US: 30 shot at school, China: 22 knifed at school

At the time there was little info to go on, and the media of course runs with every story they can. So we're dealing with semi-automatic, which just fire a few rounds a second vs. hundreds.

The fact is, while everyone is all about discussing the gun issue, it seems to be more of a mental health issue. As the saying goes, guns don't kill people, people kill people. Granted, the weapons used and their availability would have made a difference in the result, but without guns, who's to say that this person wouldn't have done something similar with knives, explosives, vehicles, etc?

 

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I strongly agree.

In the Wake of Another Mass Shooting, Let's Talk About America's Dangerously Gutted Mental Healthcare System

 

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No, I’m not justifying this needless slaughter, what I was trying to point out was that you and many other posters in this thread assumed that the weapons used were fully automatic, when in reality they were semi-auto. Big difference in terms of the semantics in the addressing which type of weapons were used in the act of this horrendous crime. The availability of full auto firearms to the public in terms of finding a fully-auto weapon, the ammo, equipment and need to purchase license for said weapon is very difficult if not improbable for anyone without the funds.
• Class 3 firearms include machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, suppressors, destructive devices and Any Other Weapons (AOWs).
• The tax for privately manufacturing any class 3 firearms is $200. Transferring requires a $200 tax for all class 3s except AOW’s, for which the transfer tax is $5.
• To legally possess a class 3 weapon you must complete a transfer of registration within the NFA registry.
• There are two ways for you to legally buy a class 3 gun. The first is by transfer after approval by ATF of a registered weapon from its lawful owner residing in the same State as the transferee. The second is by obtaining prior approval from ATF to make NFA firearms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_(by_state)

 

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Ah yes, the media.

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To be fair, motivated criminals can alter legal semi auto weapons into fully automatic ones. But there is little motivation for them to do so. See The North Hollywood shootout.

 

Then there's this guy. Fischer: God Didn't Stop School Shooting Because He's A Gentleman Who Doesn't Go Where Not Wanted.

 

(In response to post #25)Yes, this does occur, the internal mechanisms and components can legally be bought separately and then put together. Yes this does happen and I will not deny that criminals or even everyday citizens do this. I’m all for tighter restrictions on these components. However I’m not going to fully blame a piece of technology that at its core is neutral for the mental instability of an individual who desperately needed medical help but never received it.(This you brought up in article in your last post #22 which was very informative)

 

:facepalm:Really? This a-hole is getting involved and I thought these fundamentalist guys were bad after Columbine, blaming the teaching of evolution for the motive behind the shooting.

 

This commenter on Fark pretty well summed up my feelings. Maybe I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there.

http://www.fark.com/comments/7486968/81292170#c81292170

 

Here is the solution, Israeli style:

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Noone said a semi-automatic was a fully automatic. I just said that semi-automatics ARE automatic weapons. This is from the first paragraph of your own referenced Wiki article:


"A fully automatic firearm is a firearm that will continue to fire so long as the trigger is pressed and there is ammunition in the magazine. Both "semi automatic" and "fully automatic" weapons are "automatic" in that the firearm automatically cycles between rounds with each trigger pull."

 

And as I said in the second sentence "Saying automatic, without the prefix of semi in front of it, implies a fully automatic weapon." A very large percentage of people who want to ban firearms know very, very little about them. Many surveys done in the early nineties showed that a huge percentage of people in favor of the AWB thought that it was banning military select fire weapons (switchable between semi and fully automatic). They see these weapons in movies where people hold the trigger down, and it keeps firing, and assume that the scary black rifle that looks very similar is in fact the same. When people advocate banning something that's already illegal, it makes me cringe.

I have much more sympathy for someone advocating making semi auto weapons illegal than I do for those who would ban "assault weapons". The last federal assault weapon ban was a useless (Edit: near useless) piece of legislation. As it specified cosmetic features of weapons, it resulted in cosmetic changes. California still has an AWB, and it results in silliness like this: ‘Bullet Button’ Used To Get Around California Gun Laws.

 

I know what you said. If you assumed my saying "automatic weapons" only referred to fully automatics then that was your mistake not mine. Though I will admit I understand the difference now between semi and fully a little better than I did. Tks for the education.

 

As it is, my brother will not come back to "The People's Republic of California" because many of the weapons he owns (which are perfectly legal in Kansas) would not be legal here. For one example, he wouldn't be able to have his 100 round drum for his Ak-47 anymore. He excitedly told me about that one when he purchased it at a gun show in Tucson during the brief period when we both lived there. What made it really special was that it had a clock spring. Standard magazines use ordinary springs; if you leave the magazine loaded for long periods, the spring will fatigue, losing pressure, increasing the likelihood that the gun will jam. With a clock spring, as he excitedly informed me, "You can leave it loaded, then when you need it, you put in the key, wind it up, and it's ready to go!" When you would "need" a 100 round drum for your Ak-47 is a bit of a mystery to me - zombie apocalypse maybe? And to choose to live in Kansas over California so you can have such gadgets? Eh, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives.

