A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
One would hope this incident and its greater exposure into the final minutes of someone's life will somehow help spur serious gun control in this country.
Don't Canada and Norway have strict gun control laws? The bottom line is that no law can stop a determined nutjob. By the way, I thought free speech weekend was a couple of weeks ago.
No laws can stop it happening but laws can reduce the incidents and limit the options that allow this to be too easy in the U.S. It happened in Norway on a horrific scale but I doubt it will happen there again for quite a while.
no one—really no one—anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life. . . . we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.
Exactly how I feel. One of the best friends of my life was gunned done by a lunatic with an AK-47 that he bought over the counter in the 30 minutes it took for him to fill out the paperwork. Coward that he was, there's no way he had the guts to do it with anything except a gun that he could easily buy.
I feel for your loss, but I couldn't disagree more with your conclusion. I don't know if your friend was the victim of a random shooter or someone he knew personally, but there are no gun laws that can stop a determined killer. When the government takes away our freedoms (eg. gun control, Patriot Act, NDAA, etc), we lose in the long run.
Why do we need the freedom to acquire automatic weapons? Why do we need the freedom to acquire gas grenades, kevlar vests? Our "freedoms" need to be sensibly applied.
This has nothing to do with 'understanding'; it has everything to do with 'deciding' . . . choices individuals make, choices that societies make . . .
jazzcyclist wrote:is that there's no way to stop someone from getting guns if he's determined, otherwise these things wouldn't happen in other nations with draconian gun control laws.
The fact that these sorts of things happen at a highly significant LOWER rate in countries with stricter gun control laws proves that the harder we make it to get guns, the better off we'd all be.
As people have already stated, minds are already made up about the gun issue in the U.S. My belief is that the problem is not the implement, but a breakdown of peoples core values. Think of a typical American Amish kid as compared to a typical suburban American kid during the last 50 yrs. The more's both have are vastly different. The worst thing you might expect from the Amish kid is that he might go mad and attack his neighbor by cutting off his beard, but the suburban kid with an advanced degree goes and shoots up a theater. Violence has permeated society including the films we watch. The Dark Knight was extremely graphic and violent. Why aren't we outraged at the people who profit from these films? Are we so bored with our lives that we need this stuff. Parents buy their kids extremely graphic and violent video games...WTF nobody cares. The only way to stop these things from happening is to change our culture and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
jazz cyclist wrote:...there are no gun laws that can stop a determined killer. ....
That is correct, but one can certainly make it harder to be a mass killer.
I would argue (as somebody who has 5 guns in his house by the way, and started shooting at age 4, so I'm no anti-gun nut) that nobody needs a fully auto AK47 with a 30-round clip.
Automatic weapons have been strictly reguilated since 1968. You can't just go down to your local gunshop and buy one a whim.
This has nothing to do with 'understanding'; it has everything to do with 'deciding' . . . choices individuals make, choices that societies make . . .
jazzcyclist wrote:is that there's no way to stop someone from getting guns if he's determined, otherwise these things wouldn't happen in other nations with draconian gun control laws.
The fact that these sorts of things happen at a highly significant LOWER rate in countries with stricter gun control laws proves that the harder we make it to get guns, the better off we'd all be.
For what it's worth, I'm 100% with Marlow et al on this. The logical gap between "a well regulated militia" and easy access to assault weapons is absurd and obscene.
Vince wrote:As people have already stated, minds are already made up about the gun issue in the U.S. My belief is that the problem is not the implement, but a breakdown of peoples core values. Think of a typical American Amish kid as compared to a typical suburban American kid during the last 50 yrs. The more's both have are vastly different. The worst thing you might expect from the Amish kid is that he might go mad and attack his neighbor by cutting off his beard, but the suburban kid with an advanced degree goes and shoots up a theater. Violence has permeated society including the films we watch. The Dark Knight was extremely graphic and violent. Why aren't we outraged at the people who profit from these films? Are we so bored with our lives that we need this stuff. Parents buy their kids extremely graphic and violent video games...WTF nobody cares. The only way to stop these things from happening is to change our culture and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
I am with you on this. How long have we had access to guns in society? Why is this BECOMING a problem? Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Society despite (or perhaps because of) all it "progressivism" is losing core values as you noted. There is more devisiveness than ever. If you were to be able to take all the guns away you may limit some of these types of incidents, but there will likely be other types of manifestations of this behavior, and, as a whole, I doubt the number of killings in this country would change.
jeremyp wrote:Why do we need the freedom to acquire automatic weapons?
