Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut

news.blogs.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 336 posts

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

#261

Post by codegeek »

marknutter wrote: post #258
codegeek wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

The solution is somewhere in the middle. It is never one or the other. Can you remove access to all weapons ? No. Can you treat all mentally ill ppl ? No. Can you make it harder for ppl to buy weapons especially if they could be mentally ill ? Yes, certainly. Will it always work ? No.

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

#262

Post by danielweber »

kevinh wrote: post #192
llambda wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try on a little human emotion and sensitivity for size: this isn't your site to police. Even pg has pointed out the precision of the wording which you seemingly ignored.

Posting an article on a website isn't sensitivity. It just lets people gawk. Despite what pg says, this article does not belong on Hacker News. This has absolutely no relation to hacking in general. There are a multitude of sites that will provide content like this article. There are precious few sites limited in scope to what Hacker News should be about.

I see "most popular articles don't belong" as excepting things like, say, assassination of a President or a 9/11 happening. And it can be useful for people to talk about and figure out what's happening.

But looking through the thread, most people aren't posting information. They are debating policy at a time when emotions are (validly) hot. There are lots of places on the Internet where one can debate political policy (and I love doing so), so it seems weird for it to be here.

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

#263

Post by mnicole »

mnicole wrote: post #193
nollidge wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, but I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment.

Sorry, thought you were insinuating that changing the laws on obtaining one would make a difference in stopping those who will essentially do whatever they need to to get it. :)

It won't let me reply directly to you this deep in the thread -

> I definitely was insinuating that, along with lots of other things. So everyone who wants a gun will do whatever they need to get it? Measures such as background checks, safety class requirements, mental health checks, restrictions on high-capacity or high-throughput weapons, higher taxes, manufacturer and supply chain oversight, spying on domestic traffickers, or closing the gun show loophole?

You can help control/prevent, yes, but I'm strongly in the camp that if there's a will, there's a way.

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

#264

Post by detst »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #259
detst wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right. I should have framed my statement around mental health, not just mental illness.

(EDIT: listening to CNN in the background, Dr. Drew Pinsky said something along the lines of what we have here.)

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

#265

Post by protomyth »

dmm wrote: post #171
protomyth wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/12/06/3d-printed-gun-fires-rea...

[edit:] http://defensedistributed.com

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

#266

Post by untog »

bcoates wrote: post #164
untog wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have too much faith in the political process. The gun lobby ensures that there is no debate on gun control.

That is the political process. The gun lobby can deliver votes, the anti-gun lobby can't. Support for gun control is extremely shallow, a lot of people are for it if asked a yes/no question but the activist population of people who would change their vote, volunteer time, or donate money is tiny.

That is the political process. The gun lobby can deliver votes, the anti-gun lobby can't.

The gun lobby has money, which is available from bodies like gun manufacturers. There is no equivalent on the other side- there are no anti-gun manufacturers to give money.

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

#267

Post by mc32 »

king_jester wrote: post #162
JoeCortopassi wrote: post #129

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…

If you believe that the shooter in this case was disturbed or had mental illness (I've seen no reports to conclude this, btw) then the first thing you would demand is 1) better mental health care facilities and treatments for the public at large and 2) universal health care systems to provide the least possible friction in accessing those mental health care services. Also, you don't have to be either for banning guns…

If this was a mental illness issue and we agreed to provide better or universal mental health care, how would one have everyone who needed treatment submit to evaluation and treatment? Assuming we agreed upon and used professional guidelines to evaluate people's mental health.

Would people be coerced? Would it be voluntary? If voluntary, I suspect only a fraction of those who had serious issues would seek help. On the other hand, there would be serious issues with legally compelling people to be treated involuntarily, if they have not violated nay other major laws which would make their treatment compulsory.

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

#268

Post by btilly »

sixQuarks wrote: post #15
ColinWright wrote: post #8

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Yes, this is important, yes, it's newsworthy. No, it's not "Hacker News". It's all over the news, and there's nothing specific about hacking, or start-ups. It's not even of "deep interest" in any real sense. It's tragedy, pure and simple, and then it becomes pol…

your quote just negated your argument. Read it carefully, it says: "MOST stories about..." Most is the important word here. This shooting is unprecedented in the US as far as the number of children killed, and will mark a point in history. Considering I don't even watch the news or go to any news web sites, if I hadn't heard about it on HN, I probably wouldn't have even known about it to be honest.

This shooting is unprecedented in the US as far as the number of children killed...

For a shooting, yes. But the 1995 Oklahoma bombing included 19 young children among the 168 killed, including all 17 children in a daycare in the building.

This level of death is, sadly, not unprecedented. And I guarantee you that in 20 years it will be even less remembered by the general public than Timothy McVeigh is.

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

#269

Post by marknutter »

crazygringo wrote: post #239

This may seem tangential, but I swear it's not. We live in a country (US) where growth and progress is measured primarily in GDP. Poverty is measured economically. People's happiness is blithely assumed to be some kind of function of their economic well-being, especially because that can be measured. There are alternative ideas like "Gross National Happiness" that attempt to measure what could arguably be called the…

You may be incorrectly assuming that wealth makes people happier.

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

#270

Post by protomyth »

MattRogish wrote: post #155
protomyth wrote: post #73

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…

Agreed. My wife is a psychotherapist and has seen a lot of what is happening. Mental-health spending by government is down, service is down, and more folks are going without competent mental health services. Regardless of ones position on guns, it's almost universal that not nearly enough who need mental health care get it. And, our national attitude is still one of "Therapy is for crazy people!" - yeah, just like "t…

Yeah, I think people would be amazed at how bad the mental health care has become in this country. I am a small government type also, but this is one of those things that government really needs to do. Our desire to get rid of asylums led us to do some amazingly stupid things. The mid-90's were a serious pain, but I hear from my friends still dealing with those systems that is even worse now.
Post reply on HN