192 replies to this topic

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

This time in Oregon. 9 dead. 10, including the perpetrator. Another hue and cry, more politicians offering their "thoughts and prayers" but little else, more people trying to defelct the conversation to mental health.
 
(Not that mental health is not a worthy cause in and of itself. If nothing else, at least the gun apologists' attempts to change the conversation will have some positive effect.)
 
The president seems angrier this time. He's got nothing to lose now, politically, no more elections to win. So maybe something will actually happen this time. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Support for stricter gun control laws is tepid at best. It flares up after a tragedy like this, but the strongest supporters are in places where they already have some of the strictest gun control laws, like my own state of Massachusetts. Here you must undergo a comprehensive background check when you get your gun license, so ironically there is no waiting period. If you have a valid Mass. firearms permit, you can walk out of the store with as many guns as you want (up to five).

Now, as many of you know, I am not in favor of private citizens owning handguns. Rifles and shotguns I have no problem with. But I understand that the political reality is that guns are legal in the United States and are likely to remain so. That being the case, I believe we must have strong, consistent, and well-enforced gun control laws. And there should be a national registry of all firearms containing records of when they are bought, sold, or otherwise change hands. Conservatives HATE that idea.

But honestly I don't think we are going to get any of that. Once again, the ugly reality of politics will prevent it. And in the end, we get exactly the country we want, in which the occasional mass shooting is just part of the background noise.

[Manoka]

While mass shootings are tragic, I don't believe gun control laws will prevent mass attacks from occurring. If you take away guns, people will use other weapons, be it explosives, knives, or whatever. Background checks are already mandatory for the nation, and exclude things like felons, those with mental disorders, and the like.

 

Furthermore, I think it's rather hypocritical to only focus on gun deaths, instead of say, alcohol related deaths, or even marijuana, something you want to legalize. According to the CDC (Page 19) in 2011, 40,239 people die from drug related deaths, and 26,256 die from alcohol, for a total of 66,495 deaths. About 6.5% of fatal car accidents were from marijuana alone (36.9% of 18%), which is about 2000 people dead annually. A decade later, and it's closer to 12%.  In 2004, 46.7% (Page 7) of all violent offenders met the criteria for being drug dependent. 27.7% were under the influence during the violent offense. Only about 5% of people in the U.S. are Chronic users of illegal drugs. It speaks volumes about the impact it can have on people's brains. And this is for something that can only be used for recreation, not self defense, hunting, or as a symbol of freedom ingrained in the constitution. 

 

 

There have been approximately 78 mass shootings from 1983-2012. (Page 11). In these, 547 died, and 1023 were casualties, total. That comes down to about 18 deaths per year, or 34 casualties. Comparatively, more people are struck and killed by lightning, about 40-50 are killed and 500 are struck, in the U.S. You're more likely to win the lottery. 

 

The Oklahoma city bombing killed and injured nearly 680 people, which is about 2/3rds of all the shootings in the last 30 years, in a single attack; technically, with an average of 34 casualties per year, this is exactly 20 years worth. The 9/11 attacks killed and injured 6000 people, which is about 6 times more than that of all the mass shootings combined. Those guys used box cutters. You could easily see how a motivated attackers could kill 20 times as many as a mass shooting without even having to get something traditionally seen as a weapon. As for convenience, guns require extensive background checks. You can buy solid ammonium nitrate, which is an explosive in and of itself. Acetone peroxide can be made just by mixing two chemicals together, no bunson burners or anything. Hydrogen peroxide is like ammonium nitrate in this respect. It's no more complicated than putting bullets into a gun, or prepping your location beforehand.

[Lord Draculea]

To me, the gun debate seemed from another world until recently (we have no such unfortunate tradition). In my opinion, a better question is: why has the phenomenon of random mass shooting (by various kind of lunatics) accelerated during the past years? And I think a good answer should look at some of the changes taking place deep in the social fiber of our "global" civilisation. The world is becoming an uglier place, and not just in the Middle East...

[slimshadyinc]

I tend to the think gun control isn't really as big a deal as our other issues in America. Like income inequality for example. Who cares about guns when people are struggling to eat and stay alive?

[Thrash]

I believe the person who headed up banning guns in the UK got killed with someone by a knife, sweet irony.

