27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting 2987
Several readers sent word of a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. According to most reports, 27 people are dead, including 18 children. The alleged shooter is dead, a man in his 20s. He was armed with multiple weapons and may have worn a bulletproof vest. According to CBS, "It is unclear if there was more than one gunman at the school. Miller reports authorities have an individual in custody who investigators said may be a possible second shooter." (Investigators now say the person being questioned is not a suspect.) One student was quoted as saying, "I was in the gym and I heard a loud, like seven loud booms, and the gym teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled. And I kept hearing these booming noises. And we all started crying." Another, 8 years old, said, "I saw some of the bullets going down the hall and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom."
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
It is time. (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody's got to say it (Score:4, Insightful)
Newtown Conn Prayers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
I would miss it some, but to me, it's not worth this.
.
But isn't it too late? There is no way to get from here to there.
WTF (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to be the biggest fucking piece of shit to pull something like this. They should quit releasing these douchebags names as they are absolute nobodies.
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think banning all guns is necessarily the answer- if somebody really wants to kill someone they'll find a way. Automatic weapons, though, have no good reason to exist and should ABSOLUTELY be banned. It's insane that they are legal in the US.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
The cure is worse than the disease.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
what's the core problem, here? tools that kill people? we have so many of those. just outlaw anything that could hurt people? go all 'england' as an over-reaction?
the core problem is people are crazy and act out.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
guns are not the problem.
I am incredibly saddened (Score:5, Insightful)
This shouldn't involve political sides! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously? Mentally insane people go to a k-4th grade school and start killing people, and you post how it's related to a political party's stance on something?!?
Republican or Democrat no one wants to see this happen.
You say tighten gun control, did they get the guns legally in the first place? Should we be locking up anyone who might have a breakdown, or might be outright crazy?
It's a tragedy, and as the father of 2 that aren't even old enough for school yet I can't imagine what the families are going through, but pointing fingers doesn't help here.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
When is it ok to discuss gun proliferation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently the White House [1], let alone the NRA, doesn't think it's time to discuss the culture that causes these kinds of shootings - a culture where guns are not only freely available, but generally untraceable and too often get into the hands of folks who should not have them (ie, mentally imbalanced, felons, and domestic terrorists).
If the unquestioning defense of the 2nd amendment means we can't even discuss why disturbed or evil individuals who shouldn't have access to these kind of armaments have the "right to bear arms", then we're fucked as a country.
Let's not even get into the fact that the NRA and gun-lobby have effectively made the process of tracing how these weapons get distributed to the wrong hands is never questioned and the illicit channels aren't closed.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
In much smaller numbers.
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
our country makes it too easy to become a nutcase.
this is a social problem. blaming what tool you use to act out is not helpful.
what would be helpful is finding out why so many americans are stressed out and going crazy on the population. I think we should look at why our society is freaking out. the tool the crazies use is NOT the issue!
we have a culture of anger. that's a place to start looking for solutions.
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't look now, but the time when you can lawfully operate your car in manual control on an urban road is limited. Maybe 20 years.
Sure, you can kill someone with a broken bottle. Guns, however, make it just too easy.
Gun control != taking guns away (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone posted elsewhere: "I don't want to take your guns away, but if the price of freedom is 18 dead elementary school kids 3 times a year, I don't want to be free. "Gun control" doesn't have to mean "take away guns". Stop arguing against that straw man."
Gun owners jumping right to slippery-slope arguments are not helpful.
Re:Yay (Score:2, Insightful)
But the 2nd doesn't apply... it's a "Gun Free Zone". Isn't this what you wanted?
Yeah, if only those kindergartners were armed, right? FFS
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it? Having 18 little fucking children gunned down by some fucking maniac, and you're going to sit here and say that making weapons harder for fucking lunatics to possess is somehow a disease that needs to be put up with.
Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this, and it's not like gun control means fucking maniacs can't kill lots of kids (Norway comes to mind).
Still, there is a thing called unacceptable loss here.
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
Re:And yet... (Score:1, Insightful)
what's the core problem, here? tools that kill people? we have so many of those. just outlaw anything that could hurt people? go all 'england' as an over-reaction?
the core problem is people are crazy and act out.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
guns are not the problem.
Guns amplify the problem like no other tool in existence does.
So yeah easy access and possession of guns IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM.
Cue the knee-jerk pro-gun arguments (Score:4, Insightful)
of which your post is one, funnily enough.
Would never happen to him (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the problem with people - complete lack of empathy.
The GP believes that he would have been there with his own firearms and gunned down these people. Or if all of the teachers had concealed carry he would have been taken out immediately. Or that if every child had had a gun, he would have been stopped before he even got his firearm out.
Many a gun proponent has been turned by having a spouse or child killed. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because some crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be much better.
Maybe a better answer is that we need to treat our crazy people. It's not a matter of expense; either you pay money to treat mental illness, or you pay money to clean up after them. I'd rather spend on getting them help than in burying our children.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
So it allows someone who is not an assassin, a trained killer, or physically strong the ability to defend themselves. I'm ok with that. This is the purpose guns serve. I do believe, however, that anybody owning a firearm should also be required to know how to use it. Which is easier than knowing how to kill with an arrow, a knife, your hands, etc. Again, the point of guns is to level the playing field when it comes to defending one's self.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not quite the case. While a maniac could do a helluva lot damage with a meat cleaver, guns, particularly semi-automatic and automatic weapons, allow for very large rampages. As well, one has at least some hope of survival standing up to someone with a knife. A guy packing an arsenal can pretty much kill most people who get in his way, unless they're packing as well, but in any kind of civilian setting, having two or more people firing at each other is going to lead to pretty substantial collateral damage.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do guns & bullets serve a purpose other than murder?
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, no one died in the knife attack. Is the difference really that hard to understand?
