own?
If you want to counter government you need bazookas, hand guns are totally useless. Still bazookas and high explosives are banned from practically everybody, especially from criminals and mentally unstable.
Then, this kind of people should not be allowed to own/have guns. How do we stop that? Saying "only criminals" ... well, I sincerely hope other people try to limit criminals "freedom".
And yet, the number of gun related deaths does't even make the top 10 causes of death. More than 37,000 people in the US dies in car accidents last year. Approximately 11,000 died due to gun violence. Let's outlaw cars today.
How is using a gun for target practice anything but its intended purpose?
That's like saying using a hammer to pound in a thumbtack is not using the hammer for its intended purpose because a thumbtack and a nail are two different kinds of targets.
The intended purpose of a gun is to lob a hunk of lead at its target. There is no "intended target" for all guns any more than cars are only intended to go on the freeway. Just like the driver decides if he wants to take the freeway, the avenue or the back streets, the shooter decides what the intended target is... not the gun.
I happen to like target shooting (I prefer a muzzleloader... I find it more fun), but I don't hunt and I've yet to have the urge to shoot someone with it. Man, they really should not sell me a gun since I'll probably never use it for its 'intended use' of killing something.
Really? Trolling makes you sicker than 18 dead children? Really? How is life as a sociopath?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
The fucking fucker's fucking fucked. Fuck!
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Right, it does. How much did we just spend on the election? Let's tax that. Stupidest waste of money I've seen yet.
This system works and take out the crackpots.
What probably helps too is that we take more care of the "crackpots" here. Free (ish, depending) medical care, including mental health care.
Close the "gun show loophole" and then we'll take the "It makes it harder for fucking normal people" line seriously...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
That's a straw man. Guns have no purpose other than *killing*. So maybe we should ask ourselves, who has a legitimate need to kill, and what tools do they need to do it? A hunter might need a hunting rifle. A police officer might need a hand gun. I'm not sure why anyone outside of deployed active duty military or on-duty swat team members need an assault rifle.
Case in point http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/in-china-22-school-students-stabbed_816680.html
Yeah, and I only use my grenades to juggle.
We already have the legal framework for making it illegal for a "lunatic" to possess firearms. The problem is our system for detecting, handling and treating such people is seriously deficient. Alarms were up everywhere for the guy at Virginia Tech, yet nobody pushed it through.
Ban knives too, 22 kids were also the victim of a mass stabbing at a school in china.
Guns are not the problem. Fucking nutjobs are the problem.
All the children in China survived.
Why? Because the attacker was not armed with a semi-automatic rifle firing .223 ammo. Guns are the problem because they take a bad situation and make is enormously worse. They are the multiplier.
Yes because it's unfair to the gun lobby. How are they suppose to pretend that gun violence isn't a problem during times like this.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
If I look at the cross section of my friends who are NRA members, most are Republicans. Of those, most are for limiting all government programs, but especially those which treat "fake" illnesses like mental instability. They post about how the government shouldn't be providing social services because it raises the taxes which chip away at the money they work for every day in their jobs.
Nobody in the NRA ever seems to be asking Congress to fund programs to evaluate and assist the mentally unstable. Quite the opposite, they're more likely to call them weirdos or outcasts or cheats, living off the government dole and asking for service after service for nothing. These are the same people who made fun of the little kid in high school, or hurled epithets from their truck window at the way they dress or called them godless fags as they walked by on the street.
And, for the record, a crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be better. (1) the total death toll would have been lower and (2) the chance of the person going through with it would have been lower, as it's hard to light your own death fuse. It's why most suicide bombers don't actually activate their own explosives - they're remotely detonated by handlers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The are preparing to use the gun as best they can for the guns primary purpose: To Kill.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
PROTIP: Correlation is not causation.
The US simply has a very high level of desperate and crazy people. Masses and masses of insane religious schizos, extreme poverty gradients, generally being an anti-social dog-eat-dog society (Which is the cause for the former two.) aka. ultra-capitalist law-of-the-jungle feudalism, extreme obsession with wars and murder and hate...
Under all those things, the actual effect of the people losing the freedom because they can't stage a revolution anymore simply becomes invisible. And the possibility of staging a revolution was the whole point of keeping the population armed. If anything they are not armed enough... with weapons and defense against social engineering (aka lobbyism aka politics aka marketing aka PR aka news aka propaganda aka churches)!
Because the reason they didn't already have multiple revolutions is because they are grown to be passive-thinkers without an actual free will, completely under the control of social engineers.
Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Before this was the Empire State shooting. Before that, the Aurora shooting. Before that, the Tulsa shooting. Before that, the Chardon High School shooting. And that's only 2012. We're quickly coming to a state where gun control discussion is silenced the whole year because there is always a shooting nearby.
A gun in a safe may not be of much use. It would be almost a worse tragedy if you had to resort to throwing a safe at someone. Before this misery in Connecticut today, I saw a surveillance video from earlier in Spring. Two guys try to hold up what appeared to be a slot machine parlour. One geezer was out of his seat and shooting the bad guys about three two five seconds after they announced the holdup. No trying to remember a safe combination for him.
Their they're doing there hair.
Note that it says "injured", and not "killed."
Cynical Idealist
Who would you rather face? A knife wielding attacker or a gun wielding attacker?
I thought so.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
In order to kill somebody with a knife, you need to really, really want to. You need to consider the biology, see them as a person. You need to work at it.
To kill someone with a gun, you need to be in the vicinity of the person and you need to point at them. You don't need to humanize them at all.
There is a difference.
4 people died from the knife attacks in Akibahara. You can bring up 100 knife attacks, and I'll show you 1000 shootings that had more deaths. You can actually defend yourself from knife attacks, and staying out of arms-reach of the attacker provides 100% protection from knife attacks. None of which work against someone with a gun. Again, what is so god-damn hard to understand about guns being inherently more dangerous than any other tool available, and guns having exactly one purpose: to kill?
Yes, the people going on these rampages are insane. But do we need to outfit every person with an arsenal, and wait for insanity statistics to kick in? And no, arming everyone on campus isn't the solution. One, you just guarantee who the first victim is (the teacher). Two, you guarantee that there'll be plenty of friendly fire accidents. Or do you really want to now argue that professionally trained people in the Army and Police are somehow less able to avoid friendly fire than untrained civilians?
The only thing insane here is the idea that guns are somehow the same as knives or toasters, and that they need to be treated exactly the same.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
the number of people killed by gun FAR out number the number of people who may have been saved becasue they have one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"It has been conclusively shown again and again that the purpose of the second amendment is not to fight zombies, but to resist tyranny."
Sure. Like you'll be able to stop tanks, fighter jets, drones and professional soldiers with automatic rifles with your .45 peashooter.
