I think everyone should be armed; trained, armed and disciplined. But there is so solution; this is not a gun issue; this is a people issue; we outlaw bombs but people still build them; we outlaw gas, nerve agent; blood agent; viral agents, but people still use them; we outlaw nukes, but everyone wants one; this guys could have just as easily hacked this many people apart with a sword and axe, but that would take a bit of skil and conditioning, but look at world history; they are effective; and if you are unarmed you are probably just as defenseless against a crazy with a knife or sword or something; check your almanac; lots of people still get cut up and stabbed or blugeoned to death; is just a matter of scale; the problem here is people; one guy made an evil choice to use a tool to hurt people; he could have chosen anything; the arguement is always, but guns are so easy. yeah, well people are so lame. I just cannot comprehend how so many selfish people could cower in fear and let this guy shoot; reload; shoot; reload; walk away; reload; shoot; reload. sheesh a .38 has about a 37% chance of one shot kill; a .22 much less; and it is very difficult to hit a critical area on a moving target. I just cannot wrap my head around this thing; yes, it is very sad, tragic, horrible, evil, and such a waste of life, love, hopes, dreams, and it hurts to think about it, but still, I just dont get it; are we as Americans just gonna keep getting led like lambs to the slaughter and do nothing? Are we that apathetic to think somebody else is gonna save you. I am mystified; so I talked to some of my friends about this; and they are mystified too, maybe it is because we are all vets; maybe is is because we have looked into the face of evil and violence before, but we seem to be saying wow; how could this happen; but mean it very differently from what I have been reading in the paper; and msn; and on these boards. i wonder I really do.
I agree 1000%. The idea that a gun in the home is one's only means to protect your family is common within certain groups. In truth, those guns are stolen by criminals (when houses are robbed) far more often than they are used in self-defense.
Legal, private firearm ownership supplies guns to criminals far more often than it protects homes.
An idea...
Then what if the law could send YOU to jail or get you a criminal record if a gun used in a criminal act is traced back to you (the original owner), even if it was reported stolen. i.e.: You buy a gun, be ready to assume the responsability. You provided the gun to a criminal by not storing it in a safe place to begin with (criminal negligence).
That would get SOME people thinking twice about getting a gun.
Ultradan
this guys could have just as easily hacked this many people apart with a sword and axe, but that would take a bit of skil and conditioning
Not on this scale. Amok runs with axes, knives or crowbars do happen (and probably are more common on this side of Atlantic where guns are more rare) but those end up usually with one or two dead and max ten injured. Killing one person with melee is relatively simple, massacre is not (I also would guess that people fight back easier against a guy with an axe than a guy with a gun...).
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What amazes me is that I didn't read the news until about 4pm today (checking my email on MSN), and I just glazed over it. I guess I'm a bit desensitized (spelling's gotta be wrong there), but I was one of the kids who was told "you're a threat" on April 21, 1999 (one day after Columbine).
I was on the threat list, too.
And by the way, you did spell desensitized right.
-Mr. Shiny
Well magna T; history would tend to not agree with you; people were killed with swords and axes on a far larger scale than this and most of it was not even noteworthy.
an I have been a gun owner most of my life and not had the desire to shoot anyone and I often carry it with me as is permitted where I live; the only weapon I used to shoot at people with was the one the government gave me and against targets they chose; life of a soldier, sigh though I had no desire to do so.
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Well magna T; history would tend to not agree with you; people were killed with swords and axes on a far larger scale than this and most of it was not even noteworthy.
an I have been a gun owner most of my life and not had the desire to shoot anyone and I often carry it with me as is permitted where I live; the only weapon I used to shoot at people with was the one the government gave me and against targets they chose; life of a soldier, sigh though I had no desire to do so.
I tend to agree with Magdalena. While there are all sorts of cultural reasons for widespread ownership of guns in the US, their ubiquity makes this sort of thing much more common there than in other parts of the world where gun controls are tighter. Your argument on axes and swords is pretty dishonest and I'm sure you are aware of that. One particular example I can give you is of the Dunblaine massacre here in the UK, where a guy shot a load of primary school children and their teacher with a couple of handguns (I forget the exact figure, but I think there were about 16 fatalities). Shortly afterwards, a guy went nuts with a machete in a playground. Similar situation, different weapon: I think there was one death.
I'm not drawing on this for some sort of anti-gun commentary. You guys like your guns, and you are entitled, especially if you treat them with respect. Just, please don't pretend a gun is as dangerous as a carving knife in the wrong hands - it isn't, it is far more deadly.
Chinese foreign exchange student? That did surprise me. I figured it would be a white young male that was a loner, and listened to “satanic” music and was to enthrall by games like grand theft auto.I heard he was Korean.
