Another day, another shooting in the US

[O. Van Bruce]

Ed, you should REALLY practice to summarize your arguments. I've read it and I think I haven't understood everything you wrote.

Anyway, Ed, don't you think that the "free gun owning" and "defend yourself" environment that rules most of the USA makes easier to use casually a gun?

I don't know how you feel about it but for me, as well as for most of the people I know, wielding a fire arm is something unussual and "dangerous" if you are doing it for not a real (or imaginary) purpose.

In contrast, people in the USA seem to lack that reverence for something letal.

[Drum]

Look at the states with the biggest drops. Look at where the drops are. Look at New York, Illinois, California. Check out their laws and check out the numbers around, say, 1994 (for example!).

I know they're across the board. What's relevant is that the states that increased their gun laws had the biggest drop ... but I actually forgot about Florida (because it's Florida). They still have a much higher violent crime rate in general so I am calling this a victory for the champions of civilization regardless.
That being said: I think laws like conceal and carry will also lead to low levels of gun violence, for the same reasons gun advocates do. But they're still fucking stupid.

[Ruldra]

And the copycats are showing up already.

Bartlesville High School student arrested in school-shooting plot

[O. Van Bruce]

And the copycats are showing up already.

Bartlesville High School student arrested in school-shooting plot

Isn't that just another one of those plots that get constantly uncovered by the U.S. police? the only think that make it appear now is just because of the recent massacre.

Things like that seems to be pretty common on EagleLand.

[Friendly]

Ed, you should REALLY practice to summarize your arguments.

I second this. Brevity is the soul of wit (Shakespeare). Learn to condense your thoughts. This is an integral part of mental discipline.

----
On topic:

Consider the following axioms:
A) 50% of the people have an IQ of 100 or less (bell curve distribution), and many of us are really much closer to neanderthals (instinct-driven, dim-witted) than we'd like to think. Add to this the terrible educational system of the USA
B) US-American culture has always been closer to violence than peacefulness (manifest destiny, death penalty, military interventions around the globe, winner-takes-all mentality, violent entertainment and media etc.)
C) There is an abundance of easily accessible firearms in the USA.

Result: Lots of people get shot in the USA.

What is there to debate? How is this in the least surprising? I don't even see any room for discussion.

[BulletMagnet]

A single mother shoots a home invader who wanted to rape and probably kill her. This IS the NORMAL in lethal firearms use

This statement sounds very suspect to me, at least offhand; while there certainly are situations like the one you cited that few would argue with, I find it difficult to believe that, for all of the criminal/accidental/etc. instances of gun violence we experience as country, that still more (human-to-human) gun use than that is clearly "justified" in some manner. I'm not an expert on the subject, though - are you (or anyone else) aware of any hard data that's been taken on this? I'd be very surprised if so many bona fide self defense-ish cases are on the books.

[DragonInstall]

I think the threat of someone having a gun deters a lot of criminals.

You know most run away at the sight of one, let alone the sound of a round being put into a chamber. So I think the case of the criminal being shot or killed from someone defending themselves is quite rare, compared to them just running the hell away.

[greg]

Man, I keep repeating. I'ts not about banning guns, it's about making then harder to get in a legal way. Make people have some psichological and ethical test, and teach then how and when to use then legally before giving then any kind of firearm.

Great idea. I'm sure that a normal person can pass that test easily. However, then their mentally disturbed sperg of a son gets his socially malfunctioning hands on the gun and kill people. She apparently was a gun collector, and she gave him some guns.

[BryanM]

The media is, as usual, a big giant turd on this one. The school and the guy's mother had nothing to do with each other.

And the same typical "gun control advocates killed them kids"/"atheists killed our kids"/"False Flag PSYOP/Obama Gonna Take Our Guns"/"hey maybe we should be a culture that doesn't love violence so much" shit goes around and around in a blender. And they say the shooter's the crazy one here.

The 80's were a crazy time man. Doesn't that video kind of ooze fascism?

