Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on December 14, 2012, 11:57:54 pm
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20730717
Hot on the heels of a multiple stabbing in a school in China.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
Now, whilst I fully expect this conversation to mention the difference in fatalities between the knife attack and the gun attack, the real concern here is that fact that schools seem to be becoming more and more a target for mentally unstable people wanting to prove a point as loudly as possible.
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I think the issue is greater than just schools. There's a disturbing trend in the last few years of more shootings in general, not simply restricted to schools. All of them are getting much better publicity than ever before, too.
I hate to put it so simply, but I think that increased publicity is exactly the problem, or at least part of it. Anyone going in to do this kind of thing knows beforehand, that successful or not, devastating or not, their name is going to be plastered all over the nation (and even world) for days afterward.
For someone already going to off themselves, that's an incentive to make it bigger.
Now, don't mistake that as a reason for all of them, or probably even a majority of them. I am, however, fairly sure that in at least a few cases, the guaranteed publicity from such an act was enough to "upgrade" it from a mere suicide to a mass shooting.
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We need better health care for the mentally ill.
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Do you really want to open up this particular can of worms?
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We need better health care for the mentally ill.
got to agree there. ive been trying to get the government to pay my insanity bill for like 5 years now.
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The can of worms that many of these shooters are likely mentally ill and that the shootings and the shooters' deaths or imprisonment could likely be prevented if the poor had better access to mental healthcare and if mental illness wasn't so stigmatized in the US in general? That one? Because that actually sounds like a good one to get into instead of another GUN CONTROL RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE thread.
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We need better health care for the mentally ill.
got to agree there. ive been trying to get the government to pay my insanity bill for like 5 years now.
Here he goes again... :rolleyes:
Just shut the thread down. Nothing good can come of it.
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I will say that the FBI did itself no favours with its 'watchlist' that identifies a typical school shooter, but I will also say, as an outsider, that the US's apparently high usage of psychiatric drugs on younger people does concern me. A small part of me is worried that the supposed treatment may well be part of the problem.
With regards to gun laws, I will clarify that whilst it may impact casualities, it does prove that access to guns is not causal in any way to the act.
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The can of worms that many of these shooters are likely mentally ill and that the shootings and the shooters' deaths or imprisonment could likely be prevented if the poor had better access to mental healthcare and if mental illness wasn't so stigmatized in the US in general? That one? Because that actually sounds like a good one to get into instead of another GUN CONTROL RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE thread.
i have a right to defend myself against the sane people and ravenous bucks. yea lets not go there.
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*Post deleted. I'm not getting sucked in.*
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most of the time the shooter suicides so nobody really has a clue about what their motives are.
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Thing is, even if they do have a 'motive' it's often more an 'excuse', if they had not had that excuse, they would soon have found another.
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There is a very, very good reason that this should not turn into a gun control thread.
There was nothing to control here. Gun control only works when the perpetrator of a gun crime expects to be able to get away with it and not be found and making it much more difficult for such to happen. There was no such motivation here. There was no background event to fail the check. He was obviously patient enough for the waiting period. This is not the kind of thing that gun control would protect against in the slightest.
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and look at the school stabbing in china, you apparently dont need a gun to go on a murderous rampage.
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Guns don't affect the cause, but they do affect the outcome.
That said, the US is far more likely to hand out bullet proof vests to schools than legislate guns, it's a safer political route.
I can understand the needs for guns in the more remote areas of the US, where there is the possibility of threat from wild animals. Often a shot into the air is enough to drive off an over-inquisitive bear, but, like all laws, it's not just about what is written down, it is about why it was written down and how relevant that is to modern US society.
In simplest terms, the Constitution is not the Bible, and the Amendments are not Commandments. To my mind, I need more of an argument than "Someone said it was OK 200 years ago.". Whilst that doesn't mean that the US Gun laws are inherently wrong, the simple fact that 'the Constitution says so' is not sufficient.
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Why is there actually never an armed patriotic american nearby to stop the amok running person before he can kill at least a dozen people?
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Flip's post prompted me to look up a comparison between shootings in the US, to other countries
It may be wikipedia, but it does provide some perspective regardless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States
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I honestly cannot think of very much at all that your average Joe would need a semi-automatic weapon for, apart from Sport Shooting. Gun control over here in Australia effectively means 'no guns', which copped a lot of flak at the time that our Prime Minister Howard introduced the pieces of legislation that turned us into the firearms nanny-state, but at least we've never had a mass shooting in the 16 years since its been introduced, compared to 15 mass shootings in the 16 years leading up to it. Unfortunately you folks seem to have far more an entrenched gun culture than we ever did over here.
Whatever happens with these laws, I'm just pretty shaken that 27 people got shot today.
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I wonder if this discussion can be relevant if you exclude gun control as it is a base aspect of the problem, I know you can use explosives, knives and any manner of weapons to do stuff like this but ultimately having legal access to a mag/clip loaded semi auto makes the act much easier.
having said that Gun control is not the (please excuse the pun) magic bullet as this is a multi faceted issue where open minded attitudes to mental health issues would help reduce the instances of these acts.
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Gun control is a peripheral issue in these things, I'm afraid. The bigger issue at play is the environment that is responsible for getting people to a point where they think that killing a lot of people is just the thing to relieve the burdens of your life.
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Flip's post prompted me to look up a comparison between shootings in the US, to other countries
It may be wikipedia, but it does provide some perspective regardless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States
No shooting in Switzerland. How is that possible?..
Why is there no mentally sick people in Switzerland? [at least committing such things]
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I think it boils back down to support for those with mental health issues again. Switzerland does have problems with mental health issues, but are more willing to confront the problem...
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Swiss_count_the_cost_of_mental_illness.html?cid=6361418
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No shooting in Switzerland. How is that possible?..
Why is there no mentally sick people in Switzerland? [at least committing such things]
Because maybe they have a better handle on how to head these things off before they happen?
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You also have to take a look at the population
There's only seven point six million people in Switzerland
http://www.indexmundi.com/switzerland/demographics_profile.html
Meanwhile, there's three hundred and thirteen in the United States
http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/demographics_profile.html
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Why is there actually never an armed patriotic american nearby to stop the amok running person before he can kill at least a dozen people?
I'm certain this is some flavor of sarcasm, but I would add that with the trend of mass-shootings comes a fairly constant aspect to them: most of them occur in firearm and knife-free zones. No one is actually armed, and probably not sufficiently trained, to combat the sick bastard before he or she may take those lives. For the people that will scream gun control in this instance, it's a fairly weak argument, as it illustrates a case where law-abiding citizens followed the law, and a fringe element couldn't care less about the law.
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Why is there actually never an armed patriotic american nearby to stop the amok running person before he can kill at least a dozen people?
Because schools are gun free.
Not even school security can carry guns in school zones, so pretty much every other law abiding patriotic American also has to leave their gun at home.
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Flip's post prompted me to look up a comparison between shootings in the US, to other countries
It may be wikipedia, but it does provide some perspective regardless
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shootings_in_the_United_States
No shooting in Switzerland. How is that possible?..
Why is there no mentally sick people in Switzerland? [at least committing such things]
Interestingly, Switzerland is very big on sport shooting, military duty is compulsory, and they're required to keep their military-issued equipment (including assault rifle) with them at home.
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Interestingly, Switzerland is very big on sport shooting, military duty is compulsory, and they're required to keep their military-issued equipment (including assault rifle) with them at home.
Therefore the problem is not with the guns but somewhere else.
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Dug up this old piece on Reddit, it's Marilyn Manson's commentary on the Columbine shooting (wait, wait, bear with me here); I think it's actually very insightful and well-articulated. It's a bit of a read, but it's definitely worth the time.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/columbine-whose-fault-is-it-19990624
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Also, two snippets that popped up on my Facebook feed that are more directly related to the Sandy Hook tragedy.
"Events like this, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: if I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
-Roger Ebert
"We've had 20 years of mass murders, throughout which I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media, if you don't want to propagate more mass murders:
1. Don't start the story with sirens blaring.
2. Don't have photographs of the killer.
3. Don't make this 24-7 coverage.
4. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero.
5. Do localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market.
Because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder we can expect to see one or two more within a week."
-Dr. Park Dietz
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Dug up this old piece on Reddit, it's Marilyn Manson's commentary on the Columbine shooting (wait, wait, bear with me here); I think it's actually very insightful and well-articulated. It's a bit of a read, but it's definitely worth the time.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/columbine-whose-fault-is-it-19990624
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Also, two snippets that popped up on my Facebook feed that are more directly related to the Sandy Hook tragedy.
"Events like this, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: if I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
-Roger Ebert
"We've had 20 years of mass murders, throughout which I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media, if you don't want to propagate more mass murders:
1. Don't start the story with sirens blaring.
2. Don't have photographs of the killer.
3. Don't make this 24-7 coverage.
4. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero.
5. Do localize this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market.
Because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder we can expect to see one or two more within a week."
-Dr. Park Dietz
Very true. When I could contemplate suicide, I would contemplate mass-murder/suicide in exactly that context. (Don't worry, I'm not actually at risk of suicide and/or murder. I've just thought about it a lot.)
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borrowed from facebook.
(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/563782_10152346240575052_1565391745_n.jpg)
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We need better health care for the mentally ill.
Battuta has said all that I think needs to be said on the matter.
/$.02
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borrowed from facebook.
(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/563782_10152346240575052_1565391745_n.jpg)
Absolutely. This man was evil and/or psychotic, and the media cannot be held responsible for his actions.
Last night I heard a talk show host say that there might have been less people killed if the teachers were armed. What are your thoughts on this?
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Yes. Let's arm school teachers and allow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong.
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Personally, my thoughts on that are a little mixed. In this particular instance it would of been good for the teachers to have guns (provided they were calm enough to locate the shooter), but then there's the possibly of a teacher committing a similar massacre in the future.
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Agreed. Maybe it's time school security and teachers started carrying guns. While I understand the reasons for not allowing this, I think that some school shooters would be discouraged by a chance of being shot before killing anyone. Right now, once inside he's inside the school, the shooter is pretty much safe from any harm. Teachers are, in general, more mentally stable than most teenagers. How do they stay so is beyond me, but at least from my experience, they're pretty good at it. I don't think a teacher would draw a weapon unless it was absolutely necessary.
No shooting in Switzerland. How is that possible?..
Why is there no mentally sick people in Switzerland? [at least committing such things]
Interestingly, Switzerland is very big on sport shooting, military duty is compulsory, and they're required to keep their military-issued equipment (including assault rifle) with them at home.
Swiss mentality is different and most things in there (probably including mental healthcare) are extremely efficient, in no small part thanks to it being so small and rich.
That said, the US is far more likely to hand out bullet proof vests to schools than legislate guns, it's a safer political route.
This creates an... interesting mental image of a "school uniform" consisting of MCCUU cammies, MTV and an LWH, all with school logo in place of EGAs. Could help solve the problem of school shootings (well, of somebody besides the shooter dying in them, at least), but would be a bit cumbersome to wear, especially for an elementary schooler. The problem with body armor is that it's cumbersome and heavy, so hardly anyone would wear it unless school shootings were an everyday occurrence.
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I have no problem with teachers wearing body armor, but I don't think it would be terribly useful without a way to quickly take down a shooter.
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Why is there actually never an armed patriotic american nearby to stop the amok running person before he can kill at least a dozen people?
This is because 1) if the person running amok is actually stopped, there's no way to tell how many people he would have killed unimpeded; and 2) unimpeded mass rampages are much more newsworthy than thwarted mass rampages.
Because of #2, you seldom hear about these events, but they do occur. You just have to go looking for them.
http://citizensvoice.com/news/police-bar-patron-shot-plymouth-homicide-suspect-1.1371076
An armed patron stopped a gunman's shooting rampage early Sunday outside a Plymouth bar, shooting the suspect multiple times on East Main Street after he fatally shot one man and critically wounded another, arrest papers revealed.
Investigators said the suspect, William J. Allabaugh, 25, shot a man in the head inside Bonnie's Food and Spirits just before 2 a.m., then fatally shot another customer outside the 133 E. Main St. pub.
When Allabaugh pointed his semi-automatic pistol at another patron, the man, Mark Ktytor, pulled his own gun and fired multiple rounds at Allabaugh, according to arrest papers. The shots dropped Allabaugh to the ground and left him with critical injuries, police said.
Yes. Let's arm school teachers and allow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong.
So let's disarm school teachers and disallow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong either...
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Yes. Let's arm school teachers and allow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong.
So let's disarm school teachers and disallow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong either...
Are you actually advocating arming teachers and allowing guns on school property? In a serious sense?
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You Americans and your wonderful, precious guns...
Here in the UK we have about 1/5 of your population, many cultural similarities and about 1/200 of your shooting deaths. No one has guns, not even the cops.
Over there every Tom Dick has a gun. You can just buy a gun, you pick up bullets from a grocery store. Guns are just a part of your life, of course people are going to use them. That and the whole macho man image America likes to project. So when you pull a gun on someone and they don't back down, you're going to think "Oh, I'm going to look like a ****ing pussy now if I don't shoot..."
:snipe:
That and everybody who wants to fight is going to be packing a gun because everyone has a gun, instead of using their fists or at worse a knife or a bat.
:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
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Thing is, with new things like impact gel, bullet-proof clothing is shedding weight fast.
My concern about arming teachers is that, should the shooter kill them first, instead of having a weapon, they now have two. Many shooters continue until they either run low on ammo or are killed themselves, more weapons means more opportunities to kill and could actually up the death count. Not to mention the absolute ****storm if a teacher misses and hits another pupil, such a risk would cause hesitation and put the ball even further into the shooters' court who has no such concerns.
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Thing is, with new things like impact gel, bullet-proof clothing is shedding weight fast.
My concern about arming teachers is that, should the shooter kill them first, instead of having a weapon, they now have two. Many shooters continue until they either run low on ammo or are killed themselves, more weapons means more opportunities to kill and could actually up the death count. Not to mention the absolute ****storm if a teacher misses and hits another pupil, such a risk would cause hesitation and put the ball even further into the shooters' court who has no such concerns.
Put guns in the hands of teachers and they'll start pulling them on their classes. All it takes is a teacher having a rough time in life, and a class full of relentless dicks and the gun comes out and
:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
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That sounds like just about every FPS ever.
"How do we stop Gordon Freeman? I know, let's throw a bunch of mp7s at him!"
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You Americans and your wonderful, precious guns...
Here in the UK we have about 1/5 of your population, many cultural similarities and about 1/200 of your shooting deaths. No one has guns, not even the cops.
Over there every Tom Dick has a gun. You can just buy a gun, you pick up bullets from a grocery store. Guns are just a part of your life, of course people are going to use them. That and the whole macho man image America likes to project. So when you pull a gun on someone and they don't back down, you're going to think "Oh, I'm going to look like a ****ing pussy now if I don't shoot..."
:snipe:
That and everybody who wants to fight is going to be packing a gun because everyone has a gun, instead of using their fists or at worse a knife or a bat.
:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
Thank you for that wonderfully uneducated series of posts...
While it may be true that firearms do enable violent crimes to be conducted more easily, the mindset of the criminal is still the problem. Under ideal conditions, if everyone (with absolutely no exceptions) was forced to abandon their arms, perhaps the world would be more safe. As you noted, the UK seems to set a decent example. And then there is the exact same, yet opposite European example, where a well-armed (and trained, the other critical factor) population is remarkably safe and peaceful, Switzerland. Your argument ultimately doesn't hold, because the issue is a social and, ultimately, a personal problem.
...The argument you hold that firearm owners are uneducated meatheads just waiting to blast away at their neigbors is one of horrid ignorance, and unfortunately is communicated by the popular media quite freely. I doubt you have ever had any firearm training or any other sort of martial discipline when you make your claims. And I'll also bet you're all to happy to buy into the popular entertainment industry's glorification of violence and revel therein. I encourage you to challenge your own current beliefs on the matter and look to social discipline and personal responsibility as means of rectifying the issue rather than blaming a device used by an unstable human being as the root of the problem.
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I was gonna complain about the fact he assumes everyone in America is a gun nut.
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It was almost as bad as Piers Morgan selling his agenda...
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:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
Stop it with the smilies. If you have a point, try to make it by using rhetoric, not gifs. Especially those smilies are in incredibly poor taste in this context, and reveal a lack of critical thinking skills that I for one find appalling.
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No one has guns, not even the cops.
All of your other fallacies aside, are you trying to convince anyone that this is a good idea? What do British police do if they come across someone who does happen to be packing heat? Wave their truncheon in his general direction?
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You Americans and your wonderful, precious guns...
Here in the UK we have about 1/5 of your population, many cultural similarities and about 1/200 of your shooting deaths. No one has guns, not even the cops.
Over there every Tom Dick has a gun. You can just buy a gun, you pick up bullets from a grocery store. Guns are just a part of your life, of course people are going to use them. That and the whole macho man image America likes to project. So when you pull a gun on someone and they don't back down, you're going to think "Oh, I'm going to look like a ****ing pussy now if I don't shoot..."
:snipe:
That and everybody who wants to fight is going to be packing a gun because everyone has a gun, instead of using their fists or at worse a knife or a bat.
:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
Thank you for that wonderfully uneducated series of posts...
While it may be true that firearms do enable violent crimes to be conducted more easily, the mindset of the criminal is still the problem. Under ideal conditions, if everyone (with absolutely no exceptions) was forced to abandon their arms, perhaps the world would be more safe. As you noted, the UK seems to set a decent example. And then there is the exact same, yet opposite European example, where a well-armed (and trained, the other critical factor) population is remarkably safe and peaceful, Switzerland. Your argument ultimately doesn't hold, because the issue is a social and, ultimately, a personal problem.
...The argument you hold that firearm owners are uneducated meatheads just waiting to blast away at their neigbors is one of horrid ignorance, and unfortunately is communicated by the popular media quite freely. I doubt you have ever had any firearm training or any other sort of martial discipline when you make your claims. And I'll also bet you're all to happy to buy into the popular entertainment industry's glorification of violence and revel therein. I encourage you to challenge your own current beliefs on the matter and look to social discipline and personal responsibility as means of rectifying the issue rather than blaming a device used by an unstable human being as the root of the problem.
You're welcome! :D
Alright, serious hat on. As far as I know though, Americans aren't well trained. National service as was mentioned in Switzerland will drill some respect into a person. No national service in America. You can just go pick up a gun. Even kids who haven't hit double digits are getting taught to fire guns. You're right, I know guns don't fire themselves, someone has to pull the trigger, but it's all too easy to do it in America.
Now if I'm wrong, why are Americans slaughtering each other by the dump truck load with guns then? I don't know why you think I would revel in media violence, quite the opposite. Unless it's those little snipe shot smileys.
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No one has guns, not even the cops.
All of your other fallacies aside, are you trying to convince anyone that this is a good idea? What do British police do if they come across someone who does happen to be packing heat? Wave their truncheon in his general direction?
There are a few special armed police units. But your regular cops don't carry guns.
It's enough with the low gun crime, but it does have it's issues if someone starts shooting in a remote location, like the 2010 Raoul Moat shooting spree.
There's always the army if anything beyond the police happens.
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Can't get decent universal healthcare to help disturbed people before they become spree killers, can't get any type of common sense gun control laws like most other countries have (even the ones with lots of guns); I guess what we need are giant bullet-proof hamster balls for all pupils coupled with mandatory anti-tank artillery in the faculty lounge.
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No one has guns, not even the cops.
All of your other fallacies aside, are you trying to convince anyone that this is a good idea? What do British police do if they come across someone who does happen to be packing heat? Wave their truncheon in his general direction?
Actually, one specific branch of the Police, SO19 are fully trained in firearms use, however since they need to be called out, it does mean that officers on the spot are usually only armed with Pepper Spray.
This has led to tragedies : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/18/woman-police-officer-killed-manchester
However, it could be argued that, given the nature of the attack, even if they had been armed, it would not have made a difference.
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I have spent a lot of time with guns and have pretty serious self defense training and I would not want to carry and would not want people around me to either.
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Yes. Let's arm school teachers and allow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong.
So let's disarm school teachers and disallow guns on school property. That can't possibly go wrong either...
Are you actually advocating arming teachers and allowing guns on school property? In a serious sense?
quite an insightful discourse you have going here.
Anyway, to be perfectly honest mass shootings don't happen often enough to merit any change in gun laws on school campuses or anything. Maybe I sound callous and cold but how many people have died in the past 10 years in school shootings? A quick look at wikipedia and I'm pretty sure the number is in the hundreds. How many people have died as a result of smoking in the past 10 years? Maybe I'm taking a bit of a leap here but I don't think it's worth all the accidents that would happen (they would, and lots of them) to allow guns in a place full of children and angsty teenagers - remember: it's not just crazy nuts you need to worry about.
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I have spent a lot of time with guns and have pretty serious self defense training and I would not want to carry and would not want people around me to either.
Given how little faith I have in the average intelligence of my fellow human beings, I'm in full agreement. I'd make police the lone exception, since they actually have the required training, and at least as a general rule seem to use firearms appropriately.
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Heard a radio news report on the way home that stated that the shooter did in fact have to force his way into the school. So short of having armed police officers stationed in elementary schools there doesn't seem to be much else the school could have done. Oh and I agree with the Batman and Mongoose, last thing we need is a bunch of gun toting amateurs with no training running around shooting at any thing they may feel to be suspicious. Doesn't mean we need to restrict gun laws much further as it is pretty much a given that some one who wants a gun is going to find a way to get one. The thing we need to fix is the notoriety these assholes get when they decide they want to take their own lives in the messiest most sadistic way possible so that others will remember or take notice of them.
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Alright, serious hat on. As far as I know though, Americans aren't well trained. National service as was mentioned in Switzerland will drill some respect into a person. No national service in America. You can just go pick up a gun. Even kids who haven't hit double digits are getting taught to fire guns. You're right, I know guns don't fire themselves, someone has to pull the trigger, but it's all too easy to do it in America.
Now if I'm wrong, why are Americans slaughtering each other by the dump truck load with guns then? I don't know why you think I would revel in media violence, quite the opposite. Unless it's those little snipe shot smileys.
Right. Sure. Let's pretend that you can't learn anything from anyone besides a state-appointed official. Or that they sell shotguns to anyone in the average grocery store. If you believe either of those two things, you need to spend more time in contemplation. The "America" you're trying to explain to me is a nation I don't have any experience with, and I live in the United States. If you think the US is some sort of post-apocalyptic nightmare or the wild west where everyone is out to kill each other, and that the morgues are overflowing with shooting victim corpses, then you're delusional. I don't think you think it that bad, but hey, I could be wrong.
If nothing else, your views scream out a perspective that the individual is not to be trusted and is a danger that must be contained. It is a viewpoint that dictates that normal, law-abiding citizens are just as much a threat as mentally-unstable psychopaths. I find that perspective very offensive indeed.
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Now if I'm wrong, why are Americans slaughtering each other by the dump truck load with guns then? I don't know why you think I would revel in media violence, quite the opposite. Unless it's those little snipe shot smileys.
I'd be curious to see a per-capita statistic, since your efforts to compare the relatively tiny population of the UK to that of the US are amusingly flawed on their face.
I'm betting the shootings number per exty population is a lot closer than you think.
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Now if I'm wrong, why are Americans slaughtering each other by the dump truck load with guns then? I don't know why you think I would revel in media violence, quite the opposite. Unless it's those little snipe shot smileys.
I'd be curious to see a per-capita statistic, since your efforts to compare the relatively tiny population of the UK to that of the US are amusingly flawed on their face.
I'm betting the shootings number per exty population is a lot closer than you think.
Tiny? 63 million is not tiny. 1/5 of the US.
I saw that Bowling for Columbine thing, and...
Gun deaths:
Japan: 39 (0.030/100,000)
Australia: 65 (0.292/100,000)
United Kingdom: 68 (0.109/100,000)
Canada: 165 (0.484/100,000)
France: 255 (0.389/100,000)
Germany: 381 (0.466/100,000)
United States: 11,127 (3.601/100,000)
Okay so my 1/200 estimate was way off, but the US still has roughly 35X more gun deaths by population than the UK.
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Let's pretend ... that they sell shotguns to anyone in the average grocery store.
I actually agree with your post there, but this part amused me. You can totally buy shotguns at Wal-Mart.
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Now if I'm wrong, why are Americans slaughtering each other by the dump truck load with guns then? I don't know why you think I would revel in media violence, quite the opposite. Unless it's those little snipe shot smileys.
I'd be curious to see a per-capita statistic, since your efforts to compare the relatively tiny population of the UK to that of the US are amusingly flawed on their face.
I'm betting the shootings number per exty population is a lot closer than you think.
You would lose miserably. The US wins the competition by a *long long shot*. Don't believe me? Just look at this worldwide timeline of school shootings, and the list is mostly comprised by US examples with some oddities included like France or Yemen.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html
I have to say I was appalled by the suggestion that maybe it was time for teachers to start carrying guns. JFC, the problem in America is too damned guns, not too few. The situation regarding Switzerland is incomparable, since that is a quite odd country in many, many respects.
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You would lose miserably.
It's a pity that Lorric just admitted I was correct in that his guesses were far inflated, then, and that I never specified school attacks in general, but I guess reading is hard.
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Well then I misread your intention. Let's get it straight though, you are to all accounts admitting that the ratio is still mind-boggingly huge.
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I blame my state (Virginia), where people can go to a gun show and get a gun without the otherwise required background check.
Edit: Uh... not sure what I'm blaming it for. But it's a problem.
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You would lose miserably.
It's a pity that Lorric just admitted I was correct in that his guesses were far inflated, then, and that I never specified school attacks in general, but I guess reading is hard.
Hey hey, I bet you never even read that post. You made it sound like that US and UK would be about equal, with our "tiny" 63 million population. Bottom line is 35X more people on equal population die to guns in the US than the UK. So you are wrong.
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the checks for handguns are at the federal level. things like rifles and shotguns can be had without checks, though you still have to file federal paperwork. im not sure how state law comes into play, though i think the state can limit the types and number of weapons you can get.
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I bought a rifle last year, and the guy had to call the FBI and make sure I was clear before selling it. So there was a check, but I think there should be a much more thorough one.
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So you are wrong.
You posited 1/200th.
I said it would be much closer than that.
It was 1/35th.
I'm apparently wrong.
If this is how deep your analysis is, I'm not surprised at the quality of your argumentation. I mean, your error was over 50%, but hey.
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So you are wrong.
You posited 1/200th.
I said it would be much closer than that.
It was 1/35th.
I'm apparently wrong.
If this is how deep your analysis is, I'm not surprised at the quality of your argumentation. I mean, your error was over 50%, but hey.
If you honestly expected the US to still have many, many, many X the number of shooting deaths by population than the UK, then you can have this one. If not, no.
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I didn't have an expectation, aside from the fact that you were bull****ting up relative statistics.
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If you honestly expected the US to still have many, many, many X the number of shooting deaths by population than the UK, then you can have this one. If not, no.
:wtf:
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I bought a rifle last year, and the guy had to call the FBI and make sure I was clear before selling it. So there was a check, but I think there should be a much more thorough one.
i sold a few guns when i worked at a pawn shop many years ago. i always dreaded the paperwork. the call to the fbi can sometimes result in a hold, where a more thorough check needs to be done. and we essentially hold onto the gun until the fbi either authorizes or denies the purchase. this usually happens when the buyer has a criminal record or any other red flags. if you go buy a gun with a clean record you can usually get it in less than an hour.
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There is no need for us to bicker.
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I personally support tighter gun control laws, primarily as a means to root out sociopaths and unstable people (perhaps a personality test?). Given our rate of gun deaths I'd think we would already have implemented tighter policies, but every time someone tries politicians and pundits (mainly conservatives) go "OH **** THE SECOND AMENDMENT CONSTITUTION BLAH BLAH BLAH!" and ruin any chance of useful debate.
However, I do believe that private citizens who aren't dangerous should be able to purchase and conceal handguns, because I don't want the government to be the only one with weapons.
Lorric, you severely overestimate the amount of violence in America. I mean, it's more violent than other democracies, but it's still not the ****ing wild west.
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Heard a radio news report on the way home that stated that the shooter did in fact have to force his way into the school. So short of having armed police officers stationed in elementary schools there doesn't seem to be much else the school could have done. Oh and I agree with the Batman and Mongoose, last thing we need is a bunch of gun toting amateurs with no training running around shooting at any thing they may feel to be suspicious. Doesn't mean we need to restrict gun laws much further as it is pretty much a given that some one who wants a gun is going to find a way to get one. The thing we need to fix is the notoriety these assholes get when they decide they want to take their own lives in the messiest most sadistic way possible so that others will remember or take notice of them.
Quoting myself to emphasize the point, pay particular attention to the last sentence as it is the most important. Gun control isn't the answer especially in a country where there are already so many weapons around. The problem lies in the motivations of the ones committing these barbaric acts of violence and no having more guns or less guns isn't going to stop them from doing what they have already decided to do. It would be the equivalent of treating a sympton and not the disease, take away the gun and the would be assailent will find another means to carry out their plan. Maybe through a bomb or knife take your pick bottom line is we need to find a means of stopping the appeal for these nut cases to attack public places such as schools and malls.
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An unarmed man can potentially fight off an unskilled knife user, but an unarmed man stopping an unskilled gun user would be virtually impossible under most circumstances. Also, there are many weapons and tools (Shovels, baseball bats, hammers, axes, etc.) that are nearly as effective--or, in the case of the axe, and hammer--superior to a basic knife and could be used to defeat a knife user. No common weapon comes anywhere near the effectiveness of a gun, making someone with a gun far more dangerous than someone with a knife.
I understand it won't be easy, but we need to stop these nutjobs from getting firearms. After all, there will always be people who want to murder others--nothing society does will change that.
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I'm not sure exactly how one would've been able to prevent access to the firearm to the perpetrator, seeing as they purchased by his mother. Perhaps background checks ought to take account of one's family too? In Australia for instance, it's a condition that weapons be stored in a safe that meets a list of specifications, one of which I believe is that it's only accessible to the person the firearms are registered to. As has been mentioned before, the failing here was with the mental health system, as opposed to the firearms laws.
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First of all, condolences to all the people that lost loved ones in this horrible event. I wish no one would have to experience something so tragic and shocking like that, especially the little ones in that school.
I'll probably be all over the map with this post, but I feel its good to try to cover all the bases a little, my apologies beforehand if the result is a little chaotic.
In my opinion, any laws that pertain to gun control are basically victim disarmament as the criminals won't turn their guns in and will still manage to get their hands on such hardware. I feel appalled to see how much of the 'mainstream' US media almost immediately called for gun control or restrictions of rights without even giving proper time for people to grieve and honor the dead, blaming the tool used rather than the individual that committed said crimes. I wonder if these stations realize that they lead by example, and how much trouble it causes when one calls for things to happen out of sheer emotion rather than rational debate and research on such a big platform like TV news media.
These recent shootings seem, to me, to reinforce two major points: society is degenerating slowly but surely, like loss of morals and honor ("better to drown yourself than hurt the little ones") and lack of understanding and support, or 'catch-nets' for the (mentally) downtrodden to help them back on the tracks and to become more positive, not just medicate the heck out of people without regularly checking up what effect it has on such patients, also deficiencies in things like good nutrients can cause havoc on brain and mental functions too... lots of things to consider in regards to health and mental care.
Second point: economic woes and uncertainties (fiscal cliff, QE infinity, bailouts, foreclosures, on and on) that also bring people to the point where they lost the will to live but for some psychological reason seek to perform a massacre so their suicides would, in their minds, 'mean' something. It's like the most extreme 15-minutes-of-fame to perform.
It makes me wonder what role the whole entertainment, celebrity culture might have in the depressions of such individuals too, in conjunction, if they would go so far as to kill so many innocent children like that. To adhere to all the new fads and styles in order to feel good or accepted is unaffordable for most.
On a hopefully little bit more positive note, when looking per capita especially compared to all those official numbers of unemployment, debt and downturns, I suppose one could be thankful there haven't been even more big shootings and violent unrest the past year(s) given what the US (and world) economy is going through, though in other words there's a chance we've seen nothing yet in that regards if the economy and society in general continues to decline. We might see something similar or bigger, or many small things happen around the 21st because of all the end-of-the-world hype being another 'trigger' for peoples on the edge to perform suicides or even massacres in a copy-cat fashion due to the massive reporting involved.