However, it may be just more government warmongering.
Jerks.
Sorry last night on the news they said Chinese, but hey they didn't know the body count either.
Fizz
and if you are unarmed you are probably just as defenseless against a crazy with a knife or sword or something
I'm trained to take knives away from people, and I've defended myself successfully, unarmed, against people with baseball bats. But a gun from 10 feet away? I'm dead unless he hesitates. The only time I've had a gun pointed at me, the guy was luckily drunk (and I got close real quick and was apparently intimidating or persuasive enough to take it from him), and it was a close call. If he'd attacked, the way the bat people did, I'd be dead right now. Drunks waving knives don't scare me to much. Drunks waving pistols scare me to death.
Maybe if we could condition gun safety as second nature into 100% of the population... that would be great. I'd be all in favor. We could have our cake (or guns) and eat it, too. But for every person like you who treats guns with respect and care, there's an idiot who just thinks it's "cool" to have one.
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Gun control is a non-issue. Those who want guns to commit crimes or atrocities will always be able to get them.
The only thing "laws" affect is those who choose to obey them. Those who choose to obey laws are not the ones society needs to worry about.
Drunk drivers kill thousands of more people each year than criminals with guns do. We have tough drunk driving laws......enough said, right?
Why do we get nervous in airplanes? They kill way less people each year than cars/drunk drivers do....it's all about the publicity, then I guess, because airplane crashes sure are good TV aren't they?
Not minimizing what happened at VT--horrible, of course...but let's think this through rationally.
I think your view point is skewed by your job - i.e. you see criminals with illegal guns all the time. However (and I may be wrong in this) most of these massacre-type incidents take place with guns which are legally held. Criminals with guns may be scum, but they at least have a mildly rational agenda - they use guns to get what they want (money and so on) and don't run around killing lots of people on a whim. The sort of individuals who carry out these sorts of massacres are often otherwise ordinary, law-abiding citizens who just happen to be secret nutjobs. But they probably don't have underworld connections to obtain illegal firearms, at least not easily.
So yes, someone will always have a gun, irrespective of gun-control laws. But gun-control laws may prevent unstable non-career criminals from obtaining firearms. As pointed out above, these incidents are rarer (not completely absent, but rarer) in states with stricter gun controls than the US. I suspect they tend to be more spur-of-the-moment, and people use the weapons to hand, rather than going out of their way to purchase illegal firearms to perpetrate a massacre, assuming they even knew where to go to get one in the first place.
As I said above, I'm not judging anyone with this because I am not a US citizen. But I think that people need to realise that the gun laws that are prevalent there make this thing much easier.
What amazes me is that I didn't read the news until about 4pm today (checking my email on MSN), and I just glazed over it. I guess I'm a bit desensitized (spelling's gotta be wrong there), but I was one of the kids who was told "you're a threat" on April 21, 1999 (one day after Columbine).
I was on the threat list, too.
And by the way, you did spell desensitized right.
-Mr. Shiny
I got sent to anger mangement for saying what I thought about how crapy our education program was and how most of our teacher were burnt out and truly didn't care if we learned anything or not. They also said I looked angry because all I did was read in their class....this was all based on what one teacher said....No one thought it might be because I was bored and not challenged. (We are now in a state of extreme hyper-sensitivity now a day) Thanks God two of my teacher that I actually interacted with and actually TAUGHT class came to my aid and got me out of there. Teachers are a God send with a exetrmely hard job and I know the kids don't make it any easier, but I would assume they quit than burn out and stop caring.
Fizz
My thanks to teachers
I got sent to anger mangement for saying what I thought about how crapy our education program was and how most of our teacher were burnt out and truly didn't care if we learned anything or not. They also said I looked angry because all I did was read in their class....this was all based on what one teacher said....No one thought it might be because I was bored and not challenged. (We are now in a state of extreme hyper-sensitivity now a day) Thanks God two of my teacher that I actually interacted with and actually TAUGHT class came to my aid and got me out of there. Teachers are a God send with a exetrmely hard job and I know the kids don't make it any easier, but I would assume they quit than burn out and stop caring.
I got out because I was getting the feeling that nobody really wanted me to teach anything. As long as statistically low-achieving students showed statistical improvement on the standardized test scores at the end (by any means), everything was great; the down-side was that brighter kids were given absolutely no opportunity to expand their limits. The "national honor society" had documented plagiarism rates double the school average. Sorry; I'll stop now. Nobody likes it when I suggest that in addition to "no child left behind," we need an "every child will sink or swim" clause.
What I am saying is, people once accepted violence more realistically, dealt with it ritually, and helped young men learn to use it appropriately (some people still do this thank God). Today we seem to sweep it under the rug and to our surprise it erupts outs with terrible consequences.
Back when I was teaching, a fight once broke out in my classroom; it actually took me a minute to realize they weren't playing. Most high school kids I taught had never been in a fistfight in their lives; when I was growing up, every boy on the playground fought with just about every other boy on a daily basis. We were sent to the principal's office. Today they're expelled.
So I can easily see how people could cower, rather than counterattacking. We've bred self-defense out of them for the dream of "violence-free schools."
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I am sure. I have fought for my life and I have fought for people I never seen before's lives. I have never been in a mass killing environment before but I know that every life around me is worth the same as my own. I am willing to risk mine for the sake of others. I am intense because this type of inaction leads to death by fear of doing something and degrades society as a whole. Philly is succumbing to gun violence because witnesses are too scared to get involved and point fingers at perps, meanwhile this year is already on track to far surpass last year's record numbers of shootings and homicides.
People need to be taught to stand up.FH
Hmm. From everything I've read about this incident, you are being waaaay too hard on the victims here. This guy apparently was popping into classrooms out of the blue and firing. When asked about what happened, every witness I've seen so far said they thought the noise (of the perp killing others in other classrooms) was construction related. Witnesses from several different classrooms have related the same story of being completely off-guard when this ass showed up in their room.
AND, several of them blockaded the doors to their rooms once the perp left, despite having gunshot wounds themselves, despite this guy trying to get back into their rooms, despite him firing rounds into the doors to clear the obstruction. This was a despicable act by someone who, for whatever reason, completely lost whatever compassion for his fellow man he once possessed.
These kids are 18-20, and in a setting where they had no reason to be on their guard. If you have alot of anger, focus it on the perp, not the victims.
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I think your view point is skewed by your job - i.e. you see criminals with illegal guns all the time.
Agreed. The empirical evidence on this issue is more overwhelming than global warming. We are the ONLY major industrialized nation with this problem. The murder rate by firearm is greater in NYC than in most industrialized COUNTRIES.
It's true that the right to bear arms is enshrined in our constitution. It is not true that this means it cannot be changed. The constitution also prohibited alcoholic beverages, and placed narrow restrictions on who had the right to vote.
Nobody likes it when I suggest that in addition to "no child left behind," we need an "every child will sink or swim" clause.
I agree with you I was in the system of "no child left behind" it sucks. We spent all our time "training" to take this one big test not learning. That just shows you what happens when Bush and the Kennedys work together...It hurts the smart kids helps a couple and the rest that wouldn't put any energy in to school get a free pass because anyone can pass that damn test. You can't help by lowering the bar.
Fizz
I find that I cannot conjure the words to express how utterly fecal this tragedy was... and I'm not going to try.
However, responsing to the thread within the thread, I have to say that I always wonder how effective I might be in situations like this.
Against a gun, depending on time to play and school lay-out. you're really not going to do anything but fastball an Ab Psych textbook really hard and hope for an ocular explosion. Most likely it's going to flutter on past the bad guy like a paper birdie and even the gunman is going to feel a little bad for you. However, if four people stormed him at close range, some of them are dying, but he's going down. Although there's a bit of a Captain America vibe going on in this thread, and bullets don't bounce off good intentions, I have to agree that most people's fear of death paralyzes. It may have always been that way but I suspect there is a certain amount of modern sheltering and 'baby boy' syndrome at play. Then again, it it's generational, what happened on 9/11?
I can say with certainty that if I had been on a flight with with box cutter weilding terrorists, my actions, win or lose, would have been instantaneously and very final. Is it a tough guy thing? Is it because I've been cut by people weilding blades more serious than a box-cutter? Is it because of early trial by fire as one of the few white people in an all black school back in the 70s during a pitiable race war? Years of martial arts? Naw. It's because there's something inside me that says, "NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, B&%$#!" A kind of narcissism that makes me think it's my responsibility to protect the tribe. I see trouble coming and I rush to it. An idiot, they call me. This narcissism also makes me forget that I'm anything but a big bag of guts, ready to be unsealed... but that momentary amnesia and lack of self importance is what makes the (finger quotes) hero. Of course I am not saying that the victims of this shooting were self important scaredy cats. It's only natural to not want to have your head blown off and you don't know how you're going to react and how much sense you'll be able to retain until you're in that situation. I can say all this but then drop me into that scene and I might just fall into fetal position and pee. Some of those who got popped may have been just like me and got caught trying. I always envision myself running at the bad guys and getting torn to pieces, then gaining a measure of leverage and looking to the other soon-to-be victims screaming, "Uh, help?!" to no avail.
