[dankoBanana]

If you push someone off a tall building, do we ban tall buildings?
If you strangle someone with a rope, do we ban ropes?
If you beat someone with a baseball bat, do we ban baseball bats?
.

Tall buildings arent built for killing people. Ropes also. Same goes for baseball bats. Assault weapons are. That is the difference

[boriscleto]

Sadly, Nation Knows Exactly How Colorado Shooting's Aftermath Will Play Out | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

[kswier]

Gasoline has 6x more energy per-kilo than dynamite, should we ban gasoline?

Its not only how much energy that is stored that matters, it is also how quickly it is released. The same applies to many of the other 'weapons' that have been mentioned. One person would be hard pressed to do the damage that was done in the movie theatre with a rope, a baseball hat, by pushing people off buildings, with a car, or even with a pistol. You cannot stop someone who is bent on destruction, but you can make it difficult for them.

With that said, I am always on the fence about the gun debate. I know people who use guns for target practice and hunting, and I have no problem with it (they know gun safety and abide by safety rules). However, I think these tragedies will become more frequent as population increases. Perhaps the best balance is to limit weapons that are designed for massive destruction??? Regardless, the freedom of gun ownership does come at a price.

Lastly, it is always good to keep things in perspective. How many lives are lost by the malicious use of guns that would not be lost if guns were banned (a very hard, or impossible, statistic to obtain, I know)? How does this compare with other causes of death? Is this a minor problem or a big problem? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I think they need to be part of the discussion.

[magkelly]

I take great exception to the idea that America is the only country capable of breeding such people.

List of rampage killers: Europe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Check out the various lists and categories. Yeah, there are a lot of Americans on that list but they're in good company and let's not forget that guy from peaceful, civilized, Norway, Anders Behring Breivik. (Why is it killers are always ID'd by 3 names?) I was surprised to find he'd bought all his guns legally actually. I thought that gun control over there was a lot tighter than that.

[Parallax]

I take great exception to the idea that America is the only country capable of breeding such people.

That's different. The European (and Canadian) mass murders were tortured souls that just needed understanding and guidance but society let them down. The American mass murderers, like all Americans, are just evil, bloodthirsty animals that like to kill.

[Winder]

Its not only how much energy that is stored that matters, it is also how quickly it is released. The same applies to many of the other 'weapons' that have been mentioned. You would be hard pressed to do the damage that was done in the movie theatre with a rope, a baseball hat, by pushing people off buildings, with a car, or even with a pistol. You cannot stop someone who is bent on destruction, but you can make it difficult for them.

With that said, I am always on the fence about the gun debate. I know people who use guns for target practice and hunting, and I have no problem with it (they know gun safety and abide by safety rules). However, I think these tragedies will become more frequent as population increases. Perhaps the best balance is to limit weapons that are designed for massive destruction??? Regardless, the freedom of gun ownership does come at a price.

Regardless of the object used to kill people the responsibility falls on the individual. What if he had stole a semi-truck and drove it into daycare? Would we be having this conversation?

Can you really make if difficult for them? What is a good historical example of government making it difficult? Prohibition financed several generations of organized crime and did more damage than the alcohol itself. How many people die every year in the war drugs? How much safer would Mexico be if we were not financing the drug cartels?

Laws are only followed by law abiding citizens. Criminals by definition don't obey the law so laws and regulations only impact law abiding citizens.

[séamuis]

Ropes also

a long list of people in human history would very much disagree with that. a lot of ropes are and have been made, for the sole purpose of extinguishing human life.

[les3547]

The first two posts I've quoted are why this sort of discussion is meaningless. There is no common sense on the side of the gun advocates.

