Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker Cops have named the programmer who went on a gun rampage at WTS Paradigm – a US maker of enterprise resource planning software – this week. He shot four colleagues, leaving one in a critical condition. At around 10.20am on Wednesday, Anthony Tong, 45, who had worked at the company in Middleton, Wisconsin, for little over a …
Isn't it time to make it harder to acquire firearms? Have real background checks from a common federal government data base. Have at least a week long waiting period. Tax up the wazoo semi automatic fire arms, such as the AR-15. They are not needed and almost useless for hunted anyway. Psychiatric evaluations for anyone trying to buy a firearm for self protection. These are the people that end up shooting other people, Or getting shot with their own firearm by their 2 year old.
Only 35% or so of the U.S. population own firearms. Yet their are many hundreds of thousands more firearms floating around than the total population of this country.
Do something to stop the slaughter. NOW is the time to talk about what to do about stopping the violent gun deaths. Think you need a firearm? Join a militia first and show up every month for their meetings. Or lose your firearm.
How would that have fixed this situation?
He had no criminal record, and could legally have purchased a firearm. Or bought an illegal one.
Or simply run a truck into a crowd of people. Or poisoned them. Or blown up a truck of ANFO next to the building.
The exact weapon or method is almost incidental to the act.
@EveryTime - "Or simply run a truck into a crowd of people. Or poisoned them. Or blown up a truck of ANFO next to the building.
The exact weapon or method is almost incidental to the act."
But with those alternatives available, this guy chose a gun. Maybe he chose it for its many advantages: easier to target than a truck in an office environment, easier to administer than deadly poisons, no need to build it yourself, unlike a bomb. It almost seems that having purpose-made devices for accurately shooting lumps of metal to kill people readily available makes it more likely that they are used in mass shootings. Who would have guessed?
Bollocks
Easy access to guns makes for easy access to murder. Other methods exist, but are harder to implement, and require more planning - giving people time to rethink their action.
Guns may not kill people, but they sure make it a lot easier.
"Guns may not kill people, but they sure make it a lot easier."
They also make it a whole lot easier to protect yourself. According to the CDC 500,000 to 3 million people per year are protected in the US by the defensive use of firearms.
No, the CDC has not publicly said that "500,000 to 3 million people a year are protected...".
They have previously conducted some research which has never been published and references to it have been pulled due to questionable extrapolation of the studies they did. And if you think about it, stating a range of 0.5 million to 3 million is a ludicrously wide range such that the margin of error is enormous.
Total tosh....
you need guns to protect yourself from "other" people with Guns.
Self fullfilling prophecy.
if no one had a gun then no one could be killed by a gun.. Simples.....
Statistics
UK population 70 million, gun deaths about 60 PER YEAR
How does the US compare with other countries?
About 40% of Americans say they own a gun or live in a household with one, according to a 2017 survey, and the rate of murder or manslaughter by firearm is the highest in the developed world.
There were more than 11,000 deaths as a result of murder or manslaughter involving a firearm in 2016.
So tell me again how guns save lives?
Crime and the media that reports it in large headlines and repeatedly. That's why. There's cities in this country where most of us wouldn't go unless we were in a tank with a platoon of Marines as escort.
Fear is a big factor and the way businesses operate for pure profit, some foster fear as a product.
"According to the CDC 500,000 to 3 million people per year are protected in the US by the defensive use of firearms."
If there weren't as many firearms around in the first place, there wouldn't be that many people in danger in the first place. What you're saying is that up to 1% of the population EVERY YEAR is at such a risk of being hurt that firearms were needed to protect them.
To me that sounds like a good argument for restricting gun availability
This post has been deleted by its author
Please bash any law or stats you want, but be accurate.
Your thinking people are using guns to defend against other people with guns, which is not correct. If you read the reports, it is primarily people using guns to counter un armed assaults. Yes there is defense of knives, and guns, but at a much lower rate.
Your mother will not be able to fend off the rapist even with a knife, but you don't love your mother anyways.
@Timmy B - "According to the CDC 500,000 to 3 million people per year are protected in the US by the defensive use of firearms."
Is this the same CDC that is specifically prohibited from using its funds to advocate or promote gun control? Do you think that might make unbiased research difficult? Do you have a citation for your claim?
"According to the CDC 500,000 to 3 million people per year are protected in the US by the defensive use of firearms."
Citation? I am really curious. And I look up stuff on the CDC website fairly regularly.
Or is this not the Centre for Disease Control but some other organisation entirely?
AFAIK, you can't easily make ANFO anymore, because they changed the recipe of fertilizer to contain less nitrogen.
As for "doing something": anything that would be done now would only impact the (very) far out future because of the number of legal and illegal guns in circulation.
We know how good politicians are with such far-out timelines...
The sheer availability of weapons is not the only factor in reducing the number of shootings.
I live in a country where every able-bodied citizen has to join the military for compulsory training once he turns 18. Everybody who completes that training gets a fully functional, automatic assault riffle to take home and keep, in case the country is attacked and quick mobilization is needed.
Ammunition is not handed out anymore (since 2007), but that is not a big obstacle.
While murder-suicides did and do happen, but they usually involve close family.
Why is that?
Maybe because a functioning social security system exists, that doesn't leave people completely hopeless? Even criminals can have hope here (up to a point, of course).
Maybe it has to do with the amount of holiday people get, the amount of work-related stress?
Also, the amount of prescription drugs consumed is way less here (well, pretty much everywhere else but the USA has lower consumption).
I'm in favor of restricting gun-ownership (unless maybe you live in the mid-west and actually own a farm or go hunting nobody needs a gun).
But it's unfortunately only a very, very small part of the puzzle and it will only slightly reduce the problem, for a very long time: the guns will be around for decades to come.
Personally, I love Switzerland, and travel there for various reasons. But it's full of....Swiss people. We have many millions of people who believe "taking care of business" with violence (fist, foot, knife, gun) is culturally acceptable. My township of ca.25,000 thousand has lots of guns in safes, and essentially no murders per decade. The population is educated, and they'll "rat" on each other at the least violent infraction. Three miles away, in the neighboring city, the culture is entirely different. They excuse themselves from our culture of law, convincing themselves that shifting their beliefs would be caving in to "the man." You have to see it, experience it, to believe it. And then there's East End London.
"but why that happens only in USofA ? maybe there is a problem..."
USofA still has a free press, you hear about it as soon as it happens.
Shootings and gunfights in the streets and murders etc. happen in other more respectable countries, but to find about them you have to scour archive.org, or to wait 10 years until they get mentioned in connection with something else, such as neonazis serially executing immigrants and such, or very public fire fights between biker gangs.
Taking my coat and going home ... this thread is "I-have-my-head-deep-in-sand"-fest.
EmilPer,
So, US of A has a free Press but the rest of the world does not ...... are you really sure about this !!!???
Trump will fix that for you soon and your press will not be free either !!!
Is this argument meant in all seriousness ???
Is this believed by others ???
Did you get this 'nugget of information' from FoxNews ???
This is an example of yet another issue in the US of A, a large population that is apparently so easy to manipulate/program.
The techniques have been honed over generations from saturation advertising 24/7 to mass manipulation via the internet/social media. The techniques unfortunately 'do travel' and the rest of the world is experiencing similar attempts, some successful as well.
