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Post by errolmartyn on Dec 18, 2012 21:30:35 GMT 12
Quote: "Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newtown school, most of the victims might still be alive," wrote Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt. Unquote.
Only 'might', then? Clearly a Pratt by name and in other ways as well . . .
Errol
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 18, 2012 21:40:16 GMT 12
I can recall a similar idiot putting out a press release after the massacre in the movie theatre in Colorado, claiming that if a large number of cinema-goers were armed with firearms, the massacre wouldn't have happened because someone would have shot the gunman.
I can just picture it....the perpetrator pulls out his firearm in a darkened cinema and starts shooting. Heaps of other cinema patrons pull out their guns and start shooting back at who they think is the perpetrator, except that now there a huge number of muzzle-flashes in the darkened cinema to aim at. The result would be that instead of a dozen or so dead victims, the death toll could reach a hundred or more from numerous guns in different places around the cinema.
That is the ultimate idiocy of the gun-nuts' advocacy for everybody to be armed to guard against gunmen.
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Post by lumpy on Dec 18, 2012 22:03:40 GMT 12
Quote: "Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newtown school, most of the victims might still be alive," wrote Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt. Unquote. Only 'might', then? Clearly a Pratt by name and in other ways as well . . . Errol Yep , seems to a mentality of " lets all have guns " ! But why is that so much different from " let no one have guns " ? ( aside from all the unessary killing ) ? Seems to be a lot of comments from the pro gun lobby that go like " this wouldnt have happened if I was there with my gun " - but reality is it just becomes " my gun is bigger than your gun " ( scary stuff ) !
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Post by Peter Lewis on Dec 18, 2012 23:01:04 GMT 12
As the fellow at the Aardvark forums says:
Arming the general populous might reduce the number of people killed in mass-shootings like this but I'm pretty sure that the number of wrongful or accidental killings would far outweigh the total of of lives otherwise saved. For example...
You hear shots from down the hall, you grab your gun, you see a workmate walking down the hall with a gun in his hand -- he sees you and turns to face you. Do you:
a) say "gidday, what's all the noise" -- on the assumption that he's not the offender -- and risk being shot.
b) shoot first and ask your questions later -- perhaps only to find out that he's just doing what you're doing and trying to find the real shooter.
I suspect many folk would opt for (b) and we'd see even more people killed by friendly fire than by real murderers.
The only real solution is a movement towards a situation where there is a strong social stigma against carrying - or even owning - a firearm. A similar exercise to how we made smoking socially unacceptable.
However, this process, once started, takes many years to complete.
In a society such as the US, where guns are a part of everyday life, it may take 50 years or more to work.
As such, it is not a political option as it does not promise a quick fix. It is, however, the only solution that will actually work.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 19, 2012 9:49:36 GMT 12
From the Los Angeles Times....Not all Americans mourn; some emulate the Newtown killerBy DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Tuesday, December 18, 2012WHILE MOST Americans spent the weekend in shock and mourning following the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., at least a few of our fellow citizens were thinking that killing school kids is a cool idea.
On Sunday, Los Angeles police arrested 24-year-old Kyle Bangayan at his parents’ house in East Hollywood. Bangayan had posted a Facebook message in which he threatened to shoot children at several elementary schools. Police found nine guns in the home.
Also Sunday, far from the tough streets of L.A. in the rural town of Sedro-Wooley, Washington, police arrested 19-year-old Korry Martinson. After praising the Newtown shooter and blaming the government for incidents of mass slaughter, Martinson wrote on his Facebook page, “If this causes our gun laws to be taken away, to the point as to where I cannot own a gun, I will personally get my sawed off double barreled shotgun and my AK-47 and go shoot up every school within a 100 mile radius of my current location.”
Police in Sedro-Wooley did not find any guns in Martinson’s possession, but on Friday, the same day as the shooting in Newtown, police in Cedar Lake, Indiana, collected 47 guns at the home of a 60-year-old man, Von Meyer, who they say had threatened to kill his wife and shoot up the elementary school located just 1,000 feet from his home.
