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Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

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Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#171
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with everything you've just said, I'm not sure what the answer is. You have to go and purchase a gun, it's extremely difficult to manufacture one yourself. So, there's a point of control, where we can check people (including, yes, for mental illness). But mental illness itself has no check point. How can we ensure that people do not have untreated Schizophrenia? Mandatory checks for everyone once a year…

It is increasing less difficult to manufacture a gun or really anything else that can do mass damage. 3D printers will become a reality and any lockouts won't last any longer than the DRM on a DVD. We haven't put the money into brain research to figure out if there is a test we could do. Checkpoints are the easy part. Look at all the places we test for drugs (employment, school sports). If we figured out the mythical…

Chambers and barrels will be very difficult to print, they have to be forged or machined because of the extreme stresses involved.

EDIT: That article you linked to discusses a 3d printed lower receiver. That part of the rifle does not have the barrel and chamber. The part of the ar with the barrel and chamber is called the upper.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Spoons] themselves don't [make people fat], but they make it highly efficient. [Spoons] are tools, they create or enhance capabilities and as such they can be judged based on the outcomes of their usage.

I see you saw my comment before my "probable" edit :). The purpose of spoons are to feed. The probability of getting fat as a consequence of using a spoon is small. The purpose of guns is to make killing efficient.

People don't buy guns to "kill people", they buy guns to defend themselves. Most people who own guns would prefer to never have to use them.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#173

Listen, there are two parts to this: 1. The horrible tragedy, and 2. The hopes to prevent this from happening again. If we are going to talk about this, we need to all fall under the assumption that we agree that this is both a very tragic act perpetrated by someone who is obviously disturbed/mentally ill, and that it is all of our desires to do what we can to make sure senseless acts of violence like this never happ…

The problem is that easy availability of guns amplify the destruction that can be perpetuated by mentally unstable individuals. A similar incident happened in China today where 22 kids were stabbed by one perpetrator but not one had life threatening injuries. What if Walmart China sold guns like the US one does? How many innocent kids would be dead today?

> How much liberty do we all give up, to limit the devastation of the senseless acts of a few?

Liberty? What about the liberty not to get randomly shot down and you or your loved ones' life taken away from you and the people who know you? Isn't the gift of life the supreme liberty taking precedence over the need of some to worship guns?

The ability to take away someone right and liberty to live at a moment's notice borders on a superpower and should be handed out very sparingly to those who absolutely need it to do their job.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that is such a straw man. In America, the country in which I (and presumably you) live, what's the body count on the ol' oppressive regime-vs-AR15 wielding madman debate anyways? I'm thinking it's on the order of 0 to a couple hundred thousand. If everybody in North Korea owned a shotgun, yes, the world would be a better place. I don't understand why that means children should be murdered en masse, or that I shou…

>> I don't understand why that means children should be murdered en masse, or that I should have to dodge bullets in my own neighborhood (yes, really), all so that you can sleep easier at night knowing that the far-off, nebulous specter of the 'oppressive regime' is held safely at bay by your Colt 45. Pardon me, but I grew up in a country where 'oppressive regime' was not far off at all, and where brutal murders happ…

And now you live in a country with enough societal and institutional safeguards against oppression that it isn't necessary for the citizenry to own automatic weapons. Congratulations.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#175
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really rather we talk about mental health and brain chemistry. Objects are easy to vilify, but we are ignoring mental health in this country and this is the result. The number of people walking around with untreated Schizophrenia is seriously problematic. The shooter in NM set off so many warnings that were ignored by people in power that it should have been seen. When the dust settles, I would expect a simil…

While I agree with everything you've just said, I'm not sure what the answer is. You have to go and purchase a gun, it's extremely difficult to manufacture one yourself. So, there's a point of control, where we can check people (including, yes, for mental illness). But mental illness itself has no check point. How can we ensure that people do not have untreated Schizophrenia? Mandatory checks for everyone once a year…

> But mental illness itself has no check point. How can we ensure that people do not have untreated Schizophrenia? Mandatory checks for everyone once a year? I'm really not sure how it could be done.

You can't ensure that every single person that has a mental disability gets treatment, but as a society we do not support easy access to mental health treatment. Mental health services, like physical health services, are pay to play and that provides a huge barrier for people with mental disability, esp. since some amount of those people will have a very hard time affording such treatment and/or medication. Consider also that folks with mental disability tend to have less robust support networks of family of friends and that mental health care has stigma attached to it for most of the US population.

The best option is to reduce the difficult of getting mental health care treatment as much as possible: universal health care, public awareness campaigns to fight against social stigma, and more robust social services.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#176
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with gun control. Guns exist, that can't be stopped any more than preventing alcohol from existing (prohibition), and some bad guys will always have access to guns. Or knives, or diesel fuel, or explosives. Was the Oklahoma-city bombing a wake-up call for "explosives control"? Was the 2009 Chengdu bus-fire ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Chengdu_bus_fire ) a wake-up call for diesel control?…

That doesn't mean we should start encouraging everyone to carry guns, knives, diesel fuel, whatever. "More guns" isn't the solution any more than "fewer guns" is, but I would still feel safer if I knew that getting a gun was more difficult than a stroll into the corner shop.

More people are carrying guns though, and yet overall violent crime has been falling.

It's not the gun.