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Jade, on the box cutter thing, I agree with you 100%. And my gut reaction to the first version of this story I heard was to say, 'If it were me, I'm dying in an action pose.' The problem is that it seems by the story I've heard now that many of these KIDS did exactly that.
Believe me, the trailer park was no picnic to grow up in. My point is that these kids were not in the trailer park at the time, nor were they on a plane with even a couple of minutes to weigh their odds. These kids went from parlez vous francais to apocalypse now in about 15 seconds.
I'm not drawing on this for some sort of anti-gun commentary. You guys like your guns, and you are entitled, especially if you treat them with respect. Just, please don't pretend a gun is as dangerous as a carving knife in the wrong hands - it isn't, it is far more deadly.
hmm, I guess we just know different kinds of people; there is a very good reason every soldier in every army on the planet carrys a knife or bayonet which may be fairly close to a short sword; even our military still teaches knife fighting and throwing; why, because it is effective. The only difference between the effect of a person with a gun and a person with a different kind of weapon is training, dicipline and willpower. Any fool with a gun can kill with very little fo the first two.
but; I dont want to get off topic; this is still a tragedy and very very sad; I just am sensitive to people blaming it on the weapon when it was the person
I just am sensitive to people blaming it on the weapon when it was the person
I HOPE, at least, that no one is actually stupid enough to blame an inanimate object. It's clearly the perp's fault. I'm just starting to wonder if we don't make it unnecessarily easy for him, though. I started off 100% hard-core anti-gun control. Recent events and empirical data are beginning to make me wonder-- they haven't convinced me, necessarily. I never like to think that I know everything, because whenever I start to, it seems like I'm always wrong. And it sucks to be wrong if this many lives are stake.
yeah, like the Jade am am one of those who envision running at the bad guys, but of course I have 23 years of martial arts and an extreme sense of duty and love for my fellow man.
So has anyone heard about a center for cards and letter and stuff for the victims of this tragedy? There has to be something positive we can do.
So has anyone heard about a center for cards and letter and stuff for the victims of this tragedy? There has to be something positive we can do.
Right on, Valegrim. Now you're talking. If somebody finds out, I'm in.
Nothing can possibly lessen this tragedy, but it can at least let people know they're not alone.
Okay the killer has been identified:
AOL News-
BLACKSBURG, Va. (April 17) -- The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.
News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior, arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began.
Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
There is more, but its mostly on how he was a disturbed looser
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Okay the killer has been identified:
AOL News-
BLACKSBURG, Va. (April 17) -- The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.
News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior, arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began.
Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
There is more, but its mostly on how he was a disturbed loser
Scary. And what's even scarier is the guy sounds a bit like me (aside from the whole massacre thing). I had the same thing happen (getting referred to a counseling service) in grade school when a teacher read my poetry. But now I'm all good, so you don't haave to worry.
Sometimes, I wonder how these things escalate so far (I'm talking about Cho, not a thirteen-year-old-Mr. Shiny). Why didn't anyone do anything? And why do people have to pass the f$*+ing buck on the fact that they could have done something?
Anyone remember back after Columbine, people kept blaming Marilyn Manson?
Here's a direct quote from Mr. Manson himself after Columbine:
Filmmaker Michael Moore: "Mr. Manson, if you could have said anything to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris before the shooting, what would you have said?"
Marilyn Manson: "I wouldn't have said a thing. I would have listened to what they had to say."
Filmmaker Michael Moore: "Mr. Manson, if you could have said anything to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris before the shooting, what would you have said?"
Marilyn Manson: "I wouldn't have said a thing. I would have listened to what they had to say."
I saw that interview. Marilyn Manson's statement was probably the best piece of insight provided by anyone about the whole tragedy.
Some people are already Blaming Video Games. for no reason then to push along thier own agenda. What pisses me off is not the killing or ever the kid that did it, (the saddens me) what pisses me off is people passing the buck. The year after I graduated from highschool one of the star football players of my class what gun down. Shot 33 time by to other kids, turns out that thye 3 of them were part of some thift ring in town. They papers glossed over that fact and said it was because the other 2 boys were into D&D. We were f#%~ign pissed,as a gamer in Highschool in a fairly small school we knew all hte gamers and this was f@#(^% b$#~%@~@ these a&@~@&@s never picked up a D&D book in there life. We were glad that they jury say though that crap and throw the book at these 3 jack asses. I'm just hoping that people distracted by the media's "look at the Monkey" tricks this time.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Some people are already Blaming Video Games.
I think this notion is idiotic. Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, the Boston Strangler. These are famous serial killers who existed WELL BEFORE influences like D&D, video games, and heavy metal came into the picture. I think the media and the public at large forget that serial killers have been around since the dawn of time and that trying to blame their motivations on one certain thing is just downright stupid. Too often people point the finger and say "This person killed 10 people because D&D made him into a psychotic lunatic" or "This person shot up a subway car because he saw it in a video game that twisted his mind." The truth is: THE PERSON WAS F%!$ED UP TO BEGIN WITH! He just "happened" to also play D&D or video games or listen to rock music.
If D&D and video games truly drove people to murder people by the dozens, I can safely say that everyone on these boards would be in prison by now. That is not the case.
I think this notion is idiotic. Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, the Boston Strangler. These are famous serial killers who existed WELL BEFORE influences like D&D, video games, and heavy metal came into the picture. I think the media and the public at large forget that serial killers have been around since the dawn of time and that trying to blame their motivations on one certain thing is just downright stupid. Too often people point the finger and say "This person killed 10 people because D&D made him into a psychotic lunatic" or "This person shot up a subway car because he saw it in a video game that twisted his mind." The truth is: THE PERSON WAS f&**ED UP TO BEGIN WITH! He just "happened" to also play D&D or video games or listen to rock music.
If D&D and video games truly drove people to murder people by the dozens, I can safely say that everyone on these boards would be in prison by now. That is not the case.
Preaching to the choir, dude.
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I'm not drawing on this for some sort of anti-gun commentary. You guys like your guns, and you are entitled, especially if you treat them with respect. Just, please don't pretend a gun is as dangerous as a carving knife in the wrong hands - it isn't, it is far more deadly.
hmm, I guess we just know different kinds of people; there is a very good reason every soldier in every army on the planet carrys a knife or bayonet which may be fairly close to a short sword; even our military still teaches knife fighting and throwing; why, because it is effective. The only difference between the effect of a person with a gun and a person with a different kind of weapon is training, dicipline and willpower. Any fool with a gun can kill with very little fo the first two.
but; I dont want to get off topic; this is still a tragedy and very very sad; I just am sensitive to people blaming it on the weapon when it was the person
You are obviously bang-on when you say that it is the person who kills, not the gun, and certainly American gun laws absolve no one from their responsibility to treat their fellow man humanely.
My only real comment is that guns are, realistically, more deadly than melee weapons. I accept your military training and all, but I suspect the reason that guns are issued to soldiers as well as bayonets is because of their efficacy in killing people. It's a question of technology - a gun is tailor-made for the moderately trained Joe to kill his fellow man, easily and effectively. If that wasn't the case, soldiers would still be wielding short swords like the Roman legions. Guns are very good at killing people, better than bayonets. I think you are really trying not to accept this obvious point because you don't want to have to defend laws which allow powerful implements of death into the average home in America.
Personally, I don't want to make a point about gun laws, if only because we have been there before on these boards. But you also cannot completely absolve the gun laws as being part of the problem. Your average antisocial wacko doesn't just need the desire to kill all of his fellow classmates, work colleagues or whathaveyou, he needs a means to do it too. Laws which provide easy access to firearms facilitate this. Yes, as I say above, it doesn't remove the responsibility for said wacko's actions. But the stricter gun laws in European countries make it much less likely that said nutcase is actually going to be able to get a gun. It also makes it much more difficult for me, who has never wanted to massacre anyone in my life, of course. But the societal consensus here is that I can live without one very happily. There certainly isn't a gun-shaped hole in my life.
So my take on it is that, as a society, the US is broadly comfortable with widespread gun ownership. That is a decision made broadly by society, and which appears to have democratic support. (That is perfectly valid, the same as the European decision not to have widespread gun ownership.) But the flipside is that it makes the sort of things we saw yesterday easier to carry out. I don't think it says much about the US as a whole frankly - it is more, in my view, a rather silly nostagic throwback to post-colonial days instead of indicative of a "deep sickness" or some crap like that. But to pretend that there is no connection between widespread, legal gun ownership and the misuse of firearms is wilfully obtuse.
None of the above, of course, will bring back anyone killed - the above is just debate.
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I don't think it says much about the US as a whole frankly - it is more, in my view, a rather silly nostagic throwback to post-colonial days instead of indicative of a "deep sickness" or some crap like that. But to pretend that there is no connection between widespread, legal gun ownership and the misuse of firearms is wilfully obtuse.
Right on. It's in the constitution to discourage your country from sending the redcoats over again to burn our capital. If you're saying you pledge your country will never do this again, I'll hand in my long rifle.
I know lots of NRA members and I'm sure they would follow suit.