If you believe that, there's a handful of people in Syria who'd like to have a word with you.
Let me be clear here. I'm very much against guns being as prolific as they are. The bullshit defeatist "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have them" argument is so abundantly wrong-headed it defies belief, IMHO. Just look at the gun statistics in England compared to the the US and you have a compelling argument.
However.
When you're looking for reasons why one society in particular has a record of atrocities like this, the first place to look is what makes that society unique. The famous NRA quote "It's not guns that kill people, people kill people" was an attempt to deflect criticism of the penis-extensions^W^W guns generally available (to which my and Eddie's retort is "sure, but the gun helps!"), but like all good propaganda it contains a kernel of truth. The real question then is "why are these people killing each other ?"
The real reason people are using guns to kill themselves and others is the society that they live in. The cold hard truth is that guns are available worldwide, and yet it's a peculiarly American thing (with some outliers) to go crazy and kill a bunch of children/people using your personal arsenal. What's wrong is deeper, I believe.
IMHO American society is in a slow but inevitable death spiral...
It's hard to reconcile that Americans give generously to charities with the first two points above, unless it's just Democrats doing the giving; which is unlikely :). I'd have to posit a discontinuity between the act of giving, and the way of living. It's as if people are ok with being nice to others if they choose to, but refuse to have the general good of society imposed upon them. That's a very odd form of independence, and smacks of biting off your nose to spite your face, but since I don't understand the motivation, I may have it completely wrong there. What's clear is that charitable donation is important to Americans, but charitable society is not.
Religion also plays its part. The society is highly religious, relative to the developed world but religion here in the US is a business like any other. The prime goal is not to try and guide society in the right direction, it's to funnel cash to the higher-ups in the religious power structure. People are told they're doing the right thing as long as the cash is flowing upwards,and the "church"'s goal is simply to continue to make sure that is the case. Upon examination, it's a good metaphor for what's wrong in the more-general society.
It adds up to an uncaring society, and I can see how anyone stuck on the lower rungs with seemingly no prospect of getting higher up could reject it, and similarly reject the rest of the social rules we all expect to be obeyed. There's no golden solution here, no panacea, you're not guaranteed anything will ever be perfect, but if the society had more general welfare built in, it's my personal belief there'd be less atrocities.
A society is by definition a group of people collectively living by a set of rules. As
Physicists get Hadrons!
A lot better than 20+ dead i imagine.
Yay! A gun control debate after a big shooting! And look, I'm in it now!
That said, I'm on the side of the gun nuts. And the problem is really inborne. It used to be that more people were packing but now there's a social stigma associated with it -- so fewer "normal people" are going to look into the gun show loophole let alone take advantage of it. This stigma is far weaker in states dominated by gun nuts.
Has anyone done a study on the frequency _and_ severity of these incidents in gun control and gun freedom states? It seems that red states are winning this one, with freak incidents like the famous incident in Texas decades ago involving high ground and a sniper rifle.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
You say easy access.... I do not think you realize just what you go through to even purchase a handgun. I served for 4 years in the Army as a Ranger. I have no criminal record, barely even a few tickets. No history of mental disorders at all. When I applied for my permit to purchase my first handgun, it took them 7 months to issue me one. Yet, the Army entrusted me with enough firepower on a daily basis to have demolished that school and killed everyone in it. I didn't and I never will. You can enlist in the military and go to war to protect the constitution and the people it serves when you are 17 years old yet you cannot own a car, a gun, drink alcohol or smoke tobacco. You can serve 4 years in the military before you are even old enough to purchase a handgun or drink a beer.
It is not the gun laws that need to be visited. It's the root cause of violence that has to be looked at, and some method of treatment for it needs to be found.
Gun laws seem to prevent lunatics in most 1st world countries from doing this same thing with the same frequency. For some reason we have more deaths per capita than most other civilized countries.
The simple existence of guns denotes that there will be situations like this. Remove the fucking guns and the legality for owning them and there simply won't be any guns available or such a reduced number that it is no longer the significant problem we have today.
So yes gun laws themselves don't stop lunatics and criminals, but if the guns aren't there legally in the first place there will be far far fewer guns available for the criminals...or are you saying that's a bad thing?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
What hard data? Cite?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Asshole eh? Wow.. somebody has sand in their vagina...
Yet Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. and oopsie...
I say this as a moderate Dem with a libertarian bent: civilian gun owership will not be outlawed in the US within your lifetime. Witness this and this. We need to disarm criminals, close the gunshow loophole, and find a mechanism to weed out the mentally unstable with respect to weapons purchases. The last is the trickiest, especially considering doctor patient confidentiality.
really, one case against the piles and piles of data in other countries that show, overall a clear reduction?
You are nothing but a cherry picking bastard. not that I expect much more since no data support your position.
2004:
* 16,750 suicides (56% of all U.S. gun deaths)
no, they wouldn't have found another way. Some may have, but probably about 25%. Most suicide deal wth the moment.
* 11,624 homicides (40%)
* 649 unintentional shootings, 311 from legal intervention and 235 from undetermined intent (4%).
~80 people a day die from guns
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Didn't you know? Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Actually, it's the bullets that kill people.
The Second Amendment says people have the right to bear arms, but it says nothing about ammunition ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... 0 dead in mass stabbing.
Sure, nutjobs are the problem, but guns let nutjobs translate nutjob impulses into mass death with the press of a finger. And many of the same people who advocate free, easy access to guns are the same people who suggest that government funding for things like mental health assessments and treatment is a huge waste of taxpayer money and an invasion of personal liberty.
I find it hilarious that on one hand, gun advocates argue that gun-control laws only affect law-abiding citizens, because criminals already all have guns. On the other hand, all the scenarios they play out to show how awesome guns are for self-defense involve either no guns on the criminal side, or criminals who do not pull their guns first. The first scenario is just a failure in logic, and the second scenario is just wishful thinking. The advantage always lies with the criminal, because they know their victim, while the victim doesn't realize they're about to be victimized. Unless there is an advantage in ability on the side of the victim, the attacker always has the upper hand.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
How many bombs are detonated every year vs how many shootings?
You're dead fucking wrong.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can.
Might.
Also, goes both ways. One guy might not be able to rape two women by himself, but with a gun...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
People do tend to scream when they get stabbed or see someone else get stabbed, you know.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I have mod points at the moment but not enough to knock down all the boneheaded arguments of the form "it's a problem of poor (insane) behavior, not the ease with which people can act out" - and the related, equally foolish argument "knives kill people too".
Is there any reason to think that mental health in this country is much worse than anywhere else? Not really.
Is it as easy to kill someone with a tool designed specifically for that purpose or with something else? If you followed the link to the knife attack in China (http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html), you'll see that 22 children were wounded, none reported dead. So, 22 wounded is the same as 27 dead?
