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Especially since the shooter had two handguns.Oracle wrote:You'll never get rid of guns in the states.
No reason anyone should have an automatic weapon.
Yes, because the US did an awesome job in Vietnam with their missiles, warheads, tanks, and bombers. Still lost the damn war. And we are barely able to contain the terrorist problem in the Middle East. We have soldiers getting killed out there because of IEDs made out of spare parts and household chemicals.Julius Seeker wrote:This isn't the 18th century anymore, we're not dealing with muskets anymore, and there is no threat of a British King sending in the red coats. This is the 21st century, armies now have missiles, warheads, tanks, and bombers, no civilian guns will stop that - they're only effective in shooting other civilians; and very effective at that.
And a rifle.SineSwiper wrote:Especially since the shooter had two handguns.Oracle wrote:You'll never get rid of guns in the states.
No reason anyone should have an automatic weapon.
Which is always an easy scapegoat and red herring in these debates. Why not talk about the sorry state of mental health in this country?Oracle wrote:And a rifle.
My comment was more directed towards the gun control debate in general.
Required for home securityAnarky wrote:Didn't this 'rifle' end up being a fucking AR 15?
"Gun related deaths"? Why filter based on that? Why not just "violent crime"?Julius Seeker wrote:I wouldn't call it a red herring at all so much as the core issue. To ignore any link between the US's abnormally high rates of gun related deaths as being linked to the US's equally abnormally high rate of gun ownership and abnormally relaxed policies regarding gun ownership, is ultimately ignoring all logical preventions of these types of crimes.
Really? It will keep happening? Why stop at guns? The materials to make bombs don't require a 2nd amendment. Butcher knives don't require a 2nd amendment. Crossbows? Swords? People will kill other people with a piece of glass if they have to. They don't need guns to do that.Julius Seeker wrote:This sort of thing will keep happening again and again until the US government admits the 2nd amendment doesn't work for current times.
One is TSA and their dictatorship of policies that requires no law to be passed. The other is an effort to get through Congress, and frankly, every time something like this happens, everybody shouts at each other at the top of their lungs in a defensive manner. And guess what? Nothing gets fixed because nobody willing to compromise at that point.Anarky wrote:One man brings a shoe bomb to an airport and from here until the end of time I need to take off my shoes to go through airport security.
We've had 30+ mass shootings since Columbine and what has changed?
What? What are you talking about? Mental hospitals still exist today. Granted, their solution to every problem isn't lobotomy after lobotomy after lobotomy, but you can still have somebody committed, and they still have hospitals for this sort of thing.Anarky wrote:We need to bring back Mental Hospitals. Getting rid of them in the 1960s was a big mistake. It may sound somewhat cruel, but some people are dangers to themselves and society and thinking a parent can work full time and find adequate care for a person such as this is ridiculous.
All the kids lived because the insane guy was (thankfully) really stupid when it comes to anatomy.Don wrote:If guns don't kill people then nuclear bombs don't kill people so we can clearly just have everyone with nuclear bombs?
Obviously the insane will do whatever they can do get this stuff but it'd be harder to get a gun if there's stricter regulation. A guy in China stabbed 22 guys with a knife at a school. The difference is that the kids he stabbed all lived. If the shooter didn't have a gun he'd probably do the same thing the guy in China did, but it'd be harder to cause the same kind of destruction with a knife compared to a gun.
If you need more proof this is a mental health issue, and not a gun issue, consider what is occurring in China that has one of the world's most strict gun control/bans:
China statistics:
The 2004 Jia QingYou (Bus Driver) case, in ShanDong. 27 primary school students stabbed.
The 2004 Liu HongWen (Teacher) case, in HuNan. 4 primary school students killed, 12 wounded; with a meat cleaver.
The 2005 Yang GuoZhu case, in JiangSu. 28 kindergarten students stabbed.
The 2006 Bai NingyYang case, in HeNan. 3 kindergarten students killed, 14 others wounded; Locked into the classroom and burned.
The 2005 Liu ShiBing case, in AnHui. 18 middle school students SHOT WITH SIX RIFLES.
The 2005 Xu HePing (Janitor) case, in BeiJing. 1 kindergarten student killed, 14 wounded; by knife.
