2012-12-14, 18:22
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Link #361 | |||
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Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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man have killed one another senselessly since the dawn of of the race. At first it's with stones, then swords, now it's with firearms, and eventually it'll be something else that's more effective. You can't regulate the sadistic or the crazy. Even if you magically zaps away every single firearm tomorrow, those who are committed to carrying out these acts will continue to do so, they'll simply move to other means (some which are even more effective). Also, before someone tries to paint me as advocating for a free-for-all policy towards gun control (which inevitably will happen), that's not what I'm for at all. But understand that while firearm is the tool of choice for the perpetrator of these incidents, it is not the root cause of these incidents, nor will the lack of such prevent future incidents from occurring. Quote:
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2012-12-14, 18:25
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Link #362 | |
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Level 5 Pyrokineticist
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Australia
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2012-12-14, 18:33
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Link #363 | |
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Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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"Also, before someone tries to paint me as advocating for a free-for-all policy towards gun control (which inevitably will happen), that's not what I'm for at all." Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-12-14 at 20:52. Reason: there is a limit to sarcasm. |
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2012-12-14, 18:54
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Link #364 | ||
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=^^=
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: 42° 10' N (Latitude) 87° 33' W (Longitude)
Age: 45
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You could have at least said "teachers with gun training". And just to let you know, I have a career change decision right in my face -- to become a teacher myself. If I have to learn how to use a gun, then so be it; that's presuming I ever get a job teaching. Of course, you are a regular citizen like me. Neither of us have any power towards policy-making. Regardless, I wanted any kind of thought towards any kind of idea favoring the benefit of society. Quote:
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2012-12-14, 19:06
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Link #365 |
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Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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Mmmm beam weapons....
A question would be, why wasn't this a serious problem earlier? What changed that has made this a serious issues and problem (gun violence in schools and such...not general thief crimes or mob violence)? Something changed, but what, why, and can it be corrected?
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2012-12-14, 19:15
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Link #366 | ||
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=^^=
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: 42° 10' N (Latitude) 87° 33' W (Longitude)
Age: 45
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But yea, that's a freakin' good question. There had been shootings before, like that famous one at a Texas university. Y'know, that sniper up in the bell tower. And there had been school rampages around 1910 or so. But now, it's like an epidemic -- where these incidents are happening all too often. Aurora, Colorado was just last year. Quote:
=== Speaking of incidents -- y'know -- before 9/11 -- airline incidents have been relatively common in America. Major airline crashes still happen across the globe, but America hasn't had one since American Airlines 587. This is due to safety standards imposed by our government -- via the FAA. The politics simply made these kinds of incidents absolutely unacceptable. The airline industry simply has the infrastructure and the regulations in place to make sure flights are safe. Knock on wood, but it's been 11 years with a very stellar track record. The same sentiment is not applied to these mass shootings, where one after another, they get swept under the rug. Someday, one American shooting may top 50 people. Will it take that much?
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2012-12-14, 19:15
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Link #367 | |
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Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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And here I thought there was at least someone who' can talk about the issue without getting hostile, apparently I presumed too much
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There isn't any single solution that can solve these problems. Hell, it's not even a singular problem. Like I said earlier, it's not just about guns, it's also about culture, social-economy, healthcare, etc. You can't relegate all mass shootings to one single bin and ask how do we deal with it, they're symptoms of a combinations of different issues, which all needs to be addressed. There needs to be better mental healthcare infrastructure in the US, which has been gutted in recent decades, parents needs to do better job with parenting, we need less celebration of violence in our culture, there needs to be an improvement in the social-economic pit that has swallowed the poor, better enforcement of gun laws and closing of loopholes, etc. Lumping it all together and compress it to lolguns isn't going to solve anything. |
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2012-12-14, 19:33
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Link #369 |
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Shougi Génération
 Graphic Designer
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Sydney, Australia
Age: 37
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I find it hard to even express how I feel about what happened to these kids.
