25 People Dead, Mostly Children, at Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

Amen.
My grandfather only had his rifle, a shotgun for slaughtering hogs with a headshot, and a pistol. That's all the NRA used to really be about, protecting the average citizen's right to be reasonably armed.

They went off the rails as an association when they became a political lobbying organization.

 

Yup.

Politics and religion.
The two things that can make what appear to be sane, responsible, and decent people anything but.

 

Very helpful link, thank you, clarified a lot of the terminology.

 

I didn't give him a pass, but if guns weren't available, he wouldn't have walked in and shot those babies. It's perfectly logical.

I had to go through four months of psych evaluations and counseling to get a surgery that only had to do with me, the fact you can own a gun without at least that in thus country is disgusting. It's not 1776, and we don't need Fucking guns. When that amendment was created, it was done so to protect from the British. It's ridiculous now.

 

For the pro gun devotees who say we have enough gun laws on the books already, let me tip you onto a little Capitol Hill okey doke;

When a bill is passed into law, the best way to subsequently 'kill' it is not to authorize the funding needed to ENFORCE that law.

Most of the federal gun laws on the books don't have the necessary funding to make the laws anything more than words on a piece of paper.:toimonster:

That's why there's still an effort to pass more effective gun control laws nationally.

This is the type of shit the NRA and Faux News don't tell you.:smt071

 

Huntress in theory your reasoning is very sound, nobody can argue against it. That being said, guns already exist, and that means that insane and criminal elements are not going to follow the laws and will illegally obtain guns or other means to do their unspeakable crimes. Responsible gun owners (which are the overwhelming majority) should not be held responsible for the crimes of the few. It would be Prohibition all over again and that was a miserable failure.

Again, criminals/gang bangers want stricter gun control laws, it makes their jobs easier, go to 20:20 below. If the criminal/thug/gangmember wants more gun control laws, that cant be a good thing for us law abiding citizens.

[YOUTUBE]dhXOuuHcjbs[/YOUTUBE]

 

Most gangbangers kill other gangbangers, like the mafia they cannibalize their own more than innocent citizens.

It was the Bushmaster M-15 that killed most of those kids, not the glock or Lanza's other 9mm. Good reason to reinstitute the assault weapons ban.:drinkers:

 

Hold on a sec. How many Bushmaster M-15s are out there and how many have actually killed civilians and how many were owned by responsible gun owners? I keep hearing how much of a "problem" this is but is it really?
I get innocent people were murdered but if the main issue is to stop the death of innocent people I got several more issues that require our attention far more than legally obtained assault rifles. Our is this more about assauging the fears of people who are terrified at the concept of guns more so than tjeir application?

 

I would beg to differ with that. So many innocent children and adults are hit and some die from gangbangers shooting at each other. It seems like there's a story in the paper every day about an innocent child or adult being mowed down by gang-related shootings because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yet, where is the outrage at all of the gang violence that happens in our cities? They kill more people annually than psychos with guns. What is Chicago's death toll again? Does it matter at this point?

I want to know where the outrage is on gangs. Where the FUCK is the outrage on gangs and gang violence? Where are the voices who are screaming for gangs to be abolished? Where?

I would have to agree with you on the part in bold.

Also, this argument is really no different than the outrage that people express when a pitbull or rottweiler kills a child or adult. You get the people screaming for destroying those breeds.

And you get the people who come out of the woodwork to tell stories of how loving and amazing their pitbulls and rottweilers are.

This is no different. There are many, many of those dogs that never so much as think about hurting a human, but we should get rid of entire breeds because of a few evil dogs who were likely raised by assholes to be that way? I don't think so.

The few always try to spoil it for the many.

 

We know the answer to that. Theyre poor minorities so no one gives a flying fuck. Thats why I asked Ali since when have we really cared about innocent people getting killed?
Now that suburban America sees that avoiding the "bad" areas isnt going to keep them safetheyre freaking the fuck out

 

We agree that there is no need for assault/military grade weapons in the hands of civilians. As Books said, there is a lot of collateral damage done to innocent civilians when the gangbangers are waging war against each other.

http://www.modbee.com/2007/09/19/71531/in-the-line-of-fire-gang-members.html

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/innocent-victims-swept-up-in-norteno-sureno-gang-w/nKnR5/

Just a few of the many, many tragic stories out there...

 

That part that is in bold. So sad that we as humans should even need to ask that question.

The chilling question that goes along with that..and is heartbreaking and painful to contemplate is..

Why do we not care that innocent women and children die in shooting sprees and gang violence?

Something is inherently wrong when another person can so callously and coldheartedly take the life of another person if it isn't during a life and death struggle for their own survival.

But what is the answer? Ban guns? All guns? No.
Commit all mentally ill against their will into institutions? Besides not always knowing whose mentally ill..it's against the bill of rights to do so

Continue to witness and hear about the pointless and tragic deaths associated with such killing sprees? Get our hackles raised for a huge on-line debate and then when the media flourish has passed, go back to our small lives until another round of shootings occurs?
Wash, rinse, repeat? As needed?

Reductio ad Absurdum

 

The debate has never been about whether or not people care that these things happened and are continuing to happen. No one is debating that they could care less that 20 innocent children and 6 innocent adults were mowed down. That's never been up for debate. That's a given that people give a shit about that.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that could care less that this happened. I know no one that wasn't deeply affected by this tragedy.

The debate has been how to fix these problems.

And I think we've come to the conclusion that there aren't any easy answers.

 

I agree with you on that very last part. And that's why this will continue to happen.

