# Gun violence against Turkish cafe's in Germany **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 21, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321 "2020-02-21T19:45:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dan39](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@dan39](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dan39)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/1 "2020-02-21T19:45:08Z")
Yesterday a gunman stormed two Turkish cafes and killed at least 9 innocent people. The gunman later killed himself and his mother (or vice-versa, we don’t know yet) so now there will be no accountability for any of this. Are we hearing so much of this in the news that we are getting de-sensitized to things like this and simply dismiss it as another act of random violence brought on by mental illness or far-right extremism as this was referred to in the media? Yes, it is tragic, and yes, we feel bad about events like this, which brings three immediate questions to my mind. 1) How do we stop this kind of thing from happening, 2) What is the state of mental instability in our country, and 3) How do we prevent “just anyone” from being able to acquire guns for purposes other than killing other people? Here’s another question. What possesses someone to do this? Is it brought on by violent video games? I don’t live in the United States or Germany, I live in Canada, where guns, although likely prevalent in this country as in the United States or Germany, are not as easily obtained as they are elsewhere and we don’t hear about mass shootings going on as they are in other countries. I’m sure they happen, but we just don’t hear about them as much unless it’s extremely serious. Time and time again we hear of incidents like this yet it is perceived that nothing is done to prevent it. What the world needs is a gun amnesty program where people who WANT to give up their guns can take them and have them destroyed, or receive monetary compensation in favour of turning in their weapons, even if it is of a minuscule amount. Wouldn’t it be great if guns were only used for hunting, skeet shooting, or target practice, and not against people? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/2 "2020-02-21T20:15:13Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > What the world needs is a gun amnesty program where people who WANT to give up their guns can take them and have them destroyed, or receive monetary compensation in favour of turning in their weapons, even if it is of a minuscule amount. Wouldn’t it be great if guns were only used for hunting, skeet shooting, or target practice, and not against people? Nothing wrong with reducing the overall number of guns, but the problem with this thinking - as is often highlighted in the guns debate - is that those who would want to use their guns for the purpose of murder, are precisely the people who do \*\*\*not \*\*\*want to turn in their own guns for such a program. People like Harris, Klebold, Paddock, Cho Seunghui, Eliot Rodger, etc. have their guns for a very important and specific purpose to them - homicide. Why would they turn them in for $50 per gun? ---
**Author:** ![dan39](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@dan39](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dan39)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/3 "2020-02-21T20:59:02Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Why would they turn them in for $50 per gun? Just think of it this way - it’s $50 you never had before, and money you could help to feed your starving family with. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/4 "2020-02-21T21:27:30Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > Wouldn’t it be great if guns were only used for hunting, skeet shooting, or target practice, and not against people? No. Guns were invented for a reason, and it wasn’t for shooting skeet. People in the process of trying to seriously harm or kill other people deserve to die and guns are the best tool for that job. They allow people who aren’t strong young men to defend themselves and others against human and animal threats. Also, there is no correlation between the number of guns in a country or state or region and the number of gun homicides in that country, state or region. So if your goal is simply “fewer guns”, don’t expect that to translate to “fewer murders”. What we need is fewer murderers and mass murderers. I don’t think there is any proxy metric you can change to accomplish that, whether it’s reducing guns or increasing police. Well, something tells me a strong social safety net and UHC would take away some of the despair and despondency the inner city underclass feels and make it harder for gangs to recruit. This might lower murder rates significantly, but it wouldn’t stop the middle class white men who shoot up schools or public gatherings. Unfortunately, crime has its fads, too. Remember how common plane hijackings were in the 70s? Remember how many serial killers were out there in the 80s? I suspect we’ll just have to wait this one out. Eventually the cool new crime will be something else, and I shudder to think what. But the media sure as hell isn’t doing anybody any favors in the meantime, hyping up mass murderers like they’re hottest new pop star. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/5 "2020-02-21T21:34:34Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > Here’s another question. What possesses someone to do this? Is it brought on by violent video games? Yes, it’s caused by video games. Racial and ethnic strife didn’t exist before Atari fucked everything up for everyone. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/6 "2020-02-21T21:34:33Z")
There weren’t constant mass shootings in the 1970s and 1980s. Americans’ access to firearms was not any more limited then than it is now. Something else is behind this, and I don’t know exactly what it is, but whatever the hell it is, addressing it would probably do more to lower the deaths in America than any kind of “gun amnesty program.” ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/7 "2020-02-21T21:45:58Z")
