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10 Confirmed Dead In Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College
CNN and other sources report that an attacker, now in custody, shot and killed a
reported ten people, and wounded another 20, at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, about three hours south of Portland, and described by CNN as "technically a gun-free zone." Students are being evacuated to a nearby fairgrounds, and local authorities advise anyone to avoid the area of the college. Wikipedia editors are also quickly compiling information about the attack. More news on the attack is still breaking; expect updates here.
Seems like it means "opposition-free zone"
Perhaps it means that the law says "no guns allowed, unless you're a criminal and don't care about the law".
Notice all these shootings seem to be happening in "gun free zones"?
Frankly, college students are adults, they should be able to have guns on campus. Why not just make safe gun use and storage one of the first required classes? Rather than try and ban something that isn't going away, teach safe use and respect for guns and life.
What is the description of the shooter? Male? Female Black? Muslim? Mexican? Citizen? Legal Immigrant? Illegal Immigrant?
I would use the description "Criminal", but that's just me.
Maybe scumbag, dirtbag, douchebag, or asshole might be better options...
Pile of wormridden filth works for me too...
Anti gun lobbyists will say this is because of guns.
Pro gun lobbyists will say this is because there weren't enough guns
The rest of the world will look at America and wonder "what social/economic/cultural problem exists where there can be a few mass shootings a year?"
Everyone will argue for a month or so. John Oliver might say something about it. But after a month, everyone will forget this has happened. Then, several months later, there will be another mass shooting in the US and the cycle repeats itself.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
This has become a regular event in America. We can lay a lot of responsibility for this at the feet of the terrorist NRA and the corrupt legislators they pay off, with both these latter groups little more a bunch of bootlickers to the gun manufacturers. There are more than 300 MILLION guns in this crazy nation - so many that *anyone* who wants to get a gun can get one, one way or another. America is FOURTH in death by gun, after Thailand, Nigeria and Colombia; that's the company we keep. We have more murders by gun than any developed (and many undeveloped) nations. It's a national disgrace. More people have died by gunshot in America than were killed in all our wars! The NRA *actively* lobbies to defeat laws that will keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill persons, and on and on. It's a national disgrace. What about the rights of the 100's of thousands of people that have been murdered by gun in America - what about them?
"Notice all these shootings seem to be happening in "gun free zones"?"
No?
100% of shootings have occurred in a place with guns (by definition).
There have been many shootings in places with armed guards (D.C. Navy Base, schools with armed guards, firing ranges!). So no, not all these shootings "seem to be happening in gun free zones".
Gun violence is down across the board.
Well, there are a lot of gun free / highly-regulated countries with far less gun crime than the US. Maybe you should dis-empower citizens from making bad decisions / accidents. Oh, well. Slashdot, the land of libertarians, out of my cold dead (more likely dead than most countries) hands. Just wait a few more years and school shootings will be as passe and hum drum as rockets being lobbed over the Gaza / Jerusalem border.
Bye!
Perhaps it means that the law says "no guns allowed, unless you're a criminal and don't care about the law".
That is exactly what it means. I wish I had mod points, they'd be yours.
When will people understand that only law-abiding people pay any attention to laws? When will they grasp the concept that labeling something a "gun-free zone" doesn't magically do ANYTHING?
Criminals will still have guns and they'll still bring them into a "gun-free zone" no matter how many signs are posted.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Dan Hodges said it best:
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This has become a regular event in America. We can lay a lot of responsibility for this at the feet of the terrorist NRA and the corrupt legislators they pay off, with both these latter groups little more a bunch of bootlickers to the gun manufacturers. There are more than 300 MILLION guns in this crazy nation - so many that *anyone* who wants to get a gun can get one, one way or another.
You say that Americans having lots of guns like it's bad thing.
300 million guns in civilian hands and gun deaths have steadily dropping for the past 20 years or so. The obvious correlation is that more guns means FEWER gun deaths.
Go check your meds, you may have forgotten a couple.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Frankly, college students are adults, they should be able to have guns on campus.
Not all college students are mature enough to own a gun responsibly. As a young college student, I could've solved a vast array of social problems with a gun, either for myself or the whole campus. It wasn't until after I left school, worked a decade and came back to school to learn computer programming that I had the maturity to deal with school, especially since I was working 80 hours a week, taking classes at night and teaching Sunday school.
What about the rights of the 100's of thousands of people that have been murdered by gun in America - what about them?
