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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.
Guns, religion and unchecked capitalism.
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.'"
Nothings wrong with me. I just got back from the gun range.
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?
Yeah, going totally bonkers because you lost at Madden NFL? C'mon, guys, we don't really have to have that sort of thing.
Obvious solution: EVERYONE who plays Madden NFL at tournament levels should be locked up, to proactively prevent this sort of thing.
Or, alternately, we just make losing Madden NFL illegal. No losers, noone going postal for losing, Everyone wins, everyone is happy, right?
On a rather more serious note, the bozo doing the shooting killed himself. A bit of an overreaction to losing a game, even without the shooting other people part....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
There was one a couple of years ago in TX, but a good guy with an “assault rifle” stopped it. The media does not like to remember that one.
Are you trying to pretend this isn't a "gun-related" mass shooting and instead is "videogame-related"? They don't have mass shootings (or even many shootings) in Korea. Not sure what you were going for there.
And more guns of course.
That's bullshit and you know it. The Texas church shooter had already done his deed and was fleeing the scene when the citizen intervened. Also, the citizen's choice of weapon had squat to do with ultimately stopping his escape. But - Hey! Keep living that Rambo fantasy!
...for years that "Guns don't kill people; video games do!" Looks like they're right for once.
You never hear about mass shootings in Texas
Oh really? Never hear about them?
I guess this list is bogus. No mass shootings you say? Perhaps you're not looking hard enough.
Not that one, the (draw mohammed/shoot jihadists) contest.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You should get beyond your 1st or 2nd grade education and move straight to a basic civics class. The 2nd amendment is already a limited right in our country. It can't be fully revoked, but it can be limited - and it is.
Socialism = drinking water, interstate highways, college tuition assistance programs. You know, scary stuff you have to fear rather than allow yourself to think about, being a Republican. No thinking allowed! FEAR it.
The obvious answer, since speech and guns are both protected rights, is to ban football.
We can't ban football games, because speech, but we can ban the actual game, and then in 50 years nobody will be interested in it enough to want to play Madden online, and there will never be another shooting exactly like this one.
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?
I can guarantee that this happened in a "gun free zone." These shootings always do. You never hear about mass shootings in Texas or other places that allow open carry. The just don't happen. It's almost like an armed populace is a safe populace.
According to the update, the shooter was a competitor who lost. That doesn't sound premeditated: instead it sounds like someone who happened to carry a gun when he flipped out took recourse to the gun.
So this was a case where exactly the case of "an armed populace" was what enabled a guy losing a game to turn into a mass shooter. In Europe, you'd have gotten a few broken noses and a guy under arrest and on line for medical costs.
rename it to Calmmen
Table-ized A.I.
America is only 11 when it comes to mass shooting casualties per capita.
Ah yes, the infamous, "But when you look at the statistics. . ." bullshit argument. It's the same one used to excuse away the fact white men are the largest perpetrators of child molestation/rape in the U.S., as well as the largest perpetrators of mass shootings in the U.S.
If a country of 6 million people has one mass shooting, of course their numbers will look higher. But looking at the number of occurrences and the totality of deaths, the U.S. leads the pack.
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. Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people. It also means that you disarm law-abiding citizens, while criminals can go right ahead and arm themselves (Anders Brevik, for example).
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.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But looking at statistics per capita is just fine when slagging off America about education, medical care or countless other things.
Hundreds of millions of citizens, hundreds of millions of guns, yet somehow the inanimate object is still held up as the problem. Millions of people living peacefully and owning guns without hurting anyone. I guess if there were no guns, there would be no death right? No stabbing, no bludgeoning, no driving through crowds. We'd be in a peaceful utopia of kindness, right? Like in Europe where nothing bad ever happens, right?
The overwhelming majority of gun deaths in the U.S. are drug/gang related. End the bullshit war on drugs and watch them drop. Next up, suicide. Stop gutting mental health treatment and revolving door committals for at risk people. There you go, massive decrease in gun deaths. That would cost money though. Gotta keep the prison industry rolling. Can't waste money on crazies when we need to fund pork. Easier to distract the masses with "guns bad, history bad, group-think good".
you DO realize greed and avarice are human traits, not just american.
We're discussing the present, not long-past history when our grandparents were kids. If you go back that far, the US was no picnic either -- in some parts of the US, not being white and speaking to a white woman incorrectly could get you "disappeared" or falsely convicted of rape and sent to the electric chair.
They redefined 'mass shooting' about 3 years ago. It's much 'worse' since then.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you count swatting, its not the first.
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.
And in Portugal an idiot took his 13 year old kid to a robbery. A cop shot the kid during the chase and got convicted for involuntary manslaughter and convicted to pay 50.000 euro to the perp. The other perps kids were not removed from the family. We cant own guns, just 6.35mm pea shooters.
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.
"Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people. It also means that you disarm law-abiding citizens, while criminals can go right ahead and arm themselves (Anders Brevik, for example)."
Of course the very reason criminals can so easily get guns in this country is because we're awash in them. All you have to do is put your head up and look around at every other first world nation with stricter gun laws than ours. They all have lower homocide rates.
