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Everything We've Heard About Columbine is Wrong?
wtpooh writes "There ia a story over at Salon magazine about the continuing investigation into the Columbine killings. Pretty much everything we've been told by the media about the killers is wrong: They were probably not gay, they were not anti-jock, anti-god, or anti-black, and they were certainly not part of the Trench Coat Mafia, which was almost nonexistent at the time of the shooting. Essentially, the confused memories of the eyewitnesses and the overzealous reporting of the media fed off each other, turning rumors into facts." Considering the number of Slashdot pixels that have already been devoted to the Columbine massacre, this story is well worth a look. Quite an interesting perspective, not only on the massacre, but on the way the news media covered it. Updates: a story at apbnews.com refutes much of the Salon story above; Salon runs excerpts from Harris's diary.
Okay. Maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic here, but, well, here goes. It doesn't matter. You see, it's distasteful to the human psyche to consider things of this nature. Did anyone else see the online Onion article on Columbine? I think that they're a lot closer to the mark than any of us should feel comfortable with. Face it. The reaction to this has not been "Oh, those kids must have felt terrible!" It's been "We need more security in our schools!" What's worse, the sideline message has, in fact, been a backlash - "See what happens when you let those freaks get out of line?" I'm in Boulder - a whopping twenty miles from Columbine - and people are already forgetting. I know this because it's safe for me to go out on the streets in my leathers or my black wool cloak again, without fear of the "norms" starting something. If it was that bad in tolerant Boulder, I shudder to think of what it was like elsewhere. People forget. They don't want to remember. It's unpleasant to dwell on as soon as it's no longer the day's soap opera, the current bit of scandal for them to dwell on. And yes, as has already been pointed out, the United States is very hardset in its violent ways. We haven't yet given up on racism, and those are people who are only visibly different. People who are psychologically very different - that's a much greater hurdle, one that I'm not sure I have the faith in humanity to overcome. As my SO put it to one of her very Christian cow-orkers, "You should be glad that they wear that funny makeup and paint their nails weird colors. Otherwise, they could be right there... among you... without you even knowing..." Bah. I'm going back to work before I get any more disgusted with humanity...
Sig broken, watch for
It seems more likely to me that it's because people seem to assume that moderators are stupid, so that whenever they write something that _is_ insightful (== different), they stick in a little blurb about how it will be marked down because of it. Then, because they were wrong that the moderators were stupid, they're wrong that they'll get marked down. Then combine this with the fact that you most likely see a biased sample of ones that were marked up... there are quite a few people who say that and are right (or at least don't get moderated at all).
I don't think my analogy of guns to whiskey falls flat, necessarily, because alcohol also has a sole purpose: to produce intoxication. Like guns, there is great doubt as to its benefit to sociey, the potential to clear harm to the individual if misused, and this doubt and this potential harm have in the past been used as an excuse to restrict individual freedom by legislative means. Also, I made no mention to target shooting or hunting, although I do both (confession: most of the time I'm deer hunting I'm far more interested in just watching wildlife go by at dusk than in actually shooting anything).
I believe that counting laws is more than a "straw man": In my home state, if you hold up a convenience store with a shotgun, you're committing not just armed robbery, but you are also in possession of a firearm during the commissioning of a felony--two crimes for the price of one, although you could certainly add criminal trespass, trespassing with criminal intent, brandishing a weapon, parking in a handicapped zone, and Lord knows what else if you really felt like it. I don't know whether all the extra laws have done anything to deter armed robbery--aside from by keeping potential repeat offenders in jail for longer.
On the other hand, you wouldn't believe the thicket of federal laws one must wander through for a parent to legally take his minor child to a target range to fire a pistol. Among these laws, it is illegal for him to do so unless he is carrying a properly written permission note that he wrote to himself! Pending federal legislation could imprison the father for five years if he doesn't have the note with him, and if it's improperly written, it's not a permission note. And heaven help you if you bring a revolver and a pistol; portions of those two law sets are mutually contradictory.
All these and other laws about where and when and loaded and unloaded and displayed or locked or unlocked keep me so nervous that I usually leave mine at home, leaving myself essentially defenseless against someone who is carrying a gun (or carrying a knife or who is just physically stronger than me (which includes just about everybody (I'm a geek (remember?)))) and just doesn't give a damn. I got nervous as hell when I recently moved to a house within one thousand feet of a school. I actually had to sit down and read the Code before I could figure out whether I was violating any laws by, for example, carrying a revolver between my house and my car, and whether this was any different than carrying a rifle. Back when I lived three thousand feet from a school, it was okay.
Now that I know where I stand with regards to that law, I can safely return to my habit of answering the door with a revolver on my belt--this keeps conversations with Jehovah's Witnessess and Girl Scouts wonderfully short! ;-)
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This is not my sandwich.
I think it went up to +1 once, and not it's a 0 again. Man, talk about moderator bias. I actually only found this post by reading a post that was PRO gun that was moderated UP and was total BS, and then find this (and some parent posts a couple up from this) that were moderated down to "troll"
Actually, a good thing to read after this post (which is also sitting LOWER than it should on the points scale) is This Intellegent postabout the NEJM artical, and the reply that totally cleared up some of the major errors in it.
>>At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing.
If you believe that, you've bought the lie.
Modern firearms are not designed to kill. They are designed to woulnd. The economics of combat make this necessary.
>>Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
I'll defend firearms from another perspective. It is my right to own one under the constitution of my country. I don't care what those backwards fucks on the otherside of the atlantic do. It is the firearm which has kept my country free.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wasn't there a shooting on a Long Island commuter train about five years ago?
Don't a lot of train passengers wear trench coats?
Maybe we should ban bags and put metal detectors and armed guards on commuter trains.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
I don't think my analogy of guns to whiskey falls flat, necessarily, because alcohol also has a sole purpose: to produce intoxication. Like guns, there is great doubt as to its benefit to sociey, the potential to clear harm to the individual if misused, and this doubt and this potential harm have in the past been used as an excuse to restrict individual freedom by legislative means. Also, I made no mention to target shooting or hunting, although I do both (confession: most of the time I'm deer hunting I'm far more interested in just watching wildlife go by at dusk than in actually shooting anything).
I believe that counting laws is more than a "straw man": In my home state, if you hold up a convenience store with a shotgun, you're committing not just armed robbery, but you are also in possession of a firearm during the commissioning of a felony--two crimes for the price of one, although you could certainly add criminal trespass, trespassing with criminal intent, brandishing a weapon, parking in a handicapped zone, and Lord knows what else if you really felt like it. I don't know whether all the extra laws have done anything to deter armed robbery--aside from by keeping potential repeat offenders in jail for longer.
On the other hand, you wouldn't believe the thicket of federal laws one must wander through for a parent to legally take his minor child to a target range to fire a pistol. Among these laws, it is illegal for him to do so unless he is carrying a properly written permission note that he wrote to himself! Pending federal legislation could imprison the father for five years if he doesn't have the note with him, and if it's improperly written, it's not a permission note. And heaven help you if you bring a revolver and a pistol; portions of those two law sets are mutually contradictory.
All these and other laws about where and when and loaded and unloaded and displayed or locked or unlocked keep me so nervous that I usually leave mine at home, leaving myself essentially defenseless against someone who is carrying a gun (or carrying a knife or who is just physically stronger than me (which includes just about everybody (I'm a geek (remember?)))) and just doesn't give a damn. I got nervous as hell when I recently moved to a house within one thousand feet of a school. I actually had to sit down and read the Code before I could figure out whether I was violating any laws by, for example, carrying a revolver between my house and my car, and whether this was any different than carrying a rifle. Back when I lived three thousand feet from a school, it was okay.
Now that I know where I stand with regards to that law, I can safely return to my habit of answering the door with a revolver on my belt--this keeps conversations with Jehovah's Witnessess and Girl Scouts wonderfully short! ;-)
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This is not my sandwich.
As far as the US Military's ability to subdue motivated peasants equipped with small-arms, I refer you to the conflict in a country called Vietnam. While the failure to succeed militarily in Vietnam was due more to political considerations than military capabilities or tactics, I believe that the political considerations involved in setting up a military regime in America would be, to say the least, daunting.
Tyrants like unarmed peasants.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Bugger! I hate it when Slashdot and my firewall won't play nice with each other!
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This is not my sandwich.
>>Of course, this isn't the only answer, but the argument about having guns for protection simply doesn't hold:
Sure it does, look at history. In Nazi ocupied Europe the germans did whatever they wanted to to the mostly unarmed Jewish population. Until they hit the Warsaw ghetto. The Jews there had 10 handguns (cheap handguns) and they were ablt to hold the German military at bay for nearly two weeks. The Germans had to burn that ghetto to the ground to get those people out.
The Swiss are and have been a heavily armed society. Isn't it just convienent how the Nazis managed to "forget" to bother them. The Swiss have few natural resources, BUT their watchmaking skills could have been easily used for weapon development. If the Germans had been able to get them under their control they would have been a valuable asset to the Nazi war machine.
>>But a lot fewer will get in a situation where they die because someone else have a gun.
Since the begininning of this century at least 100 million people died because they did not have access to firearms, or at least suitable firearms. From Ottoman Turkey, to the Khemer Rouge it's a historically proven fact that when people are disarmed genocide can occur.
>>The same holds true for restrictive gun laws (provided they're enforced properly): There may be cases where someone would save their life without those laws, but there's more cases where having them will save people.
Another lie. There is no way in hell that you or anyone else will be able to prove that "gun control" has saved more lives this century than it has cost. What gun control laws have saved over 100 million people? NONE. Gun control kills people. Gun control serves only to disarm the peaceable and make them prey for violent lawbreakers.
A couple of years back, right here in the US a school shooting was stopped before it hit Colombine proportions by the principal who ran out to his vehicle and and came back into the school with his own firearm.
>>One of problems in the US is a society that seems to worship violence, and with high poverty rates, high unemployment in many areas, and in many ways lack of tolerance.
The obsession with death is a human psychological trait. Everyone in a civilized nation on this planet knew of Princess Diana's death nearly immediately after it happened. Why? Because people are obsessed with death. My country has many failings, but this is not ours alone.
Countries like India, Pakistan, and nearly the whole continent of Africa have much higher levels of poverty than the US does, but our violent crime rate is disproportionately higher.
Lack of tolerance isn't just here in the US, in Germany it's illegal to say anything about the Nazis that isn't negative. It could be illegal to publicly say "As bad as Hitler was, as evil as Hitler was, he did alot of good for Germany as a whole." In much of Europe the fact that we have firearms here in the US is so reviled that our European slashdotters seem to feel an obligation to slam us everytime something violent happens here.
>>Gun control laws have to be part of a package, and that package must at the very least also include making guns hard to get for EVERYONE.
In that "EVERYONE" do you include the police and the governments? After all they have killed more people in the past 99 years than all of the criminals on the planet combined.
We have enough gun control laws here in the US, but they are not enforced properly. Why? Because there are people with political agendas who don't want them enforced. Because they can then call for more and more restrictive laws. If we enforced all of the laws that we already have and added one new wrinkle, "Commit a crime with a gun and you'll serve life. Commit a murder and you'll be executed." we'd see our crime rate drop immediately.
One last point, I've seen a conspicuous lack of THE main factor as to why we see so much violent crime here in the US. Drugs. People who are addicted wll do anything to get another hit. I smoked cigarettes for several years, now I'm in the process of quitting. I have a piece of Nicotine gum in my mouth right now. Addiction is a powerful thing. Money is also a powerful motivator. If one drug dealer or group of drug dealers sees someone cutting into their profits an all out war can and probably will occur. This can be resolved in one of two ways, eliminate the supply of illegal drugs OR legalize them. Marijuana being a (sorry for the pun) weed will grow anywhere so it'll be next to impossible to eliminate that. Cocaine must be refined. To refine cocaine from the coca plant you need Ethyr and Sulfuric Acid, the only place in the western hemisphere where those can be obtained in any great quantity is the USA. If export was severely restricted the supply would dry up immediately. If they were legalized the profit motive would be gone and drug dealers would have to get a regular job. There's be no more drug wars. I know that both "solutions" have more problems of their own and we don't have the time and this isn't the place to discuss them all.
It's not the guns, it's the people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
That info was got from some who live in and around Zurich.
Heh. Think about it. These people are Europeans -- otherwise known as radical socialist liberals. They're lying to you to further their agenda. If you trust foreigners, you deserve what you get.
Hey, here's a better idea: Since facts can be faked, you must rely only on logic. And logic says that "an armed society is a polite society", so any facts to the contrary must be faked. Q.E.D. Satisfied?
La Place de la Concorde Suisse by John McPhee is not only a good read, but a solid account of the Swiss military, both operationally and culturally by somebody who went there and hung out with said military (and as far as he adresses the issues you raise, he agrees with you). McPhee doesn't have any ideological axes to grind, either. I realize that in these dark Buchananized years, objectivity and accuracy have been redefined as "left-wing bias", but never mind that. Read the book.
You will try for a long time because you must be French to understand it or have lived in France in quite a while.
One good book (although not perfect) on this topic is "The xenophobic guide to the French" which is very hilarious (but don't take anything said in it for true). I'm trying to find the counterpart for the English and the Americans now.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Any facts that don't support right-wing ideology are LIES! LIES, I TELL YOU! LIES!
Actually, from what I've heard of Switzerland, I'm a bit shocked to hear that they have a high murder rate -- especially compared to England, which is an economic disaster area. I'd'a thunk they were an exception to the generally laughable innacuracy of that chestnut about how an armed society being polite (e.g. Kosovo, Colombia, and the American West, ha ha).
> Dude, the SCA's not a militia, it's an excuse to dress funny and maybe get laid. There's a difference!
;)
Tell that to the hundreds of people who were on the battlefield at Pennsic.
The article about airbags killing more kids than schoolyard shootings doesn't weaken the analogy. In fact the statistic is an example of a uniquely American phenomenon with regards to airbags. Namely due to lax seatbelt laws the airbags in the US have to be configured to stop an unrestrained adult. Hence the force is sufficient to break the neck of an infant.
However, in Australia for example children are not killed by airbags as all occupants of a car are expected to be restrained by seatbelts.
The article about airbags killing more kids than schoolyard shootings doesn't weaken the analogy. In fact the statistic is an example of a uniquely American phenomenon with regards to airbags. Namely due to lax seatbelt laws the airbags in the US have to be configured to stop an unrestrained adult. Hence the force is sufficient to break the neck of an infant.
However, in Australia for example all occupants of a car are expected to be wearing a seatbelt as it is required by law. The result is that the airbags do not need to be set at quite as high a pressure as for the US and afik there have been no airbag fatalities in Australia.
Look, I don't know about you, but I don't give a good goddamn about the motivations of my assailant. If somebody wants to kill me, be it with a pointy stick, a gun, a bomb, or a thermonuclear device, my FIRST inclination is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to make him STOP DOING THAT. I am NOT interested in having a heart to heart with that assailant about how cruel the world has been to him.
Bad guys WILL have weapons. Therefore, prudent good guys should also have weapons to thwart said bad guys.
Oh, and I'll take a crazed rifleman over an IRA car bomb any day of the week, thank you very much.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
In Detroit, MI this year, three officers were killed in the line of duty. They were the first in many years, and the crime rates are dropping.
None of them were taken down by their own pieces.
Well.. a respect for human life, a respect for your fellow man, a respect for the fact that we are all equal..
I'm the child of a pair of baby boomers, and I have all these. And amazingly, I'm not even religious in the slightest. (I only point this out as many would cite religion as the 'best' way to instil morals)
There's no easy answer. And people hate that, they want easy answers, in the form of Ridilin (sp?) or a new government agenda. It's not an easy task to reform the basic morals of a nation. I just hope a downward spiral doesn't come of this all.
despite knives being less effective, my cousin was effectively kicked out of an entire school system for bringing a knife to school. they tried to charge her with possesion of a firearm and all sorts of other stuff, and were horrible assholes about the whole thing. so, effectiveness doesn't matter in the post-columbine school world. nothing does. students in my cousin's former school are regularly harrassed by teachers and are completely at the mercy of anyone in the school's administration. even parents and substitute teachers have problems there.
>"Americans charge after success at any cost -- & the sacrifice of friendships or family ties is considered not only normal, but expected."
>
>Do you think Hollywood epitomizes the US? Yes, there are SOME people who lead such shallow lives that they have to be numero uno at
>everything.
Years ago I saw an article in the WSJ about some Brits in Yorkshire, who would rather remain in the area on the dole than move to the South where there were jobs.
The writer of the article had the implicit attitude that these guys were more interested in living off of welfare than making something of themselves, but now -- having been to Europe a couple of times & gotten to know enough to compare European & US cultures -- I suspect the real reason they did not want to move was because they were that attached to their friends & family.
I haven't seen that kind of strong attatchment in the US outside of the Midwest (well, some people consider Ohio to be part of the Midwest) & the American South. And I have one friend who has complained about how shallow people in San Francisco are, compared to his hometown.
It's a matter of perspective. If you don't know any different, how can you see it?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Oh my god... Radja, you are joking, right?
I live in the Netherlands, where guns are outlawed and soft-drugs are legal. Our crime-rates are amongst the lowest in Europe (almost on par with Germany, although Germany has not legalized soft-drugs), and are - proportionally speaking - far lower than those of the US.
In fact, Barry McAffrey, drug advisor for the Clinton administration and an avid supporter of the so-called "War on Drugs" (tm), was forced to reconsider his opinions about the Netherlands when he visited our country last year. Up until then, he had claimed that our drug policies were a total failure - when in fact they are a huge succes, judging by both national and international statistics.
(The funny thing is, when he voiced his opinions about the Netherlands the first time, the US media were all over it. But the second time, when he reconsidered them in front of several national and international television crews during a press statement, even CNN somehow failed to pick up on it.)
But I'm digressing. Let me just say this: ask yourself why, outside of the US, public shooting sprees like the one in Columbine virtually never happen. Sure, the UK and Australia had some a while back, but those were exceptions, whereas in the US it seems like is starting to happen on a bi-monthly basis.
The reason? Gun laws. We outlaw guns. See, the argument pro-gun activists use is that when guns are outlawed, only criminals carry guns. That may be true, but a lot of the damage in public shooting sprees is done by mentally unstable people, not criminals. Criminals conduct their shootings in drive-by's and up-close hits. The last thing they want is to be caught, so they do it quickly, quietly, and preferably without witnesses.
Mentally unstable people, on the other hand, don't care about getting caught. They just want to shoot as many people as they feel are responsible for their demise, and if a few innocents get in the way, that's okay - they probably intended to kill themselves afterwards anyway, so they don't have to deal with any consequences.
One argument I've heard against this is that if we're all allowed to carry guns, and one of us goes on a shooting spree, we can stop that person by taking him out with a gun. It seems logical, except for one thing: by the time a gun is drawn in defense, chaos has already ensued, people are running everywhere, and a lot of life has already been lost.
So what's the answer? I don't know. I don't claim to have the perfect solution, except that when I look at the situation here in the Netherlands (and, to a lesser extent, in Europe) and compare that to the US, I can't help but feel good gun-laws could have saved some lives.
One closing thought: a friend of mine once half-jokingly confessed how he wished he had a shotgun, so he could shoot everyone who was bullying him at school. The problem was, he said, that he had no idea how to get one. He imagined he would probably have to deal with all sorts of shady characters before getting his hands on one, and that just seemed too much of a hassle. So that's all it remained to him: a secret wish.
- VictorHee-hee. Dying tickles!
First, most serious researchers I've read besides Kleck believe this number is quite a bit too high. This is for several reasons. From what I've seen, Kleck's study (the National Self-Defense Survey) asks a single question, and makes no effort to determine whether the responder actually stopped a crime (or only thought they did), or whether the responder was acting legally. In fact, I think Kleck even mentions the latter issue as though it's not a problem, but a feature, with his survey (unfortunately, about 50% of criminals convicted of a crime involving a gun claim they were acting in self-defense). Further, I seem to recall his question would count the *threat* of a gun as equivalent to the actual *use* of a gun when counting DGU's (never mind the fact that there's no way to tell how often the mere *threat* of a gun actually gets someone killed).
There are other, far more thorough surveys (though still flawed, of course), such as NCVS, that put the figure in the range of 50,000-100,000/year.
A pity the NRA doesn't see fit to mention the fact that Kleck's figures are so hotly contested (by everyone but them, of course).
Regardless, even if Kleck's stats are too low, it's a poor solution that only partially cures the problems it causes -- from 1 to 2 million crimes involving guns/year (NCVS). Since the rate of gun ownership is positively, not negatively associated with crime in societies around the world, it's pretty obvious gun ownership isn't the only (nor the best) way to stop crime.
Also, your analogies to guns ("why don't we ban THESE?") all fall flat for one simple reason: Guns are the ONLY commercial product of the lot designed solely to kill. Arguments about target practice and hunting fall flat; the kind of weapons we're discussing are designed to kill people. They have no other practical use.
Oh, and counting laws is a straw man. One must consider what the laws stipulate. Many are designed to prevent (the Brady Law's background checks, for example), not just punish.
Don't get me wrong. The NRA and I (and probably you) are in agreement when it comes to increased enforcement of our existing laws. We can always do more. But to claim that new laws and regulations won't do anything, without considering what they call for, is simplistic.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
But if you're going to argue about (not that it really belongs in this forum) at least understand what the topic is. Gun ownership in the United States is not a matter of practicality, nor a matter of hunting, not even a matter of self defense. It's a matter of politics. Many things about the US society are designed to create a balance that keeps the government in check. One of them is is the right to vote. Another the right to keep and bear arms. These two rights have a surprising amount in common, if you think about the underlying purpose each serves.
Ultimately, no government governs without the consent of the governed. If deprived of every other recourse, the governed have the choice of dying rather than consenting. This has always been true (and hopefully will always be true); even a repressive government has a limit to how far it can go. At some point the price of tolerating the government becomes less than the price of overthrowing the government - a price paid in blood.
It all has to do with moving that line, the line over which the government dare not step. Being a particapatory democracy makes it a little less likely that somebody can "stack the deck", but more importantly, it gets the citizenry used to the idea that they can make up their own minds about their lives and the future of their society - not only that they can, but that they should, that it is their right. Sadly, apathy saps much of the effectiveness of voting today.
Private gun ownership also helps push the line - it raises the cost of repressing the populace, and hence lowers the cost of overthrowing the government. While voting makes us more likely to refuse to consent, gun ownership makes us more able to do so effectively.
Today, private ownership of firearms is not totally unrestricted in the US. Even leaving aside registration and waiting periods, you can't just buy any firearm you want; fully automatic weapons require a special federal license, for example. It's hard to make a case that the firearms citizens can legally own will protect them from the military. But mounting a defense against soldiers, tanks, jets, bombs and missiles with small arms looks a lot better than doing it with rocks and sticks. And it is more practical - most military theory holds that while all of those nifty toys may help you take ground, when it comes to holding ground, there's just no substitute for dug-in infantry.
Is there a cost to private gun ownership? Hell yes, in accidental deaths alone, even if we leave aside the issue of whether legal gun availability increases criminal gun use. But it's a price that US society has chosen, so far, to continue to pay.
The difference between a citizen and a subject is a gun.
The ignorance is in ignoring the problem of crime and labeling those who point out who are committing the crimes as racists.
Nobody, let me repeat this, NOBODY is ignoring the problem of crime. NOBODY is denying that crimes in the USA are disproportionately committed by "racial minorities". You're sort of, well, hey. You're lying, really. You're making claims which are not true. Nobody is ignoring these things. It's a fact. Find me some references where somebody is trying to deny the number of crimes happening, or the racial makeup of the criminal population (aside from white supremacists trying to claim that all criminals are nonwhite). You may find one or two by diligent searching, but it's not gonna be much.
whether or not said group is more prone to violence than the rest of us(which seems to be true if you look at crime statistics)
No, what's controversial here is why these facts are true. The explanation is the issue. You're saying that having dark skin somehow magically turns people into criminals. That's idiotic. I'm sorry, but it's just idiotic. It's irrational. A correlation is just that: A correlation. You've got to be on crack to start with a bare correlation and try to deduce causality without going out and getting any real data.
So why do people commit crimes?
Some criminal behavior results from people being crazy. That railroad killer character is a good example; he was stone batty. Buford Furrow is another good example, as were Harris and Klebold. These people didn't do these things because of their skin or their lack of exposure to the Ten Commandments; their problem was that they were fucking crazy.
Other people commit crimes because why the hell not? I have a lot invested in obeying the law and playing by the rules; I grew up in a nice middle class family, and when I played by the rules I got ahead. That's not true for everybody. It's not true for poor people of any color, and by God crime rates correlate a lot better to poverty than they do to race. When people are poor and without hope, they often do crazy things. They've got damned little to lose by breaking the rules, and damned little to gain by playing by them. You can shake your finger like the church lady and say "well they shouldn't be bad!" but you're shaking your finger at human nature, which is a pointless activity at best. You'll get better excercise by jogging, and you'll accomplish just as much.
And in spite of your most dearly cherished delusions, there is and since the 1950's has been a steady trickle of blacks and hispanics fighting their way into the middle class. The barriers for them are greater than those faced by white working class people, because they look different and they have race as well as class prejudice to contend with, but it does happen and will continue to happen. And just let me ask you one question, kiddo: How many white people escape poverty in any given year? Take a walk down to West Virginia and tell me about the superiority of the white race. Poverty is a bitch. It perpetuates itself and it's hard to shake. Life is tough, and you need all the free advantages you can get. My parents kept me on "welfare" until I graduated from college. You'd call me "self-made", no doubt, because the handouts came from my family. Bullshit. No man is an island.
You're right, but we must go further: We have to define a "criminal" as "he who is accused", and then strip them of all rights. We can't get into this bullshit about illegal searches and seizures, or unreliable witnesses, or "police brutality" (come on! they're only brutal to the guilty -- by definition -- so it's just not a problem!). We have to THROW MORE PEOPLE IN JAIL. That's the only solution: Grab everybody who might possibly be guilty, grab everybody who looks at a cop the wrong way, and punish them swiftly and savagely. Accusation == Guilt. It's a simple equation, and it's the only thing that can save us.