There is a valid argument for legal gun ownership, but neither of these come close.
Yes, because a gun is going to help you against a tank or an F-15 circling above your house. Times change, what made sense 200 years ago might not make sense anymore...
The parent post was "+5 informative" but also incomplete. Yes, McVeigh was able to kill many without using a gun. But we're arguing about ease of acquisition here.
To do what McVeigh did you have to be pretty smart, do some clever planning, get large quantities of materials, and basically put a lot of stuff together.
To kill a bunch of school-age children like this all you need are assault weapons and a credit card, both of which are readily available and take little smarts, planning, or money.
That's the issue at stake here. Yes, making guns harder to get doesn't solve the problem. But it sure as hell raises the bar on being a casual mass murder (plus coward: I'm so sick of these guys offing themselves so they can't be punished for what they do. I want technology that brings them back to life so we can feed them into a wood chipper, feet first, dammit). Suddenly, in an American world where' it's f*king hard to get assault weapons, if you want to go cause mayhem in a kindergarten you're going to have to spend more money and time, do a lot more planning, and so on. Some of these nutcases will surely say, "nah, not worth it." Instead, one quick phone call and a credit card number, and you've got a murder on deck.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
None died.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws.
They're often not criminals when they get the gun. They might be people with criminal intent, but they're often not.
Crimes of opportunity and passion are usually committed with the tools at hand and account for a very large fraction of homicides.
I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
Yet you did.
In order to kill somebody with a knife, you need to really, really want to
I think the guy who did this latest shooting really really wanted to kill people.
Yes, that's my point. Detractors of gun control are using this sensationalization to silence discussion, accusing proponents of politicizing $nearest_tragedy every time gun control gets mentioned. In two weeks somebody will considering approaching the topic and you'll see Fox News frothing at the mouth in reference to this shooting.
And if you are not locked in a closet with it, you probably won't die to the concentration of gas that you can produce from household cleaner concentrations of bleach and ammonia.
I will always walk around unarmed, as do the overwhelming majority of people in modern day America (let alone the UK). With that in mind, I'd rate my survivability as far higher if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a metal club or a knife than I would if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a semi-automatic handgun.
Can I imagine life with a caved-in skull? No more so than having my brains blown out. But can I imagine life after being smacked in the ribs with a crow bar? More so than after getting a couple of bullet-shaped holes in my chest.
look at the number of murders per 100,000 people in the US versus other western countries with stricter gun laws
Hmm, you're talking about Greenland? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_world_by_intentional_homicide_rate.png
...is that folks are using this story as a political foil.
18 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN ARE DEAD! VIOLENTLY.
However, the very first thing that people think of is the age-old political battle about guns.
This kind of abstracting our fellow humans into avatars is not something that I particularly like about modern times.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
The overlooked word is 'countries' which is significantly different than city or state. Gun crimes would likely decrease if the entire country were locked down. Given the porous borders of cities and states in America, strict gun laws in one area would only have a minimal effect.
Apparently in 1998, there were 121 accidental firearm deaths in children 15 and under.
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/whitney.pdf
Much better than 20+ dead.
If a normal person suddenly becomes unhinged which do you think they'll be able to do immediately, buy a gun or build some sort of explosive?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
And I thought people on slashdot knew about logic. No one said the only wai to kill people is with guns. Your counter argument doesn't counter the argument.
My
Knives are freely and readily available in China. Why did none of the victims fight back and stab the perp?
That's what it comes down to, isn't it? There are plenty of people who want to own guns for whatever reason, and value this higher than a few dead kids every now and then. "For the children" only works as an argument when it's someone else that gets hit with the direct consequences.
Strip all the bullshit away, and what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
a better comparison would be how many students died in school due to lightning strikes, shark attacks, or terrorism compared to school shootings. I assume they're all very close to zero. So no, you shouldn't be worried about lightning strikes yet.
And if the killer had had no gun no one would have been shot.
Yeah, it's just so hard to drive an ammonium nitrate bomb up to a building.
Driving is easy. Building your own bomb is harder.
Why did McVeigh have to build his own bomb? Because bombs aren't sold in bomb stores, or at bomb shows. Because society recognizes that bombs are too dangerous to sell to the general public.
Why do so few other crazy people follow McVeigh's example? Because it's a lot of work. Buying a gun and shooting people with it, on the other hand, is relatively easy to do.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The article you quoted mentions that gun crimes in Chicago are down 9% overall. 438 deaths this year. Article mentions 900+ homicides in the early 90s. I think you may have accidentally posted an article that agrees with the person you were attempting to refute.
The shooter wasn't a parent from what I've read. His mother was a teacher. He shot his brother at home, went to his mother's kindergarten class and shot her (as well as a bunch of other people). There aren't words vile enough to describe this guy.
All I know is that I'm hugging my 2 boys (one of whom is in kindergarten) a few extra times tonight.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Japan, where I lived for 10 years, has *nothing* like this. Yes, the occasional crazy has been known to hack and slash up random people with a knife, but a) those incidents are much less frequent than in the US and b) the amount of damage is limited by the relatively indestructive nature of the weapons. And while it's not as simple as "nobody can get a gun", not having access to guns definitely limits the ability of nutters like this guy to wreak havoc on such a massive scale.
I hated a lot of shit about Japan but reading articles like this as my daughter prepares to enter kindergarten really makes me think hard about moving back.
It's not a citation per se, but you can ask anyone who lives or has lived in a country with strict gun laws how many gun massacres they have each year, and the answer is going to be a hell of a lot less than the ridiculous number we have here in the US. Connecticut School? Oregon Mall? Sikh Temple of Wisconsin? Aurora movie theater? Jesus.
I'm not talking about overall violence.
Given the choice between the two, I'd rather live in a world where there a good chance of getting robbed than a good chance of getting shot.
The occurrences in Japan and China are exceedingly rare. A few knife massacres in a nation of >1billion is not the same as having a mass murder per week with guns in the US.
And you did not refute my point.
LESS GUNS = LESS GUN VIOLENCE
There are thousands of weapons collectors, shooting competitors, and enthusiasts who have gone through the process to own Class III weapons. Only two murders have been committed in the last 50 years using legally obtained automatic weapons, and in one of those the perpetrator was a law enforcement officer. But rather than require background checks, fingerprinting, and registration, the NRA and other fanatics want semi-automatic handguns, shotguns and rifles with quick-change magazines to be available off-the-shelf and on-demand for any reason. The system to regulate Class III weapons has shown itself effective at keeping powerful weapons out of the hands of hooligans. But the fanatical NRA is going to ruin gun ownership for everyone because of the irrational fear of the "slippery slope" phenomenon.
There are other countries that enjoy high rates of gun ownership, such as Sweden, but officials simply ask a few basic questions, like 'do you have a hunting license?' or 'do you belong to a shooting club?' If neither, why do you need a gun? Of course, Sweden has a low rate of violent crime so self-defense is rarely a valid reason. Collectors can own weapons also, but they need to show they have a valid collection, not just an armory of heavy weapons waiting for the apocalypse.
but if they were armed, do you think as many would have died in this incident?
The shooter apparently had body armor, so likely yes.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
The hard data shows far more crimes prevented by guns than caused by them..
I'm unaware of such "hard data". Cites please. Btw, if you are referring to John Lott's important work, note that the National Academy of Sciences reviewed this and did not back his core claims.
Incorrect. Europe has extremely strict gun laws. Could you point me to a few dictators of which you speak in Europe?
Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany...all have strict gun laws.
They do not have dictators. Your assertion is disproven.
Wait, fixing the root of the problem rather than the symptom?
HERACY!
This is what people don't understand. For every homicidal lunatic that goes and shoots up a school, there are thousands of responsible gun owners that are in danger of losing their rights because of knee-jerk reactions that do nothing to solve the problem.
How about we identify and cure the psychosis that causes someone to want to shoot up a school, rather than attempt to restrict the tool they use to shoot up a school?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
that's right and how many people's lives were saved by firearms? shitton more than 121. And 121 is less than 1 per million people, i'll take my chances with letting law abiding citizens own guns.
The 2nd amendment exists to guarantee the people of the united states retain the capability to wage war against the government.
Tell that to the people at Ruby Ridge.
Try acquiring your own Predator drone. Assert your right to keep and bear personal thermonuclear weapons. You might be able to buy a tank if you have the cash, but chances are it would be thoroughly gelded.
In 1776, a well-regulated militia could band together and cast its own cannons, bore its own rifles and pretty well put itself on an equal footing with a unit of the British Army.
These days you can't even come close. A lot of military technology isn't buildable by any single person or small group. But even when it is, it's often illegal to acquire it. There are more and more places where even the most basic weaponry is forbidden. Try asserting your Second Amendment Rights at an airport or courthouse.
The stereotype of the brave Patriot brandishing his gun at the US Government is a cartoon. A pitiful, pathetic joke. The reality is a mouse waving around a toothpick at a horde of cats.
So pardon if I laugh at the brave heroes. Our primary defenses against an unjust government lie in other areas these days. Including the fact that we've brought up the children who become members of the nation's armed forces to believe that the protection of the nation is more important than the protection of the government.
It's just as well that we don't have real 2nd Amendment rights, however. We live in a highly-leveraged age. It no longer takes an army to wipe out a city, just a suitably deranged well-armed individual. Four people can take down a skyscraper and they don't even need to buy or build weapons. And we get frequent reminders that there's no shortage of suitably-deranged individuals.
Please.
In some way, if the people want to revolt against their government they WILL get hold of real military grade weapon no matter what. You don't need to keep them constantly armed. I haven't seen any problems for the revolutions in Libya or Syria to arm them self.
If you are afraid of your own government, be sure to keep your police force small and don't allow them to have paid soldiers - force them to use conscripts instead. The only way an government can enforce control is through the military and the police so by don't having a big police force and no professional soldiers you reduce their power more than arming yourself.
Banning weapons would patch the symptom, but not cure the disease. (If weapons should be banned, it's another discussion - I don't wanna touch this issue now).
The main problem is that we allow all kind of nutcracks to go loose without restrictions at the same time we fail to uncover these nutcracks before they do any harm.
I understand I'm dangerously flirting with absolutism here. However, I don't like the way this is going neither.
I don't want kids being murdered (by weapons of any kind) at schools, and I don't want to see them jailed inside schools that looks like prisons neither.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Having much tighter gun control hasn't stopped school shootings in Canada. We've had multiple school shootings in Montreal (I can remember at least three), despite our much tighter gun control than the US.
And you don't even have to ban guns.
STOP SENSATIONALIZING IT.
These people who do this sort of thing has issues, one of them is typically a deep unsatisfied need for attention and people to pay attention to them. The fact that it'll be in the news for a long time to come just reenforces that need. Sure, they guy who did it is dead and it really doesn't get him any useful attention, but in his warped mind he got the attention he was craving.
Continually making this shit so high profile just encourages others to do the same thing. You HAVE TO DO IT BETTER THAN THE LAST GUY OR NO ONE WILL GIVE YOU ANY ATTENTION. If you aren't bigger with a more gruesome crime, the news will pass you over, then you don't get the attention you crave.
Stop blasting it over and over on the news. Don't say his name on TV or the radio. Don't acknowledge the persons former existence. Other loonies will take notice that doing so is no longer the way to get attention.
We do this too ourselves by broadcasting it to every radio, tv and cell phone practically WHILE ITS HAPPENING so that EVERYONE starts paying attention.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
so instead of just losing the money (and getting it back later through insurance) the geezer escalated the situation by actively using violent action through the use of a weapon.
is that a positive outcome?
did the two guys die?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country shows what you are looking for. If you go down that list and correlate it to the link you provided, in general, with few exceptions, countries with less guns have lass gun violence. There are exceptions, but the trend is quite clear.
Less guns = less gun violence.
Which is exactly why most firearms hobbyists, like myself, choose to get a concealed carry permit, if available in their state. Ideally, teachers would be allowed this option as well.
Many of the murders I hear about on the news go something like this "And little 12 year old Jimmy got his Dad's gun and shot the old man on the porch across the street because he wanted to take his new TV." Most of the murders that happen around here are from adults not keeping their fire arms safe and locked up. If adults cant keep the guns in a place where irresponsible people will wont get them then those adults should not have any guns.
Plants never kill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcher_plant never!
I agree with that, irresponsible people shouldn't have guns. And responsible people should.
You really think that would eliminate poverty?
Lets have some sanity about guns as a privileged and not a right
So, treason is cool now? Passing laws in direct violation of Constitutionally enumerated rights is fine?
While we're at it, let's make a list of other Constitutional amendments we prefer to ignore. How about those pesky 13th, 19th, and 24th as well?
Really? Because my home state of New Hampshire, with some very relaxed gun laws, has a rate of 0.43 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Compared to New York's 2.67, and California's 4.82 per 100,000... I'd actually say you'd have a hard time concluding that from the data you presented. California & New York both have much stricter gun control. Yet their per-capita rates are 6x and 11x the rate of New Hampshire, with its fairly relaxed gun controls.
In other words: Maybe the NRA has a point, and you can't just draw a straight line equivalence between "strict gun controls" and "lower gun homicide rates."
