For my UK friends debating US gun control
This article pretty much sums it up regarding US opinion on these tragedies.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:01, Reply)
gun laws have got more strict over that period though, haven't they?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:08,
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That's a question for Coccy...
Despite disagreeing with his philosophy, he is quite knowledgeable on the topic, although some of his data sets are politically skewed. Personally, I want nothing to do with guns of any sort outside of Xbox...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:12, Reply)
personally, I don't, either,
although I don't begrudge anyone wanting to shoot for sport. I'd rather do archery.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:14,
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I'm with you...
my family has long hunted, and my uncle and cousins have given up guns for archery because it's more challenging for them. My grandfather wanted to give us grandkids his guns before he kicks and I declined my share.I go archery target shooting with them on occasion.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:23, Reply)
bizarrely hunting with a bow and arrow is illegal here,
you have to use a shotgun :(
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:25,
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What I'm hoping doesn't happen
is that they find out that this guy played video games....They'll sooner ban Lego Batman, than construct some productive legislation on this...Please let him have a My Little Ponies collection, or an ant farm, or a toenail collection...anything but video games...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:39, Reply)
yeah they've still got to vent their rage on something I guess,
over here it's obvious, we'd just vent it on the guns.
Still, I don't think legislation is the answer. Society has to change.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:45,
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I have quite strong feelings about this as a self sufficiency type
personally I feel the agenda here is not animal welfare - a clean kill with a firearm or air rifle is just as tricky as with a bow or crossbow - but snobbery: bow hunting is much more accessible than using a firearm, particularly for those with a limited income.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:49, Reply)
i hope you are just merchandising some wind up
self sufficiency doesn't mean technophobic.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:06, Reply)
That's a bit quick for analysis.
We were having a mass debate down there but I think everyones sated for the time being.
Anyway toodle pip i've got to wash my hair.
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Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:09,
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quick before I get the last word
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:11,
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^^^ Phr yn-medh hi
A spammer popped up and we all got our guns out.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:24, Reply)
Amerikanek godnys, dhe Dhuw re bo grassys!
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Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:35,
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That is going to take me AGES to work out.
And it's probably going to be about my mum again, isn't it :-(
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:55, Reply)
Yeah something like that
Was trying to say that it's happening over there not here thankfully.
However when I were a lad they didn't teach Cornish at schools so have to rely on internet phrase lists.
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Cerebus Sticky! Sticky! Stick! Stick!, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:07,
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As far as I can gather from the news headlines
the important thing isn't gun control, or that people have died, or even the attempt to catch the perpetrators. It is that the cinema was showing Batman.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:14,
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By comparison,
Tuesday's murder of the entire cast, crew and audience of Keith Lemon : The Movie only made page 23 of the Yorkshire Evening Post (and that's only because Leigh Francis was from Leeds).
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:55,
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For a second there I thought that was real
Now I feel all disappointed.
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Sheriff John Bunnell https://twitter.com/thewonderfulgam, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:10,
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Opinion will not change the mind of a killer, which ever way it swings.
A nutter is a nutter, you can get machine guns in the post if you know where to look...
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Brandy_Bumwinkle, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:14,
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It forces such killing to be pre-meditated, though.
Not that there aren't many other legal things in every house which could kill in the heat of the moment.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:18,
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they have a paranoid society perpetuated by the media, though,
Fox News have been reporting lately that they are now using drones to patrol rural Nebraska to spy on ranchers.
Also they broadcast things like this in their commercial breaks:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPuQ9f9IwHI
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:20,
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You got that right.
Listen to right-wing radio, which I do just to know what the nutjobs are up to, and you'll hear numerous commercials for this company:
www.foodinsurance.com/
Which shills emergency rations for the apocalypse that Obama's supposedly going to unleash in his second term. There's also some show on Disc or TLC or something that shows people installing ultimate bomb shelters. All of the yahoos live in rural parts of the reddest of red states...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:26, Reply)
Oh, America and the cult of the individual.
They'll never have gun control because it violates exactly that.
Even in the face of massacres such as this, being told what to do by the Government is still more terrifying to them.
