I agree that there is a media bias but at the same time events like these do occur more frequently in the US. The link I posted has some interesting facts. Apparently 11 out of the 20 worst mass shootings in the world occurred in the states and the next highest country (Finland) only had 2.
It also says that there are other countries with similar gun laws (Switzerland and Israel) that don’t have nearly the same problems. So it seems that the gun laws aren’t the main problem.
Clearly guns are not the only problem - anybody arguing like this is stupid - but at the same time the sheer availability of all these guns in the US does lead to a lot more harmful situations in general than in countries with very strict gun control laws. 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.
I guess people focus on the gun thing first (or other simple factors such as video games, music etc.), because it is in principle rather easy to influence (by laws). All the other, perhaps way more important, factors contributing to these events are difficult to understand and influenced.
[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]Elegua360 wrote:
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
But auto vs semi is an issue when writing gun control laws. [/quote]
You’re showing massive ignorance here. I sincerly doubt he was using a Class 3 weapon.
Plus, having actually killed people with selective fire weapons, I can tell you I seldom, if ever, did more than a 3-round burst.
Full auto, outside of a chain-fed and/or crewed weapon is of marginal use.
[/quote]
According to Nation Master, the SIG556 can fire up to 700 rounds a minute.
Class 3 or not I don’t see any reason a 20 year old should be able to get his hands on one for non-military purposes. [/quote]
You are forming an opinion on a weapon based on intentional misinformation.
If you ever got your hands on such a weapon, you would find that firing 700 rounds per minute is not even remotely physically possible. You would also find that intentionally hitting something while even attempting such a feat is highly improbable.[/quote]
Is it Misinformation?
Is it wrong? Are you saying the gun cannot shoot off 700 rounds per minute?
As with the other person who commented your missing the point. While he did bring it I don’t even think he used this gun, but the fact that a mentally unstable 20 year old can easily obtain a weapon like this is a problem. The kid was clearly not rational I doubt he came up with a strategy planned out which guns to use and when. Yet if he ran in there with a knife, a kid, maybe 2, maybe a teacher would’ve died. While even one life lost is disturbing 27 in such a short time should not be so easy.
Technically it’s easier for a situation like this to happen every day, then it is for it not to happen.
[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]
Why not enlighten me then?
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
Clearly guns are not the only problem - anybody arguing like this is stupid - but at the same time the sheer availability of all these guns in the US does lead to a lot more harmful situations in general than in countries with very strict gun control laws. 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.
I guess people focus on the gun thing first (or other simple factors such as video games, music etc.), because it is in principle rather easy to influence (by laws). All the other, perhaps way more important, factors contributing to these events are difficult to understand and influenced. [/quote]
You clearly never paid attention in history class past the 2nd grade.
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
[quote]Elegua360 wrote:
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
But auto vs semi is an issue when writing gun control laws. [/quote]
You’re showing massive ignorance here. I sincerly doubt he was using a Class 3 weapon.
Plus, having actually killed people with selective fire weapons, I can tell you I seldom, if ever, did more than a 3-round burst.
Full auto, outside of a chain-fed and/or crewed weapon is of marginal use.
[/quote]
According to Nation Master, the SIG556 can fire up to 700 rounds a minute.
Class 3 or not I don’t see any reason a 20 year old should be able to get his hands on one for non-military purposes. [/quote]
You are forming an opinion on a weapon based on intentional misinformation.
If you ever got your hands on such a weapon, you would find that firing 700 rounds per minute is not even remotely physically possible. You would also find that intentionally hitting something while even attempting such a feat is highly improbable.[/quote]
Is it Misinformation?
Is it wrong? Are you saying the gun cannot shoot off 700 rounds per minute?
As with the other person who commented your missing the point. While he did bring it I don’t even think he used this gun, but the fact that a mentally unstable 20 year old can easily obtain a weapon like this is a problem. The kid was clearly not rational I doubt he came up with a strategy planned out which guns to use and when. Yet if he ran in there with a knife, a kid, maybe 2, maybe a teacher would’ve died. While even one life lost is disturbing 27 in such a short time should not be so easy.
Technically it’s easier for a situation like this to happen every day, then it is for it not to happen.[/quote]
It is theoretically possible with its rate of fire. I, nor anyone I know, have never seen a 700 rd magazine on an AR. So in a practical sense it is impossible.
[quote]infinite_shore 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]
Why not enlighten me then? [/quote]
Actually I take that back. This is not a good place to have a decent discussion on anything.