In other words: Maybe we need to look at the effectiveness of specific gun control laws (or, conversely, look at where the bulk of the maniacs committing mass murder are getting their supplies from), and develop sensible and effective gun policy that will actually lower the rate more than just saying "enact the harshest, strictest controls you can, and the problem will solve itself."
Not one, NOT ONE, of the over 100,000 legally-owned automatic weapons in civilian hands has been used to commit a murder in over 70 years. Even murders using illegally-owned automatic weapons are pretty rare.
Guns have no purpose other than *killing*. So maybe we should ask ourselves, who has a legitimate need to kill
Now that is a good question :)
Why have a law about murder with a particular tool, when there is a law about murder already?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Those are the number for accidental deaths of children. You know, children going into the gun cabinets of responsible gun owners and killing themselves or eachother? Or people who watched too many action films trying to save somebody's life?
Accidental deaths for adults are ten times higher.
And none of these 27 who died today are part of any of these numbers, they're in the "homocide" category.
Combined homocides are 100 times higher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ushomicidesbyweapon.svg
Accidental injury rates are *much* *much* higher.
China is a nation of 1 billion people. What is the rate of mass murders in China due to Knife Assaults?
In the US we have mass murders, on average, about 1 per week.
It amazes me that there are still people arguing that the best solution to the problem is to have *more* guns. There are far more armed civilians in this country than any other country on the planet, and yet these kind of events are happening increasingly often in America. Clearly this is not working as either a deterrent, or helping to keep people safe. The free availability of guns and ammunition is definitely making it much easier for the nutjobs to do an unbelievable amount of harm before the police, or anyone, can respond.
If you want "hard data", look at the number of murders per 100,000 people in the US versus other western countries with stricter gun laws
You can't make good conclusions based on just that alone. You'd have to take into account societal factors, poverty, et all. The US is not a homogeneous country like many Western European countries are.
As expected, most of the comments seek to blame guns. Well I've never had a gun so I have no personal axe to grind there, and I'm not even in the US but in the UK where guns are very strictly controlled. And yet, I don't blame this tragedy on Americans having guns.
Instead I blame it on three things that seem far more strongly correlated to nutters going postal:
1) The widespread violence on American TV and in films provides daily role models for the mentally unstable. Television is immensely powerful as an influence on weak or poorly educated personalities. In Europe we have nowhere near the American level of obsession with screen violence, sex is far more our adult cup of tea, which American religious fundamentalism suppresses.
2) A general dislike for social responsibility and extremely wide support for looking after your own interests and nobody else's is endemic in the US, a part of the national culture. Indeed, any suggestion to look after your fellow man is often greeted with total disdain. Clear minds can distinguish between lack of social responsibility and actual hatred of others, but the mentally unstable may not quite see that distinction because it is a rather thin one. It's a dangerous outlook to have on society.
3) The American Way (at least in cities) seems to apply far more pressure on people's lives than is typical in Europe. Our social safety nets like national health are powerful devices for giving people the sense that someone cares about them, and there is no strong cultural pressure to "succeed" in business here, nor to keep up with the Jones's. As a result, it is also rare here for people to feel like they're failures and to lose all hope for the future.
These are all important things that can make the difference between just tolerating another boring day and deciding to end it all and take others with you. Nutters are not created by guns, but by conditions in their environment, and there is no shortage of alternative methods of mass killing. Would anyone feel better if that person hadn't used a gun but instead locked the children in a room and sprayed it with gasoline? I don't think so.
Don't focus so much on the means by which this tragedy was perpetrated. The means are not your main problem.
One word: Mexico (and I live here).
And yet we have fewer murders here. Strange. Probably because we can defend ourselves. I love Indiana.
The MAD philosophy of the Cold War era worked - even with regimes which were not what we would consider the most stable.
Yes, it did work. And it worked because the men with access to "The Button" were aware of the real consequences of those actions and could think to the future to how those consequences would pay out. IE, the mindset of very very few teenage high schoolers.
This is how an american responds to suggestions that work in other countries: "But we're like, so .. different man. You can't possibly understand the challenges we face."
It's horseshit.
"Old man yells at systemd"
1) Gun laws aren't an oxymoron by any definition.
This is your opinion, but as you will see, you haven't supported it very well.
2) Being a criminal does not equate to getting a gun.
Obvious. What's the point?
3) Gun laws make it harder for criminal to get guns,. And it keeps getting harder.
Unfortunately, this just isn't true. Criminals have easy access to guns, even in places with tougher gun laws. As the GP rightly pointed out, criminals do not follow the law. That alone does not mean that guns laws have no effect on the ease by which criminals can obtain guns, so your theory could still be correct. However, the reality has shown that gun laws are far more effective at making it harder for honest citizens to obtain firearms for their own self protection than they are at preventing criminals from having guns.
4) Crime drops when gun laws are enacted.
Yeah... this isn't true either, one of the most-cited counterexamples being the steep rise in violent crimes in Washington D.C. after the gun ban of 1976. At best, as the NY Times pointed out, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Of course, this isn't the only counterexample, by far, but I only need one to prove your assertion incorrect, so I'll leave it at that.
5) If having a gun was illegal, you would have an opportunity to know someone was going to kill people when you found them with a gun.
Umm, no... You realize that the vast majority of armed robberies do not end in any shots even being fired, right? The threat is usually enough. Obviously the posession of a gun by a criminal does not imply his intention to kill. These points are so easy to counter, it makes me wonder at how serious you are.
6) Same thing if someone was getting Ammo.
Similarly false, and even more absurd.
7) teacher firing a someone one in a panic situation means more people would have been likely to die.
Most likely, you feel like you would panic in that situation and so you imagine in your mind that others would act as you think you would. Your imagination does not match reality. Common citizens are capable of training with firearms in order to react appropriately, and it really doesn't take much training. This is obviously true because many common citizens do train and choose to carry concealed weapons. Nobody is suggesting that it is a good idea for untrained people to use guns. The scenario you envision where clueless people flail their guns around in "panic situations" exists in some fictional hollywood movies and your own imagination.
In reality, it would have been a very good idea for the teachers to be able to opt to retrieve training (if they wish) and be allowed to keep a gun on their person for such a situation. The body count could have been much lower.
8) How many gun deaths are their in Japan?
Gun deaths are lower in Japan, so you assume this has something to do with gun laws? This is a simple case of the false-cause fallacy. In reality, crime, generally, is lower in Japan than the US. It follows that gun-related crime would also be lower, but it does not follow that gun laws have anything to do with this; that's just your assumption. A much safer assumption is that the US has culture and class-disparity problems, not to mention the dismal state of the mental health industry.
All the evidence shows, overall, people are safer with very strict gun laws. You can make trite logical fallacy all you want, becasue that's all you have.