All of our guns are most certainly not making us safer in this country
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Europe as a whole has more people than the US yet across the board their numbers are much higher.
You, like so many others, conflate the entirety of Europe with the U.S. when you should be looking at each individual country. However, since you brought it up, this article says there were 19 mass shootings in all of Europe between 2009 and 2015 wherein 319 people were killed (the outlier being the shooting in Norway in which 69 people were killed). That comes out to 20 deaths as the result of mass shootings per year in the entirety of Europe, or just over one death as the result of a mass shooting for each European country per year.
During that same period in the U.S. there were 25 mass shootings with 199 people killed (apparently our shooters need more practice). Snopes laid out the skewed statistics and why the U.S. ranks far and above Europe in mass shootings.
Since that time, the U.S. continues to pull ahead of Europe in mass shootings. This article uses 2009- 2016 for their numbers in which they calculated 156 mass shootings with 848 people killed (their methodology is slightly different than above). One thing to note is, according their numbers, only ten percent of mass shootings take place in a "gun free" zone.
As to your other statistics, I said child molestation and rape, not rape as a whole. Big difference. But keep using statistics to justify racism and ignore who the real perpetrators are of certain crimes.
Translation: "hurt durr REAL socialism has never been tried!!1!1!1"
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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Was this a gun free zone?
The property's rules of conduct prohibit carrying weapons of any kind other than by law enforcement. If it's like most places, it would also have lots of copiously posted signs to that effect.
Someone intending to shoot up the place would, of course, just chuckle on the way past the signs. 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.
If it was gun free, how did he get a gun in there?
Because, of course, guns don't just magically disintegrate when entering a "gun free zone."
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
I’m American, and I wonder the same thing.
#DeleteChrome
All of our guns are most certainly not making us safer in this country
What's your next guess? Guns are used defensively about two and a half million times a year in the USA.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Wrong. Black on black gun crime is indeed the leading rate on gun based murder. It's not debatable. It's straight fact.
Chicago would have almost no gun crime at all if you eliminated the black gunman.
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
I live in a country with pretty strict gun control. The criminals still have guns.
Jesus H. C., man - you have no idea with the meaning of the word regulated means
as it was used in the period that the Amendments were written. That entire line is what
we would call (in today's language) the "duh" line, iows, its meaning was clear and
obvious to the people at the time. A Militia without the right to bear arms is not a Militia;
the two concepts are inseparable. It has nothing to do with laws or "regulation."
It's not the right to bear arms, it's the right for a Militia to legally exist that is spelled out
by the amendment. And a Militia is an "ensemble" of gun-owning individuals. (The right of)
private gun ownership is a trickle down of the right for citizens to form and operate a Militia.
Think about it, what value is there to a right to be armed is you cannot assemble as a Militia?
The founding fathers were no dummies, and the Amendment was purposefully worded in
that way for that reason. This was to prevent laws from being passed that would restrict
armed citizens from forming a Militia. It even goes further than an individual "right" -- it's a
necessity - something that is absolutely required, not a luxury, for the security of a free State.
Think of it along the same lines as jury duty and things will begin to make better sense.
Please, please do some linguistic work before spouting anti-gun rhetoric.
CAP === 'tyranny'
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.
America is only 11 when it comes to mass shooting casualties per capita.
Ah yes, the infamous, "But when you look at the statistics. . ." bullshit argument.
What do you want to do? Ignore any stats that disprove an ideology?
If you find yourself claiming an argument to be bullshit just because facts are brought up you are not going to have an easy time in the world.
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.
The USA has more guns than most countries, and yet still manage fewer homicides than countries with fewer guns and stricter gun laws.
*Citation Required.
As far as I can see that's mostly bullshit, if you're comparing apples with apples.
Check this graph out.
I added the US and compared with your rate per 100,000 people with a couple of rich countries and a couple of random other countries.
US rate = 4.9 (2015)
UK = 0.9
All High Income countries = 2.4
Feel free to have a play, I mean you might like to compare yourselves with Somalia or whatever.
Why is it that we need to separate Europe into its constituent countries, but we cannot do the same with the USA? Surely you're not asserting that their is only one singular culture that exists throughout the entirety of the Unites States land masses... That would be profoundly stupid to assert something which is quite false.
I have a couple of solutions that might work. Now the knee jerk reaction is "Oh, let's just get rid of all the guns!" And it seems like that mostly works, and allows authorities to focus on the people who seem to be trying to get guns, but the minute you say that, the gun people are all like "Weeeeh! Then only criminals will have guns! Weeeeh! We have to have guns to revolt against the government if we need to! Weeeh!" I dunno. Hard to focus on the message over all that weeeehing. And clearly these people have never been napalmed by a government-run military that, despite the fact that those same people say the government sucks at running anything, is really well armed, really well run and quite capable of overwhelming whatever little pea-shooters civilians have. But I won't even suggest it, you know, to avoid the weeehing.