Also on Friday in Enid, Oklahoma, police investigated threats of a shooting at an upcoming assembly at the local high school. Meanwhile, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, police arrested 18-year-old Sammy Chavez for trying to enlist his friends in a plot to lure students into the school auditorium and shoot them.
In Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, a man walked into a hospital and started shooting. A police officer and two hospital workers were wounded before police killed the gunman.
Then, on Sunday, 19-year-old Shawn Lenz of Columbia, Tennessee, posted this message on Facebook:
“feel like goin on a rampage, kinda like the school shooting were that one guy killed some teachers and a bunch of students : D”
When Maury County police arrested Lenz, they found a shotgun, shotgun shells, a rifle and a machete in his possession. On his Facebook page, 19 people have “liked” his comment and 831 others have left comments of their own, most in the aftermath of his arrest. Lenz’s Facebook posts give the sense he is not a likely murderer, just an unthinking kid talking trash.
It is a little harder to figure out what Marcos Gurrola, a 42-year-old Garden Grove man, had in mind on Saturday when police say he went to the Fashion Island shopping mall in Newport Beach and shot off more than 50 rounds in the parking lot. Christmas shoppers panicked, stores were locked down and bike patrol officers took Gurrola into custody.
Apart from the ones who actually started shooting, it is anyone’s guess which of the men in these weekend incidents were serious about killing people and which are just fools who lack brains and empathy. But this quick sampling of news reports indicates there are way too many oddballs among us with violence on their minds and guns within reach.
Thankfully, they are outnumbered by people who have not numbed their feelings of compassion and humanity. Among that number was Victoria Soto. Vicki was a dark-haired 27-year-old who taught first grade at Sandy Hook Elementary. Friday morning, when the killer broke into the school and started shooting, she quickly hid all her students in the cabinets and closets in her classroom. When the dead-souled young man with an assault rifle walked into her room, Vicki told him the kids were in the gym. He killed her on the spot.
A long string of Facebook pages have been set up in Victoria Soto’s honor. It seems an odd thing, this new social media gathering place where, with just a few clicks, anyone can jump from the messages of aspiring killers to memorials for those who have been taken from us by a killer’s gun.www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-emulate-killer-20121217,0,5881004.story
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Post by phil on Dec 19, 2012 10:42:10 GMT 12
We are fortunate that apart from a couple of exceptions (MSSA law and PCP airgun law) NZs Firearms laws and culture is generally sensible and reasonable. Providing a balance between law abiding peoples ability to own weapons if they choose, and the need to protect the public from people who really shouldn't have firearms.
The USAs obsession with firearms, and the ridiculous assertions of the pro-gun loby that giving everyone a gun would somehow stop mass shootings, versus the UKs 'Ban Everything' approach, neither of which are policies that have worked to provide a safe firearm culture in either society.
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Post by phil on Dec 19, 2012 10:46:26 GMT 12
Kentucky, 12/15/2014: Completely OT here... but... interesting picture that. Very little context of course, just being one image of a fire fight, but I'm not sure that the people who sited this position did a very flash job. Nothing like building a nice high wall of sandbags to hide behind, only to have your enemy pour enfilading fire into your position, from the high ground behind.
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Post by mumbles on Dec 19, 2012 11:20:03 GMT 12
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Post by bell407 on Dec 19, 2012 11:38:35 GMT 12
Kentucky, 12/15/2014: Completely OT here... but... interesting picture that. Very little context of course, just being one image of a fire fight, but I'm not sure that the people who sited this position did a very flash job. Nothing like building a nice high wall of sandbags to hide behind, only to have your enemy pour enfilading fire into your position, from the high ground behind. Oh crap, we're on the wrong side of the wall!!
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 19, 2012 18:25:55 GMT 12
Death to all gunsBy Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 3:55PM - Tuesday, December 18, 2012You wish!IS it time? Can we just say it outright? Let’s try it:
Guns are, socially and ethically, devastating. Worthless. They add nothing of positive, intrinsic value to a culture, a people, a country. They only diminish, destroy, display an awesome sense of malformed ego and disastrously warped humanity.
