School shooting: In which N. America becomes a police state.

[God Emperor Akhenaton]

Wendigo

God Emperor Akhenaton

I suggest a trip to mogashu. Aka, the most dangerous city in the world. Maybe if you don't get killed, you you could get sold as a fancy white sex slave.

If you can't get "Mogadishu," you could have gone with "Somalia."

I really need to stop using talk to text then.

[Mimetic Hybrid]

Ban

Mimetic Hybrid

Are you trying to make a point that fewer/tighter gun laws will prevent an individual - with an agenda to kill people - from committing that act?

No, my point is that you are twisting a conversation about gun violence into one about mental illness. The question isn't about mental illness. It's about gun violence, and specifically spree shootings. But, logically, yes, a high level of control over firearms, an absolute ban on civilian ownership, coupled with adequate border control to prevent illegal importation, would probably prevent the majority of these sort of shootings. Anyone who tries that "only outlaws will have guns" bit is just in ******** denial.

How am I twisting the conversation into one about mental illness when the recent mass shootings have clearly stated that the individual was mentally ill to begin with and not adequately tending towards? This wasn't an individual with just a wild hair in their crack, this was a mentally unstable individual that was left unchecked.

Mimetic Hybrid

Left unchecked, illegal weapons would still have been obtained and used.

Prove it.
Drugs as an example, while illegal is easily obtained.

[Chibi Halo]

I'm going to leave you guys with that I said last night in another thread at around one in the morning my time.



Quote:

What gets me though is that stuff like this gets glossed over until it happens on a large scale like this. Try living in the shadows of Chicago and turning on the local news every Monday morning to hear the weekend wrap up of who was shot next. It hasn't been just one person every few weeks but rather weekend after weekend. As of October 30, 2012 at 7:30am (that's the date and time of the latest article with the accurate numbers) the number of homicides in Chicago this year is 436. This violence gets glossed over and occasionally mentioned and talked about and then forgotten. I'm not bitter Newtown is getting all the attention right now but they shouldn't be the only ones not when every single weekend in Chicago someone is being shot in senseless gun violence. I know gun violence happens every day but when you have whole neighborhoods losing so many of their young people and so many of their valued community members and an entire month being called the deadliest of the year in one city so far, something needs to be done.

Not all gun violence is done by insane people who fell through the cracks like recent mass incidents like this. It's young men who live in urban areas that don't have the opportunities available to them to get away from the social situations that come with living where they do. They grow up believing that all young men where they live join gangs, sell drugs, and are handed handguns at an early age. They grow up thinking that since they will more than likely never go to college then they have no choice but to become a part of the street gangs and the street violence. That's why Pastor Corey Brooks sat on a roof. That's why he walked across the country. That's why he sat in a tent all weekend recently. He believes a community center for the most at risk area of Chicago where he preaches will help keep these young men from committing these acts of senseless violence because it will provide them and the people of these neighborhoods a positive place to turn their lives around and break away from the gang influences. He's officiated too many funerals of these young victims, funerals where more gun violence has taken place outside their doors.

It's officially the weekend in Chicago and forty-six minutes ago Pastor Corey Brooks left the following on his Twitter feed, "CoreyBBrooks 6 people shot tonight, 4 of them teens. 14, 15, 16, 16. #chicago". Yep, it's another normal gun homicide weekend in Chicago. Welcome to my neck of the woods.



In a lot of these incidences it's not the gun laws, which yes do need to be looked at again, and the easy access to the ammunition that need to be looked at but the culture in which these young people grow up in. When it happens in suburban areas like this recent incident people instantly look to make excuses and blame mental issues and gloss over the real issues that Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and other larger cities are dealing with. Now I know these two situations aren't the same but the following illustrates my overall points. Michael Vick when arrested for dog fighting said that he grew up in a culture where that was seen as the normal way of life. It's a culture where Uncle Randy owns dogs for the dog rings, Easy Eddie down the street keeps dog ring dogs, and guys you look up to take part in and raise dogs for dog fighting. Kids living in neighborhoods and cultures like that are going to believe that it's perfectly fine for that type of thing to exist and take part in.