Since we can't do that *cough*, we could just give everyone guns and mandate that everyone carry them and be trained in their use. Then if someone starts shooting, everyone can start shooting back. Doesn't that sound like fun? It'll be just like the wild wild west, and there's got to be a reason that is one of the most romanticized periods in US history. I'm sure the NRA would be completely behind this plan if they weren't going out of business for... what did they do again? Insurance fraud or something? Illegally influence US elections on behalf of Russian oligarchs? Honestly, it's getting pretty difficult to keep up. Well, whatever god damn shenanigans were going on over there that's causing them to go out of business now, anyway.
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. Then you could apply the GI bill to their education, it's got militias right in the thing, solves the current recruitment problem and everyone gets a healthy dose of perspective that they were otherwise lacking when they come out of high school. I think that covers all the bases.
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.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Attempting to disarm the public means discarding the natural advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
But it also discards the natural disadvantage of stupid people naturally outumbering everyone else. If absolutely everyone was packing, you'd get a bunch of ewll-meaning dumbasses engaging in spray and pray trying to hit the bad guy and making things much worse.
If you don't think that will happen then you have much higher faith in humanity than I do.
It also means that you disarm law-abiding citizens, while criminals can go right ahead and arm themselves (Anders Brevik, for example).
So how come you also get mass shootings in Texas?
I sincerely hope that if your life is ever in danger, that there is someone equipped and prepared to defend you
Likewise if your life is in danger, I scincerely hope it's not ended rather abruptly ya a well meaning memver of the militia playing at Rambo.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The USA has more guns than most countries, and yet still manage fewer homicides than countries with fewer guns and stricter gun laws.
Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Are you delusional or what ? I live in Europe and I can walk safely anywhere without fearing to be shot by some random asshat.
I live in the United States and also walk safely anywhere without fear of getting shot. Been walking around for fifty-something years and never seen anyone pull out a gun in public.
I can see how it might appear that we are all armed to the teeth and taking potshots at each other if all you have to go by are the news stories. Personally I don't own a gun simply because I don't want or need one and I'm certainly not fearful. Fearsome, one might argue, but that's another story.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country." - James Madison
You can find his words in the annals of Congress. The 2nd Amendment is a more concise and clear version of what he wrote. It's only when you don't like what it clearly and plainly states (in the vernacular of the time it was written) that it becomes unclear or cloudy. If you're in doubt about what it said - then go back and read what was debated and proffered by the original writers.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
>"Ah yes, the infamous, "But when you look at the statistics. . ." bullshit argument."
Statistics are facts. If you don't use facts, then you are arguing irrationally and emotionally.
>"But looking at the number of occurrences and the totality of deaths, the U.S. leads the pack."
Meaningless. Obviously such statistics have to be per capita or they are pretty much of no value. And when you do make it per capita, USA is nowhere near "leading the pack." In fact, in mass shootings, "the USA is 4th behind 3 European countries or eighth when a broader set of non-conflict countries are examined."
http://www.gunfacts.info/wp-co...
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-c...
Nice, can't beat'em so call them Russian. A sure sign of a strong intellect.
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We keep letting just any two morons make a baby anytime they want and then we hold them the loosest of standards on how to raise it. Then, as it grows, it learns how unique and special it is and gets trophies for coming in last place, while mommy and daddy make sure its grades are adjusted after they threaten the teachers and schools for failing their unique snowflake. It never learns how to deal with actual, real life and all the disappointment and frustration life brings and then shoots the place up when things don't go it's way. We don't need more gun control - we need population control.
Then read what he originally proposed as the basis for the 2nd Amendment; I quoted it, and you can follow the link. It's that the right to keep and bear arms is unambiguous and explicit, and that a well-armed society is the best way to ensure freedom of governance (given that the US was, at that time, barely 10 years old). Don't take your misunderstanding and extrapolate it - go and learn about it, see what was written in the vernacular of the day, and go forward.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You're missing the point of a gun free zone. People are not retarded and think that it magically creates a place that guns can never enter (I'm fairly certain the above poster was being sarcastic and you didn't get the joke). Gun free zones exist so that the second a gun is noticed the cops can be called. There's no delays wondering about the person's motives are because they are breaking the law just by having a gun in that place.
It also creates an environment where people don't have to feel intimated by others (good business sense for a restaurant). Let me tell you from personal experience there's nothing like being in an open carry state, having a minor disagreement with some one and having them draw attention to the fact that they are carrying a gun in that context.
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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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(I'm fairly certain the above poster was being sarcastic and you didn't get the joke).
I'm fairly certain you didn't read his follow-up post, nor take note of his handle. He's one of the most prolific flaming-liberal-America-sucks posters around here.
Gun free zones exist so that the second a gun is noticed the cops can be called.
Oh, phenomenal. That buys you a whole 2.7 seconds before you would have called the police anyway after the first round was fired. That's definitely worth the tradeoff of the shooter being able to freely plug away at fish in a barrel until the cops show up.
