Dear America,

jonescg

100 MW
Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
4,212
Location
Perth, Western Australia
Please stop shooting each other.

Sincerely,

Chris.

:(
 
I couldn't agree more. Seems a terrifying and deeply tragic misuse of guns, one that I suspect will result in a great deal more concern over gun laws, when the real problem is that a culture of violence has developed, where the value of human life has decreased below the level that many civilised countries would see as reasonable.
 
Handguns and assault rifles are designed to kill humans. They serve no other purpose. You don't go hunting with handguns or AK-47s.

Killing humans is both illegal and wrong.

These kinds of weapons have no place in the hands of anyone other than a soldier, who is paid and trained by his country to protect his nations sovereignty. Seriously America, get over it. Your armed forces are great. Let them do the protecting and killing, as that's what they are trained to do.

Jeremy, I agree completely. Guns don't kill people, people blah blah blah. But when you consider the above, we can surely make it easier to prevent such tragedies.
 
I'm no great supporter of gun laws, despite living in a country where gun ownership is so restricted by law that only very few people legally own guns, but recognise we need them.

There are several examples of other countries where gun laws are fairly relaxed and where gun ownership levels are high, yet who have a tiny fraction of the gun-related crime that the US has.

The problem in the US is cultural, some ordinary people just aren't sufficiently socially integrated or responsible to own guns, or any other weapons come to that.

Time will tell as to whether this was a planned mass murder or a moment of insanity. If it was planned, then changing gun laws probably wouldn't make a jot of difference, as criminals can get hold of illegal weapons even in the most tightly controlled countries. If it was unplanned, some sort of outburst of anger, where the mass murderer had guns literally at his fingertips to use, then tighter gun laws may very well have prevented this tragedy from occurring.

I'm lucky, I'm the sort of fairly even tempered individual who hasn't ever got really angry. My brother, though, was very different when we were young. He would get violent within seconds on occassion, and would, I'm sure, use any weapon to hand in a violent outburst. This is why tighter gun laws are a good thing, in my view. If you can reduce the ready availability of guns, so that a moment of anger or madness doesn't result in murder, then that has to be good for society as a whole, and a price worth paying for the gun fanatics. If gun fanatics are sane and responsible, then let them prove that before they are allowed to own guns for sport or hunting.
 
It's really just a crazy americans problem. Only the rich are allowed to be crazy nowdays. Poor or middle class folks get told to go away. If you have health insurance, you don't get treatment till you get well, you get treatment till some arbitrary dollar number is gone. Then it's out you go.

Not just that simple of course, but with no place to send disturbed people left unless you have lots of cash, it can't be helping any.

Other things are different, nearly every game is kill humans. Sure, we played kill games when I was young, but the idea was always kill evil persons, within the framework of a war sanctioned by the state. Vid games now are all shoot em all, sort em out later shit.
 
I don't know the facts, other than the media reports, but the BBC news here is reporting that the mass murderer came from a fairly wealthy family. His mother is reputed to have been a teacher at some time, and seems to have been a reasonable parent. The only odd thing in the news reports here (apart from the tragedy itself) is mention of the mother having purchased several guns and the ammunition. One has to ask the obvious question, why did a supposedly responsible parent do something as completely crazy as buy several guns?
 
Jeremy's post seems to imply that the US is civilized. Civility here is thinly scattered like raisins in a bread pudding and is lost in the scramble for the dollar.
 
Thanks for your concerns,
America is fine (the people anyway, the government is another issue)....having Lunatics with access to firearms is is getting passe' these days.

The kid who did this was on the lowest rung of middle class,(the working poverty class) His mother was a "teachers aid" (a job that pays less than a "check out" clerk in most areas of the country)

Dog man hit on the bigger issue. No one can afford to seek help, mental or physical.

I am sorry he had access to some one elses leagle fire arms....he shouldn't have & It is reprted that the guns used were registerd to his mother (the 1st victom)

As much as I apreciate the concern, I doubt we will see any reasonable gun laws come from it. America is different. There is a LARGE gun culture here that will not care what laws are passed....the guns will allways be & we will just make more criminals out of normal law abiding folks. (incert criminalzation of drug abuse argument here)

Call me crazy, but i do not blame the guns for any part of yesterdays tragity. He could have used a bomb or poison if his sick mind had taken that route.

I don't know if this made the news anywhere else on the planet & frankly I hadn't heard about it untill yesterday myself in all the ruckus....but lunies are everywhere & they will attack whatever their twisted lodgic points them too:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html

Deepest condolance to the victoms & their families.
pure tradgity........nothing else to say.
 
jonescg said:
Handguns and assault rifles are designed to kill humans. They serve no other purpose. You don't go hunting with handguns or AK-47s.

Killing humans is both illegal and wrong.

