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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

#201

Post by jlgreco »

pdeuchler wrote: post #108
purplelobster wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can pro-gun people please stop using Switzerland as their go to argument? Do you know why they have so many guns? Because people who have done military service are required to keep a rifle locked up in their house. These are trained people who have gone through psychology tests and military training. That is very very fucking different than the situation in the US.

Because as we all know, psychology tests and military training are foolproof for sifting out the crazies.

Screen doors don't keep all the bugs out, but they sure do help. The alternative, a solid door, is a political impossibility in America. You may as well wish for a pink pony.

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

#203

Post by andylei »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #72
untog wrote: post #4

I can't wait until the part where we all don't talk about gun control and carry on as usual. Sigh. EDIT: I see my post is being downvoted. I know that it may come across as insensitive to immediately leap to the gun control debate, but frankly I'm more angry than upset by this news. How many times does it have to happen? We have a good 48 hours of emotional outpouring and then everyone forgets it ever happened.

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?…

> It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person.

this is such a bad argument. of course its true that the person is responsible, but that's not an argument against gun control.

we can't just lock up everyone that could possibly go on a shooting spree, but we sure can make it harder for a person to go on shooting sprees. make it harder for people to get guns!

> Guns exist, that can't be stopped any more than preventing alcohol from existing

great, but if access to guns was restricted, it would be harder for crazy people from going on shooting sprees.

nobody thinks that all access to guns can be eliminated, but its pretty reasonable to say that if it were hard to get guns, fewer shooting sprees would happen.

> guns are just tools, as are knives, and diesel fuel, and even explosives

this comparison is so clearly bad:

the tradeoffs for society are obvious in each of these cases. knives are pretty dangerous, but they don't really enable someone to rampage through an elementary school to kill 27 people. diesel fuel is pretty dangerous, but it's also really useful to society. i'm pretty sure we already have controls on who has access to explosives.

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

#204

Post by davidcuddeback »

IgorPartola wrote: post #152
marknutter wrote: post #54

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.

So perhaps you'd like your neighbor to acquire a nuke or smallpox-based vaccine. Sure, he's a great guy and will never use these things, and besides, nukes have plenty of other purposes in a household. Their primary reason is totally not for killing people, so this is all good, right?

Let's not resort to reductio ad absurdum arguments, please. There's plenty of rationale arguments that you could have made instead. No one's suggesting that people should be allowed to keep nuclear bombs in their homes, and your metaphor is untenable.

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

#205

Post by paulhauggis »

paulhauggis wrote: post #102

A news anchor on CNN had a theory about how as a society, we are becoming less empathetic because of our tendency to have more and more online relationships. Just look at the people on Twitter and even here on HN. You act very differently than you would in real life. I almost wonder if there is something to this and has an effect on some people, which leads to less empathy in real life.

I guess HN really is going down hill. I wasn't trolling at all and genuinely had some thoughts on the topic, and I am downvoted with no comment.

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

#206

Post by jweir »

goostavos wrote: post #148
jweir wrote: post #74

Something to be aware of Ruger's 1 Million Gun Challenge http://www.ruger.com/micros/million/about.html

I fail to understand the point of your comment. Why do we need to be aware of a gun manufacturer wanting to sell guns?

Wanting to sell guns is a given.

I was surprised(not shocked) to learn of the contest for one manufacturer to sell over a million guns in one year with the goal of increasing funding for lobbyists.

1.2 million guns is a lot of weapons to sell in a year.

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

#207

Post by davidcuddeback »

marknutter wrote: post #172
hackinthebochs wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they buy guns to defend themselves

Or to hunt. Or for sport.

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

#208

Post by baddox »

lostlogin wrote: post #25
vyrotek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And spoons make you fat

Exactly right. But did you using your spoon make 27 fat who didn't want to be?

The analogy would place blame on the manufacturer/seller of spoons, right? In which case, they would be blamed for everyone getting fat.

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

#209

Post by jlgreco »

codegeek wrote: post #111
InclinedPlane wrote: post #72

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?…

"It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person." This kind of zero sum game attitude is a problem in my opinion. yes, Guns are used by people and they don't shoot by themselves. But better controls must be put in place to at least try and keep it away from crazy people. I am saying try , make it harder . If you have a toddler in the house and he starts playing with knives, would you blame it on the toddler…

Exactly. This is a problem with no silver bullet. It is impossible to remove all guns/gun rights in America, and it is impossible to find all the crazies and lock them up. Not without violating some serious rights.

The best we can really do is tighten all of the bolts that we can see, and hope the leak slows down to an acceptable level. Improve gun ownership laws, improve our handling of the mentally ill, assist those experiencing crippling poverty, etc. Attack all the angles reasonably to get crime down to a reasonable level.

(And an acceptable level cannot be "no incidents". To accomplish that would require a police state. We must accept that once in a while horrific things will happen, and there was nothing that could reasonably be done to prevent it. i.e., shit happens.)

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

#210

Post by josephlord »

lostlogin wrote: post #31
bstewartny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun control cant and wont solve these problems. These are societal problems. Anyone insane and evil enough to kill children would get guns on the black market or use some other weapon such as a bomb. Schools need to able to have armed guards and better locked/secured entries IMO.

Then why is this problem more prevalent in America? I know this sounds like baiting, it isn't. Surely gun laws come into it, even if they aren't the root cause (they aren't IMHO).

Britain [not counting Northern Ireland] (about 1/6 the population of the US) and with really quite tight gun controls has had three murder sprees since 1987 that killed more than 10 people (all of which used guns). The worst of these (in 1987) led to a significant tightening of gun controls. Additional gun controls were also brought in after the 1996 attack on primary school in Scotland.

http://www.murderuk.com/mass_murderers.html

Other attacks have occurred at schools without guns including this one with a machete that resulted in injuries but no deaths: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/8/news....

I would suggest that perhaps there is also a societal issue in the US compared to Britain causing these things (in addition to the affect of the larger population) but the most important aspect may be the greater availability of firearms that gives opportunity to people that may not carry out the act if they need time and preparation AND it greatly increases the lethality of attacks that do take place.

Note this excludes terrorism where numerous incidents have had a bigger death toll but those planned coordinated attacks and I think a different category from the sort of incident today.

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