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Mass Shooting Reported at Madden Video Game Tournament in Florida (polygon.com)
Multiple people on live streams and social media reported a mass shooting at a Madden NFL 19 tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, this morning. The Jacksonville County Sheriff's Office confirmed that law enforcement was en route to the scene but had no further information early this afternoon. From a report: In the video, two competitors are playing when someone starts screaming off camera. As the first of nine shots break out, they abandon their stations and others are heard fleeing. Then a man is heard crying out, "What did he shoot me with?" Three more shots are fired and screaming can be heard. This weekend at Jacksonville Landing downtown was the first of four qualifier events for the Madden Classic series sponsored by EA Sports. CNN: "Multiple fatalities at the scene, many transported. #TheLandingMassShooting," according to Jacksonville Sheriff's twitter page, which urged people to "stay far away from the area" as the area is not safe at this time. "One suspect is dead at the scene, unknown at this time if we have a second suspect. Searches are being conducted," according to another tweet from the sheriff's office In a statement issued moments ago, EA Sports Madden NFL said, "This is a horrible situation, and our deepest sympathies go out to all involved."
Top competitor Drini Gjoka, who was at the event and reported the terrifying scene, said, "The tourney just got shot up. Im leavinng and never coming back. I am literally so lucky. The bullet hit my thumb. I will never take anything for granted ever again. Life can be cut short in a second.
Update: LA Times reports that the shooter was a gamer who was competing in the tournament and lost, according to Steven "Steveyj" Javaruski, one of the competitors.
Top competitor Drini Gjoka, who was at the event and reported the terrifying scene, said, "The tourney just got shot up. Im leavinng and never coming back. I am literally so lucky. The bullet hit my thumb. I will never take anything for granted ever again. Life can be cut short in a second.
Update: LA Times reports that the shooter was a gamer who was competing in the tournament and lost, according to Steven "Steveyj" Javaruski, one of the competitors.
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
Can we finally admit that video games do, in fact, mess with young people's minds and make them more violent?
I don't know about that, but I think we ought to be able to agree that video games are not a substitute for parenting.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From TFA:
Update: The Los Angeles Times reports that the suspect was a competitor at the tournament who had lost.
Also, there seems to be a problem with Florida. Maybe we should build a wall around there?
Uh, no.
We have a person who was mad at Valve because he took away his easy income. It could have easily been a stock broker or a online scammer losing his income lashing out.
Maybe we should stop selling the american dream of easy money and a government with a "hands off" attitude to mental health.
It was a mass shooting, so why was it put in quotes? Seems rather disrespectful to me, like someone saying, "so you were in a 'mass shooting' and you're a 'victim'? Sure you were."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And more guns of course.
The way people act about American football, either playing or watching, is just as violent or worse than any video games. When are people going to admit and do something about that?
another incel trumper?
> Also, there seems to be a problem with Florida. Maybe we should build a wall around there?
Agreed there seems to be a problem with Florida.
Florida MIGHT be second place to California for being weird and fucked up in all sorts of ways.
I have to disagree on the wall, thing though, only because there is a more effective and less-costly option. I have it on good authority that California and Florida will be underwater by 2020 if we do nothing at all. The way that statement was phrased, I think it was supposed to be scary, but it seems alright to me.
...for years that "Guns don't kill people; video games do!" Looks like they're right for once.
This is proof that sports , and sport themed video games are promoting bad behavior.
Both football, and football video games should be banned.
If not banned, we need a 10 day waiting period, background checks a full psyche evaluation, and a registry of people who purchase this game and play football.
All football players should be treated like criminals, and be monitored via ankle bracelets 24x7x365.
This should extend to referees, managers, coaches, and staff.
Anyone who is against this promotes bad things!
Football, and football game culture is bad culture.
Couldn't the shooter at least pick a decent game to go on a killing spree over?
As opposed to the violence in European football? The ones we hear about every single year, including where a certain group has said women should be barred from the first few rows of a game?
rename it to Calmmen
Table-ized A.I.
how many shootings before say 1960s ? when there was no guns/religion/capitalism/freedom.
I wonder if it was this kid all grown up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That "asshole with guns" was referring to a piece of shit that killed innocent people over bullshit.
So you really think it's better to murder people than being weaponless?
Oh what a surprise, another left piece of shit shows on /. to stand on the still warm bodies of the victims of a mass shooting.
Good point. It would be better to a respectful period of time - say until the pain of loss has faded - to realize you therefore no longer have emotional motivation to fix the problem.
The people pointing out issues with pro-gun-culture aren't the problem here. By definition, the people causing these problems are people with guns. What you're doing - as a nation - doesn't work. America tried it the NRA-way, and it's only getting worse. So I'd like to respectfully suggest that you take the moral outrage and bereavement and use it not to call random Internet strangers names, but instead to drive you to... fix your shit.
"Oh no... he found the
Sorry, but no. I don't want to glorify mass mayhem and terrorism. I really don't want people to "think for themselves" when their apparent thought process is: "If I shoot 20 people, I'll make the first slot on the 11:00 news."
Better to bury the news and not publish their names and faces in public -- no need to encourage copycat crimes.
Are you delusional ? Ahem Bataclan, Ahem Nice ....
I think we can finally agree that EA is messing with people's minds.
This would never have happened at a Nintendo tournament.
I'm sure more guns would have fixed the issue.
Yes, he wouldn't have been able to shoot as many people with his Xbox One controller.
You are welcome on my lawn.
you DO realize greed and avarice are human traits, not just american.
Good grief. The problem is mentally unstable people that parents, schools, and the judicial system seem to have no idea what to do with. A guy like this just doesn't suddenly get beat at a video game and at that moment start firing his gun at people. This is somebody who almost certainly has a long history of aggression issues. And honestly, what is the answer? Yes, the availability of guns in the US makes the likelihood of a gun as the weapon of choice go up, but the vehicle attacks that have happened all over the world demonstrate that someone sufficiently demented will find a way to kill and maim lots of people. Better mental health services is a start, but whether your country allows easy access to guns or doesn't (and some countries do and some countries don't), there's just a risk to being alive, that some nutcase is going to decide one day to go out killing, and, while statistically very unlikely, it is possible you may become a target.
The fact is that despite the wider trauma that goes along with a mass shooting (whether this kind of spree killer or gang violence), most murder victims knew their attacker. I find it akin to the kind of hysteria that goes along with, say, serial child rapists, very scary, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of children subjected to sexual abuse are abused by a family member or a family friend or someone else close to them. In either case, something as mundane as a husband killing his wife or a child sexually abused by an uncle doesn't really make the news, and certainly not the national news, and yet those are the situations where violence is most prevalent. It's just that our monkey brains are actually rather poor at prioritizing risk. We'll freak out about the risks of terrorism or airplane crashes, when you're statistically far more likely to choke to death or slip in your bathtub, or really, to die of heart disease, but those aren't sexy enough stories to sell advertising.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1) Kids should be taught to have a conscience.
2) Kids should be taught self-control. (If you're angry, then count to 10 or 100 before you say anything. If you're losing control, then walk away so you don't hurt someone.)
3) Kids need to see their parents acting ethically, and using self-control, as a good example.
