27 Dead, Most Are Children, at an Elementary School in the U.S.

I don't know what to say anymore. There have been so many shootings this year here in the U.S. that I'm not shocked something like this happend. But to target children? There are no words for something like this.


http://gma.yahoo.com/breaking-conn-school-district-locked-down-shooting-report-151955384--abc-news-topstories.html

absolute fucking tragedy.
world has finally gone berserk...it went mad years ago

How many times will we allow incidents like this happen in this country? It makes me sick to the stomach to think that we are getting used to it. We'll have a few weeks of grief, and some gun restriction discussion will come around, but after a while everybody will forget about it until the next incident happens.

What is freedom? Obviously, freedom means that schools must be secured like banks and prisons in order to protect the right to bear arms.
Freedom means owning 2 hand guns and a semi-automatic weapon and getting killed with them by your own son.
Freedom means being fined by the authorities for "drinking in public" but the right to bear arms must be upheld in case the free citizens want to protect themselves against these authorities fining them for drinking in public.

Freedom does not mean you can sit in a movie theater without fear that some idiot thinks the premiere of the "hobbit" is great chance for the next massacre. Freedom does not mean your children can go to a school without fear of being shot by the next depressed semi-genius or school drop-out with the guns he picked up at his parents' house. Hard to understand, really.

"Now is not the time to talk about gun control" - I'm paraphrasing, but I keep seeing this quote in news articles about the shooting.

I'd love to know when an appropriate time for that conversation would be, because you'd think that ~20 dead kids would be as good a reason as any.

Mind you, I've had this conversation enough times that I no longer need to have it with people because I know how it ends. 'We need our guns!'.

Whatever works for you I guess!

The appropriate time to talk about gun control is indeed not now - it should have been years ago, before this ever happened.

When the amendment in question that allows Americans to own guns was written, a gun was a flintlock musket, which would take an easy thirty seconds to load in the hands of an experienced gunman, would have a range of some 150-200 yards and could hit a circle of three meters in diameter at a hundred yards, if the gunman was good.

No founding father would have wanted (semi-)automatic assault weapons in the hands of citizens. This horrendous tragedy should not be used for political reasons, it should never have come to this in the first place.

Hearing about this hit me unexpectedly hard. Tremendously sad, one way or the other. I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to lose a young child in such a horrific way (or at all).

My mind can't even get to the 'issues' yet. The enormity of this reality of this is so crushing that my vision of the grief and horror of the families and responders and community eclipses everything. I had a couple of nuclear arguments with my own child this week about his school attendance that in an instant dissolved to nothing in the relative gift that my son was here and safe, the end of the world a couple of days ago reduced to its proper place as a bump in the road. Experience tells us that the power of the emotion that drives all our responses to these nightmare scenarios attenuates over a relatively brief time whether it's focused on gun control or gratitude and perspective in our own lives. And that is wasteful and sad. For the sake of these precious, innocent and vulnerable lives lost I hope I can do a little better for a little longer, this time.

40% of the country stands with the NRA lobby.

Ten thousand gun-related deaths in the US last year. All the rest of the developed countries per capita COMBINED do not come remotely close.

"Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 43 times more likely to kill a family member, friend or acquaintance than to kill an intruder, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine."

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/105337/yes-really-ban-all-the-guns

Yet the second amendment is right. Timeless. Flawless. Even though it was made long before automatic weapons were invented.

But when it comes to gun-toting Americans, numbers and facts do not matter. There is no discussion. These people truly believe that if everyone had a gun, we'd all be safer. Children will continue to die because of the vanity of these dumb, xenophobic, uneducated, irrational people that exist in far too great numbers.

And they think they're heroes.

The right to bear arms. But the right to health care is "socialism" and bad.

The rest of the civilized world shakes their head in disbelief.

But of course everyone else is wrong.

People think having guns will mean we're protected, but Elementary School kids will not be toting around guns. Even if someone, for instance, was sitting in a movie theater with a gun in hand, he would be off-guard enough to still get shot regardless of how protected he was.

Ah, but I'm evidently preaching to the choir as everyone here seems to think the same way.

That includes this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEj04XNaVJ4

Australia, where I live, banned semi-automatic rfiles in 1997 after the Port Arthur massacre in my home state the previous year. 35 people back then and, as I recall, it was the world's worst non political massacre for many years. Significantly, there hasn't been another massacre in the 15 years since in Australia thank goodness.

The Australian death rate from guns subsequently dropped from around 500 people a year to 200. In America, 9 people per 100,000 died from firearms in 2010, compared to just 1.04 per 100,000 in Australia. Mind you, that's still bad compared to just 0.22 per 100,000 that died in the UK. That means that a person in the US was 40 times more likely to have died as a result of a firearm than in the UK in 2010. But Americans think they're safer having them. Go figure!

There are only the most tenuous (and increasingly less relevant) reasons for a civilian having a firearm - and I'm talking about the kind that is tailored for taking the odd potshot at an animal in a less-than-expedient fashion.

But there is literally no reason for any civilian to have a weapon designed to inflict harm on a human being. The weak argument of "hey, farmers need guns!" isn't much of an excuse to have guns in circulation of the type that this asshole used on a bunch of unarmed children. I Googled the main rifle that he used - fucking say to me, with a straight face, that you think a civilian should own something like that, for any reason at all. I would happily puke in your face if I could.

There's no fuckin' reason. Not even the old 'I have the right to defend my home!' nonsense. I've often thought (and sometimes still do) that if I lived alone and didn't have accidental injury to my family to worry about, that I might be the kind of person who'd own a gun for self defence. Seems innocuous enough, right? - It's Me Or Him! But ultimately, if you grow up with a gun as a part of your process of rationalisation (as Americans do), it starts to be an acceptable part of your problem solving mechanisms.

I don't buy the trope that video games and movies are mainly to blame for firearm related violence (most games I've played don't hold a candle to the Old Testament) but I do think that such common literature dumbs down our concept of what it actually means to shoot someone to death. I saw a horrible video on Youtube a few years ago (duly flagged it and got it removed, although maybe I shouldn't have) where one of these gas station clerks gets shot because he didn't have any money in the cash register. The robber puts a couple of bullets into him and runs out. The clerk lets out a rather guttural yelp and hits the deck immediately. You can't see him after that, but you can hear him rolling around on the floor wailing wordlessly. After that, his moans become longer and more drawn out. Within a minute or two, the noises turn into gurgles and death rattles, and then about a minute after that he goes quiet. He died in incredible agony before anyone could do anything about it. Although an old lady does walk into the gas station, looks confused by the awful noises she's hearing, and leaves again.

Maybe reading it like this wouldn't have much of an impact on you, but the video left a horrible one on me. But I think watching a video like that would surely have to change your feelings about whether or not it's okay to rationally decide to shoot someone.

Like I said after the cinema shooting a couple of months back, the idea of everyone packing heat is just silly. Can you imagine the amount of friendly fire that would've gone down in that cinema if they'd all been armed?

The only heroic tales of self defence I hear of usually involve a law enforcement officer (see: the Dimebag shooting). Being a gun owning society didn't save the people murdered in that bar, or the ones at Virginia Tech - how much more of this do people really want to go through before they can say they're at least trying to make a change, even if it's a rough one that's going to take a while to see the benefit of?

It's a cognitive dissonance at play, here. These people have had it shoved into their heads from day 1 - 'it's my right to own a gun!'. It never crosses their mind that while they might have a legal argument for owning a gun, they've really got almost nil moral reason for owning one. I mentioned self defence earlier, but even so - just what does that justify, in the end? It's not self defence to get someone on the ground and blow their brains out (as was done recently).

To say nothing of the fact that these kids were knocked off by guns that didn't even belong the shooter, but his mother (I read that - do correct me if I'm wrong, as facts in these kinds of stories do tend to shuffle about in the first few days). People fantasise about a horrible future where guns are illegal but the criminals still get their hands on them, but the truth is that America's there already. This asshole used someone else's gun to do what he did. 'People will still die' is a ridiculous statement when you weigh it up against the possibility that 'this sort of thing might happen less often'. I have no time for anyone who isn't at least open to that idea.