[Justavictim82]

The world is becoming an uglier place, and not just in the Middle East...

 

I disagree here. The world has always been an awful place. The only difference between now and 1015 is that we are able to kill people at a faster rate. A lunatic with a sword or crossbow could have just as easily done the same thing as the guy in Oregon just slower and perhaps with not as many victims. I am good with not living a life of indentured servitude/serfdom and working myself to death of which I would pray comes before I hit 40.

[Haflinger]

He doesn't mean compared to the middle ages, he means compared to like 1960. Mass shootings are a very recent trend.

[Manoka]

He doesn't mean compared to the middle ages, he means compared to like 1960. Mass shootings are a very recent trend.

Mass attacks really aren't that recent, there's just not a lot of information pre 1960. 

 

You can look at the Boston Massacre and other massacres in the U.S., a handful of them in the UK, and so on. Massacres have been happening for centuries, it's happened to the Jews God knows how many times. It's not really anything new. 

[Manoka]

According to Mother Jones, there have been 71 massacres since 1982 to today, or 2015. In this, we have about 33 years worth of information, which equates roughly to about 2.15 attacks per year. 

 

As of 2015, we'd had two. So, that's about the statistical average. In fact, since our population is larger, it should statistically be happening more often; we had about 226 million people in 1980, and have about 313 million today. The difference is news coverage, and the fact that it's fresh in people's minds. In reality it's about the same as it was. 

 

http://www.motherjon...jones-full-data

 

 

 

Syria is getting worse, but Iraq and Afghanistan are getting better, as is Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia etc. 

 

You take the good with the bad, and everyone likes to ignore the good.

[Lord Draculea]

I believe the person who headed up banning guns in the UK got killed with someone by a knife, sweet irony.

 

Yeah, except that putting in a lunatic's hand an extremely deadly weapon he can use without a blink makes him a much bigger threat.

 

 

I disagree here. The world has always been an awful place. The only difference between now and 1015 is that we are able to kill people at a faster rate. A lunatic with a sword or crossbow could have just as easily done the same thing as the guy in Oregon just slower and perhaps with not as many victims. I am good with not living a life of indentured servitude/serfdom and working myself to death of which I would pray comes before I hit 40.

 

Then you would have loved to live the stone age, when hitting 35 was a rarity. No Obamacare, no taxes to pay... and so on. So many advantages! 

 

 

Mass attacks really aren't that recent, there's just not a lot of information pre 1960. 

 

You can look at the Boston Massacre in the U.S., a handful of them in the UK, and so on. Massacres have been happening for centuries, it's happened to the Jews God knows how many times. It's not really anything new. 

 

We're not talking here about just any method by which people can get killed. The discussion is about lunatics acting on their own and committing mass murder out of the blue.

[Manoka]

I believe the person who headed up banning guns in the UK got killed with someone by a knife, sweet irony.

 

Yeah, except that putting in a lunatic's hand an extremely deadly weapon he can use without a blink makes him a much bigger threat.

 

 

/>

>I disagree here. The world has always been an awful place. The only difference between now and 1015 is that we are able to kill people at a faster rate. A lunatic with a sword or crossbow could have just as easily done the same thing as the guy in Oregon just slower and perhaps with not as many victims. I am good with not living a life of indentured servitude/serfdom and working myself to death of which I would pray comes before I hit 40.

 

Then you would have loved to live the stone age, when hitting 35 was a rarity. No Obamacare, no taxes to pay... and so on. So many advantages! 

 

 

Mass attacks really aren't that recent, there's just not a lot of information pre 1960. 

 

You can look at the Boston Massacre in the U.S., a handful of them in the UK, and so on. Massacres have been happening for centuries, it's happened to the Jews God knows how many times. It's not really anything new. 

 

We're not talking here about just any method by which people can get killed. The discussion is about lunatics committing mass murder out of the blue.

 

These are massacres, and they have happened with some frequency for thousands of years. There's plenty of records of them occurring. 

