ANOTHER theater shooting in the gun country...

How would comparing 50 or so countries with vastly different...everything
To a single country
Be a relevant comparison?

Because US is made up of 300 million people and is being compared to countries with a fraction of that. Common sense really.

@hood_honky:

What exactly is "hood honky"?

@PSP107: what exactly is the relevance?

Kkk member, you know the white guys in white hoods. Hood honky.

@ariabed: I bet you're all against racial stereotypes but there you are, branding someone a racist. love the hypocrisy lol

Do you know what stereo typing means?

Your user name is hood honky right?

Honky another name for a white person.

Hood what the kkk members wear on their heads.

Hood honky its a pretty simple joke using your user name not racial stereo typing, better luckk next time.

Kinda makes sense though...at first I thought it was a honky from the hood...but I'm thinking it's probably more like a honky wearing a hood.

Not to mentioned our diversity. A lot of the "ideal" countries (especially the European ones) simply lack the multitude of ethnic diversity of US population. But gun control advocates will never dare suggest diversity might be a contributor even though some minorities are responsible for higher crime percentages than their proportion within the total population.

So Boyz in the Hood is really a movie about couple of underage male klans members?

@ariabed: Wow. Those stats in that video are nuts. You know you got a gun problem when......

There are some; the naval yard shooter and DC snipers come to mind. Also black gangbangers have killed several hundred times more innocent civilians than mass murders.

There are so many guns in the U.S that the current status quo is simply irrevocable.

I don't believe gun control advocates in the U.S will ever get their way, which is why they ought to rethink their strategies, and most importantly, reevaluate their goals.

It's a deadlock, gun right advocates have no hope of repealing existing gun control law that don't make any sense either.

I think the deadlock stems from the fact that the law attempted to remedy an irremediable situation, or to reconcile irreconcilable parties. The result was a perverse law that was met with the same malcontent from both sides of the divide.

I don't necessary think the crimes and killings are problems beyond solution, but certainly that solution is not found in gun control. Like I stated before, do I think that if someone can make all of the guns and our knowledge of guns magically disappear that deaths would drop sharply? Absolutely. Unfortunately that's not how gun control laws work in reality. They are only effective at limiting guns in law abiding citizens hand, not the criminals.

And really the idea of right to armed goes beyond the what's stated in the constitution. As Cicero wrote thousands of years ago:

"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. When weapons reduce themselves to silence, the laws no longer expect one to await their pronouncements. For people who decide to wait for these will have to wait for justice too - and meanwhile they must suffer injustice first. Indeed, even the wisdom of the law itself, by a sort of tacit implication, permits self defence. Because it does not actually forbid men to kill; what it does, instead, is to forbid the bearing of a weapon with the intention to kill. When, therefore, an inquiry passes beyond the mere question of the weapon and starts to consider the motive, a man who has used arms in self defence is not regarded as having carried them with a homicidal aim."

lol

Its probably some suburban white teen who listens to lil wayne.

Well to be fair, Boyz in the Hood released in 1991 =(

So therefore, a lot of people knows what's it about.

That maybe true but those are mostly innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire, doesn't make it ok i know.

Would be good to get some comparison stats on that claim though.

This is why I now watch my pornography at home. You miss the camaraderie of your fellow perverts but less likely to be shot for enjoying the art of film.

"A lot of these isolated shooters have been people with known histories of mental illness." How do we know this?

The Colorado shooter may have been insane, at least that's the impression that he gave in court. The Connecticut shooter, no one knows why he did it; not even the investigators. We could assume mental illness when the motives are inconclusive, but that goes back to my original point; why do we just assume mental illness for these guys? They're the only ones who receive this consideration. Truth is, we assume illness even when the terrorist's motives are quite transparent, as in the case of the recent church shooting.

There's no specific statistics on innocent victims, but it can be inferred from FBI crime statistics based on race.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-43

For murders and manslaughter, almost 50% are committed by blacks, vs 48% white despite the fact that black population is only 12% of total.

This info does not, in the slightest, validate your claim that "black gangbangers have killed several hundred times more innocent civilians than mass murders."

I run a gun store and while not everyone is a paranoid weirdo I would say at least half of them that I deal with are.

It doesn't directly, which is why I used the term "inferred". All you have to do is take out the words gangbangers and innocent and the statement would be applicable.

Then that must be your inference because I don't see that suggested here. Where is it inferred? How is it inferred?

There are no national wide statistics on gang related violence and homicide (and each locality has their own definition of what constitute as gang related). Generally, the estimate has been around 40%-50% of all murders (http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/fullpage/chicago-gang-violence-numbers-17509042http://homicide.latimes.com/post/gang-related-controversial-term-varying-definitions/). Combined with FBI homicide statistics by race.

They don't just assume mental illness. The Colorado shooter had a known history of mental illness. He had a long history of treatment and his psychiatrist is currently being sued by some of the victim's families. The Connecticut shooter also had a known history of mental illness and his mother has received a large portion of the blame for having guns in the household of a person with a know mental illness. Most people aren't calling that church shooter mentally ill. They're saying he was racist and that led to the removal of the confederate flag from some state capitols.

