Source: http://gma.yahoo.com/breaking-conn-...ng-report-151955384--abc-news-topstories.html I type this with tears coming down my face. My deepest prayers go out to the children, faculty, parents, and families of all those involved. What kind of sick, disgusting human being kills innocent children at a school? I think it's about time we, as a country, start having some serious talks about fire-arms.
Absolutely horrifying. Nothing's going to change until the debate about gun control doesn't devolve into some paranoid, tinfoil-hat bullshit about how the government is trying to disarm the American populace and turn the country into Oceania, which will probably happen in this thread, unfortunately. Yes, the problem isn't as simple as gun control, but it's a pretty obvious place to start. Better than burying our heads in the sand and expecting the rest of the world to just keep feeling sorry for us every time this happens.
As some of you may have discerned from my posts, I'm kind of a "liberaltarian." I lean liberal but a lot of my tendencies fall in line with the libertarian train of thought. When it comes to gun control, my personal view is basically wishing that there was a magic button somewhere that, when pressed, would erase all guns from existence. But of course this can't happen. So then I think to myself, what is the next best alternative? Whenever something like this happens, libertarians say something along the lines of "why didn't anyone else have a gun?" And a lot of times, it kind of makes sense. For instance, if some responsible, law-abiding citizens had been carrying legal fire-arms at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, it's possible some lives could have been saved. My opinion on the drug war is that keeping drugs illegal only helps create criminals, and benefits the drug dealers while hurting some poor sap who just wanted to smoke some pot without hurting anybody. So when I hear discussions about gun control, I can't help but wonder if the same logic applies. Making them illegal would only hurt the responsible citizens while helping the twisted ones, right? Then this happens. Some guy walks into an elementary school and starts killing kids. The libertarian response, the response that is supposed to fall in line with the previous train of thought, is: well why didn't the elementary school teachers have any guns? Except, as I'm typing that, I can't help but notice just how fucking stupid it sounds. What kind of country is America where one of the supposed solutions to a problem is "arm the elementary school teachers"? Seriously? what kind of shit is that? I don't know what it is about America that makes things like this happen more often than in other countries. Is there something in the water here? All I know is that right now I'm very confused and disgusted with what happened, who did it, and the culture surrounding it. I don't want to live in this country anymore. Also I'm only really using this as a platform to vent a little, because writing helps me sort out my thoughts. So my apologies for the very personal rant.
I'm in distraught and in total shock, I can't for the life of me figure out why or how this would happen, especially at an elementary school. I'm speechless, it's so horrifying.
My heart goes out to the families of this horrible tragedy. I can't even begin to express how I feel about this.
This is awfull. Freaking disgusting. The problem isn't simply the guns. The problem is about how can people which were born "normal", which were cute babies like all of us, turns into fucking psychopats. The problem is about how the society lets such disgusting people rise. And itt would be too simple to say "It's society's fault!". The problem is that every human has a part of primitive feelings, such as violence, pleasure. Most people control those primitive feelings, but serial killers don't give a crap about controling those feelings, they act like they do because they take pleasure in what they do. Those people are the most selfish persons being, they don't care about the others, they only care about how they feel. I don't think making the guns illegal would be the perfect solution. They would only find other ways of killing.
I feel sick every time something like this happens. Most of these children and adults would still be alive if we had an intelligent view on gun control. Instead, people think on the most basic level possible and we get the mess that we have now. Horrible murders like this makes people spout even dumber and dumber ideas about gun control, though. Instead of appealing to emotion and screaming "ban guns!" (which makes no sense at all in any way, shape, or form), we could use events like this to intellectually contemplate why things like this happen and what could be done to better protect ourselves. Here's some stuff to entertain the anti-gun crowd: And in before "gun bans work in the UK!": Handgun crime 'up' despite ban Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade British Gun Crime up 242 Percent
The only thing I'll say on this is that those statistics are misleading. Of course gun crime went up after the ban. When there are more laws to be broken, the rate at which crimes occur will "rise" artificially, because you've made the definition of what is a crime more broad. This does not necessarily mean that there was more gun violence after the ban than there was before it.
How are there more laws to be broken? There was only one more law to be broken: possessing a gun. After everyone turned in all their guns, you think the majority of the increase in gun crime was due to people being caught for illegally owning a gun? Edit: Anyways, those numbers are of offences in which guns were used. Even if they weren't, there's not simply 'offence' stats in the articles.
Kind of answered your own question there. That "only" one more law was an incredibly broad one. I don't know, because the statistics wouldn't account for it. All the statistics show is that there was a broken law. (Edit: Apparently not.) But do you really think it's so far-fetched? Would you really be that surprised if Obama outlawed guns tomorrow, the entire state of Mississippi simply did not turn their guns in when they were supposed to? There's an adjustment period.
Right now, I don't even want to think or argue about gun control policies because I can feel is the pain of the families from Newton. This is worse than the Columbine shootings. The kids were so young, five to ten years old. This is heartbreaking.
Not to derail this thread but there was also a mass-violence case in china, where 22 minors and 1 adult were injured. The reason I bring this up is to illustrate to those who say that guns aren't the problem that major difference between the two occurances are that no one in China was killed, which just goes to show that guns *are* pretty much the problem. It really speaks volumes where in two cases of such crazy shit happenings that are so similar the one involving guns is the one that ends much worse. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/14/china-school-attack_n_2298430.html So, those who say that guns aren't the problem, I just can't take you seriously, sorry, I have no reason to believe it's anything other than bullshit.
Yes, because supplying dozens of vigilantes with guns in a darkened, enclosed space is going to increase safety. I've never understood this point of view. "Let's just arm everyone and ordinary citizens will take care things." Putting guns in the hands of more people is only going to increase gun usage. That's not a problem solver, it's a problem escalator.
Except for those people to get caught there'd have to be door to door inspections. I'm assuming those UK gun crime stats are people carrying out crimes, not people simply being found to have a gun on them. The gun violence stats don't have that ambiguity, though.
I don't necessarily disagree with you. In the thread that was made about that shooting, I actually specifically brought up the point "isn't the only thing worse than a guy shooting a gun in a dark crowded room, TWO guys shooting guns in a dark crowded room?" But it probably isn't that simple. My point was that while you may not agree with it, you can see the logic behind it yes? That a law-abiding citizen with a gun and some training could have helped stop the criminal? And yet when you apply that logic to elementary school teachers, it just seems so...ridiculous.
Plus, if you give guns to everyone to stop these criminals, in the heat of many shootings happening, it would be hard for a third-party innocent person to recognize who's the violent one and who's the vigilante.
Do you ever wonder why most cops rarely (if ever) have to discharge their weapon on duty? Do you wonder why most criminals very seldom go after cops compared to regular citizens? It's because criminals know that all cops are armed and have the ability to kill them. What do you think criminals would do if they knew everyone was armed? Would they still try and rob that convenient store? Would they try and rape that woman at night? Would they try and shoot up a school? Yes, some will still try. But most would rather not risk being killed as evident by the majority of them not going after policeman. Only the crazies would continue to commit crimes that could potentially kill them.
The Onion has a pretty apt article about this, actually. http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-nation-reports,30743/