Yesterday I gave the new girl at work a ride home. The way there, she never stopped talking, telling me her entire life story. How she worked at this bar by a naval base for 12 years and all the fun trouble she'd get into with the navy boys, yackity yak. One thing I thought was odd was that she said she'd only moved to the area two weeks ago, and when I asked where she was from, she said "Lake County". I thought it was weird that she told me which county she was from and not what town/city like most normal people. I decided not to ask why she moved despite how open she obviously was, and just let it go. She then starts gabbing about her boyfriend and mentions that they started dating two years ago, but broke up for roughly a year in the middle despite neither of them wanting to. Again, why the hell mention such weird shit? I don't care about your love life, can it. But I stayed respectful and took her home.

Upon returning to work, my coworkers start laughing at me and asking if she'd shut up at all. Clearly they knew her better than I because I wasn't anticipating such a talker. They then mention that she goes to the bathroom once an hour for ten minutes at a time every day, and it constantly taking breaks and wandering off to places nobody knows, and that she keeps bringing up some "event" that she can't elaborate on because she'll get fired (pay no mind that she always brings it up herself).

And then it hit me, she's totally a drug dealer. "Lake County" is the prison she was recently released from, which is the "event" she won't talk about and the reason she had to split from her boyfriend. I don't know if I should be a detective, or if I recently befriended the least sneaky criminal in the universe.

Take away their guns and they'll go on a stabbing spree instead. Just happened in China earlier today.

At this point I'm not even surprised that these mass shootings are happening anymore. They've just kinda become a common occurrence nowadays.

Move to Japan! It's safer there, considering barely anyone has any form of weaponry anymore.

TIME TO INVADE.

Just heard about it, truly awful. There seems to be mass shootings in the States like every two weeks now, it really is getting out of hand. As for the gun control thing, whenever the issue is brought up, the Republicans seem quick to shout "you're politicizing a tragedy". It seems like a cop-out to me, because politics could be used to stop more tragedies, or at least lessen the extent of the distractions. While I am a bit more right-wing on gun control than a lot of people there really isn't a logical reason as to why an everyday citizen would need an AR-15 or any semi-automatic assault rifle for that matter. At that point it's no longer about self defence. Ordinary people do not need weapons designed to kill many people in a short amount of time. R.I.P to all the people who were killed. It's truly sickening that he would not only go on a mass shooting, but also go after children.

I think its sad but I also think its hilarious for the anti-gun types to think more legislation will stop violent crime, when there exists a thing called the "Black market". Not to mention areas of the country are far more prone to violent crime and removing guns from law abiding citizens would increase the likelihood of them becoming victims. If you take away guns from law abiding citizens you haven't done anything but make it easier for them to fall prey to violent criminals, but try telling that to these crusading idiots who use these occurrences to push weapons restrictions that don't work.

It's unfortunate that these children had to die though.

hmm ,still we have only had one massacre in nz,and then they changed the gun law and we havn't had another since.I know if you try'd hard enough you could get a weapon,but the black market of it wouldnt just be like getting your mate to score a tinny bro !

It might not stop the people who are absolutely hell-bent on killing someone, but more gun legislation would prevent spur-of-the-moment, unplanned shootings, which I would guess make up a majority of gun-related homicides across the world. People aren't going to access the black market to get a gun which they'll only use in a situation where they're too upset to think rationally.

Veracs, banning handguns seems to work elsewhere, why wouldn't it work in the USA? And a rational explanation would be nice, not just "black market", because the black market will eventually die down if the controls are tight enough. Sure, it might take two decades or something, but if the laws are against private ownership, and there's, say, an active program to destroy the guns, they will not exist eventually. Killing the culture is more important than the legislation itself.

I once overheard a guy demanding a change in the law to allow private ownership of any firearms and concealed AND open carrying of them in a second-hand music store in Finland. He said that unless he gets guns, he'll be defenseless when THEY come. I almost asked him how many of THEM he has had to let go alive because he doesn't have enough firearms, but fortunately noticed the thousand-yard stare of a person who has never been in combat but has a limbic system that looks like the Moscow underground map instead of a healthy part of the brain. Most of the western world consider the US system more or less insane, and for a good reason. And this coming from a geezer from a country with MORE firearms per capita than in the USA.

I used to think the "more gun control" argument wasn't the answer, mostly just because I have a knee-jerk bad reaction to anything that allows our government more control. At this point though? Fuck that. What we're doing isn't working, we should at least TRY something new. More than 20 children murdered in cold blood in their own school? I'm jaded as fuck and that still makes my stomach do flips.

Another thing I think is interesting: Why is it never "terrorism" when one of our own citizens opens fire in a public place? Can it only be terrorism if it's politically motivated?

Yes. Terrorism is a method of making war and war is the extension of politics into armed conflict.

