I remember, way back in the dark ages, when I was in high school, I wasn't part of the "in" crowd and sometimes got pelted with trash walking down the dreaded "main hall of doom" where all the football players hung out. My solution was to enroll in martial arts classes, which gave me a new confidence in addition to the ability to defend myself. And yet I never had to use those skills, nor did I "go after" the people who had bothered me before. The enhanced confidence was enough that people did not mess with me.

Nowadays, when faced with a similar situation it appears our children's answer is to bring "a gat" to school and "put caps in 'em".

So what changed? There's got to be an underlying social issue here. The right to bear arms, or arm bears (Baloo), has been around a long time and it is only in the last ten years or less that this sort of occurance has become widespread. You did not hear about this sort of thing in the 1980's, much less in the 1960's or 50's.

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Peace!
Brigs

quote:

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Bottom line: you can't massacre people with a knife.

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"A thousand throats may be cut in one night, by a running man"

(Don't mean to get all morbid, but...)

In the neighborhood where I live, it is not especially dangerous, and yet a few nights ago when I heard a noise in the house in the middle of the night, and tiptoed out into the dark hallway, the escrima stick I had in my hand felt awfully inadequate. I am no expert but I certainly know how to hurt somebody with it. But if the suspected intruder had a gun?

Turns out one of our rabbits had gotten loose from the cage and was happily munching on one of our still-unpacked boxes.

I had told my father "no" about wanting a gun for the house. My wife and I both feel that guns are bad. I certainly don't want my daughter finding it on some hypothetical day I'm not home and having a tragedy occur.

But still, that night, before I found Dapple munching away, I regretted my decision. It's a tough issue.

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Peace!
Brigs

It could reduce crimes like this, perhaps, and it's a lifestyle change, but people can live without carrying guns around.

(Just a side note: The U.S. is the number one country... I hope you don't mean in low crime rates!)

The Unites States is far far diverse than any other nation in the world.

That's why countries like Japan and Korea can critize us, because they're populations are basically of all the same origins. Japan is far crowded than the US, but the people generally come from the same origins, so they don't have the problems we do.

The United States is made up of many many different nationalities. What you call yourself is how you associate yourself with groups. We have so many groups in the same place, and we still all have that fear of 'the other' or 'the different'. As the most diverse nation, there's a lot of fear here, and we're going to have problems.

And like I said, Chimaera, is it so much easier to criticize a nation you do not live in. Those people you quoted cannot be considered experts unless they have lived here and understand what its like, which I seriously doubt they have.

And, in this case, I highly doubt the guns would have mattered. They had explosives as well. If they couldn't kill with guns, they would have done it with more explosives, which, I might add, anyone could get the information to build from the internet. There are many recipes in the 'Anarchist's Cookbook'(which I might add I have only been able to find on Asian sites, interestingly enough).

I look forward to a day where people can look past skin color, 'race', and see people for what they really are; Human beings. Maybe, just maybe people will forget such trivialities, and then we wouldn't need such things as guns.
This is why I like Trek so much. They've gotten past this, and shows us a world united for one cause, and not the petty bickering and fighting and killing we see today.

*phew*

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Jeff Raven - Having more fun than any human being should be allowed to have

Jeff: While ethnic crime gets a lot of coverage in the media, it makes up only a small portion of the shootings that happen. If the US were ethnically pure there would still be whackos, be they kids or adults, wanting to kill people.

First of all, I'm sick to death of this Yankee "Gun's don't kill people, people do" bullshit. You frickin' need both to pull off shit like what happened in Colorado! We have two options: Fix the guns or fix the people.

As Jubes said, fixing the people is the best solution. But it is damn hard. Many Westerners have become apathetic when it comes to issues like family violence and loony, desensitised kids. The NRA, an organization still livng in the 1760s, rants on about gun education. It's a load of shit. You can educate people so that they'll never point a gun at a human when all the marbles are in there and in place. But all the educating in the world won't stop on poor deranged bastard with the marbles slipped out of their spots from taking the gun that is found in more than half of American homes and going out shooting people, laughing all the time.

The other way is to fix the guns. Get rid of them. Regulate them. There is no way in hell those two kids could have killed 15 people without guns. In the same way those involved in the Cold War eventually realised that Nuclear weapons were so powerful they should be banned, we as a race have now developed guns that are far too dangerous because now it is easier than ever to walk in and kill people quickly, easily and from a great distance. Forget rocks and sticks and swords and battle axes and muskets. We're reached a technological threshhold. A teenager can now kill dozens without getting a scratch on them.

Gun ownership is a vicious circle. The more people who buy guns to defend themselves from robbery and hooligans, the more people who wake up one morning and decide to go postal we get. And is keeping a gun to kill a criminal really, really justified. If an unarmed thief threw a rock in your window, climbed in and started taking your stereo system, would they deserve to get shot on sight by the homeowner? The American legal system does not recognise that as murder. But it is, nonetheless. What if it's a family member you don't recognise in the dark and blow them away? That has happened on more than one occasion in the US. Most would-be criminals are normal American people who'd have bought a gun for "self-defence" once and are given the confidence for walking into that 7-11 and taking that money because of the gun. "Guns for self-defence" ultimately get used to kill people, be they innocent, guilty of a serious crime or a minor one. Killing people is wrong. Anyone disagree here?

