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Child Item

Another mass shooting in the U.S

dd972

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/police-respond-us-school-shooting-reports-153441807.html

condolences to those affected, wonder though if these will go on indefinately and the gun culture of the U.S is set in stone

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Rascasse

FISMA wrote: »

According to the FBI, more people die in the States because of hammers and clubs than rifles.

In 2005
murders by rifle was 445,
murders by hammers and clubs was 605.

In 2006
murders by rifle was 438
murders by hammers and clubs was 618.

In 2011
murders by rifle was 323
murders by hammers and clubs was 496

Also, 100% more people are killed by hands and fists than by rifles.

No, more people are murdered by hammers and clubs than rifles.

Do you have then numbers including suicide and accidents, both of which affect children considerably? Death by firearms (if it were listed as a single cause of death) is the second most common cause of death of 10 to 19 year olds.

I wonder if people that post these nonsense stats are being deliberately dishonest or somewhat lacking in intelligence.

FISMA

Convince yourselves.

Here is the link to the FBI webpage.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11

Sparks

Rascasse wrote: »

No, more people are murdered by hammers and clubs than rifles.

And that's the specific point. If you're going to introduce a ban on "assault weapons" (which in this case will mean not assault rifles which have been very strictly controlled in the US since the 30s, but semi-automatic rifles that fail the "idontlikedelookofthat" test - which by the way, is how we restrict access to them in Ireland), then you're talking about a ban on something that is used to murder people fewer times than something you're not going to consider banning.

And again, this is ignoring the 2003 CDC report that states fairly categorically that a ban just won't work, that we don't know what's causing these tragic bouts of insanity, and because we don't know, we can't fix them:

Evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these laws for the following reasons.

Bans on specified firearms or ammunition. Results of studies of firearms and ammunition bans were inconsistent: certain studies indicated decreases in violence associated with bans, and others indicated increases. Several studies found that the number of banned guns retrieved after a crime declined when bans were enacted, but these studies did not assess violent consequences (16,17). Studies of the 1976 Washington, D.C. handgun ban yielded inconsistent results (18--20). Bans often include "grandfather" provisions, allowing ownership of an item if it is acquired before the ban, complicating an assessment of causality. Finally, evidence indicated that sales of firearms to be banned might increase in the period before implementation of the bans (e.g., the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994) (21).

The Task Force's review of firearms laws found insufficient evidence to determine whether the laws reviewed reduce (or increase) specific violent outcomes (Table). Much existing research suffers from problems with data, analytic methods, or both. Further high-quality research is required to establish the relationship between firearms laws and violent outcomes.

That is what is needed - to understand the problem, and then to draft a solution to it. Otherwise, you're just pushing buttons at random, hoping you'll get lucky and fix something you don't understand instead of what's far more likely - that you won't fix the problem, or worse, you'll make it worse than it already is.

Piliger

These gun nuts trying to quote their studies and argue about hammers and cars are just trying to sell the unsellable. Ordinary people do not need guns and they should be banned - period.

yoyo

Killer Wench wrote: »

I mean if that's a mass shooting then let's add this one to the list.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/03/us-swiss-shooting-idUSBRE90202Z20130103

Only three shot? How about 4 in the US only yesterday... here. Just seems to be the norm in the states that any shooting under 10 deaths doesn't seem to be reported, there is a serious issue in the US with guns and weapon availability, I cannot understand even how responsible gun owners can deny this...

Nick

Sparks

Piliger wrote: »

Ordinary people do not need guns and they should be banned - period.

Tell that to the Irish Farmers Association. Or the International Olympic Committee. Or any one of a dozen major associations (and a thousand smaller ones) in between the two, as well as a few state bodies.
Then watch as they politely tell you that you have a right to your opinion, but that they won't be changing how they do things because of your opinion because frankly, who cares what someone who won't even read the basic information thinks about a policy issue?

clairefontaine

Piliger wrote: »

These gun nuts trying to quote their studies and argue about hammers and cars are just trying to sell the unsellable. Ordinary people do not need guns and they should be banned - period.

If hammers and clubs were deadly and powerful as they say, the cops and the military would be carrying them. They are not carrying hammers and clubs, they carry guns and for a reason.

Saying that, guns are only a small part of the bigger picture, the bigger problem of these shootings in the US. I don't know exactly what the problem is, but my guess is it's a number of them that group together so that these situations are created.