Guns are tools, they aren't the problem. We need to be better at being able to detect these individuals who are likely to go on these rampages. But more than that we need to have a society that is better able to defend itself. If even 1 in 20 or fewer teachers at a school were people who were responsible and trained and carried guns for self-defense then these sorts of attacks would be far less common. Because the attacks would be ended sooner by armed citizens acting in defense. And because then schools and other places would no longer be defenseless. The reason why these crazy people go to schools to commit mayhem is because they know that they aren't going to be stopped. They know that it's just going to be unarmed teachers and defenseless children. If that stopped being the case, if there started to be more of a risk to the shooter in these situations then maybe these sorts of shootings would be less common.

We've spent the last half century in the developed world progressively making ourselves more and more defenseless and less and less empowered, on the premise that doing so also disempowers the bad guys. The rage killers, the school shooters, the terrorists, etc. But the exact opposite has come to pass. We've disempowered the individual and made ourselves defenseless and even more vulnerable to these monsters.

No, not everyone should own a gun, or be allowed to own a gun. But if we started to cultivate more of a culture of self-reliance and personal responsibility, and if we started increasingly empowering individuals to take care of their own self-defense by becoming more aware, more trained, more prepared, and to carry weapons if they so choose then maybe we'll actually end up with a safer society.

I've been shooting guns since I was 10 years old, and I've been carrying a pocket knife since middle school. I take these things vary seriously. I maintain my certifications and training in first-aid and CPR. I have well stocked first aid kits in my home, car, and backpack (when I ride the bus or bike), including things like hemostatic compounds. I also have a concealed carry permit (which means that my info and fingerprints are on file with local law enforcement) and own firearms. If you make a law which limits my capability to defend myself or others then you are not making society more safe. And almost any gun-control law is going to preferentially disempower good people like myself while having much less impact on the bad guys who don't care about living within the law.

Edit: the concentration on guns as an item which "enables violence" is no more sensible than the TSA's concentration on liquids or nail clippers. It's just another form of security theater.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun control is the easy answer. I want to know how we as a society can figure out why people get frustrated, depressed, or angry to the point that shooting up a kindergarten enters into the picture. We don't know the backstory here, but usually these events are all about someone whose life is spinning out of control for any of a dozen reasons, and either nobody has a clue that anything was wrong or everyone thought t…

It's easy to blame the person --- the offender. But when you think about the way society works, often times the most effective solutions to risk are a combination of social campaigns to educate the masses, as well as physical controls or barriers to prevent bad things from happening. For example: think about speed bumps. Sure, we could just blame any drivers who crash into pedestrians in parking lots, but by adding s…

I think we're coming from the same place here.

Modern society seems to be good at creating situations where people feel powerless or like lashing out. The offender obviously makes an awful choice, but maybe we should think about how to make things so that society isn't so brutal?

I say that gun control is the "easy" answer because it is a response to a specific event. That doesn't mean that I think that gun control is "bad". I'm just saying that the underlying issue that leads people to do awful things has other negative (but not as horrific) effects too.

As an unrelated illustration, the 14 year old inner city kid walking around with a gun or knife feels miserable and powerless. The weapon makes him feel empowered, but in a negative way -- if he grows up that way, that's going to leave him vulnerable to substance abuse and that mindset will be passed on to his kids and his social circle too.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#178
post #145
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the analogy is silly. The point really is that [Noun] Control is impossible. What about crossbows, knives and rocks? Things aren't the problem. People are the problem.

Reductio ad absurdum: I would like to own my own [nuclear weapon], please.

I'd settle for a [drone].

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#179
post #149

Listen, there are two parts to this: 1. The horrible tragedy, and 2. The hopes to prevent this from happening again. If we are going to talk about this, we need to all fall under the assumption that we agree that this is both a very tragic act perpetrated by someone who is obviously disturbed/mentally ill, and that it is all of our desires to do what we can to make sure senseless acts of violence like this never happ…

> 1. Disarm everyone, and 2. Allow everyone to carry weapons. Nice strawmen. There are obviously options in the middle, namely, increasing traceability of weapons and ammo and shutting down channels that where weapons are allowed to change hands anonymously. The proliferation of weapons is one thing, but the fact that these tragedies occur and we don't have a way to follow the chain back to the disreputable dealer wh…

The guy used basic handguns in this shooting. The problem is his mental health, not his access to guns. If he were motivated enough, and guns weren't available, he could use any manner of other means to kill a bunch of people - bombs, molotov cocktails, home-made flame throwers, samurai sword, vehicles, etc.

Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

#180
post #149

Listen, there are two parts to this: 1. The horrible tragedy, and 2. The hopes to prevent this from happening again. If we are going to talk about this, we need to all fall under the assumption that we agree that this is both a very tragic act perpetrated by someone who is obviously disturbed/mentally ill, and that it is all of our desires to do what we can to make sure senseless acts of violence like this never happ…

> 1. Disarm everyone, and 2. Allow everyone to carry weapons. Nice strawmen. There are obviously options in the middle, namely, increasing traceability of weapons and ammo and shutting down channels that where weapons are allowed to change hands anonymously. The proliferation of weapons is one thing, but the fact that these tragedies occur and we don't have a way to follow the chain back to the disreputable dealer wh…

I think you mean false dichotomy, not straw man.
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