'Tis the Libertarian way!
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:27, Reply)
And the irony to this is that America is one of the most brain-controlled places on the planet
Their freedom is given to them by the tit of Mcdonalds and the cock of Coke.
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Brandy_Bumwinkle, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:32,
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they also broadcast shit like this
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3fWTIpc16w
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:41,
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I take Prozac, weakly.
(I lie, Citalopram is mother's little helper chez Joe)
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joetotale blear-e'ed, wither'd spectre, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:20,
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The manufacturing of consent?
Or they just like shit food?
And guns?
And the freedom to have both even if it kills them?
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:48, Reply)
consumer capitalism not just as a reality but as an ideology,
and an irrational fear of anything that looks like socialism.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:54,
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Which is odd and inconsistent
They seem to be scared of the word "socialism", but they didn't shoot that chap we saw in the clip the other day who stopped and changed that "muslim"'s tire for free, did they?
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:48, Reply)
they're proud of their philanthropy and their voluntary kindness,
it's socialism when it's enforced by the government.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:51,
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It is a wonderful indoctrination job someone has done over there
I've said it before on here, but just to get back on my soapbox with "socialist" health (Health just being a good example)...
Say we all got together and paid X each for a doctor to just look after each of us as needed, that is n*X monies going straight to our care.
If we pay X each to an insurance company, who pays a private company who pays a doctor, and each "broker" along the way takes a 20% cut, that is 0.8*0.8*n*X money. So either the doctor is paid 64% of what they would otherwise get, or it costs overall 36% more.
It is basically and fundamentally flawed and wasteful.
They are so scared of paying for what they see as "spongers" that they are willing to pay a third more money so as to not ever help anyone out.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:07, Reply)
the whole insurance model is pretty fucked up,
if the right wingers are as Christian as they say they are I don't know why they don't fund healthcare voluntarily through some kind of state or national charity. If they were willing to solve the problem themselves the government wouldn't have to do it for them but they want their cake and stamp on it.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:14,
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yes.
perhaps even more than a third. %age of gdp spent on health in the usa is 17.4, in the uk it's 9.8. plus we have wider access. well, we did until just recently. fucking tory cunts.
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:07,
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I'm half-tempted to take BC off ignore just so I can see what his response is to this story.
But then I remember that that'd mean seeing what his response is to this story.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:41,
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Yep.
I found myself getting too wound up by his right-wingery. So for the sake of trying to keep my b3ta entertaining, he became the second person I've ever put on ignore.
I have to say, it's largely worked a treat.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:00,
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Jolly Jack.
Again, that's political. I find his cartoons horribly complacent and bourgeois, centred as they seem to be on videogames and comics.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:22,
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can't say I agree with some (maybe a lot) of his views
but I can talk to him, not to change his mind, but explore the arguement, seems a decent enough chap to me, ah well.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:28, Reply)
Oh, he probably is decent enough.
But he annoys me all the same, and I'm under no obligation to be annoyed.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:35,
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yeah you are!
*jabs enzyme in chest with finger*
sorry. :D
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:37,
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It will be
Guns=good and safety for all. Period. Then he'll post a video of some elderly woman in a coffee shop who shot some kids stealing sugar packets. How being armed in a "dark" theater would help you evade the random bullets coming from a psycho who just threw down "smoke" bombs will be an interesting problem for him to tackle. We might not hear from him until he returns from his secret underground bunker where he bathes in the ashes of Charleton Heston...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:49, Reply)
That's easy
Denver has a Concealed Carry Ban, therefore, the Gunman knew that everyone was unarmed, so therefore felt free to carry out the crime, whereas if Denver didn't have this silly law, everyone could have been packin, and the Gunman would have thought twice!
Yes, this is the kind of bilge people will/do spout...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:58, Reply)
I'm sure someone will tell me all the data on this page is unreliable or irrelevent but what the hell
www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:15,
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he had a small message for you.
it was fairly friendly. would you like it?
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:21,
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as part of a bigger post...