When you get home, 'buy another gun' as it will make you feel better ...... not so sure anyone else will though !!!
The CP of China murders many citizens year in and year out, and now places Uyghurs in "re-education camps," and you're worried about US homicides?y My Township (and county) are as safe as most of Europe. Gangs/drugs are involve in most murders. In my state they are occurring only miles away from us. Seriously intervene? Politically impossible.
Mexico. It's where the murder rate is truly high, and the techniques of murder especially gruesome. And Venezuela, Guatamla, etc. I think Europeans, and Brits, look at gross statistics, highlighted video about "mass" shootings, and have no idea of the distribution of crime in America by ethnicity and urban neighborhood. It reminds me of Americans who can't find Indonesia on a globe.
"How would that have fixed this situation?"
The exact list of remedies listed by the OP might or might not have helped in this exact case, but it's hard to argue that such remedies would not bring about an across-the-board reduction in shooting fatalities.
One thing that is not directly related to shooting but is definitely needed is better access to mental health, including recognising early symptoms, and ditching the social stigma associated with mental health problems.
"It actually specifically states "well regulated militia", that "regulated" part is the one that seems to be written in ink invisible to the gun nuts..."
Remember that this was written a fair while ago and the people that penned it may not mean what you think they do.
Nor what you think maybe. Unluckily, they are all dead, so we can't ask them. And is really important what they thought a quarter of a millennium ago, in a very different environment? Or is more important what is happening in the actual environment?
Remember that this was written a fair while ago and the people that penned it may not mean what you think they do.
So? Antonin Scalia and all his "originalist" ilk spout that the Constitution should be interpreted by what was originally written. And then went on to do the exact opposite. Rank hypocrisy aside, the "well regulated militia" part is in the original text....
@someone else...
what did "A well regulated militia" mean at the time it was written? Did the word regulated mean the same? No as people now think it means controlled by the government. but then it could mean well trained or well organised. The whole point is that it was a check on tyranny.
So? Antonin Scalia and all his "originalist" ilk spout that the Constitution should be interpreted by what was originally written. And then went on to do the exact opposite. Rank hypocrisy aside, the "well regulated militia" part is in the original text....
---
One problem with historical documents and their interpretation is that figures of speech and word meanings shift significantly over time, and may, for example, reverse their meaning compared to how we would understand a passage.
This is a nasty trap that catches a lot of laymen and amateur historians with an insufficent understanding of the usages of the period being studied.
The fact that the meanng is clear to you does not mean that you actually understand it.
Among other usage variations (via the OED): a 1790 Adam Smith W.N. v. i. iii. i. (Bohn) II. 253 When those companies‥are obliged to admit any person, properly qualified,‥they are called regulated companies.
I have found, in life, that when people consider dangers and murderous societies, they usually turn to the safest target. Thus my German friends did, during the Cold War, constantly marched against and assailed the US: They were simply afraid of the Soviet East, knowing the soviets, one or two-hundred miles away, were hopelessly ruthless, unbelievers in the view that everyone deserves to feel safe, at liberty.
We had our civil war. Gruesome as it was, it didn't hold a candle to WWII in Europe, or the intentional murders by the Soviets of their own citizens, or the stunning numbers killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The world, everyone from Olaf Palme to the French Youth rebellion, were railing at us in 1971 because -Vietnam. Meanwhile, five hundred miles to the north, Mao was ordering murderous measures that had even less rationality, and killed many millions more. People are content with tunnel vision.
The "gun nuts" understand that part very well and have read other papers by the founding fathers explaining exactly what they meant. There are two clauses in the amendment, the prefatory clause, which gives the reason, and the operative clause, which states the right granted.
Also understanding history, where the new country had just won a war against a parent country with large standing armies that had tried to disarm the populace prior to the revolution, and had done so in the past to other subjects, the framers understood that the people needed to have power to resist a tyrannic government.
Other writings from the framers explained that the militia was everyone, not the state, and that regulated meant well-trained or self-controlled.
So what the framers meant, which has been upheld in Supreme Court decisions, is that to ensure that the United States remained a Free state not under dictatorship, monarchy or tyranny the individual people have the right to keep and use weapons, and should be well trained in their use.
It was not meant for a way for the state to control or limit the individuals access to those weapons as they had just fought a war to rid themselves of that kind of control.
"Militias are mention in the first part of the 2nd Amendment. You know the forgotten part that many think was written in invisible ink."
Perhaps its time to change parts of a constitution that may have been relevant in a semi lawless wild west scenario 200 years ago but don't apply in a democratic 21st century society where (in theory) the rule of law applies.
And even if you think the police/legal system/whatever in america is corrupt and is run by the industrial-military complex/bilderberg group/left wing nutjobs/right wing nutjobs [delete as applicable], the idea that you and a dozen of your friends are going to overpower the US military with a few handguns is just so fucking laughable that anyone who thinks that frankly needs a psychiatric assessement.
" the idea that you and a dozen of your friends are going to overpower the US military with a few handguns is just so fucking laughable that anyone who thinks that frankly needs a psychiatric assessement."
Do the math.
The US military probably has at most 200,000 combat troops, and occupying territory, particularly urban territory is a resource and tactical nightmare for any military, particularly when the opponents can blend with the civilian population.
Let's see... Americans trying to hide among Americans, in their own home cities... I wonder if they could manage that?
On the other hand you have on the order of 140,000,000 armed civilians, with enough guns to arm just about *everyone*.
There is a reason that competent security analysis has concluded that the US is probably the single country in the world most protected against a successful coup attempt... because of an armed, politically aware civilian population.
Even if you could subborn the entire US military, it wouldn't be enough, and you'd never get the majority of them anyway - most coups depend on a critical 5 to 10 percent of the military in the right locations, and temporary neutrilization of the rest. For example, the military coup in Portugaul used the small part of the army still in the country, and the help of the air force transport squadrons who refused to fly the bulk of the army back from Africa, rendering it irrelevant.
*My* psychiatric state is just fine, and my historical and analytical skills are even better.
"On the other hand you have on the order of 140,000,000 armed civilians, with enough guns to arm just about *everyone*."
Even assuming you could muster all of them which wouldnt happen (at most you'd get a few hundred thousand crazies), how do you reckon they'd fare against some B52 carpet bombing, abrams tanks, A10s or cruise missiles ? Ask the Taliban how well that works out long term. You see, this is the thing, people like you still think its 1850. Wake up.
"Even assuming you could muster all of them which wouldnt happen (at most you'd get a few hundred thousand crazies), how do you reckon they'd fare against some B52 carpet bombing, abrams tanks, A10s or cruise missiles ? Ask the Taliban how well that works out long term. You see, this is the thing, people like you still think its 1850. Wake up."
Well, you clearly don't understand the issues, do you?
Dunning and Kruger warned me there'd be days like this.
Let's see...
The most powerful military in the world, and its allies, have been trying to subdue Afghanistan for seventeen years now. They have drones, satellites, artillery, armour, missiles, jets, lots of shiny high tech, unmatched surveillance... and the last time I looked, the government they were propping up didn't control much outside the capital, and not always all of that.
The terrain is relatively open, ideal for a power with total air dominance. Their opposition has small arms, explosives, and some support weapons like machine guns and mortars. These are also distant foreigners, and killing them does not have an immediate political backlash in the US.
