# Looks like another mass shooting
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [August 5, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529 "2012-08-05T17:11:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/61 "2012-08-05T23:01:53Z")
> [@Beastly\_Rotter](#):
>
> 19 posts to the gun debate, I think that may be a record even in mass shooting threads.
Of course, why would you bring up guns in a mass shooting thread? Everybody knows that shooting sprees, alone among social or natural phenomenon, simply defy any kind of explanation. It’s like asking why does the wind blow ([http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask\_st/111297.html](http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/111297.html)) or why do birds sing ([Bird Song](http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/birdsongs/whysing)) or why are some people melancholy by nature ([http://nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/what-causes-depression.shtml](http://nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/what-causes-depression.shtml)).
We just have to accept that there are limits to human understanding … especially when that understanding might present us with truths that we wished were otherwise.
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### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/62 "2012-08-05T23:08:45Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#):
>
> But to get back to the point, you’re saying you would enact these restrictions to reduce spree killing deaths, yes or no?
Yes. In that vein, I would particularly seek to restrict access to weapons that permit rapid or extended-duration (i.e., before having to reload) shooting. I would advocate for such a restriction on the basis of the minimal added benefit those weapons afford over guns that do not allow rapid-firing or extended-duration shooting in the service of self-defense. Nor are these used in firearm sporting uses.
I will add, if the rejoinder is “Well, you can fire a pistol so many times per minute,” or “You can fire a revolver X number of times before having to reload,” then I would also advocate regulations that limit those weapons’ capabilities as well.
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### Author:  [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/63 "2012-08-05T23:10:18Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> Of course, why would you bring up guns in a mass shooting thread? Everybody knows that shooting sprees, alone among social or natural phenomenon, simply defy any kind of explanation. It’s like asking why does the wind blow ([http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask\_st/111297.html](http://www.pa.msu.edu/~sciencet/ask_st/111297.html)) or why do birds sing ([Bird Song](http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/birdsongs/whysing)) or why are some people melancholy by nature ([http://nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/what-causes-depression.shtml](http://nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/what-causes-depression.shtml)).
>
> We just have to accept that there are limits to human understanding … especially when that understanding might present us with truths that we wished were otherwise.
O, I’m not in dispute about that, it’s just that Batman fans at least get a couple of pages of thoughts and prayers and a desire to rend the shooter asunder and then shoot the little bits before the debate starts in earnest. Still, at least it wasn’t a Sikh shooter in a Christian church, then it would have been Terrorist Guns Down Worshippers. Never mind, carry on with the firearms show: think this one’ll make 12 pages?
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### Author:  [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/64 "2012-08-05T23:13:15Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#):
>
> Closer to 11k, not sure where you’re getting the 15k number, but this is part of my point. Have the debate on those 11k deaths vs whatever benefits gun ownership brings. Don’t have the debate based on “omg something horrible was on the news!!! BAN THEM!!!”
>
> To be so worked up over those 12 (and I know I pulled that number out of my ass - but by all means, dig up the actual numbers - it’s going to be less than 50 by a large margin) deaths per year because they’re dressed up in such an emotional narrative is stupid. Calls for policy changes based on them is stupid. Call for policy changes based on the whole picture.
>
> Incidentally, I expressed this in another thread, and this may seem morbid - but most of these spree shooters aren’t very good at killing people with guns. I’d be more worried about people fiddling with explosives, personally - the Columbine kids and the recent Batman guy both fiddled with explosives but decided it’d be more glorious to go out with guns blazing. Well, that may have saved lives, since explosives are generally much better at killing people than these spree killers are. In a way, guns may offer a release valve on some of these crazies that ultimately results in fewer deaths.
>
> Not saying across the board - maybe some would never try to murder without access to guns - but that’s a factor. Even if you were to magically dissapear all guns, you may not solve the issue of crazies wanting to go out in a blaze of glory.
Year…Homicides…Accidental Firearms Deaths
2007…12,791…613
2006…12,632…642
2005…12,352…789
2004…11,624…649
2003…11,920…730
[http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10\_sy.html](http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html)
Good call. Here are the specific numbers for the most recent five years available from the CDC website.
I didn’t say anything about banning them. I’m just saying that these people have paid your bill for you, so quit being a whiny bitch about it. Go get your shoot on. You ought to make it worth it.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/65 "2012-08-05T23:13:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> And is still far higher than it would be without all those guns.
