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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.
What does "technically a gun-free zone" mean?
Seems like it means "opposition-free zone"
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?
The gun ban was treated as a mere technicality of no consequence it seems.
No matter where you go, there you are.
You left out WHITE... Most of these idiots are white.
White cisgender male, even if proven to be otherwise.
Also, Republican.
And racist
And sexist
And redneck
All of the previous gunmen have been on mind altering homicide suicide pills from the doctor
Gun violence is down across the board.
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.
This being the internet, and specifically Slashdot, I look forward to a well-mannered, reasonable discussion about the event and surrounding possibilities with absolutely no moderator bias intervention, political fervor, or anyone being referred to as a "fuckwad".
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.
This is Slashdot news why?
that's the problem, he was a nice guy.
God helps them that themselves. -- Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanac"
WTF?
because statistically, a nation of 300 millions inhabitant *has* to have such event every now and then. I'm pretty sure that if you look at the whole European Union, at least one of such event *will* happen.
Oregon has some of the Nation’s most liberal gun laws Gun Laws in Oregon
I personally do not advocate the total abolition of guns, but in light of the repeated incidents of gun violence and mass shoots, it would seem to make sense to review what works and what doesn’t work in preventing these sad events.
For those that support total bans, this put those in areas where police protection or assistance is miles away at an awful disadvantage to criminals.
For those that resist even the most minimal of background checks and waiting periods, you are so devoted to your Gun ideology that you can’t see there is a middle ground that can save lives.
For those that scream we need to be able to stop authoritarian governments should things go wrong, that boat had sailed sometime in the early 20th Century. You aren’t going effect political change with guns – period. This group especially worries me, as they include some of the most rabid bigots you will ever run into, and are convinced the rise of minorities in America is a precursor to the end of times and a plot by the New World Order.
We need to do something better and I’m I’m tending to tighter controls not less.
Letter To Iran
This assumes that the people with the guns respond
Better some chance than none, which is what you have currently. I will always take small odds over no odds.
But with an increase in school shootings, if you allowed students to be armed the odds someone would respond would also increase - again, over the possibility of zero that exists today.
Your "assumptions" are foolish since there are many examples of people responding to help others, even if it puts themselves at risk - and again, even if any one of those assumptions were correct, it lowers the odds some but never down to zero, which you have now.
Gun Free Zones statistically are not any safer than Gun Accepted Zones.
Might want to re-check your statistics after today. We also know areas with stricter gun laws have worse gun crime, because criminals with guns are unopposed and take advantage of that fact.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
1) Before you go around accusing the NRA of being terrorist, ask yourself, which one of them have actually committed a terrorist act?
2) There's not a chance in hell you'll ever ban guns. Even if you did, that would never get rid of them. So why not look for a practical solution instead of going after something that you'll never achieve with any measure of success? Politicians who promise to ban guns are the real corrupt ones because they know they can't, they just want votes.
3) Fun fact: Nearly all of the mass shooters in America have been left wing activists, and nearly all of them have been in urban areas, where firearm restriction is the tightest, rather than being in rural areas where almost everywhere you look it is perfectly legal to discharge a firearm.
there has to be a few remaining...
> The obvious correlation is that more guns means FEWER gun deaths. If this were true, then there must be some number of guns in America above which NO gun crimes could happen. How many do you think that would be? 600 million guns? 900 million? Three guns for every man, woman, and child in America? Five? Tell the what the number is. I really want to know. At what point does it dawn on you that you're a sucker for another industry that doesn't give a shit whether the product sold to you actually provides the benefits you think you're getting from it?
so basically an oppressed minority
No one thinks white men are a minority except for white men. Leave politics out of this.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
Dan Hodges said it best:
America decided that mental health care is Somebody Else's Problem.
Everybody knows who to call if you see someone with a broken leg.
They'll send a truck with flashing lights to pick the person up.
What do you do when somebody has a broken brain?
Everybody passes the buck. Not my problem, somebody else's problem.
Well, eventually the buck gets passed to a bunch of grade schoolers.
The grade schoolers can't make it somebody else's problem.
They pay the price.
While America believes that mental health care is Somebody Else's Problem, it will never be over.
I would add mentally ill, but that would just be pointing out the obvious.
And i don't necessarily mean the shooter. If early reports prove accurate "The night before the attack, the alleged shooter appears to have had a conversation with others online about his intentions, the source said."
There's your problem right there. A person with issues made what might have been a final plea for help the night before and everyone just blew it off. Depending on what he said, at the very least he could have been held for making terroristic threats and possibly had a psych eval. Noooo. No one wants to get involved. It has f-all to do with guns. We'd rather lock up and ignore some guy with 1/2 oz of weed than commit and help the mentally ill. When the U.S. gets serious about mental health and people start getting involved instead of letting their friends self destruct, we'll see these events decrease.
In the meantime, I reserve the right to defend myself and my family. That doesn't mean playing hero. That means getting them out of harms way. If out of harms way means past an active shooter, then at least we have a chance.
Media should take responsibility for glorifying the crime and the perpetrator?
Almost all the mass shooters were psychiatric patients that were on medications or suffered deprivation of medications, antidepressants to be specific.
There will be a ton of people who will blame, as usual, the guns.
Here is my top 2 list.
1. Media. First amendment has limits. If you will start screaming "Fire", people will follow the instinct of the herd and there will be stampeded. CNN and the like should be sued until the are left without pants, for non-stop propagation and advertisement of the crime. This promotion is consumed by insane individuals who will do whatever the CNN is telling them to do in order to become famous.
2. Antidepressants. Blaming Big pharma is just the same as blaming manufacturers of the guns. It is just a tool. Medical community should take responsibility for putting so many people on antidepressants.
