Ongoing US Mass Shooting Thread

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Nobama

If your goal is to kill someone or a group of people there are many ways to do that. Focusing on the type of guns used seems dumb. Shot guns are allowed in Canada and if these two people entered this building with shot guns I think they would have achieved the same result. How about knives? bombs? Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And as the evidence keeps coming in it looks like this is a planned attack orchestrated by the same religious beliefs similar to Paris - A place where guns are illegal.

Top bar is Assault (other)
Middle Bar is Assault (Sharp object)
Bottom bar is Assault (Firearm)

Almost 2/3 of homicides in the US were commited by firearms. Actually sounds pretty reasonable until you look at the other comparable countries where only two others have firearm death rates above 50% (Greece and Italy; Portugal and France maybe close as well). And that's putting aside the fact that the homicide rate in general is towering over everyone else. If the US gun violence could even be cut in half, it MIGHT bring them down to respectable levels (albeit still well above everyone else).



Look at all those Latin/South American countries that are sending their spooky citizens to the US with comparable homicide rates between major US cities and their ENTIRE COUNTRIES.



Whew, finally a graph that favours the US. Wait, is that Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq and Pakistan? Great company there.

And finally, and most stunning IMO, accidental deaths by firearms!



..funny, it's almost identical to the first graph.

Yeah... there's a problem. I don't see how it's possible to deny it. Your only comparable firearms death rates are f***ing war zones.

http://www.humanosphere.org/science/...-s-rest-world/

[pylon]

I used to get passionate about this subject, but it is at the point with me now that it just isn't worth the aggravation anymore. Just like that friend you had that is battling addiction, and is making terrible life choices and you've tried a million times to help or intervene, and every single time they just F it up, and make matters worse for themselves. Eventually all you can do is shrug your shoulders, give up, and let nature take its course.

The US is addicted to guns, and we just have to accept that these massacres are just another screw up as a result of their addiction. These massacres are just part of American life now. If they don't want to help themselves, why bother caring anymore?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

A group of guys with knives and hammers killed 30 people and injured something like 150 in China not long ago in a relatively short period of time.

OK. So if knives and hammers and shotguns are such effective weapons for killing people, why not restrict home defence to those tools? Surely you can defend your home from the bogeyman who haunts your nightmares just as well with a kitchen knife than with a high-velocity handgun with a dozen rounds.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

This is a BS line of logic and you know it.

FIrst of all with the shotgun argument. You're right, a shotgun is the ultimate room clearing weapon. But you don't see a lot of shot gun based massed shootings because they're not an effective weapon. They aren't magazine fed and they're not a super accurate weapon, and they don't have a significant range compared to the weapons that are most commonly used, where you can accurately hit something down range up to more then a football field in distance. Most shotguns that are purchased are also manual reload, the magazine fed shot guns are also a banned weapon. As are some of the more exotic rounds that you can fire through them.

Yes, they are. Either tube magazines or even detachable.

The thing about pointing the finger directly at firearms is where most anti's lose me. These types of firearms have been available for decades now. In both US AND Canada. However, events like this have only become common in the past 10 or 15 yrs. So what changed? The firearms or people?

[MrMastodonFarm]

Have Christians and their leaders denounced the gunman from the Planned Parenthood shooting last week?

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Absolutely. What is so absurd about that?

A group of guys with knives and hammers killed 30 people and injured something like 150 in China not long ago in a relatively short period of time.

did they have 355 incidences of that in the last year? Or was that an exceptional situation.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Yes, they are. Either tube magazines or even detachable.

The thing about pointing the finger directly at firearms is where most anti's lose me. These types of firearms have been available for decades now. In both US AND Canada. However, events like this have only become common in the past 10 or 15 yrs. So what changed? The firearms or people?

People changed. And the easy accessibility of military-grade weaponry has made their crazy rampages far more lethal than they would be otherwise.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

OK. So if knives and hammers and shotguns are such effective weapons for killing people, why not restrict home defence to those tools? Surely you can defend your home from the bogeyman who haunts your nightmares just as well with a kitchen knife than with a high-velocity handgun with a dozen rounds.

Don't direct your rhetoric crap at me. If you have something meaningful to contribute, please do. A questioni was asked, I answered.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

did they have 355 incidences of that in the last year? Or was that an exceptional situation.

Ok, again, a question was asked, I answered. The question was about effectiveness, not frequency.

[Nobama]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

This is a BS line of logic and you know it.