That's the same thing for urban gun violence. These young people are looking up to the gang bangers who own guns similar to the ones used yesterday and are having them romanticized by the older men in their communities. What needs to change is how our society views these kinds of guns in some of the poorest neighborhoods in our largest urban areas. They need to stop being seen as a tool to get people out of their social and economic situations and as what they really are something no individual without proper police or military training should even see in the physical world. The only way the young people in urban areas should see these weapons is through a photograph.

(I apologize for the long response but it has to be said and added to the conversation because if we don't change how we view guns we won't change how we keep the wrong guns out of the hands of people who want to own guns [ie competition shooters, rifle hunters, ranchers, and responsible collectors of historical replicas])

[Wendigo]

Lanza grew up in an isolated and affluent neighborhood in Connecticut. Aside from the culture among avid gun-owners like his mother, there isn't much of a cultural argument. He for sure did not grow up looking up to local gang-bangers and dealers.

The point that there are other murders equally worth paying attention to is valid, but it's a different deal.

[Ban]

Mimetic Hybrid

How am I twisting the conversation into one about mental illness when the recent mass shootings have clearly stated that the individual was mentally ill to begin with and not adequately tending towards? This wasn't an individual with just a wild hair in their crack, this was a mentally unstable individual that was left unchecked.

Define "recent." In the last few years, there have been plenty of mass shootings. I gave two that did not fit your pattern of "unchecked" mental illness. Nor can you say there was any substantive indication of mental illness in Michael McLendon's case, or Binh Thai Luc's, or Scott Evans Dekraai's, or Shareef Allman's. Moreover, even those that did show signs of mental illness were not necessarily "unchecked." Steven Kazmierczak was on medication, seeing a psychiatrist, and had no apparent violent tendencies.

So your argument fails as far as re-framing this to be about mental illness. This is about gun violence. The only common thread is the guns.

Mimetic Hybrid

Drugs as an example, while illegal is easily obtained.

Drugs can be manufactured locally, with relatively little skill, and can also be transported in higher quantities across borders, just as a basic weight to profit ratio. Also, there's a large ready market for drugs, as a basic consumable, as many of them are addictive. So, initial investment costs, legal or illegal, are practically zero for drugs.

Guns, however, are durable goods, are harder to transport in quantity, and generally are more expensive to either manufacture or obtain on a per unit basis. Hence, the price tends to become prohibitive, especially if you smuggle to first world nations. Hence, a firearm sold for, oh, maybe $500 to $800 here might run as much as $15,000 if sold in Australia.

In other words, apples and oranges. The amount of criminals with firearms could be drastically reduced if obtaining one is as expensive as purchasing a new car.

[Wendigo]

Ban

Steven Kazmierczak was on medication, seeing a psychiatrist, and had no apparent violent tendencies.

And that may have been part of the problem. He had been on Xanax, Ambien and Prozac, and had recently discontinued use of Prozac on his own. It made him "feel like a zombie," according to his girlfriend.

I happened to know a guy who had been discontinuing one antidepressant medication to start another, and in the interim jumped off a bridge over traffic. Psychiatry can help, but it's not always a silver bullet, either.

[Ban]

Wendigo

I happened to know a guy who had been discontinuing one antidepressant medication to start another, and in the interim jumped off a bridge over traffic. Psychiatry can help, but it's not always a silver bullet, either.

Mm. I'm personally fully in favor of a more robust psychiatric health system, up to and including an involuntary commitment standard far less rigid than "a danger to yourself or others." However, it seems kind of ridiculous to lump that discussion, which is absolutely about abridging the rights of the mentally ill, into a discussion about abridging the rights of gun owners, especially without any hint of goddamn irony.

[Mimetic Hybrid]

Again, besides the obvious mental disorder what sane-sound mind and body person would commit such acts? Equally, how would banishing guns prevent more deaths instead of saving? A spoon doesn't make a person fat. I can see your argument directs that this will be fewer and far between if the weapons are not easily accessible. Perhaps. A mentally unstable individual will still find ways to kill someone however, with actual criminals using weapons more often for knowledge of a disarmed populace emboldens. Thankfully, guns and the right for personal protection from our fellow man and government will never change.