Then do the correct and right thing and change the Constitution. There is a process to do so - use it. Or do we just decide that rule by executive fiat is acceptable?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
When did Europe start needing "diversity" barriers to protect their Christmas markets? When did London overtake New York City in murders per capita, despite having a gun ban? When did New Year's Eve in Cologne have over a 1,000 women sexually assaulted by gangs of men?
Seems certain people are the problem, not the guns.
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.
He's making a point.
There were guns, religion, white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and all the other horrors your purple haired teacher told you about.
What there wasn't was 39% of the population on mood-altering pharmaceuticals, and constant 24/7 emotional manipulation by media conglomerates and their advertisers.
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.
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.
According to a new poll on citizen security in 135 countries, Venezuelans are the least likely people in the world to feel safe walking alone at night.
The Gallup 2017 Global Law and Order Index found that just 12 percent of Venezuelans felt safe walking after sundown and only 14 percent expressed confidence in their police.
In addition, 38 percent of Venezuelans said they had been robbed in the last year, putting it in sixth place worldwide behind five countries, all in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Observatory of Venezuelan Violence, or OVV, says there were at least 28,479 violent deaths in 2016, or 91.8 deaths per 100,000 residents.
https://www.miamiherald.com/ne...
Great place. Good thing they banned guns. Keep up the good work, Hugo!
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.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
Free for all anything is anarchy, Einstein.
Oh, we have strict gun regulations by the way...
You also have strict truck regulations and strict knife regulations, which haven't helped either.
The problem is that Europe has terrorist insurgents and the US has lots of untreated crazy people.
our heroin overdose rate is nearly 10x the gun death rate now. In fact if you rule out suicide (lets face it, take the gun away, they still kill themselves) we have other, enormous death problems we gloss over. The overdose rate from opiates is greater than driving related deaths, and homicides (all of them) combined. We debate gun laws forever, nobody gives a fuck about the people dying from opiates. Its no longer a case of drifter junkies 'making a choice'. I have seen too many normal people get sucked into that world because doctors prescribed some crazy pharma shit for pain and then turned off the faucet cold turkey.
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.
so instead of targeting guns, maybe we should get to the bottom of whats driving homicide. Banning sudafed sure as fuck didnt stop the use of meth. All it did was make it a real PITA for me when I actually need the shit. I have to get my ass to a pharacist between the hours of 9am and 8pm. If something comes up outside this time I have to deal with the problem until then.
Its time to dig deeper and ignore the tool. Take guns away and IED's will just rise in their place just like israel. Its like getting rid of spiders in your house. You cant spray for them because they walk above the poison. Kill the other bugs and the spiders will die off all on their own. Banning guns based on statistics would easily justify revoking drivers licenses and mandating public transportation due to the massive amount of traffic deaths every year. In the end its still just another tool. Something has changed in the last 30 years that makes people massively more likely to commit homicide than in previous decades. It certainly is not proliferation of firearms. I the 70s and 80s you could go into a gun store and there would be an AR15, and an M16 side by side. The difference was the M16 required a $200 tax stamp and you waited a few weeks to get approved. That was a _real_ assault rifle. How is it in the 70s anybody could buy every form of weapon, including fully automatic, and the homicide rate is much higher now than its ever been; despite decades of gun control laws.
hmm maybe, if the ATF, in 2009, did not embark in a clever 'sting' operation that successfully sold millions of guns to the cartels. Only that 'sting' operation turned out to be a case of our law enforcement getting played for chumps and losing all those weapons.
BTW another source of bad guys getting guns.... they buy them from dirty cops. No other theft required.
i assume you live somewhere that guns are not prevalent. This is nowhere near an accurate assumption. Most of those wild-west gun-slinging idiots you describe, turn out to be felons.
"So how come you also get mass shootings in Texas?"
doesnt it say something to you that all these mass shootings take place in a place that is either 'strickly gun free' or a place where nobody would think they needed to carry one (church)?
Ive had a CCDW issued to me since 2000. Since that first church (the predominantly black one) got shot up in NC(SC?) I have started carrying even at times when I have no reason to suspect needing one. This means even to the gym using equipment. Its a shitty world we live in that even the taboo of killing 'in the house of god' doesn't scare people enough to wait until another time. Ever since that shooting I have been carrying something damn near everywhere I go. I do train, regularly. The idea of collateral damage is not lost on me. However, there is a very effective method of target acquisition that nearly eliminates this. Im guessing you didnt know that since you envision people just firing randomly like in the movies.
If a country of 6 million people has one mass shooting, of course their numbers will look higher. But looking at the number of occurrences and the totality of deaths, the U.S. leads the pack.
Uh, why would you even want to look at the total number instead of adjusting it per capita? Adjusting it per capita seems like a reasonable thing to do........
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm curious as to why you think mandatory military service is a terrible idea. I can think of some reasons why it is a very good idea: 1) if you are going to have a standing military, it is better for it to be representative of society rather than a self-selected segment- the former probably more accountable to the whole 2) a representative military, drawn from all corners of society (as much as possible, anyway) is less likely to stand for unjustified/interminable wars (or at least there should be a higher threshold when its everyone's kids going) 3) an obligation of citizenship to to fight for and defend the nation if needed.
Again, I'd be interested to know why you think mandatory service is terrible. I think more than a few of our current problems and wars stem from its absence.
No shit sherlock.
First you said "real capitalism has been tried. And it leads to hellholes that are even worse than Maoist China". Then you said "free-for-all capitalism is just another name for anarchy". The place you fucked up is when you assumed that it's the capitalism part of " free-for-all capitalism" which leads to anarchy, rather than the free-for-all part.
You basically said "anarchism and capitalism leads to anarchy" and then tried to pretend that capitalism is the problem. What do you do for an encore? "Ice cream is bad because poisoned ice cream will kill you"?
This comes from the "There Ought To Be A Law" Department....
There ought to be a law that says a business, if open to the public, can decide to outlaw firearms on their property, BUT they must also keep sufficient security on-hand to deal with any threats. As an example, most sports venues do this. If an incident occurs on the premises without security to deal with it, then the owner is jointly responsible for any damage, up-to and including wrongful death.
Anyone with a basic machine shop can make just about any sort of firearm they want.
There are no countries which have banned firearms which don't have any firearms at all as a result.
You can't stop people from getting a gun if they want one. You can only make it more difficult. Unfortunately, the side effect of any of the proposed ways of making it more difficult for someone who will misuse a gun to get one is that you make things more difficult on 99 other law-abiding people with an inherent right recognized in our Constitution to self-defense for every bad guy you inconvenience. In the end, the criminals will have guns because they want them more and don't care about following the law, while the most law-abiding will be disarmed.
Not to mention that it's literally impossible to round up and destroy the existing firearms in the U.S. without causing a civil war where most of the military will be on the side of the other people with the guns.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
"An armed society is a polite society."
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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).
Chris Kyle was also at a gun range, surrounded by 2nd Amendment activists who were all responsible gun owners. Patriots It was the least gun-free zone on Earth.
He was slaughtered in cold blood. All those guns and he ends up murdered.
You are welcome on my lawn.
America; where not being a total douchebag to other people is called "socialism" and is a bad thing.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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...
Breaks down to 14.8 for poison and drug overdoses, 11.7 for motor vehicle accidents, 10.4 for falls
Breaks down to 6.5 for alcoholic liver disease
Breaks down to 4.0 for homicide by gun
So being killed (murdered) by gun is pretty far down the list. 4.0 per 100,000 works out to a 1 in 25,000 chance of being murdered by gun in any given year Any of the above causes are more likely to kill you.
Thing is, "real capitalism" has been tried. And it leads to hellholes that are even worse than Maoist China.
A good measure of "real capitalism" is the Ease of Doing Business Index which measures capitalist principles and the amount of government interference in starting and running a business.
Here are the top 10 for 2018:
1. New Zealand
2. Singapore
3. Denmark
4. South Korea
5. Hong Kong
6. United States of America
7. United Kingdom
8. Norway
9. Georgia
10. Sweden
Here are the bottom 10, which lack basic capitalist qualities of property rights, efficient enforcement of contracts, rule of law, and fair regulations:
Haiti
Congo
Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Libya
Yemen
South Sudan
Venezuela
Eritrea
Somalia
Which are the hellholes?
[Citation needed]
Did you forget that Chris Kyle wasn't the only person killed there? His friend Chad Littlefield was shot 7 times.
Afterwards the killer left and drove to his sisters house where he confessed, and she called 911 to report what he had done.
Are you suggesting that all of those '2nd Amendment activists who were all responsible gun owners' who surrounded him simply... froze, and didn't attempt to engage the killer... or call 911?
Being armed doesn't guarantee you are going to be successful in defending your life, however it does significantly increase the odds.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
That's bullshit and you know it. The Texas church shooter had already done his deed and was fleeing the scene when the citizen intervened. Also, the citizen's choice of weapon had squat to do with ultimately stopping his escape. But - Hey! Keep living that Rambo fantasy!
1. He was heading to another target to shoot more people.
2. He was wearing body armor and the citizen with the AR-15 recognized that the type of armor he was wearing doesn't cover the sides. He specifically aimed at his sides for this reason. While behind a truck at a reasonably long distance. Yes, the choice of weapon made a big difference.
Because we don't need 4 million more soldiers in the military. The US military owes its superiority to tech, not manpower, and throwing more at it won't make it better.
Besides, who's going to pay the cost of training them, housing them and feeding them? You?
"An armed society is a polite society."
This along the same moronic line of thinking that lead to Google/Facebook/Twitter promoting the idea that if people used their real names, they'd be more civil towards each other. Yeah, that worked out really well.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The average Venezuelan has lost 32 lbs in the last two years.
Sounds like a bit of socialism would be healthy for the US...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
Well, I stopped reading when you started painting your rhetoric opposition as crybabies.
Do you expect to be taken seriously when you are unable to actually deal with some arguments your opposition has?
Now I'll be the first to admit that the pro-gun side has a lot of idiots and mind, I'd rather they didn't have guns either. Frankly, half the NRA shouldn't have guns. However, that is my personal opinion which is not valid enough to base legislation on, especially considering I'm not even American.