And I'm not ultimately saying no one cares about this particular incident. Obviously we care very much or we wouldn't continue to grow this thread to 50+ pages.

The way in which we don't care is excemplified in the fact that the things that have transpired in the past are forgotten. Are we still raging over treyvon martins death as we did 6 months ago? What about the aurora shooting?
Or columbine 13 years ago?
Or the federal building attack when my daughter wasn't even a year old?

We will go back to complacently thinking that THIS is how it should be because there are no easy answers.
A government can't stop a person hell bent on killing. If they could this would been stopped long ago.
Only a person hell bent on killing can stop themselves from killing. Do guns make it easier to do so?
If not, then why do we equip our military with every kind of gun imaginable instead of huge knifes to kill?

This will abate and drop into obscurity for the rest of us. While those hit the hardest are left to understand what happened to them.
What Lanza did defies reason, logic, and real, concrete answers.
What he did was evil. Pure evil. Motivated by whatever force brought it on. Whether its because he has aspergers and a personality disorder of sociopathic proportions. Or whether he played violent video games day in and day out. Or whether he had easy access to numerous weapons made to make killing that much easier.
It's the motivation behind the act..ultimately..that is the issue. No matter the weapon used to kill.

No easy answers for sure.
Because how do others police a persons motivation for anything?

 

Why are you even comparing Australia to America? There's 22 million Aussies to 315 million Americans.

In-case you didn't know, however....in 1996 there were 7 homicides by firearm in Victoria.
After the buy-back program in 1997 - there were 19 firearm homicides. A 171% increase. Go figure.

And really now, in the grand scheme of firearm homicides, seven Aussie gun homicides in the prior year to banning semi-autos is hardly a horridly high number (and remember, pump-action and semi's were in public circulation then).


So what does that tell you.....IT'S NOT THE GUNS. IT'S MENTALLY DERANGED PEOPLE NOT being properly monitored...that's what American legislatures actually need to address.

Because in the countries with almost as many handguns per person, they don't have the same firearm homicide problems. It's our unchecked crazy people who want to kill, period.

Private Gun ownership per 100,000 Residents
USA 88
Serbia 58
Yemen 58
Switzerland 46.

 

YW. The media was confusing with all the terms being interchanged...it helped me.

Don't tell Mayor Bloomberg that. He's had no problems enforcing laws thus far.

Maybe blame the bleeding-heart judges for letting them out. Or is that the early parole board?...
Clearly someone isn't enforcing the laws on the books, Congress did their part.

Do you understand that the Bushmaster M-15 is a semi-auto. I know it sounds all gangsta/militaresque but it's still a one-shot pony. Or as you like to call them, 'pea-shooters'.

 

I HOPE this gets people thinking more about mental health care in the United States in light of this shooting. Adam Lanza was described as 'deeply troubled'.

I don't know if you all recall the Virginia Tech shooting, but Cho was similar in that respect and had mental issues for years which were ignored until it was too late.

Please let's not turn this into some sort of gun control debate. Less guns doesn't mean that criminals have less access to them. I'm all for gun rights and I don't even like guns.

 

Guns weren't available to him - he was 20. He stole them. He could have stolen them from a hunter, a gun shop, a cop, a rent-a-cop or military officer.

Rather, the logic here is if mental health assistance was MORE available, he WOULDN’T have walked in and killed those babies. Let's be real.
Because of the 31,000 gun fatalities in 2011 (amongst 315 million people), 11,000 were homicide and 20,000 were suicide. Again to put that in perspective, Japan (with 127 million people) had 33,000 suicides last year and they don’t own guns.

So I have to ask, if you had a choice between MORE gun laws....or MORE mental health care funding, which would you chose?

That's because you were actually going to HAVE SURGERY and live in your body through enormous physical and mental changes.

People buy guns for PROTECTION, not to randomly use against people. For those that occupationally do such as cops and military, they have way more than 4 months of psych evals. Way more.

When I obtained my Act-235, I had to take full-time classes, pass several PSYCH EVALS (much more intense than your GP ones), train to shoot and show precise marksmanship....OR I FAILED. And after a certain passage of time, my certification must be renewed with the same requirements.

Years prior to that when I bought my private gun, I went through a background check and was made to wait. I respect my gun immensely - I go to the firing range and make sure I know how to use my gun IN THE EVENT I HAD TO SAVE MY LIFE. For no other reason I do this.

I know you told me once that you'd rather let a murderer kill you, than pick up a gun to save your life... but I value MY LIFE and in the same scenario, I want to live. So we can't ever agree just on that reason alone.
.

 

these law biding citzens always complain about how the govt is interferig with thgeir amendments and it was a group of people (soon to be govt) wrote it. then these law biding citzens are the ones scared of it and ready to wage war and become a tim mcveigh

 

Better question...Why AREN'T you comparing the US to Australia? Everyone else is. And the UK. And not for no reason, either. Everyone else isn't just a plain idiot and you're the fucking glock-toting genius, Bliss. For fuck's sake, you sound like a raving lunatic right now. Calm the fuck down.

From Time Magazine...

And yes, it's also a mental health issue, but I fail to see why you cannot see the fact that we consider guns part of our cultural right is also a huge part of the problem. There have been crazy people throughout history, but the invention of the gun and it's efficient method of killing people and things from afar can't be discounted.

Furthermore, an article written by someone who's school was the center of an attack said this far more eloquently than I ever could:

It doesn't take rocket science to see that we, as a country, have fucked up in some way.