> [@Lamoral](#): > > There weren’t constant mass shootings in the 1970s and 1980s. Americans’ access to firearms was not any more limited then than it is now. Something else is behind this, and I don’t know exactly what it is, but whatever the hell it is, addressing it would probably do more to lower the deaths in America than any kind of “gun amnesty program.” This happened in Germany. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/8 "2020-02-21T22:00:25Z")
While $50 is better than nothing for a worthless former firearm that you were otherwise going to destroy yourself, and gun amnesties for illegal firearms furthermore employ the carrot-and-stick principle, what are you proposing? The authorities in Germany are already under no obligation to issue a gun license to people they don’t like, such as felons, and on the other hand millions of people already have perfectly legal firearms for which they paid a lot more than $50 and do use them for competitive target shooting and so on. The people buying military firearms from the mafia are not likely interested in your $50. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/9 "2020-02-21T22:06:28Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > Just think of it this way - it’s $50 you never had before, and money you could help to feed your starving family with. Elliot Roger didn’t have a starving family to feed. Adam Lanza didn’t need $50. Money and welfare programs for the poorest inner city areas would probably put a damper on gang violence in those areas, which in the US at least is where the vast majority of murders happen. But mass shootings are an entirely different problem that will require a very different solution (if one even exists – not all problems have solutions :(). Gun buybacks are a bad idea all around though. They don’t solve any problem. Lots of people make homemade guns – cheap, shitty ones – just to sell to the buyback program, and then they turn around a buy nice new _good_ gun with the money they made. “That which is measured improves” – old engineer’s proverb There was a city once with a rat problem. (I don’t remember the exact city, but this was related to me as a true story). So they did what you suggest. They paid citizens for rat corpses. Thinking, “Hey, we need fewer rats, right? Let’s pay people to go around killing them.” But what they were measuring _wasn’t_ what they wanted to improve. What they wanted was fewer rats. What they measured was the number of dead rats. People started breeding rats to get that sweet sweet dead rat money. The rat population\* soared\*. The program was a huge failure. Paying people for guns just increases the demand for guns. Even if you wanted fewer guns and didn’t care about the murder rate, buying guns from citizens isn’t going to accomplish that. And it isn’t even fewer guns that we want, remember? It’s fewer murders. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/10 "2020-02-21T22:06:56Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > Just think of it this way - it’s $50 you never had before, and money you could help to feed your starving family with. Most gun owners aren’t $50 away from starvation. Most guns cost a lot more than fifty bucks in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/11 "2020-02-21T22:14:30Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > Just think of it this way - it’s $50 you never had before, and money you could help to feed your starving family with. I truly cannot tell if you are serious - again, only law-abiding folks will feel that way, and most of them are not “starving”. Why would someone like Adam Lanza, Stephen Paddock (who was a millionaire,) or Omar Mateen, who is planning mass murder, give in their gun for fifty bucks? To give an example of how these killers think, here are quotes by one of them - [Cho Seunghui, the Virginia Tech shooter who killed 32 victims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho): > [@](#): > > _You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off. You sadistic snobs. I may be nothing but a piece of dogshit. You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Do you know what it feels to be spit on your face and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on a cross? And left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life. Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can just because you can? You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything. You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart, and raping my soul all this time_ Does this sound \*\*remotely \*\*like the words of someone who will willingly give up his gun for 50 bucks, as you suggest, so he can make a grocery household budget? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/12 "2020-02-21T22:16:57Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > There was a city once with a rat problem. (I don’t remember the exact city, but this was related to me as a true story). So they did what you suggest. They paid citizens for rat corpses. Thinking, “Hey, we need fewer rats, right? Let’s pay people to go around killing them.” > > But what they were measuring _wasn’t_ what they wanted to improve. What they wanted was fewer rats. What they measured was the number of dead rats. People started breeding rats to get that sweet sweet dead rat money. The rat population\* soared\*. The program was a huge failure. [Hanoi, Vietnam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive): > [@](#): > > _In Hanoi, under French colonial rule, a program paying people a bounty for each rat tail handed in was intended to exterminate rats. Instead, it led to the farming of rats._ ---
**Author:** ![dan39](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@dan39](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dan39)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/13 "2020-02-21T22:19:55Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Most gun owners aren’t $50 away from starvation. Most guns cost a lot more than fifty bucks in the first place. That $50 quote was an arbitrary number proposed by Velocity. I said, “a minuscule amount” in my original post. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/14 "2020-02-21T22:27:46Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > This happened in Germany. I know that, but oddly, the OP segues into discussion of guns and violence in the United States and Canada. I’m not sure why he chose to use an act of politically motivated terrorism in Germany - which hardly ever sees any such incidents in the first place, and certainly not a great number of random spree shootings, if any - to kick off a discussion about North America, but…that’s why I said what I said, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/15 "2020-02-21T22:31:18Z")
> [@dan39](#): > > That $50 quote was an arbitrary number proposed by Velocity. I said, “a minuscule amount” in my original post. 🙂 Most gun owners aren’t a minuscule amount of money away from starvation. Most guns cost more than a minuscule amount, unless you have a very strange definition of minuscule. Gun buyback programs have generally seen people unloading broken unworkable guns. Maybe a few people who just don’t want a gun anymore. The money just isn’t worth it for someone who really wants a gun. ---
**Author:** ![dan39](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@dan39](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dan39)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/16 "2020-02-21T23:05:32Z")
> [@Lamoral](#): > > …the OP segues into discussion of guns and violence in the United States and Canada. A logical segue since I used Germany as the example of the most recent incident, which could be attributed to United States and Canada (and other places) for similar incidents. ---
**Author:** ![dan39](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/258eb7/32.png) [@dan39](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dan39)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/17 "2020-02-21T23:12:13Z")
Speaking of gun violence, when I was a kid, around 12 or 13 years old, my brother, and sister and a couple of friends we were camping in my parents’ trailer outside my dad’s house (my mom and dad split when I was 12, dad was just looking after us that weekend), when all of a sudden during the night shots rang out. We were scared to death! About 10 minutes later, a policeman knocked on the door and told us to go inside with my dad for our safety. As it turns out, the neighbourhood kids came knocking at my dad’s front door around midnight wanting to come in and have a drinking party. When my dad refused to let them in, they left and came back a short time later and started shooting at my dad because he wouldn’t let them in. Not only is this a huge problem, it was a really huge problem for us kids, my dad, and for small-town Southern Ontario. It could have turned out much, much worse than it did. Guns are too readily available for anyone which is where gun violence starts. Curb the guns, curb the violence and subsequent events. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-violence-against-turkish-cafes-in-germany/848321/18 "2020-02-22T00:52:43Z")
Well, to put it in a German perspective, the gun ownership of the villain is one, but a minor aspect of the tragedy discussed at the moment in Germany. Xenophobia and hatred, combined with mental illness, are much more in focus. The fact that the perpetrator legally owned guns is a fact, but just today in that context I learned that about one million people in Germany legally own about 5 million guns, out of a population of 82 millions. Compare that to US figures. And then compare the figures of spree shootings, and most of all, deaths by gun shots in total, between the US and Germany, and you will see a pattern. I don’t post this to belittle the latest atrocity here, it’s a damned tragedy and by far not the first symptom of right wing tendencies going overboard, but gun control is NOT the biggest issue in this incident. By the way, many people here now ask for even better gun control in Germany, a gun control American gun control supporters can only dream of.