 

Guns really aren't as dangerous as a lot of people, think. They poke tiny holes in people, and you don't go flying backwards, instantly die, or even have a 100% chance of being hit. The average police officer only lands about 1 in 6, to 1 in 10 rounds on target or a 10-15% chance, (Page 4), and the average bullet wound only has about a 5-15% chance of killing you [1] (I can go even deeper in to the numbers, if you want me to). That equates to something like .25-2.25% chance of dying every time somebody pulls the trigger of the gun, assuming they're as well trained as a police officer, which most criminals probably are not, and are likely to miss more often. 

 

Criminals don't always hit with their guns, and not all hits are kills, such as those in the arms, legs, etc. If just killing somebody with a gun was so easy, there'd be no reason for training in the military, there'd be nothing separating snipers form the common man, and so on. 

[Lord Draculea]

Manoka, it doesn't take a sniper to kill an unarmed and unsuspecting victim sitting at 2 meters away. Any madman can do it with no special training. What you're describing are action scenes, where people shoot at each other while trying to keep their heads down. Can't you see the difference?

[Manoka]

Manoka, it doesn't take a sniper to kill an unarmed and unsuspecting victim sitting at 2 meters away. Any madman can do it with no special training. What you're describing are action scenes, where people shoot at each other while trying to keep their heads down. Can't you see the difference?

That's true, but it doesn't take a gun, either. You can use a spear, a throwing knife a really long axe etc. 

 

And if you lunge first, you can use an axe, a knife, a hatchet and so on. I'm not going to argue that it takes no skill to use a gun at point blank range, but I'm also not going to argue that it takes skill to use a knife against an unsuspecting target at point blank range. Effectively, guns aren't any more deadly than these weapons. 

 

Guns are loud, draw a lot of attention. Once people start moving and are aware of your location your chance of hitting them starts to go down drastically, once people start to fight back, police arrive etc. But the same is true with almost anyone weapons. Guns do not facilitate this. 

 

Ted Bundy killed most of his victims with an ice pick and a tire iron. They were unsuspecting, undefended people. If the other person doesn't see the attack coming, you could in theory bludgeon in their skulls, stab them, blow them up (say rig their car to blow), without any real difficulty. You don't even have to be there in person with say, a poison. Criminals in general don't have the skills to rake out the full potential of most weapons they use. They effectively target unsuspecting defenseless people, be them in schools, churches, wherever. That is what creates the high body counts, not the weapon itself.

[Lord Draculea]

I'll have to strongly object to your (nice) attempt to put firearms and knives/axes in the same category of threat. 

 

A knife/axe takes at least physical strength combined with eye-hand coordination to use (abilities that most lunatics lack, as we're not talking here about professional killers), plus they're not effective unless the attacker gets very close to the victim. (Not to mention that it would not be very practical to walk in the streets or into a public building with an axe in your hands.) As for throwing them to the victim, that actually requires a lot of training, no less than that of a sniper. A shooter in a room with 10 unarmed men is likely to kill them all (assuming he has enough ammunition), while a bearer of a knife will probably be immobilized after having killed or injured two or three victims.

 

What are we talking about, really? I can't even assume that you are taking your own arguments too seriously.

[Manoka]

Most people can't hit the targets very well, even trained police officers, at ranges of 3-25 feet. Most criminals probably would do worse, so they have to get extremely close to the target for them to become useful, just like a knife or an axe. It doesn't take a lot of hand-eye coordination to use a knife or an axe, because it's much more intuitive to pick something up and feel the weigh or heft of it in your hands. Any kid could know how to swing a baseball bat, pretty much anyone can understand how to chop wood, but a gun is far more complicated. Your ability to take down a person with a knife or a gun is about the same, since after you stab 1 victim, everyone else in the room becomes aware of the attacker's existence and could all bum rush them in order to knock them to the ground, disarm them etc. The thing is, few if any people will actually run towards the crazy man with an axe, or a gun, or what have you, which means they're almost never stopped, because of that. In theory if everyone ganged up on them they could all overpower him, but people don't suddenly go in to a coordinated series of attacks immediately whenever a crisis occurs. There's confusion, shock, fear, and general irrationality that makes people's reactions varied. Since few people are aware and willing, even the willing think they don't have the numbers and stay back.

