The Big and Senseless Mass Shooting Thread

[JessFR]

Says the globalist living in Australia.

What you say here, in a nutshell, encapsulates so much about why America is viewed the way it is by the rest of the world. Insular doesn't begin to describe it.

You carry on talking up your 'freedoms' about property (ie guns) rights and how dastardly unfair and unfree it is to have them taken away.

Our countries will carry on enjoying our campuses and malls that don't need armed police roaming them. We have a word for it.

Freedom.

I'm not sure what exactly makes me a globalist, as for my not my problem comment, I was half joking, there's also context to it...

The post I was replying to is this

Elsewhere in the world there would be such outrage if 20 school children were shot dead that change would happen. Instead America are so set in their 1950's hysteria that there is more moral outrage that they won't be able to hunt turkeys.

This to me is a demonstration of someone talking out of their ass about things they know little about. Hence my tone in my reply...

It has nothing to do with hunting turkeys, or 50s hysteria, and America isn't elsewhere in the world. I don't care about elsewhere in the world, that's elsewhere in the world's problem. You seem to have no idea why the situation is the way it is based on what you're saying.

Obviously I'm saying that since we are in fact talking ABOUT America specifically, drawing a comparison to unspecified other countries and their reaction, which in and of itself has a lot of complex subtleties to go over as well depending on country, is an irrelevant point to make on its own and thus not relevant to a straightforward discussion of American gun politics. In short, what happens in the unspecified rest of the world on such a vague point is not my problem. Or to be more politically correct, it's too broad for me to be interested in branching out the topic into. In addition to that context, I also intentionally amped up the cliche american aspect of it in an attempt to annoy the poster as they annoyed me, which I clearly made far too subtle.

Now as for your point... it's again a faulty comparison.

Not many countries have an unarmed police, and two that do have armed police include Australia and (to my knowledge) New Zealand. Both countries globally praised for low gun violence and supposedly good gun laws. As such, having armed or unarmed police does not seem to be relevant to this subject. You'd have to investigate into more specific elements of police statistics to make decisions on the relative merits. Oddly enough, New Zealand despite being pretty much the same in the statistics on the crime side, has far freer gun control than the UK and Australia.

And as for the UK..... your gunless cops may be coming to an end. My understanding is the London bombing made some people in power question the wisdom of an unarmed police force.

 

[alasdairm]

i read that the nra has 4.5 million members. i don't know why 5 million gun-control activists don't just join and elect a different board...

alasdair

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Actual mass shootings have happened about every two months this year. The statistics of 200 plus draw from a larger set of parameters as compared to what most of us associate with mass shootings.

Can you elaborate on what those parameters are? I'm genuinely interested in how "mass shooting" is defined (and if different people have different definitions).

Droppers The killing of four or more people at a single location over a short period of time in the United States. This can be part of a shooting spree

Er...just to put some flesh on that as it were.

Umpqua is the 294th mass shooting event in 2015, as defined by the website Shootingtracker.com, which chronicles them as an event in which four or more people are shot.

By the FBI’s definition – four or more killed rather than four or more shot, a “mass murder” event rather than a “mass shooting” – there have been 45 such incidents this year, and 142 since Sandy Hook.

That’s just intentional homicides. Firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in America every year, according to the CDC; (Centre for Disease Control)

That means guns kill more people in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in the entire year of 2014.

...

 

[Droppersneck]

Ali Id agree with that but you have to think the only people generally in that camp middle aged soccer moms with lots of free time. Surely there are five million of them. I just think freedom and libertys intensity and conviction will be hard to match by anyone. I saw on msnbc some mothers of sandy hook parroting the very message you just posted so who knows maybe they will get it done lol

I live in Australia, and that's total bullshit. First, most Australians aren't even descended from convicts, they're descendants of people who chose to come here escaping shit like famine. And a lot of the convicts were convicts of status crimes like being poor. So that's all bullshit too.