Too much? Too far? Not really. I’m sure you already sense that all those cartoonish action movies, thuggish hip-hop songs, clunky old westerns, ultra-violent video games and the racks of high-caliber weaponry over at Cabela sporting goods and the local gun show — all of which we’ve been led to believe are so essential to our national identity — none of them offer anything of deep worth to the culture; no authentic masculinity, no real patriotism, no genuine power or strength or class. Heart, soul or integrity? Don’t be absurd.
It’s all a vulgar illusion, Hollywood glitter-bombing, manufactured mythology in service of shameless capitalism and a false, bloody American ideology that’s never served us well and only made us the ugly, violence-drunk stepchild of the civilized world. Don’t you already know?
Here is the truth: Guns are pain. Guns are impotence masquerading as virility, shame masquerading as valor, the devil disguised as an outrageously misinterpreted chunk of the Constitution that was never meant to suffer what the fat lords of the gun lobbies have made it suffer.
Do you wish to speak of false gods? Things virulently anti-Christian? The antithesis of everything a peaceful, advanced country is ideally supposed to be founded on? Because guns are all that and more. Jesus would be disgusted.
Perhaps you think guns and the current cluster of feeble laws on the books are generally fine, and it’s the mental health industry that needs the help? Perhaps you think Sandy Hook, Aurora, Colorado, Virginia Tech, et al could be better prevented by improved treatment for the mentally ill?
Maybe. But a culture of gun fanaticism feeds insanity. Put the other way: insanity loves guns. They are interlinked and inextricable. Too-easy access to guns is a huge part of the problem, but even bigger is the gun fetishism so brutally interwoven into our society and popular culture, from childhood on up, that provides the hateful lie that guns aren’t just macho and all-American, they’re downright required for ensuring your sadism is remembered forever.
Sandy Hook isn’t just about mental illness. It’s about mental illness shot through with endless images of ultra-violence and 300 million guns currently in American hands. It’s about insanity allowed to multiply its destructive powers by a factor of 61 mass murders in the past 30 years. It’s about gun-loving survivalist mothers of mentally ill kids stockpiling weapons for herself, teaching her kids to shoot, preparing for society’s collapse, all surely fed by right-wing fearmongers and idiots.
Do not misunderstand. I’m well acquainted with the sporting thrill. I know the supposed nobility and beauty to be found in ethical and honest hunting (which I believe still exists, despite the canned hunts and the repulsive Texas exotic game preserves). I know the outright fun to be had shooting beautifully made, powerful weaponry at paper targets, clay pigeons, bottles and beer cans out in the woods. I get it.
Do you know what else is fun? Piloting tanks into buildings. Shooting meth. Driving my car 150 MPH through busy streets, drunk. Throwing bowling balls off of skyscrapers and watching them demolish parked cars 300 feet below. Smashing windows with metal bats. Joining a Venezuelan rebel militia.
This does not mean we should indulge in them, or that they deserve a prized place in society. This does not mean the tiny adrenaline rush afforded by gun sports is worth the overall cost, or is in some way unique or precious, and therefore must be defended by men so terrified of losing their thin hold on masculinity that they must strap firearms to their giant bellies to go to Wal-Mart, just in case the terrorists want to steal their ‘97 Corolla.
Shall we ask the NRA and the gun lobby to prove it? If they have any evidence that guns are the slightest bit helpful or necessary to human development, progress, industry, spiritual development, love, family? Has any culture in the history of the civilized world ever evolved toward more munitions and antipathy, and flourished, healthy, calm and full of love?
Of course not. There is no single argument for guns that holds up, that makes any sense whatsoever, that cannot easily be disproven by fact, ancient spiritual wisdom, or common sense.
Guns do not protect more than they destroy. They do not save more lives than they kill. They do not safeguard more families than they devastate. They do not add security more than they add fear, suspicion, antagonism and hate. As has been pointed out again and again: Guns, by there very existence, insist on their own use. And their use is, singularly and without reservation, death.