4) Kids should be taught that if you lose a game or a job or a girlfriend etc., then it's not the end of the world. Young people need to be told that; they haven't lived long enough to experience loss and recovery from loss.
When they're extremely upset over something transient, they should be told, "A year from now, this won't matter. Five years from now, you won't even remember it. If you can't see this, then just trust me on this one." That's what my parents told me, and they were right. I remember them reassuring me with these words, but I don't remember what I was so upset about.
5) I wonder if shooters like this grew up surrounded by crowding and/or constant loud music. I can't imagine a kid who plays on swings, makes forts out of snow or cardboard boxes, and lies on his back looking at clouds, growing up to be a killer.
Ohh, you're playing the 'everyone I don't agree with is alt-right' card. You totally don't like like a ignorant ass at all.
That's great. Now if we didnt have the highest homicide rate of any first world nation by a very sizeable margin I might think you have a good point. But we do so you don't.
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What a surprise, a right winger who the second gun control comes up starts slandering other people rather than having a civilized discussion on the topic.
And what better time is there to talk about gun control then after a mass shooting? If a bunch of people burn to death in a building fire should we not be able to talk about fire safety?
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Oh? So the constitution has been revoked and all people with dissenting opinion have been locked up in FEMA camps? I didn't get that memo.
Hey, I didn't make the first post jackass. I merely responded to some leftist pile of shit that started screeching about guns before we even have solid reporting on what happened.
It it is never appropriate to became talking about regulation before you even know what the hell happened. Be it about fires or firearms.
Good point. It would be better to a respectful period of time - say until the pain of loss has faded - to realize you therefore no longer have emotional motivation to fix the problem.
Yeah, why would we want to take a level headed approach when we can just legislate from the hip on emotional appeal. We're guaranteed to have a great democracy that way
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Says the leftist troll that he himself started out with a statement stranding on the still warm bodes of the victims.
Troll? No, friend. I honestly believe that increased gun regulation is sane. I'm not saying that to trigger you or anyone else. Further, I'm not standing on any bodies, warm or otherwise. I'm disregarding the regretful - but irrelevant bodies you're referencing. The only way they matter is that they should make you feel that something is wrong, and to seek ways to fix it.
You are a perfect example of why I show abso-fucking-lutely zero respect for your kind.
What precisely is "my" kind? Rational people? People who aren't inclined to support the status-quo that isn't working? Just curious.
What in your diseased mind makes you think you deserve a respect when you started off with a generalized attack on an entire class of people?
What class of people am I attacking? Pro-gun supporters? Look, I'll admit I do think that group are wrong, and fatally so. But I'm not attacking them. I'm encouraging them to get off their asses, and change their minds. To save lives. But in your narrative, I'm the bad guy. You know nobody's buying that, right?
The answer is is that you don't deserve it, and you will never receive it.
But more to a more cogent point: well the problem with your non-argument is that there is no real problem, not in the way assholes like you think there is. Mass shootings like this are so statistical rare as to be a non-issue. Yeah, they're terrible, but so are shark bites, Ebola, and Islamic attacks. If you lump every single death where a gun is involved you'll get about 30K a year, and if you just look at homicides you're only going to about 10K. All of these are terrible but they're a drop in the bucket compared to the 2.5 million people that will die every year from all causes. And even more to the point while 30K people might die with guns the best data we have from the federal government itself shows that roughly 300K people will use a gun in self defense every damn year.
If you think I need to 'fix my shit' maybe you should educate yourself and learn about the reality of guns in America before you start beakin' off, lest you look like a retard in a public form.
You know, aside from the abrasive, antisocial, combative, ignorant, rude, angry, dismissive, condescending things you wrote, there were also a few words. At great effort, I have located them and admit that deep in there you've got a point. It's a great point, much better than the One Handgun Per Child plan that seems be your vision for a safe country. That point seems to be: the American education system is broken.
Let's see. Three hundred thousand people - per year - use a gun to "defend" themselves each year. That's one in every thousand citizens. Given that some Americans are children (let's imagine the age distribution is even up to 100 years old, which it's not), we can disregard say... 15% of your citizens. Given that some Americans are either elderly or disabled, we can probably chalk up another 15% to ignore. Then, let's estimate that maybe half of the remaining adults have guns, we arrive at 35% of your country being able to be included in your federal statistic. What just happened there is that we used reason, to come to the recognition that supposedly, one in three hundred gun-owners needs to "defend" himself every year.
I ask you... what the actual fuck?
See, in those countries other than America, where we lack guns to protect ourselves, if one in three hundred of us needs to "defend" ourselves every year, we'd be dead by now. Or homeless because all our stuff was stolen. But it doesn't work that way. The threat isn't present for us. The need-to-defend isn't present.
So hey, I'd suggest you revisit your own arguments in the light that they're just... macho bullshit, and - again - go out and actually protect some people by advocating sanity, not pro-gun culture.
"Oh no... he found the
Yeah because the real problem here isn't the psychopathic asshole that wanted to hurt people just because he lost a videogame, its really all the fault of the tool he used.
And making something illegal has already been proven to work so well to get rid of it. That's why America doesn't have a drug problem any more. Oh wait.
Besides, wasn't the event already a gun-free zone? Maybe if more people were carrying he wouldn't have been so quick to go on a rampage in the first place, or they could at least have defended themselves and ended it quicker.
You liberal morons make me laugh. You spent the last year and a half comparing Trump to Hitler at the same time you're begging him to take everyones guns away.
The principal fallacy that I am rather surprised that nobody calls out when the pro-gun shills start talking about protecting themselves, is that guns are protection. They are not shields, they don't 'protect' you in any way. ballistic vests are protection. Helmets are protection. Guns just give you a chance to engage in retaliatory violence on even footing. (Although even that is really questionable, since most people don't carry the same type of weapons that mass shooters do. I would feel pretty stupid if I got in a gunfight against a guy in level 3 body armor and carrying a fully automatic assault rifle while armed with a short barrel 9mm.)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I Say this as a Brit myself:
When I see British citizens mocking the USA I just remember that in 100 years or so, we went from ruling 25% of the world to living on an island the size of Michigan. I've never been more happy that 15 years ago I decided to emigrate to the USA. I look at the pussy liberal culture in the UK that was emerging even then and see how it has now driven the entire country into the ground and made everyone scared to even admit to having testicles. The entire country has totally become a handout culture, and now the peecee agenda is enabling a mass of immigrants to turn into an Islamic state. If that's your idea of a "civilized" country you can stick it.
Oh yeah. Here's one of your "incredibly polite" good people who have respect for themselves and others:
https://nypost.com/2018/05/09/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, the "lone shooter" is very precisely the representative of gun culture in the United States. That is the very image that the NRA must promote in order to get people to buy more guns, which is goal at the very heart of "gun culture".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, by all means, let's add "mass shooters" to the list of people being oppressed by government.
