But all those countries are groaning under the weight of tyrannical governments, their disarmed and oppressed people powerless to overthrow them. Except Switzerland for some reason.
Only the people of the US are truly free, and if it takes a few thousand killings to keep it that way, it’s a small price for them to pay for us, isn’t it?
Ah, more mind-reading. How many fingers am I holding up?
I love that at about 1:13 right in the middle of the frame there’s a guy who stands up, takes a sip from his beer, and starts flipping off the shooter while yelling “fuck you, motherfucker”. As soon as the shots start, he crouches down, but when they stop, he’s back up flipping a bird.
Are you being this obtuse on purpose? Are you really this stupid?
The point is that you can make the US seem like it’s NOT the developed country with the most mass shootings if you a) carefully select the time frame used and b) tweak definitions so you can remove data from your data set.
The table is using outlier events to claim a broad fact. It’s intellectually dishonest at best.
If the table you gave was actually relevant, it should show a consistent relationship over time. But it doesn’t. If any five-year period before or after the specific five-year period chosen was used, some countries wouldn’t be anywhere close to being on that table. The US would, tho.
I don’t know. Perhaps reliable data wasn’t available, perhaps they didn’t look at countries below a given per-capita GDP, who knows.
Hypothetically we could say you are so full of shit you squeak going around corners. Do you know that he tried to get a gun and failed? Hypothetically maybe we could say he just wanted to blow shit up and a gun wasn’t as satisfying?
How many truck bomb massacres have we had in the US since McVeigh by the way?
I’m curious.
If there are crazy people around, maybe we should remove access to things that a) make it really easy to kill people and b) only exist to kill people.
Of course, you could also claim that the US somehow has more crazy people than other countries - which would seem to be an even stronger argument for gun control, but you’re stupid, so YMMV.
I do care about the victims - but I’m more interested in reducing the odds of having to care about another set of victims.
See the poem above about fences and ambulances.
This seemed wrong to me but I just checked and only 3 people died during the Boston Marathon bombing.
In general, I see guns as a useful tool that is very similar to cars in that mostly they are used for fun but occasionally have the benefit of being critical for survival and then occasionally are used recklessly and either kill the operator or innocent people. Because of that, I’d be ok with guns being regulated much more closely to cars with licensing and registration but I’d also open up what people are able to own so that dangerous toys like Challengers and suppressors were both commonly available.
In the end, I think that grief and anger for the victims is a natural first reaction but isn’t helpful for anything but making the people who experience them feel better. It’s a terrible shame that this happened and I think first the fact-finding needs to occur to determine what happened and how it happened and then if it was achieved legally those loopholes need to be plugged and if it happened illegally then we need to figure out how to enforce the laws on the books appropriately.
One middle?
Bolding mine. Then why doesn’t your side shut the fuck up with the screaming, fear-mongering “OMG, liberals are going to take our guns!”? (Cite: any statement by the NRA.) Oh, that’s right. Then people would quit buying more guns. Because they are only for self-defense and you should have a dozen or more just to be on the safe side. Robust 2nd Amendment brought to you by American Outdoor Brands.
:smack:
I find I can get along quite well without a gun but not so much without a car.
Some of the speculation making the rounds is that he didn’t need illegal fully automatic weapons-just legally bought semis and a trigger crank. Anyone knowledgeable about this topic care to respond?
PolitiFact excoriated Obama’s claim “This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”
They point out:**
Over the decade and a half studied, the researchers found 23 incidents of mass shootings in the other 10 countries, resulting in 200 dead and 231 wounded. In the United States over the same period, there were 133 incidents that left 487 dead and 505 wounded.**
See ? 23 incidents divided by 10 = 2.3 per country
versus
USA = 133
That showed him !
Lookit all these people having fun! (And perhaps a few fleeing for their lives, but mostly this is pure recreation!)
Link.