Remember: Not only are gun laws and gun crimes at an all time high -- but so is the prison population! Yes, boys and girls, let's play Arbitrary Correlations, that game of knowledge and fun where the whole family can play! And best of all, everybody loses!
Oh, yeah: According to most sources, gun crimes have been declining for twenty years. Oops.
"There are no reindeer in Iceland."
I was being sarcastic.
So was I.
Next time I'll use a smiley to make it easier.
So will I.
"How did the Taliban do it? I'll tell ya how: They WERE the armed majority"
Do you even know what you're talking about? The Taliban arose as a Pushtun faction consisting of Islamic students funded by Pakistan's ISI. They started off as an armed militia guarding a highway route, then took over villages by force. Both the Taliban minority and the villages were well armed.
Er, okay, I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
Regardless of wether you agree with either of these people: Most doctors (Real doctors, not shrinks) will tell you that things like Ridilin are over-prescribed to young hyperactive children because their parents don't have time to take care of them or properly discipline them.
Ritalin isn't a depressant, by the way. I know somebody (an adult) who's on Ritalin and he isn't anything like what people describe as "drugged". He's kinda hyper. The Ritalin just lets him decide for himself what he's going to think about, rather than his mind jumping randomly and uncontrollably all over the place. My shrink (who also thinks Ritalin is overprescribed for young kids; apparently it retards growth, too) is of the opinion that I've got ADD, and we're talking about giving Ritalin a shot; that "mind jumping randomly and uncontrollably" think is very familiar to me. I'm interested to see what Ritalin is like, and I have absolutely no interest in the ravings of Scientologists and other axe-grinders.
The fact is, people rant about how doctors blindly prescribe these drugs, but the people who are opposed to it are just as blind, and they offer equally reductionistic "one-size-fits-all" solutions. People are more complicated than that.
(Real doctors, not shrinks)
I don't mean to be rude, but that looks a bit like you've got some kind of weird axe to grind WRT the psychiatric profession. Like engineers, truck drivers, and strippers, you get some very good ones, and some very bad ones, and a whole lot who are somewhere in the middle.
This is NOT TRUE IN ALL CASES.
Agreed.
I'd guess that probably half the cases of ridlin being prescribed today could be solved with some counseling and therapy with the family.
Half? I don't know, not having met everybody in the US, and not being well qualified to judge
Any responsible shrink will tell you that drugs without counseling are almost always a serious mistake . . . And you'll never hear about this from the media, but an awful lot of shrinks consider medication to be a last resort, and some are absolutely and unwaveringly opposed to it.
OK, folks, this guy may be a fanatic, and nothing I say may get past his rejection of antidepressants.
Okay, so let's label me and that invalidates what I say? Come now.
I neven said that anti-depressants have no purpose. I said nothing of the sort. But the simple fact is that Drs. prescribe anti-depressants without trying ANY OTHER therapies. I think this is crazy: screwing with your brain chemistry is not something to do lightly.
I will also observe that, in every post I have made, I have consistently pointed people to independent, non-anecdotal evidence. This guy just calls names.
I would just hate to see people go through the kind of hell I went through to learn that anti-depressants are an often abused medicine. If that makes me a fanatic, then fine. But it leasnt I'm a logically well supported fanatic instead of some jerk who just drops an assertion and runs.
Need I say more?
-- Slashdot sucks.
Didn't George Michaels get arrested for doing that?
Heh
a certain model of grenade . . . a bazooka,
These items are not firearms. No way. No how.
What kind of word game is this? What weird definition of "firearm" are you using? Not that it matters; the Second Amendment says "arms". In modern English (since, oh, the 16th century at least) "arms" means "weapons". No distinction is made. Nor, for your rhetorical purposes, is any distinction valid, unless it's something real subtle that you forgot to mention.
In regards to Afghanistan, they are in the middle of a de facto combat zone.
No, they're not. By definition, they cannot be, and you know why? Because "an armed society is a polite society". Therefore there is no violence in Afghanistan.
:)
I'm not going to dignify that with a response.
The only point you make worth looking at is the "1/100" point. How many kids on Luvox does it take to make one in 1000 shoot up their school?
I'm done posting on this thread. The evdence is their. My email address is there. If you want information, contact me.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I apologize if it came across as if I thought all of America was like the areas being discussed. I know that is a cliche. I realize fully that is not at all the case. My comments were incomplete and should have contained a line such as "I acknowledge that my description...(of life in major Canadian urban settings)... could describe much of the rest of America. I don't mean to imply you *cannot* have much the same experience in many parts of the US..." . Regardless though, I imagine you'd have a better chance of never seeing a gun in Canada as the gun-ownership statistics and regulations are so vastly different between the two countries in urban areas.
Vancouver would have been a better choice for a Canadian city with a high crime rate (high for Canada). Toronto has a remarkably low rate of violent crime for a North American city of its size (one of the biggest). It's nickname used to be "Toronto the Good".
I am not claiming Toronto or Canada is perfect. They are not. My only point really is to say that its possible to have a country with similar geography to the US but without the guns are huge part of the culture thing. That's why I posted the original response. I basically agree with the Kintanon guy.
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
. . . we don't know how "mental institution" was defined for purposes of the statistic.
See above
Wow you jumped to use the word ridiculous pretty quick.
I do not doubt for a minute you could do all you claim.
I never said that there are *no* guns in Canada. Of course there are, especially in rural regions or tourist/hunting areas.
I've lived in urban areas not rural areas and I believe my Canadian urban experience is typical.
That it's a societal thing is exactly the point I was making. It's a societal thing and we have much the similar geography than the US. I replied to someone saying the UK had less guns than the US because it was harder to get them in because the UK has less coastline to defend. I took issue with that assertion.
You called me ridiculous and then basically agreed with what I was saying. Perhaps I have to learn how to express myself with greater clarity?
P.S. it's hot and humid as hell in central Canada for much of the year - we're as far south as northern California and there are all those wetlands (damned mosquitos!)
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
"and the French have God knows what kind of mentality."
Well, we have the French mentality, what other mentality do you want us to have?
True, but we're still trying to figure out what that means . . .
:)
Ireland is not an armed population...
First: The Six Counties are a very heavily armed population. That's how they shoot each other: With guns. Nevertheless, the British-supplied (and, until recently, tacitly encouraged) Protestant paramilitiaries have usually gotten the best of it, not to mention the RUC's SS tactics.
Second: If the US military turns on the people of the US, it will be a South-American style right-wing military coup. I really don't know where the militias will fit in if that happens, but they're philosophically very sympathetic with right-wing military coupsters. I'm not planning on staying here for too many more years.
My point is that, an armed and trained civilian body is a great deterrant to a forceful acquisition of power.
The militias are hardly "trained", and they sure as hell ain't "well regulated".
Millions of widely dispersed, able, armed bodies is a powerful asset.
They're a powerful asset for people who read The Turner Diaries, unfortunately. I'd like to think of this country as a place where we can vote about things instead of shooting each other, but that's probably obsolete thinking.
This is the dumbest argument for allowing total gun access. It's like saying -
"Thalidomide kills or deforms people? Well, other things do as well. What if someone consumed DDT - that could kill them too."
In other words, if X is harmful, point to Y and say "That's harmful too!" I hear this so often the sheer stupidity of this logic is amazing.
You're saying you can make bombs out of fertilizer. So what? Geez, why not allow every country to have a nuclear weapon - they could say, "Nukes kill people? So do conventional weapons! If we really wanted to bomb a country, we would bomb them with anyway."
I've seen this happen a lot as reporters come under pressure from thier editors to get something that none of the other papers have. In this instance rumour and conjecture equates fact and gets published, which is then referred to by other articles and so on.
You can see instances of this in the reporting of the Olymic bombing and several other occasions where there are lots of intrest but limited facts to print.
The days of investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstien have long since passed. These days reports seem to want to reformat a press release and publish.
It's interesting, assuming this to be true, that so many people could empathise with the distorted, incorrect version of events, to the extent that he got thousands of e-mails saying "we were bullied like this too". I wonder whether there would have been half as much fuss if it had just been some madman with no motive killing people.
axolotl
I had the pleasure of working in the States for a month, just after the Columbine shootings. This would have been great, except for the fact that I have long black hair and wear black clothes - yup, I'm a goth, and have been for ten years.
...
The downside to this was that every day I had passers by crossing the road to avoid me, and verbal abuse from jerks in muscle cars or pickups. Even some of the people where I was working were a little bit aprehensive about talking to me
Meanwhile on CNN and other stations, much was being made of the alleged musical and fashion tastes of the Columbine gunmen. I decided to read up on the incident, and was struck by the fact that the killers looked nothing like goths, didn't appear to like what Americans consider to be goth bands, and nor did their friends (the so called `Trenchcoat Mafia').
I started to watch the TV shows, and was struck by the warped logic displayed by many of the commentators. While the actions of the killers was indefensible, the arguments being put forward as to why they acted the way they did was disturbing. Clean cut, rent a quote, god fearing teens were stating that the killers and their friends were outcasts. The conclusion that was drawn was that anyone that looked different or didn't listen to pop music was a potential menace to society.
At no point did anyone ask whether the avaliablility of guns was a factor. The fact is that most teens have felt like killing someone on the spur of the moment, but the availability of such effective means to do it is the key. I'm sure there are as many messed up kids (and adults) in the UK as there are in the US, but incidents like Columbine simply cannot happen with such alarming regularity because access to firearms is so limited.
So, please don't attack a music scene or fashion that you don't like or don't understand. Look further and ask whether it's time to stop the dubious right to bear arms. This isn't the wild west anymore, there aren't any bears, Indians or bandits waiting to ambush your wagon train. Guns simply don't have a place in a modern society.
Chris Wareham
I hate the media. Who do I blame for these incidents? I blame the media. If you tell someone something often enough, they begin to believe it. The media has been focusing on the fact of 'how bad the teens are today' for the past 30 years. Eventually people begin to believe that they are. And, of course, todays teens act accordingly. I also detest the fact that the media spreads so much FUD about something. Yeah. Lets go out and find something that happens to 1 in 10,000,000 people. Make it sound like a big deal, and blow it WAY out of proportion. Instead of focusing on someone doing good things, helping out their fellow man, they focus on the negative things in society. Unfortunatly, it seems, that many people don't want to see the good in society. I'm not saying that the negative shouldn't be brought out, i'm just saying that they focus on the negative. Watch the nightly news. I assure you the first 5 stories are about someone killing someone, some political scandal, or someone dying. Too bad at least one of those 5 lead ins couldn't be about the person that helped someone out. Anyhoo. Me.
Harris and Klebold were simply illustrating a truism uttered by H. Rap Brown back in the 1960s: "Violence is as American as Cherry Pie." (Katz, you're old enough to remember that one). Violence (literal, threatened, or figurative) is the all-purpose "solution" to problems, whether a non-compliant kid, a non-compliant foreign country, a non-compliant workforce, or whatever.
If it takes a village to raise a child, then Americans (and I myself am occasionally one) are the village idiots who helped raise Harris and Klebold.
Have a nice day.
--
--
=8^
So your advice in a nutshell would be: "act more like Katz, get noticed, get rich"? ;-) Anyway... "you prefer the term writer to journalist when describing the same thing" -- exactly.
You may disagree with my attitude, but please don't misrepresent it as apathy.
That's right; (mis)represent it as arrogant and pigheaded instead.
Oddly enough, I own an AK-47 and see no reason why I shouldn't. It is a great gun. What do I use it for you ask? Simple, stress relief and sport shooting (bottles, dishes, microwaves, various other nick-nacks that you can put on a private range...you get the idea). The point is, just because I have an AK-47 doesn't make me anymore or less of a dangerous person. I know the laws of this country and am not apt to breaking them. If the situation calls for the use of my AK, I will use it. If the situation dictates that it doesn't, you had better damn well believe that I am not going to jail over some petty situation that might force another "crazy" or "misunderstood" person to shoot someone. Then again, that's just my 2, 3, or 4 cents. Take your pick.
mmm...well, all things considered I'd have to say that it's been pretty well demonstrated (in Afghanistan and Vietnam, among other places...) that people with assault rifles and sams /can/ beat ultra-expensive super-modern weapondry...
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
I only posted the statistics, which I got straight from the pages I referenced: the official government statistics of the UK and the US respecively. If you don`t like the statistics, fine, but don`t go flaming the moderators for being biased. Can you not differentiate between facts and argument? What I posted above are FACTS: they are the numbers gathered by police and government surveys. I quite deliberately did not then go on to say `And these statistics show that guns ought to be banned`; as the post below points out, the statistics show that *all* assaults, not just those involving firearms, are higher in the US. I suppose it was naive of me to assume that the people reading the facts would have the intelligence to interpret them for themselves, rather than merely saying `Oh, it says the number of deaths is higher in the US, therefore the poster must be anti-gun, therefore the moderators were biased in moderating it up`.
I would like to think that the reason my post was rated `informative` was because I gave both the salient statistics and links to where I found them, so that people who were interested could investigate further themselves. I suppose I was expecting too much in thinking that you`d actually bother to think about it at all.
I might as well say nobody has fucked with Iceland because they eat reindeer.
There are no reindeer in Iceland. Are you thinking of Finland? Nobody fucks with Finland because Finland is real hard to love if you're not a Finn. Even then, it may take some doing. I mean, it'd be like invading Pennsylvania, but much colder. Hell, for all I know, Finland may be even more desolate than Pennsylvania, though it's hard to believe that a greater degree of desolation is possible.
Afghanistan, 1997. Practically every house had missiles and AK-47s, but the Taliban imposed their rule.
Ooh, good one. True, too. How did the Taliban do it? I'll tell ya how: They WERE the armed majority. These gun guys always forget the fact that most tyrannies are imposed by a moronic majority who think they'll benefit in some mysterious way if they pass laws that screw somebody else . . . As if human happiness were a zero-sum game. But hey, morons are like that, and armed morons are no different. There's nothing magical about an armed majority that will make them just, or good, or honest, or intelligent. They just have more power to impose whatever cretinous garbage they would have voted for anyway if they were unarmed. The gun-waving freaks out there in Michigan "protecting" my freedom are a lot more fanatically devoted to eliminating my freedom than anybody in the damned government ever was (with the exception of Pat Buchanan, who's been working for the gov't most of his adult life).
Instead, what seperates the US from some other societies is a tolerance for individualism.
Fascinating closer, given the context of this discussion. Think about it!
"Respect was invented to fill the space where love should be." - Anna Karenina
Don't ask. Go see.
Umm...read your history. The 2nd amendment was about state militias being able to prevent the federal govt. from being taken over. Back then all armed men were members of the state militia.
As for your interpretation of "well regulated militia" actually meaning "well regulated firearm", that's an unbelievable contortion of grammar. adjective-noun. I'm not sure from where you pulled the "firearm" and are replacing the "militia".
If they meant well regulated firearm, they would have said "well regulated firearms", instead of leaving it to such a contorted interpretation.
Columbine hype was a mess that should have never been attempted and never should be repeated. If you think media hype hurt the kids who were harrassed by the athletes, even ones totally remote from Eric and Dyllan personality imagine what the parents of the victims (who thankfully were not the mussle-brained crackheads originally targeted by these crazy morons) have felt from the media hype which advertised those like Eric and Dylan making them them folk heroes.
And yes Slashdot has glorified Eric and Dyllan too. The news article states they praised a man who has tortured, raped and killed millions and fucked up entire Eastern Europe. You portraid them as French-revolutionesque type class fighters and what they did as a necessarily evil.
Now my worthless opinion about all that. Eric and Dyllan lived inside their fantasy worlds, remote from the rest of the Universe. One day that fantasy world collapsed and they decided to shoot themselves. Now about the `jocks`. Who needs brains if you got muscles! I wouldnt wanna touch those like Eric and Dyllan with a 10-ft. pole, but their brightness bypassed the natural survival-intstincts! Oh well, less steroids would definately help some pimple-faced stoners, a.k.a. atheletic school leaders.
My opponent here is quite correct that I called him a name. That was harsh, but necessary. I did it because I needed to end this thread, which would have led nowhere. I tempered it as best I could. I take responsibility for whatever damage was done; I would do it again; but my intent was not to flame. Yes, I got personal, but you got personal with me in the original post, though you did not know that.
I never intended to debate you. That probably left you frustrated, but it would be pointless because I do not disagree with you. You're not the problem. I did not debate the facts with you because I do not dispute most of your facts. I dispute their interpretation. Specifically, I felt compelled to challenge the message which was written between the lines of the first post:
person on antidepressants = homicidal maniac
You may protest that this was not the message you intended, and you are right. However many readers will find that message in your statement. I tried to address my remarks to those readers. I tried to offer an alternative interpretation of the facts you presented. That is all that I wished.
Peace.
Like, whoa. Who was it, damn, some British philosopher in the 19th c. said something a lot like that, about consciousness being a passenger, and somebody else (Twain? Bierce? Mencken?) said more recently that "Man is a rationalizing animal", which nutshells it well enough.
Anyhow, you're right: We're not as sapiens as we like to claim.
"These items are not firearms"
:)
Let's see....when the 2nd amendment was written, a firearm meant a lousy primitive musket. Of course, today, it means "a semi-automatic which can be converted with an add-on into a full automatic", but.....it does not include a bazooka.
And how exactly do you know that the framers of the constitution intended the first one to be a "firearm" but not the second weapon?
"There's nowhere in the state of California you can buy a machine gun legally."
Try a gun show. I'm talking of real life, not the theoretical laws that should apply.
"reason our prisons are full is not
because we have lots of guns, but the combination of criminalizing narcotics and the explosion of gangs."
Actually, it's because of 3 strikes. There are 40,000 people serving life in prison, a good number for non-violent crimes. In case you're cheering, it costs 1/2 million per prisoner, and your taxes are paying for it, Mr. Tough-on-crime.
. . . at least the air was clean.
It's obvious! Read the damn BIBLE for a change, and look at what the FACTS are: Jesus was against gun control and in favor of mandatory prison sentences for microscopic amounts of weed. Jesus was a laissez-faire free-market capitalist, and he advocated violence and retribution in most situations involving conflict.
Just because you can't get your facts straight is no reason to malign Our Lord that way.
So, please don't attack a music scene or fashion that you don't like or don't understand. Look further and ask whether it's time to stop the dubious right to bear arms. This isn't the wild west anymore, there aren't any bears, Indians or bandits waiting to ambush your wagon train. Guns simply don't have a place in a modern society.
And kiddie porn is available on the Internet.
Therefore, we should ban the Internet.
Same logic, same reasoning.
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
You mean the overwhelming fear I've had of trench-coated goths for the last 6 months is wholly unneccessary, and I can go back to ignoring them?
I'm sure they will all be disappointed at their loss in distance-from-mainstream-society and notoriety points. Oh, well. I still blame it all on Marilyn Manson...
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I lost my blind faith that the media *had* to report the truth at an early age. I had been watching an unedited speech by some forgotten politician and after it was over I switched to a national news program. It had only been seconds since the live broadcast and the reporter had taken every conceivable controversial word and turned it into a scandelous statement. I found myself yelling to my TV, "That's not what he said!" but it fell on deaf ears. I'm not sure when it happened but all media, with the 'net being a last bastion of hope for me, seems to have turned into "Hard Copy" style tabloids. I now seek my news from many varied sources and prefer international sites where the reporting is at least more interesting.
persecute geeks, nerds, goths, etc. It is exactly the kind of thing you see in police states.... they declare a state of emergency and then use it to strip away any of remaining rights that the people might have had. The only difference is that this time people actually go with it. I for one would like to see some militancy the next time something like columbine happens. We geeks, nerds, goths, punks, etc need to tell these fascists that we won't let them trample on our rights like they did last time. It is time that we reminded them that we are Americans too and have the same rights they have.
Okay, so, they hated the world. Great. Now those of use who hate the world are going to get a bad name. ;)
This sig is false.
Sound trite? Maybe.
No, I'm not a whacko and I didn't write this. However, I just thought I'd throw that out for a different perspective. I found that at abrupt.org. I think there is quite of bit of insight into our system and the twisted minds it produces there. take a look.
Our cultural maliase runs very deep. Guns are not the problem, nor is TV violence, nor is jocks or high school cliques. These things have been going on since civilization began.
I believe the causes run much deeper; our obsession with amusement is a great part of it. If you understand that everything (from the drug wars to the daily news to our political campaigns) is being presented to us in the form of entertainment, I think you will see at least the beginning of the problem. Would ritalin have "cured" these kids? Maybe, but ritalin is the problem. Armed guards in schools is ludicrous - one is reminded (sorry) of all the ad hoc patches and crap that makes up our least favorite OS. At some point one needs to start over.
If you want to understand our deep cutural sickness you need to read. I'm suggesting a few books and I'll leave it at that:
support gun control: take guns from cops
I'm not saying the mainstream media did a GOOD JOB reporting the events last Spring, but I'm not sure what has changed, notwithstanding the "fear of geeks" that they created.
In the name of comic relief, and NOT to suggest a cheap joke, I suggest this: ABC-TV's "Freaks and Geeks" will have a wider audience because of the tragedy.
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
and ofcourse Europe, where most countries have quite strict gun-laws, has the highest crimerating...
a LOT higher than the US.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I live in Boulder,Colorado, and close to certain large media event crimes. I am so sick of this story (and others !!) I could PUKE. Pardon me while I VOMIT.......l
Granted, no statistic is really reliable, it would be nice to see some sort of numbers comparing crime in the US to crime in a place such as the UK...but more specifically a certain city in the UK that scales well to a city in the US. Anybody have any data, or know a good source for solid statistical data?
Okaaaaay..
From the Home Office Statistical Publications website, I can get the 1998 British Crime Survey, which tells me that in the UK in 1997 there were 714,000 wounding assaults (more than trivial injury). Only 25% of violent crime is committed by people previously unknown to the victim. The Statistics of Deaths Reported to Coroners: England and Wales 1998 tells us that 142 deaths were given a verdict of `unlawful homicide` in 1997 (note this doesn`t include Scotland); this works out as 2.4 murders per 1,000,000 head of population (see below).
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has a summary of firearm-related crimes, wherein we are told that: "Victimizations involving a firearm represented 23% of the 2.9 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault" and that it is "estimated that 68% of the 18,209 murders in 1997 were committed with firearms." This works out as 67.9 murders per 1,000,000 people, or 46.2 murders with firearms per 1,000,000 people.
The population of the US is 268 million, with 29 people per square kilometre. The population of the UK is 59 million, with 243 people per square kilometre. (Source: World Bank country data.)
I`m afraid I don`t have time to go looking up specific cities though.
Of course the media bases its content on rumours. Between the American government 'changing the facts' (YES, it DOES happen) on a few mistakes or other reasons, and the capitlistic media doing its VERY, VERY best to BUY VIEWERS from the competitors, how can one not tell the truth? I think it was an old Jedi who said... "..you'll find many of the truths we cling to depend on a certain point of view..". With this attitude toward the mentality of the American public of "Believe what we say, it is TRUTH", how can I honestly be impressed with the sanctity in which America has fallen to? Yes, I do believe that America is the greatest country I've lived in (yes, I have traveled abroad much in my youth), but with this sort of mentality I wonder... "do I really want to stay?" P.S. When I believe "Dateline" honestly pointed fingers at Naziesque bands (i.e. KMFDM, which is a TOTAL fallacy) I nearly fell out of my chair. Didn't the blame game to Rock and Roll fall through in the 60's 70's and 80's? Perhaps this proves that people don't change, only technology does. Thank you for your time, Tenement
Kids who are different take abuse from their peers far too often. Yes, I mean ABUSE, not "just teasing." Five guys coming up to me and threatening to steal my bike and hit me on the head because I was the only one on the block wearing a bicycle helmet is not "just teasing." Death threats at 3 AM are not "just teasing." One of the five black kids in my high school returning to his locker to find it broken into with most of the contents damaged and racist graffiti everywhere is not "just teasing." Being sexaully assaulted (or threatened with same), telling the administration, having them NOT BELIEVE you because the guy "is just a flirt," and having the guy find out you told on him and follow you around threatening to kill you for the next three weeks
And even the "milder" things add up after a while. Try being the kid that people don't want to sit with until test day, when they copy your paper. Try having a teacher who SEES this go on and does NOTHING about it. Try being out sick and returning to school and hearing that all the girls in your class think you were out because you were having an abortion, when you've never even had sex! And all the teachers looked the other way
I don't CARE if peer harassment was the "root cause" of Columbine or not. It's about damn time that people realized what really goes on in schools if you aren't one of the golden kids. I'm still sorry that a mass murder had to take place for this conversation to begin, but it is LONG overdue.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Now with this feature in /. , I am beginning to think that the Taiwanese earthquake was actually an aftershock of the Columbine shootings. Guys lets stick to the techno issues. If you want to cover anything else get a job at Salon or some other cyber rag.
while i can understand why you are sick of hearing about this, you might actually want to read this article.
/.'s quality of late, and i'm not looking for another three months of columbine articles, but this one was worth it.
it isn't a piece about why anyone killed anyone, rather a clarification about what _didn't_ occur. something nice to pass along to all those concerned parents trying to brainwash the children "for the children."
i do wonder if there's any more honesty in this article than anything else the put out in the media. i don't read salon enough to know whether or not they are a source for unbiased news, or if they are simply another propoganda machine. *shrug* in the end, i suppose it doesn't make any difference.
i'm sure i would not have heard about this article if it hadn't been posted here, so i suppose someone around here oughta say thanks to roblimo for it. i won't say that i've been exactly thrilled with
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
But carrying guns actually makes it more likely that you end up a murder victim at the end of the day.
Can you provide ANY facts to back that up? I think ( actually I know ) you will find the statistics indicate the exact opposite.
If I ever got around to writing about Columbine (trying hard to get back on topic), I would start my research with this site, which rather oddly in this whole affair, is a place which does honestly try to stick to the facts about those two individuals who were at the centre of all this.
(ignore my .sig this once, I think)
But carrying guns actually makes it more likely that you end up a murder victim at the end of the day.
BULL
Found the following at http://www.tsra.com/Lott6.htm
The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey reports that the probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. Men also benefit from using a gun, but the benefits are smaller: offering no resistance is 1.4 times more likely to result in serious injury than resisting with a gun.
/. rocks for news. All kinds of news. And proof that the media lies and invents facts is nice to see. I think everyone who reads here often already knew this, but it's nice to see them get caught once in a while.