I'm telling you, just read the pro-gun comments here to see just how sick gun culture really is.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If making something illegal doesn't make less of it, then why do so-called "Christian conservatives" want to make abortion illegal? Why have any laws at all?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nobody uses their home security system to go murder a bunch of kids.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well all I can say to that is 'good luck'. I watch a fair amount of news coverage from a lot of English speaking nations, one thing I've seen is how damn authoritarian the British government is when it comes to people that try to defend themselves. Almost as if they take some sick pleasure in going after a citizen that stands up for themselves instead of doing the hard work of preventing the crimes that the original person was trying to defense themselves against.
And don't even get me started about that god damn Telford situation. If there was ever an argument for completely terminating and re-staffing an entire police force that would be it.
Well if you RTFS it turns out a person shot a ton of other people. It pretty much sounds like almost every other mass shooting we've ever had. Sure, it might turn out to be terrorists or something but as of when this article went up on slashdot that was seeming pretty unlikely.
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Nice, can't beat'em so call them Russian. A sure sign of a strong intellect.
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Yes, by all means, let's add "mass shooters" to the list of people being oppressed by government.
I'm telling you, just read the pro-gun comments here to see just how sick gun culture really is.
Gun owners aren't guilty of mass shootings, just like Muslims aren't guilty of terrorist attacks and gays aren't guilty of molesting children. Blaming innocent members of a minority culture for the crimes of others is probably the most common argument bigots make. You should stop blaming innocent people for others' crimes like that.
Politics aside, the NRA does some positive activities. Supports shooting ranges / gun safety and affordable insurance. The insurance aspect is interesting since could be an area to couple with other insurance such as liability and health.
Maybe it's you that should stop watching MSNBC.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/po...
" Yes, the availability of guns in the US makes the likelihood of a gun as the weapon of choice go up, but the vehicle attacks that have happened all over the world demonstrate that someone sufficiently demented will find a way to kill and maim lots of people. "
If we had a similar homicide rate to other first world countries you'd have a good point. The problem is that we have a homicide rate several times higher then the next closest first world countries. Clearly people aren't finding other good ways to kill each other.
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Ha. After having been to that country about a half dozen times I feel like I can say I'm sure they were happy to see you go.
Also, the dismantling of a colonial empire to allow the formally subjugated to rule themselves is not a bad thing. In fact, a people's inherent natural right to self rule is why we revolted.
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"Yeah because the real problem here isn't the psychopathic asshole that wanted to hurt people just because he lost a videogame, its really all the fault of the tool he used.
And making something illegal has already been proven to work so well to get rid of it."
First world countries with stricter gun control laws then us universally have homicide rates 4-5 times less than ours ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) so yes, in this case limiting the tool does seem to do an awful lot of good.
You conservative morons make me laugh. You refuse to look at real life things that work extremely well in almost every other first world nation like gun control or socialized medicine (as a country we pay twice or more percapita for our health care relative to any other country with socialized medicine) because it disagrees with your ideology.
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No, I want to regulate ACTIONS by not encouraging people to act on murderous thoughts. Why glorify mass murder?
By your logic, every jihadi attack was committed by a muslim, therefore all muslims are guilty of jihadi attacks. Check your emotion, it blocks logical thinking.
So you really think it's better to murder people than being weaponless?
No, it's better to be able to defend yourself than to not be able to defend yourself. Law abiding people in the US use legally owned firearms for self defense (almost entirely without having to fire a shot) orders of magnitude more often than criminals use guns to murder anybody. You really can't grasp that being stripped of your right to self defense and being a murderer aren't the only two possibilities?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The problem is that we have a homicide rate several times higher then the next closest first world countries.
Looking at the numbers, the elephant in the room as the biggest factor is race, not guns.
If you do a more fair comparison, the homicide rates of whites in the US to other developed countries, the difference is much less, but the US whites (males of course) have "only" double the homicide rate.
Bear in mind that in all cases, random mass-killing by assault rifle, truck, or any weapon, make up only a tiny proportion of homicides.
So the "vehicle attack" argument is almost irrelevant to the broader question of gun homicide.
Guns don't cause violence, but they do escalate it once someone decides to go that route.
It is notable that Brazil has strict gun control laws, which it actually enforces, yet it has a murder rate per capita that is ten times that of the U.S. It also has a major problem with "leaked" guns -- many of which are coming from the police. Clearly the cause of their problem is systemic, but maybe ours is too.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"Looking at the numbers, the elephant in the room as the biggest factor is race, not guns.
If you do a more fair comparison, the homicide rates of whites in the US to other developed countries, the difference is much less, but the US whites (males of course) have "only" double the homicide rate.""
No, it's not race it's poverty. Non-whites are far more likely to live in poverty in this country and the fact that poverty breeds crime is about as close as you get to a sociological fact. This is why you generally don't compare third world to first on crime statistics, the large poverty driven crime skew makes any comparison useless.
There is no magic "crime gene" that makes non-whites more crime prone in this country.
"Bear in mind that in all cases, random mass-killing by assault rifle, truck, or any weapon, make up only a tiny proportion of homicides.
So the "vehicle attack" argument is almost irrelevant to the broader question of gun homicide."
I have no idea what you are getting at here.
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Gun culture is sick culture.
My father attended grade school in rural Maryland in the 1950's. The boys in his class brought their rifles to school in the morning so that they could hunt squirrels on the walk home from school. That was typical in rural America during that era. Fathers judged when boys were mature enough to handle a gun and taught them gun safety and shooting skills. Hunting and shooting were social and communal. There were very few fatalities from rural grade school shootings in the decade of the 1950's, despite the common practice of allowing students to bring guns to schools. Some schools had shooting clubs. Rural American was safe because it had a healthy gun culture.
Gun culture is about advocating and practicing responsibility and safety. Can you name any mass shooting carried out by an NRA class instructor or a competitive shooter? Are the U.S. Olympic shooting teams "sick?" What about those in the armed forces? Someone is willing to risk his life at war for his country and you describe his affinity for the weapons used to perform his job as "sick?"
Study the biographies of those who commit mass shootings. They are not part of gun culture, but usually loners with histories of anti-social behavior.
Where do members of gun culture congregate? At shooting ranges. If gun culture is sick, then where are the mass shootings at ranges??
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Many online Madden players engage in negative aggressive play and taunting of opponents. It is not about winning. Itâ(TM)s about dominating and humiliating your opponent. Watch YouTube videos where this event is promoted. You will see players overcome with emotion screaming at the top of their lungs. What would drive someone to shoot up a place after losing a video game? I am sad this happened but not surprised.
Platforms and publishers need to do a much better job for online games. Online play is a cesspool of aggressive players who want to humiliate and dominate their opponent. It is not about winning. Gave up on Madden years ago. Opponents run the same glitching money plays, never punt, and go for two poInt plays to run up the score. The movement to make Madden an e-Sport is a shift away from casual gamers towards to aggressive players. I would encourage gamers to not buy a product that tolerates aggressive poor behavior by players.
This is a good example of what happens when an entitled disordered personality gets their hands on a weapon and perceives a slight against their egoic self. Since their own internal dialogue is already oriented around complete self destruction the best way for them to commit suicide is to get the police to do it for them, whilst taking those who inflicted the perceived injury with them.