FIrst of all with the shotgun argument. You're right, a shotgun is the ultimate room clearing weapon. But you don't see a lot of shot gun based massed shootings because they're not an effective weapon. They aren't magazine fed and they're not a super accurate weapon, and they don't have a significant range compared to the weapons that are most commonly used, where you can accurately hit something down range up to more then a football field in distance. Most shotguns that are purchased are also manual reload, the magazine fed shot guns are also a banned weapon. As are some of the more exotic rounds that you can fire through them.

Ok the last time I looked explosives are a banned weapon, so maybe that explains why there is a lower then 355 incident per year mass murder caused by explosives. Now as yourself and be honest, can you imagine if grenades were legal and these mass murders could walk onto a attack with a 30 round semi automatic weapon and 5 or 6 lightweight fragmentation grenades. The casualty rates would be a lot higher then they are.

As for the knives thing, come on man, most knives aren't designed as a primary killing weapon unless we're talking about swords. And as a killing weapon even the dumbest mass murderer knows that a fully tricked out magazine fed semi auto weapon is the weapon of choice, so why bother with a knife.

When I was in the military, we had knives and bayonets and they were cool to use, but unlike a Tom Clancy novel or movie of the week they were so far down the list of weapons that we would actually ever have to use, that rocks and a healthy spray of our urine would probably be used first.

And your right, guns don't kill people, people kill people. But guns like the ones being used make it easier for them to make that decision to do it and carry it out.

would you give gas to a pyromaniac?

Gas doesn't kill people, its not its primary design.

But a gun does kill people and that's its primary design.

Fair enough. But your argument about which guns should be allowed and which should be banned comes from the perspective of that guns are a new thing and we should decide which guns to sell and which guns not too. The problem is there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States. A gun grab by the government may be able to take guns from honest people but do you really think that the criminals are going to hand in their guns? Basically it would be disarming the good people that are safe and responsible with firearms while the criminals still have stockpiles of guns. Being "legal or not" doesn't seem to effect the people with bad intentions. Sure a gun is easiest right now to commit evil deeds but take that away and the criminals will find other ways to hurt people.

Some of the most recent mass murder atrocities have had nothing to do with guns (9/11, Boston Marathon, England Subway Bombing etc) Focusing on the guns seems narrow minded and not really a solution to stop this.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Yes, they are. Either tube magazines or even detachable.

The thing about pointing the finger directly at firearms is where most anti's lose me. These types of firearms have been available for decades now. In both US AND Canada. However, events like this have only become common in the past 10 or 15 yrs. So what changed? The firearms or people?

go look at the California banned weapons, magazine fed shot guns are banned.

And yes your absolutely right but there's a reason why shotguns aren't used commonly they aren't as easy to deploy and use as a weapon like the AR.

You keep trying to make an absolute statement that its people. But if you give deranged people or zealots or people with anger issues or people with political or religious issues easy access to effective killing machines nothing good is ever going to happen.

There were 336 mass shooting in the US in 2014 this year there are 355. In 2014 there were 383 people killed and 1239 wounded, this year there were 449 killed and 1292 wounded. funny that the number of people that pretty much ate the bullet is the same.

Your right, between 1982 1nd 2011 a mass shooting happened roughly every 200 days. Between 2011 and this year that's reduced to an average of 64 days.

There are more shootings happen, and your blind enough to sit there and go, no its not easy access to guns, its all on people changing. Well maybe the access to guns and money is easier. But the commonality that's occurring is this.

for the most part these type of weapons (magazine fed, semi auto, lightweight) are being used in mass shootings,

For the most part, these guns have been purchased legally

Therefore, and ipso factor and etc there is obviously a problem with allowing sick and demented and angry people these weapons.

These weapons make it easier for an amateur to kill a lot of people fast.

Therefore since the argument is damnit we can never have nice things, those weapons need to go.

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

The idiotic American ideal of elected judges puts them right into the same category of politicians where they need to maintain the support of special interests to retain their positions. Your entire system is broken from the ground up.

Um, what?

The judges (errr...justices) on the Supreme Court are not elected. (Nor are judges in the other federal courts, as well as in some state courts).

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by Nobama

Fair enough. But your argument about which guns should be allowed and which should be banned comes from the perspective of that guns are a new thing and we should decide which guns to sell and which guns not too. The problem is there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States. A gun grab by the government may be able to take guns from honest people but do you really think that the criminals are going to hand in their guns? Basically it would be disarming the good people that are safe and responsible with firearms while the criminals still have stockpiles of guns. Being "legal or not" doesn't seem to effect the people with bad intentions. Sure a gun is easiest right now to commit evil deeds but take that away and the criminals will find other ways to hurt people.

