Elementary school shooting

Apologies Supermonkey as I obviously didn't make my sarcasm clear

Firstly, if you believe the Ten Commandments came directly from God I seem to have missed the one that says Thou shall arm thyself with an AK47 and shoot the crap out of thy neighbour should thou so wish. Was it a subtext of Thou shalt not kill I.e. except when you want to?

My real point was the Ten Commandments came directly from God, so they say. Both the bible AND your constitution were written by man. They were both written to suit a purpose at that time. NEITHER are sacrosanct and nor should they be. After all you wouldn't have amendments if they were

So the Christian angle just doesn't hold up. If anything it should be an over riding reason why not to retain the right to arm all your citizens.

And for the record whilst the UK has become multicultural it is still predominantly Christian by religion of one sect or another.

 

Guns or no guns is the wrong debate imho, as there have been massmurder with knifes, swords and axes aswell in the past ten years. Guns are just tools that makes it easier to attack from a greater distance.

The real problem is the society that looses sight for the individuals that become massmurders. Usually people don't become massmurders over night because they had a bad dream, but because of developing and cummulating problems over longer periods of time.

More strict laws won't solve the problem, only a more socially aware society - where noone is left behind - can.

 

In the short term however, we don't want people to have access to highly efficient long-distance killing apparatus. Because that in itself shapes a society that advocates particular ideas about the relationship between people and how conflict is resolved.

Think about it. The NRA blames video games that depict violence, but doesn't think anything of promoting devices that have been specifically designed for no other purpose than to kill. It doesn't see the irony in that because its thinking is essentially sociopathic. Yup, that's a society "where no-one is left behind". Not.

 

This. Seriously, look at Timothy McVeigh. Fertilizer and fuel oil are both still legal. He took out how many people without a single gun? His issue was crazy, and a lot of it. That happens with a lot of people. Plenty of big crimes this year were committed without a gun-some with bare hands and teeth. But it's always somehow worse if it's a gun. I have no problem with closing the gun show loophole-it's a patently stupid loophole. Background checks? Sure, go for it. But you're still not treating the problem that causes these rampages. Sane people do not do this. And insane people might use guns if they can get them, but they'll use anything else in a pinch. We've seen mass slashings, IEDs, and a guy that freaking ate another guy's face. I still maintain that the issue that's most responsible is the fact that it is virtually impossible to get help if you need it in this country. You're not getting any help around here until AFTER you've done something. I'm sure you can all see the issue with that.

 

It's not just mass murders though - it's the thousands of other deaths caused by guns.
Saying if there weren't guns available they would find them anyway or use knives is like saying you might as well legalise selling rocket launchers

 

^
This

 

Out of interest can you get long term psychiatric help on medicaid in the U.S.?

 

We have nutters in England that hate the world and want to go out with a bang!

But they're not at home surrounded by assault rifles and ammo.

What a ***** going to a school and shooting children, if you want a fight take on some armed police you spineless ****.

 

With an equivalent of our NHS I'm sure they could but a significant proportion of Americans don't want to pay for others to benefit.

Okay let's summarize a few things here shall we.

Those of you Americans posting here who are pro guns for all accuse us, your cross Atlantic cousins, of knee jerk reactions when a mass slaughter takes place Stateside. It's not. We simply do not accept that guns for all are a good idea, period, mass slaughter or not.

Now probably adequate mental healthcare might have prevented this latest atrocity but that still doesn't change our stance that guns should only be legally available to those of the public who have a genuinely justifiable need such as farmers, hunting, "pest" control, sport etc.

So why is it that not only do your cross Atlantic cousins feel safe enough, as a rule, to not require guns but positively shun the expansion of availability as likely to make their society more dangerous?

What is it about your society that makes the man in town or suburbs feel so insecure? And what should you as a nation be doing to reverse that insecurity? Tooling up with enough fire power to start a war can't be the answer, it might make you feel safer but not your society as a whole, so what is?