Re:Yay (Score:3, Insightful)
[...] but if they were armed, do you think as many would have died in this incident?
Irrelevant. There would be far, far more OTHER incidents (kids getting hold of the guns, teachers unable to cope with the stress of teaching and seeing an easy way out, etc) which would have led to MORE deaths.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
So, where do you draw the line in regards to things that are lethal weaponry? What is the purpose of a gun? They were designed to kill living things. Why stop at allowing people to carry guns? Why don't we allow people to carry grenades? Or RPGs?
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
What are 'arms'? Isn't a SAM 'arms'? Why can't people carry them around? Oh yeah, because they can inflict mass casualties, that's why. So why doesn't at least a multi-fire assault rifle fit this definition, because it sure looks to me like that's what happened here.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun crime in England and Wales has been steadily declining for years. In 2010/11 there were fewer than 12K recorded offences, and that's including crime involving air rifles and imitation guns.
No, they aren't the entire problem, as other countries have proven it's possible to have widespread gun ownership without widespread gun crime. However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't you know? Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Sometimes I wish Obama would do really want the right wing is scared about: implement and enforce some sensible gun control laws. Those living in middle of Kansas farms can keep their guns to stave off the zombies (and their sisters). The rest of us living in civilization would like to see some gun control.
The price we pay for freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy.jpg [thismodernworld.com]
That's from two massacres ago [wikipedia.org].
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun laws are an oxymoron. Criminals, by definition, do not abide by the laws. So it is only the good people that do not have guns in gun free zones. I do have strong feelings about gun laws but I do not think that this is the time to air them.
My thoughts are with those unfortunate parents whose grief must be too hard for anyone to bear
Re:Yay (Score:3, Insightful)
But the 2nd doesn't apply... it's a "Gun Free Zone". Isn't this what you wanted?
Yeah, if only those kindergartners were armed, right? FFS
Yea! I mean, it's not like there's a single adult in an elementary school, right?
Sheesh...
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
To put things into perspective: over the last twenty years, there have been fewer than 200 fatalities [wikipedia.org] in school shootings (including colleges and universities) in the United States. By way of comparison, during that period in the US there have been about 1000 deaths due to lightning strikes, 25 due to (unprovoked) shark attacks, 3000 due to international terrorism, and 200 due to domestic terrorism. So we really ought to be more concerned about lightning and box cutters than about handguns.
Like propping up the failed manhood... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
The gun make it a lot easier for a bad guy to kill a lot of people. That's the difference.
Imagine, if you will, a maniac runs into a school with a sword and starts attacking people. We'll even say he knows what he's doing with one beyond "the pointy end goes in the other guy". There's no question that a few people will get killed. But everyone there will also have a much easier time running away, throwing things at him, putting barriers between him and themselves, using improvised weapons like mop handles to slow him down, etc. So you're now dealing with a situation where, say, 3-5 people are dead instead of 26.
Or if a maniac uses a crossbow instead, his targets can make effective use of potential shields like garbage cans and desks, have a better chance of dodging, his rate of fire is much much slower (about 1 per minute) which enables defenders to tackle him while he's reloading, and his ammunition is heavy and cumbersome.
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think banning all guns is necessarily the answer- if somebody really wants to kill someone they'll find a way. Automatic weapons, though, have no good reason to exist and should ABSOLUTELY be banned. It's insane that they are legal in the US.
Yet another representative of the uninformed masses. Automatic weapons ARE legal, yes, but they require a TON of paperwork, invasive background checks by local, state, and federal agencies, time-consuming (at the very least, a 6+ month wait), are cost-prohibitive for the vast majority of the populace, and are rarely used in these types of "Guy goes crazy and commits an atrocity" type of tragedies. The way you presented your comment made it sound as if I can just walk home with one today, and shoot up a movie theater or school tomorrow. That is not the case at all.
It wasn't the case at Virginia Tech, wasn't the case in Aurora, and isn't the case here.
Semi-automatic weapons (one firing per trigger pull), are fairly common, and much easier to get, particularly in some states than others. These still typically require up to a 7-day waiting period while states police run checks on a purchaser in different states. Please don't spread misinformation.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
injured vs dead
Re:When is it ok to discuss gun proliferation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently the White House [1], let alone the NRA, doesn't think it's time to discuss the culture that causes these kinds of shootings
You couldn't be more wrong. It's time to discuss the culture, not to start reactively banning things. This is a classic XY problem. "X" is "wants to stop random violence". "Y" is "wants to ban guns". "Y" doesn't fix "X". This son of a bitch walked into a school with a weapon and used it. The weapon itself is interchangeable - although it was a gun this time, it just as easily could have been a bomb, poison gas, or a well-aimed car. Our choice as a society is whether we want to enumerate and ban all the things people can use as weapons, or if we'd rather figure out why people want to use weapons in the first place.
Banning stuff is easy. It's utterly ineffective at solving the initial problem, but it's easy. I challenge you - and me - and all of us - to figure out why the hell people want to kill kids in a school. Answering that question may be a lot harder, but that's the task we need to be putting our efforts into.
what would you miss? (Score:5, Insightful)
target shooting? hunting? both seem like amusements that maybe we could afford to lose in the name of safety. (How many people really need to hunt for their food in this day and age?) Also, they might not have to go - the restrictions could be on firearms ill-suited to those activities, not to mention forms of those activities without firearms.
If it's something else you'd miss, sorry, but those are my best guesses.
Was the gun legally obtained? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a lot of posts in here about banning guns. They are far more controlled where I live (Canada), but rest assured shootings that happen in Canada are always with black-market guns. It's not the people who legally purchase and register firearms doing these things, it's those who obtain them illegally.
You may argue that making guns harder to get, like here, reduces this kind of thing. That may be correct. But no matter what, people can get anything, and they will, if sufficiently demented, do something bad.