So let us fantasize. Let us leave the talk of “reasonable” gun control legislation that no one really believes will come to pass to the wan politicos and scowling talking heads, and bequeath only a floating hypothetical question to the right-wing senators, NRA members and gun lobbyists right now whining about all the anger and sadness being aimed at them by a mournful nation: If one of those kids at Sandy Hook Elementary had been your kid, would you change your mind? Your heart? Your worldview?
Let us instead propose a pure and wild fantasy that has little chance of existing in our lifetime, but is all sorts of beautiful to imagine nonetheless. It goes like this:
All guns in the United States are banned outright tomorrow. Through some marvel of cultural apocalypse and social cataclysm, a new law passes and suddenly all civilian-owned firearms are forbidden forevermore. Can you imagine? Do you know what would happen next?
Nothing. Nothing would happen, save for huge torrents of panic and gun hoarding (particularly in the petrified, undereducated South), spurts of violence, a massive surge in black market sales, an insane scramble to arm up because surely the liberal zombies are coming.
There are, after all, 300 million registered guns in America, and countless more unregistered. There are stockpiles a mile high, warehouses and bunkers and shops full of death. The culture is so saturated with gun porn, it would be many years before it eased. Bottom line: An outright gun ban would have no notable effect on gun violence whatsoever, and might even serve to briefly exacerbate crime.
At first.
But then, a surefire miracle. As manufacturing halted, as the black markets slowly dried up, as availability diminished, as advertising vanished, as the virus of easy-access weaponry began to pass through the national bloodstream, why, the entire culture would shift, whole and true.
It would be nothing short of astonishing. In a short generation or two, guns and the bleak fantasy they invoke would devolve into a strange and sickly memory, a dark folklore, like looking back on the Red Scare or cigarette ads or slavery.
Gun deaths would plummet. Shooting sprees would nearly vanish. The national mood would brighten. In just a few short decades — a blink of an eye, in the long view — guns would all but disappear from the national consciousness.
And then? A weird sense of disbelief, a warped nostalgia: Was that really us? Did we really fetishize deadly weaponry so appallingly, so disastrously? Were some horribly lost Americans actually calling for teachers to carry guns into elementary schools? How many kids had to die before we finally woke up? What the hell took us so long?• on Twitter and Facebook.blog.sfgate.com/morford/2012/12/18/death-to-all-guns
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Post by lesterpk on Dec 19, 2012 20:29:26 GMT 12
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 19, 2012 20:32:10 GMT 12
Or more people are liable to get shot as everyone carrying a gun panics and opens up on who they think is the original perpetrator.
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Dec 19, 2012 20:46:16 GMT 12
from The Economist....The gun control that works: no gunsBy LEXINGTON | 4:56AM - Saturday, December 15, 2012I HESITATE to offer thoughts about the school shooting in Connecticut that has seen 20 children and seven adults murdered and the gunman also dead. Your correspondent has been in the rural Midwest researching a column and heard the news on the car radio. Along with a sense of gloom, I found I mostly wanted to see my own, elementary-school-age children back home in Washington, DC, and had little desire to listen to pundits of any stripe: hence my reluctance to weigh in now.
To be fair, on NPR, the liberal columnist E.J. Dionne had sensible things to say about President Barack Obama’s statement on the killings, and how it was probably significant when the president seemed to suggest that he was minded to take action on gun control, and never mind the politics. On the same show the moderate conservative columnist, David Brooks, expressed sensible caution about assuming that stricter gun controls could have stopped this particular shooting.
Switching to red-blooded conservative talk radio, I found two hosts offering a “move along, nothing to see here” defence of the status quo. One suggested that listeners should not torment themselves trying to understand “craziness”, though it would, the pair agreed, be understandable if some parents were tempted to remove their children from public education and homeschool them.
To that debate, all I can offer is the perspective of someone who has lived and worked in different corners of the world, with different gun laws.
Here is my small thought. It is quite possible, perhaps probable, that stricter gun laws of the sort that Mr Obama may or may not be planning, would not have stopped the horrible killings of this morning. But that is a separate question from whether it is a good idea to allow private individuals to own guns. And that, really, is what I think I understand by gun control. Once you have guns in circulation, in significant numbers, I suspect that specific controls on things like automatic weapons or large magazines can have only marginal effects. Once lots of other people have guns, it becomes rational for you to want your own too.
