Everytown for Gun Safety foundation has been quoted in many newspaper articles with this figure.

Newsweek:

Huffington Post:

Time:

There are many other examples. All you have to do is check a major news site and they are most likely running that figure.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Link?

You've produced no links, three isolated quotes whatever?

You're hitting it right on the head SC. I don't consider "two steps forward, three steps back" progress. Yeah, we have had a black president for almost 8 years, yet racial tensions in this country have been worse than they have been in a long time. I thought all that was suppose to END racism and the like. Heck, most of the time the people that supposedly say they want to end racism are the ones that help keep it alive by constantly pulling the race card whenever something doesn't go their way (and many times it's very obvious that race had nothing to do with whatever the problem is) or trying way too hard to find racism in something when it isn't there. For example, in the Jungle Book how they were trying to say that the song "I wanna be like you" was racist...MOWGLI ISN'T EVEN WHITE YOU IDIOTS!!! :mad:

Also I agree with the fact that some people that were use to "the old ways" have trouble dealing with today's world. If they don't completely agree with today's ways, then they are automatically labelled a racist-homophobic-transphobic-misogynistic bigot. When that happens of course they're gonna be miserable and unhappy, and it'll be all downhill for them psychologically.

And yeah.. many other things. How they try to create a "don't say anything that's offensive" movement yet the internet is an uncensored platform where people say the most offensive things known to man. How the media shines the spotlight on these mass shootings yet completely ignore other horrible things that happen. I'm not too far away from Baltimore, and when I turn on the news—murder, rape, robbery—every single day. It's actually gotten even worse since the riots ended.

Mmmhmm. The Internet shows off a very savage side to human life. It can be like neanderthal/caveman times here. In a cyber sense, that's where we may be at.

And of course, if you're a shooter or something, you can become famous. Everyone's trying to be famous now. You can go online and turn yourself into a celebrity if you try hard enough. I did it! Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Instagram, before all of that, there was Sexy Celebrity.

Well, first off, it's not remotely true that "pretty much every" Republican is hostile to immigration. The last Republican President wasn't, and the nominee after that wasn't, and the nominee after that was in-between. The party is fairly divided on immigration and most of the disputes are about how to balance legal precedent with a failed system. And the Trump version of "build a giant wall to keep them all out" is in the clear (but loud) minority.

Second, I think I already gave you a perfectly good reason that encompasses these issues as well: good personal behavior is not synonymous with good law. In fact, in some ways it's mutually exclusive. Charitable behavior, for example, is only positive in a moral sense when it's optional. If you force someone to be charitable, it's no longer charity by definition.

And it's sort of a disingenuous argument anyway, isn't it? Surely you'd have major problems with Christians trying to make the tenets of their faith law in virtually any other area. We don't advocate legislating these ideals for the same reason we don't want to mandate church attendance or ban all sinful behavior.

I graduated from Roseburg High School in 1983. Attended Umpqua Community College in 1988.

What I'm saying is more that my impression (that might be wrong) of things like fox news, right wing america is often intolerant toward immegration, pointing out the differences (I'm thinking about Bill O'Reilly who constantly talks about how the blacks aren't integrated, etc.). My point was that there seems to be a large distance between what the christian doctrine, the teachings of Jesus seem to be (based on the new testament) and how the mostly christian pollitical group in your country is diametrically the opposite of that.

Uh oh -- better watch out with him -- he's a loner.

Wow. Close call. ;)

First off they occur because the deranged shooters know that schools are gun-free - so training staff to be armed is a step in the right-direction.

Second they occur due to the negative affects of industrialization and lack of cultural unity on societies. People today don't exercise, eat well, and over-indulge in pleasures such as video games, internet usage, TV, etc - this lack of healthy social and physical activity leads to repressed rage and mental illness.

And since modern America has less of a common sense of cultural unity, with people becoming overly materialistic, nihilistic and distanced from one another - it leads to tension especially in higher population dense and diverse areas (which is why shootings happen most often in areas like Chicago, versus say Plano, TX despite Chicago's higher gun control laws).

The modern media is also to blame in many ways - for one it publicizes exploitative stories like this just as "outrage porn" for the sake of ratings, leading to people who indulge in the news being more paranoid and misanthropic - and it also gives deranged killers an outlet to "become famous" knowing they'll get in the news for committing their crimes.

Guns themselves are the least of the problem - more people die in auto accidents and from alcohol-related incidents than guns each year, but the extremists on the anti-gun side aren't advocating for reinstating the Prohibition, which would be the logical course of action if "preventing death" was their real agenda (but it isn't - it's just sating their emotional whim rather than actually coming up with a pragmatic solution the the problem).

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

The answer is simple. Close all the schools. America obviously doesn't need them judging by the way we are dropping down the leader boards in education rates. And I'm not even kidding.

except cars and alcohol serve a purpose beyond shooting things. if you kill someone with one of those things, you are doing something completely contrary to its intended use, but guns are designed with the idea that you will have to shoot someone or something. and besides, society has been working on making those things safer. being drunk while driving is illegal because you have the potential to kill someone, but carrying a gun is legal even though it's even easier to kill someone with it. if you want to buy a car, you have to take drivers' ed, it has to be registered, and if you break a law you have your licensed revoked. even ignoring the cost, it's much harder to buy a car than it is to buy a gun. i also believe that america really needs to work on getting a better mass transit system, which would cut down on a lot of those auto-related deaths.



this jim jeffries bit is pretty great

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

It's hard to tighten gun laws bc of the second amendment

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Did you really just say "piffle"? I like it.

