America and our love for guns!

[Bill Cravener]

What’s needed in this country is less regulation on gun ownership, that way your kids can carry and when one of these nuts show up out of nowhere your kids can shoot back. Yeah, that’s what we need to do. What we need to do is make it easier to buy guns. Bang, bang, bang!!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/us/colorado-theater-shooting/index.html

[hutch--]

I personally agree with the view but with a few reservations. Hand guns have had to be licenced in OZ since the 1920s and I would not like to see them any easier to get. Humerous that the shining example of responsible gun ownership is the Swiss yet we don't hear of loonies doing mass shootings like we have seen in the UK, US and other western countries that have restricted firearm ownership.

A coward with a gun like that idiot in Sweden can kill a lot of people when there is no-one there to shoot back, it only takes one armed security guard to solve a problem like that yet the politics of the anti-gun lobby only allow for disarming the population, not protecting it.

I don't personally care if the guy next door has an Ack Ack mounted on his front verandah, as long as he does not bring down any helicopters on top of my place.

[mywan]

I'm with Hutch on this one. When the constitution says "well regulated militia" I think we should take "well regulated" seriously. I grew up in Texas where when I broke down farting around as a teenager in the middle of the night it was no big deal to have a gun pointed at me as I entered a strangers house to make a call for help. I would rather have the gun pointed at me than to fail to receive help. Yet that doesn't mean everybody should legally own a gun as a birth right. The gun laws in the UK doesn't seem to have helped them much.

As far as this particular incidence, it pales in comparison to the yearly deaths by tasers from cops alone. In fact police officers do not even make the top 10 list of most dangerous jobs. In spite of drivers having the number 9 spot and traffic fatalities being the number 1 cop killer. In fact your odds of being killed by a cop, whether armed or not, is greater than a cops odds of being killed by a member of the public.

So why is this incidence so incendiary when with just cops tasers alone there are at least 59 documented death by taser in 2009 alone. Of those shot dead by cops nearly 2/3 were people who were unequivocally (uncontested by anyone) not armed with anything, much less a gun. These statistics are hard to come by when national statistics reporting include death by traffic accident for cops but do not include death rates by cops. I therefore only use numbers from documented cases. The ones involving per capita odds being based a county wide tabulations of news reports. Reporting of this nature should be a standard requirement. They certainly pad their own risk statistics with traffic accidents, which they do report for national statistics and still can't make the top 10 most dangerous jobs.

So why do we react so strongly to such minuscule risk of incidence like this when so many are dying from ignored causes?

[xanatose]

An outlaw does not care what the law says. Thereof gun control only takes the guns from the less likely to abuse them into the hands of the most likely to use them. Including rogue governments. Education is the real solution.

If a person is educated in using, maintain and above all, respect of the gun since youth. That person will be 99% less likely to abuse it as an adult.

[MichaelW]

An armed person with the right skills could have reduced the number of injuries and deaths here, as in virtually every other mass shooting. There is a reason that 49 of the 50 states here have laws that allow citizens to carry concealed firearms.

[jj2007]

Firearm-related deaths in the United States and 35 other high- and upper-middle-
income countries
EG Krug, KE Powell and LL Dahlberg

During the one-year study period, ... the rate of firearm deaths in the United States (14.24 per 100 000) exceeds that of its economic counterparts (1.76) eightfold

If you prefer a scientific U.S. source, here is a quote from a Harvard essay:

For rural areas, the big problem is suicide; in cities, it’s homicide. ("In Wyoming it’s hard to have big gang fights," Hemenway observes dryly. "Do you call up the other gang and drive 30 miles to meet up?")

P.S.: I live in the homeland of the Mafia (2.95 per 100 000) :icon_mrgreen:
P.P.S: Data are a bit stale, those for Mexico (12.1) must have changed considerably; and tasers didn't exist yet.

[mywan]

In 2007 the national average homicide rate was 5.9/100k people. The study linked above is all gun deaths combined. If we round that 1.76 factor up to 2 then that gives a 7.12 deaths per 100k people in the countries we were being compared to. This is higher than our homicide rate. I do realize that article was from 1998.


It gets more troubling looking at race statistics.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/Facts/U.S._Firearm_Deaths_and_Death_Rates_by_Race-Ethnicity_Intent.pdf

In 2007, as noted, we had a homicide rate was 5.9/100k people. Yet among whites the rate was 1.5/100k people. Among blacks 18.1/100k. The overwhelming majority of violent crime in not interracial.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_06.html

I had a cousin that shot himself in the leg rabbit hunting years ago. He still turns red faced when it's mentioned. Using numbers from all gun related deaths is a bit like cops including their deaths by traffic accident in the statistics used to claim how dangerous their job is and therefore justifies stricter laws to help "protect" them. Such numbers even include cops shooting armed robbers, and unarmed kids that reached for their waistband at the wrong time in front of a cop. That also includes the old lady nearby here the cops shot because they served a warrant on the wrong house.