[Ed Oscuro]

Ed, you should REALLY practice to summarize your arguments.

I second this. Brevity is the soul of wit (Shakespeare). Learn to condense your thoughts. This is an integral part of mental discipline.

If you look carefully, though, you'll see that I'm spinning out arguments (and counter-arguments to those) off the top of my head, repeatedly, in a way that just defies summation.

I appreciate the thought, but I think you guys underestimate how difficult it is to do more than just slap out any old talking point while also being concise. If I were just repeating other people's arguments, one or two at a time, I'd be able to do that very easily.

It is probably somewhat easier for all concerned if people did not resent having to occasionally skim through text, or read quickly, as necessary. College reading assignments are what, 20 pages easily? (Well, maybe the utilitarian says that the amount of time people have to spend reading more would not justify me multiplying the time I would have to spend, but then that sacrifices my time or the quality of the thoughts presented, or at least the number.) I would understand the upset if it felt like somebody was intentionally drawing things out.

Of course I apologize for the many errors and unclear points that I have left in there, and I don't mean to make anybody else do my proofreading for me. I probably should have put the note at the beginning.

Blaise Pascal, author of one of the most confounding short arguments (his Wager regarding God), had this to say: "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue parceque je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte." (I don't understand French but have read it means roughly "I wrote you a long letter because I lacked the time to make it short."

A single mother shoots a home invader who wanted to rape and probably kill her. This IS the NORMAL in lethal firearms use

This statement sounds very suspect to me, at least offhand; while there certainly are situations like the one you cited that few would argue with, I find it difficult to believe that, for all of the criminal/accidental/etc. instances of gun violence we experience as country, that still more (human-to-human) gun use than that is clearly "justified" in some manner. I'm not an expert on the subject, though - are you (or anyone else) aware of any hard data that's been taken on this? I'd be very surprised if so many bona fide self defense-ish cases are on the books.

In light of the above I'll put a little arrow next to the part that directly responds to this, but I think it is a good treatment of many issues.

Actually, I could grant your complaint here - I wrote sloppily. However I should be careful to outline what I'm actually criticizing: The news does not, and in fact cannot, provide an overall balanced picture of firearms use. Some things simply aren't newsworthy, and others are more newsworthy than others and push other stories out - so "woman saves herself and baby, with gun" (commas!) seems more unusual than things which are in the statistics ("youths rob store" stories), and likewise "woman kills baby and 20 others" is what's in the news - and we will endlessly analyze that case but even understand there may be 21 cases of women involved in deaths in other circumstances, which also would have had to run on that day. I realize that the statistics don't promote justice in of themselves - when I heard the number twenty, in connection with children killed, it took me a good long while before I thought of it in terms that really made it a human story (i.e., thinking of just one child shot to death). For many years the crime writer at a big paper in Tampa, Florida was unable to actually get every case of a homicide into the paper at all, even though it seems they should be, because each case was not "newsworthy!"

Here is another type of case that you read about: Some kid goes to an event at a firing range with his dad, and somebody puts an Uzi in the kid's head - he can't control the weapon and so he ends up shooting himself. (This happened; he died.) Is it necessary to say "there needs to be a law explicitly against using weapons when you are little?" Little people have actually gotten themselves out of situations with firearms, and if they do that while running afoul of the law, the parent gets in trouble - there was a case of that recently as well, although a prosecutor used their discretion not to pursue the case. It seems that it is enough to say that if you put a gun into a tyke's hands and they hurt themselves, you are responsible. But if you give somebody the means to protect themselves in an emergency, I think the law should not seek to punish that also.

→ There are a lot of non-violent so-called DGUs (Defensive Gun Uses) where there is no police report, so there is no statistical evidence about the scale of such uses. Likewise it seems that we ought to classify many things as DGUs even though they cannot possibly be counted - for example, if a person has a weapon in a holster, they may be attacked for that reason - or they might be unconsciously avoided by a potential perp, so that law and order have prevailed without anybody being aware of it. You can say that police are sometimes randomly attacked because of their uniforms, but the sight of a uniform also makes some people with a guilty mind ("mens rea") think things over again, even if they have a tactical advantage.