These kinds of weapons have no place in the hands of anyone other than a soldier, who is paid and trained by his country to protect his nations sovereignty. Seriously America, get over it. Your armed forces are great. Let them do the protecting and killing, as that's what they are trained to do.

Jeremy, I agree completely. Guns don't kill people, people blah blah blah. But when you consider the above, we can surely make it easier to prevent such tragedies.

Chris you may need to stand corrected. I shot this video when I went back home a couple of years back.

It's an AK. A favourite if your looking for reliability, mud and rain in an automatic in fiordland amongst the helicopter deer cullers.



[youtube]cRQucHAJHDA[/youtube]
 
Rodney64 said:
jonescg said:
You don't go hunting with handguns or AK-47s.

Chris you may need to stand corrected. I shot this video when I went back home a couple of years back.

It's an AK. A favourite if your looking for reliability, mud and rain in an automatic in fiordland amongst the helicopter deer cullers.

I'll own up to going coyote hunting from the air with an AR15, once (it was out in the wilds in Idaho, mind)......................................
 
As insane and outrageous as the recent shooting is, more kids die as the result of careless driving every week in the USA (more precisely, about 50 kids under 15 are killed by USA motorists each week). This level of carnage has been relatively steady for the last 60 years (going back farther there's fewer deaths, but still far too many).

There's no sign it will get much better any time soon, this is especially evident in the way people's driving has been getting more aggressive each passing year (subjective, unproven observation/opinion, I know).

That's every week for more than half a century. What an outrage.
 
Thud said:
I don't know if this made the news anywhere else on the planet & frankly I hadn't heard about it untill yesterday myself in all the ruckus....but lunies are everywhere & they will attack whatever their twisted lodgic points them too:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html
.

Yes, but did it strike you that a killer with a knife wounded 22 kids. A killer with a gun killed every one he shot. Lethality matters.

There is reason for hope. First of all, the US government who we are taught to fear and arm ourselves against on bumper stickers is in fact us. Second, any amendment, including the 2nd, can be repealed; the US Constitution is a living document. The 18th amendment was added with the best of intentions. The 21st amendment repealed it. We are a democratic society. Don't despair, act.
 
We've discussed the gun crime differences between the US and the rest of the world elsewhere, but it is a fact that Americans murder more people using guns that many (most?) countries that we would consider have a similar standard of living.

It's also a fact that since the UK banned handguns 15 years ago we haven't had one single instance like the shootings in the school in Dunblane in 1996 where 16 small children and their teacher were shot dead, or the many similar shootings (including the most recent in Connecticut) that have occurred across America with monotonous regularity (this is what, the second, or is it third, school massacre in the US this year?).

Reading the article posted on the other thread (http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html) it seems that when Australia made a similar ban on guns they experienced a massive reduction in gun related deaths.

The linkage between guns and murder seems clear - if you have a general population walking around with guns then they will use them to kill each other.
 
dogman said:
Only the rich are allowed to be crazy nowdays. Poor or middle class folks get told to go away. If you have health insurance, you don't get treatment till you get well, you get treatment till some arbitrary dollar number is gone. Then it's out you go.

Yep, that's IF you already have health insurance. A person's history of mental illness or depression have been regularly used by insurance companies as pre-existing conditions; thus grounds for denial of any health coverage.
 
This is one of the reasons why I don't own a television :x . Too much violence, be it real or make believe.
 
Powerful, military style firearms handled by unqualified and unstable people make for very dangerous situations. The real root of the problem is mental health care or lack thereof but the glorification of "guns & violence" in our culture is what tends to inspire these crackpots.

Honestly, I dunno the solution - outlawing military weapons is one approach but good luck with another form of prohibition.....

Firearms are relatively low tech. Any motivated individual can rework and/or fabricate military firearms as it's 100 year old technology. Thank you Mr Browning!
 
Guns or not, we live in a violent society here in the USA and i don't like it either, Jones.

In Switzerland, they hand their young semi-automatic weapons at the age of what, 18? to be part of the standing militia.. Yet, they have 1/5th-1/15th the murder rate compared to any metro area in the USA, and most murders aren't done with guns. Also, when did the last mass shooting happen in Switzerland? 2001 i think?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010–2011)

And in China, since they have less access to guns, they pull the same shit, but with knives, or tractors, or whatever else.
 
TylerDurden said:
Yep, that's IF you already have health insurance. A person's history of mental illness or depression have been regularly used by insurance companies as pre-existing conditions; thus grounds for denial of any health coverage.

This describes my situation. I had serious bout with depression about a decade ago, which has made my insurance expensive or difficult to get forever. The insurance companies will not tell me what the pre existing condition is, but i have a good guess.