The 2005 Yan YanMing (Student) case, in HeNan. 9 high school students killed, 4 wounded; by knife.
The 2005 Ma JiaJue (Student) case, in YuNan. 4 university students beaten to death with a blunt object.
The 2006 Abduhalik Muzht case, in XinJiang. 2 middle school students killed, 3 others wounded; by sword.
The 2006 "Yang Xinlong" case, in Henan. 1 elementary school student killed, 19 taken hostage; by knife.
The 2007 "Su Qianxiao" case, in Guangdong. 1 primary school child killed, three wounded; with a knife.
The 2008 "Chen Wenzhen" case, in Guangdong. Two middle school students stabbed to death.
The 2009 "Xu Ximei" case, in Guangdong. Two preschool children killed, three children and one adult injured at a primary school; with a knife.
The 2010 "Zheng Minsheng" case, in Fujian. 8 primary school students killed, 5 wounded; by knife.
The 2010 "Chen Kangbing" case, in Guangdong. 15 primary school children and one adult injured; by knife.
The 2010 "Xu Yuyuan" case, in Jiangsu. 28 children attacked, 5 seriously injured, 2 critically; by knife.
The 2010 "Wang Yonglai" case, in Shandong. 5 kindergarten students and one adult injured; first by hammer, then doused with gasoline and set fire.
The 2010 "Wu Huanming" case, in Shanxi. 7 kindergarten students and 2 adults killed, 20 wounded; by knife.
The 2010 "Hainan Institute of Science and Technology" case. 10 men wounded 10 students; by knives.
The 2010 "Fang Jiantang" case, in Shandong. 3 kindergarten students and one teacher killed, 20 wounded; by knife.
The 2011 "Minhang District" case, in Shanghai. 8 preschool children slashed with a box cutter.
The 2011 "Wang Hongbin" case, in Henan. A young girl and 3 adults killed, adult and child wounded at a daycare center, with an axe.
There are something like 310 million guns in this country. Any sort of law banning one gun or another isn't going to put a dent in that figure. Thus, it's more productive to talk about other angles, and stop pretending that problems like these are simple to solve. Hardly any social issue is "simple to solve".kali o. wrote:Sine can say whatever he likes, gun control needs to be tightened. A gun does more damage on a wider scale than a knife. Gun deaths in the US eclipse any stat Sine can dig up elsewhere. If Sine wants to go off about about Mental Health, he is welcome to it, but that is a complicated issue with far more fuzzy solutions. Meanwhile, gun control is an actual start with clear solutions.
Where's the Secret Service?bovine wrote:
SineSwiper wrote:There are something like 310 million guns in this country. Any sort of law banning one gun or another isn't going to put a dent in that figure. Thus, it's more productive to talk about other angles, and stop pretending that problems like these are simple to solve. Hardly any social issue is "simple to solve".
I just want people to even TALK about something other than gun control as the panacea to all of our problems. Right now, it's been a total shouting match and nobody is talking about the root cause. The shouting is unproductive. It's also unrealistic. I mean, hell, all the pro-gun control politicians have been talking about is bans on "assault weapons", which has NOTHING TO DO with the Newtown shooting.kali o. wrote:You saying it's complicated and saying it won't work is really all you have. That doesn't make it so, nor does pretending it not an issue do anything more than increase that figure. Mandatory registration for each firearm is a start. State licensings, in addition to federal, and assault/ammo bans too. Strict training reqs should accompany that all. Laws relating to storage and securing home firearms should be detailed and failure to comply should carry strict penalties.
If I ask you what your plan is to solve mental health on a national scale and increasing social isolation in urban environments, you are going to sputter out, at best, some incomprehensible drivel you've given little actual thought to...so don't use that as a diversion to the actual gun issue. It's a total copout.
What talk? You said nothing about the subject. Nothing. You have no statistical correlation to the actual topic at hand (gun access and gun deaths). You wrote "so and so won't work, so let's talk about X instead". If you are under the impression you made some sort of meaty attempt at conversation, and not simply a dismissive attempt at deflection, then I'd argue you have no idea what a conversation actually is.SineSwiper wrote:I've already talked about mental health. Now it's YOUR turn to talk about it. See, it's a conversation: I talk and then you talk. That's how it works.
