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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.
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.
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.
but as that doesn't align with the anti-gun narrative you wish to project
It also doesn't align with common sense, but God saw it fit to leave that out of some individuals as well.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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."
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."
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'
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.
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!
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.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
"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.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
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.
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.
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
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