The terrain is far more problematic in the US. Finding people on a mountainside in Afghanistan is one thing - trying to pick the same number of people out from the crowds in New York city is another thing entirely.
Carpet bombing New York would have vast negatives - if you did it, pretty much all of New York would turn on the military - for that matter a lot of the military would resist the attempt. Destroying their own civilian population and infrastructure is, to say the least, a counterproductive strategy.
And if the potential oppressors have tanks, you don't shoot at them while they are driving around, you wait till they are replacing a track, or taking a night off for a movie... and once you do something, you go back into the population.
You cannot usefully weild a military against your own civilians the same way you would against an armed foreign force. Certainly not in a western democracy. Any thought that you could is delusional.
For that matter I don't think B52 carpet bombing worked in Vietnam, either. The biggest gun doesn't always win the war.
There is far too much simplistic analysis of issues around firearms that is mostly intended to bolster beliefs that are held without regard for rationality... and your posts are a perfect example of that failing. Like a lot of issues, it isn't really all that easy to solve with simplistic nostrums like 'ban guns'... first you have to grasp the real causes, and then you have to find a way to address them. Gun control is just a pointless distraction from the real work.
After a carpet bombing, I doubt it... ask those German and Japanese cities... the survivors usually have not much will to fight more and get more bombs. There's a level of horror that breaks any will people have.
In Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan US tried, and is trying, of course without success, a "limited", "humanitarian" war going against only some precise targets - that type of war can't be won without support from the population.
In Mogadishu they were caught without tanks against more heavily armed enemies with no fear to kill them - and it took old, yet useful against that kind of enemy, Pakistani tanks to save them, the Somali couldn't stand their firepower, and had no weapons against them.
B-52 in Vietnam were used only in the last stages of the war. Before most of North Vietnam coudn't be targeted because of the political implications as the ports couldn't be mined for fear of blowing up Russian or Chinese ships.
But if killing people, any people, is not an issue, look at how ISIS could take control of whole cities even without tanks - just terrorizing the population. But of course they couldn't stand a force with bigger weapons than theirs determined to fight them (the Curds, on the ground, still with support from artillery and planes).
Oh I dunno.
My relatives tell me the flattening of bits of London and almost all of Coventry did nothing to quell the desire to get stuck in and do unto others. From all accounts Dresden was a *boost* to the German civilian morale, and Tokyo was firebombed "scientifically" using data gathered during and after Dresden, yet Japan was still highly bellicose afterward.
It all depends how the leadership depicts the way forward.
It just depends on how much "civilians" are you allowed to kill, and with which weapons. And how long people armed with rifles stand before fleeing when all around them big bombs explodes and people die.
It doesn't look US had issues to occupy German and Japanese cities after having destroyed them, does it?
Look at how Russia kept Chechnya. Or how it crushed revolutions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary - when you can ignore the death tool, everything is far easier.
And the issue won't be a military coup - which would be quite unlikely - or Trump ordering to kill all Democrats, the issue could be a revolt of some "Tea Party" fanatics or some religious sect, or the like, which may not have at all the majority of the population on their side.
"and occupying territory, particularly urban territory is a resource and tactical nightmare for any military, particularly when the opponents can blend with the civilian population."
Which is why the preferred US military technique since 1941 has just been to blow everything to bits and rely on "God taking care of his own".
The amount of ammunition used in the invasion of France in 1944 was so huge it caused major logistical problems.
Which is why the preferred US military technique since 1941 has just been to blow everything to bits and rely on "God taking care of his own".
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Which is much harder to get away with when you do it to your own country / power base / source of funds and supplies.
The amount of ammunition used in the invasion of France in 1944 was so huge it caused major logistical problems.
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And in Vietnam, one US battalion went on a mission, dropped at dawn by helicopeters, carrying 2000 rounds per man. By noon they were radioing for an emergency resupply because they were running out.
Members of other militaries I have talked to don't think much of US fire discipline.
The reason the US introduced single-shot / 3 shot burst M16s instead of single shot / full automatic was to at least slow down the depletion of ammunition in the field. I seem to recall it was an after issue add on kit.
Most militaries just tell their troops to use full automatic only when necessary because of the circumstances, and if you need it it's this setting here.
*My* psychiatric state is just fine, and my historical and analytical skills are even better.
OK. I'll see your "historical and analytical skills" and your unsubstantiated and outlandish estimate of 140MM armed civilians, and raise you one B52 (without nuclear armaments).
Especially since the 2nd Amendment was written when there was no US military at all. The discussion about a professional standing Army went on for a while, as it was exactly seen something an authoritarian government could use to subjugate the population. For years, US didn't have a Navy at all but a few small ships.
The fact they defeated English troops couldn't ignore UK couldn't send in those time a powerful force enough without risking to be attacked and badly defeated in Europe. A local standing Army would have not such a issue. So "militiae" - well regulated - looked a good compromise.
Later the situation wholly changed - as battlefields became more complex, and weapons too, and weapons became increasingly designed for battlefield use specifically, not generic ones for hunting/self-defence/combat ones, requiring specific training for efficient use. Ammunition too was increasingly designed to do much more damage on impact.
Now you've got tanks and airplanes...
"Militias are mention in the first part of the 2nd Amendment."
The only part the firearms enthusiasts see is "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!!1!1!"
I think it's time for a teeny bit of infringement, myself:
(a) Positive RealID required for every firearms or ammunition purchase
(b) Logging of every purchase and ID to a national database
(c) Mandatory registration of every firearm in the same national database
(d) Mandatory background checks and waiting periods for all firearms and ammunition purchases.
All things the NRA has been adamantly against since forever.
"Mandatory registration of every firearm in the same national database"
We tried that.
The only concrete effect was getting innocent people killed by nervous police, and possibly, some complacent police killed by people who had unregistered guns.
We spent billions of dollars on that fiasco. Finally we elected a federal government that promised to get rid of the registry, and now, thankfully, it's gone.
Bad data, incomplete date, little or no beneficial effect...
Even the party that stuck us with that disaster is leery of trying to bring it back.
PS - Curiously, the criminals with illegal guns did not register them.
Then again, a lot of the guns they have are not legal and haven't been legal for civilian ownership in this country for the better part of a century.
Others are closely restricted or prohibited, with detailed background checks, mandatory signoff permission from your spouse or boy/girlfriend, criminal check, references, employment information, mental health information, effective waiting period for fireams licences from several month to more than a year, and mandatory renewal of licencing. The criminals have lots of those guns, and they are not on the database for such firearms, which has been in place for a long, long time, and still is required.
"" Join a militia first and show up every month for their meetings."
Because we really need militias, don't we(?)"
I think OP was referencing the US constitution where the right to bear arms is linked to the membership of local militias. I actually like that reasoning. There isn't (and won't be for a very long time) the political will in the US to amend the constitution re weapons. However actually enforcing the constitution with a stricter interpretation can have a positive effect on reducing shootings.
"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"
So if you're a regularly attending member of the militia, you can own and carry weapons in that context. Otherwise weapons have to be kept in locked cabinets at militia HQ.
" Join a militia first and show up every month for their meetings."Because we really need militias, don't we(?)