This is because if they were to just commit suicide there would be no notoriety and attention from their actions. I counted the discharges and it sounded like a hand gun with a nine round magazine, a reload with a fresh magazine, then another 3 shots. More than likely the shooter pre-meditated a variety of scenarios where this *could* occur otherwise why bring a loaded firearm with a spare magazine? I doubt it was a rifle of some description.
This is the danger of Narcissistic Personality Disorder when it is hovering just below the the threshold of becoming Anti-social Personality Disorder. Those people walk around life always looking for ways to create destruction for everyone and looking at this guys eyes and face in the picture he just reeks of someone who can't sleep at night because his own unconscious self is barraging him with thoughts of what a loser he is. More so look at the facial expression of the Bills player - this is someone with enough social intelligence to pick up that there is something wrong with this kid. I know this is after the fact however it is possible to tell all this from a photo.
So when he lost at the one thing where he thought it was his domain, it pushed him over the edge he knew he was precariously resting on. The thing you can't obviously see is he was looking for a scenario to generate the worst possible outcome so that a notorious death was the one thing he could do so that people would pay attention, after all killing himself means nothing, killing others in the process confirms his own self destructive nature.
How do I see this? I have been writing a book on this subject because it is a common problem that generally only manifests as psychological abuse. At 24 he didn't have enough social experience to defend himself from the perception of the abuse repeated from his childhood nor the impulse control to stop his own destructive nature manifesting.
Yes, you can blame the parents too. At least one was abusive and the other enabled the abuse, possibly tried to compensate and they projected their own toxicity into this kid, from which they will draw their own supply for the rest of their lives. I'm going to predict, he was probably a quiet kid, didn't make much trouble, no one really noticed him. Never had a criminal record, no history of violence, very few friends, probably all on line.
This, I feel, is the core issue with the weapons violence in the US, it is a manifestation of mental health issues like these. Start fixing the mental health issues and you will see a reduction in gun violence.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No, it's not race it's poverty. Non-whites are far more likely to live in poverty in this country and
First, I'm talking about the differences in homicide rates between developed countries, and the statistical correlates, not absolute causes.
I was not touching the subject of why blacks have higher homicide rates. It matters for the sake of comparison only that they do.
Poverty is certainly a factor. However, in the case of the United States, poor non-blacks still have much lower homicide rates than poor blacks.
the fact that poverty breeds crime is about as close as you get to a sociological fact.
Inequality, not absolute poverty. Plenty of countries have high poverty and low crime.
What about Mozambique? Sub-Saharan Africa, much deeper poverty than any US inner city, lots of guns still around since the civil war ended. And it has a homicide rate lower than the U.S. Nobody is suggesting there is a simple answer to the whole problem.
There is no magic "crime gene" that makes non-whites more crime prone in this country.
No kidding. That is a silly comment. Most heritable traits are polygenic - including height, IQ, aggression, impulsiveness.
Do you think the high crime difference between men and women is 100% cultural and not due to biological differences?
For one thing he "broke the law"...this was a gun free zone. See how stupid THAT is? Then, the next thing, you will find this lDIOT was: a loner, no social skills, anti social, keeps to himself, few friends, an outsider, quick temper and on and on. But no...let's just make this about guns, how evil they are, how we need to have a serious conversation, rub our hands together, and have a few candle light protests. This kid, from what I have found, won last year, became upset because he lost, blamed someone else, then got mad, went out and got his gun. You can bet if he didn't have the gun, he probably would have used his car. I'll bet, once the smoke clears, you'll find he's another kid that was raised that he can't do anything wrong, coddled by his parents, given participation trophies his entire life, never told no, got into video games at a young age, stayed to himself. Once things unraveled, he couldn't handle it. No, this was not about the gun, the gun was just the tool. Had it not been available, and had some people been able to LEGALLY carry into this place their weapon, perhaps this would not happen. He probably would have used his car, bat, club or something else. Another spoiled brat, that took his own life because he couldn't "man up" and accept responsibility.
So for over a decade there has been the argument that violent video games make people more violent. And tons of arguments for or against. However, I want to use existing arguments to point out something equally stupid; if you do not mind. Yes, I am hijacking this thread.
For over 7 decades the US government and the DEA have been calling cannabis a 'Gateway drug'. Why? Not because of any scientific research, but pure statistics.
An overwhelming majority of heavy users of drugs like heroin, admit to using 'marijuana' at some point in time. So these people jumped to the conclusion that cannabis is a gateway drug. Following that logic, why isnt alcohol, cigarettes, or coffee also a gateway drug because 100% of heroin users also used these as well.
So lets use this same, already government sanctioned, presence. If 100% of these mass shooters also admitted to playing video games, should we label video games as a 'gateway' to mass shooting? the precedence is definitely there.
That's only true for small parts of Sub Saharan Africa ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) and suggesting differences in ethnicity are on the same level as the differences between the two sexes is what's "silly" around here.
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This gun debate is getting really old, and it's never going to be "won" by either side. Just like abortion, women/gay/minority rights. It all just gets recycled into one big round after another. Talking heads will use majority opinion to get elected on these issues for years to come... ..Unless human beings wake tf up and realize they are responsible for their own actions. Period. It's not a "fair" world out there, there are plenty of crazies and just plain evil people out there that want to do harm (I would mostly gather because great harm had been done to them at some point in the past). So you have to be able to defend yourself. But the point is to raise as many children up to be ethical and respectful people.
TL;DR: Respect is what's missing.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
They only talk lies.
Like, "Truth isn't Truth", or something.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
A lot of people seem to have some extreme anger issues.
Once they're raging, things can go stupid quickly. Doesn't even require a gun.
As an example, drive on our freeways from time to time and watch how stupid people can be once the anger takes over.
I think that's what sets America apart from the rest of the world. We're very quick tempered over minor stupid shit. The overall attitude is just angry.
You may / may not agree with me but if you spend six months or more away from the US, it will be one of the first things you notice when you get back.
But there are a fuck of a lot of Russians-pretending-to-be-Americans here
You have evidence of this? Please cite.
.... I wonder "Oh, where in America is it this time ?"
I'm hardly ever wrong.
and now the peecee agenda is enabling a mass of immigrants to turn into an Islamic state.
Somewhere there's an Islamic citizen wondering why we let the damn British back in here.
I wonder, what does a country with testicles do? Stop the "demographic changes"? So more Brits than Arabs then. That's more civilized? Speak up, what are you getting at here. We can always let in a lot more Mexicans if we don't want it to become Islamic.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Thoughts and Prayers.
Both Sides.
Lone Wolf.
Mental Illness.
More Guns.
but you alt-right nutjobs
And yet, as seen in the killer's reddit posts, he's yet another angrily irrational left-leaning person who hated anyone who voted for Trump. Just another alt-righter, right? Gotcha.
Sort of like it was an "alt-right" but never the less Bernie Sanders fan boy that decided to go and try to kill a bunch of Republican congress members? Is that how it works?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I do understand your points and why you feel the way you do. I do feel sorry that guns are your "normal". You will never know different and understandably so as it has been ingrained in your society for generations.
From a personal standpoint I am so happy I don't live in the US. There is a definite liberating sense of freedom and peace to live in a society where the thought of needing to lethally protect myself never crosses my mind (as practically no-one else has a gun).
Fuck, no!