The fact remains, though, that there are enough statistics that show that the availability of guns alone isn't the factor that determines violent crime. Any halfway sane person, at that point, should go "Well, gee, perhaps there are other issues as well?"
Let's say America creates a prohibition on guns (I'm not even going to go into how bad America is at handling prohibitions...). What do you expect will happen? Violent crime using guns MAY go down. Abuse of legally owned guns will vanish, sure, because there won't be any more legal guns.
Do you think there will be fewer robberies or murders? How well does it work out for countries like Great Britain?
If you have a high rate of fucked up people in your country, you don't need to idiot proof the world. You need to take a long, hard look at yourself and admit that you, as a society, are doing something terribly wrong. Your rate of incarceration is astoundingly high while your crime rates are puttering on along the same lines as those of most other countries that don't have such draconian laws.
Maybe start there before you go paint tens or even hundred's of thousands of law abiding citizens as potential murderers? It would have the advantage of bringing tangible benefit to all of society, too, even if you don't care about ever owning a gun yourself.
Or are you actually trying to get fifty percent incarceration rates? Is there some kind of competition you're trying to win?
I just can't understand how it's somehow more worthwhile to take something away from good people that they love instead of making sure you have a populace you can trust with those things. The latter may be harder but in the long run would have so many positive effects on all aspects of life I don't even know where to begin listing them.
Uhm, you do realize the right in the US constantly request free for all capitalism, right?
No, that's just another one of your silly misapprehensions.
There's a constant stream of "we don't need regulation" and "the government needs to stop interfering"
There's essentially nobody anywhere near the mainstream "right" who argues for zero regulation, so you're just flat out wrong. Even Friedman argued that regulation was needed in some rare situations. Zero regulation is more a position of the Libertarian party, and even there it's not a universally held opinion.
Even those who do argue for zero regulation are arguing for zero regulation of economic activity by a central government. That is not a "free for all". Nobody is arguing that businesses should be allowed to murder, steal, commit fraud, or enslave people. They're speaking strictly about economic activity; buying and selling of goods and services. If you think there's any place in the world which descended into anarchy because the government didn't regulate buying and selling, you're a fool.
In close quarters, that would actually be a disadvantage.
Sure, you're every bit as dead if you get shot in the head with a 9mm slug versus a 40mm HE shell, but you can't deny that the Bofors has that intimidation factor as well as the retro-cool if you go for the L/60 model.
But anyway it's just in case. You have a pistol. You back off and level your carbine at him. He backs off further and levels his AR-50. You back off yet further and level your Bofors. At this point it's a fairly safe bet he doesn't have a 155mm down his cargo shorts otherwise you'd need to whip out your BL14/45 Mark VIIs at which point it's really got silly.
You see a good guy with a gun can only reliably stop a bad guy with a gun if the good guy has greater range.
Not to mention the high risk of scratching your paint while getting in and out of your car.
Go for a towed mount. Then, if you have a really persistent tailgaiter, you can get your passenger to hop out of the cab, over the tailgate and level it at the asshole behind you.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We have this little structural problem: ratification of Amendments requires a 3/4 supermajority of states (NOT population - they're treated like individual countries in this respect) to ratify. That's 37 in the current scenario. That means it takes 14 states to block one -- and the least populous 14 states make up 5% of the national population. They're also the ones with the most open space, where owning a gun is not only not much of a problem, but a necessity for some. You only need a bit more than half of those in each of those states, but even if you count all of the people in those states, that's still the tyranny of the 5 percent nation.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Bernie Sanders understands the concept very well, he has deliberately chosen to use the term "socialism" for his particular US-centred vision of social democracy in order to provoke. It's a regrettable terminological choice that would only work in the US where few have a clue about these terms. Socialism and social democracy have nothing to do with each other, in fact quite a few social democrats were put into Gulags by socialists and communists, as well as into concentration camps and prisons by the Nazis.
What you call social liberalism is something else, there is a left-wing tradition of liberalism since Adam Smith addressed the Social Question of the 19th Century.
a representative military, drawn from all corners of society (as much as possible, anyway) is less likely to stand for unjustified/interminable wars (or at least there should be a higher threshold when its everyone's kids going)
You think, even if this were to happen, that everyone's kid would go to war? Nope. The poor kids get assigned infantry or other front line roles while the rich kids (who are most likely better educated) get assigned staff positions, stateside postings, or other rear echelon roles such as logistics or intelligence, keeping them as safe as possible.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Great place. Good thing they banned guns. Keep up the good work, Hugo!
USA: Safer than Venezuela!
I love how you compare the USA to poor conutries with massive problems (as opposed to dirst world nations) then conclude that the main cause for difference is the laws on guns.
As opposed to you know the massive piles of everything else.
What next? The US has way fewer people murdered by the state than North Korea. Must be because NK has strict gun control. I can't see any oter reason and if you ban guns you'll be just like NK.