 

Again, based on statistics, they don't have a chance to kill everyone in the room. Based on intuition, guns take considerable skill to use at a range, meaning they aren't much more deadly than throwing a knife at those ranges. A single gunshot also doesn't mean death, you only have about a 5% chance of dying if you get medical attention. A single explosive attack, by a car bomb, killed more than every mass shooting in the last 20 years combined. So, if it's the gun, why is it that there are other forms of attacks that end up being far deadlier? Why is that we focus on how many undefended, unaware targets they can attack compared to say, knives or axes, which could kill in theory just as many? From a psychological standpoint, guns may be scarier so people may be inclined to act less, but few people would try to tackle an axe-wielding maniac to the ground, either. I don't think it would change much. There have been mass knife attacks with just as many casualties so, if it's just the gun, it doesn't make a lot of sense as to how all these other people didn't need guns.

 

 

Obviously this is all based on speculation, how "deadly" it is in theory, but here's a video for example of a knife vs. a gun. Basically you could run the distance needed essentially to stab someone in about the same time you could draw and aim a gun, even out to ranges of about 24 feet, so range is kind of not that important sub 30 feet.

 

[Haflinger]

According to Mother Jones, there have been 71 massacres since 1982 to today, or 2015. In this, we have about 33 years worth of information, which equates roughly to about 2.15 attacks per year. 
 
As of 2015, we'd had two.

Nope, not true.

In 2015, The Washington Post reported 204 mass shootings occurring in the U.S. in that year alone, according to ShootingTracker.com. In August 2015, the Washington Post reported that the United States was averaging one mass shooting per day.

Source: https://en.wikipedia...oting#Frequency

[Manoka]

According to Mother Jones, there have been 71 massacres since 1982 to today, or 2015. In this, we have about 33 years worth of information, which equates roughly to about 2.15 attacks per year. 
 
As of 2015, we'd had two.

Nope, not true.

>>>In 2015, The Washington Post reported 204 mass shootings occurring in the U.S. in that year alone, according to ShootingTracker.com. In August 2015, the Washington Post reported that the United States was averaging one mass shooting per day.

Source: https://en.wikipedia...oting#Frequency
 

 

Pretending that murder will go away if we ban guns is absolutely ludicrous. People will still try to kill other people, it's not the guns that facilitate it. And already drugs kill more than all murders combined, yet, I don't see you supporting banning alcohol or other things? In fact, I imagine you want to legalize marijuana, yes? Drugged car accidents alone kill more, but it's okay, because it's a hobby you support, even though it's completely for recreation. 

 

Mass shootings technically qualify as events where 4 or more people died, the instances in question don't even always involve one death. There's no reason to consider those mass shootings if it was just, 1 person being shot, then it's normal murder.

[the rebel]

You see people overdosing on drugs is the same as a person killing some one with a gun... How can you not comprehend the solid logic shown.......

People dying every year from old age more so than guns, I don't hear you calling for the ban on the old age, Logan run style... So why issue strict gun laws as old age is the bigger issue.

The irrelevant counter arguments made by the forum clown are ridiculous.

[Manoka]

You see people overdosing on drugs is the same as a person killing some one with a gun... How can you not comprehend the solid logic shown.......

People dying every year from old age more so than guns, I don't hear you calling for the ban on the old age, Logan run style... So why issue strict gun laws as old age is the bigger issue.

The irrelevant counter arguments made by the forum clown are ridiculous.

You making a strawman argument just makes you a fucking retard. 

 

People want to ban drugs, people want to ban guns. Drugs kill more than guns, in car accidents, in overdoses, from the diseases they cause. But hey, there must be a difference, because you know, guns can actually be used to defend yourself, they can be used to get food from hunting, where as drugs are purely for recreation. 

 

 

You can't fucking ban old age, you can ban drugs you fucking dolt. 

 

There in lies the difference. If you're willing to accept something solely for recreation you're guilty of the thing you're accusing me of. Personally I think that legalizing guns does more good than harm, that for the minute number of bad people out there, there's a lot more good people. But you'd support drugs solely for the expressed intent of recreation, despite the people it would kill, despite the complete lack of benefit to saving lives, and that's so different from me wanting guns "because they're cool". You're nothing but a hypocrite. And if you even think for one second that dying from a car crash is any better than dying form a gun, you're a complete idiot and possess no rationalization skills.

[slimshadyinc]

Popcorn anyone?