The US has about a third of a billion people. A tiny proportion of them are dangerously nuts. So... horrible stuff happens sometimes.
You can blame the violence on video games. With the same logic, you can blame the violence on the chairs they were sitting in, or the snacks they ate.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
You guys are so paranoid. A Russian behind every post...living in fear of Russians.
Solution take guns from Democrats.
Interesting thing: liberals fear Trump is taking their rights yet youre ready to give up your firearms to a tyrant and the Russians. Must not fear Republicans and the Russians too much...
> Good grief. The problem is mentally unstable people
Are you suggesting that US has a unique mental health problem?
I have seen far worse mental health situations elsewhere. Mental health is even a taboo topic in less developed countries, much less have imperfect access to care. Yet, in these countries, psychopaths and people who go postal don't do mass shootings (they may throw something around or charge with a sharp/heavy objects - much easier to deal with) because they don't live societies with a cavalier attitude to optimized killing tools.
Healthcare in this country is by and large, a for-profit industry. America views being healthy as a privilege of success, not a basic human right. This means if you're not feeling entirely right in the head, but you're saving up to buy that new iPhone, you'll probably skip out on getting that psych evaluation.
Around last holiday season, I bought something which required registration with the federal government, and the manufacturer insisted I take a few basic lessons before being allowed to use it. Oh wait, that was a consumer-grade camera drone, not a gun. I've never bought a gun, but I'd imagine there must be similar common-sense rules involved with something that is clearly more dangerous than a glorified toy quadcopter. Oh wait again, there aren't.
I suppose we deserve this shit.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
See, in those countries other than America, where we lack guns to protect ourselves, if one in three hundred of us needs to "defend" ourselves every year, we'd be dead by now. Or homeless because all our stuff was stolen. But it doesn't work that way. The threat isn't present for us. The need-to-defend isn't present.
Because other first world countries are bigger on the concept of social safety nets for people who fall on hard times. Here in America, we have this prevailing conservative attitude that if you can't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you should just starve to death.
Problem is, these people aren't content to sit in a gutter and slowly starve - instead, they turn to crime. Consequently, people with guns end up having to defend themselves from them.
Bigger problem is, to sell "fixing" this to the American public, you'd have to tell them you're going to take some of their money and give it to deadbeats (you're not going to be able to shake that stigma), and they'll have to give up their guns too. That's why it's a tough sell.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Maybe if more people were carrying he wouldn't have been so quick to go on a rampage in the first place, or they could at least have defended themselves and ended it quicker.
I don't know which right-wing nutjob originally started this idiotic proposal which keeps getting parroted every time there's a shooting, but it has a huge logical flaw ya'll keep missing: If a bad guy with a gun shoots at least one person before getting shot by a good guy with a gun, it's still a shooting.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Is you country accepting pansies for permanent immigration?
They complain, getting sick of ignoring them. Wish they would just leave.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Someone really should make a gun that looks like a game controller.
It would buy you a split second.
I'm really surprised nobody has wrapped orange tape around their gun barrel before nutting up. Same reason.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In Europe, maybe. Not in the US. Everything's bigger there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In fact, a person who defended themself against a home invader actually was sentenced to two years in prison. The home invader?
Nothing was done to them.
Then it wasn't selfdefense. Self-defense is legal everywhere, gunning down unarmed people is not(*), even if they are breaking into your home.
(*) except in Florida I hear.
We just had a story about a gamer going and killing an innocent family because he was mad at Valve
Wow. Okay let's follow your line of thinking and look at the profession and loose association of everything anyone with murderous suicide intent had in common. I think you'll find the only really common denominator is that a person was born.
Maybe we need to stop births, that way we can solve your root cause.
One thing is that by spending so much time behind screens, people are not able to react properly to real life social situations or handle their emotions in such situations. That and the fact that Americans practically put guns into the hands of lunatics doesn't bode well for the future of the US as a society, especially with the climate of political hatred and financial uncertainly. It's a time bomb waiting to explode.
The stereotypical American is someone who eats a supersized big mac meal and then launches a gun attack on their own school or work colleagues. While not partaking if this activity they are online ranting and raving about how bad the liberals or conservatives are. And of course bombing the crap out of third world countries because some Saudis hijacked four planes 17 years ago. That's how the world views America.
...if that. Obtaining parts that modify guns into full auto, or modifying them by yourself isn't all that hard, and if you're going to do a mass shooting you don't really care about legality of what you do. The bump stocks are an easily accessible, half-assed solution that requires holding the gun just right so that it shoots like full auto, and not as firmly as with real full auto - resulting in accuracy going to shit. Without bump stocks the shooters would quite likely seek out genuine full auto - and that would result in more people injured or killed.
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Why is this shit modded interesting and the GP not?
The point wasn't about a stupid flamebait between American and "European" football at all, but to show that the "video games cause violence" argument is ridiculous.
There is absolutely nothing useful about a bump stock ban. But after the Las Vegas shooting, a blood sacrifice needed to be made to appease the masses, and bump stocks became the sacrificial lamb.
If footballs are outlawed only outlaws will have footballs
As a Brit that still lives here I'm fucking proud that my country stood alone in the world against Nazi Germany and bankrupted an empire in order to meet its promises.
I'm also proud that we helped the members of that empire transition to self rule, and continue to support them to this day.
I look at the pussy liberal culture in the UK that was emerging even then and see how it has now driven the entire country into the ground
You appear to be blind. I hope someone keeps paying your health insurance premiums for you.
Not every mass shooting is done by someone that owns guns.
Stop trying to demonise a whole class of people because of the actions of a few fuckwits that don't all even belong in that class.
Nobody commits a mass shooting with a baseball bat, or automobile, or any fucking other thing besides a gun.
Nobody commits a mass vehicle ramming attack with a gun. By your logic all automobile owners should be demonised for trying to run over pedestrians.
Cupcakes are tasty. I like fairy cakes myself.
Wait, hang on. Why are we discussing cake? Oh. Was that meant to be an insult?
Should have guessed you didn't know what you were talking about when you tried suggesting video games are all about shooting people up. It's not as though the tournament was entirely based around a computer game that doesn't have any guns in it.
Interesting that you describe that person as a gamer, rather than a failed business man, an owner of expensive sports cars, a mental illness sufferer or indeed any of the other identities that would apply.
Pushing an agenda much? Just that 80% of the population qualify as 'gamer', it's not a terribly useful distinction when determining why someone might, e.g., kill themselves.
Hmm. No.
Can we finally admit that video games do, in fact, mess with young people's minds and make them more violent? We just had a story about a gamer going and killing an innocent family because he was mad at Valve, and now we have this.
It's time to serious consider regulating video games and protecting our children.
Uh, no.
We have a person who was mad at Valve because he took away his easy income. It could have easily been a stock broker or a online scammer losing his income lashing out.
Maybe we should stop selling the american dream of easy money and a government with a "hands off" attitude to mental health.
you DO realize greed and avarice are human traits, not just american.
having them is human, promoting them as good is American.
Just another second banana
Can we finally admit that video games do, in fact, mess with young people's minds and make them more violent? We just had a story about a gamer going and killing an innocent family because he was mad at Valve, and now we have this.