Seriously though if you actually like your conutry can you please raise the bar a little higher than you currently have it?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The United States is in too many conflicts. Increasing the manpower in the military just makes it easier to deploy US units overseas on "peacekeeping" missions.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
So wning a weapon was to protect against the governement, not against other citizens who might have guns.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Or, I am just calling out pussies like you, who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Your motives for disarming the public have nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with establishing a totalitarian society. Your type _pretends_ to give a shit about the number of people killed calling it an epidemic. And yet nobody gives a shit about the drastic number of people (72,000 in 2017 alone) dying every day from something much more likely to happen to them. Every single day, every city has posts on nextdoor.com regarding break-ins and crime. Whenever the topic of opiate dependency driving the crime comes up, at no point does the discussion direct itself to dealing with that problem in order to bring down the number of breakin's. No, instead its a constant one-sided 'they made a conscious choice' mantra. See people like you do not give a shit about any death rate so long as you _feel_ safe. You _think_ this is going to make you safer. It's not.
You cannot set up one group to have complete authority over the other and remotely pretend that both groups are equal. Gun violence is not the only thing unique to this country, we do a fair share of bullying too. In a society where only a small subset is given the power to use and abuse lethal force, where do you think these bullies are going to migrate? There are definitely some there now, but the problem will be a lot worse. You cannot say 'country XYZ doesnt have cops bullying the public' because their society doesn't have nearly the bullying that ours does. There was no concept of 'police' when we wrote the constitution. There were soldiers assigned to various garrisons to enforce the peace. The founding fathers were already aware of how abusive this system was. Hence why the constitution says no army should be standing for a duration exceeding two years. It also explains the 3rd amendment (forced to give quarters) because they know just how power gets abused.
Don't like the CEO of chick-fil-a because he wrote a personal check to an anti-abortion group? Not a business check mind you, but a PERSONAL one. "We'll show him! We'll boycot the entire fucking chick-fil-a franchise and punish every fucking employee because he had the audacity to make a personal donation with something I disagree with!" no matter the topic, there is a hate group out there wanting to punish every single person until society reforms itself into what THEY think society should be like. It makes the Southern Baptist boycott of Disney back in the 80s look sane, and that was some bullying shit too. I dont pay for things that I don't agree with, but my influence stops at my telling someone else why *I* am not giving them a penny of my money.
"Your motives for disarming the public have nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with establishing a totalitarian society. "
Oh Jesus Christ, now you're just going over the deep end. Virtually all of the rest of the first world has stricter gun control laws then us and still have vibrant, open democracies with regular crime rates at roughly the same level as ours. There is a very obvious solution to our high homicide and gun violence rates sitting right in front of us in almost every other first world nation. Meanwhile, no one currently has any good ideas on how to solve the opiate problem our country is having.
You're just being stupid and choosing to demonize some one with claims that you have zero supporting evidence for. At this point if all you have is deflection and name calling I'm wasting my time talking to you.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
https://slashdot.org/~_Sharp'r_ quoted RAH thusly:
"An armed society is a polite society."
Y'know, I've been a fan of Robert A. Heinlein's literally since I was six years old. I've read all his fiction, and much of his non-fiction, as well (Grumbles from the Grave is pretty darned entertaining, believe it or not). And the thing is that, even when I first read Beyond This Horizon - from whence that quote is taken - at the age of eight or so, I knew enough to take it as a premise for the world RAH built to set that story in, rather than any sort of universal truth.
And that, in turn, is because there is ZERO real-world evidence of that proposition's truth - nor was there any such evidence available to Heinlein when he made that statement. Instead, as a writer of fiction, he set out to explore a world that was based on that proposition, as a source of the conflict his protagonist must resolve to move the book's plot to its resolution.
The inescapable fact is that in the present day, there are quite a few armed societies we can study to provide evidence for or against the truth of RAH's proposition - and, frankly, it doesn't hold water.
Heinlein imagined a world in which a formalized code duello made it possible for people who choose to go armed to fight to the death over insults, but that specifically exempted those who choose not to arm themselves. In that world, challenging, menacing, or targeting anyone who is NOT visible carrying is automatically treated as a felonious criminal act to which all armed bystanders are obligated to respond with deadly force. In the actual, phenomenological world in which real people live, that kind of social firewall just doesn't exist. Live in, say, Afghanistan, or the DRC, or Iraq, or Somalia, or - well, anywhere other than the USA where some significant portion of the local population routinely goes strapped, and another percentage does not, the unarmed ones are simply not, as a rule, routinely provided protection by the civilian folks with guns. (Or by local militias, for that matter.)
Instead, the armed population essentially does as it pleases, and the unarmed ones keep their heads down and their mouths shut - from fear for their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, against whom retaliation is to be expected, for those who are foolish enough to make themselves targets by, for example, standing up to armed teenage bullies, professional predators, or adherents of a different belief system than those locals who go armed.
The same was true of the American West in the 19th century. That's why one of the first institutions that arose in any newly-settled area was formally-constituted and empowered law enforcement: local constables, county sheriffs, U.S. marshalls, Texas Rangers, and so on.