I do not believe my argument really weighed on this, though; these last two examples show why I am skeptical about the utilitarian or statistical arguments. I was (and am) concerned about the real justice (whatever that means) of one idea about controlling the problem versus another, although the utilitarian "big picture" definitely counts too. What I do know is that there is a right for citizen justice - at some level. Clearly, there is some threshhold involved; you don't let people settle territory disputes with personal micronukes, for usurping the sovereignty of a democracy. But the concept of a citizen arrest, at least, is uncontroversial (and if that's not good enough I can just reduce the threshhold - you have the right to defend yourself against an unprovoked attack, instead of waiting for the police to come, without us even having to consider firearms).

Look at our essential beliefs about this case: Somebody did something which could, in different circumstances, have been bad (shooting intruders - if I remember the article, one bad guy expired right at the scene and the other fled with an injury and was being sought at the time of publication). However, in this case we have to grant that the person used good judgment. Some people say "in other circumstances, this is bad, and those are the cases we should be more concerned about." They obviously don't mean that one person's death by beating is less severe than one person's being shot to death, but that looks like one of the accidental conclusions you would get. But it isn't clear that "other circumstances" can be fought reasonably by the means proposed (banning firearms), and it isn't clear that even means which would more directly attack a necessary cause of this event (somebody being a criminal or insane) can be carried out on a reasonable scale, which leaves the possibility of there still being criminal intent, and means to carry it out. Likewise, if somebody denies that shooting a perp ever shows good judgment, then they are off on some bad Kantian trip or something religious and don't know or care about the consequences of actions. It would be nice to have a world without defensive killing, or lying, but we aren't there yet. There is a nice picture of the good that St. Augustine came up with - there is no evil but people pick "lesser goods." I think sometimes you have no choice but to pick a "good" lesser than what is actually probably going to work. The mother could always have tried anything random, but whether it would have worked to save her would have been unpredictable, don't you think?

Unless we can find airtight defenses against various problems (the problem of firearms proliferation, the problem of criminals and even the insane being resourceful enough to get one of even a few firearms or even using means other than firearms to their end), the firearms angle really revolves around whether it is a reasonable imperfect defense to allow - and denying this would be essentially the same as saying that there is no right for people to utilize their judgment about what is the best option available to them, because if they judge that defense incorporates a firearm (like Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s handgun permit which possibly should be revoked for illness, or bodyguards for the powerful - notice here the unhealthy "us versus them" reaction this provokes, and the "people in power deserve better protection" it seems to imply). The one-size-fits-all judgment would seem to hold that it is tough cookies if you are a little old lady up against a gang of ruffians; you've got to punch your way out of this mugging! Or maybe you can have some good luck with whatever crap the powers that be want you to use, like a taser whose electrodes a perp can pull out, "that's not mace...that just clears the sinuses," (Under Siege 2!) and maybe some useless shit that will still kill somebody and get you hauled up in front of a jury because of the brutality of using something that ended up killing the bad guy anyway. "Why didn't the police just shoot the gun out of his hands..?"

The logic behind "firearms make it easier to kill people, so make it harder to get firearms" argument has obvious problems because it can be used to generate idiotic rules. Bringing this up will probably cause people to roll their eyes, because they feel there is something special about firearms (as compared with "computers make it easier to hack banks, so..."), so I will say that the real issue here is whether the law has a preventative purpose (hint: yes) which is better met by punishing a crime after it has occurred or by criminalizing ranges of actions. In some cases, like the computer example or the uniform above, I think it is quite reasonable to argue that criminal sanctions weigh more heavily against the law-abiding than they do deter those already engaged in crime or the mentally insane, AND they also harm the ranges of legal activities that are available to all.