True (if we could magic all the guns out of the universe), but I see no reason why laws restricting gun ownership would be any more effective than laws restricting drugs. I’m not sure if you were implying that- if you not, then I’m not sure what the point was.
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### Author:  [@ExTank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ExTank)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/66 "2012-08-05T23:14:02Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> Yes. In that vein, I would particularly seek to restrict access to weapons that permit rapid or extended-duration (i.e., before having to reload) shooting. I would advocate for such a restriction on the basis of the minimal added benefit those weapons afford over guns that do not allow rapid-firing or extended-duration shooting in the service of self-defense. Nor are these used in firearm sporting uses.
>
> I will add, if the rejoinder is “Well, you can fire a pistol so many times per minute,” or “You can fire a revolver X number of times before having to reload,” then I would also advocate regulations that limit those weapons’ capabilities as well.
So you don’t want to ban guns, you just want to set the way-back machine to 1750, with single-shot muzzle loaders.
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### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/67 "2012-08-05T23:17:54Z")
> [@Beastly\_Rotter](#):
>
> O, I’m not in dispute about that, it’s just that Batman fans at least get a couple of pages of thoughts and prayers and a desire to rend the shooter asunder and then shoot the little bits before the debate starts in earnest.
I agree that usually that’s how it goes down. But then I noticed that doesn’t seem to do a goddamn thing as far as actually addressing the problem. So, I thought, let’s skip all the solemn hand-wringing and let’s see if we can actually make some headway on solving this problem this time!
I confess I am not terribly optimistic about that.
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### Author:  [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/68 "2012-08-05T23:19:49Z")
O, and I wait like Patience on a monument for the first suggestion by gun advocates that this would have been preventable if devotees at Sikh temples - or Muslim mosques, for that matter - were all packing heat.
eta:
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> I agree that usually that’s how it goes down. But then I noticed that doesn’t seem to do a goddamn thing as far as actually addressing the problem. So, I thought, let’s skip all the solemn hand-wringing and let’s see if we can actually make some headway on solving this problem this time!
Well, that and the victims this time were all dusky heathens.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/69 "2012-08-05T23:20:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> True (if we could magic all the guns out of the universe), but I see no reason why laws restricting gun ownership would be any more effective than laws restricting drugs.
Because they _have been_ in other countries. And you don’t need to “magic guns” out of the universe, they are physical objects that can be destroyed.
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### Author:  [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/70 "2012-08-05T23:22:14Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> True (if we could magic all the guns out of the universe), but I see no reason why laws restricting gun ownership would be any more effective than laws restricting drugs. I’m not sure if you were implying that- if you not, then I’m not sure what the point was.
So using guns is like using drugs?
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/71 "2012-08-05T23:27:44Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#):
>
> So using guns is like using drugs?
“After hearing my buddy talk about how good drugs felt I went home and shot myself up; boy did that hurt!”
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### Author:  [@madrabbitwoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madrabbitwoman)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/72 "2012-08-05T23:41:17Z")
Fuck the gun debate. Fuck both sides at the moment. Fuck anyone who cares more about those issues that the lives of those hurt.
my best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to those injured. My sympathy goes out to the families of those killed. A bloody terrible thing has happened. At present we don’t know the motivations of the killer. Fuck whatever those motivations were. Just more senseless hurt an waste.
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### Author:  [@BigAppleBucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigAppleBucky)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/73 "2012-08-05T23:43:46Z")
Froedtert Hospital is a class 1 trauma center. They can handle more than three shooting victims. In fact, many days they get more than that number.
- Hospital spokesman interviewed on CNN.
Sad.
The USA has around 30,000 shooting deaths per year, 11,000 of them murders or accidents.
UK, by contrast, had a total of 42 shooting deaths in a country of 60 million.
> **[Britain records 18% fall in gun deaths](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html)**
>
> The number of deaths in Britain from gunshot wounds has fallen to a 20-year low despite concerns about levels of violent crime.
We just have to grin and bear the situation, I’m afraid.
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### Author:  [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/74 "2012-08-05T23:52:57Z")
How about you guys all go start your own thread. Moving on.
The police did a short press release and ended it by saying no more official information would be released until tomorrow morning at the next press release. As of right now, they’ve got a house surrounded a about a mile away from me, new helicopters over head and I heard the have the area evacuated. But this is all going from the subtitles I saw on the local news at the TV they had on at the restaurant I was at. So I’m assuming they had his ID.
