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.

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.

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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?

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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

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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.