But we're not trying to stop people from shooting "things." We're trying to stop people from shooting innocent people. That's supposed to be the rationale behind gun control, and if it is, then you can't bait-and-switch "innocent people" for "things" in the middle of the argument.

The argument ought to be: will it save lives? Will it protect people? If it would, then you at least have a difficult argument about what kinds of rights we're willing to trade away in the name of safety, and what kinds of costs various freedoms are supposed to have (and I'd really love to hear a gun control advocate at least admit there's some nuance to that question).

But we never even get to that point, because gun control advocates merely assume their proposals would lead to fewer deaths. Why? On what evidence? Look at homicide rates across the country:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQVc2YEWIAAKOKV.jpg:large
(source)

There's nothing here to support the idea that more gun ownership means more murders, and plenty to the contrary. That massive outlier on the right, Washington DC? It has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. South Dakota, 3rd-lowest homicide rate? 4th-highest gun ownership rate.

The options are not "guns" vs. "no guns." The options are a world where only criminals have guns, or a world where law-abiding citizens can have them, too.

What you actually said is that "pretty much all" Republicans think this way, which simply isn't the case. But it would certainly be fair to say that Republicans are more likely to want to restrict immigration. Though they would tell you (fairly) that what they oppose is illegal immigration. I love immigration and support pretty lenient immigration laws, personally, but the party as a whole is pretty divided on this.

I have no idea what this is in reference to, but Bill O'Reilly is not the head of the Republican party.

And again, my counterpoint is that they're not opposed to it: they're opposed to making it law.

Not all good things should be mandated and not all bad things should be banned.

Something else to consider, re: "why won't they do anything?" Leaving aside the unstated assumption that any problem is something the government should be actively trying to fix, it might be because the problem's getting better, not worse:

https://twitter.com/ChuckLane1/statu...63969306087425
Even mass shootings are about the same as they were at almost every point over the last few decades. What we have more of is media coverage.

Does this mean we can't debate gun control? Absolutely not: those deaths matter. But those arguments have to account for the fact that firearm homicides have dropped without the apparently crucial gun control measures they support, which sure seems to lend a lot more weight to the arguments about this being primarily a cultural (and not legal) issue, with corresponding cultural (and not legal) solutions.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Interesting graph. In my crime thriller the character goes to new hampshire to buy his gun because they have such lax gun laws. But they're on the lower end of that chart.

Anyway I have the solution to stop these school shootings!!
All we need on school grounds is to employ some enforcement droids - series 209

https://wiki.base22.com/download/att...7167/ed209.jpg

But what if there's a "glitch"?

If it's anything like over here you need the schools open because they're basically creches, allowing the parents to go to work because a single income isn't usually enough anymore.

load them with rubber bullets

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Fun ideological exercise for my left-leaning friends: take any argument about gun control and replace "guns" with "drugs." Still like the sound of it?

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

"the right of the people to keep and bear Drugs, shall not be infringed"

I like the sound of that! :D

Not sure if I'm in the group you're talking about, but on the face of it, I'd be fine with that.

I'll buy that for a dollar!

Or, as I like to say, "Good business is where you find it."

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Both sides can find a statistic to support what they want to find. If I was pro-guns, and was doing research, I'd simply leave out any information that makes my argument look bad. Bad information (like using Switzerland half-truths) contribute to reinforcing a prejudice. If one city has strict gun laws, one goes next door to get them. Even if the entire state has one, anyone can go state to state without being searched. I think the entire country has to have a law, but then again, geographies and population matter. I'm in favor of a voluntary buyback program. I'm worried about the new gun carriers, doing it out of fear and/or paranoia. Even for those who hate guns, they might think "Well, everyone else has one, maybe I should, because of course I'm normal." Regardless of the law or external forces out of my control, I have no interest in ever having a gun, even after I had a loaded gun pointed at me a week ago just going for a walk.

The next time there's a shooting, compare all the major news networks.

What legitimate purpose does alcoholic drink have? Its only purpose is to intoxicate people.

As far as cars go, most people in large cities like NYC get along without one just fine. Plus they contaminate the environment.

The "intended" purpose argument seems poor when the actual functional and common usage purposes seem more valid. Since a person killed by a drunk driver instead of a gun isn't "less dead". And self-defense against armed attackers is certainly a valid purpose, especially in the case of women who aren't physically capable of fighting off a 250 lb rapist with a taser or pepper spray, let alone one carrying a weapon himself.

If you mean tougher laws against gun access, I'm not against that. I don't believe the 2nd Amendment means a person has a God-given right to carry a machine gun into a grocery store. But eliminating firearm usage entirely? No.

If staff on campus was armed and trained in defensive firearm usage, it would deter attacks like this as well. You don't see these shooters targeting police stations or military bases, just places like churches and schools where they don't expect anyone to be armed.

Oh idk how about SAVING THE WORLD
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1832368/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

While I'm sure @freddoso is a good and reputable man, that graph is sinfully uninformative (I honestly stay out of gun control stuff in general, but data I can't let slip by). Without looking up the laws of individual states, it's a bit difficult to know any effects. It didn't even label its vertical axis! Shame on you David! SHAME!

Here's a chart that I think is more compelling, and more fleshed out with an ability to look at how laws differ across the country.
https://img.njdc.com/media/media/201...wholechart.png

There's not a 1:1 relationship, but it does raise some questions, I believe.