Hope everyone will be alright and that this wave of shootings will disappear instead of precipitate or get even more frequent.
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I personally support tighter gun control laws, primarily as a means to root out sociopaths and unstable people (perhaps a personality test?). Given our rate of gun deaths I'd think we would already have implemented tighter policies, but every time someone tries politicians and pundits (mainly conservatives) go "OH **** THE SECOND AMENDMENT CONSTITUTION BLAH BLAH BLAH!" and ruin any chance of useful debate.
However, I do believe that private citizens who aren't dangerous should be able to purchase and conceal handguns, because I don't want the government to be the only one with weapons.
Lorric, you severely overestimate the amount of violence in America. I mean, it's more violent than other democracies, but it's still not the ****ing wild west.
You will not catch sociopaths with personality tests, since they will lie. And there are no better liars than sociopaths.
I'm not sure why you think I think America is the wild west. I said Americans are slaughtering each other with guns by the dump truck load. 11,000+ bodies could fill dump trucks I would think.
I do however think guns have become seen as a "problem solver" by some, rather than the lethal weapon of last resort it should be.
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In my opinion, any laws that pertain to gun control are basically victim disarmament as the criminals won't turn their guns in and will still manage to get their hands on such hardware.
You would think so. There was a rash of knife murders in the UK some years back. There was a real public backlash against it, but one thing that was done, was that the police offered to take in weapons no questions asked. Not a law, you only hand them in if you want to. A vast number of weapons were handed in, and knife murders dropped dramatically.
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I don't really want to get involved with this thread, but I will give my perspective as another international voice - in my discussions with my friends on this specific incident, there's been a remarkable consensus. People sympathise with the immediate victims, but there's also a very, very real sense that, frankly, the US brings these incidents on themselves, and that they (along with other incidents of gun violence) are the price you, as a nation, have chosen to pay for lax gun control laws.
This gets linked every time there's one of these threads, but here we go again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Firearm related deaths per 100000 people. Sort by homicides and check the numbers. If we limit it to anglophone countries with a lot of cultural similarities, the US is roughly 4 times higher than Canada, 18 times higher than New Zealand, 33 times higher than Australia and 75 times higher than the UK. And the idea that people who want to kill will find a way, guns or not, is also not borne out by the numbers. Murder rates generally (again, per 100000) are closer, but the pattern is fairly similar - Murder rates are 2.5 times higher than Canada, 3.5 times higher than the UK, 4 times higher than Australia and 4.5 times higher than NZ.
Guns are designed to kill people. By definition, then, they make it much, much easier to kill people than if you don't have access to a gun.
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There was a rash of knife murders in the UK some years back. There was a real public backlash against it, but one thing that was done, was that the police offered to take in weapons no questions asked. Not a law, you only hand them in if you want to. A vast number of weapons were handed in, and knife murders dropped dramatically.
The murder rate is at its lowest in two decades. Violent crime has been falling the entire recession, in spite of the recession. Gun buybacks are a regular thing in pretty much every city and county in the US.
Gun control fell out of the legislative interest because these things were happening anyways, with or without it. The Democratic Party correctly perceived there was no percentage in fighting the battle as long as the murder rate and violent crime kept dropping. There probably still isn't.
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Responding to a general argument along the lines of "gun control laws won't stop determined criminals from getting guns":
This is true for most of the kinds of gun control being proposed, but only because there are already so damn many guns already in the country, and because more guns are constantly being produced or imported. Also smuggling, but meh.
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I've seen the same thing debated for over 10 years and no one has done a damned thing to prevent it. People should just start treating it as another tax.
Call it the 2nd Amendment Tax and move on.
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firearms are one of the few areas of american manufacturing that are still healthy. people who import guns need to be shot. buy american for ****s sake.
and banning guns wont make the insane people go away. they will just have to use other implements, like sharp things and molotov cocktails.
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Lols...
Relevant to Nuke's post:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIMuoUcc1s
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and banning guns wont make the insane people go away. they will just have to use other implements, like sharp things and molotov cocktails.
Who said I was talking about banning guns?
That's one solution. Better healthcare so that the insane people can get treated is another. Better training in gun ownership is a third.
The simple fact is that America isn't the slightest bit interested in coming together picking one solution or even bits of all the solutions and actually doing something that will make a difference. All you get is endless debate about gun control.
So like I said, it's a tax which your country is willing to pay. What I don't get is why we have to hear about you filling in your tax forms every few months. You've already decided you are willing to pay.
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Er... what? Figurative "gun violence = a tax" ?
Heheh... a tax... atax... attacks... derp.
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It doesn't help that we have a sensationalistic media culture around here either. I ask you what is the easiest method to gain notoriety in this country for the those who are not already in the media spot light and the answer is commit an atrocity. Check the ages of the individuals who commit such atrocities and alarmingly it winds up being people in their late teens or early twenties. Some thing is definitively wrong in our society where this sort of thing can happen as frequently as it does. Can we use some more tougher gun laws, sure but it doesn't address the underlying problems that drive such individuals to commit such terrible acts of violence in the first place.
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and banning guns wont make the insane people go away. they will just have to use other implements, like sharp things and molotov cocktails.
Who said I was talking about banning guns?
That's one solution. Better healthcare so that the insane people can get treated is another. Better training in gun ownership is a third.
The simple fact is that America isn't the slightest bit interested in coming together picking one solution or even bits of all the solutions and actually doing something that will make a difference. All you get is endless debate about gun control.
So like I said, it's a tax which your country is willing to pay. What I don't get is why we have to hear about you filling in your tax forms every few months. You've already decided you are willing to pay.
a tax on guns would be somewhat problematic. thats like putting a tax on free speech. its just something that does not work under our constitution. it would take an amendment to get rid of it. and as someone has mentioned, the democrats, being the main gun control party, have lost interest in that cause. perhaps they will pick up on it again given recent events. all your other ideas are valid and would be a lot easier to implement, but it hasn't happened yet. im rather disappointed this turned into a gun control thread, because there are other aspects of the issue that always end up getting overshadowed by the gun control debate.
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Yup, as I've said before, guns had an impact, but not a causal one. The bigger issue here is the fact that 'School Shootings' have been imprinted into the American culture by the Media barrage they receive.
The Columbine shooters, with the help of various News agencies have achieved everything they wanted to achieve and more, they not only became the anti-heroes they wanted to be perceived as, but the coverage has even served as 'inspiration' to other deranged people.
It's a vicious circle that America has been dragged into, and the only way out I can see is not to deal with the problem after the shooting starts, but to deal with it beforehand.
I think part of the reason Switzerland take mental health so seriously is because everyone has guns, but a country where it's cheaper to buy a gun than pay for psychiatric help is recipe for disaster.
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a tax on guns would be somewhat problematic.
kara's referring to a "tax" in human lives.
@karajoma, I no longer really have the heart to get deeply invested in this discussion, but isn't the argument that "if only there were fewer guns in circulation, these violent crimes wouldn't happen with such frequency" a near-perfect example of reductive logic? Further, are not the cultural differences between America and non-American Western societies sufficiently large to necessitate a solution unique to the American situation? However, I agree with the general gist of your recent points; Winston Churchill once said that "you can always count on Americans to do the right thing, once all other options are exhausted". I guess we haven't exhausted all options yet. (I admit I'm ignoring the other points of your recent post, I just don't want to do a point-by-point response/rebuttal)
If I'm not making a lot of sense, I apologize. I delved into this topic and related depressing issues a bit too deeply as of late, and I just don't have the heart to really discuss these matters. If this is going to turn into a gun control thread, I'm going to contribute just a bit and I'll be done. Here's my fraction of a cent: the American gun control "debate" (or "public discourse" as I prefer to consider it) is hamstrung by a refusal by each side of the aisle to accept a respective axiom. The conservative faction must accept that guns are *weapons*, and when used properly, have no purpose other than ending lives. Whether those lives are human or not is malleable. (And don't even start on "sport/target shooting". All firearm-related activities eventually lead back to developing skills to use said firearms to kill- full stop.) The liberal faction must acknowledge that people are fully capable of committing violent crimes without firearms, and in plenty of cases, without proper weapons at all.
No, I don't have some witty closing one-liner or "tl;dr" for those who won't read this thing. I'm done.
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kara's referring to a "tax" in human lives.
Indeed, it's a tax in innocent lives. And it's one that Americans seem quite happy to pay since neither side seems willing to compromise in the slightest.
Further, are not the cultural differences between America and non-American Western societies sufficiently large to necessitate a solution unique to the American situation?
Now that I agree with. And it's something that both sides need to stop doing. The gun control side point at the UK, the pro-gun side point at Switzerland and Canada. Both are fundamentally silly arguments since none of those countries are the same as America.
Basically, it comes down to this. The great American public can not be trusted with guns. It's that simple. Now I'm not being anti-American cause I'll be the first to admit that the British public can't be trusted with them either. We faced that issue after the Dunblaine Massacre and for the Brits the easiest solution was to simply get rid of them. The Swiss solved it by national service and increased training with guns until they could be trusted with guns. That said the Swiss have a reputation for being somewhat boring, maybe that solution alone wouldn't work for America. Maybe the solution isn't even gun related and instead requires better mental health and anti-gang spending.
What America needs to face is that something needs to be done besides both sides shouting at each other until they are blue in the face.
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Also, if you consider that, on the same day, someone was arrested in Oklahoma for trying to arrange a massacre in his school, it shows evidence that something is going very wrong somewhere...
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/viewart/20121215/NEWS/121215009/Police-arrest-suspect-Oklahoma-accused-plotting-school-attack
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Absolutely. This man was evil and/or psychotic, and the media cannot be held responsible for his actions.
Last night I heard a talk show host say that there might have been less people killed if the teachers were armed. What are your thoughts on this?
I'd go as far as claiming the shooter would just go somewhere else if the school was a potentially dangerous place.
The crazy shooters often want to play God.
They pick a group of targets who they will have total control over- they decide who lives and who doesn't.
When they get confronted by a good guy with guns, they either surrender or commit suicide as they no longer have absolute power.
It's very rare a shooter goes somewhere where people are likely to have weapons when planning mass murder.
No one has guns, not even the cops.
All of your other fallacies aside, are you trying to convince anyone that this is a good idea? What do British police do if they come across someone who does happen to be packing heat? Wave their truncheon in his general direction?
I think the procedure was to call SWAT and shoot a random Brazilian.
As for the per capita gun deaths:
Let's compare gun deaths based on gun crime and accidents alone, and not by grand totals.
In 2010 the NYPD alone shot and killed 8 people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/nypd-had-fewest-fatal-sho_n_807862.html
Which was a record low...
FBI in 2010- 387 people, down from 414 in 2009.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/deadly-force/142-dead-and-rising/national-data-on-shootings-by-police-not-collected-134256308.html
I'd say that an estimate of 1000 criminals getting shot by police per year in the US won't be too far off.
Add more in lawful self defense by non-police (don't know how many though)...
I'd also like to filter out shootings done by people who shouldn't be in the US in the first place, but that would be politically incorrect.
To be fair, do the same for the UK, although with unarmed society and police the numbers won't be as significant.
P.S. Let's also leave gun control for a week or two, that's not really what this thread is supposed to be about.
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I think the procedure was to call SWAT and shoot a random Brazilian.
Nice way to emulate exactly the kind of behaviour that was being criticized....
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I'd say that an estimate of 1000 criminals getting shot by police per year in the US won't be too far off.
Why are you estimating when you could simply look for statistics? 10 seconds on wikipedia found this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
Sure it's a little old but I doubt the murder rate has reduced to 1/10th what it was in 2004 so even a large fall still means a lot of deaths. Are you going to claim that those are all self-defence? Or even that the majority are?
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No one has guns, not even the cops.
All of your other fallacies aside, are you trying to convince anyone that this is a good idea? What do British police do if they come across someone who does happen to be packing heat? Wave their truncheon in his general direction?
I think the procedure was to call SWAT and shoot a random Brazilian.
All force areas have dedicated and trained for purpose Firearms officers scattered about their regions, though short of incidents involving reported firearms the preference is to use tazer when the officers are deployed, though if you decide to wave a gun about expect to see G36K's pointed at you in many areas.
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I think the procedure was to call SWAT and shoot a random Brazilian.
Nice way to emulate exactly the kind of behaviour that was being criticized....
It's not like a 5 second search of wikipedia won't find the American police doing the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting
I deliberately picked that one from this list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_the_United_States) cause it's a nice example of how owning a gun can get you quite legally shot in your own house. I also do have to wonder how many of these people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2011) also legally owned their guns.
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I'm not entirely sure whether the assumption that the school shooters are looking for a feeling of power over others is entirely correct. I tend to view these incidents more as break up of a person's behavioral limitations which may be caused by environmental factors or just a lack of medication. If it seems that the environment is completely immoral and arbitrary, they could be responding in kind. It is a very difficult subject, especially because the perpetrators are typically not caught alive - they are the only ones who could say where it all went wrong. The scariest thought is that these people could be former good people whose moral fabric has been torn down.
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In these kinds of events, doesn't the shooter end up committing suicide like half the time? It takes time for the police to actually arrive on the scene, and they can't do anything meaningful if the shooter is dead by the time they arrive.
And yet guns are usually disallowed from schools, movie theaters, exc, meaning there's no bystander with a concealed gun to try and shoot back.
Funny how these types of shootings never seem to occur at a martial arts dojo or gun auction...
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You will not catch sociopaths with personality tests, since they will lie. And there are no better liars than sociopaths.
I'm not sure why you think I think America is the wild west. I said Americans are slaughtering each other with guns by the dump truck load. 11,000+ bodies could fill dump trucks I would think.
I do however think guns have become seen as a "problem solver" by some, rather than the lethal weapon of last resort it should be.
I believe personality tests are designed to spot lies. They may not be perfect, but the would at least root out some of these people.
Going by your posts, you seem to think America is a horribly violent, lawless place where a bunch of stupid rednecks (you used that stereotype, if not that word) murder each other and everybody around them over over stupid arguments.
I apologize if I misunderstand your views, but that's the impression your posts give.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20749167
Two Democrat Senators claiming they will bring new gun control laws to the floor.
Seems that Gun Control is going to be an issue whether people like it or not.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20749167
Two Democrat Senators claiming they will bring new gun control laws to the floor.
Seems that Gun Control is going to be an issue whether people like it or not.
Riiight, because most of the criminals that use guns get them from unlawful sources anyway? What good is gun control going to do? :wtf:
So sick and tired of politicians using tragedies to advance agendas.
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Actually, in the case of school shootings, most of the criminals get their guns from either relatives (who get them through legal sources) or through legal means themselves.
I'd be more concerned that this is a case of closing the stable door long after the horses have bolted. Automatic weapons are already out there, and people will not want to give them up, even if they cannot justify owning them in the first place.
It really does need to be borne in mind that, when the Second Amendment was created, gun firing rates were at a level where mowing down a crowd of people was not even conceivable, I'm sure even the most Freedom loving of the Founding Fathers would have blanched at the concept of just anyone running round with weapons with that kind of power.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20749167
Two Democrat Senators claiming they will bring new gun control laws to the floor.
Seems that Gun Control is going to be an issue whether people like it or not.
Riiight, because most of the criminals that use guns get them from unlawful sources anyway? What good is gun control going to do? :wtf:
So sick and tired of politicians using tragedies to advance agendas.
We have so many guns floating around because of our lax gun control laws that have allowed so many people to purchase firearms when they should never have been able to.
Obviously, gun control wouldn't fix the whole problem. But, it would at least help somewhat.
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In these kinds of events, doesn't the shooter end up committing suicide like half the time? It takes time for the police to actually arrive on the scene, and they can't do anything meaningful if the shooter is dead by the time they arrive.
And yet guns are usually disallowed from schools, movie theaters, exc, meaning there's no bystander with a concealed gun to try and shoot back.
Don't know if this had been posted yet, but it seemed relevant (even if related to a different shooting): http://easybakegunclub.com/news/1943/Clackamas-Mall-Shooter-Was-Confonted-By-Concealed-.html
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Everyone who has read or posted in this thread needs to drop whatever they are doing, quit posting, and read this entire piece RIGHT NOW.
http://gawker.com/5968818/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother
It's a mother's perspective on mental illness and violence, and it is particularly poignant in the wake of Friday's events.
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Personally, that article seems to indicate to me that there are serious deficiencies in disciple there. Perhaps this is a good case study to consider what sort of "mental conditions" are self-induced or encouraged/enabled, or are simply inherent instabilities in the psyche?
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Personally, that article seems to indicate to me that there are serious deficiencies in disciple there. Perhaps this is a good case study to consider what sort of "mental conditions" are self-induced or encouraged/enabled, or are simply inherent instabilities in the psyche?
no
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Personally, that article seems to indicate to me that there are serious deficiencies in disciple there. Perhaps this is a good case study to consider what sort of "mental conditions" are self-induced or encouraged/enabled, or are simply inherent instabilities in the psyche?
nooooo
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Personally, that article seems to indicate to me that there are serious deficiencies in disciple there. Perhaps this is a good case study to consider what sort of "mental conditions" are self-induced or encouraged/enabled, or are simply inherent instabilities in the psyche?
nooooooooooooooohoooooooooo
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Batts said it nicely.
FYI, there's another blogger who took some issue with Long's post, but her critique is a shameful example of out-of-context quoting to serve one's point, doubly-shameful as the writer of the critique is a PhD who writes for Al Jazeera and The Atlantic.
Regardless of the backstory, the piece I posted should be food for thought for anyone making blanket statements about responses to the Newtown events. Mental health is an untreated epidemic in most G20 democracies, and has been downloaded almost exclusively to the police in the US and Canada.
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Psychopathy is notable because it expresses so distinctly in children and appears so highly (though not totally) driven by genetic or prenatal factors. Psychopathy is a constellation disorder and the individual components may have separate underlying etiology. It is not a product of poor discipline, and trying to treat it as such would be disastrous.
Schizophrenia usually manifests later in life, and arises out of a combination of genetic predisposition and stressful life events. Like psychopathy it cannot be treated as behaviorally curable; to do so would be to condemn both the patient and those around him to profound danger.
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
You sociopathic bastard.
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Batts said it nicely.
Battuta's initial response hardly put that well. A triple-post with a non-substantial reply only serves to throw a volume of emotive responses into an argument with the aim of dissuading or disengaging the original poster. That isn't discussion. Unless you're Bill O'Reilly.
I do agree with you that mental illness is a serious matter, and never contested that. My point was to ask what environment or environments contribute to the actions of unstable individuals against other members of the populace, and where we may determine if the psyche is naturally unstable OR if there are factors which promote the destabilization of said psyche. My assessment may not be the best one, but there's also not enough information there to draw a conclusive one, either.
Psychopathy is notable because it expresses so distinctly in children and appears so highly (though not totally) driven by genetic or prenatal factors. Psychopathy is a constellation disorder and the individual components may have separate underlying etiology. It is not a product of poor discipline, and trying to treat it as such would be disastrous.
Schizophrenia usually manifests later in life, and arises out of a combination of genetic predisposition and stressful life events. Like psychopathy it cannot be treated as behaviorally curable; to do so would be to condemn both the patient and those around him to profound danger.
There's a response. Thank you.
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
You sociopathic bastard.
Made me laugh :)
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
You sociopathic bastard.
Made me laugh :)
I do so hope that this is not one of those "It's funny cuz its true" situations :nervous:.
But hey, you are welcome :).
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
You sociopathic bastard.
Made me laugh :)
I do so hope that this is not one of those "It's funny cuz its true" situations :nervous:.
But hey, you are welcome :).
I wouldn't advocate my own destruction.
But I thought it was funny.
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
Oh hi, ****dick. Stop treating sociopaths as if all of them are teh Deebil and are evil forever. By the way, would you like if I advocated killing you and your family? Advocated ostracizing and torturing you, just because you lack something I have?
If you think that people should be treated that way, just because you don't like them, it is YOU who needs to be exterminated. But if you want to go ahead with your little eugenics episode, I'll be more than happy to shoot you. Dead. Hopefully, that'll never happen.
Now go sit in the corner and think about the implications of what you just said. Hopefully, you will learn something from this. And hopefully, you will realize that the "solution" does not consist of "kill people I don't like to the last man.", and more "Help establish better mental health facilities and better mental health service availability". :nono:
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
Oh hi, ****dick. Stop treating sociopaths as if all of them are teh Deebil and are evil forever. By the way, would you like if I advocated killing you and your family? Advocated ostracizing and torturing you, just because you lack something I have?
If you think that people should be treated that way, just because you don't like them, it is YOU who needs to be exterminated. But if you want to go ahead with your little eugenics episode, I'll be more than happy to shoot you. Dead. Hopefully, that'll never happen.
Now go sit in the corner and think about the implications of what you just said. Hopefully, you will learn something from this. And hopefully, you will realize that the "solution" does not consist of "kill people I don't like to the last man.", and more "Help establish better mental health facilities and better mental health service availability". :nono:
They are evil. How can you defend them? They have no redeeming qualities.
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That's probably not true at all. Sociopathy isn't even a clear on/off.
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That's probably not true at all. Sociopathy isn't even a clear on/off.
Well it would have to be blatantly obvious if we were going to start killing people. And I think a "nice" sociopath, if there is such a thing, would never show up as one in the first place.
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I say again, there is good in bad people, there is bad in good people.
It's strange because I had a discussion in another Forum about the Second Amendment that could almost have been the child in that article. I'm not saying that in a ridiculing matter, merely that any opinion that differed from his own made that person a '****ing idiot' or a 'moron', and that nobody outside the US understood the 'American Dream' or 'Freedom', and we were just jealous of the US etc..
Sadly, he ended up much more a figure of pity than derision in my eyes.
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Well it would have to be blatantly obvious if we were going to start killing people. And I think a "nice" sociopath, if there is such a thing, would never show up as one in the first place.
There is a large group of personality traits that can be labelled sociopaths/psychopaths. These people are typically characterized by an inability to feel sympathy/empathy - they understand society's rules, they simply don't care. It's strongly correlated with narcissism.
With that broad group, you have pro-social psychopaths/sociopaths, and anti-social psychopaths/sociopaths.
The anti-social bunch are what are thought of as psychopaths/sociopaths in popular media. Clinically, these people can be diagnosed with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder). They make up a small proportion of the general population, and are responsible for a fair chunk of the crime rate. They typically end up incarcerated or dead early in their lives; if they do survive long-term, they tend to retain the personality traits throughout their lives but their willingness and ability to act on them typically diminishes after their late 40s.
The pro-social bunch are paramedics, firefighters, doctors, police officers, and a small subset of the military, who function easily within society's rules because they choose to do so. They retain the core diagnostic traits of a psychopath/sociopath, however.
Never confuse psychopathy/sociopathy with anti-social personality disorder. Two different things. There are a lot of people employed in the emergency services in particular (it produces the 'high'/gratification that psychopaths/sociopaths typically seek through their behaviour) who do a lot of good, yet are clinically-diagnosable as psychopaths/sociopaths.
Further reading:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763410000795
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/556047
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The only treatment for psychopaths and sociopaths is extermination.
Oh hi, ****dick. Stop treating sociopaths as if all of them are teh Deebil and are evil forever. By the way, would you like if I advocated killing you and your family? Advocated ostracizing and torturing you, just because you lack something I have?
If you think that people should be treated that way, just because you don't like them, it is YOU who needs to be exterminated. But if you want to go ahead with your little eugenics episode, I'll be more than happy to shoot you. Dead. Hopefully, that'll never happen.
Now go sit in the corner and think about the implications of what you just said. Hopefully, you will learn something from this. And hopefully, you will realize that the "solution" does not consist of "kill people I don't like to the last man.", and more "Help establish better mental health facilities and better mental health service availability". :nono:
They are evil. How can you defend them? They have no redeeming qualities.
You can be a bad person without being a horrible piece of crap that lacks any good qualities whatsoever. However, I will concede that some people fit that description.
Nonetheless, executing them is still bad because (1) executing someone because of their personality is wrong, and (2) allowing the government to do that can only lead to tyranny.
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Well it would have to be blatantly obvious if we were going to start killing people. And I think a "nice" sociopath, if there is such a thing, would never show up as one in the first place.
There is a large group of personality traits that can be labelled sociopaths/psychopaths. These people are typically characterized by an inability to feel sympathy/empathy - they understand society's rules, they simply don't care. It's strongly correlated with narcissism.
With that broad group, you have pro-social psychopaths/sociopaths, and anti-social psychopaths/sociopaths.
The anti-social bunch are what are thought of as psychopaths/sociopaths in popular media. Clinically, these people can be diagnosed with ASPD (anti-social personality disorder). They make up a small proportion of the general population, and are responsible for a fair chunk of the crime rate. They typically end up incarcerated or dead early in their lives; if they do survive long-term, they tend to retain the personality traits throughout their lives but their willingness and ability to act on them typically diminishes after their late 40s.
The pro-social bunch are paramedics, firefighters, doctors, police officers, and a small subset of the military, who function easily within society's rules because they choose to do so. They retain the core diagnostic traits of a psychopath/sociopath, however.
Never confuse psychopathy/sociopathy with anti-social personality disorder. Two different things. There are a lot of people employed in the emergency services in particular (it produces the 'high'/gratification that psychopaths/sociopaths typically seek through their behaviour) who do a lot of good, yet are clinically-diagnosable as psychopaths/sociopaths.
Further reading:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763410000795
https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/556047
The pro-social set are the more dangerous to me. Obviously if they aren't doing anything wrong, fine. If they truly can exist that way, then great. Their sociopathy may even give them an advantage in those fields. But if they do decide to do bad things to people, then they can do so without being detected. At least the anti-social type people can identify and be wary of, but the pro-social type somehow manage to function in social circles even better than regular people, so they go unsuspected, leaving a trail of victims in their wake. You could imagine the doctor being a good doctor most of the time, but quietly killing or misdiagnosing the odd patient for kicks on the side. "No, it wouldn't be Mr. X..."
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You didn't do any of the further reading, did you?
If you're basing all your information on what you've seen on TV and in the movies, you know less than nothing about this subject.
James Fallon might be a good starting point for you to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I12H7khht7o
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Some Firefighters do fall foul of things like 'Hero Syndrome', however, the problem is not so much with the illness as the treatment of it. The Narcissism is a big factor, because a Narcissistic person is likely to react for more expansively to negative situations.
I, for example, have a problem with making mistakes. Everybody feels stupid when they do something wrong, but the ability to get 'over' that error and pull yourself back into the game is highly dependent on self-image, and strangely enough, the higher the level of Narcissism, the longer it takes, because the more you beat yourself up over it, trying to justify yourself.
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You didn't do any of the further reading, did you?
If you're basing all your information on what you've seen on TV and in the movies, you know less than nothing about this subject. Do a YouTube search for James Fallon.
The first link doesn't work for me. The page comes out wrong. The second one I didn't really understand.
However, I have done plenty of sociopath research, though I admit it's all about the damage they do, I haven't come across anything to suggest they can be good.
The way I see it is if a sociopath does choose to be good, it is only because they want it to be so, for whatever reason. If they want to do bad things, and they can, then they will do so without a second thought. They would kill someone if they could get away with it even if they were just mildly curious to see what it would be like. And they often really enjoy inflicting pain, both emotional and physical. As far as I can tell the only emotion they can feel is anger, and they have no conscience.
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Speaking for the group with consciences, it is our duty to rid society of those lacking consciences because at least we'll be able to feel bad about it afterwards. Awesome plan right?
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Just... no.
Psychopaths and sociopaths are two names for the same thing: people characterized by lack of remorse/empathy/sympathy, impulsivity, and often a lack of regard for safety of self/others. They typically are very charming/charismatic, self-centered, and are usually emotionally-detached (though the pro-social bunch can successfully fake emotional attachment). This is not an exhaustive or exclusive list because their isn't one - the terms have been dropped from the DSM altogether in favour of the harmful variant of it, ASPD.
Criminals of this personality type are diagnosable with ASPD, of which the first three traits I listed are considered among the diagnostic criteria. ASPD diagnosis actually focuses on criminality, because it is well-acknowledged that not all the people who fall into the psychopath/sociopath umbrella are criminals.
>The way I see it is if a sociopath does choose to be good, it is only because they want it to be so, for whatever reason.
This is true of everyone in society. We all have that choice, and jails the world over are full of people who chose not to play by society's rules and yet aren't psychopaths/sociopaths. Similarly, emergency services have a documented tendency to collect people with these personality types who aren't criminals.
>If they want to do bad things, and they can, then they will do so without a second thought.
Not unique to psychopaths/sociopaths, either. This is true of pretty much everyone. Given opportunity, motive, and means, literally anyone is capable of breaking social rules. Ever driven faster than the speed limit?
>They would kill someone if they could get away with it even if they were just mildly curious to see what it would be like.
Citation required. Psychopaths/sociopaths do not kill because of these personality traits; rather, the traits enable them to kill when they have sufficient motive under circumstances where a non-psychopath/sociopath may be hindered by a 'conscience.' That motive can be nothing more complex than self-gratification though inflicting pain (sadism), but there are plenty of sadists who are not also psychopaths/sociopaths.
>As far as I can tell the only emotion they can feel is anger, and they have no conscience.
See, everything you're writing says to me that your research is popular culture and not academic reading. Psychopaths/sociopaths are emotionally impaired in a general sense - usually described as they simply do not 'care.' Even about things that would make a normal person angry.
Fun fact of the day: The greatest mass murderers in history weren't necessarily all psychopaths and sociopaths, but every single one of them is a narcissist. In terms of danger to society at large, narcissists are a much greater risk - mostly because ASPD is typically detected early in life, pro-social psychopaths/sociopaths avoid detection as they cause no harm and indeed have a net benefit to society, while narcissists are the people most likely to occupy positions of power and influence and therefore effect change and policy direction.
Not to Godwin the thread, but Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were both narcissists. Whether or not they were psychopaths/sociopaths has not really been established as the phenomenon wasn't even really identified, nevermind studied, until the mid-1900s.
By proposing the extermination of psychopaths/sociopaths, you're proposing we wiped out 1-2% of the human population, most of whom never have and never will actually do anything to justify that extreme action. That shows a serious lack of understanding on your part.
Again, James Fallon. Look him up.
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“Just... no.
Psychopaths and sociopaths are two names for the same thing: people characterized by lack of remorse/empathy/sympathy, impulsivity, and often a lack of regard for safety of self/others. They typically are very charming/charismatic, self-centered, and are usually emotionally-detached (though the pro-social bunch can successfully fake emotional attachment).”
This is highly dangerous to the rest of us though. Why should we suffer this danger?
“This is true of everyone in society. We all have that choice, and jails the world over are full of people who chose not to play by society's rules and yet aren't psychopaths/sociopaths. Similarly, emergency services have a documented tendency to collect people with these personality types who aren't criminals.”
Yes. But it’s different with sociopaths/psychopaths, which you pretty much admit later. Even monsters sometimes have standards of right and wrong, lines that should not be crossed (like hardened criminals drawing the line at crimes against kids) but there’s nothing to stop a sociopath/psychopath, they have zero respect for the rights and desires of others.
If you have anything about the emergency services being full of sociopaths and psychopaths, I’d like to read that.
“Not unique to psychopaths/sociopaths, either. This is true of pretty much everyone. Given opportunity, motive, and means, literally anyone is capable of breaking social rules. Ever driven faster than the speed limit?”
I’m not talking about social rules, I’m talking about clearly defined, ingrained right and wrong that the majority will abide by. I don’t drive, but most people break the limit, so for me, it’s not a social rule when most people disobey. A normal person wouldn’t destroy someone just for kicks.
“Citation required. Psychopaths/sociopaths do not kill because of these personality traits; rather, the traits enable them to kill when they have sufficient motive under circumstances where a non-psychopath/sociopath may be hindered by a 'conscience.' That motive can be nothing more complex than self-gratification though inflicting pain (sadism), but there are plenty of sadists who are not also psychopaths/sociopaths.”
