As a former member of the religious right, this doesn't shock me at all. I heard similar messages in many church services.
Ok, but schizophrenics are only part of the problem. I'm not saying we shouldn't review gun control, I'm merely commenting that over competition can have serious consequences.
The 2nd Amendment is an outdated relic from a past era. We used to need guns everywhere because we lived on farms that were miles and miles apart, and there was no 911 to call to get the cops to your property at a moment's notice if thugs showed up to steal your cattle and rape your daughters. And I really don't have a moral problem with law-abiding citizens owning guns for protection. But the problem is that human beings are emotional critters. And someone can be law-abiding for their entire life and then fly off the handle at any given moment. And when that moment comes, having a gun handy isn't exactly safe. And not everyone who goes on a shooting spree is necessarily crazy, either. I have to confess something -- I thought about bringing a gun to school and killing a bunch of kids long before it became "trendy." I was terrorized in school for years, from the time I walked in until the time I walked out. I was so angry a lot of the time that I would have really loved to have just gotten them all back in one swift blow, consequences be damned. There was also a time -- multiple times, actually -- where I was absolutely convinced that I was going to commit suicide before I graduated. Would I have done either of those things? I'd like to think that I wasn't so far gone that there was no coming back. And I'm not saying I'm special somehow -- these days, there are probably more teenagers than not who think about stuff like this at SOME point. But to this day, I thank (insert your personal deity HERE) that I never even had the option to seriously consider it because I just didn't have access to a gun. I do know this... every other time there's been a story about a mass shooting, I've been angry and pissed off and furious that we can't at least have a serious conversation about gun control laws. Tonight, I had a slightly different reaction. I was lying on the living room couch watching the news coverage. My 19-month old nephew was lying across my chest with his legs dangling off the couch. He had his mom's (my sister's) iPhone, watching the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on some app. He was just happy as a clam in deep sand. I looked at the tv screen, I looked at his face, I looked back at the screen, and I looked back at his face... and I was just sad.
So, this would have been better if this guy's mom took more classes? She is the one who bought the guns. Ban 'em all. We don't have sufficient societal self control to be given access to guns.
No problem. I am not aware of anyway to be able to tell the good from the bad arbitrarily, but at least by educating anyone wanting to buy a firearm, and I mean be brutally honest about what happens when you pull that trigger to include showing graphic images of the end result of pulling that trigger, would hopefully drive it home for some of these idiots that these aren't play things.
I didn't say that, and according to Ct. State Law you have to be at least 21 to even own a firearm. I guess part of what I am saying is that for the educational part would include proper storage of firearms. Did she have them locked up? Did he kill her first, take the keys and get the guns? I don't know. That's a pretty broad brush you are using there to paint all of society in the US with. I can think of 30 different people I know who own firearms, not one has ever shot another person.
It's the day of the shooting and I've read as many comments against gun control as for it. The same against comments against it on the SAME day of the shooting of 20 american school children. Gun control will not happen. In regards to guns, the US is addicted. The US is Eddie Van Halen when he kept smoking after getting cancer and part of his tongue removed and claiming smoking didn't cause it.
She might have them locked up for years.. then she gets complacent, and convinces herself that their is no longer any need to do so, slacks off on it, then this happens.. My point is that people often start off on (insert topic here) rather strict, then gradually cut corners, etc.. Fair enough, but the question we need to ask is the irresponsible extreme minority having easier access to guns worth the tragic occasional cost? For me it comes down to risk/reward. The risk isnt worth the access...
Maybe I am just a naive Canadian, but I have never understood the "need to protect my home" argument for gun ownership. In my 30 years I have never once felt that having a gun in my home would make it safer, in fact i think it would do quite the opposite. I am not anti-gun, my brother hunts, owns a rifle and as he just moved in with me this rifle now, reluctantly (on my part) in my home. He is a responsible gun owner/user (to the point that we have no amo in the house), but if I think about it having the gun in the home actually makes me feel less safe. I really don't see how there is a debate on this issue at all, ban them all and save lives.
And while it's a hot topic today, it was just as bad a problem yesterday. Somewhere a drug deal went bad, a teenager decided she'd rather not go on, or a kid accidentally shot his brother. Just so some dumbshit can kill a deer for fun. Not worth it. Not even close to worth it.
Abstinence only sexual education sure stops kids from having sex An individual's idea of whats right/wrong/acceptable is already formed by his/her teenage years. You can try to scare someone all you want, their idea of guns is already set in stone.
No arguments here, but as I have been saying from my first post in this thread, I think that we also need to look deeper into this issue and address that irresponsible extreme minority, or those with mental illness, or the plain psychotic murderers and work on that issue.
That isn't sexual education, that is an unrealistic approach to sex ed. Something that I did not advocate or even come close to advocating. I disagree with you on the idea of guns being set in stone. I was 18 when I joined the service, the rather blunt, brutal and honest education of what a gun is, does and is meant for changed my immature ideas of what a gun was and its stature. It isn't about scaring them, it is about respecting what that gun is, what it does, and what it is meant to do. Just remember this, the gun itself is the means by which these people commit their senseless acts of violence. That is what we need to address and stop. To think that removing all guns will somehow stop all violence is naive at best. It will stop quite a bit, but you still have the underlying problem to deal with and for some reason it is this point that few here want to discuss or address.
It's a two pronged issue. 1.) The high availability of guns makes it easy for the "crazies" to get their hands on a deadly tool. 2.) The pressures of our highly competitive and rather hollow society exasperate mental illness.
But no one is suggesting that removing all guns will stop all violence. Some of us would just rather expend our energy on taking the few concrete steps we know would decrease violence (not end it), rather than be diverted by the more esoteric discussion of explaining the root of all violence.
Prohibition has done nothing to stop drugs and there is little evidence to support the position that gun control is going to curb gun violence. Well I know around these here parts you try and take away these good folks guns you will definitely see an increase in violence. Trying to use the government to correct social issues has NEVER ended well. In fact it always ends up in a totalitarian state. No matter how upset you are now, trying to take guns away form good citizens is even worse than the Patriot Act and TSA after 9/11.
Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward. That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early reported death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history. More guns tend to mean more homicide. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations here. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive: “The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state,” explains Florida. “It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs.../?Post+generic=?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost