Shooting rampage master thread

[Il Segaiolo Pedantesco]

White Male is the new terrorist.

can't pluck up the courage to log in Condi?

Pat

What makes you think I ever logged out?

[Goldwyrm]

Well spoken thoughts

I agree with those points.

I also agree with some of the Frotherguest's points. This hasn't been an honest discussion. Unless the actual purpose is as an outlet for anti-U.S. bias and to provide for some chest thumping.

[da_bish]

I don?t know who or what?s to blame and I don?t see how blaming helps. The situation is what it is and it?s no good pretending America?s murder problem is just caused by the availability of firearms.

Causation isn't necessary to prove. That's something of a red herring. The murder problem may or may not be caused by availability of guns, but it is certainly facilitated by it.

Look at it this way. You have piles of heroin laying all over your house. Your daughter is shooting it. You and your wife are beside yourself that's she's addicted. You look next door -- another family that also has piles of heroin laying all over the house -- and their son is fine. You sit and wonder, why oh why is our daughter the heroin addict? Why us?

No matter why she's shooting the heroin, well, wouldn't you get rid of the piles? Seems a good first step to me -- at least in your house.

I've mentioned this before in this thread, but it's worth considering that violent crime is not particularly higher in the states than in other western countries. But the murder rate is much higher, and so it stands to reason that violence escalates to murder because of the free availability of guns.

[da_bish]

This hasn't been an honest discussion. Unless the actual purpose is as an outlet for anti-U.S. bias and to provide for some chest thumping.

Some of what's been posted here is typical anti-American sneering, but that doesn't invalidate the discussion of what is obviously a serious social issue.

[theomar pius]

I don?t know who or what?s to blame and I don?t see how blaming helps. The situation is what it is and it?s no good pretending America?s murder problem is just caused by the availability of firearms.

Causation isn't necessary to prove. That's something of a red herring. The murder problem may or may not be caused by availability of guns, but it is certainly facilitated by it.

Look at it this way. You have piles of heroin laying all over your house. Your daughter is shooting it. You and your wife are beside yourself that's she's addicted. You look next door -- another family that also has piles of heroin laying all over the house -- and their son is fine. You sit and wonder, why oh why is our daughter the heroin addict? Why us?

No matter why she's shooting the heroin, well, wouldn't you get rid of the piles? Seems a good first step to me -- at least in your house.

I've mentioned this before in this thread, but it's worth considering that violent crime is not particularly higher in the states than in other western countries. But the murder rate is much higher, and so it stands to reason that violence escalates to murder because of the free availability of guns.

So it's not at all about availability, but about personal responsibility. Both families have the heroin available, but only one is addicted to it. So let's punish both. No, it's about personal responsibility. That's why the gun control argument raises the fur of so many. Blaming guns for mass shootings is like blaming forks for obesity. It throws personal responsibility out the window in a knee jerk reaction. Guns didn't kill those kids at Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza did.

[aliensurfer]

Well spoken thoughts

I agree with those points.

I also agree with some of the Frotherguest's points. This hasn't been an honest discussion. Unless the actual purpose is as an outlet for anti-U.S. bias and to provide for some chest thumping.

agreed, it's like the mirror image of TMP where it often becomes American chest beating but there is no need for the real bias and nastiness shown in this thread.

America has it's cunts as does Blighty. They may have more as they are more of them. They have guns which is their choice, as did we in the past (admittedly old black powder times but we had them and people killed each other with them - 'Gentlemen' dueled with pistols for example).

We don't always fully understand the issue of guns and American's views on them as they do not understand our dislike of the idea of lots of guns available. No need for anything else to have entered it, especially the racist slant some posts took.

Mockery and good natured banter is one thing, but, as often happens with certain topics on here (and elsewhere) people overstep the mark.

Now, before this freaks Kev out by sounding too sensible,



YOU'RE ALL CUNTS

[da_bish]

So it's not at all about availability, but about personal responsibility. Both families have the heroin available, but only one is addicted to it. So let's punish both.