Short answer: No. But joining a militia would satisfy that inconvenient and oft ignored (I'm looking at you, Antonin!) independent clause of the 2nd Amendment. So, not a bad idea.
Actually a gun is NOT involved in every mass murder. IED's, poison, cars, plains, etc. are often used in mass murders.
In addition there is no law that will prevent an evil or deranged person from killing innocent bystanders. Even if you could eliminate legal sales or possession of guns, there is a huge black market for guns that are imported from Russia, the Ukraine and many other countries to the U.S. As the news has shown mass murders via guns or other methods is not unique to the U.S. unfortunately. Europe has seen it's fair share along with Asia and Australia to name a few.
Until people address the real issue which is not guns but evil, sick depraved people nothing positive will be done to lower the incident of mass murder be it at a rock concert, night club or an office environment.
Then with respect, and since this is essentially a techno site, if I may I'll take your premise and apply a little logic.
1: It's fairly apparent that the US has a higher incidence of gun related violence and death than other countries (I'm sure there are those who would argue this, and they are of course entitled to. But I'm posing it as a premise).
2: Accepting your point (purely for the sake of logical review), let us assume the root cause is indeed not guns but 'evil, sick, depraved people'.
3: The logical combination of (1) and (2) would appear to suggest that the US has a significantly higher incidence of 'evil, sick, depraved people' than other countries (I'm not saying this is so, merely extending the logic).
4: Er - why? All those evil etc people in the US, I mean? What is the root cause under this logical structure?
The Americans have been looking into this for years. Just look at the Milgram experiments which was trying to see why Germans were bad people(Nazis specifically) and ended up discovering the Americans are most willing to kill.
Maybe not gloryifying killing quite so much might be a good thing?
Guns are definitely a convenient purpose made killing device, there can be no argument it does augment murder far more than any item which that can kill but has a primary function other than harming humans.
However, guns in the US is a stable door wide open with rusty seized hinges and covered in spider webs.
Legislating against gun ownership in a place that is saturated with guns of all kinds would be almost as futile as a brexit deal proposal.
What is needed is a culture change, not directly to do with gun ownership, but to do with the approach to life which leads to there being so many occurrences of folk who end up feeling the need to do as much harm as they can. It is something hard to describe but I felt when I was there and the reason that after 3 years I chose not to stay there despite all the wonderful people and obvious benefits of the place. In those three years, I never heard a single gunshot when I was not in the vicinity of a shooting range.
There was another incident yesterday too, Maryland claimed four more lives.
Three of the main causes seem to be: 1. Intense competition for money and status in very poor, crowded, uneducated neighborhoods; 2. Collapse into anger when stuck in a job-poor region when a job or family is lost, taken away, or driven away by oblivious behavior; 3. Blind rage when someone discovers they have been universally ostracized due to personal characteristics the perp can do nothing about, such as ethnicity, color, mental disability, etc. We have enough pro bono lawyers. It's time we had more pro bono friends/volunteers to help the unlovable or deeply scarred.
The_Idiot,
5. Answer: Because of all the easy to obtain guns etc including all the illegal sources.
6. Which brings us back to controlling the easy access to guns !!! :) ;)
<jk ..... for the people that don't realise ....... or is it ???!!!.>
@Big Al 23
No, IEDs, poison, cars and planes are rarely used in mass murders in the US.
Why the hell does the US have a problem with black market guns from Russia and Ukraine? You don't have a land border with them. Is your Customs and Excise Department totally incompetent?
In Europe, Australia and Asia (excluding actual war zones), mass murders, when they happen, are headline news. In the US, shooting of 4 or more people is a statistic. If we've got our fair share of mass murders, the US is greedy and has far more than its fair share!
Now tell me how much free diagnosis and healthcare the mentally ill get in the US.
"Why the hell does the US have a problem with black market guns from Russia and Ukraine?"
Because the source of black market guns from Indonesia has been locked up?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/25/ex-calif-state-sen-leeland-yee-gun-control-champion-heading-to-prison-for-weapons-trafficking/
Most people in the world (i.e. the populations of India, China, Indonesia, and Sub-Saharan Africa) get very little, if any, free mental health and medical care at more than a primitive level. In all these areas mass murders (mass....not just four people) occur with some regularity. In the US arson in poor urban areas is not a bit rare. Remove those areas from the statistics and America, for all its guns, is as safe as France. The data for the US is available on the US Department of Justice website. For the referred-to regions, Nexis or Google suffices.
"you could eliminate legal sales or possession of guns, there is a huge black market for guns"
In the US there are so many shootings that are not done by gangs, cartels, criminals who have easy access to illegal weapons. The majority of fatal shootings is done by legally registered / acquired weapons. It's a fallacy to think that if it were much more difficult to acquire weapons legally that Mr. white-collar-worker would turn to the criminal underworld to acquire a gun.
"real issue which is not guns but evil, sick depraved people"
You're right that sick people are the root cause. However it is relatively difficult to mass-poison people, acquire explosives and build a large bomb etc, certainly compared to how easy it is in the US to buy a gun and start shooting. At least try and make it a bit hard for the nutters.
The majority of fatal shootings is done by legally registered / acquired weapons. It's a fallacy to think that if it were much more difficult to acquire weapons legally that Mr. white-collar-worker would turn to the criminal underworld to acquire a gun.
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And alcohol is sold legally. Clearly if it were banned, people would not be able to get alcohol, and organized crime would not make it available to almost everyone. Clearly.
Somewhere there is a sarcasm/irony/read your history icon, I'm sure.
Anyone who thinks that how things are obtained when they are legal is the only way to get them hasn't really been thinking about this.
This is the classic fallacy of legalistic political logic - "we can pass a law and it will do exactly what we want with no side effects or response by anyone or anything other than rote comliance to our whims."
Australia had a mass shooting.
They then banned guns.
There hasn't been a mass shooting since.
The UK had a mass shooting
We severely restricted and banned gun ownership.
Gun shootings massively decreased.
Worth a watch, the gun control piece by Jim Jeffries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0
Only the US feels the need to try and keep dangerous weapons in the hands of people as some kind of legal thing because obviously nothing has changed in the last 200 years. Only the US feels the need to have militias. (WTF does a country that powerful need for unregulated militias anyway)
Everywhere else at least rethinks things when bad happens, and accepts that some things have to change.
"Actually a gun is NOT involved in every mass murder. IED's, poison, cars, plains, etc. are often used in mass murders."
Look, I'm all for making a good argument by heaping on the examples, but I challenge you to produce a single instance of a mass murder in which a prairie or grassland or steppe or anything of that genre was ever used as the murder weapon.
This post has been deleted by its author
“Look, I'm all for making a good argument by heaping on the examples, but I challenge you to produce a single instance of a mass murder in which a prairie or grassland or steppe or anything of that genre was ever used as the murder weapon.“
Saskatoon RCMP Starlight Tours?
The worst mass murder of the 20th century used arson as the weapon. It is still a popular way to exact a murderous toll, whether perceived as revenge, simple hate, or even, occasionally, a simple obsession with fire. Knives have been used for millenia to commit mass murder, up to recent years. Intentional infliction of carbon monoxide poisoning still occurs.