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
[quote]Elegua360 wrote:
[quote]Airtruth wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
But auto vs semi is an issue when writing gun control laws. [/quote]
You’re showing massive ignorance here. I sincerly doubt he was using a Class 3 weapon.
Plus, having actually killed people with selective fire weapons, I can tell you I seldom, if ever, did more than a 3-round burst.
Full auto, outside of a chain-fed and/or crewed weapon is of marginal use.
[/quote]
According to Nation Master, the SIG556 can fire up to 700 rounds a minute.
Class 3 or not I don’t see any reason a 20 year old should be able to get his hands on one for non-military purposes. [/quote]
You are forming an opinion on a weapon based on intentional misinformation.
If you ever got your hands on such a weapon, you would find that firing 700 rounds per minute is not even remotely physically possible. You would also find that intentionally hitting something while even attempting such a feat is highly improbable.[/quote]
Is it Misinformation?
Is it wrong? Are you saying the gun cannot shoot off 700 rounds per minute?
As with the other person who commented your missing the point. While he did bring it I don’t even think he used this gun, but the fact that a mentally unstable 20 year old can easily obtain a weapon like this is a problem. The kid was clearly not rational I doubt he came up with a strategy planned out which guns to use and when. Yet if he ran in there with a knife, a kid, maybe 2, maybe a teacher would’ve died. While even one life lost is disturbing 27 in such a short time should not be so easy.
Technically it’s easier for a situation like this to happen every day, then it is for it not to happen.[/quote]
If this last statement is technically true, then please outline the items that which make it so and how they come together to create such a fact.
I have no words for how heartbreaking this is.
I am looking at my daughter while she eats popcorn and watches cartoons.
I am trying very hard not to cry.
My prayers go out to those effected.
How fucking stupid people have to be to think that the kind of person who would kill 20 children for the hell of it would be bound by gun control? Use your brains for God’s sake.
Obviously I feel terrible for everyone involved, but this desire to blame anyone and anything does no one a bit of good. You deal with these things by getting perspective and realizing guys like this are outliers who will never be accounted for no matter what you do. SSC’s link was good…start there.
[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]butcherman7 wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]howie424 wrote:
Why do things like this happen? I just don’t understand. Do we blame guns?[/quote]
Because there are crazy and evil people.
Guns are no more at fault than a fork made Rosie Odonnel fat.[/quote]
^^well said[/quote]
No we can’t blame guns. On the other hand, if the perpetrator only had a knife…
[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
How fucking stupid people have to be to think that the kind of person who would kill 20 children for the hell of it would be bound by gun control? Use your brains for God’s sake.
Obviously I feel terrible for everyone involved, but this desire to blame anyone and anything does no one a bit of good. You deal with these things by getting perspective and realizing guys like this are outliers who will never be accounted for no matter what you do. SSC’s link was good…start there.[/quote]
I agree that gun control isn’t the answer and that blaming is fruitless. However we, as a society, need to examine the dynamics that are contributing to the rapid and undeniable escalation of this type of violence and begin to take some measures to address it. From 1975 through Columbine, the US averaged one attempted or completed “rapid mass murder” per year. Columbine (1999)-2010 the average rose to four per year. Last year there were eight. This makes ten for 2012. That is an alarming trend. Something is causing this and saying “Meh, crazy people do crazy shit” doesn’t really cut it as a response. Neither does knee-jerk restriction of freedoms.
I don’t have the answers, but we need to start asking some serious questions.
[quote]batman730 wrote:
[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
How fucking stupid people have to be to think that the kind of person who would kill 20 children for the hell of it would be bound by gun control? Use your brains for God’s sake.
Obviously I feel terrible for everyone involved, but this desire to blame anyone and anything does no one a bit of good. You deal with these things by getting perspective and realizing guys like this are outliers who will never be accounted for no matter what you do. SSC’s link was good…start there.[/quote]
I agree that gun control isn’t the answer and that blaming is fruitless. However we, as a society, need to examine the dynamics that are contributing to the rapid and undeniable escalation of this type of violence and begin to take some measures to address it. From 1975 through Columbine, the US averaged one attempted or completed “rapid mass murder” per year. Columbine (1999)-2010 the average rose to four per year. Last year there were eight. This makes ten for 2012. That is an alarming trend. Something is causing this and saying “Meh, crazy people do crazy shit” doesn’t really cut it as a response. Neither does knee-jerk restriction of freedoms.
