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Post by AA0 on Dec 27, 2012 19:36:25 GMT
I agree with Amon for most of the points on these topics.
Each time I hear people in favour of gun rights all that goes through my mind is blah blah blah excuses blah blah blah. Fact is, other countries don't have such ridiculous availability of mass murder weapons, and while people still break and go to attack others, the outcome is not headline news. When they pick up a knife to attack others someone just smacks them down and it stops there, maybe it results in a murder, maybe two, maybe its big local news, but they aren't continuously setting ground breaking new records for tragedies. When you take someone's ability to impulsively grab a weapon of mass murder, they will take whatever else they can find, they aren't thinking in a calm sane manner, they just want to do what they want right then and there.
The argument brought up several times about the criminals who want weapons will be able to get weapons if gun controls are enabled, sure, that is true. Do we see criminals running havoc with military grade weapons with citizens defenseless in other first world countries? Of course not. Even bringing up this argument is avoiding the entire issue, we are talking about someone snapping and having access to weapons of mass murder. You will never eliminate this from happening, even with good mental health programs people will SNAP, they'll do something stupid and attack others, giving these people the right to own automatic weapons is so ridiculous it isn't funny.
Here in Canada, following firearm controls, the murder rate went down quickly. You can still have access to rifles, but you must be licensed, registered, and have proper storage in place, if they aren't locked up they will take your guns away, and that is how it should be. You don't have the right to be irresponsible with a weapon. My personal feelings is that people are given far too much credit for their intelligence, some people might be brilliant but for the most part the rest just waddle through life acting impulsively to everything that happens. People that plan to murder others become serial killers, famous and studied, the rest are just nut jobs that have a right to murder others, apparently.
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Post by Yuusuke on Dec 28, 2012 15:41:06 GMT
... That's why British police don't carry guns, and why most criminals in the UK don't either. Because armed robbery carries a ridiculously high sentence compared to straight up robbery, or even robbery with violence. It's just not worth it. ... Two small items that might be of assistance, Cheryl: Most British patrol officers do not carry guns. However, the substantial number of Armed Police most certainly do, and most every patrol car (in London Metro, at least) has a fully automatic submachine gun stowed at ready. Since the handgun ban in the UK, murder by handgun rates have increased 89%. Other than that, carry on. Hope that helps.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Dec 28, 2012 15:59:24 GMT
Is that a typo?
Increased?
If that's not a typo, then wow....
Looks like gun control really worked out well for the UK, eh?
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Post by Yuusuke on Dec 28, 2012 16:02:28 GMT
... and while people still break and go to attack others, the outcome is not headline news. When they pick up a knife to attack others someone just smacks them down and it stops there, maybe it results in a murder, maybe two, maybe its big local news, but they aren't continuously setting ground breaking new records for tragedies. ... Do we see criminals running havoc with military grade weapons with citizens defenseless in other first world countries? Of course not. ... automatic weapons ... Here in Canada, following firearm controls, the murder rate went down quickly. Some help here, if I may, AA0: Recently in China: knife-armed assailant, ~20 dead. Not quite so recently here in Japan (2010?): knife-armed assailant in the middle of Akihabara (Toukyou's trendy electronics shopping district) killed 7. Only a coincidental police presence (all armed; all shooting at him) stopped him. re: havok with "military grade weapons" (also see below) ~ Norway and Germany both come to mind immediately. re: automatic weapons ~ virtually no crimes are committed by the very few legal owners of automatic weapons (FFL Class 3 holders). I suspect you meant semi-automatic or autoloading weapons. They are capable of some volume of fire, so your point may be valid in some cases (Colorado Theater Attack) but by far the greatest part of mortality in mass casualty firearms crimes happens when the shooter is uncontested and has time to individually murder each victim (Sandy Hook being only the latest). re: Canada murder rate after firearms control ~ that would be some rather old number, being that as far back as 1980~83 when I was regularly entering Canada, handguns were completely banned. As far as recent numbers, the only major nation with a clear reduction of violent crime and of firearms murder in the last decade is the USA and that is usually attributed to the great increase in the number of States that allow citizens to carry concealed firearms after certification. Otherwise, same-same (carry on). Hope that helps.
