Shooting at CT Elementary School

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

This, basically harley, your entire argument rests on "OMG STAHP THE WEAPONS BEING SOLD LEGALLY!" In which case, black market + still homicidal maniacs = dead kids everywhere.

If only those five year old kids would've been armed, then no one would've gotten hurt.

Reidmar wrote:

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

This, basically harley, your entire argument rests on "OMG STAHP THE WEAPONS BEING SOLD LEGALLY!" In which case, black market + still homicidal maniacs = dead kids everywhere.

The whole idea of stopping weapon distribution to only "those deemed most fit to own a gun" is like a fucking dandelion plant. Have you tried pulling out one of those? Their roots are fucking five feet long. The flowering part of the plant is tiny. Let's label this issue "gun control". Pull the weed, and out come the roots:

1) southern part of the country never really got over the civil war
2) nation of people who like to do what they want yet bawwww about wanting laws to protect things so Bad Things don't happen
3) drug cartels
4) illegal shipments of things involving guns/drugs hidden in totally legit shipments, like say barrels of dead salmon
5) licensed people don't want to give up their rights/license for hunting/sport/self-defense/whatever
6) pawn shops. Yes they work with police to determine whether pawned guns have their serial numbers removed. No, that doesn't mean they all actually do that.
7) gangs
in some places in this country you actually kind of do need a gun to protect yourself, sometimes
a) these places have lots of drugs/gangs/pawn shops
b) the belief that the cops suck, authority sucks, the law sucks, so you gotta protect yourself because nobody else will
9) the cultural significance of guns, even if not needed

etc

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

Yes, but uh... over three-quarters of the weapons used in mass shootings are legally purchased.

You can arrest black-market dealers, you know.

So, I'm gonna sink to your level for a bit.

"BWAAAAAAAA!!!! We can't stop all gun crime, so why bother trying to stop it at all?!"

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

Yes, but uh... over three-quarters of the weapons used in mass shootings are legally purchased.

You can arrest black-market dealers, you know.

So, I'm gonna sink to your level for a bit.

"BWAAAAAAAA!!!! We can't stop all gun crime, so why bother trying to stop it at all?!"

You can, for example have a gun seller go "Well, I ran my background check and although you seem like a skeevy shooter-type person, I'll just sell this to you because, well, I need to keep my business running and gun sales have been kind of shitty this month." Also known as passing a background check. The laws/hoops for a person to jump through to obtain guns legally varies from state to state. I'm not saying "Oh shit, just give up!" It's just that the issue is bigger than what you make it out to be. You provided the "Let's eliminate all the guns!!!!!" And we asked, jaded, "How?"

And seriously all crime-deterrent is, is how complicated can you make This Thing so it's really inconvenient to do. If someone really wants to do This Thing, there's really nothing stopping them. You can blame a country, with the age-old argument of "Lol Amerikkka sux!!! Do like us Limey bastards!" and while to some extent you're right, there's uniquely American bullshit preventing this shit from getting done but still, you're showing results without explaining the in-between ??????? bullshit.

Reidmar wrote:

TheHedonist wrote:

Mad toward an obvious bait

... Uh, considering this is the first time you've responded towards any of my remarks, I'm gonna go ahead and say that I was putting an obvious bait out for someone to bite, thank you for being stupid enough, and for not being harley.

And secondly, it was a bait.

Oh my god stop acting like you did something intelligent. You just claimed to be a sociopath on the internet. There is not enough eye-roll in the world for you right now.

Nihilist wrote:

You can, for example have a gun seller go "Well, I ran my background check and although you seem like a skeevy shooter-type person, I'll just sell this to you because, well, I need to keep my business running and gun sales have been kind of shitty this month." Also known as passing a background check. The laws/hoops for a person to jump through to obtain guns legally varies from state to state. I'm not saying "Oh shit, just give up!" It's just that the issue is bigger than what you make it out to be. You provided the "Let's eliminate all the guns!!!!!" And we asked, jaded, "How?"

We could make like Australia and finance a large-scale buyback for assault weapons. It seemed to work there, even if the article title is rather inflammatory.

Finance it how? You're broke and drowning in debt.

A background check is not for a single gun. It's for a goddamn GUN LISENCE.

Moron.

Somebody will always do it, Nihilist. They always will.

So according to your logic, why try stopping them at all? There's a falacy in that reasoning. Why bother? Because maybe there wouldn't have been 62 mass murders in America since 1982!

In the UK we have the occasional massacre too, despite tight gun control. Why, in the last 24 years, we've had 7.

It's probably worth mentioning also, that four of them were in Ireland, and directly related to "The Troubles", as we call the ethno-political war that seems to have settled down into a generalised resentment now. So it's a little tough to determine if they count as four, or one.