Don’t need a gun. Can use bombs, poison, gas, cars, trucks, planes, or a trebuchet.
If you Second Amendment Absolutists are comfortable resting on your laurels, safe in the knowledge that the constitution says what it says, and it doesn’t matter what the people think, just remember that the constitution is a piece of paper. It only exists because we all agree that it exists.
When public opinion sways against your preferred position the constitution will be changed. You’ll yell and scream, but it will happen. Where in the constitution does it talk about same sex marriage? Yet somehow the Supreme Court decided that George Washington and John Adams must have meant SSM when they were drafting the Constitution.
When your position becomes wildly out of step with public opinion, the courts will stop acting as if the 2nd Amendment provides an individual right to bear arms, and all your complaints about activist judges won’t matter one bit, because the citizenry won’t care. There are more guns than ever in the US, but they’re owned by fewer and fewer people. It used to be nearly every household had a rifle and/or shotgun, because people lived in the country and they shot deer and groundhogs and coyotes. Gun ownership was normal. But our population is becoming more and more urban, and those country folk, the common clay of the new west are becoming a smaller and smaller minority. Where I grew up hunting was just normal. Now 40 years later where I live, and it just isn’t anymore. I grew up with rifles in the house. My kids didn’t. And their kids certainly won’t. So guns will be increasingly seen, not as just a normal part of life, but as a hobby for cranks and weirdos.
Concern troll mode [ON]: If you really cared about preserving your right to bear arms, you’d be trying to sway public opinion in your favor. When another massacre happens, you’d have something worthwhile to say other than telling people upset by the massacre to fuck the fuck off. The current NRA strategy is an absolute stonewall, against anything and everything, because if you give the gun-grabber hoplophobes an inch, they’ll take a mile. That strategy will work until it doesn’t, and then you’ll lose everything.
All of which are regulated far more than guns are.
Looks pretty fishy to me.
Didn’t work too hard on it, but I could find only one mass shooting in Norway and three in Finland ( strangely only one in that given time frame ).
That’s like ever.
Funny how they happened to pick up just those years.
I was going to make a comment earlier but since then the various predictable regurgitations of the right-wing gun apologists has only reinforced my sentiments, which can be summarized in this simple Q&A:
Q: In light of yet another horrific incident of gun violence, what is now going to be done about the extraordinary gun violence in America?
A: Absolutely nothing.
Q: But this was the worst mass shooting in America in modern history. Surely even Republicans must feel that doing nothing would be unconscionable. Don’t these guys even have the rudiments of a conscience?
A: No.
Q: I can’t believe that absolutely nothing will change after this.
A: Look, do you have a problem with English comprehension? Sweet fuck-all is going to change, except maybe the NRA might try to use the opportunity to proliferate more guns.
I think that about sums it up. I no longer have words for this.
It’s not right to suggest Americans want nothing to happe**n **when when this stuff happens.
*With one exception, Pew polls taken after many of the high-profile mass shootings suggest that Americans typically favor more gun ownership after such incidents.
*CNN 2015
Some of us are missing the point. It’s not just laws; it’s the gun culture that we worship as a society. We’re told that the second amendment is precious and not to be infringed under any circumstance. And we’re ridiculed (see folks in this thread) if we say anything about it. It’s almost at a point where your precious, fucking guns are now as incorruptible your beloved jesus.
We love shoot-em-up movies, shoot-em-up TV shows, shoot-em-up reality shows, etc. We fucking love watching folks putting holes in bitches and/or the aftermath of solving the criminal case surrounding it. It’s great entertainment… never mind that it’s obscene and quite misanthropic.
This problem ain’t gonna be solved by increasing gun laws but that’s a good first step. I’d go so far as to say it’s a necessary step. The pro gun side of the argument needs to be smaller than the no gun side for any cultural change to begin. This country needs to let ourselves know that we’re serious about gun crime. Currently, most laugh it off as, “get away from my second amendment”. 