It's time to serious consider regulating video games and protecting our children.
No. Because you're a moron. Considering the amount of video games sold and played and how long we've been using them and how much violence is happening because of video games.... nah son. Those numbers don't add up at all. Violence happened at a video game tournament. Why would video games be the cause why wouldn't it be gun worship? Why wouldn't it be white fragility? why wouldn't it be gamergate? Maybe there was a girl playing and it set him off losing in front of a girl. Because all of those factors have a MUCH higher correlation with violence than the super category of "video games"
Just another second banana
I find your concern for people with opiate problems highly suspect as there is absolutely no reason that both issues can't be discussed in the public sphere. Either you're a complete idiot or you're a scum bag whose trying to deflect attention away from a topic you don't want discussed by using the opiate crisis as an excuse.
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Law-abiding people, on the other hand, would follow the rules, leaving the only civilian guns on the premises in the hands of the criminals.
Yeah, funny how that's really only a problem in a country like the US where guns are far too readily available with barely any regulation. Strange how you almost never hear of such shootings in countries where it's hard to get a gun in the first place.
Honestly the fantasy that FAR too many Americans have that they would be able to effectively defend themselves in a gun fight that starts at a time and place they cannot predict is utterly delusional. It is not practical or smart to be carrying a gun at all times. Unless you actually served in the military in a combat specialty or possibly on a police force, you almost certainly have no idea what you are doing and are more of a danger than an asset. Worse when the police do respond, you become a problem because they have to figure out if you are the shooter which puts them, you, and others in additional danger. If you respond to a shooter with your own firearm, nobody around you knows whether you are the "good guy" or not. If I see you brandish a gun I have to assume you are trying to murder me and act accordingly even if in reality you have the best of intentions. Imagine for a moment that I have a gun too and I see someone I don't know pull out a firearm in a crowd. What do you think is likely to happen? Several options and most of them very bad for all involved.
Because, of course, guns don't just magically disintegrate when entering a "gun free zone."
Which is why letting (essentially) anyone and everyone carry without regulation is a incredibly dumb idea.
What? Clearly we like it this way, or we'd do something about it. Just like everyone else has.
"We"? We have some delusional idiots among us but let's not pretend all Americans are on board with the current idiotic situation.
Another possible option would be mandatory military service for all US citizens from their 19th birthday to their 24th birthday. And mandatory reserve status for anyone who wants to own a gun.
I have no problem with mandatory conscription as a condition of gun ownership. After all the 2nd amendment does say "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." so let's for once enforce that part of the amendment. Good idea. The best part is that it does not in any way infringe on the "right of the People to keep and bear arms". It actually makes that right useful for once. I don't think mandatory conscription for all is a good idea or necessary given the likely dangers to the US. Honestly we already spend too much money on our military as it is with a volunteer force and conscription does not in general improve the capabilities of the military.
Another alternative is that we can just keep doing what we're doing, letting any crazy jackass get all the guns and ammo they want. This is probably what will happen.
Depressingly this is likely to remain the case.
So maybe you'd rather he firebombed the place - just a little gasoline, maybe a liquor bottle and a rag and a match. So much better than shooting them? There's 1000's of ways to kill a lot of people if you want to - those two immigrant pukes in Boston made pressure cooker bombs from the gunpowder from fireworks. Too simple. Guns are just easier, but you don't need one to do murder, you only need them to prevent murder. The victim's only chance is usually a gun, since other things that can stop the attack are usually too big or too expensive or too heavy to be carrying around. The victim needs something light, small, and portable to be able to retrieve it and stop an attack.
Sorry to pop your pompous little bubble there, but the fact of the matter is that shit happens, and when it does, it's better to be prepared than unprepared.
Really? Then why is it that we pretty much never hear of these "prepared" people you speak of doing anything actually helpful? Where are all the pistol packing "good citizens" when they are needed when these mass shootings happen? Your argument relies on a fantasy rather than how real people actually go about their lives. When the US has lower levels of gun violence than countries with more restrictive gun laws then and only then can you lecture us about how firearms make you "prepared".
Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
First off, I have NO idea if you are a "good person" or not. What I do know is that if you brandish a gun I have to assume your intent is to murder me or others and behave accordingly. We aren't going to have a conversation about it. That means my responses are going to be either A) flee or B) fight and that response is going to come fast. If my response is B then there is a good chance one or both of us ends up dead even if we both intend to help. Second, the notion that "good people" (implied to be carrying firearms) outnumbering "bad people" somehow prevents these shootings from happening is belied by the fact that THEY KEEP HAPPENING. How many have to die to disprove your fantasy that citizen shooters are going to create a deterrence in the real world?
I sincerely hope that if your life is ever in danger, that there is someone equipped and prepared to defend you, but kindly stop pretending that abject helplessness is a virtue.
The odds of someone (including you) being properly equipped and prepared to engage in a fire fight on your behalf are a good approximation of zero. Even in the US most people do not carry firearms 24/7 particularly in public spaces. You included and don't pretend otherwise. Your argument is a strawman. People aren't helpless just because they aren't carrying a firearm, and even if they are that doesn't mean they are prepared to deal with a real live shooting event.
This person killed three people with a handgun that he purchased legally. As is the case with the overwhelming majority of mass shooting events it ended only when the shooter took his own life (trying to respond more quickly is a rather futile goal, generally we can't do that regardless of how many guns are around in any hands).
Equally important is that not only are handguns comically easy to get in many states, but he could have pulled this off with other weapons that are even easier to get in many more states. A pump-action shotgun with a 6 shot magazine can be had in almost any state for under $500. All you need is a driver's license and to clear an exceptionally quick background check that is known to have issues. In many places it takes less time to buy this than it does to buy sudafed (and in some cases these are available over wider hours of business than sudafed as well).
Seriously, why do we need access to guns under such exceptionally loose terms? Why can't we slow down people just a little when they are literally making life and death decisions?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The only legal self defense item you can buy in the UK is a rape alarm
Why not take it one step further and make murder illegal? Then he wouldn't have been able to murder at all.
If making something illegal doesn't make less of it, then why do so-called "Christian conservatives" want to make abortion illegal? Why have any laws at all?
I'm sorry, but it sounds awfully like you're legitimizing anti-abortion laws here. Such laws don't work. They shift who has the abortions towards the poorer end of the spectrum, and they make them much more dangerous, but they don't prevent them. And anti-gun laws don't work, either. They shift who has the guns towards the criminal end of the spectrum, and the richer end (since they can afford to get around the restrictions one way or another) but hang the poor out in the wind. Criminals still have them, citizens don't, and then they are even more vulnerable.
If you want to fix the gun problem, the answer is just like fixing the drug problem. Care for people's needs (including education, but more notably food, clothes, shelter, and community) and you'll see the problem improve. In fact, the problem is already improving; gun deaths due to assault are generally falling year-on-year, in spite of mass shooting events. Gun suicides continue to climb. Didn't we learn anything from the rat experiment? When you put rats in an empty cage with drugs, they will do the drugs until they die. When you put rats in a healthy environment, and offer them drugs, most of them ignore the drugs and do other things. If the environment becomes overcrowded and their needs thus aren't met, then they become interested in the drugs.