According to many medical studies 'moderate' drinking is good for you and someone who has one or two servings of an alcoholic beverage actually is healthier than his/her counterpart that does not drink at all. Bad example dude.
Um, could you just please list the statistics of people killed and injured due to firearms per year, as opposed to bombs. 5 million lamerz do a lot more damage than a few 1337 bomb makers.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Read the Constitution sometime. The framers explicitly secured the right "of the people" to keep and bear arms. And I don't care how many Supreme Court justices think otherwise, they used the word "states" when they meant the states, and "people" when they meant individuals.
And just as an ugly woman is less likely to be a prositute...someone with a hunting rifle is a lot less likely to be a killer than someone with an assault rifle (not that guns /make/ them killers, just that it is a lot easier with a gun designed to kill people).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
They sell a t-shirt reading, "End racism. Kill everyone." The connection is clear!
;-)
>Every so often something comes up to remind us that we are not so superior after all.
.sig. :)
i may steal that as a
while i agree with you for the most part, i'm not at all certain that these 'facts' make any of the long hours of discussion here any less relevant.
they were kids mad at the world. i didn't see anything that suggested the kids weren't geeks, simply that the goth/trenchcoat/gay themes were nonsense.
i don't believe that i've ever met anyone who spent much time planning mass destruction who wasn't a geek of some sort. this, of course, doesn't mean that i've met everyone who has thought of such a thing...but in general, i think we're the ones who spend so much time obsessing (my personal favorite version..."thinking too much,") that we'd actually work out plans, and either invent or copy the tools necessary for the job.
the fact that they weren't neo-nazi's, the gay liberation front, or dancing elephants only makes it more relevant to me.
hope i don't seem argumentative here, because i think you have an interesting (and enlightened) perspective. i'm just not sure how it changes things for the hundreds (thousands?) of people here who either related to the killers or to the people who've suffered long after the shootings.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
>You can't eliminate guns. They're too easy to
>make. You never heard of a "zip gun"?
First, a zip gun needs ammo. If you strictly control guns, why not ammo as well?
That aside, you're comparing apples and oranges. A hand-built, one-shot, slow-loading zip gun isn't in the same category as even a shitty clone-of-a-clone-of-a-clone import automatic pistol with a couple spare clips.
If they'd used zip guns in Columbine, there probably wouldn't have been more than a handful of injured.
c.
Log in or piss off.
Does anyone know if ZIP guns still have the click of death problem? You know, you fire them a few times, and then they destroy the magazine, making it unusuable.
Also, what fires faster, a SCSI ZIP gun or an EPP ZIP Gun?
Thanks,
George
This thread seems interesting, but seems some moderators view it as a troll... Gun bias in moderators?
I have an idea...all the luddites can move to a remote tiny island in the pacific for y2k. If no apocalypse occurs they have to stay there. If an apocalypse does occur they can find their own damn way off the island ;)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think they are.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people.
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were on psychotropic drugs -- that is anti-depressant therapy. In one of their cases, it was Luvox. According to the autopsy, he was taking it as directed in normal doses.
This drug has been known to cause mania and psychosis in clinical trials!!! Don't take my word for it: read the product insert.
Guys -- these kids were drugged into doing this by liberal education and its refusal to deal with Kids who don't match the norm. Make no mistake about it.
So: don't blame the parents. Don't blame the other students. Blame the schools, the NEA, the APA, the drug companies, and the doctors that pass this stuff out like it's candy.
Why do they pass it out like this? Simple: the drug companies advertise these "vanity drugs" extremely heavily. I used to work in the medical field, fixing systems for doctors. I would regularly see these gorgeous women come in as drug company reps. They would cook lunch for the staff, chit-chat with the doctor, and leave all kinds of name-branded junk for him to use.
Don't believe me? Go in a doctor's office sometime and see what kind of pen he's using. 50/50 chance it says Zoloft or Luvox on the side.
The net result: the doctor, when presented with a Kid with behaviour problems (too much sugar and too little discipline) says "Let's just try this and see if it works". Doctors are human too, and "a beautiful woman told him that it would help this, so it must be true," right?
*sigh* This makes me MAD.
-- Slashdot sucks.
I agree with this entirely. The only problem is, how do you change a culture, especially given that many (most) people won`t want their culture changed?
OJ. Ever since then the tabloids have had just as credible stories as the "news". Which is why my information about the world comes from places like /. not spoon fed to me thru my idiot box or from the slanted BS in the newspaper.
When all this first came out, it seemed the media was trying to paint a picture of these 2 kids as having gone over to the "dark side" of life. The references to Goths, heavy metal or alternative music and the ridiculous "Trenchcoat mafia" were as thick as pea soup. Then there were my all-time favorite reports, from "concerned" reporters, trying to look sincere at their anchor desks, wondering what this kind of music or the Internet was doing to our kids. It seemed to me if you didn't listen to or dress like the Top 40 darlings of the day, aka Britney Spears or Backstreet Boys, you were wrong. The media helped inflame this. School principals helped too, especially if you read some of the accounts here posted to Katz's article. I guess there is a pre-concieved mold teenagers are supposed to fit into. My parents had one for me, and I broke it....badly. From four generations of teachers emerged an engineer (GOD FORBID!) who likes computers and heavy metal. Personally, I am sick of hearing how this music rots your brain or the Internet will be the downfall of civilization. I am extremely sick of the media blowing little sound bites out of proportion. When I have kids, I know I will let them listen to anything they want, (please not country, please) or dress a certain way unless its dangerous. Is there a moral? Don't trust the media, establishment, etc? Heck, if you are smart enough to be here and read this, you already know that. I guess my message (if there is one) is be yourself and trust yourself. Instinctively, most people know the difference between right and wrong. We don't need the media to tell us. (Apologies for the apparent lack of continuity. It's my first post.)
What? The media has it all wrong /again/? They've merely been pushed the self-created exaggerated, sensationalized conclusion? NO!?
/botched/ job!? And that immediately afterwards, every uptight principal in the US decided it was cause to violate the civil rights of American citizens by denying them public services because they wore a certain type of clothing that in actuality had nothing to do with the perpetrators anyway? Couldn't be!
What? These kids where really PEOPLE? Couldn't be! They must have been evil satanic GOTHS. Or immoral godless GAYS. Never real PEOPLE! If they were real people, we'd have to acknowledge that there were real reasons, perhaps caused by other people around, that they may actually have done these things. You mean they're not racists? Not anti-Christian? You mean that stupid so-called martyr I've been hearing so damn much about from every news magazine and foaming preacher is really NOT a martyr, but just another random death? No way!
You mean that everything the media has piped into my soggy little brain is false...that these were just two very frustrated, screwed up teens, outcasts of outcasts, that did a
--
This was just an occasion for every selfish stupid special interest to displace the "fault" on to their favorite evil, and push their cause...nobody gave a damn about the real PEOPLE involved. They were too damn busy licking their wounds and feeling sorry for themselves by making out as if their enemy was some big evil unaviodable thing. Well wake up! Black clothing and satan don't cause people to do this! It's everybody's responsibility to see that no human gets in a state that they want to do something like this.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Prediction
Now that a more detailed story has come out about the Columbine incident, and a great deal of the stories we thought were true are proven false, what is going to change? Nothing.
Christians will still use one of the students as a martyr, the media and special interest groups will still insist that music, fashion and the Internet have a profound influence on young adults, and the gun battle will go on unfettered.
I wish I had some statement that would sum this all up, but there are so many sides to this story, that I don't think we will ever understand them all. Which interestingly enough, seems to be the driving force behind the media coverage..."Will we ever know what REALLY happened?"
Maybe we're not supposed to.
Maybe we should go back to flintlocks. Yeah, you can shoot him... but you might go blind/deaf/blown up doing it.
Not sure where you found your misinformation, but in most of Switzerland, it is not uncommon to see men riding their bikes to the local range with their assault rifles strapped to their backs. It is completely legal, and frequent practice is encouraged. The myth you hear about having to account for every round of ammo is just that. The ammo that must be accounted for is the block issued for use in time of defense. You are free to buy and shoot as much of your own ammo as you choose.
I have not been to NZ, so I cannot comment on that.
P.
It's not just me saying this. See http://www.breggin.com/luvox.html.
Just thought I'd throw in some more documentation. For God's sake, get your kids off of this stuff.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Ever hear of the crusades? Thousands of people died, were guns a factor? Thousand of people each year are killed with knives or baseball bats, should be ban/license those? Look at the statistics that show crime has decreased in areas where concealed weapons permits were allowed. (somewhere in the order of 30%) You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
Good point. However, like someone posted, times have changed.
Most developed democratic nations (Norway, sweden, UK, australia, etc) have no right to bear arms, and.........if you look up amnesty's report, they have a FAR better record on not oppressing their citizens than the US does.
In other words, guns in the US provide an illusion of ensuring liberty.
Citizens in industrial democratic countries with no right to bear arms are less oppressed. (We are talking facts here, right? Not IF/BUT analogies).
You might ask - what if a Hitler arises in the US. The answer is - obviously you need to balance the risks. I'm sure we would allow workers to carry guns to their office if the odds were reasonable that their employers would oppress/torture them. but the odds are so low that it is not worth the high risk of tens of thousands of accidental deaths.
Sadly, most americans have no clue what goes on in other countries. To the rest of the world, the right to bear arms on the grounds that the govt. might oppress them makes it as ludicrous as a picture of cubicle workers carrying machine guns to prevent their manager from attacking them.
In case you wondered why the rest of the world ridicules US gun policies, think of that image.
You've obviously never set foot outside your own little town...I can walk around this main city in the most densly populated country in Europe without worrying about violence.
I don't fear being beaten up, or someone pulling a gun on me even at night in the parks.
On the other hand, I can carry and use soft drugs and go to any movie I like (age limits are guidlines only), and can see porn anywhere (including the record shops). I can travel wherever I like too.
I can own a gun too, legally.
I didn't see anything in there that refuted the idea that incessant bullying was the last straw.
.02
.02
It might not be the case, but it can't be inferred from the Salon article.
My
Quux26
http://www.intap.net/~j/
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
All the banning of trenchcoats, dark-colored makeup, violent video games, and whatever else, were knee-jerk reactions and bad decisions. Gee, maybe they should banned white people. You never know when one of those whities might get an idea in their head and act up. No. What happened, was *administrators* tried to protect their populaces, and how did they do it? The attacked the "wierd" people. This is not a good way to make policy.
The person who breaks into my house and threatens my life is going to have 5 or 6 .45 caliber holes in his head. "Uh wait a minute Mr. bad guy and let me call the police"
For me this sort of thing (and this is by no means an isolated incident) underscores the fact that as a reputable source of information our mainstream media are a joke. Fallible human beings cannot be expected to get it perfect every time, but they can make an honest effort to approach that ideal. Evidently the news media have decided that we're not worth the effort.
Disgustedly yours,
-r
You have a knife, and I don't. Who do you think is going to win the fight?
When it comes to guns being restricted, people tend to assume binary viewpoints. Nobody seems to realise it's a matter or reducing the odds.
Example - Imagine 2 cities, one where seat belts & air bags are used and one where they aren't. let's say you go to the city where they aren't used. You are surprised to see the number of auto deaths are vastly greater, and try to make a point.
You: If you had seat belts/air bags, it would reduce the number of deaths.
Local: Bullshit! There was an accident in your town, and people got killed even tho they had both!
You: I'm not saying it will cure all problems. It will simply *reduce* the number.
Local: Crap! There was a case of a car falling over the bridge, and they died *because* they wore seatbelts and couldn't get out. Unsafe cars don't kill people. Unsafe people kill people.
See what I mean? You can prove that the safety measure does actually *kill* people. And you can prove that even when it's implemented, it doesn't prevent deaths. But what you may forget is that the probability is vastly reduced.
Look at the numbers:
The US has 20,000 deaths each year from guns, far more per person than any other industrial nation. (note - per person, so don't say it's got a bigger population , blah blah blah).
Japan has 1/216 fewer gun deaths than the US, per 100,000 people. (Guns are NOT banned in japan, they are just very, very difficult to get). Yes, japan has a smaller population - this is *after* adjusting for the population.
There are 200+ million guns in the US, with more than 50% of the population owning guns.
15 % of the US population spends time in a mental institute at some point.
Just combine the last 2 numbers and enjoy the fireworks.
L.
Although the populations of New York and London are pretty much the same, London is geographically twice the size. Perhaps a lower population density could account for some of this?
It is hard to trust reports like this, especially when it seems so poorly put together. So much emphasis was placed on one diary by one killer, and the conclusions seem stretched. Countless eyewitness reports are cavalierly dismissed, and major assertions are backed up by anonymous "sources".
When going against the grain, it pays to be credible. With something as poorly substantiated as this, an assertion of "the media got it all wrong!" deserves a retort of "my friend, you ARE the media".
Did you even bother to READ the whole article mentioned?
The new Salon doesn't say that C.Bernal got killed because she believed in God. It says that someone else may have been asked that question, answered, got shot, and survived. That sequence of events (except for survival) may have been mistakenly assigned to C.Bernal. Salon also quotes (or paraphrases) one of the investigators as saying that it probably wouldn't have mattered which way she (whoever it was) answered, she would have been shot.
Using Howard Stern as an example of "the media" is like using Windows 95 as an example of an operating system. Quite simply, he's out to shock people in any way he can. If that includes "rape them, so they could have some enjoyment", that's just Howard being an idiot. That's what he does for a living, and some people like it. I don't, but please don't paint all of "the media" as Howard Stern.
Well, OK the Windows analogy is weak, but it sure sounded good to me.
Actually, whgen it comes to the relative effectiveness of guns and knives, it depends on range. Get to within ten feet or so and the knife befomes far more effective.
I think you're also forgetting the effectiveness of a knife as a slashing weapon.
It doesn't matter, because they guy you're responding to was wrong. Take away the guns, and criminals won't turn to knives. They'll turn to bombs. Then we're really screwed.
Worst of all, simple illegalization of guns isn't going to change a thing; most criminals already get their guns by illegal means (legal means are, after all, too easy to trace), and simply taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is not going to change that.
Hey. Sorry for your bad expirences in the US. I cannot say that it wouldnt have happened here, but those I identify with probably wouldnt have given your too much hell.
As for spur of the moment killings, these kids aren't waking up pissed at the world and saying: "Hey I think I should go to school and kill everyone." What they did was (for highschool students) pretty well planned out. It was something they had been working on for quite some time. They also didnt just have guns. They were also armed with explosives (obviously not very good with them or things could have been worse).
I feel that if you want to kill someone, the tool you choose to use is irrelevent. If I was going on a suicide run, guns would be the first obvious choice. Sure you could take them away. Then I goto the internet or the library and figure out how to make napalm and c4. Its really not that hard. Now you decide to ban household chemicals... oh dear. Now I crack open the gas line in the school and light a match.... then you ban natural gas as well as the petrol the cars run off of. Now I am forced to use nerve agents (much more effective than guns. Perhaps I an uncapeable of making nerve gas-I must then take on the entire school with swords and knives. I think you get the point. Shortly after the killings I was watching an interview on cnn with a woman in the UK. She said that she didn't understand why Americans felt that we needed guns. Well in history classes here we have this topic called the Revolutionary War. That has alot to do with why we feel we should have the right to bear arms. john
-- john
and pipebombs should be made illegal too while they're at it.
Pork is not a verb
I think this attitude misses the point. The most disturbing things in the Hellmouth series was not the thought that administrators might provoke another massacre with their crackdown on geeks and outcasts. I thought that the crackdown in and of itself was brutal. It was everything we experienced as kids, amplified by mob mentality. The desired restrictions on jocks and teachers were one of our solutions to this ongoing problem in American schools. Isn't enough to say that /.-ers as a whole are against the institutionalized system of outcast abuse?
After reading Salon's article, I still could not find solid evidence that constant taunting and abuse didn't push these two sickos over the edge. True, they wanted to kill everybody, not just the jocks... but did anyone stand up for them at any point? Do you think this had absolutely no effect on their perspective? Again, is it wrong for us to want to see the end of the system of outcast abuse just because it wasn't the sole cause of the massacre?
I hope this makes sense to somebody. I'm writing uncaffenated here...
Okay, but what about the probability of serious injury when the attacker is carrying a gun versus when the attacker is not carrying a gun?
And it`s not just a choice between `resisting with a gun` and `offering no resistance`. How about `resisting with kung-fu`, for example?
If you act smart, you are subject to the extreme social cruelities of the ignorant mob in high school.
You live in a society where total isolation is impossible. There is a certain obligation, in any society, to show some consideration to other members. This includes attire and attitude. In the aftermath of the massacre, to wear similar attire as the murderers hurts and angers in the same way as partying at a funeral or wearing a swastika to a Holocaust memorial.
This is not a condemnation of your attire per se. The swastika was a harmless symbol before Nazi Germany. But the world's interpretation of symbols changes, and it is not unreasonable to be asked to show some consideration for its members. It is a matter of etiquette, and rudeness begets rudeness. That you would care only about your coat in the aftermath of the massacre might suggest a misplacement of priorities.
I do not wish to downplay the seriousness of the matter, but I recall a radio interview in Wales between a female radio interviewer and some guy taking some kids on a camping trip. This apparently is something that happened, but my source is the University Students magazine, so the credability is somewhat questionable, but it made 'Wanker of the week' It dgoes something along the lines of this...
female radio interviewer: so what what are you going to teach the children on this trip?
camp leader: well we'll take the children tramping, fishing and canoeing, and teach them how to use a rifle
interviewer: so you are teaching the children to become killers
camp leader: no I didn't say that, we will be teaching them how to act responsibly with guns
interviewer: but you use guns to kill things, you are teaching the children to kill
camp leader: no we are not, all the children will be supervised and be taught how to use a gun responsibly
interviewer: but you are equipping them to be killers
camp leader: look lady you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not...
needless to say the interview stopped earlier than expected
I'm wondering if I'm the only one who was slightly disgusted by the way Katz went on about "geeks" being "repressed" in the wake of Columbine? I mean, cripes, 15 people died violent brutal deaths here, and many more were maimed and/or paralyzed. And the only angle Katz seems concerned about (nay, obsessed about) is that some schools are banning trenchcoats, etc!?! I find that frankly revolting.
Did anyone ever think that the admittedly knee-jerk reactions of school administrators might actually have saved lives? There was at least one other shooting afterwards, perhaps the crack down prevented more? I mean, it's too bad that some school kids lost some priviledges, but if lives were saved (even one,) isn't that *worth it*?
The number of deaths in vehicle related accidents dwarfs the number of deaths from gun shots. So what? Look, we americans aren't all as psycho as everyone seems to think. Stop watching the damned news. I grew up with guns, around guns, my little community had around 1000 people in it, all of whom owned at least 3 guns. I have NEVER EVER EVER seen someone get shot. A friend of mine grew up in a suburb near a city, he saw some nut with a shotgun blow a guys leg off. The total number of guns per person in his area? Less than .01. In fact, the guy with the shotgun was probably the only one in the neighborhood with a weapon at that time.
You'd think that with so many guns in my area I'd have at least HEARD of some one getting shot... but nope. It just doesn't happen.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
History tells me I should be much more fearful of an armed government of a disarmed populace, than of any particular weapons (be they guns, gasoline, or explosives) in the hands of private citizens
As I understand the provision in the US constitution for the right to bear arms is to guard against govt tyranny. Of course, small arms are hardly state-of-the-art military hardware these days are they? When the crimes of the US Govt reach that point where significant resistance is called for, do you honestly think that small arms will be the tools for the job?
If that argument is to make any sense at all, you'd be wanting a few privately owned tanks, gunships and cruise missiles, no?
You thought Columbine was bad... you want to wait until little Johnny takes an Apache to school!
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
True, social outsiders were singled-out and harassed after Columbine. And, yes, part of it is because they're easy targets for such treatment. But I think that whatever social group these kids had belonged to would have been singled-out.
Let's say that the kids were jocks, or members of some other typically "popular" high school social group. Then the first target of our collective blame (until we knew better) would have been the social down-side of being in a popular group -- the pressures & expectations of the peer group, being under the public eye, expectations of setting a good example, etc. There would be a cry for this group to be watched, counselled, and so forth. I think whatever group the killers happened to come from would get similar treatment, with their social position being the early bearer of the blame. Why? Because the kids ashed out socially.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that had it been a traditionally "popular" group, there would have been more of a "kid-gloves" approach; a public outcry for understanding instead of further ostracism
And that should make it clear how much of an anachronism the 2nd Amendment is. Even if you
:)
armed every single person with fully automatic weapons, do you think we could stand up to the
government? They have tanks, helicopeters, fighter jets, bombers, cruise missles, etc.
Simple guns and sheer numbers go a long way.
"Wolverines!!!"
Any government that decided to take away the rights of an armed populace would be dealing with a very long, bloody, expensive, damaging and drawn out war. This would cause most to not even attempt it.
"When they kick in your front door, how you gonna come? With your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun"
-Paul Simonon (The Clash)
God, I sound like a militia fanatic... I really am not. But I do believe it is actually my responsibility as an American citizen to own, and know how to use, a gun.
Yeah, everynow and then I devote a Sunday School class to explaining to kids and/or adults that
What Would Jesus Do? Sell that BMW, give the money to the first homeless man he saw and preach a gospel of love while living on hand-outs and sleeping in shelters.
--
Clear, Dark Skies
its the high velocity fragments of metal that tend to make people scream and bleed a lot.
for crying out loud. what is it with the us and the attitude of 'my gun is bigger than yours' what we have here folks is a cut down version of the arms race..
police: 'okay.. so let me get this straight.. the guy ram-raided your house with a tank.. so you used your anti-tank rocket launcher to neutralise the target '
home owner: 'i was defending my property'
okay.. so its a far flung example.. but the point is.. where does this stop.. where does 'protecting yourself' end.. heres something wacky..instead of trying to *kill* each other.. why dont we all just get along instead..
if you have to shoot something.. please .. use a camera for chrissakes..
dms0
the children.. i dont give a f*&@ about the children.. thats what parental responsibility is for....
The scary thing when you look at them, they were pretty much ordinary kids like the rest of us. The media is trying to look for abnormalities and printing lots of rumors, but most not true. They almost always interview some stoned neighbor of a criminal who says "they were really wierd!". The scary thing is how can "almost normal" people do incredibly evil things?
The Second Amendment is the one to which you refer.
The founding fathers had just fought off a tyrannical government and wanted to ensure that they would not have to do so ever again. That is the reason for the Second Amendment. To provide for the people a means to overthrow the government if it became necessary.
I've heard the following arguments against the Second Amendment:
1: But, only muskets existed when that was written. They never knew that people would have machine guns(tm) and deadly-high-powered-assault-rifles(tm).
By that logic, only books and newspapers would be protected by the First Amendment. Movies, TV, Radio and your beloved Internet would all be subject to regulation by the federal government.
2: But, only members of a militia can have guns.
Well, most people are members of their Federal and State Militias. As a male between the ages of 18 and (I forget the upper limit), by federal and state law I am a member of 2 militias: The Militia of the United States, and The Militia of the State of Texas
3: But, it says "well regulated Militia...," so the government can "regulate" it as it sees fit.
Today we use the term regulated to mean controlled. During the late 18th century, the term "well regulated" meant something like "in good woring order" There are writings from the time that refer to well regulated farms or foundrys.
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
Right, and you won't be firing off 30 rounds of hot arrows a second with your composite bow.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Good point. Unfortunatly there are just as many fanatical, illogical, emotional, anti-gun zealots as there are gun nuts. Guns have been around for a long time. Pre-1963 you could own almost any type of military firearm in the united states. It was in the 60's when the Weathermen, SLA, and other american terroist groups began bombing and killing americans that these restrictive gun laws came about. Lots of people had m-14s, garands, and other "Assault rifles". Their kids just weren't taking them to school and blowing people away. Personally I don't think gun laws do jack to crime. Criminals are opportunists and they don't let laws get in their way. One thing to think about here is why the media is reporting when some white, suburanite, teenage losers take guns to school and kill their classmates. Yet we see nothing on the news about the literal war going on in American inner cities where many more children are being killed, however most of these children are minorities. How about the fact that 10 (3000:30,000) times more children are killed in automobile accidents than firearm accidents. Anyway my 2 cents.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
Yeah. What he said.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Why are some people so desperate to justify allowing murder to happen more often?
Has everyone forgotten the treatment that every 'different' person got after those killings?
Of course not. The Geek Crackdown was completely unjustified. My point was not that the other subcultures were right, it was that we were as wrong as they were. But most importantly, we all got it wrong for the same reason: the Columbine Massacre is a mirror.
There is a childrens story in which a mirror is brought into a village which has never seen one before. Everyone thinks it is a portrait and gives their opinion of the subject, not realising that they are in fact talking about themselves. That is exactly what happened here.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
What are you...freakin illiterate? How does "a group of my friends, hold organized training sessions, develop a commands structure, etc." constitute a well regulated Militia? I disagree with your interpretation.
Yeah but you're not going to kill as many people as quickly. You may wound quite a few but it takes more time and effort. You give me a group of 10 people who don't have a choice, and you have a knife. What do you think the odds are then?
Your just playing games with statistics, and in fact they prove nothing.
I am, however, tired of the argument against our constitutional right to bear them focusing on their use in crime and crime prevention. The US Consitution provides for the individual's right to bear arms, not for hunting, not for protection from criminals, and certainly not to equalize some perception of physical prowess. The right to bear arms was intended to ensure that the citizenry could always protect itself from an over-bearing and unjust government. Think about the US approach to cryptography, censorship, personal privacy, and other favorite /. discussions.
If only the government has assault weapons, how do we protect ourselves from the government? There may come a time when I feel I need to take up arms to protect my liberty and my constitutional rights. Will I be able to? Think about it.
From a bumber sticker: "I love my country. It's my government that I don't trust."
"what the FUCK is that?"
"Hey, Marylin! Marylin Manson!"
Shortly after the incident, we were on our way to a goth club in London, when a few lager louts yelled at us (along with other general abuse):
When the reply ``Yes, but we only selected assholes like you'' came back, there was a smatter of nervous laughter, as they tried to work out if we were serious or not. Yes, it was an amusing incident, but it might not have been so funny if we weren't in a large group. Had there been just one or two of us, it could have got nasty...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Why does that incident stick out so much?