What about my right to keep and bear arms?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The solution is not banning guns, the solution is a proper public health system and a respect for mental health, and being willing to lock up the mentally ill for treatment.
again with the gun free zone myth.
again with the reminder that almost no place is actually chosen on that basis, but rather that almost all targets/locations are chosen on the basis of a personal connection between the shooter and the location or someone at that location (workplace/school, boss/collegue, ex-spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/etc).
again, you wont care because facts aren't something youre interested in
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A mass shooting at a firing range?
You are full of shit.
Gun Free Zone means where the victims can't have guns.
Well, in all fairness ... there are plenty of other countries that are gun-free and others that allow citizens to carry guns and in both cases there are far fewer gun-related deaths than in the US.
Methinks this has very little to do with gun laws (I'm not for or against them). Maybe the US has some sort of social/cultural problem.
Your argument is faulty. Everywhere is a murder free zone, yet murders still occur. Should we legalize murder on the basis that if I murder my murderer before he/she murders me then I'll be safer? Laws are not designed in and of themselves to prevent crime. They merely describe the crime and the results if you should commit it. This is so that I can look at you, as a judge, decide I don't like you, and then have you executed for jay walking while allowing my BFF to pay a $5 fine for raping your mother.
This is Slashdot news why?
Not really. The military wants them young because kids are easily moldable to turn into soldiers — or cannon fodder — on the battlefield.
You're right. With 1/5 the population of the US, they should be having 'several' mass shootings per year, not zero. Fucking slackers.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
This situation will never really be fixed until the US wakes up to the fact that it is the only modern nation in the world that doesn't have a proper public healthcare system with guaranteed access to all, regardless of ability to pay.
Those of you who know me, know that I'm a far-right conservative, "they can take my gun from me from my cold, dead hands" type.
That being said, it is time for a national single payer health care system for everyone from birth to death, with no signups, memberships, co-pays, or anything else. Take all the money from medicare, medicaid, social security, etc. and put it into a national health service.
We have police and fire paid for by taxes, we have roads and airports paid for by taxes, we have a military, public education, and a hundred other things paid for by taxes. We have LONG since past the time of small government, yet we don't provide for the health of our citizens.
I would repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a national single payer health system. That isn't a popular idea among far-right conservatives, but it is time to do it.
People who have mental health issues need to be able to seek treatment. That is the only thing that is going to stop this sort of thing, we have people who are unstable who roam the streets and are untreated. They do something like this and everyone screams about guns.
It isn't about guns, it is about mental health care and access to it.
> When will people understand that only law-abiding people pay any attention to laws?
When will you understand that life is not binary? Crime is a spectrum, not an arbitrary line between us and them. Your kind of reductive analysis is not insightful - slogans don't inform, they obscure complexity.
What does "technically a gun-free zone" mean?
It means the news media is trying to stretch the "gun-free is safer" anti-gun propaganda in the face of the public becoming aware that gun-free zones are an invitation to mass murder and virtually all mass murders (and much other victimization) now happen in them.
"Gun-free zones" disarm the law-abiding people in them (so they can't shoot back and limit the carnage - and deter it from starting in the first place, turning them into helpless victims, but don't stop the attackers. Legislation (or private decision) to make an area into such a zone makes it a magnet for both nacent mass-murders and other victimizers.
A better term for such zones might be "free-fire zone" or "victim-rich zone".
By prepending "technically a", to "gun-free zone", they can make it sound different from the "gun-free zone" of the legislation. They pay lip service to the laws' unenforceability on bad guys. They recast the zones' danger into an enforcement problem, rather than a fundamental flaw in the concept. This helps to slow the propagation of the understanding that such zones are inherently more dangerous than unrestricted areas, that "The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.".
That helps the anti-gunners in their efforts to pass MORE restrictions, making MORE areas dangerous, and to give the police more power to search and otherwise oppress people in the name of solving the problem they created.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The answer is less guns, not more.
A right to guns does not even make sense, civilians would stand no chance against the US military. Besides, if people didn't rise up after the snowden revelations and rampant corruption, it's unlikely they are going to.
NO, the answer is health care. Plenty of other countries have more guns per capita than the US and don't suffer these issues. You know why? Because people are looked after and get the help they need, rather than some nonsense ridiculous purely free market approach.