I have an incredible distaste for this whole thing. I don't deny that maybe if I was American and had grown up in a gun toting family that maybe I'd feel differently, because my gut would tell me that someone was coming for my guns and my rights, and I have no doubt that a situation like this is going to result in what will be seen as a possibly unfair amount of 'Murica bashing, but let's be serious - a bunch of kids and some teachers got pumped full of ammunition that is designed to cause maximum damage against a human target. Short of visiting the crime scene itself, what is it going to take to get through to people that this isn't an episode of TJ Hooker, that real people died horrible deaths here, and that it might be worth doing something to curtail the circulation of these weapons?

Fucking abominable, the whole lot of it.

Just about 13 or 14 hours prior to this attack, a man in China used a knife to attack an old lady (it was her knife and they had argued), then he went to a primary school and attacked the heads of over 20 children with the same knife (this from the news on the Wikipedia website). Then also on Wikipedia I have learned that there are security guards in schools in China due to these types of attacks occuring. Also a man used explosives to kill even more school children (than this latest attack) in the United States back in 1927 after first killing his wife. These seem to follow the same pattern and this is more relevant (I think) than the chosen weapon. I think most Chinese are too poor to be able to play violent video games or to watch many movies; also back in 1927 there were no video games and movies were in their beginning stages (when was the first movie? I should have paid better attention during Hugo.). So I guess my point is that while gun control makes sense, it probably is only part of what is necessary and the other part is maybe increased security being hired for public venues where crowds are gathered including churches and schools. But I don't think we can ever get to 100 percent security.

Anyway, I always wonder if some of these problems are human problems that cannot be solved or if somehow over the course of time we can make progress as a species. It would be so interesting to be able to look into the future and see if we are ever able to stop violence and wars.

"But I don't think we can ever get to 100 percent security"

But that's meaningless. It is within the realm of possibility to improve that percentage, so why not try?

Nothing personal, but it's one of the oft repeated phrases after a massacre that makes me angriest. It amounts to 'people will still die, why tinker with things?'. It infuriates me as much as the old chestnut : 'people die in cars too, but we're not banning cars!'.

Thing about cars is that they have a clear, definable function in society, and they're mostly safe. You can have a safe drive to work - who wants to bank on a bullet to the head being as safe as your daily commute?

These fallacies - ones like the comparisons to cars - they only have to be thrown about just enough to play on peoples apathy to the point that they sort of nod their heads and say 'yeah, you're right - not much can be done, let's just do nothing'. And while I acknowledge that some fairly well meaning and grounded people say these things with the best of intentions, it doesn't make them any more helpful or constructive.

And as for that stabbing in China - so what? That's China. They put up nets so that factory workers can't turn themselves into pavement pizza anymore. Why not aim a little higher than that bog hole?

"So I guess my point is that while gun control makes sense, it probably is only part of what is necessary"

Oh, absolutely. The guy on the news (the one I was referring to when mentioning the cars comparison) was very right when he said it's 'a people problem'. Whether or not guns are available isn't the only issue, and you'd be naive (ie. Brian May) for thinking they'll disappear in America in our lifetime.

The nature of the weapons available can be altered, though. There is a huge range of weapons that have absolutely no business being in civilian ownership.

The other side of the issue is a human one, and one that really can't be regulated by government. That's down to individuals and communities monitoring themselves and each other, and mentally unsound people getting looked at. That's where the "it'll never be 100 percent" part unfortunately comes into it, because people don't always pick up on the warning signs - how often has it been said of these assholes, 'he seemed like a nice kid'?

But I'll bet this prick would've had a harder time blowing those kids away if his nutjob survivalist mother didn't have that semi-automatic lying around. Which -is- the part that can be looked at, and should be. No matter how many idiots bleat about the rights they think they have.