It doesn't include D.C., which is an outlier as Yoda mentions, but indeed it is an de facto outlier based upon the fact that it's a metropolitan area rather than a state; most of the time when we consider state level data we don't include D.C. because it'd throw off a lot of calculations. Much more fair to compare it to metropolitan areas (which I'd be interested in seeing, I'm not actually sure how city level data bears out).

Though if you compare it to metropolitan areas, remember your lessons on causation; if we look at a city with a high crime rate, and a large police force, we should be careful not to assume it's the large police form that's causing the crime.

Though even if you added D.C. to the bottom, I find the direction the data is pointing to be an interesting thought. (Possibly get rid of Hawaii and Alaska also, I would have kept it to contiguous states probably)

I've had the chance to work personally with the Brady Campaign, and I can undoubtedly say that they have an incredibly nuanced view on the problem of gun violence, and are honestly a wonderful (and even pragmatic) bunch. Obviously, there are probably some people who have reductive views towards the issue, but I think you might be painting with too broad a brush.

I will also say that I've had the chance to work with the CA chapter of the NRA, and found their lobbyists similarly kind and straight forward (They are also a bit more nuanced than they seem, we even got to work together for funding on the dealer record of sale backlog). Sometimes that actions of the group itself have been a little...iffy..however. But I never had to interact with that aspect beyond their organized efforts to keep our phone's busy non-stop during the last gun control push around Sandy Hook.

Don't find this a particularly compelling thought experiment, I think it's a bit of equivocation. I could similarly say, replace "guns" with "grenade launchers". What we're talking about is a spectrum, and how far down that spectrum gun control should go, I usually don't hear all or nothing stances.

I think you're way ahead of the rest of the debate here. Your chart is infinitely better in a situation where people have eschewed extreme positions and declared a cease fire on straw men, but that's not the state of the discussion in this thread. We're not even at the point where gun control advocates have questioned the idea that more guns lead to more homicides. So, simplistic arguments get a simplistic chart. If people want to make arguments that don't involve, ya' know, posting stand-up comedy, they'll get correspondingly detailed responses.

Agree on all counts.

If I were referring to all gun control advocates, absolutely, but I was just talking about this thread in particular.

You mean false equivalence? Or do you actually think the thought experiment is deliberately deceptive?

Either way, let's flesh it out a bit: my friends on the left tell me the war on drugs is a failure because being illegal only forces them underground, and because restricting drugs is treating the symptom and not the disease. On these issues they have an intuitive understanding of how unrealistic and ineffective these kinds of restrictions are. But this understanding vanishes when we start talking about guns.

The answer is very simple. we have to spread love among the people belonging from different religions. there is a need to eliminate the concept of hate and brutality from our society.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

This segment is so ace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGY6DqB1HX8

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Just to be clear I agree that gun violence needs to be addressed just in ways that don't discard the constitution I read something yesterday about Hilary' s plan and I think it could work

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Before I watch a John Oliver clip I need to know what he DESTROYED or EVISCERATED in it.

It's really arguing against the stigma surrounding mental illness, and the problems with the industry/services meant to help the mentally ill. I didn't find it particularly combative towards anyone except against the type of people who believe mentally ill are all psychopathic killers, who are definitely incorrect.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Sorry, I was kidding; every week there's a viral video of someone like Oliver with a headline about how they "destroyed" such-and-such (usually any political position the person sharing it already thought little of).

Serious response: it's a good clip and I'm glad you shared it.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

I don't want to get too involved in the arguments but just some thoughts I have in regards to the shootings in America, I'm not really following them too much:

- People are saying not to ban guns as people need them for their safety. How come then I don't feel the need to have a gun? And so does the majority of the world?

- What about putting some extra security in schools?

- What about trying to find a reason behind the shootings? Was it a political reason? Religious? People are just losing their minds? After Dark Knight shooting and maybe even Breivik incident (that's outside US though) I was thinking that these shooting are a result of some sort of psychological disorder, police should investigate that, offer some new approaches to the problem maybe?

- As for gun ban... Does anyone know if the killers owned guns legally? If yes, then, I think yeah, it's pretty obvious that gun ban might help.

I think a better question is why you'd think your feelings are the barometer by which everyone else's are judged. Maybe you've never lived in a dangerous area. Maybe you've never lived in a country that had many guns to begin with. Whatever the reasons, that feeling doesn't have universal applicability. I don't feel the need to do or own a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I feel comfortable saying nobody else should have them.

Probably because the majority of the world lives in a completely different country with a completely different culture.

You live in Lithuania, right? According to Wikipedia, Lithuania has "the most homogenous population in the Baltic States." America is much larger, and much more varied. I like this about us, but it's not without its cultural tensions as a result.

And while it's fair to wonder why America has so many guns in the first place, the fact remains that it does. So comparing it to countries where there have never been many to begin with doesn't make much sense. It's kind of like someone in California asking someone in Russia why they waste so much money on snow shoes.

I don't see how that logically follows at all. We know a gun ban wouldn't be a behavioral deterrent, because anyone unconcerned with punishment for murder sure isn't going to be scared off by punishment for gun ownership.

You could make the case that a gun ban could be a logistical deterrent, but I don't see what evidence we have for that; nothing else we ban ends up being particularly hard to get for someone who actually wants it, and in many of these cases we see a fair bit of planning and forethought.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Genetically engineer an army of vampire unicorns to guard the schools

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Genetic engineering as a means to eliminate murderous violent tendencies...might be more plausible in the future, than one thinks.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

I live in the UK now which has extremely varied culture yet gun laws are very strict and people don't seem to be protesting against that.
And again, UK doesn't seem to have that many mass shootings... Coincidence?

