The Big and Senseless Mass Shooting Thread

[alasdairm]

...if you decide to go to college or a theater carry a gun...

right.

thanks for totally avoiding the main point.

alasdair

 

[Droppersneck]

Better yet move to a country that was constructed with founding principles that better meets your personal needs. Violent crime rates are the same in Euro countries only there you get stabbed or bludgeoned more than shot. Id take getting shot anyday, but not like I have to worry about this as I do not live in a major urban area. The people that founded this country knew the dangers of firearms and other weaponry but they still amended it second only to freedom of speech. This was not a willy nilly decision as history is doomed to repeat itself and they knew this.

 

[alasdairm]

'if you don't like it leave' is such a weak cop out.

alasdair

 

[Droppersneck]

Not really if you think about it. All those mexicans that disliked living in a authoritarian narco state left for greener pastures. Heck Im guessing you are a duel citizen even. All that said Id like background checks beefed up and loop holes closed, but you know this.

 

[alasdairm]

i.e. like many people you mock and criticise, you believe in more regulation of firearms.



alasdair

 

[Droppersneck]

Not really brother I just stand firm against the government banning even a single class of small arms. It is such an incredibly slippery slope the people need to be cautious. Look at Australia ffs

 

[herbavore]

If the whole of the rest of the advanced 'civilised' world was looking at me aghast and telling me I was wrong...I'd examine my psyche.

This thread is as shocking to right thinking people as the incident that brought it about.

You would think that would be true, wouldn't you? Instead, some of us will line one side of a street with candles for another vigil and the other half will go out with signs saying "Don't take my guns away!" and line the opposite side of the street. Then we will go home and wait for the next young man to implode on the toxic waste of a dying culture.

The thought of armed guards at schools is a repugnant image. I don't think this is the way to go, though I understand the emotion behind it.

 

[alasdairm]

Not really brother

Id like background checks beefed up and loop holes closed

yes really.

alasdair

 

[cashfl0w_d0nkey]

The thought of armed guards at schools is a repugnant image. I don't think this is the way to go, though I understand the emotion behind it.

Mine is an emotionless response. It is a solution reached by looking at the problem and the possible solutions and choosing the most readily implementable one.

Many colleges have campus police already. Every state school I'm familiar with certainly does. We have armed police all over the rest of society, why should colleges be any different? I think the only argument against it is one of cost, but even still, colleges spend lots of money on their campuses, etc... They can arrange a couple $100k for a police force.

 

[alasdairm]

alasdair

 

[nuttynutskin]

I'll say the same thing I said on here before quite a while ago... Forget about the idea of gun free zone signs stopping homicidal psychopaths and give teachers at least the option of handgun training and carrying. It's good to have a campus cop on the premises but if they're on the opposite side of the campus when one of these assholes strikes there's not much they can do before the damage is already done.

People are less isolated in Europe too. If someone starts talking crazy, acquaintances will call them out on it. Not so in the USA. Nobody will say anything, and they will ostracize you.

And, bingo... I see it all the time with these shootings unfortunately. People talk about all of these warning signs they noticed with the shooter but no one does anything about it til it's too late.

 

[cashfl0w_d0nkey]

alasdair

We're not talking about suicides or people being killed by firearms though. We're talking about gun deaths resulting from crime. In 2013, New Hampshire had 21 murders, 5 by firearm, resulting in a rate of 0.4 firearm deaths per 100,000. That's lower than the 1.2 in Massachusetts. Connecticut has much stricter gun laws than Rhode Island and yet were equal at 1.7 per 100,000 that year. Looking at the multi-year statistics, Massachusetts and Connecticut, the two states in New England with the strictest gun laws, have the highest rates of gun deaths resulting from crime. Flimsy evidence for the effectiveness of such measures, especially in light of the fact that the Newtown shooting happened in CT.

My point isn't that I think more guns floating around is the answer. My point is that increased gun regulation doesn't actually solve the problem.

 

[JessFR]

Also, ill say again, "gun-related" is stupid, who cares if you ban guns, lower gun deaths only to have stabbing related deaths increase by the same amount. Give me a statistic that says the same thing laid out by type of death and showing deaths total and I for one will give it serious consideration.

