Reported: 10 Killed in US Batman Premiere

deko said:
All the braindead Americans on the iRacing forum are having a discussion about "How much safer we all would feel if everyone was armed to the teeth", basically. I can't believe it.

Put it this way, everyone will, at one time, have had a few words with someone else over something completely trivial, in a pub or something. Instead of throwing a punch, he pulls out a gun and blows your head off. How is that better?
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lol imagine if everyone had a gun and someone opened fire on the gun man, someone would then open fire on them etc. everyone panicking and running around

adrenalin going, the average person cant think straight, it would be a blood bath like you seen in old western films.
 
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estebanrey said:
There is no need for criminals in America to have illegal guns as you can buy them so easily from shops.

The point I was trying to make is the kind of person that goes on a shooting spree isn't mentally stable anyway so you can't then apply a rational thought process to them.

They don't tend to think about their own lives or safety before carrying out something like this.

The point about death by cop shows this, they go out trying to kill as many as they can because they want to die and try and take as many people with them as possible.
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Criminals cannot buy legal guns, it isn't as simple as walking in to a shop and saying "I'll have a 9mm Hi-Point please!" even for law abiding people. Also, with more people armed, the death by cop rampage gets stopped much quicker anyway.
 
phil675 said:
It is reasonable to assume that someone will not draw a gun on the public if there is a high risk that those people will also be armed.
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Except, the USA has one of the highest rates of handgun murder in the world. It also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. Therefore your assumption fails completely.
 
jamief said:
Except, the USA has one of the highest rates of handgun murder in the world. It also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world. Therefore your assumption fails completely.
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It's of course not as black and white as that, as cultural issue have huge effects on the numbers.

But ultimately I cannot believe anyone would think if we had gun ownership here in the UK akin to the US, that gun related deaths and crimes would do anything other than go up....
 
Random handgun crime is almost always illegally obtained guns, its so rarely ordinary people like you and I with a registered weapon. It just isn't as simple as the people who spout no to all guns full stop make it out to be.
 
phil675 said:
Criminals cannot buy legal guns, it isn't as simple as walking in to a shop and saying "I'll have a 9mm Hi-Point please!" even for law abiding people. Also, with more people armed, the death by cop rampage gets stopped much quicker anyway.
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Different States have different laws, some are tighter than others. And how does a shop know if that person will use the gun for criminality or not, they're not mind readers?

Sure people already with certain convictions are restricted from buying guns but people aren't born with criminal records. And even if a criminal does get his hands on a gun the chances are that gun was bought legally by someone who does pass the necessary criteria who then just gives it to the other person who sells it to them (so it's not an 'illegal' firearm per se).

You also have "gun shows" in a lot of States which are no more than carboot sales for guns and you can't tell me any proper vetting is going on there.
 
Well, its a contentious issue and I'm sure I'll not convince you to change your outlook, but my opinion is that people should be allowed to carry weapons with the proper training and various checks made on them, and this would have a positive effect on crime. I'm talking about the US here, not the UK.
 
phil675 said:
Well, its a contentious issue and I'm sure I'll not convince you to change your outlook, but my opinion is that people should be allowed to carry weapons with the proper training and various checks made on them, and this would have a positive effect on crime. I'm talking about the US here, not the UK.
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:rolleyes:

Yeah that's worked REALLY well in america hasn't it!

Plus you do realise that the homicide rate in the U.K has been dropping for the last decade ?? Without the need of people stuffing glocks in their knickers :rolleyes:
 
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phil675 said:
You're tripping over yourself implying things there.
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How so? The suggestion was that a reasonable person wouldn't open fire on a group of people who could also be armed, thus implying these sorts of massacres would be less likely if more people carried guns. Was that not the implication?

phil675 said:
Doesn't this tend to be desperate people that are criminals using illegal guns anyway? Not sure what this has to do with law abiding people carrying guns.
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It was suggested that more people carrying guns would decrease the chances of massacres like these - the suicide by cop phenomenom shows that this isn't the case. I've never read anything to suggest that people choosing to commit suicide in this manner tend to be criminals using illegal guns.

phil675 said:
Even a slightly mad person would be put off by the fact that the chance of achieving their goal is lower if they are taking on a room full of armed people. The guy who did it probably imagined a room full of helpless lambs he could gun down without any comeback, and that is exactly what happened by the sound of it.
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Well, that depends on their goal. Still, I can't imagine someone trying to take on a whole cinema full of people without having a gun themselves, regardless of how the people in the cinema were armed. And then even if they did, it's unlikely they'd do anywhere near the sort of damage they're capable of with a gun.

phil675 said:
I'm not suggesting that every man woman and child be issued an M-16. But law abiding people being allowed to carry registered firearms is surely better than everyone being helpless. With proper legislation, compulsory training and strict gun tracking it could and does work in parts of the US. Over here would likely be a different story as guns are cracked down so much already.
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I think that the fewer people that have access to such a powerful life-ending tool, the better. Even the most level headed people will act irrationally at times of high emotion. Not to mention the fact that the prevalence of them in America leads to people who shouldn't have them having relatively easy access to them, whether it's a kid taking his Dad's gun into school or illegal sales. It seems far too easy for the wrong people to get hold of illegal firearms in America and I very much doubt putting more guns out there will help that.
 
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phil675 said:
Random handgun crime is almost always illegally obtained guns, its so rarely ordinary people like you and I with a registered weapon. It just isn't as simple as the people who spout no to all guns full stop make it out to be.
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Fair comment... But hand on heart, would you say if gun ownership was as rife here in the UK as the US, gun injury/crime/death figures would stay the same? I think most people would accept they'd go up. The question would then be, how acceptable would those increased figures be?

For example, there's obviously deaths with cars on the roads. We could remove them and the figures would drop. But society decides to tolerate those figures due to the dependency/importance of personal transport in society.

I suspect most people don't see enough gains from freeing up gun ownership compared to the downsides. I'm happy to compromise my freedom to own guns if it means the very people I don't want having them, are also less likely to own them.
 
Aside from the obvious tragedy that has occurred I notice that it's been confirmed that one of the injured is a three month old baby, what on earth is a three month old baby doing at a cinema past midnight :confused:

Maybe one of these day's America will learn to tighten up the access that people have to firearms.
 
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