You’re going to have to dig around for your citation, and I don’t know if you’ll even find it. I have some things bookmarked for sociopaths. I’ll just dump them:
http://www.keswickhousepublishers.com/Keswick%20House%20Publishers/Blog/18CEC69B-BCE7-4069-A74B-377987C51E2D.html
http://www.keswickhousepublishers.com/Keswick%20House%20Publishers/Blog/2CE641CA-9DED-495D-BE46-47ABE8225E48.html
http://www.keswickhousepublishers.com/Keswick%20House%20Publishers/Blog/91B3234A-FD5C-4399-AA8D-5535FB209B8A.html
http://www.lovefraud.com/
http://www.sociopathworld.com/
http://www.sociopathworld.com/p/forum.html
That last one, sociopath forum with sociopaths. I only went in there once, and came out feeling contaminated and chilled to the marrow. Most of the topics when I went in had had their content censored or deleted, only recent posts I could see, but it was enough. Oh look what we have here. Might be one to keep an eye on…
Oh, somehow the url stays the same. There was a topic called “Worst thing you’ve done” second from the top.
Anyway, would a normal person, even if they did enjoy inflicting pain, inflict pain for no other reason than their own enjoyment? I’m sure I wouldn’t.
“As far as I can tell the only emotion they can feel is anger, and they have no conscience.”
From what I remember, it’s the only undiminished emotion.
Anyway though, I’ve certainly heard the word “narcissist” thrown around a lot with sociopaths and psychopaths, enough that I kind of thought the two went hand in glove. Even without it though sociopaths and psychopaths are still extremely dangerous. But it sounds like the narcissists need to be exterminated either instead of or as well.
Fallon, you wanted me to look him up because of him having the psychopath traits, right?
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Psychopathy is notable because it expresses so distinctly in children and appears so highly (though not totally) driven by genetic or prenatal factors. Psychopathy is a constellation disorder and the individual components may have separate underlying etiology. It is not a product of poor discipline, and trying to treat it as such would be disastrous.
Schizophrenia usually manifests later in life, and arises out of a combination of genetic predisposition and stressful life events. Like psychopathy it cannot be treated as behaviorally curable; to do so would be to condemn both the patient and those around him to profound danger.
as i understand it my family has been insane to some degree for many generations. moms schizo, my sister is bipolar, my brother gets panic attacks (that pussey), grandma is a little nuts. i hear stories about a few long dead aunts who were in an asylum. the sad thing is when i took psyche 101, we were told that insanity isn't genetic at all. i know this is not the case, but damn.
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Lorric: You are now officially off this thread, unless you can start arguing in a more rational way. The links you have posted so far to support your arguments show a distinct lack of understanding regarding simple things like how to do research.
Also, linking to a forum for self-identified sociopaths and citing it as evidence? That's a blatant an attempt at grasping at straws; as GIF theory will undermine anything in there that is actually legit information.
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Lorric: You are now officially off this thread, unless you can start arguing in a more rational way. The links you have posted so far to support your arguments show a distinct lack of understanding regarding simple things like how to do research.
Also, linking to a forum for self-identified sociopaths and citing it as evidence? That's a blatant an attempt at grasping at straws; as GIF theory will undermine anything in there that is actually legit information.
I don't know what to say to that.
What is GIF theory?
I can guess though, I expect you're saying that there will be fake/poser/wannabe sociopaths on the forum distorting things. But it shouldn't just be disregarded either because of that. It's a forum for sociopaths. There will be sociopaths there.
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Psychopathy is notable because it expresses so distinctly in children and appears so highly (though not totally) driven by genetic or prenatal factors. Psychopathy is a constellation disorder and the individual components may have separate underlying etiology. It is not a product of poor discipline, and trying to treat it as such would be disastrous.
Schizophrenia usually manifests later in life, and arises out of a combination of genetic predisposition and stressful life events. Like psychopathy it cannot be treated as behaviorally curable; to do so would be to condemn both the patient and those around him to profound danger.
as i understand it my family has been insane to some degree for many generations. moms schizo, my sister is bipolar, my brother gets panic attacks (that pussey), grandma is a little nuts. i hear stories about a few long dead aunts who were in an asylum. the sad thing is when i took psyche 101, we were told that insanity isn't genetic at all. i know this is not the case, but damn.
As for you Nuke, panic attacks have nothing to do with being weak.
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Psychopathy is notable because it expresses so distinctly in children and appears so highly (though not totally) driven by genetic or prenatal factors. Psychopathy is a constellation disorder and the individual components may have separate underlying etiology. It is not a product of poor discipline, and trying to treat it as such would be disastrous.
Schizophrenia usually manifests later in life, and arises out of a combination of genetic predisposition and stressful life events. Like psychopathy it cannot be treated as behaviorally curable; to do so would be to condemn both the patient and those around him to profound danger.
as i understand it my family has been insane to some degree for many generations. moms schizo, my sister is bipolar, my brother gets panic attacks (that pussey), grandma is a little nuts. i hear stories about a few long dead aunts who were in an asylum. the sad thing is when i took psyche 101, we were told that insanity isn't genetic at all. i know this is not the case, but damn.
I am not saying one way or the other here but one thing to consider when dealing with families is to separate genetic from environmental because a huge part of a child's development environment is the parent's state of mind which may promote similar conditions or other developed conditions, for example both Bipolar and Panic attacks may develop from experiance of events, especially in childhood or my be the result other factors such as genetic predisposition/conditions.
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Thanks, MP-Ryan, for posting in. You did have some new information for me as well there. From what I have understood, it may just be a bit of brain chemistry that is somehow off that allows the violent form to manifest itself, I recall reading a rather chilling account of a person who did the shootings from a tower some decades ago about succumbing to his violent impulses as he was not allowed to medication in time. The point is, there really is nothing that the person could do to help himself if this happens even if he wanted to, the only way to help is medication, and that helps only if the person is willing to use it.
From the description of the mother in your link, it sounds to me that the boy would not only have difficulties in controlling his impulses, but could also be heading to a divided personality. For a disclaimer, I don't have any psychological education, so I may not be using the right terms here. My understanding is that the reason for the brain chemistry to dysfunction can be social, but genetical as well. Long term social difficulties might bring the body to a state where this just happens. I'm not sure about how many hormones control the thought patterns in the brain, but I do believe that sociopathic behavior can be awakened in every single one of us if some hormones are just blocked. This is also probably what happens when people become enraged by drinking strong alcohol. Some limitations are just lifted, and a petty little thing can make you very very angry so that you cannot be spoken out of it.
However, I never thought emergency people could be sociopaths, but that might well be true. The difference could indeed be that they just agree to follow the rules. Supposedly this has something to do with age, and understanding something about yourself and being able to cope with it? I do recall higher functioning autists saying that as they grew older, they just started to understand things differently, and finally became integrated to the rest of the society? Maybe that is the same?
However, how does it go according to the current understanding? Is the opposite of a narcisstic brain actually an autistic brain (especially higher function autists)? What I didn't know that the school shooters could be determined to be narcisstic, I have classified part of them to be autists at some level, but they may have turned to narcisstic after something really integral to them broke down. This is just what I thought it could be, I can't really say for sure. I do recall reading a later life account of a teased person who could be said to be autistic in the beginning, ending up with thought patterns of what was called white rage, where all emotion is removed and the person starts to plan the demise of other persons for years ahead which sounds more sociopathic to me.
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What is GIF theory?
(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215499488_8pSZr-L-2.jpg)
I can guess though, I expect you're saying that there will be fake/poser/wannabe sociopaths on the forum distorting things. But it shouldn't just be disregarded either because of that. It's a forum for sociopaths. There will be sociopaths there.
How many? If you want to use it as a legit source, you have to make sure that what they're saying is actual, unfiltered stuff from actual, unfiltered sociopaths. Given the peculiarities of this medium, that is simply not possible.
As for the other links in your last post, they do lack in what one would call "credentials".
The first collection of three links lacks links to real science. The second is a site started by someone who had a bad relationship with a supposed (!) sociopath and tries to help people in similar situations (which, as far as motivations go, is not all that bad, but a lack of professionalism is notable there too).
As for the supposed sociopath forum, well, I think that that's more like a club for bad sociopath fanfic than anything else.
The problem, dear Lorric, is that you try to argue with people like MP_Ryan and Battuta, who are able to do the actual research and quote the actual science on the matter. You're essentially trying to bring up anecdotal evidence against scientific evidence, which never, EVER works and is a habit you should unlearn.
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Lorric, you are making a series of assumptions that really aren't supported by the research that has actually been conducted on psychopath/sociopathy/ASPD.
A lot of what you're saying seems to come down to this ingrained notion of right/wrong, which is what I'm actually talking about when I say social rules. I (and researchers) call these things social rules because they are a derivative of society, and not something that's ingrained in people from birth. Most of the norms and social rules we live our daily lives by are entirely learned (and without giving a lecture on behavioural genetics, we'll just say that there is a genetic basis for behaviour, but its more a predisposition to living in social groups than specific behaviours). Psychopaths/sociopaths differ in parts of their brain from most people, but it's not because they don't have an ingrained notion of social rules - far from it, they understand these rules implicitly - they simply have less of a resistance to breaking them due to a variety of their personality traits. But as I said, everyone can and will break certain social rules given means, opportunity, and motive. Plenty of people speed behind the wheel - that's a social rule being broken, and you endanger others by doing it. Murder is also the breaking of a social rule. The difference between a normal personality and a psychopath/sociopath is that a normal person feels remorse when breaking social rules, and the level of remorse (and therefore inhibition) escalates with the magnitude of the rule-breaking. For a psychopath/sociopath, there is no remorse. They understand on a conscious level that society views murder as a more serious crime than speeding, but they simply do not care - it doesn't bother them. Remorse is therefore not a barrier to them. So like I said before, it's not that psychopaths/sociopaths kill for no reason, it's that the reasons a normal person might not kill don't have any effect on them.
Now, generally when someone asks for a citation around here they mean a specific reference for a claim you're making. Dumping generic links and telling someone to find it yourself usually doesn't go well or lend credence to an argument. I'll also point out that the links you've posted are not what I'd call credible sources - fact-checked, peer-reviewed, or research-based. None of them list their sources, and any website claiming to be a haven for sociopaths is probably a haven for narcissists and other people with delusions of grandeur that think they're sociopaths but actually aren't.
And again, it's not that psychopaths/sociopaths are unable to feel any emotion except anger, it's that they tend to exhibit emotional detachment generally, and often simply do not care. They can experience anger, grief, love, hate, longing, melancholy, irritability, etc - just not in the same sense as a normal individual.
Anyway, narcissism is often confused with psychopathy/sociopathy, but they aren't the same things. Narcissists are all about feeling their own self-worth, have impulse control, and can feel remorse. Psychopaths/sociopaths are characterized by lack of impulse control and remorse, but they are not defined by an obsession with sense of self. Narcissism is a motivating personality disorder; psychopathy/sociopathy is a disorder which can enable certain behaviour.
I'd you suggest you delete said links altogether, as they are garbage, and do some academic reading instead from legitimate sources. You asked about the pro-social psychopath information; the best reference I can suggest is an Abnormal Psychology textbook. Amazon sells them. I have the Canadian edition (the older one, not this link) (http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP001894.html), but they're all pretty similar (stats just differ by country).
As for Mr. Fallon, he is a neuroscientist who also happens to have the brain physiology (and some of the personality indicators) of a psychopath/sociopath. His 15-minute youtube clip is well-worth listening to, as he explains some core concepts.
Anyway, if you find this subject interesting, take some college/university-level classes in Psychology. The university I attended offered abnormal psychology as a 300-level class with minimal pre-requisites, so it's an option even for those that don't major in psychology (I didn't).
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As for you Nuke, panic attacks have nothing to do with being weak.
You're correct about that.
This is highly dangerous to the rest of us though. Why should we suffer this danger?
Is it right to murder someone simply because of their personality?
EDIT: Oh, and not all of them are dangerous, as other people have pointed out.
Yes. But it’s different with sociopaths/psychopaths, which you pretty much admit later. Even monsters sometimes have standards of right and wrong, lines that should not be crossed (like hardened criminals drawing the line at crimes against kids) but there’s nothing to stop a sociopath/psychopath, they have zero respect for the rights and desires of others.
Having some marginal moral standards does not prevent you from being a sociopath.
Anyway, would a normal person, even if they did enjoy inflicting pain, inflict pain for no other reason than their own enjoyment? I’m sure I wouldn’t.
Yes. It's called bullying. Nearly everyone does that at some point in their life.
Anyway though, I’ve certainly heard the word “narcissist” thrown around a lot with sociopaths and psychopaths, enough that I kind of thought the two went hand in glove. Even without it though sociopaths and psychopaths are still extremely dangerous. But it sounds like the narcissists need to be exterminated either instead of or as well.
Again, is it acceptable to kill people because of their personalities?
And even if you think it is, couldn't the government abuse that power to kill dissidents by falsely calling them sociopaths?
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as i understand it my family has been insane to some degree for many generations. moms schizo, my sister is bipolar, my brother gets panic attacks (that pussey), grandma is a little nuts. i hear stories about a few long dead aunts who were in an asylum. the sad thing is when i took psyche 101, we were told that insanity isn't genetic at all. i know this is not the case, but damn.
Actually, there's a fair bit of evidence that certain types of mental illness have a strong basis in genetic factors, triggered by environmental cues. Among these are depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
The key is "triggered by environmental factors." Genetics is not destiny, at least in psychology.
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I wasn't expecting all this anyway, so I wasn't ready for it.
My original motivation in looking into sociopaths/psychopaths wasn't out of interest in them in general, it was out of a desire to be able to detect them and protect myself and potentially others from them.
I'm sorry about the "look for it yourself" thing, I didn't want it to come across that way. I simply didn't know where I got it from.
I may come back to this later, but I'm kind of tired now. :)
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For a break from creepy extermination stuff, here's a bit of follow up on the political side:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/17/us-usa-shooting-connecticut-obama-idUSBRE8BG0N220121217
Seems the republican party has mostly gone quiet on this for the time being, which I guess is understandable seeing as how they can't really frame it as a healthcare issue given their recent track record there. Will the massacre-mitigation optimists be crushed again if we get our hopes up this time? History points to yes.
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Not destiny, maybe, but the branch certainly doesn't fall far from the tree in my experience. Granted, this is yet again "anecdotal evidence" (everyone head for the hills!!!), but my grandfather, my mom, and I all have anxiety disorders that wax and wane from inconsequential to periods where we are in the fetal position begging the world to "go away" for weeks on end. Our life experiences were pretty substantially different, so one wonders what triggers are so common to all of our lives that, if we'd but known, we could have avoided this ****ing annoying "destiny." And now I'm watching the same nervous harbingers in my daughter, reminding me why I used to swear I wouldn't inflict my genes on another generation. What environmental cues were we supposed to avoid? Breathing oxygen? Being born?
When I was diagnosed w/ GAD, I was "helpfully" advised that I needed to lower the stress level in my life. As if I had any control over circumstances I was born into. I'm just saying, genetics may not be destiny, but it's pretty damn close.
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As for you Nuke, panic attacks have nothing to do with being weak.
your supposed to call your brother a pussy. its tradition! the point of my post was to provide (all be it anecdotal) evidence that mental illness is at least partially genetic.
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As for you Nuke, panic attacks have nothing to do with being weak.
your supposed to call your brother a pussy. its tradition! the point of my post was to provide (all be it anecdotal) evidence that mental illness is at least partially genetic.
I can't call my brother a pussy
Then again, he doesn't call me one either
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
:wtf: :nono:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.
A nutjob with a knife might have been stopped (as the man in China was), but a nutjob with a sword (weird example, but still relevant) could have done just as much damage.
That said, I agree with you in general.
That said, I agree with you in general; we do need tighter gun control laws.
That said, I agree with you in general. I just think this is one of the
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Sorry, I messed up my post.
Still using my friend's computer that won't let me edit.
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
:wtf: :nono:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
Apples to oranges. China may have no guns, but they also do not have a culture oriented around the self, and a strong historical precedence for self-defense - unlike the US and Canada.
If Adam Lanza had walked into a school with a knife instead of three semi-automatics, there would not have been 20 children and six adults killed. Look at the actions of just the principal and school counselor.
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Yeah, but if he'd had a sword he could have done the same thing and killed almost as many people (if not as many).
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
:wtf: :nono:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
Apples to oranges. China may have no guns, but they also do not have a culture oriented around the self, and a strong historical precedence for self-defense - unlike the US and Canada.
If Adam Lanza had walked into a school with a knife instead of three semi-automatics, there would not have been 20 children and six adults killed. Look at the actions of just the principal and school counselor.
Not to mention, 22 injuries, 2 serious, no fatalities. That's the difference between guns and just about every other type of personal weapon available on the planet - you can kill a lot more people a lot quicker, with fewer non-fatal injuries.
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Yeah, but if he'd had a sword he could have done the same thing and killed almost as many people (if not as many).
Actually, that's highly unlikely, swords are not as fatal as they are made out to be. Even Samurai swords, as sharp as they were, had to be used by someone skilled. Someone unskilled, when rushed would lunge at anywhere, and many points on the human body are not instantly disabling when hit. Also, when you are rushing into a life-death situation, you are awash with endorphins, and may not even care about the degree of damage until the fight is over.
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A sword can easily break bones and cause severe bleeding. A single hit can easily kill you, particularly if you're child with a small and weak body.
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A sword can easily break bones and cause severe bleeding. A single hit can easily kill you, particularly if you're child with a small and weak body.
Broken bones and severe bleeding are bad, but it is the level of penetration of the inner organs that makes the difference, and, without wanting to get into gruesome details at a time like this, the softer nature of childrens bones would actually protect them more. Also, as has been mentioned before, he was rushed by adults, who could certainly get close enough to have an effect.
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No, there's no way he could do that with just a sword. You have to get up close and then you have to actually hit. And people wouldn't just stand around either waiting to be cut down, they'd be running around, they'd be shoving chairs and tables in his way, they'd be throwing objects.
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Arterial bleeding can kill in a matter of minutes. Broken bones make it very difficult to fight back. And, a well-aimed stab or slash could kill you almost instantly.
The kids would be too terrified to fight back in any meaningful way. The adults would try, but without a weapon of their own they would have to either improvise one or use their bare hands--and the latter option would be borderline-suicidal. They would also be acting on reflexes and adrenaline, which means that unless they've had combat training they would probably be ineffective fighters.
Even if they rushed him, they would be unable to grab his sword without getting their hand cut off. They would also lack a way to quickly take him down, unless they found something like a hammer or a baseball bat, and that would require them to get close to him--which would likely be fatal unless they killed or incapacitated him in one hit. And all that adrenaline would cause them to think very, very fast, making a miss quite likely.
Admittedly, they would have slightly better chances. But not much better, and it's certainly not impossible that he could have done the same thing.
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Arterial bleeding can kill in a matter of minutes. Broken bones make it very difficult to fight back. And, a well-aimed stab or slash could kill you almost instantly.
The kids would be too terrified to fight back in any meaningful way. The adults would try, but without a weapon of their own they would have to either improvise one or use their bare hands--and the latter option would be borderline-suicidal. They would also be acting on reflexes and adrenaline, which means that unless they've had combat training they would probably be ineffective fighters.
Even if they rushed him, they would be unable to grab his sword without getting their hand cut off. They would also lack a way to quickly take him down, unless they found something like a hammer or a baseball bat, and that would require them to get close to him--which would likely be fatal unless they killed or incapacitated him in one hit. And all that adrenaline would cause them to think very, very fast, making a miss quite likely.
Admittedly, they would have slightly better chances. But not much better, and it's certainly not impossible that he could have done the same thing.
But he would be untrained and running on adrenaline too. All you'd need is a few teachers to grab chairs and batter him down. And if his sword got caught in anything, that would be the end of the road too.
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How bizzarre - now we've gone to swords.
Lorric actually has partial... basis in his rationalization. If you have the option, take a machete or a cheap sword and go somewhere in which you can maneuver it safely. Some brush out in the back yard will do just fine. You'll note that making precision strikes and clear hits is not as easy as you may have initially thought. Maintaining a high degree of accuraccy for each strike is also a matter to be concerned about. Also note that machetes and cheap swords are often poorly balanced and a bit unwieldy. A balanced, properly maintained and sharp sword is something most people do not have and do not aspire to own. Combine that with training conditions, and you're unlikely to have a lot of deaths on your hands unless the killer is a real nutjob (skilled and crazy).
Now consider maneuvering indoors with the weapon. That's not terribly easy, and the Japanese made use of short swords and knives specifically for that purpose; the most common sword someone is likely to own, the katana, is NOT one of those specialty weapons. Ultimately, effective use of hand to hand weapons is very training-intensive. There is a reason it has taken so long to re-construct what we now know about European martial arts: these very sophisticated fighting forms were forgotten and abandoned not only due to advances in weapons technology, but due to the fact that it is much harder to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat as opposed to firearms.
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Not only that, but the factor being missed here is that, even if a swordsman manages to kill someone who's running full-tilt at them, there's a little thing called momentum. They're going to have an unconscious or dead person slamming into them, which gives someone else a huge opportunity to move in and restrain them.
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I know this is HLP, and therefore I shouldn't ask, but how in blazes did we get onto swords and how is that even relevant to anything?
Good grief.
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This is ****ing grotesque. As someone with training in modern edged weapons in the context of krav maga, I am absolutely disgusted by them and, by extension, with this little armchair massacre the thread has devolved into.
Anyone who has really worked with weapons should know to be respectful of them and horrified by thought that they will ever need to be used against another human being. None of us here (with perhaps a few exceptions) understand violence or its psychological toll, and no one should therefore feel qualified to game out scenarios about the massacre of schoolchildren with machetes vs. a Sig.
e: I would like to add that most gun deaths of any sort in the USA are self-inflicted, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. Another leading use of firearms is to murder your domestic partner. I am capable of using and familiar with firearms for self-defense, but I had a very real introduction to firearms in my life when, at age six, one of the twins who lived next door accidentally shot his brother to death. Better security and safety in his home could have saved his brother, but so too could the absence of a lethal weapon.
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someone could always pack a chainsaw, or a makeshift flame thrower. thats aside from the fact that the typical profile of a school shooter is someone with above average intelligence, they could easily get there head around a recipe for explosives.
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This is ****ing grotesque.
To which I'd like to add a request for a show of hands, now. How many of you have ever actually handled a weapon? How many of you have ever made an attempt to use it on something alive? (Hunting or whatever.)
\o to both
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.
(http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/576322_432421576827473_1667000967_n.jpg)
Relevant image I came across. I'm not involved in this argument fyi, just adding tidbits here and there
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To which I'd like to add a request for a show of hands, now. How many of you have ever actually handled a weapon? How many of you have ever made an attempt to use it on something alive? (Hunting or whatever.)
\o To both as well. I'm quite proficient with the three major classes of civilian firearms, and have successfully hunted several times. All the animals I've taken were done so cleanly and then later eaten. I'm very fond of the weapons my family owns, but more than anything I feel a very dire respect for them.
Regarding other weapon proficiencies, I trained in Taekwondo as a child, but I would not consider that hand-to-hand combat training, and I have no formal training with any hand-to-hand weapons. Additionally, I would consider myself a proficient compound archer as well, though I am a bit out of practice ("proficient" here meaning "comfortable enough with skills to apply to hunting").
I could segue into a continued discussion of the OT, but I won't. I've already said my piece and am done... especially in light of the recent direction change. Swords? Seriously?
ed: clarity
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Mental health, yes, more should be done, in every nation. Would definitely go a long way towards solving the problem. But you know what else would? Still gun control. You reckon a nutjob with a knife could have done this?
Like Kara said, it's a second amendment tax, and America seems to be continually willing to pay it. Sad fact, but fact nonetheless.
http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/576322_432421576827473_1667000967_n.jpg
Relevant image I came across. I'm not involved in this argument fyi, just adding tidbits here and there
Strawman. The fact that murders - even mass murders - are committed without guns doesn't make freely available guns any better or any less dangerous.
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Trained in bladed weapons. Thankfully never needed to use one in combat.
As I said before, I am unwilling to go into gruesome details of the kind of damage swords can do because of the subject matter, it is not really the time or the place, but I did however want to challenge the seeming opinion being stated that the chances were the outcome would be the same to that of a gun, for reasons that have already been covered.
Whilst it is true that the pro gun-control advocates need to be careful not to allow themselves to run too far on emotion and assumption, the same is also true of the opposite, those who advocate a more permissive approach need to do so based on cold, hard truth where at all possible. It's the only chance, even in emotional situations like this, that any kind of balance will be struck.
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If we ran this on cold hard truth we'd debate controlling swimming pools, because they kill more kids a year per capita and per individual item than guns in the US.
We're never going to have swimming pool control debates.
"Cold hard truth" has very little to do with this discussion on either side. If were to analyze things by the numbers we wouldn't even get to discussing guns for a long time. Guns, though, are really sexy in the minds of both sides.
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Yup, and in some ways the problem is that it is distracting people from far deeper, and probably further-reaching issues that need to be addressed with regards to the whole situation.
Like most societies, there are issues up and down the line that need to be addressed, and oddly enough, I hope that when the Right Wing move, they are actually against gun restrictions, because that means they are veering more in the direction of considering the mental condition of the shooter, rather than his methodology.
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If we ran this on cold hard truth we'd debate controlling swimming pools, because they kill more kids a year per capita and per individual item than guns in the US.
When you go to a swimming pool or install one in your home, you assume the risk of drowning and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.
If guns only killed the people who bought them or their families, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Actually we probably would and we'd get people talking about how banning swimming pools wouldn't stop someone filling their bathtub with acid and endangering their children that way. :p
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When you go buy a gun, you assume the risk of people getting shot and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.
Fixed. (In fact, given that swimming pools cause more child deaths per single pool over the child deaths per single gun, we're doing a much better job at the above than we are at its swimming pool alternative.)
Dead people are dead, the one thing in which pretty much everybody is equal. You're assigning an arbitrary value to their death, despite the things which really make it tragic to most human beings (avoidablity, before time, lack of deserving nature) being essentially the same.
In other words, you have perfectly demonstrated my point that both sides think guns are much more sexy and want to debate them when they're far from a substantive issue by comparison. Pools are good example because people don't think about it. A more obvious one is sobriety groups.
But MADD's not as sexy as the NRA or their opponents though, so here we are.
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Why are you arguing the finer points of murdering people with various weapons?
You can kill someone with your bare hands. All weapons serve to make the process faster and easier. Guns are categorically at the top of the faster/easier list.
Anyway, on the topic of guns... I can't be arsed to look up the exact numbers but I'm almost 100% sure that if you look at the numbers, you can apply some very basic statistics to the whole thing, and you'll find a couple irrefutable conclusions:
1. Far more people are murdered than saved as a result of gun usage.
2. The relative proportions of people who use guns for defense and people who use guns to murder are such that the likelihood of any given gun crime being thwarted by another gun-user is extremely low.
You can argue about the effectiveness of gun control but as far as I'm concerned you cannot deny that it can't possibly raise the number of violent crime deaths. In fact, it is almost guaranteed to lower the rates significantly over the long term.
However, mental health improvements would prevent more deaths than gun control could ever manage.
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You can argue about the effectiveness of gun control but as far as I'm concerned you cannot deny that it can't possibly raise the number of violent crime deaths. In fact, it is almost guaranteed to lower the rates significantly over the long term.
In regards to that, if someone wants a gun, but they can't go to their local store to get one... they'll find other not so legitimate ways to get one
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When you go buy a gun, you assume the risk of people getting shot and if you're sensible you take precautions against it.
Fixed.
Badly. You completely missed the point.
Yes on the number of deaths count swimming pools are an important issue, but in terms of public safety it's laughable to equate the two. I can't drown in someone else's swimming pool unless I decide to go there. I can however be killed by the lack of precautions taken by someone else with their firearms.
But MADD's not as sexy as the NRA or their opponents though, so here we are.
Another false equivalence. There is no pro-drink driving group. So their is no drink driving/anti drink driving debate. It's nothing to do with sexy. It's because there is no one to debate against. Most rational people agree that drink driving isn't legal and should be punishable.
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Well, once again, it's swings and roundabouts. The availability of the guns in the legal market tends to have an impact on the availability through illegitimate sources. I believe many cases in the US involve someone legally entitled to buy guns then selling them on to those who are not, whereas in the UK, the stigma attached to handguns makes it much more difficult to make the initial contact, especially if you are just some Middle-ish Class kid with a high IQ and low social interaction skills, which appears to be at least part of the psychological makeup of the kind of person that resorts to this.
You'll note these shootings aren't being done by 'criminals' in the classical sense, these aren't people who would normally have access to illegitimate weapons, or often even people in groups that would be considered 'prone' to criminal elements as such, and often those that attempt to obtain those weapons for themselves are clumsy and non-successful. It's something far deeper than 'Good Guy/Bad Guy' going on here I think.
Edit :
Also, another interesting perspective on what happens when a school shooting takes place :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20763752
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You can argue about the effectiveness of gun control but as far as I'm concerned you cannot deny that it can't possibly raise the number of violent crime deaths. In fact, it is almost guaranteed to lower the rates significantly over the long term.
In regards to that, if someone wants a gun, but they can't go to their local store to get one... they'll find other not so legitimate ways to get one
Which in turn make obtaining a gun more difficult, means that if police stop and search then they will be instantly detained. the persons distributing the guns will be under investigation by the police, your average citizen wont posses a gun so cant use it in the heat of the moment (certainly where a lot of UK gun incidents are logged), also it means that most of those who do posses guns tend to be those who have past offences and so monitored by the police.
Sure it is not perfect and in a country like the US I would suggest it is only applied to heavily urbanised areas where there is little need for guns outside of professions such as pest control and prety much anything else falls under the jurisdiction of the police. my understanding is there there are many large areas in the US which are not farmed (unlike in Europe) and have potentially dangerous wild animals roaming them so there is a real justification to poses a gun in these cases.
Also not to be ignored is public and political attitudes to mental health and the attitude towards guns in certain regions and aspects of American society
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You'll note these shootings aren't being done by 'criminals' in the classical sense, these aren't people who would normally have access to illegitimate weapons, or often even people in groups that would be considered 'prone' to criminal elements as such, and often those that attempt to obtain those weapons for themselves are clumsy and non-successful. It's something far deeper than 'Good Guy/Bad Guy' going on here I think.
An excellent point you do make here
Although, the idea occurred to me. What about mental screening for gun purchases? Criminal records are checked as mentioned before, but what about mental stability? I don't recall anything being mentioned about people being screened psychologically for gun purchases. That there would be a step in the right direction
Afterall, if someone is thinking of suicide/murder, they're going to be less inclined to see a shrink if it's between them and a way out and not bother with the whole process
However, there is the part where they take say, their parent's guns.
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You'll note these shootings aren't being done by 'criminals' in the classical sense, these aren't people who would normally have access to illegitimate weapons, or often even people in groups that would be considered 'prone' to criminal elements as such, and often those that attempt to obtain those weapons for themselves are clumsy and non-successful. It's something far deeper than 'Good Guy/Bad Guy' going on here I think.
An excellent point you do make here
Although, the idea occurred to me. What about mental screening for gun purchases? Criminal records are checked as mentioned before, but what about mental stability? I don't recall anything being mentioned about people being screened psychologically for gun purchases. That there would be a step in the right direction
Afterall, if someone is thinking of suicide/murder, they're going to be less inclined to see a shrink if it's between them and a way out and not bother with the whole process
However, there is the part where they take say, their parent's guns.
thing is what happens when junior figures out the combination too or lifts the key for dad's gun safe?
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You'll note these shootings aren't being done by 'criminals' in the classical sense, these aren't people who would normally have access to illegitimate weapons, or often even people in groups that would be considered 'prone' to criminal elements as such, and often those that attempt to obtain those weapons for themselves are clumsy and non-successful. It's something far deeper than 'Good Guy/Bad Guy' going on here I think.
An excellent point you do make here
Although, the idea occurred to me. What about mental screening for gun purchases? Criminal records are checked as mentioned before, but what about mental stability? I don't recall anything being mentioned about people being screened psychologically for gun purchases. That there would be a step in the right direction
Afterall, if someone is thinking of suicide/murder, they're going to be less inclined to see a shrink if it's between them and a way out and not bother with the whole process
However, there is the part where they take say, their parent's guns.
thing is what happens when junior figures out the combination too or lifts the key for dad's gun safe?
Read last line. I'll requote it for convenience
"However, there is the part where they take say, their parent's guns. "
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/facepalm
sorry about that
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/facepalm
sorry about that
S'all good
I'll leave this one here for you then
Is part of the blame then shifted to the parent for not keeping their mentally unstable child from their guns?
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Trained in bladed weapons. Thankfully never needed to use one in combat.
As I said before, I am unwilling to go into gruesome details of the kind of damage swords can do because of the subject matter, it is not really the time or the place, but I did however want to challenge the seeming opinion being stated that the chances were the outcome would be the same to that of a gun, for reasons that have already been covered.
Whilst it is true that the pro gun-control advocates need to be careful not to allow themselves to run too far on emotion and assumption, the same is also true of the opposite, those who advocate a more permissive approach need to do so based on cold, hard truth where at all possible. It's the only chance, even in emotional situations like this, that any kind of balance will be struck.
If you have training than you have a better idea of a sword's capabilities than I do.
Anyway, I think that we basically agree on this. We need to somehow stop these people from getting guns.
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This is ****ing grotesque.
To which I'd like to add a request for a show of hands, now. How many of you have ever actually handled a weapon? How many of you have ever made an attempt to use it on something alive? (Hunting or whatever.)
\o to both
ive gone hunting a few times. bullets going through meat makes a mess.
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If we ran this on cold hard truth we'd debate controlling swimming pools, because they kill more kids a year per capita and per individual item than guns in the US.
Possibly true, but guns kill *way* more people in general than swimming pools. An order of magnitude of difference.
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Since we're showing hands, I have training with firearms, in edged-weapon defence, and in the carrying/use of defensive weapons (not guns) which I carry at work. The conversation around knives/swords/silliness is, in my view, asinine.
For the record, I'm not in favour of blanket bans on guns, gun types, etc. I am in favour of the rigorous regulation of ownership, carrying, and storage of all firearms to ensure they are possessed, stored, and used safely for the purpose for which they are intended - hunting, target shooting, and limited self-defense circumstances as permitted by law (which is true in the US and Canada, generally). I have a firearms license for both restricted/non-restricted weapons in Canada (although I do not personally own any right now).
While this entire Newtown tragedy was preventable through better mental health systems, it is also preventable if there were proper controls in place for the firearms owner and the storage of the weapons themselves. For one, her mentally-ill son should never have had any sort of access to these guns. Trigger locks are cheap, and keys are easily hidden. Gun safes are relatively cheap (given this woman's finances, she had no excuse), and a combination can be kept from the son. Furthermore, she should not have been able to even purchase the guns in a household with a mentally-ill family member without a legal requirement to safely store those guns away from his access.
The sad fact of this case is that 20+ people would not be dead if this woman had put trigger locks on her guns and hidden the key, or kept them in a gun safe for which her son did not have the combination. She didn't, and she along with 20+ other people including kids paid the price of that folly with their lives.
The real tragedy is that these legislated requirements are common sense and not only prevent these sorts of issues, but also the massive numbers of deaths attributed to accidental firearms discharges that occur in the US annually, many/most of them in children.
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Yes but enforcing the rules would mean people have to take responsibility when they buy a gun. And the only way to check they have taken responsibility is to legislate and enforce those legislations. Most countries do that for cars but would America be willing to accept the same amount of responsibility for guns that they currently accept for cars?
So who is willing to allow ATF agents into their home to check that their guns are stored properly on a semi-regular basis? Would people accept mandatory training with firearms before ownership is allowed? Would people who own a gun be willing to pay a gun tax so that the government could pay for it?
I doubt anyone would be willing to pass that law. The other tax is cheaper.
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Answer to all of Karajorma's rhetorical questions: if they want to purchase/keep their guns, yes.
I would make an awesome dictator.
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Since we're showing hands, I have training with firearms, in edged-weapon defence, and in the carrying/use of defensive weapons (not guns) which I carry at work. The conversation around knives/swords/silliness is, in my view, asinine.
For the record, I'm not in favour of blanket bans on guns, gun types, etc. I am in favour of the rigorous regulation of ownership, carrying, and storage of all firearms to ensure they are possessed, stored, and used safely for the purpose for which they are intended - hunting, target shooting, and limited self-defense circumstances as permitted by law (which is true in the US and Canada, generally). I have a firearms license for both restricted/non-restricted weapons in Canada (although I do not personally own any right now).
While this entire Newtown tragedy was preventable through better mental health systems, it is also preventable if there were proper controls in place for the firearms owner and the storage of the weapons themselves. For one, her mentally-ill son should never have had any sort of access to these guns. Trigger locks are cheap, and keys are easily hidden. Gun safes are relatively cheap (given this woman's finances, she had no excuse), and a combination can be kept from the son. Furthermore, she should not have been able to even purchase the guns in a household with a mentally-ill family member without a legal requirement to safely store those guns away from his access.
The sad fact of this case is that 20+ people would not be dead if this woman had put trigger locks on her guns and hidden the key, or kept them in a gun safe for which her son did not have the combination. She didn't, and she along with 20+ other people including kids paid the price of that folly with their lives.
The real tragedy is that these legislated requirements are common sense and not only prevent these sorts of issues, but also the massive numbers of deaths attributed to accidental firearms discharges that occur in the US annually, many/most of them in children.
i kinda agree with everything you just said. id also like to point out that guns aint cheap. its not unusual for somone to drop hundreds of buck on a gun (or a small arsenal), and then dont want to spend a few more bucks on a gun safe or trig locks. weapons meant for hunting (or sport shooting) especially there is no excuse for having them out all the time (unless you live in the woods and hunt from your back porch, as certain inlaws of mine do). these weapons have no reason to be out all the time.
of course when it comes to guns for personal and home defense things get iffy. if someone breaks into your house they are probibly aren't going to like you when they see you frantically trying to open the gun safe or get the trigger lock off your pistol so you can put a bullet or two through them. and if you live in such a dangerous part of town (or grizzly territory) that you need a gun you are probibly better off training everyone in the household in their use than not. people who buy guns for defense usually do so as a reaction to already well armed criminals. and had the criminals not had guns, they would not have needed them either. this is merely a survival strategy in a second amendment world.
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So who is willing to allow ATF agents into their home to check that their guns are stored properly on a semi-regular basis? Would people accept mandatory training with firearms before ownership is allowed? Would people who own a gun be willing to pay a gun tax so that the government could pay for it?
I would accept those stipulations. In combination with current weapon class limitations (no machine guns, no grenades, etc.), such stipulations are perfectly reasonable. It only makes sense that devices designed to kill things should be subject to limitations similar to other devices that can easily cause incidental deaths (cars).
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@IronBeer: so would a lot of people. The problem is the next part of what he said: nobody in the position to control whether such a law passes is going to pass such a law.
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Yes but enforcing the rules would mean people have to take responsibility when they buy a gun. And the only way to check they have taken responsibility is to legislate and enforce those legislations. Most countries do that for cars but would America be willing to accept the same amount of responsibility for guns that they currently accept for cars?
the difference is in the us owning and driving a vehicle is considered a privilege, where as owning a gun is a right. i dont think america has the political will right now to change an amendment as old as america itself.
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Yes but enforcing the rules would mean people have to take responsibility when they buy a gun. And the only way to check they have taken responsibility is to legislate and enforce those legislations. Most countries do that for cars but would America be willing to accept the same amount of responsibility for guns that they currently accept for cars?
the difference is in the us owning and driving a vehicle is considered a privilege, where as owning a gun is a right. i dont think america has the political will right now to change an amendment as old as america itself.
"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/12/jeffrey-toobin-second-amendment.html#ixzz2FTWH8OPO
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EXCLUSIVE: Fear of being committed may have caused Connecticut gunman to snap
By Jana Winter
Published December 18, 2012
NEWTOWN, Conn. – The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families.
Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims' families worship.
“From what I've been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed," Flashman said. "Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”
A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza's anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting.
"He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry."
- Joshua Flashman, Newtown resident familiar with Lanza family
Flashman was told Nancy Lanza had begun filing paperwork to get conservatorship over her troubled son, but that could not be confirmed because a court official told us that such records are sealed. The move would have been necessary for her to gain the legal right to commit an adult to a hospital or psychiatric facility against his will. A competency hearing had not yet been held.
Adam Lanza attended the Sandy Hook School as a boy, according to Flashman, who said Nancy Lanza had volunteered there for several years. Two law enforcement sources said they believed Nancy Lanza had been volunteering with kindergartners at the school. Most of Lanza's victims were first graders sources believe Nancy Lanza may have worked with last year.
Flashman said Nancy Lanza was also good friends with the school’s principal and psychologist—both of whom were killed in the shooting rampage.
"Adam Lanza believed she cared more for the children than she did for him, and the reason he probably thought this [was the fact that] she was petitioning for conservatorship and wanted to have him committed," Flashman said. "I could understand how he might perceive that—that his mom loved him less than she loved the kids, loved the school. But she did love him. But he was a troubled kid and she probably just couldn’t take care of him by herself anymore."
The Washington Post reported that the distraught mother had considered moving with her son to Washington state, where she had found a school she thought could help him. Either way, according to Flashman, Nancy Lanza was at her wit's end.
A separate neighborhood source also told us that Nancy Lanza had come to the realization she could no longer handle her son alone. She was caring for him full-time, but told friends she needed help. She was planning to have him involuntarily hospitalized, according to the source, who did not know if she had taken formal steps.
Multiple sources report that Adam Lanza suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and unspecified mental and emotional problems.
Adam Lanza has also been described by those who knew him as highly intelligent, and a spokesman for Western Connecticut State University told The Associated Press he took college classes there when he was 16, earning a 3.26 grade point average and excelling at a computer course.
Alan Diaz, 20, who was friends with Adam Lanza at Newtown High School, said the Lanza he knew was ill-at-ease socially, but not a monster.
"He was a wicked smart kid," Diaz told us by email. "When I first met him, he wouldn't even look at you when you tried to talk to him. Over the year I knew him, he became used to me and my other friends, he eventually could have full conversations with us.
"I've heard him laugh, he has even comforted me once in a hard time I had," Diaz said. “A big part of me wishes I never dropped contact with him after he left high school, felt like I could have done something."
Flashman said nobody will completely understand why Adam did what he did.
“No one can explain Adam Lanza besides God and Adam Lanza, and I don’t even think Adam Lanza could explain Adam Lanza, to be honest with you.”
Source/Read more: here (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/#ixzz2FTWvXkyJ)
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the difference is in the us owning and driving a vehicle is considered a privilege, where as owning a gun is a right. i dont think america has the political will right now to change an amendment as old as america itself.
This is significant, because it renders much of the gun control debate moot.
When other countries have decided to make sweeping changes to their gun laws, it's just been a matter of passing a bill. Because the Supreme Court has favored a very broad interpretation of the second amendment (and done so very recently), if such reforms are simply put through the normal legislative process, they stand to be struck down quickly.
Constitutional amendments, in the United States, can only be modified or repealed by another amendment. A Constitutional amendment is one of the rare cases that only passes Congress with a two-thirds majority in both houses. Even if it passes Congress, though, an amendment does not carry legal weight, until ratified by three quarters of the state legislatures. Currently, any coalition of twelve states can block an amendment from taking effect, even if it passes the high hurdle of two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress.
I can think of eleven states that would block such any amendment designed to strike or weaken the second amendment, without even having to look west of the Mississippi River, and there's no shortage of allies to that effort on the other side of that geographic boundary.
I think Congress can easily craft a gun control bill that will pass the Senate. Even prominent members of the Blue Dog caucus are open to proposals to ressurrect the 1994 assault weapons ban, and I don't think that Senate Republicans are up to filibustering such a bill, in the wake of Sandy Hook. I think that a compromise bill could find enough Republican support in the House (perhaps with some political arm-twisting) to get the simple majority needed there to pass. Unless Antonin Scalia drops dead before such a law passes and is challenged, then such a bill would be struck down, with the five-justice majority's opinion summarized as "D.C. v. Heller, lolz."
Right or wrong, it will take more--possibly much more--time and blood before the United States warms enough to the idea of gun control to achieve any progress toward gun-control legislation that is viable in the long-term.
"The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative." - Winston Churchill
[addendum]
Deathfun, the part of The New Yorker article that you have quoted is grossly misinformed [edit] or out-of-date [/edit]. Again (and less jovially), I cite District of Columbia v. Heller. The Supreme Court, in 2008, held exactly the opposite of what that quote says, stating that the second amendment guarantees the individual right to bear arms, regardless of service in a militia, law enforcement, or military organization.
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Tangentially relevant, re: "well regulated militia"
I read something somewhere that said "regulated" is more like "regular" in the sense of a "regular army", and that the meaning we think of when we see it nowadays like "regulations", i.e. having laws pertaining to it, is new.
Can't find original source, but the Wikipedia article on the second amendment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) says:
The term "regulated" means "disciplined" or "trained"
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a form of autism
a form of autism
a form of autism
YOU STUPID ****ING ****
ASPERGERS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORM OF DISORDER TO AUTISM, YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF FECAL MATTER
AND BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO BE STUPID, I AM AUTISTIC MYSELF AND HAVE BEEN AROUND MANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE SHARED MY DISORDER, HAD ADHD, OR ASPERGERS.
****ing pieces of ****. And don't you even think of whining to me about *you're so meanie!!!111*. **** you. I have a right to be pissed off. People thinking that Aspergers is autism are ****ing stupid, and help remove many forms of help for the autistic and make it harder to GET help in the first place.
I was lucky, even though I don't believe in luck. I was born before the autistic had institutionalized help, and I was fortunate enough to have the signs noticed by my mother, and she took me to a specialist who recognized what I had straight away. I had help.
But I still struggled, as the environment I was in was pure ****. Bad teachers, bad children, almost bad everything. I refuse to watch others who share my so-called "condition". I refuse to watch them be forced to put up with the same bull**** that I had to struggle through. Autism is a form of underdevelopment, and Aspergers is a developmental issue where one's social abilities do not develop properly as one ages. None of these are diseases, nor are they mental illnesses. By the way, call me mentally ill, and I will EAT YOUR ****ING LIMBS.
If you legitimately think that autism is Aspergers or vice-versa, you are an idiot and have obviously not done your research. Also, I find such things to be snide remarks against my intelligence, even if they are not directed at me, because it usually proposes the stupid idea that the autistic are mentally ill, which is untrue. It is however possible to have a mental illness as well as autism, but again, they are not the same. Correlation does not imply causation.
Now, if anyone here wants to throw stupid **** around about autism or similar disorders, I will rip into your arguments and kill them. Bloodily.
Kapeesh? Also, I am not cranky or stressed. I am however infuriated by the stupidity of the above article. :rolleyes: (I am aware I may be derailing the topic.)
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My understanding is that Autism is a spectrum disorder of which Aspergers forms one part. while I have not lived with the condition in myself I have had the mixed fortune of living with my sister who is a largely functional Aspergers in that she can sustain herself for several days in a new environment without direct support from our parents or close friends but is characterised by social awkwardness from inability to comprehend emotional interactions with other people, audio hypersensitivity, fixation on a small number of subjects and panic attacks from situations she doesn't understand.
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Most countries do that for cars but would America be willing to accept the same amount of responsibility for guns that they currently accept for cars?
In all likelihood, yes.
Not because they'd accept your hyperbolic and hilarious example about home-checkups though, because they're generally not required to take that degree of responsibility for their cars either. Such laws are administered at the state level and vary. Virginia, for example, requires a yearly safety inspection to ensure all your lights work among other things; this is typically combined with a smog check. If the safety inspection is failed, you have thirty days to fix it or they take away your car. California does a smog check every four years or so, but doesn't require safety inspections ever (though it's still a crime to drive around with broken lights, many people do it anyways).
The point is, this idea people are going to be sent out to check on your gun-storage procedure would never happen (hi it's an amendment to the constitution against unreasonable search and seizure that means you're never going to get agents of law enforcement into a home without a warrant or crime committed on the premises); you'd probably be told to buy a trigger lock and bring gun and trigger lock in so it could be certified you know how to use the thing, and you'd be up for additional charges or made criminally liable for crimes or injuries committed if the gun was stored improperly. (Which would be difficult to prove in most cases.)
That's realistic. That's something that could actually happen. ATF agents isn't.
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So it's basically worthless then. People will buy the safe and then throw it in a skip, or at the very least not lock it. They'll buy a trigger lock and then leave it in a drawer somewhere unused and probably never even removed from the packaging.
Like I keep saying, the will isn't there to do something about the problem.
And quite frankly, I don't believe the optimism on this thread that people would agree to any of the things I suggested. If everyone was really willing, why hasn't someone done it before? I severely doubt I'm the first person ever to suggest it.
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BritishShivans - Rein it in a bit please? Check your PM inbox.
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ASPERGERS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORM OF DISORDER TO AUTISM
While I can understand your frustration, you could perhaps understand that the people who say "Aspergers is a form of autism" are not being ignorant, they are merely reciting the present day definition of it as put by every dictionary available.
Take for instance Wikipedia:
Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
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So it's basically worthless then. People will buy the safe and then throw it in a skip, or at the very least not lock it. They'll buy a trigger lock and then leave it in a drawer somewhere unused and probably never even removed from the packaging.
Not true. Canada has safe storage/possession/use laws that state exactly the sorts of things I've talked about, and while police have the right of inspection (FYI, NGTM-1R, regulatory inspections are not subject to the same scrutiny as criminal proceedings and therefore can bypass warrant requirements, even in the US - this is why your baggage can be searched at the border), it is rarely exercised except on a complaints basis. Yet, despite the seeming non-enforcement, the tiny number of accidental deaths attributed to improper storage of firearms in Canada belies the notion that strict and regular enforcement is a requirement to ensure people follow these laws.
Yes, US culture is different but if you pay attention to what's happening in politics and public opinion now, I think this Newtown mess has created more of an impetus to do something than any mass-murder before it. Something about 20 dead 5-7 year-olds has triggered the common sense region of the American "gun nut" brain.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/local-official-laments-newtowns-love-affair-with-guns/article6550842/
I have a number of friends in the States, and while I've heard them talk about the fetishization of guns in the US before, an excerpt from this article really drives the point home that gun culture in the US is seriously screwed up and an attitude shift needs to accompany any change in legislation:
For much of the year, second-amendment defenders have been packing [Newtown] town-council committee rooms to fight a proposed ordinance that would restrict backyard target shooting, a round-the-clock hobby that has become the subject of persistent noise complaints. The ordinance would restrict recreational target practice to police-approved ranges.
The police chief, who endorsed the measure, complained during debates that one resident had been using military-grade weapons to detonate propane tanks in his backyard.
Despite the chief’s concerns, 60 residents packed one meeting, according to the Newtown Bee, with just one of them speaking in favour of the ordinance, which has yet to pass.
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of course when it comes to guns for personal and home defense things get iffy. if someone breaks into your house they are probibly aren't going to like you when they see you frantically trying to open the gun safe or get the trigger lock off your pistol so you can put a bullet or two through them. and if you live in such a dangerous part of town (or grizzly territory) that you need a gun you are probibly better off training everyone in the household in their use than not. people who buy guns for defense usually do so as a reaction to already well armed criminals. and had the criminals not had guns, they would not have needed them either. this is merely a survival strategy in a second amendment world.
This is my favorite NRA-promoted myth of all.
How many home invasions occur annually in the United States?
How many of those home invasions are successfully stopped with no injuries to the residents because they had a firearm at hand?
How many people die annually in the US due to accidental discharges from improperly stored firearms in the home?
I can tell you right now that without even looking up the numbers this year, there are far more people killed (by an order of 10 or more) by accidental firearms discharges due to weapons stored improperly in the home than there are home invasions stopped because the resident had a gun. Home invasions are rare; accidental deaths are not. The 'myth' of home defense is precisely that, yet it's one that seems regularly bought into by otherwise rational Americans.
As for animals, while I know a few people in northern Canadian communities who keep rifles at hand because polar bears have a nasty habit of trundling through the middle of town, - which is perfectly reasonable, and you can keep the rifle trigger-locked or the bolt out because the bears aren't breaking down doors, you have time to load and ready the gun if going outside - I grew up in grizzly country. Our guns and bear spray were kept in a locked gun safe, with trigger locks on them. In all the years I lived there, no one died from a bear mauling in the area, nor were there serious injuries sustained anywhere near a home. Sure, Alaska is a different type of bear country from the BC interior, but if you have bears breaking into your house you need to renovate your house, not store guns irresponsibly.
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Related Tangent TB has posted a non-monetised video on the sections media's slant about it being caused by computer games
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwAo8lcAC4
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a form of autism
a form of autism
a form of autism
YOU STUPID ****ING ****
ASPERGERS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FORM OF DISORDER TO AUTISM, YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF FECAL MATTER
AND BEFORE YOU DECIDE TO BE STUPID, I AM AUTISTIC MYSELF AND HAVE BEEN AROUND MANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE SHARED MY DISORDER, HAD ADHD, OR ASPERGERS.
Wait, hang on a second.
If you legitimately think that autism is Aspergers or vice-versa, you are an idiot and have obviously not done your research. Also, I find such things to be snide remarks against my intelligence, even if they are not directed at me, because it usually proposes the stupid idea that the autistic are mentally ill, which is untrue. It is however possible to have a mental illness as well as autism, but again, they are not the same. Correlation does not imply causation.
I'm in psychology, and as far as I know, psychologists recently voted to amend the DSM to remove Asperger's as a diagnosis. Asperger's is now recognized as simply a form of autism.
To quote the first random article I googled up
The clinical diagnosis for Asperger’s syndrome will be removed in the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association psychiatrists’ diagnostic guide.
The fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-V, will come out in May and Asperger’s will be notably absent, replaced with the broader definition of “autism spectrum disorder.” Previously, Asperger’s was thought to be a milder form of autism.
The choice to remove the definition from the DSM, sometimes referred to as the psychiatric bible, has been much-debated and is opposed by some who think the change in definition will exclude some patients from diagnosis, and could mean they don’t get the treatment and services they need.
“Our fear is that we are going to take a big step backward,” Lori Shery, president of the Asperger Syndrome Education Network, told The New York Times in January. “If clinicians say, ‘These kids don’t fit the criteria for an autism spectrum diagnosis,’ they are not going to get the supports and services they need, and they’re going to experience failure.”
Not everyone who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome disagrees, however.
Joshua Muggleton, a psychology student who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, writes in The Guardian: “…after looking at the research I was forced to conclude that actually, the DSM-V is a big step in the right direction. For years, studies have been suggesting that autism and Asperger’s syndrome are the same condition, differentiated only by level of impairment.”
Now, you're free to disagree with the scientific community on this one...but for the moment the scientific consensus appears to be that Asperger's is autism.
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Out of curiosity, what is the difference between a higher functioning autist and an Asperger?
Also, who else thinks that the shooter himself is also a victim? And not only a victim, but the first victim?
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Calm yourself BritishShivans.
Asperger's syndrome is a type of autism. That is a fact. Autism is too complex a disorder to just call it autism and lump everyone into the same pigeonhole, it needs breaking down into subtypes. I have been aware of the term for about 20 years or so, and all that time it has been a form of autism.
In other news, word is Americans are buying up guns now in fear of gun control.
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Autism is a form of underdevelopment. If you're autistic, you'll usually be born with a lack of social functions you would normally have (i.e understanding facial expressions, or emotions such as happiness.) and some physical ones. You need to be "taught" these things, so to speak. Autism is a spectrum, so it can vary wildly from the minor to the severe.
Aspergers is just as diverse as autism, but like autism, it also has a core group of symptoms that are defined as "being" Aspergers. My own observations, based upon my friends and what I've seen, is that people with Aspergers develop normally in minor cases, but have difficulty extending their feelings to others, and in severe cases, may have trouble extending empathy. There also seems to be common "trust" issue that is actually quite similar to what a number of autistics in the middle of the spectrum have, due to them not being able to understand others as easily.
As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
More so, on the Aspergers side of things, it's very rare for them to literally lack understanding of emotions or faces. Unlike Aspergers, inability to understand certain things which the human brain would usually be programmed with is one of the defining traits of autism.
Hell, when I was younger, I literally didn't understand what anger or what certain facial expressions or gestures meant. I had to learn those things. So I know they're related - my point is that it's stupid to label them as being the same problem, because anyone with a functioning brain should be able to realize that it's pretty obvious they have different problems from each other, despite sharing a few.
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Autism is a form of underdevelopment. If you're autistic, you'll usually be born with a lack of social functions you would normally have (i.e understanding facial expressions, or emotions such as happiness.) and some physical ones. You need to be "taught" these things, so to speak. Autism is a spectrum, so it can vary wildly from the minor to the severe.
Aspergers is just as diverse as autism, but like autism, it also has a core group of symptoms that are defined as "being" Aspergers. My own observations, based upon my friends and what I've seen, is that people with Aspergers develop normally in minor cases, but have difficulty extending their feelings to others, and in severe cases, may have trouble extending empathy. There also seems to be common "trust" issue that is actually quite similar to what a number of autistics in the middle of the spectrum have, due to them not being able to understand others as easily.
As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
More so, on the Aspergers side of things, it's very rare for them to literally lack understanding of emotions or faces. Unlike Aspergers, inability to understand certain things which the human brain would usually be programmed with is one of the defining traits of autism.
Hell, when I was younger, I literally didn't understand what anger or what certain facial expressions or gestures meant. I had to learn those things. So I know they're related - my point is that it's stupid to label them as being the same problem, because anyone with a functioning brain should be able to realize that it's pretty obvious they have different problems from each other, despite sharing a few.
Oh, is your problem then people thinking autism and aspergers are exactly the same, not that aspergers is part of the spectrum then?
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Autism is a form of underdevelopment. If you're autistic, you'll usually be born with a lack of social functions you would normally have (i.e understanding facial expressions, or emotions such as happiness.) and some physical ones. You need to be "taught" these things, so to speak. Autism is a spectrum, so it can vary wildly from the minor to the severe.
Aspergers is just as diverse as autism, but like autism, it also has a core group of symptoms that are defined as "being" Aspergers. My own observations, based upon my friends and what I've seen, is that people with Aspergers develop normally in minor cases, but have difficulty extending their feelings to others, and in severe cases, may have trouble extending empathy. There also seems to be common "trust" issue that is actually quite similar to what a number of autistics in the middle of the spectrum have, due to them not being able to understand others as easily.
As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
More so, on the Aspergers side of things, it's very rare for them to literally lack understanding of emotions or faces. Unlike Aspergers, inability to understand certain things which the human brain would usually be programmed with is one of the defining traits of autism.
Hell, when I was younger, I literally didn't understand what anger or what certain facial expressions or gestures meant. I had to learn those things. So I know they're related - my point is that it's stupid to label them as being the same problem, because anyone with a functioning brain should be able to realize that it's pretty obvious they have different problems from each other, despite sharing a few.
Oh, is your problem then people thinking autism and aspergers are exactly the same, not that aspergers is part of the spectrum then?
Obviously, you moron. :rolleyes:
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Obviously, you moron. :rolleyes:
That is uncalled for.
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I think most people around here know and accept the psychology consensus - that Asperger's is one manifestation of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Asperger's and autistic disorder are both part of ASD, but have different diagnostic criteria.
You seem to be strongly overreacting to a perceived slight which doesn't really exist in this thread, and your overreaction is currently harming, rather than helping, the case you're trying to make.
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As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
Apparently the psychological community disagrees, as 'Aspergers' has been eliminated as a separate concept. As of this December, it's all positions on the autism spectrum under the DSM V.
I have no dog in this fight since I'm nowhere near the part of the scientific community that deals with these things, and I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but my understanding is that Asperger's as a separate diagnosis has ceased to exist. Anyone with the diagnosis would, I guess, be relabeled with high-functioning autism?
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Out of curiosity, what is the difference between a higher functioning autist and an Asperger?
Also, who else thinks that the shooter himself is also a victim? And not only a victim, but the first victim?
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/autism-and-asperger-syndrome-an-introduction/what-is-autism.aspx
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them.
It is a spectrum condition, which means that, while all people with autism share certain difficulties, their condition will affect them in different ways. Some people with autism are able to live relatively independent lives but others may have accompanying learning disabilities and need a lifetime of specialist support. People with autism may also experience over- or under-sensitivity to sounds, touch, tastes, smells, light or colours.
Asperger syndrome is a form of autism. People with Asperger syndrome are often of average or above average intelligence. They have fewer problems with speech but may still have difficulties with understanding and processing language.
below is a direct link to the Asperger section of the site
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/autism-and-asperger-syndrome-an-introduction/what-is-asperger-syndrome.aspx
When I say my sister is higher functioning she is defiantly autistic and easily identified as such by anyone with experience with autistic people, at the same time though she is fairly independent, she has attended uni travelling from home to uni when she has lectures, and recently travelled to Italy for a few days on her own but there is no way she could cope with living on her own, there are too many pitfalls to cause panic attacks and the like not to mention day to day pit falls like preparing her own food as she is afraid of cookers, ovens and the like. Also while she finds social interaction tricky due to inability to read emotions she is able to form friendships and able to communicate with them face to face. Also while she has a few fixation topics she is more open to take in information and due to her IQ is fairly good at retaining that information and using it. Co-ordination is another area she has difficulty in but again not as severe as many and can do things like swimming with a fir degree of competence. and lastly but most fortunately she does not to our knowledgeable have any of the other mental problems associated aside from anxiety which is being managed without drugs with a large degree of sucsess
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As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
Apparently the psychological community disagrees, as 'Aspergers' has been eliminated as a separate concept. As of this December, it's all positions on the autism spectrum under the DSM V.
I have no dog in this fight since I'm nowhere near the part of the scientific community that deals with these things, and I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but my understanding is that Asperger's as a separate diagnosis has ceased to exist. Anyone with the diagnosis would, I guess, be relabeled with high-functioning autism?
I should also mention that I'm particularly wary of America's scientists/doctors/psychologists talking about autism. Autism Speaks, a particularly notorious group responsible for spreading large quantities of misinformation is basically the public face for autism over there, and thus there is a worrying possibility that they may ruin things over there.
I don't know about your scientific community stuff, though. Could you send me your sources (if you have them), Battuta? I'm interested.
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Well, my question was targeted at higher functioning autists and Aspergers, since the definition between them is sketchy for me. I have met and studied with people who had Asperger's syndrome, and do recognize them relatively quickly. But when I read about higher functioning autists, they seem to integrate completely to the society around their 40s and 50s, and maintain the position that there actually never was anything particularly wrong with them to begin with. They are just built in a different way, and the rest of the society does a catch up and starts to realize this later, and accepts it. I'm not sure whether this holds with Asperger's. So the difference isn't really that clear to me, and it seems that when somebody is talking about higher functioning autists, they are talking about Aspergers and vice versa.
I find it very interesting that the neural sciences have got such a boost in the beginning of this century. It may not be falsely said that 2000s will increase the fundamental understanding of human itself. Scientifically speaking, James Fallon's speeches in YouTube were excellent, saying that you really don't have two similar sort of personalities, while politics would need that for legalization. I'm very grateful that this understanding about completely different natures is starting to spread around, and hopefully will some day be visible in the education system.
However, the question I have raised earlier to the psychologists remains; are the narcisstic and autistic personality types polar opposites of each other? Their personality traits somehow suggest that to me, but that may be a little far-fetched.
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As for Bats, I'm quite aware that Aspergers is related to Autism. That however does not mean they are the same ****ing thing, and labeling Autism as being Aspergers or Aspergers as Autism is a stupid and most certainly idiotic idea, as they might share the same issues or traits, they are two completely different problems to each other, and both require a different approach.
Apparently the psychological community disagrees, as 'Aspergers' has been eliminated as a separate concept. As of this December, it's all positions on the autism spectrum under the DSM V.
I have no dog in this fight since I'm nowhere near the part of the scientific community that deals with these things, and I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but my understanding is that Asperger's as a separate diagnosis has ceased to exist. Anyone with the diagnosis would, I guess, be relabeled with high-functioning autism?
That is a huge mistake in my eyes.
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I should also mention that I'm particularly wary of America's scientists/doctors/psychologists talking about autism. Autism Speaks, a particularly notorious group responsible for spreading large quantities of misinformation is basically the public face for autism over there, and thus there is a worrying possibility that they may ruin things over there.
I don't know about your scientific community stuff, though. Could you send me your sources (if you have them), Battuta? I'm interested.
