# 27 dead, 18 children **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 14, 2012, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050 "2012-12-14T18:38:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![bashere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@bashere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bashere)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/241 "2012-12-15T01:12:28Z")
> [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](#): > > …doesn’t require people to follow a causal chain of more than one link! Wow, now I’m really depressed. Thanks a lot. ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/242 "2012-12-15T01:14:17Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > In America, you give drugs to the crazies and then let them buy guns. > > What a country. Not only that, but in America, even if you are poor, you can buy a gun for much less money (and probably much less effort, if you know where to go) than getting health care, or mental health care. ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/243 "2012-12-15T01:20:54Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Latest news reports say they were his mom’s guns, but fuck if they’ve gotten anything else about this story right on the first try today. Oh, sure thats ok then. Decide you want to go kill some kids, just raid your moms odds and ends drawer and get her guns, no problem. If I went insane tomorrow and wanted to shoot people at a school, I would not be able to do it. I could not get a gun. I mean, I guess I could join some criminal or terrorist organisation but even the IRA don’t hand out the armalites to everybody shouting “Brits out”, I would have work myself up the ranks to get my hands on anything good. I guess I could go from farmhouse to farmhouse looking for the odd farmer that has a shotgun he’d lend me, but thats not really practical for a spur of the moment homicidal rampage now is it. If I wanted to kill kids tomorrow I could not get a gun to do it. I guess Ireland just isnt a free country. ---
**Author:** ![artemis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/91b2a8/32.png) [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/244 "2012-12-15T01:21:07Z")
> [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](#): > > I’m not being facetious. But they’re still pretty low down the list. My **first five** solutions to drive down gun violence are: > > A.) Eliminate income inequality. This is the big one. The shit-stopper. > B.) Revive affirmative action and make it much more aggressive than before. In decreasing order of priority, target gender, geography (rural esp.), and race. > C.) Much more extensive mental health counciling and psychiatry. This necessitates having a health care program that’s even more comprehensive than the ACA. > D.) If you can’t get rid of the War on Drugs entirely, make the drugs that have a high joy-to-harm ratio (like LSD, marijuana, mescaline) legal while making/keeping illegal the ones that have a low ratio (tobacco, cocaine, heroine) and put a large tax on alcohol. > E.) Education, education, education. Specifically, the next social engineering campaign should specifically target bullying and exclusionism and. > > I have more than that, but America’s gun violence rate could be lower than **Sweden’s** in a generation without even touching gun ownership. Good ideas, every one. There’s only one problem with them: they require us to actually do some _work_. (Not to mention spend some money!) Passing ineffectual gun control laws is much easier. Who cares that they won’t change anything? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/245 "2012-12-15T01:23:27Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Pretty soon the gun nuts will check in with their masturbatory fantasies about how more people packing heat would have gotten to the shooter before the cops could. And of course “NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT GUNS!” Jesus titty-fucking Christ. How many people have to die for your fucking “right” to a steel phallus? Ironically, it was the Obama administration that said that now is not the time to have a discussion about public policy decisions. I’d say you were wrong again, but that would imply that one time you were actually right instead of just trolling. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/246 "2012-12-15T01:27:22Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Oh, sure thats ok then. > > Decide you want to go kill some kids, just raid your moms odds and ends drawer and get her guns, no problem. > > If I went insane tomorrow and wanted to shoot people at a school, I would not be able to do it. I could not get a gun. I mean, I guess I could join some criminal or terrorist organisation but even the IRA don’t hand out the armalites to everybody shouting “Brits out”, I would have work myself up the ranks to get my hands on anything good. I guess I could go from farmhouse to farmhouse looking for the odd farmer that has a shotgun he’d lend me, but thats not really practical for a spur of the moment homicidal rampage now is it. > > If I wanted to kill kids tomorrow I could not get a gun to do it. I guess Ireland just isnt a free country. Hey, you were the one insinuating that we just hand out the guns to crazy people, I was just correcting it. I don’t even **own** a fucking gun, FYI, and I’ve never liked them. (NB: Full disclosure - my husband owns a shotgun for deer hunting. I’m not even sure where it’s locked up, mostly because I don’t give a shit about it.) ---
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/247 "2012-12-15T01:29:14Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > I don’t even **own** a fucking gun, FYI, and I’ve never liked them. Hey, children are dying for your right to bear arms, the least you could do is have one. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/248 "2012-12-15T01:29:19Z")
Last year, Handguns killed 48 people in Japan. 8 people in Great Britain. 34 people in Switzerland. 52 people in Canada. 58 people in Israel. 21 people in Sweden. 42 people in West Germany. 10, 728 people in The United States. NOT from the Onion. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/249 "2012-12-15T01:32:48Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Last year, Handguns killed > > 48 people in Japan. > 8 people in Great Britain. > 34 people in Switzerland. > 52 people in Canada. > 58 people in Israel. > 21 people in Sweden. > 42 people in West Germany. > 10, 728 people in The United States. > > NOT from the Onion. See? Gun laws didn’t stop people being killed in all those other countries! So obviously it’s totally useless to try in the US. (West Germany?) ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/250 "2012-12-15T01:33:16Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > Hey, children are dying for your right to bear arms, the least you could do is have one. :mad: Yeah yeah. Good job on pissing off someone who might have otherwise agreed with you, though! _applause_ We need to deal with mental health issues first, not guns. Gun killing sprees are the ugly symptom of our failure to provide adequate health care. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Dord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@The\_Dord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Dord)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/251 "2012-12-15T01:37:40Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > Yeah yeah. Good job on pissing off someone who might have otherwise agreed with you, though! _applause_ > > We need to deal with mental health issues first, not guns. Gun killing sprees are the ugly symptom of our failure to provide adequate health care. I agree. Our country frowns upon mental illness and we finally (as a nation) need to have a frank talk about it with our politicans/friends/family/doctors, etc. It does not need to be swept under the rug anymore. As sad as this event is, this might be the catalyst for change. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/252 "2012-12-15T01:40:44Z")
