Connecticut School Shooting

[Ice]

I think it's easy in cases like this to focus on guns being the problem. What never seems to be addressed is that the underlying mental illness is talked about after the fact. When do we start looking at identifying, treating and monitoring those who have a mental illness, like a personality disorder? This is a population more prone to violence and yet it is never addressed until it becomes a criminal defense in court. Mental illness isn't covered by most medical coverage in the US so this type of illness goes untreated more than any other. Guns are just the tool, they're not the cause.

[Matata]

Ugh, I hate the 'home-made bomb' arguement. Let's compare the process of using home-made bombs vs guns for massacres:

Home-made Bomb:
1) find a recipe: Have enough of a grasp of chemistry to find the recipe that will work for your situation. Very tricky balancing act, bombs made out of cheap materials get heavy and large in a hurry, as extremely energy dense materials are generally not made available to public. Moderate difficulty.
2) collect supplies: depending on recipe, could result in suspicious behaviour and hard to acquire items. Easy to high difficulty.
3) Build the bomb: do this without blowing yourself up or attracting attention. Dependent on location. Very high difficulty.
4) transport and planting the bomb: do this without blowing yourself up or attracting attention. Great care must be given to size of bomb, volatility and intended location. Extremely high difficulty.
5) Detonate the bomb: do this without blowing yourself up or attracting attention. Timing is crucial to achieve intended affect. Requires strong knowledge base of electronics. Even dedicated manufacturing facilities produce dud-bombs, your odds will be much, much poorer. Very high difficulty

Notice how an extreme risk of personal death is present in nearly every step and that a strong grasp of multiple scientific disciplines is required? Do you not think this would be a very significant deterrent, and that even in your best case scenario all you have is an unreliable, unpredictable and hard to use weapon? The construction would be a very drawn out process with many opportunities become overwhelmed or change your mind. People who want to die in a blaze of glory would find this process very unappealing and it only appeals to very specific type of whacko: one with knowledge, skill, dedication and patience. Even someone with a degree in engineering would find this to be a extremely daunting task.

Guns:
1) Get some guns and armour from a gun show. Congratulations, you now have some of the most diverse, discrete, effective and reliable killing tools created in all of the history of man-kind. You could start planning on friday night and be ready to roll monday morning.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Ice

I think it's easy in cases like this to focus on guns being the problem. What never seems to be addressed is that the underlying mental illness is talked about after the fact. When do we start looking at identifying, treating and monitoring those who have a mental illness, like a personality disorder? This is a population more prone to violence and yet it is never addressed until it becomes a criminal defense in court. Mental illness isn't covered by most medical coverage in the US so this type of illness goes untreated more than any other. Guns are just the tool, they're not the cause.

No one is saying guns are the cause, people are saying lets remove easy access to this tool which allows the underlying causes to turn into mass murder.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Ice

I think it's easy in cases like this to focus on guns being the problem. What never seems to be addressed is that the underlying mental illness is talked about after the fact. When do we start looking at identifying, treating and monitoring those who have a mental illness, like a personality disorder? This is a population more prone to violence and yet it is never addressed until it becomes a criminal defense in court. Mental illness isn't covered by most medical coverage in the US so this type of illness goes untreated more than any other. Guns are just the tool, they're not the cause.

The US needs to address mental illness AND their disasterous gun problem.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

Is it possible to make all guns in the US vanish?
Of course not! The rabidly anti-gun folks can't seem to get this. Those in this very thread calling for Obama to pass an Executive Order to "put a stop to this" don't seem to get that it wouldn't stop anything with millions of guns already here. Its fantasy to think we could somehow force them to all be turned over to the government, and would probably cause a revolution if it was tried.

Who doesnt get this?
Name one CP poster or recognizable public figure that fails to grasp this.

This type of false equivocation and obfuscation is counter-productive.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by nik-

Canada has a lot of weapons, but when it comes to handguns and assault weapons there are some serious hoops to jump through to get them.

Actually there isn't. In most cases buying a handgun is easier in Canada then it is in the States. I'm not up on US gun laws but pretty sure most States have a two week "cooling off" period. In Canada? You can bring a handgun home with you 2 days after you purchase it. As for the other hoops? Apply for restricted licence, have a quick telephone interview with the RCMP after they do a background check, you have your licence.

[nik-]

Alright, then I guess they'll have to outright ban them to stop the culture/entitlement then.