What's the answer to that?
Re:It is time. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, lets go the Switzerland route and actually require able bodied individuals to own and be trained in firearms. That way, the US too can have one of the lowest firearm crime rates in the world.
Oh, you meant the other direction, didn't you? Right, because the illegality of gun ownership is going to stop someone who walks into an elementary school and opens fire on kids. Dude will be totally scared of breaking that law, right? I mean, the war on drugs worked so well at stopping people from getting drugs...
Re:Would never happen to him (Score:5, Insightful)
Many a gun proponent has been turned by having a spouse or child killed. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
Many gun opponents have been turned by having a spouse or child killed, while they watched, defenseless. The rest just don't believe it can ever happen to them.
The street - she runs both ways.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Criminals also don't follow laws against theft, murder, etc. And?
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
They all survived. How many would have been killed with a firearm? How many more could the baddie have injured or killed with a ranged weapon?
Re:And yet... (Score:0, Insightful)
It is an acceptable loss.
The 2nd amendment exists to guarantee the people of the united states retain the capability to wage war against the government.
In the comments below is posted a comment from another board:
"I don't want to take your guns away, but if the price of freedom is 18 dead elementary school kids 3 times a year, I don't want to be free.
That is a price we need to pay. Loosing 18 children is tragic indeed, but crazed maniacs are not what's most dangerous. Vastly more people have been murdered by Governments in the world than by maniacs and street thugs. Defending against crazed governments is why we have the 2nd amendment, and why we need to make it hard for the government to know who was weapons.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Shockingly enough, in countries where there are strict gun laws, there appear to be less shootings by criminals than int he U.S.
This is the simple fact opponents of gun control simply cannot deal with.
Less guns mean less gun violence.
Period.
Re:It is time. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ban knives too, 22 kids were also the victim of a mass stabbing at a school in china.
Guns are not the problem. Fucking nutjobs are the problem.
Re:When is it ok to discuss gun proliferation? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the unquestioning defense of the 2nd amendment means we can't even discuss why disturbed or evil individuals who shouldn't have access to these kind of armaments have the "right to bear arms", then we're fucked as a country.
I don't disagree with you at all, but there is an opposing corollary: If the unquestioning fear of firearms leads us to always ask why crazy people are permitted to have guns rather than why people go crazy and nobody notices, then we're equally fucked. I think ideally we should ask both questions, and we should do it as dispassionately as possible while not forgetting that we're talking about human lives.
Many people use guns all their lives and never abuse them, not so much as pointing them at someone they shouldn't even while unloaded. Some people use guns for protection of themselves and/or others. And some use them to commit crimes. I'm all for finding a way to prevent or at least reduce the number of people in that last group, even perhaps at the cost of some of those in the first group. But I want to simultaneously ask the question of why this is happening in the first place.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
if someone who is unhinged wants to do mean and violent things, they will.
when we are ready to start blaming our society instead of tools it owns, then we can move to a solution.
we have a 'war on drugs' as if that does any good. we have a 'war on poverty' and that does no good. we like to declare war and have easy solutions. but the underlying causes are not readers-digest concepts and voters and lawmakers can't read more than a few paragraphs before being bored.
banning tools is rarely going to get you the result you are really after. its easy to blame tools but this won't help.
the anger with so many, runs so deep.
our country is boiling over with hate. bursting at the seams. and we seem to encourage it, if anything! look at the constant fighting with D and R in washington. look at the news. they don't report good things, those don't 'sell'. they report violence and people LOVE that shit.
our society is kind of fucked up. some serious soul searching should be done.
but it won't happen. and more like this will continue while we turn a blind eye. short-term is all we can think about. 'long-term social stability' is a forgotton concept in the western world.
Re:Let's do some statistical research (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for posting this.
All I see is bickering about whether or not to ban guns, but nobody willing to look at WHY someone would do this. In all likelihood, the shooter was mentally disturbed. Mental health care is sorely lacking in this country(and probably almost all other countries as well).
Living with two family members with mental illness makes it easier to see that these people are not heartless monsters who kill for fun. They have serious issues that need to be addressed. Unless you are filthy rich or have awesome insurance(which probably means you are rich), you cannot get access to the health care that you need.
Re:Yay (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, killing is one of (not the only) the primary purposes of a gun. You cannot say the same of a computer.
Quoting Bob Dylan here - (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time these incidents occur, there is a tremendous and instantaneous outpouring of these same old arguments "guns don't kill people..." "outlawing guns is not going to prevent crazy people from getting them..." The arguments never change, the politics never change, and these incidents happen again and again.
The definition of 'crazy', or one of them, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. HOW MANY TIMES do we have to hear about shooting rampages in our own schools, malls, movie theaters, workplaces, before people will begin to ask themselves if maybe their outlook is simply wrong? How many people would have to die before you, Mr. 2nd Amendment Defender, would reconsider your own viewpoint? Just do this exercise for me - say a number out loud.
Doubt is essential in a deliberative society. If you can never doubt your own viewpoint, then the freedom to discuss and debate it is worthless.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
The question to ask is: if guns were freely and readily available in China, would there be FEWER deaths from these incidents?
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Self defense for people who live in dangerous neighborhoods where the people who would use guns to kill them, would not think twice about using an illegally obtained gun (and would, in fact, shy away from a legally obtained one).
It is a tool to end life, but not all ending of life is cold blooded murder, or even arguably murder. Ending life is a fact of life, unless you are a plant.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, more people firing weapons with panicky children running around, what could go wrong?
Re:Like propping up the failed manhood... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know people who feed their family for the winter by using guns as tools. Get some perspective.
Those people probably didn't need an automatic .223-caliber rifle. I have plenty of perspective today.
