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

You again;
Ad-hominem is not an alternative term for general abuse.
So... you're using the term "trolling" incorrectly, and you're using the term "ad-hominem" incorrectly.

Why should I listen to anything you say?
I mean you're obviously not as literate as you'd like to believe, therefore your arguments are probably not worth listening to.

See what I did there?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Asguard, people avoiding reading your posts most of the time because it's far too painful in most instances to try deciphering them.
That aside, yes, we're all aware that you made the deep and meaningful observation that guns make it easier to kill people. What is it you want, a gold star and hugs for pointing out the bleeding obvious?

I did actually reply, and should you have taken the time to actually read responses rather than going off screaming for attention like a two year old, you might have noticed.
I said that gun control in the case of the USA is like trying to cure gangrene with a band aid. Now, I know that might have been a little beyond you comprehensive powers, but I don't believe in catering to the lowest common denominator and I'm not going to dumb anything down just so you can keep up.

And as for me being Australian as well as you and Bells... no, I don't find it "ironic" at all. Bloody embarrassing, in your case, but not ironic.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

A table showing the number of guns owned per 100 people does not tell you how many people own guns, LG. One man might own a hundred guns, and your numbers are going to be skewed.

Still, seeing as you posted it, and assuming it's reasonably accurate for what it does show, let's take a look, shall we?

So this table states that there are 89 civilian firearms owned per hundred people in the USA. Their closest competitors are Sweden and Switzerland, France and Canada, all falling into the 30-50 category.
Americans own twice as many guns, give or take, as the Swiss, Swedes, French and Canadians.

The number of homicides by firearm in the USA approaches 10 thousand per annum.
In Switzerland, 51. Sweden, 92. France, 682 and Canada, 554.

So. Here we have America owning twice as many guns as Switzerland, yet having a gun murder rate approximately 200 times that of the Swiss. 20 times higher than the Canadians. That doesn't sound just a little disproportionate to you?

Like I said, gun control in the USA is like putting a band aid on gangrene.
It won't cure the problem, but it might help cover the stink.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I don't disagree with you on this, my statement has to do with society, not the individual.

 

I am a 5th generation American. My ancestors came to this land from Sweden and settled in the Great Plains and lived with the Indians and gunfighters of the Wild West. They were homesteaders. They had guns, my father had guns, I have guns, my brothers have guns, my cousins have guns and my son has guns. In the case of my brothers, they have assault rifles too. And not one of them has killed anyone or threatened anyone with those guns.

Every time we have a mass shooting, the talk of gun control is never far behind. If it were clear that gun control laws would eliminate this problem, I would be all ears. But it is not clear. In fact none of the gun proposals currently being discussed would have prevented the recent mass murder or the ones that preceded it. Based on what I know, the mass shooting problem appears to be more of a mental health issue than a gun control problem. Mentally healthy folks don’t go around blowing away scores of innocent people.

Decades ago when I worked as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy, I was assigned to work with some mentally ill patients. And one patient in particular, this patient was violent and quite capable of murder. Everyone agreed that when the man was released he would become a danger to society. But they couldn’t keep him in the hospital forever. So they released him. And I am sure to this day, that he eventually killed someone.

After the Navy I worked for the Emergency Medical Services in a major metropolitan area. I remember taking violent individuals up to the psychiatric emergency room on police psychiatric holds (e.g. 5150) only to have them released in short order because the staff didn’t want to deal with them.

Healthcare in America has been a problem, especially for those with mental illnesses. If we had provided effective healthcare to these mass murders, we would have many more individuals alive today. One cannot say the same for the proposed gun control laws. We should learn from our mistakes. Fortunately, Obamacare will make healthcare, including mental healthcare, available to all Americans. This is ultimately a healthcare problem, not a gun control problem.

 

Tell that to young, immature, impressionable people.

 

Not sure why you are so antsy about the wiki link. I mean you just pulled a statement out of thin air ("more gun owners in canada") that appears straight out false. At least reference your claims.


That aside, seems you missed this ...

I think you will find that the licensing and background checks required for gun ownership in canada are much more intricate than the states ...

IOW high numbers of incidents and high numbers of incidents occurring to a class of person with inflated probability issues are both consequences of a poorly orchestrated/legislated safety hazard.

For instance if investigating accidents involving vehicles you will find that weak/unregulated legislation grants an inflated number of incidents that grow exponentially when the numbers start to get denser (hence a place like india that has numerous vehicles and a relatively chaotic system of regulating them has an unprecedented incident rate ... even when contrasted with similarly dense and transport savvy places like china.
In general, increased regulation of risk management sees diminished number of "high risk" issues, whether it be in lowering the numbers or lowering the risk factors

I understand that you are trying to highlight mental health issues that result in out of control gun behaviour but I don't understand why you can't acknowledge increased regulation of firearms is integral to such discussions.

 

It seems to be an urban myth. If I were asked which country has the highest rate of guns per capita, I, too, would intuitively say it's Canada. I don't know where this claim has come from, but it's not uncommon.

 

I listened to a 30 minute review of the details. In this review it was stated that, among other details, that (1) the older brother had not spoken to his younger brother in a few years and (2) their mother was an extremely stick disciplinarian (whatever that means) who expressed a great disappointment with her son (3) her son was on anti-psychotics medications to treat a mental illness (all medicines have side effects and IMO these are some of the worse).

Is any of this true? Well, it'd be pretty hard to find out about the parenting. You'll find plenty of people who think a good spanking is good parenting. That hitting children, yelling at children, etc... is perfectly good parenting as children 'need to be disciplined'.