I'm not sure you understood the analogy.

Many people argue that the free availability of guns is not the cause of gun violence in the states. They point to Canada as an example, where there are roughly as many guns per capita as in the States, but a much lower rate of gun violence.

As far as I'm concerned, Canada is the house next door in the analogy. It doesn't matter to me that the boy next door is not addicted. I'm not going to leave the piles of heroin around in my house, so my daughter can use it, just because the boy next door is not using. You wouldn't either.

Blaming guns for mass shootings is like blaming forks for obesity. It throws personal responsibility out the window in a knee jerk reaction.

That's a cute analogy, but it's not exactly on point, as obesity is really a matter of personal responsibility. Gun violence is not a matter of personal responsibility, it is a matter of public safety, a very different issue.

Guns didn't kill those kids at Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza did.

Oh please, not that again. The gun killed the children. He murdered 26 people in ten minutes. This would never have been possible without the bushmaster.

[TMeier]

Look at it this way.

Reasoning by analogy is always tricky because the validity depends on the accuracy and completeness of the analogy. What if an addictive personality is just addictive and if your daughter couldn?t get heroin she just started sniffing solvent? Or went out into the woods and started taking whatever psychoactive herbs she could find, there are lots. You'd have forbidden the neighbors to have heroin (a useful rat poison) and made little difference.

You say while this may be so for some, addiction is a scaled problem and if the most convenient and powerful addictive agents are removed fewer people will be addicts.

I agree. If we confiscated guns in the U.S. there would be fewer deaths from gunshot and probably fewer murders and suicides overall. But guns are not completely useless, by the same logic which says guns facilitate crime surely they facilitate crime prevention.

The question is how much crime and what sort do guns prevent? I don?t have any idea. There have been flawed and disingenuous studies from both sides of the argument. It really hinges on what you think the rate for other violent crime would be in the U.S. if there were fewer guns (you will never get rid of them all). The only way you could conclusively discover this is to confiscate the guns and wait 20 years. Of course then it?s very unlikely you?d ever get them back no matter what happens, once a large majority are unused to arms they are never going to get voted back into circulation.

If we could have an honest, dispassionate investigation of this question it would be very useful but in the current climate that doesn?t seem likely. One side refuses to admit guns can have any social use and the other pretends they aren?t any part of the problem. There are very few people who honestly want to know what their effect actually is.

This is practical side of the question, it makes certian assumptions about the nature of the relation of the individual to society. The philosophical question is should a majority have the power to forbid someone something which has an overall deleterious effect socially if it gives an individual benefit? Most societies answer this with an unequivocal ?maybe?. It seems to depend on how difficult it is to enforce the prohibition and how strongly people feel about the thing to be proscribed. There are many things, like alcohol, tobacco and private automobiles which have a huge social price but are allowed because people aren?t yet worked up enough about them to do anything or don?t think prohibition would work.

[da_bish]

Well, of course it was just an analogy, which I think was clear, but the point remains, if your daughter were using the heroin you have in piles all over your house, and you didn't want her to be an addict, would you spend all your time trying to find the root cause of her addiciton, or would you get rid of the piles?

Crime rates in the states don't really support the notion that gun ownership suppresses crime. That's a big argument of the gun crowd, but it seems for every story I read in the news about a crime averted by gun ownership, there are about ten about a child who shot himself or another kid playing with dad's self-defence firearm, or a man who shot his wife thinking she was an intruder, or the gun that's "purely for self-defence" being grabbed in the heat of an argument.

Ironically, on the day of the Sandy Hook shootings, the NRA's twitter account posted a link to a story about a woman who had prevented a robbery in her beauty salon because she was armed. They posted in the story the hashtag #armedcitizen. As they were posting that, another "armed citizen" was carrying on with his own gun use.

[Colonel Kane]

Da Bish, your daughter sounds cool.