The first time that I was posted to Washington, DC some years ago, the capital and suburbs endured a frightening few days at the hands of a pair of snipers, who took to killing people at random from a shooting position they had established in the boot of a car. I remember meeting a couple of White House correspondents from American papers, and hearing one say: but the strange thing is that Maryland (where most of the killings were taking place) has really strict gun laws. And I remember thinking: from the British perspective, those aren’t strict gun laws. Strict laws involve having no guns.
After a couple of horrible mass shootings in Britain, handguns and automatic weapons have been effectively banned. It is possible to own shotguns, and rifles if you can demonstrate to the police that you have a good reason to own one, such as target shooting at a gun club, or deer stalking, say. The firearms-ownership rules are onerous, involving hours of paperwork. You must provide a referee who has to answer nosy questions about the applicant's mental state, home life (including family or domestic tensions) and their attitude towards guns. In addition to criminal-record checks, the police talk to applicants’ family doctors and ask about any histories of alcohol or drug abuse or personality disorders.
Vitally, it is also very hard to get hold of ammunition. Just before leaving Britain in the summer, I had lunch with a member of parliament whose constituency is plagued with gang violence and drug gangs. She told me of a shooting, and how it had not led to a death, because the gang had had to make its own bullets, which did not work well, and how this was very common, according to her local police commander. Even hardened criminals willing to pay for a handgun in Britain are often getting only an illegally modified starter’s pistol turned into a single-shot weapon.
And, to be crude, having few guns does mean that few people get shot. In 2008-2009, there were 39 fatal injuries from crimes involving firearms in England and Wales, with a population about one sixth the size of America’s. In America, there were 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008.
I would also say, to stick my neck out a bit further, that I find many of the arguments advanced for private gun ownership in America a bit unconvincing, and tinged with a blend of excessive self-confidence and faulty risk perception.
I am willing to believe that some householders, in some cases, have defended their families from attack because they have been armed. But I also imagine that lots of ordinary adults, if woken in the night by an armed intruder, lack the skill to wake, find their weapon, keep hold of their weapon, use it correctly and avoid shooting the wrong person. And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain—no guns in homes at all, or almost none—is on balance safer.
As for the National Rifle Association bumper stickers arguing that only an armed citizenry can prevent tyranny, I wonder if that isn’t a form of narcissism, involving the belief that lone, heroic individuals will have the ability to identify tyranny as it descends, recognise it for what it is, and fight back. There is also the small matter that I don’t think America is remotely close to becoming a tyranny, and to suggest that it is is both irrational and a bit offensive to people who actually do live under tyrannical rule.
Nor is it the case that the British are relaxed about being subjects of a monarch, or are less fussed about freedoms. A conservative law professor was recently quoted in the papers saying he did not want to live in a country where the police were armed and the citizens not. I fear in Britain, at least, native gun-distrust goes even deeper than that: the British don’t even like their police to be armed (though more of them are than in the past).
But here is the thing. The American gun debate takes place in America, not Britain or Japan. And banning all guns is not about to happen (and good luck collecting all 300m guns currently in circulation, should such a law be passed). It would also not be democratic. I personally dislike guns. I think the private ownership of guns is a tragic mistake. But a majority of Americans disagree with me, some of them very strongly. And at a certain point, when very large majorities disagree with you, a bit of deference is in order.
So in short I am not sure that tinkering with gun control will stop horrible massacres like today’s. And I am pretty sure that the sort of gun control that would work—banning all guns—is not going to happen. So I have a feeling that even a more courageous debate than has been heard for some time, with Mr Obama proposing gun-control laws that would have been unthinkable in his first term, will not change very much at all. Hence the gloom.www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2012/12/gun-control?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709
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Post by ngatimozart on Dec 19, 2012 21:04:25 GMT 12
What they don't state is what they base there statistics on. I was taught at university that you can prove anything with statistics. It's all about your data and sampling. So i would take that story's argument with a very large dose of salt.