Most likely not "from Russia" or "from Syria", where they're probably killing at least 10 people per hour today.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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?
Explain Mexico. Guns are practically banned.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The obvious correlation is that more guns means FEWER gun deaths.
I know, right? The populations in every other developed country in the world are being DECIMATED by their lack of guns. If only there was some way to curb the violence & mass shootings :(
You left out WHITE... Most of these idiots are white.
Actually, not. It turns out non-white, non-Asian, people are (currently in the US) more prone to mass murder, both offenders as a percentage of their population and as a victim-count per-capita of offender's group's population.
But their victims are more often also non-white, non-Asian, and the attacks generally "aren't news". (When was the last time you heard the national media do a big news event on a drive-by or other mass shooting in the poorer residential areas of Chicago, Springfield, New York City, Philadelphia, or DC?) It's another example of how black (or Chicano, etc.) lives DON'T matter - to the news media.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
probably one of those illegal immigrants from Canada. With their flapping heads and funny words. (Southpark reference)
Last I checked, the description was "injured".
I think Kim DotCom may have a comment on what happens on file downloads in NZ "New Zealand Police, in an armed raid on Dotcom's house involving 76 officers and two helicopters"
Wrong, most are Democrats. And piss off with that "cisgender/not cisgender" crap, that's too lopsided to even be a worthwhile metric.
http://message.snopes.com/show...
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Black on black shootings and people cluck their tongues and say "glad I don't live there". White on white shootings and people say "something needs to be done!"
Yes, Oregon has a very high number number of republicans. Both inside and outside of Portlandia.
We don't have that many solid red or blue states in the US, the majority of them are purple-ish, like of the color of a two day old black eye.
> and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
That's the reason they defined that right in the first place, but unless you want to amend the Constitution, the right exists whether or not anyone joins a militia.
Of course, that won't stop the courts from deciding that the words don't mean what they used to and changing things to suit them.
I'm from the gun-averse camp, but I'm well aware that nothing can be done to silence the gun lobby in this country. It's in the Constitution, and we're too diverse a country to ever support taking it out. You could have daily mass shootings of 50+ people and the NRA would still defend gun rights, with millions of owners right behind them. Even background check laws will never be strengthened beyond what's there already because people are going to assume the government will be coming for their guns.
So, it seems to me that the next best thing would be to fix mental health care and make sure everyone has equal access to it. Who knows what happened, but it's most likely someone with an ax to grind who just happened to get triggered today. Right now, there's virtually no state-run inpatient mental health treatment beds outside of maybe the psychiatric ERs. You basically have to be Hannibal Lecter to get committed to an asylum now. There's also not that much support available in the community. Deinstitutionalization was supposed to get people out of the hospital -and- treat them on an outpatient basis, but they forgot the second part when states closed all the asylums.
Yes, it's well known that most anti-gun statistics (such as this one) throw suicides and accidents in for effect.
The well regulated militia part was about private citizens being able to form their own armed groups for mutual defense.
It had nothing to do with the police, national guard, or anything government run.
Even the SCOTUS has ruled on this.
and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
What about the "bear arms" part? I've got guns, but no bear arms. If only the people who wrote the Bill of Rights had written about the individual amendments, we might be able to understand more than just the exact words. Oh wait, they did write about them.
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.
Yes, it's well known that most anti-gun statistics (such as this one) throw suicides and accidents in for effect.
"For effect"? Suicides and accidents are by far the largest cause of death by firearms, so concentrating only on homicides is utterly misleading. And in the U.S., death rate from firearms huge.
1) Before you go around accusing the NRA of being terrorist, ask yourself, which one of them have actually committed a terrorist act?
Timothy McVeigh. Just answering your question.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
300 million guns in civilian hands and gun deaths have steadily dropping for the past 20 years or so.
Homicides have been dropping, along with an across-the-board decrease in crimes of all types. Gun deaths have been going up.
Potentially for 1 on 1 murders the rates would remain unchanged. But mass killings are much easier with a firearm. So you would likely see a death toll drop there even if incident rates remained the same.
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.
Which overlooks the obvious fact that murders have been dropping virtually everywhere.
Btw, did you look at just murders or accidents/suicides too? Because guns cause more death from suicide than murder.
I stole this Sig
or the good guy to shoot the bad guy... (note that I'm not making assumption on mental health of the bad gun...). So all in all, a gun is just a tool to fulfill an aim.
Yes there is. Unfortunately, the really dangerous ones are free to infect the rest of the planet with their insanity.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
he left (self-declared morally Righteous)
You do know correlation does not equal causation, right?
the very behavior of cis-gendered white male *is* a target
Target of what? This ain't 4chan son, gonna have to explain it using english, not memespeak.
It is considered a disease which should be fixed
Fuck does that mean?
eg. the war on boys
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"Regulated" as in well trained. Not as in governed by laws. A "well trained militia".
The 4th definition of "Regulated".
4. To put or maintain in order: regulate one's eating habits.
"Militia" = All able bodied males 18 to 34 years of age. Which is what makes the Selective Service and Draft legal.
With registration you can still have guns, so what is the purpose you refer to? The "A well regulated Militia the" part? We have a national defence agency that doesn't rely on guys with muskets any more. I don't see a no registration clause to the amendment in any event.
Letter To Iran
3) Fun fact: Nearly all of the mass shooters in America have been left wing activists.
Fun fact, you just made up a complete bit of bullshit.
Next you're going to tell us that John Wilkes Booth, Charles J. Guiteau, Leon Czolgosz, and Lee Harvey Oswald were all connected to the Democratic Party of today?
You'd have a better argument with Kim Davis, but oh wait, wait, wait, she LEFT the party.
Not that she ever did anything substantial, her membership was nominal.