[jj2007]

In 2007 the national average homicide rate was 5.9/100k people. The study linked above is all gun deaths combined.

Yes, it includes suicides, which doubles indeed the figures. From the Harvard essay linked above:

In general, guns don’t induce people to commit crimes. "What guns do is make crimes lethal," says Hemenway. They also make suicide attempts lethal: about 60 percent of suicides in America involve guns. "If you try to kill yourself with drugs, there’s a 2 to 3 percent chance of dying," he explains. "With guns, the chance is 90 percent."

And I fully agree that there is a race problem. Google for the link between poverty and crime, e.g.:

Poor people make up the overwhelming majority of those behind bars as 53% of those in prison earned less than $10,000 per year before incarceration.

(you are certainly aware of the fact that the U.S. have an incredibly high % of population in prison, compared to developed countries)

[mywan]

(you are certainly aware of the fact that the U.S. have an incredibly high % of population in prison, compared to developed countries)

We're still number 1 at something  ;)

[Bill Cravener]

Mass shootings have become a fact of life here in American. It’s rather alarming that toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns then guns are here in the States.

Just imagine going to a movie with your family or friends while enjoying popcorn and a flick when out of nowhere some nut who went to the local gun dealer and purchase a gun with no background check appears then systematically mows down your wife and kids, your best friend, the people next to them, and the people down the aisle with his AK47 blazing. The facts are clear, nations that are most civilized and have the fewest guns have the fewest deaths by crime, fewest suicides by guns, the fewest gun-related accidents and fewest mass murders by nuts using a gun.

The right to bear arms had a purpose when we were a wilderness nation. We are no longer a wildness nation. But hell we Americans would rather be proud ignoramuses and march to the tune of the death lobby, confusing freedom with guns with freedom of speech. There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. and firearm violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year.

Here is a list of mass random shootings just this year (2012). And there are many mass random shootings that we do not hear about on national news every year which go unnoticed by the general public.

July 19, Aurora, Colo: Gunman shoots into a movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 50 others.
July 17, Tusaloosa, Ala: Gunman shoots into a bar, injuring 17.
May 30, Seattle, Wash: Gunman shoots into cafe and later carjacks a woman, killing five and injuring one others.
April 7, Tulsa, Okla: Two gunmen accused of shooting passersby in a north Tulsa neighborhood, killing three and injuring two others.
April 2, Oakland, Calif: Gunman opens fire on classroom at Oikos University, killing seven and injuring three others.
March 3, Pittsburgh, Pa.: A gunman opens fire on a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, killing one person and injuring seven more.
February 27, Chardon, Ohio: Teenager shoots into high school cafeteria, killing three and injuring three others.

I suppose what we Americans need to do is return to the way things were back in the days of the old west and all of us carry a six shooter strapped to our hips. YEE HAA!!

[Bill Cravener]

An armed person with the right skills could have reduced the number of injuries and deaths here, as in virtually every other mass shooting. There is a reason that 49 of the 50 states here have laws that allow citizens to carry concealed firearms.

Let’s assume for augments sake there are some 100 people in the theater. Of that 100 lets speculate that oh say 20 men/women are carrying a hand gun. Of that 20 lets assume 10 of those gun carriers know how to handle a hand gun. The madman begins shooting randomly mowing men, women and children down. Now let’s say you are one of those trained hand gun carriers and you see your wife or kid take a bullet. There is a rage now arising in you as you see your loved one fall. As the madman fires rapidly at the panicking crowd of people, wanting out of the theater, you a trained hand gun owner pull your gun and aim at the madman. In your own, at that moment madness, you begin pulling the trigger but in the on-rushing panic of the crowd you are knocked about and several of your rounds stray. A young woman near you takes a bullet thru the head from your stray bullet. A small boy takes one of your strays thru the chest. Yet you are certain you hit the madman several direct shots but he doesn’t drop because he’s wearing body armor. Now just imagine the other 19 gun carriers also firing at the crazy bastard going up the stairs as the on coming panicked theater goers want out even if it has to be over you.

It’s insanity to think that the outcome would have been less tragic in my scenario described above.

[Ghandi]

To put some icing on the cake, the government will gladly allow this sort of thing to happen and be heavily debated in the press because it draws attention away from them while they stick the knife in and sell us all down the river, no matter what country you come from.

The saddest thing though, is we can talk about right and wrong until the server dies but in all honesty, the politicians don't care one bit about the people they represent so nothing will ever change. They simply use the people until they have no more to offer then they phase them out or blatently throw them on the scrap heap to make room for the next group of chumps they'll feed to their corporate overseers.

There is never talk about removing the root causes of problems, only of the business it generates when a project is taken on and the fiscal benefits which are available to those vying for the contracts:

1. Smoking is a problem? Control the sale of tobacco stronger, introduce proper penalties for those breaking the rules and stick by it or here's a suggestion: BAN IT ALTOGETHER.
2. Alcohol abuse is a problem? Control the sale of alcohol stronger, introduce proper penalties for those breaking the rules and stick by it.
3. Teenage pregnancy and parenthood a problem? Stop paying them to be breeders and force them to work for their handout.