Did you ever wonder this?

Just look at it in the simple way.. If you have sweets at home, you are more likely to eat it as it's easily reached. If you don't have any and you are hungry, you'll have to go outside and get it. It's not a hard thing to do it and you will go an etra mile if you're really craving that chocolate but it is a hassle and some people would rather not eat any.
Same with guns... If you really want to shoot someone, neither the law nor the strict gun laws will stop you. I think most of these mass shooters were just plain crazy and easy access to guns is one of the reasons why their plans came true.
Even if one shooting could've been avoided with strict gun laws put in practice, it's a win. And how can owning a gun in order to protect yourself can be justified is beyond me.

Nobody's arguing that it's a "coincidence." The argument is that the entire society is less diverse and has less interest in guns to begin with, and has higher incidences of other things as a result (stabbings, for example). By some measures they may even have more violent crime overall (it's hard to compare because it's measured differently, among other things, but there are several major areas where it's worse).

I discussed it earlier in the thread, in fact.

Exactly. The only people a gun ban would stop are people who aren't particularly committed to the idea, and it's hard to conjure up a person extreme enough to want to kill lots of people but NOT extreme enough to violate a gun ban to do it.

Why do you think that, though? Do you have any knowledge of the shooters or how easy it was for each of them to obtain their guns?

The "if it saves just one life..." logic is wildly untenable. If applied consistently it would lead to the banning of virtually everything. It would also self-contradict, because guns have been used in self-defense to stop tragedies.

Aye, you mentioned that. And my questions in response were why it's beyond you, and why you think that sentiment should be universally applicable. Have you lived in a dangerous neighborhood, for example?

Gabrielle, did you see the charts I posted of declining gun ownership in America? Less homes have guns today than in the past and yet we have an increase in mass shootings. Obviously we need to look elsewhere for the causes.

Our love of violence in America is a big part of these mass shootings. Vornography is out of control....movies, TV and video games sell the idea that killing is fun! It used to be that killing in films was done by the bad guys and NOT shown as justified revenge and made to look cool. Sometime in the last quarter century, many movies started adopting the fantasy revenge killing as a main theme. The idea of going ballistic, getting even and ending in a blaze of gun fire has become part of the national psyche. Add to that, this:

In a nation of 318 million people there's going to be a tiny, tiny number of individuals who have family and or psychological problems and end up retreating from the real world, replacing human contact with technology and escaping into a world of media and video, hyper violence. Locked inside their own heads, visions of glorious revenge killings can take root. These mostly young males often are taking prescribed psychiatric drugs which can increase violent tendencies. With the pharmaceutical companies doping our children in droves, is it any wonder a miniscule number snap and go on a shooting rampage?

I definitely see where you're coming from Citizen, but that obsession with violence and the media is applicable to the majority of Western civilization, and there is always going be that minority like you said, yet if that were strictly true, then those trends would apply to countries like the UK, Australia, New Zealand etc. Yet they don't experience mass shootings so although I think it's probably a combination of factors, and the media is probably one of them, I think one of the most major issues is, like Gabrielle said, accessibility to guns.

Gabrielle, a couple of us said earlier in the thread that we on this side of the pond can't rationalise it because our cultures have such vastly differing attitudes towards this that it's just something we'll probably never be able to comprehend or agree upon :lol:

The only way the us us ever getting tighter gun laws is if the 2nd amendment were to somehow be repealed

Japan has a very violent history, violent video games and the most violent movies (watch a Takashi Miike film some time) but their gun homicide rate per 100,000 people is 0.00 (2008). In the US it's 3.55 (2013). What's the difference?

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

yeah, but the fact that one diverse country has mass shootings and lenient gun laws and another diverse country doesn't suggest that diversity and gun ownership aren't really related. Being diverse doesn't justify having a gun in your home.

I'll check it out later, as I am interesting in this


So that's the point! Even if one person is stopped, how is strick gun laws a bad thing?


No, I don't actually. I asked that earlier. Dark Knight shooter was crazy though, he didn't really have any political/religious agenda, did he? The way I see it, if you shot someone just for the sake of shooting, it is crazy. It's out of the norm.

Gun as a self-defence tool, in my opinion is a wrong idea in general. I'm agaisnt death penalty as well, I believe that America's way of dealing with crime and violence is wrong in general but that's another discussion.

As for banning everything.. Yes, it wouldn't work as banning certain things would have bad consequences..Well, and banning guns has no bad side. Of course, based on your opinion, you could say that gun ban would mean that people can't defend themselves but then again, maybe you wouldn't have to defend yourself that much as the criminal is less likely to have a gun on him to use against you.

Dangerous is not equal to dangerous. I bet there are tons of friendly neighborhoods in US where people own guns justifying it by the same ''I live in dangerous neighborhood'' and in general, does this mean that your circumstances give you the right to use a deadly weapon which could result in murder?

Well, yeah, I do think that guns are not the main reason and solution to this phenomenon.

I do agree with this but don't you think that this proves that this love of violence is kind of part of the American culture now? That would mean that mass shootings are not going away really.

Based on the past, there's absolutely no reason to think so. Unless we undergo a nationwide shock treatment to the problem because doing nothing to just a little bit doesn't work obviously.

I don't know if those of you who live in other countries know why we have gun rights granted to U.S. citizens in the 2nd Amendment of our Constitution. Our Constitution doesn't grant us the right to bear arms for self defense or for sport...Our founding fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment so that an arm population could, if necessary rise up and over through a tyrannical government.

American cultural is very different than other countries.