They did not have that many to begin with, but there were two unrelated mass-shootings in Australia in 2011 — in addition to massacres not involving a fire-arm. So much for "complete lack".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...
and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
What about it? You're mentioning it without any sort of context. The actual context: the people who wrote the Second Amendment said, essentially: "It turns out that we're going to have to have some sort of trained, standing military at one level or another. The need to have such organizations does NOT mean that the military has a monopoly on keeping and bearing arms: the government MAY NOT infringe on the people's right to keep and bear arms, even though there will be well organized militia, as well."
So what about that phrase, exactly? What's your point?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You should read Heller.
1. The militia clause is *a* reason, not *the* reason for the second amendment.
2. Militia was defined at the time as all able-bodied men of fighting age. With the fourteenth amendment this would expand to include everyone, of majority age at least. This was not a government (even state-level) controlled body but the people themselves.
3. Well-regulated meant in working order, not under rules and regulations of a chain of command.
So, if you then replace the words "well-regulated" with "well-equipped", "militia" with "populace who can fight" and "the people" with "everyone" you get: "A well-equipped populace who can fight, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of everyone to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
As is common in the anti-gun crowd stats, deaths and not homicides are generally used to show how evil guns are. Your own link has a link to FBI stats showing that while deaths began increasing, homicides continued decreasing. Why the discrepancy? Suicide stats show that at around the same time of the uptick suicide rates began to clime again and the primary method of choice for suicides in the US is of course, guns.
These same anti-gun stats groups also attempt to link access to guns to suicides but studies comparing suicide rates between countries with varying level of gun access show rates generally unaffected by gun access. Depressed or desperate people find a way.
The assault weapons ban was also generally a meaningless piece of legislation as there is no such thing as an assault weapon, or it's probably more accurate to say all weapons are by definition "assault weapons". Most of the restrictions in "assault weapons" laws target cosmetic components of guns are are easily bypassed with a few mods by the manufacturers. Grip and stock styles and choice in optional mounting brackets did not affect the behavior of the actual gun or change its lethality but looked great for politicians trying to get their faces on TV.
Passing real legislation to fund and improve validation systems which can properly link databases together so that mental health restrictions and other red flags are visible in a timely manner during background checks just isn't the same as being able to hold up an M16 lookalike on camera and talk about how your new law "pulls machine guns off the street" even though machine guns were never legally available in the first place (but what constituents don't know doesn't hurt you in the polls).
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
69 deaths from gunfire
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
Mind sharing some statistics for that claim?
http://www.examiner.com/articl...
Sounds like you are regurgitating some hate-talk-radio host's flawed hateful email.
I may be mistaken but it may also be that GP meant a description that can be used by police force to distinguish between good and evil persons taking part in a shootout.
Europe has a massacre of 10 million or more every 30 years or so, and has for centuries.
They are just in a lull these past few decades.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My understanding is that yes, suicides would probably decrease, simply because other forms of suicide tend to be at least moderately harder to accomplish, and thus the suicidal individual is more likely to reconsider.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It was the only way they could defend themselves from being talked to death by a serial con-artist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
"well regulated" meant "in good order" at the time, not "covered by many laws".
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm
"militia" meant all male citizens of adult age.
Thus, a more modern phrasing of this Amendment would be:
Because it's necessary for a free country to have its citizens be competent with militia weapons, the right of the people to own and carry firearms shall not be infringed.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It was a gun free zone. Clearly it is impossible anyone could be shot there. Obviously this is a hoax.
While the US president sends predators drones with bombs on remote parts of the world... Great !
"stuff that matters"
The fact that you had to dig up a four years old event speak for itself.
https://imgur.com/gallery/CLOx...
This covers most of what you'd want to know and look at regarding firearms statistics, both in the US and worldwide. Homicide vs gun ownership, gun assaults vs gun ownership, violent crime vs gun ownership; it compares the states within the US, all the OECD countries, and all countries. It shows what weapon is killing the most people and which people are the ones being killed. It even looks at mass shootings, including per capita rates, and overall number of deaths from mass shootings as a percentage of overall homicides.
Citations are included in most of everything, and numbers are usually taken from government bodies such as the FBI or CDC.
With registration you can still have guns, so what is the purpose you refer to? The "A well regulated Militia the" part? We have a national defence agency that doesn't rely on guys with muskets any more. I don't see a no registration clause to the amendment in any event.
Actually we do rely on the "militia" for national defense. The "unorganized" component of the federal militia basically consists of all able bodied men of military age. Its something entirely different from the national guard, the federal law defining it specifically says so. You are in it by being an american citizen that meets certain criteria. The is no enlistment, no signing up, you are born (or naturalized) into it. During times of national emergency you can be transferred from the federal militia to the army or navy reserve. In other words conscripted, drafted, into the military. Such conscription is a major option for national defense.
As for "muskets". The colonial militia members sometimes had state of the art firearms for the day, better than standard issue military firearms, i.e. rifles rather than muskets. Rifles having greater range and better accuracy.
As for "well regulated", the 18th century usage of the word was referring to being equipped and practiced sufficiently to be useful. Its not referring to government imposed restrictions regarding ownership. Note that "well regulated" does not necessarily mean showing up on the town commons for drills. Owning a rifle and using it for hunting was considered sufficient, hence the "unorganized" part of the federal militia that has absolutely no obligation to enlist, show up for practice or training, etc.
Basically this topic is far more complicated than most realize.
Because whites are still the majority in the US. On a per capita basis the opposite is true.
so if there's a gun for every man woman and child in this country, why is our gun fatality rate more than 4x higher than any other western nation?
why arent we the safest nation on earth?
In the 93 weeks since Sandy Hook, this is school/campus shooting #142.