The fact that in almost all of these incidents the shooters had mental issues should give you morons some type of hint....now, are you going to take it?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Annnd this is exactly what mod points are NOT for. They are not "I agree with you" tokens.
"That's just like, your opinion, man."
Seriously, I'll use my mod points however the fuck I like, Mr Mod Point Policeman.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There are also ones, where guns are very widely spread and yet gun-violence is lower than here.
But we don't need to go abroad — simply compare, say, Chicago, IL, where even a museum could not get permission to display a WW1-era rifle, with Austin, TX, where guns are easy to get... The strictness of the anti-gun laws and "regulations" (all of them obviously unconstitutional, BTW) simply does not correlate with gun-violence.
The entire US has this law known as "the 2nd Amendment", which declares arms-possession a right to be taken away from the bad, not a mere privilege to be granted to the good.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The sad thing is there is no reasonable discussion or compromise on either side of gun control. The NRA is one of the largest lobbyists in Washington, but not everything they argue for is good, but they fight everything because the gun-control lobby also will give no ground.
So both sides dig their heals in and give nothing.
This is sad and a mistake. One common argument is the "gun show loophole". It is misnamed, because gun dealers have to do background checks, even at gun shows. All it means is that private citizens can buy and sell guns without background checks within the same state, yet they can do this inside or outside of a gun show.
The fear of all gun transfers being "background checked" and thus having documentation is that sooner or later the US Government will pull an Australia and seize guns, and having records will make that much easier. Right or wrong, that is the fear from gun freedom groups.
A compromise might be, "amending the constitution to make clear that the ownership and possession of guns by private citizens is a natural god given right that may only be taken away in individual cases by a court of law that rules someone mentally incompetent." In return, all gun transfers get a background check.
I'm sure some people on both sides would not like even that compromise, but it would be a start. Both sides have to give something, or nothing will happen. We don't live in a nation where one side gets everything and the other side goes home empty handed. Or perhaps we do which is why nothing changes.
---
The other issue is that the government doesn't do very much to show that it respects the rights of citizens. Everything about guns is always about more bans, more restrictions. Want to impress the gun freedom side? Perhaps repealing the 1986 ban on select-fire weapons, in return for required background checks on every transfer might be something. It would show a give and take on the issue and that citizens do have rights.
Another thing they could give would be national concealed/open carry laws, respecting the right of the population to be armed, but in return, require training and safely classes for all gun owners.
---
These are ideas and attempts to find a reasonable middle ground, to offer something to both sides and to do something that would actually fix the problem, rather than paper it over with "guns are evil/guns are wonderful" arguments which accomplish nothing.
and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
Generally, the gun smuggling happens from north of the border, to the south... with the help of the ATF.
Yeah, an Illiberal web-site running an op-ed aiming to convince populace into obediently surrendering their rights. Surprise...
They fail, though. The only thing they even claim is "not a single case includes evidence that the killer chose to target a place because it banned guns". But they all (or most) did happen in a gun-free location. How do I know? Simple, if it weren't so, MotherJones would've highlighted this fact in the very title. They did a commendable job putting the 62 mass-shotings incidents over 30 years together, but, curiously, do not have a boolean column "Gun free zone Y/N" in it...
But the shooter picking a place because it is gun-free is only part of the problem. There is no one there to stop him — whether he was cunning enough to count on that or not.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If a wizard suddenly made it impossible for guns to exist in America; they could not pass across any border, the ones inside the country simply turned into nothingness, do you think the rates of assault and murder would instantly go down?
Yes, I do think that getting rid of the easiest at-a-distance point-and-click method of murder would result in lower murder rates.
Call me crazy...
Or do you think someone can commit mass murder on this scale with knives and baseball bats?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Are you really going to compare 2nd and 3rd world countries with a 1st world country? If you take the drug countries and war thorn countries out you're left with the US being in 1st place.
So in the US you have a 0.003% chance of being killed in your lifetime (based on average age of 82)
Compare with Canada (a direct neighbor with similar lifestyle BUT with gun control). You have a 0.0004% chance of being killed in your lifetime.
This means you are 7 times more likely to die from homicide in the US than in Canada. Now go ahead and explain how gun control doesn't minimize the problem.
What about the rights of the 100's of thousands of people that have been murdered by gun in America - what about them?
They have the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and their loved ones, just like everyone else.
Many people just don't want the responsibility.