Mass murder, four or more victims including, often enough, the perp, is a TV News obsession, The deaths caused one or two at a time, especially in the toughest neighborhood of urban America, are vastly more numerous each year. They primarily involve minorities killing minorities. Sad. But there's usually no absorbing "film at 11," no crowd of politicians and hysterical grieving family and friends.
I personally would not prefer it if all these senseless killings were committed with swords, daggers, or flammable substances. The ugliness of violence is about weak dysfunctional families, and the vast armies-of-one sunk into loneliness and substance abuse. The schools should educate every young person, as they pass through the system, about these ills, and the possibility of pulling the disturbed, addicted, or hopeless and angry, back into community. It really isn't about guns, anymore than medieval England's murder rate was about swords.
Isn't it time to make it harder to acquire firearms?
Why? Americans whacking other Americans is statistically a very rare occurrence, it totally drowns in all the non-Americans casually whacked by Americans while going about their normal business!
As a non-American I'd say: Let 'em have their guns and eat it too!
Banning semi-automatic firearms is a silly concept and shows you don't really know what you're talking about. Pretty much every pistol is a semi-automatic. If you really want to stop killing then you need to ban pistols. And that's simply not going to fly in the USA.
Disclaimer - I live in the UK but do shoot.
@TimmyB - Have an upvote for this : "If you really want to stop killing then you need to ban pistols. "
No use beating around the bush, that is exactly what is needed to solve the issue. Just look at the situation in Australia, Japan, Europe etc and realise that what is needed to prevent all those shootings and deaths is to have the same sort of gun laws as countries that don't have so many shootings and deaths.
"that's simply not going to fly in the USA"
Unfortunately that's the current case, but that doesn't mean give it up as a lost cause. And starting by smaller restrictions now is at least a step in the right direction
What's the point in banning guns? Surely it would be better to ban ammunition?
I realise that it's possible to make your own ammo, but it's also possible to make your own guns. Hell, a marble sellotaped to the end of a shotgun cartridge is lethal, simple and indiscriminate.
So is Ammo. Here's a clue as to the problem https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/9mm-ammo
Long term, sure restrict firearms but so many are in circulation and they are getting easier to make.
(no not domestic 3d printing - try a machine shop and plumbing store - look up the BSP Luty).
Making ammo is seriously hard, especially at scale , especially for anything not a basic manual shotgun. Selling it in bulk at the local supermarket is not a good idea.
Guns are not the issue, banning guns would reduce violence and crime by such a statistically insignificant number that nobody would even notice it.
The US has a problem with violence and mental illness, caused by many things such as the lead and mercury in most US drinking water, the SSRIs that people take like candy (notice how most spree killers were taking SSRIs, SSRIs are involved in spree killings more often then guns are), the neurotoxin preservatives in food and the self reinforcing culture of violence that US cities have.
"SSRIs are taken as a result of mental problems (stress, depression etc) - they are symptom not the cause."
SSRIs are massively over prescribed in the US and violent behavior is a known side effect of SSRIs.
"I'm expecting some serious woo to back that up."
Propylene glycol and Phenoxyethanol are known neurotoxins that cause CNS damage.
"The US has a problem with violence and mental illness"
Just stop right there.... the vast majority of people that have mental health issues do NOT and are not violent.
I don't have a gun, I don't know anyone with a gun, none of my neighbours have guns.... none of their friends have guns... how many gun deaths do you think there were in my neighbourhood?
It really doesn't matter how you try and justify it the US has a problem with violence and a ready availability of guns. full stop.
"Just stop right there.... the vast majority of people that have mental health issues do NOT and are not violent."
Actually, it's well known that people who are mentally ill tend to follow the preoccupations of their society. For instance, in the Victorian era religious obsession was a big thing; in the Freudian era mentally ill people tended to become sex obsessed, thus providing circular justification.
So if a society has a significant number of mentally ill people shooting people and blowing things up, what does that tell us?
"So if a society has a significant number of mentally ill people shooting people and blowing things up, what does that tell us?"
And there isn't a significant number of mentally ill people shooting people.
Statistically, mental illness is not a predictor for severe violence.
The firearms are not the problem, it is the culture.
A careful analysis will show that number citizens with firearms, or type of firearms, has no relationship to the number of homicides using firearms.
Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that mass attacks are usually deadlier if they use vehicles than if they use firearms... and the worst domestic origin attack in the US (168 dead, 680+ injured) was done with fertilizer, fuel oil, and a van.
In two recent attacks in Toronto, the disturbed individual with a gun killed 2 people and injured 13, while the disturbed individual with a van killed 10 people and injured 16, some critically, in less time over a greater distance.
The Nice truck attack killed 86 people and injured 468.
Thus, oddly, you want someone to use a gun, as most people are not really that good at it, and because response systems are oriented to dealing with guns, with things like automatic shot detection and location.
You really do not want people to think 'f*ck the gun, I am going to get me an SUV and go on a rampage'.
Finally, gun control does not work in most cases. Countries and places with some of the most stringent gun laws (Mexico, Haiti, Chicago) have very high levels of gun violence, while countries that are armed to the teeth (Switzerland, where the guns do not show up in the statistics gun control lobbyists use because they are not owned by the people keeping those real assault rifles - not the faux uber dangerous 'assault weapons' - in their homes) has a very low rate of firearms homicides.
"The firearms are not the problem, it is the culture."
This 'either-or' is a fallacy. It's BOTH, plus a few other things as well. Many countries have:
- a lot of firearms about
- mental health issues and poor mental health structures
- problems with over-prescription of drugs
- overworked and overstressed workers
- large sections of the population in poverty
- terrible social safety nets
- tons of preservatives in diet
- a history of racial / ethnic violence
- a history / culture of glorifying violence
etc
The US is the only country, though, that not only has all of the above problems, but in many cases is the clear leader, sometimes by an order of magnitude. Claiming that there are other issues leading to mass shootings is all well and good, but why refuse to improve in one area simply because there are other areas for improvement?
Or, even worse, why claim that improvements shouldn't be made in one area because the reasons are in other areas *and then refuse to make improvements in the other areas as well*??
Except that Americans have a bit of a problem with bow-hunting too, which is also "shooting"
Double problem really - I believe that they are allowed to do a certain amount of "out of season" hunting as long as they use a bow an arrow, despite modern compound bows being almost as accurate/lethal as a rifle, at the tiny distances usually involved.
Obviously a gun is involved in every mass shooting - otherwise it wouldn't be called a shooting.
Yeah, because if cameras are involved, it's just a photo shoot; if lots medicinal shots are being given, it's a mass vaccination; if it's many shots being poured, it's a bar crawl; if rockets are being shot into the air, it's a pyrotechnics display and if it's simply a bunch of idiots shooting off their mouths, it's politics.
A bomb is involved in every bombing.
A knife is involved in every knifing.
A vehicle is involved in every vehicular attack.
Don't stop at controlling the weapons; heal the mental injuries that create such intense violent anger--because such anger will find it's outlet regardless of the available weapons.
The system is rigged to divide us. Heal the rift to end the violence.
People forget that the Post Office had a problem with this last century, and it got so bad it coined the term, "going Postal". However, they looked at the problem and adopted human resource techniques and work place mental health processes that stopped the problem. I think it is time ALL work places adopt the same standard operating procedure, because the problem has veritably been fixed at USPS.
There is no slaughter....more people die in Car accidents etc every day than school shootings etc...