Perhaps because of its *rarity*.
When it comes to massacres in the US. When the rest of us hear about it, it's sadly almost become "What another one? My God..."
The original poster never said such things never occured in Scotland or wherever. They were commenting on the huge descrepencies on the frequency of such incidents.
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
The fact is, the emotional anti-gun NUTS have KILLED more people than gun owners, albiet indirectly, don't believe me? Then Try to argue this post.
The Electric Ballroom (Camden High Street, near the tube station) is OK on Friday nights. Further up the road during the daytime is Resurrection Records, a record store in the basement of a clothing shop. Pop in there to lay your hands on flyers for clubs and gigs. (And why not treat yourself to a copy of the Killing Miranda album while you're there - feel free to disregard this sentence).
A number of half-decent clubs occur at Gossips in Soho on Wednesday and occasional Fridays. But the best Goth club in London is undoubtedly the Slimelight. Some of the music may be an acquired taste, but the good always outweighs the bad no matter what brand of Goth you like.
It's a members only club, so just turn up at the Angel tube station at 10.00pm on a Saturday night and ask someone to sign you in.
Chris Wareham
Howard Stern's comment's were taken completly out of context by the rest of the media. He simply said that if they had done that at least he could see some motive behind the crime. He was just as shocked by this as everyone else, and was also at a loss to explain it.
Non gratis rodentus anus
This is very interesting. It is somewhat supported by the results of Project Excile in Richmond VA.
In Project Excile the NRA ran a public awareness campaign (ie, ADVERTISING or CONSCIOUSNESS SPAMMING) to remind people of the harsher penalties for committing crimes with firearms. Billboards, etc. Guess what--crime is down in Richmond. George W. Bush has reportedly gotten behind this effort in Texas.
There's a problem in this country because Profit obfuscates Truth.
Visa is NOT everywhere you want to be.
WWF is not real.
Elections are bought with commercial time and image consultants.
How do we keep profiteers from obscuring Truth?
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
There would be absolutely no problem with doing
this in the UK, other than being regarded by ones neighbours as somewhat odd.
I know you've enjoyed your time in the spotlight, and really, it's nice how over the past 6 months you've made sure not notify the media of every piddly thing that happens at your school (NEWSFLASH: Columbine student caught chewing gum in class today! Film at 11), but c'mon, we're getting tired of it. Perhaps you should worry about beating your kinds into shape rather than being an adorably popular media darling.
The trenchcoat caused the crime. Ban trenchcoats!!
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
It states that: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. And I exercise that right with pride.
Call me biased, but I'm not really suprised when a tragedy such as this occurs. .. one in 300million chance of someone snapping, and of having access to the firepower, and something has to happen.
Given the US's reputation of 'damn the consequences, it's my legal right to own a gun so I will' and the statistical probability that given a population of some 300 million (?) all you need is a
I, however, live in Australia. We recently [2-3 years ago] had a similar situation [Port Arthur], and this resulted in a very controversial change to our legistation, basically [and i'm generalising here] outlawing all semi-automatic rifles [pistols are already illegal without the licence]. We may only have a pop'n of 19million, but gun-inflicted fatalities are proportionally less than in the US.
It is my opinion that the US gun ownership laws are at fault. Unfortunately, they cannot be changed democratically, as the people are sufficiently ignorant enough to not see the greater good in outlawing personal guns. It's entrenched in "The American Way".
Oh well...it's your country.
While I own a shotgun and handgun, I'm not blinded into believing that ALL firearms should be allowed. There is no reason (even self defence) for some assualt rifles, and full automotics, and anything that resembled a rocket launcher :)
However, I do believe handguns should be allowed. I'm not going to give you any reasons to back this up, since they can be easily argued either way. My reasoning is that you CANNOT remove them. There are way too many handguns and people unwilling to give them up to get them all. If the government decides to just go out and round them up, there will be a civil war, with many deaths.
That and my handgun is unregistered. This was purchased at a place and time as to make it completly legal, and there are many like it. So no matter what utopian vision you have for the future, I'm not giving up my gun (they won't even come for it), and I don't think I'm the only one.
Finkployd
I dare you to post a large sign on the front of your house stating "This house is gun free". Will do you it? Do you feel safe?
Salon chickened out and dumped on Cassie Bernal, which they started by saying she died because she believed in God. Sorry, Christians don't phrase it that way, but Salon's audience isn't smart enough to know that.
And who would be brave enough to criticize Howard Stern, creator of all things liberated and good? Know what his comments were? That Klebold and Harris should have had sex with the girls, since they were going to die anyway and it wouldn't have made any difference to the victims. That's right, if you're going to kill them anyway, may as well go ahead and rape and enjoy them so their lives aren't a complete loss. Kool, huh, huh, huh.
I remember the immediate attitude from everyone who knew me, the day Columbine occured.
I remember exactly when i heard the news.
I was sitting at the computer, in my trench, when all of a sudden my younger brothers, their next door neighbor friends, and several kids i don't even know, all ran in telling me that i can't wear my coat anymore. i rolled my eyes, thinking it was some stupid kid thing, and ignored them, after a while they went away.
About five min. later, my parents, next door neighbor and a few other "mature adults" surrounded me, wanting to "talk." Turns out, i was expressly forbid from wearing my trenchcoat, "untill the whole thing calms down."
then i was 'asked' to 'consider' wearing something other then black 'for a while'. Aftr about 3 hours of arguing, screaming, yelling, and nearly getting hit by several 'mature adults' because of my 'insolence' (read: because i wouldn't do exactly what they wanted with no question), i managed to 'compromise' into not wearing my trenchcoat. and still keeping my normal dress. after that i was passive-aggressivly griped at during all the media hype, (which i followed very closely) and am still looked at negatively by a few of those people as 'rude and insolent'.
Scary thing is, i had left high school, and earned my degree about 2 weeks earlier.
I am now faces with the dillema to wear it now that it is getting cold. It is the only coat i have and personally, i still like it.
Damn the hype, Damn the prejudice that immediately insues.
Salon is wrong. Their editors are just putting pressure on the reporters to get a story out. What better story than to revist Colombine and
say how the media has no idea what it's talking about. Why is this set of events more beleiveable than the first set?
Wait a minute. The media is telling me that the media has no clue? So Salon is telling me that
Salon can't be trusted?
So there are these two guys at a fork in the road. One always lies and one always tells the truth. . .
I digress. It just leads to the question, Who should we beleive now? The media can't be trusted. They're a business not a service. One must remember that. They are not here to inform they are here to make money. What makes money?
Fringe groups picking on norms. Two "punk/goth/gay/racist/whatevers" picking on good
god fearing christains sells alot of add copy. Two crazy kids who snap and kill people just scares people.
I wish I had an answer.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Umm, don't think so.
Hungerford got semi-automatics banned. An equivalent reaction to Dunblane.
Jim
The point being that these studies do also say that excessive drinking (ie more than a few units a week) are bad for you, far worse than leaving drink alone. Moreover, it`s not the alcohol that`s good for you, but antioxidants found specifically in red wine. If you drink too much, the bad effects of the alcohol outweigh the benefits of the antioxidants.
And the research wasn`t funded by French wine growers, but by UK academic funding bodies.
Not every result of research you don`t like is FUD..
When the crimes of the US Govt reach that point where significant resistance is called for, do you honestly think that small arms will be the tools for the job?
Yes, they will be. Not the only tools, but without them, no resistance will even be able to start. A handgun can't beat a tank, true... but that guy has to come out of the tank to eat or take a leak eventually -- and that's when the small arms come into play. By incrementially taking out the people guarding and/or using the higher power weapons, those weapons can be taken for use by the resistance.
Having small arms provides a chance for such a long term resistance to work. Not a guarantee, just a chance.
Sure, it's based on what the writer considers "facts" but so were the first reports.
Hardly.
The initial reports were probably taken from out-of-context comments and testimony from kids who had just been shot at. And, in typical media feeding frenzy fashion, if Channel A says "we believe this may have happened", then Channel B says "we have reports that this happened".
This Salon article is taken for a summary of comments made by one of the chief investigators into the shootings (she said something to the effect that for every day since April 20, she's been investigating what happened at Columbiine High School) after spending five months sorting out who said what, why, and what, to the best of everyone's knowledge, actually happened.
Of course, the actual report of the investigation has not actually been released yet, so the fine details may end up differing slightly. But I'm willing to trust that this is as good of an account as we'll ever get (short of taking a time machine back to April 20, 1999) as to what actually happened and why.
Jay (=
Kung fu really now. You're a gullible one aren't you?
I know kung fu and a a couple other Asian words but not enough to get me fed in a restaurant. If criminals knew everyone had a gun lots less would commit crimes. People do commit crimes because they are too stupid to see consequences. Make the obvious more so and even the dumb mothers wouldn't be as likely to try stupid stuff. You ban the gun types have too much faith in human decency. Basically people will try whatever they think that they can get away with. Know who your real allies are in the anti gun movement? Big government that wants total power over the population. What they can do to you you'd wish that they just shot you and got it over with. Then again these people do understand the consequences of what one motivated individual and a gun can do. The US is founded on the belief that some things are more valuable than human life. An amazing concept in today's spineless society.
Japan, low crime, no guns. England, low crime, no guns.
Mono-cultural societies as a whole have lower crime. It has NO relationship to guns.
Now, in America, the cultural model is complex, yet studies have been done. Among Asians, and to a lesser part whites, crime and homicide are lower than that for blacks. But, the statistics coorelate to the ethnic groups home country. If you come from a country where there is high crime, even if your 3 to 7 generations American, your still more likely to have a crime rate in your "cultural group" that is similar to the crime rate of the country your from.
Graph homicide, or even gun related crimes some day. Notice that the sharpest turns up in the graph where crime rises are directly at points where more restrictive gun regulation was inacted. In a society with about as many guns as there are people, and guns that are "several generations old," it is a legistacal impossability to "pass a law" and get them off the streets. There are probably more guns burried in some back yards than murders in jail. What it comes down to in the USA is, the guns are there, you can't remove them. You have to make the culture less violent. Trying to make guns illegal will only shift the "power" ballance to the criminals by taking guns away from "law abiding people" and leaving guns in the hands of "people with no respect for the law."
You can name as many countries as you want, but the statistics don't show that gun laws relate to crime in any significant way, due to the wide range of countries in the world to analyze. BUT, in the USA, there is a connection, when you pass more restrictive gun legislation, crime goes up, like you noted. New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC have high crime, and restrictive gun legislation. Seattle, Austin TX, Phoenix AZ, big citys with somewhat lower crime rates have very few gun restrictions.
Nope, not at all. Just pointing out the rather MAJOR flaw in your use of statistics, that's all. A point which you have still not addressed, either.
"If you want to minimize the amount of damage an intelligent sociopath can do, you can give him a way to indulge his latent Rambo fantasies, make a lot of noise, and do his killing one victim at a time. A gun'll do the trick." - bullshit! So you are now trying to claim that a gun is the weapon which creates the least number of casualties in an attack?! Hmmmm....
I find it amazing people are so willing to say everything the media has fed us about these killings in wrong, inlight of this new evidence. Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that this "evidence" came from a media source just like all the old "evidence". Sure, it's based on what the writer considers "facts" but so were the first reports. I put as much faith in this "evidence" as I do the stuff the came before. The truth is it was most probably a combination of factors that caused them to do it, and we'll never know forsure, since they're not here to tell us anymore.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
> i won't say that i've been exactly thrilled /.'s quality of late,
> with
Okay, someone else noticed it, too. It seems to me like they've been focusing on "volume" instead of quality (or relevance?). I can't seem to reload often enough in a day; there are just too many stories posted. If I forget to check during my lunch break, I'm doomed that evening when I have to read through four screens of garbage with two worthwhile stories...
Meanwhile, everyone on the system is posting long comments that don't say anything just so people think "it's long, I'll moderate it up" so they can be moderators.
Aggghhh! Slashdot is going to hell and it's taking all of us with it!
-Chris
I think many studies (medical too) are of the same quality as the famous Mindcraft studies. You get what you pay for.
But maybe it was a bad example if it causes people to discuss the example instead of what I was trying to say.
Summary: The line between legel/illegal weapons/tools is arbitrary but a civilized society should draw the line at "things" designed to kill or seriously hurt other people.
I doubt if anybody in that event had a ready-made "model of reality" in the midst of that massacre. But you miss my point: the article was eager to dismiss unconvenient on-the-spot witnesses' accounts with little or no reason. One does not make a credible argument against a witness -- let alone several -- by saying "you are wrong and hallucinated the whole thing. I have no proof, but you did". Try that in a court of law. But that is indeed what the article did, and substituted its own thesis backed up by even more unreliable data: unnamed "sources" and speculation with little or no connection to the evidence.
The article is poorly substantiated, lacking names and proof. To smugly say "the article is correct" is to ignore the fact that the source of the article is also part of the "notoriously unreliable" media.
A gun gives me the ability to defend myself from those who the police can't protect me from, whether they burglars or muggers on the street. And, just remember one of the first things hitler did was register all firearms and then confiscate them. Oh and lets not forget the little matter of the american revolution
A gun gives me the ability to defend myself and my family from those who the police can't protect me from, whether they burglars or muggers on the street. And, just remember one of the first things hitler did was register all firearms and then confiscate them. Oh and lets not forget the little matter of the american revolution
My solution is just arm everyone, man and woman and child to the teeth. Give 'em all fully automatic rifles! That way you have an armed balance of power and people will be to afraid to start anything. When everyone is packing a gun we will all be a lot safer!
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Why is it that because I own firearms (several including a deadly-high-power-assault-weapon(tm)) and use them in a responsible manner, people will try to demonize me as some type of wonton murder who is just waiting for a chance to blow someone's guts out. I truly wish nothing of the sort. BUT, if someone endangers me or (more importantly) my family then I will take any and all measures I deem necessary to protect their (and my) safety. If that means I draw my
Good people are not the problem.
Guns are not the problem, neither is their (mistaken) great availability. Before 196(2|4) literally anyone could go into a store and buy a gun, no 3-day wait, no "instant check", just cash-and-carry. Kids could (and did) buy rifles through the mail. And, in many places they took them to school, so they could go hunting or plinking[0] after school.
Criminals are the problem. For whatever reason there are people who don't want to play by the rules. But, how do you stop crime. The police can't. They can only try to catch the bad guy after he commits a crime. The police can't protect you, nor are they required to. They are only required to protect society as a whole.
If the police for what ever reason. can't protect me, then I will.
The society we live in didn't just happen. We created it, by our actions and our failure to act. And now we have to live in it.
[0]plinking is just shooting holes in targets, tin cans etc...
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
What do you think the minutemen were of the American Revolution?
And I really don't give a damn. I have a simple message to everyone outside of the US who sees fit to tell us how to handle the gun issue. Butt out.
This is a very personal, hot topic for the US. We have to deal with it, and folks coming in and telling us that we're nothing more than a bunch of wild west lunatics (Need I mention the wild west never existed outside of a couple isolated cases?), are not going to help things a wit. We all know what your opinions are, but remember that this is a very different culture from much of Europe.
Call me a hipocrite because we go around telling folks like China to clean up their human rights violations. I don't care. This is something we need to resolve on our own, and getting rid of guns won't solve the societal problems which caused Columbine, Fort Worth, and a thousand other incidences. There is no quick fix for this, and outlawing guns certainly won't solve our problems, just make people believe they have done something, and thereby relieve them of any further responsibility for what has happened in this country.
And people wonder why I don't believe a damm
thing I see on tv or read in a paper or magazine.
They are either creating there own facts or just
or on the rare ocasion they get the facts right
they putt such a ditrotion on them and f*ck
things around.
I'd rather die in an accident or murder spree than rot in your paranoia.
What if they saved lives? HHAT IF THEY WASTED THEIR TIME! WHAT IF TOMORROW ANOTHER ZOLOFT, RITALIN, PROZAC ADDICTED TEEN GOES AND KILLS PEOPLE? THAT'S WHAT WE GET FOR BELIEVING IN SOMA.
Now ladies and gentleman, let me say I will except to the trenchcoat story if and when it is physically demonstrated that all trenchcoats come equipped with transdermal patches for psychotropic drugs. If anyone can prove that trenchcoats have never and can never cone without the patches, I'll buy it.
While you're at it, how about a class action suit against media for irresponsibility in journalism?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Everyone should the read the article, the investigators clearly state, it wasn't the guns, it was the HATE. If you want to question the investigators fine, but until you do it after 4 months of continuous study, I'll stick with their opinion.
+&x
Everyone is just blathering on and on about their opinion as to why they did it. The simple fact is that no one will ever know precisely why... However, a lot of the opinions don't see the big picture. People saying that they were on drugs, they were outcasts, yadda yadda yadda..
The whole damn thing.. in fact, pretty much every evil ever committed on mankind by other mankind, is caused by one simple factor. Man has this tendancy to push his own beliefs onto others, and yet has the tendancy to resist against being pushed too hard.
That's it. Simple. Clear. Push a guy too far, he'll snap. Doesn't matter how you're pushing him, or even what you're pushing. All the evils in the world stem from someone thinking, "My beliefs are the only ones that matter."
So stick with that, okay? Deal with it, and move on with life.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
And just how in the HELL do you know that no suicides were caused by this little crackdown, hmm? Kids who were willing to admit that life isn't all sweetness and light for them were branded by teachers, administrators, society in general, and sometimes THEIR OWN PARENTS as would-be brutal killers, and in many cases cut off from the net or from their "bad influence" friends, the things that were probably all that was saving their sanity in the first place! But since it doesn't happen in a big flashy all at once noteworthy way, nobody cares. That's just typical.
"Well, if we can prevent even one death
Irreparably damaging our brightest children via emotional abuse makes as little sense as irreperably damaging our ecosystem by exterminating something "dangerous" like honeybees.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I thought this was a site about geek news. What in the hell do the shootings at Columbine have to do with geeks?
To summarize, Salon talks about how they weren't anti-(fill in the blank), but they actually were. They were anti-(fill in the blank), there were just a lot more possiblities to put in that blank, so really it becomes easier to say they hated everybody and everything. Hating blacks or religous people are subsets of hating everybody.
Dicta, for those reading who might not already know, is the legal term for extranous, non-binding text. It is analogous to comments in code. For all of its worth in law, it could just as well be, "Since the sky is blue." The meat of the amendment is what is actual law.
Re-read the amendment. While it says that a militia is needed, the actual law it set down is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It says nothing about the rights of the militia to bear arms, it says nothing about the right of the people to bear arms only in militias, it says nothing about the right to arm bears.
While I often see people use grammar to link the right to bear arms to militias, the proper reading of the amendment seperates the right from the militias. The framers could have just as easily wrote the Fourth Amendment as "The right of the militias to keep and bear arms shall not be infrigned."
I think that the reason the framers might have thrown in the line about militias was not to limit the right, but to explain it. The framers didn't add the right to bear arms to hunt or for trap shooting or even for personal protection. They threw it in to ensure the "...security of a Free state..." (my bolding.) That's right kiddies, they put it in so that we don't forget that the Fourth Amendment's purpose to keep the government in check.
Interesting, eh?
It is far more difficult to go on an indiscriminate killing spree with a knife than it is with a gun. The actual physical act of stabbing someone is also far more difficult than pulling a trigger - films give the impression tha stabbing someone is quite easy, but in most cases it takes a lot of exertion to push a knife into a body.
At the end of the day a gun has one purpose - killing. Knives have a domestic purpose, and to outlaw them is obviously ludicrous. Please don't defend firearms by comapring them to potentially dangerous objects that *do* have a place in civilised, modern society.
Chris Wareham
Just out of curiosity, why do you think the framers threw in that line about the "well regulated Militia?" Somehow, I can't see any of them saying, "Okay, now let's make sure that people can carry guns. While we're at it, we'll just idly throw in that a well regulated militia is a good thing."
The presence of the first half of the amendment isn't due to chattiness on the parts of the authors, or idle observation: it was to justify their reasoning.
In any case, while the Bill of Rights is arguably the most important legal document ever put to paper, it is still a document written by mortal men. It's not the word of God from on high: it's a statement of values by which the authors hoped to cast a fair and just federal government. It is as open to interpretation - and criticism - as any other document written by homo sapiens.
I found this article a while back. Unfortunately, I lost the author/publication information. An excellent read on the Columbine tragedy and the aftermath. If anyone has the information on the writer/publication, please let me know. I typed this in myself, so there may be a few typos. Sorry.
"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school...," Paul
Simon mused in a popular song some years ago. Simon, of course, was in
high school long before multiculturalism, Afrocentrism, Outcome-Based
Education, bilingual education, Heather Has 17 Mommies, Holocaust
Studies, and assorted therapeutic group gropes and mass séances in
"counseling" displaced the deathless vapidities about history, life, and
literature that typically spill from the lips of teachers in all ages
and nations. But no matter what sort of crap Simon endured in his high
school and what sort poisons the minds and spirits of teenagers today,
it is nothing compared to the offal that the American news media
regularly inject into grown-ups and anyone else who pays attention to
them.
The mass murder of 12 students at Littleton, Colorado's Columbine High
School on April 20 was the occasion for the construction of a veritable
mountain of journalistic chicken doodle by almost every major newspaper
and news service in the world. The blood had not stopped flowing before
the ace reporters and investigative journalists had the whole gory mess
all figured out and ready to serve hot and piping to a gape-jawed
public. As it turned out, almost everything they reported was wrong -
some of it almost certainly deliberately wrong - and not only wrong, but
a carefully crafted wrongness that pointed in the exact opposite
direction of the truth about Littleton and a lot of other things in the
United States that it is important for some people to hide.
The two teenage killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, an Associated
Press story told us on April 21, were "said to be part of an outcast
group with right-wing overtones called the Trenchcoat Mafia." "Students
said the group was fascinated with World War II and the Nazis and noted
that Tuesday [April 20] was Adolf Hitler's birthday," it continued. The
same day, yet another AP story described "Trenchcoat Mafia" as a group
that "hated blacks, Hispanics, Jews and athletes." A student named Aaron
Cohn, repeatedly quoted in several stories, claimed the "Mafia" "often
made anti-Semitic comments"; he was the apparent source of the story
that the killers had called the black student they murdered by a racial
epithet, while other students said the group or the killers themselves
worse "Nazi crosses" and "made generally derogatory remarks' about
Hispanics and blacks." "They talked about Hitler and worse clothes with
German insignia," gasped the New York Times on April 23. "They hated
jocks, admired Nazis and scorned normalcy... They were white
supremacists...," the Washington Post bubbled on the same day.
And so it went for the next week or so, with proponents of more gun
control, more voodoo education, more hate crime laws, and more federal
manipulation of schools, law enforcement, and families flapping their
wings and their jaws overtime, intent on squeezing every possible ounce
of political advantage from what the press at once dubbed "the worst
attack on a school in American history." Even that wasn't true. In 1927,
a school board member named Andrew Kehos planted several dynamite bombs
under his local schoolhouse in Michigan and blew it to splinters,
killing himself and 45 other people. Including 38 students. Whether Mr.
Kehos was also reported to have "right-wing overtones" and to be a
"white supremacist" is not known, but that atrocity committed by a
lunatic, like most others in civilized countries, was soon forgotten.
The Littleton massacre wasn't forgotten, at least not for several weeks
after it happened, and it soon became clear that the media were trying
to use it in almost exactly the same way they had exploited the Oklahoma
City bombing of April 19, 1995. They were setting a Reichstag fire,
creating a vast and elaborate lie that sought to pin the blame for the
Littleton massacre on "the right."
But the Littleton Lie couldn't last because it was just so contrary to
certain facts that soon began to emerge from the carnage, and in any
case, the Lie was largely irrelevant to the main political usage of the
massacre, more gun control. Yet the major media kept the Littleton
incident on their front pages for at least two weeks after it occurred;
it was only when the facts did emerge that they lost interest in it and
the story began to follow Mr. Kehos and his dynamite bombs into that
subcontinent of oblivion reserved for inconvenient facts and truths. The
facts, you see, not only gave the lie to the Littleton Lie but pointed
to a truth the news media didn't want to bring up.
One glimpse of reality began to creep onto the national screen when the
contents of Eric Harris's website were released. Those contents had been
reported to the local police by an alarmed parent more than a year
before young Master Harris tripped over the edge on April 20, but the
cops had ignored them. As soon as the massacre occurred, however,
American Online shut down the Harris website, and no one got a gander at
what was on it until the New York Times, to its credit, reported at
least some of the contents on May 1.
The Times found the following passage, written by Harris, "intriguing":
"You know what I hate?" Harris "repeatedly asked readers of the site,"
the Times reported. "One of the answers he gave was, 'RACISM!'" "He
wrote that people who are biased against 'blacks, Asians, Mexicans or
people from any other country or race besides white-American' should
'have their arms ripped off' and be burned." "'Don't let me catch you
making fun of someone just because they are of a different color,' he
wrote." Young Master Harris, as it turns out, hated many things besides
"RACISM," among them fans of "Star Wars," people who mispronounce words,
liars, country music, freedom of expression, opponents of the death
penalty, and smokers. But "RACISM," so far from being a creed to which
he subscribed, was definitely on the enemies' list.
As for Dylan Klebold, it soon came out that he was of Jewish background
and that his grandfather had been a prominent Jewish philanthropist in
Ohio. In fact, young Master Klebold was reported to have taken part in a
Passover seder only shortly before the massacre. Whatever motivated him
to splatter the brains of his pals, it probably wasn't the admiration
for Hitler and the Nazis that the press had attributed to him and his
colleague, nor did Eric Harris's website reveal any sympathy for Hitler
or for "racism" or indeed for any "right-wing overtones" except perhaps
his enthusiasm for capital punishment.
But what finally and definitely exposed the fantasies, speculations,
unexamined assumptions, and outright lies the news media concocted and
inflicted on us for two weeks was an interview in the New York Times on
April 30 with several students at the high school who had actually known
the killers. What they had to say should have ended the professional
careers of several of the con artists who pass themselves off as
"reporters" and whose misreporting had already fabricated myths and
legends about the Littleton killings that will probably never die
completely.