Im not sure a ban on guns would solve the problem at all, might even make it worse. Guns are so endemic to the 2nd ammendment and so at the heart of the US, the frontier, the wild west, the self reliance, the mastery over nature, the ability to protect oneself at a distance, that banning them would only create a bigger black market for guns as the entitlement to them would not just vanish.

It would take a major cultural overhaul or an acceptance that these events are the price you pay for freedom.

Manic Moran

Two days after the shooting in Connecticut, there was a shooting in a cinema in San Antonio, TX.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Two-wounded-in-theater-shooting-4122668.php#ixzz2GOP72zBX

Only got as far as wounding two, though, which is why it didn't make much news. A woman at the cinema had a gun of her own.

NTM

Sparks

clairefontaine wrote: »

If hammers and clubs were deadly and powerful as they say, the cops and the military would be carrying them. They are not carrying hammers and clubs, they carry guns and for a reason.

(a) The cops aren't really supposed to be murdering people, so why would they choose their equipment based on what gets used more often to murder people?

(b) Every police force in the world carries clubs of one design or another:

clairefontaine

Sparks wrote: »

(a) The cops aren't really supposed to be murdering people, so why would they choose their equipment based on what gets used more often to murder people?

(b) Every police force in the world carries clubs of one design or another:

My point was to debate with those statistics. The cops need a weapon that can kill or maim at a distance. And can do it fast. No other personal weapon can do that. The gun holds a special place in personal arsenal. That's why they need guns. The stats also focused on rifles, failed to mention other kinds of guns. There are plenty of other statistics that can be trawled out to counter the argument but where would that get us?

Banning guns wont do much but push them into an unregulated underground much like drugs. It might make things worse.

Too bad the gun debate is monopolising the crisis, when there are many other things at play.

I don't like the NRA but they had a point about the video games, not that I'd blame the games either, just like I would't blame JD Salinger for John Lennon's assassination, but there is something to look at there, in that compulsive technology has the potential to make the people around you unimportant. There is something about life being cheap when these tragedies occur.

If it gets to the stage where you need metal detectors to operate a movie theatre, we are all lost at that point. It's bad enough you have them in urban high schools. That's why people spend thousands to send their kids to private schools, to avoid a TSA style pat down when you go into a place where you will be learning algebra and falling in love for the first time. This is what we have come to.

kunst nugget

clairefontaine wrote: »

I don't like the NRA but they had a point about the video games, not that I'd blame the games either, just like I would't blame JD Salinger for John Lennon's assassination, but there is something to look at there, in that compulsive technology has the potential to make the people around you unimportant. There is something about life being cheap when these tragedies occur.

The NRA are just looking to blame anything besides guns for the tragedy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/17/ten-country-comparison-suggests-theres-little-or-no-link-between-video-games-and-gun-murders/

clairefontaine

kunst nugget wrote: »

The NRA are just looking to blame anything besides guns for the tragedy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/17/ten-country-comparison-suggests-theres-little-or-no-link-between-video-games-and-gun-murders/

I agree they are avoiding all culpability, not even taking 2% of the responsibility, but that doesn't necessarily negate the points about technology.

kunst nugget

clairefontaine wrote: »

I agree they are avoiding all culpability, not even taking 2% of the responsibility, but that doesn't necessarily negate the points about technology.

If you read the article and look at the graphs you can see there is no correlation between video game consumption and gun murders in fact the trend line would seem to suggest the opposite. Do you play video games yourself?

clairefontaine

kunst nugget wrote: »

If you read the article and look at the graphs you can see there is no correlation between video game consumption and gun murders in fact the trend line would seem to suggest the opposite. Do you play video games yourself?

Right. Ok but.... there is nothing on that graph to mark how much time young men/] boys in each country are spending in front of the video games. [I say young boys because these theatrical shootings have regularly been carried out by young men/boys.]

The graphs mark consumption, which I assume to mean purchases per capita, but nothing on how much compulsive viewing is taking place within households.

old hippy

A lot of these young men are also exposed to ridicule and social isolation from their peers. I think that can do more damage than video games.

clairefontaine

old hippy wrote: »

A lot of these young men are also exposed to ridicule and social isolation from their peers. I think that can do more damage than video games.

Definitely, and that isolation pushes them into a relationship with the tv and computer, they don't learn how to socialise, so they get further isolated and alienated and the cycle compounds itself.