*snicker*
Does gun control have to be all or nothing? It's harder to conceal a deer rifle under your trench coat and then use it for mass murder, especially if you have to reload every 2 shots. A couple of 9 mm semi-autos with 13- to 17-shot magazines make it a WHOLE lot easier to kill schoolkids, but make it much harder to hunt deer or redcoats. Just an idea...
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The all or nothing argument is one that NRA members are very fond of. I worked with a guy that was unwilling to admit that our government should have ANY right to regulate the posession of 'arms' of any kind. As far as he was concerned, if you could find a place to buy a nuclear weapon, it was okay to keep one in your house.
This is the argument that says that our elected officials of today are somehow less capable of fashioning reasonable rules to regulate modern weapons than the framers of 200 years ago were. Certainly, the founders were all knowing and could foresee all eventualities when they wrote the constitution. That's why they fought like cats and dogs over every statement in the document, before, during, and after the drafting of it.
Strict constructionists stink!
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I agree, ownership of weapons in no way contributes to the use of such weapons. That's why the U.S. foreign policy is tolerant and leniant towards countries that wish to peacefully obtain nuclear weapons. After all, we realize that such contries could attack with conventional weapons, or even send sword wielding legionnaires against us. It's not as if they need nuclear weapons to attack, so it's really not a big deal if they have them.
Plus, once every country has a nuclear weapon (or two, or three, or a thousand), no one will attack anyone else because everyone will be afraid of being nuked!
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Does gun control have to be all or nothing? It's harder to conceal a deer rifle under your trench coat and then use it for mass murder, especially if you have to reload every 2 shots. A couple of 9 mm semi-autos with 13- to 17-shot magazines make it a WHOLE lot easier to kill schoolkids, but make it much harder to hunt deer or redcoats. Just an idea...
Per capita, the two most heavily armed countries in the world are Switzerland and Norway (mostly due to their "citizen militia" defense concepts). However, it is almost impossible to own a handgun in either country. So, even though just about every other adult Swiss or Norwegian male has an assault rifle in the attic, one almost never sees any kind of gun-related violence. Thus, it seems to me that the solution would be handgun control.
It also has the added benefit of eliminting just about all spontaneous, angry gun usage - you simply can't pull out a rifle from your glove compartment if you get cut off in traffic...
I don't think it says much about the US as a whole frankly - it is more, in my view, a rather silly nostagic throwback to post-colonial days instead of indicative of a "deep sickness" or some crap like that. But to pretend that there is no connection between widespread, legal gun ownership and the misuse of firearms is wilfully obtuse.Right on. It's in the constitution to discourage your country from sending the redcoats over again to burn our capital. If you're saying you pledge your country will never do this again, I'll hand in my long rifle.
I know lots of NRA members and I'm sure they would follow suit.
*snicker*
Yeah- snicker- very mature.
Speaking as an Irishman whose country only shook off "redcoat"oppression in the last century, I can recognise the sentiments. However, since the US military budget dwarfs the combined budgets of the next ten countries on the list, I hardly think anyone is going to invade anytime soon. We used to say "burn everything English but their coal". Times change.
I was under the impression that the right to bear arms was more linked to the right to insurrection in the face of tyranny.
Bottom line, the right to bear arms is an amendment- an adjustment, a change to an existing document- the implication being that the original document was imperfect. Amendents continue to me made- so to regard a handful of hot button phrases as untouchable, set down by infallible titans is at best naive, at worst fundementalist zealotry.
The untrammeled proliferation of weaponry in a civil society is toxic to it's well being . It means that the American Dream so espoused talks the talk, but walking the walk is an entirely different matter. End of the day, it's the Law of the Gun that has the final say, and all the Gun has to say is death. That's why more then ten thousand deaths occour year in, year out due to gun violence.
It also has the added benefit of eliminting just about all spontaneous, angry gun usage - you simply can't pull out a rifle from your glove compartment if you get cut off in traffic...
You haven't seen the size of the trucks on the roads around here. If the glove box size is proportional to that of the vehicle, you could easily keep a few rocket launchers in there. Or a Sherman tank, for that matter.
Does gun control have to be all or nothing? It's harder to conceal a deer rifle under your trench coat and then use it for mass murder, especially if you have to reload every 2 shots. A couple of 9 mm semi-autos with 13- to 17-shot magazines make it a WHOLE lot easier to kill schoolkids, but make it much harder to hunt deer or redcoats. Just an idea...Per capita, the two most heavily armed countries in the world are Switzerland and Norway (mostly due to their "citizen militia" defense concepts). However, it is almost impossible to own a handgun in either country. So, even though just about every other adult Swiss or Norwegian male has an assault rifle in the attic, one almost never sees any kind of gun-related violence. Thus, it seems to me that the solution would be handgun control.