Autism Speaks is just an advocacy group, I'd hope they don't have any influence on the actual scientific community. I don't know much about them, though, and you could well be right.
Anyway here's some random-ass article I googled up http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/dsm-v-5-criteria-aspergers-autism-spectrum-1203128
The important thing is that this is a vote by the American Psychological Association which will go into the next DSM, the manual which defines all mental illnesses for everyone in the field. It's a controversial and political document, but it does reflect, in general, what most scientists believe the current evidence points to.
Ironically even though I'm in psych I don't deal at all with this stuff, since my focus is on experimental social behavior. Clinical psych is an alien world to me.
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As a UK resident I had to look up Autism Speaks, but given stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Speaks#Controversies
I would be wary of any scientific work they fund and would prefer to see corroboration before taking it on board, more so than usual.
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Do they actually fund any meaningful scientific work that would make it into peer reviewed journals?
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As a UK resident I had to look up Autism Speaks, but given stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_Speaks#Controversies
I would be wary of any scientific work they fund and would prefer to see corroboration before taking it on board, more so than usual.
Yeah, that's sadly the standard you usually have to hold up. Usually, most advocacy groups and psychologists in the area of autism or similar don't tend to be as reliable. You have to pay attention to the credentials of people working in the area.
But yeah. I find it worrying because I know that the new stuff will probably cause more stress. While the stuff done by the "real" medical scientists/doctors, the problem is that misinformation groups like Autism Speaks usually has significant sway, so even if the people doing the treatment and therapy are qualified, because of the sway and sheer presence of the aforementioned groups, their message will most likely reach people before the science does and cause problems.
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Do they actually fund any meaningful scientific work that would make it into peer reviewed journals?
Probably not. I already know the anti-vaxxers tend to comprise a large portion of the Autism Speaks community, so most, if not virtually all that will come it will be pseudoscience.
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So liek, the problem I have with "autism as a thing" is that it's just a categorization of the type and severity of a person's peculiar mental development. Really all it means is "this person's brain developed differently, and we have no idea how it's different from normal people or what caused it, but as a result they have bad social skills".
Yes, it's a legitimate thing you can claim as a disability, because it's a fundamental difference in how their brain developed, rather than a face-deep "personality problem", and as such it's useful to be able to categorize it.
But... uh... where was I going with this? Oh right... doofuses publishing articles that say "We may have found out what causes autism!" annoy me.
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How do you know that ASDs don't have a shared underlying cause?
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How do you know that ASDs don't have a shared underlying cause?
Funny that you mention that. There's a pretty good chunk of evidence that suggests a strong genetic basis for all ASDs. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22688012)
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Idunno, intuition?
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Genetics has for a long time held the best hope for the idea of a universal "cause" though I am using cause in the absence of a better word arriving in my mind as I suspect it wont be as simple as saying genes x, y and z are the cause and that there is some other factor(s) involved whith genetics providing an increase in risk, for example my sister and myself, while my sister is Aspergers I am to my knowledge neurotypical and the same parentage.
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I was going to say a joke, but then I realized it was probably going to be taken the wrong way so I didn't say it
Obviously since there's no joke here
The answer to the genetic problem: No more procreation of the normal kind. We shall create our next generation in test tubes! By utilizing science, we shall create the ultimate human being! A race to make us obsolete and eventually slaves to the very things we created!
Okay, there's *a* joke
Just a different one
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Genetics has for a long time held the best hope for the idea of a universal "cause" though I am using cause in the absence of a better word arriving in my mind as I suspect it wont be as simple as saying genes x, y and z are the cause and that there is some other factor(s) involved whith genetics providing an increase in risk, for example my sister and myself, while my sister is Aspergers I am to my knowledge neurotypical and the same parentage.
You're right, it probably won't be that simple, and epigenetic factors will likely come into play. But twin studies do provide a gross measurement of how much of the variation in the presence of a disease can be attributed to shared genetic and prenatal factors.
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Autism Speaks is good for some things ->http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C_O0vRTkaaY
They spread the word of how to understand someone with Autism really well, however, they're criticized for viewing Autism as a disease, and not, what some say, just a difference in development.
Good example right here of their controversy http://vimeo.com/20692567
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Not true. Canada has safe storage/possession/use laws that state exactly the sorts of things I've talked about, and while police have the right of inspection (FYI, NGTM-1R, regulatory inspections are not subject to the same scrutiny as criminal proceedings and therefore can bypass warrant requirements, even in the US - this is why your baggage can be searched at the border), it is rarely exercised except on a complaints basis.
But there's still the possibility of it being exercised. See the difference?
If people think that the only time they'll pay the price for not locking up their gun, is after their gun is used to shoot someone, why would they care? Especially given that as NGTM-1R states, proving that the gun was improperly stored is going to be pretty hard to prove (You can always claim that they must have gotten hold of the key/combination from somewhere).
If there is the possibility of being caught (even if it's small) then it becomes worth storing guns properly. On the one hand you have the annoyance of using the safe/lock but on the other hand, you have the admittedly small chance of someone coming to your house and giving you a massive fine. So since you have to buy the safe/trigger lock as a condition of buying the gun, you might as well use it.
Semi-regular inspections might not always be needed, hell they might not be needed at all. But you definitely need to give some kind of authority figure the ability to enter your house and check or the rules become meaningless and ridiculously easy to circumvent. Having rules in place for what to do only after a tragedy is silly because many people think that tragedies will never happen to them in the first place. Those people who have considered that possibility already use a gun safe/trigger locks.
Yet, despite the seeming non-enforcement, the tiny number of accidental deaths attributed to improper storage of firearms in Canada belies the notion that strict and regular enforcement is a requirement to ensure people follow these laws.
Yes, US culture is different but if you pay attention to what's happening in politics and public opinion now, I think this Newtown mess has created more of an impetus to do something than any mass-murder before it. Something about 20 dead 5-7 year-olds has triggered the common sense region of the American "gun nut" brain.
Maybe I'm just more cynical than you but I doubt that this is going to cause a long term shift without some form of legislation. Sandy Hook will quickly be forgotten, hell it was almost completely forgotten on a thread about it! People very quickly move on.
I simply don't believe that the gun nuts have shifted enough for change to happen. And I simply don't believe that Americans who don't currently use them, will meekly start to use trigger locks or gun safes without the threat of being beaten with a very big stick.
You only need to look at NGTM-1R's completely wrong assumption that you couldn't make inspections part of any legislation on constitutional grounds to imagine the kind of stupidity we'd see from the pro-gun lobby on the same issue. Cause if NGTM-1R can fall for it, you can bet that the gun nuts will.
"They want to force me have a gun safe. SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED! 2ND ****ING AMENDMENT!"
"They want to come into my house to check I have a gun safe! UNREASONABLE SEARCH!"
I somehow doubt there's been a big enough shift in opinion to make people willing to change their views on guns. The gun nuts know that they're okay, it's those irresponsible people and criminals who own guns that kill other people, never them!. Why should they have to pay the price? Why should they have to pay a tax on guns in the form of gun safes and trigger locks? The criminals don't have trigger locks! The criminals don't have gun safes! All this does is tax the law-abiding citizen more! It's that Obama again! I own a gun safe but I'm deliberately not going to put my guns in it, the government can't tell me what to do!
Feel free to write me off as a cynic though. We'll see how much tax is collected next year and whether it is paid in safes or dead bodies.
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To be honest, I'm quite aware of what he's citing; however unlike him I actually live here and know that it's not operative in the manner Ryan thinks it is. A court challenge has even money on beating it and the government isn't going to pursue you into your house to check under any normal circumstance. "Can", "Will" and "Will Have Your Can Taken Away For Trying" are different things.
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As I keep saying, the will to do something isn't there. All you're doing is backing that up.
If all of America say "Of course allowing an inspection isn't a violation of the constitution any more than a baggage check" then the supreme court would have no choice in the matter.
But they won't do that. People like you will argue that it's not going to happen, and people more stupid will argue about how it's Obama Nazism again.
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As I keep saying, the will to do something isn't there.
You're essentially saying that because you only get about 50% percent compliance to the speed limit on Scripps-Poway Parkway, and it's impossible to do any kind of practical monitoring or because practical monitoring has never been and will never be attempted (all three are true), that having the speed limit there is clearly useless.
That's clearly facetious. So is this argument you're making that changing the law to require trigger locks will have no effect regardless of enforcement. Some percentage of people who currently don't have them will make an attempt to obey the law regardless, thereby making their guns safer; probably a fairly significant percentage, at that.
Trying to connect "willingness to enforce" with "willingness to change" the law is something that anyone who's examined cellphone driving laws would pretty quickly figure out doesn't actually make a connection a lot of the time. But prohibiting talking on a phone and driving at the same time did significantly reduce the number of people who did it.
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Except that I'm arguing that even a law to force the mandatory sale of trigger locks or gun safes won't go through or at the very least will face very stiff opposition.
You're merely picking one part of my argument and trying to claim that's the entire argument. But anyway, I think I've reached the point where I've said my piece. We'll see next year if the willingness to legislate or to change was there or not.
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as far as accidental shootings, locking away guns gives curious children a mission (all be it one where they often kill themselves/other people entirely on accident). you are better off taking them to the range or take em hunting, or enroll them in a gun safety class. frankly im surprised we dont teach gun safety in high school.
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To be honest, I'm quite aware of what he's citing; however unlike him I actually live here and know that it's not operative in the manner Ryan thinks it is. A court challenge has even money on beating it and the government isn't going to pursue you into your house to check under any normal circumstance. "Can", "Will" and "Will Have Your Can Taken Away For Trying" are different things.
The courts in your country, as in mine, have specifically accepted that parties subject to regulatory inspection have a diminished expectation of privacy. Where regulation extends to property, that principle applies. In Canada, this is done in two ways: firearms inspectors have authority to enter a dwelling and inspect firearms in limited circumstances; they also have the power to compel a person to bring their firearm(s) to a place at a reasonable time of the inspector's choosing and make the firearm available for inspection.
Regulatory compliance checks are not investigations, and therefore the guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure does not exempt a person from them. The USSC has ruled on this subject in the context of the border already and precedent is established.
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as far as accidental shootings, locking away guns gives curious children a mission (all be it one where they often kill themselves/other people entirely on accident). you are better off taking them to the range or take em hunting, or enroll them in a gun safety class. frankly im surprised we dont teach gun safety in high school.
Nonsense. Well, not teaching gun safety, that's a good idea. Nonsense is the bit about kids getting access. My family has firearms locked in a gun safe, the combination for which is not written down, and the guns are secured by removing the bolts and locking with trigger locks. None of that precludes me from getting a shotgun out and loading it in a matter of 60 seconds, but there is no way in hell anyone who doesn't know the combo and the location of the keys is making those guns functional.
There are simple ways to properly secure and store guns. Responsible owners do this already.
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Frankly im surprised we dont teach gun safety in high school.
That's the bit where quite a few liberals get just as stupid as the Republicans they like to mock. They accept that you can teach sex ed in school and still say "But don't **** until you're older" but seem to have an issue with the fact that you can just as easily teach gun safety and still not be encouraging people to buy a gun.
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Frankly im surprised we dont teach gun safety in high school.
That's the bit where quite a few liberals get just as stupid as the Republicans they like to mock. They accept that you can teach sex ed in school and still say "But don't **** until you're older" but seem to have an issue with the fact that you can just as easily teach gun safety and still not be encouraging people to buy a gun.
That's rather different.
Teenagers ARE going to f***. There is really nothing you can do about it. The only question that needs to be addressed is whether they should have the knowledge of how to practice safe sex or not. The notion that Sex Ed would in any way or form significantly encourage them more than our entire culture, cinema and TV already does is outright ridiculous.
And those idiotic "abstinence only" programs that tell people to "just wait till later/marriage" (instead of teaching them about how to have safe sex) have long been proven to have only one effect: A rather disastrous increase in teenage pregnancies.
Gun safety is an entirely different matter. Kids/teenagers generally do not come into contact with guns unless someone else messes up horribly first, nor is there any reason at all that they should come into contact with lethal weaponry. It's also outright hilarious hat anyone would still ask "why" there is such a high amount of gun violence in the US, when the US is pretty much the only country with such lax gun laws in the western world... and everyone else is pretty much shaking their head at them (while having a tiny fraction of the gun related incidents that the US has.... due to strict gun laws.)
Frankly... I get it... the right to bear arms is a part of US culture. It's hard to give that up.
The right to bear arms also directly causes an amounts of innocent deaths per year that dwarves the deaths caused by terrorism.
Ultimately... the US will have to have to decide if the right to bear arms is worth those deaths.
The pro gun lobby will eventually at least face up to that fact due to overwhelming evidence, instead of pu**yfooting around the issue like they currently still do.
Don't take me wrong.... I really do get it.
In Germany we have occasional gun related violence too, but the amount is tiny compared to the US. We don't have that problem, or at least not to the ridiculous extent that the US has it, but it's never been part of our culture either.
What we do have however, is no speed limit on the Autobahn... and that also proven to cause a certain amount of deaths per year... yet no politician that does not want to commit political suicide would ever dream of amending THAT law.
I still do hope that at some point both our countries will do the sensible thing, when the death toll gets too much.
As far as the US goes... with the amount of shootings per year now, I doubt anyone, even pro gun advocates, would disagree that an effective solution has to be found and the matter can not just continue to be ignored.
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Kids/teenagers generally do not come into contact with guns unless someone else messes up horribly first, nor is there any reason at all that they should come into contact with lethal weaponry.
Or if they just... live in the country.
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That's rather different.
Teenagers ARE going to f***. There is really nothing you can do about it. The only question that needs to be addressed is whether they should have the knowledge of how to practice safe sex or not. The notion that Sex Ed would in any way or form significantly encourage them more than our entire culture, cinema and TV already does is outright ridiculous.
And those idiotic "abstinence only" programs that tell people to "just wait till later/marriage" (instead of teaching them about how to have safe sex) have long been proven to have only one effect: A rather disastrous increase in teenage pregnancies.
Gun safety is an entirely different matter. Kids/teenagers generally do not come into contact with guns unless someone else messes up horribly first, nor is there any reason at all that they should come into contact with lethal weaponry.
In any country other than America, you might have a point. But in America, especially in certain parts of America, coming into contact with guns is about as much a fact of life as sex is.
But ignoring that, you've missed the main point of sex education and therefore of gun education. The religious right preach "abstinence only" because they too miss this point. You don't teach kids history because you want them to be able to talk about the Civil War at age 14. You teach them history because you want them to be able to talk about the Civil War at any point in their later life!
The same is very much true for sex education. Abstinence Only lessons fail not just children but the adults they become because even if they are successful at preventing teen pregnancies the resulting married couples have no idea about birth control and cling to stupid playground myths instead.
And teaching kids how to be safe around guns is analogous. It's not just about preventing the child ****ing up and blowing someone or himself away. It's about making sure the adult he will become knows exactly why he should keep any guns he does decide to buy in a gun safe.
Now I'm certainly not saying that other countries need something like this. Most other countries in The West have found a far more sensible way of dealing with this issue. But in America it's something that might be a damn good idea.
Won't happen of course, your reaction to the idea is exactly the same as the reaction of someone on the religious right when told his kid should have sex ed. And it's exactly the same reaction you'd get from the left wing.
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Now I'm certainly not saying that other countries need something like this. Most other countries in The West have found a far more sensible way of dealing with this issue. But in America it's something that might be a damn good idea.
Won't happen of course, your reaction to the idea is exactly the same as the reaction of someone on the religious right when told his kid should have sex ed. And it's exactly the same reaction you'd get from the left wing.
There is something fundamentally out of whack in regards to guns in America and suggesting to teach "gun safety" as a solution is just completely nonsensical and I believe I can even explain to you why:
I mean... does anyone really think that those people who slaughter kids at schools do so because they do not understand gun safety? ...
They kill other people because they want to kill other people and often themselves as well.
Do you really think teaching gun safety to any of these school schooters would have made any difference at all?
How would knowledge of gun safety in any way or form even influence their suicidal wish for slaughter?
Excuse my choice of language, but it's completely idiotic to compare this issue to sex ed:
For sex, the "worst case", i.e. a teenage pregnancy, is usually an accident, often due to lack of knowledge.
Gun violence is not an accident at all. It is a deliberate act, often motivated by deep psychological issues.
I thought that difference was rather obvious.
Knowledge of gun safety would have no effect on school shootings at all... except maybe teach the perpetrator to be more competent with guns and not hurt himself on accident, as he slaughters everyone else during his quest for revenge/suicide/rage/etc.
Also: Teenagers and especially teenagers at school... fight, they fight all the time matter of fact, with words and fists and sometimes even that gets out of hand. That's what they always did and always do and if you gave them access to lethal weaponry a lot of them would not surive the experience to learn better (i.e. not to fight in the first place) while they grow up.
You give adults free access to guns... some (adult) nutcases will go on deliberate killingsprees and at least some of those guns will find their ways into the hands of teenagers and sometimes you even have a kid blow his brains out on accident or on purpose. That is also a fact. While the later is an accident where teaching gun safety may actually help... those school shootings are certainly not.
There is however an effective solution as demonstrated by so many other countries and there is no effective alternative that has been brought up so far.
That's what any pro gun supporter at least should face up to. I'm sick and tired of the stupid excuses. Admitting to themselves what the cost of the "right to bear arms" actually is, would be a first step towards a sane solution.
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This discussion is..........spirited :D
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Knowledge of gun safety would have no effect on school shootings at all.
And once again you've missed the point and gone off on a pointless rant. For a start you've completely missed the fact that I'm actually strongly pro-gun control. But the simple fact is that nothing will be achieved at all if both sides refuse to acknowledge that a middle road path needs to be taken since neither side is ever going to get it all their own way.
So no, it wouldn't stop school shooters immediately. It would however stop a hell of a lot of accidental shootings. And more children die as a result of those every year. Furthermore it would later stop a small number of school shootings as those people would make sure that there weapons have trigger locks etc. That's a minor side benefit but not a completely negligible one. In this case for instance no one would have been shot if the perp's mother had kept her guns in a safe which only she knew the combination to.
And last but not least, who says that gun safety lessons need to be taught by giving actual working guns to kids? That's almost as much a case of missing the point as the religious nut who claims that sex ed means that the kids will be told to **** in class and the teacher will grade them on it.
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Knowledge of gun safety would have no effect on school shootings at all.
And once again you've missed the point and gone off on a pointless rant. For a start you've completely missed the fact that I'm actually strongly pro-gun control. But the simple fact is that nothing will be achieved at all if both sides refuse to acknowledge that a middle road path needs to be taken since neither side is ever going to get it all their own way.
So no, it wouldn't stop school shooters immediately. It would however stop a hell of a lot of accidental shootings. And more children die as a result of those every year. Furthermore it would later stop a small number of school shootings as those people would make sure that there weapons have trigger locks etc. That's a minor side benefit but not a completely negligible one. In this case for instance no one would have been shot if the perp's mother had kept her guns in a safe which only she knew the combination to.
A middle road would be a step into the right direction, but ultimately a half measure, as we both already know what that right direction is, don't we?
And call me a cynic, but in practice ... that middle road approach would likely end up being a lot more of ineffectual squabbling with nothing being done to solve the actual problem.
And if you really think that gun control lessons in school are going to lead to responsible behavior in adult live and have any effect on school shootings down the road at all I do have several bridges that I would like to sell to you. That's almost as ridiculous as expecting people to lead a healthy lifestyle by giving them a couple of nutrition lessons at school. (I am a teacher btw ... you simply will not modify peoples behavior that easily.)
So from my viewpoint "gun control at school" would be another ineffective baindaid fix that might make some politicians feel better for "having done something" while completely ignoring the actual problem.
And last but not least, who says that gun safety lessons need to be taught by giving actual working guns to kids? That's almost as much a case of missing the point as the religious nut who claims that sex ed means that the kids will be told to **** in class and the teacher will grade them on it.
You misunderstood. I never said that. What I said is that with lax gun control laws like the US some guns are inevitably going to end up in the hands of teenagers and kids.
What I did point out afterwards was there is not a single good reason to give liberal access to guns to either teenagers or adults. - certainly not to Assault Rifles... let's not forget just how ridiculous the gun control situation in the US actually is.... Assault Rifles of crying out loud ...
See I do understand when someone who has an actual need for a gun (like a hunting rifle for someone who lives in an area with wild animals) does not want to give that right up, ... but semiautomatic and even automatic weapons? How can anyone even begin to justify having that stuff available ...
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The very ideas of teaching gun safety in schools and having gun safes and people to come to houses and check weapons just seem so absurd to me as a resident of the UK.
Just get rid of the weapons! It seems like such a logical thing, I don't know why Americans don't see it too to stop this senseless slaughter. Criminals don't carry out massacres. Except against other criminals. Criminals don't want to go to jail. They'll use guns to get their way, but outside of the odd sick bastard, who's a different animal, if they can get what they want without shooting people they will, they're out to make money and be out of jail to spend it. An automatic penalty for carrying a gun might also deter criminals from using them, if they knew they didn't need a gun because no one else was packing one.
Here's a little story for you, we know someone who got burgled once. She called the cops and they took ages to arrive, and showed up way too late to do anything useful.
Later, she got burgled again, and this time she lied and told the cops she thought she saw a gun. In like two minutes the place was swarming with cops. Now, if that was the difference to a criminal carrying a gun and not carrying a gun, do you think criminals would carry guns as much?
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Later, she got burgled again, and this time she lied and told the cops she thought she saw a gun. In like two minutes the place was swarming with cops. Now, if that was the difference to a criminal carrying a gun and not carrying a gun, do you think criminals would carry guns as much?
I believe that's kind of the point that most Americans simply do not get their heads around. That stupid slogan "Guns do not kill people" couldn't be more wrong.
A gun, just by being there and available, makes killing, especially multiple killings like school shootings, much much "easier" and also... just by "being there" a gun escalates any conflict to one that can easily end lethal. So yeah "Availability of guns actually does kill people, a lot of them actually".
Statistical evidence is rather too overwhelming to talk that fact away. As said earlier, at this point, that's all I am asking: For the pro gun lobby to face up to the facts and admit the cost of that "right to bear arms". As long as they are in outright denial when discussing the issue, you just won't find a solution.
Anyways... why don't they go the whole mile and sell some miniguns, handgrenades and claymore mines with those assault rifles? Are those too dangerous? But Assault Rifles aren't? Just doesn't make sense.
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Criminals don't carry out massacres. Except against other criminals.
Your rank insensitivity to all the victims of the IRA and the Ulster loyalist types is noted.
Or hell, you must have skipped the '30s era of criminal history.
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Criminals don't carry out massacres. Except against other criminals.
Your rank insensitivity to all the victims of the IRA and the Ulster loyalist types is noted.
Or hell, you must have skipped the '30s era of criminal history.
They are terrorists.
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Terrorists are criminals. :blah:
I mean, I'm pretty sure that's an inherent quality of terrorism.
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Terrorists are criminals. :blah:
I mean, I'm pretty sure that's an inherent quality of terrorism.
I just see them as distinct from each other.
And they're not relevant to this discussion anyway. Muslim terrorists are the only terrorists America might have to deal with, and they almost never use guns in their attacks, it's all about bombs.
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Terrorists are criminals. :blah:
I mean, I'm pretty sure that's an inherent quality of terrorism.
I just see them as distinct from each other.
And they're not relevant to this discussion anyway. Muslim terrorists are the only terrorists America might have to deal with, and they almost never use guns in their attacks, it's all about bombs.
What the **** are you talking about? Before 9/11 the most horrifying terrorist attack in American history was conducted by an American, and Muslim terrorists have conducted devastating massacres using only firearms.
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Oh I give up.
Please, all of you, feel free to tell me why terrorists have any bearing in a discussion on gun control, and their relevance in this discussion.
I don't know, maybe I should have said common criminals.
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Look I'm generally in agreement with you that if all guns were banned in all of America we would have on net fewer deaths. Most gun casualties are accidents, suicides, and homicides of helpless family members/significant others.
The role of guns as a self defense tool, or even as a tool for perpetrating crimes, is actually pretty small compared to their role in accidents and suicides.
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They are terrorists.
Killing your fellow citizens is always a criminal act. It must always be a criminal act. Treating terroristic acts as anything but criminal grants them legitimacy as political expression and that results in major parts of the social contract that makes human societies work unraveling.
You want to know what this has to do with the discussion? It demonstrates you aren't really considering these issues seriously. So does your poorly-considered disagreement with Karaj. Every time you express shock "as a citizen of the UK" your credibility on a uniquely American issue takes a massive hit, because you're not trying to see the issue from the inside and hence any solutions you offer to it are likely facile.
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where theres a will, theres an angle grinder with a diamond cutoff wheel. i somehow doubt the steel in a gunsafe can withstand the onslaught of powertools, which you can totally buy when your insane.
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They are terrorists.
Killing your fellow citizens is always a criminal act. It must always be a criminal act. Treating terroristic acts as anything but criminal grants them legitimacy as political expression and that
results in major parts of the social contract that makes human societies work unraveling.
You want to know what this has to do with the discussion? It demonstrates you aren't really considering these issues seriously. So does your poorly-considered disagreement with Karaj. Every time you express shock "as a citizen of the UK" your credibility on a uniquely American issue takes a massive hit, because you're not trying to see the issue from the inside and hence any solutions you offer to it are likely facile.
I would treat terrorists as enemy combatants in fighting them (not soldiers, they are not worthy of being called soldiers), and criminals in charging any prisoners.
I hate this rubbish where you see terrorists marching through the streets or attending funerals, all in masks. If they were enemy soldiers, you would send troops to the location and exterminate them.
Terrorists aren't killing their fellow citizens in this case. I know there was that sniper, and the London bombers were not foreign, but homegrown terrorists do not identify with their home country anyway. 9/11 was foreign terrorists from the Middle East killing American citizens, along with any other nationalities on those planes.
The IRA was Irish terrorists killing UK citizens. Though they will have killed plenty of "collaborators" in their own country, it was Republic of Ireland vs United Kingdom to them. I grew up seeing their bombs on the nesws, and even at that age, when their leader showed up on TV, I would say "Why don't they just kill him?" So would my mother. If an enemy commander was going to appear somewhere, and the opposing force knew about it, he'd be eliminated.
I am taking this seriously. I do however wish I had taken my own advice at the start of the thread and just stayed out of it. But I am not an American citizen. And I don't understand the gun fetish Americans have especially in the face of all this death. It's not logical to me. Karojorma's suggestion would be an improvement, but it's a sticking plaster on a deep wound.
Simply put, I feel American citizens are not fit to possess guns, and they should be taken from them. You wouldn't let a child play with something dangerous, would you? Americans are like children playing with toys that they're too young for. As others have said, it's not criminals that are the problem when it comes to guns, it's ordinary people. And they're not ready yet to own guns.
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Simply put, I feel American citizens are not fit to possess guns, and they should be taken from them. You wouldn't let a child play with something dangerous, would you? Americans are like children playing with toys that they're too young for. As others have said, it's not criminals that are the problem when it comes to guns, it's ordinary people. And they're not ready yet to own guns.
I don't think it's fair to say that every one of the 310 million people in America are not ready to own guns.
It's not ordinary people that are the problem, it's ordinary people who have become mentally ill. Buying a weapon with a mental illness is pretty much impossible as long as the seller is legally authorized to sell weapons. But that doesn't stop then from obtaining one from the black market, which is pretty easy to do. Keeping weapons out of the hands of someone who is very intent on obtaining one is very hard unless they are thoroughly watched, which is also very expensive to do.
Also, it isn't often you hear of some who is mentally "sound" go on a killing rampage of innocent people. Most murders from people who are fine are related to drugs and gangs.
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Simply put, I feel American citizens are not fit to possess guns, and they should be taken from them. You wouldn't let a child play with something dangerous, would you? Americans are like children playing with toys that they're too young for. As others have said, it's not criminals that are the problem when it comes to guns, it's ordinary people. And they're not ready yet to own guns.
I don't think it's fair to say that every one of the 310 million people in America are not ready to own guns.
It's not ordinary people that are the problem, it's ordinary people who have become mentally ill. Buying a weapon with a mental illness is pretty much impossible as long as the seller is legally authorized to sell weapons. But that doesn't stop then from obtaining one from the black market, which is pretty easy to do. Keeping weapons out of the hands of someone who is very intent on obtaining one is very hard unless they are thoroughly watched, which is also very expensive to do.
Also, it isn't often you hear of some who is mentally "sound" go on a killing rampage of innocent people. Most murders from people who are fine are related to drugs and gangs.
No, not all of them. In fact, probably more are able to own a gun safely than not I would think.
But as a whole, they're not ready.
You know, I normally absolutely hate laws which protect the irresponsible at the expense of the responsible. But normally, the irresponsible can only harm themselves. In this case, they can harm anyone. So it is in their own interests to give up their guns.
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I don't think you show the depth of thought I would want from someone debating this issue.
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I don't think you show the depth of thought I would want from someone debating this issue.
Maybe my "just take away the guns" assertion lacks depth, but it is a simple solution to what to me seems a simple problem.
Like I said though, I just don't understand America's gun fetish. I would think people would be sick of guns by now, wouldn't want to look at another gun, I don't get it.
I'd rather have my simple solution than complex sticking plaster solutions.
I know people are saying "People will simply never give up their guns, so we should look at ways of minimising the problem." This may well be of some use in the short term, but if people will rebel against losing their guns, then you have to work on eroding America's gun culture. Aggressively challenge it. Put people on the spot and ask them what's more important, owning guns or innocent lives.
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I'm not taking issue with your solution, as my post at the top of this page should make clear.
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I'm not taking issue with your solution, as my post at the top of this page should make clear.
Why then? If you agree with my solution, what is the problem?
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Why then? If you agree with my solution, what is the problem?
To do the right thing for the wrong reasons is not quite as great a treason as the wrong thing for the right reasons at first, but it usually gets there given time.
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And if you really think that gun control lessons in school are going to lead to responsible behavior in adult live and have any effect on school shootings down the road at all I do have several bridges that I would like to sell to you. That's almost as ridiculous as expecting people to lead a healthy lifestyle by giving them a couple of nutrition lessons at school. (I am a teacher btw ... you simply will not modify peoples behavior that easily.)
As ridiculous as teaching kids about sex and expecting them to be more responsible about their future sex lives?
You misunderstood. I never said that. What I said is that with lax gun control laws like the US some guns are inevitably going to end up in the hands of teenagers and kids.
All the more reason why you should make sure that when they do, the kids know how to not kill themselves or members of their families with them. Again, the analogy with sex ed really couldn't be much closer.
What I did point out afterwards was there is not a single good reason to give liberal access to guns to either teenagers or adults. - certainly not to Assault Rifles... let's not forget just how ridiculous the gun control situation in the US actually is.... Assault Rifles of crying out loud ...
And where did you get the impression I'm saying that teaching kids to use guns is the entire solutions? Where did I say I'm against banning assault rifles?
This is a situation with multiple, interconnected problems. It does not require a simple one-off answer. I happen to personally think the guns do need to go but anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the gun control debate in America will know that's never going to happen. Gun culture is far too ingrained in the American psyche to get rid of it with a sweeping change. And the position of the anti-gun lobby has become so entrenched that a suggestion like teaching gun safety in school which should meet no opposition is shouted down with rants like yours by people who view it as the thin edge of the wedge.
So basically it comes down to "Do you you want to see a raft of middle of the road changes brought in now which reduce the number of deaths? Or do you want to shout and scream for the final goal and therefore ensure it never happens?"
My bet is that America does the second one. And that's why despite being a very staunch pro-gun control advocate I'm having a go at the left on this issue about as much as I usually have a go at the right. Cause they're being just as stupid and reactionary as the far right Republicans they so despise usually are.
The very ideas of teaching gun safety in schools and having gun safes and people to come to houses and check weapons just seem so absurd to me as a resident of the UK.
Just because something seems absurd doesn't necessarily mean it is. Arguing on that basis would disqualify many of the discoveries of 20th century physics. You always have to look deeper and see if it actually is absurd.
What worked in the UK will not necessarily work in the US. I pointed out earlier that both sides put a lot of effort into comparing the US with other countries. And that both sides are being equally stupid in doing so. The US is not those countries. The solutions those countries had might not work in the US.
Even at the time of the Hungerford massacre the UK had a much smaller percentage of the population who owned guns. They also each owned a much smaller number of guns in general.
We don't have a written constitution so therefore we didn't face issues on those grounds.
We don't have borders with two countries which also have a large number of guns.
And most importantly, we didn't have this belief that everyday citizens have any need for a gun.
So after Dunblaine it was pretty easy to get rid of the weapons in the UK. America is not the UK.
Simply put, I feel American citizens are not fit to possess guns
I don't think it's fair to say that every one of the 310 million people in America are not ready to own guns.
It's not ordinary people that are the problem, it's ordinary people who have become mentally ill. Buying a weapon with a mental illness is pretty much impossible as long as the seller is legally authorized to sell weapons. But that doesn't stop then from obtaining one from the black market, which is pretty easy to do. Keeping weapons out of the hands of someone who is very intent on obtaining one is very hard unless they are thoroughly watched, which is also very expensive to do.
Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric on this one. As a culture, America can not be trusted with guns. Sure there are some individuals who do act responsibly with them but in general America don't treat guns with the necessary respect. It's something I feel America needs to realise in the same way that the UK did after Dunblaine.
And like the UK did, America then needs to decide what to do about it. They need to decide whether to become a society that can be trusted with guns (like the Swiss) or to become one that decides it's not worth the price (Like the British). But introspection is hard. And it's much easier to say that this isn't a problem with society. It's just criminals and the mentally ill and they can always get hold of guns.
It's a cop out. Sandy Hook didn't occur because of a mentally ill person obtaining weapons on the black market. They were obtained from the possession of a non mentally ill person who completely failed in her responsibility to make sure that the mentally ill person she lived with couldn't access them. She paid for her lack of foresight with her life but no one seems to want to blame the victim so no one wants to acknowledge that she could have prevented it.
Furthermore, if the black market makes it so easy for the mentally ill to get hold of weapons, surely that in and off itself is an issue. Cause someone who isn't a criminal shouldn't be finding it that easy to get hold of a gun.
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Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric on this one. As a culture, America can not be trusted with guns. Sure there are some individuals who do act responsibly with them but in general America don't treat guns with the necessary respect. It's something I feel America needs to realise in the same way that the UK did after Dunblaine.
Kara, no matter how much I respect you, I resent that statement and the implications it carries. Blanket assessments of a broad population are poor criteria for making decisions. In a sense, it is that exact same process that propagandists use to villianize foreign powers or ideological groups different from their own. Yourself, being moderator who makes a point of ensuring that all viewpoints are considered and viewed respectfully, I do expect better than that.
...This is not to say that you haven't been promoting seeing all sides equally, either. I do agree with your prior points on the net effect of certain types of legislation being only marginally effective. Ultimately, problems will arise regardless of legislation, and citizens who uphold the law will be forced to endure additional monitoring or taxation. As has been said many times before, the best solution is one within the populace itself, which should strive to uphold tenets of responsibility and strive to take care of its members that need help.
I also want to tack this on... who actually thinks any great deal of Americans actually own an assault rifle or submachine gun? An assault rifle is a select-fire weapon capable of firing in either bursts or sustaining fully automatic fire and employs a reduced-charge rifle round. A submachine gun is effectively the same thing, but fires pistol ammunition. Current licensing makes it very difficult and expensive to get either, and legal owners are very few and far between. A semi-automatic AR-15 or AK-47 is NOT an assault weapon, it is a semi-automatic rifle. In many states, high-capacity magazines cannot be fielded in public areas open to bearing or firing weapons, either. Because this may not be common knowledge to those outside the United States, I think it's important to note.
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Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric on this one. As a culture, America can not be trusted with guns. Sure there are some individuals who do act responsibly with them but in general America don't treat guns with the necessary respect. It's something I feel America needs to realise in the same way that the UK did after Dunblaine.
Kara, no matter how much I respect you, I resent that statement and the implications it carries. Blanket assessments of a broad population are poor criteria for making decisions. In a sense, it is that exact same process that propagandists use to villianize foreign powers or ideological groups different from their own.
I think you need to check the earlier statement I made where I said that the British can't be trusted with guns either. Nor can we be trusted to do brain surgery. Our solution for them both was the same. In the UK we feel that only certain small subset of highly specialised people need to be trusted. The general population has no need to be trusted with guns.
The Swiss on the other hand took a different approach. They decided that everyone should be educated to the point where they can be trusted. So they have national service and allow people to keep their guns at home afterwards.
America has the problem that people want to be trusted with guns but the society makes little to no effort to give them the competency to do so. While some individuals might be competent, your society as a whole is not. You insist that someone must have mandatory training with cars before they are allowed to drive but you don't make the same rule for buying a gun.
So I'm not going to revise my opinion that as a whole, the American public can not be trusted with guns. As a society you do nothing to inspire that trust.
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Why then? If you agree with my solution, what is the problem?
To do the right thing for the wrong reasons is not quite as great a treason as the wrong thing for the right reasons at first, but it usually gets there given time.
What more right reason is there but saving thousands and thousands of lives?
Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric
If the World ends now, I know I can die happy :D :lol:
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Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with Lorric on this one. As a culture, America can not be trusted with guns. Sure there are some individuals who do act responsibly with them but in general America don't treat guns with the necessary respect. It's something I feel America needs to realise in the same way that the UK did after Dunblaine.
Kara, no matter how much I respect you, I resent that statement and the implications it carries. Blanket assessments of a broad population are poor criteria for making decisions. In a sense, it is that exact same process that propagandists use to villianize foreign powers or ideological groups different from their own.
I think you need to check the earlier statement I made where I said that the British can't be trusted with guns either. Nor can we be trusted to do brain surgery. Our solution for them both was the same. In the UK we feel that only certain small subset of highly specialised people need to be trusted. The general population has no need to be trusted with guns.
The Swiss on the other hand took a different approach. They decided that everyone should be educated to the point where they can be trusted. So they have national service and allow people to keep their guns at home afterwards.
America has the problem that people want to be trusted with guns but the society makes little to no effort to give them the competency to do so. While some individuals might be competent, your society as a whole is not. You insist that someone must have mandatory training with cars before they are allowed to drive but you don't make the same rule for buying a gun.
So I'm not going to revise my opinion that as a whole, the American public can not be trusted with guns. As a society you do nothing to inspire that trust.
I suppose that is an interesting perspective. I do not have personal experiences that lend credence to your perspectives (with respect to firearms), but someone else certainly may.
...May we leave this at an agreeable disagreement?
:)
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I don't mind, but let me take another stab at convincing you before I let it rest.
Would you happily allow a 12 year old who may have never touched a gun before to handle one around you (assuming you're not allowed to say anything?) Would your feelings change if you knew he had just completed a training program in gun usage and gun safety?
(If you feel 12 is too young, raise the age to the level where you feel someone would be competent).
In the first case you'd probably feel nervous that the kid might hurt himself or you by accident. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's not been trained in the use of weapons. In the second case you'd worry less about it. The American public can't be trusted with guns cause you have no idea what level of competency someone might have with a weapon. In a land where
The CDC says one child, on average, every three days died in accidental incidents in the United States from 2000 to 2005 (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/04/21/forgotten.gun/index.html?eref=edition)
it's pretty hard not to believe that there are a lot of people who believe that putting a gun in the bedside drawer is adequate storage.
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From my outside perspective, Id say more gun regulation in the US would be good, however I very much doubt a great reduction in fatalities can be achieved through regulation alone, and a complete ban has no hope of passing at all. It has more to do with gun culture than laws, countries like Norway or Switzerland have lots of guns, yet not much gun deaths.
I also feel that gun rights set a great pro-freedom precedent, because if someone wants to introduce some other restrictive laws against victimless acts, people can always point to gun rights and say "despite thousands of deaths a year we have not banned those".
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Would you happily allow a 12 year old who may have never touched a gun before to handle one around you (assuming you're not allowed to say anything?)
The moment you added this stipulation it all became useless nonsense because that's not a situation that would or should occur in any form of reality. Even if the kid should have had some kind of training, adults would still verbally check regardless.
Adding that stipulation was useless hyperbole and undermines the argument as such. You could have gotten by without it. Save self-sabotage, what was the point?
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And if you really think that gun control lessons in school are going to lead to responsible behavior in adult live and have any effect on school shootings down the road at all I do have several bridges that I would like to sell to you. That's almost as ridiculous as expecting people to lead a healthy lifestyle by giving them a couple of nutrition lessons at school. (I am a teacher btw ... you simply will not modify peoples behavior that easily.)
As ridiculous as teaching kids about sex and expecting them to be more responsible about their future sex lives?
You misunderstood. I never said that. What I said is that with lax gun control laws like the US some guns are inevitably going to end up in the hands of teenagers and kids.
All the more reason why you should make sure that when they do, the kids know how to not kill themselves or members of their families with them. Again, the analogy with sex ed really couldn't be much closer.
Kajorama.... having sex with another human being is not the same as slaughtering innocent children, which is the crux of the issue.
Furthermore... I am very put off by your comment about "responsible sex lives". Who sleeps with whom is no business of anyone and especially not that of the state.
I think you are majorly misinterpreting the actual goals of sex education. It is most certainly not to encourage or discourage people from finding relationships and enjoying sex... but rather about giving them the knowledge of how to do safely what they would do anyways. You can't even blame sex education for any kind of "encouragement" when any potential encouragement gets dwarfed by the actual encouragement present everywhere in our society and especially in the media. Finally ... if anything, learning about the dangers of STDs will be a discouragement, not an encouragement. ;) lol.
As said before, Teenagers and adults will have sex. Period. The question is whether they get an STD or pregnant on accident or not.
Sex Education is quite effective at encouraging people to have safe sex and preventing teenage pregnancies as well as STDs. That is very much a proven fact.
Back on topic, as I have also pointed out before... while teaching gun safety may indeed reduce accidents... it would do nothing at all to prevent deliberate slaughter.
If someone wants to kill people... they will do so. If they know about how to handle weapons safely they will only do so more effectively. The question that remains is what weapon they have easily access to. If that guy in the latest shooting had only a knife then he propably would have been quickly subdued by the principal, his deputy and the school psychologist... but no, he had an assault rifle and gunned all three of them down.
What I did point out afterwards was there is not a single good reason to give liberal access to guns to either teenagers or adults. - certainly not to Assault Rifles... let's not forget just how ridiculous the gun control situation in the US actually is.... Assault Rifles of crying out loud ...
And where did you get the impression I'm saying that teaching kids to use guns is the entire solutions? Where did I say I'm against banning assault rifles?
This is a situation with multiple, interconnected problems. It does not require a simple one-off answer. I happen to personally think the guns do need to go but anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the gun control debate in America will know that's never going to happen. Gun culture is far too ingrained in the American psyche to get rid of it with a sweeping change. And the position of the anti-gun lobby has become so entrenched that a suggestion like teaching gun safety in school which should meet no opposition is shouted down with rants like yours by people who view it as the thin edge of the wedge.
So basically it comes down to "Do you you want to see a raft of middle of the road changes brought in now which reduce the number of deaths? Or do you want to shout and scream for the final goal and therefore ensure it never happens?"
My bet is that America does the second one. And that's why despite being a very staunch pro-gun control advocate I'm having a go at the left on this issue about as much as I usually have a go at the right. Cause they're being just as stupid and reactionary as the far right Republicans they so despise usually are.
What I have been saying and am saying is that teaching gun safety would in no way or form have any kind of effect on school massacres... except in possibly making the shooter more competent in handling those guns.
Furthermore I argued that something has to be done against gun violence and anyone suggesting "gun safety" as a solution to that problem would be fooling himself.
That is what I have actually been saying.
We are on complete agreement on the need to ban assault rifles, but while you are very confident that multiple angles can be pursued at the same time, I rather worry that if "teaching gun safety" is brought up, the pro gun lobby will latch on and sell it as "the solution TM" - while even further promoting availability of semi automatic and assault weapons at the same time, ... and propably get away with it for a couple of years and countless more bloodbaths.
It sounds exactly like the kind of "but we are doing something" bulls*** that would likely prevent any further progress until the next couple of school children massacres happened.
Finally... another point that we may or may not be in disagreement with: Underage persons should not handle guns. Period. There is a reason why there is an age limit on alcohol and driving cars and any of those reasons is ten times true when it comes to guns. Kids and teenagers, no matter what you teach them, will not consistently act responsible. Many adults won't either for that matter, but kids and teenagers pretty much come with a guarrantee for irresponsible behavior.
I do realize you pointed out that teaching gun safety would not necessarily require any guns, but on the other hand ... you just do not hand a gun to a 12 year old. Period.
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What in the hell is going on in this thread now?
I would like the two Brits (who seem to know very little about firearms and their safe usage - no disrespect kara, while some of your position is reasonable a good chunk of it is rooted in perception), the one German (who seems to think education is bad), and the defensive Americans to all take a little break and kindly look up the facts on firearms usage in Canada in the last 20 years as an example of how proper regulation and safety training can work.
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/index-eng.htm
You don't need to ban guns. You don't need to restrict them to the point where only a select few can access them. You need to train people in their safe and responsible use and storage. You need to ensure that the people who can access them have background checks and complete mandatory safety programs before they can be licensed. You need to ensure that the licensing process is meaningful. And you need to restrict the types of weapons that are available to the public by balancing public safety and need.
Canada has a relatively high per-capita ownership of firearms, yet we have far fewer criminal incidents and accidental deaths with guns than many comparable countries. It's because we've regulated them - by trial and error. Admittedly, the regulatory system went overboard when we started registering every single weapon in the country, but we've since backed away from that with the focus on regulating owners and registering only restricted weapons - the types you're not going to see an average person use for hunting or pest control.
I grew up around guns, and I've been using a firing them since I was 10. I was properly trained in their use, and guns are neither an object of fascination to me nor an object of fear. They are a tool with a purpose, be it defensive or recreational, and one to be treated with caution and respect.
It's pretty clear to me that people like Lorric who would advocate the banning of all weapons for frankly silly reasons don't understand the utility they have in the correct circumstances. A lot of people in North America still hunt for sustenance (I don't, but I've a number of friends who do and deer/elk/moose can be delicious). Lots of people here are hikers, and while I'll always prefer to use my bear spray there are times when the only weapon that will do is a firearm.
You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
Canada's situation makes it quite clear (Australia too, actually) that it is possible to make firearms available to certain members of the generally subject safely. Incidentally, any youth of age 12 can obtain a Minor's license if they pass the requisite safety requirements. There are actually provisions for youth even younger to obtain a license if they hunt for sustenance (a very real possibility in remote communities).
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the one German (who seems to think education is bad)
2 / 10. ;)
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What in the hell is going on in this thread now?
It's pretty clear to me that people like Lorric who would advocate the banning of all weapons for frankly silly reasons don't understand the utility they have in the correct circumstances. A lot of people in North America still hunt for sustenance (I don't, but I've a number of friends who do and deer/elk/moose can be delicious). Lots of people here are hikers, and while I'll always prefer to use my bear spray there are times when the only weapon that will do is a firearm.
You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
I wish people would at least say why my reasoning, saving thousands of lives, is "silly".
I wouldn't want to take the guns away from people for who they need them for their profession or are clearly responsible owners.
The reason I would want to take them from the general population is because people are dying right now. It will save lives. Then once you've taken the guns away, you can set about enabling the people who want their guns back and are willing to put the effort in to show they are capable of using them to get their guns back through whatever gun safety/gun use program America decides to implement, and if anybody can get their guns back straight away. Those that complete the program earn a license which they can use to purchase a gun, or have their confiscated gun returned to them.
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What in the hell is going on in this thread now?
It's pretty clear to me that people like Lorric who would advocate the banning of all weapons for frankly silly reasons don't understand the utility they have in the correct circumstances. A lot of people in North America still hunt for sustenance (I don't, but I've a number of friends who do and deer/elk/moose can be delicious). Lots of people here are hikers, and while I'll always prefer to use my bear spray there are times when the only weapon that will do is a firearm.
You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
I wish people would at least say why my reasoning, saving thousands of lives, is "silly".
I wouldn't want to take the guns away from people for who they need them for their profession or are clearly responsible owners.
The reason I would want to take them from the general population is because people are dying right now. It will save lives. Then once you've taken the guns away, you can set about enabling the people who want their guns back and are willing to put the effort in to show they are capable of using them to get their guns back through whatever gun safety/gun use program America decides to implement, and if anybody can get their guns back straight away. Those that complete the program earn a license which they can use to purchase a gun, or have their confiscated gun returned to them.
It's silly for the same reason that trying to redraw lines on a map in Africa in order to solve that problem in that A) it will never happen, ever and B) it wouldn't work even then.
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What in the hell is going on in this thread now?
It's pretty clear to me that people like Lorric who would advocate the banning of all weapons for frankly silly reasons don't understand the utility they have in the correct circumstances. A lot of people in North America still hunt for sustenance (I don't, but I've a number of friends who do and deer/elk/moose can be delicious). Lots of people here are hikers, and while I'll always prefer to use my bear spray there are times when the only weapon that will do is a firearm.
You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
I wish people would at least say why my reasoning, saving thousands of lives, is "silly".
I wouldn't want to take the guns away from people for who they need them for their profession or are clearly responsible owners.
The reason I would want to take them from the general population is because people are dying right now. It will save lives. Then once you've taken the guns away, you can set about enabling the people who want their guns back and are willing to put the effort in to show they are capable of using them to get their guns back through whatever gun safety/gun use program America decides to implement, and if anybody can get their guns back straight away. Those that complete the program earn a license which they can use to purchase a gun, or have their confiscated gun returned to them.
It's silly for the same reason that trying to redraw lines on a map in Africa in order to solve that problem in that A) it will never happen, ever and B) it wouldn't work even then.
I don't know what the Africa thing refers to.
But saying it will never happen is defeatist, and of course it would work if it did.
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Canada, a fairly heavily-armed country in terms of private ownership, has around 30 firearms per 100 residents. So does Germany. Switzerland is around 45. The United States is around 88.
The US Constitution includes the right to keep and bear arms.
So how, dear Lorric, do you propose to ban and remove guns in a country where they are only a few short of enough for every man, woman, and child? Even if it were a good idea (it's not), it's not even remotely practical.
Banning weapons does not eliminate firearms deaths, either. It can drastically reduce them, yes, but countries even with very restrictive firearms laws have equal or higher violent crime rates to those that don't. Doesn't mean zero firearms restrictions are a good idea, but it similarly does not show that banning firearms solves the problem.
Saving thousands of lives is hyperbolic as well; a component of the murder and violent crime rates occur due to weapons of opportunity. Sometimes those are firearms; if a gun isn't available, another weapon probably will be. Firearms restrictions can prevent a number of accidental deaths. In both cases, the same objective can be accomplished with the same results without a total ban on gun ownership. Again, the situation in Canada demonstrates that quite admirably.
There are also a number of good reasons for people to own, possess, store, and use firearms. Banning them outright doesn't acknowledge that reality, and restricting them to a tiny minority doesn't work either. The US absolutely needs stricter firearms laws in general, but what you're proposing is just beyond reality.
This is the second time in just this thread that you've thrown out one-statement simplistic solutions to complex problems. That doesn't help the discussion at hand, it just serves as a distraction where the rest of us are taking time out of somewhat productive discussion to correct your misconceptions.
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Canada, a fairly heavily-armed country in terms of private ownership, has around 30 firearms per 100 residents. So does Germany. Switzerland is around 45. The United States is around 88.
The US Constitution includes the right to keep and bear arms.
So how, dear Lorric, do you propose to ban and remove guns in a country where they are only a few short of enough for every man, woman, and child? Even if it were a good idea (it's not), it's not even remotely practical.
Banning weapons does not eliminate firearms deaths, either. It can drastically reduce them, yes, but countries even with very restrictive firearms laws have equal or higher violent crime rates to those that don't. Doesn't mean zero firearms restrictions are a good idea, but it similarly does not show that banning firearms solves the problem.
There are also a number of good reasons for people to own, possess, store, and use firearms. Banning them outright doesn't acknowledge that reality, and restricting them to a tiny minority doesn't work either. The US absolutely needs stricter firearms laws in general, but what you're proposing is just beyond reality.
Hey, where did you get those stats? Does it have stats for other countries too, I'd like to see.
That is an absurd number of guns, I didn't think there were that many. If that's true, that America has 88 guns for every 100 people, then that's hundreds of millions of guns. I knew America had a gun fetish, but never in my wildest imagination did I think there would be that many.
However, this also might mean with so many gun owners, that teaching gun safety mandatorily would be impossible too.
Perhaps the removal of firearms could be done gradually, on a state by state or even city by city basis, starting with whichever state has the most gun deaths per person, and working from there. If you can't get rid of them all, then get rid of them in the worst areas.
If you want nationwide approval, you need to attack this mentality and break it down so they will accept it.
Anyway, you don't think it would do any good to take them anyway even if you could. what would you do if they put you in charge?
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Those numbers came from a Wikipedia entry; they're a collation of national statistics. Google firearm ownership by country.
Again, simplistic statements about complex problems.
Now, if I could be dictator-for-a-day to solve the US gun issue, I'd start by introducing legislation to make licensing mandatory, improve the scope of background checks, require a mandatory safety course in order to obtain a license, introduce mandatory laws on safe storage, and restrict the types of firearms legally allowed to be sold in the US. Basically, I'd introduce very similar measures to what Canada currently has in place because it works. None of those proposals infringe the 2nd amendment, all of them go toward generating a shift in attitude around firearms safety rather than lean towards bans.
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Those numbers came from a Wikipedia entry; they're a collation of national statistics. Google firearm ownership by country.
Again, simplistic statements about complex problems.
Now, if I could be dictator-for-a-day to solve the US gun issue, I'd start by introducing legislation to make licensing mandatory, improve the scope of background checks, require a mandatory safety course in order to obtain a license, introduce mandatory laws on safe storage, and restrict the types of firearms legally allowed to be sold in the US. Basically, I'd introduce very similar measures to what Canada currently has in place because it works. None of those proposals infringe the 2nd amendment, all of them go toward generating a shift in attitude around firearms safety rather than lean towards bans.
I had a look. I wonder how countries like Afghanistan and Syria can have such tiny gun ownership figures. You get the impression on that everyone is running around with an AK47 in somewhere like Afghanistan sometimes.
Simple solutions are often the best ones.
And why would your solution be any easier to implement than taking away all guns?
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And why would your solution be any easier to implement than taking away all guns?
Just so no one wonders why I'm no longer bothering to address Lorric's massive oversimplifications, this question is why. Lorric - I've previously answered this - 2nd amendment, 88 firearms per 100 residents, gun culture.
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And why would your solution be any easier to implement than taking away all guns?
Just so no one wonders why I'm no longer bothering to address Lorric's massive oversimplifications, this question is why. Lorric - I've previously answered this - 2nd amendment, 88 firearms per 100 residents, gun culture.
But you're still telling people they need a mandatory license and mandatory home saftey laws. If they don't, then you have to take their guns. Enforcing that on a nationwide basis would be harder than just taking people's guns one by one from each household. And they can still shove the second ammendment in your face.
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And why would your solution be any easier to implement than taking away all guns?
Just so no one wonders why I'm no longer bothering to address Lorric's massive oversimplifications, this question is why. Lorric - I've previously answered this - 2nd amendment, 88 firearms per 100 residents, gun culture.
But you're still telling people they need a mandatory license and mandatory home saftey laws. If they don't, then you have to take their guns. Enforcing that on a nationwide basis would be harder than just taking people's guns one by one from each household. And they can still shove the second amendment in your face.
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But you're still telling people they need a mandatory license and mandatory home saftey laws. If they don't, then you have to take their guns. Enforcing that on a nationwide basis would be harder than just taking people's guns one by one from each household. And they can still shove the second ammendment in your face.
Yes, yes, no, no.
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But you're still telling people they need a mandatory license and mandatory home saftey laws. If they don't, then you have to take their guns. Enforcing that on a nationwide basis would be harder than just taking people's guns one by one from each household. And they can still shove the second ammendment in your face.
Yes, yes, no, no.
yes,yes,explain,explain.
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It's already been explained. Several times. MP-Ryan's patience in doing so has been astonishing.
In return all you have done is assert he is wrong without explaining yourself, so you can **** right off asking anyone for explanation of their position when you're over here saying that some is more effort than all, in an environment that wants neither, without explanation of why this could possibly be so.
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It's already been explained. Several times. MP-Ryan's patience in doing so has been astonishing.
In return all you have done is assert he is wrong without explaining yourself, so you can **** right off asking anyone for explanation of their position when you're over here saying that some is more effort than all, in an environment that wants neither, without explanation of why this could possibly be so.
It has not been explained.
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Lorric, at the bare minimum, go educate yourself on exactly how the US Constitution functions (note that it's already been explained in this very thread) before your general ignorance on this matter frustrates the rest of us even more.
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Lorric, at the bare minimum, go educate yourself on exactly how the US Constitution functions (note that it's already been explained in this very thread) before your general ignorance on this matter frustrates the rest of us even more.
It has been frustrating for me too.
I will stay away from the thread for a while and let things cool down. Perhaps for a few days, perhaps forever, but If I come back, I promise I will read up on the US constitution first.
I only wanted to try and help. Sometimes a view from an outside perspective can be valuable even though it is an American problem.
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Not accompanying the thread, just wanted to post the NRA's response which is hilarious, armed guards at every school, can you taste the freedom?
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=us_c1
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Not accompanying the thread, just wanted to post the NRA's response which is hilarious, armed guards at every school, can you taste the freedom?
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/21/us/connecticut-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=us_c1
There was another one putting veterans (armed) at every school
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what was the security to press ratio there?
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You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
Speaking of the nuances of the situation, Canada and Australia both have at least semi-functional mental health systems. Not only that, but counter to the viewpoint you expressed in your post, millions of Americans do indeed view guns as "an object of fascination" rather than "a tool with a purpose" (despite the NRA's pious lip service to the contrary). Emulating Canada's gun regulations would do nothing to curb that nasty aspect of American gun culture (and would probably inflame it by making our right-wing militia types feel that their fears are justified). Would modeling our gun control on Canadian laws help a little? Probably. Would it reduce our gun violence rates to levels comparable to those seen in Canada, absent big changes to other parts of our policy and culture? Nope.
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Kajorama.... having sex with another human being is not the same as slaughtering innocent children, which is the crux of the issue.
Furthermore... I am very put off by your comment about "responsible sex lives". Who sleeps with whom is no business of anyone and especially not that of the state.
I think you are majorly misinterpreting the actual goals of sex education. It is most certainly not to encourage or discourage people from finding relationships and enjoying sex... but rather about giving them the knowledge of how to do safely what they would do anyways.
I got about this far into your post before I had to stop and simply ask "Are you even reading my posts?" Where have I claimed that sex education is about the state telling people who to sleep with? Where have I claimed that sex education isn't about giving kids the knowledge about how to have sex safely? I've made exactly the points you just made because they support my position.
Then I've said that the way you're acting about teaching firearm safety in schools is exactly the same way the religious right act about sex. They want abstinence only. Your suggestion for how kids should approach guns is.....abstinence only. You've even stated yourself that kids are going to be able to get hold of guns. The parallels are pretty clear.
You can't even blame sex education for any kind of "encouragement" when any potential encouragement gets dwarfed by the actual encouragement present everywhere in our society and especially in the media. Finally ... if anything, learning about the dangers of STDs will be a discouragement, not an encouragement. ;) lol.
You can't even blame teaching gun safety for any kind of "encouragement" when any potential encouragement gets dwarfed by the actual encouragement present everywhere in our society and especially in the media. Finally ... if anything, learning about the dangers of accidental shootings will be a discouragement, not an encouragement. ;) lol.
Sex Education is quite effective at encouraging people to have safe sex and preventing teenage pregnancies as well as STDs. That is very much a proven fact.
So why are you resistant to the idea of teaching gun safety? 1 kid every 3 days. One Sandy Hook every 2 months. This is not a small number. Banning semi-automatic weapons is not going to help with that much. I suspect that the laws that MP Ryan mention would do a lot more good.
Back on topic, as I have also pointed out before... while teaching gun safety may indeed reduce accidents... it would do nothing at all to prevent deliberate slaughter.
If someone wants to kill people... they will do so. If they know about how to handle weapons safely they will only do so more effectively. The question that remains is what weapon they have easily access to. If that guy in the latest shooting had only a knife then he propably would have been quickly subdued by the principal, his deputy and the school psychologist... but no, he had an assault rifle and gunned all three of them down.
As I pointed out before, the reason a mentally unstable person had access to weapons is because of several failings in the system. The ultimate one however was the decision of the shooter's mother to allow a mentally unstable person access to weapons. Are you seriously telling me that education can do nothing to prevent that?
What I have been saying and am saying is that teaching gun safety would in no way or form have any kind of effect on school massacres... except in possibly making the shooter more competent in handling those guns.
And this is the second time I've pointed out why you're wrong. It would have a small effect. So it's a step in the right direction.
We are on complete agreement on the need to ban assault rifles, but while you are very confident that multiple angles can be pursued at the same time, I rather worry that if "teaching gun safety" is brought up, the pro gun lobby will latch on and sell it as "the solution TM" - while even further promoting availability of semi automatic and assault weapons at the same time, ... and propably get away with it for a couple of years and countless more bloodbaths.
And they'll say the same thing about banning semi-automatic weapons. As I keep pointing out, you need a raft of measures. Not just one simple solution. There needs to be some give and take or nothing will happen. You're arguing ideals, I'm arguing a practical solution.
Finally... another point that we may or may not be in disagreement with: Underage persons should not handle guns. Period. There is a reason why there is an age limit on alcohol and driving cars and any of those reasons is ten times true when it comes to guns. Kids and teenagers, no matter what you teach them, will not consistently act responsible. Many adults won't either for that matter, but kids and teenagers pretty much come with a guarrantee for irresponsible behavior.
What's the age of consent in America?
You can make the same argument for sex ed. Since kids shouldn't be having sex at 13, we shouldn't teach them about sex until they reach the age they should be doing it.
Let me simply ask you the same question MP-Ryan was asked. My response would have been virtually the same as his. About the only difference is that I would re-enact the ban on semi-automatics.
But if you were god-emperor of the US for a day, what laws would you enact?
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Age of consent ranges between 16 and 18 in most of the states. Twenty nine states and the District of Columbia have it set at 16, 9 states have it set at 17, and the remaining 12 have it set at 18. Just as a quick FYI.
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You can't approach the subject of firearms regulation in vast countries with remote areas like Canada and the US from the perspective of someone who has spent virtually their entire life in the non-remote areas of the UK. It disrespects the nuances of the siituation.
Speaking of the nuances of the situation, Canada and Australia both have at least semi-functional mental health systems. Not only that, but counter to the viewpoint you expressed in your post, millions of Americans do indeed view guns as "an object of fascination" rather than "a tool with a purpose" (despite the NRA's pious lip service to the contrary). Emulating Canada's gun regulations would do nothing to curb that nasty aspect of American gun culture (and would probably inflame it by making our right-wing militia types feel that their fears are justified). Would modeling our gun control on Canadian laws help a little? Probably. Would it reduce our gun violence rates to levels comparable to those seen in Canada, absent big changes to other parts of our policy and culture? Nope.
No one, least of all me, is saying the US is going to see that cultural shift around firearms anytime soon. You're absolutely correct that it would help a little but wouldn't bring the gun violence rates in line with the other comparables. That said, even a little help is better than doing nothing. In Canada, the major shift took about 30 years, and we didn't have a constitutional right to keep/bear arms to deal with. Any change is going to take much longer to occur in the United States, but I fully believe it's possible.
Also, while not part of my response to LP, you just have to laugh at the NRA. Anyone who didn't realize just how loony that bunch is would think they're a satirical organization based on today's statements. Armed guards in every school? Land of the free, indeed.
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Eh... it would mean a much faster response time than calling 911...
Edit: oh, but then you have to worry about the weapons being misused, or feeding the bad guy weapons & ammo. Maybe keep them in a locker with a 2-key system?
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I've seen a number of interesting write-ups come out of this whole thing, but this one (https://kontradictions.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/why-not-renew-the-assault-weapons-ban-well-ill-tell-you/) actually dates a few months back, to the Aurora, Colorado shooting. It makes the argument why renewing the "assault weapons" ban would accomplish absolutely nothing, and how the original ban was incredibly poorly-written and had little to no practical effect. I wasn't even aware of any of that myself before reading it, but if it's the sort of legislation that people are going to push for again, then it'll do ****-all to solve the actual underlying problems.