The infamous "Trenchcoat Mafia" that was supposedly behind the
bloodshed, said 16-year-old Devon Adams, consisted last year of about 15
or 20 people who wore black trenchcoats as a kind of clique uniform.
They played cards and hung out and smoked together. "That's all it was,"
and anyway, more than half of them had graduated last year; the group
barely existed anymore. Harris and Klebold weren't even a part of it, he
told the Times.
Well, but what about the racism, the sympathy for Hitler, the obsession
with World War II? Meg Hains, 17, said,
I am black/white mixed. And when the media is coming up with this
thing that Dylan and Eric were racists, they weren't. They were my
friends. They were very nice to me, both of them. I don't get this whole
racial thing that people are coming up with.
Miss Hains, you can see, has a lot to learn, and no doubt a good deal
of the remainder of her learning experience will be devoted to "getting"
the "whole racial thing" with which her elders are so obsessed. Devon
Adams acknowledged that Harris and Klebold did use "racial slurs," but
"I don't think it meant that they were racist." "What about the Nazi
stuff?" the Times insisted. Meg Hains replied, "That is the biggest load
of [expletive] I've ever heard. They never wore swastikas on their arms.
Never. Not in this entire year that I've known them. No." Devon Adams
said, "They're not Nazis. They didn't worship Nazis." They read books
about Nazis because they were studying World War II history in school,
he said. The report that they shouted "Heil Hitler" when bowling was
also untrue, said Dustin Thurman, 18.
In short, when the press told the public that Harris and Klebold were
"white supremacists," "right wingers," "racists," "neo-Nazis," etc.,
they lied. Journalists assumed, probably because unconsciously they have
come to believe their own propaganda line, that all mass violence is the
work of the "right," a catch-all term that can include anyone from
Elizabeth Dole to the Aryan Nations. If it's the assassination of a
president, the bombing of a federal building, or the mass murder of
high-school students by wigged-out teenagers full of pubescent
resentment, plugged-up hormones, and the mental and moral garbage
regularly served them by their schools, their televisions,, their
movies, their music, their books, their government, and their
newspapers, then it has to be because "the right" is on the march. And
of course, this myth is useful for discrediting anyone who really is on
"the right" when he questions the quack nostrums and increased state
power that the left demands as a "solution" to the "crisis."
What, then, did cause the massacre at Littleton. The simple answer is
"human nature," the propensity that all human beings have to explode, as
Mr. Kehos exploded back in 1927 and as lots of other people do in one
way or another every now and then. Of course, not everybody does
explode. Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold do so?
The question is probably still unanswerable, but one story that popped
up in the Washington Post is suggestive. A woman who was a friend of the
Klebold family recalls that Dylan used to play with her daughters and
remembers telling his mother that in her house she had only girl toys
while in your house, you have only "boy toys." "Boy toys," replied Mrs.
Klebold, "but no toy guns."
Dylan Klebold's father is said to be "a liberal who favors gun
control," yet another Associated Press story reported several days after
the killings. His mother worked in a community program that helped
"disabled students gain access to education." When Dylan and Eric broke
into a car and got caught, they were placed in an "anger management"
program, and the police who ran the program praised them for their
conduct. As for Mark Manes, the pal of Eric and Dylan who sold them the
semi-automatic pistol they used in the shootings, his mother is a member
of Handgun Control, Inc., the country's largest gun-control lobbying
organization. "She has been against guns forever," Manes' lawyer told
the New York Times. "Mark grew up in a house where no weapons were
present." Much the same seems to have been true of Eric Harris,, who was
an enthusiastic fan of Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia. "I hope we do
go to war," he told a classmate. "I'll be the first one there." That
exactly why Harris tried to enlist in the Marines a few days before the
blow-up at the school. Maybe it wasn't Marilyn Manson that lit his fuse
so much as the Weekly Standard or the Wall Street Journal editorial
page.
The dirty little truth the American propaganda machine won't tell us
directly, the secret that has to be pried out from between the lines of
the machine's unreliable newspapers and thinly disguised politicization,
is that all three of these young men grew up in the make-believe world
concocted by liberalism, a fantastic place where race and sex mean
nothing; where violence and crime don't exist and guns have no function
and no meaning, even as toys; where wars against "ethnic nationalists"
for "humanitarian goals" are morally imperative but owning a handgun to
protect your home and family ought to be a crime; where war is only one
more goody-good community project like getting disabled students access
to education; where people who adhere to "RACISM!" deserve to have their
arms ripped off and be burned and human beings, including healthy young
men whose genes and glands and brains drive them to aggression and
conflict, are simply blank slates to be shaped and twisted and scribbled
over by "anger management" programs and all the therapeutic witchcraft
that Hillary Clinton and her friends really believe in. It was not Adolf
Hitler or Marilyn Manson or the "right" that made Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold pop their corks in April but liberalism itself and all the
illusions liberalism conjures up to mask the truths about human beings
and human society that it refuses to face. That's a secret the news
media can't expose, partly because those who run them can't even
recognize it and partly because, if they every did, the whole system
constructed on the lies of liberalism would crumble.
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
Like the bilious, moronic blowhard I am, it seems that I have now not only made a fool of myself, but been caught out at it.
I retract my assertion and hide stealthily behind my original disclaimer "unchecked at that". I don't think I can be sued for fraudulent misrepresentation, but it might be worth a try, if only to teach me a lesson.
Since I can't seem to get an accurate measurement for my own waistline, I doubt I'll have any luck with Scottish crime statistics. I might as well spologise to all Scots living, dead or missing presumed drunk, while I'm at it.
what a f'kng great day this is turning out to be.
Yrs sincerely,
A. Moron.
(jsm)
The problem with eye witnesses is that the human brain builds it's model of reality from incomplete data - but humans rarely realize that this is happening. So people assert that they saw or heard what they expected to see and hear, rather than what actually occurred, and things that you heard about second hand become (in memory) things you witnessed personally.
There have been a number of studies by People With Important Letters After Their Names that showed how easy it was to create false memories in people. The studies were originally done as part of the research into "recovered memories" of long ago events, but it applies to events just witnessed, as well.
The article is correct, eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable.
--
Clear, Dark Skies
No, it does not.
Go away and actually READ your constitution, then come back.
Speaking as someone who was caught up in worldwide media attention a few years ago the press just made up facts when I didnt talk to them about me. They made up a LOT of facts I found out later getting their scripts, FBI documents, talking to other witnesses.
Sad that the people who are supposed to be informing america just make up things when its too much of a bother to WAIT and be NICE and find out the truth.
Their tactics are brutal.. Answer my questions or else I will make up anything I want about YOU and your family. Phone calls 24 hours a day because when there is a news story.. the people in it never sleep do they? (I personally had to change my number 2 times because it rang nonstop for DAYS.)
So I am NOT suprised when people are finding out that the Colubine kids are not the terrible people that media made them out to be.
But who cares? I mean only those 2 kids.. because now they couldnt find a jury who would find them innocent no matter what because EVERYONE in america has heard about the RUTHLESS OUTLAW Trenchcoat Mafia that they were in.
Sad for the boys that now they cant have a fair trial. Oh Well just another day dealing with the media.
I think I said professional journalist rather than writer? Unless you mean you prefer the term writer to journalist when describing the same thing...
Jon is both a journalist (I mean he writes about the latest hot current affairs in his domain of interest) and a personality - we all know who Jon Katz is, though I am sorry to say that I haven't heard of Paul Dunne, even though I have quite possibly read and enjoyed your work.
I am at school right now, so the computer system may automatically censor some of the things I try to say.
And maybe that is part of the problem.... that hatred and revenge are repressed and feared, rather than considered forms of art, which they should be. At least by my standards, the five topics of art are comedy, tragedy, love, , and revenge... revenge being the purest of these. For how better to deal with hatred and misanthropy (I am, incidentally, a proud misanthrope) than to create with destructive energy?
Even when revenge is exacted, it can be done with cleverness and nonviolence... when I was beaten by a "clique" of people, I went into school two hours early and switched their belongings amongst various storage spaces. Almost a "hack" a la MIT... certainly better than ing them all.
If hatred is d rather than respected, then we as a society are never going to go anywhere. The lack of respect for those who are different- Goth, atheist, ortohdox religious, , furry, antisocial, unintelligent, whatever- is the probelm with today's society, the problem which caused these people to , caused the s before them and will continue to cause tragedies until something is done.
Anyone who wants to talk to me about this.... I've been thinking about it a lot... email me. It's up to people who understand to educate those who don't; not for theur sake, but for our own.
Artiraxin "Rax" Morgant"That sounds like a tautology to me!.... Book it, I don't care! I meant to say that! I said it sounds like a tautology!
I have to agree here; my working knowledge of chemistry, when I was in high school, would have been suficient alone to make a fair amount explosives (that, coupled with the easy availablity of various chemicals through mail-order catalogs, which have significantly fewer restrictions). I also do not own a gun, although I have used one (and even took our university's riflery course, and train with the riflery team); personally, I am not sure if I could ever take another human's life, but I will not push aside guns, banning them, simply because they cause problems among a significant minority of the population. If we are going that path, then let's ban alcohol, cars, cigarettes (whoops... we are already trying to get there on that one), knives, steel bars, construction sites, physical games, crossing the street, hiking, cliff climbing, installation of ceiling fans, etc. I can list mumerous thing that have killed or maimed, accidently or purposely (no officer, honest; I didn't push him off that cliff...). Basically, I would rather live in danger than give up freedom; THAT is the wild west attitude that many have mentioned, and it is a defining part of the American psyche. Just as many of you cannot imagine, or do not understand why Americans still have guns despite the lowered crime rate your countries have exhibited, I cannot understand why you would want a freedom of choice eliminated. Like I said, I do not own one, but neither do I approve of not being able to own one. I value my ability to decide for myself how to live everyday, where to go, what to do; even if it gets me in trouble, destroys my life, or even prevents me from functioning within society, so be it. I refuse to let my freedom of choice (which is what everyone of the first ten Constitutional Amendments insures) be removed, even if it means a harsher, more violent world to live in. I guess one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, said it best: "Those who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety." It may not be the best attitude to have, but it is one ingrained into me since birth, and one that will be difficult for me to let go. -Grandpa_Spaz
Hmmm..
There's a little thing known as reasonable force.
to defend yourself from someone out to either break your bones, or otherwise make your life thoroughly miserable, I don't think a gun is of much use. If you use it, then the chances of causeing a fatality (much worse than the original crime) is significant.
I wouldn't carry one. Now, one of those stun guns (high voltage charge), or mace, or similar (also illegal in lots of places) seem much more reasonable. There is a chance of damage, and maybe in the extreme cases, a chance of fatality, but it seems more in keeping with a counter to the original force.
Anyhow, this thread is goin' way off topic.. And it's done to death elsewhere..
Back to the show, folks,
Malk
Don't be ridiculous. We've got tonnes of guns in every community. If I decided to go on a murderous rampage with a shotgun, I could go upstairs and get a semi-auto and a jacket with big pockets for holding the boxes of shells. I could also take out a nice 30-06 that would make a good sniper's weapon, as well as the perfect deer rifle. With an extra 20 minute's work I could have a sawed-off shotgun: the ideal hold-up weapon. Just last week I practiced my marksmanship with a .22 shooting a golfball at 30 meters (with about an 80% hit rate; I'm a bit rusty).
This is normal for one of the many hunters in this country. Any of us can buy as many guns as we like and have plenty of practice in how to use them. We don't go around robbing and shooting people because it would be stupid, as well as evil, to do so. It's a tiny fraction of citizens that commit violent crime, and they generally don't bother with guns. Knives are a more popular murder and mugging weapon than guns, probably because a knife doesn't get you shot "just in case."
We have less violent crime in the States, but it's not for lack of guns. It's a societal thing. We don't have the same level of class and racial conflict, for one thing. I think violent crime is more likely in warmer climates, too. People wander around on foot alone more in nice weather.
Guns also probably serve some role in keeping down crime in rural areas. Practically every farmer has guns, and usually close at hand. They need them to exterminate vermin and keep predators properly afraid of humans. This serves as a natural deterrent to crime.
89 people died in the Happyland Night Club fire in New York, when a Cuban dude showed up with a chip on his shoulder and a couple gallons of Exxon Super Unleaded.
168 people died at the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, thanks to the efforts by one Timothy McVeigh at improvising novel uses for fertilizer that Farmer Brown never dreamed of.
Harris and Klebold took out, what, 13 people with all those big evil nasty guns you're so fixated upon? Lam3rz by comparison, I'd say.
So, tell me again how your own version of a sociopathic weapons fixation (i.e., your apparent "gun-grabbing" mentality) is going to help us get to the heart of the real problem(s), whatever they may be, and fix them?
Guns don't kill people.
People kill people.
And the very worst of those killers -- the ones we all should fear the most -- seem to be less fixated on guns than you are.
Does that sound smart to you?
Is it just me, or am I the only one disgusted at how the Media glazes over facts and over hypes the rumors. It makes me sick to my stomach. It allmost makes one wander what else the media has covered up. i.e. How Rodney King was SO high on drugs that it took a NUMBER of police officers to try and subdue him, etc.
/. readers pointing out the truth.
I'm glad SOME people still hold to the principles of respectable journalism. Thank you to you
I searched that article for the words "gay" and "god" and they weren't in the article! I guess wtpooh did what the media did: created facts.
Following the Columbine shootings, and the comments made in many media organs, `outsiders' were branded potential murderers. This included goths like myself, and stereotypical computer nerds. Basically anyone who didn't play a lot of sport, wear ordinary clothes or listen to pop music were labelled `ousiders'.
This is why an article like this has some relevance to Slashdot. I try hard to disprove the `nerd' myth. I am a self taught computer programmer who earns a good salary. Simply because I don't meet the society norms in terms of appearance, people whho meet me outside of work assume I'm a drug addled drop-out who exists on welfare.
Chris Wareham
Frankly, I'm getting sick of hearing about this. I didn't even bother reading the article. Why does there have to be a clearly defined reason everything happens? Why can't people just accept that sometimes things happen that we don't expect? This whole ordeal sickens me. It sickens me that kids would do things like that. It sickens me how much the media feeds off of them, and probably go home and pray that someone else will go on a murderous rampage. It sickens me how much people are willing to accept stereotypes and how the media propogates them. In the end of last school year and the beginning of this new one, I've been through so much hell because of the way the media just keeps feeding everyone this garbage. I listen to "satanic" music, I have a demented sense of humor, I'm a non-conformist, I am disruptive and rude to people who deserve it. Its never gotten me into serious trouble before. Now my parents think I'm a satanist, as do my teachers. My fellow students are afraid Im going to kill them. And I've been offered therapy more times than I can count this year. All this because I'm just a bit different. Imagine how bad the goths and such are getting it right now?
I hope I never see another one of these damned "why kids kill" or "this is what really happened" articles or anything even remotely related to them ever again.
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
---------------------------
While I agree that the media has a very hard time getting all of the facts and verifying all of their data before publishing in a case like this, it's notexcuse for bad journalism. My roommate lives a block away from the church that was recently shot up in Ft. Worth. The papers the next morning claimed that people were dead that weren't even at the church at the time. At least they'll have a newspaper to keep and show their kids, "Hey, I was dead once."
....that humans are thinking creatures. You refer to the human brain as a machine - you are dead right.
Humans don't "think" the way we usually mean it. Our brains associate endlessly. "A" gets associated with "B" (goth-violence,gun-death,christian-zealot, etc). The associations your brain makes are completely governed by it's own experiences. How many of us argue based on personal experience? Extrapolate single incidents/stories to everything? The answer is every single one of us.
We're doing it with Columbine. We WILL extrapolate it, and it will be completely illogical. People who are defenders of gun rights do so not because of logical argument, but only because that's where they've come from, that's how their brain has associated things, and that's how the world looks to them now. Ditto for those against gun laws.
How else do you explain that devout Christians are usually Replublicans, and support gun rights, are pro death penalty? Makes no sense, it's just an association of random things that happened to go together frequently. Jarts are bad, guns are good. Liberal democrats aren't any better. NO ONE is any better, because we are all machines. If you happen to make more sense than most, feel lucky your machine developed in a more reasonable environment.
And before you go and say people don't all fit into these categories - I know that. But everyone has they're own set of bizarre associations. I just picked some examples that most can see. Pick any person you want and you'll find contradications and illogic in their beliefs and values. They'll philosophize really bizarrely to explain it too. The smart ones realize that they're beliefs are contradictory and irrational, like Paul here.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Of course, some of the coverage was right, too. A large part of the Jon Katz series on the matter was about how people were being unfairly targeted as potential killers because of distorted media coverage at the time. And, iirc, some of it was about how things such as what's illustrated in the Carrie movies can happen if people are pushed too far (which they're saying now was not the case this time, but imho, is still is a valid point)
That'll teach me not to trust my Swiss friends!! That info was got from some who live in and around Zurich. Perhaps they don't get out much. I am aware there is a lot of misinfo about a lot of Swiss rules etc. so I do try and check with those who should know.....
Still, correct me if I'm wrong again, but the rules on the use of guns is still quite strict ? (i.e. concealing a weapon or openly carrying one down the main street is frowned upon)
my post is a wee bit off topic but...
I'm in London for the semester, and haven't been able to find someone who could point out any decent goth clubs to me - any suggestions?
It was all a Joke some people started to prove the impact posting articles on the web has on people and the news and this story seemed applicable.
- -----
I heard this from a very reliable source
It is rather sad that people can't take the time to weed out what is false and actualy take in what is true good and educating.
-------------------------------------
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Two points:
* Sorry, handguns might make people feel macho, but they are no use against a 300 billion $ army with a gazillion warheads.
The 2nd amendment was written in times when citizens did have a fighting chance - both the govt. and Joe Sixpack had muskets which blew loads of smoke. Today, not a SINGLE civilian army has overthrown a well armed govt. (Don't name some peanut island in the South Pacific, we are talking about the United States here. Well armed.)
Kosovo? A 19 member coalition had to use all its might for weeks before handing over victory to the armed citizen force.
* The other problem is that with a well armed public, you are naive if you think that uprisings will occur when the govt. suddenly turns evil and starts pillaging and torturing its people. No. Do you know how uprisings REALLY occur? When a tiny % thinks its being oppressed, it starts bombing FBI buildings and shooting cops. And killing other civilians. Look at the crazy nutcases in Ireland - a glowing example of rebels exercising the 2nd amendment. Like what you see?
The whole right-to-bear-arms is glorified with romantic images of rebels overthrowing an evil govt. and having a joyous party. In reality, oppression happens all the time to varying degrees. It's only a mattering of people thinking they are oppressed enough to fight the govt. and when they do, it won't be a romantic overthrow of evil rulers. It will be nutcases like the Freemen and right wing militias who shoot down people to start a civil war (you do realise rebels can be irresponsible, don't you?)
I'd give the odds of a million to 1 that a protracted terrorist situation like Ireland is more likely than a genuine authentic civil rebellion which is actually successful.
Dream all you like - gun ownership as a device to overthrow a US govt. that turns dictatorial is both useless and causes more damage without achieving anything.
Problem #2: Even when kids who maybe could benefit from it get sent to counseling, the counselors are HORRIBLE most of the time and they do more harm than good. The attitude is "you're broken, how can we fix you so you're like everyone else?" I've been to three different counselors for various reasons and all three of them did me much more harm than good. The one I was sent to in 8th grade actually ended up making me MORE suicidal by telling me that my ways of coping with things (which generally involved my usually sarcastic sense of humor) was wrong. Then, there was the "advisor" I was required to meet with monthly when I was in an early-admissions program at college. I was being harassed by floormates (death-threat phone calls at 3 AM, etc.), knew who it was but had no proof, and the counselor refused to believe me. Then of course there was the one at college who came to talk to my dorm after one of the girls lived there took 90 Zoloft and died. "You may be feeling [insert list here], and none of
that is valid
Or, if you want a really nasty example, my best friend basically ended up signing himself into a mental institution thanks to an inept school counselor who didn't tell him that that was what he was doing. It took his parents over a week to get him out of there. Talk about torturing a young teenager
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
It's very easy to sit back, after the fact, and trash the media. But if you think about it they're not completely to blame.
If you've ever been at the scene of an accident you'll know that each witness has a different story on what happened. Well, the same applies here.
The days of investigative reporting are mostly gone. Why? Because we're an instant gratification society, one that doesn't allow the time to do proper research on a story like this. Everyone wants to know what's happening RIGHT NOW. As such, the only things that come out are theories and conjecture, the (dubious) accounts of so-called eyewitnesses - the same witnesses who have varying ideas of what happened.
Because properly sorting out what actually went on takes time, and the legal process often requires that evidence be kept quiet until the investigation is complete, few 'real' facts come out until quite some time after the event. That doesn't stop people screaming for answers.
What happens? Unlike the police, the media does not have access to all the evidence. So the same stories keep getting repeated, over and over, with only the occasional fact being added in. And, as with any story retold without being checked, it morphs into something even further from the truth.
We are as much to blame as the media are. I bet virtually every last one of you now blaming the media were, at the time, glued to your screens. Afterwards you probably went off and talked with friends, doing exactly what the media was doing, theorizing and making you're own interpretation of events.
If people had a little more patience to wait until information has been gathered, instead of screaming for information to be pieced together, what is being reported would be far more accurate. Unfortunately, few have patience anymore.
However, I must admit such horrid coverage like 20/20's story leaves no one to blame but themselves. Sensationalism at its worst.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I wonder if the constitutional right to own firearms doesn't influence the mentality of the people. Guns are automatically associated with violence.
Ofcourse, there are people who own a hunting rifle, or a shotgun because they like to hunt. Others own a pistol, because they don't feel safe without one, since everybody has a gun. But what do machine guns have to do with hunting, or self defense? How does knowing that it is perfectly normal to own tools for killing large numbers of people fast influence the way people think about violence?
Furthermore, if the government says it is alright to kill criminals (execution, but also owning a gun to kill burglars/muggers/etc), how will that affect the way hategroups think about the object of their hate? In their eyes gays/pro-choicers/blacks/random-minority are 'criminals', they've grown up with the idea it is ok to kill criminals, so the only thing stopping them (if at all) is the fear of getting caught.
In my country it is considered exceedingly abnormal for people to own a weapon. It's not illegal perse, but there is a lot of red tape to cut and licenses to obtain if you want to buy a gun. Generally, only people who may need one professionally own a gun (body guards etc).
We have had one convicted serial killer this century. He robbed, and killed several lonely little old ladies in the sixties. He used a led pipe.
I think you make a very thoughtful point here, which I've seen reiterated in a lot of foreign (er..I guess that means non-US :> ) posts on various Slashdot forums.
:>
What I haven't seen are any reliable statistics from either side of the matter backing up either position.
Granted, no statistic is really reliable, it would be nice to see some sort of numbers comparing crime in the US to crime in a place such as the UK...but more specifically a certain city in the UK that scales well to a city in the US. Anybody have any data, or know a good source for solid statistical data?
Setting proof aside, its a tough problem to look at. It really just makes more sense that guns should be eliminated from society as much as possible. It makes sense from an idealistic sort of view. We shouldn't have to fight violence with violence!
But, I have fears that fighting violence with violence is more realistic than one would hope. For instance, look at our situation with nuclear weapons (or so we hope). Everybody has them, so everybody is afraid to bomb everybody else. This appears to be working.
The problem I have with this much more realistic position, is that it really doesn't feel like it can last forever! What are the chances that one day somebody doesn't bomb somebody else? Its almost like we're riding on a hope that nothing goes wrong.
Hmm. I feel that though one standpoint may be much more realistic than another, it still doesn't solve the problem.
Thoughts?
I agree, Getting this on the net is a very very good thing.
since the primary target in the whole witch hunt are the goths, a good 75% (don't quote me on this, it is a VERY rough estimation based from personal opinion/observations) are decently net-savvy.
I remember sending a good many of my friends to the article, and printing it out for those who needed it. it really helped during times of mindless persecution and paranoia.
I was lucky because (as i said in another post) i got out of high school 2 weeks before the columbine thing occured. but it scared me. all i could think on was remembering a story (not sure if it was national) about some people who dragged a black guy behind the car untill he died. That level of inansity and prejudice was now being focused towards me and those like me. i made sure all of my goth/outcast friends had a copy of the main text of the voices from the hellmouth, and it apparently did a lot of good, because the administration was forced to see the level f stupidity they were at, and while they still did ban trenchcoats, they really were lax on the whole goth/dark group in school. not that that stopped the jocks and preps from getting a couple of brain cells. another good friend of mine was suspended because in the middle of lunch, he was surrounded bywhat seemed (to him at the time) half the football team, and things were getting ugly. he backed them off with a straight look into the "leader of the pack's" eyes and a comment on "how everyone has their braking point, and you don't know what mine is...." immediatly the group dispersed and 5 min later he was escorted to the office by the school cop and suspended.
i think he was an idiot cause he gave them exactly what they wanted, but it is a prime example of the mentality.
its almost like they are trying to get rid of the problem my making it blow up.
something i have noticed, if a massacre did occur at the local high school. you would have the negative emotions, but people seem to want it to happen, as long as they are the ones who survive. that way they have a story to tell, it livens up their rather shallow existance and they get nationwide pity. remonds me of those who torture animals then have the animal put down when it finaly snapps and attacks the person.
The Salon article stated that they had a TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, a 9 mm rifle and a pair of shotguns. None of those are automatic weapons. They're all semi-auto(pull the trigger, fire 1 shot), or manual action (pump, bolt, lever, etc). The .45s you mentioned are most likely the classic Colt 45, Model 1911, which is also a semi-auto, but due to the larger caliber and increased mass of the bullet, it would have most likely inflicted greater injury than the 9 mm.
so the question is, what happens now? how much you wanna bet the answer is "nothing"?
probably the answer is, a bunch of slashdotters get to say "see, i told you so" although nobody's listening, and we are forced to accept Salon's view as true because it's better backed up than anyone else's and a totally objective viewpoint is unavailable.
will this alternate point of view on the columbine killings get any attention? will the actual facts get a front-cover Time article like the half-truths and assumptions did? probably not. The jury of Public Opinion has heard what it wants to hear and made its verdict. The columbine killers _were_ members of the trenchcoat mafia, the christian girl who died _was_ somehow a martyr (although what for i can't imagine) and marilyn manson is responsible. Not because any of these things are true, but because that is what people walk away thinking and these are the "facts" that will color people's desisions from now on.