I don’t have the answers, but we need to start asking some serious questions.[/quote]
Look at our media and politicians. Has it ever been as hostile as it is right now?
I am only 28 so not old but I cant recall ever seeing the amount of hatred in this country we have right now. My dad and my uncles and all between 50-60 say the same thing. There is so much hatred out there whether it be political,racial, or really any kind of lines. People that are crazy feed off that energy and hence we get what we are seeing. Insane people doing over the top insane things thinking this is what they are supposed to do.
If things continue how they are with everyone screaming at each other and the country stays one side vs the other get used to this crap happening because not everyone is like most people who can sanely just say well they dont agree with me and argue with words. Some seem to think killing everything they can is whats needed of them.
Also blaming a tool just isnt gonna cut it. An individual killed those people not a gun. Dont take responsibility off of that asshole by saying well clearly it was guns that killed. Guns didnt kill he did.
[quote]punchedbear wrote:
[quote]batman730 wrote:
[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
Also blaming a tool just isnt gonna cut it. An individual killed those people not a gun. Dont take responsibility off of that asshole by saying well clearly it was guns that killed. Guns didnt kill he did.[/quote]
An individual killed those children…with a gun.
Your argument is kind of like saying that alcoholism didn’t kill the drunk driver, the pavement that his head hit at 70mph after being ejected from his vehicle with a .25 blood-alcohol level killed him.
[quote]batman730 wrote:
[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
How fucking stupid people have to be to think that the kind of person who would kill 20 children for the hell of it would be bound by gun control? Use your brains for God’s sake.
Obviously I feel terrible for everyone involved, but this desire to blame anyone and anything does no one a bit of good. You deal with these things by getting perspective and realizing guys like this are outliers who will never be accounted for no matter what you do. SSC’s link was good…start there.[/quote]
I agree that gun control isn’t the answer and that blaming is fruitless. However we, as a society, need to examine the dynamics that are contributing to the rapid and undeniable escalation of this type of violence and begin to take some measures to address it. From 1975 through Columbine, the US averaged one attempted or completed “rapid mass murder” per year. Columbine (1999)-2010 the average rose to four per year. Last year there were eight. This makes ten for 2012. That is an alarming trend. Something is causing this and saying “Meh, crazy people do crazy shit” doesn’t really cut it as a response. Neither does knee-jerk restriction of freedoms.
I don’t have the answers, but we need to start asking some serious questions.[/quote]
You answered your own question I think. Columbine, as sick as it sounds, gave a lot of deranged people ideas. I don’t think there’s a better answer than that, especially when looking at it statistically as you have. It would be tough to attribute that spike to anything else given the timing, IMO.
In any event, my wording was poor too. I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t attempt to understand what was going on in the minds of these people, but my personal opinion is that it is nigh on impossible to predict the behavior of outliers like them. And since the perpetrator is dead, so is our best resource in understanding this, hence why I think people like you, me, and the rest of this message board are better served directing our thoughts away from the blame game.
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
[quote]butcherman7 wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]howie424 wrote:
Why do things like this happen? I just don’t understand. Do we blame guns?[/quote]
Because there are crazy and evil people.
Guns are no more at fault than a fork made Rosie Odonnel fat.[/quote]
^^well said[/quote]
No we can’t blame guns. On the other hand, if the perpetrator only had a knife…[/quote]
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
[quote]butcherman7 wrote:
[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
[quote]howie424 wrote:
Why do things like this happen? I just don’t understand. Do we blame guns?[/quote]
Because there are crazy and evil people.
Guns are no more at fault than a fork made Rosie Odonnel fat.[/quote]
^^well said[/quote]
No we can’t blame guns. On the other hand, if the perpetrator only had a knife…[/quote]
[/quote]
All of these people would have been FAR more “successful” if they had used a gun instead of a knife or a crossbow, especially the first link you provided in which the attacker didn’t kill anyone but managed to “only” wound 20+ people.
[quote]HeavyTriple wrote:
How fucking stupid people have to be to think that the kind of person who would kill 20 children for the hell of it would be bound by gun control? Use your brains for God’s sake.
[/quote]
This shouldn’t have happened. I mean, the school IS designated as a ‘gun free zone’ after all. It’s the LAW.
We need another law stressing how important it is to respect ‘gun free zones’. THAT is the solution. Only then will these things stop.