Well, aside from the few crazies that popped up earlier. Seriously, conspiracy nuts like that just piss me off.

But more to the point, aside from the insane people earlier, this thread has been very civil, very well thought out, and both sides are presenting good, well written points of discussion. Only goes to show just how wrong the mainstream media has it about "different" people.

You're totally right but that is to be expected because "different" people know the mainstream media spews utter bullshit

It is in the media's interest (as it is for any corporation or other big entities, really) that people conform and to try their best to make others feel alienated.

The worst part about the mainstream media, and they do this for everything, is the "false equivalence". They'll take one guest representing one side of a topic, and another guest representing some fringe, and they'll put them side by side as if both parties are offering equally but opposing views. They do it with climate change, gun control, abortion, gay marriage, anything where they think they can stir up a good argument.

This is a well noted observation. The greater point is that both sides usually have opposing but both valid opinions on how to solve a problem. If only we could accept that the best way to resolve all sort of issues is a well thought out solution incorporating the finer points both sides make.

The next day we were talking about it before work, and my boss started saying that if this had happened before his son was born, he would have been just like the rest of us: supportive, disgusted, but generally detached. But his kid is as old as those kids were, might have been his class, and it hit him harder than he'd ever thought possible. In a strange kind of way he didn't even know just HOW much and deeply he loved his son. He's known him since the first day he was born, better than he's known anything, he said. He just couldn't process the whole thing. It hit him powerful hard, he'd been crying all morning, and he was just failing at describing what the parents must be feeling. "Their world has fallen out." that was how he put it...

I still feel monumentally awful!

I'm afraid that you're indeed correct. Your culture and political traditions are so fundamentally fucked up that any hope for a substantial and effective solution for your problem in the foreseeable future would be nothing more than a pipe dream.

We all as a nation ought to feel that way!

I agree completely, although more in sentiment than tone.

My computer restarted mid-post and I'm typing this in a hurry, so fuck it if this seems like a rant. (It is).

I've pretty much given up trying to debate the anti-self defense crowd because at some point it just starts to feel like debating evolution with a creationist. Most gun-control advocates are a bit like tobacco lobbyists in that they explicitly lie to sell their point; most gun control supporters are like creationists in that they are miserably ignorant of crime statistics in the US. They don't know that gun crimes (and violent crimes in general) have been consistently dropping for twenty years despite the constant wailing of the media to the contrary. They don't know that almost no academic studies showed a link between the "assault weapons ban" of 1994 and reduced gun crime; they don't know that, by extension, crime researchers have concluded it had no measurable effect on gun crime. They don't know that while federal laws have generally gotten stricter in the last two decades (assault weapons ban, the Brady bill, etc), states have generally gone in the opposite direction: they don't know that the number of states that explicitly allow concealed carry in public has nearly doubled in the time period that gun violence declined. They don't know that the people who have these concealed-carry permits are so responsible they are 13 times less likely to commit any crime than the average population. They don't know that the criminological community---the community of scholars and academics who devote their entire lives to studying crime, not just armchair TV commentators---have almost uniformly reject the "more guns=more crime" hypothesis on the basis of hard data, not logic or theory. Because the statistics don't support that thought, or virtually any other thought the gun-control community has. Does that mean they have embraced the "more guns=less crime" theory? No; some have, some haven't. It's a wash; anyone who tries to sell a story that all the data point one way or the other is not telling the truth when it comes to any correlation between rates of gun ownership and gun crime. Gun crime in the US is largely a function of socioeconomics and our absolutely insane drug policy rather than of gun laws.

Gun control advocates don't know that statistically speaking, military weapons have been used for zero violent crimes in the last 30 years, because they don't know the difference between a military weapon and an "assault weapon." They don't know that the legislative concept of an "assault weapon" did not exist until the 1980's, because they don't know that the concept was invented by gun control advocates. They don't know that "automatic weapons" includes semi-automatic weapons, and that the federal definition of "assault weapon" is explicitly semi-automatic. By extension, they don't know that about 99% of all military weapons---including, by definition, 100% of all machine guns, 100% of all submachine guns, and 100% of all assault rifles---were perfectly legal under the Assault Weapons Ban, because they are burst-fire or fully-automatic. They don't know that an extremely large percentage of hunting rifles meet the federal definition of an "assault weapon," because they don't know that most "assault weapons" are functionally identical to hunting weapons. They assume that everything that looks like an AK-47 or an M-16 must, in fact, be a military weapon.