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Post by bell407 on Dec 20, 2012 0:56:48 GMT 12
The Times reached out to local school officials to gauge their opinions on the suggestion. "I don't have a problem adding mystery to the equation," Huntsville Superintendent Casey Wardynski said Tuesday. A retired Army colonel who used to carry a gun himself, Wardynski indicated he wouldn't necessarily arm the teachers. It could be someone else in the school, like a school resource officer, to carry a weapon. SROs are sworn law enforcement officers assigned to the schools by the agency they work for. Guns are not necessarily his first choice, either. Wardynski said district security officials could be armed with a Taser or pepper spray, both non-lethal but effective ways to temporarily disable a person. The knowledge that there is someone armed in a school could be a powerful deterrent to a potential attacker, Wardynski said. "You have to make it more complex for the bad guy," Wardynski said. "What we have now is not very complex." The problem with the scenario of arming school officials, even with Tasers or pepper spray, is that it is illegal. School districts in Alabama cannot arm their security officials. The 1990 Federal Gun Free Schools Zone Act also makes it a felony for an unlicensed person to carry a gun into a school zone, defined as anywhere within 1,000 feet of a public, private or parochial school, excluding private property. blog.al.com/breaking/2012/12/should_teachers_be_armed_hunts.html#incart_m-rpt-2
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Post by phil on Dec 20, 2012 7:06:11 GMT 12
If you are going to have security officers in schools in the US, they should be armed. What is the point in having a guy with a badge and a uniform, and even a hat, but no gun?
It's like having a fire warden but no fire extinguishers.
All they can do is be one more person to shout 'run away'.
I don't think arming teachers is a good idea at all, security isn't their job, teaching is. Don't give a gun to someone for whom using it (or not using it) isn't their primary job, that will just introduce poorly (ie dangerously) handled firearms into the equation.
However, if your risk assessment has identified shootings as a threat, and providing an on site security officer (which seems common place in the US, however strange it seems to us) is part of your risk mitigation it makes no sense not to have them armed.
How many schools practice fire drills?
All of them.
How many practice shooting drills?
I bet hardly any.
In Colombine the teachers ushered students into the Library, which was a building with large glass windows. Like a fish bowl.
If there'd been a fire in the school that day, all the teachers would have known exactly what to do, because they had endlessly practiced their fire drills. No one learnt from that.
Again, if school shootings are identified as a threat (which clearly they are), then there should be 'shooting drills' where staff and students are taught the safest response and where to hide, and more importantly, where not to hide.
The talk of arming school security with tasers and pepper spray is fine if your threat is students with knives, but it's asking an unarmed civilian to confront a gunman, how reasonable is that?
All this talk of banning guns in the US is pie in the sky stuff. Maybe a change that could take 100 years to realise, if someone with sufficient political will could try and make it happen, and I doubt that will be the case. Millions of guns will simply go underground.
In the mean time all the hand wringers need to stop avoiding the issue and do something practical to protect schools, and unarmed security is not that something.
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Post by bell407 on Dec 20, 2012 10:19:28 GMT 12
I agree Phil, that a gun ban will not be the answer, how many illegal drugs are banned? I'm sure last time I checked murder and rape and assault were already illegal, as is the case with drink driving and reckless driving, yet all of these things still happen.
As for the people going on about a AR or assault rifle ban, according to the FBI, in 2011 323 murders were attributable to rifles, this includes all riles, not just assault or military styles. More people were killed with knives and fists than rifles. Banning rifles is not the solution, in the big picture!!
They need to work on their treatment of the mentally ill.
Having an armed person in the school, preferably in plane cloths is the best option, he does not become the first target because the killer does not identify him as security and as said above, the chance that there may be armed resistance at a school may dissuade a potential killer from attacking, you know, kind of like how these killers tend to stay away from attacking police stations. It ended quite badly for the last guy how tried that, he wounded one cop and then he was shot to pieces, funny how it ends that way when your victims can shoot back huh?