It's hard to hate that old slogan - "If God created all men, Samuel Colt made them equal." (Compare with Hard Boiled, "Give a man a gun...") If it helps to think of it this way, it's a form of natural selection at work - and denying people the right to overcome certain disabilities or accidents of circumstance just for the sake of a "world without guns" seems to deny the justice of technology. We should all be bears or giant dinosaurs if this was truly justice. I don't believe technology brings salvation, but it doesn't hurt when it's used right. (I hope you get my meaning; this does look silly even to me.)

Man, I keep repeating. I'ts not about banning guns, it's about making then harder to get in a legal way. Make people have some psichological and ethical test, and teach then how and when to use then legally before giving then any kind of firearm.

Great idea. I'm sure that a normal person can pass that test easily. However, then their mentally disturbed sperg of a son gets his socially malfunctioning hands on the gun and kill people. She apparently was a gun collector, and she gave him some guns.

But does this militate (man that's an awkward word for this discussion) towards saying that firearms ought to be universally banned? Because you sure as hell don't know if the people on the street or next to you have designs one way or another. As I said above, there's more than one way to skin a cat or a person, and I think being able to defend against them is important.

I also think there are problems by saying everybody's guns should be locked up, put in the trunk unloaded, etc. because obviously, again, they may need to be used right away and you need time to decide.

Anyway, I return to my initial conclusion: Ban crazy people.

[Ex-Cyber]

Make people have some psichological and ethical test

Such a "test" would likely end up being a big questionnaire that someone could trivially lie their way through. Plus it would pointlessly add to the general social stigma surrounding mental illness for no other reason than to give the gun lobby a political token to concede.

[Subterranean Sun]

Country's got a serious problem. Called guns. Wonder if Obama will finally implement the firearm ban (Charlton Heston turns in grave.)

Yes, there should be a complete ban on guns, and it will be just as effective as a ban on drugs, illegal immigrants and prostitution. Look how there is zero stoners, illegals, and hookers in America thanks to those bans.

No, I'm not a gun enthusiast. Right wingers and left wingers are both annoying as hell when this sort of thing happens. Banning guns is an overly simplistic approach to solving the problem. The problem is in the hearts of Americans. American society has become completely corrupted and there are too many people with rotten souls. This was another shitty, scrawny "remote" goth kid it seems. I'm sure as a fuller psychological profile emerges, it will turn out that he was obsessed with all sorts of death and crap and had a disregard for others. He shot his own mom in the face, even.

People are screwed up. That's the point of having laws. While fixing people's mentality would undoubtly be the best solution to this problem, it's simply not possible. At least, you will not live to see that -- and neither shall I. Just look at human history and notice how little has changed over the last 2,500 years or so. It's because people aren't saints that we need laws to regulate them (and us).

Anyway. A few years ago there were several (!) incidents in China where some psychopath ran into a kindergarten and stabbed children with knives. Look at these incidents, including the one happened 2 days ago (the one Drum just posted about ITT), and you'll notice a common point in them: the assailant didn't use guns. Why they didn't I'm not sure, but I'd wager it has something to do with the strict gun control of China. I don't know how hard it is to obtain a gun from black market, but if these dudes could obtain a gun easily, they probably would have. So I believe gun control do in fact make it a lot harder for the average psychopath to get a gun, which helps reducing the damage they deal with their insane actions, because you can't say with a straight face that guns aren't better than knives for the purpose of killing a large amount of people.

[greg]

But does this militate (man that's an awkward word for this discussion) towards saying that firearms ought to be universally banned? Because you sure as hell don't know if the people on the street or next to you have designs one way or another. As I said above, there's more than one way to skin a cat or a person, and I think being able to defend against them is important.

No, because as somebody already pointed out earlier (I think it was Moniker), there is no way they could ever enforce a complete gun ban in the USA. It would begin a complete police state, to dwarf the transgressions against personal liberty Americans have endured over the past 11 years already in the name of "keeping people safe." I have no doubt that the current President would not hesitate to enact a complete ban on guns if he was given a chance, but I really hope that he would never get the chance. In such a case, a complete door-to-door search and seizure must take place, which would be yet another violation of the Constitution. It is completely impractical, since the USA is WAY TOO HUGE of a place to stash guns and such. It isn't a small European country or island nation like Japan.