As I said in my previous post, buying automatic weapons is very, very difficult and very expensive. It's probably easier to buy a semi-automatic weapon in the U.K than it is to buy an automatic weapon in the U.S. I can tell you this from personal experience.
jeremyp wrote:kevlar vests?
Why not? What harm can a nutjob inflict on someone with a kevlar vest? I think purely defensive items like this should be totally unregulated. How many people would have survived the shooting if they had been wearing one?
odelltrclan wrote:I doubt the number of killings in this country would change.
That's where we virulently disagree. Guns allow disturbed people to kill with ease. Without that ease, cowards (and they all are de facto - they can't work things out in a direct sane manner) simply don't have the nerve to do what they do. Everyone is whole lot braver with a gun in their hand. Talk about the ultimate enabling device.
I'm so disgusted with this topic, I'll quit this thread now, or gh will end up banning me for saying what I really think.
edit - Jazz, really? You're going to quibble about how FAST it shoots?! My dear friend died in a hail of 10 rounds in just a few short seconds.
jazz cyclist wrote:...there are no gun laws that can stop a determined killer. ....
That is correct, but one can certainly make it harder to be a mass killer.
I would argue (as somebody who has 5 guns in his house by the way, and started shooting at age 4, so I'm no anti-gun nut) that nobody needs a fully auto AK47 with a 30-round clip.
Automatic weapons have been strictly reguilated since 1968. You can't just go down to your local gunshop and buy one a whim.
Actually in Arizona you can, and I am sure in oter strates as well. "Fast and Furious" was all about "allowing" locals to buy up automatic weapons en masse, legally, and then arrest them before they got to Mexico. Unfortunately the AG's would not /could not arrest anybody because buying these wapons en masse was legal. As far as buying an automatic weapon I have little doubt I could get one if I had the urge to. I have friends who have done so (in Florida) and with no trouble at all. Some of my friends are ex cops and they are appalled at how easy it is to get them.
jeremyp wrote:Why do we need the freedom to acquire automatic weapons?
As I said in my previous post, buying automatic weapons is very, very difficult and very expensive. It's probably easier to buy a semi-automatic weapon in the U.K than it is to buy an automatic weapon in the U.S. I can tell you this from personal experience.
Not in Florida or Arizona (read my other post).
jeremyp wrote:kevlar vests?
Why not? What harm can a nutjob inflict on someone with a kevlar vest? I think purely defensive items like this should be totally unregulated. How many people would have survived the shooting if they had been wearing one?
You don't seriously think we should all wear vests in public because the gun laws are so ludicrous do you? I can see the headlines now: "100's of people saved from death due to wearing of kevlar vests during mass shooting. Vests will now be mandatory at all theaters."
The guy had four guns, only one of which is remotely related to hunting. The other three have no business being sold to average citizens. Our country is fucked up in a multitude of ways and this is one shining example. (And I too own guns, but nothing with the rapid firepower that this guy's guns had.)
odelltrclan wrote: Society despite (or perhaps because of) all it "progressivism" is losing core values as you noted.
Perhaps, but this is an excerpt from the article on the killer.
"A longtime neighbor in San Diego, where Holmes grew up, remembers only a "shy guy ... a loner" from a churchgoing family. In addition to playing soccer at Westview High School, he ran cross country."
I saw the movie yesterday. Although we're 70 miles away from Aurora I couldn't help watching the exit doors during the first gun battle...I literally forgot about the film and started imaging what those folk went through up north. It took a while to get lost again in the movie -- and I did because it was excellent...as indicated by the (rare) applause afterwards!
Marlow wrote:edit - Jazz, really? You're going to quibble about how FAST it shoots?! My dear friend died in a hail of 10 rounds in just a few short seconds.
I don't consider this quibbling at all. It's more like you're being loose with your gun terminology to further your argument.
jeremyp wrote:Actually in Arizona you can, and I am sure in oter strates as well. "Fast and Furious" was all about "allowing" locals to buy up automatic weapons en masse, legally, and then arrest them before they got to Mexico. Unfortunately the AG's would not /could not arrest anybody because buying these wapons en masse was legal. As far as buying an automatic weapon I have little doubt I could get one if I had the urge to. I have friends who have done so (in Florida) and with no trouble at all. Some of my friends are ex cops and they are appalled at how easy it is to get them.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! The Gun Control Act of 1968 didn't give states any sort of latitude on automatic weapons. We're talking federal regulation, not state regulation, and as you know, federal law trumps state law. I'm not saying it's impossible to get an automatic weapon legally, just difficult and expensive. By the way, there's a big difference between automatic and semi-automatic when talking about guns. Are you sure you know the difference?
odelltrclan wrote: Society despite (or perhaps because of) all it "progressivism" is losing core values as you noted.