We're batting an average of 1.5 per week.
Literally no other advanced nation in the world has such a fucked up statistic.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
What part of "the founders aren't perfect and gave us a document we can change (and have) for a reason" is so hard to understand?
Times change.
Society changes.
The constitution can too when we decide some particular aspect of it needs attention.
In the 93 weeks since Sandy Hook, this is school/campus shooting #142.
We're batting an average of 1.5 per week.
I'm willing to have another look at the 2nd Amendment and throw the bird to the gun nuts (and i like guns), and so are a growing number of people, as that statistic gets added to with each stupid, preventable, predictable incident every 4.6 days.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Or not. It's not the NRA's fault this guy decided to go out in a blaze of glory.
Epidemiological research shows that most who survive a first suicide attempt to not re-attempt suicide; this research also shows that the easy availability of guns make that first attempt FAR more deadly than by other methods. Thus, the sheer easy availability of guns makes for more successful (if you want to call it that) first suicide attempts. If some percentage of those first time gun suicide attempts had not had access to a gun they would have had a better chance of survival and (according to the research) gone on to survive long term.
But SCOTUS also said that municipalities have the right to make reasonable limits to access. Yes, do try to keep up!
FIRST among developed nations for gun-related homicide, and FOURTH among ALL nations for total death by gun.
Rwanda comes to mind.
oh, and its not about mental illness, not solely, and not largely.
makes a convenient excuse though.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/1...
We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
We know that the stigma of people who suffer from mental illness as scary, dangerous potential murderers hurts people every single day — it costs people relationships and jobs, it scares people away from seeking help who need it, it brings shame and fear down on the heads of people who already have it bad enough.
But the media insists on trotting out “mental illness” and blaring out that phrase nonstop in the wake of any mass killing. I had to grit my teeth every time I personally debated someone defaulting to the mindless mantra of “The real issue is mental illness” over the Isla Vista shootings.
“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
What I hear from people who bleat on about “The real issue is mental illness,” when pressed for specific suggestions on how to deal with said “real issue,” is terrifying nonsense designed to throw the mentally ill under the bus. Elliot Rodger’s parents should’ve been able to force risperidone down his throat. Seung-Hui Cho should’ve been forcibly institutionalized. Anyone with a mental illness diagnosis should surrender all of their constitutional rights, right now, rather than at all compromise the right to bear arms of self-declared sane people.
What’s interesting is to watch who the mentally ill people are being thrown under the bus to defend. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the NRA tells us that creating a national registry of firearms owners would be giving the government dangerously unchecked tyrannical power, but a national registry of the mentally ill would not — even though a “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun.
and
And the big splashy headliner atrocities tend to distract us from the ones that don’t make headline news. People are willing to call one white man emptying five magazines and murdering nine black people in a church and openly saying it was because of race a hate crime, even if they have to then cover it up with the fig leaf of individual “mental illness”–but a white man wearing a uniform who fires two magazines at two people in a car in a “bad neighborhood” in Cleveland? That just ends up a statistic in a DoJ report on systemic bias.
And hundreds of years of history in which an entire country’s economy was set up around chaining up millions of black people, forcing them to work and shooting them if they get out of line? That’s just history.
The reason a certain kind of person loves talking about “mental illness” is to draw attention to the big bold scary exceptional crimes and treat them as exceptions. It’s to distract from the fact that the worst crimes in history were committed by people just doing their jobs–cops enforcing the law, soldiers following orders, bureaucrats signing paperwork. That if we define “sanity” as going along to get along with what’s “normal” in the society around you, then for most of history the sane t
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Times change, but government's don't. The reasons for the second are still valid, these shootings not withstanding...
And frankly, banning guns won't fix the problem because the guns aren't the problem.
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?
(You're forgetting that this hypothetical world contains one or more people capable of wielding reality-bending magic.)
The NMA (National Magic Association) was right all along; the banning of magic for self defense was just the beginning. People resorted to using guns and murder is still an issue. And now people like you want to ban guns, too? When will this madness end?!
The only thing that can stop a bad guy who memorized Fireball is a good guy who memorized Fireball.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
France has had a few. Mohammed Merah in 2012, the Charlie Hebdo earlier this year. Uherský Brod shooting in Czech republic (earlier this year). Stabbings in Graz, Austria, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You're talking about a the "unreported mass shootings" in black neighbourhoods. Different situation altogether.
Most of these OMG another mass shooting the media latches on are done by angry white guys. Looks like this one might be a little different.
My understanding is that yes, suicides would probably decrease, simply because other forms of suicide tend to be at least moderately harder to accomplish, and thus the suicidal individual is more likely to reconsider.
Or private suicides decrease, and public suicides (by train, car, bus, bridge, etc.) increase.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I just wanted to point out that this was a case of a radical Atheist targeting Christians specifically. I point this out because Atheists are fond of saying that only "religious nut-jobs" go around killing people, but in reality every group has a crazy person.
http://nypost.com/2015/10/01/oregon-gunman-singled-out-christians-during-rampage/
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
since they actually know about guns and are not interested in feeding into the emulsions of a bunch of gun nuts and their desire to pretend that their strapons somehow make them special.
keep moving those goalposts. Let the world see how frightened you are of reality and how little your strapon helps you deal with it.
that so many gun nuts are known for. I'm surprised it took this long.
They can actually do better. On a Tuesday morning a few years back, a small team armed with small knives killed nearly 3,000 people.
See that "Preview" button?
it makes it easier to spot the more serious criminals. Of course, your average ammosexual feels that he doesn't have to follow the law either, but after a few of them get jailed, the rest will find another outlet for their fantasies.