We've always been violent in America. Our country was born out of violent revolution. We chose to stand up and fight for are independence. We had a bloody civil war that at the heart was about whether or not the government had control over the states rights. We had lawlessness and gun violence in the old west. Even in the mean streets of Chiago and New York we had mass killings between rival gangs. We still have bloody gang warfare and drive by shootings. We love guns and we're violent. That's the way it is.

If it's about saving lives then just outlaw alcohol for recreational use and make it available by prescription only.

Plus by the same logic then guns "save the world too" since if... eh the allied soliders didn't have guns then they'd have lost WWII?

By the same logic then if even one rape or murder is prevented via gun ownership, then it's a win right?

I hope that's not even serious.

http://gunowner.tv/why-defend-yourse...shoots-rapist/

Man, come on now, blaming a TV show for someone going an kill bunch of people is insane. Killing might be fun, in a video game , person that shoots someone in GTA and then goes on to shoot people in real life is obviously mentally challenged, not a games problem. Same goes for movies. If things worked this way we would have increase in Devil hunting, superhero activity, dragon hunters and so on... Look ,look, example, who with the sane mind would read A Song of Ice and Fire (or watch Game of Thrones) and then go on to skin someone? Killing in a video game/movie/comic/book/tv or any other media dose not equal real life! Whenever I play Witcher or Fallout I play as a neutral (look is there something in for me) kinda of character, dose that mean I'll go around with 2 swords and hunt monsters, being the bastard who is in for the money? Nop. People get offended by everything these days, where is your imagination? Also, do we really need to tell adults "look man, throwing the bomb because you saw it in Counter-Strike is not ok" ? And when it comes to children it depends from child to child, and its also a parent problem, developers/directors say its not for kids.

Mate, sorry to disappoint, you are in term of history still a young country, this is not much compared to others, trust me, I know my history. :)

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

I didn't say that. You're taking what I said out of context and turning it into a straw man argument.

I qualified my statement by saying a tiny, tiny portion of American males with family problems and or physiological problems, who are also under a doctors care, can be influenced by overtly violent movies and video games. Please go back and read my post, slowly.

So your post is just telling us that there are people with mental problems? Cool.

They only have a few guns in Japan.

Someone will say "What if he had a knife" - go over all these mass shootings. Maybe one or two would have been killed, but you have to get very close to someone's personal space, and even then, most gun violence don't end up in deaths, and most of those are when someone is asleep (usually a spouse or other family member).

Its pretty clear that Citizens post wasn't saying anything you said it did. So own up to it, and don't respond to YOU jumping to hasty conclusions being exposed with snarky responses, it really doesn't work on anyone.

You're not being constructive, you're being dismissive with statements like that. That's a posting tactic when someone doesn't have much to say. I'm willing to discuss this but only if it's kept above board.

I deeply apologize if I offended you in any way. It's crystal clear now. :rolleyes:

Ok, let's step on the ball as we say. There are plenty of people out there who have problems and need help with them, but anything can trigger them, say something bad and bam, you are dead. My point is, it can be anything and it can't be fixed by removing a game ,movie etc (not saying you suggested we should do so). So if anything, health care should be better.

Surely if you have a serious problem, whether it be personally or as a society, you try to find a solution rather than just saying it's the way it is?

Khan, one point I was making in my post is that:

The vast majority of Americans don't go on shooting sprees. That includes people who have mental difficulties.

It's the media that makes it seem like every school in America is a war zone, it's not.

If there are 3 highly publicized school shootings in a year that equals 1 out of every 100 million Americans doing it. That's such a tiny number that you can almost say it's not really a problem...Except of course to the families and communities that suffer such a horror. I'm not trying to diminish it, but without the media circus, school shootings weren't be perceived as common place.

It's not "one diverse country" and "another diverse country," that's the point: America is a melting pot of cultures. The UK may be more diverse than Lithuania, but it's not as diverse as the United States. And it's not about justification, it's an explanation: different cultures clash. It's not a very pretty truth, but it's something we see again and again. Homogeneous populations have different cultures, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

That means you're just guessing. I'm not sure why you'd advance a guess as if it were an argument.

Guess might be too generous, too, because what anecdotal evidence we have about the shooters cuts against this guess: these events are usually planned. They seem to pretty much never be a case of someone who loses it and just happens to have guns nearby.

Agreed. And are those the kinds of people you'd expect to make rational, weighted decisions about the risks of violating gun regulations?

Yes, it does: people defend themselves with guns all the time. By your logic, if "even one person" is saved by defending themselves with guns (and it's a lot more than one), they should be legal, which makes the "even one person" logic self-contradictory, as I pointed out in the last post.

And if there were a good way to make sure lots of criminals gave up their guns, that might be an interesting point, but there isn't.

What?

Unless you're only proposing banning guns in certain neighborhoods, this doesn't really address the issue at all.

I've asked a couple of times if you've ever lived in a dangerous area. Can I safely assume the answer is "no"?

Killing in self-defense is not murder, by definition. And I hope that pretty much everybody has some circumstances under which they would use force to protect someone else, yeah.

Absolutely. I'm British and if you cut in a queue, I will publically shame you. I'll be openly disapproving, shake my head and I will tut you. I will tut you TO YOUR FACE!!!! :mad:

Now, if you're a tourist, you may not notice, but if you're a Brit you will die inside. :D

You could say it’s false equivalence (which I think of as a type of equivocation). There are some parallels between drugs and guns (I also think there should be a spectrum approach on drugs) but interchanging them in the argument creates more confusion than clarity.