In point of fact, all the evidence is that an armed, non-fictional society is a polite one only when its armed members are forced by laws and law enforcement personnnel to behave themselves. Because people - and especially young men - are, by default, basically assholes when they suddenly acquire the means to impose their will on others with impunity.
It has nothing whatever to do with self-defense. It's about self-aggrandizement, and the addictive pleasure of forcing others to bend to your will. Everything else - everything - is post hoc rationalization.
Note that I'm not talking about rural folks who use firearms to control the local varmint population, nor am I talking about those who use guns to hunt for food, or strictly for target shooting. I'm talking here about urban and suburban Americans who fetishize gun ownership and fantasize that they are somehow capable of effectively resisting government authorities, should they feel the need to revolt against authority - despite the fact that small arms are essentially worthless against trained military personnel armed with everything from satellite-directed drones to B1 bombers to tanks to RPGs and ...
You get the p
Check out my novel.
> 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.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Are people seriously thinking we can ban all guns in the US, even handguns?
Actually, I forecast, that since this shooting didn't involve a scary AR type rifle...that this even will drop off the news rather quickly like the last few shootings that involved shotguns, or hand guns, since those don't fit within the Anti-Gun's arguments about "full semi-auto" rifles...or "assault" rifles like the AR and its ilk.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>> You should get beyond your 1st or 2nd grade education and move straight to a basic civics class. The 2nd amendment is already a limited right in our country.
>
> The Second Amendment doesn't grant the right to bear arms. It's intended to keep the government from infringing on that right.
The ENTIRE US Constitution is meant to be an enumeration of the powers of the federal government. Our rights are not enumerated by the Bill of Rights. They are not limited by what's written down in the Constitution. What the federal government is allowed to do is what's limited by the Constitution.
This is a very basic, core principle that some people that whine about "civics" fail to grasp or acknowledge.
Also, the whole thing still has to be viewed through a prism of over 200 years of case law. So just looking at that old document isn't enough.
That is another important fundemental element of Anglo-American law that a lot of people like to gloss over.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I have insurance in case something bad happens. I'm not afraid it will happen, just smart enough to know it's better to be prepared than to be caught off guard.
Try again?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
If he'd driven through the crowd with a car, would you be calling for increased car laws?
If he'd walked through the seated rows wildly swinging a baseball bat, would you be talking about restricting little league games?
If he'd walked in with a propane tank bomb, would you be looking at regulating barbeques?
If he'd walked in with a large fan, a sack of flour and a lighter, would we be talking about how nobody 'needs' to own a kitchen, and should eat out at restaurants with licensed and trained professionals doing the cooking?
If he'd walked in with a big jug of bleach, and a big jug of chlorine, mixed them up and left, would you be advocating for background checks at Home Depot in the cleaning aisle?
You ask 'why do we need access to guns under such exceptionally loose terms?' Why are you assuming that if somebody wanted to do harm like this guy did, he'd walk into a gun store, run into some red tape, and figure 'oh, ok, guess I won't go harm a bunch of innocents, I wonder if Dairy Queen's open?'
Lets address the root issue, violence, rather than fixating on what tool somebody chooses to use to perpetrate that violence.
Or, put another way, why would you expect a gun ban to stop violence, when the existing bans against violence and murder don't? Does it need to be double-illegal to make people think twice? Triple-illegal?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Or, put another way, why would you expect a gun ban to stop violence, when the existing bans against violence and murder don't?
I did not call for a gun ban. You went a bit past hyperbolic there to claim that I somehow did. I'm merely calling for more serious restrictions on who can buy guns and how they can be sold. I am a gun owner myself and I was appalled at the fact that I could buy a shotgun at Bass Pro Shops in less time than it takes me to buy sudafed at CVS. Why do we need to make it so easy for people to kill each other?
There are plenty of problems at play with this shooter for sure, but none of them were helped by how easy it was for him to get that gun. What problem are we solving by making guns so cheap and easy to acquire?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"When you exclude the black population ... There will always be ... strictly black on black inner city violence." That pretty well sums up the fucking problem. The black population isn't a separate, excludable population. Treating the situation as such, though, is a great recipe for not addressing the issue. If there's greater violence in your community, what do you do? More funding for police. More training for police if they're part of the problem. More community involvement. Or do you just say, "well, shit happens, I guess it's okay to live in a shithole [country]."?
What? You're not "part" of the "community" because "it's a different neighborhood"? Yes, that's just your bullshit excusing why you fail to act upon a problem that's happening where you live. If it's the neighborhood beside you, you rally to support them as above. If it's in the same city but on the other side, the same. If it's a city a ways away in the same state, the same. Even if it's not in the same state, the same thing applies.
American on American violence is a problem, wherever it is. I know a lot of Americans are assholes who treat non-Americans as subhumans and couldn't place a random country on the map if their life depended on it, but to act like some Americans are separate and it's sufficient to play statistical games with them to make "the rest" look good? Fuck you. That's pretty much the epitome of being unAmerican.
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.
And, of course, the place where they competition was held was a "gun free zone". As is standard with mass shootings (all but 1?). So, guns were already illegal where the shooting happened.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.