Exactly. But I wouldn't expect any sensible gun legislation in this country anytime soon; the gun lobby has considerable fiscal pull in congress, even with democrats. It's absolutely horrifying.

There are a lot of explanations for traditional school shootings in high schools/universities... but attacking an elementary school? Killing kindergartners? I honestly can't think of what would drive someone to do such a thing, without resorting to simply calling the man evil and chalking it up to genetics. Which is far too simple of a explanation to really suffice. Awaiting further information regarding the killer's past.

It's likely just some old-fashioned misanthropy mixed with sociopathy.

Well, based on the live news feed I was following his mother was a teacher at the school. I think they were theorizing that the classroom which caught the brunt was hers.

Definitely premeditated. Adam Lanza (shooter) killed his father, went to the school and shot his mom and her classroom, all while carrying his brother's ID on him. His brother, Ryan Lanza, was being harassed on Facebook because Adam's corpse was identified as Ryan.

Poor guy (Ryan). Has to deal with the weight of losing his entire family after being harassed and painted as a mass murderer.

This shooting is absolutely horrible, and it's stuff like this the makes me rethink my position on gun control, as I, like Jonpo tend to not want the government to have more control over people's lives, but we also need to search for ways to prevent this mass killings (if there is a way). I was feeling pretty bad today because I've been sick in bed all day, but events like this really put things in perspective.

I'm sure all the pro-gun law mother fuckers are going to have something smart to say about this.

Why am I not surprised that the first reflex of some people is to shout "DONT TAKE MAH GUNZ AWAY!"

"It's not guns that need control. It's that this country systematically removed God from our schools! Uh... yeah that's it!"

Gun control is not the main issue here. The real issue is mental health awareness. If we devote more of our resources to understanding what can cause the human mind to act so irrationally and to educate everyone about it—rather than the politically-saturated realm of gun ownership—maybe, just maybe, we might be a bit better off.

^And instead of calling them "crazy-psychopaths" and blaming movies, music, video games, etc.

Indeed, it is very important to consider content over form in this situations. I.e. we need to examine cultural and gender issues around the shooter, rather than immediately jumping to mental issues or considering someone mentally ill or evil. That is what really flabbergasts me about today's shooting, because it doesn't at all fit into the "masculinity/power struggle" motives which most school shootings are due to.

However, we definitely do need to consider gun control as well. The sole purpose of guns are to kill and maim living things. Obviously outlawing guns to citizens is not the right choice (my dad had to poach for most of his food as a child, and imagine a world where only the military/police have guns), but people who try to sweep the gun issue under the rug are really missing the point. People shouldn't need weapons. Mass shootings aren't likely to stop happening so long as people can easily obtain assault rifles.

Whatever the causes might be, this is first and foremost a horrendous tragedy. I seriously feel sorry for the families of the deceased, and hope they can get through this. R.I.P. to all of the poor victims of this nightmarish situation. R.I.P. to all of the children

Please get off of your soapboxes and stop patronizing the media who are interviewing young children about a traumatic event and have repeatedly misreported information because they're too busy publishing anything they hear regardless of truth. It only hurts the victims families to invade upon their grieving - the whole world will be listening if they want to tell them. Swarms of media are very discomforting.

I'm not speaking of here specifically, but in general - with hardly any information being resolved, all I hear is people who already have conclusions, first reactions where people act on what they already know.

.

I was gonna say I don't think the families are going on Metal-archives and seeing all this stuff being said. Very unlikely imo.

Uh? What's your point, Wizard? "I'm not gonna write anything about the tragedy because the relatives of the victims are not gonna read it" WTF. That's one of the worst replies I've seen, you're completely missing the point of Zodi's post.

The way I interpret Zodi's response was "why is he addressing us to get off our soapboxes about what we interpret of the situation because none of them are gonna read it so I don't see how it would affect them". I think I interpretted it wrong. No need to get on my case bro.

Doing the type of work I do, you would think that I'd be all about giving more people access to guns... you know the second amendment and all, and unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of the people I work with are like this. I'm all about police having more weapons, but the common average everyday citizen does not need to have the same type of weaponry that the police and military have access to.

My department was finally authorized to carry personal AR15's on duty. Thank god, as, especially where I live, there are more high powered rifles than you can imagine. The fact of the matter is that the average, everyday citizen does not need to have an AK47 or an M16 or an AR15. These are weapons that are designed for tactical or military purposes.

As far as handguns... I've noticed that most of the handguns that the criminals have are stolen from normal people. I tend to think that the less people that own guns, the less they will be stolen. Nappy's right when he says that it would take at least twenty years for this to start working, but by making guns more difficult to get for normal citizens, it would make it more difficult for the criminals to get guns. I can't imagine all of the idiots I deal with on a daily basis traveling to a major city, tracking down an arms dealer and then driving back to central PA to have a Highpoint 9 with a scratched off serial number stuffed in their waistband.