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Eh... it would mean a much faster response time than calling 911...
Edit: oh, but then you have to worry about the weapons being misused, or feeding the bad guy weapons & ammo. Maybe keep them in a locker with a 2-key system?
The point being: if you've gotten to the point where you need to station armed guards in every school, you already ****ed up somewhere else.
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I've seen a number of interesting write-ups come out of this whole thing, but this one (https://kontradictions.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/why-not-renew-the-assault-weapons-ban-well-ill-tell-you/) actually dates a few months back, to the Aurora, Colorado shooting. It makes the argument why renewing the "assault weapons" ban would accomplish absolutely nothing, and how the original ban was incredibly poorly-written and had little to no practical effect. I wasn't even aware of any of that myself before reading it, but if it's the sort of legislation that people are going to push for again, then it'll do ****-all to solve the actual underlying problems.
The 1994 assault weapons ban was something of a highlight in the occasional disconnect between good politics and good governance.
When you craft a bill that you hope will become a law, there is a section in the bill's introduction that states the bill's purpose. The content of that section is always carries an implicit lie within it. A budget bill, for example, might say that its purpose is to fund the government, reduce deficits over the following [X] years, and lessen the tax burden on citizens. Those are all secondary goals of the bill, at best. If the purpose section of a bill was an honest representation of the bill's goals, then items number one, two, and three would always be, "To pass in Congress, avoid or override a Presidential veto, and survive any potential judicial challenge."
You could write a budget bill that would be the perfect solution to fund the government, reduce deficits, and lessen tax burdens, but if it is rejected by Congress, gets successfully vetoed, or is struck down in court, then it doesn't do anything to advance the stated goals. What do you do? Do you put forward this bill anyway, ultimately wasting your time on legislation that cannot accomplish anything because it will not carry the force of law? Alternatively, do you water down your perfect budget, to align it with judicial interpretation of the Constitution and existing law and the politics of the legislature and chief executive, so that your bill can pass and do something? If you are willing to compromise, how much are you willing to compromise? Is it enough for your bill to do half of what you had hoped? Is it enough for your bill to do a quarter of what you had hoped? Is it enough for your bill to do one quantum more than nothing toward your stated goals? Is it enough for your bill to do nothing toward your stated goals now, if it lays the political groundwork for a later (possibly much later) bill that can make progress toward those goals?
Now, put yourself in Diane Feinstein's shoes, in late 1993. Mass shootings had affected her constituency twice in as many years, and so she wanted to prevent or mitigate future incidents. She could have crafted legislation as simplistic as Lorric has repeatedly advocated, calling for a total ban on firearms and the confiscation or mandatory buyback of all privately owned guns. Such a law would certainly have had a huge impact on gun violence. Such a bill would never be so much as entertained on a committee schedule, though. Even if it did manage to find enough favor in the committee process to reach the floor of both houses of Congress for a vote, it would have had the support of no more than about ten Senators and forty House members, even in the Democratic majority of 1993/1994.
Feinstein, in crafting the assault weapons ban, had to compromise, straight from the off, to serve the greater purpose of granting the ban the force of law, so that it could do something, anything, rather than nothing. The effect of compromising the ban to the point where it could be reasonably expected to pass Congress and survive judicial challenge led to the class of banned weapon being defined by the superficial (folding stocks) and the extreme (barrel-mounted grenade launchers, a feature conspicuously ignored by your referenced blog post). It's a grim hypothetical to ponder if any mass-murderer would have utilized a barrel-mounted grenade launcher, purchased between the years of 1994 and 2004, to supplement his/her deed, but if there was one such killer who would have added another person to his/her body count with such an attachment, then the 1994 assault weapons ban did its one quantum more than nothing. Certainly, that's a low bar to set, in terms of practical consequence, but it was still a high bar to set politically. The alternatives were overreaching and accomplishing nothing or doing nothing, which always begets nothing. In other words, good politics had to supercede good governance to achieve even so little as to say, "We, as a nation, feel that barrel-mounted grenade launchers only belong in the hands of military and law enforcement, but we're cool with it, if you already own one."
Now, I'll say that my knee-jerk reaction to hearing Senator Feinstein talk about reintroducing the assault weapons ban in the coming Senate session was to call it bone-headed. For the entire ten years that the 1994 assault weapons ban was in place, it was a free cudgel with which Republicans got to beat the living tar out of Democrats. It remains a tool of the gun lobby to promote the notion that there is no such thing as effective gun control legislation (which is only true inasfar as the gun lobby and current interpretation of the second amendment prevent effective gun control from being politically or legally viable). While Senator Feinstein obviously sees the 1994 assault weapons ban as having done at least its one quantum more than nothing, I see it as having been counterproductive, having laid the political groundwork, not for more effective gun control, but for more effective opposition to gun control. By 2004, Democrats had dropped gun control from their party platform, in an effort to stop hemmoraging seats in the legislature, and with their opposition gone, we as a nation, were not willing to renew any part of the assault weapons ban, not even the bit about grenade launchers. I don't like the idea of getting to 2022 and finding that we've made no progress whatsoever in dealing with gun-related problems because the well was poisoned by heavily compromised legislation.
That being said, we haven't seen the text of the bill that Senator Feinstein intends to introduce this time out, and she has made clear that she has changed the ban from the 1994 version. I still don't hold high hopes for it being any more practically effective, since it still has to pass Congress and survive judicial challenge, but it is quite audacious to try to judge a bill before its text is available.
I do think the old assault weapons ban, if reintroduced, could be made more politically effective, though. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the majority opinion was delivered with a variation of the old adage, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." Even Scalia knew the ruling in that case was interpreting the second ammendment to state that Congress cannot prevent anyone from buying any type of weapon, from a 0.22 pistol that can barely penetrate heavy paper to a 20mm autocannon pulled from an Apache helicopter. I think that a new assault weapons ban should be crafted specifically to put that ruling to the test. Draw a line in the sand where everyone, or nearly everyone, in the United States will be on the same side. Maybe that's a ban that only does away with 20+mm autocannons and barrel-mounted grenade launchers, which have never (to my knowledge) been used in the commission of a civilian crime. The goal of such a ban would not be to reduce crime, but rather to get one person to commit the crime of buying one of those weapons, so that the Supreme Court can strike down the ban (D.C. v. Heller, lolz) and get the populace to realize in large enough numbers that the second ammendment is too broad and requires revision, so that, in the future, we can address the issue of gun control in a sensible and effective manner.
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Has anyone misused the term "Assault Rifle" in this thread yet? It always happens.
A semi-automatic is NOT an assault rifle regardless of how tacticool it looks.
And the banning semi-auto argument is kind of moot. A little practice with a bolt action will carry you a very long way. Pump shotguns can be very very quick as well.
Has anyone suggested common-sense mental health screening/healthcare improvement, teaching of gun safety, and banning of quick-buy gun shows? That's probably the best first step in my opinion.
Disclaimer: I'm a gun owner/collector. I don't support any sort of weapons ban, but I do support legislation that help prevent mass killings regardless of the method used.
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Has anyone suggested common-sense mental health screening/healthcare improvement, teaching of gun safety
Yes, repeatedly. Or do you mean IRL politicians?
and banning of quick-buy gun shows? That's probably the best first step in my opinion.
Afaik I'm the only other person who has even mentioned this issue in this thread, and nobody acknowledged it. :blah:
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Has anyone suggested common-sense mental health screening/healthcare improvement, teaching of gun safety
Yes, repeatedly. Or do you mean IRL politicians?
I know IRL politicians aren't suggesting sensible things like that with any seriousness. I just hadn't read most of the thread, but I assumed most people here would be well aware of those issues. I'm just afraid there's been a lot of the "Brady Bunch" nonsense flowing freely. I've tried to avoid this thread up until this point, but the last couple pages looked sensible so I decided it wouldn't be too bad to step into the conversation.
and banning of quick-buy gun shows? That's probably the best first step in my opinion.
Afaik I'm the only other person who has even mentioned this issue in this thread, and nobody acknowledged it. :blah:
Yeah man that's a real big loophole that needs to be plugged. I'm all for guns being available, but roving gun shows tend to pack around some serious firepower with limited or non-existent accountability for buyer and seller.
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I've been seeing the reports of mass gun and ammunition buying that keeps breaking records over the past years, especially now after this school shooting; it seems people take guns so serious that they don't mind waiting up to 4 hours in order to acquire them. Local reports like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u8sp05j6IIA) one gives a little example of that as well.
I'm thinking gun control won't work in the USA and would go so far as to say that the act of restricting the guns will lead to another civil war or even revolutionary war. When the Redcoats went to confiscate the guns, even after the long train of abuses (after 10 years of nonviolent disobedience and protests by the colonists) before that time is when the revolution really got off the ground.
I feel that this is something's that's been missing in this debate on guns though, both here on HLP and in general. The need for all citizens, being the militia, to be well equipped and trained against a tyrannical federal government in case it goes back against it's citizens, rather than only for defense against home invasion or for hunting. The whole Constitution is written and created to ensure that the government is the servant of the people rather than the other way around, and the Second Amendment being there to defend the First Amendment, as well, since they fought a bloody revolution to rid themselves of government that turned tyrannical.
Collective punishment for the acts of a few deranged lunatics (who in this newest case didn't legally obtain the murder weapon anyway) doesn't really work in a society which prides itself on individualism and freedom. Much like you shouldn't re-arm a disarmed society suddenly (or maybe even at all), it's a horrible idea to attempt the disarmament of a fully armed one.
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Collective punishment for the acts of a few deranged lunatics (who in this newest case didn't legally obtain the murder weapon anyway) doesn't really work in a society which prides itself on individualism and freedom. Much like you shouldn't re-arm a disarmed society suddenly (or maybe even at all), it's a horrible idea to attempt the disarmament of a fully armed one.
FIrst of all, I don't really like your term of "Disarmed society", as it implies that a society used to be armed, but now is no longer. More often then not, the societies which are unarmed didn't really have all that much arms in the first place.
It's not really "collective punishment" either. Collective punishment is locking people up because their family members did something. Restricting acces of guns to people who are mentally sound is not collective punishment. It is not like you are taking away their freedom, or their food, or their lives.
I feel that this is something's that's been missing in this debate on guns though, both here on HLP and in general. The need for all citizens, being the militia, to be well equipped and trained against a tyrannical federal government in case it goes back against it's citizens, rather than only for defense against home invasion or for hunting. The whole Constitution is written and created to ensure that the government is the servant of the people rather than the other way around, and the Second Amendment being there to defend the First Amendment, as well, since they fought a bloody revolution to rid themselves of government that turned tyrannical.
That doesn't work anymore these days. The government has tanks.
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FIrst of all, I don't really like your term of "Disarmed society", as it implies that a society used to be armed, but now is no longer. More often then not, the societies which are unarmed didn't really have all that much arms in the first place.
You did read the thing about 88 guns per 100 people? (Granted I suspect a majority of those are repeat ownership, but still.) Basically, go back and read the thread again and you'll realize that's not a valid criticism.
That doesn't work anymore these days. The government has tanks.
I direct you to Syria for what happens when the government is forced to interact with their citizens via the use of armored vehicles. (Hint: they're losing.)
It takes boots on the ground, the infantryman and his rifle, to create basic safety and security for the citizens, take weapons away from those the government deems unacceptable, create a simple form of legalized public order, and generally do everything necessary to rebuild governmental control. All tanks can do is destroy buildings, an essentially terroristic act that does nothing to reestablish control and can even increase the local resistance to the dictates of the government.
The objection that advanced military technology invalidates the possibility of armed resistance from the populace is invalid on its face and upon closer examination.
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You did read the thing about 88 guns per 100 people? (Granted I suspect a majority of those are repeat ownership, but still.) Basically, go back and read the thread again and you'll realize that's not a valid criticism.
This was not about america, but about the term "Disarmed society" in general, as used by JCDNWarrior.
I direct you to Syria for what happens when the government is forced to interact with their citizens via the use of armored vehicles. (Hint: they're losing.)
It takes boots on the ground, the infantryman and his rifle, to create basic safety and security for the citizens, take weapons away from those the government deems unacceptable, create a simple form of legalized public order, and generally do everything necessary to rebuild governmental control. All tanks can do is destroy buildings, an essentially terroristic act that does nothing to reestablish control and can even increase the local resistance to the dictates of the government.
The objection that advanced military technology invalidates the possibility of armed resistance from the populace is invalid on its face and upon closer examination.
On the other hand, Libya needed the intervention of massive airstrikes for the rebellion to succeed.
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You did read the thing about 88 guns per 100 people? (Granted I suspect a majority of those are repeat ownership, but still.) Basically, go back and read the thread again and you'll realize that's not a valid criticism.
This was not about america, but about the term "Disarmed society" in general, as used by JCDNWarrior.
I direct you to Syria for what happens when the government is forced to interact with their citizens via the use of armored vehicles. (Hint: they're losing.)
It takes boots on the ground, the infantryman and his rifle, to create basic safety and security for the citizens, take weapons away from those the government deems unacceptable, create a simple form of legalized public order, and generally do everything necessary to rebuild governmental control. All tanks can do is destroy buildings, an essentially terroristic act that does nothing to reestablish control and can even increase the local resistance to the dictates of the government.
The objection that advanced military technology invalidates the possibility of armed resistance from the populace is invalid on its face and upon closer examination.
On the other hand, Libya needed the intervention of massive airstrikes for the rebellion to succeed.
I'd wager the American situation in event of revolution is unique from many that have occured in the Arab Spring. Society is structured much differently, and we have interesting military/police organizations like these (http://oathkeepers.org/) (not to imply Im much of a libertarian). We have astounding rates of gun ownership, a volunteer army, and lots of veterans who probably didnt forget all of their training.
Im not implying a revolution is needed or would magically succeed without any outside support, but the situation here is much different.
Troops here are encouraged to protest unlawful or unjust orders. Any serious push to disarm the populace would probably result in mass refusals and possibly defections. I assume many defectors would bring their equipment along.
EDIT: Here's an example of refusal to follow disarmament orders: http://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/159oc2/i_ama_soldier_who_was_asked_to_take_weapons_from/
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On the other hand, Libya needed the intervention of massive airstrikes for the rebellion to succeed.
Citation needed.
Quite seriously, while the airstrikes sped up the process, they were neither required nor even necessarily useful for the massive double-agent operation that took Tripoli. Nor did they have much to do with the mountain groups who were the ones that ultimately would fight and defeat the regime's main efforts in the early days. There is no reason to believe that Libya would not have ended exactly the same way without foreign intervention, at greater cost in time and blood certainly, but the end frame being different without intervention flies in the face of how thoroughly the rebels had their opponents infiltrated and managed to call the shots for both sides of the fight.
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To re-emphasize what Batt's said earlier, what about the mental health of the situation: what caused the shooter to snap and why? And how many happy pills was he sucking down the pipe before he snapped?
But it's much easier for both gun control opponents and advocates to appeal to an emotional blank check and feed into a corrosive media circus than allowing people to mourn properly and give us a clear picture to why the tragedy occurred in the first place. My personal disdain and detachment for the issue follows along this principal: gun control is a hot button topic and with the usual media circus and "liberal" hollywood stars jumping on the bandwagon (as attested to the disgusting anti-gun groups that are sprouting on youtube), pulls attention away from other facets we should be examining as a society. Point in case, I think were dealing the symptoms of a disease rather treating the cause.
Rather than continue a pointless debate I offer an even more crazy and ludicrous option: Thought Control! People kill still murder each other in many ways, many without the use of guns, and if some of the horrific crimes that we sometimes hear mentioned in places like Japan or China should stir some debate as to why people go nuts and do crazy ****. People murder their fellows using vehicles or box cutter knives. So, how long is it before anti-gun antics evolves into an assault on free speech, free thought, and individualism as well?
Since American's seem to love their guns, let's remove violence and stampede upon people's right to expression, then tell them that violent thoughts and suspicious activities are a surefire way of telling they're a potential mass murderer? Or how about legislating media that ban depictions of weapons in movies, games, and everything else while white-washing entertainment but failing to hold the media circus accountable for stirring up a hornet's nest?
When the NRA dolts and idiots who lust over gun control have an answer to why we kill each other then I might be interested in the debate, but until then, adieu.
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Could someone (other than swantz) please comment on the gun shows thing?
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Could someone (other than swantz) please comment on the gun shows thing?
People may not have anything super-intresting to add to the conversation man. It's a pretty cut-and-dry thing anyway. The only people that really benefit from it are those who run the shows, and those who want to legally obain firearms with minimal wait time.
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What is there to say about them except that they should have been either banned or heavily regulated long ago?
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Nothing, really. I don't think anyone here is interested in defending that as a thing.
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IFF America shreds the 2nd ammendment and bans the use of weapons (and is actually able to enforce the banning), then these killings will end.
This will not happen. Americans love their freedom to hold as many guns as they want to, and any government that tries to impose such bannings will be shredded to pieces (or holes).
Therefore the killings will not end, and these discussions will continue forever. Simple as that.
Carry on.
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IFF America shreds the 2nd ammendment and bans the use of weapons (and is actually able to enforce the banning), then these killings will end.
This will not happen. Americans love their freedom to hold as many guns as they want to, and any government that tries to impose such bannings will be shredded to pieces (or holes).
Therefore the killings will not end, and these discussions will continue forever. Simple as that.
Carry on.
Way to oversimplify brutha.
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No, he's 100% correct. If all guns magically disappeared overnight there would be no shootings until more were made. Why he bothered posting that I do not know, it doesn't add anything at all to what's been already said.
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People would just use something else. Molotovs are insanely easy to make. They would be extremely effective in a space such as a classroom with no windows and a closed door.
Knives, propane, household chemicals, vehicles, and much more would be the next step up for someone determined to kill as many people as possible.
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I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed by "these killings" he meant shootings, otherwise yeah. There are always ways to kill people. It's never about preventing all killings, that's pretty much impossible, it's about taking steps to minimize chances at an appropriate cost. The gunshow loophole is a simple, common-sense step to take that can reduce the number of unchecked firearm sales without significantly harming MUH FREEDUM, for example. If anyone actually want to ban and confiscate all guns in an effort to halt violence, well, good for them.
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People would just use something else. Molotovs are insanely easy to make. They would be extremely effective in a space such as a classroom with no windows and a closed door.
Knives, propane, household chemicals, vehicles, and much more would be the next step up for someone determined to kill as many people as possible.
So how do you propose to stop killings like this happening if not a gun ban then?
Cause if America is against a gun ban, they're sure as **** against the kind of socialised health care you'd need to catch the mentally ill who would do something like this.
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That does not logically follow in the slightest, see also Canada.
Or, you know, everyone who was disappointed with the lack of a single-payer system back when the big healthcare thing went through during Obama's first term.
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People would just use something else. Molotovs are insanely easy to make. They would be extremely effective in a space such as a classroom with no windows and a closed door.
Knives, propane, household chemicals, vehicles, and much more would be the next step up for someone determined to kill as many people as possible.
So how do you propose to stop killings like this happening if not a gun ban then?
Cause if America is against a gun ban, they're sure as **** against the kind of socialised health care you'd need to catch the mentally ill who would do something like this.
I propose what I originally proposed. Safety lessons, sufficient mental healthcare (I've experienced what a struggle it can be to get proper care), a push to stop labelling mental illness as something terrible that you should never reveal to anyone (which pushes people to avoid treatment due to stigma), and regulations to patch up loopholes. To be honest, the news reporting style on these events literally BEGS copycats to come out of the woodwork to do their deeds. These events are important and should cause discussion, but starting reports with sirens blaring and filling every cable news channel 24/7 with the bodycount and the weapons used really gets the copycats sitting on the edge of their seat. They're creating anti-heros for copycats to rally around.
Who said you can't support universal healthcare and oppose gun bans? I was seriously psyched about "Obamacare" at first. I'm not as excited now, but it's still a step in the right direction. One thing that really catches me hard in politics is the need to fall to one "side." I support universal healthcare, a woman's right to an abortion, gay rights (human rights really), science funding, public education, "high" taxation, and many more things typically considered liberal. I also support gun rights, military spending, heavy restrictions on wasteful welfare programs (don't get me started on people being allowed to purchase soda and chips on food stamps), and minimizing government involvement in the market whenever it is safe/beneficial to do so.
Also what NGTM-1R said.
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I don't think people would be as likely to attack, or as successful in their attacks, using non-firearm weapons. The only real alternative I'd worry about (bombings) requires a lot more in the way of commitment and resources.
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Or, you know, everyone who was disappointed with the lack of a single-payer system back when the big healthcare thing went through during Obama's first term.
While the two positions are not obviously linked, the people who were in favor of a single-payer healthcare system were from the wing of the Democratic party a lot more likely to favor tighter gun control. Meanwhile, those in favor of the loosest restrictions on gun ownership tend to be from the side of the American political spectrum that thought an insurance mandate was a Socialist practice to be opposed at all costs. It's not a 100% overlap in either case, but it's a significant enough correlation to forgive Karajorma for linking the two.
An interesting point to note, as I go back over Wayne LaPierre's post-Sandy-Hook press remarks again, is that he mentions mental illness exactly once, in a call, not to ensure treatment of their illness, but to ensure proper cataloguing of the mentally ill. So, the official stance of the largest of the United States' pro-gun lobbying organizations is to do nothing with the mental health system, except to demand that doctors violate patient confidentiality by putting those patients in a national database. In fact, LaPierre's thesis was that mental illness wasn't even the problem, but that television and movies and video games have corrupted our youths and so greatly desensitized them to violence that they're more willing to commit violent acts. (If that sounds familiar, it's because it's a stock script that the NRA has been using since the 1990's at least.)
The big reason why, up to this point, I had been talking about the politics of gun control, instead of the politics of mental health reform, is that the people with political clout are talking about gun control. We could, on this forum, come up with a solution to eliminate mental dysfunction as we know it, without any civil rights or budgetary impact on the country, but unless someone on the forum is a U.S. Representative or Senator who intends to take our ideas back to Capitol Hill, it doesn't do us a lick of good. (If someone here is an incognito Congressperson or Senator, drop me a PM, and I'll be happy to discuss any topic you want to bring up. ;) ) At least in discussing gun control, in this period, when politicians are wearing their gun control positions on their sleaves, forum members may give a measure of consideration to what candidates they will support or oppose in the 2014 midterms, if this is a priority issue for them.
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On the whole 'improving mental illness tracking' issue, I just wanted to add that shootings of this kind are so incredibly rare that we have no diagnostic criteria with predictive validity. Any system of that kind would be built almost entirely of false positives.
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I don't think people would be as likely to attack, or as successful in their attacks, using non-firearm weapons. The only real alternative I'd worry about (bombings) requires a lot more in the way of commitment and resources.
While I won't deny the ease-of-use a modern firearm provides being a big issue, I still kind of debate this with myself frequently. The type of person who pulls a shooting like this one off is clearly already devoted enough to destroy their own lives and the lives of many others. Why wouldn't they deal with a little more difficulty in planning if they've already made a commitment like that? For example, the deadliest mass murder in US History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster) was accomplished by a devoted farmer with explosives. Dynamite was far too easy to acquire at the time, but a little googling could teach most of today's would-be bombers how to turn some fairly common (and far from expensive) chemicals into bombs/gassing agents.
Maybe firearms are just what's in vogue?
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To echo Swantz, the trend in recent years for mass shooting attacks has been away from the disorganized and unskilled Columbine shooter we usually think of when we talk about mass shootings. Many of them have shown enough organizational skill, patience, practice, or all three, to have gone for bombs.
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Dynamite was far too easy to acquire at the time, but a little googling could teach most of today's would-be bombers how to turn some fairly common (and far from expensive) chemicals into bombs/gassing agents.
Maybe firearms are just what's in vogue?
One needn't buy a gun's constituent components and assemble them, prior to use. If you do buy a gun in pieces, since it is a mechanical device, rather than a volatile chemical, it is far simpler and less hazardous to assemble and test. A gun also comes with its own instructions; you don't have to go searching for them. Guns are also relatively uniform, so that if you know how to operate and maintain one, you know how to operate and maintain a wide variety, while different types of explosive vary widely in their safe handling and (deliberately unsafe) detonation. Guns are capable of being used in both targeted and indiscriminant violence, while bombs always produce collateral damage.
Finally, guns, in the United States at least, are widely available, whether you seek to purchase one from an arms dealer or steal one from an unsuspecting victim. The eighty-eight guns per hundred people statistic has been tossed about quite a bit already, but pre-made explosives are not nearly as common among the civilian population. If you intend to undertake a bombing, you will have to make your own bomb, but if you plan to undertake a shooting, mass or otherwise, chances are strong that you'll be able to get a gun.
Firearms are not just what's in vogue. Firearms are the right tool for the job of killing, and they're a tool that is easier to come by than any other.
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Well, while I still agree that we need to examine the gun control debate especially the mental health of legal weapons owners, I often counter with a whimper: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/radley-balko/the-police-state-comes-to_b_2321878.html
We debate the types of weapons that citizens can use and obtain, but our own police forces are making an alarming trend with the heavy militarization that actually puts a heavy cost on the tax payer both in damages and puppy shootings. Often, gun control advocates often turn a blind eye towards the heavy fire power that numerous police departments obtain as they fatten budgets with SWAT gear, armored vehicles, and the like. It's one thing to remove weapons from the hands of citizens, but I don't feel comfortable knowing that our own police are developing an unneeded taste for military equipment in common situations. But I tend to also argue this is the further symptom of our inability to fully rationalize why we kill and methods of prevention, and as a result, build up a sense of false security through either gun control or guns themselves as a crutch.
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Dynamite was far too easy to acquire at the time, but a little googling could teach most of today's would-be bombers how to turn some fairly common (and far from expensive) chemicals into bombs/gassing agents.
Maybe firearms are just what's in vogue?
One needn't buy a gun's constituent components and assemble them, prior to use. If you do buy a gun in pieces, since it is a mechanical device, rather than a volatile chemical, it is far simpler and less hazardous to assemble and test. A gun also comes with its own instructions; you don't have to go searching for them. Guns are also relatively uniform, so that if you know how to operate and maintain one, you know how to operate and maintain a wide variety, while different types of explosive vary widely in their safe handling and (deliberately unsafe) detonation. Guns are capable of being used in both targeted and indiscriminant violence, while bombs always produce collateral damage.
Finally, guns, in the United States at least, are widely available, whether you seek to purchase one from an arms dealer or steal one from an unsuspecting victim. The eighty-eight guns per hundred people statistic has been tossed about quite a bit already, but pre-made explosives are not nearly as common among the civilian population. If you intend to undertake a bombing, you will have to make your own bomb, but if you plan to undertake a shooting, mass or otherwise, chances are strong that you'll be able to get a gun.
Firearms are not just what's in vogue. Firearms are the right tool for the job of killing, and they're a tool that is easier to come by than any other.
You're right. They are a great tool for the job of killing. The point I'm really trying to get across in that post is that even removing those firearms from the hands of the populous won't seriously dent the number of mass killings such as these. I hate to sort of echo the NRA, because I don't agree with their social-conservatism crap, but US media and culture really are pretty violent. Sex scenes are considered heinous, while the goriest image of murder is A-OK. We've got a perfect storm of violence glorification, lack of effective gun education, widespread gun ownership, avoidance to psychiatric treatment (I'd bet large numbers of people think all psychiatry is totally bull****), and a mildly tumultuous socio-economical situation. One of those is easy to fix, but doesn't really solve the problem, sort of like taking cough syrup when you have a cold. It's really just a stopgap, it doesn't clear out the rhinovirus infection. The rest of those are much harder to fix, like curing the common cold, but are the true "solution" to the greater problem.
I don't want to get down into a 1st amendment vs 2nd amendment thing, because I honestly like the 1st a whole hell of a lot more. The problem is that part of me wants to feel like the 1st might, and that's a very big might, need to be defended by the 2nd one day. You can take this and roll the fictional revolution ball for a while if you like.
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Humorously swantz, i think you summed up Americana in a neat package. We are quick to act, brutal in fashion and last to think (if at all). And often to any of these debates, thinking is usually put on the sidelines while both sides launch political jockeying and currying favors rather than sitting down for a serious set of discussions on why psychological factors play an important role in such tragedies. To be honest myself, I don't see even the "liberals" actually supporting any moves towards building a better infrastructure for mental healthcare and diagnosing problems, as it would serve to backlash against police and prison service unions that push for stringent laws that are hard on crime, soft on reality and punishing to our national budget.
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I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed by "these killings" he meant shootings, otherwise yeah. There are always ways to kill people. It's never about preventing all killings, that's pretty much impossible, it's about taking steps to minimize chances at an appropriate cost. The gunshow loophole is a simple, common-sense step to take that can reduce the number of unchecked firearm sales without significantly harming MUH FREEDUM, for example. If anyone actually want to ban and confiscate all guns in an effort to halt violence, well, good for them.
Of course I meant these school shootings, and I fervently believe those paragraphs to be true. I know other countries where people do carry guns do not suffer from these issues, but I do not attribute those differences to "mental issues", but rather to its own gun culture. Americans have a very special relationship with guns which I do not recognize in other developed country's people.
The point I'm really trying to get across in that post is that even removing those firearms from the hands of the populous won't seriously dent the number of mass killings such as these.
Rubbish. In China one mad tried to do the same and was only able to hurt some people, not kill anyone. Why? He had only access to a knife, not a semi-automatic. If you could magically handwave away all the firearms from americans, these killings would stop 100%. What I wanted to point out is that such measures are in the realm of magic wonderland, not reality. Americans will never accept gun bans and I don't blame them. They want that freedom and I can't judge that. Take these shootings however as a kind of "tax" over that freedom they have. Just as they take the amazing costs of their badly managed private healthcare as a "tax" over the freedom they have of not paying for anyone else's healthcare and so on.
Freedom costs money and lives, and it's on the Americans to choose how free they want to be, not me.
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Who said you can't support universal healthcare and oppose gun bans?
Who indeed.
It's not a 100% overlap in either case, but it's a significant enough correlation to forgive Karajorma for linking the two.
Except I didn't link the two. And I was very careful not to link the two. That's the hilarious thing. Everyone is so certain that must have been what I said that no one bothered to actually read what I said.
I said that there was no way America was going to accept the kind of socialised healthcare necessary to catch the mentally ill people who might commit this sort of thing. The cluster-**** that occurred surrounding Obama's first attempt makes that quite clear. Without that people are going to slip through the net cause seeing a doctor is too expensive. Most likely, it's going to be the kind of person who needs to see a doctor most.
I didn't once correlate that people who are pro or anti-gun control. I know there is, as you say quite an overlap but there's no need to point the finger. All that matters is that it won't pass. So it's as impractical a solution as simply wishing away all the guns.
And that's before we get to the point Battuta keeps making that even with better mental care, you're still not certain to catch even a majority of these people.
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Not to derail or lend any credibility to conspiracy theory tinfoil hat wearing nutjobs, but can anyone explain this 30 second video to me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=urrRcgB581w
Regardless of the strange video, I can't believe how many conflicting reports have come from this.. "the AR was found in the trunk.. the AR was found in the school.. the AR was used in the shooting, as well as his suicide.. wait 3 handguns found in the school instead.. the AR was found in the trunk but somehow he still used it in the shooting... no wait it was just the 4 (not 3) handguns.. we sure had better ban those ARs." Is it really so hard to get the story straight? Seems like it shouldn't be.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/18/bath_school_bombing_remembering_the_deadliest_school_massacre_in_american.html
38 children, 45 ppl dead
short circuit in the dude's wiring was the only thing that kept 500 pounds of dynamite + some gunpowder from going up as well and killing even more people.
Someone else remarked:
Michael Tremoglie on the Italian website, Academia Res Publica, offers some food for thought about the Sandy Hook school shooting. He writes that the worst school killing in history wasn’t committed by a disaffected teenager, didn’t involve a gun, and happened before there was violent entertainment and before God was taken out of schools. In 1927 in Bath, Michigan, a middle-aged farmer blew up a schoolhouse, then detonated a car bomb. He killed 38 kids and six adults, and nobody ever figured out why.