And second, I have seen piles of Australians whom are rule and law obsessed. Frequently even asserting that something is virtually morally wrong by virtue of being illegal.

I had a chick try and make me walk home once in the pouring rain because she wouldn't risk driving the 5 minutes through back roads when my seatbelt in her car malfunctioned. And she's far from the only one I've seen like that. Don't consider yourself so special, you're like everywhere else in this respect, you have straight narc types and more rebellious types.

And look at your complete and total obsession about refugee's supposedly coming to Australia illegally and "jumping the queue". So you stick them all in offshore detention centers for the crime of being refugees, as the vast majority turn out to be. Guess they aren't australian enough to break unfair rules.

And of course you don't require lots of lawyers to protect your rights, you need to HAVE rights for that.

I feel truly bad for your situation. I'm sure having a nanny state has its upsides. I would say try and immigrate here, but that is damn near impossible or so I have been told. Do you guys have any political parties that are for shrinking the presence of government?

 

[spacejunk]

Pro tip: your reading comprehension could use some work, mate.

 

[alasdairm]

parroting

those people lost children and yet you can't resist snidely jabbing at them. i don't want or expect everybody to holds hands and hug each other but don't you have one ounce of human compassion for a parent whose kid was shot dead at a school? seriously

not to mention that the irony is obviously totally lost on you...

alasdair

 

[Droppersneck]

Shm I like how you left out the part of what they consider a mass shooting. It is defined as an incedent where shots are fired and four or more people are present. No one had to of been injured. So all four could of come out unscathed. The funny thing about statistics is you can skew them to say whatever you want. In this case it is extremely misleading at the very least. Every time Cletus shot his gun in the air at a hoe down it was a mass shooting apparently. The problem is partisans lap this shit up at face value and don't bother to due diligence.

 

[Droppersneck]

I do have compassion for them, but none for their partisan cause.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Shm I like how you left out the part of what they consider a mass shooting. It is defined as an incedent where shots are fired and four or more people are present. No one had to of been injured. So all four could of come out unscathed.

I left out nothing. If your case is so strong why do you need to be disingenuous? I only posted what I did because you failed to mention you were using FBI figures to start with. What I quoted from shooting tracker.com is correct. They require people to actually be shot in, you know, a shooting. They do not count, as you imply, any old hillbilly friend of yours firing off a gun in the air at a wedding of his cousins.

My sources are shooting trackers actual website, Newsweek and all other news sources I could find.

 

[spacejunk]

“It’s not the guns,” Trump said during his hourlong speech. “It’s the people, it’s these sick people.”

I just love how this turns into an exercise in stigmatising mental illness, not weapons.

And way to respond to someone that calls you out on posting misinformation, droppers. Nice work.

 

[JessFR]

Trump stigmatizes the mentally ill, as do many on the pro-gun side. Claiming that mass shootings should be dealt with by improving mental health services. Which is somewhat misleading, mental health problems are involved, but I doubt all mass shooters have treatable mental illness. And even if we improve mental health services, id be curious how many mass shooters would have been identified under such a hypothetical improved system.

On the other hand, the anti-gun stigmatize gun owners instead, calling them rednecks and generally finding ways to dismiss anything they say. Ironically both sides have much in common IMO. And my experience is neither are interested in constructive discussion that treats both sides with respect, how could they? Someone on one side will inevitably through a bad joke or insult, the other side responds in kind, and then the more moderate start joining in as group mind takes over. Its happened here.

I feel truly bad for your situation. I'm sure having a nanny state has its upsides. I would say try and immigrate here, but that is damn near impossible or so I have been told. Do you guys have any political parties that are for shrinking the presence of government?

I live in Australia in not Australian, I'm American. Ok actually it's more complicated than that, I'm a dual citizen raised in the US but moved with my family here in early teens. Apart from being too poor to afford moving. My bf is just Australian and so it would be difficult.