Thanks for your little list, but it isn't really "evidence" so much as it is a list of incorrect assumptions. If you really want to provide some evidence for your claims, try to avoid taking logical leaps and instead try providing links to some real research or something.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
This is ridiculous. You can also run away from someone with knife, you can lock yourself in a closet, you can be 10 feet away and be relatively safe from someone with a knife. None of these things are true when guns are involved. Guns make mass killings very very easy, knives absolutely do not.
Which one is more efficient and cheaper? Which one will save more lives? Paying one or two guards who can't be everywhere and will always do nothing but call the police or actually taking the guns out of people's hands and making the place safer for everyone?
Engage the NRA reality distortion field if you like. The truth won't change.
Strip all the bullshit away, and what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
The difficulty seems to be that the people who think like this live in a world of mechanical cause and effect in which every individual death has a definite mechanical cause that is never related to the easily availability of a tool for killing people.
They don't seem to be able to grasp that making something easier means there will be more of it, so they aren't able to understand that easy availablity of guns neccessarily and inevitably leads to more people being killed by guns.
A precisely equivalent claim is: "Cars don't travel, people travel. Banning cars won't stop people from travelling. And lots of people who don't own cars still travel. I know someone who doesn't own a car, and they take the subway all the time. So eliminating cars won't change a single thing!"
We can all agree that anyone who made such an argument would have to be insane, but incontinent gun-addicts make it all the time.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Screenshot:
http://i.imgur.com/TqXhG.jpg
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Mental health is worse here than anywhere else. In other developed countries the mentally ill get access to therapists and medications. In the USA if you can't afford your Abilify ($600 in USA, $160 in Canada [price for US citizens without Canada's universal health coverage], $25 mail-order from India) this month, then you just don't get to have any.
Combined with no-questions-asked access to lethal firearms and a cult-like obsession with 'personal responsibility', you can see why we have these kinds of atrocities. Medically needy people in America see people just like themselves doing fine or thriving in "socialist" European countries, while in the USA they either pay 50% of their income on health care, rack up medical debt, forced to quit their jobs and "spend down" all savings - including 501k and 401k plans - just to qualify for the few situations Medicaid actually covers them (mainly children and their parents - single adults without dependents are out of luck until 2014 when Obamacare kicks in).
Something just seems off when the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth leaves its most vulnerable suffering sometimes worse than what is seen in third world countries. Suppposedly there should be enough philanthropists to magically fill in the gaps, but it is often quite deficient. There are non-profit hospitals with executives earning record salaries and bonuses, and endowments from donors that add up to billions, yet more and more often they are turning away those with limited ability to pay, or they suck dry all savings from a struggling family, even forcing them first to max out their credit cards and home equity lines before offering any charity care. If there is a delay in making these payments the hospitals are halting treatment, even for cancer. If they suspect you can ask or beg for money, they will halt treatment on a regular basis until you pony up the cash, and this is after you have already made several lump-sum payments of tens of thousands of dollars. Bill collectors will walk in with physicians in the middle of examinations and halt the exam if you "refuse" to cough up more thousand-dollar bills. If you doubt this just search Google about how hard it was for one family to afford treatment at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. And no, this isn't an issue just for the uninsured, there are too many cases where insurance denies essential coverage or limits are maxed out.
Another disconnect is the cost of a bachelors degree, which is free or low cost for many Europeans, but many in the US are overwhelmed by student debt and living worse than if they just pursued a skilled trade through an apprenticeship. The only thing government has done in the past 10 years is to close more escape routes from desparation situations, such as bankruptcy reform that leaves anyone earning $1.00 more than median income absolutely screwed for five years - and that's only if they stick to the plan and pay 100% of their disposable income to creditors, who are usually medical providers with billing practices totally out of sync with the actual costs for services.
This sort of disparity where you can have wealth beyond your wildest dreams if you are smart, work hard, know the right people and have good luck, or due to random misfortune, regardless of how hard you work or how educated you are, you can still find yourself struggling the rest of your life to provide your family's basic needs. If you're wealthy you pursue asset protection planning, including medicaid planning [that's right - the rich have plans to transfer their wealth so they can qualify for medicaid to pay their nursing home bills - Google it! ], to protect your fortune, so the wealthy can withstand such calamity. But there are no such plans to help those just starting out and haven't created or protected their wealth in time for when the SHTF.
This artificially created scarcity and disparity in the US economic system no doubt pushes many people over the brink. Our system has become much less about capitalism (which isn't all bad) to a system of survival of the fittest. In a country with too many guns and too many untreated mental nutcases, trust me, you don't want to play the survival-of-the-fittest game.
Don't be a dick. "Prayers are with you" is shorthand for "I feel powerless to help this situation personally and I'm hurting, so I'm doing the one thing I can to help me deal with this horrible situation." Yes, we get it that your lack of religion makes you a more intelligent, enlightened, and good looking person. Golf clap for your superiority. But one of your neighbors is grieving and the best you can come up with is to demean his coping mechanism?
Did telling him his religion is stupid make the world a better place? No? Then gloat in private, please.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'd also like a clear amendment to the 2nd amendment, but I figure the gun nuts would be just as unreasonable about that.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Me thinks you listen to Glen Beck too much.
Get real, no such thing. Most of Europe have extremely strict gun crimes and no dictators. One maniac went around with a shotgun shooting people in UK previous year, it's still talked about. It's a daily occurrence in USA, not even worth time on local news.
Judging by the charts here it looks like there were about 200,000 homicides with guns in the last 20 years (not counting suicides). So... a little more concerning than lightning strikes.
Ever notice how cowards like this never go on a killing spree at the gun range?
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
You have to be the biggest fucking piece of shit to pull something like this.
Sigh, I wish Slashdot had a minimum age.
Has it occurred to you that someone who goes to kill a large number of children might be mentally ill? Spend some time reading up about insanity in the legal sense.
They should quit releasing these douchebags names as they are absolute nobodies.
His name is already out, less than 12 hours later. What's the rush, aside from vigiliantism? His family and friends will be vilified, even though they probably had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Please help metamoderate.
I think it's highly indicative that you chose a misogynist insult in relation to a gun violence discussion. Women-hatred and violence have been vile bedfellows forever
I was not agreeing with him. It was to point out his absurdity. Just because criminals don't follow the law is no reason to not have the law. Laws are not only deterrents but also to provide punishment. Or are you goong to claim we should abolish laws against murder since criminals will do it anyway?
Murder, theft, rape are BEHAVIORS. These are actual morally wrong acts. You have to make certain actions illegal for a basic functioning society. Yet the idea of making the possession of certain things illegal is relatively a new concept. The idea here is that the illegal item is so strongly correlated with an illegal ACTION, that possession implies action. That is why cocaine is illegal. If you possess it, you're guaranteed to be using or selling it, and not simply keeping it safe one day for controlled pain relieving purposes for when SHTF.