Perhaps, but this is an excerpt from the article on the killer.
"A longtime neighbor in San Diego, where Holmes grew up, remembers only a "shy guy ... a loner" from a churchgoing family. In addition to playing soccer at Westview High School, he ran cross country."
Pego, I am not sure exactly what you are implying here, but, this quote really makes no change in what I was stating. I don't know the facts associated with this individual but the fact that he was raised in a churchgoing family actually could be reinforcing the argument. I have had a number of acquaintances in my life go from "churchgoing" to non-church going, agnosticism and athiesm in large part to progressivism and the secularism movement and I believe that has a part in society losing core values. I am not suggesting that all agnostics or athiests do not have values. But, many who were raised with those values who lose their belief in God also may struggle with a sense of right or wrong and end up with serious issues. I wonder if some of these nut jobs come from such a background? Obviously something goes off inside of them to jump to doing something like this.
JazzC...I'm with you on the freedom issue here and I don't know how easy/hard it is to get an fully auto anything, but I do know it is pretty easy to convert a semi-auto to a fully-auto rifle,(just file down the catch on the trigger mechanism) but in a crowded theater a semi-auto gun/rifle is going to kill a lot of people, so it doesn't make any sense to quibble over semi vs fully auto. To all the gun control people, would you have preferred that he spray all the patrons with an oily gasoline mixture and then throw a match and lock the fire escapes on his way out? It's not about the method, it's why, as a society, are people becoming murdering Zombies?
Pego.... I'm not referring to any particular religion or political view...just how desensitized and receptive our current culture is toward violence.
jazzcyclist wrote: Why not? What harm can a nutjob inflict on someone with a kevlar vest? I think purely defensive items like this should be totally unregulated. How many people would have survived the shooting if they had been wearing one?
This is not Kabul. That has to be the dumbest comment here.
Vince wrote: To all the gun control people, would you have preferred that he spray all the patrons with an oily gasoline mixture and then throw a match and lock the fire escapes on his way out?
How does one respond to such idiotic comment? I am lost for words....
It is silly statements like this, along with this 'freedom' nonsense, which is really just a campaign ad, that a real discussion, let alone finding a solution, is impossible on this topic.
Gun control is a losing campaign issue. Absolutely nothing is going to be done on a federal level in the foreseeable future.
Vince wrote: To all the gun control people, would you have preferred that he spray all the patrons with an oily gasoline mixture and then throw a match and lock the fire escapes on his way out?
How does one respond to such idiotic comment? I am lost for words....
It is silly statements like this, along with this 'freedom' nonsense, which is really just a campaign ad, that a real discussion, let alone finding a solution, is impossible on this topic.
Gun control is a losing campaign issue. Absolutely nothing is going to be done on a federal level in the foreseeable future.
Why don't you stop calling people who don't agree with you idiots/stupid? It's people like you that make the topic impossible. There are rational solutions to violence that all people can agree upon.
Why don't you stop calling people who don't agree with you idiots? It's people like you that make the topic impossible. There are rational solutions to violence that all people can agree upon.
Rational solutions? Name one, instead of the usual 'freedom' nonsense, or some moronic scenario. And not where everyone goes around in kevlar armour and armed to the teeth.
Let us be honest. These threads really go nowhere. There are no solutions in today's political climate. These mass shootings have taken on the character of tornado disasters. We feel dreadful for the people involved and kind words are said, but really nothing changes and we can only wait for the next one.
PS. At least with a tornado you sometimes get a warning.
jazzcyclist wrote:... Why not? What harm can a nutjob inflict on someone with a kevlar vest? I think purely defensive items like this should be totally unregulated....
I have family members in the law enforcement business who would disagree with you strongly. They don't really like the thought of confronting bulletproof nut jobs.
Why don't you stop calling people who don't agree with you idiots? It's people like you that make the topic impossible. There are rational solutions to violence that all people can agree upon.
Why don't you stop calling people who don't agree with you idiots? It's people like you that make the topic impossible. There are rational solutions to violence that all people can agree upon.
jeremyp wrote:Actually in Arizona you can, and I am sure in oter strates as well. "Fast and Furious" was all about "allowing" locals to buy up automatic weapons en masse, legally, and then arrest them before they got to Mexico. Unfortunately the AG's would not /could not arrest anybody because buying these wapons en masse was legal. As far as buying an automatic weapon I have little doubt I could get one if I had the urge to. I have friends who have done so (in Florida) and with no trouble at all. Some of my friends are ex cops and they are appalled at how easy it is to get them.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! The Gun Control Act of 1968 didn't give states any sort of latitude on automatic weapons. We're talking federal regulation, not state regulation, and as you know, federal law trumps state law. I'm not saying it's impossible to get an automatic weapon legally, just difficult and expensive. By the way, there's a big difference between automatic and semi-automatic when talking about guns. Are you sure you know the difference?
