It is the same all over the world.
North Seattle mass shooting, at least 4 dead
- Thread starter Chris Wilson
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It is the same all over the world.
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Had the USA have had a land border with either Germany or Japan I don't doubt regardless of armed citizens they would have been invaded, probably along similar lines to Russia they would have won in the end but an invasion would have happened.
Majority of people who carry out these shootings are not licensed to carry... These people will find access to guns regardless.
Physically de-arming the whole U.S of guns is almost an impossible task, with country so big and bordering places such as Mexico... The gangs and cartels that are source of most gun crimes will always find a way.
People forget to understand when comparing EU to USA in relation to gun crime, just how much more mental issues, hatred issues, racial divisions, mobs,gangs, drug trade the USA has compared to EU.
Guns are mere tools of expressing that built up hatred, these mass shootings sadly are nothing compared to a normal week in Chicago.
3,131 shootings so far this year (Jan 1) In Chicago, with over 500 dead.
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Once you live in USA for a bit, you kind of realize that the people here are way down on that spectrum compared to lets say UK.
Armed citizens have never kept the USA safe from invasion. Two friendly neighbouring countries and an ocean either side of them is what kept them safe from invasion.
Today you can add "more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined" to that list of reasons.
Likewise, there was no chance in hell that an armed populace was going to stop blitzkrieg. If the professional French army couldn't do it, clueless civilians would've been even worse off.
This is the only problem with banning guns in the USA. The number of guns in circulation is already at such a stupidly high level that in the short term it would do no good. It's a generational problem, there needs to be a concerted effort to get guns off the streets and there needs to be tighter regulations on gun sales. That would start the ball rolling and would be far more effective in the long term than an outright ban.
But it will never happen because "muh freedumbs".
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Has anyone else here got the point where they see all these American shootings in recent times and have pretty much decided they will not ever consider visiting USA until pigs fly (guns are banned)?
More pointless loss of lives.
More pointless loss of lives.
Has anyone else here got the point where they see all these American shootings in recent times and have pretty much decided they will not ever consider visiting USA until pigs fly (guns are banned)?
More pointless loss of lives.
No, would love to go the US ( if i could afford it ).
These are still isolated incidents and would not deter me from visiting.
not really, getting caught up in a mass shooting is a tiny risk in the grand scheme of things
don't base your life choices on media hype
Has anyone else here got the point where they see all these American shootings in recent times and have pretty much decided they will not ever consider visiting USA until pigs fly (guns are banned)?
More pointless loss of lives.
From my experience you are more likely to be shot by an over eager/jumpy cop than some random person :S think I saw like 1 every day person on the street that was obviously actually armed in my entire time there. One of my friends kept a small revolver in a car safe and him and another had sizeable arsenals at home heh.
lol that kind of special thinking is not limited to these forums.
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Here's a verbatim copy of what an American posted this morning on a US news site forum, and is indicative of how many think.
"As I have posted before, the killer had a decent probability of being stopped, before five deaths, by a responsible licensed concealed weapon holder had this occurred in Florida. As of July 31, 2016, there were 1,632,184 active licensed individuals in the state out of a total estimated population of about 20 million. Even before this occurred, my spouse was discussing taking a small arms training course this Fall. She is an excellent shot with a shotgun having been taught by her father, years ago, when they shot trap. If confronted by such a situation, armed with a smart phone, a victim can only shoot a picture of the attacker. "
A previous poster here said he'd be disinclined to visit the USA unless guns were banned. Apart from the fact banning hand guns and making rifles much harder to licence, gun crime continues in the UK, with the inner cities seemingly easy sources for un-licensed hand guns, and a swathe of young gangsters only too willing to use them. The USA is literally awash with firearms, banning them and seeing a worthwhile decrease in gun crimes might take a century or more. If I were to visit the US it wouldn't bother me at all, it's part of their constitution and culture and what makes countries and their inhabitants different.
I would welcome the introduction of licensing for members of the public to carry concealed weapons over here, the way things are going. I'd be the first to apply for one. Quite why our police are not now routinely armed to the teeth I cannot fathom. It seems politically correct nonsense and pretending that the likes of IS are just fooling around when they say they are bringing a war to the doorstep of the Christian world.
"As I have posted before, the killer had a decent probability of being stopped, before five deaths, by a responsible licensed concealed weapon holder had this occurred in Florida. As of July 31, 2016, there were 1,632,184 active licensed individuals in the state out of a total estimated population of about 20 million. Even before this occurred, my spouse was discussing taking a small arms training course this Fall. She is an excellent shot with a shotgun having been taught by her father, years ago, when they shot trap. If confronted by such a situation, armed with a smart phone, a victim can only shoot a picture of the attacker. "
A previous poster here said he'd be disinclined to visit the USA unless guns were banned. Apart from the fact banning hand guns and making rifles much harder to licence, gun crime continues in the UK, with the inner cities seemingly easy sources for un-licensed hand guns, and a swathe of young gangsters only too willing to use them. The USA is literally awash with firearms, banning them and seeing a worthwhile decrease in gun crimes might take a century or more. If I were to visit the US it wouldn't bother me at all, it's part of their constitution and culture and what makes countries and their inhabitants different.