Here’s what I mean by spectrum: it seems reasonable to have some restrictions on both weapons and drugs, and also that neither one should be outright banned. On the far extreme, I think there’s not a right for a citizen to own a nuke. I also think that if there was a drug that gives an incredible high for 5 minutes, but then the person’s arms and legs fall off, that drug should be banned. On the other side, caffeine (by all means a drug) seems to act as a mild stimulant that many are able to use responsibly (though there certainly are some health and addiction risks that seem to go unnoticed), and many are able to use knives for practical and non-violent purposes.

Somewhere in between knives and nukes is a spot where I’d say, okay, beyond this line I don’t think we should allow these weapons to be sold. Somewhere between coffee and super-high limbs-fall-off drug is a line where I’d say, okay, beyond this I don’t think we should allow these drugs to be sold. In the area before these lines are shades of regulation, where yes, this should be allowed in principle, but it should be heavily regulated (only in lab settings/only for specially permitted cases), and before that a shade of medium regulation (Doctor’s prescription only/licenses), and so on.

The reason I find it to be more confusing than helpful is that the line on the spectrum is already difficult enough on one issue, comparing it to another issue magnifies those disputes. I might think pot is analogous to a crossbow, you might think it’s analogous to an assault rifle. It’s trying to have both those conversations simultaneously, when I don’t think the translation works (at least, not until there’s agreement on at least one spectrum).

Now, all of that is a bit moot because the scenario you brought up next works much better for me because it limits the scope of what we’re talking about, but I wanted to clarify.

I know very little about weapons trafficking, but on the face of it I think you have a point that if we were to ban guns, it’s not as if we could realistically expect them to disappear. Off the top of my head, some differences are that:

I imagine manufacturing weapons is more difficult than manufacturing drugs (so restrictions cutting into the supply are not as easily replaced by home-brewed operations in the case of guns).

The illegality of drugs create a situation where addicts are less likely to pursue treatment. I don’t see a clean analogy in guns for that scenario.

Guns (at least the ones that would be banned) seem more difficult to traffic, the amount of buyers would ostensibly be lower, the product is larger, and I’d imagine between the two scenarios of seeing a drug deal go down and a gun deal go down, one is more likely to immediately contact the police in the case of the second.

But you are right that we couldn’t expect guns to disappear in the aftermath of a ban.

That said, the US is so lax on gun restrictions that the black market is supplied via purchases at legal locations (often gun shows). Guns are actively trafficked out of the US and into Mexico.

Again, I’m not advocating a total ban on guns. But I think that doesn’t mean we can’t put some sensible restrictions in place.

The John Oliver video is indeed pretty good. I’m always a bit upset that the jokes are a bit formulaic (the non-sequitur “saying *topic* is like *simplification* is like saying *good thing* is like *bad thing*. I’m not even saying that joke form is bad, they just lean on it a bit too hard) because they are suspiciously evenly spaced out. It feels less like using humor to condense a complicated subject, and more like reward to keep my attention. All in all though, I think the show picks typically excellent topics in that they are usually unnoticed or ignored problems that just a little exposure can get people riled up about.


Just an observation. I’ve heard the argument about keeping the gap between civilian arms and government arms as narrow as possible, but it seems like if the gap was the main concern we’d also hear calls for demilitarization and reducing the firepower that government agents (e.g. police) have. But I typically hear the opposite from those very same people, which seems counter intuitive, no?

Can’t say I’m satisfied by your line of argument here.

Partially because it seems to imply that the nation is wholly set against gun control because of a violent history. And to be frank, the gun control “brand” isn’t doing the best right now(partially because of extreme positions taken by advocates, but also partially because of misinformation). But I saying we’re just violent and we love guns is a mischaracterization.

Take, for example, some of the actual gun control issues up for debate. Just recently (but before this shooting) there was some Preventive Medicine research on where public opinion is at 2 years after the Newtown shootings. The findings on specific issues are what interest me the most:

http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image...001668-gr1.jpg

Edit: That image cut off the caption explaining what the bottom axis represents: the horizontal axis is %support for the position

The first 3 policies strike me as particularly sensible (I’m for the last 2, but I’m not sure how we go about performing temporary removals, I’d have to know more). And support seems to cut across the divide between gun owners and not. Public opinion is not the end-all be-all metric for what law should be, but I’d like to reframe what a gun control agenda actually means.

We’re not going to get a ban on handguns, we probably aren’t even going to get a ban on assault weapons. But having to go through those discussions when that’s not what’s on the table is tiresome.

I find your thoughts a little hard to follow in this section. You start with saying that there are a small amount of highly publicized school shootings, and if the media didn’t highly publicize them, there would be none (by definition, right?). Surely we’d want to talk about number of school shootings (or just shootings), publicized or not?

I also find the last sentence odd because in the very first post of this thread, you say:

If you’re playing devil’s advocate that’s totally alright (it’s a good thing to have in these conversations really), but your position seems to shift a lot. I don’t think you’re a bad person, and from what I’ve seen you post elsewhere on films, I know you’re not a dumb person. Forgive me if it seems I’m implying either.

Regardless, I think a parallel argument that the effect of the media’s widespread coverage of shootings exaggerates the actual danger that one is in of dying by gun violence (which is relatively small, even where the rates are highest) is a fair one. But I also think it’s fair to say that if one’s primary concern was media worrying the populace about things that are actually not likely to harm them, there are more salient misrepresentations:

https://localtvkfor.files.wordpress....sgundeaths.png

Note: There's a version of this graph that includes 2001 (and 9/11), which had a death total of 2,990 for the year. But I can't upload from here and I couldn't find a hosted version of that graph in my quick search.