[Ban]

Mimetic Hybrid

Again, besides the obvious mental disorder what sane-sound mind and body person would commit such acts?

People with an ideological motive, such as terrorists o anti-statists. People with a regular criminal motive, such as getting revenge, achieving some level of fame, or obtaining some simple goal, such killing people during a robbery.

Mimetic Hybrid

Equally, how would banishing guns prevent more deaths instead of saving?

Well, by drastically reducing the ease of killing another person. It's kind of common sense, if the issue is gun violence, which tends to be on an entirely different caliber than violence with knives or other less deadly weapons, less guns will equal less violence. While there is no strict one to one correlation between countries low murder rates and high levels of gun control, those countries that do have high level of gun control tend to have low murder rates on a per capita basis.

Mimetic Hybrid

A spoon doesn't make a person fat.

This is a dumb argument, an alteration of the "guns don't kill people" tired old slogan. Yes, the gun does kill people. That's the whole point of having a gun, so that you can effectively kill something. Whether it's an animal or a robber or whatever, that is the end purpose of having a tool that propels a chunk of lead at 400 meters per second into a living creature, to tear flesh, rupture organs, and shatter bone.

Mimetic Hybrid

A mentally unstable individual will still find ways to kill someone however, with actual criminals using weapons more often for knowledge of a disarmed populace emboldens.

This is also a dumb argument. The assumption that average criminals automatically have greater resources or connections to obtain firearms than the average citizen is the product of watching too many Hollywood movies. The vast majority of "actual" criminals are not getting their weapons through some black market or shady underground connections. They're getting through entirely legal means.

Mimetic Hybrid

Thankfully, guns and the right for personal protection from our fellow man and government will never change.

Seriously, now you're talking about the spectre of the government being like a bogeyman?

Do you have anything besides recycled NRA arguments with no facts to back them up?

I mean, seriously, I grew up with guns. I own a handgun. I'm pretty ambivalent to the notion of a large-scale ban on personal firearm ownership. But, even I know that your tired old crap doesn't amount to a coherent ******** argument. Do you have anything worth saying, or are you just going to continue being tedious?

[N3bu]

Ban

While there is no strict one to one correlation between countries low murder rates and high levels of gun control, those countries that do have high level of gun control tend to have low murder rates on a per capita basis.

I should point out that's likely not because of Gun Control. The reason they have gun control is likely the same reason they have a smaller murder rate, that is to say a different culture, one in which public safety isn't a scary bogey man (unless it's from homosexuals) and one in which people don't really care much about guns.

[N3bu]

In other news, on the same day in China, Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman.

[Ban]

N3bu

In other news, on the same day in China, Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman.

And no reported fatalities. Because knives are not as lethal as guns.

[Wendigo]

Ban

N3bu

In other news, on the same day in China, Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman.

And no reported fatalities. Because knives are not as lethal as guns.

I'd personally be a lot more concerned about such an event if I were a child or an elderly woman.

[Tadpole Jackson]

Ban

N3bu

In other news, on the same day in China, Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman.

And no reported fatalities. Because knives are not as lethal as guns.

If i were to stab you in the heart, or shoot you in the heart, you'd die.

Lethal is lethal, there are not degrees of lethality.

[Ban]

Tadpole Jackson

Ban

N3bu

In other news, on the same day in China, Min Yingjun stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman.

And no reported fatalities. Because knives are not as lethal as guns.

If i were to stab you in the heart, or shoot you in the heart, you'd die.

Lethal is lethal, there are not degrees of lethality.

If you fed me enough bacon, I'd also die a delicious, bacon-filled death; that doesn't make bacon as lethal guns or knives.

Your argument is dumb. Of course there are degrees of lethality. Some things kill you faster. Some things kill you easier. You don't see someone trying to take down big game with a ******** pocket knife, because guns are more effective killing tools. They are more lethal, more capable of causing death, more damaging and destructive to living bodies. Hence, the point about the guy who stabbed a bunch of children in China failed to kill any of them, whereas the guy with the high powered rifle and two handguns killed a bunch.