I was thinking about Alex Ganza when I read this article. It's worth a read.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hero/201205/the-demise-guys

old hippy

clairefontaine wrote: »

Definitely, and that isolation pushes them into a relationship with the tv and computer, they don't learn how to socialise, so they get further isolated and alienated and the cycle compounds itself.

I was thinking about Alex Ganza when I read this article. It's worth a read.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hero/201205/the-demise-guys

I'll try and read it later. But isolated and bullied kids have had their escapism for years. For me (yes, I was bullied as a kid) it was comics and music and films. What is it about computer games that dehumanises some people?

I don't play computer games, btw

kunst nugget

clairefontaine wrote: »

Right. Ok but.... there is nothing on that graph to mark how much time young men/] boys in each country are spending in front of the video games. [I say young boys because these theatrical shootings have regularly been carried out by young men/boys.]

According to Mother Jones from analysis of mass shootings in the US over the last 30 years the average age of the killer is 35

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

clairefontaine wrote: »

The graphs mark consumption, which I assume to mean purchases per capita, but nothing on how much compulsive viewing is taking place within households.

Christopher J. Ferguson, an associate professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University, in an article for Time magazine (linked below) states:

As a video game violence researcher and someone who has done scholarship on mass homicides, let me state very emphatically: There is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/20/sandy-hook-shooting-video-games-blamed-again/

And the results from the lab discussed in the article:
http://www.tamiu.edu/~cferguson/Not%20Worth%20the%20Fuss.pdf

In another article for Time on the Aurora shooting, he says:

A 2002 report by the U.S. Secret Service found little evidence that mass homicide perpetrators consume unusual amounts of violent media. Few people doubt that violent entertainment is more available now than at any point in history. Yet as Stephen Pinker documents in his latest book The Better Angels of Our Nature, we are living at the most peaceful epoch in human history. It would probably be difficult to find very many young men in the U.S. who haven’t seen at least one of the Batman movies, yet despite this and all of the violent entertainment options available, youth violence has been steadily plummeting, and is at its lowest levels since the 1960s.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/20/dont-blame-batman-for-the-aurora-shooting/

clairefontaine

Thanks for those links, very informative.

kunst nugget

clairefontaine wrote: »

Thanks for those links, very informative.

No problem.

Manic Moran

clairefontaine wrote: »

The stats also focused on rifles, failed to mention other kinds of guns. There are plenty of other statistics that can be trawled out to counter the argument but where would that get us?

Right, but look at what the reactions are which are being proposed, both by the politicians and on this thread. There have been a slew of proposed bills the last two weeks about restricting rifles. They focus on the rifles which are not the problem. Even Obama himself said that the significant problem of gun violence in his home station of Chicago isn't a rifle problem, it's a handgun problem (which makes sense, they're far better for criminal use), but nobody's looking at those, and, frankly, they're not allowed to as they're Constitutionally protected.

clairefontaine

Manic Moran wrote: »

Right, but look at what the reactions are which are being proposed, both by the politicians and on this thread. There have been a slew of proposed bills the last two weeks about restricting rifles. They focus on the rifles which are not the problem. Even Obama himself said that the significant problem of gun violence in his home station of Chicago isn't a rifle problem, it's a handgun problem (which makes sense, they're far better for criminal use), but nobody's looking at those, and, frankly, they're not allowed to as they're Constitutionally protected.

Well that is just weird.

Before this recent tragedy, I had never even heard of a Bushmaster. Since this tragedy, I definitely not only know what it is, but get Santa Christmas pics of American families with their Bushmasters in emails and facebook. Bushmaster must secretly be a little happy about this and I'm sure sales have done well out of all this hoo haa about rifles and talk of their future restrictions must have people stocking up.

The facts are that in rural America and even parts of suburban America wher eyou get bears out your window, and all sorts of wildlife, people do have use for them.

But on the other hand the nation does have a wild west mentality, that can't be denied either.

The discussions on mental illness are interesting, would like to see more on physcotropic drugs being talked about.

Capt'n Midnight

Media are culpable both news and the documentaries.