"Enzyme, sorry you have me on ignore. Believe it or not, I have championed many "left of center" causes in my profession and even campaigned for Tom Daschle (look him up - I can provide photos for proof). I've also defended indigent capital murder defendants. But you may continue to keep your biases."
i didn't realise coxxy was a lawyer. he seems so truthful.
seems... :D
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:30,
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BrokenCoccyx is a Lawyer?
That's an automatic Ignore! Goddamnit, where's his last post?
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Kerrisis There's someone in my head, but it's not me., Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:15,
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i guess
maybe i picked it up wrong and he defended them with his gun?
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:26,
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*sigh*
He could have gazzed me. Ignore doesn't bar that.
But it's not a matter of bias, is it? It's simply a matter of not wanting to be aggravated. I have better things to do than engage in interminable debate with someone whose mind I probably wouldn't change anyway (I'm already 10 months overdue for a book deadline, and haven't even finished the first draft).
Hey ho. I'll probably take him off the list eventually...
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:24,
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i agree
if only cos i can't be bothered with the hassle of disagreeing. :D
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tickle I was away, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 18:32,
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I think it will allways be the attitude of many
that this massacre could have been avoided if more peeople had guns
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 14:51, Reply)
Tragic event. Certainly criminals will always find a way to get guns. In fact the current administration is known for selling assault rifles to known drug cartel members
The knee jerk reaction is to ban all guns and try to create a sanitary world, where we all get to have a blankie, sit in our mother's lap and be cozy. The reality is that criminals will always have guns. I just am for making it a fair fight.
Enzyme, sorry you have me on ignore. Believe it or not, I have championed many "left of center" causes in my profession and even campaigned for Tom Daschle (look him up - I can provide photos for proof). I've also defended indigent capital murder defendants. But you may continue to keep your biases.
I do not put party or dogma over common sense however, and that seems to irk some partisans. I could care less what a person believes, I just want consistency. Many of my anti-war, anti-Guantanamo friends have gone dormant now that "their guy" is in office. They say they don't want to distract from his agenda, but if it's wrong, it's wrong.
Research NY city gun laws: the impetus was a gang lord tired of having his thugs having to face armed citizens when they were doing their extortion rounds.
There was a shooting in Paducah, Kentucky. Schools are a gun free zone, so the shooter was unhindered. What stopped him was a school worker who had a gun in his car and held him at bay until police came. The massacre could have been much worse.
I would prefer that no one assault, rob, push, shove, rape or stab anyone; those that do should not whine when their victims fight back.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:34,
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The question is,
why do these rampages keep happening?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 15:41,
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Mostly fair points, but
isn't saying that we should not ban guns because of the positive example X when someone had a gun just as reactionary as saying we should ban then because of negative example Y? Anecdotes are not data.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:02,
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Ideology doesn't depend on data.
The thinking is that individuals have the right to their own power, even at the risk of someone abusing it, and that a state monopoly on power is unacceptable even if the state is benevolent.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:07,
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No, but if you were arguing that you want to ban/keep guns
then it would help to, for example, have data that the slacker the gun laws of a country, the more / less / same homicides (obviously many other factors would need to be taken into account).
Saying "Someone stopped a crime with a gun" or "Someone did a crime with a gun" is meaningless.
Ideologies don't depend on data, no, but it does give them weight.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:14,
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There are studies that say that the more guns, the less crime
It is the "I don't know if I'm going to get killed if I burgle this house" thought process.
My understanding is that after the UK tightened its gun laws, "hot" burglaries increased significantly. Presumably, because people weren't afraid of the homeowner cappin' dey ass.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:21,
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nobody has ever been afraid of a home-owner cappin' dey ass,
we've never had a culture of gun ownership. Hardly anyone owns a gun. Even the police don't normally carry them. Crime rates have consistently gone down for decades.
From what I can tell from dodgy internet statistics, the rate of civilian gun ownership seems to be rather an irrelevant factor in the amount of crime and deaths by shooting.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:26,
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"studies that say that the more guns, the less crime"
Do you have a link to those studies?