It also has the added benefit of eliminting just about all spontaneous, angry gun usage - you simply can't pull out a rifle from your glove compartment if you get cut off in traffic...
Better said in anything I could have typed- I think the core of the issue is the role of the gun within that culture- on some level the use of firearms has been raised to the level of a legitimate means of discourse or conflict resolution. Their prevelence infers that since we have so many of them, there have to be opprotunities to use them The one thing both of the countries mentioned have in common is the excellence of their diplomatic corps. The weapon is there, but it is the route of last resort, and I mean LAST resort.
Shaw said that we get the goverment we deserve, couple that with Kurt Vonnegut's line that George Bush proudly proclaiming he was the "War President" was as reputable as claiming he was the "Sypillus President", and where do we stand?
Jade, on the box cutter thing, I agree with you 100%. And my gut reaction to the first version of this story I heard was to say, 'If it were me, I'm dying in an action pose.' The problem is that it seems by the story I've heard now that many of these KIDS did exactly that.
Believe me, the trailer park was no picnic to grow up in. My point is that these kids were not in the trailer park at the time, nor were they on a plane with even a couple of minutes to weigh their odds. These kids went from parlez vous francais to apocalypse now in about 15 seconds.
"Oh, ze humanity."
Luke, I only skimmed this thread this morning so I'm not sure what I wrote that seemed to suggest anyting against any of your points. It wasn't my intention. Please, I'm certainly not picking on the victims of the shooting for failing to possess superpowers or a Go Joe enough attitude (I thought the girl who played did was marvellous. Now THAT'S a plan). I'm saying that the event made me personalize and wonder about a few things about myself and the rest of society is all.
I'm sure trailer parks are tough enough places to grow up, and I wasn't suggesting that being one of twelve white guys in a sea of black when someone declares, "Hey, kids! Race war!" was the end all be all because hey, we're not actually living in a war zone, right? But before the age of 18 I'd been shot superficially two different times by stray bullets, and stabbed multiply by people whose knife demonstrations were a bit overzealous. So as much as guns and blades do indeed frighten me, they don't paralyze me. Not yet, anyway. When I hear gunfire I do cringe and feel a sympathy pain in my chest near the scar.
As a beside-the-point, I wasn't a kid when I was 18. I was physically and mentally capable of defending myself. This was proven far more then than it is now, thankfully. That said, I still haven't learned how to catch a bullet in my teeth and I'm not trying to suggest that I would have fared better than any Virginia Tech student who fell.
I'm not flexing when I say that if I was in a building and, barring being suprised, had time enough to hear gunshots coming closer, I believe I would have formulated a plan, and not one that would have had me standing ten feet away from the guy in the middle of a hall challenging, "Pick on someone your own size, Cretin!" My plan would have likely involved ambush, improvised weaponry, and if I could rally it... allies (at least someone on the other side of a hall to hoot in distraction). As Valegrim pointed out some people are just more likely to be that bull antelope that charges an approaching lion. I've done a few (finger quotes again) heroic things in my life, which nicely balances out the side of me that is a complete douche, and I know that I keep my head in a time of crisis.
When my friend Dave, who is a non-combatant, was going to his accounting job one morning in NYC, people were fleeing out of some subway station. Down in the station he could hear a woman screaming. Dave thought this might be another terrorist attack and fought the crowd to get downstairs but it was a foiled mugging and the transit cops had the matter under control. Dave is no tough guy wannabe hero. He just did what that voice told him to do.
Edit: Just called Dave. Effed up the story. There was a fire in the station and smoke... THAT'S why a woman was screaming and people were fleeing and transit cops were everywhere. Poor dude charged into a preheated stove singing Mighty Mouse. "Here I come to save the daaaaaaaaay!"
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I agree, ownership of weapons in no way contributes to the use of such weapons. That's why the U.S. foreign policy is tolerant and leniant towards countries that wish to peacefully obtain nuclear weapons. After all, we realize that such contries could attack with conventional weapons, or even send sword wielding legionnaires against us. It's not as if they need nuclear weapons to attack, so it's really not a big deal if they have them.
Plus, once every country has a nuclear weapon (or two, or three, or a thousand), no one will attack anyone else because everyone will be afraid of being nuked!
I was walking through the campus of UC Santa Cruz with my crazy aunt (see the 'Airport Insecurity' thread), when I saw this bit of graffiti:
U.S. nukes: 5,000
Korean nukes: 0
Iranian nukes: 0
Who's the real enemy?