But we don't give up because of that. We just make it harder for those sons of bitches to get their hands on guns every time. Every time there was a massacre, we tightened gun laws some more. We didn't stand around saying, "Gee... I dunno... if those Dunblane kids had some way of defending themselves..."

Our two most recent massacres were the Dunblane School Massacre (1996), considered the most horrific slaughter of young life in our recent history, with 18 fatalities, 16 of them children, and the Cumbria Shootings (2010). That's right. There were 14 years between our two most recent massacres. As opposed to the USA, where a year isn't complete without one.

TheHedonist wrote:

I don't believe you.

That's... y'know, your opinion? I don't need someone on the internet to tell me that they do or don't believe what I've said. Yanno?

xerrofoot wrote:

Finance it how? You're broke and drowning in debt.

We could re-sell them to a third-world country!

No but okay you have a point there that I would be willing to acknowledge if you'd stop referring to countries with personal pronouns.

Reidmar wrote:

TheHedonist wrote:

I don't believe you.

That's... y'know, your opinion? I don't need someone on the internet to tell me that they do or don't believe what I've said. Yanno?

Yeah. Dude, next to aspergers, sociopathy is easily the most laughably self-diagnosed disorder in the world. And, even allowing that you are a sociopath, I don't need someone on the internet telling me that someone shouldn't be upset about something that's upsetting days later. Thirty-six hours later! Goddamn it's like you're in a wheelchair laughing at all the stupid walkers because pfft who wants to walk anyway.

Quote :

We could make like Australia and finance a large-scale buyback for assault weapons. It seemed to work there, even if the article title is rather inflammatory.

See, Nil mentioned it, but I'm not sure it would work... as well in America. America has a pretty firm and popular gun culture, and thanks to NRA propaganda in the last handful of decades there is a significant and vocal segment of the population who equate their guns with their inalienable freedoms. The NRA has helped make owning firearms as American as the Bible and apple pie. In America guns aren't just a tool, they're a symbol and part of our identity as Americans, whether we like it or not.

Guns should be a privilige, not a right.

But too many people see them as a right.

"I'm a sane, responsible, trained individual. I have the privilige of being capable of owning and handling a gun.

VS

"I'm an American! I have the right to own a gun!"

Quote :

Guns should be a privilige, not a right.

I'm not so sure if the said population I spoke of sees it as a "right" per se, but as an important expression of their rights and a way of defending their rights.

Well, for those who hoped the computer would provide some answers...apparently not.

MNewtown Shooter's Compuer Badly Damaged

Quote :

A computer at the Connecticut home where Newtown, Conn., school shooter Adam Lanza lived with his mother was badly damaged, perhaps smashed with a hammer, said police who hope the machine might still yield clues to the gunman's motive.

The computer's hard drive appeared to have been badly damaged with a hammer or screw driver, law enforcement authorities told ABC News, complicating efforts to exploit it for evidence.

Officials have "seized significant evidence at [Lanza's] residence," said Connecticut State Police spokesman Paul Vance, adding that the process of sifting through that much forensic evidence would be a lengthy and "painstaking process."

Authorities also told ABC News that the weapons used in Friday's rampage at Sandyhook Elementary School, which left dead 20 children and seven adults including Lanza's mother Nancy, were purchased by his mother between 2010 and 2012.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, Lanza visited shooting ranges several times in recent years, and went at least one time with his mother.

So not only did he kill his mother before he went out and killed 20+ innocent people, he apparently destroyed any evidence that might have given a clue as to why he did it. I'm assuming something must have been on the computers he didn't want anyone finding; otherwise, why bother to trash the hard-drives?

Assuming he was acting at all rationally.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Assuming he was acting at all rationally.

Good point.

Cyberwulf wrote:

(btw, it's probably a good idea to compare the total rate of homicides in the UK and the US, not just the gun-related homicides before you decide that more guns = more murders)

OK, let's compare the total numbers of homicides in the UK v.s. the US for 2009:

Country	Murder rate (per 100,000 population)	Number of murders
USA	5.0	15399
UK	1.2	722

(source)

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

There is a black market for weapons in the UK, but the thing is, almost no one has guns there. Even the police don't generally carry them. Where criminals do have guns, they generally don't have many of them.

I find the idea that guns would somehow protect peoples' rights very strange. It might have happened in the Arab Spring, but in the US, any time someone tries to use guns to "protect their rights", they get labelled nut-cases (correctly, as it happens, but I'm ignoring that for the moment) and, at best, put in jail. If the US were to descend into a state where guns became necessary to protect rights, the odds are that you wouldn't have many people left to exercise them by the time the shooting stopped.

Reidmar wrote:

TheHedonist wrote:

Mad toward an obvious bait

it was a bait.

A one-liner qualifies as mad nowadays?