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Post by JDK on Dec 20, 2012 14:03:29 GMT 12
I'm shocked at the some appallingly poor analysis. Seems when people can carry a gun the offender is stopped quicker. Note the Examiner author says: "...within the civilian category 11 of the 17 shootings were stopped by unarmed civilians." He goes on to say that therefore, armed bystanders would do better. That is not evident with the data set, as it's a projection. Likewise you can conclude, as from from the Monash (Vic, Aus) shooting, quick action by people on the spot including those without guns will halt a mass shooting. It's a fact that unarmed bystanders can, and do stop rampages in the US, and elsewhere. Instead of arming people in schools, you could as credibly argue that schools should have fake police sirens to encourage suicidal shooters to top themselves, and stop shooting others earlier. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shootingNote the gunman was taken down by unarmed people and held for 30 minutes for the police to arrive (an appalling response time, by the way). The fixation on guns as anything other than a thing for killing people, rather than evaluating narrow issues (what works in situations) and wide issues (a civil society where guns are rare and disputes not 'resolved' with them). That's why the Examiner article is dubious; the author says: "It’s about property rights. A person has a natural right to own a hunk of iron in any damn shape they want, and they shouldn’t be criminalized until they use that hunk of iron to harm someone." No they don't have absolute rights over that of society. That's the big US problem, where "I want to", which should be greeted on occasion with 'Tough. No." but actually gets allowed and thus individuals disrupting everyone just because it pleases them. Shesh. What they don't state is what they base there statistics on. I was taught at university that you can prove anything with statistics. It's all about your data and sampling. So i would take that story's argument with a very large dose of salt. Read it again. Rightly, the author lays out his methodology, data set and sources. I'd hope your university went on to teach you that rather than making flat-earther generalisations about conclusions, you should show how the data may be interpreted differently, or how to arrive at a different conclusion by using the scientific method. Once you've checked as to the potential biases or partial possibilities of an author or source, you then evaluate the quality of their data and analysis. If doing it yourself, clearly you might start with a hypothesis, but in a scientific system, you test it with the data and analysis and publish that for critique or correction. Or you can dismiss all data on such an airy generalisation as 'lies damned lies and statistics' and keep smoking, wearing radium-dials and enjoy the lead in petrol - all chronic killers removed by statistical analysis. Again, if school shootings are identified as a threat (which clearly they are), then there should be 'shooting drills' where staff and students are taught the safest response and where to hide, and more importantly, where not to hide. That's an excellent suggestion - for the US. The talk of arming school security with tasers and pepper spray is fine if your threat is students with knives, but it's asking an unarmed civilian to confront a gunman, how reasonable is that? It's what almost all UK police were expected to do and did for many years, and generally it worked. Backup was valuable from armed officers, and in very special cases, armed officers were on duty for exceptional reasons. Thanks to this system (putting police without guns in harm's way) plus tight gun controls meant that there were a lot less deaths of police and citizens than would be the case in a more heavilly armed society. The fact also remains that you're still far more likely to die on the roads in the UK that in a shooting of any kind. Gun crime in the UK is still in the statistically insignificant risk arena, despite it's understandable high profile. As to the US' saturation with guns, and the bizarre views around them and government et al, I think rational solutions aren't likely, and any solution beats me. In the mean time all the hand wringers need to stop avoiding the issue and do something practical to protect schools, and unarmed security is not that something. Personally the best news out of this debacle is a recognition of better work in the mental health arena is needed. Having had my life disrupted by someone with a metal health problem, the state provision in that area is inadequate. Adding guns into that equation would have been horrific; but I chose not to live in the USA. I agree Phil, that a gun ban will not be the answer, how many illegal drugs are banned? All of them. That's why they're 'illegal'. However if you do a bit of reading about the ideas around decriminalising drugs, there's some interesting conclusions to draw about the criminalisation of society due to over-aggressive drug 'wars'. (The most telling example is, again in the US, the huge boost to crime that prohibition by criminalising alcohol proved. I'm sure last time I checked murder and rape