Absolute tragedy what happened. However it seems some other people have bigger things to worry about...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A-Gw3YOCEAAizZz.jpg:large

I really want to slap those imbeciles in the face while barking "Get some priorities you cunts!".

Let's be fair to them. I turned off the news to check simpsons clips on youtube.

I disagree. The more restricted a product is, the higher the price it can command = even greater incentive to provide the contraband goods.

No amount of regulation will ever truly kill off the market.

Chicago has some of the tightest gun control in America, yet the amount of crime there is staggering. Even worse, good citizens have restricted legal freedom to defend themselves on equal grounds with criminals. A violence problem exists to be sure, but not a gun problem. Gun control hurts the law abiding and aids both violent criminals and the black market.

I've heard the argument that there are already too many guns in America to stop them from falling into the wrong hands. Do you think this argument holds any merit?

I don't know about anywhere else but, making a pretty decent gun is one of the big pastimes where I live, so I can say tighter gun control wouldn't have much effect down here, just more people getting ripped open with exploding tin-cans full of nails... or cats, if their creative/bored enough.

Not shitting there, one of my friends actually drew up a blue-print for a cat-cannon, sometimes I deeply love the south.

You are well aware of the gun culture here I've seen you make similar sentiments about how obstinately rigid we are to our ways of life, in fact I kind of find it odd you would compare our countries with two distinctly different worldviews. You want a rational answer the best thing I can tell you is there is no way you could enforce any sort of gun ban on a federal scale, considering how strongly the 2nd amendment is felt in particular belts of the country i,e the South, the Southwest, and parts of the North. It would come down to fierce opposition if the feds even remotely tried to enforce their ruling, and how exactly would an "Active program to destroy the guns" whatever that means deal with the untraceable guns that are undoubtedly in the millions in this country. The Brady law at its height has done about 107 million background checks since first implemented by Clinton in 1994, there has been ample time for criminals to smuggle firearms into street gangs, funnel them into their crime organizations, all while mixing these untraceable firearms with the average joe who buys guns that leave no paper trails themselves. I'm all for sensible weapons restrictions on those with criminal records, those who are mentally deficient and have a trail of mental problems, but your post about "killing the culture" also deals with fundamentally changing the 2nd amendment for law abiding Americans who have done nothing other than enjoy their rights without harming anyone else's liberty. Guns aren't going anywhere and even if the federal government makes the tightest restrictions that make the DC weapons ban look like a timeout, the NRA and more extreme groups would never let any administration turn it into policy without first challenging it using the 2nd amendment as a precedent, or at the worst violent opposition to the federal govern,ment.



I think with the liberty we have has come a lot of unnecessary bloodshed, I'm open to the idea of laws banning criminals from owning firearms and others from what I've listed. The main example I can point you to of banning Assault weapons outright was the DC weapons ban, federal agencies instrumental in seeing the implementation of the law had shown it was a failure.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_As ... t_on_Crime

I'm curious to know how exactly a state in general can implement any sort of prohibition on automatic weapons without eventually either having the ban fail outright or penalizing the many based on what is ultimately insufficient evidence to support the claim that firearms are somehow some devilish instrument hellbent on killing everything. I concur with some of the poster's here that in the case of these atrocities regarding shootings and massacres, there has been a link between some sort of mental illness and the perpetrator behind the act. This Lanza fellow suffered from Autism and other ailments that haven't been disclosed yet, but the usual mantra is blame the firearm as opposed to the mind behind the trigger.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/connectic ... MwVXW_olRI

The twenty year figure was a number Napero threw out and thats in the face of statistics that prove contrary to his premise of bans implemented on just local levels in Chicago and Dc that show these types of bans at least on higher powered rifles which are the minority in terms overall firearm owned in this country. There are 310 registered firearms in this country at least in someway legally purchased whether buy traditional fire arms manufactures, gun shows, or by private sellers, that isn't even including the illegally trafficked guns, stockpiles that exist, and guns that are coming in from criminal syndicates like the Cartels and other crime organizations. It has never been easier to buy a gun and even if a federal ban was implemented how exactly are you going to to prosecute the tens of millions who will undoubtedly refuse to give up their guns? More importantly, if you disarm them then how are you going to prevent these law abiding citizens from defending themselves in the face of criminals who utilize vast amounts of ill-gotten dollars who may use this gun ban (assuming its not just automatic weapons your banning) as an impetus to perpetrate more crimes?

I saw HN interviewing some of these kids who went through it and was just fucking sickened. These idiots are more interested in a story and boosting ratings as opposed to covering the suffering of that community.