 

[One Thousand Words]

It's a hell of a lot harder to stab 20 people to death compared to standing in the door way of a classroom and taking pot shots from a distance

 

[spacejunk]

i sincerely doubt that stabbing a person is as simple as shooting them.
Having done niether, this is rather hypothetical, bjt the question still remains.

What is it about having weapons that is so synonymous with the concept of 'freedom' to some people?
Guns don't deserve rights. People do.
Is that so revolutionary?

Also i have to laugh at droppers' continual appeals to my patrotic sentiment, in insulting australia/ns in the most hackneyed comments imaginable. You're aiming them at the wrong guy.
Also, i didnt realised the USA was so culturally/enthically intergrated, what with your ghettos and alll...
Every country has its shortcomings. Then United States' just get played out so well in soundbytes that people take them at face value.
That, and you done learned everything there is to know 'bout 'straya on that there teevee.

 

[JessFR]

Again. I'm interested in ACTUALLY fixing or improving the problem, I'm not a politician, I'm utterly uninterested in appearing to fix the problem. As such, my interest is in data, not hysteria and media circuses. People are in fact stabbed in large numbers at a time, I just doesn't make for as much news, and so it can happen more often and yet people would still think the shootings are a bigger problem.

If you make policy based on the headlines, you're a politician. I'm sorry that it sounds cold, I know it does, but you have to be if you want to solve problems effectively. You can't let yourself be influenced by anything but cold hard facts. It may sound cold, but it's not, it's about doing what it takes to affect change. It's about saving as many people as possible, thus doing the most good. It's not about saving the victims the media likes at the behest of anyone else. That's why you need to go only off the data, and only with respect to the overall problem, the overall problem is death, murder, meaningless suicide, violent crime, ect. Action on gun law must be ensured to create overall change, not just change in the way the phenomenon happens, ignoring its quantity.

We all want to fix the problem, the only difference is I want to use science. Not instinct.

 

[JessFR]

Also, in terms of a link between firearms and rights. I my opinion, and unlike many others who like me doesn't believe in the kind of gun control being proposed, I don't think there is any inherent link.

People talk of securing possible revolution, which won't happen so long as your average American still has HBO, or stuff like that. To me it's about freedoms generally, all freedoms. Everything is permitted until legislated otherwise. In short, everything should be legal and permissible in law until there is genuine, rationally and scientifically backed reason to make it illegal. Most Australians I've known don't follow that philosophy. As has been evidenced here with spacejunk, utterly uninterested in mere technicalities like if Australian gun control worked. Working is not a primary objective.

 

[nuttynutskin]

It's a hell of a lot harder to stab 20 people to death compared to standing in the door way of a classroom and taking pot shots from a distance

How about blowing up a whole federal building? Was pretty easy for Timothy McVeigh.

 

[One Thousand Words]

Last time I check bombs weren't covered by the 2nd amendment

 

[spacejunk]

There are a lot of false dichotomies in there.
You say you want to "fix" this problem, but want to ignore facets such as 'quantity' and everything except 'cold hard facts'?

Who gets to determine what these 'facts' actually are? Is that not another elemant subject to manipulation of evidence by "politicians"?
Placing these tragedies in the "too hard basket" time and time again - dismissing them as anomolies - is disingenuous, and seems to indicate a discomfort in engaging in any sort of debate regarding the prevalence of gun violence in the USA.
Want evidence of this? Try the slander of australians evoked by someone attempting to start a dialogue on the topic.

If you want to talk "science" and not "hysteria", try dropping the nationalistic defensiveness. I don't care where people are from, only what they have to say.

In short, everything should be legal and permissible in law until there is genuine, rationally and scientifically backed reason to make it illegal. Most Australians I've known don't follow that philosophy. As has been evidenced here with spacejunk, utterly uninterested in mere technicalities like if Australian gun control worked. Working is not a primary objective.

There is ample scientific proof that guns don't do anything useful except acts of violence (unlike, erm, knives). If you really believe this is about science - which honestly i don't.
What exactly is the problem with another country not following your country's (arguably misinterpreted) 19th century dogma?