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Mass Shooting In San Bernardino Kills At Least 14 (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Authorities say 14 people were killed and 14 others were injured in a mass shooting in San Bernardino today. Police have mounted an intense manhunt for the gunmen who fired into a conference hall where county employees had gathered at a service center for people with disabilities. CNN reports: "The suspects were armed with long guns, Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told reporters. 'These were people that came prepared. ... They were armed with long guns, not hand guns,' he told reporters. Most of the victims were 'centrally located in one area of the facility,' Burguan said. Police didn't exchange gunfire with the shooters, he added."
In a typical year, just over 300 people are killed by those things in the US.
I guess we need to make sure everyone is armed and ready to fire at all times in the whole country. That way we'll have fewer shootings.
Going to the gym? Wear an ankle holster. Going to Starbucks? Pack your trusty 12-gauge. /sarcasm
But I am yet to see anyone change their pre-existing opinion as a result of these discussions.
I understand that this is important news, but it doesn't really seem to fit with Slashdot's theme of news for nerds. I suppose if it were at some event that was tech/nerd related there would be enough of a reason, but this apparently has nothing to do with either of those things.
But I suppose it will generate a lot of page views and ad impressions for Dice as people rehash the same arguments over and over again.
So, we have no idea who did it or why.
But The President is already calling for new gun control laws.
And I'm expecting to hear within the next couple of days that this could have been prevented if we'd not stripped the Feds of the authority to do mass surveillance on the US population...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
So the terrorists may have killed a few people, but we have lots of people in this country. And they are much too cowardly (and their god is much too ineffective) for them to take from us any of our beloved political leaders. So in my mind the terrorists have lost again.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I went to the local gun range today and was chatting with the owner. His business spiked since the Paris shootings, with weekly concealed carry classes booked solid through February. With this he's going to have his best Christmas sales season in years.
I'm not sure what scares me more -- random shootings, or the thought of so many yokels with concealed carry permits who've only fired a gun once or twice in their, now life trying to return fire (or thinking they can).
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
If this ends up being a verified political terrorist attack in the vein of Paris, it will get real ugly around here.
But it seems like an unlikely choice for a political attack -- no real symbolism, and not even really much of a government symbol. I would expect anti-western terrorists to attack a mall or some other symbol of decadence -- and to die doing it, right down to the explosive vests.
It almost seems like a gang hit or some other kind of targeted killing, considering the attackers drove away. There's a lot more to this story than a lunatic with a gun or some kind of jihad.
This is how far America has come? 14 dead is no longer considered a "mass" shooting, just a plain old everyday event?
Less guns means you believe in magic.
Not a mass shooting, that is a terrorist attack: "1 to 3 suspects on loose"
Well then clearly, we should get an international coalition together, and begin bombing strategic targets in San Bernardino.
I have to come down on the non-gun side here... the people attacked are developmentally disabled, which means that they are members of a class who would not be permitted firearms in the first place, independently of whether or not the general population were more likely to be carrying guns.
I know RTFA is passe, but you should have. The shootings took place at a center for developmentally disabled people that provides services to them, apparently at a Christmas party. "It employs nearly 670 people at its facilities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties,...", and you would expect a Christmas party would have a significant number of said employees present, even if it is just to provide services to the disabled people.
Therefore, unless you consider people who provide services to the disabled to be ineligible for carry permits, there is a significant chance that looser carry policies might have resulted in a different outcome.
Or perhaps the point is that guns with longer range, such as rifles, outclass short range weapons in a firefight.
In an enclosed space, range is not a significant discriminator, the ability to direct fire is. Yes, rate of fire does matter, but your claim that longer range wins out is incorrect.
What is particularly galling about this is that Mr. Obama has chosen yet another tragedy as a chance to politicize the issue. "Obama said Congress should act in a bipartisan manner to close loopholes, including one that allows people on the TSA no-fly list to legally purchase firearms." Because, of course, we know that everyone on the no-fly list is a convicted criminal who has evil intentions towards everyone else on the planet. From this report:
So, you can get on the list for some reason, cannot find out who is on the list, and have a difficult time getting off.
Given that the names on the list are not released to the public, it would be very hard for a dealer to know someone is on the list and should not be sold a weapon.
Yawn. That argument has been total bullshit since the day it first oozed out of someone's ass. Shootings happen in all kinds of places, and good guys with guns never, ever stop bad guys with guns. It's a fantasy, and we should stop basing policy on fantasies.
Or you live in any developed country other than the USA...
The jews were disarmed before they were rounded up during WWII. How did not having a way to protect themselves work out for them?
Are you seriously suggesting that the German Jews of the 1930s, if they had not had gun ownership restrictions, would have been able to successfully resist the Gestapo, SD, SS and Wehrmacht? Or that the above organizations would have said to themselves, "Whoa. Our political ideology is based on blaming 'international Jewry' for the economic woes of the Aryan German volk. Since the early '20s we've been very clear in saying we'd like to see them out of Germany entirely... one way or another. But some of them have rifles or handguns, and AMG (Ach Mein Gott!) concealed carry permits! Let's back off and not implement the Final Solution."
And, by the way, the majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust were from Poland, Soviet territories or otherwise outside Germany. How did not being subject to Germany's confiscation of Jews' guns work out for them? How did the Warsaw uprising work out for anyone?
There are plenty of valid reasons for responsible people to own guns. To claim that one of them is because it will prevent tyranny by one's own government in the modern era is totally fucking batshit insane. Find a real justification.
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