As for the medicine - that should be easy enough to look up.

Yes Bells that's right. 99% of public schooling is crap. Which is why you'll find most people, who can afford to do so, send their children to private schools or if wealthy enough have an at home tutor as well. You'll find the best "Public Schools" are located right next to the government buildings, next to the Universities, or next to the posh wealthy neighborhood.

*GAAAAASP*
Educating their own children?!?! Who'd of ever think THAT could be a good thing :bugeye:

Oh yes, educating your children at home, yes, definitely the lowest of the low.



It must be nice to think these "Monsters" just pop right up and out of the blue. Rather than to confront the mess that is society. And by mess I mean complete and utter mess.

 

If you look at mental health you will see that it is a complex issue that distinguishes itself from applications for more straight forward health issues like cancer, heart disease or whatever. One of the reasons for this is that it is infamous for its absence of criteria for assessing the success of its applications (so its often deemed sufficient if someone is seeing a professional x times per month/taking medication/ locked up/etc ). So talk of improving mental health is often just about increasing the applications and not so much on the effectiveness of the applications. This is not to say that mental health applications are ineffective or unnecessary - its simply saying that due to the complex nature of the problem, the necessary reforms and analysis's that would help streamline the effectiveness of the applications make progress necessarily slow and cumbersome.

So in short, the problem of mentally unstable people being violent will not be solved by throwing money at it... what to speak of identifying mentally unstable people before they jump out infamously in the public limelight

If however you have a situation where high risk issues (like say easy access to top end fire arms) combine with violence derived from being mentally unstable then the situation becomes volatile. The argument has never been tighter gun control laws would solve the problem. The argument is that it decreases the probability. The social/technology/economical/law and order/safety regulation issues of colonial america are so radically different from contemporary america that you can not really cite them as valid to draw a comparison. Neither can your anecdotal stories of your immediate family owning guns and not hurting anyone be accepted as a valid means to diffusing the obvious high issues that surround guns in a contemporary society that poorly regulates them (I mean you could also say that none of your immediate family have served long prison terms for serious offences ... but I'm sure you wouldn't cite that example as sufficient for disbanding legislation that seeks to implement such consequences on individuals)

 

No, but most of us cannot hit a barn wall with a gun from 30 feet.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Yes, many soldiers can shoot quite well as can gun hobbyists and hunters, but they are generally not the ones that do these things.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

If the shooter is 30 feet away, run like the getout and zigzag as you go. You may not outrun the bullet, but you will very likely dodge the bullet.

IMHO repealing the US second amendment is not the solution either.

 

The theory of evolution is being taught in BIOLOGY, not "Life Lessons and Morals 101"

 

What the 2nd amendment actually says:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."


How many gun owners today are part of a well-regulated state militia?

 

You don't need to. They're not as twisted, or as stupid, as you think they are. They actually understand quite a bit.

 

Actually I think this event is the antithesis to libertarianism: there is no libertarian solution in this that would not result in more psychos getting guns or more gun violence, the only solutions is more statism: more psychological services, more regulations on guns, more security in schools.

 

The SCOTUS settled that with Columbia v. Heller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

 

Oh the powers of a conservative SCOTUS..

 

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

I am a 5th generation American. My ancestors came to this land from Sweden and settled in the Great Plains and lived with the Indians and gunfighters of the Wild West. They were homesteaders. They had guns, my father had guns, I have guns, my brothers have guns, my cousins have guns and my son has guns. In the case of my brothers, they have assault rifles too. And not one of them has killed anyone or threatened anyone with those guns.

Every time we have a mass shooting, the talk of gun control is never far behind. If it were clear that gun control laws would eliminate this problem, I would be all ears. But it is not clear. In fact none of the gun proposals currently being discussed would have prevented the recent mass murder or the ones that preceded it. Based on what I know, the mass shooting problem appears to be more of a mental health issue than a gun control problem. Mentally healthy folks don’t go around blowing away scores of innocent people.

Yes, but that is not what is under discussion in the US. In addition to criminal checks, we need to include mental health in our background checks. Simply banning weapons is not going to fix this problem. We can see how effective banning drugs have been and alcohol prohibition certainly was not a success in this country. Gun control is a complicated problem and will require a complicated solution. Not every mental health problem should result in the banning of gun ownership either. There are a number of obstacles to effective gun control in the US including the very powerful gun lobby.

Prior to Obamacare there was no mechanism to collect mental health information. Most US healthcare providers were still using paper records to record and store all medical information. So how can one include mental health information it in a background check? The information just wasn’t available. Practical interagency sharing of medical information prior to Obamacare was a physically impossibility in the US. The rest of the industrial world is light years ahead of the US in this regard.

In the Newtown shooting, Ms. Lanza should not have mixed guns with mental illness. It’s like having children in a home with dangerous pets (e.g. poisonous snakes, pythons, etc.). So while she did everything legally, she didn’t do everything correctly.

Additionally, in Australia gun ownership is not a right. In the US and as you know, gun ownership is regarded as a constitutionally protected right, so making laws restraining gun ownership is difficult. Gun ownership is an automatic right in the US. It is a birthright that can only be removed by becoming a convicted felon. We have strong cultural attachments to our guns and you cannot ignore that attachment and hope to solve this problem. So instead of passing more meaningless laws after every mass murder, we need to get serious and fix the problem with real reforms that really fix the problem. Passing more feel good laws with a simple ban is not going to cure the ill. Adequate mental healthcare, early detection and treatment, needs to be part of the cure. Killing and incarcerating the mentally ill perpetrators should no longer be an acceptable alternative to effective mental healthcare in this country.