My personal belief is that gun law makes very little difference - there are so many other ways to kill people.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:34,
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if you want to kill people, you can.
you could get hold of a cheap SUV and drive it into a school playing field while the kids are out to play, or mount the pavement of a busy shopping street. A car is potentially a very dangerous weapon if you just want to kill a bunch of people.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:37,
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"Someone stopped a crime with a gun" is a kind of apologetic strategy,
but the theory is that if everyone has power a sort of stable equilibrium is reached by individuals protecting themselves and each other. It doesn't necessarily matter that the equilibrium has more shootings than the state-controlled society, because the principle of freedom also has intrinsic value, which is difficult to quantify.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:22,
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And if you have a theory
then you need data, right? Otherwise it is guesswork.
My example was over-simplified, but there is lots of crime data that could be analysed and debated rather than just people appealing to emotion.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:29,
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ultimately all data has to be evaluated according to a value system.
it's not the data that justifies the values. it's the values that give relevance to the data.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:31,
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So you think data isn't as valid
as appealing to someone's emotions and not even trying to get statistics to back up your case?
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:39,
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when it comes to ideology it's emotions all the way.
only two people with some ideological common ground can have a meaningful discussion of statistics. If one person values freedom more than life, how can you sway them by saying that their policies would result in loss of life?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:43,
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As soon as people don't use logic to reason
then it all becomes a matter of "faith" which is impossible and pointless to argue with as there is no language to do so.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
edit: obviously you can argue logically without data, though it helps to have some data. However, you can't argue logically if it is "emotions all the way".
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:48,
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yep,
that's about right.
Our values don't come from reasoning, they come from the society we wish to fit into.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:51,
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There is data here to support and refute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 17:26,
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Kurt Vonnegut said, "when only the police own guns, that's called a police state" (or something like that)
The amount of traffic fatalities in the US each year make gun deaths look insignificant. I suppose we could ban those as well.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:14,
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Do you actually have the reference to that?
Googling for it returns nothing, and his quote I did find "That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats [Waller] or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, "being alive is a crock of shit." hardly makes him sound pro-gun (different issue to whether he thinks some people should be allowed them and not others, though).
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:24,
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this is a point I've made before,
in the UK there are about 3500 deaths on the road each year and nobody wants to ban driving. According to the book "Freakonomics" there are more accidental deaths from swimming pools than from firearms.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:29,
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no-one wants to ban driving but there are plenty of campaigners for lower speed limits, lower drink-driving limits etc
Gun control isnt about 'banning' guns. It's about making gun ownership safer.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:41, Reply)
Criminals will find it a lot easier to obtain guns if there's a plentiful supply of legal guns in circulation for them to steal.
Has there even been any confirmation that the killer's guns were held illegally?
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:15, Reply)
^this (first sentence). It seems almost TOO obvious to point out.
Also Coxxy, how can you not see the abundance of guns (legal or not) leads to situations like this....again & again....? This doesn't happen over here.
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Tab Hunter Make this useless process end and so, begin again, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:20,
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I think the argument could be against the causal link between guns and the crime
We could say knives cause sliced bread and it would have the same problems.
Personally I believe that the cause of these problems are more complex: the violent hero culture held up by hollywood; a mainstream culture with very shallow and unfulfilling values; a media that focuses on easy to tell stories and lowest common denominator entertainment; a political system that leaves many feeling disengage with policy makers... I could go on. These things are perhaps the bigger problems, and they are harder to communicate and to solve, so we are drawn to the easy answer - Ban guns!
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:43, Reply)
Don't forget
North Hollywood 1997
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejD1Gml-ZGc
400 cops with hand guns against 2 robbers with assault rifles. So where does it end, Coccy? Permits to carry rocket launchers to overcome the baddies with the armor? Then I can apply for my missile silo when the baddies one up me again...
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 17:13, Reply)
And that would never happen in a place without legal gun ownership
Shootings in Israel were daily until they passed a law allowing people to carry automatic rifles. Guess what? The shootings stopped. Then the crazies started sending rockets. It is the crazy that is the problem.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 17:33,
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