Tremoglie notes that the only scholarly study of mass school killings was published by an Ohio sociology professor in 2007. It found that there is no holistic approach to investigating school killings, where interdisciplinary experts examine every possible angle and share their knowledge. Instead, different groups quickly seize on the tragedy to advance whatever angle they already believe. Liberals blame lax gun control laws. Conservatives blame violent media. Mental health groups say it shows the need for more funding. And so on. The study suggested that until we start investigating these tragedies the way we do other disasters, where experts from many different fields work together to discover the truth, we may never learn what really causes them or how to prevent them from happening again.
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Redirecting some of the tangent's here...
Look, folks, you can't ban firearms outright. Not practical. But conversely, you can't say that mass shooters will "just find another way" and therefore regulation of firearms is pointless too.
As data from several functioning countries demonstrates quite admirably, the best practices surrounding firearms are practical regulations with the minimum intrusiveness necessary to keep honest people honest and make stupid people honest - making it a good deal harder for a child or mentally-ill person to acquire and use a weapon. Regulation's effect on the active criminal element is, at best, a small to moderate reduction in their ability to easily acquire firearms. Therefore, effective regulation should also not make criminals out of non-criminals because of administrative issues.
Bombs are irrelevant to the discussion. Knives are irrelevant to the discussion. That there are other means by which a person can commit mass murder or injury has nothing to do with mental illness and the general irresponsible half-assed piecemeal regulatory scheme concerning firearms in the United States.
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The argument actually reminds me of someone telling me that it's pointless covering up the electrical sockets in a room with a toddler cause he could just as easily stick whatever he was going to stick in the socket in his eye.
Well yes he could. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to cover up those sockets.
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Plus isn't the main purpose of those to prevent the toddler from sticking their finger in the socket? :p
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there are those who think they should leave the outlets uncovered so as to teach children about the dangers of electricity. they might get zapped, once (or in my case learn to booby-trap outlets so as to zap others).
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You Americans and your wonderful, precious guns...
Here in the UK we have about 1/5 of your population, many cultural similarities and about 1/200 of your shooting deaths. No one has guns, not even the cops.
Over there every Tom Dick has a gun. You can just buy a gun, you pick up bullets from a grocery store. Guns are just a part of your life, of course people are going to use them. That and the whole macho man image America likes to project. So when you pull a gun on someone and they don't back down, you're going to think "Oh, I'm going to look like a ****ing pussy now if I don't shoot..."
:snipe:
That and everybody who wants to fight is going to be packing a gun because everyone has a gun, instead of using their fists or at worse a knife or a bat.
:snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe: :snipe:
I posted this a while back on another forum I go to, but you have since made me dredge it back up. In the future, I suggest you do your research before posting.
I am posting this to discuss and inform people on the fundamental human right to bear arms. There are quite a few lies and uninformed statements that some unsavory individuals have been throwing around as of late and as a citizen of this great country, it is my duty (as well as your duty) to fight this propaganda. Always remember that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" and that "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Lets start by looking at the empirical data, shall we? Gun control advocates like to go make bigoted and misinformed statements, alleging that Europeans "have no guns and thus they have no crime." While it is true that some European countries do have lower violent crime rates than the United States, all of the evidence shows that guns have absolutely nothing to do with that. In fact, the data shows that violent crime, including homicide, has been drastically on the rise since the implementation of gun control. For instance, the United Kingdom is known for it's draconian and anti-freedom gun control laws. The first of these laws in recent times was the Gun Control Act of 1968, which introduced strict restrictions on gun ownership and required firearms be registered. This law has been a complete and utter disaster and not only are the people less free, but violent crime rates (including homicide) have skyrocketed and continue to skyrocket. The homicide rate rose 52% since the law was enacted and it continues to rise. In 1997 the British government completely banned handguns, after forcing all owners to register their guns with the 1968 law, this again resulted in violent crime (including homicide) rates skyrocketing and continue to rise. In fact, after the 1997 handgun ban, homicide rates have risen by 15% since the law was enacted. In fact, the countries in Europe that have the lowest crime rates are the ones that have the most gun owners and/or least strict gun laws, such as the Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Gun control isn't just a failure in other countries, it's a failure in America as well. In the United States, every time gun control has been implemented, it has failed miserably, made us less free, and empowered criminals. Take for instance the handgun bans in Chicago and the District of Columbia, which have been struck down as unconstitutional. Handguns were completely banned in the District of Columbia in 1976, this resulted in violent crime (including homicide) rates skyrocketing. In the District of Columbia, homicide rates rose by 73% since the law was enacted.. Chicago banned handguns in 1981, this resulted in violent crime (including homicide) rates skyrocketing. In Chicago, homicide rates rose by 40% since the law was enacted.
Now lets look at the fundamental human right to concealed carry, shall we? Currently every state except Illinois and the District of Columbia have concealed carry and both of those states are currently in the process of allowing concealed carry, seeing as how not allowing concealed carry violates the United States Constitution (and Illinois Constitution). Concealed carry has been hailed as a massive success, not only for those who love freedom, but also for lowering violent crime (including homicide) rates. Concealed carry has drastically lowered homicide rates everywhere that it has been implemented. Every study conducted shows that the right to concealed carry has saved many lives and has taken virtually zero. In fact, concealed carry has even begun to spread to other countries, such as Canada, the Czech Republic and Israel.
Lets look at what gun control advocates mean when they talk about "big scary assault weapons;" the first thing that pops into your head is probably that they are talking about fully automatic rifles, however, this is not the case. These so-called "assault weapons" that gun control advocates always talk about banning are nothing more than so-called "assault" modifications to guns, such as bayonets and pistol grips. It doesn't cover fully automatic firearms at all, which were previously banned under the Hughes Amendment. All of the evidence shows that fully automatic weapons are used in virtually no crimes. Statistics show that prior to the Hughes Amendment there was not a single instance of a fully automatic gun being used in the commission of a crime. It wasn't until AFTER fully automatic weapons were banned that a crime was committed with one, and in that incident, nobody was killed (other than the two bank robbers). The Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 and absolutely nothing bad happened like gun control advocates claimed.
Gun control advocates try to mistakenly say that Barack Obama "supports gun rights" and/or that he "isn't anti-gun rights," even though all of the evidence shows that he is perhaps our most anti-gun rights president in American history. Gun control advocates only claim that he is "pro-gun rights," because they want to trick ignorant people into thinking he isn't a horrible person who hates guns and freedom. Throughout Obama's political career, he has made various anti-gun rights statements and support anti-gun rights bills. Barack Obama said that he supports banning semi-automatic guns and increase firearm restrictions. He also said that he supported banning handguns and concealed carry. Obama voted in favor of holding firearm manufacturers responsible for murders. Obama also said he would renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and immediately upon being re-elected, he had his congressional Democrat friends introduce a bill to renew it. Obama also said he believes people living in "inner cities" shouldn't be allowed to own guns. Obama cosponsored a bill that only allowed citizens to buy one gun a month. Obama also said he supports requiring guns be registered and licensed. Obama said that he believes that local gun bans do not violate the Second Amendment. Obama also said that he would consider supporting a ban on buying ammunition online. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of all of the anti-gun rights statements Obama has made and the anti-gun rights bills he has supported.
Gun control advocates try to claim that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution does not refer to an individual right, but instead refers to the right of individual states to form militias (such as National Guards). This claim is completely false and has been disproved many times. First off the rights of the states to form militias is already protected under Article I of the United States Constitution. The Second Amendment is as follows: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." As you can see, the Second Amendment does allow for the creation of a military force, which makes sense, since you need a national military to defend your country. However, the Founding Fathers separated the right to form a militia from the right of the people to bear arms. Note the grammatical separation and note how it says the right of the people, as opposed to the "right of the militia."
Every legal reference in history to the right to keep and bear arms has referred to it as an individual right. The first recorded use of the 'right to keep and bear arms' comes from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which referred explicitly to an individual right. Fourty-four of the fifty states protect the right to keep in their state constitutions and this right refers to an individual right in all fourty-four of them. The right to keep and bear arms has always referred to an individual right in other countries constitutions as well. Islamic law also calls for governments to respect for the individual right of the people to bear arms, though this right is not generally respected by Muslim countries in practice. The Second Amendment does not create any new rights, it only protects a pre-existing natural right that all sapient beings have. This has been proven time and time again by the Founding Fathers, the United States Supreme Court, John Locke and countless classical liberal philosophers.
Now lets look at United States case law and legal precedent for the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms in general. As previously mentioned, the first recorded legal usage of the right to keep and bear arms comes from the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Prior to the formation of the United States, the Thirteen Colonies also had a long-standing history of having a right to bear arms, which included the right to self-defense. Prior to the United States Constitution being formed, states that had declared their independence from Great Britain had protected the right to bear arms in their state constitutions and it included the right to self-defense. For instance, the 1776 Constitution of Pennsylvania states that "the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state." When the United States Constitution was being drafted and ratified, the Founding Fathers stated explicitly that the right to bear arms was a right of the people, not a "right of the militia" as some gun control advocates claim. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers wanted to require every free citizen to own a gun, viewing it as a civic duty. I will provide a list of these quotes from the Founding Fathers towards the end of this post.
Interpretation of the Second Amendment has always been that of recognizing it as an individual right. In fact, it was most commonly interpreted as a right that cannot under any circumstances be restricted or limited. Even foreigners held this view, including William Blackstone, who wrote about it in his Commentaries on the Laws of England. The Second Amendment uses the term "shall not be infringed," which not only states that the right to keep and bear arms is a pre-existing natural right, but also that it shall not be infringed upon. In fact, the only real criticism levied against the Second Amendment, was by those who thought it didn't provide enough protection to the right to bear arms. St. George Tucker and William Rawle, two lawyers and abolitionists (and in the case of Tucker, a Virginia Supreme Court justice) were among those who criticized the Second Amendment for not protecting the rights of gun owners enough. Tucker and Rawle argued that the Second Amendment needed to have provisions in order to help the poor be able to exercise their right to bear arms; they viewed this as difficult under the current laws, seeing as how many poor people couldn't afford firearms. Joseph Story, an early federal Supreme Court justice wrote in his work, Commentaries on the Constitution, that: "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Story also wrote that the right to bear arms is a natural right. The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that all restrictions placed on the federal government also apply to state and local governments. One of the main reasons this amendment was added to the Constitution was because former slave states would often times refuse to allow freed slaves to bear arms, which violated their rights as protected under the Second Amendment.
It wasn't until the late 20th and early 19th century that socialists and so-called "progressives" tried to re-interpret the Second Amendment to mean a collective right to form state militias. Dred Scott v. Sandford ruled that the Second Amendment is an individual right, however it also ruled that the Second Amendment did not apply to slaves. United States v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois and Miller v. Texas ruled that the Second Amendment is an individual right, however, it also ruled that the First and Second Amendments only limit the federal government. United States v. Miller ruled that that: "These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense," which is to say that the people consist of the militia. United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez ruled that the Second Amendment (and the Bill of Rights in general) was an individual right that also applied to non-citizen aliens. United States v. Lopez ruled that the so-called "Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990" violated the Second Amendment and was unconstitutional. United States v. Emerson, District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago reaffirmed that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right that applies to state and local governments, as well as the federal government. Moore v. Madigan ruled that the ban on concealed carry in Illinois violated the Second Amendment and was thus unconstitutional, requiring Illinois to adopt concealed carry.
Lets also take a look at what the Founding Fathers had to say about the Second Amendment and right to bear arms:
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives 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 your constant companion of your walks." -Thomas Jefferson
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them." -Thomas Jefferson
"We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;" -Thomas Jefferson
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character." -Alexander Hamilton
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -James Madison
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." -John Adams
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. " -Noah Webster
"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." -Tenche Coxe
"[The new government] shall be too firmly fixed in the saddle to be overthrown by anything but a general insurrection." -William Symmes
"[A standing army] if raised, whether they could subdue a nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?" -Theodore Sedwick
"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it." -Richard Henry Lee
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." -Patrick Henry
"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone...Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation...inflicted by those who had no power at all?" -Patrick Henry
"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually...I ask, who are the militia? They consist of now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor..." -George Mason
"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them." -Zacharia Johnson
"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." -Virginia delegation to the constitutional convention
"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." -Albert Gallatin
"[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded." -Roger Sherman
As you can clearly see, gun control is not only a failure, but it also takes away our freedom and is unconstitutional. What can we do to lower violent crime rates then? That is a good question and the answer to the question doesn't include gun control. I believe we should primarily focus on the causes of violent crime, as opposed to focusing on the symptoms. We need to overhaul our public education system and work to eliminate poverty. As for guns, we should protect the right of the people to bear arms, including the right to concealed carry. We should also bring back firearms classes in public schools, these classes would teach our young people about gun safety and responsibility.
Sources
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm (http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm)
https://supreme.justia.com/us/92/542/case.html (https://supreme.justia.com/us/92/542/case.html)
https://supreme.justia.com/us/116/252/case.html (https://supreme.justia.com/us/116/252/case.html)
https://supreme.justia.com/us/307/174/case.html (https://supreme.justia.com/us/307/174/case.html)
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf)
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1521.pdf)
https://supreme.justia.com/us/60/393/case.html (https://supreme.justia.com/us/60/393/case.html)
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/153/535/case.html (http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/153/535/case.html)
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp (http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp)
http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_09_10_08_1521_PetitionerAmCuHeartlandInst.authcheckdam.pdf (http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_09_10_08_1521_PetitionerAmCuHeartlandInst.authcheckdam.pdf)
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/14664/statistics-show-concealed-carry-saves-many-lives-takes-few (http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/14664/statistics-show-concealed-carry-saves-many-lives-takes-few)
http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb0110.pdf (http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb0110.pdf)
http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm (http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Barack_Obama_Gun_Control.htm)
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/research-concealed-carry-and-guns-save-lives-95307939.html (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/research-concealed-carry-and-guns-save-lives-95307939.html)
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/concealed-weapons-save-lives-article-1.1121161 (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/concealed-weapons-save-lives-article-1.1121161)
http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndfqu.html (http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndfqu.html)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/12/20121218132050819.html (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/12/20121218132050819.html)
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689)
/thread
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You Americans and your wonderful, precious guns...
[snip]
I posted this a while back on another forum I go to, but you have since made me dredge it back up. In the future, I suggest you do your research before posting.
[snip]
I'm sorry, I really am, and I tried, I really did, but that's just too much text.
TL;DR;S
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Oh I like where this is going.
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hlp gets only the best
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yea if i wanted to read a wikipedia article id have done so on wikipedia.
that said i think we should have an assault rifle a mandatory item on every kids list of school supplies.
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I'm sorry, I really am, and I tried, I really did, but that's just too much text.
TL;DR;S
Yep. It's way too much. So I simply picked the one part I know about and checked that.
For instance, the United Kingdom is known for it's draconian and anti-freedom gun control laws. The first of these laws in recent times was the Gun Control Act of 1968, which introduced strict restrictions on gun ownership and required firearms be registered. This law has been a complete and utter disaster and not only are the people less free, but violent crime rates (including homicide) have skyrocketed
Okay, I'll give you that murder rates in the UK have risen. I question your attempting to link something as nebulous as the murder rate to something as precise as gun control. Especially when
a) the number of gun homicides have fallen (which belies that whole "If the criminals want guns, they'll get guns" argument people are so fond of).
b) The number of homicides in the 4 European countries you name as having lots of guns have also, for the most part, shown similar patterns.
c) The murder rate in England and Wales are actually at a 30 year low (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18900384).
That said, having managed to get one thing correct (an increase in the overall murder and violent crime rate) this very quickly goes downhill. Had you simply suggested trends I might have been more lenient but you've gone so far as to post bogus statistics and that's something I don't allow to pass me by easily.
and continue to skyrocket.
Bollocks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent-crime-rates-UK-1981-to-2007.png
The homicide rate rose 52% since the law was enacted and it continues to rise.
Bull****!
It's not rising at all. In fact it's been falling since the turn of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime#United_Kingdom
Regarding murder, "increasing levels of homicide (at around 2% to 3% per year) [have been observed] from the 1960s through to the end of the twentieth century". Recently the murder rate has declined, "a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02", as measured by The Homicide Index.
In 1997 the British government completely banned handguns, after forcing all owners to register their guns with the 1968 law, this again resulted in violent crime (including homicide) rates skyrocketing and continue to rise.
Hogwash! (see above).
In fact, after the 1997 handgun ban, homicide rates have risen by 15% since the law was enacted.
Bunkum! (see above).
In fact, the countries in Europe that have the lowest crime rates are the ones that have the most gun owners and/or least strict gun laws, such as the Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Cherry-picking. You fail to point out that with the exception of Norway (which as the same rate) all 4 have higher gun homicide rates than the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Or that the Czech Republic has a higher overall homicide rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade
Basically this entire line of argument is nothing but flim-flam and a desperate attempt to claim that correlation is causation, all the while ignoring the most pertinent facts about gun crime. You want to link the rise in crime to gun bans but I could just as easily link it to half a dozen other factors. Abortion rates, number of atheists, number of players of Call of Duty, % of 20 year olds who are bronies, whether people from those countries look good in a kilt. I suspect I could make at least one of those fit the data as well as you did for gun control.
You ignore that the number of gun deaths in 2008 is reported as a 20 year low (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html) and instead try to paint the picture that the gun ban has lead to an increase in violent crime despite the fact that gun crimes are happening less often or that statistical research does not claim any such correlation (http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/3/455.abstract).
If the rest of your argument is as flawed as this tiny section of it, it definitely wasn't worth my time to read it all.
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I'm sorry, I really am, and I tried, I really did, but that's just too much text.
TL;DR;S
Yep. It's way too much. So I simply picked the one part I know about and checked that.
For instance, the United Kingdom is known for it's draconian and anti-freedom gun control laws. The first of these laws in recent times was the Gun Control Act of 1968, which introduced strict restrictions on gun ownership and required firearms be registered. This law has been a complete and utter disaster and not only are the people less free, but violent crime rates (including homicide) have skyrocketed
Okay, I'll give you that murder rates in the UK have risen. I question your attempting to link something as nebulous as the murder rate to something as precise as gun control. Especially when
a) the number of gun homicides have fallen (which belies that whole "If the criminals want guns, they'll get guns" argument people are so fond of).
b) The number of homicides in the 4 European countries you name as having lots of guns have also, for the most part, shown similar patterns.
c) The murder rate in England and Wales are actually at a 30 year low (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18900384).
That said, having managed to get one thing correct (an increase in the overall murder and violent crime rate) this very quickly goes downhill. Had you simply suggested trends I might have been more lenient but you've gone so far as to post bogus statistics and that's something I don't allow to pass me by easily.
and continue to skyrocket.
Bollocks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent-crime-rates-UK-1981-to-2007.png
The homicide rate rose 52% since the law was enacted and it continues to rise.
Bull****!
It's not rising at all. In fact it's been falling since the turn of the century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime#United_Kingdom
Regarding murder, "increasing levels of homicide (at around 2% to 3% per year) [have been observed] from the 1960s through to the end of the twentieth century". Recently the murder rate has declined, "a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02", as measured by The Homicide Index.
In 1997 the British government completely banned handguns, after forcing all owners to register their guns with the 1968 law, this again resulted in violent crime (including homicide) rates skyrocketing and continue to rise.
Hogwash! (see above).
In fact, after the 1997 handgun ban, homicide rates have risen by 15% since the law was enacted.
Bunkum! (see above).
In fact, the countries in Europe that have the lowest crime rates are the ones that have the most gun owners and/or least strict gun laws, such as the Czech Republic, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Cherry-picking. You fail to point out that with the exception of Norway (which as the same rate) all 4 have higher gun homicide rates than the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Or that the Czech Republic has a higher overall homicide rate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade
Basically this entire line of argument is nothing but flim-flam and a desperate attempt to claim that correlation is causation, all the while ignoring the most pertinent facts about gun crime. You want to link the rise in crime to gun bans but I could just as easily link it to half a dozen other factors. Abortion rates, number of atheists, number of players of Call of Duty, % of 20 year olds who are bronies, whether people from those countries look good in a kilt. I suspect I could make at least one of those fit the data as well as you did for gun control.
You ignore that the number of gun deaths in 2008 is reported as a 20 year low (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html) and instead try to paint the picture that the gun ban has lead to an increase in violent crime despite the fact that gun crimes are happening less often or that statistical research does not claim any such correlation (http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/3/455.abstract).
If the rest of your argument is as flawed as this tiny section of it, it definitely wasn't worth my time to read it all.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, even though you refused to read most of it.
You keep randomly calling the facts and statistics I've posted "bollocks," yet you have yet to even attempt to disprove a single fact. My sources come from the British Home Office, which is a cabinet-level position. You point to 2008 which saw a reduction in overall violent crime, yet you ignore the 52% and 15% increases in homicide since the gun control laws were enacted; increases which are still on the rise and remain well above their pre-ban statistics.
Again you're cherry picking. All of the data shows that the countries with high-gun ownership rates are far-less violent. Whereas, the United Kindgdom, where guns are banned, is the most violent country in Europe (and North America), not the Czech Republic. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html) Correlation obviously doesn't equal causation, but that applies for you as well. You liberals claim "Europe got no gun, Europe got no crime; 'murica got gun, 'murica got crime." However, anyone who does any research into this claim can see that it's bogus. The last time I checked, the left hasn't been trying to blame homicide on bronies or abortion. I will give you Call of Duty though, since liberals want to ban video games and have succeeded in doing such in several liberal nanny states alright.
I would appreciate it if you read read the rest of my essay. I have read your entire post, the least you could do is return the favor.
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You seem to be struggling with the idea of correlation =/= causation, which was the point karajorma was making there with those examples.
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You're quoting the Daily Mail!
ROFLMAO
You keep randomly calling the facts and statistics I've posted "bollocks," yet you have yet to even attempt to disprove a single fact.
Codswallop!
I posted links for pretty much all the claims I made. You posted a Daily Mail article which doesn't give links to where any of the numbers come from. My links disprove what you've said. Your links go to a newspaper famous for its biases and for making stuff up.
My sources come from the British Home Office, which is a cabinet-level position.
And you've read them incorrectly.
You point to 2008 which saw a reduction in overall violent crime, yet you ignore the 52% and 15% increases in homicide since the gun control laws were enacted; increases which are still on the rise and remain well above their pre-ban statistics.
Cherry-Picking to a ridiculous degree. Page 20 of the PDF you linked to has a table of the number of offences recorded by year. 1997 - 609 homicides, 2008/2009 - 651. Seriously? You're basing your argument on 40 murders? When that document specifically says to be careful of trends since murders are added to the total of the year they are discovered and not the year they happened? Harold Shipman alone adds around 150 to the total for one of those years. So we're talking about a number that can be altered by the effect of one single serial killer. So lets be honest, your data for the 15% figure is basically statistically useless.
Oh and there is an upwards trend going back long before the gun ban. You can claim 52% since the gun ban but I can claim even more since 1966 and say that the murder rate has nothing to do with firearms and everything to do with England not winning the World Cup since then.
More importantly, you're yet to prove that the homicide rate is in any way linked to the number of guns available. You're trying to claim that the lack of guns somehow makes the UK more dangerous by comparing it against other European countries. This is absurd reasoning given that America has more guns and does worse when it comes to the same crime statistics. If your logic was even the slightest bit sensible, those numbers should be less.
The last time I checked, the left hasn't been trying to blame homicide on bronies or abortion.
My point was that using the exact same arguments you have used, they could. Which means your arguments are invalid.
You liberals claim "Europe got no gun, Europe got no crime; 'murica got gun, 'murica got crime."
Where have *I* claimed that? Don't try to argue with me based on a strawman.
I would appreciate it if you read read the rest of my essay. I have read your entire post, the least you could do is return the favor.
Actually my interest in your post is confined to the ridiculous number of lies, misrepresentations and poor reasoning you have applied to the UK crime statistics. I personally don't give a **** about the 2nd Amendment and I couldn't give a toss about constitutional arguments. It's not something that affects the UK and despite your rather poorly argued attempts to claim that increased gun ownership would make the British public safer, it's not something that should affect them.
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All I got from this page was how many ways you could say "Bull****"
Codswallop. I'm going to use that
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I will give you Call of Duty though, since liberals want to ban video games and have succeeded in doing such in several liberal nanny states alright.
So the genius head of the NRA who blamed "violent video games" for what happened in Connecticut is a liberal? Who knew!
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All I got from this page was how many ways you could say "Bull****"
Codswallop. I'm going to use that
'tis a thing of beauty.
Swazi Spring:
Hi there. Welcome to Hard-Light Productions, where the consensus swings ever so slightly to the evidence-based side of things. You are advised to keep your FUD inside your head at all times, and will be ridiculed if it turns out that you lack the fact-finding and argumentative skills necessary to survive in an environment where rationality is king. If you cannot find hard facts to support your position, your position will be deemed invalid. If you continue to rant and rave about how liberals are evil and left is the new doom, you will very quickly find yourself unable to participate in any discussions.
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an environment where rationality is king.
Hail to the King!
:warp:
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So the genius head of the NRA who blamed "violent video games" for what happened in Connecticut is a liberal? Who knew!
He could only name Mortal Kombat.
...we're on, what, 12 of that series? I honestly have no idea. He's standing there blowing on a dogwhistle from two decades ago. Even the people who could hear it are gone now.
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Aheeem.
(http://www.tudy.ro/images/blog/violentgames.jpg)
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Aheeem.
(http://www.tudy.ro/images/blog/violentgames.jpg)
I see no uncertainty range in this graph, therefore it is invalid and you are invalid
I also don't see Unreal Tournament or Quake
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Codswallop. I'm going to use that
It's a great word which sadly isn't used anywhere near as much a it deserves. :D
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Codswallop. I'm going to use that
It's a great word which sadly isn't used anywhere near as much a it deserves. :D
well this thread has descended into the realms of Codswallop so I commend thee for pointing that out
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Codswallop. I'm going to use that
It's a great word which sadly isn't used anywhere near as much a it deserves. :D
well this thread has descended into the realms of Codswallop so I commend thee for pointing that out
Codswallop! This thread is nowhere near the realms of the aforementioned!
That would mean it still has some tangible significance!
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Codswallop! This thread is nowhere near the realms of the aforementioned!
That would mean it still has some tangible significance!
..or you just really, really wanted to use that word again. Or in other words, codswallop! :P
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What's all this gobbledegook about the UK Gun Laws? ;)
Seriously though, this reminds me of when the NHS was used as a scapegoat for attacking Universal healthcare in the US and a whole load of misconceptions were given, like 'Stephen Hawking would have died under the NHS', forcing him to personally point out he was British, was born in Cambridge and the NHS saved his life.
There are reasons for and against Gun laws from the US perspective, and trying to drag other countries into the mix seems, to me, to be missing the entire point.
Once again, care has to be taken not to confuse an Amendment with a Commandment, the 2nd Amendment was written when 'Arms' were anything from Pikemen to single-shot musketmen, the whole point of the Constitution being a 'living breathing document' was meant to prevent America from being boxed into a corner like this.
The treatment of the 2nd Amendment, that it is practically a Sin to even think about the wording and meanings behind it is a dangerous trend, it puts the Founding Fathers on a similar level to those who wrote the Bible, and whether restrictions, or stronger licensing laws or more thorough psychological evaluations are going to help or not, those questions have to be asked in a non-accusatory atmosphere, not 'You questioned the Second Amendment!!! How Dare You!!!'
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Oh, I'll go one further - Swazi Spring, my previous posts in this thread have actually addressed the majority of the bull**** you've just posted, and the bull**** they do not address is so ludicrous that it doesn't actually need correction. Go read the thread and educate yourself. I don't respond to conspiracy-BS wall-o-texts line-by-line, particularly when I've already refuted most of it.
The United States, with the laxest gun laws in the democratic world, also has the highest violent crime rate, the highest homicide rate, the highest accidental death-by-firearm rate (particularly among children), and sports the highest risk of dying by a gun. Here's a peer-reviewed study on the subject. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571454
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Violent death is a major public health problem in the United States and throughout the world.
METHODS:
A cross-sectional analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database analyzes homicides and suicides (both disaggregated as firearm related and non-firearm related) and unintentional and undetermined firearm deaths from 23 populous high-income Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries that provided data to the World Health Organization for 2003.
RESULTS:
The US homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in the other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher. For 15-year olds to 24-year olds, firearm homicide rates in the United States were 42.7 times higher than in the other countries. For US males, firearm homicide rates were 22.0 times higher, and for US females, firearm homicide rates were 11.4 times higher. The US firearm suicide rates were 5.8 times higher than in the other countries, though overall suicide rates were 30% lower. The US unintentional firearm deaths were 5.2 times higher than in the other countries. Among these 23 countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States, 86% of women killed by firearms were US women, and 87% of all children aged 0 to 14 killed by firearms were US children.
CONCLUSIONS:
The United States has far higher rates of firearm deaths-firearm homicides, firearm suicides, and unintentional firearm deaths compared with other high-income countries. The US overall suicide rate is not out of line with these countries, but the United States is an outlier in terms of our overall homicide rate.
Here's some more fun statistics: http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/guns.htm
According to the CDC, the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries
In addition to firearm deaths, we need to look at how many children and young people are hurt by guns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 1997, 2,514 children aged 0-14 were non-fatally injured by guns. In the same year, 30,225 young people aged 15-24 sustained nonfatal firearm injuries. These statistics include suicide attempts and both intentional and accidental shootings
When researchers studied the 30,000 accidental gun deaths of Americans of all ages that occurred between 1979-1997, they found that preschoolers aged 0-4 were 17 times more likely to die from a gun accident in the 4 states with the most guns versus the 4 states with the least guns. Likewise, school kids aged 5-14 were over 13 times more at risk of accidental firearm death in the states with high gun ownership rates.
Oh yeah - Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, and Germany all have high rates of gun ownership, and are included in those studies. None of them, despite having their own gun cultures, have anywhere near the crime problems associated with firearms that the United States has. Canada shares a border and significant portions of its culture with the US, yet has nowhere near the crime problems in general. So, thanks for coming out, but as everyone else has said, your post amounts to a heaping pile of bull**** with chicken **** sprinkles on top.
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The thing is, Swazi Springtime for Hitler posted that rant not just "on another forum", but basically all the forums. Seriously, copy a portion of that thing and feed it into google, dozens upon dozens of links will greet you.
Somehow, I get the impression that it's just Serdar Argic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic) all over again.
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If it's a spambot, it's one capable not only of replying to others but also of expressing preferences in music (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=79535.msg1662508#msg1662508), books (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=79574.msg1662507#msg1662507), and TV shows (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=82312.msg1662511#msg1662511).
It's probably just someone (or someones) with an axe to grind and a lot of free time.
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Oh, like judgefloro?
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Yeah, but less entertaining/amicable.
The reason he's coming back here is because, for some reason, HLP has decided to find him funny, and thus he hasn't been banned.
He replies to any questions put to him, he sticks to only one topic at a time and most importantly of all, he's unfailingly polite.
Model Forum Member.
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Swazi Spring, my previous posts in this thread have actually addressed the majority of the codswallop you've just posted, and the bunkum they do not address is so ludicrous that it doesn't actually need correction.
Fixed that for you
The thing is, Swazi Springtime for Hitler posted that rant not just "on another forum", but basically all the forums. Seriously, copy a portion of that thing and feed it into google, dozens upon dozens of links will greet you.
Somehow, I get the impression that it's just Serdar Argic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdar_Argic) all over again.
Well then. Most peculiar
EDIT: **** yeah I will Lorric!
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Hey deathfun, you might want to add "Balderdash" to your little list of words :)
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I was honestly saving that one for if he posted again. :D
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I was honestly saving that one for if he posted again. :D
He he. Hi Karajorma. I must say, since I exited the thread, that you've been doing a better job than I ever could representing Great Britain in this debate. So I support and praise you. Keep up the good work! :yes: :D
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Jesus ****ing Christ, that pile of absolute rubbish made me vomit a little. It always give me a bit of a buzz to see stupidity/Fox News rhetoric smacked down on HLP. :yes:
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**** yeah I will Lorric!
Hey deathfun... poppycock would look good in that list :lol:
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**** yeah I will Lorric!
Hey deathfun... poppycock would look good in that list :lol:
Doesn't fit