Proving my point exactly about gun-control advocates. Statistically speaking this actually happened about 4,100 times the same day as the Newtown shooting, so this is one more reason to heed the calls of ignoring the media every time there is a mass shooting. Because all of them get it wrong, all of them. They would rather sell stories of crying children and dead babies than have any honest reporting on gun crime.

The reality here is that most studies done on gun crime since the early 90's---academic studies by universities as well as studies by the Justice Department under Clinton---have pretty conclusively shown that firearms are used more for self-defense than they are for violent crime. And with the exception of one or two outlier studies, the numbers aren't even close: between 2:1 defense-offense and 5:1 defense-offense. The reason they don't get reported is because most cases do not involve anyone firing a shot. Criminal breaks in/tries to mug you/tries to rape you, criminal sees you pull out a gun, criminal runs away. Story ends, nobody gets hurt. That isn't a sexy story that the media can sell to you, because there aren't any dead white females and there aren't any schoolchildren crying. There isn't any crazy person that "forces us" to re-examine our "culture of violence" and all the usual BS scapegoats that line of thinking entails (this is a forum full of perfectly reasonable people listening to music about death and dismemberment, no elaboration required).

And for the record, I'm not a chest-beating NRA supporter. I despise the NRA, and most of the gun rights advocates who post here in support of the 2nd Amendment should give you an idea why. Hunting rights are irrelevant; the government can curb animal population growth just fine. Target practice or "sporting" rights are also a non-argument; there is no need for or right to have sports. The idea of using guns to prevent tyranny is a laughable idea for several reasons, at least one of which I've already enumerated up above: these "assault weapons" we can own in this country are semi-automatic civilian weapons which don't stand a chance against the military's fully-automatic weapons, and that is not even taking into account tanks and bombs. The NRA has given voice to a whole load of bullshit arguments in their lobbying efforts, and they have pretty substantially ignored the one real reason firearm ownership absolutely must be legal, self-defense. They are also a lobbying group, not a citizens advocacy group.

Owning guns shouldn't be about hunting but rather about vigilantism?

Batshit insane.

You're essentially saying that crimes are being stopped roughly 1.5 million times a year by normal citizens pulling out a gun?

Not a country I'd like to live in. In 2011, the Finnish police pulled a gun 27 times, shot seven times, and actually hit a person three times, the misses actually being warning shots. And that's for a nation of five million. We extremely rarely get any justified private gun use news, and I believe it's actually non-existent. Our deaths by firearms are mostly suicides, and I believe everybody should have the right to off themselves if they wish, but that's another discussion. In any case, assuming the rate of incidence was the same, that would factor into a respective number of police gun use incidents of around 1700 yearly, assuming there's roughly 315 million people in the USA. And you're essentially saying a Finn pulls a gun maybe 0.1% of the time a US citizen does? That's essentially fucked up. I feel lucky now.

No matter how you look at that, that's completely insane. In principle, in a perfect world, no civilian should ever need to pull a gun, and even acknowledging the difference between that and the real world, a factor of one thousand means your country is objectively and collectively out of its mind. You really want to support that kind of culture?

In 1996 Martin Bryant killed 35 people in Tasmania Australia with an automatic weapon. The Australian government immediately bannned automatic and semi-automatic weapons, and severely restricted the availability of other firearms in the aftermath of the shooting. Since then Australia has had zero rampage kills. America in the same time line has had 9 such incidents. I'm not saying these same laws would stop these incidents from occuring as I believe the problem is rooted far deeper than the mere accessibility of fire arms. However, taking the most obvious means (automatic and semi-automatic weapons) away from the perpetrators would at the very least reduce the amount of victims in such incidents.

You know, this mentality is strikingly similar to a teenager harrumphing and sullenly complaining that his parents "just don't understand him".

The US has existed formally for only 236 years. It's possible we could learn some things from nations and cultures which have been around for much longer than that. Just a thought.

You seriously don't believe that if the Government banned guns then people wouldn't resort to explosives? Weren't explosives also used at Columbine? If two eighteen year olds can make explosives then I'm sure anyone can. Of course it means harder aim as you obviously can't directly aim, but school shootings and rampages don't care who they hurt.

This country is too jingoistic and full of itself to do that. Why else do you think people here still parrot the long inaccurate claim that America is the greatest country in the world?

The thing that gets me about these kind of news stories is that they're given so much attention. The media is partly and endless cycle of nonsense that gets streamed to people who've developed a taste for spontaneous bits of information; yet part of it has to do with people who want to use the news to their advantage to push their point of view. Such as video games are to blame, yadda yadda. Obviously, on a basic level, it's sad. However it's not something I would think about. I'm sort of forcibly made conscious of these things through exposure on the internet. It may sound cold, but realistically I don't know anyone who died in the shooting and I didn't know the guy who shot everyone up. So what makes everyone so consciously invested in these stories is beyond me.