Because when we come down to it, why does the truth about Columbine matter? Will knowing what motivated the two killers bring anyone back to life? Motivations don't help law enforcement; all that matters to them is whether there were any accompices, and whether anyone still alive is a threat to others. Who really cares, though, are the parents and such across the nation who want more food for their own self-rightiousness. Parents and school officials get complete verification, once and for all, that if you're a Goth you're evil. Christians get to look at themselves as victims; 80% of america thinks religion is "very important" in their lives and 50% favor teaching of creationism in public schools, but still the Christian establishment gets to make itself out as a victim, a repressed minority that needs to stand strong against the world around it, which is apparently trying to destroy it; all because one person who died in an attack by crazy people on a high school in colorado was apparently christian. A great number of people get to wallow in self-pity and invigorating anger because they managed to elevate empathy for those who have lived through a very sad, horrible event in Colorado into, somehow, a feeling of personal loss or involvement.
What actually happened at columbine is irrelivant. All that matters is how what people belive about it will affect what people think, how people act, or what already fairly repressed groups are denied their only outlet (black clothing, music) of self-expression.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Erp...Fourth^H^H^H^H^H^HSecond
... What Do you guys expect, the media has allways made news when it has suted them, and then the polotitions twisted it for their own use, like all thows anti-gun laws, they dont enforce anything that is on the books, They just want more power, they want their finger in your life.
A Great example of when guns are good
NYC,Washington DC -- Hand Guns are banned, The Crime Rate is sky high, because the criminials don't fear being shot by the person who their robbing or raping.
But in small towns in Texas, there is almost no crime, when everybody has a gun, because the crinimals value their life.
As for changing the culture, it's a matter of urbanization to a point. In general (possably a false conclusion with no facts to support it), today there are more "urban" families, and gun ownership has been reduced to a point. That may be argueable, but it's less arguable that gun training has DRASTICALLY reduced in the United States.
If you go back 30 years or so (say the 1920's through 1950's) you can see that these types of crimes were lower, and gun ownership was more widespred. One crutial differance is that there were gun handling and training programs that existed even in High School, and hunting was far more common.
What this indicates is to me is that America is deep in a downward spiral of "emotion" which is causing the crime. While the number of guns in society is increasing, the culture as it relates to firearms is starting to divert into "pro-gun" and "anti-gun" segments. The guns are still there, more are made every day, yet at the same time, training for proper use and respect for these deadly tools is decreasing.
Politics has dictated that no longer can a High School student learn proper and safe handling of guns in a controlled environment. All gun related programs were pulled from schools because of political pressure. Yet, the students are just as likely to "run across" a gun unlocked in a friends house. That's an accident waiting to happen.
The solution is to _educate_ the masses. It's that simple.
Not even the "pro-gun" croud would argue that guns are safe in any and all conditions. I think that even those who dislike guns, but live in the US, should learn the proper handling and safety practices reguarding guns. But this isn't happening.
Say I was afraid of cars, and never ever in my life wanted to drive a car or be around cars. Would I then say, based on this logic, that "I am not going to learn how to cross streets safely, looking both ways and all that stuff"???? Cars are there, like them or not. If I don't learn to look for them when I cross the street, of course it's likely I will get killed by one.
I would argue that those who "fear" guns are the ones that should be educated the MOST. If your afraid of it, learn it. Learn how do deal with it if you find one. Learn how to "check and see if it's loaded." Learn safe storage, and how to take it "safely" from the place you find it, unload it, and put it somewhere children can't access it. If every child KNEW and was EDUCATED in the dangers and PERMINANCE of DEATH that may result from a gun, all these "accidents" would be much less likely (as they were in the 1950's).
The ONLY solution for a society that will never be able to remove the HUGE number of guns from it's population is to educate them about gun safety.
Unfortunately, the "emotional" factor of the "anti-gun" segment of the US population has caused more death and injury then they are willing to admit to. By thier political efforts to remove gun safety classes, close down shooting ranges (where safe gun handling is learned), they have been increasing irresponsability. By the "anti-gun" segment pushing through more strict "gun laws" which in fact do no more than making "law abiding" people into criminals, they have shifted the power into the hands of the criminals who have no respect for the laws in the first place.
It's simple. Really. If we all decided cars were dangerous, and therefore stoped teaching everyone how to drive a car safely, and coupled that with strict regulation that made only a few people able to have a valid "drivers licence" at all, the result would be thousands of "unlicenced" drivers, and very few people who knew how to drive a car at all. Accidents would go up sharply, because cars are everywhere, and there would be millions of people with no training, and no avalibility of training out there on the streets driving. It's pure logic and education.
But, for some "emotional" reason, the "anti-gun" segment of the population has done EXACTLY this to guns. They have eliminated almost every safety and training program for guns.
There is the cultural change you have to make. The US society as a whole has to realize, it doesn't matter if you like or dislike guns, they are out in society in HUGE numbers, they are everywhere. It is almost impossable to remove them from society. Therefore, if SAFETY and RESPECT were taught, it would save lives. But, unfortunatly, they think they are going to save lifes by "closing down shooting ranges" and "making guns harder to get." The end result of thier practices is LOSS OF LIFE, because they have removed the safety, but it's obvious they can't remove the guns.
Guns are hardly the problem. They're only a tool. The problem is the high school culture that allows the "in crowd" to torment anybody seen as an outsider to the breaking point.
Consider: One is just as dead no matter how they can die. And if you're determined to kill someone, there's plenty of ways to do so without a gun.
Just off the top of my head, using nothing but the chemicals I keep at home for cleaning, unclogging drains, etc., I can think of ways to make:
3 explosives
2 toxic gasses
1 explosive gas
If you allow me my garage, I could use the nitrate fertelizer and some diesel fuel to make a pretty close approximation of the Okalahoma City bomb.
If I were to do a detailed inventory of chemicals around the house I could probably come up with more. And I have enough of a working knowledge of electronics, that if *I* had set up those propane bombs in columbine's cafeteria, they bloody well WOULD have gone off as planned.
All this because I, for one, did not sleep through my chemistry classes. So, If we're going to ban all firearms, do we ban all household chemicals that MIGHT be used in a dangerous manner? We'll be living in some pretty filthy homes if we do.
What about chemistry textbooks? Chemistry classes? Electronics knowledge? We're getting pretty Orwellian here folks.
I don't own a gun. I never have. And I see no need to own one in the near future. If I ever DO feel the need to own one, I won't hesitate to buy one tho. I am familiar with gun safety and was at one point pretty handy with a rifle and shotgun (heh, thank the politically incorrect Boy Scouts for that).
But: if I flipped out and decided I really wanted someone dead; he'd be dead. And I sure wouldn't have to use a gun to do it.
Imagine all the people...
I don't know if anyone else noticed, but Rollingstone did a couple of articles on all of this media stuff being wrong and presenting a better view of the facts back in some June and July issues. . .
[Editorial note: I'd give a lot for enough moderation points to moderate down every one of the off-topic gun-control or Katz posts. Get your own damn soapbox.]
I have a theory about why Harris and Klebold didn't go into the cafeteria and shoot lots more people. I suspect the thought process was something like this: We put two propane bombs there and they didn't go off...yet. This may be a suicide mission, but if I go near the bombs I may get my limbs blown off...and live. No, thanks. I think I'll stay away from that area for a while.
Or maybe that wasn't it. These two were clearly not the brightest bulbs in the fixture, especially once the adrenaline got pumping. Maybe they were just in such a frantic hurry that they never sat down and though about how to achieve their goals. Any military veteran could tell you that's common among people who haven't become acclimated to these sorts of stresses, and that's why veteran troops are so much more effective than green ones.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Stacking bags with explosives under apartment building difficult? Heard of Moscow recently? Or parking a truck in front of a federal building.
I would say for indiscriminate terror, lack of guns will lead to far more bloody solutions. Think what would happen in that two dudes had no guns, but just decided to explode the school. Actually, they had a good chance not being caught at all.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Probably interesting :)
I for one am not saying that gun control shouldn't be discussed. I think it should be discussed passionately and at great length, just as abortion and drug legalization and East Timor and lots of other things should be discussed...but not here. This is not an appropriate or productive forum in which to conduct those particular discussions.
It's really very simple. You may disagree with my attitude, but please don't misrepresent it as apathy.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
There is not answer to this, but there are many answers. The cause cannot be summed up, it cannot be written in one sentence, one paragraph, one page or one encyclopedia. I'm sure the two boys didn't even know why they did it. Of course they had rationalisations, but it cannot be explained. Our only hope to understand would require us to review their entire life: all their experiences, everything. This is impossible. Look, however, at the culture they grew up in. Not just one part like guns or video games, but everything.
It is typical of americans to blame a problem on one cause, but to overlook the whole. Perhaps this is easier, perhaps we are close minded, perhaps both. This is also part of our culture on a whole, even a little bit human nature. We cannot blame the press alone, it is a mirror of us. The press only accelerates changes to our culture. We cannot blame guns alone, they don't kill by themselves. We cannot blame the public schools alone, they are only an embodyment of the students and teachers that make up the school. We must instead look to ourselves and our way of life. Perhaps then we can begin to understand.
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Never said that it was useless. Just radically over-prescribed.
I remember a kid in my church. He was classically depressed -- didn't eat, slept all the time, morose. He's also a geek.
The school asked his parents to take him to the doctor for depression. They did, and the Dr. said "Let's try putting him on Zoloft and see if that helps". No test. No attempt at counseling. Just try a drug and see what happens. I heard about this, and I jumped up and down, screamed, begged and pleaded to get them to try nutrition first.
They did after I practically threatened them. Their child is now healthy, happy, and drug-free on Vitamin B. I'm serious. I'm not some health food idiot who swears by St. John's Wort. I don't take any other vitamins than B. But I am convinced beyond a doubt that most depression is caused by vitamin B deficiencies.
This theory neatly explains the downgrade of our society: ever since the 1930's, americans have been consuming more and more pure sugar. In order to metabolize concentrated sugars, your body depletes your reserves of vitamin B, which in turn impacts brain function. (sugar also causes a bunch of other problems, but that's another issue. Get off the poisonous stuff!)
This is adequately proven by a number of studies from reputable research facilities, including Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins.
Yet Drs. don't prescribe Vitamin B for depression. Why not? No one advertises it (see my post above). Instead, we kill our children with unnecessary drugs, all in our mad rush to worship at the altar of the almighty buck.
Yes, I AM bitter. So bitter I could SPIT.
(p.s. Do not just stop taking any anti-depressant drug that you have been on long term with the help of a Doctor. I'm serious, this can cause suicidal depression!!!!!!!! But do get off the drugs. Life is too short.)
(p.p.s. If you get a Vitamin B supplement, get a B-Complex with 100% of the RDA of biatin -- biatin is one of the vitamin b's that make up the complex. Email me if you need help.)
-- Slashdot sucks.
Here we go again, another legend is created.
Remember a few years ago, when people were showing up on talk shows claiming that Prozac made them attempt suicide or go into a murderous rage? Everybody heard about it, and the 'Prozac makes you flip out' idea is now imprinted in the general public consciousness. Investigations later revealed that the whole brouhaha was a staged publicity campaign by a small group of people who objected to Prozac on religious grounds. (I won't mention the religion because they love to sue people.) Besides, all the people who reported bad reactions had something else in common. They were all seriously depressed, and/or had other psychiatric problems. That is, after all, why they were prescribed the drug in the first place. It really should not surprise us that some committed suicide or otherwise flipped out.
We live in a society where psychiatric help is available and widespread. Please forgive the insensitivity, but the people who go on these killing rampages are obviously wackos. There is a good chance that somebody noticed this before they went on their spree and tried to intervene, or that they sought help themselves. Thus, there is a good chance that they may have been on psychiatric drugs. Usually they help, sometimes they don't.
Remember, correlation does not prove causation.
I have to respect QuBert for being honest - he says that he is 'more inclined' to think that drugs are more dangerous than guns. Everybody, please be careful not to jump to conclusions one way or another on this, it is intellectual quicksand.
This is such BS. Again, you have done the same thing that the media has done. You have taken things you've 'heard' and turned them into what you consider facts.
I've read many an account of the situation, and never ONCE did I read anything about either of them running around with nazi regalia, or either of them being into bomb making. All the accounts I've read, including the article, outline parents that cared for their kids, and kids that were REALLY meesed up. Never once does ANY account state anything along the lines of what you suggest.
As well, I'm SURE the police killed some the kids - even though you said yourself that it was long after these two jokers killed themselves that they opened fire. Then you go and throw something that might even be true, who knows, into the bottom of your little rant to make the rest of the BS seem true.
You are as bad as the people you just called cowards. You can't even post as a regular person - you had to hide as an AC.
THINK before you RANT.
Fjord
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
I can't help but wonder why the investigators, when asked about the martyr myth would only say, off the record, that it was a touchy subject because of all the attention. Once again we are tip toeing around anything that might make a religious person upset. "No we didn't find any evidence that they were singling out religious people, and the religious community is using this as a platform to advance their agenda in the public schools."
The investigators were adamant to point out that they were not racist (even though they said 'nigger'), gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), goth, specifically anti-jock, etc.
I don't buy the martyr story. If it's not open for discussion then it's not open for reason/logic.
Is this one of those coordinated post-frenzies by gun nuts I have heard about? Or is this a spontaneous outpouring of gun love?
/me mutters something to the effect of "Smart-aleck moderators make a liar out of me".
-- Slashdot sucks.
Racist or not it's a valid point. You can't expect to force two unlike or more cultures together in a confined area. And then whether or not said group is more prone to violence than the rest of us(which seems to be true if you look at crime statistics) it is ridiculous to ignore that fact and simply deem it racism. The ignorance is in ignoring the problem of crime and labeling those who point out who are committing the crimes as racists.
I have studied this problem in GREAT detail, and tried to note a few things in my reply that I feel very important and overlooked.
Somehow, although I believe my reply to be good, I have a feeling that it will be moderated down to a troll (as well as the parent comment).
But, if you could, please take the time to read my reply completely, and take it into consideration. I strongly believe the element there that is important is how to SAVE lifes, and that outweighs any political or emotional responces to the issue at hand.
"An Eye for an Eye" in context isn't all that bad. the intent of the law was to limit retaliation, as blood feuds tended to thin out the population
If there is one thing that this whole business is good for, its exposing mainstream prejudices which run deeper than colour or sex! If the gunmen had been jocks or 'popular' types and had gone after nerds and geeks the same way, probably very little would have been said in the mainstream media about the motives of the gunmen, and it would have been put down as another 'shooting without apparent motive'.
But Slashdot has been beating this drum too long. Thousands of comments have been posted. Nothing has been learned. Slashdot is too predictable anymore. I think the moderation system has dulled things too much. Everyone sits on pins and needles because any provocative comment is likely to be marked down, while politically correct "feel good" comments are likely to be marked up. Do your own informal survey, and you will come to the same conclusion.
And why does Andover need an IPO? Looks questionable to me. Maybe not a loser, but ho-hum like BeOS stock. Why does /. need all the bucks? One reason: make Roblimo an instant multimillionaire. A year from now when Slashdot stock is trading at $2 per share, who will be left holding the bag? Not Roblimo and others who have cashed in, but the average Joe who thought he was going to make some bucks. Slashdot doesn't produce anything. The fact is that the users of Slashdot produce most of the content.
Hate to say it, but its true. I NEW all this crap couldn't have been true. If you've seen my other comments today, well, maybe those damn Krulls had something to do with it to draw our attention from the Mars Orbiter. Though I doubt it, what other beings would make up such retarded accusations? Oh, wait we're talking about the media here. These people have started fucking wars with their completely false stories, so why not? I wish the media would become at least a little reasonable with their accusations instead of making them completely up. That pisses me off. Though I geuss we wouldn't get any news if that were the way, they'd go out of print and stop going on TV withoout shock news like this. Damn.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Political apathy -- 'American', just like apple pie! (too bad apple pie wasn't invented in the US!)
Actually the reason why I don't give a fuck about these incidents like Littleton is because the media always blows them way out of proportion in an effort to gain ratings. Wake up and smell the coffee people! CNN goes for the headline shocking stories too! Its a business!
Mass media brainwashes the masses.
... and no, guns kill people when people have guns. Guns make it REALLY REALLY EASY to kill. Why the hell do you think they were created? To replace the longbow and crossbow with a miniature/handheld cannon concept! I don't see people walking around modern times with a longbow or crossbow (unless they're in the SCA or at a RenFair) and I don't see people sporting cannons in their hall closet as a measure to thwart intruders in their house.
In the olden days (dark ages to the renn period) only people with money owned swords, probably paid some outlandish sword tax, and used them for two things. Keeping bandits after their money at bay, who would likely be armed with daggers or something similar, and dueling to "defend my lady's honor".
I find it ironic that today its harder to get a permit to carry a bladed weapon than it is to carry a gun. (Hello all you Texans!)
The Salon story is basically "Oswald Acted Alone". If we can believe that the killings -- I do not call them 'murders' -- were committed by two lone nuts, striking out randomly then we can all go back to sleep. It has nothing to do with us. We don't need to think about how we treat the outsiders around us, or how we allow them to be treated. I don't like the initial "The Devil (DOOM, Marilyn Manson, etc) Made Them Do It" treatment the story got. I'm also not impressed with Salon's "The Story Is There Is No Story" treatment. The Onion gets it. Jon Katz and most of the posters in the Hellmouth threads kind of get it. "My methods were not theirs but their rage was, and is, mine" is a little lukewarm for my tastes, but it'll do.
If the story is "Righteous and Rational Retaliation" then everybody has a chance to see an unflattering reflection of themselves and make some uncomfortable but necessary adjustments. The lesson I want to see the world take away from this story is this: if you push someone until they go postal, the guy will come back with a shotgun and you'll die, so don't do it. If that kind of bullying goes on around you, you can't pretend it's none of your business. When the victim loses it, he'll kill the bully because he's a bully. He'll kill you because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time and that makes it your business.
Sure, I'll email you with - oh.
Never mind.
I put my email address in the header - I guess you'll just have to email me.
(tip: go to http://www.google.com/ , type in "london goth" and press the "I'm feeling lucky" button.)
--
Xenu loves you!
No, it doesn't say they were specifically aiming for jocks.
But it does ask the question of how many jocks hang out in the library during lunch.
In fact, who would you say DOES hang out in the library at lunch? Geeks? Nerds? Freaks? Losers? Spaz's?
EVERYONE gets bullied at school (unless you're the captain of the football team). It's part of growing up. Children are cruel and don't have the social skills or maturity to control themselves.
Especially during their teenage years when they want to fit in.
The easiest way to belong to the group is to ostracise those different from the group. So everyone gets rejected from SOME groups. Is the football captain a goth? Does he hang with the math club?
Some groups have a higher social standing than others. Deal with it.
This wasn't about being pushed in the halls.
This wasn't about being beatup on the playground.
This wasn't about not getting a date to the prom.
This was about HATE.
These two HATED everyone.
They didn't try to blow the gym during football practice.
They didn't try to snipe the bus taking the football team to a game.
They didn't do ANYTHING to jocks that they didn't try to do to anyone else.
In fact, their method of attack would have ensured that the jocks were the LAST group hit (if at all). They started in the library and walked down the halls. The jocks would have had plenty of time to run.
You are fantasizing based upon your limited understanding.
I wonder about the argument that people need guns for protection or self defense. Anecdotal arguments don't work here. The fact that you may once have used a gun to protect yourself proves as much as the fact that I have never needed one.
But what if the argument is true? I'm not sure I want to live in a place like that. And if I do live there, I think it would be worth my time to help change things so that needing a gun was no longer necessary.
And what if the argument isn't so? Then I guess I'd have to think about the kind of mentality that insists that people need guns to protect themselves and wonder what kind of world they are seeing.
Signing off from the U.S.
Seth
The arguments "if the criminals think they might get shot they wont rob & rape", "the constition allows guns" and guns as an "equalizer" between people are about as convincing to mee as those claiming "drinking is good for you" (French wine-growers), "smoking isn't THAT bad" (tobacco industry).
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I'll put aside everything except for the Constitutional issue. I personally don't see strongly to either side on the other issues-- I think that both sides can come up with equally convincing cases.
However, the Constitution *is* convincing to me. Why?
Because the Bill of Rights is the foundation of freedom in the United States; the rights set forth in the Constitution *can* *not* be taken away unless the Constitution is amended to say so. And until a Constitutional amendment passes both the House of Representatives and the Senate by a two-thirds vote, and two-thirds of the states ratify the amendment, the Second Amendment guarantees that right.
Even if I don't feel the Second Amendment has any place in society today, I believe that we should uphold it. Otherwise, we have set a precedent of ignoring Constitutional rights-- paving the way for people to ignore the other rights that the writers of the Constitution held so dear.
Seriously, if you don't like the Second Amendment, then go ahead and write up a new amendment. With enough people supporting the amendment, I'm sure that a dedicated enough group could pass it through.
- But in places where close attention is paid to what words actually say, the states'-rights reading of the Second Amendment has attracted surprisingly little support. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, shall not be infringed." Nor do the words of the amendment assert that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is conditional upon membership in some sort of organized soldiery like the National Guard. Indeed, if there is conditional language in the Second Amendment at all, evidently the contingency runs the other way: "Because the people have a right to keep and bear arms, states will be assured of the well regulated militias that are necessary for their security." Some version of this reading is supported by almost all of the constitutional historians and lawyers who have published research on the subject. Indeed, this view is so dominant in the academy that Garry Wills, the lone dissenter among historians on the proper reading of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," has dubbed it the Standard Model of the Second Amendment.
- ...no ambiguity at all surrounds the attitude of the constitutional generation concerning "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." To put the matter bluntly, the Founders of the United States were what we would nowadays call gun nuts. "One loves to possess arms," Thomas Jefferson wrote to President Washington (whose own gun collection, Don Kates notes, contained more than 50 specimens). And to his teenage nephew, the author of the Declaration of Independence had this to say: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
- They took from Locke the principle that people have a right to defend themselves, with arms if necessary, and from both Hobbes and Locke--to say nothing of their own experience with the Crown --the principle that central governments have a tendency, which requires systematic mitigation, to become overmighty with those subject to their power. The purpose of an armed population was to guarantee that the central government could not possess a monopoly of violence (no wonder modern-day liberals find the Second Amendment so hateful) and to assure that citizens would have the wherewithal to defend themselves and their communities against tyrants and wrongdoers.
And as to the question of what the Founding Fathers thought of guns, check out this article about a gun law recently overturned on second amendment grounds, which also speaks to the point of the intent of the authors of the Bill of Rights.One of the quotes from the sidebar:
One can argue that they might be "dismayed" by the proliferation of guns, or that they didn't intend for everyone to be able to carry a gun, but I don't think that view is well supported. They intended the Second Amendment to act as a preventative towards tyranny. Not particularly so that people can shoot at targets or go hunting, although those tend to be what most people use guns for.A lot of people would like to make the Second Amendment irrelevant to these times, and ignore it. You can't just ignore Constitutional Amendments, especially one on the Bill of Rights! If it is not relevant, it should be repealed. If allowed to remain, it should not be ignored.
Just for the record, there were more murders last year in Texas than in New York City - and they have comparable population sizes.
This is one of the misperceptions which skews debates about guns and crime. When you live in a small town it is very easy to ignore crime; it doesn't happen every day. The newspaper reports two or three violent crimes a year. In a place like New York the evening news leads with six or seven crimes and periodically you'll hear a gunshot or witness a mugging or see the police gathered around a crime scene. That is simply a result of size. When 100,000 people live in your immediate neighborhood you will eventually see the dark side of humanity with your own eyes. You will then start thinking that it could happen to you. On the other hand, when a crime happens in the next county over, it is far enough away that you can still feel safe.
Until recently crime rates in cities really were higher than rural areas, and that idea is firmly implanted in everybody's head - we take it for granted. Beware those unexamined assumptions!
The US constitution's second amendment is for americans what the GPL is for the net community.
9 out of 10 people that benifit from the GPLs existants will never activly partake of it in the form of programming with a GPLed program. The same goes for the right to posess a firearm.
While the vast majority of American's do not now, nor will probably ever - own a gun -- the mear fact that they CAN and some DO is a check against 'the government'.
Some are quick to point out that we have nothing to fear about the US government. Only crazy folks like Branch Dividians worry about the 'black helicopters'. However every major represive regiem that has ever come to power has made de-arming the civilian population it's first act of business. From the latest hunta in south america or africa to the Hilter. -- The scary thing about Hitler was he even sold the idea as the way to "peace" - claiming Germany would be on the forfront to remove the weapons of war from civilized peoples.
It is not the CURRENT governemnt civilian gun ownership is in place to be a check against - it is against a future one that no longer serves at the leasure of the governed population.
It's just like the GPL. It's not here to protect you from what's going on with a program in the current setting - it's ment as a stop gap against abuse of the codebase by someone at some point down the line.
Both are in place to protect the rights of those that live under it from abuse by powerful entities - be they a facist governemnt or the Microsofts of the world.
Some scoff at this notion - the US military has tanks and steath bombers. A bunch of rednecks in camo arn't going to stop the government from doing what it wants. - but that's wrong. The US tried to impose itself in both Korea and Vietnam - both foes resisted primparly via gorilla warfare in small bands with light weaponry in the face of crapet bombing and napalm.
Just as we fend off folks like MS with near unlimited funds and ability to hire brilient coders a dozen at a time.
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
I wonder if anyone has looked into the possiblity that many of these mass killers have been taking drugs that affect their brain chemistry. I thought I read that the killer in Atlanta was using Prozac. I have also heard that some of the kids in Kentucky or Louisiana were taking something to calm them down. I am more inclined to believe that drugs are more dangerous than guns.
And, by your logic, just because technology has brought weapons to mythical levels of destructive power, all "arms" should be covered equally under the Second Amendment. Does that mean that we should all have access to armor piercing rounds? Grenades? Anti-tank weaponry? Biological and chemical agents? Tactical nuclear devices?
At the risk of sounding heretical: if the authors of the Bill of Rights could have forseen today's weapons, and had said, "We think everyone should have access to nerve gas," (or whatever), screw them. We need better governance than that.