and assault were already illegal, as is the case with drink driving and reckless driving, yet all of these things still happen. A lot less of it happens that would be the case if it were legal and widely socially acceptable behaviour. People can be taken out of circulation for such behaviour (the benefit of criminal law in these areas) and that all these examples are lowered in incidence due to their growing (in the case of drink-driving and domestic violence) social unacceptability compared to when they were more prevalent. We are never going to stop all crime or social problems - properly enacted measures, such as road-law acts can and do remove huge numbers of the incidents. The suggestion for banning semi-automatic military style rifles in the US isn't a full solution, but recognising there's no good reason for such things being in civil hands, and would be a step to potentially reduce the severity of such slaughters. In Australia, the ban on such rifles has, so far, stopped any Port Arthur type killings since. Obviously that's in a less gun saturated environment. Removing rifles and longer ranged weapons, though unlikely in the US, limits the range such crimes can be committed at, and thus increases both the changes of survival and the gunman being tackled. I'd also state it's telling that the use of 'civilian' instead of 'person', 'bystander' or 'citizen' shows how militarised the thinking is in this arena in the USA. People get casually killed if you have warfare thinking, rather than a civil society. Americans wouldn't tolerate non-Americans killing so many of them every year. But in that it's like our casual relationship to cars as a potential killing machine. I'm grateful I don't face this particularly American problem with guns and mental illness, or the remoteness any solutions are for them, thanks to the gun laws of where I live. But I can feel for them. Regards,
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Post by phil on Dec 20, 2012 15:45:10 GMT 12
I'm sorry JDK, but going up against an armed offender with anything less than a firearm is doing so un-armed.
Would you try to subdue someone who has an AR-15 with pepper spray?
Tackling an armed offender if you yourself are unarmed is a last act of desperation, a fight or flight response. That some people have managed to successfully dis-arm an offender is nothing other than very good luck, given the odds stacked against them. They may have been aided by any number of fortuitous circumstances that lead to their success:
The motivation of the offender to actually carry on with their crimes. The type of weapon being used (bolt action, limited capacity). The offender's capacity to effectively employ their weapon system. Any training the bystander might have that gives them a physical advantage.
There are many variables, and to sudbue an armed offender if you are unarmed can not be considered the norm.
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Post by JDK on Dec 20, 2012 17:44:54 GMT 12
I'm sorry JDK, but going up against an armed offender with anything less than a firearm is doing so un-armed. I'm not sure what you're responding to - I didn't suggest otherwise. As it's less likely to happen than winning the lottery, I wouldn't waste a lot of time considering the question. Obviously, like most of us, I'd hope a) it wouldn't happen and b) I'd do 'the right thing' whatever that turned out to be. It is, sadly, exactly the normal option in most gunman spree situations. I suspect the data suggests most attempts are unsuccessful, but despite the gun lobby's attempts to suggest that self-defence by being armed is viable, that is a rare event. I suspect that having armed presence in school will at best simply move the potential gunmen to another location, when the environment is so gun saturated and guns are so fetishised as in the US. You'd be correct if you said attempting to subdue a gunman while unarmed wasn't a good idea - I quite agree. What normally happens and in most gunman situations, whatever guns-in-schools conclusions or other options the US government may reach, will continue to be the normal situation, awful as it is. Let's be grateful it's unlikely to be our situation. It's interesting (and will be ignored by the gun lobby) that if you read the listing in the sample set from the Examiner article posted by lesterpk, and the Monash shooting, a remarkable number of gunmen (and women) have been successfully subdued by brave and unarmed people. Desirable? Certainly not - but it's what will continue to happen, except perhaps in the US where the other option of everyone being armed - that'll be a great environment to be in, I don't think. Armed 'citizens' and gunmen is effectively a place which would be lawless, as law could not be applied by its enforces over the personal wishes of some individuals. I make no claim to any idea of a solution to the US issue. A civil society where citizens place significant value on group welfare (including metal health) coupled with a mature approach to weapons and gun control is, thankfully something we have. And, as you've noted, and I agree, isn't going to appear in the US in any reasonable timescale. Regards,
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