Let the population fight amongst themselves about pollution, poverty, healthcare, tax, guns, you name it... As long as that is occurring, the people will never unite enough to stand up against 'the man' and that is exactly how they want it. The 'GFC' as it has been labelled, did not need to happen, could have been prevented and most certainly should not have resulted the way it did: Poor people lost everything and the companies went on to post record profits anyway.

Corporations and Capitalism have potential to be positive things but only if they're policed and regulated strictly, as soon as there is room for individuals to move against one and other the 'playing field' so to speak gets reduced to one side just taking what it wants from the other side.

I remember seeing a writeup of the Skull & Crossbones Secret Society, the supposed NWO and what they plan for 'us' normal people, i laughed my head off because *they* wouldn't need to set up a New World Order when *they* already have all what *they* could ever want if there is a single grain of truth to it.

My take is that there isn't an NWO so to speak, instead we are just cattle to be bred and farmed by our governments. If the population doesn't have enough 'skilled' workers in a field, open the doors to migrants and increase the base population as a bonus...

The population isn't breeding enough for their projected figures on population growth? Pay them to breed more, give the uneducated and poverty stricken a carrot to encourage them to breed because after all, the labouring workforce is aging alongside the white collar worker and there will always be a need for 'low-end' human beings to service our 'better' masters.

They all suck and they do a terrible job, if their pay was based on their performance, they would be broker than a dole-bludger the day before his handout. I don't really agree with much Alan Jones says (probably why i try not to listen to his radio show) but there is one thing that sticks out in my mind that i did agree with:

"Politicians in the top job aren't payed enough. The position is a lonely one, everybody around them is either trying to curry favour or orchestrate their downfall and the buck stops with them. They are expected to keep their portfolio in good shape and they really do have a lot expected of them overall so they should deserve more pay for doing this job.

Having said that though, if we do pay the people at the top more, it should come with the condition that if they do not perform (ie: they don't do a good job at the top) then they should not be payed the high rate because they simply did not earn or deserve it."

I can really imagine Julia Gallah giving a 'Message from the PM' to us, telling us that although she is really happy with her efforts during her (illegal and farcicial) term as our nations Prime Minister, on assessment her performance was lacking so she will only be taking a minimal wage without all of the perks of being PM, not!

HR,
Ghandi

[dedndave]

1. Smoking is a problem? Control the sale of tobacco stronger, introduce proper penalties for those breaking the rules and stick by it or here's a suggestion: BAN IT ALTOGETHER.
2. Alcohol abuse is a problem? Control the sale of alcohol stronger, introduce proper penalties for those breaking the rules and stick by it.
3. Teenage pregnancy and parenthood a problem? Stop paying them to be breeders and force them to work for their handout.

i can see that you don't smoke, drink, or screw   :lol:

[Ghandi]

Lol, i'm one of the remaining '17%' of Australians who still own up to smoking cigarettes, i used to drink like a sailor until i became a parent and for observation 3 i refer you back to why i don't drink anymore. ;)

I am a sucker for my vices, but it doesn't make me disregard the other things, if anything it just makes me kick myself harder for being so weak willed. If i were to continue in the same vein i made the last post in, i would say that fits again: Keep turning people against each other by whatever means, be it overt and in their faces or by conditioning people to look down upon and criticize others when they don't fit the social 'norm'.

Sow disunity, control money and media and you own the population.

HR,
Ghandi

[Ryan]

Let’s assume for augments sake there are some 100 people in the theater. Of that 100 lets speculate that oh say 20 men/women are carrying a hand gun. Of that 20 lets assume 10 of those gun carriers know how to handle a hand gun. The madman begins shooting randomly mowing men, women and children down. Now let’s say you are one of those trained hand gun carriers and you see your wife or kid take a bullet. There is a rage now arising in you as you see your loved one fall. As the madman fires rapidly at the panicking crowd of people, wanting out of the theater, you a trained hand gun owner pull your gun and aim at the madman. In your own, at that moment madness, you begin pulling the trigger but in the on-rushing panic of the crowd you are knocked about and several of your rounds stray. A young woman near you takes a bullet thru the head from your stray bullet. A small boy takes one of your strays thru the chest. Yet you are certain you hit the madman several direct shots but he doesn’t drop because he’s wearing body armor. Now just imagine the other 19 gun carriers also firing at the crazy bastard going up the stairs as the on coming panicked theater goers want out even if it has to be over you.

It’s insanity to think that the outcome would have been less tragic in my scenario described above.

Bill,

Your scenario lacks what I would like to refer to as common sense.  People need to be taught to stay low and on the ground if possible when bullets are flying by.  If people were to do that, they would not be hit by stray bullets as long as the person defending them knows enough to shoot above them.  DO NOT MAKE YOURSELF A TARGET BY STANDING UP WHEN SHOTS ARE BEING FIRED!!!!