Re:Newtown Conn Prayers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the UK we had strong gun laws introduced each time a crazy did something like this but the truth is that each of those crazies had done lesser crazy shit before they went postal. The guy who did the Hungerford massacre in 1987 had take a gun into work to threaten someone and the police had not taken his guns or his license away from him. It should have been the police that were looked at for not enforcing the law as it was rather than introducing new laws. New laws will not make things better. Teachers should not be carrying guns, that is more stupid. Do you really think that teachers never go crazy? I am one and I often want to kill a student. We should have more steps to look at who, good or bad, has a gun. It should not be right, it should be a privilege that can be revoked.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
More guns will solve the problem!
Fewer guns will solve the problem!
When, in reality, each has it's own set of problems, and both sides are more interested in the idea of being right, and having things a certain way, than what is actually best.
Get the fuck over yourselves, people are hurt and you are using it to fucking proselytize. Enough playing devils advocate to a lot of this shit, pointing towards a more moderate view. You're all a bunch of arrogant bastards who don't give a damn who the fuck gets hurt, so long as you can twist it towards your pathetic agenda.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of us living in civilization would like to see some gun control.
Would you also like periodic, systematic door-to-door, room-to-room searches with backscatter X-ray machines? Because that's what it'll take to get all the guns out of the cities if you don't take them out of the country.
It has been conclusively shown again and again that the purpose of the second amendment is not to fight zombies, but to resist tyranny. Banning guns from where the population is centralized will have the opposite effect. Many of us own guns without shooting up schools, and while suicide is very very low on my list, shooting up a school isn't even on it so I have what I consider to be a healthy self-regulation mechanism; I would remove myself from the equation long before I would ever do anything so abhorrent. But it might be worth mentioning that having my right to defend myself taken away from me is also not on the list of things to do.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Except European countries have very low amounts of gun violence precisely because they strictly control guns with laws.
The trope that if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have gun implies that mass amounts of outlaws will have guns.
The facts are that this is not the case; Europe does not have mass amounts of people going around shooting people wile defenseless citizens do nothing.
face it: Less guns= less gun violence.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
fallacy.
1) Gun laws aren't an oxymoron by any definition.
2) Being a criminal does not equate to getting a gun.
3) Gun laws make it harder for criminal to get guns,. And it keeps getting harder.
4) Crime drops when gun laws are enacted.
5) If having a gun was illegal, you would have an opportunity to know someone was going to kill people when you found them with a gun.
6) Same thing if someone was getting Ammo.
7) teacher firing a someone one in a panic situation means more people would have been likely to die.
8) How many gun deaths are their in Japan?
All the evidence shows, overall, people are safer with very strict gun laws. You can make trite logical fallacy all you want, becasue that's all you have.
Re:Yay (Score:2, Insightful)
Irrelevant. There would be far, far more OTHER incidents (kids getting hold of the guns, teachers unable to cope with the stress of teaching and seeing an easy way out, etc) which would have led to MORE deaths.
Oh, so now teachers are the sociopaths and we don't know how to make a working safe? Lovely.
The hard data shows far more crimes prevented by guns than caused by them. There's nothing to indicate that this would be any different in schools, and quite literally - we have most massacres occurring at schools. It does not take a genius to see that madmen are incentivized to rampage where they can expect no return fire.
Sorry that reality doesn't fit your fear conditions, but we ought not base policy on your misunderstanding of how the world works. Especially a policy that takes away a teacher's right to self (and mutual) defense. I, for one, would be much happier if my kids' math teacher had a gun (in a safe) at school (I know he's an excellent shot). I'd gladly contribute to the school armory fund.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, it does. How much did we just spend on the election? Let's tax that. Stupidest waste of money I've seen yet.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
This system works and take out the crackpots.
What probably helps too is that we take more care of the "crackpots" here. Free (ish, depending) medical care, including mental health care.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The gunman killed the kids. The gun and bullets were simply the tools used. Should all computers be banned because hackers use them to hack?
That depends, do computers serve a purpose other than hacking?
Yes they do and guns have more purposes other than killing innocents.
That's a straw man. Guns have no purpose other than *killing*. So maybe we should ask ourselves, who has a legitimate need to kill, and what tools do they need to do it? A hunter might need a hunting rifle. A police officer might need a hand gun. I'm not sure why anyone outside of deployed active duty military or on-duty swat team members need an assault rifle.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Case in point http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/in-china-22-school-students-stabbed_816680.html [india.com]
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have the legal framework for making it illegal for a "lunatic" to possess firearms. The problem is our system for detecting, handling and treating such people is seriously deficient. Alarms were up everywhere for the guy at Virginia Tech, yet nobody pushed it through.
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ban knives too, 22 kids were also the victim of a mass stabbing at a school in china.
Guns are not the problem. Fucking nutjobs are the problem.
All the children in China survived.
Why? Because the attacker was not armed with a semi-automatic rifle firing .223 ammo. Guns are the problem because they take a bad situation and make is enormously worse. They are the multiplier.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes because it's unfair to the gun lobby. How are they suppose to pretend that gun violence isn't a problem during times like this.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
And your Pro-NRA social programs are? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I look at the cross section of my friends who are NRA members, most are Republicans. Of those, most are for limiting all government programs, but especially those which treat "fake" illnesses like mental instability. They post about how the government shouldn't be providing social services because it raises the taxes which chip away at the money they work for every day in their jobs.
Nobody in the NRA ever seems to be asking Congress to fund programs to evaluate and assist the mentally unstable. Quite the opposite, they're more likely to call them weirdos or outcasts or cheats, living off the government dole and asking for service after service for nothing. These are the same people who made fun of the little kid in high school, or hurled epithets from their truck window at the way they dress or called them godless fags as they walked by on the street.