And yeah - during the first world war, Canada had internment camps for Ukranians too. A very short stick, if you ask me.
I like the top post, all countries have their hang ups. We're all oppressed. But I can honestly say I'm glad to live in Canada. Your more likely to be stabbed to death than shot.
Dude, you're taking an isolated incident - doesn't prove anything.
In LA last month, cops shot dead a homeless woman who threatened them with a screwdriver (not making this up. it caused a major controversy). This is routine in LA - cops kill unarmed people at least once a month. OTOH, the UK incident is quite rare.
An armed society isn't a polite society, it's a nervous, edgy society. Maybe you've been watching too many John Wayne movies. Watch the local news.
The UK has more coastline than the lower 48 states of the US. If you include Alaska, the US has about 40-50% more. That's hardly 40 times as much.
I would have liked to see more attention given to that in the mainstream media: heaping blame upon jocks rather than upon goths/D&D players/movie watchers/(teen category du jour). But I suppose the media would rather tell the people what they want to hear.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Eurotrash.
That's at least four banner ad impressions per comment posted, do the math.
Is because of its high percentage of minorites. Lets just do a check on how much violent crime is perpetuated by non-whites. Yeah, yeah, I know I am "racist" so you can disregard everything I say. How much of a Minority population does Sweden have? How about Norway?
The mirror of our existance.... The funny thing is that you don't hear about these type of random hate shootings happening at inner city schools, it's always white, affluent, suburban nice places. Why? Because inthe inner city and in poorer schools there is such a great variety of people that they don't have time to hate all the different ones. The attitude of the suburban schools is one of rigidity and conformism, the little world created by the attitude of superiority of culture which most of those high schoolers carry themselves is the cause of this incident. And the even sicker concept behind it is that most people in these towns are NOT willing to face the facts that it was their "perfect little slice of heaven" that bred such contempt. It is contempt for a society that is unwilling to accept anything but themselves.
THe real solution is the teaching of acceptance and personal resposibility. My rights end at your nose. This is the only way to true freedom and happiness. The Christian Youth groups would like you to beleive theirs is a world of happiness and peacefulness, but at the same time they would shun anybody who doesn't think like them as quickly as possible. By teaching acceptance of one another's likes and dislikes, rather than anything is "good" or "bad" teaches us that we are all free. This is our right under the constitution and our right as men and women-it is also our responsibility.
Sorry, that's "three-quarters of the states ratify the amendment". I was still thinking of congress when I was typing about the states.
Meanwhile, comments that are misquoted and misinterpeted statistics or purely emotional and anecdotal which are "anti-gun" keep getting moderated up to +4 and +5 for being "insightfull" or "informative" when they are clearly BIAS.
I think EVERYONE should make an effort to read the -1 posts on this thread, because clearly these posts are not "First Post" or "Red Hat Sux" posts, but posts that some moderator has disagreed with, and give "-1 troll" to because they disagree, dispite the fact that the poster makes a valid point!
Of course not. Hundreds of the kids in that school had guns in their houses. Hunting is quite popular. Unfortunately most of them didn't have any of their guns at school when they needed them for non-hunting purposes.
Actually, the worst mass U.S. killing was at a school many decades ago. By an idiot with a huge bomb. Not a gun.
For that matter, we heard a lot recently about the losing day-trader who shot at some people. But do you remember that he killed five people at home before going downtown? He killed them with a hammer.
Remember Lizzy Borden! Remember the Boston Strangler! Remember the Ripper!
Check out this history of swiss and guns.
http://www.ssanz.org.nz/articles/swiss.html
Its from an NZ site so I assume its fairly accuarate. But apparently there no laws on long gun semi-automatic carrying, and some laws on pistol carrying though it doesn't seem all that enforced.
If you like BackStreet Boys, you're already a menace to society.
You can substitute out BackStreet Boys and put in any other "minute made band".
Anyone who doesn't listen to that crap has at least one thing going for them.
The swastika existed in the exact same form as a nature symbol, Native American in nature I believe. It was not in any way a modified cross (I am assuming you mean "cross" in terms of the Christian symbol and not anything involving crossed lines). This non-hate symbol existed for hundreds of years before being usurped by the Nazis. So it rather falls into the same category as the trenchcoat... although to a much, much greater extent.
Leilah
(I got an SQL error the first time, so am trying to post this again... my apologies if it gets on here twice.)
~ Leilah
I knew I couldn't get italics to just be on one word, I suck that much. Shoulda used preview :(
Sorry, but I think it's important.
-- Slashdot sucks.
What "restrictions on ownership and use" are you referring to? They are purposely designed with loopholes the size of a truck.
example - in Afghanistan, it's common for the average citizen to own grenades and rocket launchers. (Naturally, the number of firearm deaths are also higher).
Now let's say you banned a certain model of grenade, and made a 5 day waiting period mandatory before buying a bazooka, do you think it will make any difference?
No, because the sheer number of available weapons make it easy for anyone to get it cheap. Similarly, those "laws" in the US you are talking about are made for PR reasons. I can drive 1/2 an hour here in California and buy a fully loaded machine gun, no questions asked.
There have been no regulations in the US. It's the equivalent of passing a law saying "If you are about to do something illegal, please notify us. Thank you".
Of course, thanks to enlightened citizens such as yourself, we have a record number of prisoners in jail, breaking the world record for a western democracy.
Ah, the bliss of ignorance. Charlton Heston soundbites, macho "tough" laws - good for TV news, eh?
I know this is off-topic, but, I've seen a lot about gun control and here is what Benjamin Franklin (one of the founders of our country and writers of the constitution):
"One who would trade liberty for [...] safty deserves neither liberty nor safty"
-- Benjamin Franklin
That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
JM
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Take a second look at the facts here:
1. Two kids commit suicide, after going on a killing spree.
2. Suicide is usually caused by depression.
3. The kids left behind documentation that they were filled with anger and rage, which is linked to depression.
4. Both kids had Luvox, an anti-depressant, in their bloodstream when they died.
Here is my theory as to what happened, just for contrast. These two kids develop serious psychological problems. They seek help, or someone imposes help on them. A psychiatrist looks them over, concludes that the problem resembled depression better than anything else in his/her playbook, and prescribes them anti-depressants. They don't help much (this happens a lot), the kids don't go back to the doctor to get the medication altered, and eventually they flip out and go on their killing spree.
It should not surprise anybody when people who are under psychiatric treatment flip out. Who else would be under treatment?
Remember a few years back, when the talk show circuit was filled with people who reacted badly to Prozac? Since then, Prozac has become one of the most widely prescribed drugs in America. Has anything bad happened? Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind? Psychopharmacology is not an exact science. Drugs like this will help most patients, do nothing for others, and have weird or negative affects on the rest. Nobody understands exactly why. Treating depressed patients is a mix of educated guesses and trial-and-error. It has its downside, but the alternative is a lot worse.
The whole idea of psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. It doesn't scare me, but then again Prozac may have saved my life. All I ask is that you use common sense when you consider things like this, and that you remember: correlation does not prove causation.
Old Hat, but there was an armed guard. Unfortuanlely he was massively outgunned (Pistols vs. Shotguns really does favor the shotgun)
Only crazy folks like Branch Dividians worry about the 'black helicopters'.
Speaking of the media twisting things... The Davidians were never actually charged with any crimes not related to events that occurred during the stand off. The stand off was triggered by allegations that they possessed illegal firearms (a machine gun, I think) but I don't think formal charges were ever filed.
People should remember that the Davidians were not a 'right wing anti-government militia'. The events at places like Waco and Ruby Ridge triggered the growth of the militia movement - they occurred first.
--
Clear, Dark Skies
The number of gun-related murders in the US is at an all time high. Yet restrictions on the ownership and use of guns is also at an all time high. The restrictions are doing no good at all! Something has changed and it's not the number of guns, because they're going down. Schoolyard killings are new. Very new. Unthinkable fifty years ago.
The Valentine's Day Massacre in the 1930's shocked a nation, yet today similar gangland massacres happen on a weekly basis. And these killings are being committed with weapons that are already illegal and hard to get! Making more weapons illegal won't change anything. We're trying to put a bandaid on a severed arm! There is an illness in US society and guns are merely a scab over the wound.
But restricting guns only restricts them for the lawful citizen. I cannot today purchase an assault rifle. But the gangs still have them, boatloads of them. Banning them didn't do one ounce of good. The criminals are better armed than the police!
Solutions? Harsh and swift punishments for violent crimes and especially those committed with guns to keep these people off the streets. Require gun safety classes for purchasers of guns to prevent accidents. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. We also need to find out what has changed between then and now and fix it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The Onion did a little thing about Columbine recently, which you can read here. It's pretty funny, except that it's also very true. The media has talked about how everyone should love one another, and that there should be no little "groups", but I see no sign that is happening. In my opinion, that article is more truth than fiction.
You gotta go USB
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
What we saw after Columbine turns out to have been the high-speed creation of a collection of Urban Legends. What seems to happen is that the same story gets filtered through a series of minds as it is transmitted from one person to the next. Each mind forgets some "irrelevant" details and infers some new "facts", because that is how memory works (a number of psychology experiments show how easy it is to induce people to remember things that never were, especially details). In other words you are dealing with an iterated function in a kind of "story space". What comes out of this process is not the original data but a kind of attractor in this space. It is what people feel is the "right" story to have happened.
So, what kinds of stories come out: Well we get a bunch of them, reflecting the concerns of different groups.
This is pretty humbling. Every so often something comes up to remind us that we are not so superior after all.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Didn't George Michaels get arrested for doing that?
--
Clear, Dark Skies
Walking back from the goth club one night:
"what the FUCK is that?"
"Hey, Marylin! Marylin Manson!"
and best of all:
"Inter-net! Inter-fuckin-net!"
A hundred yards further up the road, an enterprising schemie [1] decided to throw a handy rubbish bin full of glass bottles at my head. I felt drips from the bottles hit my face as it whistled past. *Crash*. I didn't look.
Sadly, they didn't seem in the least worried that I might pull a gun on them and shoot them. But then, if I'd been allowed a gun, they would have been too. I live in Edinburgh, UK.
--
Xenu loves you!
>You need only look at societies with strict gun
>laws, and you'll se that deadly force is much
>less normal.
(I'm responding to several points made in different posts here, so excuse me for making comments that do not seem relevant to this post.)
One point that I see come up again & again in this discussion is that ``well, if they didn't have guns, they would have found another way to kill people" -- as if the desire to use deadly force against others is acceptible in US society. Or maybe I'm misreading the aggressiveness nature of US culture.
I see this aggressiveness expressed in countless ways in US culture: businessmen or women are praised for being ruthless, or for ``destroying" the competition. (The principal complaint most nerds appear to have about Microsoft is the quality of their software: well, if you can get control of an industry by turning your competitors into so many acres of scorched earth or salted ruins faster than writing quality software, which would you rather do?)
Americans charge after success at any cost -- & the sacrifice of friendships or family ties is considered not only normal, but expected. If you don't have something other people to find useful, they will pass you by as they chase after the golden ring.
So what are the 95% of us who don't fall in the category of ``the best of the best" supposed to do with ourselves?
One poster remarked that at one time everyone had 400 acres to ``let off steam" in. More likely, they went West to find Indians, Mexicans, Chinese & other starving, disenfranchised folks who could be killed with impunity. (A lot of 19th century hate crimes appear to have been committed with about as little forethought & justification as the Littleton massacre.) Nothing hides the fact that you aren't an alpha male if you can find someone else to fuck over.
And much US law makes sense if you look at it from the viewpoint that a property owner or landowner should not have to answer for his freehold to anyone except God -- & woe to the employee or subordinate who insists on respect or a living wage for their work.
So there is a lot of submerged anger in the US at the fact that if you aren't the best, you're shit. And I feel it has gotten worse in recent years: back in the 1980's, when it looked as if Japan would overtake the US as the leading world economy, many pundits opined that this was because Americans had forgotten how to be aggressive. So people worked harder, competed harder, & if one lost at this competition, the resulting anger was not as passive as it used to be. For example, my father once remarked how, when he was in boot camp during WWII, a man committed suicide after weeks of harassment for being gay; the murder/suicide scene from _Full Metal Jacket_ would never have been imagined then, let alone the primal anger expressed at Littleton.
Then I suspect enough people who post to Slashdot have bought into the philosophy of ``work harder, screw your competition over, & buy the best toys" & will flame me heartily for protesting the increased competition of recent days. They probably think I'd be happier as a slacker or a bum. Well, in turn I think that they probably just enjoy making their hamster wheels turn faster.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
The mass murders you're talking about is
way more seldom than the act of killing _one_
or _two_ other people with guns.
"Guns don't kill people"
and "people kill people"
are catchy sentences that seem very sensible.
But carrying guns actually makes it more likely
that you end up a murder victim at the end of the
day. How many times do you think "playing hero"
gets someone killed?
Carrying guns very often makes a simple fight
into deadly force.
"The very worst of those killers"..
I'm not afraid of the worst killers, it's probably
easier to get struck by lightning than being killed by one of those.
"The punk kid" that kills someone he doesn't like because he snaps and happens to have
a gun is far more likely.. as is guns that go off
by mistake.
I find it quite probable that a lot of killings
wouldn't have happened if the murderer or victim
didn't carry guns, but had to resort to knives
or fists instead.
unfortunetly, they were morons
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It seems some of the complaints about the moderators are disappearing!!#@!
It seems pretty clear that to read an intellegent discussion of this issue, you have to read at a threshhold of -1, but you have to seek out the -1's to see both sides.
Obviously, moderation is FLAWED in this debate. I sure hope all those "-1 troll" changes done by moderators are marked "unfair" in meta-moderation, because using your moderator status to bias a discussion insted of trying to sort out the facts from "first post" crap is clearly an abuse of moderation. The moderators giving the -1's should loose thier moderation privlages for this abuse!!
The "Guns for protection" argument has perhaps saved some lives, but it's probably killed more
than it has saved.
You need only look at societies with strict gun
laws, and you'll se that deadly force is much
less normal.
But banning guns in an already violent society
is unprecendented. I don't really know.
You need something in addition.
But look at the attention that we gave it here, just because the "outsiders" involved were perceived as "geeks". American history, past and present, is rife with outsiders, from Indians and slaves to immigrants, hippies, communists, and geeks. To have gone singularly overboard about Columbine (and geekdom) on /. was just as prejudiced as the mainstream's biases. There was all this rampant sympathy over the slights suffered by "us", while the slights suffered by other us-es probably don't even register on our respective radars.
An outsider killed a bunch of folks in Fort Worth last week. Was he really any different from Harris and Klebold, other than being a generation older? I don't think so.
outsider != geek
--
--
=8^
My god, my god who the hell moderated down this post??? It is one of the most insightful posts I've read (including well over 100 on this topic already). It is no more "off topic" than many of the "5" posts about guns. The other AC has a point too. TV and mass media are probably far more related to the issues surrounding the incident and the coverage (of course) than many of the "hot button" issues discussed such as gun control and "geek persecution" (are you persecuted because you are a geek or are you a geek because you're persecuted? - hmmm scratch that as too harsh - I too have been persecuted but it never occurred to me to let persecution form my identity and being older/wiser (maybe) I know where that road leads or so I think). Even the average "gun nut" probably spends far more time exposed to TV/media than to weapons of not-so-mass destruction. Mind you, this is not a call to censorship or anything else for that matter. It is a pure rant dedicated soley to whoever moderated down an insightful post. If anyone knows why I should bother to register properly at Slashdot. Please send e-mail to the account I tried to set up: username: Skrewbawl e-mail: bitreader@altavista.net I've tried registering to not be an "AC" but didn't get my password (I screwed up because I didn't know the password would be mailed by a bot - evidently Slashdot is as mistrustful as I). However, what is the point if this is the way moderators behave. Should I "be good" so I can "get points" and then "correct the morons that mismoderate"??? PS: The reason I never got my password was 'cause I did what many others have done and mangled the spelling of my e-mail to avoid spam. I used bitreader[at]_learn_to_spell_to_mail_alteviste.nat - nutso huh?
And maybe, just maybe, upon registering, I'll learn to preview my posts so I select the right formatting option - grrrrrr. Skrewbawl again.
Well, I would put that sign up, anywhere in the US. Most people don't have guns, dispite what you may think. (even in places like east LA)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Gawwwwd I did it it again :(
THIS POST HAS BEEN PREVIEWED TO PRESERVE LINE BREAKS!!!
Everybody needs a break every once in a while.
Skrewbawl
They have lots of 'minoritys' by american standards, and yet, almost no crime.
how much crime is commited by poor white trash, A lot more than is commited by black people....
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yeah, it's picky and offtopic. Big deal.
Okay, so let's label me and that invalidates what I say?
He explicitly said that your fanaticism does not invalidate what you say: Like I said, psychotropic drugs scare a lot of people. Don't judge everything he says by that
This guy just calls names.
Well, that's a plain lie. I read his posts myself. He's got some logic'n'facts there, you know. The problem is that you've taken a reasonable position ("don't overprescribe") and exaggerated it to the point of absurdity, where logic and facts contradict it. So, of course logic and facts bother you. An example of your bizarre extremism might be the following from your first post in the thread: "a Kid with behaviour problems (too much sugar and too little discipline) . .
The real core of your position, though, is that you're taking the correlation between mental illness and treatment of mental illness, and randomly claiming that the treatment causes the problem. That's idiotic on the face of it. I'm sorry, but it is.
I'm a logically well supported fanatic instead of some jerk who just drops an assertion and runs.
Actually, you seem to have degenerated into name-calling yourself here.
You give it away at the start of the article, when you say "Are we plagued by an epidemic of people killing themselves because Prozac messed up their mind?". In a word: the answer is yes!.
Every single school shooting that I'm aware in the past several years (since Jonesboro, AR) has involved a child on a psychotropic drug.
Here's another astonishing feat of intellectual dishonesty, or just plain cretinism (it's hard to tell which): "A psychotropic drug" is not semantically equivalent to "Prozac". IF a psychotropic drug OTHER than Prozac were involved (there are many), and IF Prozac were NOT involved, then -- please check my logic here, it may be too subtle for you -- IF, as I say, IF Prozac were NOT involved, then PROZAC WOULD NOT BE FUCKING INVOLVED, you wretched moron!
All you're saying is that, according to a non-random, self-selected sample: a) some small fraction (at least) of kids who need help are getting help; and b) a tiny fraction of those being helped would seem, at a first glance, not to be getting much benefit out of the help they're getting. Of course, there's always the fact that people with serious depression are not violent (I've been there) -- but people being treated successfully suddenly have enough energy to do themselves harm, and sometimes to harm others.
Yeah, I'm calling you names. You're far too irrational to repay any attempt at communication. Whatever treatment you got, obviously needs work (so does mine, by the way
Well I *have* thought about it, and I'm still bothered by those narrow-minded folks who were worried more about the priviledges they'd lose, or they were wrongfully punished, than about the fact that so many people were massacered, and complained (whined) publicly and loudly about it.
I don't know why everyone's so convinced that a wrongful suspension is going to push someone over the edge. It may not make anyone happy, and its not fair (welcome to life 101) but AFAIK there are no cases of anyone killing either themselves of someone else over it. If I'm right, then you're just arguing hypotheticals...
PS a bad counselor is going to screw you up whether Columbine happened or not.
Street cops are cops, they don't support gun control laws. The people standing behind Bill Clinton in Police Uniforms are "Police Chiefs" which is a POLITICAL office, and "real cops" don't agree with these people.
Retired people are all antigun? I don't think so. AARP had to do damage control to keep from loosing thier members after they lobbyed for gun control laws. They offered members massive financial benifits (discounts, low credit rates, low insurance rates) to keep many from leaving even thought they don't agree with the political agenda.
If you REALLY want to discuss safety, How come no one is able to argue against this ? Afraid to admit that the anti-gun political nuts are actually responsable for the deaths?
I fully expect that I could improve given time, dedication and suitable training for both bows and guns. Of the two, I'd say that the more USEFUL would be firearms training, given the proliferation and usefulness if used as a survival tool.
I suppose the big difference is in the capacity to kill people with the weapon at hand. It's easy to grind down the catch on a pawn-shop AK-47 and turn it into a full automatic weapon which can in turn be used to gun down an entire class within seconds, with a high probability of mortality or permanent injury. Taking a baseball bat into a class will net you maybe one or two victims before everyone else either runs or rushes you and takes the bat away, and those victims (unless you happened to connect with good shots to the head or spine) will likely recover from the blunt trauma delivered. The ability to mete out death on a massive scale is the key there.
A person commited to violence will be able to deliver it, sure... I think the point most people are making is that guns make it much much easier for them to deliver violence to a larger number of victims in a shorter time with more deadly result than a knife, bat, or bare hards... partially because of the speed at which they operate, partially because the shooter can be at a considerable distance (and therefore safe from being rushed by people without guns), and partially because of the relatively low skill level required to use them effectively.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
I say this first, I still am in high school. The neighborhood that I go to school is predominantly white, middle class. But the school is many races, religions, and personalities. With this many differences, there can't help but be conflicts. I used to be fit the "skate or die! rebel to the end!" attitude perfectly. I then grew to accept many other things, and am now completely different because of it.
This is an over-simplification. One of the original intentions of the 2nd Amendment was to keep some control of military power in the hands of the States -- the AntiFederalists wanted a balance of power, in the face of initial skepticism that the new Federation wouldn't work. However, "most people thought that militias would not stand to be controlled by the federal government if that body were to begin acting oppressively." (1)
Whether the 2nd Amendment is interpreted as a State or Individual right, the Courts are unanimous in deciding that it is only a limitation on the Federal Government, not on the States (see U.S. vs. Miller). In fact, the States are free to manage their militias as they see fit -- and that includes banning guns. (2)
1: But, only muskets existed when that was written. They never knew that people would have machine guns(tm) and deadly-high-powered-assault-rifles(tm). By that logic, only books and newspapers would be protected by the First Amendment. Movies, TV, Radio and your beloved Internet would all be subject to regulation by the federal government
In fact, all are subject to regulation. No right has ever been interpreted without considerations of responsibility.
There are, and always have been, limitations on ALL rights. Unless you wish to extend the right to keep and bear ALL arms (including chemical, biological, nuclear, etc.) to you, me, your neighbor, and death cultists alike?
Note that this is not an argument against the 2nd Amendment per se -- just an extremist position that disclaims all responsibility. That may or not be yours.
3: But, it says "well regulated Militia...," so the government can "regulate" it as it sees fit. Today we use the term regulated to mean controlled. During the late 18th century, the term "well regulated" meant something like "in good woring order" There are writings from the time that refer to well regulated farms or foundrys.
This is a common "pro-gun" argument, and ignores the fact that while the term "well-regulated" could mean "smoothly functioning", it could also refer to exactly what we mean by it today. To quote Mark Pitcavage: "There is a continuity from the time of the founders (and before) through the nineteenth century through today, in which the term "regulated" as it related to the militia referred to regulations.
"'Well regulated' in the Second Amendment refers to the combination of state and federal regulations, as authority over the militia under the Constitution was divided between the two by the Militia Clauses. Most of the founders emphasized federal regulations, since that was what was at issue during the ratification debates. " (3)
In writings from the time referring specifically to the militias, Patrick Henry, James Madison, John Sullivan, Alexander Hamilton, the Federal Farmer, Benjamin Lincoln, Luther Martin, James Wilson, and David Ramsay (among others) all refer to "well-regulated" as meaning "controlled by regulations". Many, many other examples of the use of the term "regulated" as meaning "controlled" can be culled from the time period as well. (4)
1. Mark Pitcavage and Sheldon Sheps, "The New Militia FAQ", URL: http://www.militia-watchdog.org/faq1.htm .
2. Findlaw.com, "Second Amendment", URL: http://caselaw. findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment02/index.ht ml.
3. Pitcavage and Sheps, "The New Militia FAQ".
4. Ibid.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
But getting these stories out on the net has gone a lot of good. Even when Katz was still in the middle of the Hellmouth series, parents and teachers were responding with "I had no idea it was that bad," and were printing comments out and taking them to the school board. I am also fortunate enough to live in a large-ish and very tolerant city, and to be long out of high school, so I know it's not as bad for me as it is for the kids still stuck in the mess. It might seem as if us geeks talking among ourselves doesn't do anything. But, even if NOBODY else takes notice (and some people have), at least the kids know they aren't alone, and that it does get better for most people most of the time.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The whole point of the Katz articles was never wether they were a sad bunch of outcasts or not! It was allways about hte reaction that people had to it. The fact that everyone assumed that they were Goths, satanists, gay, etc. and then proceeded to step all over the rights of anyone even remotly 'diferent'. .... *CRUNCH*)
IMHO Katz's article now has even *more* relevancy since all those reactions have been shown to based on untruths.
No, I can't spell!
-"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
(tagadum,tagadum,tagadum
-"stop...."
Perhaps that's the point right there... to kill someone with a sword, or a bow, or any of the more traditional weapons you needed skill in order to ensure your victory. Sure, luck and physical superiority helped, but skill, training and experience was usually the most important aspect. Firearms basically require no skill to kill or permanently injure at the range they're most often (ie: within meters)... children literally can, and have, picked up Daddy's saturday night special and blown away thier best buddy with no more training than watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
This is not to say that one can't become skilled in guns... obviously, the better trained you are with a rifle, the more effective you'll be at hitting your target at a distance. The non-skill I'm talking about here is shotgun usage at distances between your hand and the head of the poor grade 11 bastard across the hallway from you.
There's also a BIG difference between using a projectile weapon (gun, bow, or whatever) and going hand-to-hand with sword, knife or kudgel. It's not quite so easy to acheive that 'disconnection' from reality when you're looking into your victim's eyes while stabbing them/running them through.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Every time slashdot links a Columbine story, we get a minimum of 30% gun arguments. The article didn't even mention gun control -- it only listed the types of weapons they were concealing under their jackets.
Even more annoying is that it looks like some are moderating up the gun arguments that they like.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
What happened, and what is happening now, goes FAR beyond "not being able to wear trenchcoats." Kids were getting SUSPENDED for saying "I would never kill anyone, but I can understand why someone would snap." This will "go down on their permanent record," so to speak. Are you honestly trying to tell me that THAT is productive?! And as I have already posted elsewhere, "mandatory counseling" is a big part of the problem when the "counselors" are incompetent. And believe me, there's a good chunk of them who are not only incompetent but also heartless. Their attitude is "you aren't like everyone else, which means you're broken and we need to fix you." Being told that sort of thing by an alleged "mental health professional" can fuck someone's head up for a good long time, if not for life. Sure, we may have "saved" one or two "disturbed" kids, but how many more did we push that much farther?