Jeremy Harris - you say that we have a similar quality of life as other countries.. i'd say we don't. America is more like a mill for soldiers and implements of war than it is a proper society like yours. People are desperate here, especially right now in the midst of a financial depression and economy that has been worsening for decades. Unemployment is much higher than the statistics show, and if you don't have a job, you likely don't have any health coverage at all.

No job, no help for a troubled mind, high level of frustration, and lots of time on your hands.. add it up and see what you get..
 
MattyCiii said:
As insane and outrageous as the recent shooting is, more kids die as the result of careless driving every week in the USA (more precisely, about 50 kids under 15 are killed by USA motorists each week). This level of carnage has been relatively steady for the last 60 years (going back farther there's fewer deaths, but still far too many).

There's no sign it will get much better any time soon, this is especially evident in the way people's driving has been getting more aggressive each passing year (subjective, unproven observation/opinion, I know).

That's every week for more than half a century. What an outrage.

For sure most children are killed in our country by crazy people with gas than with gun powder.

I am more worried about being killed by a crazy person with a gas powered car.

Sometimes there is nothing coming the other way and they have plenty of room to pass me and they will give me just a few inches.

We need to only let very few people have gas and the power it brings to destroy.
 
neptronix said:
In Switzerland, they hand their young semi-automatic weapons at the age of what, 18? to be part of the standing militia.. Yet, they have 1/5th-1/15th the murder rate compared to any metro area in the USA, and most murders aren't done with guns. Also, when did the last mass shooting happen in Switzerland? 2001 i think?

You're not normally allowed to carry guns in Switzerland though, they have pretty strict laws on that, plus I believe they have the same sort of restrictions we have in terms of guns and ammunition kept at home having to be in locked cabinets.

neptronix said:
Jeremy Harris - you say that we have a similar quality of life as other countries.. i'd say we don't. America is more like a mill for soldiers and implements of war than it is a proper society like yours. People are desperate here, especially right now in the midst of a financial depression and economy that has been worsening for decades. Unemployment is much higher than the statistics show, and if you don't have a job, you likely don't have any health coverage at all.

No job, no help for a troubled mind, high level of frustration, and lots of time on your hands.. add it up and see what you get..

I was only going on what I've seen working there for relatively short periods. I spent time in Washington, Southern Maryland (Pax River), Florida (Tampa) and Idaho (Caldwell). In most of those places I saw and met folk who lived life pretty much as I do. The exception was Caldwell, the only place I really encountered "gun culture" (hence the trip shooting coyote from the air with an AR15.......). My arrival in the office there where I was going to work was interesting. I opened the desk drawer to find a pen and found a loaded Glock 9mm. I yelled out to the guy that was my host and he replied "oh, yeah, I forgot I left that there". Later I found the AR15 propped up behind a closet door and chatting to my host discovered that there were around half a dozen various firearms scattered around the building.
 
etriker said:
We need to only let very few people have gas and the power it brings to destroy.

madmaxlogo.jpg


When gas is outlawed, only outlaws have gas.. :mrgreen:
 
having and available assault rifle in almost every home does not necessarily lead to gun violence. look at Switzerland. almost everyone is in the army, almost everyone stores their gun at home, and very few mass shootings. Israel may not be a good example because of the Palestinian/Arab and assorted political/religious issues. but even there mass shootings are rare. at least outside of a battlefield scenario. and strict gun control for the Arab population just means they use explosives as their weapon of choice. so at least in these two cases easily available assault weapons does not correlate with gun violence.

anyways i don't think it is the availability of guns that is the problem. to oversimplify it is the gun culture /cowboy mentality. the thinking that everyone has a right to own a gun. everyone has the right to protect himself and his property with a gun. everyone has the right to settle all of their personal disputes with a gun. responsibility is seldom mentioned. shoot first, ask later is often quoted. availability of guns just exacerbates the problem.

but let us not forget reality. what? pass a new gun control law through the current congress or senate? only if you live in an alternate reality. first they need a bunch of politicians who can actually get together and stop squabbling long enough to pass a law. fat chance.

gun control is just a distraction. just another stupid debate to keep them from solving their real issues.

i do not belittle the senseless violence. it is a horrible crime especially since the victims were far too young and innocent to have harmed this man. i pray for the surviving family members. i know that they are deeply hurt. but this is such an incredible event that i am not in any way prepared to comprehend their personal grief and loss. not even remotely. all i can do is say i personally grieve their loss. i pray that some day these people will again be able to have peace in their lives.

rick
 
etriker said:
Billy Ferry did it with a bucket of gas.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/102900/TampaBay/Community_finally_ris.shtml


Good point. Let's assume it was impossible for Lanza to attain a gun. Could he not resort to grabbing a baseball bat, setting a classroom on fire and locking the door? What about driving a car full speed into a crowd of people?


The reality is that there are many ways to slaughter people.
 
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