Yikes, the brain washed republicans ITT are scary.
Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health studied information from all 50 states between 2007 to 2010, analyzing all firearm-related deaths reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and data on firearm laws compiled by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Here is their conclusion: States with the most laws had a mortality rate 42% lower than those states with the fewest laws, they found. The strong law states' firearm-related homicide rate was also 40% lower and their firearm-related suicide rate was 37% lower.
Stop trying to make this a partisan issue with your generalization. There are plenty of gun owners and 2nd amendment right supporters that don't subscribed to GOP ideology.
Brady is one of the biggest name in gun control lobbying in Washington. Why would you expect people to take anything but biased information from a report they published? Would you if I cited evidences from NRA report?
In 2010, there were 6 million NICS (basically background check for gun purchase) applications, of which 72,659 were rejected (1.2%). And of the 72,659 only 62 were prosecuted and only 13 were convicted (sauce). This means only 0.0002% of all NICS applicants actually have criminal intent. There were 1.3 million violent crimes in 2010 (sauce), Brady Act stopped 0.001% of them, maybe. We might have a better chance of stopping terrorism by rounding up all Muslims males of certain ages. Before you have a heart attack, I'm not advocating for ethnic profiling as an actual approach to anti-terrorism, only highlighting the ridiculous notion of treating everyone in a group as a criminal just because of few insane individuals.
actually in each of these mass shootings, it seems like the guns were obtained legally.
I was actually speaking to the broader context of gun violence, to which these mass shooting is only a tiny subset of. To put things into perspective, so far this year, more people have died of flu than in mass shootings. No, the larger problem when you want to talk about gun violence is drug related homicide which most likely are committed with illegal guns.
Even if the context is mass shootings, then I don't see how the gun law changes (like universal background check) most gun control advocates are proposing would reduce mass shooting, like you mentioned most of these cases, shooters got their weapons legally.
Maybe they shouldn't be able to get guns period.
If someone can wave a magic wand and make all of the guns in the world and people's knowledge of guns disappear, I'd be all for that. But unfortunately that's not how law works. People tried with prohibition and war on drugs; they also proposed, similarly, that maybe people shouldn't be able to get alcohol or drugs period. Failures on both of those fronts clearly demonstrate a disparity between those pretty ideals and their actual effect in society. Perfect law don't work in real world because people are inherently imperfect. To simplify:
I think I said this before in this thread, but I'll repeat it here. As a Canadian, non-gun owner, I find the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens is tantamount to a dictatorship. People should have the right to protect person and property with reasonable measures, especially where police response times are anywhere beyond 5-10 minutes.
Gun ownership isn't the reason why people commit violent crimes or go on mass killing sprees. Nobody wants to talk about the REAL reasons either, they just want something simple and monstrous to go after.
Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings... and no one in the US seems willing to even begin the discussion about it.
I wonder outside of the USA how many countries made gun legal and how much crimes they have. I'm a Canadian too and I do think it isn't necessary to have guns. But I also believe we should have better mental health resources. I feel like if everyone have a gun, you are always on your gard ready to shoot and kill someone, where I live no one has a gun, I don,t fear that someone will pull out a gun and end my life right there.
In 2010, there were 6 million NICS (basically background check for gun purchase) applications, of which 72,659 were rejected (1.2%). And of the 72,659 only 62 were prosecuted and only 13 were convicted (sauce). This means only 0.0002% of all NICS applicants actually have criminal intent. There were 1.3 million violent crimes in 2010 (sauce), Brady Act stopped 0.001% of them, maybe. We might have a better chance of stopping terrorism by rounding up all Muslims males of certain ages. Before you have a heart attack, I'm not advocating for ethnic profiling as an actual approach to anti-terrorism, only highlighting the ridiculous notion of treating everyone in a group as a criminal just because of few insane individuals.
actually in each of these mass shootings, it seems like the guns were obtained legally.
I was actually speaking to the broader context of gun violence, to which these mass shooting is only a tiny subset of. To put things into perspective, so far this year, more people have died of flu than in mass shootings. No, the larger problem when you want to talk about gun violence is drug related homicide which most likely are committed with illegal guns.