Since you quoted me, I'll say to my mind it isn't me that makes the discussion meaningless, it is attitudes like yours (whether for or against guns). You are intransigently opinionated, and so refuse to budge despite the fact that there is a serious question about whether it is guns or whether it is violent tendencies of citizens that cause gun murders. The problem with being opinionated is that you simply ignore every statistic, logic and fact that should open your opinion to variation. I myself have stated I am for gun control, but that my view of the US is we will never, ever outlaw guns. If that is the case, then what point is there fighting about whether guns should be banned or not? The only practical approach is figuring out ways to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

But even if we keep guns out of the wrong hands, it doesn't mean Americans will stop murdering each other. Let me use a website to reason this out for you, even though I am fairly certain no matter how much reason and facts support a more objective point of view, you will maintain your uninformed opinion.

Arbitrary Comparisons Between Countries

The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders and a very low murder rate. Doesn't this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States (Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, Don B. Kates Jr.). Japan is another country typically cited.

Gun control opponents can play similar games. The Swiss with 7 million people have hundreds of thousands of fully-automatic rifles in their homes (see GunCite's "Swiss Gun Laws") and the Israelis, until recently, have had easy access to guns. Both countries have low homicide rates. Likewise this doesn't mean more guns less crime.

The U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than many European country's total murder rates. On the other hand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mexico have non-gun murder rates in excess of our total murder rate.

Incidentally in 13th century Europe, several studies have estimated homicide rates in major cities to be around 60 per 100,000. (Even back then, the equivalent of coroners, kept records.)

There are many, many factors, some much more prominent than gun availability that influence homicide rates and crime in general. (See this excerpt from 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report and GunCite's "Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths?")

Due to the many confounding factors that arise when attempting international comparisons, this approach would appear to hold little promise for determining the influence of gun levels (or handgun availability) on violence rates.




Here's the relevant excerpt from above:

In 1993 a Swiss professor, Martin Killias, published a study of 18 countries concerning gun ownership, homicide and suicide. He in part concluded there was a weak correlation between total homicide and gun ownership. For a partial criticism of his study see Dunblane Misled where using the countries studied by Killias, these researchers found a much stronger correlation between firearm homicides and car ownership. More seriously, when the United States was included in the Killias study, a stronger correlation between total homicide and gun ownership was found. When two countries were excluded, the U.S. (high gun ownership, high murder rate) and Northern Ireland (low gun ownership, high murder rate) the correlation was marginally significant. Gary Kleck writes, "Contrary to his claim that 'the overall correlation is not contingent upon a few countries with extreme scores on the dependent and independent variable', reanalysis of the data reveals that if one excludes only the United States from the sample there is no significant association between gun ownership and the total homicide rate." (Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, p 253. Walter de Gruyter, Inc. New York, 1997.) Kleck concludes that "the homicide-guns study was not international at all, but merely reflected the unique status of the United States as a high-gun ownership/high-violence nation...Since the positive association Killias observed was entirely dependent on the U.S. case, where self-defense is a common reason for gun ownership, this supports the conclusion that the association was attributable to the impact of the homicide rates on gun levels."

Using homicide and suicide data from a larger sample of countries, 35, (International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:216), Kleck found "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate in the largest sample of nations available to study this topic. (Associations with the total suicide rate were even weaker.)" (Targeting Guns, p 254.)

A more recent study, by Killias, concludes "no significant correlations with toal suicide or homicide rates were found, leaving open the question of possible substitution effects."

This article by Rutgers University professor Dr. Goertzel offers sound advice regarding statistical analysis: "When presented with an econometric model, consumers should insist on evidence that it can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it. Models that fail this test are junk science, no matter how complex the analysis."

[Tom S.]

Well Boriscleto beat me to posting this great article The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal - Fortune Features, but aside from the flagrant misrepresentation by the GOP of the government's role in Fast and Furious to score political points, there is another part of that article which is quite relevant to my point about illegal gun sales. Reading it you see the deep frustration of the Feds from their inability to get past state laws (and the lack of strong enough federal laws) that thwarted all their good efforts to stop the straw purchases.

Then you have the NRA so powerful they can force congresspersons to vote for something utterly irrelevant to gun rights, like holding Holder in contempt, you have rogue private dealers selling without requiring any documentation, you have states that refuse to require registration . . . and at end of that funnel we have a very large angry, violent segment of the population who can easily get guns.