And, for the record, a crazy fucker walking into a gym with a pipe bomb would be better. (1) the total death toll would have been lower and (2) the chance of the person going through with it would have been lower, as it's hard to light your own death fuse. It's why most suicide bombers don't actually activate their own explosives - they're remotely detonated by handlers.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
PROTIP: Correlation is not causation.
The US simply has a very high level of desperate and crazy people. Masses and masses of insane religious schizos, extreme poverty gradients, generally being an anti-social dog-eat-dog society (Which is the cause for the former two.) aka. ultra-capitalist law-of-the-jungle feudalism, extreme obsession with wars and murder and hate...
Under all those things, the actual effect of the people losing the freedom because they can't stage a revolution anymore simply becomes invisible. And the possibility of staging a revolution was the whole point of keeping the population armed. If anything they are not armed enough... with weapons and defense against social engineering (aka lobbyism aka politics aka marketing aka PR aka news aka propaganda aka churches)!
Because the reason they didn't already have multiple revolutions is because they are grown to be passive-thinkers without an actual free will, completely under the control of social engineers.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I know. It's the absolute wrong time to talk about things like this
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
Before this was the Empire State shooting. Before that, the Aurora shooting. Before that, the Tulsa shooting. Before that, the Chardon High School shooting. And that's only 2012. We're quickly coming to a state where gun control discussion is silenced the whole year because there is always a shooting nearby.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought so.
Re:Yay (Score:2, Insightful)
In order to kill somebody with a knife, you need to really, really want to. You need to consider the biology, see them as a person. You need to work at it.
To kill someone with a gun, you need to be in the vicinity of the person and you need to point at them. You don't need to humanize them at all.
There is a difference.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
the number of people killed by gun FAR out number the number of people who may have been saved becasue they have one.
Re:Gun control != taking guns away (Score:5, Insightful)
This past year over 20 children died the slow death of heatstroke/hypothermia after their parents locked them in cars. A toddler died because his mother was an idiot and let him stand on a ledge at a zoo. Where is your outrage over those deaths? Where is your call to action for those children? Those children died not out of malice, but because their parents and all the bystanders that ignored or didn't notice them were too stupid/uncaring to bother keeping them alive.
More people have been killed this year (including children) by drunk or distracted driving. Since alcohol doesn't benefit society, should we bring back prohibition for the safety of the children?
How about instead of banning things, we focus our resources on figuring out why people go nuts and try to kill children? Why don't we try to help the nutters before they kill our children? If someone wants to kill people, they don't need guns.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me be clear here. I'm very much against guns being as prolific as they are. The bullshit defeatist "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have them" argument is so abundantly wrong-headed it defies belief, IMHO. Just look at the gun statistics in England compared to the the US and you have a compelling argument.
However.
When you're looking for reasons why one society in particular has a record of atrocities like this, the first place to look is what makes that society unique. The famous NRA quote "It's not guns that kill people, people kill people" was an attempt to deflect criticism of the penis-extensions^W^W guns generally available (to which my and Eddie's retort is "sure, but the gun helps!"), but like all good propaganda it contains a kernel of truth. The real question then is "why are these people killing each other ?"
The real reason people are using guns to kill themselves and others is the society that they live in. The cold hard truth is that guns are available worldwide, and yet it's a peculiarly American thing (with some outliers) to go crazy and kill a bunch of children/people using your personal arsenal. What's wrong is deeper, I believe.
IMHO American society is in a slow but inevitable death spiral...
It's hard to reconcile that Americans give generously to charities with the first two points above, unless it's just Democrats doing the giving; which is unlikely :). I'd have to posit a discontinuity between the act of giving, and the way of living. It's as if people are ok with being nice to others if they choose to, but refuse to have the general good of society imposed upon them. That's a very odd form of independence, and smacks of biting off your nose to spite your face, but since I don't understand the motivation, I may have it completely wrong there. What's clear is that charitable donation is important to Americans, but charitable society is not.
Religion also plays its part. The society is highly religious, relative to the developed world but religion here in the US is a business like any other. The prime goal is not to try and guide society in the right direction, it's to funnel cash to the higher-ups in the religious power structure. People are told they're doing the right thing as long as the cash is flowing upwards,and the "church"'s goal is simply to continue to make sure that is the case. Upon examination, it's a good metaphor for what's wrong in the more-general society.
It adds up to an uncaring society, and I can see how anyone stuck on the lower rungs with seemingly no prospect of getting higher up could reject it, and similarly reject the rest of the social rules we all expect to be obeyed. There's no golden solution here, no panacea, you're not guaranteed anything will ever be perfect, but if the society had more general welfare built in, it's my personal belief there'd be less atrocities.
A society is by definition a group of people collectively living by a set of rules. As
Re:Nope 45killed in 1927 school, no guns used. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that no laws were made after these events regarding bomb material or ability to get into cockpits? Are you saying that all of the laws put into place after these events had zero effect?
I can think of at least one law that was put into place that had great effect - the requirement that cockpit doors are reinforced and locked from inside the cockpit. Are you really willing to go down this road?
Re:Would never happen to him (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation?
Yet you do not require this of the GP.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot better than 20+ dead i imagine.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
The simple existence of guns denotes that there will be situations like this. Remove the fucking guns and the legality for owning them and there simply won't be any guns available or such a reduced number that it is no longer the significant problem we have today.
So yes gun laws themselves don't stop lunatics and criminals, but if the guns aren't there legally in the first place there will be far far fewer guns available for the criminals...or are you saying that's a bad thing?
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. [wikipedia.org] and oopsie.. [upi.com].
I say this as a moderate Dem with a libertarian bent: civilian gun owership will not be outlawed in the US within your lifetime. Witness this [jsonline.com] and this [oyez.org]. We need to disarm criminals, close the gunshow loophole, and find a mechanism to weed out the mentally unstable with respect to weapons purchases. The last is the trickiest, especially considering doctor patient confidentiality.