Between your wacky numbered what-if slippery slope scenario and your completely unrelated foray into Australia, there is nothing remotely REALISTIC about anything you said. It was literally a hair's breadth from batshit crazy...SineSwiper wrote:Okay, look. This is what happens if you have some sort of "assault weapons" ban:
1. The ban happens. It mostly does nothing. ATF starts to clean out the illegal guns. Then they trigger another Waco incident.
2. Since the ban never targeted handguns, you end up with school shootings with handguns. The public is angry that the previous gun ban did nothing, and demand more gun control.
3. The 2nd Amendment is struck down. There are still hundreds of millions of guns in the country, now in the hands of outlaws. The ATF cracks down and gun violence escalates. Suddenly, gang warfare has access to more guns than ever. Since many were stockpiling ammo before the ban, there's still enough bullets to go around. School shootings still happen, and the public cries out "Why is this still happening?"
4. There are still others who actually gave up their guns, with sick kids who resort to bomb making, since that information is easily available on the Internet. School bombings become more popular than school shootings. The public cries out "Why do they have to access to this information?"
5. The DoJ starts shutting down servers that mention how to create bombs. Now, the 1st Amendment is getting trampled on...
I mean, we could turn ourselves into Australia, a giant nanny state, with big Internet censorship proxies and a ratings board that would make the MPAA look like godless heathens. Frankly, I don't want to live there, and I don't want the US to turn into that.
Or we can skip trying to trigger a 2nd Civil War, and talk about the root cause. I'm just trying to be realistic here.
You obviously are just skipping over part of the thread and pretending it's nothing. If all you're going to do is selectively read shit, then it's not really a conversation.kali o. wrote:What talk? You said nothing about the subject. Nothing. You have no statistical correlation to the actual topic at hand (gun access and gun deaths). You wrote "so and so won't work, so let's talk about X instead". If you are under the impression you made some sort of meaty attempt at conversation, and not simply a dismissive attempt at deflection, then I'd argue you have no idea what a conversation actually is.
I agree. While having pilots trained and in charge of a gun on a plane might be a decent solution (one of many) to the 9/11 problem, arming teachers doesn't strike me as a valid response. The NRA has slid into a predictable arm of the GOP in the last 10 years or so, not taking into account that there are plenty of pro-gun, socially liberal voters out there.Eric wrote:The NRA press conference was a crock of bullshit with them trying to deflect and offer solutions that = more guns lol.
Like I said, it's a complex issue. Apparently, I haven't been expressing my views well enough, so I'll just steal somebody else's reply:Eric wrote:That said, I honestly don't see anything changing even after 20 kids got slaughtered, maybe in 20 or 30 years, but we're still really not ready to talk about gun reform in this country.
Short answer without too much technical jargon:
An assault weapon is a term without an actual definition. An Assault Rifle is a shoulder-fired rifle in an intermediate caliber (that is, smaller than a large bullet but bigger than a small-caliber round like a .22) that is capable of firing more than 1 bullet per pull of the trigger - most commonly three-round bursts or "fully automatic" fire (that is, hold down the trigger and the gun will fire until it is empty).
The firearm in question is an AR-15. It can accept a magazine that holds 5, 10, 20, or 30 rounds (or larger; Betamags can hold approx 100 rounds but have horrific jam rates). It fires a bullet approximately .223 inches wide, at a velocity of about 2800 feet per second. It can fire one - and ONLY one - round each time you pull the trigger. It is covered in black plastic, which makes it lighter and theoretically more impact-resistant. These facts are scary, yes? It looks like this:
The image below is a Mini-14, a rifle that can accept a magazine that holds 5, 10, 20, or 30 rounds (or larger). It fires a bullet approximately .223 inches wide, at a velocity of about 2800 feet per second. It can fire one - and ONLY one - round each time you pull the trigger. It usually has wooden furniture, and looks like this:
They are, functionally, the SAME GUN. They shoot the same bullet, from magazines of the same size, at the same velocity. But one looks dammed scary, while one looks a lot like a hunting rifle you see on the wall. The AR-15 is classified as an "assault weapon", and the Mini-14 isn't. THAT'S why the term "assault weapon" has no meaning.