Some of the most recent mass murder atrocities have had nothing to do with guns (9/11, Boston Marathon, England Subway Bombing etc) Focusing on the guns seems narrow minded and not really a solution to stop this.

The 'Good people' are not responsible for dealing with the bad people. That's not their job. That's the job of the police. The people with training, support, rules, and oversight. Furthermore, if the bad people know every house doesn't have military grade weaponry, they probably won't bring theirs along to the burglary. Is the percentage of random break ins for the purposes of murder really that high? I would think the criminal would want your TV, some jewelry, cash, whatever. Some #### he can sell. How much is a random suburban corpse worth?

No police officer is ever going to tell a civilian to intervene in a crisis. That is the exact last thing they want. You might here Republicans spouting nonsense after these tragedies, but you never hear the local sheriff do it. Why? Because the situation is already scary enough, the cops don't know what side you're on, and if they have to take time out of their day to ascertain if a 'good guy' is in fact a good guy, two things will happen: they'll shoot the good guy because there's no way for them to quickly determine that he's on their side, and they'll be distracted from neutralizing the actual threats and saving more people.

Good guys with guns have badges and wear uniforms. The gun-toting public at large is laughably bad at preventing these mass killings, which makes it all the more quaint that they think they could overthrow a government supported by the most advanced military on earth.

The first amendment will always be America's best defense against tyranny. It's been that way from day one.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by HockeyIlliterate

Um, what?

The judges (errr...justices) on the Supreme Court are not elected. (Nor are judges in the other federal courts, as well as in some state courts).

First there was nothing. Then, poof! A Supreme Court Justice appeared!

Where do you think the pool of high ranking judges comes from? Where do you think those judges get their election funding from on the way up?

Additionally, I note that you failed to defend your argument on your points 2 and 3.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

You keep trying to make an absolute statement that its people.

Have I? If I come across that way, I certainly don't intend to. I agree with MANY posters here that Americans seem to have way to easy access to firearms or keeping them properly secured seems to be too much of an after thought. But there has to be way more to it than that.

Canada has access to basically the exact same type of firearms yet we don't have an issue anything close to what the Americans have. What's the difference?

I think pointing the finger directly at firearms is taking the easy way out of this problem. The problem is bigger than that. Am I suggesting that nothing should be done? No, of course not. I'd very much like to see the Americans adopt a more Canadian approach to licensing and storage requirements.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Nobama

Fair enough. But your argument about which guns should be allowed and which should be banned comes from the perspective of that guns are a new thing and we should decide which guns to sell and which guns not too. The problem is there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States. A gun grab by the government may be able to take guns from honest people but do you really think that the criminals are going to hand in their guns? Basically it would be disarming the good people that are safe and responsible with firearms while the criminals still have stockpiles of guns. Being "legal or not" doesn't seem to effect the people with bad intentions. Sure a gun is easiest right now to commit evil deeds but take that away and the criminals will find other ways to hurt people.

Some of the most recent mass murder atrocities have had nothing to do with guns (9/11, Boston Marathon, England Subway Bombing etc) Focusing on the guns seems narrow minded and not really a solution to stop this.

Obviously any kind of fire arms reform or control is going to have to include the illegal gun trade. Which is difficult because of America's basically open border policy. Unless you can get the Chinese and Israelis and Philipines and Russians etc to stop shipping guns here via organized crime for hard currency the point is pretty much moot.

And if you want to get guns out of people's houses, then you have to look at it in a different way

1) Incentives people to not have guns in their homes. That means working on the reputation and effectiveness of police forces throughout the US. Cracking down on criminal acts that involve fire arms hard. Improvements in the poorer urban areas of the cities that have become war zones. Plus when I talk about gun crimes, I'm talking about any deaths cause by fire arms. Get rid of the stupid self defense laws that allow morons to shoot kids in the street because they react badly to a situation. There are absolutely times and places for self defense, but realistically, I fail to see where firearms in the hands of untrained novices who can go to a gun shop and buy a gun or a trade show is an effective home defense strategy.

2) Pass a massive tax bill on guns or on bullets, and require people to buy a separate comprehensive and expensive non optional insurance policy for their home if you have a gun in it. Or if your are carrying a gun on your person you have to carry an insurance policy with a massive comp policy. Make guns a expensive item.