The Columbine shooters weren't mentally ill. They were white. Like I said, Tim McVeigh killed hundreds. He wasn't mentally ill.

I thought we were talking about the number of innocent by standers caught in the cross fire of gang related shootings vs number of people shot in mass shootings.

That doesn't mean that mental illness was the culprit. In the previous post, you mentioned that the Colorado shooter didn't kill for religious dogma or ideology (which isn't a prerequisite for terrorism, anyway). Again, we don't know why he did it And in absence of his motives, we do assumed mental defect was the cause. Conversely, we assumed that the Boston bombing was a terrorist plot even when there was no evidence to suggest as much. The Columbine Shooters? I remember it. Pundits did argue mental illness and even when it was finally revealed what their motives were - a terrorist bombing plot - they're still not referred to as terrorists. SC shooting? Mental illness was considered at first, followed by a backlash of left-leaning articles dismissing the mental narrative. In the end, however, he's racist gunman; not a terrorist.

Except the US doesn't have a gun problem. The problem is people ...

Yeah, a people with guns problem. :P

.. Furthermore just because they are mentally ill doesn't mean they are being treated as such.. The Colorado shooter for instance last I checked was deemed competent enough to stand trial, and the court struck down the plea for mental insanity.. People seem not to understand how incredibly hard it is to plea mental insanity in a court of law and have it pass.. It is like once in a blue moon.. I honestly don't give a **** what we call this guy, I am indifferent.. IF you want to call him a terrorist, go ahead.. Nothing is going to change in that regard.. I just want to see mental health to actually be talked about in this country now instead of this constant ignoring to outright demonization of it..

Being called a terrorist isn't going to some how change the verdict or other such thing..

No one has said it was.. He (Colorado shooter) has been deemed competent by the court to stand trial, regardless of his mental problems, the psych evaluation found he could understand right from wrong.. It is incredibly hard to get a mental insanity plea to pass in this country's court system, you rarely ever hear about it. This guy if he had lived, would have been no different most likely..

Well, being mentally ill isn't the same as being insane.

Personal freedom to get shot as well?

Correction, a criminals with guns problem.

Well last time I checked criminals were people and a number of times these people have had no prior criminal history so.....

Still, there's a massive distinction. Your previous statement would have everyone believe that any person with a gun is a problem when in fact that's simply not true. Vast majority of gun owners are not criminals and never will be.

It's idiotic as saying the world has a Muslim problem because few Islamic extremists. Yeah, last I checked they are Muslims too...

I don't understand the point you're making. I don't believe people look fondly on those of any skin color that participate in mass killings. The Columbine shooters were completely demonized and are often referred to as "monsters". Tim McVeigh was and is still referred to as a terrorist. He's the textbook example used for "domestic terrorism".

I believe most people in the country refer to terrorism when the perps have a political goal or ideologic goal for their actions. McVeigh was angry at the government and the way the handled the Waco Texas cult, so he wanted to strike back at the government. He put bombs in a federal building that resulted in the deaths of 100's. He gets called a terrorist. The Boston bombers were angry at the US and its foreign policy. That felt they had to defend "muslims" against the west. That's the justification they gave for placing bombs in public places. hence the terrorist label.

The columbine shooters were angry high schoolers that didn't have a political or ideological goal. They were angry/disenfranchised kids that shot and killed several of their classmates in cold blood. People don't refer to them as terrorists, but as cold blooded killers or monsters. I dont see how "terrorist" is any worse than "cold blooded monster".

Some other killings have involved people with known history of signficant mental illness. That is not being used to excuse their action, but rather than have your society stick its head up its ass and ignore the impact of mental illness, maybe addressing that can help prevent further of these tradgedies?

@sonicare: I don't want to pretend to know how people label these guys. I do know that corporate media propagandists do more labeling than anyone and I suspect folks just repeat what they see and hear. But if certain folk are reserving the term "terrorist" for ideological killers, then they're wrong for doing so. To be a terrorist, all that's required is the use or threat of violence, in order to terrify or coerce; typically in order achieve a social or political goal. But even if one were to ignore the academic and legal definition and just consider ideology alone, then the Charleston shooter would still qualify as a terrorist.

What difference does it make, either way? I think Glenn Greenwald did a good job of explaining what it is to be labeled a terrorist;

This is far more than a semantic question. Whether something is or is not "terrorism" has very substantial political implications, and very significant legal consequences as well. The word "terrorism" is, at this point, one of the most potent in our political lexicon: it single-handedly ends debates, ratchets up fear levels, and justifies almost anything the government wants to do in its name. It's hard not to suspect that the only thing distinguishing the Boston attack from Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook and Columbine (to say nothing of the US "shock and awe" attack on Baghdad and the mass killings in Fallujah) is that the accused Boston attackers are Muslim and the other perpetrators are not. As usual, what terrorism really means in American discourse - its operational meaning - is: violence by Muslims against Americans and their allies.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/boston-marathon-terrorism-aurora-sandy-hook