Palum
what Suineg set it to
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The 'Yet Another Mass Murder' Thread
- Thread starter Palum
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Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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We'd literally have to have a massive country wide smelting project with every non military/police gun, and then tighten every single port/entrance into the US with the most invasive search methods on every incoming import, to actually pull guns out of the hands of criminals. Which, to say the least, simply isn't going to happen. And even if the above two factors occurred, it would still be an amazingly long and slow process counteracted by criminal elements coming up with crude (or in some cases, state of the art) gun manufacturing methods.
I'm a big gun control guy (I think one handgun per household is enough, and any rifle that isn't a single shot/reload process is illegal. Any other type of firearm is illegal) but even I know that removing firearms from the hands of normal people just means the criminal element, at this point, will simply be better armed and more dangerous than ever. Unless police/the military simply adopt a "If you have a gun, we are allowed to kill you and everyone with you" type stance, which is just as absurd as the concept of just hoping we can ban guns in the first place. The US has been a heavily armed nation for quite awhile at this point, and there are probably more guns in the US than there are US citizens. Certainly more ammunition. Banning guns is basically not an option for the US anymore.
As to school shootings/mass murders/whatever... in most cases, the person is crazy by the standards set forth by civilization. It is crazy to try and murder people when murder is considered something that is anti-civilization. You can't plan for crazy, because crazy will simply do something else. No access to guns? Ok, I'll start stabbing children in an orphanage since my plans of driving around Sorority Lane with my uzi didn't work out. Crazy people do crazy shit, because they are crazy.
I'm a big gun control guy (I think one handgun per household is enough, and any rifle that isn't a single shot/reload process is illegal. Any other type of firearm is illegal) but even I know that removing firearms from the hands of normal people just means the criminal element, at this point, will simply be better armed and more dangerous than ever. Unless police/the military simply adopt a "If you have a gun, we are allowed to kill you and everyone with you" type stance, which is just as absurd as the concept of just hoping we can ban guns in the first place. The US has been a heavily armed nation for quite awhile at this point, and there are probably more guns in the US than there are US citizens. Certainly more ammunition. Banning guns is basically not an option for the US anymore.
As to school shootings/mass murders/whatever... in most cases, the person is crazy by the standards set forth by civilization. It is crazy to try and murder people when murder is considered something that is anti-civilization. You can't plan for crazy, because crazy will simply do something else. No access to guns? Ok, I'll start stabbing children in an orphanage since my plans of driving around Sorority Lane with my uzi didn't work out. Crazy people do crazy shit, because they are crazy.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Moving at the speed of light is what gives it mass. Momentum= energy, energy= mass
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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What does segregation have to do with these mass killing sprees? There have been plenty of middle class white kids doing these types of killings.
BrutulTM
Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun.
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Adam Carolla has a new theory he has been talking about that is that young males these days just have too much time on their hands. 16-24 year old males are full of angst and anger and violence and sperm that they have no outlet for but that can be kept under control if you have someone kicking their ass out of bed every morning and making them milk cows or bale hay or dig ditches or run 7 miles carrying a rifle but that same guy who is just sitting around the house playing video games and beating off to internet porn starts to simmer with rage and starts having fantasies about getting revenge on the world for their worthlessness.
Of course it's just a totally unscientific and made up theory, but I think it makes enough sense that we should just institute mandatory military service/forced farm labor for any dude in that age range who cannot prove that he is doing something productive with his life. Since the vast majority of crimes of all sort are committed by dudes in that age range it could reach beyond just reduction of shooting sprees plus we would have all of those ditches to use.
Of course it's just a totally unscientific and made up theory, but I think it makes enough sense that we should just institute mandatory military service/forced farm labor for any dude in that age range who cannot prove that he is doing something productive with his life. Since the vast majority of crimes of all sort are committed by dudes in that age range it could reach beyond just reduction of shooting sprees plus we would have all of those ditches to use.
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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That just puts off the problem until a later age. The mandatory work age will end and these people will have no jobs (because the younger ones are now in them) and little skill. Or, we use this now super massive military to destroy tons of third world countries and go deeper in debt.
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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How do you gun grabbers reconcile the indisputable fact that murders and violent crime have drastically fallen since the 1970s all the while the amount of firearms prevelent in the country has probably exponentially increased in the same time period(also please take into consideration the huge increase in concealed carry)? That isnt conjecture, that isnt theory, that isnt an anecdote, thats a fact you can not refute. More guns, less murders and crime.
Ambiturner
Ssraeszha Raider
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Vaclav
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Funny that during that time the way violent crimes have been reported have changed and tons of cities have been embroiled in scandals over intentionally misrepresenting their crime statistics.
