Another School shooting

[Space05us]

I'd appreciate that you people who hate America, go piss on your own freedoms.. not ours.

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[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Space05us

I'd appreciate that you people who hate America, go piss on your own freedoms.. not ours.

forum; A public meeting place for open discussion.
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I'm talking about real life.

I didn't afterall tell them to shut up.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ted Striker



What blows my mind is that nearly every observer that lives outside of the US keeps saying the same thing, OVER AND OVER.

You Americans have too many guns and are too violent.

It's not even something they have to study or debate. It's blindingly obvious to them on the DUH level.

But our own population continues to delude itself with all this guns and Constitution crap. The answer is blindingly obvious to outsiders.

How many of your friends have been killed by guns Ted? I don't know anyone who has been even wounded by a firearm outside of warfare, and this includes literally hundreds of people who have lived every day of their lives with a gun (or more often several) and ammunition in their home, and who shoot for recreation, hunting or to protect their livestock on a regular basis.

Quite simply gun violence in America is not a problem for the vast majority of its citizens. As with terrorism a relatively few acts are magnified by the press (and particularly the foreign press) which make it seem as though one can't get through one's day in the U.S. without stepping over bodies. But the reality is that most people will never know someone who was murdered by a firearm. For these people there are a lot more pressing problems, like the several people they know who have serious mental health problems and no insurance coverage to speak of.

This is one of those noisy issues that gets a lot of press and sucks the oxygen from problems that have less voyeuristic / horror appeal and yet are much larger problems with simpler and less controversial solutions.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ted Striker

Concealed weapons specifically are used more than any other weapon. There is a reason for that.

They are, well, concealable.

The kids at Columbine even used a machine pistol and a sawed off shotgun.

The kids at Columbine did not use a "machine pistol", they used a Tech-9, which is a semi-automatic piece of crap that looks like a machine pistol but is in fact a good deal less useful than a proper 9mm handgun.

And yes they sawed off a shotgun, and fired birdshot out of it! Unfortunately for their cowering victims (advice for anyone in a similar situation is "A moving target is harder to hit and eventually tends to get away.") they fired from such close range (point blank) that any shotgun load acts like a big slug. But their scattergun would have not been lethal beyond a few meters.

What advantage they gained by using concealable weapons escapes me, as they opened fire outside of the school after retrieving their weapons from their car.

The advantage that law-abiding citizens gain from the fact that other law-abiding citizens may carry concealed weapons (depending on the jurisdiction) is that bad guys can't be sure who is packing, which is certainly a deterrent.

Bad guys use concealed weapons because they don't want to raise suspicion. Good guys carry them because they don't want to create a constant panic among soccer mom's who don't realize that their own suburb is actually armed to the teeth, and despite what they've heard should happen, it hasn't turned into a free fire zone due to the sheer density of weapons.

The will to do harm is the key to violence. The 911 hijackers killed almost 3000 people armed only with box cutters and an idea. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 with fertilizer and fuel oil. We aren't going to be able to coerce our way to security in this world, an argument you seem to understand on the international level. On a national level we aren't going to be able to limit the tools used by a tiny percentage for mayhem to the extent that we can significantly put a dent in the mayhem.

If we're really serious about fighting violence we could start off by giving it the media coverage it deserves, which is negligible. We are in love with our mass murderers, and all one has to do is note that much of the prime time schedule and much of the news as well is all about violent crime. This is a cultural and mass psychological problem, not a technological or freedom problem. Good healthy people don't shoot others except for self-defense, and good healthy societies don't glorify murder to the extent that ours does.

[Demerzel]

All I know is that I'm glad I don't have the right to carry a gun around. But hey if Americans want that freedom then they have to accept the consequences when something like this happens, or the disturbing case recently of the little boy shooting his sibling with his mother's pistol...

What would be interesting I suppose would be to see a comparison of the number of gun related ( & other ) deaths per thousand people for different countries around the world.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Demerzel
All I know is that I'm glad I don't have the right to carry a gun around. But hey if Americans want that freedom then they have to accept the consequences when something like this happens, or the disturbing case recently of the little boy shooting his sibling with his mother's pistol...