I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t “trade” gun control for other issues (health care, prisoner rehabilitation, education, to name a few) because it’s true, progress on those issues would likely net a greater, and clearer, benefit. But that sort of trade doesn’t seem to be on the table.

Slappy, I will try to answer all of your points, but I can't do that right now as I'm busy. I'll address one for now.

You and Sane asked roughly the same question or statements:

and
To explain... first I had seen this post by CiCi...

After reading that I decided to write a brief expose on the history of violence in America for the benefit of those who weren't familiar with America's past, as we have a multi national board. So I wrote this

That last line that I italics was meant to be an epilog to my expose. It works from a writer's perspective as it sums up the rest of my expose. Literally I'm saying what others have said, that American culture has a history of guns, violence and crime which is unique to us. Not all of us of course. That post wasn't meant as a solution.

No problem; clarification is good.

There's at least one major counterbalance, though, which is that drugs are consumable, and guns are not. Guns can last a really long time.

But yes, there are many differences and it's fair to point them out. Some things are harder or easier to ban for many different reasons. But almost everything shares the distinction that banning it isn't generally effective and has lots of unintended consequences, especially if there's a huge demand for them and hundreds of millions of them already around.

This goes back to the "state of the debate in this thread" thing I mentioned, though: several people here are calling for a total ban on guns. And that kind of needs to be addressed and rebutted before we can get into the sensible restrictions you're talking about.

I also noted, earlier in the thread, that a lot of gun control advocates have no idea of what current gun control laws are. Sometimes you'll ask them what a sensible restriction would be, and they'll list something that's already law. Combine this with the general ignorance about what gun terms even mean (having no idea what an "automatic" or "assault" weapon is seems to be the biggest issue), and one doesn't always get the sense that people are making a good faith effort to understand the thing they want to ban.

Getting past these problems is a prerequisite for any serious discussion about guns.

This is largely unrelated, but I wanted to say that I had the same thought and that this is very well put.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

I heard that people on 4chan were egging the shooter on.....disgusted with humanity

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

2 more college shootings in the US today.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Did they shoot enough people? You know it doesn't count if the numbers aren't big enough.

1 dead and some injuries at both. Not sure if your post is serious or not, though.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

It was kind of serious in as much as there is a limit after which it is deemed a mass shooting. If we start taking shootings into account regardless of number or injuries/fatalities, I wonder how high the numbers would be?

What?! I didn't hear anything... lemme see....

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Oh, it was just a fight in a college campus parking lot that escalated to gun violence. Happens every day.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

in my country ( india ) guns are not officially allowed to be possessed by people except those who have licences .

on the other hand in my neighbouring country ( pakistan ) there has been a proliferation of kalashnikovs ( AK 47 , AK 56 etc ) ever since the days when the soviet union invaded afghanistan and pakistan decided to wage holy war against it .

this has led to less violence in india than in pakistan , where the streets are unsafe at night and the major highways are full of gangs armed with automatic rifles .

In the U.S. guns are not officially allowed to be possessed by people except those who have licences (here they're called permits).

Unfortunately, criminals ignore permits the same way they ignore "gun free zones."

Cultural homogeny - 99% of Japanese citizens are native Japanese.

I believe that much of the violence in general in the states including gun violence relates to racial tensions and a lack of strong shared cultural values - which is why it's so high in "diverse" areas such as Chicago.

Why are no politicians suggesting banning 4chan?

Me too.

Interestingly, that's the same reason they say there was no looting in Japan after the 2011 Earthquake / Tsunami.

Yoda said earlier that Lithuania was one of the most homogenous countries in the world and yet their murder rate is higher than the US - just not with guns.

Australia is one of the most multi-cultural countries in the world. Our firearm homicide rate is about 0.20 from memory - the US is 3.55.

Many European countries are very culturally diverse but their firearm homicide rates are much closer to Japan's than America's.

This is primarily due to organized crime - just as Honduras is the murder capital of the world due to being controlled by cartels.

Culturally Australia is very homogeneous - race does not have direct bearing on culture. Australians have a good sense of pride in their country and community, much as many Europeans such as Germans do from my experience.

Just as in the fact that the majority of Iraqis are Arab Muslims, yet culturally there is much division and strife.

Most non-white immigrants to Australia were not taken there as slaves against their will and later segregated.

Americans however are too materialistic - which leads to a breakdown in cultural unity.

You're equating culture with race and ethnicity, which is not the same.

Areas with lack of cultural unity and high population density tend to have higher rates of violence - this is why places with strong gun control like Chicago and Washington DC have higher rates of violence than places like Plano, TX.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Sorry,forgot about this thread.
How can you say it and how can you prove it?
Ok but there's a thing called deterrent. Banned guns - less gun crime. It doesn't mean no gun crime.
You're basically saying '' there's no point to ban guns because it's very easy to obtain them anyway''. How does that make sense?
It's not about them fearing to break the law. It is about them putting the extra effort to obtain the gun illegally.