Even if the context is mass shootings, then I don't see how the gun law changes (like universal background check) most gun control advocates are proposing would reduce mass shooting, like you mentioned most of these cases, shooters got their weapons legally.
Maybe they shouldn't be able to get guns period.
If someone can wave a magic wand and make all of the guns in the world and people's knowledge of guns disappear, I'd be all for that. But unfortunately that's not how law works. People tried with prohibition and war on drugs; they also proposed, similarly, that maybe people shouldn't be able to get alcohol or drugs period. Failures on both of those fronts clearly demonstrate a disparity between those pretty ideals and their actual effect in society. Perfect law don't work in real world because people are inherently imperfect. To simplify:
guns being legal is how the criminals are getting guns in the first place.
Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings... and no one in the US seems willing to even begin the discussion about it.
Mental Illness Not Usually Linked to Crime, Research Finds
The study didn’t find any predictable patterns linking criminal conduct and mental illness symptoms over time. Two-thirds of the offenders who had committed crimes directly related to their mental illness symptoms also had committed unrelated crimes for other reasons, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse, according to the research. “Is there a small group of people with mental illness committing crimes again and again because of their symptoms? We didn’t find that in this study,” Peterson said.
It's astonishing how some of you make such definitive statements on this despite having no idea what you are talking about. It took a 5 second Google search to prove you wrong.
Mental Illness Not Usually Linked to Crime, Research Finds
The study didn’t find any predictable patterns linking criminal conduct and mental illness symptoms over time. Two-thirds of the offenders who had committed crimes directly related to their mental illness symptoms also had committed unrelated crimes for other reasons, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse, according to the research. “Is there a small group of people with mental illness committing crimes again and again because of their symptoms? We didn’t find that in this study,” Peterson said.
It's astonishing how some of you make such definitive statements on this despite having no idea what you are talking about. It took a 5 second Google search to prove you wrong.
Mental Illness Not Usually Linked to Crime, Research Finds
The study didn’t find any predictable patterns linking criminal conduct and mental illness symptoms over time. Two-thirds of the offenders who had committed crimes directly related to their mental illness symptoms also had committed unrelated crimes for other reasons, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse, according to the research. “Is there a small group of people with mental illness committing crimes again and again because of their symptoms? We didn’t find that in this study,” Peterson said.
It's astonishing how some of you make such definitive statements on this despite having no idea what you are talking about. It took a 5 second Google search to prove you wrong.
"Not usually"
So definitive.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
Find me a single spree killer that doesn't have mental health problems. All the one's from recent memory are fucking insane.
Mental Illness Not Usually Linked to Crime, Research Finds
The study didn’t find any predictable patterns linking criminal conduct and mental illness symptoms over time. Two-thirds of the offenders who had committed crimes directly related to their mental illness symptoms also had committed unrelated crimes for other reasons, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse, according to the research. “Is there a small group of people with mental illness committing crimes again and again because of their symptoms? We didn’t find that in this study,” Peterson said.
It's astonishing how some of you make such definitive statements on this despite having no idea what you are talking about. It took a 5 second Google search to prove you wrong.
"Not usually"
So definitive.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
How exactly does your link disprove what he said though?
That study is for crime in general. Bar fights are mentioned as an example.
Gun crime, much less mass shootings aren't even mentioned.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
Find me a single spree killer that doesn't have mental health problems. All the one's from recent memory are fucking insane.
Anders Brevik being one of the worst.
correlation =/= causation. Come on bro you know that.
@topgunmv said:
How exactly does your link disprove what he said though?
That study is for crime in general. Bar fights are mentioned as an example.
Gun crime, much less mass shootings aren't even mentioned.
actually in each of these mass shootings, it seems like the guns were obtained legally.
I was actually speaking to the broader context of gun violence, to which these mass shooting is only a tiny subset of. To put things into perspective, so far this year, more people have died of flu than in mass shootings. No, the larger problem when you want to talk about gun violence is drug related homicide which most likely are committed with illegal guns.