I would welcome the introduction of licensing for members of the public to carry concealed weapons over here, the way things are going. I'd be the first to apply for one. Quite why our police are not now routinely armed to the teeth I cannot fathom. It seems politically correct nonsense and pretending that the likes of IS are just fooling around when they say they are bringing a war to the doorstep of the Christian world.
This is a pretty stupid idea. If US police cannot correctly read a situation and blow people's heads off when they're complying with instructions what chance does the average person have?
Cop wannabe's with itchy trigger fingers? Do me a favour.
Gun crime in the UK is low because we don't have the mass proliferation of firearms that the USA does. We also don't have the mass shootings, and on the odd occasion it does happen the shooter is using a shotgun instead of military grade firepower and has to reload every two rounds.
Gun crime does happen but last time I looked we were somewhere in the region of 10 times less per head of the population than the USA.
Banning them won't work but a national drive to reduce their numbers and properly curtail the sale via regulation and restriction will (eventually) work.
Two questions:
Are you insane?
What purpose would it serve?
I refer you to the first of my above questions.
The last person who should be given a gun is the one who thinks he can ape the police and save the day. Acting out your fantasies in real life never ends well.
Police are not routinely armed because there is no need for them to be. All that would be achieved is a copper capping someone by accident or, worse, because said copper is having a bad day. Because there are no guns over here the direct result is that in any given confrontation you aren't 99.9% certain to *not* see a firearm involved, ergo it would be a waste of money to arm all police officers.
And Joe Public doesn't want armed cops either because the police can be just as stupid as we are.
As for IS, no amount of firearms will prevent an attack that you don't know is coming. And besides, IS just aren't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Far better to plough the money and time into something that will certainly save lives, like cutting obesity for example, or expanding mental health services.
Whats that got to do with accidental/unintentional killings wich are a huge number
I think youll find tb elegal gun ahops are the biggest source of guns
There are over 1.8m registered firearms in the UK including a not insignificant number under section 5. There is far more to it than just numbers or even types of guns - though obviously if we had more prolific licensing for high capacity, full automatic, high damage weapons then incidents involving mass shootings would be higher than next to zero - but I'd still dispute that we'd see anything close to the amount and nature of incidents like the US sees if we had more relaxed firearms licensing than we do and a similar proportion of gun ownership to population.
I think people misunderstand the mentality of a lot of legal gun owners in the US as well - recently there was a video of a couple of people who thought it amusing to use their 2nd amendment rights and open carry status of their state to effectively troll a prison facility (under the pretence of exercising their rights) that got ripped into by a lot of gun owners who saw it as abuse of their rights and infact sacrilege to the 2nd amendment.
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Let's call it 2 million to be safe. This give us a ratio, given current population levels of 1 firearm per 32 people in the UK.
In the US it's virtually 1 per person.
Therefore it cannot be said that the UK has a high proliferation of firearms.
There are a hell of a lot of perfectly sensible and reasonable people who own firearms in the USA and in an ideal world I would say more power to them. But in your above example you also cite a very good reason as to why strict regulation and restriction would be a good idea. Why have those two idiots got, and probably continue to have, access to guns?
You have crap mental health support provision, a massive wealth gap and easy access to military grade firearms.
What could possibly go wrong?
Illustrates why I believe it to be more than just numbers - both still continue to hold a number of weapons including the infamous ar15s - in the UK it would be a completely different matter.
I'd have shot both of them personally for good measure :O
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Very few people are suggesting a wholesale ban on firearms in the US. In fact the majority that discuss that are those against any "ban". Most people are more sensible and realise that banning won't work any more than the situation at the moment. What is needed is a fresh look at the legislation and a significant tightening up of said legislation.
That, along with the wholesale culture change around guns in the US, but I believe that is already occurring, albeit slowly. Gun ownership is dropping in the US at the moment, and unless something catastrophic happens I don't force that changing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not against guns - they are great tools and sporting instruments when used properly - unfortunately the US culture around guns is closer to that of somewhere like the middle east than Europe or much of the rest of the developed world.
You'll also find that the "way things are going" in the UK even less of a requirement for weapons. Other than this years "peculiar*" rise in violent crime** this sort of thing (along with police deaths on duty) have been going down for decades. Only those that don't understand the relative risk and numbers would see it as any other way IMO.
*To quote someone from the ONS that collate this information.
**Which has been attributed amongst other things to the removal of officers from various squads to work on things like historic sex abuse and various other well publicised things, leaving a shortage of officers to deal with current violent crime.
I agree that it is more than just the numbers, for example fewer households have guns that before in the States which would indicate on the surface at least that less people have more guns.
The main problem is the continued clinging to their 2nd Amendment, which is a minimum of 150 years out of date and was written when it took you 5 minutes to reload your musket. This call for the protection of their "freedoms" is why idiots and the mentally psychotic can continue to buy guns in the USA.