As for the solutions? Get rid of big magazines of 11+ rounds? With either firearm, it takes all of 2 seconds to change magazines, and you're "back in business". This is not a solution.
Get rid of bullets the size both guns shoot (0.223 inches) or larger? Welp, that's about the smallest round you can hunt with. It's actually too small to reliably kill deer; more of a round to deal with coyotes and such. Which means to get rid of guns based on bullet size completely destroys the hunting industry. Oh, and the smallest round you want for self-defense is a 0.380-inch (the .380 ACP) round - a less powerful but technically "bigger" round. So if we're going off of bullet size, there's no more reliable self-defense for women, or for people like me who have crippling injuries and are physically incapable of fleeing from an attacker.
Look, what I'm trying to say here is that there is NOT an "easy solution of banning guns", or even specific guns. There is quite literally no way to word a gun ban that will make a difference (because you can get a gun that does the same thing - or more - in a different cosmetic package) or word one in such a way that will not become a *de facto* ban on ALL guns. And while the latter may be a desirable goal to some minds, there is simply no actual, practical way to make it happen, without setting the military loose on the civilian population in a house-to-house and turning our country into another Afghanistan-style military quagmire.
Two seconds doesn't matter much when nobody is armed in the first place. Not that I advocate arming teachers, but in the land of the unarmed, the guy with the gun wins, even when he's reloading.Don wrote:I don't get why there are always people who write about things like everyone is Solid Snake (who, by the way, uses some pretty powerful weapons to do his job). Yes it doesn't matter for Solid Snake to reload in a game because he's a super soldier, but 'just 2 seconds to reload' is probably a lot of time if you're not a super soldier bred for war. It is easy to go in a vacuum and say a guy could stab 20 guys to death but you don't really hear about (successful) mass stabbings because it's actually pretty hard to do. Even from playing video game it should be readily obvious that the less ammo your gun holds the more vulnerable you would be because ammo runs out.
And Mythbusters has proven that dual wielding guns is fucking stupid. Only the Weaver stance and one-handed shoulder level stance have any level of accuracy.Don wrote:Okay so you can take multiple guns (would require more effort) and maybe dual wield them except it's not exactly that easy to make an accurate shot with your non dominant hand.
No, they just favor different weapons.Don wrote:Nobody says gun control would prevent violent crimes. The point is to make it hard to pull off, and just like taking down a pirate site does not magically make the whole piracy movement stronger (really sucks to have to find a new supplier each time it happens) people do not magically get better at the art of killing to compensate for tougher gun laws.
And as I've been trying to say repeatedly, we aren't Europe. We aren't the UK, Australia, or Canada. If comparing countries with radically different backgrounds was accurate, then Switzerland and Britain couldn't co-exist the way they do. Both have low violent crime rates, and both have completely different approaches to gun control.Don wrote:Just look at the other country with stricter laws. According to the 'bad guys just get better' you'd expect in European country we'd hear about guys juggling 3 revolvers going on a rampage since they can't get better weapons but clearly that's no problem because they can either get them illegally or just get better with regular weapons! But European countries have very low deaths caused by guns. Bad guys in Europe didn't magically become more proficient with knives or baseball bats to compensate for the inability to get firearms easily.
I gravely question the accuracy of that stat, and even if it was "technically accurate", there's undoubtedly a bunch of missing half-truths in that stat.Don wrote:By the way I saw some statistics say that the death by gun is more likely in most major US cities compared to a civilian in Afghenstein.
Goddamn, man, with the amount of video game analogies you make, it's no wonder the NRA blames video game violence in their idiotic speech. Anyway...Don wrote:Not to mention the notion that people would actually try to resist the government let alone the military taking their guns is downright absurd. If people actually tried to shoot back to whoever is confiscating the guns, those guys are likely to die horribly as soon as the military gets involved and people might finally realize they're not Solid Snake. You'd have a far better chance of trying to vote Obama or whoever out then hoping that you can somehow get enough guys with guns to resist the US military.
Don wrote:Afghenstein