Even if the context is mass shootings, then I don't see how the gun law changes (like universal background check) most gun control advocates are proposing would reduce mass shooting, like you mentioned most of these cases, shooters got their weapons legally.
Maybe they shouldn't be able to get guns period.
If someone can wave a magic wand and make all of the guns in the world and people's knowledge of guns disappear, I'd be all for that. But unfortunately that's not how law works. People tried with prohibition and war on drugs; they also proposed, similarly, that maybe people shouldn't be able to get alcohol or drugs period. Failures on both of those fronts clearly demonstrate a disparity between those pretty ideals and their actual effect in society. Perfect law don't work in real world because people are inherently imperfect. To simplify:
guns being legal is how the criminals are getting guns in the first place.
correlation =/= causation. Come on bro you know that.
Now you are just being argumentative for it's own sake. We all know that mental illness contributes a large part to spree/rampage killings. Let's read a bit, shall we?
Adam Lanza, perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, was diagnosed throughout childhood with various disorders; sensory-integration disorder, Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was undergoing behavioural and medicinal treatment. His father believes he might have had undiagnosed schizophrenia. And was completely obsessed with other school shootings. He was fucked up.
Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre, was diagnosed by a court-ordered psychiatrist with flat affect and depressed mood and was found to be "an imminent danger to himself or others". He was treated as an outpatient and because of a loophole in Virginia law, was legally able to purchase firearms despite his issues, but federally, would have been labelled a "mental defective" and Virginia state fucked up. He was fucked up.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two perpetrators of the Columbine massacre, were never officially diagnosed, but official reports of the aftermath declared Harris a sadistic psychopath and Klebold a depressive. The event was heavily orchestrated and motivated by serious issues. They were fucked up.
Anders Brevik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, was diagnosed with several different disorders by various specialists, none of which they could all agree on. He is one of the most fucked up of all time. He reacted without empathy and expressed grand delusions about his role in the events.
I would keep going, but I'm getting tired and don't feel like digging through a bunch of depressing articles to showcase that mental illness is a serious problem THAT SHOULD BE TALKED ABOUT and is a significant factor in why mass shootings even occur. And stop playing the goddamn semantics game. I use absolutisms for emphasis. Anyone with a handful of brain cells will know I'm not claiming that mental illness is the ONLY reason they occur. And really, isn't this an entirely opinion-based argument anyways? I personally think mental illness is the issue, you don't. Science can't decide yet either.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
Find me a single spree killer that doesn't have mental health problems. All the one's from recent memory are fucking insane.
Anders Brevik being one of the worst.
correlation =/= causation. Come on bro you know that.
@topgunmv said:
How exactly does your link disprove what he said though?
That study is for crime in general. Bar fights are mentioned as an example.
Gun crime, much less mass shootings aren't even mentioned.
Here's another.
Well first, that article is primarily about gun crime in general, not mass shootings.
Second, it specifically says mass shooters have mental health histories, it's just that since so few people who share the profile of mass shooters actually go on mass shootings and mass shootings themselves are such a small percentage of overall gun crime that efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
Ifind this discution fascinating as I'm from Canada and guns are illegal outside of hunting zone. To me it is obvious that if you can't put your hand on a gun, you won't be able to mass murder or just kill so easily. Killing by strangling or with a knife is as easy as pulling the trigger.
We don't have that many crime or murder with guns up here because of that and the police know that if it was with an handgun it is an illegal weapon.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
Find me a single spree killer that doesn't have mental health problems. All the one's from recent memory are fucking insane.
Anders Brevik being one of the worst.
but why are all the mass school shootings in the US? surely there are people everywhere in the world with mental health problems? you'd think places with serious problems would have a high abundance of these issues.
you'd think a country like india with more than a billion people, with a fifth of the population living below the poverty line and an abysmal ratio of psychiatrists to mentally ill people would have at least a few more school shootings than the US. but other countries don't. the most likely explanation for that is the abundance of guns.
let me throw a an analogy out there. pro-gun people claim that guns protect them from other gun-wielders (criminals). but international non-proliferation weapons treaties kinda work like stricter gun laws: no cluster bombs, no mines, and only some can have nukes (ironic because others want nukes to protect themselves from nuke-wielders). these weapons cause massive casualties and do not serve the purpose of defense.