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Post by Yuusuke on Dec 28, 2012 16:03:23 GMT
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Post by tantalyr on Dec 28, 2012 17:00:47 GMT
A few more facts and thoughts about Newtown and gun control . . . . According to the comprehensive data on guns and gun-related deaths here, although the USA far and away leads all other countries in gun ownership at 88 per 100 citizens, it ranks only 28th in the world in gun-related homicides. Carribean, Central and South American nations far outstrip the US in that category. It would thus appear that percentage of gun ownership bears a very poor relationship to whether or not gun ownership actually increases the incidence of gun-related homicides. In its landmark gun control decisions viz Washington, D.C. and Chicago in the past four years, the US Supreme Court affirmed the Second Amendment's fundamental guarantee that individual citizens have the right to own and possess firearms. But that constitutional right, like all others, is subject to reasonable restrictions by the federal, state and local governments. And though I fully support the Second Amendment's individual guarantees, I believe that reinstituting a ban on the sale and ownership of fully automatic weapons is just such a reasonable restriction. I can think of no valid reason for any civilian to own one. No hunter would actually hunt with one. And contrary to Xaeris' view, neither I nor any of the gun owners I have spoken to in the past few weeks would ever reach for an automatic weapon in the case of a home burglary when he/she has a shotgun handy. Shotguns, not automatic weapons, are considered by just about every police office and gun owner I've ever known as the best home defense weapons. Going back to my inquiry in my original post as to why some folks decide to take out the rest of the world when they snap, and not just the immediate object of their rage, a couple more facts: 1) The number of incidents of mass murder (defined as four or more victims in a relatively short time in the same location) has risen dramatically since 1980, with 1 or 2 such incidents per decade prior to 1980, 9 incidents during the '80s, 11 during the '90s, and 27 since 2000 (counting Aurora and Newtown). See article in Psychology Today.2) Almost all of the mass murderers in the US have been white (though the Virginia Tech shooter was Korean), male and between the ages of 18 and 30, and most have committed suicide upon completion of their rampage (Loughner and Holmes were very rare exceptions). See Wikipedia's List of Rampage Killers. So what has changed in America since 1980 that might factor into this increase in mass murders by relatively young, white males? Some hypotheses . . . . 1) As Frith aptly noted, we are now (due to lack of funding) increasingly dumping the mentally ill out of institutions and back into their families, who are ill-equipped and certainly untrained to deal with them effectively. 2) Since 1980 the mass media (TV shows, movies and news reporting) has increasingly cultivated a culture desensitized to graphic violence (and violent video games may share some of the blame here). Back when I was growing up, when someone was shot in a TV show or movie, he/she simply clutched his/her chest and fell over--maybe you might see a blood stain on the clothing. And the news never showed anyone actually being killed. Nowadays, of course, TV shows, movies and even the news have no compunction about showing blood spurting everywhere and what people really look like when they are violently slaughtered. You show folks violence often enough and they simply become numb to it. They no longer perceive the shock and horror which would otherwise be the instinctive human reaction to graphic violence. 3) We have become an increasingly "desocialized" America. We no longer interact personally with other individuals nearly as much as we used to--particularly those born and raised since 1980. We don't call each other on the telephone--we text. We get college degrees entirely online, with no real personal interaction with other students or professors. We vent our frustrations (and express our sorrows and joys) not to our personal friends, but on Facebook and Twitter and Internet forums. This "Age of Information" has brought with it a heavy cost--communication has indeed become much easier, but at the cost of personal human interaction. And as we continue to limit personal interaction, we increasingly lose empathy with fellow human beings. Without empathy, we cannot feel (or even imagine) the pain our fellow travellers must endure. Killing them then elicits no feeling of guilt or other emotions. Just some more random thoughts. Carry on.
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Post by AA0 on Dec 28, 2012 18:01:03 GMT
I don't think you can compare most South American countries to other countries when it comes to violence. Many of these countries are still dealing with rebel groups and organized crimes.
Canadian gun control laws have progressed further since the 80s, crime rates did decrease after the last round of tightening regulations. They got a lot more strict about registration, training and storage, storage being a huge one. I know people with registered weapons that have had someone drop by to inspect their storage methods.
20 dead from someone with a knife? There may be some other severe society issues there if people can't work together to stop something so basic.
and yes, automatic/automated. When someone who impulsively took a weapon, who isn't trained, stops to reload a hunting rifle when shooting up a movie theatre how much more damage is going to be done? People can't adapt to our lifestyle changes fast enough, shit is going to happen, minimizing damage seems more prudent than foolishly holding onto ideals you can eliminate, when you really can't.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Dec 29, 2012 1:10:06 GMT
Try asking the people aboard the 9/11 jets that question, of how a few men armed with box-cutters managed to take over a whole jet liner so that they could use them as flying weapons.
Well, the jets not including the one that went down in Pennsylvania, that is. Apparently, the people aboard THAT one did fight back and managed to cause the plane to crash land into a field instead of something a lot worse.
And when everybody around you is scared and is not trained in how to fight... someone who is skilled and holding a combat knife can do a lot of damage before he is taken down. Especially when it comes to the helpless, skinny ladies and their children.
BUT, what if there had been someone there with a concealed weapon and the training to use one? That guy wouldn't have lasted anywhere near as long as he did.
If Assault Rifles couldn't be obtained or used, if someone really wanted to kill a theatre full of people, you know what he'd do?
He'd make a home-made pipe bomb, light it, chuck it in there and BOOM.
You don't need automatic, semiautomatic, or assault-type weapons to kill lots of people. Even a simple 12-ga pump shotgun could easily kill 30+ people before they were able to get out of the theatre before they knew what was going on. You could probably kill 6-8 people with the first 5 shots, and slip a few more shells into the gun, kill several more, rinse repeat while the people panic and try to scramble out the doors, especially if you were blocking one of the two exits out of your average theatre room.