3) Frankly if your caught with an illegal gun in your possession, its 5 years in jail, if you sell a gun illegally its 10 years in jail. If you shoot someone with an illegal gun its life with no parole.


4) Improve port and border crossing inspections to reduce gun smuggling. Increase funding in terms of fighting organized crime, maybe stop chasing people for smoking dope and funnel that money into finding the sources of illegal guns.

5) No more weapons shows, no more buying guns anywhere but a properly licensed gun shop with an effective tracking system. If you've ever been convicted of a felony you can't have one, ever. If you have mental health issues on record, you can't have one. You have to go through a physical and mental assessment at your own cost that's signed by a certified professional before you can buy a gun. You also have to go through a proper gun safety and situational training course. Preferably one where they throw flash bangs and shoot real rounds over your head while your in different situations. If you don't pass that test the first time, no gun for you.

6) Limit the access to the type of weapons available. No magazines larger then 3 rounds, if you mod a weapon and are caught with it, then you are prosecuted. No semi automatics, all rifles for public use are bolt action. No magazine fed pistols, you can buy a revolver with a 6 shot maximum, and no pistols bigger then a .22 will be sold.

There will be a grace period of two years for people to get compliant with financial incentives. After that your prosecuted.

To me whether its people or guns as an argument which is stupid because I can use that for anyone. Hey cars don't kill people people kill people. Vacuums don't kill people people kill people.

At the end of the day, in the last two years we've seen over 650 mass shooting incidences a majority I believe where they used weapons that were purchased legally. Obviously there is a massive problem with the way guns are controlled.



The constitution and the 2nd amendment weren't written to be a suicide pact or a legal defense for the ability to commit mass murder on your own people.

[Derek Sutton]

Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay

Have I? If I come across that way, I certainly don't intend to. I agree with MANY posters here that Americans seem to have way to easy access to firearms or keeping them properly secured seems to be too much of an after thought. But there has to be way more to it than that.

Canada has access to basically the exact same type of firearms yet we don't have an issue anything close to what the Americans have. What's the difference?

I think pointing the finger directly at firearms is taking the easy way out of this problem. The problem is bigger than that. Am I suggesting that nothing should be done? No, of course not. I'd very much like to see the Americans adopt a more Canadian approach to licensing and storage requirements.

I do not agree with this. We have limited access to rifles and shotguns used for hunting and it is very difficult to purchase a hand gun. No matter what type of gun you own in Canada it comes with major restrictions and the owner has a lot of responsibilities.

[GoinAllTheWay]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

I do not agree with this. We have limited access to rifles and shotguns used for hunting and it is very difficult to purchase a hand gun.

Oh is it? Please describe to me the "difficult" process.

Limited access to rifles and shotguns? How is it limited? In what way?

No matter what type of gun you own in Canada it comes with major restrictions and the owner has a lot of responsibilities.

Do they? Like what?

I"m not asking these questions to be a d**k, I'm asking as I believe many Canadians and many posters in this thread don't really know the process or what's available in Canada or what laws we have in place. I see many assumptions that are inaccurate.

[Language]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814

The 'Good people' are not responsible for dealing with the bad people. That's not their job. That's the job of the police. The people with training, support, rules, and oversight. Furthermore, if the bad people know every house doesn't have military grade weaponry, they probably won't bring theirs along to the burglary. Is the percentage of random break ins for the purposes of murder really that high? I would think the criminal would want your TV, some jewelry, cash, whatever. Some #### he can sell. How much is a random suburban corpse worth?

No police officer is ever going to tell a civilian to intervene in a crisis. That is the exact last thing they want. You might here Republicans spouting nonsense after these tragedies, but you never hear the local sheriff do it. Why? Because the situation is already scary enough, the cops don't know what side you're on, and if they have to take time out of their day to ascertain if a 'good guy' is in fact a good guy, two things will happen: they'll shoot the good guy because there's no way for them to quickly determine that he's on their side, and they'll be distracted from neutralizing the actual threats and saving more people.

Good guys with guns have badges and wear uniforms. The gun-toting public at large is laughably bad at preventing these mass killings, which makes it all the more quaint that they think they could overthrow a government supported by the most advanced military on earth.

The first amendment will always be America's best defense against tyranny. It's been that way from day one.

Pretty much bang on.

[codynw]