I say, if we want to keep sane and reasonable gun rights, we need to fix all the above problems.

Unfortunately, posting an article by one source, doesn't change the fact that our own government screwed up, especially in light of the fact that I can post 10 that claim otherwise. Not only that, but they have been stonewalling the investigation of Fast and Furious from the start and have treated the family of the dead Border Patrol like lepers. Even if played devil's advocate and agreed with Forbes, it doesn't change the outcome one wit. It was a government program, it broke it's own laws, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of guns got into the hands of the mexican drug cartel and a US Border Patrolman was killed. And so far, no one has been charged with any wrong doings. That was the point I was trying to make and you, along with Boriscleto are ignoring. We have laws now to fix these problems, but instead of enforcing them, you want to enact more laws. Does that really make sense to you?

[Blue]

Its not only how much energy that is stored that matters, it is also how quickly it is released. The same applies to many of the other 'weapons' that have been mentioned. One person would be hard pressed to do the damage that was done in the movie theatre with a rope, a baseball hat, by pushing people off buildings, with a car, or even with a pistol. You cannot stop someone who is bent on destruction, but you can make it difficult for them.

With that said, I am always on the fence about the gun debate. I know people who use guns for target practice and hunting, and I have no problem with it (they know gun safety and abide by safety rules). However, I think these tragedies will become more frequent as population increases. Perhaps the best balance is to limit weapons that are designed for massive destruction??? Regardless, the freedom of gun ownership does come at a price.

Lastly, it is always good to keep things in perspective. How many lives are lost by the malicious use of guns that would not be lost if guns were banned (a very hard, or impossible, statistic to obtain, I know)? How does this compare with other causes of death? Is this a minor problem or a big problem? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I think they need to be part of the discussion.

They are still working on clearing out his incendiary devices. As far as that, go look at U.K. and a few other places where gun registration led to confiscation. On the flip side, how many killings and mass murders have weapons prevented or brought to justice Perps?

[Blue]

Since you quoted me, I'll say to my mind it isn't me that makes the discussion meaningless, it is attitudes like yours (whether for or against guns). You are intransigently opinionated, and so refuse to budge despite the fact that there is a serious question about whether it is guns or whether it is violent tendencies of citizens that cause gun murders. The problem with being opinionated is that you simply ignore every statistic, logic and fact that should open your opinion to variation. I myself have stated I am for gun control, but that my view of the US is we will never, ever outlaw guns. If that is the case, then what point is there fighting about whether guns should be banned or not? The only practical approach is figuring out ways to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

But even if we keep guns out of the wrong hands, it doesn't mean Americans will stop murdering each other. Let me use a website to reason this out for you, even though I am fairly certain no matter how much reason and facts support a more objective point of view, you will maintain your uninformed opinion.

Arbitrary Comparisons Between Countries

The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders B.S. and a very low murder rate. Doesn't this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States (Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, Don B. Kates Jr.). Japan is another country typically cited.

Gun control opponents can play similar games. The Swiss with 7 million people have hundreds of thousands of fully-automatic rifles in their homes (see GunCite's "Swiss Gun Laws") and the Israelis, until recently, have had easy access to guns. Both countries have low homicide rates. Likewise this doesn't mean more guns less crime.

The U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than many European country's total murder rates. On the other hand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mexico have non-gun murder rates in excess of our total murder rate.

Incidentally in 13th century Europe, several studies have estimated homicide rates in major cities to be around 60 per 100,000. (Even back then, the equivalent of coroners, kept records.)

There are many, many factors, some much more prominent than gun availability that influence homicide rates and crime in general. (See this excerpt from 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report and GunCite's "Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths?")

Due to the many confounding factors that arise when attempting international comparisons, this approach would appear to hold little promise for determining the influence of gun levels (or handgun availability) on violence rates.




Here's the relevant excerpt from above:

Nice set of cherry picked data. Some of those are self reported by various countries and some of that data is glaring. There are for example households in South Africa with firearms.