I work with severely disabled kids and in that setting I get to see mentation in very simple terms. For example, I roll a ball to the child. The child catches the ball and throws it back to me. In the child the senses send data to the brain. In the brain current data and memory are processed at many different levels and the result is the brain sends signals to the muscles causing movement of the body, called motor activity. Games such as kids play at elementary and intermediate school recess are important learning activities in themselves. I am going to use this term later: Playing a game results in the construction of a game model. We know thatt the brain is intermediate between the senses and the motor actions of the body.
As a child grows up and matures into an adult I suggest to you that the fancy and refined activities of adulthood mostly still involve the brain sending signals to the muscles causing movement of the body. Even the greatest pianist making the most sublime music still presses piano keys.
Now regarding the shooter such as in this October 1st event, Some combination of memories and events happening in the present have been assembled to form a grief or a grievance. Grief is a very interesting emotion. I suggest that the substance underlying the grievance is very much the same as the experience of many other people. The thing about the persons who become shooters is they have become prisoners of a literal resolution of their grievance.
I am a little puzzled at this analysis. What does it mean that a person becomes "a prisoner of the literal resolution of their grievance"? A prisoner is a person who is subject to physical confinement. Hypothesis: the persons who become shooters have a game model that they learned somewhere in their lives. What is the likelihood that shooters are enacting a game model with their physical shooting activity?
In a very limited school situation, I once saw that the energy driving ethnic gang formation came from 7th grade boys who looked around class and saw that there were only three pretty ethnically matched girls in their class. It was like that when I was in 7th grade 50 years ago. The school appropriate resolution of that tension is social dance and carefully chaperoned after school dances so the rising blood of the young men can be democratically sated by the manners and implicit sharing of a social dance setting.
For the potential shooters, we need a parallel pathway of social resolution to their personal grief or grievance. All the kids need to learn it before they drop out from school. I have not figured this out, for the person who is stuck with the idea of using a gun on others what would be a way to "abstract" the grief to a higher and harmless level. Operas like Carmen use the curtain call to show the audience that the little seamstress didn't actually die. To my great relief, really. Kids baseball teams form a line and each team gives the other a high five.
For the deadly stampedes and fights after soccer matches, some games are being played with interleaved seating. Lets look for simple modest solutions for the shooter situation.
In Los Angeles in 1981 there was a social psychological self-help movement called "Co-counseling". With a framework of rules pairs of people in a co-counseling class opened a pathway to a saner and more balanced state of mind regarding themselves and their own personal griefs.
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
Wrong. Plenty of folks throughout history loved to hack and slash each other in warfare and other bloody sports, up close and personal. However, you were generally more successful if you were built like King Leonidas or had the fighting prowess of Archilles. Guns are simply the great equalizer, allowing the weak and dim-witted to partake in the carnage as well. The problem has never been knifes, swords, or guns, but people, and that won't change until the robot revolution makes it a moot point anyway.
and what about the "well regulated Militia" part?
How can the pool of males of fighting age be expected to be trained in the use of firearms, if they don't have guns?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sounds like you are regurgitating some hate-talk-radio host's flawed hateful email.Cascadia independence movement, a west-coast, left-wing, eco-freak, secession movement (though some authors are now trying to tie him to a similarly-named neo-NAZI operation far to the east of where he lived). (The conservative secession movement in the area is the "State of Jefferson" proposal - floated intermittently since a few years before WW II.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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?
The wizard would instantly cause multiple power vacuums, which will be immediately and violently exploited. Suddenly, the police, the army, security guards, and rival gangs would no longer have guns. Feeble people switch from "probably defenseless" to "definitely defenseless". Assuming the power vacuum resolves to a similar situation as we have now, the rate of homicide would increase because being robbed at knifepoint is far more dangerous than being robbed at gunpoint.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Sounds like you are regurgitating some hate-talk-radio host's flawed hateful email.
Nope.
My wife researched this some time before that article came out. She noticed that news media would spend days to weeks claiming various mass-murderers were right-wing, then have to retract it. So she dug into online data - from sources such as media even lefties would trust, or public records, and was amazed at the high percentage of Democrats and non-party-affiliated progressives, and the near total dearth of conservatives.
She welcomes you to do your own research, but assumes you will agree with her that signing out with "Peace out!" is not exactly a Republican or conservative trait.
Chris Harper Mercer is no exception. His facebook page was still up as of 5PM pacific time and was full of rants for the Cascadia independence movement, a west-coast, left-wing, eco-freak, secession movement (though some authors are now trying to tie him to a similarly-named neo-NAZI operation far to the east of where he lived). (The conservative secession movement in the area is the "State of Jefferson" proposal - floated intermittently since a few years before WW II.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It does not matter what I think, I happen to know it has happened. While typically these events are "less fatal" I don't think a 0-deaths attack should be considered better if victim counts remain high. Personally, I wonder why you prioritize guns, when nearly every previous mass shooting perpetrator has shown poor mental health? (It's still a little early in the reporting cycle for a solid analysis in this latest attack.) Since this is such a universal factor, even past the availability of firearms, I would say improving our treatment of mental health issues should take a higher priority in responding to mass attacks.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Yes, it hits home and all that. From a European perspective: This is news, why? Ten times that many people die every day much closer in terror attacks, drowning in the mediterranean sea and so on. Ah yes, they are brown people, right?
No, I understand that if it's closer it's more important. Tribe mentality and all that, we are humans, our social brain is not built for this age. And yet, something strikes me morally wrong about this preference.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Firstly there is about 1.2 millions gun, a lot of them being riffle for hunting, for 6 million people. The US has 6 times as many weapon, and a far higher proportion of handgun versus riffle. Pretty much the same AFAIK with other countries in Europe with a lot of hunting, like Germany and France. Also in addition some of those countries require a license to have weapon, and a safety test before giving a license. So yeah the comparison is not even remotely doable.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Look you have a mass shooting in average every 60 days in the US since 2014. WHEN are you going to have start a discussion if there is a mass shooting very two months ? When the pig fly ? No the only way is to discuss it WHEN it happens.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
By hijacking a serious discussion which affects thousands of people a year in order to argue about inconsequential nonsense you are showing the world just how little you give a shit about anything which is not you. You're a terrible human being.