 

Feudal japan tried (unsuccessfully) for years to keep firearms out of the country since any goof can point a gun and take out a warrior who has undergone many years of training with a sword.

I believe one of the first mass produced revolvers was called "the equalizer" along the same line of reasoning (suddenly a nerd with a gun becomes a force to be reckoned with).

As firearms become simpler to use, lighter and more effective with minimal or even no training, we see militants/rebels recruiting women and children in their armed conflicts who then instantaneously become, for practically the first time in the history of warfare, formidable opposition to even well trained combatants.

Generally contemporary society functions in placing obstacles in the form of criteria or limits or even outright bans on potentially dangerous activities. So for instance one has to pass one set of criteria to drive a motor vehicle. This is upgraded if one is driving a larger vehicle. This is upgraded again if one is driving a vehicle carrying people. This is upgraded yet again if one is driving a vehicle containing hazardous/dangerous cargo (eg fuel) to the point of driving such a vehicle in certain locations at any time is banned ... and this is just for something as simple and straight forward and pragmatic as transportation.
These issues of regulation , prohibition without due need (like for instance you can't take a semi trailer loaded with fuel on a 10 day safari across the country for no purpose no matter how dandy you think the idea is) or even outright banning are measures brought in simply to increase safety.



What makes american gun control (or more specifically, its absence) particularly unique in this case is that we are dealing with a level of regulation and authorization that is not on par for an article at the pinnacle of being expressly designed for the quick, easy and effective killing of things.
(IOW guns belong to a "high risk" category ... kind of a no-brainer I would have thought)

Obviously the less obstacles a person needs to surmount in order to fall into a regrettable or preventable action, the more likely such instances will show up and recur. This is a fundamental aspect of OH&S

Risk assessment
Further information: Risk assessment#Risk assessment in public health
Modern occupational safety and health legislation usually demands that a risk assessment be carried out prior to making an intervention. It should be kept in mind that risk management requires risk to be managed to a level which is as low as is reasonably practical.[citation needed]
This assessment should:
Identify the hazards
Identify all affected by the hazard and how
Evaluate the risk
Identify and prioritize appropriate control measures[citation needed]
The calculation of risk is based on the likelihood or probability of the harm being realized and the severity of the consequences. This can be expressed mathematically as a quantitative assessment (by assigning low, medium and high likelihood and severity with integers and multiplying them to obtain a risk factor), or qualitatively as a description of the circumstances by which the harm could arise.[citation needed]
The assessment should be recorded and reviewed periodically and whenever there is a significant change to work practices. The assessment should include practical recommendations to control the risk. Once recommended controls are implemented, the risk should be re-calculated to determine of it has been lowered to an acceptable level. Generally speaking, newly introduced controls should lower risk by one level, i.e., from high to medium or from medium to low.


Its the nature of probability that it will never be 100%, or as you say, people kill people. Probability (in terms of civil disputes of murder) of outcomes however allows us to discern that people with guns kill other people more often and in greater numbers than people with vehicles, explosives or carrots (even though james bond could probably kill someone with a carrot). Why? Because guns have unique "high risk" qualities that lend them to such outcomes.

 

If you meant semi auto that's fine. But I think in these discussions it's helpful to specify the distinction, as it's a subtle yet very important one.

 

I think even most liberals get a bit queasy at the notion of gun control, not because it's a bad idea, but because gun ownership is a key tenet of our constitution. It's a conversation needs to be had; unfortunately, the two sides can't even begin because of how entrenched they are in their positions.

 

Bells the same comments were made here after the cinema shooting, by MAD or Michael if I remember rightly. That if everyone in the cinema had been armed then the gunman would have died and there would have been rainbows and unicorns. This "solution" might work in the fantasy of the gun nuts but in reality EVEN WHEN TRAINED people make mistakes. How many solders die from friendly fire in war zones and they are trained to work together, to use there weapons, to handle the stress of combat. As I said last time in a dark cinima how many people would have died if Everyone had pulled out a gun and started shooting?

The ONLY solution which will reduce the death toll from these incidents is to get ALL guns out of the hands of ANYONE who isn't in a job which requires them (defence, cops, rangers, pest controllers, security guards, farmers etc) and those who do have them locked up at there work when not in use and (potentually) increase the numbers of police and decrease response time

 

Violence doesn't exist because of guns, guns exist because of violence.