I'm no gun nut, but you lot are even complaining about events in Canada where having a weapon is akin to a hot potato.Stop it, criminals will get weapons by any means when they want. Now assault weapons that's another story....
Many countries have many guns. It’s a US anomaly with regards to human behavior that is causing the shootings. If you haven’t ever been to America, the US is somewhat of a cesspool or hate and almost British like superiority trips. It’s a non-stop environment of toxicity. Their news networks run almost non-stop hate trips to hopefully scrape by with enough ratings and viewers.
I left America 20 years ago and each time I go back, I’m absolutely shocked at how everyone is superior to everyone else. I just met an American yesterday who in less than two minutes told me why his daughter was superior to her peers.
It’s also amazing how incredible the toxicity of hate is. It’s a non-stop degradation of humanity. Every news paper, news channel, social media network, etc... is absolutely non-stop negativity.
It’s not about the guns... I think the guns are just an excuse now. I think it’s about everyone from the president downward selling superiority, hate and distrust. I’m pretty sure if you took the guns away, it would be bombs.
Yes, you are correct a gun is involved in every mass shooting. In case you were unaware we do have background checks in place from the ATF/FBI, I think that's probably government enough. FACT: if one has to wait for the Police to show up on average 18 people are killed, a CCW carrier and the death rate drops to 2. You have not read or you don't understand the US Constitution so I won't touch on your ludicrous militia comment. Why is it that every time a shooting occurs you're so quick to abrogate my right to keep and bear arms? The USA has many guns, you are correct, the vast majority of the owners are law abiding citizens. There are ~89 guns per 100000 citizens in the USA, I submit if guns were such a problem as described by your knee jerk comments the "slaughter" numbers would be much higher. How about you crusade on mental health funding and refrain from being a nanny.
There are devices for making holes that can be safely handled by your average two-year old ..
I have several in my desk drawer.
A cursory study of (Hollywood?) pop culture will tell you that guns are devices made to solve all your
problems, and make you look cool at the same time ...
"make the manufacturer or the reseller liable for selling an unsafe product. "
I agree, but that is already the case, I believe.
Any gun that undergoes Rapid Unplanned Disassembly when fired should be grounds for massive compensation.
Any gun that fails to fire in an emergency when the trigger is pulled... that requires more work, as you would have to prove that the ammunition wasn't faulty, you hadn't left the safety on, etc.
That's also a reason why many service pistols do not have a safety - there is a chance that it will fail to function due to user error in an emergency situation, which is very unsafe.
"That's also a reason why many service pistols do not have a safety - there is a chance that it will fail to function due to user error in an emergency situation, which is very unsafe."
It's a design feature of revolvers that they don't need a safety if you carry them with the hammer on an empty chamber
"It's a design feature of revolvers that they don't need a safety if you carry them with the hammer on an empty chamber"
Actually, modern revolvers like the Ruger GP100 can be carried with rounds in all chambers, and the hammer down.
If you are ever in the market for a revolver, I'd look at that one - robust, reliable, and after the first thousand pulls or so, quite nicely smooth.... as well as being available in the most useful and flexible calibre (.38/.357).
You can't go after a gun manufacturer that way without looking daft. They have protection from the things their customers do with guns (shooting people), but not from issues with product safety (blowing up in your hand)
Go for their lobbying practices, or the way they advertise/promote their products.
For this Brit at least was "What if they have a round of lay offs?". Guns weren't even banned inside the office; just a notice compelling staff to declare anything concealed on arrival. And lay offs are a serious business. For me, redundancy is probably six months pay and time to renew. For my US colleagues it's the health insurance for them and their families as well as a living.
When I did casual work in a Napa Valley winery, there was an office handgun in a filing cabinet. I was told it was defence against rabid raccoons. I don't know if I was being bullshitted, I never saw it get used but there were bullet holes in the bottom of one of the dumpsters.
biggest worry on a long visit to head office in Texss...
For this Brit at least was "What if they have a round of lay offs?".
I go to a concealed carry state on business a lot. If you genuinely worry, your biggest worry at that, about someone going postal due to layoffs then I'd be more worried about your overly emotive and not very analytical mind, not my American co-workers.
You're more likely, almost 3 times as likely, to be killed by a driver. 31k vs 11k [1,2] You are in fact more likely to die falling down the stairs [3].
Remember folks - You can and should form an opinion from facts, but you can never form a fact from your opinions. Facts matter, emotion doesn't.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Statistics
3 - https://ellisinjurylaw.com/premises/how-many-people-have-died-from-falling-down-stairs/
None of them is a wilful act. Accidents will always happen - and still a lot is done to prevent them. Vehicles are made safer, even stairs.
Adding on top of accidents vindictive heavily armed people who can't control their rage means only than fully preventable deaths are not,
Well, the *fact* is I read headlines about mass shootings taking place in the US considerably more often than I do of mass shootings in other countries.
why do you think it is?
That you ignore the countries that don't fit with your world view? Unless you're illogically worried about being killed in a mass shooting as opposed to one in which you are the only victim? Quite why that would matter to you I cannot fathom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Well, the *fact* is I read headlines about mass shootings taking place in the US considerably more often than I do of mass shootings in other countries.
why do you think it is?
---
Because in some countries they are so common that they are not news, and no one wants them to be news because it would hurt their national image and cut tourism.
Look at firearms homicide rate by country statistics some time. In the broader context, the US isn't really that bad, though it seems bad to me as I live in an extremely safe city in a safe country,,, which is not really a valid baseline for understanding the range of world wide events.
There are plenty of grey areas in between the two, so you don't have to from a state of light miffage direct to full-blown shooting spree. Personally, I'm a big fan of the strongly-worded letter - far more civilised than getting the shooters out.
GOP: We can't have gun regulations, they just won't work!
Also GOP: Let's ban abortion, gay marriage, and, what the hell, Muslims.
If guns were as hard to get in the US as abortions, there would be a lot less guns.
https://www.bustle.com/p/what-if-guns-were-as-hard-to-get-as-abortions-2756315
I see where you're going but how about we flip it and make things like abortions, etc. easy to get? Well, maybe not get Muslims per se as that potentially smacks of slavery but if they want to have an abortion, gay wedding, etc. that's cool.
As a (former) gun owner in the UK, I never figured out why the US pro-firearms-legislation didn't take the pitch of managing licensing. Take the approach of "all right thinking Americans can have a licence and own a weapon, it's only the criminals and lunatics and foreigners that can't". Definition of "right thinking American" to obviously match your own prejudices and social values....
I can piss off my colleagues but I don't think I've ever done it to the extent that any of them would want to murder me. :-(
Take the approach of "all right thinking Americans can have a licence and own a weapon, it's only the criminals and lunatics and foreigners that can't".
In many ways this is the case, but...
The definition of 'criminal' is ... a bit arbitrary in some ways. If you buy a DVD and rip it to get a version you can play on your tablet while camping, you have committed a felony, and if caught and convicted, you will lose, in many states, your right to vote, to own a gun, to live in certain areas of town, and so on. Similarly if you get caught with any amount of recreational drugs, depending on who catches you and where.