I don't care for Michael Moore because he's a lying hack and I disagreed with a lot of what he did in the movie, but his basic message in Bowling for Columbine is correct: America has given itself over to a pervasive culture of violence. Americans mutilate their bodies like crazy, listen to violent music, play extremely violent video games, watch disgustingly violent movies, etc. I'm not saying that one single factor really can be proved to cause such wanton murder, but I think it's just the prevalent culture of cynicism and emotional detachment from each other that prevails over all of this. Much of American's humor is based on racism, insults, and cynicism. Look at American sitcoms. It's no longer The Cosby Show or Growing Pains. Now sitcoms are called Everybody Hates Chris, I Hate My Teenage Daughter and South Park entails little children constantly insulting and denigrating each other in each episode. Look, I enjoy watching South Park too, but you have to admit that much of our culture has the pendulum swinging in the wrong direction. We thrive on conflict, whether in YouTube comments or the nightly news.

I think somebody already mentioned this above, but one of America's greatest ideals is the sense of personal freedom and liberty, but Americans have allowed that ideal to become distorted and perverted to the point where their own pursuit of happiness takes precedence over anyone else's. We've stopped realizing that my liberty ends where yours begins. A few years ago, I had unwillingly initiated a feud between me and my neighbors when I asked my neighbor to keep their six constantly barking dogs quiet. "You can't tell me to keep my dogs quiet! I'll sue you, derp-a-derp derp." Their chihuahua would explode into barking at the sight of a suspicious-looking air molecule, and the other dogs would chime in and continue barking until they couldn't remember why they were barking, so they just kept barking anyway. I tried politely asking them to control their dogs, but they couldn't respect my right to peace and quiet right outside my own window. Living in apartments is even worse. Americans just don't give a shit about each other anymore and we do not know how to get along with each other anymore.

Here in Japan, people like this just end up killing themselves. I live a short car trip away from the infamous "suicide forest" even where people go to kill themselves. It's sad, but it says something. Sure, there are incidents like the Akihabara stabbing a few years ago, but for the most part, people here internalize things more. They kill themselves rather than lashing out at others and committing mass murder. Americans are more prone to blame others for their problems and lash out at everyone. Get a gun into the hands of an emotionally unstable asshole, which will still be very easy to do in America no matter how many laws you have, and you will have mass murders like this.

I won't even bother getting into the rise of autism.

[xbl0x180]

People have been getting shot in the US all the time. It's only when white people start getting picked off that it becomes "a tragedy."

[greg]

People have been getting shot in the US all the time. It's only when white people start getting picked off that it becomes "a tragedy."

No, it's when 20 little children (whom I'm sure not all of the were Caucasian) are murdered in a classroom. Grow up.

[xbl0x180]

People have been getting shot in the US all the time. It's only when white people start getting picked off that it becomes "a tragedy."

No, it's when 20 little children (whom I'm sure not all of the were Caucasian) are murdered in a classroom. Grow up.

Hey, shithead, children are shot all the time in the US. Read or watch the news from Chicago, Louisiana, or Los Angeles.

[Skykid]

What gun ownership debate boils down to is how much power you want to take from the individual and give to the state. Taking guns away from citizens reduces their power several fold: not only do they lose the pure power of the weapon itself, but they also lose power relative to the police (and for that matter, the military). I am uncomfortable with a situation where the police in general are more powerful than the people in general, as I am a believer in the axiom that power corrupts. The more accountable the police and government are to the people, the better.

... If you think that the government should act as a parent who outlaws anything it deems harmful, then so be it. But that is not its proper role, in my opinion.

It would begin a complete police state, to dwarf the transgressions against personal liberty Americans have endured over the past 11 years already in the name of "keeping people safe."

...In such a case, a complete door-to-door search and seizure must take place, which would be yet another violation of the Constitution.