Regarding the above B.S. stamp, Check out London. It is historical but the vast majority of the gun stuff is more recent since 2006. However, there are a large number of other killings by blunt objects and knives as well.

MurderMap - London Homicide Reported Direct from The Old Bailey - Map

[les3547]

Unfortunately, posting an article by one source, doesn't change the fact that our own government screwed up, especially in light of the fact that I can post 10 that claim otherwise.

Hardly objective sources I'd bet (judging from what I've read), nor as well researched as the Forbes article.

Not only that, but they have been stonewalling the investigation of Fast and Furious from the start and have treated the family of the dead Border Patrol like lepers.

GOP BS spin. No one knows if there is anything relevant the committee hasn't seen. The small amount of stuff Holder has held back he claims would endanger the lives of people in the field, and that it is illegal for him to turn it over. Do you are anyone know that isn't true? So like the good little opportunists Issa and gang are, they saw Holder stuck in a hard place and took advantage to score political points. Meanwhile, the moron in charge of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, pressured congresspersons to vote for holding Holder in contempt. Why? What exactly does the border incident have to do with the NRA? NOTHING! Well, except in LaPierre's deluded brain, who must have had a psychic vision in which he understood, "It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy [and Holder is part of that conspiracy] to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country."

Even if played devil's advocate and agreed with Forbes, it doesn't change the outcome one wit. It was a government program, it broke it's own laws, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of guns got into the hands of the mexican drug cartel and a US Border Patrolman was killed. And so far, no one has been charged with any wrong doings.

Of course the government screwed up, it screws up all the time, such as invading Iraq because of WMDs. How many lives have been lost or damaged over that? How many trillions were spent? Who has been charged with war crimes over that?

As far as guns getting in the wrong hands, do you realize how many thousands of guns have been and still are sold to Mexicans through illegal gun sales? This has been before, during and after the government's involvement. Why focus on this incident as though it is some horribly different situation than is actually quite normal (three border agents have been murdered by Mexican drug cartels in the last few years, ranchers have been gunned down in border communities, and US citizens are being kidnapped and killed with regularity).

That was the point I was trying to make and you, along with Boriscleto are ignoring. We have laws now to fix these problems, but instead of enforcing them, you want to enact more laws. Does that really make sense to you?

It depends on the laws. Laws that require registration, close monitoring of all gun sales, a background check for every gun purchased, a clear traceable, record trail from first to last buyer and current owner, and any other law which curbs illegal gun sales has basically what I've been supporting in this thread. So yes, that does make sense to me.

[les3547]

There are for example households in South Africa with firearms. . . . Regarding the above B.S. stamp, Check out London. It is historical but the vast majority of the gun stuff is more recent since 2006. However, there are a large number of other killings by blunt objects and knives as well.

??? Did you carefully read the post?

[Blue]

??? Did you carefully read the post?

Did you notice I was talking about the chart and the U.K. comment?

[jimH]

I'm not going to comment on whether the ease with which a 24 year old man obtained AK47s and a huge ammo dump contributed to the scale of this tragedy. It does strike me as shocking that such weapons are available so casually, but on the other hand, these mass shooters are special 'forward planning' kinds of people who will obtain a weapon and a way of inflicting maximum destruction somehow no matter how strict the gun laws are.

But it does annoy me in these discussions when deprived urban areas are cited as examples of gun laws not working, usually accompanied by statistics from predominantly rural states with lax or no gun laws where the murder rate is far lower. You never hear about New York, with stringent gun control laws and relatively good crime statistics. Not to suggest that the stringent gun laws are the only or even main factor in reducing crime overall - that would be as silly as suggesting that lax gun laws directly reduce crime.

I think shootings like this one are outside the 'gun control debate' and although I am pro gun control, I think that the knee jerk response is probably missing the point. I think we should be focussing on why the shooter did what he did, rather than the tools he employed. I just wrote some waffle on this, but I have deleted it and will just say that a common thread with a lot of these shootings seems to be an interaction with our society / culture, and psychologically weak individuals.

Amen!