And one last question, if your society felt safer would you even be prepared to give up your guns if there was no longer a need for fire arm self protection?

 

Sure. Guns are a problem aswell, but they're not the root of these killingsprees. And even in european countries with way stricter laws there have been massacres like that in the last few years, so strict laws alone don't seem to help that much.

With these so called strict laws in western european countries it's still laughable easy to get a gun in most of them, given that you have no criminal record. First option would be to become a sport-shooter and second is a hunting-license.
Where I'm living - in Finland - basically every household has a rifle and a handgun for hunting. In Germany thousands and thousands of people are sport-shooters and in Switzerland every male even has his own assault-rifle from the military at home, etc, etc...

So there's only one law to prevent these killingsprees and that would be to forbid guns for civilists alltogether, or atleast to forbid having them stored at your home.

Anyways, these strict laws are never going to happen, even in Europe, so the only option to tackle the problem is from the social angle like I said up there.

 

Even in a serious thread, I laughed lewlz

 

No apologies necessary, Carrie. I understood the sarcasm perfectly well, and I actually agree with much of what you say. Although I grew up Catholic I no longer identify with any religion; rather, I was trying to provide an explanation of why it would be extremely difficult to just change the Constitution. Even though you were speaking with sarcasm, your statement rang with a touch of truth. All good sarcasm should. But, as Nexxo often says, before you get to the fun judgmental part you have to go through the uncomfortable and difficult understanding part. Speaking of what Nexxo says...

Funny you should paraphrase Specofdust, as he made that comment about right wing Republicans. Gun ownership among Republicans is almost equal to that of Independents and Democrats combined. I admit that gun ownership is not the same as NRA membership, but while actual NRA membership demographics are difficult to pin down, it is estimated that there are more Republican members and that Democratic membership has been declining.

As to its power, in 1999 Fortune Magazine considered the NRA to be the most powerful lobbying group - the same year as the mass shooting at Columbine High School. Are people growing weary of gun violence in the wake of yet another mass school shooting? Apparently not, as it is estimated that the NRA is gaining approximately 8,000 new members every day. As crazy as it may have appeared at first, it seems as though the NRA's official response to the Newtown shooting was a success. We shouldn't be surprised, though, as it's been pointed out that their purpose is to support gun manufacturers.

People are scared. They're scared of bad guys, the threat of a gun ban, misbehaving teens who like video games, or whatever bogeyman might be lurking. As a result, they're all out buying guns and joining the NRA. And while we're constantly reminded of those shady Middle Easterners and inner city thugs (read: blacks), we can read the demographics linked above to see that more guns can be found in middle class white homes. There something to be said about that.

 

Except as i pointed out before, there were three times more school shooting victims in US with 3/5 of EU population.

Except they have no ammo at home.

 

In early 2011 there was a vote in Switzerland, and the majority voted to keep those assault-rifles at home. The ammo for those rifles (i.e. 5.56×45mm) was stored at home until a vote in 2007.
According to the government there's some 3 million more firearms in swiss households in addition to the 600k assault-rifles. Now with Switzerland having 8 million citizens, why is it, that with all those guns at home never anything drastically happened in Switzerland, especially before 2007?

And again, as guns are easily available in EU aswell, why do you think there's way more gun-shootings in the US?

It's not just the amount of guns, but aswell the amount of social problems that leads to these higher rates in the US.

 

Guns are not "easily vailable" in the EU. I don't know where you get that idea.

 

This has been touched upon previously but was more or less ignored, as for restricting guns, it would not stop the shootings, it would only make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to arm themselves.

They are clearly easily available enough for criminals, and for those with psychological problems.

 

"Government statistics for the year 2010 records 40 homicides involving firearms, out of the 53 cases of homicide in 2010."
source

Again were'll refer back to the fact British police are unarmed and the UK's 0.1 gun death per 100,000.

 

A question for the Britons: if 'criminals and people with psychological problems' have such easy access to guns in the UK, has the regular police force shown an interest in carrying guns for protection?

 

I didn't realise they did.