No doubt if you asked his parents if they were responsible gun owners you'd have got 'Oh yes, absolutely!'
Today's mass shooting in the US
- Thread starter Rroff
- Start date
No doubt if you asked his parents if they were responsible gun owners you'd have got 'Oh yes, absolutely!'
Another one? Really?
I'm surprised... honestly, I'm really surprised...
See, this is my surprised face...
So then, whose fault is it going to be this time?
Anywhere taking bets on heavy metal music or goths?
We've had gun free zones and video games so far this week so why not heavy metal and goths now?
Ban Judas Priest! Not for inspiring violence, just because they're terrible.
I'm surprised... honestly, I'm really surprised...
See, this is my surprised face...
So then, whose fault is it going to be this time?
Anywhere taking bets on heavy metal music or goths?
We've had gun free zones and video games so far this week so why not heavy metal and goths now?
Ban Judas Priest! Not for inspiring violence, just because they're terrible.
I don't really understand the specific focus on "mass shootings" when 32,000~ people die a year in America due to guns, why is there an outrage when 1 person kills multiple people but not when it's spread out over the course of a year? Why is there a focus on "assault weapons" when hand guns are responsible for 2/3 of the deaths and rifles represent a small minority?
It's not that surprising really is it though? Thousands of people die in car accidents each year in the UK - most of which are barely reported, but if a school bus crashes and 10 kids die - it's usually declared as a national tragedy, it's not that hard to understand.
It's not surprising as people are basically idiots driven solely by emotion, when 10 people get killed it's a tragedy and something must be done(!), when 10,000 people die it's a statistic. Why don't we ban Diesel cars and any form of tobacco products, mandate that work gives employees time to exercise at the start of each day, and make nutrition a basic class in school. We could also employ student psychologists that have an hours one to one time with kids every 3 months to talk about how they're getting on in school and at home and see if they need any additional support. That'll save far more lives than a confiscating a few gun enthusiasts prize possessions and causing resentment among law abiding gun owners towards basically uneducated people who know zero about guns like the vast majority of people in this thread demonstrate every time they hit post reply
Firstly, a single event in which many people die is far worse than a single event in which one person dies. Secondly, if you take the time to look at any gun control advocacy group, you'll find they are equally outraged by the number of deaths spread out over the course of a year.
Because so-called 'assault weapons' are responsible for most of the mass killings.
Firstly, people are calling for gun control, not banning guns outright. Secondly, unlike firearms, neither diesel cars nor tobacco products are specifically designed to kill people, and neither of them have been used to commit wholesale slaughter at America high schools.
Where is the money coming from to pay for this?
I'm pretty sure I just spotted the real ignorance in this thread.
40% of the major mass killings in the US had a semi-automatic rifle (not necessarily an assault rifle "style" one) brought by the perpetrator(s) though not always used - the most common weapons were regular handguns and shotguns.
In shooting incidents off all kinds in the US assault style weapons account for around 3% of weapons brought by the perpetrator(s).
What is the cost of a life? your convenience in using a knife to eat or make things, etc.? that doesn't mean nothing should be unregulated but we shouldn't let the odd crazy person dictate everything too far - there are millions of people who get quiet (sort of) enjoyment from firearms who will never shoot and kill another person and probably not another living thing either.
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My point is that on average 87 people die every day in America due to guns, yet we're only outraged when there's a big news story like a school shooting. It doesn't make any sense. It's driven by an emotional reaction.
No they aren't, you just made that up and didn't even fact check it.
Sometimes you need to kill bad people, sometimes you need that threat of lethal force, guns obviously also have practical purposes like hunting. Tobacco literally has no reason to be legal, it's causes a small drug induced high yet kills 480,000 people a year in America alone, how are you defending that?!
I'm not sure what relevance the actual intention of something has. You may not intend to poison and kill people with Diesel cars and cigarettes but they do a much more effective job than guns
Hiring 1 or 2 Councillors isn't very much money. 1 Councillor can see 70 kids a week for 30 minutes, multiply that by 12 and you get 840 kids in a 12 week period. Hire 2 Councillors and you'd cover basically a whole school with extra time to spend with troubled kids. No doubt cheaper than trying to confiscate everyone's guns.