The 'blame the guy, not the gun.' talk has got to end: A gun is a tool to kill, nothing more. It is morally questionable for them to be so widely accessible and its wide access is only self-promoting because you need 'to defend yourself' from these kinds of events. It's tragic to have to read this coming from one of the leading nations of the world. A 3rd world event that should have no place in America. And yet, here we are. Proud? *Insert national anthem*
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2012-12-14, 19:34
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Link #370 | ||
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=^^=
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: 42° 10' N (Latitude) 87° 33' W (Longitude)
Age: 45
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If you disagree, show me a no-solution problem -- aside from a global catastrophe . Actually, even these can be solved politically by being prepared for them; however, we're not advanced enough for those. Quote:
And yes, it is true about all these general abstract aspects contribute to the problem. But attacking the problem in that direction is not the first step. In fact, things like cultural change acts slow for a reason -- because it takes time to propagate these kinds of changes. After all, consider how long it took for Civil Rights to happen -- 100 years after a Civil War, and even then... the cultural effects of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement can still be felt today. In fact, culturally, race has and will always be an issue. Well, with regards to guns and every other issue, the first step has to be political, buddy. And this is why I am demanding for some kind of quota on solutions. Politics is everything. Everything else you listed (culture, social-economic, healthcare, etc.) will follow suit. === And anyways, I need a break. 
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2012-12-14, 19:42
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Link #371 |
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Banned
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Hamburg
Age: 54
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Unfortunately, I don't see a chance for any improvement in the US. I'm not generally so pessimistic, but sorry guys, you are f*cked.
Of course there would be good reason to do something. Of course there's a clear correlation between the ease of availability of firearms and deaths caused by them. You have to be a nutcase to argue otherwise, even though lord knows there are enough whackjobs who try. The problem is something else: The soul of America is permeated by guns and violence in the name of "freedom". The very notion of trying to get someone to give up his firearms causes an allergic reaction in around half of the population, as if they'd have to accept voluntary slavery or something. And unless there is a clear consensus of the vast marority of the population that firearms have to be at least severely restricted, there is no hope trying to get them out of your lives. Where would I start to try to at least REDUCE the problems? 1) Make the owner of the gun co-responsible for what happened with it. The only way I see how to get people to make sure that their weapons are LOCKED AWAY. 2) Force firearms registration. If someone is found in possession of a gun that he isn't registered for, immediately confiscate it and fine him to kingdom come. 3) Raid locations which are known to house people of shady background in possession of firearms. Pay bounties for whistleblowers whose tips lead to confiscation of weapons (taken partially out of the fines for illegal possession). This way, the gun nutcases can still have their firearms, but they need to carefully lock them away. And this way, there's hope that the sheer amount of weapons drops a bit. A long shot, I know. But for more, America simply isn't civil and peaceful enough. Sorry. |
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2012-12-14, 19:51
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Link #372 | |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2010
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To those looking for end-all solution (to school shootings) that's effective, immediate while preserving the right to arms... it's all perfectly laid out here!
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in other news: around ~ 72 hrs ago in the VII Circuit Court of Appeals... Gun Rights Advocates Win a MAJOR Case for Second Amendment and Concealed Carry (CCW) Rights in Illinois: Legalized Concealed Carry in Chicago, and Eventually Nationwide? |
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2012-12-14, 19:53
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Link #373 | |
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:cool:
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Idaho
Age: 32
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People are quick to blame objects as if they somehow perpetrated these tragedies. That blame comes from unethical media and its perversion of events that are just news to a lot of them. What we don't need is weapon control. We need people to be able to get mental assistance at little to no cost. There are far too many people with situations that tend to create dysfunction and far too few reasons for them to see someone who can help them. 