Even if mental health problems are to blame, i don't see many people calling for better mental healthcare. in fact, the opposition to cheap, easily accessible US healthcare (and mental healthcare) to those who need it is far too high.
The federal government temporarily stores information about people requesting background checks for purchase by licensed dealers, and dealers are required to keep records of their sales.
These records provide information about what business licensed gun dealers do, but not about what citizens own what guns and where government agents can find those people and their guns.
Although, some states do have more strict registration programs.
To quote what you said "Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings" <------ that's a definitive statement. Unless you can prove it it would be wise not to make such a stand.
Find me a single spree killer that doesn't have mental health problems. All the one's from recent memory are fucking insane.
Anders Brevik being one of the worst.
but why are all the mass school shootings in the US? surely there are people everywhere in the world with mental health problems? you'd think places with serious problems would have a high abundance of these issues.
you'd think a country like india with more than a billion people, with a fifth of the population living below the poverty line and an abysmal ratio of psychiatrists to mentally ill people would have at least a few more school shootings than the US. but other countries don't. the most likely explanation for that is the abundance of guns.
let me throw a an analogy out there. pro-gun people claim that guns protect them from other gun-wielders (criminals). but international non-proliferation weapons treaties kinda work like stricter gun laws: no cluster bombs, no mines, and only some can have nukes (ironic because others want nukes to protect themselves from nuke-wielders). these weapons cause massive casualties and do not serve the purpose of defense.
Even if mental health problems are to blame, i don't see many people calling for better mental healthcare. in fact, the opposition to cheap, easily accessible US healthcare (and mental healthcare) to those who need it is far too high.
So is the issue that people are being killed/injured, or just that guns were used to do it?
Google mass stabbing and see how many results you get.
@topgunmv: that's not surprising because China is the most populous country in the world. Also, according to your link: "rapid social change, mass migrations, increasing disparities in wealth and weakening of traditions." were the causes.
None of which affect the US except perhaps increasing disparities in wealth, which is much lower.
These can't be the same mental issues that American mass shooters are suffering from, assuming that mental issues are the sole reason for American school shootings.
Nothing like solving a problem by failing to admit there is one
America has an overweight problem, maybe we should be talking about legislating restrictions on sugar and fat?
You can make a thread about that if you like :P
@LexLas said:
@xeno_ghost said:
Gun owners; how would you react; would you hand over your guns without a fuss or no?
Do you think there would be civil war on the streets of America if guns were suddenly made illegal?
I mean i just in vision when cops turn up to certain gun owners houses(a real gun nut) to confiscate their guns, that there would be some tense stand offs.
Just to add I'm not one that is all out for banning guns, just tougher gun laws if they are effective, just want to see how you guys would react.
EDIT: its just hypothetical guys just like a thread asking what would you do in a zombie apocalypse.
Well the last gun shop in San Francisco closed last week.
Really? Thats good!
I think if gun stores were all over the place in the country where i live then there would be alot more people who own guns, probably including me as i do like guns but not when they are used for senseless violence. So making guns less easily accessible/purchasable is a good thing.
As there are millions of guns already owned by civillians in the US this would not do much to stop gun violence, but yeh its a step in the right direction.
@bforrester420 said:
@klunt_bumskrint: Good luck killing/critically wounding two dozen people with a knife. Possible? Yes. Easy? No.
yeh agreed, guns don't kill people, people kill people but guns make it real easy and less personal, a knife would require you to get close to your victims, and you would be lucky to get a couple kills in before everyone runs away or tackles you to the ground and beats your ass.
I was actually speaking to the broader context of gun violence, to which these mass shooting is only a tiny subset of. To put things into perspective, so far this year, more people have died of flu than in mass shootings. No, the larger problem when you want to talk about gun violence is drug related homicide which most likely are committed with illegal guns.