What about children who take up smoking without understanding the long term health implications and the physical and mental addiction that follows? 90% of people start smoking when they're under 18
The CDC estimates that since 1964 smokers have killed 2,500,000 non-smokers in the USA alone:
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm
That's far more than the number of people killed by spree killers using guns.
It's not reasonable to ban guns (and yes, that is the goal - restrictions are quite openly positioned as a salami approach to a ban) and not ban a downright sociopathic way to take a drug, especially when there are half a dozen ways to take the same drug that don't kill other people. Guns and diesel engines at least serve a purpose. Smoking is a deliberate choice to harm other people for no reason other than doing so.
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Caporegime
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I don't think that a refusal to consider the banning of guns can be justified by nodding to the fact that adults of age can choose to buy cigarettes. Perhaps I've misunderstood your point.
The fact that the CDC are able to investigate smoking and its effect on both smokers and those around them yet legally barred from investigating the public health threat of guns speaks volumes to the NRA's power and influence.
My point was a reply to the post I replied to, i.e. refuting the idea that smoking kills smokers. It kills many non-smokers. Far more people kill far more other people by smoking within range of them than by shooting them with a gun.
My broader point is agreement with Roar87 - that the focus is wrong and there are more effective ways to save more lives. Why such a focus on a tiny minority of preventable deaths and not on a far larger number of preventable deaths? It's not even a focus on people killed by other people using a gun, since killings with "assault style weapons" are a small minority of killings with a gun in the USA.
The use of dead children as a political tool to leverage in changes in the law grates on me, especially when the changes are usually dishonest. You're being honest in talking about banning guns, but it's very common to talk about small amounts of gun control while intending to use that as the starting point for banning guns, regulation by regulation.
Are they legally barred from doing so or is it just not part of their purpose? The CDC is about diseases. Does it also cover guns? I don't know.
I think your point stands either way, though, since the ATF (which certainly covers guns) is legally handicapped in a variety of ways regarding guns. Not just the NRA, though. There's the legal system, since the second amendment is still in force, and there is a fair bit of public opposition to legislating away the second amendment.
Caporegime
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Mass shootings kill almost exclusive completely innocent people, they are indiscriminate and primarily only achievable because of access to guns. Murder happens around the globe, certainly more in the US than most places and certainly more by guns, but without knowing the percentage off the top of my head probably 60-70% of those murders are gang related and the majority of those will be other gang members rather than 'innocent' people. It's not great but that just doesn't and won't ever generate a lot of outrage, bad guys killing other bad guys is significantly less interesting to the general population than random psychos who go to your schools or a local mall or bank and kill normal people.
As with all things we kinda ignore risk that doesn't effect us. Massive murder rate in lets say Detroit and in particular in gang neighbourhoods, well 99% of the population can simply never go to the worst parts of Detroit, if not avoiding Detroit altogether. But if random nutjob decides to shoot up your kids school or your partners work place, or a shopping centre you've gone to with your family for the weekend, no one can avoid that by avoiding a couple specific locations.
Even when looking further at general gun murders. Will gang members not kill other gang members for territory, money, drugs, whatever, without guns? It's rather the same thing as over here in the UK, most knife crime and specifically knife murders are gang on gang violence. Murders would certainly come down in gangs without guns, though it will be decades before the supply of illegal arms would dry up drastically enough to matter if they started implementing really strong gun control today. But a lot of those murders will still occur by another method.
The more specific murders, husbands knocking off their wives rather than getting a divorce, those won't stop without guns.
But again these types of killings simply don't scare people both because the husband will use a different method to kill his wife and there is no reason you would be targetted for this kind of death. The randomness of mass shootings, that they can occur anywhere and there is really no safety from them is a vast difference to highly concentrated gun crime in areas you can avoid completely.
Pathetic. No child ever died from swallowing the toy inside a Kinder Egg either (AFAIK in America at least) yet they were banned "just in case".
As for her comment on thoughts and prayers - it just goes to show how delusional some Americans are, hoping that magic is the solution rather than actually doing something through human intervention.