A lot of people think of Australia and the US as similar, and they are relative to a lot of other countries. But there are still a lot of cultural differences of opinion. Feeling like and being treated as foreign (cause of my accent first of all) and told to "go home" (which I'm starting to think of as like an Australian motto) has left me with a lot or animosity and why I generally just identify as American. I'm more American than I am Australian.

 

[Droppersneck]

I have read about how people in Australia are generally not very accepting of other cultures. I suspect being in such a controlled environment on an island has something to do with this. If I were you I would consider making the move back yourself and getting your self established and then sending for your bf. A couple here on bl did something similar. America has many faults but we are accepting of other cultures especially Anglo ones lol. Come taste the freedom you were born to.

 

[casual1]

... told to "go home" (which I'm starting to think of as like an Australian motto) has left me with a lot or animosity and why I generally
just identify as American.

Even aborigines in Australia get told to go back to their own country. I wouldn't take too much notice of the idiots.

I am just waiting to find out what psychiatric medication Chris Mercer was on.

You have to question American culture when they have so many mass shootings. Lots of countries have easy access to weapons, every country has mentally ill people. Only the US has 100 times more mass shootings than any other country.

 

[JessFR]

Even aborigines in Australia get told to go back to their own country. I wouldn't take too much notice of the idiots.

I am just waiting to find out what psychiatric medication Chris Mercer was on.

You have to question American culture when they have so many mass shootings. Lots of countries have easy access to weapons, every country has mentally ill people. Only the US has 100 times more mass shootings than any other country.

It's not so much the being told to go home part that bugs me, it's usually whatever the conversation is that leads up to it.

As for "why America", probably some of it is of countries with highish numbers of gun owners, the US is probably the biggest in population.

Also while I'm not trying to "blame" the media, I wonder if so much excessive coverage of them contributes to more people in that country going out and doing it.

 

[psychedelicsoul]

Idk mate. sandy hook was a pile of steaming horse shit. I don't know if all of them are bs but some of them for sure are.

EXACTLY!!!! It's obvious Sandy Hook was a set up to draw the medias attention from the truth... So nobody figures out that 9/11 was an inside job meant to cover-up the truth about Obama's birth certificate. You see, the jewish people have been contacting aliens since the Kabbalah, and they abducted JFK... so the JFK that was killed was actually a clone. But the ghost of that clone is... you know who... George Bush, who's really Obama's half-brother, who helped Bush build the weather machine to cause the Katrina disaster.
It's all part of the master plan to control the masses from inside the Matrix.

Now your eyes have been opened

 

[psychedelicsoul]

I just love how this turns into an exercise in stigmatising mental illness, not weapons.

And way to respond to someone that calls you out on posting misinformation, droppers. Nice work.

Oh I see... so his weapon made him do the shooting, not ideology or mental illness.

 

[casual1]

If people want weapons to defend themselves then why aren't landmines legal?

If a person was asleep at home and an intruder broke in, how is a gun going to help? Landmines on the otherhand would just be lying in wait for such a scenario.

 

[Bardeaux]

^Also, as if a civil war broke out in the US*, Americans couldn't build landmines or raid an arsenal holding them.


*for those who are worried

 

[Droppersneck]

Bwahahah liberals hate freedom so much. Not that there is anything wrong with disliking freedom as an American that is your right.

 

[cashfl0w_d0nkey]

In light of Hillary Clinton announcing her intended gun control measures in New Hampshire today (for those unfamiliar with New England, New Hampshire is Massachusetts' country neighbor-- much more conservative, takes pride in gun ownership, etc.), I had a look at gun ownership and gun violence statistics in New England, and what I found was actually pretty surprising. Contrasting a lot of what has been said in this thread, the states in New England that have highest gun ownership have the lowest rates of gun crime and vice versa. I then looked at the rest of the country and I have to say that any statistic that tries to tie gun ownership as a percentage of the population to gun murders at the state level is a contrived statistic. It seems that gun murders are simply tied to urban areas with high amounts of poverty.