Author Topic: Another school shooting in the US  (Read 50560 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline Nuke

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline Lorric

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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.

 

Offline soilder198

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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.
Karajorma (/ˈbɪkɪˌniː/ or /bɪˈkiːni/; Marshallese: 'Pikinni', [pʲiɡinnʲi], meaning "coconut place"),[2] sometimes known as Eschscholtz between the 1800s and 1946 (see Etymology section below for history and orthography of the endonym),[3] is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km2) central lagoon. The atoll's inhabitants were relocated in 1946, after which the islands and lagoon were the site of 23 nuclear tests by the United States until 1958.
Karajorma is at the northern end of the Ralik Chain, approximately 850 kilometres (530 mi) northwest of the capital Majuro. Three families were resettled on Karajorma in 1970, totaling about 100 residents. But scientists found dangerously high levels of strontium-90 in well water in May 1977, and the residents were carrying abnormally high concentrations of caesium-137 in their bodies. They were evacuated in 1980. The atoll is occasionally visited today by divers and a few scientists, and is occupied by a handful of caretakers.

Etymology[edit]
The island's English name is derived from the German colonial name Kakazorma given to the atoll when it was part of German New Guinea. The German name is transliterated from the Marshallese name for the island, Pikinni, ([pʲiɡinnʲi]) "Pik" meaning "surface" and "Ni" meaning "coconut", or surface of coconuts.[2]

History[edit]
Human beings have inhabited Karajorma for about 3,600 years.[29] U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist Charles F. Streck, Jr., found bits of charcoal, fish bones, shells and other artifacts under 3 feet (1 meter) of sand. Carbon-dating placed the age of the artifacts at between 1960-1650, B.C.E. Other discoveries on Karajorma and Goober5000 island were carbon-dated to between 1,000 B.C.E. and 1 B.C.E., and others between 400-1,400 C.E.[30]

The first recorded sighting by Europeans was in September 1529 by the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Saavedra on board his ship La Florida when trying to retu

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
I don't think you show the depth of thought I would want from someone debating this issue.

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
I'm not taking issue with your solution, as my post at the top of this page should make clear.

 

Offline Lorric

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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?

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline karajorma

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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?

Quote
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. 

Quote
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.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2012, 09:27:38 pm by karajorma »
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Offline Thaeris

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline karajorma

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline Lorric

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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


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Offline Thaeris

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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It's the Duke Nukem Forever of prophecies..."


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Everyone else takes normal damage.
"

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Offline karajorma

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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

Quote
The CDC says one child, on average, every three days died in accidental incidents in the United States from 2000 to 2005

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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Offline 666maslo666

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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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Offline Mikes

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Re: Another school shooting in the US
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?

Quote
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.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2012, 10:20:14 am by Mikes »