[QuadCityImages]

Originally Posted by Gozer

Who doesnt get this?
Name one CP poster or recognizable public figure that fails to grasp this.

This type of false equivocation and obfuscation is counter-productive.

All of the people, including posts on THIS PAGE, saying to ban guns. If you're not going to do anything about the existing hundreds of millions of guns, banning new guns isn't going to get you anywhere.

[Minnie]

Gun control does not equal banning.

[gargamel]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

All of the people, including posts on THIS PAGE, saying to ban guns. If you're not going to do anything about the existing hundreds of millions of guns, banning new guns isn't going to get you anywhere.

Yes it will. It won't solve all the problems, but it will prevent a lot of these incidents. If I wanted to buy a gun to kill someone or shoot up a school and I couldn't walk into a store and buy one, I'd have no idea where to start. I'd probably do some google searches, post an add on craigslist, and get arrested.

Gang members and drug dealers probably have connections that would give them access to the existing guns even if gun sales were banned, but I doubt that a lot of these mass shooters would be able to.

[Cortez]

Girlfriend "you hear about the shooting in the states?"
me "ya the one in Oregon? that's mental"
Girlfriend "no the one in Connecticut this morning"


- The most depressing conversation I've had in a long time.

[TitovFTW]

Americans from either side cherry pick tweets and opinions to say the other side is "politicizing" the tragedy, while others act offended at the tone people use to get across their point across in the debate. It boggles my mind Americans could be surprised at all by this. If there's no respectful and engaging debate on abortion, gay marriage and one's politics, why would gun control be any different?

And then come the old white men who say this never would've happened back in the good old day. Who have no idea how a kid could do something like this then, when they spend their time shaming any kid who might be LGBT to believe they're a freak and different from everybody else.

I can't imagine the pain the victims family's are going through right now. My sympathy and heart is with them, but I find something incredibly disingenuous about another tragedy in America where people offer up their thoughts and prayers and yet nothing changes and nothing is done to stop it from happening again. America has become such an embarrassment to itself and the world on so many levels. It's only going to keep getting worst

[bigtmac19]

Originally Posted by Ice

I think it's easy in cases like this to focus on guns being the problem. What never seems to be addressed is that the underlying mental illness is talked about after the fact. When do we start looking at identifying, treating and monitoring those who have a mental illness, like a personality disorder? This is a population more prone to violence and yet it is never addressed until it becomes a criminal defense in court. Mental illness isn't covered by most medical coverage in the US so this type of illness goes untreated more than any other. Guns are just the tool, they're not the cause.

C'mon Ice, you can't be serious. I'm so tired of this and other similar arguments. It's the prevalance of guns in your country, your cities, your homes. Otherwise why wouldn't every other country have similar statistics for gun violence and mass murders.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by QuadCityImages

All of the people, including posts on THIS PAGE, saying to ban guns. If you're not going to do anything about the existing hundreds of millions of guns, banning new guns isn't going to get you anywhere.

This argument is the basic equivalent of "guns are already out there, so why even try". It's a load of crap.

[gargamel]

Jesus. They just showed a still photo on the news of my former boss in tears at the school.

[calumniate]

What a horrible, cowardly act. It's hard to think positive tonight

[Byrns]

After today, I've changed my mind on gun control. And Canada should outlaw handguns.

Sorry if you want to do target shooting, get an air pistol.

[Zulu29]

Originally Posted by Byrns

After today, I've changed my mind on gun control. And Canada should outlaw handguns.

Sorry if you want to do target shooting, get an air pistol.

There are just so many guns out there that have no other purpose other than killing people. I would give up my privilege to own guns if it meant something like this never happened again.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by nik-

This is my favourite part of the pro second amendment argument. Some redneck #######s who think that in the extremely unlikely chance that the government just decides they want to dictators, that they're going to all band together and get all Red Dawn to preserve their "freedom". They think they're going to successfully resist a system where a kid with a joystick can level your house with an unmanned drone.

It's a 230 year old idea from a time when people had to pour their gunpowder into a metal tube to fire a steel ball and it's tragically comical that people still think it's relevant.

What are your thoughts on Holocaust survivors who now own guns for this very reason? Just a bunch of dumb rednecks?

[QuadCityImages]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Gun control does not equal banning.

I fully agree and support common sense gun control. Others in this thread, though, are talking banning.