Given that many criminals are armed, that leaves you a prime target for home invasion, hot burglary, mugging, etc. If you get a gun anyway and get caught... that's also bad to very bad. It seems to me that multiple felony convictions can set you up for a lifetime in prison, but I don't know the details.
I believe that various rights organizations (not gun organizations) are now looking at this as a possible form of discrimination, particularly when a lot of arrests are racially disproportionate, and some of those populations are at greater risk of violence and so might need a gun more.
It's a complicated issue, and simplistic solutions do not work - just look at Chicago.
"Home Invasion" is just the US term for "burglary of an occupied dwelling." If you look it up, you'll find that the percentage of burglaries that are of occupied dwellings... is much higher in the UK than in the US. Those of you who live in the UK have assuredly seen the news reports of such burglaries, and the abused, beaten, or worse, victims. Use of weapons to defend oneself in the UK case are banned....though that is slowly turning around.
"Why is it only the US who seem to have a crime of Home Invasion? "
That's odd. They happen in lots of countries.
When someone comes into your house armed, intentionally while you are there, takes you captive, and does various crimijnal things with or without hurting you or compelling you to assist them in criminal acts, that is a 'home invasion'.
If you are not there, it's just burglary, unless they burn the house down, when it becomes 'and arson'.
What WOULD be news would be a day WITHOUT a death by gun.
If the country hasn't figured how to reduce deaths, hardly worth wasting your sympathy over Americans.
VietNam has gun carrying cops and only one law enforcement gun was discharged last year. More deer died than people.
"more deer died than people." That certainly isn't true. A nation of 91 million people is likely to experience mortality of more than one million people per year. It is unlikely that there even exist one million deer in Vietnam.
"What WOULD be news would be a day WITHOUT a death by gun."
It would be interesting indeed.
Not quite as good as all the air going to one end of the room, but good.
With a population of over 325 million, one firearms death in a day is at the level of reporting error - lost in the noise. You would never know if it were real, or a mistake.
Domestic guns killed more people in homicides in the US during the last ten years than there were US casualties for the entire Vietnam war, and many still don't see the problem...
Looking at chart A and Stats B, a 10-year old would see the correlation. The typical NRA supporter will not. Conclusion: typical NRA supporter is less clever than a 10-year old child.
"Domestic guns killed more people in homicides in the US during the last ten years than there were US casualties for the entire Vietnam war, and many still don't see the problem..."
So? That's a superficially impressive but totally meaningless statistic.
I talked to a retired officer who commanded a battalion in Vietnam. He lost about twice as many men to traffic accidents in the year before deploying to Vietnam than he did in a year of combat there.
"Looking at chart A and Stats B, a 10-year old would see the correlation. The typical NRA supporter will not. Conclusion: typical NRA supporter is less clever than a 10-year old child."
More accurately the typical NRA supporter understands the reality behind the numbers better than a ten year old child.
Then again, some of us, myself included, understand this better than the typical NRA supporter.
A background in statistical techniques and logical analysis helps.
When you get right down to it, aside from trivially obvious cases - a country with zero guns inside its borders would have zero firearms incidents (but creating a signifcant area with no guns is a very difficult exercise in culture change and is probably impossible in any practical sense), careful analysis shows that neither the number of guns, nor the number of gun owners, nor the degree of restrictions on legal gun ownership nor the level of punishment for gun possession has any definitive effect on the level of gun violence.
Countries with restrictive laws can have high or low rates of gun violence. Countries with widespread gun ownership can have high or low rates of gun violence. Counting the numbers of guns is probably much less relevant than counting the number of people with access to guns, whether they are personally owned (which show up in the ownership statistics) or provided by the state (which do not show up in those statistics - examples are Switzerland and Israel - who provide full capability military weapons that are much more effective than the sorts of weapons generally found in the US).
After all, a person with 30 guns is not really more of a risk than a person with 3 guns who is not necessarily any more of a risk than someone with one gun.
Many of the countries in your graph have high rates of gun ownership, not that far off the US number - they just own fewer guns each.... but the violence statistics are not proportional to ownership. If the US has a 30% higher ownership rate, and a 600% higher violence rate, what does that really tell you... other than the major factor is not ownership, but something else.
I really get tired of people with child-like analytical skills failing to fully grasp the real message in the numbers.... it is a societal, cultural problem - not a simple matter of available firearms, but a willingness to see them as a legitimate solution to problems, stoked by militarism, a self-righteous self-image, mythologies about the western marshal or the tough cop, racially based fears and dislikes, criminal subcultures aided and encouraged by a primitive justice system, and so on.
"I really get tired of people with child-like analytical skills failing to fully grasp the real message in the numbers.... it is a societal, cultural problem - not a simple matter of available firearms, but a willingness to see them as a legitimate solution to problems, stoked by militarism, a self-righteous self-image, mythologies about the western marshal or the tough cop, racially based fears and dislikes, criminal subcultures aided and encouraged by a primitive justice system, and so on."
And you don't think that the ready availability of guns is somehow linked to the willingness to see them as a legitimate solution to problems etc??
"And you don't think that the ready availability of guns is somehow linked to the willingness to see them as a legitimate solution to problems etc??"
Of course they are related, but you seem to be hinting at the wrong direction for the causal relationship.
The attitude influences gun ownership for certain purposes (not all gun ownership - there are lots of good reasons for having guns that have nothing to do with crime or hurting people)... people are not discovering they have a pile of guns and then going looking for a way to use them.
The total number of US soldiers in the war zone in any one year never topped 550,000. In most years the number was far smaller. The number of US persons with exposure to violence-by-gun each year is more than 320 million. In terms of deaths-per-100K the war was much more dangerous. But that's a technical matter. Every large US city has an area, often large,, in which the deaths-per-100K is greater that it was in Vietnam. Ask yourself why. And, in my suburban county bordering a major US city murder is exceedingly rare.
I saw the headline for this on another tech news site yesterday and decided to look on the BBC website (my mainstream news website of choice) to read the full story. I found what I thought was the story, but some of the details seemed a bit off compared to what I'd already read. Turns out that this was another mass shooting that had taken place elsewhere (Maryland) the same day.
America. What a wonderful f***ing country. One of the few things these days which makes me proud to be British.
Guns don't kill people.
Idiots kill people.
Idiots with guns are just so much more efficient at it.
---
At least until they realize that a technical / industrial society is littered with thousands of 'found weapons' far more dangerous than a person with a gun.
Anyone with a degree in the physical or biological science, or engineering, or with experience in any one of many trades has way more dangerous weapons than a gun.
I recall a depressed pilot, recently, who only needed the security lock on the flight deckd door, and normal autopilot functions.
The second World Trade Center attack used planning and boxcutters they sell in every dollar store.
The Nice attack used a normal truck.
If someone could engineer a persistent mass electrical failure, casualties could be in the millions. It would have to be long lasting, though, to get the higher numbers.
There are clearly other options, many of which I am not qualified to discover - but there are millions of people out there with different skill sets, all of whom will have access to different options.
Bottom line - be glad they are distracting themselves with guns. The few who don't hurt a *lot* more.
"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-guns/australia-data-shows-gun-controls-a-huge-...."
But it's simply not true that there has been a huge change. Look at one of the graphs on that page and gun murders went from 59 to 47 a year. Not what I would call massive either in terms of what it used to be, or the current rate. For the last few years murder rates there have been slowly going up too.