Even if the context is mass shootings, then I don't see how the gun law changes (like universal background check) most gun control advocates are proposing would reduce mass shooting, like you mentioned most of these cases, shooters got their weapons legally.
Maybe they shouldn't be able to get guns period.
If someone can wave a magic wand and make all of the guns in the world and people's knowledge of guns disappear, I'd be all for that. But unfortunately that's not how law works. People tried with prohibition and war on drugs; they also proposed, similarly, that maybe people shouldn't be able to get alcohol or drugs period. Failures on both of those fronts clearly demonstrate a disparity between those pretty ideals and their actual effect in society. Perfect law don't work in real world because people are inherently imperfect. To simplify:
guns being legal is how the criminals are getting guns in the first place.
Uh, no. Guns aren't legal for criminals to get.
and if guns weren't legal, they wouldn't be able to get them.
Mass shootings aren't getting more common — and are a tiny share of all shootings
There has been a rash of heavily publicized mass shootings in recent years. But those incidents, while tragic, are a tiny sliver of America's gun homicide problem. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, analyzing FBI data, found that fewer than 1 percent of homicide victims in 2010 were killed in incidents where four or more people died.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report from 2013 identified 78 "public mass shootings" between 1983 and 2012, which claimed 547 lives. For context, 11,068 people (more than 20 times the mass shooting toll over three decades) died in gun homicides in 2011 alone — and murder is, in general, on the decline, so that number was higher in the 1980s and '90s. "While tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders or non-negligent homicides related to firearms that occur annually in the United States," CRS concluded.
Also, mass shootings are, contrary to popular perception, not actually increasing. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, has found that the number of mass shooting victims, perpetrators, and incidents didn't change much from 1980 to 2010:
In 2012, Mother Jones put out an analysis coming to a different conclusion, arguing that mass shootings were on the upswing. As Brad Plumer explained, they were just looking at different numbers than Fox, and Mother Jones's numbers excluded certain types of mass shootings. "Fox is looking at all mass shootings involving four or more victims — that's the standard FBI definition," Plumer wrote. "Mother Jones, by contrast, had a much more restrictive definition, excluding things like armed robbery or gang violence."
but why are all the mass school shootings in the US? surely there are people everywhere in the world with mental health problems? you'd think places with serious problems would have a high abundance of these issues.
you'd think a country like india with more than a billion people, with a fifth of the population living below the poverty line and an abysmal ratio of psychiatrists to mentally ill people would have at least a few more school shootings than the US. but other countries don't. the most likely explanation for that is the abundance of guns.
let me throw a an analogy out there. pro-gun people claim that guns protect them from other gun-wielders (criminals). but international non-proliferation weapons treaties kinda work like stricter gun laws: no cluster bombs, no mines, and only some can have nukes (ironic because others want nukes to protect themselves from nuke-wielders). these weapons cause massive casualties and do not serve the purpose of defense.
Even if mental health problems are to blame, i don't see many people calling for better mental healthcare. in fact, the opposition to cheap, easily accessible US healthcare (and mental healthcare) to those who need it is far too high.
They do happen. You just obviously don't hear about them.
I'm Canadian and not a gun owner and I think the idea of stricter gun regulation is a bunch of hooey.
Criminals don't buy legal guns to commit crimes with.
What the **** are you talking about, legally bought guns are used in crimes all the time. The fucking shooter, which sparked this debate, bought all of his guns legally.
Seems the typical argument for opposition gun restriction is the "criminal" debacle.
The "criminals don't abide by gun laws argument" is difficult to apply to gun violence broadly. If we banned guns as a whole, I would hazard a guess that organized crime/ gang related violent crime wouldn't drop significantly. However, the more recent mass shootings (Sandy Hook, Oregon, Aurora) were all performed in suburban largely white areas with legally owned weapons. Banning guns wholesale would very likely reduce the amount of mass shootings in these areas due to difficulty acquiring illegal weaponry in stable and networked communities. Guns aren't like drugs, they are much more difficult to manufacture, ship, and use discretely. The "criminal" argument is a racially charged paranoid propaganda mess spread by the NRA/Right Wing with little circumstantial evidence. It was designed to lobby and sell weapons. Given the sales of guns following these tragedies, I'd say its working.