And it's nothing new

Back in 1966 shortly after the Texas University shootings a guy "I wanted to get known - to get myself a name" and executed a bunch of people.

just wanted to be known, to carve a name for himself. Following the leads of his two heroes, ... and ... , this high-school senior from Mesa, Arizona, headed to the Rose-Mar College of Beauty ready to gun down someone for his 15 minutes of homicidal fame. At the College he forced five women and two children into a back room and systematically shot them in the head killing five of them. When the police arrived at the scene, he gleefully confessed to everything.

http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/smith-robert-benjamin.htm

BattleCorp

Piliger wrote: »

These gun nuts trying to quote their studies and argue about hammers and cars are just trying to sell the unsellable. Ordinary people do not need guns and they should be banned - period.

I'm an ordinary person. I like shooting. I do target shooting. I compete in competitions. It's my chosen sport. It's totally legal. I'm fully licenced and comply with all conditions on my licence. I'm not Adam Lanza. If you did any research on the topic in Ireland you would see that target shooting has a better safety record than golf.

I seriously object to being called a gun nut.

Why is it so hard to get the fact into your head that just because you have a gun and enjoy shooting, you are not automatically a nut.

Killer Wench

yoyo wrote: »

Only three shot? How about 4 in the US only yesterday... here. Just seems to be the norm in the states that any shooting under 10 deaths doesn't seem to be reported, there is a serious issue in the US with guns and weapon availability, I cannot understand even how responsible gun owners can deny this...

Nick

You missed the stream of dialogue. I was responding to the shooting of 4 people in Aurora. Your "news" isn't new to this thread. Go back a few pages.

FISMA

Manic Moran wrote: »

Two days after the shooting in Connecticut, there was a shooting in a cinema in San Antonio, TX.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Two-wounded-in-theater-shooting-4122668.php#ixzz2GOP72zBX
Only got as far as wounding two, though, which is why it didn't make much news. A woman at the cinema had a gun of her own.
NTM

One problem is that the anti's do not want to hear the other side of the story.

The other is: how do you count something that did not happen? It is difficult to quantify the number of people that: did not die, were not robbed, beaten, or raped, because they had a gun.

Most liberal media do not want to carry stories about mothers, at home alone with their children, that defend off felons trying to break in to their home by shooting them.

Just like what happened today
Georgia mom home alone with kids shoots ex-con intruder

Piliger

FISMA wrote: »

One problem is that the anti's do not want to hear the other side of the story.

Simply not true. It's just that the gun nut's arguments don't hold water and they make the same time wasting arguments all the time. It's all about them and their freedom and they don't give a sh1t about the innocent people dying all around us, including those small toddlers.

The other is: how do you count something that did not happen? It is difficult to quantify the number of people that: did not die, were not robbed, beaten, or raped, because they had a gun.

Most liberal media do not want to carry stories about mothers, at home alone with their children, that defend off felons trying to break in to their home by shooting them.

Just like what happened today

That all sounds nice and fine. But does it happen much ? I doubt it. Have you any evidence that it happens much ? Does it happen enough to compensate for the mass murders and the enormous gun death stats in America ? Some evidence please ?

Dyr

Piliger wrote: »

That all sounds nice and fine. But does it happen much ? I doubt it. Have you any evidence that it happens much ? Does it happen enough to compensate for the mass murders and the enormous gun death stats in America ? Some evidence please ?

It happens far more often than mass shootings

BattleCorp

Piliger wrote: »

That all sounds nice and fine. But does it happen much ? I doubt it. Have you any evidence that it happens much ? Does it happen enough to compensate for the mass murders and the enormous gun death stats in America ? Some evidence please ?

Nothing can ever ever compensate for the mass murder of children or anybody for that matter. That's not up for debate.

My problem with your anti gun arguement is that you are lumping all shooters into the same category as Adam Lanza and every other nut job out there.

Yes, guns were used to commit the murders. But my guns weren't. Nor were the guns of millions and millions of other law abiding people used to commit murder. The vast vast vast majority of gun owners are sensible people who don't go around commiting crime. This is a fact that you seem to be blindly ignoring.

The fault is not with the gun. It's the fault of the person behind the gun.

haydar

FISMA wrote: »

One problem is that the anti's do not want to hear the other side of the story.

The other is: how do you count something that did not happen? It is difficult to quantify the number of people that: did not die, were not robbed, beaten, or raped, because they had a gun.

Most liberal media do not want to carry stories about mothers, at home alone with their children, that defend off felons trying to break in to their home by shooting them.

Just like what happened today
Georgia mom home alone with kids shoots ex-con intruder

This is not how society works. You don't take the law into your own hands.
I know it's not always perfect and there are exceptions but if everyone did it we would end up in a world of lawlessness