Caporegime
Looks like it's hunting season at the local supermarkets again.
Today's mass shooting in the US
- Thread starter Rroff
- Start date
Soldato
The American people are in a strange place at the moment. Many of the ideas they cherish are being challenged by modern times, and they perhaps need to change, but also cling to the way things were, the things that made the country great in the first place.
Without any laws, there is just chaos, and perhaps individual freedom needs to be sacrificed to protect the freedoms of others. It's a fine balance, and as society and circumstances change, so must the boundaries of individual freedom. Many Americans just don't see it that way, though.
Personally, I don't think the gun laws are tough enough in the UK. There are still far too many legal guns in the hands of farmers and their workers.
Soldato
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The UK already has some of the toughest gun laws in the world. I believe only Singapore and China are tougher, carrying the death sentence for some gun crime.
It's the same with most laws, though, in terms of balance - Should we seek to ban kitchen knives, because a few individuals have legitimately purchased them and gone directly out to commit a crime with them? Same with hammers and other DIY tools.
Plenty of other countries have far higher and easier gun ownership without the high gun crime though, suggesting it's not the law part that's the problem.
Soldato
Really? That surprises me, be interested to know which countries.
Soldato
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Switzerland, Finland and Norway are those that spring immediately to mind.
No other country has quite the same level of ownership as the USA unless you count per 100k people, but the next few down the list typically have far lower crime rates than the US.
Associate
I don't know how you came to that conclusion. We have tougher gun control laws than Russia. A ban on breech-loading pistols and fully-automatic weapons (with obscure exemptions for the latter for historic firing ranges). A ban on semi-automatic rifles/carbines outside of .22 LR calibre. 5 years mandatory minimum prison sentence for possession of an illegal/unlicensed firearm. 10 years for possession of a fully-automatic weapon. 2 years for possession of firearm ammunition without a firearms certificate. 2 years for just priming a cartridge case without a firearms certificate!
So how are they supposed to control vermin? With a crossbow, or is that too dangerous? Maybe a catapult would do?
Canada also has a lot of civilian owned long-guns and a low homicide rate.
For many years Serbia had more widespread civilian firearm ownership than the USA. Then some nutcase went on a big shooting spree so they have toughened their gun control laws now. All it takes is one idiot to wreck your gun ownership rights.
Associate
You can tell your the sort of person that has no idea how the country side works.
Soldato
Trebuchet FTW, and totally legal.
Soldato
Associate
The solution to every problem.
Soldato
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Swiss Army knife.
Pretty low armed burglary rate too, but still a higher overall gun crime rate than other examples... probably American tourists.
New Zealand is also on that list.
Associate
Slingshot using one of yer da's old socks!
Amusingly, there was a bloke in the USA who made a catapult (they call them slingshots there) with the power of a .22 short cartridge (60 foot pounds). He proved it by using a ballistic chronograph to measure the .50 calibre lead ball bearing's velocity. Don't tell the Home Office because they will want to ban catapults next!
If I recall correctly it was an Australian man who did the spree-killer shootings in New Zealand in 2019. It must really suck to have your gun control laws tightened because of a crime perpetrated by a foreign nutter on your soil.
I live in a very rural farming community and none of the farmers shoot anyone. Zero murders by farmers with firearms that i ever remember in over 40 years.
They do commit suicide with firearms sometimes.
Im sure there are cases of course but its not a thing in the farming counties around me.
Unless the farmers are feeding their shooting victims to their pigs, so no one is any the wiser...
Caporegime
The gun laws that were in place at the time of the NZ shooting would have flagged Tarrant as unfit to hold a firearm licence if the doctor who treated him for a self-inflicted firearm wound in 2018 had notified authorities. In any case, New Zealanders welcomed the tighter gun laws, just as we did in Australia when ours were improved. In fact, Australia's gun laws were tightened precisely as a result of overwhelming public demand.
...and far stricter firearm laws than the US, including no constitutional right to bear arms.
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Interestingly the UK has an almost inverse proportional relationship between the firearm ownership density of an area and firearm related crime. I live in one of the areas of the UK with high firearms ownership density and I can't even remember the last time anything happened.
Same here, there have been the odd shop or fuel station held up by someone with a shotgun but the weapons weren't legally held anyhow and not related to farming, etc. the only other firearms related incident I'm aware of is an old boy offed himself with a WW2 revolver he'd held on to after his wife died (pretty lucky no one else got hit as the round went through and exit out the window behind him and must have crossed the pavement outside about shoulder height).
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Soldato
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It sucks to have any laws tightened over isolated incidents, particularly when the perpetrators should have already been caught by the existing legal processes.
Dunblaine is one example of a perpetrator already known to the authorities for other incidents and had already been deemed unsuitable to own firearms.
Not a mass shooting but head of a large healthcare insurance company in the US gunned down, and the vast majority of the comments from US posters are basically that he had it coming and how evil health insurance is - yet they largely look down on the likes of the NHS and vote against such systems.
Man of Honour
The CEO was known for being a scumbag and the company denied enough medical insurance claims for long enough for it to impact peoples lives. There are posts from people who had meetings with his company too where they openly spoke about further price hikes for profits without a passing mention on caring about peoples lives.
This situation is very different to mass shootings, and social healthcare is very different to a healthcare insurance company that has spent years preying on people paying year after year only to deny them a claim when the need comes etc. That's rather scummy and loses peoples lives. I would hazard a bet that the shooter lost someone because of that sort of corporate greed and now took matters into his own hands.
It also does not help that the US justice system does not punish companies for being this way, it just lets them, which is why there is such a big issue, and the new white house administration is full all the way to the top of billionaire loyalists who want nothing more but to satisfy like minded billionaires, so I suspect this sort of thing will become more common going forwards.
The news media won't even talk about why this might have happened either and only focus on the manhunt. Giving context to the situation is not in their MO otherwise it would make people wiser and question the establishment.
This situation is very different to mass shootings, and social healthcare is very different to a healthcare insurance company that has spent years preying on people paying year after year only to deny them a claim when the need comes etc. That's rather scummy and loses peoples lives. I would hazard a bet that the shooter lost someone because of that sort of corporate greed and now took matters into his own hands.
It also does not help that the US justice system does not punish companies for being this way, it just lets them, which is why there is such a big issue, and the new white house administration is full all the way to the top of billionaire loyalists who want nothing more but to satisfy like minded billionaires, so I suspect this sort of thing will become more common going forwards.
The news media won't even talk about why this might have happened either and only focus on the manhunt. Giving context to the situation is not in their MO otherwise it would make people wiser and question the establishment.
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