Arizona, the state ranked by the gun-control advocacy group Legal Community Against Violence as having the nation's "weakest gun violence prevention laws." Just 200 miles from Mexico, which prohibits gun sales, the Phoenix area is home to 853 federally licensed firearms dealers. Billboards advertise volume discounts for multiple purchases.
Customers can legally buy as many weapons as they want in Arizona as long as they're 18 or older and pass a criminal background check. There are no waiting periods and no need for permits, and buyers are allowed to resell the guns. "In Arizona," says Voth, "someone buying three guns is like someone buying a sandwich."
By 2009 the Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.
odelltrclan wrote: But, many who were raised with those values who lose their belief in God also may struggle with a sense of right or wrong and end up with serious issues
Sorry, I disagree. There is no evidence that moral values of any kind are linked to individual's religiosity or irreligiosity. There are nice guys and assholes in both camps.
Vince wrote:Pego.... I'm not referring to any particular religion or political view...just how desensitized and receptive our current culture is toward violence.
Yes, with this I agree. I am just not sure, if there is a link. People have been committing atrocities throughout the ages long before our current culture.
Vince wrote:Pego.... I'm not referring to any particular religion or political view...just how desensitized and receptive our current culture is toward violence.
Yes, with this I agree. I am just not sure, if there is a link. People have been committing atrocities throughout the ages long before our current culture.
Right, percentage wise compared to historic atrocities, we are probably less murderess today. I bet the perpetrators back then were also desensitized because they were raised in a violent culture.
odelltrclan wrote: But, many who were raised with those values who lose their belief in God also may struggle with a sense of right or wrong and end up with serious issues
Sorry, I disagree. There is no evidence that moral values of any kind are linked to individual's religiosity or irreligiosity. There are nice guys and assholes in both camps.
Correct. Let's just say that it's very "amusing" to try picturing, say, Aristotle (who very obviously wasn't a Christian) as having "no values." This attempt to link a particular kind of religiosity to any superior sort of moral "virtue" is just a non-starter.
James Fallows in The Atlantic gets to the heart of the problem that I have been pointing out. And it isn't some silly, a movie is the cause of it all, nonsense, but the fact that psychopaths are nothing unique to the US, but rather other countries do something about it.
Like everyone, and I'd say especially like every parent, I am of course saddened and horrified by the latest mass shooting-murder. My sympathies to all.
And of course the additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.
Recently I visited the site of the "Port Arthur Massacre," in Tasmania, where in 1996 a disturbed young man shot and killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. The site is a kind of national shrine; afterwards, Australia tightened up its gun laws, and there has been nothing remotely comparable in all the years since. In contrast: not long after that shooting, during my incarnation as news-magazine editor, I dispatched reporters to cover then-shocking schoolyard mass shootings in West Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas. Those two episodes, coming back to back, were -- as always -- supposed to provoke a "national discussion" about guns and gun violence. As always, they didn't; a while later they were nudged from the national consciousness by Columbine; and since then we have had so many schoolyard- or public-place shootings that those two are barely mentioned.
The Brady Campaign's list of mass shootings in America just since 2005 is 62 pages long.
The truth is made worse by the reality that no one--really no one--anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life....
The reality is simple: every country struggles with madmen and ideologues with guns, and every country--Canada, Norway, Britain--has had a gun massacre once, or twice. Then people act to stop them, and they do--as over the past few years has happened in Australia. Only in America are gun massacres of this kind routine, expectable, and certain to continue.
odelltrclan wrote: But, many who were raised with those values who lose their belief in God also may struggle with a sense of right or wrong and end up with serious issues
Sorry, I disagree. There is no evidence that moral values of any kind are linked to individual's religiosity or irreligiosity. There are nice guys and assholes in both camps.
Correct. Let's just say that it's very "amusing" to try picturing, say, Aristotle (who very obviously wasn't a Christian) as having "no values." This attempt to link a particular kind of religiosity to any superior sort of moral "virtue" is just a non-starter.
When did someone say not being a "Christian" gave you "no values"??? Your biases are showing.
Aristotle did write this "We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God."