It could have been you maybe? Or their child at that school? It could have happened to anyone, and as a homicide investigator myself you always want to find out the reason why.

Well that's definitely not a loaded term, is it?

It's about as bullshit of a term as "pro-life". That is to say, complete bullshit.

There is no solution to the problem of the mentally ill. If people want to hurt and kill people, they will. All I said was that taking away the primary means of killing people would reduce the amount of deaths in such cases.

What do you believe the US could learn from other countries which have been around for much longer?

Ya know, looking at these discussions of whether or not guns should be allowed or not, all the back and forth, it's kind of interesting, now that I think about it. On one hand, I have never carried a gun and have never been in a situation where I needed to use one. These stories I've been reading of countries where guns are banned that have lower gun related casualty rates, it's pretty interesting. Going off what I just proclaimed, I'm kind of lead to believe that anti-gun is kind of my way. It's kind of beyond me why people are so pro-gun.

I never hate on my fellow American for liking guns though. One things that annoys me is when people hate on Americans. Please don't do that. First of all, American isn't a nationality, it's a country. Sure, we have some people in our country, who we Americans actually have our own slur for called "red necks," which for the most part is a general term for inbreed, patriotic, right wing, gun toting assholes. That is not the real America. That's a stereotype. I don't know if there's a general misconception about that, but that's just ignorant and unfair ad homenim argument.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of restricting people's freedoms because of a few unfortunate individuals with mental problems who use them to harm others. That's about the only thing for pro-firearms i can think of though.

That number, while often cited, is not accurate. It is part of the research of Dr. Gary Kleck, who is known for publishing studies with astronomically disproportionate statistics about gun use and self defense that don't match up with any other sort of related data. I haven't seen any of his statistics verified by other researchers, though I have seen the most commonly quoted ones challenged by other research. I believe a more accurate number of defensive gun uses is around 100,000 per year.



Presenting your thoughts as "objective" and making claims of "no matter how you look at it" show the same logical flaws as those you're accusing of being insane. Your thoughts are one thing, but misconstruing their nature only diminishes their validity.

Yes it is.

No True Scotsman, eh?

I've simply been observing this thread and trying to keep my nose out of it, but this was a serious "back the fuck up" moment. You do know what the first six letters in "nationality" mean, right? I mean damn.

So, since the mentioned statistic is just a number, and doesn't have any scientific absolute value that could be said to be objectively the limit to madness, it's just my opinion, no matter if the quoted statistic makes your country look like it has the gun culture of Somalia? Check.

Look, that 1.5 million incidents of gun use every year would essentially mean that one in three US citizens would, on the average, need to pull out a firearm once during his or her lifetime. If that indeed was the favoured method of conflict resolution to that degree, I couldn't call it a sane society.

And yes, I agree that the numbers seem hugely inflated.

Merely a generalized observation on a generalized statement, nothing more.

I just don't understand this "we need to be different from Europe because we're America" mentality that is more than evident in the United States. It's to the point where, for instance, educational programs which are tremendous successes over there are ignored or rejected here because we simply have to do things differently.

Your assertion has a certain nobility to it, but it smacks of cultural relativism at its worst.

There are a bunch or different tracks this discussion tends to take, here and elsewhere, that would get you kicked off a high school debate team.

"Bad guys would just use x weapon instead", aka "You can't stop everything, so why bother doing anything?"
Please. I personally am not interested in x weapon, and I'm pretty sure neither are lawmakers. I'm interested in these so-called assault rifles. Could someone mow down twenty 6 & 7 year olds with an assault rifle if they don't have an assault rifle? No. The question is so stupid it's not even asked. Could they do it with x weapon? Of course. He could have gone in there with a big rock and killed everyone. That's an observation just a stupid as the previous question.

"Gun laws haven't affected gun crime, so more laws won't prevent this" aka "It doesn't work in the general case so it won't work in the specific case." This specific case is mass murder, not car jackings, armed robberies, gang shootings, etc. Of course a law to ban assault rifles won't affect gun crime, in general. Neither is it supposed to.

"There's nothing that suggests gun laws have so far reduced gun crime, so they don't work" aka "insufficient evidence of effectiveness = evidence of ineffectiveness". Nobody collects data on gun crime that did not happen, obviously.

The only thing that matters is this specific case: Assault rifles that can carry a lot of ammunition make it easy to do a lot of damage in a short period of time. That's awesome when an enemy squad has you pinned down, not so much in an elementary school. The only thing that needs to be addressed is that.

You asked a question to which you got the answer you were looking for, and now you're complaining? Also, no, the question does get asked to the gun lobbyists in your country, and in case you missed the big reveal, their response was "more guns". Also, no one here was suggesting that you do nothing. If anything, several people including myself have suggested that you try to follow the good examples set by other countries, even if deep down we know that based on your culture it'd be more of an exercise in futility than anything, but that it's worth trying anyway. There's no need to be so passive-aggressive.

Not complaining, just observing. Even rational discussion can get sidetracked by peripheral issues. Before you know it you've lost sight of the assault rifle question.

Early in the conversation, a band on high capacitty magazines was suggested. It seems to be that such a ban is a pretty good idea. It has also been mentioned that we should simply reinstate the previous assault weapons ban. That law had holes you could drive a truck through, and was only effective insofar as it drove up prices, making high capactity magazines and assault rifles harder to obtain.

It's clear that American culture at large is immature and irresponsible. There's a fair amount to be said for the pro-carry argument, "I'll give up my gun when there isn't a need for one." But this just points out the looming and accepted insanity of the situation. It essentially says, "I neither feel comfortable and safe amongst my neighbors nor under my government," since some people are making the argument that personal fire arms are "the last line against tyranny" and are anticipating some kind of guerilla civil war .. as if they could win. So American culture at large is paranoid either of random shooters or perpetually anxious about a contentious future. There's very little sanity anywhere in this picture. Everyone clinging to their guns because they don't know when they'll have to pull and kill someone.

It reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit where there's catastrophe on the news and looking out the window only produces the sound of the lip-cricket.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue watching Threads.

GTog, you're aware that Connecticut has an assault weapons ban and no assault weapons were used in the Newtown shooting, right?



Correct, there are a lot of other problems in America that motivate people to own guns and keep them for self-defense. It's a violent culture, that's why we have a "war on drugs" and a "war on poverty". America loves wars, the nation has a love for saying we use our power to forcibly fix problems. Our war on drugs isn't very effective, it's been going for 40 years and we have 25m pounds of marijuana smuggled into the country annually and the sale of that funds massive criminal organizations that use violence to achieve their objectives. That reaches every high school in the country, and other drugs have more infamous cartels. The war on poverty hasn't provided hope to young people in poor communities and people are lured into crime at a young age because they see that as a brighter future and a way out of an unpleasant present.

Does this violent culture drive our legal gun culture?

That question was already answered and dealt with. Pro-gun people argued that assault rifles should stay regardless of the shootings because they're for self-defense against Aliens and Darth Vader, while everyone else argued that such weapons are unnecessary and do more harm than good, and that pro-gun people are being vigilantist cuckoos and making no goddamn sense. Next.


High capacity mags like what, anything that can hold more than 10 rounds? I don't see how a ban on those alone would do anything significant to prevent mass shootings. 10 bullets can still kill 10 people, especially if the shooter is trained well enough (some people have suggested that proper training would somehow solve that problem). Plus, guns can be reloaded in seconds, so it's not like the shooter would only be able to fire 10 rounds per hour.


The only reason why Adam Lanza's Bushmaster doesn't fall under the legal definition of an assault rifle is because it doesn't have features like a collapsible stock, a bayonet lug, a suppressor, or a grenade launcher. Otherwise, it functions and fires just the same as a banned assault rifle like the AR-15. A loophole, obviously, and an example of piss poor gun control laws.

I apologize for the inarticulate way I said that, but yes. I think you understand what I mean. There is no true American. We're all individuals. Hell, the only TRUE Americans are the Native Americans and they hardly account for much of our population, I don't think.

Living in Australia, we are apart of the same so-called "Wars" you guys are. We have a drug problem the same as any other western country. We have a poverty problem that admittedly is lesser than yours. But none of this is a reason to have guns. We have gangs that are centred on the drug trade here, and seldom do you hear about these gangs - who do carry firearms - murdering innocent civilians. When there are shootings here, they are almost always drug related. But this still isn't reason to carry guns.



Oh shut the fuck up.

You would not believe the stink kicked up by the pro-gun side of the fence over reducing the limit. And yet, ten rounds is more than enough for self defense, unless you're facing a damn army of "home invaders".

What a good point. I'll take this into consideration. Not.

There's no true Scotsman and they don't count for much.