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

311–320 of 336 posts

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

#311

Post by benjohnson »

eik3_de wrote: post #185
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…

Some data: In the US, there are about 3.45 homicides with firearms per 100,000 population per year. In Germany (where I live), this figure is 0.19, that is roughly factor 18.

I would counter that you need to go back 70 years to see how well a disarmed German population.

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

#312

Post by jlgreco »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #302
jlgreco wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did the Soviets have so much trouble with Afghanistan then? Were they concerned with what the world thought of them?

They did not have the technology that we do now. Guerrilla warfare hasn't changed much, but the most advanced military technology has changed drastically. And yes, they probably were concerned to a lesser extent. Each side in a conflict has to attempt to maintain a moral high ground or they'll lose their power. Long gone are the times when entire cultures reveled in massacres for its own sake. Even Hitler had to dres…

Right, even Hitler was worried about public opinion... but presumably the DoD fighting Americans would not? And this is before we even get into the issue of telling American soldiers to shoot at Americans who look, speak, act, and pray the same as they do.

I'm just not buying it. Even with their massively over-inflated budget and their guilt-elimination drones there is no way the DoD could maintain an armed occupation of America. They are having a hell of a time doing it in a country less than one-tenth the size with less than one-tenth the people, filled with people who have been thoroughly dehumanized by popular media, people with far fewer connections to the outside world, and people for whom the soldiers have no tribal connections.

Thinking they would do better occupying America than Afghanistan is a really strange form of patriotic hubris.

(Lest you get the wrong impression, I support gun control and think that worrying about the possibility of Americans having to fight the American army is incredibly silly.)

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

#313

Post by DanBC »

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…

I agree.

I'd love to see some innovative thinking from HN, but this thread is mostly the same pro anti gun ravings; confusion about mental health and mental health treatment; etc.

It's intensely interesting, but mostly shallowly so.

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

#314

Post by benkay »

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…

You're missing the third school of thought: provide mental health services.

It distresses me that our cultural fix-it focus is on tools and not causes: neither arming the nation nor banning firearms will address fundamental problems of mental health.

Even though you acknowledge that "...a deranged person will always find a means to carry out their ill will...", you're not addressing the derangement. Let's start there. Social services are expensive. Not having them can be...more expensive.

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

#315

Post by the_economist »

untog wrote: post #92
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…

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…

People who have untreated schizophrenia tend to reveal themselves with constant crazy behavior.

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

#316

Post by the_economist »

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…

I don't think it's a matter of focusing on happiness. Mental illness a medical issue, like cancer and heart disease.

We need to develop a cure, and when we do, days like this will be far less common.

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

#317

Post by the_economist »

jlgreco wrote: post #167
r00fus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 am personally a fan of another a solution along another axis entirely: a complete overhaul of our medical system, notably in this case the way we detect and handle the mentally ill. (A part of that could be mental evaluations for those who want to buy guns.)

This seems like the right approach, but part of the overhaul needs to be a massive increase in research. We don't have a good way to treat the mentally ill, in most cases.

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

#318

Post by hackinthebochs »

jlgreco wrote: post #312
hackinthebochs wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not have the technology that we do now. Guerrilla warfare hasn't changed much, but the most advanced military technology has changed drastically. And yes, they probably were concerned to a lesser extent. Each side in a conflict has to attempt to maintain a moral high ground or they'll lose their power. Long gone are the times when entire cultures reveled in massacres for its own sake. Even Hitler had to dres…

Right, even Hitler was worried about public opinion... but presumably the DoD fighting Americans would not? And this is before we even get into the issue of telling American soldiers to shoot at Americans who look, speak, act, and pray the same as they do. I'm just not buying it. Even with their massively over-inflated budget and their guilt-elimination drones there is no way the DoD could maintain an armed occupatio…

I'm not sure we disagree on anything here

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

#319

Post by lookACamel »

jlgreco wrote: post #189
king_jester wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is sanity really a possibility here? Sure, we don't have a diagnosis, at least yet, but I would say by definition this person was not sane. A mass shooting is no crime of passion. It seems to me that there are two problems here. The first is that we suck at finding/handling the mentally ill. These mass shootings are rare, but the connection between crime and mental illness in this country is anything but. The second…

In order for someone to be considered "insane" in court they have to have a mental illness so severe it prevents them from comprehending the nature and consequences of their actions.

Serial killers in general are perfectly aware of what they are doing, they just don't care about the judgement imposed by society on such actions and at the same time the personal payoff is too great to ignore.

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

#320

Post by nerfhammer »

jevinskie wrote: post #156
InclinedPlane wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. Just because the public doesn't have nuclear weapons doesn't mean that they are incapable of resisting an oppressive regime. Ordinary firearms are for more than sufficient for that purpose. A populace doesn't need to be able to defeat conventional armies on an open battlefield in order to resist oppression. What would be the likely result of, say, an American insurgency against an oppressive government? You w…

This is precisely true. You need not look further than America's troubled middle east wars to see how devastating a small guerrilla force can be. Some of the insurgents are using Mosin-Nagant rifles, a Russian bolt-action rifle that dates back to 1891!

And yet they were not able to use these weapons effectively against homegrown tyrants.
Post reply on HN