So you don't want the government to regulate your gun ownership, but you are fine with it locking you up if it deems you to be mentally ill and possibly dangerous.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Its interesting that in the US Constitution, the right to bear arms came before the right for black people to not be treated as property. There's something fundamentally wrong with that, and yet the US Constitution is upheld as something the world should admire and strive to work toward...
I said mass murder. I'm not talking about one guy stabbing one or two people on the street because one of them owed the other drugs money.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
People resorted to using guns and murder is still an issue.
Oh, now, did I say murders would drop to zero? Nope.
And now people like you want to ban guns, too?
I also quite deliberately did not say that I wanted to ban guns - mainly to see if anyone would automatically assume that I did.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think America needs to think long and hard about what kind of Freedoms it wants to have. As there appears to be a choice between two evils here, one is gun control, and the other is media control.
If you can't take the guns away from the crazies, then you need to take away their glory. Ban anything but local press from reporting on it, and stop the presidential statements, I can only imagine that whipping the nation into furious debate only increases the appeal to these perpetrators. Perhaps that will mean that less crazies will get the idea to shoot up their school in the first place, and wont get the glory of getting their face on TV around the nation
Maybe the longer this continues the problem of the media will solve itself, as Obama is right, you've become numb to this
While typically these events are "less fatal"
Which is what I said, isn't it?
I don't think a 0-deaths attack should be considered better if victim counts [wikipedia.org] remain high.
I do. I absolutely do. I'll take "21 people injured" over "21 people killed" any day. What's wrong with your maths?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
What about them? It's been 14 years since the last mass murder with an airplane in the US, and after it happened something got done (okay, it culminated in body scanners and the TSA, but that's another discussion).
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Well, most countries don't base their civil defense on 18th century ideas, and so they don't have these ridiculous situations to deal with. Most countries create a military, and then people who serve in the armed forces get all the training and equipment they need from them.
Are the reasons still valid, though? If the government is so despotic it needs removing, the question comes down to whether the US armed forces are going to protect the government or the citizens. If it protects the government, no amount of fat accountants & other assorted weekend warriors with no training or logistics support is going to change anything. If the armed forces protect the civilians by ousting the government, then whether the civilians are armed or not doesn't matter in the slightest.
If you'd said the 2nd amendment was valid in the time it was written, you'd be right, but clearly a lot has changed since then.
Times change, and the disparity between the firepower of the populace and the armed forces changes too. Ignoring that doesn't really help the discussion.
This guys sums it up: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/24/8...
I could ask the same question of you—because from my perspective, the only difference between victims being injured or killed is a matter of luck. I consider it an error of the highest order to include that sort of randomness in the factors which drive public policy.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Perhaps unsurprisingly that sounds about exactly the same for Canada.
Bans are not necessary, you just need to make them harder to get a hold of. Also regulation such as making clips/magazines larger than 5 rounds/bullets illegal also makes such events more difficult. Canada also has a high gun/population ratio, however almost all fall into the shotgun or hunting rifle variety. Handguns are rare and regulated (literally) to the gun range.
You can never totally prevent this sort of thing, however making guns harder to get would certainly reduce it, and regulating what kinds of arms you can get could limit the severity of it. In the US where you can probably trip over guns, it is just too easy. When it is hard, you really have to plan and deliberate and follow through over a lengthy period, when it is easy, you go nuts or are mad and grab your nearest 8 guns and 200 rounds and go to town in the next 10 minutes.
About the only thing I would say about Canada in the same vein that needs some improvement, is that while there are mental health services and medication availability, Canada does have a homeless mental health issue, which I see every day. We really need to do more there in that regard.
Adult children are allowed to stay on their parents' health insurance policy until they're 27-years-old, which is often cheaper than an individual insurance policy. Without that provision in Obamacare, most young adults wouldn't have insurance coverage while attending college or working a minimum wage job. Nothing prevents a young adult from buying their own insurance. This has nothing to do with owning a gun.
Domestic terrorism in the US is mostly perpetrated by white right wing males with guns or bombs. This is a fact.
I would go on to say that it's conservatism that is the real enemy. The liberals in all of the countries in the world want to cooperate with each other and build a society. Conservatives want to fight each other. Take Iran as an example. The liberals in the US and Iran wanted to stand down and create a working thriving peace. The Conservatives in both countries want war.
There is an unaddressed pathology at play in the conservative mind.
Actually, we highly prefer them to be mature, educated, and capable of independent and reasoned thought. Why? Because it's not a Good Thing when PVT Joe Snuffy misplaces an encrypted radio set, rolls a million dollar armored vehicle full of troops, or discharges his weapon at the wrong time. Naturally we still get a lot of knuckleheads and young or not, they are probably the most difficult to "mold" and most in need of doing exactly what they are told and nothing more.
Of course, you and those that modded you up are in no danger of finding yourselves anywhere close to a battlefield (or a multitude of infinitely less exciting places), so you wouldn't know that.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
So, if guns were not generally available people would stop committing suicide and drunk rednecks would stop having accidents?
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Fun fact: Nearly all of the mass shooters in America have been left wing activists...
{{cite}}
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
the only difference between victims being injured or killed is a matter of luck. I consider it an error of the highest order to include that sort of randomness in the factors which drive public policy.
