Are you perhaps referring to that story in China where the kids were slashed, four of them bad enough to go to the hospital, but not one of them were killed? I’ve seen this story paraded by gun enthusiasts four times so far, one of them erroneously claiming that the kids in China had been killed.
Tell that to the parents and loved ones of all those dead children and teachers.
Why not. The happyland killings killed more people than all the mass killings for years.
Over the years, there have been many Pittings of drunk or careless drivers here on the SDMB.
I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone express the sentiment, “I wish the driver had never bought a car.”
Have you?
Your reply makes no sense, nor is it funny.
Then why not advocate for what I’m suggesting? A much more reasonable scenario that, most importantly, is much more likely to someday see the light of legislative day and thus an actual potential good. Plus, my regulatory suggestions have significant moving parts that could all be brought on slowly, so that no single piece of it will seem outrageous.
The present incarnation of the NRA will oppose any and all gun regulation, and thus we have actually had an inappropriate liberalizing of gun law (for example the Virginia 30 day waiting period between each handgun purchase was repealed through NRA pressure), but to start imposing even some regulations you have to be willing to fight the NRA.
I don’t think it’s particularly useful for gun control advocates or opponents to bring up blade attacks, but there have been sword attacks in Japan that left multiple dead. To be honest I don’t see how you slash 22 people and not kill any of them, even the Romans understood a stab only three inches deep into the torso is serious trouble. That’s true even today if you don’t get people to a hospital very quickly.
You are aware that China has experienced a small epidemic of these attacks over the past few years, and that in several of them kids HAVE been killed? One attacker managed to kill eight children before he was stopped.
I think people are brining up blade attacks just to dispell the idea some folks seem to have that guns are the ONLY way to quickly kill or injure a significant number of people, so if we could just get rid of all guns no future mass attack could occur. It seems to me that many people underestimate how deadly a blade more than 3" long is. Especially meat cleavers, machetes, and the like (which, unlike swords, are readily available for purchase).
You’re describing a technique that explains the NRA’s behavior to fight all legislation and that’s to piece-meal smaller regulations into place in order to achieve a hidden agenda.
If that’s the case, the people bringing up blade attacks ought to learn to read.
I don’t really think reasonable gun laws can prevent these mass shootings. I think Germany and the Nordic countries have reasonable gun laws. Most of those countries don’t ban specific “normal” weapons, but tightly control the people who are licensed to buy them. That appears to me, to be the superior approach to controlling gun crime. But because they do not ban the weapons that can do these kinds of attack, then yes, in those countries legally owned guns are sometimes used to do spree killings.
To me, the 9 gun homicides per 100,000 in the U.S. (versus like 1 per 100k for Germany and less than that for some of the Nordic countries) are what is of real concern. Since I think people should be allowed to own multiple round semiautomatics, and those countries demonstrate you can make those guns legal without having high gun crime I think that’s a reasonable approach.
Does that mean I value the right to own a semiautomatic weapon over the lives of children? Not really, but it does mean that when I see countries that allow semiautomatic weapons that have very low gun homicide rates that I don’t think extremely rare mass killings should be a reason to ban guns in an otherwise safe country.
The U.S. has both spree killings and high gun crime, I hate to say it, but I think some politicians should use these emotional spree killings to make political hay and start us on the road to reasonable gun regulations. The lessons from Germany and the Nordic countries that I take is that you can allow gun ownership to people who are willing to own them safely and go through a lot of bureaucratic hoops and still have safe societies.
As I’ve always said, with 300m+ guns, even good regulations won’t fix it over night. But there is a generational effect to bureaucratic regulation, and those regulations would slowly “starve the beast” in that casual gun owners would evaporate and you could have programs in place to buy back guns casuals inherit but do not want to get the licensing and such to legally own.
You keep espousing European gun laws without laying out what those laws are which is a non-argument.
You’ve then gone on to front the idea of legislation based on political emotions. this alone is an appalling approach to lawmaking.
None of what you suggested ever remotely addresses the actual problem of violence or the reality of illegal gun access to criminals. If the principal had a weapon and was trained to use it then she would have had a much better chance of stopping this event.
All that aside, none of this discussion would have addressed the ease of murdering the children absent ALL guns and knives in the world. As has been stated before, the shooter could have mowed them all down in a car while they were outside the school or he could have commandeered a bus and driven head on into a truck.
This is a thread about the second amendment, not cars and buses. And I have addressed illegal gun access to criminals, I suppose you just haven’t read the thread. Anyone can look up legislation in Norway or Germany, I had made the assumption laws, which are always publicly posted, could be easily researched by anyone. I’ve laid them out in other threads, but in reality it’s not unreasonable to say “Wikipedia lists the major gun laws of all relevant countries, use it.”
Well lets get down to brass tacks. When I hear you and others talk about looking at the underlying causes of violence rather than banning guns, I don’t believe you. I think you are simply trying to deflect attention away from a simple and potentially effective solution to the problem of gun violence because you just don’t want to give up gun ownership. And that as soon as the cries for banning guns goes away, you completely lose interest in looking at the causes of killing sprees and gun violence and how to prevent it. Once the proposal has deflected attention from a gun ban, it’s purpose has been accomplished, they have zero interest in following through. I am all for a serious program to investigate and end killing sprees but I tend not to buy into it, not because it’s not a good idea, but because I don’t think it’s being honestly advanced.
(Caveat: I am using the editorial "you’ here, Magiver. Based on your other posts in the past, I do not believe this is your personal attitude, I DO believe it’s the most common attitude of those who oppose gun bans.)
In the meantime, cars are just not the murder weapon of choice. That’s guns. Also, you can get from one place to another in a car. Guns have only one purpose.
Defending yourself? Equalizing the situation when it’s you against a 250 pound muscle-bound thug?
Ripping holes through bodies of human beings, often killing them, is what guns do.
So no one ever defended himself using a gun? Prevented a crime? Do guns do that?
How often? And how often are they used to massacre innocents, by comparison?
Screw the Second. It’s an archaic relic of a bygone time which has become an actual impediment to advancing the progress of civilization. Repeal the fucker, and get it out of the way. And let’s please not present the childish “people’s militias resisting tyranny” fantasies as serious arguments anymore.
I was posting in response to someone claiming that guns have “only one purpose”. Do they?
Go ahead and try. Will be fun watching you (plural) fail miserably.