Gun control is very different. Unlike cocaine, there is NOT a strong correlation that simply possessing a firearm implies murder. Note, I said murder not kill. Murder is wrong, killing is not necessarily so. Yes a gun's true purpose is to kill. Most people own a gun for self defense, to kill in self defense. Killing in self defense is morally and legally justified. Its justified just like being able to work and earn a living - its far more messier and gruesome, but your right to defend yourself is not less than your right to work and earn a living - both are for the purpose of the pursuit of one's happiness, or life.
The discussion our government needs to have - but likely won't have because "it's too hard" - is of mental health and mental health care in this country. We still live in a country were people with mental health issues are chastised and treated as irregulars to be shamed. We have the ability to help these people but we don't do anything, and end up with this.
... well, possibly ever. I would favor leaving gun laws alone for decades if we instituted universal health care immediately. We are dealing with people that we can help, but we instead as a society opt not to.
And of course this is all made a thousand times worse when these people lose their jobs - and lose their health care as well. This leaves them in a place where they are no longer able to get the help they need to become healthy and contributing members of society. Eventually, they end up doing this.
I am far more liberal than any president this country has elected since
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
How many Americans here own or have access to some type of firearm?
I'll take a rough guess of 70% of Americans on this forum have access to a firearm
(Feedback requested: Would you say that is an under or over estimation??)
OK now's the kicker!
How many of you are "PART OF A WELL REGULATED MILITIA"?
I'd guess around 10% (I'm including Ex/army and police as "militia style" entities)
So 60% of Americans here illegally own or have access to a firearm!
Read your 2nd amendment and correct me if i'm wrong...
it's not new laws you need. It's enforcing of current laws around the 2nd amendment!
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
There's nothing to indicate that this would be any different in schools...
In fact, the scant evidence we do have points quite the other way. But when a teacher or student (college) intervenes in a shooting, somehow this seems to not be newsworthy.
So why don't these madmen randomly attack police stations and monster truck rallies?
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
The Aussie laws were changed some 20 odd years ago to ban automatic weapons, it has not made a significant difference in the number of gun deaths (~200/yr). However it has made a repeat of the massacre that triggered the laws virtually impossible to anyone but a trained sniper. There are plenty of legitimate reason to own a gun, here in Australia "self defense" is not one of them. There is (currently) no legitimate reason for owning a semi-automatic weapon in Australia. Hand guns have never been culturally popular in Australia even when you could buy them at the hardware store. However you can still own one if you join a registered gun club.
Gun laws are not black and white, it's not an binary choice between guns and no guns. If Uzi's are available to the general public then you will get more people dying at these kind of massacres simply because that is what those weapons are designed for. When semi-auto are available you will get massacres like this one, simply because they make it possible. When all that is available is a musket, someone will just take it off him after the first shot.
Arming primary school teachers won't deter anybody, nor is it a sign of a healthy society. These nutters have decided to go to war with society, they know it's a suicide mission and that's often part of the goal. If they had a nuclear missile they would use it, so it's probably best not to give nuclear weapons to the general public, I agree with the laws here and draw the line at semi-auto's, others will place it elsewhere. The culture of the country affects normal people, nutters want to blow it all up. Where US/AU differs culturally with guns are the attitudes surrounding shooting people to protect property, most Aussies think people are more important, even if they do deserve to be shot. Carrying any sort of weapon for self defense is seen as a somewhat cowardly behavior, but someone living in the bush should still keep a shotgun handy to scare off drunken troublemakers.
We still have just as many nutters, there was one in the news the other day, he whacked a cop with a hammer without warning, stole his gun, then ran off to a nearby park and shot himself in the head.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is there any reason to think that mental health in this country is much worse than anywhere else? Not really.
Actually, I think that there is. People in other countries with accessible guns don't go on rampages nowhere near as often, even adjusting for population and number of guns available.
Is it as easy to kill someone with a tool designed specifically for that purpose or with something else?
You're asking the wrong question. Is it easy to construct a tool designed specifically for the purpose of killing many people at once, which is not a gun? The answer is yes, and they have seen widespread use by terrorists already.
A law against theft or murder restricts a particular unlawful activity.
A law that bans possession of firearms restricts a particular item on the grounds that it might be used for unlawful activity.
The more direct analogy is laws banning possession of lockpicks. On which opinions vary widely, from outright ban, to "can own with a license, need to show reasonable cause", to legal unless used in commission of a crime. If you want to argue the same spectrum for guns, by all means, let's do so.
Given the choice between the two, I'd rather live in a world where there a good chance of getting robbed than a good chance of getting shot.
When the probabilities are about equal, sure. What if they're not? Say, legalizing gun ownership would mean that you're twice as likely to get shot by a criminal, but ten times less likely to get raped (as a woman).
LESS GUNS = LESS GUN VIOLENCE
Compare the availability of guns to an average citizen in the USA and Switzerland with their corresponding gun violence rates. It's not as simple as that.
It's hilarious that you use Jamaica as an example to refute me.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31474297/ns/world_news-americas/t/us-guns-fuel-jamaicas-gang-wars/
How many firearms are in Jamaica are unlicensed? Do you think the huge crime rate there has anything to do with the huge amount of smuggling of UNLICENSED firearms that come from the us? The hilarious thing is, most of those unlicensed smuggled guns that are seized are traced to..guess where...Florida.
"Jamaica and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives find most of the seized weapons come from three Florida counties — Orange, Dade and Broward — all with large Jamaican populations, according to Shields."
Pretty funny.
Id rather live in a world where I can run from a knife or a beating than deal with guns.
Why don't you ask the British which they prefer? They have this huge wave of thuggery supposedly. DO you think the British would like to introduce guns into that mix?
Why, you destroy them. You offer people money to bring in their guns so that they may be destroyed. You ban the sale of new assault rifles. it will take time, but the other option is too terrible to imagine...an ever increasing supply of guns.
4) Crime drops when gun laws are enacted.
Given that, perhaps you can explain why the states with the most permissive carry laws in the US have the lowest rates of violent crime?
7) teacher firing a someone one in a panic situation means more people would have been likely to die.
One "oops" beats 28 "gotcha!"s
All the evidence [I just made up] shows, overall, people are safer with very strict gun laws.
In the immortal words of Wiki - [citation needed].
I have to reply to your comment even though I promised myself to stay out of this thread.
Don't become too bitter and try to understand that not everyone is simply trying to win arguments, although some are. Everyone is enraged as you are at this tragedy. However, people have colored perceptions and that affect how they will respond to what just happened. For example, if you see my posts, I'm more left than right, and my first reaction to this afternoon was, "This is terrible!" and after my emotions were riled, my next gut feeling was, "enough is enough! how can anyone justify these lax gun laws anymore?..."
