I am pro gun rights (not necessarily pro-gun - I don’t own one or have any intention of owning one). It should be obvious that easy access to guns is a factor in rates of gun related violence.
Reports I’ve seen say it was an ex-husband upset about a custody issue, and that he had been the one who originally filed for divorce.
Is there any interest, I wonder, in addressing the fact that the vast majority of these spree shooters are men? Do we need to get better at teaching men better ways of handling frustration than killing not only the object of their frustration but also numbers of other innocent bystanders? I already know that we need to, as a society, get better at identifying and treating mental illness such as the Virginia Tech shooter exhibited.
According to the wikipedia site before Dunblane, if you ignore the ones having to do with the IRA there was only one mass shooting in the previous 150 years before the strict gun laws were passed. It seems that the lax gun laws in the UK did a better job preventing mass shooting than the strict gun laws. Or there is no correlation that can be seen between the two.
Bingo! The OP asked “Can someone explain to me the shootings in the US?” and so far everyone is talking about gun policy. We should be talking about mental health policy instead - of which we have none, other than “you are on your own, buddy”. In the US you are free to do as you want, include go crazy. Some people seek treatment, some live with it, some harm/kill themselves, a very small number harm/kill others.
Not if Scalia can help it.
This calls for a repeat of one of my favorite Canadian stories, which it turn shows why I hold the sensible Canadians in such high regard…
Years ago I was on a fishing trip in British Columbia, and one evening fell into conversation with a couple of local lumberjacks in the hotel bar. Being the brash American, I brought up the subject of firearms and commented on Canadian-style gun control. I suppose, in retrospect I may have sounded a bit condescending although I honestly didn’t mean to…heck, we were all pretty deep into our cups by that time.
The local gave some thought to my statement, then said; “It’s true, we don’t feel the need to have guns around all the time. But, you see, we’ve never had the fascination with firearms that you seem to have in the states. When somebody pisses you off, your first thought is to get a gun and shoot him. Around here if somebody gives us a hard time we don’t even think about shooting them…we just take them out back and beat the sh*t out of 'em.” :eek:
Makes perfect sense to me.
SS
Where “lax gun laws” meant we could own a pistol, which had to be locked away in a registered gun club, for the sole purposes of sport shooting? Or we could own (and still can) a shotgun or rifle for hunting and pest control?
The UK has not had “lax gun laws” for over a century now.
I am quite pro-gun ownership by civilians, and I will accept the occasional gun spree shooter and a slightly higher rate of fatalities when violent crime occurs. I realize that my fellow citizens might not feel that way, and we can have THAT fight at the ballot box.
This is sort of what I was going to say.
Gang activity is going up in Canada, but it’s still at the point where it’s knives, not guns, and it’s still very neighborhood-based. If you don’t live in a bad neighborhood, you’re not going to get shot or stabbed. And the gang gun activity is mostly restricted to the upper levels. The little peons aren’t shooting each other, it’s the top people shooting each other.
It’s something that has really confused me. Americans say they own guns to protect themselves from robbers or home invaders, but those people don’t have guns anyway!
I made this point before on the thread about the Gifford shooting, it was sad that many pro gun advocates showed an actual dislike of even looking for better care and for more effective ways to prevent people with mental issues from getting a hold of a gun in the USA.
I’m sure some 60 year old, 130 pound woman will be comforted to know that she doesn’t need a gun because her 19 year old home invader only has a knife.
Wha–? Robbers and home invaders don’t have guns? :dubious: This must be something new, because last I heard robbers and home invaders were at least as likely to have guns as anybody else. Or are you saying the victims of robbery and home invasion don’t have guns?
Just curious about that statement. Enjoying the debate otherwise, so carry on.
Hm, I looked up the actual numbers on serial killers, and…
Population Serial Killers Per 10m
USA 312m 217 6.955
Canada 35m 10 2.857
UK 62m 51 8.225
Germany 82m 17 2.073
France 66m 15 2.273
So obviously crimes of a certain type can be specific to nations. (English speakers are bizarre…)
Drugs are harder to restrict; you’ll note that prisons are full of drugs, but not guns. They can be made easier, they can be stored/hidden in more ways since they aren’t solid objects, they are addictive, they can be used in private. Frankly if the only effect of strict gun control was to make the gun owners bury their guns in the back yard that would be a victory; hidden guns aren’t being used to kill people.
Not as long as he can claim it says what he wants it to.
Please recall that in many other places such violence is mistaken for a political act.
Every once in awhile you’ll read a story about some foreigner going on a stabbing spree. Have you ever stabbed 4 or 5 people to death? It takes a lot of work! You have to be angry enough to chase them down and everything. Here in America we lazy bums just casually mow people down with a rifle or a pistol from a distance, not stopping to smell the murder. We have so much to learn.
Probably just as difficult as being polite on the web. 
As a pro-gun person…
There’s no question that a person with violent objectives in the US can acquire a firearm much more easily than in other places. However, I also think the case can be made, given the distribution of perpetrators of violence, that guns are not a cause of said violence.
I think a lot of the violence in the US comes from the perception of marginalization by people who are on the fringes.
In Europe, you can believe to some extent (with things like UHC and a perceived wider social safety net) that even if you’re down, you’re not out and there’s a way to get out.
In the US, there’s a feeling among many that the downtrodden are lazy bums who don’t deserve anything. Well, if you tell a person he doesn’t deserve anything other than the bottom, I think that person’s probably more likely to try to take something than work to get that something. Similarly, the most likely perp of a shooting is an ex-husband, or a socially marginalized student, or someone filled with racist rage, or similar.
Add in historical racial tensions that are still ongoing in many ways, and you have a hell of a stewpot brewing.
I note that I expect to see the crime rates of this type rising in Europe with African/Arab/Subcontinent immigration, not because of who the immigrants are specifically but because of their own perceptions of themselves as marginalized/ghettoized. Whether it will be guns or fists+knives due to availability remains to be seen.
There was a guy in… Belgium, I think ? Couple years back. He decided to dress up like a clown, go into a maternity ward with a knife and just went to town on the babies. Killed or maimed around 20. Awful stuff. One assumes he’d have had a machine gun were those legal in Belgium - less tiring, more bpm*.
People just break in the head.
- that’s babies per minute of course. I’ll keep y’all a spot in the big furnace by the most scenic lake of fire.