We are not so different from rats. If our needs are met, there will be less violence of all kinds. Our needs are not being met.
UBI and national health care, now. Taking guns away from people with an established history of violence, fine. National gun control? Are you sure this is the gang of criminals you want regulating who can be armed?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nobody uses their home security system to go murder a bunch of kids.
Yeah, it's manslaughter, not murder. The first world lifestyle is predicated upon the suffering and death of the residents of the third world, and the security system is for protection of those ill-gotten gains.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, so let's say half as many people are inclined to do so, but the means they must use, absent guns, kill 3x as many people per incident, on average.
Did we do better, because the number of incidents decreased by 50%? Or worse, because the death toll increased by 50%?
At least with a gun you can take cover, GTFO, or return fire when you hear the first shots. With an IED, it really only makes one sound and by the time you hear it the worst has already happened.
Beside that, how do you propose we manage who can get them easily when most people who misuse them have no disqualifying factors until the first time they misuse them (e.g. after they own one)? Now, I don't disagree with you, and more than one shooting in recent history could have been prevented if the FBI and local police had acted on legitimate tips from the public, but that's different from managing who can get them. I'm genuinely curious how you propose that.
Ah, and for the fact that you can make a workable firearm from about $30 in Home Depot parts. It might only survive a handful of rounds being fired, but that's all that's needed for a mass shooting: 9 shots fired, 5 dead (including the shooter) and multiple injured.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
> AR
Why'd you choose one of the hardest out there? Converting AK to full auto without semi-auto option takes like 5 minutes with no tools, just a piece of wire to tie two parts together. There's a book on Amazon, "Full-Auto Conversion Of The SKS Rifle." To convert FN FNC you need to make this kind of part. This all within 10 minutes of googling.
BTW, converting AR to full-auto with no semi-auto option is supposedly not all that hard either.
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Seeing as the actual lamb which did all the shit (again and again and again and again) is as venerated as Jesus for [insert weird reasons here], that's the best anyone can hope for. Remember: when something is intrinsically irrational, any attempts to curtail it will appear irrational from its perspective. You seem to have figured out the latter part, but not yet the former.
You just laid a major burn on every Democrat in America.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Gun culture is sick culture.
Eh? I live in a very heavily armed and very safe place. In fact, it is safer than the average European country. What is sick about wanting to preserve and protect what makes my home unique from most cultures and countries in the world throughout history?
As an American I have frequently lamented our public education system and pointed to other countries as models of education systems that should be emulated.
Prithee, which country are you a product of? I am deeply interested by your manifest intellect. In particular interest is the complete lack of political education and critical thinking skills you have been trained in. I would like to study the obviously dysfunctional non-American education system that created American-like results.
Care to elucidate me?
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
It's a good thing we have nearly constant shootings so we are never allowed to talk about guns.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
And this comes as a surprise? I guess school shootings are too boring now. Own it America, or change your law.
is it makes it real easy to kill a lot of people fast. Cars require your target to be somewhere you can get a car. Bombs require some skill (and yes, I know it's not a lot of skill, but if you're already mentally deranged it's a fairly high barrier).
This is also why guns are such a problem for suicide. You can blow your head off before the meds kick in and you realize you don't want to die.
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they exist to stop casual or spur of the moment shooters. Bars are a good place for gun free zones since drunk people do stupid things and, well, Hotels often have bars. But there's lot of places that prefer to be gun free since the odds of a mass shooter showing up and getting taken out is the odds of a fist fight escalating into a gun fight.
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Specifically, 1977, when the NRA began changing from 'gun safety and training' to 'firearms ownership advocacy.'
The NRA in the 1930s:
Now, it's important to note that at the time, the NRA was was pro-control, not anti-ownership.
It's also important to note that the idea that the 2nd Amendment guarantees free ownership of firearms by private citizens harkens back to the olden times of 1988 when a bunch of activist judges on the SCOTUS overthrew the prior two hundred years of constitutional interpretation and law.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Was I seeing Mass shooting memes YESTERDAY on Facebook?!!?
https://www.facebook.com/icarr...
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
...the shooter was a gamer who was competing in the tournament and lost...
Most of the mass shooters are losers, figuratively speaking. This guy was literally a loser.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
And the rest of us hope that you stay in your bunker and off the streets.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I do feel sorry that guns are your "normal".
There's no reason to feel sorry. America, has a nation, only exists because of free access to firearms and other weapons. We were a colony of what was arguably the most powerful nation on the globe at that time, after all. And the potential need to have another revolution was the very reason the founders of these United States legally enshrined the right to own a gun in our constitution. It's right up there with all the other essential freedoms, like the freedom of speech, assembly, and to not have the government just seize your propriety at any one time.
here is a definite liberating sense of freedom and peace to live in a society where the thought of needing to lethally protect myself never crosses my mind
Well that's an interesting point there and one that a lot of people from outside of the US don't really acknowledge. And that's the perception of crime and shootings in general. The corporate media will produce a constant stream of coverage of sensationalized death, unless it counters any narrative that's inconvenient for a media narrative. Then they'll bury it. Kind of like how it just came out that for the first time the number of murders in London has exceeded the number of murders in New York City.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's a damage mitigation strategy.
It's not possible to get rid of all psychopathic assholes, because new ones are born every day. But if it's a pain-in-the-ass to get a gun, fewer psychopathic assholes will have them and have to resort to less-deadly means of venting their rage.
To see how this works, let's go with your drug analogy. How many people regularly get a hold of heroin compared to the number of people who regularly get a hold of alcohol? A whole lot less people get heroin, since it takes some more effort to get.
Maybe if more people were carrying he wouldn't have been so quick to go on a rampage in the first place, or they could at least have defended themselves and ended it quicker.
Based on statistics from the military, about 1/3 to 2/3rds of the shots fired in a firefight like this do not hit their intended target. So, put a whole lot of armed people there and they'll shoot a lot of bystanders.
Add to this the confusion: One guy starts shooting. Three people start shooting him. The next three people draw and have to figure out who's the aggressor. Some are going to get it wrong and shoot some of your "good guys". Plus you've got that missing-1/3rd-of-the-shots thing taking out other bystanders, so they really do look like bad guys. Which will draw fire from other good guys, causing more people to drop and more firing.
Which is why an enormous amount of police training is when not to shoot at people....or at least it used to be.
A heavily-armed crowd is a fantastic way for a suicidal psychopath to cause a whole lot of death.
Safer than most of Europe... Ok. Good luck banning knives.
Game rage, pure and simple.
I'm just a decent below-tournament-level player and have been raged on countless times. I've even been banned from servers by admins who did no know how to play. Calling me a cheater is bad enough, but they often go on to threaten my life because they lost a lowly video game. After their rant, besides the obvious "get more practice", I offer them gaming advice like considering the purchase of surround sound headphones, not walking their character in the middle of the street, considering clearing the room with a flashbang/grenade before charging in, etc. My offer of help is always rewarded with more rage. Clearly they cannot identify themselves as the problem.
And so, if you want to know what caused this, there you go.
When I see British citizens mocking the USA I just remember that in 100 years or so, we went from ruling 25% of the world to living on an island the size of Michigan.