Gangbangers who commit most of the violent crime in America are not shooting up schools, especially in rural communities. Most murder crime/rape committed in "White America" are committed against people close to the perpetrator which makes defending oneself with lethal force difficult for many reasons. The "criminal" argument realistically applies to mostly robbery, in which armed robbery situations where one can defend themselves properly are exceedingly rare. Burglars are looking for easy money, not shootouts or murder.
Speculating that banning guns would very likely remove the frequency of these mass shootings in America is probably correct just by access to the weapons needed to perform these shootings. More importantly, it would help bandage America's paranoid and sick gun culture. For reducing all violent crime in America, other steps such as decriminalization of drugs and education reform in impoverished areas would need to be passed.
Just like the right to abortion, the right to gun ownership isn't going anywhere in this country. Guns most likely do not make us safer as a society, but they are an individual right. While the highly publicized mass shootings get all the press, they contibute a very small amount to the overall deaths by firearms in the US. Over 10,000 ppl a year are killed by guns in the US. The overwhelming majority are not gunned down by rampaging lunatics but rather victims of domestic violence, gang violence, etc.
For comparison, the same number of people are killed each year in the US by drunk drivers.
Based on some of the conversations, what I'm curious about is the reasons behind the need to own a gun. Why do people want to own a gun? And if the reason is to feel safer, then what are the reasons people feel unsafe without a gun?
I think I said this before in this thread, but I'll repeat it here. As a Canadian, non-gun owner, I find the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens is tantamount to a dictatorship. People should have the right to protect person and property with reasonable measures, especially where police response times are anywhere beyond 5-10 minutes.
Gun ownership isn't the reason why people commit violent crimes or go on mass killing sprees. Nobody wants to talk about the REAL reasons either, they just want something simple and monstrous to go after.
Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings... and no one in the US seems willing to even begin the discussion about it.
The thing is people bring this up nearly every time there is a mass shooting, but those same people have never made a sustained effort to change how we deal with the mentally unstable and the relation to said shootings. They just bring it up as a distraction for people to consider so that nothing will be done to their easy access to guns. It's something that has become really obvious and people are beginning to point it out.
For the record I think that changing the system of how we deal with mental illness is good thing to get behind, but it's being used as a tool to keep people from obtaining gun reform as opposed to something that is actually being pursued. If you want to actually pursue changing the system for mental health (and actually show that you are working on this when a gun massacre is not currently in the news) I will back you on it, but I will also continue to pursue gun control reform as it's been shown to have great success in other countries.
@topgunmv: that's not surprising because China is the most populous country in the world. Also, according to your link: "rapid social change, mass migrations, increasing disparities in wealth and weakening of traditions." were the causes.
None of which affect the US except perhaps increasing disparities in wealth, which is much lower.
These can't be the same mental issues that American mass shooters are suffering from, assuming that mental issues are the sole reason for American school shootings.
Are you suggesting that the causes or degree of causes for a mental breakdown is the same for every person?
Just like the right to abortion, the right to gun ownership isn't going anywhere in this country. Guns most likely do not make us safer as a society, but they are an individual right. While the highly publicized mass shootings get all the press, they contibute a very small amount to the overall deaths by firearms in the US. Over 10,000 ppl a year are killed by guns in the US. The overwhelming majority are not gunned down by rampaging lunatics but rather victims of domestic violence, gang violence, etc.
For comparison, the same number of people are killed each year in the US by drunk drivers.
While small in the grand scale of things Its still 5x + higher than any other developed nation
And thus So it goes Nothing like solving a problem by failing to admit there is one
I wonder how many more mass shootings it will take before it finally clicks...
