Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or cars used in any accidents. Thousands of people die in car collisions every year, accidental and intentional, whether they were drunk or sober, reckless or diligent, or just an innocent pedestrian or cyclist who happened to have bad luck that day. A few days ago someone posted a web site called http://www.banthecar.com where they laid out detailed arguments for banning all cars, because of all the problems they ca…
> history of gun control being used to enable racism and genocide Reference? (Genuine question.)
Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
251–260 of 336 posts
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#252I 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?…
I hate the phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people" because it prevents reasonable discussion but it does get closer to the root of the problem and the solution.
The problem is how we treat mental illness. It's so stigmatized that people feel extreme shame and a sense that they just have to want to be better.
Every single person should be able to walk into a doctor's office, be screened and treated for their illness without the stigma that we attach to it. "Why should I have to pay for it?" This is one, among many, of the reasons. Will it eliminate these incidents? Nope but the result will still be a better society.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#253This isn't hacker news. I'm going to see this depressing, heart wrenching news in a hundred other places... let me have my one safe technology news site :(
True, but it's a community whose opinion I trust more than most others, so it's often enlightening to read comments about non-hacker news posts once and a while.
But the comments here are just the exact same opinions/comments that you see/hear everywhere else from people who are arguing about gun control. Nothing valuable or new here at all.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#254This is a tragedy, but why is it on HN? From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html we have: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. That fits this story.
I said the same thing here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380
PG himself has chimed in to point out the words "most" and "probably".
I'm with you, but we seem notto be in accord with the site owner.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 traine…
> 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. I call BS on this. In such a situation there's a lot of confusion and panic about what…
Of course, it's not easy. But it's not impossible either. A good samaritan may not always be able to help, but sometimes they can. In such a situation they'd definitely need to be careful, and in general it's inappropriate for armed civilians to try to act like police in situations like this (e.g. hunting down the attacker). But armed civilians can protect the people they are around, and they can stop the shooter from just going from room to room willy nilly (as happened at Virginia Tech) until they run out of bullets. More than that, as I mentioned, by preventing schools from becoming the havens of defenseless individuals that they are today it will have a deterrent effect against attackers. The reason why schools are such a common choice is precisely because there are lots of people there and everyone knows they are defenseless.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#256Please, if you want to go postal, don't aim at our kids, aim at the politicians.
Drain your frustrations with those who destroy our future, not those who will build it.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 traine…
I work under the assumption that there aren't any "bad guys," there are just people who wake up one day and snap. If somebody snaps, I would rather they not have a gun, even if they originally bought it for self-defense.
But yes, I agree that guns are only a tool, and that the underlying cause is psychological and/or cultural. No matter what we do with guns, it won't prevent future incidences; I just don't see how people can view a situation like this and think "oh, if the teachers had guns, everything would be all right."
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"The problem is his mental health, not his access to guns" The problem is that he had access to guns when he was mentally ill. Thats the problem. You cannot isolate the two.
What's easier to solve: remove all access to any weapon, or treating mental illness?
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#259Earlier 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?…
I hate the phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people" because it prevents reasonable discussion but it does get closer to the root of the problem and the solution. The problem is how we treat mental illness. It's so stigmatized that people feel extreme shame and a sense that they just have to want to be better. Every single person should be able to walk into a doctor's office, be screened and treated for the…
It's not just mental illness, it's everything. It's how we treat friends, how we treat girlfriends/boyfriends, how we treat strangers, etc. And the problem isn't just deranged people who commit massacres, it's also people who feel so alienated, alone, and down that they commit suicide.
Re: Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut
#260Earlier 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.
That's actually true. There is a wealth of research that shows that things like having larger spoons and larger bowls causes people to eat more and therefore get fatter. Similarly, is taking a crazy person's gun away going to stop them trying to kill people? Probably not, but it'll be much harder for them to kill anyone.
Well then we have the answer to our obesity epidemic, don't we?