What would be interesting I suppose would be to see a comparison of the number of gun related ( & other ) deaths per thousand people for different countries around the world.

It was interesting, about 20 gun threads ago. Suffice it to say that even where the highest rates of gun deaths occur, it is rare.

[Odin]

Gian, you have no "right" to own a gun. The 2nd Amendment was to prevent a hypothetical tyrannical federal government from disarming state-controled millitias. It has nothing to do with personal ownership of weapons. It becomes obvious if you read the whole amendment carefully.

The sad thing about this is that it became legal to carry concealed weapons in public here just last year.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Giancarlo


Yeah in the UK you have an example of where crime is skyrocketing... by other means... like knives.
DEBUNKED!

Ah yes, the infamous spree stabbings from water towers where 12 people are knifed to death by expert mass murderers throwing Ikea bread knives and sharpened potato peelers.

[Ming]

Don't even bother responding to Giancarlo... he's toast for a week.

And I would recommend that people discuss the topic, and not the posters... because you could be next to go

[Odin]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Ah yes, the infamous spree stabbings from water towers where 12 people are knifed to death by expert mass murderers throwing Ikea bread knives and sharpened potato peelers.

[Patroklos]

I agree that banning guns is wrong, for the constitutionality of it, but also the impracticality of it. It would take 200+ years before a ban would mean a damn thing to criminals. Same goes for those who have them in their homes.

But I will humor you Whaleboy, how exactly do you plan to recover all these weapons from society? As far as the illegal ones, we would have the same problems as now. But how do you plan on getting my gun? Are you going to send the cops, the feds, the military? Surffice to say most of these people are owners of private firearms and probobly would be too enthusiastic. Surffice to say most private citizens won't give them up willingly, and since your arguement is iminent danger to innocents you can't just let them keep them. You are talking about a bloodbath. And I can think of a few groups of people that would be near exterminated in the process, and none of them are the gun owners.

Anyways, I agree that the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to arm MILITIAS, and thus the national guard. The only private citizens who should be able to own weapons are the ones that know how to use them properly, ie military and police types. And yes, they should be locked in arsenels. Then again, you guys don't trust us much now do you

[OzzyKP]

Poor Gian...

My blog entry on this: http://www.oneandfour.org/

[alva]

Originally posted by Ming
Don't even bother responding to Giancarlo... he's toast for a week.

And I would recommend that people discuss the topic, and not the posters... because you could be next to go

Ah c'mon, he wasn't that bad in this thread. Besides, I love to watch him "debate" in favour of the gun-lobby.

Ah yes, the infamous spree stabbings from water towers where 12 people are knifed to death by expert mass murderers throwing Ikea bread knives and sharpened potato peelers.

[MOBIUS]

Guns don't kill people - people kill people...

Originally posted by Giancarlo

Yeah in the UK you have an example of where crime is skyrocketing... by other means... like knives. So your strawman attacks don't really hold up now do they? Banning guns didn't stop the skyrocketing rate in crime in the UK. In fact during the same time violent crime is falling in the US nationally. So your argument DOES NOT HOLD.

DEBUNKED!

And at Molly Bloom's response...

Skyrocketing crime...

It is true we have been experiencing greatly increased rates of gun crime due to Yardie gangs etc, however these are still minuscule compared to the US precisely because we are not awash with guns and they are that much more difficult to get hold of...

Interestingly we had a gun incident today involving the police where one person was killed - this made HEADLINE NATIONAL NEWS...

Perhaps the most notable thing about this incident was the fact that in a city of 300,000 this was apparently the first time the Humberside police force had EVER had to use a firearm in anger!

I know what situation I prefer.

[Patroklos]

I know what situation I prefer.

It hardly matters, as you cannot disarm America and especially its criminals.

This is one instance where Europe benefits from having been ruled by authoritain states for centuries.