Also, your whole spiel about being unable to empathize with your family's emotions was made up? Go play with xerro's daughter, you waste of space.

Anon wrote:

Cyberwulf wrote:

(btw, it's probably a good idea to compare the total rate of homicides in the UK and the US, not just the gun-related homicides before you decide that more guns = more murders)

OK, let's compare the total numbers of homicides in the UK v.s. the US for 2009:

Country	Murder rate (per 100,000 population)	Number of murders
USA	5.0	15399
UK	1.2	722

(source)

Nihilist wrote:

Which would be all fine and dandy, Harley, if there wasn't a massive black market for weapons.

There is a black market for weapons in the UK, but the thing is, almost no one has guns there. Even the police don't generally carry them. Where criminals do have guns, they generally don't have many of them.

I find the idea that guns would somehow protect peoples' rights very strange. It might have happened in the Arab Spring, but in the US, any time someone tries to use guns to "protect their rights", they get labelled nut-cases (correctly, as it happens, but I'm ignoring that for the moment) and, at best, put in jail. If the US were to descend into a state where guns became necessary to protect rights, the odds are that you wouldn't have many people left to exercise them by the time the shooting stopped.

A friend and I have been discussing the fact that the 'right to own guns' thing here in American is because of the Second Amendment. the problem is, when that amendment was written, you could only get one shot off with a gun before you had to reload it. Also, most towns (even large ones) didn't have anything approaching police departments. Roughly 99.9% of America was wilderness that still hadn't been explored. So the attitude was that no one was going to protect you but you.

That doesn't work in the 21st century, where even the smallest towns have volunteer police departments. There's simply no excuse for anyone (outside of troops at war overseas to have automatic weapons capable of firing 500 rounds at a time. It's useless for hunting (you'll simply rip the dear or rabbit to shreds. But it makes killing large numbers of people easier because you don't even really have to look at who your killing. Just point and shoot at anything that moves. The days when murder required you to actually look at the person/persons you were killing are long gone. It's the cowards way of making whatever twisted 'statement they're trying to make (especially because they almost invariably kill themselves). At least the whackjobs who assasinated President Kennedy and Martin Luther King only had regular rifles, and obviously never expected to get caught. This guy, and the theater shooter, obviously went into it with the idea they weren't goning to be taken alive. I doubt the shooter in Norway planned on being caught either.

I honestly don't think the underlying problem here is guns. I think the underlying problem here is that, again, everyone talks about guns instead of how to get help to those who need it.

NRA chimes in: 1,000 dead kids needed for them to possibly consider altering their pro-gun stance

There is no reason why any civilian should ever need an automatic weapon. It boggles the mind that they are legal.

An assault rifle has no practical purpose except in full-scale war.

You know what else is a problem? The Grandfather Clause. You're allowed to inherit guns regardless of anything. If assault rifles were banned, you would still get to keep any you've bought, which seems to be the reason for people rushing out and buying them.

Going around banning Assault Rifles isn't enough though. The Dunblane School Massacre, undoubtedly the most horriffic in UK history with the deaths of 16 five year olds and their teacher, ending with the suicide of Thomas Hamilton, was carried out with four legally owned handguns.

Regarding Assault weapons, I suggest an opportunity for buyback that lasts up to a year. That way, owners don't feel like they're losing all their money.

And stronger background checks. For crying out loud, what is the POINT of banning one kind of gun if all the other kinds are still so easy to acquire?

And making a law so that the permit of one state CANNOT be used to buy or use guns in another. If you're turned down once, you can't just try again in another state six weeks later.

Aggie wrote:

NRA chimes in: 1,000 dead kids needed for them to possibly consider altering their pro-gun stance

Also, what a heartless bastard. So, 999 dead kids isn't enough, it must be 1000. And not even nation-wide. One incident.

I bet it would only take one dead kid, if it was his own. Although I seriously doubt he has one.

He really isn't doing the NRA any favours. But hey, that's a plus. Do you really want to be affiliated with a man who thinks like that? Even in the slightest? That's not even the thoughts of a human being. I apologise to Reidmar for calling him a sociopath. LaPierre is the real sociopath.

Also, he needs to talk to whoever's writing his speeches. At the least he could have said , "Even if 1000 kids died" and shown his beliefs were above value, but no, he put an actual price on his beliefs.

"I would not change my stance even if 1000 kids died."

"If 1000 kids died I might change my stance."

The first wording just sounds cold and heartless. The second sounds utterly sick, like he'd go in for bribery. You could bribe him with 1000 kids' lives. I could make a cartoon of something like that, with him counting children's souls on a throne made of guns and saying "998... 999... wait! One of these is the murderer! No deal!"

If you'll notice, he actually changes his stance to 250,000 dead kids at the end.