Re:Would never happen to him (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/08/us/soldier-kills-4-people-and-hurts-6-in-a-restaurant-in-north-carolina.html [nytimes.com]
My cousin and his wife were in that restaurant when Sargent French went on his rampage. He's a gun owner and is extremely responsible and law abiding. But at the time, concealed carry was illegal and just out of respect and common decency, he didn't take his gun with him. But I remember him telling me that, while he was huddled behind an overturned table with his wife, he wished he had his gun with him.
He never goes anywhere without it now.
What happened today was a tragedy. The real problem isn't the guns, it's people. Even if you could completely outlaw and eliminate guns tomorrow morning, sickos would still find some way to hurt others. No, it might not be a mass killing like this, but if you're the one on the receiving end of a sicko's attentions, whether you're in a group of hundreds, or all by yourself in a one-bedroom shack, is irrelevant.
Re:rampage killers (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they don't. They're also used for target shooting, competition (think martial arts), collecting (I know a guy who has swords on the wall at his place of business), and probably more if I think about it. The overwhelming majority of weapons owners are not and never will be violent criminals.
Re:Would never happen to him (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife was shot and killed ten years ago by a maniac who was previously convicted of another felony. The pistol was sold to him by his uncle so his uncle knew he was a convicted felon. It was then transported over state lines without a permit by said felon. He was going to comit a crime regardless of rather there was gun control or not, especially because he and his uncle had already broken two federal laws known as the Brady gun laws months before the murder took place.
I still dont carry a gun and I actually do believe in gun control. Would it have saved my wife? Nope. The maniac still would have had an illegal weapon. But you know what, it might actually save someone elses life. If the choice between saving someones life because of a stupid law or letting people carry weapons that are designed to kill other humans is what get to deal with then I am all for gun control.
Thank goodness you said "many" and not "all."
I also dont believe in capital punishment. Make them rot in prison for the rest of their lives. I will happily pay for it. Provided of course we stop giving them all the great things in life, they get nothing. Two reasons;
1. If by chance they are actually innocent, then I dont want blood on my hands for killing an innocent person. And yes there are some innocent people on death row.
2. If they are guilty then death is a very easy out. Make them wish they were dead. Make them pay for the victims children to go to college or get decent medical care. Make them do something productive that helps the victim(s) of their senseless crime. It wont ever bring back my loved one, but it sure would help this single parent of two over the past ten years survive a little easier having another income that I would have had if my wife hadnt been taken by some lunatic with a gun he shouldnt have had in the first place.
But hey, thats just my $.02
Re:It is time. (Score:2, Insightful)
The point is that if guns are made illegal (which I don't necessarily support) it's going to be a whole lot harder for random nutters to get hold of a firearm suitable for going on a rampage with.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it hilarious that on one hand, gun advocates argue that gun-control laws only affect law-abiding citizens, because criminals already all have guns. On the other hand, all the scenarios they play out to show how awesome guns are for self-defense involve either no guns on the criminal side, or criminals who do not pull their guns first. The first scenario is just a failure in logic, and the second scenario is just wishful thinking. The advantage always lies with the criminal, because they know their victim, while the victim doesn't realize they're about to be victimized. Unless there is an advantage in ability on the side of the victim, the attacker always has the upper hand.
Re:Would never happen to him (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're suggestion is that elementary school teachers pack heat? Do you know what happens to panicked people, children or otherwise, who get in the middle of firefights?
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can.
Might.
Also, goes both ways. One guy might not be able to rape two women by himself, but with a gun...
Prevalent nonsense arguments: knives & insanit (Score:4, Insightful)
I have mod points at the moment but not enough to knock down all the boneheaded arguments of the form "it's a problem of poor (insane) behavior, not the ease with which people can act out" - and the related, equally foolish argument "knives kill people too".
Is there any reason to think that mental health in this country is much worse than anywhere else? Not really.
Is it as easy to kill someone with a tool designed specifically for that purpose or with something else? If you followed the link to the knife attack in China (http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html), you'll see that 22 children were wounded, none reported dead. So, 22 wounded is the same as 27 dead?
There is a valid argument for legal gun ownership, but neither of these come close.
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent post was "+5 informative" but also incomplete. Yes, McVeigh was able to kill many without using a gun. But we're arguing about ease of acquisition here.
To do what McVeigh did you have to be pretty smart, do some clever planning, get large quantities of materials, and basically put a lot of stuff together.
To kill a bunch of school-age children like this all you need are assault weapons and a credit card, both of which are readily available and take little smarts, planning, or money.
That's the issue at stake here. Yes, making guns harder to get doesn't solve the problem. But it sure as hell raises the bar on being a casual mass murder (plus coward: I'm so sick of these guys offing themselves so they can't be punished for what they do. I want technology that brings them back to life so we can feed them into a wood chipper, feet first, dammit). Suddenly, in an American world where' it's f*king hard to get assault weapons, if you want to go cause mayhem in a kindergarten you're going to have to spend more money and time, do a lot more planning, and so on. Some of these nutcases will surely say, "nah, not worth it." Instead, one quick phone call and a credit card number, and you've got a murder on deck.
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
[Citation needed], 'cause I think you're talking out your ass.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to kill somebody with a knife, you need to really, really want to
I think the guy who did this latest shooting really really wanted to kill people.
Re:And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that's my point. Detractors of gun control are using this sensationalization to silence discussion, accusing proponents of politicizing $nearest_tragedy every time gun control gets mentioned. In two weeks somebody will considering approaching the topic and you'll see Fox News frothing at the mouth in reference to this shooting.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
I will always walk around unarmed, as do the overwhelming majority of people in modern day America (let alone the UK). With that in mind, I'd rate my survivability as far higher if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a metal club or a knife than I would if I were attacked by a lone crazy person with a semi-automatic handgun.
