Every so often, one hears of some regular civilian johnnie in the US losing it, and shooting a few(or more) innocent people. I’ve only ever heard of this happening in the United States (although I can recall one incident in the UK, and the one in Norway of course).
Is it that there are genuinely more such cases in the US or that its a media/reporting bias - i.e because its happening in the US you get to hear about it everywhere in the world?
And if there are more such incidents in the US, then why is it so? Is it because of the relaxed gun laws? Then why aren’t they tightened up inspite of so many tragic occurrences? Are there defensible arguments in favour of allowing guns?
To be honest I don’t think even the most pro-gun types would argue that it isn’t at this point.
Pro-gun SDers, do you disagree ?
I’m not saying there aren’t pro-gun arguments (e.g. “well if everyone had guns they wouldn’t get very far”), but it seems to me that really is the only reason why these things happen more often in the US than anywhere else.
You’d have to be pretty stupid to claim otherwise. Yes, of course we have far more shootings because guns are widely available. But some things that have to be considered: America has always had these guns as part of the country’s culture and we simply have gotten to the point where, because of how saturated the country is with guns, banning them would do more harm than good. The people who don’t care about obeying the law won’t give them up, and only the law abiding people would be disarmed. This has already been demonstrated in a smaller scale in cities with very strict gun laws like Washington DC that are plagued with violent gun crime.
In short, for better or worse, America is stuck with the guns; at this point, it’d be more effective to work on alleviating the conditions that create the crime, rather than trying to just ban guns. There are too many guns in circulation for that to be effective.
Keep in mind, also, that countries where strict gun control works - UK, Norway, Japan, etc - are far smaller and more ethnically homogenous than the US. America is an absolutely gigantic country composed of fifty states, all of completely different political and cultural character.
Doesn’t seem like preventable crime to me - IIRC, it usually involves people working alone with little to no predetermination and/or criminal background.
I don’t see how this is related. What problems would strict gun control cause in big heterogeneous countries?
Wouldn’t things be a little easier if people stopped pretending a 230-year old document was handed down from Mount Olympus rather than something written by people to suit its specific time and circumstances: Grow the fuck up and behave like intelligent, responsible adults rather than a John Wayne metaphor.
disagree. CIP: Dunblane UK, Norway, and that korean soldier who lost it. shootings happen where there are too many unarmed people trapped and not enough armed guards or armed citizens.
can shootings like that happen in a neighborhood of gun owners?
those who believe in disarmament, look at it this way: there are a lot of ways to kill several unarmed, defenseless people herded in a pen like sheep. packing an arsenal õf firearmes in your person is a rather inefficient way to commit mass murder. now come to think of it, a lot of people get killed in gunless places not by bang! bang! bang! but by a single KABOOM!
if i’m a guard or soldier, i’d rather i someday meet a gunman than a bomber or a poisoner.
It’s true; if it’s mass carnage you’re after, you can’t really beat explosives. It’s so easy to make them with readily available materials. Or you could just poison people. It worked for Double-O-Swango. If there were ever a real revolution in America, a real guerrilla movement like the ones people always talk about online, its main weapon would not be AR-15s and AKs; it would be explosives and poison.
ah, there you have me. yes, access to firearms is a factor, no denying it. but i’m convinced the real problem is security. having lots of guns and believing columbine couldn’t possibly happen in your local school is a bad combination.
Well that’s sort of the point isn’t it? Most of the shooters that I read about aren’t hardcore killers or terrorists. They’re just unhinged/angry people who manage to kill innocents because they have easy access to guns. If they had easy access to bombs, they’d blow things up instead.
The people who do blow things up currently are terrorists who have to plan ahead, source explosives, collaborate with other people - thus providing a window in which they can be stopped. This is because explosives are controlled substances.
fair point. we’re talking about mad shooters with option to bomb and not a belligerent (terrorist.) but society is wary of both groups and security measures for both are largely the same. a first-time terrorist is almost impossible to pre-empt, just like a random shooter.
How many people a year die in these spree shootings on average? Anyone want to do the math? What’s the number of who need to die in order to effect a national sweeping policy with rather severe political and social effects? One, two, a dozen, two dozen? The idea that we have to ban guns due to randomly spree killings every once in a while is like freaking out over every plane crash when a thousand times as many people died in routine transport accidents in the meantime. Your emotional reaction to sensational occasional incidents overrides any sense of perspective on the cost and effectiveness of dramatic changes in social policy.
The availability of guns is to civilians is not quite a pre-requisite for spree shootings, but obviously it’s a factor. But spree shootings don’t correlate all that strongly to rates of civilian gun ownership, and they certainly aren’t a uniquely US phoenominon.
They are essentially an inconsequential blip in the grand scheme of all sorts of unnatural deaths.
It does happen elsewhere, Finland, Australia, Norway, Japan and the UK [ Dunblane, Hungerford, Whitehaven ].
But as the USA has 600 million guns and 300 million people I’d expect their rate of spree killings to be a fair bit higher.
Although as Bowling For Columbine explains, Canada has the same relaxed gun laws as the US but only a fraction of the murder rate, but as Fatty Moore is guilty of massaging statistics to suit his view we’d better not set too much store in that factoid.
my question: how come there were no armed guards? oh, if there were, the gunmen would have gone elsewhere. you should see the exclusive schools in the philippines. there are armed guards patrolling the corridors and stationed in every node in the school.