When will people understand that only law-abiding people pay any attention to laws? And that is precisely why having "Speed Limit 30" in residential areas is a total waste of money. When will they grasp the concept that abeling something with a speed limit doesn't magically do ANYTHING? People will still drive through your neighborhood at 90 miles per hour no matter how many signs are posted.
"The campus has its own police force who have guns and are trained to use them"
You'd be surprised just how little training most of them actually have. You might be even more surprised how little recurring/refresher training most police get outside of very large cities. Many police fire at yearly range qualifications and that's it. Small to mid-size departments just can't afford it anymore. Even academies are cutting back on firearms training AND lowering the bar in some cases. For police that are 'gun people' they will seek out training and practice at their own expense. As for the rest... a gun is a tool required for the job, they will do the minimum required.
If you want an unsettling indicator, do some googling of officer involved shootings. When one or more officers are firing 10, 20, 30 rounds with reloads and hitting the suspect 3 and 4 times, I think it speaks to the level of skill. Yes, it's a high stress situation, but they are supposed to be trained to handle that too, no? In those situations you will perform like you train. Last training 5 years ago? Guess how you will perform...
The places with the highest rates of gun violence all have bans on guns
Incorrect. Places like Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, on and on all have strict gun control laws and very low rates of gun violence.
Israel has very low rates of gun violence too, but many people are packing. And soldiers always carry their rifles — even when going to beach for R&R — with two magazines each. It is not uncommon to see a girl in a bikini guarding a gun-pyramid, while her girlfriends are swimming, for example...
Whatever the reasons for lower gun-violence in Japan or Israel or what have you, the ban on weapons is certainly not the only reason. Whether it is even a contributing factor is not at all obvious.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You've just compared *all* homicides between two countries, as opposed to *gun* homicides to attempt to explain how it's a *gun* problem in one of those countries. I'll leave it to you to work out the flaws in that argument.
I would never, ever, ever draw my gun and fire at someone unless I had a clear and open line of fire, I was 100% sure of my target, and I was directly saving lives by stopping someone who was clearly intent on killing innocent people
Wow that is a great attitude to have. Good on ya. /notsarcasm The US is so lucky to have a licensing system in place that guarantees all gun owners have the same do no harm philosophy and basic competency in handling firearms. Oh wait, I'm thinking of the license required to cut hair (http://www.beautyschoolsdirectory.com/faq/state_req.php). Pretty much anybody not recently incarcerated can have as many guns as they want in the US which is why we need our politicians to spend so much time and effort fighting gun control. /sarcasm
The places with the highest rates of gun violence all have bans on guns.
What total nonsense. The country with the highest rate of gun deaths in the world is - according to wikipedia - Honduras. Up until 2007, carrying guns, concealed or otherwise, was completely legal in this country. Today it is still legal to purchase and own firearms. So, no ban.
Some others on the list have bans, but it's clear that there is no correlation between ownership rates, legal status, and death rates. So, banning guns doesn't stop people getting killed, and widespread gun ownership doesn't either. You can point to counterexamples in both cases. America has the highest rate of gun ownership, and while it doesn't lead the world in gun-related deaths (it's only at number thirteen, mainly behind fairly lawless countries I'd argue, but that's a tough call), it's certainly up there.
America does however lead the world in mass shootings - and that list doesn't even include school massacres (How is that even a thing? It's a serious question). Mass shootings are something different to regular gun violence. We're not talking about armed robberies, or criminals shooting each other down in the street. We are talking about crazy people. I don't think there's any reason to believe that America is home to more crazy people than anywhere else - I've been there plenty of times and Americans as a rule are polite, hospitable, pleasant and reasonable. It's a nice place.
So why do crazy people in America have such easy access to deadly weapons?
Banning guns from certain locations isn't the goal of gun-control advocates. The goal of gun control is to keep the guns out of the hands of the SHOOTER. If that means that a few law-abiding citizens can't get access to an M-16 for entertainment purposes, than so be it. Banning guns piecemeal from specific locations has never been promoted as a comprehensive solution.
You are drinking the NRA's cool aid + your links were crap and had nothing to do with statistics of Gun homicides per capita: a real measure of the social impact of Guns.
Since you like the Washington Post, try this
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
or the BBC
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
For civilized western countries, the USA gun homicide rate is 10 times that of comparable countries.