Not to mention many of the statistics are MURDERS/DEATHS not shootings, better medical care does mean more people survive gunshots doesn't really indicate the number of shootings well though. Mortality rate on someone EMS got to in time with a gunshot was 20-25% in the early 70s, it's now in the 70% range. (And funny thing one of the few gun control measures - banning hollow points from general sale was in the 80s)
Most people don't want to get shot period, so the stat of murders is irrelevant versus shootings in general which ARE UP from what I can see. Just lethal shootings are down.
Fadaar
That guy
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The main problem isn't the statistics, it's the availability of information and the speed at which it travels. If some fuck pulls a gun out on a university campus or a high school, the media is going to know about it within (pulling a number out of my ass here) 20 minutes or less. Combine that with the insane amount of sensationalizing and overblown coverage for things like that, and the problem appears to be infinitely worse than it really is. Wikipedia has a list of shootings that took place on school grounds in the US, and if you look at 2013 it looks like an incredibly high number. However, if you read through the description for each one (I did it yesterday so my number might be off) only about 10-12 appeared to be premeditated, with the intent for mass harm. Even then many of them ended with zero fatalities. The majority were heat of the moment arguments/fights, a drive by or retaliation attack (ie gang related stuff), or a gunshot inflicted suicide that just happened to take place on school grounds.
List of school shootings in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DickTrickle
Definitely NOT Furor Planedefiler
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Correlation is not causation. The facts are that murders have lessened and gun ownership has increased. It has surely not been proven that gun ownership reduces crime is a fact.
The Freakonomics guys, for instance, think abortion played a large role in that.
I'm not saying gun ownership isn't a primary cause -- it might be -- but from those two facts alone you cannot make the implication you're making with the certainty you're making it.
Olscratch
tour de salt
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Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No. | Mother Jones
How come bad guys don't use grenade launchers and rocket launchers since they don't follow our laws prohibiting these uber weapons?
How come bad guys don't use grenade launchers and rocket launchers since they don't follow our laws prohibiting these uber weapons?
McQueen
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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These mass shootings all seem to happen in gun-free zones, in which legally armed citizens wouldn't be carrying. If that weren't the case, the cowards that perpetrate these shootings may have chosen not to go on a rampage. Or they may have chosen a different means of attack. Endless speculation is possible on either side, with no real way to prove either side of the argument (except that gun-free zones are often targeted). Crazy's gonna crazy, guns or not.
fanaskin
Well known agitator
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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you realize hollowpoint ammunition isnt banned, right? I mean I can only imagine how the market for it has exploded in the past two decades with the massive increase in concealed carry.
Also, yeah police departments may cook their books a few percent here or there, but we are not talking about a 10 or 15% decrease. You simply can not argue that violent crime and murder rate has drastically decreased over the past 4 decades.
FBI Table 1
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It has relativistic mass but photons do not have mass.
The problem with light is that it has some very special properties (it moves faster than any real matter could). Therefor the relation p = mv is not well-definied for light (since that only applies to particles with mass)
opiate82
Bronze Squire
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Here is the problem with just banning guns. There are 80 million (admitted) gun owners out there in the U.S. currently. Let's say you get your wish and the damn things are banned and let's be generous 90% initially comply with your ban. That leaves 8 million (admitted) gun owners still out there. Now let's continue to be generous say that that with threat of legal action and force 90% of the remaining (admitted) gun owners reluctantly give up their guns but the rest are flat out not willing to secede their right to bare arms. That would leave 800,000 (admitted) gun owners out there willing to fight for their 2nd amendment rights.
For reference, there are approximately 700,000 law enforcement officers currently in the U.S. (many of whom are gun advocates) and the maximum number of insurgents the U.S. military faced in Iraq at a given time was 24,000.
Point is the proverbial cat is out of the bag when it comes to guns in this country. It is a futile effort to just say "ban the damn things" so instead we should be proactive and look at the root causes of these types of violent outbursts (guns don't automatically make someone violent) and maybe look to countries where they have extremely low violence rates despite high gun ownership (e.g. Norway at 98% gun ownership) as examples to help fix what is broken here in the U.S.
For reference, there are approximately 700,000 law enforcement officers currently in the U.S. (many of whom are gun advocates) and the maximum number of insurgents the U.S. military faced in Iraq at a given time was 24,000.
Point is the proverbial cat is out of the bag when it comes to guns in this country. It is a futile effort to just say "ban the damn things" so instead we should be proactive and look at the root causes of these types of violent outbursts (guns don't automatically make someone violent) and maybe look to countries where they have extremely low violence rates despite high gun ownership (e.g. Norway at 98% gun ownership) as examples to help fix what is broken here in the U.S.