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Thinking the unthinkable

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#321

Post by jcromartie »

gyardley wrote: post #150
bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

I know HN frowns upon any kind of "political" discussion, so I'll won't elaborate too much, but can someone please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol?? She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do. I cannot understand for the life of me why the focus here is on guns. Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history, but m…

I think it's quite simple: a bullet to the vital organs was just as deadly 200 years ago as it is today, but you could only shoot one at a time (for some non-negligible value of "a time"). Now, handguns and rifles with high rate of fire and replaceable magazines are plentiful and easy to get ahold of, and they just have a much higher potential for death on a large cape.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#322

Post by jcromartie »

DanBC wrote: post #172

Here are some numbers from Gloucestershire, a rural county in England. In a population of about 800,000 people there are about 4,000 people on the books of specialist MH treatment services at any time. There are about 2,000 people with a diagnosis of psychotic illness (eg, schizophrenia). There are about 3,000 people with a diagnosis of mood disorder (eg, depression). There are about 60 beds for 'adults of working ag…

You should be thankful that you have 1000 murders a year. We have 3X as many per capita in the US.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#323

Post by droithomme »

sp332 wrote: post #136
Alex3917 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"(nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such an extent as in the US, BTW)." Virtually every single school shooter has been on SSRIs, and many people think these drugs have been the cause of the shootings. Already WaPo has reported that the CT shooter was on psychiatric medication, so we'll know for sure in a couple weeks when we get the tox screen back. http://www.ssristories.com/in…

Gun laws are getting more strict in the US; violent assault in general (and gun violence in particular) are at their lowest levels in about 40 years or so. Yet mass shootings are on the rise, and on average getting more deadly.

This article has a graph of mass shootings, offenders and victims from 1980 to 2010.

http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/n...

> Based on data extracted from official police reports to the FBI, the figure below shows annual incident, offender and victim tallies for gun homicides in which at least four people were murdered. Over the thirty-year time frame, an average of about 20 mass murders have occurred annually in the United States with an average death toll of about 100 per year.

As you can see in the graph and statistics, there has not been a rise in the number of shootings, perpetrators or victims.

Here is an article from yesterday also noting this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/15/mass-shootings-not-...

"Mass Shootings Not On The Rise, But Their Impact Is Huge"

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#324

Post by dmix »

clarky07 wrote: post #318
tsycho wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think bambax's main point is summed up by - "The NRA says "guns don't kill people, people do" but the truth is that guns help people who want to kill people, kill more people." Do you have any real points to counter that, rather than just pointing out irrelevant technicalities or calling him names? And no, it doesn't change bambax's real point at all whether its a automatic or a semi-automatic.

Yes, guns also help people to defend themselves. For every mass shooting with a guns I can give you twenty articles about someone defending themselves and saving their lives and others with the use of a gun.

Not only incidents where they were successful in self-defence but the perception of the potential victim being armed is also highly relevant.

How much crime is deterred from happening in the first place, for example in states where its well-known that gun ownership is popular, is often difficult to track accurately. But there's a ton of statistics that show correlation in crime reduction.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#325

Post by clarky07 »

dmix wrote: post #324
clarky07 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, guns also help people to defend themselves. For every mass shooting with a guns I can give you twenty articles about someone defending themselves and saving their lives and others with the use of a gun.

Not only incidents where they were successful in self-defence but the perception of the potential victim being armed is also highly relevant. How much crime is deterred from happening in the first place, for example in states where its well-known that gun ownership is popular, is often difficult to track accurately. But there's a ton of statistics that show correlation in crime reduction.

Exactly. Compare gun crime in DC, which has tons of gun control, to lots of other places without gun control.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#326

Post by clarky07 »

jcromartie wrote: post #321
gyardley wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know HN frowns upon any kind of "political" discussion, so I'll won't elaborate too much, but can someone please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol?? She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do. I cannot understand for the life of me why the focus here is on guns. Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history, but m…

I think it's quite simple: a bullet to the vital organs was just as deadly 200 years ago as it is today, but you could only shoot one at a time (for some non-negligible value of "a time"). Now, handguns and rifles with high rate of fire and replaceable magazines are plentiful and easy to get ahold of, and they just have a much higher potential for death on a large cape.

To be fair, bullets are much much better now and it's much easier to have accurate and much faster traveling bullets. That neither here nor there though.

We also had all this technology for the last hundred years and yet didn't have this problem for the most part until the last 10-20 years. (the 1911 semi auto handgun is still one of the best and most popular in the world, and it is over 100 years old). That tells me that the gun isn't the problem.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#327

Post by MartinCron »

clarky07 wrote: post #315
bambax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion about "semi-automatic" versus "automatic" weapons actually strengthens the case FOR regulation; automatic weapons are regulated => they're not used in mass-killings; semi-automatic weapons are not regulated => they are used in mass-killings. How one can conclude from these facts that less regulation is better, I don't know. All guns are bad, and the more automatic they are, the worse. The NRA says "gu…

There are plenty of mass killings with knives as well. If you completely got rid of semi-auto guns, people would use bolt action guns. If you get rid of those, people will use knives. People have been killing each other since the beginning of time. You clearly have no knowledge of guns, how they work, how they are currently regulated. The reason automatic weapons aren't used in shootings, is that they cost > 10k. Yes…

There are plenty of mass killings with knives as well

I don't want to be the "citation needed" guy, but this is an outrageous claim.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#328

Post by dmix »

clarky07 wrote: post #325
dmix wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only incidents where they were successful in self-defence but the perception of the potential victim being armed is also highly relevant. How much crime is deterred from happening in the first place, for example in states where its well-known that gun ownership is popular, is often difficult to track accurately. But there's a ton of statistics that show correlation in crime reduction.

Exactly. Compare gun crime in DC, which has tons of gun control, to lots of other places without gun control.

Indeed, new numbers come out all the time. This ones from 2011, from two states with some of the worst gun crime:

> Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C. But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn’t rise after the bans were eliminated — they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/crime-rates-in...

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#329

Post by sp332 »

droithomme wrote: post #323
sp332 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun laws are getting more strict in the US; violent assault in general (and gun violence in particular) are at their lowest levels in about 40 years or so. Yet mass shootings are on the rise, and on average getting more deadly.

This article has a graph of mass shootings, offenders and victims from 1980 to 2010. http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/n... > Based on data extracted from official police reports to the FBI, the figure below shows annual incident, offender and victim tallies for gun homicides in which at least four people were murdered. Over the thirty-year time frame, an average of about 20 mass murders have…

Interesting, this page from the Washington Post says that of the worst 11 shootings, 5 of them happened since 2007, and that doesn't even include Sandy Hook. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#330

Post by clarky07 »

eloisant wrote: post #87

It good to talk about mental illness, but the debate on guns is still relevant. Here is a similar incident in a country with no easy access to gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara_massacre With a truck and a knife, it's 7 deaths instead of 28.

Surely its possible to kill more than 7 with a truck. Just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it can't. There've also been plenty of other knife rampages that killed more than 7.
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