Y’know, it sort of fascinated me to read about how Thomas Eagleton was actually outright mocked in public for admitting to depression - teased about electroshock! It’s a huge contrast to attitudes even today, so I think there’s been a lot of progress, even if there is a ways to go yet. ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/253 "2012-12-15T01:43:44Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > We need to deal with mental health issues first, not guns. Gun killing sprees are the ugly symptom of our failure to provide adequate health care. I fail to see why we can’t do both at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Lago\_Ys-Transform](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lago_Ys-Transform)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/254 "2012-12-15T01:44:42Z")
RE: Cartooniverse Okay, so now tell me why you think that despite Sweden, Norway, France, and Canada only having only [1/3rd fewer guns per capita](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country) have **much lower murder rates per capita** than the United States. Like, the United States has three times as many gun murders as France and more than five times as many as Sweden. I’m not saying that gun control will be completely useless at further driving down crime. But those reductions are seriously going to be tiny and bullshit unless we face this one, tiny little fact that we can’t really ignore: **The culture of the United States sucks and is full of fail.** There. I’ve said it. > [@Carol the Impaler](#): > > I fail to see why we can’t do both at the same time. Because it’s not ‘both at the same time’ it’s ‘priority number #16 on a list of things that we need to do to drive down gun violence’. The United Kingdom has a rate of gun ownership an order of magnitude lower than France yet has a slightly higher murder rate. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/255 "2012-12-15T01:47:46Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Last year, Handguns killed > > 48 people in Japan. > 8 people in Great Britain. > 34 people in Switzerland. > 52 people in Canada. > 58 people in Israel. > 21 people in Sweden. > 42 people in West Germany. > 10, 728 people in The United States. > > NOT from the Onion. But but but … FREEDOM! Seriously, could this be put on large billboards across the entire USA? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/256 "2012-12-15T01:50:12Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > But but but … > > FREEDOM! > > Seriously, could this be put on large billboards across the entire USA? They’d just end up full of holes from the gun filth taking potshots at them. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/257 "2012-12-15T01:51:40Z")
I have to admit, I’m still wondering about that West Germany thing. Are the stats old? Do the two former Germanies have wildly different crime rates? ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/258 "2012-12-15T01:52:37Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > You might be right about our having seen the last Republican president in our lifetimes though. For reasons mentioned in my last post, you guys have been busily manufacturing Democratic voters for the last fifty years with your crappy educational systems Yes, liberals are really big about cutting funding for education. > [@](#): > > enthusiastic support of illegal immigration Yes, because farmers and other business owners hate having cheap and exploitable labor, that traditionally democratic voting bloc. And Republicans did so much to stop it when they were in power. > [@](#): > > welfare and housing projects and their progeny Because it’s better for the poor to be literally on the street, sleeping on the pavement, since they can’t get a job that gives them more than 25 hours a week at minimum wage and therefore can’t afford typical rent payments. This whole putting people with small incomes in low income housing thing, really a bad, bad idea. I must subscribe to your newsletter. > [@](#): > > not to mention income-shifting and sex-targeted government-enforced giveaways like birth control and proposed giveaways like abortions. Wait for it… Wait for it… Here it comes. > [@](#): > > It’s obvious that the more losers and dependents you guys can crank out, the more votes you’ll have. So, let’s recap. The folks who want better access to birth control, and want legal access to abortion, \*\*those \*\*are the people churning out all the losers? Not the “never wear condoms, it makes jesus cry” trailer trash whose public education consisted of watching two dogs fuck, since they go to a private church/school which insists on telling them nothing about where babies come from and how to prevent it. > [@](#): > > I’m amazed that our elections are still as close as they are. Elections are close because it takes a few seconds for pray the condoms away Billy Ray to fuck his cousin. It takes a lifetime to educate their inbred offspring, you putz. But eventually the old conservatives who insist on policies of ignorance die off, and the stupidity level of the entire country goes down. ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/259 "2012-12-15T01:58:51Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Last year, Handguns killed > > 48 people in Japan. > 8 people in Great Britain. > 34 people in Switzerland. > 52 people in Canada. > 58 people in Israel. > 21 people in Sweden. > 42 people in West Germany. > 10, 728 people in The United States. > > NOT from the Onion. Dubious Face Here is a more accurate chart, but not as sensational. And it takes a bit of brain power to read and interpret > **[List of countries by firearm-related homicide rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate)** > > This is a list of countries by firearm-related homicide rate per 100,000 population by year. > Homicide figures may include justifiable homicides along with criminal homicides, depending upon jurisdiction and reporting standards. Not included are accidental deaths, or justifiable deaths by any means other than by firearm. > All the data in this table is from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). There are 2 countries in the UNODC dataset that are missing from the table below: Egypt (2... ---
**Author:** ![Hbns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hbns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hbns)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050/260 "2012-12-15T02:02:10Z")
> [@Lago\_Ys-Transform](#): > > **The culture of the United States sucks and is full of fail.** +10,728 For the smug UK’ers, how soon you forget: Michael Ryan Thomas Hamilton Derrick Bird [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/27-dead-18-children/644050.md?page=14)