So you haven't heard of "statistics" either?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
While that is all true, you might ask the Syrians how well all the firepower works for them...
There are plenty of cases in the 20th century where poorly armed civilians rose up against evil governments and outnumbered them.
Tanks and bombers are useful, but they can't be everywhere.
After all, while we crushed the Iraqi military in 2003, how well did the occupation go after that? How effective is all our military power in Afghanistan against people in pickup trucks armed with AK-47s?
Stealth bombers are great, when bombing large, specific targets. They are useless against 3 million angry civilians in NYC, unless of course you plan to blow up the whole city.
But even as WWII and Vietnam showed, bombing cities flat doesn't crush civilians either.
Our military is really, really good... at crushing other militaries... they are a really crappy police force...
So you don't want the government to regulate your gun ownership, but you are fine with it locking you up if it deems you to be mentally ill and possibly dangerous.
You need to be really clear on this...
I don't want the executive branch to regulate my gun ownership...
I do want the judicial branch to be able to lockup the mentally ill after a court hearing where the medical doctors are allowed to present their evidence for both sides and you're allowed a defense.
There is a mile of difference between those two...
This has become a regular event in America.
Gun violence, as well as violent crime in general, has dropped significantly in the last 2 decades or so
America is FOURTH in death by gun, after Thailand, Nigeria and Colombia; that's the company we keep.
Actually, America isn't even in the top ten.
We have more murders by gun than any developed (and many undeveloped) nations.
That's cherry-picking, unless you can explain why it makes sense to compare the US vs Sweden, but not the US vs Russia. Also, Turkey (considered a developed country depending on definition) has a higher murder rate than the US. And why would "murders by gun" matter more than just simply "murders"?
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.
The ACLU *actively* lobbies to defeat laws that will keep criminals and rapists on the streets. But instead of calling it a national disgrace, we refer to it as the inherent risks of essential liberty.
What about the rights of the 100's of thousands of people that have been murdered by gun in America - what about them?
What exactly about them? Safety and/or protection from criminals and madmen isn't exactly a right, and the supreme court has made it clear repeatedly that citizens have to expectation of police protection...
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
There were founding fathers who wanted to abolish slavery in the constitution from day one, but others had large businesses dependent on slavery.
It was a topic discussed at length at the time, but they couldn't reach a compromise.
The world was already slowly waking up to slavery being wrong, it just wasn't quite ready.
Today, in the 21st century, your average citizen still has the right to keep and bear arms, as it should be.
What about the federal law declaring me as part of the militia?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
So the one NRA member you can think of that's committed a terrorist act... didn't use guns?
...huh
And he managed to kill more people than any active shooter incident?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
Or do you think someone can commit mass murder on this scale with knives and baseball bats?
Between knife attacks in China and intentionally set fires in Australia? Yes, yes I do...
Remember: the worst school attack in US history *wasn't* a shooting...
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
Let me give you a second example.
Rather than taking the effort to tally all the votes cast in an election, let's throw all the ballots into a giant pile, mix them about (maybe in a cement mixer) so they're completely random, and pull one out. Whoever is on that ballot wins the election. If you fully believe that randomness is not bad for public policy, then you must conclude that there is no drawback to this voting system, and the lower work required to determine the winner makes it superior to the systems in use today.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Since the constitution was ratified in 1788 we have lived with guns without this epidemic of anarchist mass shootings.
Maybe it is not the guns, but the society that has changed. Post counter culture, we no longer live in a communal, "we the people" society, but rather a narcissistic, individual, I'm going to get mine society.
Think about what has changed in the past 50 years. We have millions of kids growing up in single parent families, we have millions of people who have rejected community and religion (of all forms), and who have no feeling of respect for their fellow human being.
More guns, less guns, it wouldn't matter, because it isn't the problem. Our society is broken and we don't seem to be willing to admit it and address it.
How is that in any way analogous to statistically studying mass killings/injurings? I never suggested looking at one stabbing spree and one gun spree and forming policy based on the results.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
What I am claiming is that the difference between fatal and non-fatal injuries in a mass attack comes down to the same lottery luck as the election analogy. The (relative) skill of the attacker and defenders is more critical when determining the total number of victims, and less so when determining the extent of any particular injury.
Do you like Japanese imports?
I have a gun. Many guns. I've never fired at any Human Being. I'v e fired at lots of paper targets. I grew up with a deer hunting dad. Guns were things that would kill you. I choose to keep my gun. Because my gun had not hurt anybody. My gun will {WILL} protect my life from people that wish to take it. I'd rather have it and not need it. I am a peaceful soul. We cannot keep drugs and cell-phones from prisons and schools.What makes you think that we can keep guns out of the criminals hands? I beg you to be sincere. I'd like to protect my family from the elments that would take away my freedom that would do such.
I love you all....
If and when a Militia is needed the citizens will have the guns they need because our right to guns was not infringed. If our rights are infringed the guns will not be available for a Militia so the guns stay.
If the Supreme Court can find abortion rights in the right to privacy and can restrict free expression of religion on public property by claiming not restricting it is a law they could surly find that only active Militia members can have guns. Of course if that were the case there would be 20 million active Militia members over night. I think they fear that more than few dozen school shootings a year.
that so many gun nuts are known for. I'm surprised it took this long.
How is this racist? You act as if everyone who has a different culture is magically a different subspecies of human, with their own genotype and phenotype to go along with it.
Being anti-multiculturalist is not being racist.
If the original post wasn't clear enough, let me spell it out for you: any multicultural society is going to experience more conflict, via the tools at hand (not necessarily guns), than any monocultural society. Europe is largely monocultural, and that's in the process of changing.
Mind sharing some statistics for that claim?
http://www.examiner.com/articl...