I assume you attribute this to your strict gun laws? If that's the case you either have a causation problem or maybe you're actually responding to a different threat about something completely different. God knows the reduction of the UK empire doesn't have even the slightest of anything to do with what has been discussed ANYWHERE in the over 1000 comments on this story so far.
The entire country has totally become a handout culture, and now the peecee agenda is enabling a mass of immigrants to turn into an Islamic state.
LOL did you leave the UK voluntarily or were you kicked out for being a twat?
Don't look now your hypocrite is showing!
Gun culture is about advocating and practicing responsibility and safety.
Gun culture is whatever either says says it is. Unfortunately one side has some statistics behind it rather than just some nice sounding words.
It's a good thing we have nearly constant shootings so we are never allowed to talk about guns.
I can't tell if you're trolling or just very stupid. The media loves talking about shootings and will flock to report on any event that isn't inconvenient for their greater narrative. Read: the vast majorly of shootings in the US, which usually involve violent criminal thugs shooting at other criminals.
instead of 30... Anyway it'll drop off quickly because this has become routine. 3 dead and 9 injured is barely even news anymore...
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the 2nd amendment was not nor was it ever a carte blanc to have as many guns in any way shape and form as you want.
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you're comparing a variety of 1st world nations with strong natural resources and few enemies to the likes of Yemen (currently under siege by Saudi Arabia with the help of America and occupying the same slot as America on it's list ), Somolia (a country that suffers constant droughts and has no natural resources) and Venezuela (which the US shut out of the world banking system and then used their inability to pay debts to seize property from, funny how it's OK when we do it).
Yeah, take a bunch of people who've been shit all over by circumstance and the most powerful nations on earth and hey, what do you know, they have trouble maintaining functional governments.
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I read a news article once about an old man who had a pizza girl knock on his door (wrong house). He shot her dead. Said he felt threatened. By a pizza girl.
I also know several gun nuts who carry talk about how they'd love to be in an active shooter scenario so they could shoot back...
I mean, I know the plural of anecdote is not data and all, but I swear to God there's a lot of folks out there that just want to shoot somebody.
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it was supposed to stop meth labs in the city limits, which is by and large has. True, we'd be better off legalizing all drugs, implementing single payer and then treating drug use as an illness by supplying the users, making them take their drug in a clinical setting and then immediately providing consulting. But who the hell is gonna pay for all that?
This is another one of those "rational irrational" decisions. I can't have a functioning healthcare system for the working class but I _can_ have gun control that keeps guns out of their hands. But then again it doesn't look like we can have that either. People _love_ guns. So we'll just have mass shootings every couple of days (seriously, there's one every few days now).
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and Japan. Singapore too (though they're ridiculously draconian to do it). You do need a strong enough economy to keep crime to a minimum though... My country (America) probably doens't have that.
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that isn't so built up that a guy passing recognizes body armor when he sees it, knows how to compensate for it and is carrying the firepower to do so... That just doesn't seem like a safe place to live.
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You are not saving lives. Killings will happen and murder rate in US is not outrageous. It is only perceived as such.
Focus on what really kills Americans instead of media darlings. Focus on something that rarely makes headlines despite statistics.
There is no "murder" epidemic even in Baltimore. Stop being liberal to killers. Hang them in a proper way: in 3 days, in a month, in a year, but not in a fricking 20 years.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Wooo. You're a smart A.C. I would hesitate to call you clever, tho.
Disclaimer: I believe we have a right to own guns, and I believe that many proposed gun laws lack common sense.
That being said, I'm on board with stricter gun laws. We can't just speak to a whole classification of weapons "Assault weapons" because it'll lead to loopholes, and we can't just apply laws to some citizens (cops can be corrupt).
If we're going to make a positive movement in gun ownership, it needs to be specific, smart and targeted. And it can't just be a form of control, it has to be applied across the board. If specific guns really are bad, ban the manufacture in the first place. Once the gun is made, all it takes is one corrupt "licensed person" to distribute to another "unlicensed person". If we don't need a weapon then neither do police. They probably kill too many people (according to the news, not saying I believe this or not) today anyway. But reassure people that not all guns are being targeted. Just the unnecessary ones. MOST people are okay with not owning a grenade launcher.
And we can't just make it illegal to own a gun if you have mental health problems. We need to address mental health, and if you think you should but you're afraid of taking action, the threat of losing more rights certainly isn't a push in the right direction.
Yeah, the media hypes it up after a school shooting, but they live on disaster.
Yeah, people want to talk about guns right after a shooting to control the narrative. What a coincidence! Instead, you and the NRA wants the control the narrative by only "allowing" talk of gun control when there has been no recent tragedy so you can say "see everything is fine, no need to change anything."
How are those two things any different?
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I think you just proved the point.
Look how many times you talk about "rural" and "hunting". How many household in 1950's were sporting handguns?
The problems are guns, predominately handguns, in urban areas. Hunting guns in rural areas aren't really the issue of "gun culture".
My Dad did basically the same thing, attended a one room school, and the village he lived in so small that the only thing to do was hunt and fish, so you started off very young. I remember him telling me about saving like 3$ (or something very low anyway) to buy a single shot 20 gauge shotgun from Sears as the first gun he owned (and still has). My dad took me hunting probably when I was 12 or earlier. I don't hunt now or own any guns as I live in an urban area...
Similarly to handguns, an AR-15 with a 30 round clip isn't something you need for hunting. In Canada simple regulation like limiting clip size to 5 rounds and restricting handguns seems pretty common sense. I mean if you are actually hunting, and you miss the first 5 shots at whatever you're firing at, you probably aren't going to get it anyway with the next 25 rounds either....
In what way is the NRA controlling the narrative? How exactly can they possibly influence an entire media industry and makes it's money on sensationalize this tragedy with the explicit aim of trying to take down their group by any means they can? You're giving the NRA way more power than it really has.
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> I assume you attribute this to your strict gun laws?
Not at all. I attribute it to the pervasive growth of the small-minded, passive-aggressive, submissive attitude that has now completely taken over in the UK, and has turned Brits from a strong-minded people that successfully stood together against incredible odds in WW2, into a bunch of spineless peecee muppets that welcome being totally nannied by an overly controlling system, and can't be bothered to get off their own asses and actually do anything positive, so just sit around and whine about everything all all the time, while still expecting to be fed, housed, educated and medically cared for with welfare handouts from the very same government/society they are criticising.
>> LOL did you leave the UK voluntarily or were you kicked out for being a twat?
I voluntarily left because back then I could see the UK becoming exactly the giant mess that it is today. If you haven't lived outside the UK recently at least for a while, It's understandable if you truly can't see it and think I'm bullshitting, In which case I urge you to not take my word for it, but see it for yourself by getting out and living in a better country for a while, and looking back at the UK from the outside. You'll then see exactly what I mean for yourself.
yes, but its then not just the start of a mass shooting is it?
> before getting shot by a good guy with a gun
Maybe you should try telling the cops to put their guns down too.
Baloney. The police and the military are VERY heavily armed crowds too. Just being told you're the good guy, putting a badge on, learning how to march and doesn't change actual human psychology.