And if anybody tried to fight back, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to make a makeshift bayonet by strapping/taping/whatever a knife or two on the end of the gun to turn it into a spear to fend off anybody trying to tackle or take you down. And/or carry a pistol for a backup.
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Post by lycaunoss on Dec 29, 2012 22:34:50 GMT
AA0 you need to do a little research on the lethality of knives. I suspect you will also find that a large percentage of killers will have the knife as their weapon of choice in spite of the media spectacles we are seeing recently. The gun itself is not the weapon of mass muder it's the individual using the gun that makes it so. A weapon of mass murder as you put it just happens to be whatever weapon the mass murderer got his hands on and like Tant suggested earlier they would simply have used a different method if they could not obtain a firearm.
Having said that I think it actually highlights part of the gun control helping. Knives are probably the weapon of choice of killers because they are easy to get, cheap, totally unregulated, largely untraceable. If guns were say as available as knives perhaps they would be the choice for serial killers?
There's no way it can be an easy solution. Screaming gun control to me is a cop out. Everyones spending a lot of time looking for something to blame when they should be looking for the problem.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Dec 30, 2012 0:09:42 GMT
Guns are very NOISY. Unlike what Hollywood would tell you, suppressors (aka "silencers") do not reduce a gun blast to a "pffft" sound, like a blowpipe.
Serial Killers who don't want to get caught don't use guns very often, because...
1). Many serial killers like to get up close and personal to their victims (either to rape them, to torture them, or to SEE them die close up)
2). Knives are a lot quieter.
3). Knives are a lot harder to trace (ballistics and the like can prove what gun shot what bullet)
4). If you're going to be up in his face, just stab him with a knife rather than trying to shoot someone less than 2 feet away with a gun.
That's why you see a lot of serial killers using things other than guns. And yes, true, knives are easier to get than guns. That much is true too. But there's more to it than just that.
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Post by FrithRae on Dec 30, 2012 4:36:20 GMT
Before we get off track - we're not talking about Serial Killers.
Mass Murderers; gun violence. Not Serial Killers.
There are huge differences bewtween them, personalities and criminal profiles included.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2012 11:27:52 GMT
Tant has some good hypotheses there and each of them seems valid, but #3 in particular stands out for me. Even 10 years ago the phone was still a viable source of voice calls. Nowadays I mostly get texts or emails, even from people I would have gotten voice calls from a decade ago. Its easy to fall into the trap and to have little contact of the real sort.
Its a big reason why I left my job in video games (and my basement since I worked remotely) and got a job at a local company. Human contact and interaction.
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Post by lycaunoss on Dec 30, 2012 14:15:43 GMT
Before we get off track - we're not talking about Serial Killers. Mass Murderers; gun violence. Not Serial Killers. There are huge differences bewtween them, personalities and criminal profiles included. A Serial killer is defined as someone who kills 4+ people I believe. So explain to me how this is different and how it would be different if a gun was not the weapon used? The problem is the disturbed individual not the tool he chooses to carry out the deed. My point being that the gun is the trivial part and the individual is the important one.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2012 18:03:14 GMT
I think there is usually a time element taken into account as well.
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Post by Pharcellus on Dec 31, 2012 0:11:42 GMT
2) Since 1980 the mass media (TV shows, movies and news reporting) has increasingly cultivated a culture desensitized to graphic violence (and violent video games may share some of the blame here). Back when I was growing up, when someone was shot in a TV show or movie, he/she simply clutched his/her chest and fell over--maybe you might see a blood stain on the clothing. And the news never showed anyone actually being killed. Nowadays, of course, TV shows, movies and even the news have no compunction about showing blood spurting everywhere and what people really look like when they are violently slaughtered. You show folks violence often enough and they simply become numb to it. They no longer perceive the shock and horror which would otherwise be the instinctive human reaction to graphic violence. I don't buy into the notion that there is any causal link between media violence and real violence. There is a large body of research on this, and VERY scant amounts of it indicate any causal link. In several studies, in fact, it turns out the opposite is true -- that people predisposed to violence gravitate towards more violent media. I also don't buy the desensitization argument. If you have been exposed to real violent or extreme situations, you know just how massively and viscerally different real violence is. There are friends I know who are very much into violent video games, movies, etc who have passed out at the sight of someone (or themselves, even) actually bleeding profusely from serious (but not life-threatening) wounds. It is fantasy, and (most) people almost instinctively understand/recognize the difference between fantasy and reality. I think this is a core problem for many things (like our broken politico-economic system), not just gun violence, but with a caveat: I think it is still mainly a problem with people who are otherwise psychologically predisposed to antisocial behavior. That said, I think that extreme versions of this in the early developmental phase of children can lead to such predispositions. Humans have evolved to be social, and there is ample research to show that depriving children of this necessary social interaction at that developmental phase does make it more likely for them to engage in antisocial behavior, even to the point of psychosis. Regarding the statistical comparison to other countries, I think you have to be very careful picking data points to compare in the proper context. For example, I don't think that comparing, say, Somalia to the US makes for a very meaningful comparison.
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