This is just word play you're trying to use against me. First of all, most people who have a gun are not skilled gunmen which would mean that they could kill someone when 'defending' themselves. In most of these cases, you would go to prison and get done for manslaughter.
So how gun is an effective protection, I don't know. Saying one person is saved by defending themselves is actually saying the offender is killed. However you look at it, it results in someone losing a life. Of course, there may be cases where the offender only gets injured or disarmed but I would believe these are the rare cases.
There was actually a case in UK when some boys used to break in this farmer's house frequently and one day, the farmer shot one of the boys. Is that a good example on how guns serve the purpose of protection?
It takes forever for certain laws to be enforced. Some of them can never be enforced (prohibition is a good example). It's not like you ban cigarettes on Monday, and Tuesday no one is smoking in public places.
Same with guns. Obviously, innocent people would lose their guns quicker than potential criminals but with strict rules, the latter would have less guns or less opportunities to obtain one.
Haha, it's an expression, sorry. :D It means that what is dangerous for one person, might not be dangerous for another. I may think having a glass of vodka is dangerous whereas someone doesn't see danger in robbing banks.
Well, I lived in a neighborhood where someone was sliced with a machete literally 10 meters from my house. Shop assistant was shot there as well a couple of years ago. I was told by people that the area is dangerous and I did use to see some suspicious looking people around the area. Nothing ever happened to me. I wasn't safe but I was feeling safe.
It's normally classes as manslaughter which would give you prison time.

General demographics are tracked by some form of census in every developed country.

Deterrent against what? Not mass shootings, which are (ostensibly) the topic. The overwhelming majority of these incidents involve weeks or months of planning, and a shooter (or shooters) who plan to die as a result. The "extra effort to obtain the gun illegally" is trivial in comparison.

What part of it doesn't make sense? Laws are bad if they restrict people's freedoms without meaningfully preventing or reducing the thing they're trying to prevent.

It's not wordplay, it's just logic. You say we should do something if it saves "even one person." Legal gun ownership has saved at least one person. You're free to make other arguments about gun control, but that particular argument (which is clearly employed because it's simple and morally dramatic, and not because it's intellectually defensible) doesn't make sense.

What part of the idea is confusing? If you're attacked, and you have a weapon, that increases your chances of defending yourself.

There are related downsides (the possibility of accidents, as you mention later), but I'm not sure what part of "a gun can be effective protection" is hard to understand.

Except in one instance the lost life is an innocent person and in the other it's a criminal who forced an innocent person to defend themselves. So unless you want to take the ridiculous position that all actions which result in a loss of life should be seen as morally and legally identical, it's not clear what point you're trying to make.

This sounds like another argument based on a guess, but okay, let's say this is true: rare compared to what? And are you suggesting that if it were common enough, you'd find the argument persuasive?

Related question: why do you think banning guns will deter criminals (who by definition are already willing to break laws), but the increased likelihood of an armed victim won't? You're simultaneously arguing that criminals will find gun laws to be a deterrent, but won't be deterred by an increased chance of their victims being armed. How does that make sense?

Out of curiosity: why do you think prohibition can't be enforced, but gun laws can? What would your response be if I started quoting alcohol-related death totals?

That might stop petty muggers, but it wouldn't stop mass shooters, terrorists, or anyone particularly determined. Which means the most high-profile attacks (again, the ones that almost invariably spark discussions like this) would continue.

Also, if you admit that innocent people would "lose their guns quicker," doesn't that mean there'll be a prolonged period of time where lots of criminals still have guns, and no law-abiding citizens do? During this time, won't things be even more dangerous for law-abiding citizens than they are now?

Thanks for the explanation, but what does that expression have to do with what we were talking about? You said you couldn't imagine why someone would need a gun, and I told you that some people live in dangerous places. IE: places where they feel they may be attacked or robbed. I'm pretty sure any reasonable definition of "dangerous" has to include violent attack.

I'm glad you felt safe (though one incident doesn't really tell us if you've lived in dangerous places or not), but why's that an argument for anything? You may or may not have been safe, however you felt, and even if you were, that has nothing to do with people in completely different places and situations.You live half a world away from the people you're talking about: why would you feeling safe in a random neighborhood in Lithuania years ago be an argument that somebody in Detroit or Chicago should, too?

This is simply incorrect; killing in self-defense is not inherently a crime, let alone one that results in prison time.

It's possible to engage in "voluntary manslaughter" with what's called "imperfect self-defense," where someone is recognized as having an unreasonable (but honestly held) belief that they had to kill to protect themselves, however. But even that is nowhere near "murder."

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

I don't think you can legislate understanding. I don't think there's a way to stop the violence. Too many are busy with semantics, thinking that the problem is solved once you call it terrorism, and the media feeds into the garbage because everyone gets a slice of the pie by exploiting and trivializing everything.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Plus, for at least the last 15 years psychologists have been saying that stopping the constant attention on these people, the coverage, 24 hours news, photos, delving into their personal history, etc is the best way of preventing more attacks.

It's their cash cow... They are trolls who exploit every situation. Everyone wants 10% of the corruption too.

Re: Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?
 

Of course. That goes without saying.

Totally agreed...and I've thought that for several years now.
Totally agree here too. The media causes more of the mass shootings, than the the gun manufactures do.

LYRICS "Dirty Laundry"...DON HENLEY

I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something
Something I can use
People love it when you lose
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor
But I wound up here
I just have to look good
I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down...

We got the bubble headed
Bleached blonde
Comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash
With a gleam in her eye
It's interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation
Is the head dead yet
You know the boys in the newsroom
Got a running bet
Get the widow on the set
We need dirty laundry

You don't really need to find out
What's going on
You don't really want to know
Just how far it's gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Kick 'em when they're up
Kick 'em when they're down...

Dirty little secrets, Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers
In everybody's pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry

We can do the Innuendo
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done
We haven't told you a thing
We all know that Crap is King
Give us dirty laundry