Can I imagine life with a caved-in skull? No more so than having my brains blown out. But can I imagine life after being smacked in the ribs with a crow bar? More so than after getting a couple of bullet-shaped holes in my chest.
Re:Yay (Score:1, Insightful)
In a Steven Segal movie, here's what happens: the brave teacher pulls out his own gun and takes the bad guy down before he can shoot any of the kids.
In reality here's what happens: armed citizens rush to take down the gunman. Some of them miss, injuring / killing more kids in the process. By the time the police arrives at the scene, they're incapable of distinguishing the perpetrator from the well meaning people also holding a gun. One of them is possibly shot by law enforcement.
Adding more guns to the situation is just a recipe for disaster.
What's Really Heartbreaking... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is that folks are using this story as a political foil.
18 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN ARE DEAD! VIOLENTLY.
However, the very first thing that people think of is the age-old political battle about guns.
This kind of abstracting our fellow humans into avatars is not something that I particularly like about modern times.
Re:What better time than to air them (Score:2, Insightful)
I am sick and tired of the NRA knee jerk activists that are first to scream, don't call attention to the fact that we want to keep our guns, lots of guns, semi automatic people killing guns because of a flawed Supreme Court decision, in the face of yet another MASS shooting of innocent people in public areas, Theaters, Malls, Schools. Its not just the people that do the killing, its the guns, the gun culture, the easy access to guns. Criminals can get easy access to guns because there are so many around to buy or steal. If they were rare, the price would be higher and you would have fewer criminals being able to afford guns (free market supply side economics at work, how can you argue with that). The specious argument that it is people not guns that do the killing, I would argue that a person without a gun would not be able to go into a school and kill 20 children , or into a theater and mow down rank after rank of people in a easy, impersonal way.
Lets have some sanity about guns as a privileged and not a right or if you like a right that is regulated in a sane way that prevents or make this kind of travesty rare.
The gun lobby has no solution to this problem. They are silent on the matter and want you to be silent too.
Re:Yay (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somebody's got to say it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no gun nut but he's right. A semi-auto and quick fingers can do the same thing. In the paintball world they use two-fingered triggers so you can fire at full-auto-like speeds with a semi-auto. In practice full auto mode is generally useless, in fact I'd prefer if nutcases used it in their rampages when available as it generally wastes ammo.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what it comes down to, isn't it? There are plenty of people who want to own guns for whatever reason, and value this higher than a few dead kids every now and then. "For the children" only works as an argument when it's someone else that gets hit with the direct consequences.
Strip all the bullshit away, and what's left is "I want a gun more than I want other people not die from gun-related crime."
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's just so hard to drive an ammonium nitrate bomb up to a building.
Driving is easy. Building your own bomb is harder.
Why did McVeigh have to build his own bomb? Because bombs aren't sold in bomb stores, or at bomb shows. Because society recognizes that bombs are too dangerous to sell to the general public.
Why do so few other crazy people follow McVeigh's example? Because it's a lot of work. Buying a gun and shooting people with it, on the other hand, is relatively easy to do.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not talking about overall violence.
Given the choice between the two, I'd rather live in a world where there a good chance of getting robbed than a good chance of getting shot.
The occurrences in Japan and China are exceedingly rare. A few knife massacres in a nation of >1billion is not the same as having a mass murder per week with guns in the US.
And you did not refute my point.
LESS GUNS = LESS GUN VIOLENCE
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
but if they were armed, do you think as many would have died in this incident?
The shooter apparently had body armor, so likely yes.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Incorrect. Europe has extremely strict gun laws. Could you point me to a few dictators of which you speak in Europe?
Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany...all have strict gun laws.
They do not have dictators. Your assertion is disproven.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
that's right and how many people's lives were saved by firearms? shitton more than 121. And 121 is less than 1 per million people, i'll take my chances with letting law abiding citizens own guns.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
The 2nd amendment exists to guarantee the people of the united states retain the capability to wage war against the government.
Tell that to the people at Ruby Ridge.
Try acquiring your own Predator drone. Assert your right to keep and bear personal thermonuclear weapons. You might be able to buy a tank if you have the cash, but chances are it would be thoroughly gelded.
In 1776, a well-regulated militia could band together and cast its own cannons, bore its own rifles and pretty well put itself on an equal footing with a unit of the British Army.
These days you can't even come close. A lot of military technology isn't buildable by any single person or small group. But even when it is, it's often illegal to acquire it. There are more and more places where even the most basic weaponry is forbidden. Try asserting your Second Amendment Rights at an airport or courthouse.
The stereotype of the brave Patriot brandishing his gun at the US Government is a cartoon. A pitiful, pathetic joke. The reality is a mouse waving around a toothpick at a horde of cats.
So pardon if I laugh at the brave heroes. Our primary defenses against an unjust government lie in other areas these days. Including the fact that we've brought up the children who become members of the nation's armed forces to believe that the protection of the nation is more important than the protection of the government.
It's just as well that we don't have real 2nd Amendment rights, however. We live in a highly-leveraged age. It no longer takes an army to wipe out a city, just a suitably deranged well-armed individual. Four people can take down a skyscraper and they don't even need to buy or build weapons. And we get frequent reminders that there's no shortage of suitably-deranged individuals.
Frankly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Banning weapons would patch the symptom, but not cure the disease. (If weapons should be banned, it's another discussion - I don't wanna touch this issue now).
The main problem is that we allow all kind of nutcracks to go loose without restrictions at the same time we fail to uncover these nutcracks before they do any harm.
I understand I'm dangerously flirting with absolutism here. However, I don't like the way this is going neither.
I don't want kids being murdered (by weapons of any kind) at schools, and I don't want to see them jailed inside schools that looks like prisons neither.