I think I said this before in this thread, but I'll repeat it here. As a Canadian, non-gun owner, I find the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens is tantamount to a dictatorship. People should have the right to protect person and property with reasonable measures, especially where police response times are anywhere beyond 5-10 minutes.
Gun ownership isn't the reason why people commit violent crimes or go on mass killing sprees. Nobody wants to talk about the REAL reasons either, they just want something simple and monstrous to go after.
Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings... and no one in the US seems willing to even begin the discussion about it.
Woah. I agree with the Fox. That's hasn't happened in awhile. But yes.....the problem isn't the guns. Mental Health probably though how you keep people on meds I can't fathom short of locking them up. Better screening would be great to catch it. Then there is the media. They make this morons famous and I think that plays into why we are having a rash of these instances lately. Report the crime. Don't name the individuals. If they are nothings....maybe it will slow down.
Woah. I agree with the Fox. That's hasn't happened in awhile. But yes.....the problem isn't the guns. Mental Health probably though how you keep people on meds I can't fathom short of locking them up. Better screening would be great to catch it. Then there is the media. They make this morons famous and I think that plays into why we are having a rash of these instances lately. Report the crime. Don't name the individuals. If they are nothings....maybe it will slow down.
The psychopaths who commit spree or serial killings do so for the notoriety. Keeping their name and likeness out of the public's eye might dissuade others from doing the same. Psychopaths feed off fear and the chaos they cause, and I don't doubt many spree killers do what they do solely for the attention, psychopath or not.
The media in the US is one of the biggest problems when it comes to issues like these.
Values are determined by the law of supply and demand, this is true whether we are talking about the stock market or the black market. Black arms trade in the US is cheap because the supply is plenty and demand is relatively low. Banning civilian arms ownership would not necessary reduce supply since there would be influx of civilian off loading their now illegal arms into the gray/black market and US will likely continue to be a leader in arms manufacturing (Russia has relatively strict law against civilian arms but illegal AKs can be brought relatively cheap due to it abundance in that country). Not to mention drastic increase of illegal arms manufacturing and especially with fabrication technology where it is now.
I think I said this before in this thread, but I'll repeat it here. As a Canadian, non-gun owner, I find the idea of keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens is tantamount to a dictatorship. People should have the right to protect person and property with reasonable measures, especially where police response times are anywhere beyond 5-10 minutes.
Gun ownership isn't the reason why people commit violent crimes or go on mass killing sprees. Nobody wants to talk about the REAL reasons either, they just want something simple and monstrous to go after.
Mental health problems is the sole reason why there are mass shootings... and no one in the US seems willing to even begin the discussion about it.
The thing is people bring this up nearly every time there is a mass shooting, but those same people have never made a sustained effort to change how we deal with the mentally unstable and the relation to said shootings. They just bring it up as a distraction for people to consider so that nothing will be done to their easy access to guns. It's something that has become really obvious and people are beginning to point it out.
For the record I think that changing the system of how we deal with mental illness is good thing to get behind, but it's being used as a tool to keep people from obtaining gun reform as opposed to something that is actually being pursued. If you want to actually pursue changing the system for mental health (and actually show that you are working on this when a gun massacre is not currently in the news) I will back you on it, but I will also continue to pursue gun control reform as it's been shown to have great success in other countries.
But countless studies have shown that more guns within a country just lead to more violent crimes. Look at japan, 3 gun related deaths last year.
If someone can wave a magic wand and make all of the guns in the world and people's knowledge of guns disappear, I'd be all for that. But unfortunately that's not how law works. People tried with prohibition and war on drugs; they also proposed, similarly, that maybe people shouldn't be able to get alcohol or drugs period. Failures on both of those fronts clearly demonstrate a disparity between those pretty ideals and their actual effect in society. Perfect law don't work in real world because people are inherently imperfect. To simplify:
guns being legal is how the criminals are getting guns in the first place.
Uh, no. Guns aren't legal for criminals to get.
and if guns weren't legal, they wouldn't be able to get them.
*facepalm
You shitting me. Drugs aren't legal, how are people getting them? Alcohol weren't legal during prohibition, how were people consuming them then?
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