There may have been 11 mass killings so far there in the last decade (51 deaths) and 7 (43 deaths) in the previous decade. So despite removing a lot of guns people are still killing each other at pretty much the same rates.
"and there we go another "we cant do anything" so fuck it I want to go pew pew gun nut.."
You don't seem to be using any version of English that I am familiar with. Do you want to try again? Perhaps add some punctuation this time?
Also, just seeing you getting that cross because I rubbished your post using figures from the paper the article referred to, shows that it's perhaps not me that's the nut.
"But it's simply not true that there has been a huge change. Look at one of the graphs on that page and gun murders went from 59 to 47 a year. "
Erm... I'm not sure if you read the same article, but the one that appeared on the link I clicked on says "The chances of being murdered by a gun in Australia plunged to 0.15 per 100,000 people in 2014 from 0.54 per 100,000 people in 1996"
You seem to be just counting the number of gun murders and ignoring that the population has increased in the last 20 years
@jmch
I looked at the numbers of mass killings. Not gun deaths. They took the guns away and people found other ways. It's not the guns that killed people. It was people, and they still act the same, if not worse.
Some of the mass killings that still happened were done not using guns.
"You seem to be just counting the number of gun murders and ignoring that the population has increased in the last 20 years"
That's the problem with casual numbers.
Interestingly enough, in this country the federal government tried to discourage gun ownership, invalidating all gun licences, and requiring paying for new materials, courses, tests, and licences, which were made as onerous as possible in terms of throwing everything they could think of into the courses and tests.
A lot of people decided that if they had to do it again, they'd do both tests - the long arm test (rifles, shotguns) and the restricted test (handguns, some rifles and shotguns).
Once they had a restricted licence after some cost and inconvenience, they decided to use those licences.
Handgun owndershp quadrupled over about a decade.
At the same time, firearms homicides continued to drop, though increasing gang violence with illegal weapons mitigated this.
One year recently, even with gang on gang violence (a lot of firearms deaths are due to this), more people were killed with knives than guns.
Gusn do not cause violence, and the people most likely to use them on other people are those who are already breaking the law (illegal guns, prohibited types of guns) and intend to use them for criminal purposes including gang wars.
Laws, registration (all handguns are registered and legal access is tightly controlled and vetted), and outright bans (many criminally held guns are totally illegal and always have been) do not and cannot stop these people.
The most you could do is increase the profit for illegal firearms traders by driving the price up - which the gangs see as a cost of doing business - an overhead item that gets included in the price of their products.
Only two injuries today so far but the day is young.
It is indeed. Guns are regulated to the point of being illegal here, and still people are getting shot.... could it be that criminals don't respect the law and just carried on having firearms. Whodathunkit?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/london-shooting-gun-armed-police-injury-street-met-a8548231.html
There have been more people killed by firearm in the last century in the USA than all the other wars combined in history worldwide. The 2nd amendment has no mention of ownership either. I would ban outright all weapons with the exception of very limited recreational and safety usage by leaseholder.
#statisticsneverdie
There have been more people killed by firearm in the last century in the USA than all the other wars combined in history worldwide.
Total rubbish; State your source.
America has about 30k gun deaths per year, so about 3 million people in a hundred year span. It's also about a third of the number of people Spain killed in the Inca conquest [1].
FFS. Facts!! Use facts to form an opinion, don't just come here spaffing your emotions around like a moody teenager.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll#Modern_wars_with_greater_than_25,000_deaths_by_death_toll
"There have been more people killed by firearm in the last century in the USA than all the other wars combined in history worldwide."
Just when I start getting optimistic about the world, innumeracy raises its ugly head.
At the claimed rate, the US would be an unpopulated wilderness, and no one would dare go there for fear of the bad statistics fairy.
According Glassdoor website:
"CEO has history of verbally abusing employees including personal attacks and swear words. Also stokes his ego by belittling employees in front of customers. Also attacks customers behind their backs, attacking their intelligence, physical appearance or their company in general.
Unethical behaviours any time money is involved: bill customers when they shouldn't, screw employees out of quarterly bonuses, and beating up vendors and underpaying them. People are treated like cogs in a machine for making money, not valued resources. Key resources are burning out and upper leadership doesn't care. Mantra is still "work harder, work more". Work- life balance is terrible.
Company lacks a shared vision, which results in divisions constantly battling with each other. Upper leadership believes this competition between teams is healthy, so unlikely to change.
Very little opportunity for advancement. Complete lack of training for new hires. Pay is not competitive. Benefits get worse every year and cost the employee more.
Overall, a very toxic place to work."
Lacking HRM and unrestricted gun ownership, a lethal environment if you ask me...
There's quality reporting. Is El Reg scraping twitter for news stories ?
"At this time, there is no indication as to what caused the murderous outburst and they have appealed for witnesses to get in contact."
Clearly, it's because he's a scumbag. Don't the police research their shootings on the Internet ?
"The Aberdeen shooting comes one day after gunfire rocked two other workplaces. A gunman who opened fire at a Middleton, Wisconsin, software company wounded three people and sent panicked office workers scrambling to safety on Wednesday before being fatally shot by police.
In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a gunman shot four people outside a judge's office and crowded courtroom on Wednesday before being killed by police."
A link to my favorite rant about how most Americans argue badly about guns:
https://www.popehat.com/2015/12/07/talking-productively-about-guns/
Spoiler: Ken White (the author of the linked post) dumps on both sides. It is really a rant on how Americans are terrible about discussing and/or regulating rights.
The post was good enough that a cleaned-up-language version was published by the LA Times newspaper.
It's called the Internet, and it goes all over the world, not just to one little island.
Many of us are neither from the US or the UK.
And I am pretty sure most of the anti-firearms commentary is coming from other places than the US, so techinically it is not American propaganda - it is 'doesn't live there and may not understand all of the issues' propaganda, in which the Internet specializes.
The bottom line is that banning guns would not do anything to eliminate the injury or killing of innocent people because guns are readily available via illicit means. Criminals, gang members and devious people don't care what the laws are, they do as they please. For those who believe other wise, please explain what law is going to stop anyone from killing innocent people enmass?
This mornings news reports a worker stabbing three newborns and several adults. What law would prevent this? There are routine reports of people driving their car into crowds and killing and injuring many. What law would prevent this? It's extremely naïve to believe that you can outlaw evil. The reality is that you can't legislate evil out of society because only law abiding citizens follow laws. Until people deal with the root cause which is bad people nothing positive will happen. More unenforceable laws are ineffective feel good actions that do not serve the populace.
> banning guns would not do anything to eliminate the injury or killing of innocent people
Not do *anything* huh? Kinda reminds of that that classic Onion headline that pops up every time there's a mass shooting..
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
C.
Not do *anything* huh? Kinda reminds of that that classic Onion headline that pops up every time there's a mass shooting..
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
And yet many other nations have virtually no gun control or certainly far far less than the UK, and also have no spree shooters. So, what was your point again? Because the rest of the world shows there's no link between gun control and shootings.
It's all about a single question: How many deaths will society accept?
*
If you doubt this, then just ask yourself:
Q: Why is it that 37,000 deaths each year in the USA NEVER make the headlines?
A: Because these 37,000 deaths are caused by (socially acceptable) automobile accidents.
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