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2012-12-14, 19:54
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Link #374 | ||||||
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Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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2012-12-14, 20:03
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Link #376 | |
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Shougi Génération
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Sydney, Australia
Age: 37
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-12-14 at 20:37. Reason: going too far on the personal tangeant |
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2012-12-14, 20:05
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Link #377 | |
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Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
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1) Modern news. Were these events really less frequent in the past? Back then people focused on local news, and only big national events trickled down to local news outlets. Thanks in part to the internet, everything is at the national level now. Aside from potentially skewing people's perceptions, news is almost always about negative events, and shifting from local to national (or world) news means that there is truly no end to the terrible things you can read and hear about. This likely has a negative effect on people's outlooks and world views. How this influences society can't be known, but I don't imagine that there's anything good in it. (Any news hounds here? Have you ever forced yourself to stop checking the news and maintained that for at least a week? Didn't you feel a lot better?) Lastly, there's always the fear of copycat crimes. The worst crimes tend to make it to the most news outlets and stick around for the longest, thus gaining maximum exposure. Does this plant a seed in some people's minds? I think that this aspect is usually overstated, but we can't say that it's meaningless. 2) Population growth. Compared to the past, we have more people and the population density in some areas has gone up. Aside from creating increased competition amongst members of society (and with it, stress), every person harbors the potential to do something wonderful or something terrible. Genetics and environment are dice rolls as to how a person will turn out. With more people around, you have to figure that you'll roll more "terrible" combinations. This also feeds back into the point about the media. 3) The most important (and unfortunate) point: disintegration of community within society. While mental illnesses are met with fear and misunderstanding across nearly all cultures, and while every culture has loners, some culture studies indicate that other cultures rally around members in distress. Understandably, this provides a stabilizing effect. In America (and perhaps western cultures as a whole), this is quickly being lost. The first two reasons contribute to this. The constant bad-news cycle makes people fearful, and they stop trusting one another. (Listen to some older folks lamenting about how they used to be able to run around their neighborhood freely, but kids today can't because it's too dangerous. It didn't become more dangerous, it's just that kidnappings in some small town on the East Coast are now immediately relayed to parents in small towns on the West Coast as well, and vice versa.) Lack of trust and increased fear of one another causes people to keep to themselves. This is one aspect of isolation. The increased population and the increased competition within society places more strains on members of society. How many people place their aging parents in nursing homes because they don't have the time or can't otherwise afford to take them in? How many parents spend sufficient time parenting, instead of having baby-sitters or the television raise their children? Further, how many people really become members of the community that they reside in? The modern "global economy" often demands that people move around - these are people who can't contribute to the stability and trust of a community. I'm sure there's a lot more that could be said, but those are the three points that come to mind for now. Unfortunately, there's no policy change that can easily fix any of them. How do you get people to stop being so afraid and to start trusting each other again?
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2012-12-14, 20:07
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Link #378 | ||
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:cool:
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Idaho
Age: 32
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What are the weather conditions? Will the gun army encounter jamming conditions? Will the knife-wielders have trouble running? How good is the marksmanship of the gun-wielding army? Do they even have training in guns at all including maintenance of their firearms? Just because they can shoot bullets it doesn't mean they'll hit their targets. Believe it or not, people are really good at missing the broad side of a barn. Also, most bullets fired in war don't actually hit a target much like Stormtroopers in StarWars. There's a long bit of psychology behind this. If you're going to try and participate in a debate thread, please have something to contribute. Quote:
This is true. There's obviously a lack of loss of life in the knife incident as opposed to the incident with the gun. That's not necessarily as a result of the weapons themselves however. I'm not well-versed enough on these situations to compare them factually.
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-12-14 at 20:37. Reason: quoted part edited |
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2012-12-14, 20:07
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Link #379 | ||||||
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Meh
Join Date: Feb 2008
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Ah, the sweet smell of people proposing laws without thinking of their legal ramifications...
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Moreover, on what ground can you even begin to put criminal responsibility on owner who themselves have done nothing wrong? Should car owners be responsible for injuries and fatalities caused by their car if it was stolen or when they let someone else borrow it? Quote:
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-12-14 at 20:37. Reason: quote edited |
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2012-12-14, 20:20
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Link #380 | |
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Shougi Génération
Graphic Designer
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Sydney, Australia
Age: 37
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-12-14 at 20:33. Reason: going a tad too far. |
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