Think about it, and stop dismissing the other posters as "whining little kids." We're not.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I see no reason why kids who are willing to kill (even though it's illegal) would have any trouble getting a gun (even if it is illegal).
How exactly do you propose to legally control guns in a way that will effectively hinder lawbreakers?
Well I'm glad.
Maybe now the school will give me back my rights..
Let me wear a jackeyt during the winter..
Idiots..
I knew it all along.
But this just makes it easier.
They were all lies?
Makes more sense than "They were all an isolated case"
Even more annoying is that it looks like some are moderating up the gun arguments that they like.
Perhaps you should expend more thought on why those posts (pro or anti, doesn't matter) were moderated up.
Like it or not, guns are a technology that touches all our lives - in America, in Indonesia, in Kosovo or Chechnea (sp?). And the gun debate illustrates both what is good and bad about democracies and political change.
Consider the gun posts here: a small number of posts that attempt to be well thought out and reasonable, coupled with a larger number of posts that resort to name calling, and a similar number of posts expressing exhaustion over the whole thing.
Pretty much illustrates how western societys work, doesn't it? Fanatics shout until reasonable people become tired of the whole thing and move on - resulting in a government driven by shrill minorities rather than sensible majorities.
You can see it everywhere: guns, abortion, Northern Ireland, the Middle East.
Sigh. I can hear geeks all over the country saying "Why should I bother caring about the truth behind pro- or anti- gun arguments when there's a quake III frag fest going on?"
Replace the word "gun" with any other issue you care to name and you've summarized the Western World today.
--
Clear, Dark Skies
It did say that the killers were not goths, atheists, or gays. It did *not* say that they were not bullied by other kids. It did say that they weren't specifically aiming at jocks, but that is nowhere _near_ the same thing. We geeks could very well have been completely right. In fact, we're about the only group who still _could_ be completely right.
a moderators nightmare
The only point you make worth looking at is the "1/100" point. How many kids on Luvox does it take to make one in 1000 shoot up their school?
Well, you really have absolutely no goddamn idea, you know that? "Mania" is one thing; "shooting up one's school" is another thing entirely. You're telling us that there's a one in one thousand chance that this kid had "mania" (which happens a lot without any shooting, by the way), and then you ask us to accept as a certainty that not only did he have this "mania" (0.001 != "certainty"), but that the "mania", unaided, certainly caused him to shoot up the school. That's the most bizarre chain of low probabilities treated as "conclusive proof" that I've seen since . . . since . . . well, since I hurt my stomach laughing at Pat Buchanan and stopped reading the products of his mania. People are not clock-radios. We're not that simple, and not nearly so deterministic. You don't just push a given button and automatically get a given behavior, especially not a very complicated one like these kids at Columbine engaged in. Get a grip.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for mindless reductionism.
"we better not get caught,
we'll be put in institutions,
where we'll be drugged and shocked,
till we come out born again Christians"
-Dead Kennedys
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
those 168 deceased Okies could tell you that a single disturbed individual's hatred is the mother of invention.
No, they can't. There dead, remember?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I just re-read your last comment.
How could I have been so misguided! A child was *gasp* wrongfully suspended! Oh the horror!! Well, the tragedy at Columbine absolutely PALES in comparison to this outrage, this disgrace! Forget watching your classmates being gunned down, the sheer emotional trauma of a WRONGFUL SUSPENSION, or a bad counselor must surely be too much to handle.
I can be so INSENSITIVE sometimes. Instead of focusing on those personally affected by Columbine, (or better yet, on "News for Nerds") let's commisurate the fate of those wrongfully SUSPENDED(!) Let's devote another 1400 comments to this topic, too, please...
Meanwhile, for no aparent reason This VERY informative post was not moderated up (quite possably because it is Pro-Gun), This post which is quite good has bounced back and forth between -1 and +1 (because it points to Pro-Gun SAFETY, it was a TROLL?), and This Post Was Moderated as a Troll TWICE today, and just rose back up to a 0 when in fact it was not a troll, it's only aparent reason for being moderated down was that it made it clear that comparing international statistics that are used to make Anti-Gun arguments are not only inconclusive, but quite possably irrelevent!
Tell me again how the moderators are not bias?
Yes, I think it is VERY important to point out what is going on, and the moderates FEAR you knowing that they are really acting biasly, so I'll bet you anything this very post gets moderated down to a troll because it criticizes them for thier unfair actions.
Well, Malda, here is the true test of your "Meta-Moderation" policy, either these guys will meta-moderate themselfs into more power yet, or if your meta-moderation works, they will loose thier abused powers.
dosn't involve a fire-arm. perhaps New York is just more violent in general?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I'm sure many have seen this, but...
The Onion has a very interesting, darkly humorous take on the whole thing. A very good read that strikes a little too close to the truth for many, I'm sure.
From the very beginning, from really the minute the story came on the news, facts were wrongly stated or possibly plain out fabricated. 1: Local NBC channel states there were maybe 100 people in the commons - multiply that by 4. 2: entrance was into the commons (Salon corrected that). I could go on and on, the Salon fixes most of the bad information.
Maybe the problem was the students from the school thinking they knew more than they really did. On that same NBC station (I was watching...) they had three or four students on that provided innacurate information, (this is where the homosexual trench coat mafia bit came from. seriously.)
I can say as a journalist myself (I'm currently the photo, layout, and webpage editor for the paper. No, we don't have a page yet, but that's just because Acrobat Distiller is giving me problems. If anyone knows distiller and macintosh real well, help me out please hehe.), that I was disgusted by the photographers and reporters covering the incident. Cameramen running around getting in people's faces when they had all the time in the world to ask them a question or maybe even get a picture from a distance. Reporters demanding information from people who probably knew less than the reporter did. Even recently when the softball field was dedicated, a pair of reporters from the local daily was being a real prick about getting names and pictures of prettymuch everyone there. When the coach of the softball team was hugging Dave Sanders' wife (yes, Sanders' - his last name is Sanders damnit.) there was a rush of photographers looking for the 'sympathy' shot. There were much better shots earlier of the balloons going up over the field, with the school in the background, and everyone standing in the foreground.
Anyway, I just say I'm impressed by Salon getting the facts straight when NOBODY else has before. Maybe the 'mainstream' media needs a wakeup call.
(Too bad I didn't get to this article earlier, maybe some more people would have seen this post :-/, that's happened to me three times now.)
--onyx--
Man, I will take that deal in a second.
Even if you excluded gun-murders from US homicide statistics, we would still have a higher murder rate than England, Canada, Japan, or much of the rest of the world. More people are kicked to death in the U.S. each year than are murdered at all in Japan.
Actually, England and Wales already had lower crime rates than the U.S. before so much gun control legislation was enacted here. Recently, however, mugging rates there are 1.4 times U.S. rates, and they have twice as many burglaries as we do. All this after they enacted even harsher GC laws than they already had. (Source: "Most Crime Worse in England Than US, Study Says" Reuters, 11 October 1998) Their murder rate, while climbing, still hasn't attained ours.
Murder rates in the U.S. were lower back when there were almost no laws regarding who could own and carry firearms, so I might ask you exactly the same thing.--
This is not my sandwich.
It has more relevancy because the reactions here were equally based on untruths. See further down, subjects: "Interesting Slashdot prejudices" and "The Mirror of Columbine". The bottom line for me was: American violence-as-usual at Columbine, and a bit of hypocrisy here at /., amongst other places. YMMV. The dead remain dead, no matter how much gasbagging we do.
--
--
=8^
What gets reported in the media has more to do with our prejudices than with the prejudices of those present or the actual facts.
This is similar to how rumors spread. Rumors don't spread based on how much factual basis there is for them. Instead they spread based on how much they resonate. People want to believe that the criminals are part of marginalized groups. So the coincidence of clothing makes them "trench coat mafia". It makes them gay. People want to believe that they are bad people, out to target a group. But they hit a lot of different people so they are targeting blacks, Christians, and jocks. (Hmmm...between those groups you can "explain" a *lot* of deaths.)
And people don't want to ask questions. So articles to the contrary (for instance the Rolling Stones article that someone mentioned) get ignored. This one will as well - it does not make good copy.
These are phenomena familiar to all members of disliked minorities. But people really don't want to think about that. And so we accumulate a few more urban legends...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I have some statistics, this compares the "uniform Crime Report" from the FBI for 1997 (the last I could get) and the same statistics for 1998 from the Metropolitan Police in London.
This compares two cities, New York and London, with similar populations, Ethnic diversity and, to a lesser extent, social deprivation - we have proper social welfare.
Murder:
New York 770 London 52
Rape:
NY: 2,157 L: 602
Robbery:
NY: 44,707 L: 8,331
GBH/Aggrivated Assault:
NY: 45,229 L: 1,429
Burglary:
NY: 54,099 L:31,172
The rest the Met doesn't provide information about.
God took a while, hope somebody reads it.
Mark.
References NY: http://www.fbi.gov.uc.htm
Met: http://www.met.police.uk/mps/mps/press/stats.htm
They both use NT, ain't that special!
I've never seen a gun ether. (well, I did see one in a sporting goods store, once). Most americans will probably never see one in there life ether.
The media tends to 'distort' the scale of things, a lot
I hear there's a lot of crime in toronto...
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I have seen a number of posts recently slating /. for lack of professional journalism. In this case, professional journalism has suckered /. along with the rest of the media.
Jon Katz did what professional journalists do in a hype situation: proliferate and legitimise the hype. When this thing went down, I learnt the value of the author exclusion user preferences. I couldn't take any more self-righteous commentary or me-too posts. Jon's work is the only thing I filter, and that keeps me happy.
I had a rough time at school, and I would guess that most /. regulars did too. We all know this, but we don't all feel the need to vent about it whenever the chance arises, even exploiting tragic events for the purpose.
Jon is a serious media man, and the only 'professional' journalist writing for /. AFAIK. Which for me makes his reportage less credible - the raw, almost candid reports posted 'from the field' have more real substance, and less media agenda.
I know the feeling. I grew up in the 'home of the British army' - Aldershot. And anyone without a buzz cut, blue stonewashed jeans and a white t-shirt sticks out like a sore thumb there.
In fact, the newspapers were suprised when the locals weren't upset about the Paratroop regiment being barracked elsewhere. After years of fights, vandalism and falling house prices I wonder why.
Chris Wareham
gays included in the list of persecuted groups because of Columbine? I see a lot of that here, and I don't understand it. The homosexual trench coat mafia idea was pretty much killed after it was said. Gays are a protected group under political correctness which the media and the NEA subscribes to. No gays were persecuted because of Columbine unless they were a gay goth, gay geek, etc. I don't know about goths, but there are hardly any gay geeks. To throw in gays as a persecuted group because of Columbine hurts getting at the truth which is geeks, goths, and several other outsider groups are getting persecuted as a result, but not gays.
nt
you know, the way people as a society are willing to destroy lives. They just weren't doing it the "social" way.
It takes more than a little emotional trauma to set someone off. Apparently, many of us fall into the category of "outsider", yet none of us have snapped. What does it take to turn an outcast into a mass murderer? Click here for some information that the media is not telling you.
>How much of a Minority population does Sweden have? Over 10% of the population here are first or second generation immigrants. Quite a lot of them are from the other Scandinavian countries, but there is still a large number of "non-northern European" immigrants. Funny coincidence: I was at a party yesterday welcoming the new computer science students to Uppsala University. Who sits at the table next to me, but Dan Berner, probably the most famous Swedish nazi. My future colleague. Bleaahh.... :(
Of course, you've obviously haven't done enough research yourself. If you'd _read_ the article rather than just having the browser search it for key words you might have noticed that the article occupies five (I think it was five, might have been six) pages. The words "gay" and "god" were in the article.
Excuse the AC post, but for reasons that will soon be obvious to the reader, it is necessary.
I don't know about this Luvox stuff (well, actaully, i take that back, i did know someone on luvox, and they were a little wierd...), but lets not get carried away by beating up Zoloft.
Zoloft has saved my life, and has made me productive again. I don't feel drugged, or paranoid, or manic. I feel good. i feel like me, before I was sick.
I agree that often, these types of drugs are prescribed as an easy answer to a complex problem, with tragic results. But let's remeber all of the people who would be dead/as good as dead without them.
You have heard that the ancients were told, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and "Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.'
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, "You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, "You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
Matthew 5:21-22 NASB
Ok, you are a hypocrite. America messes with the internal affairs of every fucking country but screams like pigs when it is hinted that the rest of the world might have opinions on how you uses and abuses the world. And don't think the American interference in other countries affairs is about human rights. NOOO....its about the almighty dollar. America destroys every international attempt to protect the environment, since it just might stop American companies from doing whatever they wish. America continues to sell land mines, torture equipment such as electroshock batons to any oppressive regime.
With regards to the gun issue: It doesn't matter what the reason is.
a) The availability of guns causes violence. America has lots of guns and you won't get rid of them soon. Children and others are slaughtered. Conclusion: America blows.
b) Its the culture. Other countries have as much weapons but far far less violent crime. Conclusion: America blows.
The story that Prozac caused suicides or manical rages was spread by Scientology in the media, since the fact that one little pill did more good than thousands of hours of their auditing threatened their income.
I live in a nice quiet neighborhood in the US, and theres a loaded 357 magnum in my closet. Why? Just because you live in a "safe" neighborhood doesn't mean something will *never* happen. You can't guarantee someone won't break in. Wouldn't you feel safer owning a gun? Anyone who invades my house and threatens my family won't live long.
Your experiences should show you that are reasons for learning about things like this. When people understand the actual reasons behind events, they don't make up reasons like has been after Columbine. If people were able to understand who these boys were and why they did what they did, the public would be less inclined to jump all over geeks, goths, weirdos, etc, etc.
There are millions of people who dress "weird", listen to "devil music", are Muslim (to throw in another overly stereotyped group), that do not act the same as others seemingly like them who hurt people. Ignorance breeds fear, as the old saying says, and the only way to combat ignorance is to learn. Maybe if you took the 10 minutes to read the article, you could teach somebody something, instead of just shutting your self off from the world because you've been treated bad.
I just want to point out that this is a matter of where you draw the line. For example, should I be allowed to buy nerve-gas for personal protection ? Why not ? I would be a mighty deterrant. "If I shoot that one, maybe his nervegas pods explodes".
Most countries have decided to not allow firearms, and I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that you are not allowed to have some types of weapons even in the most gun-liberal places in the US.
Finally I would like to say that personally I don't want to include handguns in what should be legal to have in your house. The arguments "if the criminals think they might get shot they wont rob & rape", "the constition allows guns" and guns as an "equalizer" between people are about as convincing to mee as those claiming "drinking is good for you" (French wine-growers), "smoking isn't THAT bad" (tobacco industry).
The Ukrainians have been getting the short end of the stick over the last few centuries too, IMHO.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
of everybody were right?
.... *CRUNCH*)
Has everyone forgotten the treatment that every 'different' person got after those killings?
Has everyone forgotten the schoolkids which were beaten, arrested, interrogated and barred from school because they were 'just thos trenchcoat-mafia murderers'?
Now it seems there was even less reason for this treatment. This wasn't a revenge of the geeks , but the geeks were still acused and *very* victimised about this whole thing. If anything there is more reason to scream out loud 'Innocent until proven guilty' as well as pointing out to people how much of their prejudices they were following.
No, I can't spell!
-"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
(tagadum,tagadum,tagadum
-"stop...."
"and the French have God knows what kind of mentality."
Well, we have the French mentality, what other mentality do you want us to have?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Let's start with both sets of parents. The Klebold kid was running around with Nazi regalia, but his Jewish mother (daughter of a famous Ohio philanthropist) was too chicken to set him straight. She feared she would damage his self esteem. The other clown was into bomb making for years. What did his daddy do? Essentially, nothing, except that he talked about his feelings.
The kids were in and out to reform school. To hear what the judges had to say about them was sickening. They basically enabled kids who were mean, destructive bullies that tortured animals.
The act itself was cowardly. What could be less brave than pointing a gun at a person without a gun?
The police were despicable. For all there vaunted assualt training, all they did was stay outside, hiding behind their squad cars until hours after the shooting was over. They did pour thousands of rounds of ammunition into the school building, randomly, long after these two jokers killed themselves.
Which brings us to the fifth set of cowards, the press. How many of these kids were killed by friendly fire? The autopsies are sealed, "for privacy." I'll bet. I'll bet half the deaths were the result of police bullets. You think I'm wrong? Half of all shootings of police are done by their partners.
Two countries that are often touted by the pro-gun lobby as reasons to keep the free availability of guns in the US: Switzerland and NZ, because both have high gun ownership. However, what they all fail to mention, is that if you carry a gun in a public place (say in the city or suburb) you WILL get arrested and you will be facing down the barrel of a few dozen specialised aremd police. You cannot carry a loaded (or even unloaded really) gun in public (I'm excluding hunting in the forest/bush/farmland).
And just try carrying a pistol/handgun in a public place.....
Both countries may have a lot of guns, but they are HEAVILY controlled. In NZ the gun must be kept locked in an approved gun safe/cabinet. The firing mechanism must be kept separate and have an approved lock, and the ammunition must also be stored separately and locked.
(Note: I am not commenting on the correctness or otherwise of the US gun policies)
I mean, come on. You have Dateline NBC and trucks (don't tell me you forgot _that_ one) and 20/20. In general, the media does seem less interested in style over substance. This is typical of professional media.
Slashdot _ISN'T_ professional media. It is a running commentary on life. It is a bunch of geeks/techies who comment on various things. At no time have I heard anyone in the slashdot org claim to be channeling Woodward or Bernstien or even Ed Murrow.
The problem is people who pontificate without regard to reality, fact finding, or any other attempt to verify. No doubt the final report on Columbine will be reported in the media, and will spark a lot of media "debate" (not that they will even get close to navel examining).
Besides, do we really trust the media? If you are smart, you haven't since Vietnam and Cronkite, who had a penchant for taping the most horrific scenes and calling it news. Liberal Media trying _hard_ to sway America.
I guess I can sum up my moment on the soap box by saying it this way. I'm not surprised by the Salon story, why are you?
Idiot.
I've seen this happen a lot as reporters come under pressure from thier editors to get something that none of the other papers have. In this instance rumour and conjecture equates fact and gets published, which is then referred to by other articles and so on.
Too true, but the real problem is that nobody, least of all the reporters on the spot, wanted to face the reality - every one of them was looking for a nice, simple (and preferably sensational) excuse for these people's actions.
What nobody wants to face is the faint echoes of frustration and hatred in themselves as they consider what really happened and why.
There are also a lot of disturbing implications in this and similar behaviour that significant parts of society like schools are dysfunctional. They are. Go visit the School Is Dead, Learn In Freedom website, for one example among many. Point by point, school is the single most difficult and debilitating way to learn things. Schools as a genre need not to be improved, but removed. They don't work. But few journos are brave enough to point this out with any firmness.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
but I know that in 1987 or so a retarded couple (IQ's both in the 60's) got married and had a kid, and while a lot of people tried to talk them out of it, nobody took any real action against it. 60 minutes recently had a big follow-up story about it.
Replace guns with encryption.
Yep, that's right. The number one reason that it doesn't make sense to outlaw encryption is also the number one reason that it doesn't make sense to outlaw guns: if they're a criminal, they use guns/encryption anyway, so why tread on my rights.
You might say, "Well, it would make it harder for them to get". BS. There are millions of guns out there. I think that the "average" American owns 2 guns. Most of these are hunting rifles, and most are in the hands of a relatively few individuals, but they are still there. The sheer number of guns in the US (and the world as a whole too) make them nearly impossible to get rid of.
Same thing with crypto. All I have to do is download a copy of it. If they outlawed crypto tomorrow I'd still have my copy of PGP on my HD. Foriegn hosts would have readily available copies beyond the reach of any single national government. It would be impossible to stamp out.
Let's say you actually did get rid of all of the guns. I gun is not exactly an atomic bomb. It's a tube with one open end and a bullet at the other. Somebody on some thread meantioned that some rebels somewhere (Afganistan?) made decent copies of the AK-47 from hand tools. They brought up the point of the availability of such things as drill presses in most industrialized countries. Even if you destroy every gun out there, some criminal (who doesn't even have to re-invent it, just copy some old, simple design) will be able to make more.
Same thing with encryption. Anybody can invent OTP. Anybody can memorize a good stream cipher. Anybody can look up the algorithms behind RSA in a decent encyclopedia. And anybody who can code worth a darn can implement these ideas into a usable program. If you kept everything to short text messages, you wouldn't even need something fancy like IDEA or 3-DES. You could just use raw RSA, which is a *very* powerful algorithm.
Pandora's Box has been opened. Guns and crypto exist. And any attempts to regulate them into oblivion will just fail. You just have to learn to live with their existance and concentrate on solving the problems that both create.
"Americans charge after success at any cost -- & the sacrifice of friendships or family ties is considered not only normal, but expected."
Do you think Hollywood epitomizes the US? Yes, there are SOME people who lead such shallow lives that they have to be numero uno at everything. But they are not the majority, or even a substantial minority. They are aberrations. It is not expected or condoned. I've lived in several cities and rural areas of the US, and just recently in the Silicon Valley. It is Silicon Valley that is not the norm. People here are different than anywhere else in the country. San Jose might as well be on a different planet for all the similarity it has with San Fransisco, a mere fifty miles north. And neither is Hollywood similar in any way to Los Angeles, Pasadena or Anaheim.
Instead, what seperates the US from some other societies is a tolerance for individualism. Sometimes this leads to ruthless competition. It also leads to new forms of expression, new counter cultures, and new political ideologies.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
How recently was the Swedish state sterilizing the disabled? Just curious because, well within living memory, many US states have done the exact same thing to the mentally disabled, minority groups like American Indians, etc.
Yes, the swastika is a modified form of a cross, and has been around for a very long time - long before the Nazi party and Hitler. Incidentally, there is a pretty good theory, with a lot of historical basis and facts to back it up, that the Nazi party was really a religious orginazation, fighting a "cult" war...
Anyhow, regarding the swastika - the reason the swastika can have points "leading" clockwise or counter-clockwise is not just a simple reversal, but more the use of this symbol of protection. For that is what the swastika is. It is similar in regard to a pentagram (which has been distorted to mean that if it is "upside down", you must be in league with Satan - though if it is "rightside up" - guess what? - you are still in league with Satan - at least according to some - grrr...) or a hexagram.
In many paganistic religions, "doing" something clockwise is different from doing the same thing counterclockwise. Just as a poor example - say you and your fellow pagans are dancing around a bonfire on a full moon night, linked arms, etc. - and chanting your "enemy's" name - dancing clockwise around the circle might mean "defence", like a shield - while counterclockwise would be an "offence" - casting a "magickal" spell toward the enemy.
The terms used to described clockwise and counterclockwise movement are "daosil" and "widdershins", respectively (I think I got those right - someone please correct me if I am wrong).
The fact that the Nazi party used a religious symbol to represent the party is only one example to show how they were ultimately a religious force (you also have ties to the Thules, various artifact finding expiditions to Tibet and Iceland, and a host of other facts to support this, as well)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Besides this article, Salon also has excerpts from Eric Harris' "diary." Among his writings: "You know what I hate? Star Wars fans: get a friggin life, you boring geeks." I thought this was interesting, given some of the the comments and speculation on Slashdot. While many of us (myself included) felt that we could identify w/ Eric and Dylan, they may have not been able to identify w/ us. Just food for thought.
So antidepressants are evil, overprescribed, and unnecessary?
My father though the same way. He has bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression). Before he went on lithium and prozac, home was a living Hell.
My ex-roommate's parents were against antidepressants too. She ended up on prozac after three suicide attempts.
Not every mental illness responds well to drugs. If you put someone with bipolar disorder on prozac, they can end up manic.
If Harris and Kleibold really were mentally ill, maybe we should blame them and take their illness into account, instead of blaming their meds.
Sorry if this sounds angry, but it seems that antidepressants are always condemned by people who have neer been affected by clinical depression.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
As I recall Adolph Hitler made a similar statement during the 1930's. We all know what he was trying to correct.
"This drug has been known to cause MANIA AND PSYCHOSIS in clinical trials!!!"
no less than 3 exclamation points, huh? too much coffee?
"Don't take my word for it:"
good, i won't.
yeah, nice link you got there. causes mania and psychosis you say? check your link: that's happens between 1/100 and 1/1000 cases. not something to get your panties in a bunch about. this drug isn't exactly the Problem With Kids Today, and it certainly wasn't "the magic cause" for harris and klebold.
oh, doctors... i bet those guys that bring home six-plus figure salaries and drive BMW's everywhere can't get any babes. yeah, they're probably real desperate to hit on all the drug-company reps. hell yeah. nice theory.
"these kids were drugged into doing this"? "make no mistake about it"? are *you* on drugs??? are you a totally worthless reference or are you doing this just to get attention? "doctors that pass this stuff out like it's candy?" yeah, i'll bet the doctors have nothing better to do all day than write prescriptions for silly drugs.
"oh... this kid doesn't really need any drugs, but let's write him some anyway. writing prescriptions is fun. i don't pay those damn malpractice insurance premiums for nothing!"
you're screwed up. you're making noise here. either go back to your bible or go write for 20/20.
It's what makes this country great. Now if only all those gun-gun shoot-shoot types would actually make the country safe instead of shoot off their cake holes on this thread.
So close and yet so far. Even if I agree with your conclusion, you can't get there with that reasoning. Dicta is extraneous, non-binding text in a judge's written decision. It is not applicable to statutes, regulations, or the U.S. Constitution. In statutory interpretation, each word is presumed to have meaning bearing on the subject. (At least not in the eighteen years I've been practicing law.) Now you can think about the implications of the phrases "well regulated", "security of [the] state" and how those might apply to a non-organized militia (organized militias being run by the states). You might still be correct, but tighten up your arguments a bit.
If you think deeply enough, you will have no single direction for your outrage.