US Shoppers Killed In Gun Rampage.....

[McMurphy]

It is a thorny issue, indeed, and I agree in part with JD's assertion that fear of some form is a relevant factor in the discussion, despite the topic branch and debated side one should endeavor to take part in. Regardless of that shared viewpoint, I still conclude that everyone's opinion expressed on the prior page of the thread has been based largely on a train of logic rather than leashed by the impulse of fear.

For myself, I think that is why I may be so torn personally about the subject. There is a clear and reasonable thought process on either side of the topic, particularly when it comes to the issue of historical (though not be used as a loaded term) rights versus reasonable demands of security. If either or both sides were primarily fueled by fear, the decision, for me, would not pose such a slippery hold.

As more of the identities are released and they become all too human, as opposed to statistics posted on the warm light of the computer screen within this hotel room in San Francisco, the more I dwell on a past incident that got little to no attention, yet reflects the newest shooting spree. I must forewarn you, however. I don't really know where I will be going with it, how badly I will ramble (and it is apparent already I am in the mood to ramble), or even what message I am attempting to get across.

I believe it was a bit over three years ago, a male Native American student charged into his school within the Red Lake Reservation, killing several of his fellow students with high powered firearms. One of said students was a friend of my sister, and some others were her acquaintances. The shooter was the son of the Red Lake Sheriff, and he stole his father's guns and police car to carry out the carnage.

The Red Lake Reservation is a type in the minority; meaning, it is closed, which, in turn, is defined by a Native American Reservation that acts entirely as its own country because it rejects US money. It is also one of the poorest Reservations in the country because of it. However the scale tips in one's mind's eye, they make a tough choice and choose as much freedom from United States rule that can be mustered.

Those news observers who had refreshed their internet pages with enough attention may have actually caught mention of the incident since, for a brief period of time, it was covered by national news. A news media gripped with the lust of the sensualist would surely cover every bloody inch of the tale. If given the chance.

Reporters tried, but they were promptly escorted off the scene with their coverage confiscated. Being a closed Reservation, Native American officials need not bother themselves with catering to the whims and drool of the media, and they chose to reserve that right in effort to yield any attempts to cash in on a horrible event.

I don't know where I am going with this post, but I can say what I am not attempting to do. I am not implying through example that we should strip the media of its freedoms. Somewhere in there, I feel that I am inferring that maybe so many people would not find a sick glory in "going out in style" if 24 hour cable news networks weren't plastering their faces on screens and their names at the beginning of tickers.

I feel that, if amended under the laws of monopolies, the news media could not be owned by entertainment corporations, and that may slow it down.

I don't think what I have related supports either of the above theories.

Anyway, my own thread of thought has become unraveled. Take from all this as you like.

[Kissmequick]

Just to clarify, militia basically means that I have the right to organize an armed group of persons for the purpose of petitioning a grievance to the government as long as our guns are registered and we are not acting like moronic terrorists or breaking the law or otherwise injuring the populace (like those crazy environmentalist people that bomb buildings up here).

ahhh I see - I asked because I know very little about the Bill of Rights or the Consitution ( apart from 'Take the Fifth!' lol). Although I'd be a lot more worried over here if any Tom Dick or Harry could set up a militia.

It is also a large misunderstanding to believe the only effective recourse in curbing such heinous events is to attack the citizens' rights,

But don't the citizens who died have rights too? Or is it that you insist on personal freedom whatever the cost? If you want personal freedom, you have to accept the responsibility / consequences, of which this is an example.

It's a tricky balance - you can't have total personal freedom ( if that were the case, you wouldn't be locking up murderers would you?), but you can't be too restrictive either.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong either way, just that it has to be looked at and thought about extremely carefully, historical precedent or not.

Did the forefathers envisage this when they signed? Or was it that then the only people who could actually afford to raise a militia were the landowners etc, not the hoi polloi. Did they see that gun crime would become such a problem? I doubt it. Just because something has always been done, doesn't mean it should continue to be done. Or you wouldn't even have guns in the first place

I mean, we've got historical precedent for all sorts of things that would not actually be allowed to happen today.

[McMurphy]

No, you are correct. No right guaranteed under the Bill of Rights spell out an unconditional envision of personal rights. The law of the land may be based upon the thesis that, if a society protects an individual's rights, it inherently protects the collective rights of the people, but that is not to imply that someone can expect too much.

I also agree with your statement in regards to taking an extremely careful approach to any issue when deaths are occuring. Idealism nests only in comfortable quarters.

[Kissmequick]

The law of the land may be based upon the thesis that, if a society protects an individual's rights, it inherently protects the collective rights of the people

In a perfect world, that would work. Sadly....

Glad I'm not making the decisions on this kinda stuff.

[dustinzgirl]

Yes, the people in the malls have the same rights I do.