...I think somebody already mentioned this above, but one of America's greatest ideals is the sense of personal freedom and liberty

"Sense" being the operative word.

It always beggars belief to find Americans who still believe the core values of the fabled constitution are somehow maintained within the spirit of the populace and the government is there as a secondary power.
I appreciate from inside the borders, where you're drip fed concentrated bullshit where legitimate news broadcasts are meant to be, that it might be difficult to see the woods for the trees, so here's the hardline:

You have no liberties. The government does not follow the constitution. Your president has barely any power to do anything. You have no rights, nor any real influence. You can't stop your government from going to war. Gun ownership won't save you from totalitarian power, since it's already here. Your country is owned by banks that make withdrawals of taxpayers money if and when they choose. The USA is already a police state, more so than most of continental Europe, and your economy is completely fucked because the government of Goldman Sachs and corporate America (a different country, essentially) have their own constitution: money; and it takes higher priority over anything that's been before, as it does in US medicine and accompanying insurances, where you'll effectively be denied life because of the small print.

I'm sick of hearing all the talk. If you want to act on your supposed civil liberties, take those arms, go to DC, and demand power be returned to the people. Just make sure you dodge all the tank fire on the way.

[BryanM]

Just around one a day.

Statistics simply don't carry the profitable kind of emotional product shitlords like this can bring. You never see a headline that goes "HOLY SHIT - RECESSION SAVES LIVES EQUAL TO TEN NINE ELEVENS!!"

... but holy shit. Tens of thousands of people didn't die who were gonna. That's pretty impressive.

the fabled constitution

I've heard that many have/had been against maintaining standing armies. Since after all, if you have a hammer, you're going to want to hit some nails with that thing.

[djvinc]

I had my first job in the USA after my studies.
I could make a life there, I enjoyed a lot of things really, but I had to leave for 4 reasons :
- materialism, making my life all about the things I buy compared to my neighbourood
- law, because if you're at the wrong place/wrong time, your life turns into a huge mess
- guns, no good reasons to have them except maybe in your house.
- the military, creating wars at the other end of the planet every 10 years for training.

I knew that nothing would change for the better in these 4 points, at least during my lifetime

My condolensces to the families.

[Specineff]

Skykid, you're not helping anything. Cut it out already.

[Skykid]

Skykid, you're not helping anything. Cut it out already.

It helps if it makes Americans question whether or not "the right to bear arms" actually means anything constitutionally anymore.

[Specineff]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10 ... 50591.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... 34858.html

You do not see anybody from the USA or other countries critizicing the heavy-handed sanctions of your government, (regardless of how much in the wrong those people were) just because we don't see that happening here in the same degree. Please grant the US-residing members of the forum the same courtesy.

[greg]

Hey, shithead, children are shot all the time in the US. Read or watch the news from Chicago, Louisiana, or Los Angeles.

And those incidents make the news, don't they? So here we are when 20 children are killed all at once by one guy. You don't think that's a big deal? It's not a huge shock to any community, large or small?

[neorichieb1971]

What gun ownership debate boils down to is how much power you want to take from the individual and give to the state. Taking guns away from citizens reduces their power several fold: not only do they lose the pure power of the weapon itself, but they also lose power relative to the police (and for that matter, the military). I am uncomfortable with a situation where the police in general are more powerful than the people in general, as I am a believer in the axiom that power corrupts. The more accountable the police and government are to the people, the better.

... If you think that the government should act as a parent who outlaws anything it deems harmful, then so be it. But that is not its proper role, in my opinion.

It would begin a complete police state, to dwarf the transgressions against personal liberty Americans have endured over the past 11 years already in the name of "keeping people safe."

...In such a case, a complete door-to-door search and seizure must take place, which would be yet another violation of the Constitution.

...I think somebody already mentioned this above, but one of America's greatest ideals is the sense of personal freedom and liberty

"Sense" being the operative word.