However, a right-leaning person might see this and their first reaction is "This is terrible!" and after their emotions are riled, their gut feeling would be, "enough is enough! why weren't any of the adult allowed to bear arms, they could have stopped this asshole!..."
My first though wasn't, "this will score me points on slashdot!" and I'm sure no libertarian or rightie thought, "shit, now I have to make arguments on slashdot." We're all fucking mad and we're all just being emotional in our own way. At the end of the day, this didn't need to happen, and we all agree on that.
Don't kid yourself, the toll can vary.
Going Postal, Pre-Pistol - How did mass murderers operate before the advent of modern weapons?
Hundreds of other mass murderers have perpetrated their crimes without automatic firearms. Frenchman Pierre Riviere killed his mother, sister, and brother with a bill hook in 1835. In 1932, Julian Marcelino, a Filipino immigrant of relatively small stature, managed to kill six and wound 15 on a Seattle street using only a pair of blades. In 1915, Monroe Phillips shot seven dead and wounded 32 with a shotgun in Georgia.
Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns.
The U.S. mass murder rate does not seem to rise or fall with the availability of automatic weapons. It reached its highest level in 1929, when fully automatic firearms were expensive and mostly limited to soldiers and organized criminals. The rate dipped in the mid-1930s, staying relatively low before surging again in the 1970s through 1990s. Some criminologists attribute the late-century spike to the potential for instant notoriety: Beginning with Charles Whitman’s 1966 shooting spree from atop a University of Texas tower, mass murderers became household names. Others point out that the mass murder rate fairly closely tracks the overall homicide rate. In the 2000s, for example, both the mass murder and the homicide rates dropped to their lowest levels since the 1960s.
A mass murderer’s weapon of choice depends somewhat on his victims. Attacks with guns, fire, knives, and bare hands are far more likely to be directed against family and acquaintances than total strangers, while mass murderers prefer to use explosives against people they don’t know. Also of note: Those who use firearms in a killing spree turn the gun on themselves 34 percent of the time, while only 9 percent of mass-murdering arsonists take their own lives.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
PROTIP: Correlation is not causation.
But it can be a bloody big hint. And this one is a neon sign two stories high flashing "IT'S THE GUNS!"
For example: Australia severely restricted certain classes of firearms after a particularly bad mass shooting. The number of mass shootings in the 16 years since the change dropped by at least an order of magnitude. Prediction, experiment, result.
There were no significant complicating factors, we didn't have a major reduction in poverty, or improvements in mental health, nor changes in law enforcement which could explain the result. This is demonstrated by other crime rates not changing significantly during the same period.
Same country, same culture, same crime rate; single change in the law, single result.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Here's some hard data for the number of murders per 100k citizens in various countries. The US has a murder rate over 2.5 times that of any other country with strict firearms control so it does not seem to do anything to improve that. However the same article also has stats for property crime which suggest that the US does seem to do better there than other countries. Finally there is child abuse and neglect where again the US has a rate over twice that of other countries with firearm control.
So while are argument could be made that firearms may suppress property crime they seem to have an appalling effect on the rate of murder. Given that if I have to be the victim of a crime I would much rather be robbed than murdered it seems that firearms make things worse not better.
what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
"I want to enjoy peanut butter more than I want other people not die from peanut allergies."
"I want home lighting more than I want other people not die from electrocution."
"I want easy transportation more than I want other people not die in motor accidents."
I guess we all share an awful lot of contempt for human life.
Or maybe even if we consider each human life to be particularly sacred, things that account for 0.000001% of our mortality rate just are not worth making major sacrifices to prevent, and if we did bend over to address each possible threat at that scale, life would not be worth living in the first place.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Have you ever even met a gun owner?
I am a gun owner.
Yes, you have the casual hunters
That is the majority, at least from what I have seen.
for the most part, people take gun ownership seriously
No, most (civilian, non-police) gun owners take gun safety seriously, cleaning their guns diligently and making sure the action is open and the magazine is removed before they check their targets. Only a minority are out there training for any sort of realistic combat, and even fewer are training frequently enough for it to really matter.
people run through thousands of rounds drilling it in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, they'll only have two assailants and make it out with just a flesh wound.
Must be the same sort of people who think they are going to save their neighborhood from zombies/terrorists. I call it a fantasy, but maybe I am just too cynical...
Palm trees and 8
One of the teachers was a gun owner and owned multiple firearms.
Her son used them to murder twenty children.
Good morning shilly! A) Google me, Cylithria is my real name. I assure you that I am a woman. :)
B) "It's almost entirely done by men." - I assure you it is not. Women can and do hate women. I spent 20+ years working with Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, and Reservists or National Guard. The misogyny was almost nil. 20 minutes in a ladies restroom at a large event.... Sweet Butter Jesus the misogyny!
Sorry, I am not one to argue much. Think what you choose. IMHO the OP was not attempting a slam on women. If you ever encountered sand in a vagina you might see my point.
Have a great day.
Funny, Bruce... for someone with as many intellectual accomplishments as you have, how is it exactly that you missed the fact that you're advocating taking away someone else's right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Explain to me how depriving each and every one of your countrymen of a right endowed upon them by their Creator based solely on the actions of a person who clearly stepped beyond the boundaries of the social contract does not constitute blatant hypocrisy?
I have the same right to Life as everyone else here, including you, does. Derived from that right is the right of self-defense against all entities who transgress against us in proportion to the severity of that transgression. Should someone attempt to use lethal force against me, I am morally and ethically permitted to use the same in response: Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! As a law-abiding citizen with no criminal record, for you to exercise prior restraint against me, to deprive me of the ability to defend myself in a proportional manner to the threat, you are directly violating my right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. You are also purposefully giving the transgressing party an advantage they would not possess were I to have the Liberty to arm myself accordingly and as such are setting up the situation where the transgressing party is far more likely to kill me.
So, by advocating unjust prior restraint, you are:
1. violating the right to life
2. violating the right to liberty
3. violating the right to pursuit of happiness
4. violating the right to due process
5. aiding/abetting the initiation of force/use of violence against an innocent party
6. aiding/abetting the murder of an innocent party
So, in light of 1-6, can you explain to me how your actions, were they to become more than simple words, do not constitute a transgression against every person who is subject to your whims? Do you know what's ultimately sad about this? The crazy sonofabitch who shot up that school was crazy; presumably you aren't.
Last I checked, we're supposed to respect each other's rights, not stomp on them in an emotion-driven tit-for-tat to soothe our own bruised egos. You're supposed to be smarter than this, Bruce. It's not rocket surgery.