Do any of you think that without guns there would be no way to kill a group of people? Oklahoma--no guns or even grenades were used then. It was just a bunch of fertilizer and chemicals. I can drive two miles and buy enough of the stuff to blow up town hall if I was so inclined. There are many ways to kill. Guns are only one of them. The most popular choice in our current era, but before that it was swords and before that it was clubs and before that it was probably magic (lol) and one day it will probably be telekenesis.

People think that things like this have never happened before, but fact is they have and they will continue to happen as long as there are humans. I do not think the frequency has increased, but the number of people and the media has increased our knowledge.

Point is that saying those who died had thier constitutional rights infringed is kind of true since it does say the right to pursue happiness. But, if we remove one constitutional right, then we will create a premise of removing all of them.

And thats a bad freaking idea.

Even as loosely as our government has followed the constitution over the last century, we can still use free speech as a way to petition grievences to the government. When we allow congress to make a legal method of removing the right to bear arms and create a militia, we will allow them a method of removing and altering all our other constitutional rights. Which isn't so far away from happening anyways, but I'll be damned if I won't state my grievences about it. At least I can still do that without filling out forms in triplicate and providing a urine sample and the soul of my first born

PS Most ideals of idealists kind of creep me out.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by dustinzgirl

Yes, the people in the malls have the same rights I do.

Do any of you think that without guns there would be no way to kill a group of people? Oklahoma--no guns or even grenades were used then. It was just a bunch of fertilizer and chemicals. I can drive two miles and buy enough of the stuff to blow up town hall if I was so inclined. There are many ways to kill. Guns are only one of them. The most popular choice in our current era, but before that it was swords and before that it was clubs and before that it was probably magic (lol) and one day it will probably be telekenesis.

Whilst all this is true dustinzgirl, killing people en-masse should be made as difficult as possible. The easy way to kill lots of people is with an automatic rifle. Explosives are more difficult to collect, prepare, deliver and detonate on time and therefore less likely to be successful and more easily detected. Incidents like Oklahoma are rare and incidents with guns less rare because of the relative availability of explosives and guns.

To follow your argument you might as well allow people to buy TNT over the counter because if it's banned people will only use guns anyway. And to continue the argument to it's inevitable conclusion, what's wrong with everyone having their own, personal thermo-nuclear device? No-one would mess with anyone then, right?

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by mosaix

To follow your argument... to its inevitable conclusion...

What argument is that? I didn't see anyone saying that everyone should be allowed any and all weapons they want and can afford, and with any other argument than that, your "conclusion" is far from "inevitable". For example, with an argument that people should be allowed to have weapons to match what the criminals generally have, the escalation you envision doesn't go on indefinitely; it ends at the prevalent level of weaponry of the bad guys in a given culture: guns in some places, blades and clubs in some others. Claiming that that argument goes any further/higher than that would be lying. So exactly what argument do you believe you're reacting to here, and how far/high does it really actually truly go?

[McMurphy]

Originally Posted by Delvo

What argument is that? I didn't see anyone saying that everyone should be allowed any and all weapons they want and can afford, and with any other argument than that, your "conclusion" is far from "inevitable". For example, with an argument that people should be allowed to have weapons to match what the criminals generally have, the escalation you envision doesn't go on indefinitely; it ends at the prevalent level of weaponry of the bad guys in a given culture: guns in some places, blades and clubs in some others. Claiming that that argument goes any further/higher than that would be lying. So exactly what argument do you believe you're reacting to here, and how far/high does it really actually truly go?

Very true. Have I missed a statement published in this thread that claimed that Rights were without boundaries? I would hope not, because that would be utterly forgetting the notion that, for example, Freedom of Speech does not mean you can run through a crowded theatre and scream "Fire!" for nothing more than to arouse public panic.

To make a fertilizer bomb is quite easy and, scary enough, easy to access the knowledge to do it. The morbid reality of suicidal killers of this country is that it is just not fashionable to be a suicide bomber. Maybe if we put enough glorified accounts of their domestic murders on the cover of Time magazine that would alter. Or we can just not do it at all every time any kind of mass murder happens, and partially remove a perk for them.

Of course, I am only willing to go so far to place the blame on the media.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Delvo

What argument is that? I didn't see anyone saying that everyone should be allowed any and all weapons they want and can afford, and with any other argument than that, your "conclusion" is far from "inevitable". For example, with an argument that people should be allowed to have weapons to match what the criminals generally have, the escalation you envision doesn't go on indefinitely; it ends at the prevalent level of weaponry of the bad guys in a given culture: guns in some places, blades and clubs in some others. Claiming that that argument goes any further/higher than that would be lying. So exactly what argument do you believe you're reacting to here, and how far/high does it really actually truly go?

I was responding to DG's argument that banning guns was pointless because people would find other ways of killing.

[Dave]

Building a bomb and detonating one tends to be premeditated (a nuclear bomb would be even more so.) I don't think anyone builds a bomb without the expectation of using it.