It always beggars belief to find Americans who still believe the core values of the fabled constitution are somehow maintained within the spirit of the populace and the government is there as a secondary power.
I appreciate from inside the borders, where you're drip fed concentrated bullshit where legitimate news broadcasts are meant to be, that it might be difficult to see the woods for the trees, so here's the hardline:

You have no liberties. The government does not follow the constitution. Your president has barely any power to do anything. You have no rights, nor any real influence. You can't stop your government from going to war. Gun ownership won't save you from totalitarian power, since it's already here. Your country is owned by banks that make withdrawals of taxpayers money if and when they choose. The USA is already a police state, more so than most of continental Europe, and your economy is completely fucked because the government of Goldman Sachs and corporate America (a different country, essentially) have their own constitution: money; and it takes higher priority over anything that's been before, as it does in US medicine and accompanying insurances, where you'll effectively be denied life because of the small print.

I'm sick of hearing all the talk. If you want to act on your supposed civil liberties, take those arms, go to DC, and demand power be returned to the people. Just make sure you dodge all the tank fire on the way.

Isn't this the truth.

I can't find anything wrong with it at all. After living there for 6 years and seeing how blind Americans are. The people of America are shit scared of their government. Scared of change, scared of everything, except other countries. Other countries are weak and their ideals are not as strong.

We quite often get a political USA thread here, it goes on for hundreds of pages and some people write books on it. Fact is, if you sell guns, people will die. Its that simple. Its like an anti lottery, one day it might affect you.

[O. Van Bruce]

You have no liberties. The government does not follow the constitution. Your president has barely any power to do anything. You have no rights, nor any real influence. You can't stop your government from going to war. Gun ownership won't save you from totalitarian power, since it's already here. Your country is owned by banks that make withdrawals of taxpayers money if and when they choose. The USA is already a police state, more so than most of continental Europe, and your economy is completely fucked because the government of Goldman Sachs and corporate America (a different country, essentially) have their own constitution: money; and it takes higher priority over anything that's been before, as it does in US medicine and accompanying insurances, where you'll effectively be denied life because of the small print.

I second this. Even if the Americans feel insulted, it's the sad reality. Blame Ronald Reagan and Neo-con ideology that have run rampant since then.

[R79]

Seeing these horrific incidents from across the pond, just seems surreal. Would be virtually unimaginable for a family here to have a young man with a autistic spectrum disorder, living in a house with handguns and ammunition lying around.

I saw one report saying he liked LAN games... wait for the FOX News cranks to jump on that one

[O. Van Bruce]

It's funny how this thread has become Europe Vs U.S.A.

It's allways like this but I have to say, why a lot of American intelectuals look at Europe when they seek for social justice? why do we have better social services? why we live more healthily and with less preocupations? why I haven't seen a house robbery on my neighborhood on the whole 9 years I have lived here? Why I haven't seen a gun in my city except on the hands of a cop?

[neorichieb1971]

Its not Europe vs USA. Its common sense vs stubbornism.

Americans don't change anything because it is deemed un-American.

Which essentially says. Its more American to have multi shoot outs every so often where innocent lives get lost for no apparent reason.

The biggest reason politics doesn't budge is because of the size of the gun industry in the USA. Just like in the rest of the world nobody bans cigerettes out right. They just up the price and charge ridiculous taxes for it.

Charge $50 for each gun, charge $50 for each bullet. Job Done. Now you have to be rich to do the deed.

[Friendly]

Allow me to reiterate the above in simpler words: Hand out tons of guns to monkeys, monkeys start shooting each other.

/thread

[R79]

Just a cursory look at the shooter's dox reveals a personality that could easily have been a registered user here. Made his last post at 4chan? I'm sure plenty of us have dipped in there once or twice over the years. The term "monkeys" is as simplistic as Charlton Heston's "my cold dead hands" at the NRA rallies.

They shoulda had way stricter controls on the proliferation of small arms ever since Columbine. You look at states that have open carry, it's like something out of the Middle East. Nations which ironically bear the full brunt of America's gunboat driven, hectoring and deeply hypocritical morality.