He said nothing about crime free. He said he didn’t live in fear.
Really? That’s your argument? Like for real?
Not really. You can’t dismiss New York’s success in drastically reducing its homicide rate, in part by strictly enforcing stringent gun regulation, simply because it doesn’t suit your narrative.
We used to have well over 2,000 murders a year, peaking somewhere around 2,600 in the early 90s. Now we’re down to around 300.
So, “crime free New York City”? Not quite. But it’s a hell of a lot better. And not because people are carrying guns to defend themselves.
Velocity, I think trying to keep ontopic about what to do with the “clean” shooter may be doomed to fail because pretty much everyone has already picked his or her battle line and will use every opportunity to stay on-message.
On the media publicity thing, gotta say…
And further, it would leave the dissemination to happen with no editorial judgement, fact-checking or correction. Not an improvement.
Besides it’s not a matter of just not reporting a name. The newspaper police blotter reports the names of suspects arrested for various and sundry crimes every day w/o it being seeing as “glorification”. OTOH with mass shooters it often gets breathlessly sensationalized with both professional and amateur commenters playing forensic psychoanalist picking apart tweets, FB picture, details on their grooming and clothing styles, afterschool club participation, the car they drove and even the visual theme of their web page, trying to dig up if there had been some detectable “tells” that Someone Should Have Noticed And Done Something About.
Let’s face it, we are culturally fascinated with getting inside the heads of extreme criminals, we want to know just what IS their major malfunction, so maybe we can figure out if there were any such “tells” we could use on the next one. That so far we have found no reliable “watch this guy” indicator is frustrating to many. That we may at some point make up a set of “watch this guy” parameters while we have no way to look inside the head of the guy who’s going to go off the edge, is scary to many more.
Yes, we can as the USA, overall has a had a dramatic decrease in violent crime. Not to mention NYC just had a large increase in it’s murder rate for 2019.
as wiki put it; “Crime rates in New York City spiked in the 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic hit,[1][2] but they have been dropping since 1991,[3] and, as of 2017, they are among the lowest of major cities in the United States.”
Many in combat zones don’t see moving as an option. Sucks to be stuck. But generally, if you’re in a situation where firearms seem necessary, you’re in the wrong situation.
Common concealed carry is IMHO such a wrong situation. You MUST assume all around you are armed and dangerous because if you don’t, you’re dead. Welcome to Paranoia World, brought to you by the usual suspects.
As I said earlier, he lacked the guts to deliberately crash an airplane. To amplify on that, when he started shooting he still lacked the courage to kill himself and expected a cop to do it for him. When the horror of what he was doing finally hit him, dying became easier than living and he shot himself.
What are you talking about?
As has been said already in this thread, guns for self-defence are illegal in England.
And it wouldn’t make any difference to have a police officer standing next to you, since our beat police are not armed.
Good points. How do we identify the guys who need fixing? I’d like to require a license to purchase firearms. It would include a psychology exam as well as background checks. You’d have to have a license to buy at a gun show. Include a shooting test, and declare on the license how good a shooter he is. That might remove some of the reluctance, and even become something to be proud of.
Hong Kong is an example of what strict gun laws can do. Here is an article from the Times on a shooting in Hong Kong in 2018 - the first gun crime there since 2015. The shooter was employed as a bodyguard and got a gun that way.
Here are the rules:
Guns are used in robberies there - mostly toy guns.
There is plenty of crime there, just not gun crime.
How about plane crime? It’s mostly plane crime, right?
Plane crime rates are sky high!
<chef’s kiss>
What’s your point? New York has had a dramatic decrease in crime, including gun crime, over the past few decades. And it had *nothing *to do with people carrying guns to defend themselves.
IANAL so consider this as uninformed speculation. A differently-composed SCOTUS accepts a 2nd Amendment case and rules that inclusion in a “well-regulated militia” is required for public possession of personal firearms in the US. What gun owners do in private, on their own property or dedicated ranges, has other limitations. LEOs are armed as needed. Anyone else carrying in public must be legally “clean” enough to be a militia member, and have a legitimate reason for public possession. Enabling legislation can lay out the details, like hunting permits on specified public lands, penalties for carrying near schools, etc.
Is this approach feasible or just a fantasy?
Is putting in at least two armed guards in each school such a dumb idea?
So you have never needed to defend yourself? Neither have I. But lots of people I’ve never met might need to. I am quite aware that most of my experiences have been privileged, but if the situation were different I might feel different.
Hong Kong which is currently full of armed riot police?
No, but it’s gun laws had nothing to do with it either, since the rest of the nation saw a similar decrease.
Guys…
Topic: mass shooters with clean backgrounds
Not: 2nd Amendment, news coverage of shootings, England or Hong Kong
You’re a bit behind on your news. Hong Kong today is trying to control the border with China. And you could also read the cite.