Another school shooting

[Chadd 916]

Seriously... I've been to a few different universities. What is so straining about college that would make this keep happening? The admission credentials?

Parents are sheltering their kids so much, they have no idea how to cope with any level of adversity.

Rustpot very nicely said.

Am I the only one who sometimes wishes these fuckheads didnt kill themselves, that way they could be apprehended and thrown in a dark 4x6 for the rest of their lives?

I would prefer they just turned the gun on themselves before taking out everyone else.

[mrusse01 0]

If you want a real example, look at Washington D.C. Handguns were banned there in 1976, and yet homicides peaked in 1991, and handguns in the last year were still used in 80% of homicides. Didn't stop criminals there.

Well then, open and shut case I guess.

Please continue to ignore the rest of the developed world that generally has strict gun laws, and also happens to generally have drastically lower crime/murder/gun crime rates than the United State. Those two facts have nothing to do with each other.

Not getting into this can of worms again, we already had this convo over the VaTech shootings, pretty good arguments for both sides I thought, search for it if you are interested.

Terrible to hear about another one of these shootings...we had a scare in the Toronto area a week ago when there was thought to be a gunman on the loose at a local campus....turned out is was just a kid walking around with a camera tri-pod.

[TBLfan 25]

Am I the only one who sometimes wishes these fuckheads didnt kill themselves, that way they could be apprehended and thrown in a dark 4x6 for the rest of their lives?

Your not alone with your thought, but it does end up costing A TON of money to keep them bottled up in a cell.

Unfortunetly, with the laws being the way they are putting someone on death row costs a lot more than life in prision. Why? Legal fees and years behind bars in a particular prision.

[usahockey22 0]

If you want a real example, look at Washington D.C. Handguns were banned there in 1976, and yet homicides peaked in 1991, and handguns in the last year were still used in 80% of homicides. Didn't stop criminals there.

Well then, open and shut case I guess.

Please continue to ignore the rest of the developed world that generally has strict gun laws, and also happens to generally have drastically lower crime/murder/gun crime rates than the United State. Those two facts have nothing to do with each other.

That was one example...I have pages and pages of extensive research and studies that have been done in this area to support the facts that a) gun control laws don't stop motivated criminals and B) areas where residents can carry concealed weapons have less gun crime due to the factor of deterrence.

The "developed world" I would agree, on average, is more gun-controlled by country than the United States...don't think anyone can contest that. And we do have a higher relative crime rate. But of course correlation does not prove causation, and I believe that our culture has much more to do with our violence than simply having gun laws the way that they are. My friends and I were joking about the fact that AMC ran the Charles Bronson "Death Wish" series in a marathon format for 2 or 3 weekends in a row...no place but America would you achieve great filmmaking success by releasing a 5-part series of some guy just gunning people down as is what happens in those movies. I'm also not saying the media causes any of this, rather it reflects our culture of violence, as they only give us what we want.

One more quick example of the "developed world" getting along well with guns, is Switzerland. Switzerland has the 5th highest per-capita GDP in the world (USA is ranked 7th), an incredibly low unemployment rate, and generally known to be a very successful country, socially and economically. One little known fact is the deeply rooted gun culture in Switzerland...Switzerland has a population of around six million people who publicly own at least two million firearms. This includes over 600,000 fully-automatic combat rifles and over 500,000 handguns. Swiss laws require all males of a certain age to keep an automatic rifle at their home with a certain amount of ammo, should the need arise to defend the country. Their gun culture is historic and quite prevalent, yet the BBC reports, "the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept". (That other info is courtesy of BBC too)

Now comparing this with the United States, there are a few obvious differences. First, our country is much larger and more diverse, with more poverty, hence more conflict is likely to occur. But you also have to consider the deterrence factor and the factor of our culture. If you were a criminal, wouldn't you be more likely to shoot someone down here in the US in a no-carry zone, than you would be in Switzerland where many people have loaded automatic rifles in their homes? (In fact many studies support this factor quite clearly, the largest being performed by a U. Chicago prof. of Economics. Even a survey of burglars in the United States confirmed that burglars are quite deterred by the idea of robbing a gun owner). Then of course the difference in cultures. Switzerland is a more homogeneous society than ours, and so the people are more united in their desires and other ways, such as the national defense initiative of the required guns there. The United States on the other hand is a society of individuals who are all contending for the american dream in different ways, ie the "Wild West" and civil war that took place less than 200 years ago, now we enjoy a relatively high crime rate and huge prison population.

OK, I'll leave it alone now, but just a few things to consider before going after guns. Guns are not the problem.

[mrusse01 0]

Very well said.

[lawryde 0]

Socio-economic factors cause most gun violence.

This isn't "most" gun violence.

This is some dude who's wires got crossed and had access to an object that could kill 5 people and injure 18 in a matter of moments. If he came in there with a baseball bat he might have been able to kill the teacher and then everyone would have jumped him.

If some of those kids in the lecture hall had been carrying would it have stopped that guy? He most likely would have still done it since he had a death wish, but he certainly would have taken out 2 or 3 people before someone returned fire.

There are no easy answers to this.

Let's just remember the dead.

[chef_ducky 0]

Well Said

[Rustpot 1]

Let's just remember the dead.

Aye.

The debate can rage on. Campuses will never be hot zones for individual concealed carry, so it's a moot point. At the same time, if there was no gun fertilizer + the internet = many more gone and a greater tragedy on our hands.

Guns are inherently dangerous when placed into the hands of those not in their right mind or those who do not possess the training required for safe operation. But to punish a nation by saying one person can do evil is a slippery slope. The line is currently drawn and to erase it completely or embolden it to any large degree would enrage the country even more and the debate would just have a few happy people still arguing for more change and a lot of pissed off people asking for change in the opposite direction.

Let's play hockey, raise your stick to the rafters in their memory and try to make the world a safer place one child at a time.