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### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/75 "2012-08-05T23:53:51Z")
> [@madrabbitwoman](#):
>
> Fuck the gun debate. Fuck both sides at the moment. Fuck anyone who cares more about those issues that the lives of those hurt.
> my best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to those injured. My sympathy goes out to the families of those killed. A bloody terrible thing has happened. At present we don’t know the motivations of the killer. Fuck whatever those motivations were. Just more senseless hurt an waste.
There’s nothing we can do! Like plague and pestilence and famine, we just have to accept these things as God’s will. Don’t develop medicines, don’t produce sanitation codes, don’t study agronomy. Just give your self over to self-indulgent helplessness.
Forgive me: there is something we can do, and it should not be forestalled by theatrical displays of grief.
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### Author:  [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/76 "2012-08-05T23:57:53Z")
Remember kids: “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”
But do guns make it easier? Place you “duh” ----\> here.
My heart goes out to all the victims and their families.
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### Author:  [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2012, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/77 "2012-08-05T23:58:16Z")
> [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](#):
>
> . . .
> Forgive me: there is something we can do, and it should not be forestalled by theatrical displays of grief.
What exactly is it that we can do?
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### Author:  [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/78 "2012-08-06T00:03:22Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#):
>
> What exactly is it that we can do?
We can have a serious debate about how we might go about regulating access to firearms, or certain kinds of firearms, in a way that would reduce the occurrence of these tragedies. We’re not dogs trapped in Skinner boxes. We have human minds with human willpower; we can address these problems just as we put men on the moon and have been able to discover subatomic particles.
Or in other words, what do the Malay tribesmen know that we don’t:
> [@](#):
>
> From a social-psychological point of view, young men are a thicket of false positives. Who can pick from among the millions of alienated boys who will, triggered by loss, sow chaos? The preventative focus must come elsewhere; and to this end, Mullen, along with many other researchers, have looked to an unusual antecedent. The English phrase “running amok” is derived from the Malay concept of pengamok, or someone who commits an intensely violent and indiscriminate homicidal assault, often with a machete or a dagger, often in a crowded public space. Westerners have been fascinated by the pengamok since Captain Cook first visited the Malay archipelago and recorded its existence in his journal, in 1770. Since the amok was regarded as an extreme form of gila kena hantu (a kind of possession by evil spirits, or tiger spirits) or gila buatan orang (possession by witchcraft), it was treated with enormous tolerance—even, researchers claim, subtly sanctioned by the Malay tribes.
>
> Historians of the amok now speculate it was a redemptive act of face saving, a way for a young male to massively compensate for a perceived loss of status. The analogy to the civil massacre is obvious. But here is where things get interesting: Incidents of amok began to decline as Malay tribes modernized and Westernized. By the mid-19th century, the amok was being described and treated as a mental illness. In effect, Western psychiatric medicine disenchanted and banalized the amok—and as a result, it lost its implicit sanction as a magnificent act signaling the presence of evil spirits. And here is where things get doubly interesting. As one researcher has written: “Inexplicably, while the frequency of and interest in amok among primitive tribes were decreasing, similar occurrences of violence in industrial societies were increasing.” It is as if the pengamok were a virus that, even as it was being eradicated on the Malay island chain, leapt to the West: to Austin, to Dunblane, to Port Arthur, to Colombine, and beyond.
(Source: [Aurora shooting: If we want to prevent the next massacre, we need to cure our addiction to evil.](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_dilettante/2012/07/aurora_shooting_if_we_want_to_prevent_the_next_massacre_we_need_to_cure_our_addiction_to_evil_.single.html)) No **evensven** jokes, please.
And take heart, firearm enthusiasts, the article suggests that gun control is not the _sine qua non_ to stopping these. Although, in the short-term, it would reduce them. But I agree, that is only but one facet in a comprehensive approach.
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### Author:  [@madrabbitwoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madrabbitwoman)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/79 "2012-08-06T00:08:27Z")
Dear Kimmy\_Gibbler
Please bugger off to GD and start your debate
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looks-like-another-mass-shooting/630529/80 "2012-08-06T00:08:30Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#):
>
> So using guns is like using drugs?
For some, it certainly seems to be.
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