Buying guns and knives is not, because if you ask young people why they carry them, they never expect to actually use them, they think they are to defend themselves. They believe that having weapons will deter others from using similar weapons against them. In actual fact it is like an arms race, and everyone believes that they have to be equally tooled up otherwise they will be threatened themselves. The problem is that when everyone has a weapon, those weapons are ultimately going to get used, whether they expect or want them to be.

I would use exactly the same argument for having guns to use against criminals, I just think that the UK laws have now gone too far.

[Kissmequick]

Explosives are more difficult to collect, prepare, deliver and detonate on time and therefore less likely to be successful and more easily detected.

Not to mention that it would take a dgree of premeditation, and that bombers generally have a political point to make, rather than just flipping one day and trying to take as many people as possible with them.

Any thoughts on why this is so much seen as a US crime? It seems a fairly common occurence there, as oppsed to say Europe. People stil flip out here ofc, and do stupid crazy things, but they don't generally shoot a load of complete strangers. If it isn't the availability of guns ( my personal opinion, but I'm prepared to be proved wrong) what is it about the US that makes people do this, and not people in Europe ( or only very occassionally)?

For instance, the European Union has a population of 428 million, the US has appx 300 million. Yet the incidence of gun sprees in the states is far far higher. The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined ( statistics from NEA Health Information Network, hope they're accurate!)In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. 5285 in one year. Of kids. That's more than 9/11.

The population of the US is five times more than the Uk. Yet 19 * 5 =/= 5285.

or how about this?

Gun Report Reveals Child and Teen Deaths by Firearms in One Year Exceed U.S. Combat Deaths During Three Years in Iraq. ( Childrens' Defence Fund)

There must be some reason. Is there any other explanation apart from gun availability? If so, what?

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by mosaix

I was responding to DG's argument that banning guns was pointless because people would find other ways of killing.

Delvo, McMurphy

Perhaps I need to explain a little further. As I said above I was referring to DG's specific point about not banning guns because people would find other ways of killing instead.

I wasn't making a point about rights and boundaries, I was making a point about one specific argument.

To make the point again, in slightly different way: what's point in trying to persuade North Korea and Iran not to build nuclear weapons if they can use high explosives instead? The answer is obvious and the same answer applies to not banning guns if people can use knives, clubs etc.

I was answering one specific point, I wasn't making a general point about banning guns.

Regarding the making of fertilizer bombs. Whilst we were suffering from the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland any retailer who received a large order for fertilizer from an unusual source (i.e. not a farmer) had to report the details to the security forces. The same went for sugar. I would be surprised if there wasn't a similar requirement in force in the US.

[Delvo]

Originally Posted by Kissmequick

Any thoughts on why this is so much seen as a US crime?

partially because it is less rare here, and partially because the difference often gets overstated in various ways by anti-gun activists and people who like to say bad stuff about the USA.

Originally Posted by Kissmequick

Gun Report Reveals Child and Teen Deaths by Firearms in One Year Exceed U.S. Combat Deaths During Three Years in Iraq. (Childrens' Defence Fund)

That only proves that the "war" in Iraq isn't really much of a war. We also kill another "September Eleventh" worth of our own people every few weeks in automobile traffic, but deadly traffic accidents remain rare enough that almost nobody knows anybody who knows anybody who ever knew anybody who died in one, and we get in our cars every day without any thought of ourselves or anyone else we know or even anyone else in the whole city getting killed that way today. A gun in the home is also about 1/100 as likely to be involved in a gun-related death as a pool in the home is to be involved in a pool-related death, but there's no campaign to ban household pools.

Originally Posted by Kissmequick

There must be some reason. Is there any other explanation apart from gun availability? If so, what?

There can be no doubt that their availability is most of it, if not all of it. The problem with using that as an argument to ban guns is that banning them wouldn't make them unavailable. If a scanner were invented that could detect them efficiently while walking by and pointing it at an area like a tricorder, I think I'd support a systematic search to remove them all. But without that, passing laws does nothing but harass the good guys.

[iansales]

Originally Posted by Delvo

That only proves that the "war" in Iraq isn't really much of a war.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go out and kill more Iraqis. Hell, drop a tactical nuke on Basra, why not. Will that make it a "real" war?

:-)

[Kissmequick]

That only proves that the "war" in Iraq isn't really much of a war

So 5000 kids ( not including adults here) dying means only the Iraq isn't much of a war. That's one way of lookng at it. Another way of looking at it is more people are dying of guns in a country that has no war within it's borders than one who does.

As for cars and pools - they have a variety of recreational uses. As far as I'm aware their main purposes are not to kill people. Accidents happen yes. But murder isn't an accident.

The problem with using that as an argument to ban guns is that banning them wouldn't make them unavailable

And the fact that countries with strict gun laws have way way WAY less gun crime says what ?

passing laws does nothing but harass the good guys.

Er well I would think it only harrasses the people who are breaking it - and that would probably mean the bad guys? If I get stopped and searched on suspicion of having a gun, how exactly does that harrass me? It might be inconvinient for the whole two minutes it takes till they find I haven't got one. Inconvinience does not equal harrassment.