But could a truck, home made bomb or cannon kill >50 and injure >500 in one go? auto and semi auto weapons can. what place do auto and semi auto weapons have in a hunt, sports, self-defence scenario? I have friends in the US who are very careful and safe gun owners/users (I also know one or two careless owners/users - but careless is different to mentally unstable), and they tend to have hunting weapons, and self-defence weapons which tend to be enough to do the job they are intended for. And yes, as mentioned on R4 this morning, the US was born out of armed uprising against the British (wheras Aus/Can and similar had peaceful transitions), so guns are deep in the American Psyche. The glamourisation of guns and gun use by TV, film, etc has devalued life somewhat, imho. Pete
agree, but frequency of the type of coordinated high level 9/11 is extremely rare. guns are an immovable object in the US, but absolutely no need, that I see, for auto and semi auto weapons in the hands of civilians.
Again, not anything like as easy as buying a machine gun and just opening fire on the street somewhere. Imho a bomb would be the only comparison, and even that would likely have less impact and be more difficult in most cases than just opening fire with a few clips
Its easy to rent a truck as Barcelona, Nice and London etc have found out. Whilst I agree that firearms are ridiculously easy to source in some states of USA and that guns will always be favourite as it gives the user empowerment and makes them feel superhuman. But if guns were completely eradicated, the issue would not necessarily disappear, it would merely alter the focus and the means. The issue should not be the sheer quantity of life taken, as no single life should be taken violently like this.
Nope. Bad/disillusioned/mentally ill people willl still do these things. It’s what makes us human: the infallibility of belief in something
Don't forget the candles and a concert afterwards Given the substantial majority of gun owners are legally registered and never break a gun law in their entire lives then yes, to cover all guns and all gun owners with the same brush based on the incredibly small minority, would seem emotive bandwaggoning rather than factual reasoning so I agree, guns may have been the tools but the reasoning was clearly insanity We have a generation when offered the loss of food for a day or the loss of their social media, the majority would lose their food for the day. The media have largely been co founders of such attacks as the offenders know they will get at least a free week of mass publicity, in regards to isis, all media is little more than their own satchi & satchi but for free. The media have even ignored history in pursuit to outdo other networks. They are reporting this as the largest mass killing by an individual in American history with so far, with 59 killed and 527 injured. However on the 19th of April 1995, one Timothy McVeigh drove a truck bomb to a building in Oklahoma and killed 168 people and injured 684 others and not a single gun was used, he used ammonia nitrate and nitromethane, both are easily available to joe public..
It is a widely reported statistic that a legally owned firearm is more likely to kill a member of it's owner's family than be used to defend them.
Sorry @efcbluepete but Canadian Inuits & Australian Aborigines who both suffered genocide. Forbidden from speaking their own language, murdered quite regularly under the guise of scaring 'locals'. Only a few years ago Australia did formally apologize for its actions in segregating children from parents, from the murder/rape/torture..frankly its atrocities. As well as Canada did the same a number of years before. Canada apologized in 2008 Australia did so in 2013 We can all (I am no different) learn misnomers & seemingly delete historical precedents but it is our duty too keep skeptical of are leaders objectives. And of course be morally accountable to each other & our media's coverage of events.
More seriously, there is an idea that occurs to me after every one of these atrocities. It's the idea that goes slightly further than John's ^ ^ ... Is a news black-out of the perpetrator's name practical? Instead of celebrating/ reviling the individual, thereby sealing his place in history, could he not be referred to by a generic title? "The Latest Sick Fuck" is my suggestion but other options are available. The foreknowledge that there will be no notoriety or immortality for the would-be mass-murderer might prove discouraging to some. On the other hand, there are downsides to concealing the identity of these people, not least of which are the practical difficulties that plague attempts to hide information from the public. I really don't believe such an approach could be made to work but is there merit to it, I wonder?
The psychologist said that the name could be released into the local community where the incident took place but withheld nationally. No doubt it would leak out and be there to find if people wanted to find it but the point is it wouldn't be on nationwide 24 hour rolling news to create notoriety or immortality.
We have our own nutjobs it's just in the states they seem to have the go big or go home ones. Look at the Norwegian Anders Breivik. Set off a van bomb in Oslo that killed 8 purely to keep the police/army and security services busy just so he could then go onto a youth camp island and killed 69 teens/young adults, 77 died all in all and he wounded 200 also. And yet largely they manage to keep the bugger from using the media as his platform of a martyr to his manifesto
The US constitution's 2nd amendment has to be the most deliberately misinterpreted piece of legislation in the history of the world. "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state..." The amendment was written at a time when a fledgling country had no effective standing army. At that time the militia probably was necessary to protect the country. Now the country has one of the largest and well equipped armies in the world - so a militia is no longer necessary. It is often quoted as meaning that it allows civilians to own weapons to defend themselves against a corrupt or oppressive government. This is a massive misrepresentation, used by redneck hicks and gun-toting loonies. The wording was undoubtedly meant to mean the militia would provide security from external invasion - not security against the country's own government. America, clearly, has a massive problem with gun violence. Over 270 mass shootings (where four or more people have been killed) already in 2017 - nearly one per day. Nearly 33,000 gun deaths in 2016. BUT as over 550 top politicians - senators and congressmen - (99% of them republican) have taken massive donations from the NRA nothing is likely to change in the near future... "Gun control doesn't work" spout the pro-gun lobby - and yet the death rate per capita from guns in Europe is barely one hundredth of what it is in America. "The land of the free..." Free from what, exactly? Free from fear ? Free from paranoia ? How is being so terrified of everyone, including your own neighbours, that you feel the need to be armed at all times freedom ? Since 1968 more Americans have been killed by other Americans with guns, within America (1.5 million) than have been killed in every war America has ever been involved in throughout its entire history (1.3 million). During the Vietnam war more Americans died as a result of gun violence within America than died in combat in Vietnam... A country that values the right to own firearms more highly than universal healthcare is morally bankrupt and has no right to call itself a civilised nation...
Whatever the exact wording of the second amendment or the thinking behind it, the concept of the right to "bear arms" militarises civilian firearm ownership. I don't know of any licensed firearms owner in the UK who would refer to their guns as "weapons". They're just guns, tools to do a specific job. Here you must have "good reason to possess" before you are granted an FAC. These will be for recreational target shooting, the hunting of game, vermin control or deer management. Self defence is simply not and has never been an accepted reason. There are exceptions, usually granted to ex-servicemen in exceptional circumstances and I do know someone whose certificate is conditioned with "for the preservation of human life or the prevention of terrorism" but those conditions are extremely rare and would never be granted to ordinary civilian applicants. The idea that you might need a firearm in order to shoot another person should circumstances demand is simply alien to our legislative and gun ownership culture. In the US it is a founding principle. If you're raised from birth with the notion that it is a reasonable assumption that decent upright citizens might at some point need to shoot and kill their fellow citizens in defence of self or property and should therefore have the right to arm themselves in readiness, its hardly surprising that millions of people buy firearms purely for that reason and develop the urge to make use of them. How many and what sort of guns you have in society is largely irrelevant when you've got such a pathology ingrained in the national psyche.
