Mass shooting in Orlando Nightclub

The number of Americans on twitter eagerly jumping to the defense of their gun laws is ridiculous. Some of them seem to think that gun control won't help, but praying will. It's baffling

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

People talk about gun control, but the actually reality is that the number of people in the US that carry a gun is very very low. I can imagine that no one in that club was armed, no one near scene was armed, no one within a mile of it was armed except the police. Yea if everyone in that club had a gun that guy would have been stopped fast.

If everyone in the club started firing guns while probably after a lot of drinks, in bad lighting, with limited or no experience of sharp shooting, do you seriously think they'd have done much more than cause further deaths and injuries to bystanders ?!

Renegade Mechanic wrote: »

Howld on now. I appreciate that gun violence is a large cause of death in America.
For example, in 2014, almost 11 thousand were killed by one. But let's look at some other statistics from cause of death surveys.

*Heart disease killed 611 thousand.
*Cancer killed 584 thousand.
*Chronic lower respiratory diseases killed 150 thousand.
*Accidents killed 130 thousand.
*Stroke killed 128 thousand.
*Alzheimer's disease killed 84 thousand.
*Diabetes killed 75 thousand.
*Influenza and Pneumonia killed 57 thousand.
*Kidney diseases killed 47 thousand.
*Suicides topped 41 thousand.
*Road fatalities were 36 thousand.

There are - for a supposedly "developed" nation - far more serious problems needing to be dealt with. This just gets all the coverage for some reason

Actually, tbh, I'm beginning to wonder how the yanks haven't gone extinct!!!

All developed nations have the above. Guns is a separate issue.

BattleCorp wrote: »

It aint the guns. Lots of countries have high gun ownership but not the continual mass shootings that the US has.

To be honest, that's a statement that gets repeated and repeated without any reference to stats.

No country even comes close to the level of gun ownership in the USA nor do very many allow the types of heavy military style weapons that are allowed for hobbyists in some US states.

Even very quick search on Google for stats will show you the differences. It's not exactly difficult to point point out the differences.

In most European countries with relatively higher gun ownership, they're mostly genuine hunting weapons too and you're talking about ownership rates that are leagues lower than the US even in the most heavily armed EU countries.

You've also got a culture that aspects of which glorify gun violence and see shooting as part of national identity and so on. It's a very odd combination of factors that don't exist in almost any other country I can think of.

That being said, I've no idea how you could unwind the current position.

RT now reporting the suspect is Omar Mateen? (Not sure of name spelling) an American citizen. Sky News now reporting on Prince Harry's new haircut.

Marteen's parents are from Afganistan moving to NY in the late 70's. Marteen was born in 1986

Kat1170 wrote: »

This may be the case, but no other country comes any near the same ratio of mass shootings. If purely gun ownership was to blame then there should be a direct correlation with the amount of mass shootings with the number of guns in those countries.

Yeah because everything about gun ownership rules in the USA is totally fine.

House representative Peter King now say's he has solid evidence this is a radial Islamic attack and has the shooters name but won't release at this time. The name's up on Twitter for the last 35 minutes. Meanwhile on Sky News the sun has come out to dry Prince William's bald head.