Sounds like you are regurgitating some hate-talk-radio host's flawed hateful email.
While there isn't a firm definition for "mass shooting" most seem to go by the 4 victims in a single event. This is based on the FBI definition of mass murder being 4 or more victims from a single assailant. HeyJackass,com compiles their own dataset via following sources: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Homicide Watch Chicago, DNAInfo Chicago, Chicago Redeye Homicide Tracker(no longer updated), NBC5 Chicago, City of Chicago Data Portal and CPD CLEARMAP. To date within the city limits of Chicago there have been 17 events of 4 or more victims shot in a single event (http://heyjackass.com/2015-multi-victim-shootings/). Every instance has been black assailants with black casualties. (http://heyjackass.com/2015-multi-victim-shootings/) Chicago being my hometown, it is the only place I follow statistics closely and I cannot say that this trend holds true nationally. Also of note, within the city limits of Chicago, 78.7% of the victims of shootings are black with 68.8% of the assailants being black. (http://heyjackass.com/2015-race-of-victim/)
Although it should be noted that current US Federal law explicitly identifies all able bodied men in a pretty wide age range as being in the militia.
But yes, the 2nd amendment is worded that way meaning that in order to raise a militia you need an at least partially armed and experience populace.
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.
I agree we need to address a bunch of factors: safety nets, mental help. universal healthcare in general, income inequality, social mobility, etc.. we rank poorly in all those areas compared to other modern countries.
However, look at Australia. They didn't ban guns, but they did make it more restrictive to get and own them. Like requiring by law locked storage, etc..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/port-arthur-massacre-shooting-spree-changed-australia-gun-laws-n396476
It is either luck, or the gun laws worked. Because they have had zero mass shootings since the laws changed. Which I think was about 20 years ago.
How many mass shootings did they have before that?
Regardless, you don't restrict people's rights because stuff happens that you don't like.
Shall we limit freedom of speech and toss out the first amendment because people say stuff we don't like?
The right to keep and bear arms is a right, not a privilege.
Most countries haven't given much thought to how their people will protect themselves against a future corruption of their government.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
There is, but the poms decided to use it as a prison instead.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What about King George being dead for 200 years now, and most of the surviving (Red) Indians being too busy running casinos to go round scalping people?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The right to keep and bear arms is a right, not a privilege.
Note: I like guns. Own several. But the constitution does not specify 'arms' very specifically. People, generally, cannot own weapons of mass destruction (nukes, cannons, explosives, etc.. ). The people that are allowed to own weapons with huge destructive capabilities have to go through a much more restrictive process of checks, licenses, fees, etc..
There is nothing in our constitution that would block our ability to regulate the level of "destructiveness" a person is able to own. We do it already to several classes of weapons. We could choose to apply stricter regulations, background checks, etc.. to lower levels of weapons.
Also... rights can change. Not often, but a right isn't set in stone.
"I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816[10]
If we get sick and tired of school shootings every month, we could remove the right to keep arms if we wanted to as a society.
The constitution has been amended before, and it will be again. It isn't a religious scripture from god:)
I don't want people to walk into Walmart and buy a 50 caliber machine gun without some serious background inspections, licenses, mental health checks, etc..? Do you? If not, then what is the issue with applying stricter control to handguns? It isn't taking away your right to own the gun.
And I know fully well that 9/10 mass shooters in this country would pass background checks. And that is precisely the reason why I think we need stricter regulations than even the proposed increases in background checks. But we can't even pass minor increases in the background check laws.
Most of the conservatives in congress think that any increase in gun regulations is a slippery slope, which is quite literally allowing thousands of innocent people to die each year. When we have absolute proof from other countries that there are common sense laws that would help to save lives.
citations? because last I checked your avg gun owner..... does not have any problem following the law. Illegal shootings are at an all time low and going down....but yes lets throw out insults based in fiction
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Note: I like guns. Own several. But the constitution does not specify 'arms' very specifically. People, generally, cannot own weapons of mass destruction (nukes, cannons, explosives, etc.. ). The people that are allowed to own weapons with huge destructive capabilities have to go through a much more restrictive process of checks, licenses, fees, etc..
There is nothing in our constitution that would block our ability to regulate the level of "destructiveness" a person is able to own. We do it already to several classes of weapons. We could choose to apply stricter regulations, background checks, etc.. to lower levels of weapons.
My first response to this was going to be... less understanding...
However, after thinking about it, there is a fair point to be made there... clearly we aren't going to be selling nuclear weapons at Walmart, so the limit has to be somewhere between a BB gun and a nuclear weapon. The question then becomes, what is that limit?
My primary issue is that those "restrictions" are also set by the very same government that should fear its citizens, rather than the other way around.
I don't want people to walk into Walmart and buy a 50 caliber machine gun without some serious background inspections, licenses, mental health checks, etc..? Do you?
Ahh... yes and no... the problem is if you allow the government to have a list of everyone who has weapons, it becomes very easy for that same government to take them all away. Of course, the NFA is more than 80 years old now, so perhaps that ship has sailed.
I do think that select-fire weapons should be legal to purchase again, but you're right, they probably shouldn't be sold over the counter.
If not, then what is the issue with applying stricter control to handguns? It isn't taking away your right to own the gun.
Handguns are person defensive weapons, those along with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles should not have very many restrictions on them.
The other consideration is that plenty of places "allow" you to have a handgun if you're special. If you're not, tough luck.
Any permitting system should be on a "shall issue" basis. My gut response is against such systems, however I'd be willing to compromise on the issue, in return for a few things. Most notably I want national uniform laws that allow concealed carry, national "shall issue" laws to any permits required for guns, and I'd like the 2nd amendment updated to make it very clear that the right to buy and own guns and hold them in personal possession is clear and confusing.