This is because
- You have freaking guns everywhere. Accessibility increases the homicide rate (kids find them, a bullet does more damage than a punch etc.etc)
- You have an African American problem. When a people group you beat on for hundreds of years get their freedom & guns: you've got a problem.
- The USA celebrates violence: You as a culture group are not mature enough to have guns as freely as you do.
It will take multiple generations to solve your gun violence problem. If you put in sensible gun reforms like Australia, you will have 20-30 years of criminals having a vast supply of weapons, while law abiding people don't: thus the laws will fail from the outcry of the innocents.
I'm afraid your goose is pretty much cooked.
46137
Exercised restraint due to the large crowd.
This is a good point that gets overlooked a lot.
You'd be a complete fool to try and return fire against a target that you have not identified in a crowd. You're just as likely to add to the problem as to solve it, and even might end up being mistaken for the active shooter yourself.
I have many guns, I sometimes carry a gun (I have a CHL in Texas). I would never, ever, ever draw my gun and fire at someone unless I had a clear and open line of fire, I was 100% sure of my target, and I was directly saving lives by stopping someone who was clearly intent on killing innocent people.
If there are other people either in front of or behind him, around him, or I'm unsure of the situation, I would not draw and fire.
I'm both legally and morally responsible for every round I put downrange, I would never wish to place an innocent in harms way.
I own and carry guns responsibly, I am not "Rambo", and real life is NOT a movie.
So what you're saying is, there's basically zero chance of you ever being able to use your gun in the defense of anyone/anything. So why bother?
If carrying guns was illegal, people would be arrested and banged up just for possession. Push guns underground, and they become much more expensive and risky to buy. Why not just divert all the money and resources in the "war on drugs" into the "war on guns", and it'd be won inside a decade, I reckon.
America does however lead the world in mass shootings
But, not per-capita.
So guns are not the solution to gun violence. Duly noted.
What a shit pile of humanity that was.
Norway, at the top of the list is misleading. In fact, many of the others are also misleading. This list includes years 2009 to 2013. At the top are countries with just 1 or 2 incidences, but not large populations. Expanding out the years and you find in many cases no more incidences. Apply some statistics and you will find with just 1 incidence and no others over more years just does not support the thesis of the linked article. It is not stastically significant. What might appear true over a small data range is often shown to be untrue over a larger data range.
Israel has very low rates of gun violence too, but many people are packing. And soldiers always carry their rifles — even when going to beach for R&R — with two magazines each. It is not uncommon to see a girl in a bikini guarding a gun-pyramid, while her girlfriends are swimming, for example...
Whatever the reasons for lower gun-violence in Japan or Israel or what have you, the ban on weapons is certainly not the only reason. Whether it is even a contributing factor is not at all obvious.
Israel is in an active war zone, this tends to change things a lot.
Japan, Australia, the UK and other countries with sane gun laws have murders, but almost no mass killings. The reason for this is the lack of firearms, whether you like to admit it or not, the abundance of guns is directly correlated with a high number of shootings. This is true for a lot of countries where guns are abundant (whether they're legal or not).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nope, in Oregon students with the proper permits are allowed to conceal carry, so it's just one more thing you are wrong about. Also, as usual, such laws failed to produce a hero because the simple truth is that 'the bad guy shoots first'.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I know this is an unpopular opinion on this mostly US-centric userbase here, but I just have to say this.
The NRA's "more guns is the answer" is inherently flawed for this single, simple reason: Before any good samaritan carrying a firearm can even react to a murderer, one or more people have already been shot and/or killed. How will everyone owning a gun prevent this from happening? It won't. It cannot. You're trying to divide by zero, here.
Preventing the situation from ever happening is the only sane logic.
Some people may believe that everyone owning a gun will at least minimize the impact. While it is possible that not as many people will die in these situations if everyone were carrying a gun, I fucking gaurantee you will care if it is your loved one who was killed.
Death is absolute. A single death in the hands of a psycho is one too many. It needs to be prevented, not stopped part way through a killing-spree, after one or more people have died. Taking the shooter out will not bring his victims back from the dead. He has already acheived his satisfaction.
I like to believe there are some intelligent people here, but when the gun subject comes up on this site you all turn into backwoods hillbilly NRA-cocksucking drooling morons. /end rant
What is Mexico's fault is restricting their citizens' ability to defend themselves from criminals while also having a corrupt and ineffective police force. Fortunately, some politicians and citizens are trying to change that. http://www.vice.com/video/the-...
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs