School Shooting in Connecticut

FarmerBrett · December 16, 2012, 2:47pm

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
Yeah, and you guys are home to a lovely practice called “glassing.”

Glassing is a physical attack using a glass as a weapon. Glassing can occur at bars or pubs where alcohol is served, and a drinking glass or bottle is available as a weapon. The most common method of glassing involves the attacker smashing an intact glass in the face of the victim. However the glass may be smashed prior to the attack, and then gripped by the remaining base of the glass or neck of the bottle with the broken shards protruding outwards.
Common injuries resulting from glassings are heavy blood loss, permanent scarring, disfigurement and loss of sight through eye injury.
In the United Kingdom, there are more than 5,000 glassing attacks each year.

It always makes me chuckle (it’s a dark chuckle) when someone from the UK tries to pull the moral superiority card on US tendencies toward violence. You guys have plenty of problems on your own lawn you need to clean up before offering us advice. [/quote]

I thought this discussion was about a SHOOTING at a school, not what a few drunken men might do to each other on a Friday and Saturday night. I’ve never heard of dozens of innocent children being glassed, just pissed up adults. So it’s hardly the same thing at all and a pretty pathetic counter argument.

True, we do have our own problems (alcohol related violence) but at least we are trying to tackle them with the introduction of a minimum unit price for alcohol and the use of plastic glasses in rough areas etc. So we are dealing with the problem by taking away the weapons and dealing with the root cause of the violence (alcohol)

I apologize if you thought I was trying to be morally superior, I wasn’t, I was just trying to make sense of this in my own head. Obviously having access to a gun does not make a person violent, but it does cause problems when one gets in to the hands of someone who is hellbent on violence.

So what do you make of the statistics then?

Number of murders with firearms in UK 2011 - 58
Number of murders with firearms in US 2010 - 8775

Even taking in to account the population difference (US 5 x UK) you must admit that the discrepancy in the figures is striking. I’m sure we are just as violent a society, but fortunately we don’t all have guns.

[/quote]

http://reason.com/archives/2002/11/01/gun-controls-twisted-outcome[/quote]

So the gist of the article is that apart from murder and rape the UK is worse for all other crimes. Pretty sure I’d rather be mugged or burgled than murdered or raped.

Sorry do you really think that makes you superior and wins you the argument? LOL

Anyway why are you making this in to a US versus UK discussion. People are just trying to make sense of why this sort of thing happens and would be just as curious if it happened in Germany or Iceland or anywhere. It’s not US bashing.

FarmerBrett · December 16, 2012, 2:46pm

[quote]NikH wrote:
Yeah thats fucking stupid logic. “what if you get your hands on atombomb”. The fact is if a guy goes nuts he grabs what ever he can to do most destruction.[/quote]

I agree with this. It all comes down to the proximity and availability of a weapon.

Imagine 2 men fighting in an empty room. All they could do is punch and kick each other. Now imagine there is a knife or gun on a table. Obviously as things escalate someone could end up being stabbed or shot.

Having to source a gun off the black market would take knowledge, time and premeditation, but coming home after having a bad day knowing your mum has one in her dresser drawer is a different story. The availability increases the likelihood of use.

orion · December 16, 2012, 2:49pm

[quote]NikH wrote:
Thanks for proving my point. “what if you get your hands on atombomb”. The fact is if a guy goes nuts he grabs what ever he can to do most destruction.[/quote]

Nonsense.

If a man gets really, really, really angry he takes time and thinks.

What you describe is someone going apeshit, in which case nothing can be done anyway.

cwill1973 · December 16, 2012, 2:56pm

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
I’m shocked by how much denial is going on here and how many people think that the availability of firearms was not a contibuting factor, the “guns don’t kill people, people do” argument.

Here in the UK we too have plenty of angry, maladjusted, disaffected young men brought up on a diet of solitude, violent computer games and non existent parenting, but the key difference is that they don’t have access to their parents’ legally obtained firearms. If they did I’m sure we would have similar occurences.

It’s sad but it seems, if the comments posted on here are a fair reflection of public opinion, that the right to bear arms is too highly valued and too ingrained in your culture to ever be surrendered, in which case these horrific episodes will continue.

And those of you getting off on discussing the particular fire power and attributes of specific guns on this thread is crass in the extreme.

[/quote]

And yet Britain had 551 homicides and over 400 attempted homicides in November of this year alone. Yep, sure looks like your gun laws kept people from killing each other.

NikH · December 16, 2012, 3:07pm

[quote]cwill1973 wrote:

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
I’m shocked by how much denial is going on here and how many people think that the availability of firearms was not a contibuting factor, the “guns don’t kill people, people do” argument.

Here in the UK we too have plenty of angry, maladjusted, disaffected young men brought up on a diet of solitude, violent computer games and non existent parenting, but the key difference is that they don’t have access to their parents’ legally obtained firearms. If they did I’m sure we would have similar occurences.

It’s sad but it seems, if the comments posted on here are a fair reflection of public opinion, that the right to bear arms is too highly valued and too ingrained in your culture to ever be surrendered, in which case these horrific episodes will continue.

And those of you getting off on discussing the particular fire power and attributes of specific guns on this thread is crass in the extreme.

[/quote]

And yet Britain had 551 homicides and over 400 attempted homicides in November of this year alone. Yep, sure looks like your gun laws kept people from killing each other.
[/quote]

Maybe if you read it more carefully you would realize it’s not in a month

also,

In the US Ã¢?? population 311.5 million (1) Ã¢?? there were an estimated 13,756 murders in 2009 (2), a rate of about 5.0 per 100,000 (3). Of these 9,203 were carried out with a firearm.

In the UK Ã¢?? population 56.1 million (4) Ã¢?? there were an estimated 550 murders in 2011-12 (5), a rate of about 1.4 per 100,000. Of these 39 were carried out with a firearm (6).

FarmerBrett · December 16, 2012, 3:36pm

[quote]cwill1973 wrote:

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
I’m shocked by how much denial is going on here and how many people think that the availability of firearms was not a contibuting factor, the “guns don’t kill people, people do” argument.

Here in the UK we too have plenty of angry, maladjusted, disaffected young men brought up on a diet of solitude, violent computer games and non existent parenting, but the key difference is that they don’t have access to their parents’ legally obtained firearms. If they did I’m sure we would have similar occurences.

It’s sad but it seems, if the comments posted on here are a fair reflection of public opinion, that the right to bear arms is too highly valued and too ingrained in your culture to ever be surrendered, in which case these horrific episodes will continue.

And those of you getting off on discussing the particular fire power and attributes of specific guns on this thread is crass in the extreme.

[/quote]

And yet Britain had 551 homicides and over 400 attempted homicides in November of this year alone. Yep, sure looks like your gun laws kept people from killing each other.
[/quote]

That’s for the entire year (for a country of 62 million). Not November.

At least get your facts right.

cwill1973 · December 16, 2012, 3:12pm

The bottom line is people are going to find a way to kill one another regardless of the weapons that are available. Calling for the elimination or restriction of a constitutional right demonstrates a lack of critical thinking and an absence of any understanding of the lessons history keeps repeating. It is a demonstrable fact banning something does not lead to its discontinued use.

cwill1973 · December 16, 2012, 3:14pm

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:

[quote]cwill1973 wrote:

[quote]FarmerBrett wrote:
I’m shocked by how much denial is going on here and how many people think that the availability of firearms was not a contibuting factor, the “guns don’t kill people, people do” argument.

Here in the UK we too have plenty of angry, maladjusted, disaffected young men brought up on a diet of solitude, violent computer games and non existent parenting, but the key difference is that they don’t have access to their parents’ legally obtained firearms. If they did I’m sure we would have similar occurences.

It’s sad but it seems, if the comments posted on here are a fair reflection of public opinion, that the right to bear arms is too highly valued and too ingrained in your culture to ever be surrendered, in which case these horrific episodes will continue.

And those of you getting off on discussing the particular fire power and attributes of specific guns on this thread is crass in the extreme.

[/quote]

And yet Britain had 551 homicides and over 400 attempted homicides in November of this year alone. Yep, sure looks like your gun laws kept people from killing each other.
[/quote]

That’s for the entire year (for a country of 62 million). Not November.

At least get your facts right.[/quote]

You’re right. The way it was written in the Guardian made it look like it was for the month of 11/12. My bad.

Dr_Pangloss · December 16, 2012, 3:26pm

Why isn’t the discussion about the state of mental health treatment in the US rather than yet more ineffective gun control?

The Batman shooter was seeing a therapist who specialized in treating schizophrenia and Adam Lanza, the school shooter, was diagnosed with Asperger’s or some other spectrum disorder as well as a personality disorder according to his brother, Ryan.

The truth of the matter - and the reason this thread is up to 13 pages with no solution in sight - is because there is no one, over-arching solution that will prevent any one individual from massacring a group of people. If it’s not a gun, it will be a bomb. If not a bomb, then it will be an automobile driven into a crowd. If not an auto, then arson.

What no politician can say, and what the average citizen doesn’t want to believe, is that we are powerless to prevent something like this from happening again. Or, to be more accurate, these events can only be prevented by those in the shooter’s family and social circle who can identify potentially aberrant behavior, help the person seek treatment if appropriate, and then assure that guns, especially, aren’t accessible.

DBCooper · December 16, 2012, 3:26pm

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
I never went deeply into the issue but can’t really come up with a good reason for giving the average Joe the right to arm himself.
[/quote]

Well thankfully our Constitution was not drafted by people like you. [/quote]

Actually, it was drafted by people like him, specifically James Madison.

The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was simply to allow for public armories that could arm a militia in the event of invasion or something along those lines. It was not intended to allow for every citizen to privately arm himself against other citizens. Madison knew that many anti-Federalists would be suspicious at best of a large, federal standing army, so the 2nd Amendment provided for each state to have an armory that could arm the populace in times of insurrection.

Up until about the 1960’s or 1970’s even gun rights advocates and the NRA did not fight to allow automatic or semiautomatic assault weapons into the hands of citizens. The NRA didn’t lobby against the ban of automatic weapons early in the 20th century, nor did they fight against banning carrying concealed weapons. Shit, carrying concealed weapons was outlawed throughout most of the country even as far back as the early 19th century, including today’s ardent gun-control-opposed states like Texas, Alabama and Kentucky.

And up until the early 1970’s people rarely, if ever, challenged the 2nd Amendment’s language. In U.S. v. Miller the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 2nd Amendment did not apply to private citizens but only to the right of the public to provide for individual states’ protection in the form of a well-regulated militia or other such armed forces.

In the 1970’s, as a reaction to the liberalizing times, people’s individual rights became a large political issue. Turning the 2nd Amendment into a matter of private gun ownership rights distorted the actual intent of the Amendment and turned it into a political issue that conservatives could hang their hats on, since liberals seemed to have monopolized most of the other individual rights issues.

It’s the conservative version of judicial activism, in a way. The language of the first section of the 14th Amendment, along with some other areas of the Constitution, has been liberally interpreted to mean that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” somehow confers upon women the right to abort children. In much the same way, the language of the 2nd Amendment has been liberally interpreted to mean that “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” confers upon people the right to own any and all sorts of assault weapons for recreational purposes.

I love guns. I own three 12 gauge shotguns (Weatherby, Remington and Browning), a S&W .500 Magnum (instant erection when that big fucker comes out of its case) and an old snubnosed S&W .357 Magnum. I like shooting them, a lot. It’s one of the simplest, purest forms of recreation there is.

But at some point we need to ask ourselves if this sort of fun is a right or a privilege. I think in light of this latest tragedy it’s an entirely appropriate time to examine the issue further. And clearly, a conservative interpretation of the Constitution reveals that we have never really had the “right” to privately arm ourselves for recreational purposes. I prefer a more liberal interpretation, but liberal interpretations can go too far, as I feel the Court went with Roe v. Wade and now with its protection of expanded gun rights. Because that IS what has happened. Our gun ownership rights have been liberally interpreted and have expanded every decade, with little lasting contraction, since the 1970’s.

And let’s not forget that guns aren’t the final factor here. Crazy, disillusioned, maladjusted cowards are the REAL problem here. But you know what? A disillusioned coward with mommy and daddy issues with a knife or a baseball bat who is hellbent on killing a lot of people simply aren’t going to kill as many people as a disillusioned coward with two handguns and two 20-round clips or a fucking assault rifle.[/quote]

No, they’ll use homemade explosives.

Anyway that was a nice essay. So are you suggesting the drafters of our Constitution envisioned general restrictions upon the individual possession of firearms?
[/quote]

I don’t know what the hell was going through the Framers’ minds at the time, aside from whatever they wrote. Honestly though, I don’t think they envisioned anything like what this country has turned into.

The thing is that some Framers might have argued for general restrictions on firearms and others might not have. They didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on all the issues.

NikH · December 16, 2012, 3:28pm

[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
The bottom line is people are going to find a way to kill one another regardless of the weapons that are available. Calling for the elimination or restriction of a constitutional right demonstrates a lack of critical thinking and an absence of any understanding of the lessons history keeps repeating. It is a demonstrable fact banning something does not lead to its discontinued use. [/quote]

Fucking lol.

People are gonna keep killing each other, and the more powerful weapons you give them the more they are gonna kill.
History keeps repeating itself by massacres in schools and not doing anything about it.
‘Demonstrable fact’ what fact? You are referring to addicting substances. In what way is a gun addicting if you are even a little bit sane. The more fced up thing is that you can buy grenades and RPG’s in the US as a civilian. Just demonstrates how much the weapon industry has to do with politics.
HOW WAR MADE THE BUSH FAMILY RICH ~ The International Coalition

rehanb_bl · December 16, 2012, 3:43pm

The problem is that social structure is creating these people who are mentally ill, taking guns away won’t solve the problem.
Treating these individuals or removing them from society is what needs to be done.

Cortes · December 16, 2012, 3:47pm

[quote]NikH wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.

I think there’s a pretty clear decrease.[/quote]

In 1976, the Washington, D.C. City Council passed a law generally prohibiting residents from possessing handguns and requiring that all firearms in private homes be (1) kept unloaded and (2) rendered temporally inoperable via disassembly or installation of a trigger lock. The law became operative on Sept. 24, 1976.[33] [34]
On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, struck down this law as unconstitutional.[35]

[36]

During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower.[37]

NikH · December 16, 2012, 3:51pm

What are you trying to show with that graph?

Cortes · December 16, 2012, 3:50pm