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eplipswich
2728
eplipswich
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Closeauthor=Dyhaltoauthor=SaileriusThis is a poor comparison.
Countries with gun bans have significantly lower violent crime rate than the US.
The US is so large and diverse that, for all practical purposes, it is a bunch of separate countries. The differences between Texas and North Dakota are night and day. Comparing the entire USA against somewhere like Norway is like comparing Europe to Japan.
Yeah, you can't really compare a big country with a small country. Note that a small country is easier to manage than a big one.
Crystalgate
694
author=KingArthur
Doesn't matter because the fact remains that people will kill other people regardless of the presence of firearms.
There will be people who kill other people regardless of how good mental health-care you have to. Or do you mean that the same amount of killing will occur without the presence of firearms?
Also, like Jude already said somewhere above, there are also many more factors to consider when a murder occurs besides the question of whether guns are legal to own. Sure, a country that prohibits firearms might have a lower murder rate, but that country could also have other systems in place to help curb murders. You just can't reach an answer just looking at whether that country allows firearms or not.
Yes, but this goes for every single factor. For example, you determined that mental health-care can help despite there being more factors than how well your country handles mental health-care. If we can determine whether or not mental health-care helps despite the fact that there's also other factors in place, then we can determine whether or not gun control helps even though again, there's other factors in place.
It's a well known problem, you need to isolate a single factor. The method I suggested may not work (although I think it's better than cherry picking Japan,) but isolating factors is a task that researchers constantly have to do.
Indeed, I agree that the two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive; removing every single means of killing is a valid (albeit extreme) method of curbing murders after all.
I said absolutely nothing about removing every single means of killing, I suggested taking away their guns.
A sane person can kill people, even in mass. Human nature and the actions of someone can't be determined by mental health care alone. I'm not saying it's a bad idea to enforce it more and it is a step in the right direction, it's just preventing something like this happening again in America is near impossible now.
Gun control should be made tighter in America because of the ease of availability.. But there's no real point now, it's too late because America is fucked in that regard, they already have so many guns in circulation their is no way to prevent anyone getting there hands on one.
Gun control should be made tighter in America because of the ease of availability.. But there's no real point now, it's too late because America is fucked in that regard, they already have so many guns in circulation their is no way to prevent anyone getting there hands on one.
author=bulmabriefs144
Let's assume further. All guns, legal or not, suddenly stopped being carried forever.
People stop killing each other? Not a chance. Next, let's ban bombs, even though most people get to only about firecracker level of those. Oh, but sparklers are dangerous too. While we're at it, July 4th is a sucky holiday.
People stop killing each other? Not a chance. Now some people carry knives. Let's ban cooking. You have to get food prepackaged and microwaveable, lest you stab yourself.
We must ban cars next, they're dangerous. And gosh, you could die inside this house, with its poor ventilation. You should live in this nice homeless shelter, while only important people can dare risk living in houses. It's a sacrifice they make, for the good of all, you see.
This logic is silly to me. To see how silly this logic is, apply it in reverse. If we can trust any item to be legally available no matter how dangerous it is, why not limit it to handguns? Why not automatic weapons? Rocket launchers? Abrams tanks? Nuclear weapons?
@bulmabriefs144 (and quite a few others): the idea is not to eradicate definitely all murders in the USA, just reduce their numbers.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Feldschlacht IVauthor=bulmabriefs144This logic is silly to me. To see how silly this logic is, apply it in reverse. If we can trust any item to be legally available no matter how dangerous it is, why not limit it to handguns? Why not automatic weapons? Rocket launchers? Abrams tanks? Nuclear weapons?
Let's assume further. All guns, legal or not, suddenly stopped being carried forever.
People stop killing each other? Not a chance. Next, let's ban bombs, even though most people get to only about firecracker level of those. Oh, but sparklers are dangerous too. While we're at it, July 4th is a sucky holiday.
People stop killing each other? Not a chance. Now some people carry knives. Let's ban cooking. You have to get food prepackaged and microwaveable, lest you stab yourself.
We must ban cars next, they're dangerous. And gosh, you could die inside this house, with its poor ventilation. You should live in this nice homeless shelter, while only important people can dare risk living in houses. It's a sacrifice they make, for the good of all, you see.
Actually, that sorta makes sense. For purposes of self-defense, the strongest weapon you need is whatever the other guy has. Take note: the other guy is a criminal. Gun control laws don't apply to him. The reason he doesn't have a stinger missile array isn't that it's illegal, it's that it's expensive. But if burglars could afford rocket launchers, then by god I'd keep a rocket launcher in my cash register.
