Another School Shooting in America, is there an answer?

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.

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load them with rubber bullets

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?

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

I like the sound of that!

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."

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.


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.

This segment is so ace.

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

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.

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.

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.

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"Anything less than immortality is a complete waste of time."

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.

Genetically engineer an army of vampire unicorns to guard the schools