It's not completely on topic with the whole school shooting concept, but I thought that it needed to be mentioned.
sometimes I wish I could just post a reply to one person; would be a lot less crowded on these threads with the bit off topic stuff.
Just to keep things in perspective; my home paper carried this story today, but right next to it was one dead newborn infant abandoned by its mother, another dead guy that rammed his motorcycle into a van killing himself and critically wounding a five year old; some violent gang members who did some nasty stuff - guess they stabbed someone and abandoned them out on the mesa; a blurb on overcrowding in prisons and if they should let the non violent offenders out early; this sort of stuff is hard to build hope for the future on. The more I read the news; the less I want to read the news talking about the deeds of the wicked.
Now MSN is saying that this guy had disturbing writing and his teachers had recommended him for psychatric evaluation; so is a bit of yet one more mental person slipping through a beleagured mental health system.
As an NRA member, I'm party to all the secret information that NRA members advocate.
1) Responsible gun ownership
2) Eddie Eagle Child Safety Program (what to do if you see a gun)
3) Teaching women that they can refuse to be a victim
4) Strong mandatory sentencing for gun crimes
5) Obeying the law, honoring the constitution
Crazy stuff, I know. Cocaine is illegal, yet everyone can get it. If you make guns illegal, the only ones it will hurt are those who obey the laws anyway.
While murder rates are higher in the U.S. than Europe, other violent and property crime rates are much higher there, partly because no criminal has to fear any armed homeowner. I won't cite my sources, because I'll be accused of being a right wing hack, but I do believe independent research will bear this out. The fact that Australia's crime rate soared after the 1996 weapons ban is pretty well known and the fact that Texas' violent and property crime rate dropped by 30% after it allowed citizens that qualify and meet the requirments to carry concealed handguns is well known to me as a Texas Master Peace Officer.
Gun control laws will do nothing. We don't need more useless feel-good legislation.
The societal problems that cause these types of incidents aren't really fixable either. Best way to handle this is to have a containment plan at public facilities and drill the student populations of all schools in making themselves less vulnerable.
Better security drills and a better way to detect and respond to gunfire would also help. Some cities have installed automated gunfire detection systems that allow dispatchers to send officers very quickly to shots fired incidents, allowing public safety to flood an area and contain the shooters more rapidly.
My Department practices "active shooter" drills annually. We all attend 8 hours of training every year just on containing "active shooters" not to mention our firearms qualifications and use of force training, etc.
I'd love to find an effective way to keep the guns out of the hands of the wrong people, but knee jerk gun legislation ain't the way, folks.
Richard McBeef. Frightening, and sometimes accidentally funny if you read it aloud. A young guy named Pete once handed me this "book" he'd written full of snarling euphymisms for homosexuals. Homosexual aliens were attacking the Earth and, armed with these euphymisms, he fought them off with nunchakus and shurikens. Wonder how that guy's doing these days?
Edit: No really. Inappropriate timing but one day soon read Richard McBeef aloud and sound the voices. You'll hate yourself for laughing, well, if you're able to laugh at it.
As an Australian, I'd just like to query F2K's claim that crime rates 'soared' here after the 1996 change to existing gun laws - I'd be curious to know the source of this claim, as I'm afraid I must have missed it. As well as the soaring increase in crime.
Reggie
I would agree with F2K on that issue; in all countries and states that have banned personal gun ownership; violent crime rates has rocketed; take our own Washington DC for instance, on the the most dangerous places per capita in the country
Sorry, scientist in me won't accept any claim without sources - I can track down stats that show Australia has between 10 and 17 times less gun related deaths than the US, but nothing that shows that we've had a major increase in violent crime rates. Mind you, the change in gun laws here in the 90's only impacted on a small section of society, as existing laws were fairly careful to begin with.
Please note that this doesn't have any bearing one way or the other on how things should be handled in the US, whilst similar in many ways, the two countries developed in different ways - we didn't need to fight for independance, we just sort of drifted away on our own. I think we were forgotten.
Reggie
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Richard McBeef. Frightening, and sometimes accidentally funny if you read it aloud. A young guy named Pete once handed me this "book" he'd written full of snarling euphymisms for homosexuals. Homosexual aliens were attacking the Earth and, armed with these euphymisms, he fought them off with nunchakus and shurikens. Wonder how that guy's doing these days?
Edit: No really. Inappropriate timing but one day soon read Richard McBeef aloud and sound the voices. You'll hate yourself for laughing, well, if you're able to laugh at it.
Wow. It's Hamlet written by a moron.
Sorry, scientist in me won't accept any claim without sources -
Reggie
There's a scientist in you? MEDIC!