Simple way to stop this type of problem (Score:4, Insightful)
And you don't even have to ban guns.
STOP SENSATIONALIZING IT.
These people who do this sort of thing has issues, one of them is typically a deep unsatisfied need for attention and people to pay attention to them. The fact that it'll be in the news for a long time to come just reenforces that need. Sure, they guy who did it is dead and it really doesn't get him any useful attention, but in his warped mind he got the attention he was craving.
Continually making this shit so high profile just encourages others to do the same thing. You HAVE TO DO IT BETTER THAN THE LAST GUY OR NO ONE WILL GIVE YOU ANY ATTENTION. If you aren't bigger with a more gruesome crime, the news will pass you over, then you don't get the attention you crave.
Stop blasting it over and over on the news. Don't say his name on TV or the radio. Don't acknowledge the persons former existence. Other loonies will take notice that doing so is no longer the way to get attention.
We do this too ourselves by broadcasting it to every radio, tv and cell phone practically WHILE ITS HAPPENING so that EVERYONE starts paying attention.
Re:Yay (Score:2, Insightful)
so instead of just losing the money (and getting it back later through insurance) the geezer escalated the situation by actively using violent action through the use of a weapon.
is that a positive outcome?
did the two guys die?
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what would you miss? (Score:2, Insightful)
I would miss the 2nd American Revolution. The only reason this country exists is because citizens were armed. One day, not today, but someday it will be replaced by something better, and that will only happen if citizens are armed.
The right to revolt against illegitimate authoritarian government is much, much more important than 27 lives.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Because my home state of New Hampshire, with some very relaxed gun laws, has a rate of 0.43 gun homicides per 100,000 people.
Compared to New York's 2.67, and California's 4.82 per 100,000... I'd actually say you'd have a hard time concluding that from the data you presented. California & New York both have much stricter gun control. Yet their per-capita rates are 6x and 11x the rate of New Hampshire, with its fairly relaxed gun controls.
In other words: Maybe the NRA has a point, and you can't just draw a straight line equivalence between "strict gun controls" and "lower gun homicide rates."
In other words: Maybe we need to look at the effectiveness of specific gun control laws (or, conversely, look at where the bulk of the maniacs committing mass murder are getting their supplies from), and develop sensible and effective gun policy that will actually lower the rate more than just saying "enact the harshest, strictest controls you can, and the problem will solve itself."
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
The MAD philosophy of the Cold War era worked - even with regimes which were not what we would consider the most stable.
Yes, it did work. And it worked because the men with access to "The Button" were aware of the real consequences of those actions and could think to the future to how those consequences would pay out. IE, the mindset of very very few teenage high schoolers.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how an american responds to suggestions that work in other countries: "But we're like, so .. different man. You can't possibly understand the challenges we face."
It's horseshit.
Re:Newtown Conn Prayers (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be a dick. "Prayers are with you" is shorthand for "I feel powerless to help this situation personally and I'm hurting, so I'm doing the one thing I can to help me deal with this horrible situation." Yes, we get it that your lack of religion makes you a more intelligent, enlightened, and good looking person. Golf clap for your superiority. But one of your neighbors is grieving and the best you can come up with is to demean his coping mechanism?
Did telling him his religion is stupid make the world a better place? No? Then gloat in private, please.
Mental illness (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to be the biggest fucking piece of shit to pull something like this.
Sigh, I wish Slashdot had a minimum age.
Has it occurred to you that someone who goes to kill a large number of children might be mentally ill? Spend some time reading up about insanity in the legal sense.
They should quit releasing these douchebags names as they are absolute nobodies.
His name is already out, less than 12 hours later. What's the rush, aside from vigiliantism? His family and friends will be vilified, even though they probably had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Re:Yay (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's highly indicative that you chose a misogynist insult in relation to a gun violence discussion. Women-hatred and violence have been vile bedfellows forever
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to reply to your comment even though I promised myself to stay out of this thread.
Don't become too bitter and try to understand that not everyone is simply trying to win arguments, although some are. Everyone is enraged as you are at this tragedy. However, people have colored perceptions and that affect how they will respond to what just happened. For example, if you see my posts, I'm more left than right, and my first reaction to this afternoon was, "This is terrible!" and after my emotions were riled, my next gut feeling was, "enough is enough! how can anyone justify these lax gun laws anymore?..."
However, a right-leaning person might see this and their first reaction is "This is terrible!" and after their emotions are riled, their gut feeling would be, "enough is enough! why weren't any of the adult allowed to bear arms, they could have stopped this asshole!..."
My first though wasn't, "this will score me points on slashdot!" and I'm sure no libertarian or rightie thought, "shit, now I have to make arguments on slashdot." We're all fucking mad and we're all just being emotional in our own way. At the end of the day, this didn't need to happen, and we all agree on that.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
PROTIP: Correlation is not causation.
But it can be a bloody big hint. And this one is a neon sign two stories high flashing "IT'S THE GUNS!"
For example: Australia severely restricted certain classes of firearms after a particularly bad mass shooting. The number of mass shootings in the 16 years since the change dropped by at least an order of magnitude. Prediction, experiment, result.
There were no significant complicating factors, we didn't have a major reduction in poverty, or improvements in mental health, nor changes in law enforcement which could explain the result. This is demonstrated by other crime rates not changing significantly during the same period.
Same country, same culture, same crime rate; single change in the law, single result.
Re:what would you miss? (Score:5, Insightful)
You hunt chicken with a rifle and I'm supposed to take you seriously?
And do cows really need to be hunted?
I don't know where you live but I'm pretty sure there aren't enough wild deer nearby to sustain the ~8 million population of the city I live in.
Re:Yay (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the teachers was a gun owner and owned multiple firearms.
Her son used them to murder twenty children.