For purposes of defending yourself against a potentially corrupt government a la second amendment, it could be argued that you need whatever the government has. One look at third-world dictatorships and you can see exactly how reasonable an abrams tank would actually be.
It's worth noting, though, that the gun control laws are what make rocket launchers and nuclear weapons expensive. Gun smuggling is a very high-risk crime and so the gun runners charge a ton of money for the big stuff.
In realistic terms my personal cutoff for gun control laws is weapons that cause collateral damage. Explosives and fully-automatic weapons have a tendency to hurt or kill a lot more people than just the target, and thus they don't make sense for self-defense except as a deterrent. Wiring your pawn shop with explosives is a very effective way to prevent people from trying to break in, but not something you seriously probably want to ever go off even if you do have a break-in. Traditional firearms, however, make sense to me to be available to the public. They only hit one person at a time, so they are useful for self-defense.
Killer Wolf
1235
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer keeping firearms available as much as possible. Guns are, generally, loud. If someone starts firing one in a public place, chances are it will not be very long before other men with guns (and uniforms) show up to start firing back.
The deaths from this shooting are tragic and inexcusable, but imagine what could have happened if the sick person in question had taken another avenue. What if it had been poison, or even anthrax? He could have killed many more, and silently.
I am also a proponent of having armed security in place in schools. It may seem like a bombastic comparison, but a good model for what I'm talking about can be found in El Al. After repeated acts of terrorism against the airline, they got serious about security. There are armed security on every international flight. Immediately after September 11th, an acquaintance told me about a trip she took on an El Al plane. She said that she felt comforted by the presence of an armed and uniformed member of the Israeli army standing there watching over the flight.
It might sound like the typical American joke: There is a terrible shooting, and people think that having MORE guns could have stopped it. The problem is, that is something I believe. After Columbine, I would have liked to have seen a program in every school where, with (possibly)some hazard pay incentive, a select number of teachers would be enrolled in firearms training and tactics. I know, we can't afford music or art programs in schools, but we should find money for teachers to play weekend warrior just in case they have the chance to save even a single student's life in the future? No easy answer.
I'm pro-gun. Years ago, I was even a card carrying member of the National Rifle Association. I'm also a registered Democrat, which, I guess, makes me something of a contradiction. Just don't call me Starburst, and we'll be okay.
Laws are never the answer, because the people that they most need to apply to are the ones who could not care less about them in the first place. Disarming me does not disarm criminals. Also, taking away a right and a freedom is never a good place to start. First guns, because they are a popular target. Maybe next time somebody goes on a rampage with their smart, green thinking, Prius. If it happens once, it will inspire others (as they say with school shootings). If it happens enough, lets take away the right to drive.
Firearm ownership is already restricted. You have to be a certain age, you have to pass a background check, and so forth. (Unless you're lucky at a gun show.) Making it harder to legally obtain a firearm doesn't stop people from doing so illegally. Look at how well the prohibition on alcohol worked out.
Also, guns do not kill people. Believe, me, I have plenty of evidence. I've set a gun on a shelf and left it there for months. It never went out and murdered someone. A weapon does not have intent. A tool is not responsible for the will of the one who uses it.
The deaths from this shooting are tragic and inexcusable, but imagine what could have happened if the sick person in question had taken another avenue. What if it had been poison, or even anthrax? He could have killed many more, and silently.
I am also a proponent of having armed security in place in schools. It may seem like a bombastic comparison, but a good model for what I'm talking about can be found in El Al. After repeated acts of terrorism against the airline, they got serious about security. There are armed security on every international flight. Immediately after September 11th, an acquaintance told me about a trip she took on an El Al plane. She said that she felt comforted by the presence of an armed and uniformed member of the Israeli army standing there watching over the flight.
It might sound like the typical American joke: There is a terrible shooting, and people think that having MORE guns could have stopped it. The problem is, that is something I believe. After Columbine, I would have liked to have seen a program in every school where, with (possibly)some hazard pay incentive, a select number of teachers would be enrolled in firearms training and tactics. I know, we can't afford music or art programs in schools, but we should find money for teachers to play weekend warrior just in case they have the chance to save even a single student's life in the future? No easy answer.
I'm pro-gun. Years ago, I was even a card carrying member of the National Rifle Association. I'm also a registered Democrat, which, I guess, makes me something of a contradiction. Just don't call me Starburst, and we'll be okay.
Laws are never the answer, because the people that they most need to apply to are the ones who could not care less about them in the first place. Disarming me does not disarm criminals. Also, taking away a right and a freedom is never a good place to start. First guns, because they are a popular target. Maybe next time somebody goes on a rampage with their smart, green thinking, Prius. If it happens once, it will inspire others (as they say with school shootings). If it happens enough, lets take away the right to drive.
Firearm ownership is already restricted. You have to be a certain age, you have to pass a background check, and so forth. (Unless you're lucky at a gun show.) Making it harder to legally obtain a firearm doesn't stop people from doing so illegally. Look at how well the prohibition on alcohol worked out.
Also, guns do not kill people. Believe, me, I have plenty of evidence. I've set a gun on a shelf and left it there for months. It never went out and murdered someone. A weapon does not have intent. A tool is not responsible for the will of the one who uses it.
@Killer Wolf It's funny, I just had a conversation about this with a friend I went to college with from Europe. She made it a point to illustrate how absurd Europeans find the logic of 'if we ban guns people will just kill each other with x object' and how their population just can't take us seriously with it. The idea of a society that has to post heavily armed people everywhere for basic services just shows how much of a failure our method of ensuring safety is compared to the rest of the world who does not have to do this shit. The very idea of it would be laughed at all the way to Parliament.
She went on to mention how backwards very peaceful societies like the Netherlands find our culture and acceptance for violence and how readily we give up our liberties for the illusion of safety that doesn't work anyway, and how the rest of the the industrialized world is waiting for us to wake the fuck up and get out of our bubble.
I couldn't help but agree with her.
She went on to mention how backwards very peaceful societies like the Netherlands find our culture and acceptance for violence and how readily we give up our liberties for the illusion of safety that doesn't work anyway, and how the rest of the the industrialized world is waiting for us to wake the fuck up and get out of our bubble.
I couldn't help but agree with her.
Killer Wolf
1235
Part of the point I was, in a roundabout way, trying to make toward the end with the "weapons do not have a will of their own" thing is that I think the focus needs to be on the people behind the trigger.
Lets take guns out of the equation. Some pathetic excuse for a human being could still load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school/police station/hospital/etc.
I'm going slightly off topic for a minute with a slightly less than hypothetical example. Someone has "help" from local hospice service taking care of a terminally ill relative. This relative has trouble breathing, so the nurse recommends Liquid Morphine to relax the patient and allow her to breathe better. A family member, on the other hand, points out that Morphine isn't going to address the congestion and sinus issues exacerbating her condition. Hospice wants to put the relative to sleep so that they don't have to listen, but the family member buys Mucinex and allergy pills because he does listen. Address the cause, not the symptoms.
Legislating against firearms will address a symptom: this tragic, and ever growing, list of school shootings. Unfortunately, it will not address the CAUSE. I agree that this country needs to wake up about violence against children, and violence in general, but I think more gun laws would just be a big dose of sedative - a quick "fix" put in place so no that real work has to be done.
Lets take guns out of the equation. Some pathetic excuse for a human being could still load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school/police station/hospital/etc.
I'm going slightly off topic for a minute with a slightly less than hypothetical example. Someone has "help" from local hospice service taking care of a terminally ill relative. This relative has trouble breathing, so the nurse recommends Liquid Morphine to relax the patient and allow her to breathe better. A family member, on the other hand, points out that Morphine isn't going to address the congestion and sinus issues exacerbating her condition. Hospice wants to put the relative to sleep so that they don't have to listen, but the family member buys Mucinex and allergy pills because he does listen. Address the cause, not the symptoms.
Legislating against firearms will address a symptom: this tragic, and ever growing, list of school shootings. Unfortunately, it will not address the CAUSE. I agree that this country needs to wake up about violence against children, and violence in general, but I think more gun laws would just be a big dose of sedative - a quick "fix" put in place so no that real work has to be done.
Armed guards at important institutions, especially schools, is something I wouldn't object to. As long as it's trained personnel, not teachers.
Schools should have a nuclear deterrent. That'll stop people from even thinking about mass murders!
(actually, there should be a 28 day waiting period and a ban on semi-automatics)
(actually, there should be a 28 day waiting period and a ban on semi-automatics)
author=Killer Wolf
Part of the point I was, in a roundabout way, trying to make toward the end with the "weapons do not have a will of their own" thing is that I think the focus needs to be on the people behind the trigger.
Lets take guns out of the equation. Some pathetic excuse for a human being could still load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school/police station/hospital/etc.
I'm going slightly off topic for a minute with a slightly less than hypothetical example. Someone has "help" from local hospice service taking care of a terminally ill relative. This relative has trouble breathing, so the nurse recommends Liquid Morphine to relax the patient and allow her to breathe better. A family member, on the other hand, points out that Morphine isn't going to address the congestion and sinus issues exacerbating her condition. Hospice wants to put the relative to sleep so that they don't have to listen, but the family member buys Mucinex and allergy pills because he does listen. Address the cause, not the symptoms.
Legislating against firearms will address a symptom: this tragic, and ever growing, list of school shootings. Unfortunately, it will not address the CAUSE. I agree that this country needs to wake up about violence against children, and violence in general, but I think more gun laws would just be a big dose of sedative - a quick "fix" put in place so no that real work has to be done.
That "quick fix" seemed to work everywhere else in the world. People who make this argument never seem to realize that other countries have made the same laws that are being discussed here and it worked.
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
Yeah, let's have armed guards 'protecting' everyone and deterring 'criminals'! That doesn't sound like every single autocratic country we've seen in this world at all!
Crystalgate
694
author=Killer Wolf
Lets take guns out of the equation. Some pathetic excuse for a human being could still load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school/police station/hospital/etc.
Could or will? I have many times heard the argument that if guns are removed, the criminals can use other means to kill. However, it's not whether or not they can do it that matters, but whether or not they actually will do so.
Since we are dealing exclusively in the domain of hypotheticals now, lets say that schools have armed guards now. So, to succeed one will have to take that into account. Since going in with a gun or 12 may result in being shot before the mass killings can happen, lets load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school instead, blitzkreig style.
Arms races always turn out great for the participants.
Arms races always turn out great for the participants.
Not terribly convinced about the arms race thing, whether it's forward or backwards. While poisons and explosions have been used before, they're certainly not convenient enough to use, even less so in crimes of passion type things. I have a hard time seeing people suicide truck bombing a school, for what that's worth.
Here's a question: What sort of control, prevention methods, affordable therapeutic services, nuclear satellites, whatever, could have stopped this particular attack?
Here's a question: What sort of control, prevention methods, affordable therapeutic services, nuclear satellites, whatever, could have stopped this particular attack?
Honestly, that would require me researching and learning about the murderer and his motives, and that is something I am not prepared to do right now.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=kentona
Since we are dealing exclusively in the domain of hypotheticals now, lets say that schools have armed guards now. So, to succeed one will have to take that into account. Since going in with a gun or 12 may result in being shot before the mass killings can happen, lets load up a truck full of ANFO and drive it into/through a school instead, blitzkreig style.
And that is harder to do! Far fewer potential mass murderers can afford to do this than can afford to get a machine gun. And far fewer can pull it off, even if they can afford it - a single insane person with no connections to terrorist organizations or organized criminal syndicates can only get so far without raising some serious red flags. I doubt many gun runners would want an international spectacle like a mass murder of kindergarteners traced back to them, since that's something the police are gonna be pretty freaking persistent on hunting down due to the media coverage. (Disclaimer: my knowledge of organized crime and police procedure is based entirely on watching tv crime dramas)
Nobody here or in government has the right answer, because there is no right answer. We can't put an army in every school, we can't get rid of guns, we can't preemptively try and arrest someone who might commit a crime.
This is a symptom of an underlying cultural problem that allows kids to fall through the cracks and feel like they have nothing to live for, and no where to belong. It didn't happen overnight and it won't be fixed overnight.
But in the mean time, our Republic will sustain terrible blows like this massacre, and it has to remain strong enough to maintain its freedoms rather than allow for the giving up of liberty to gain security. That requires people on both sides of the isle to set aside their personal agendas.
And what works for the rest of the world will not necessarily work here. This country is not only enormous and diverse, but it is rather unique. I am sick to death of hearing a European talk about how something worked for their 2-mile-long country with a population of 500,000 and a military budget of 0. The USA is not only geographically huge, but it is a world-spanning empire and a "federation" style government, as in, decentralized power structure in government. It's like saying what's best for the rowboat is best for the 100,000 ton luxury liner.
This is a symptom of an underlying cultural problem that allows kids to fall through the cracks and feel like they have nothing to live for, and no where to belong. It didn't happen overnight and it won't be fixed overnight.
But in the mean time, our Republic will sustain terrible blows like this massacre, and it has to remain strong enough to maintain its freedoms rather than allow for the giving up of liberty to gain security. That requires people on both sides of the isle to set aside their personal agendas.
And what works for the rest of the world will not necessarily work here. This country is not only enormous and diverse, but it is rather unique. I am sick to death of hearing a European talk about how something worked for their 2-mile-long country with a population of 500,000 and a military budget of 0. The USA is not only geographically huge, but it is a world-spanning empire and a "federation" style government, as in, decentralized power structure in government. It's like saying what's best for the rowboat is best for the 100,000 ton luxury liner.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=harmonicThat's simply false. One answer is going to statistically cause fewer deaths than the other.
Nobody here or in government has the right answer, because there is no right answer.
We're all just too lazy to track down any scientific studies showing which one.