Then the hunting argument. Oh please. Automatic handguns to cut down a deer? Even up here in peacful little Canada there was a grassroots opposition to the C-47 (?) gun-control bill that required every firearm in the country to be registered because it was unfair the government control who can own a hunting rifle and who can't. Puh-leeeze... Pay the friggin' $50 and go kill some goddamn grouse.

The bullshitters at the NRA also keep on using this goddamn second amendment to keep guns in the hands of all people, be they sane or insane. For the final time, The Constitution is preventing the Government from taking away the muskets of the citizens so they would be unchallenged by the people in case of an insurrection. Times, attitudes, and technology have changed. It has to go.

quote:

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...it won't be done because the American government isn't interested in doing sensible things a lot of the time, only popular things.

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And yeah, bombs are illegal but accessible because they are easy to make. Anyone on the forums want to volunteer to build an effective handgun out of hardware store components? And how many of these Denver-style massacres have been done with bombs as opposed to guns? Huh?

Jeff:

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Outlaw guns, and then only outlaws will have them.

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Jeff:

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I personally support everything in the Bill of Rights. Its worked for more than 200+ years, and we're the number one nation in the world

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So yeah. Screw the second amendment. The problems with gun ownership by everyone far outweigh the benefits.

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"......"
�������������-The Breen at Internment Camp 371

Also, about 'guns don't kill poeple, people kill people'. True, but without guns, they'd find it a lot harder.

'Outlawing guns means that just the outlaws would have them' This argument does not hold. FOllowing this logic, EVERYTHING should be legal so that ordinary citizens as well as criminals can have it. You ban guns, outlaws may still have them, but it'll be a damn site harder for two high-school students to get hold of them.

And Jeff, it may be easy to criticise a government that you don't live in. The same holds true for you. Have you lived in the UK, Australia, France? You say that we cannot make a fair judgement because we don't live there. You don't live here. You' don't know what its like to live in a country where you can walk down the street, and realise that even in relatively dangerous areas, you may get mugged, but you are unlikely to get shot.

And about the bombs. Bombs have to be made. They have to be planted. They have to have people nearby when they go off. They are directionless. They cannot be thrown without extremem risk. They are hard to make in any quantitity. You have to know how to make them. With a gun, anyone can kill anyone else, by accident, on purpose, at any time, with hardly any effort.

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Anyone remember how they felt the day after Rich Mullins died?

And I will take the time to say I will rest a few days from this subject, as it has been a very sad week indeed.

This could not have happened without warning signs of some sort. Obvious ones.

The problem is people who are showing signs that they may be about to do something drastic, but everyone ignores it because it's "not my problem".

The problem is parents who don't know their kids well enough to see that they need help, or (more to their shame) see it, but don't act because "what will the neighbors think?"

When it becomes not only acceptable, but expected that each of us comes to the aid of others in distress, then this sort of thing will cease to happen. It will not happen even if there are piles of guns in every living room. The cause of deaths like these does not rest in a holster or gun cabinet. The evil that was done did not come from a holster. It came from the hearts of the men who performed these acts.

Until we are prepared to address the root of the problem, this sort of incident will continue to happen.

I repeat, laws are totally ineffective against those determined to break them, and unafraid of punishment. Consider how many laws and rules were violated in the recent incident BEFORE anybody even started shooting. Up to and including everything from the manufacture of explosives to the carrying of weapons onto school property. Laws only work when they're obeyed.

Yes, it's true, neither laws nor education will stop a deranged person. But really, they should've been locked up before that. People don't just suddenly "become" deranged.

As for guns in the home... well, if you're a collector, there's always a safe. It's what my dad keeps most of his in. If you want one for quick defense, it's a bit harder, but there are trigger locks and lockable drawers (and you could always take the clip out and stash it separately), and now they're coming out with "smartguns" that require the proper computer chip to fire (worn on a ring).

Access to firearms does not make one a killer. from where I'm sitting, I could have my hands on a loaded gun in less than a minute. But the only warm-blooded creature I've ever shot was a rabid groundhog. (I shoot carpenter bees with a .22 rifle, but they don't count.)

The_Tom said that fixing the people was the better solution, but it's very hard, and therefore we should get rid of the guns.
*giggle* I've never heard a statement more typical of the very problem the US faces.. the desire to go with the quick fix and the easy solution.

>And is keeping a gun to kill a criminal really, really justified.

Yes.

>If an unarmed thief threw a rock in your window, climbed in and started taking your stereo system, would they deserve to get shot on sight by the homeowner?

Absolutely. People who don't respect other people's property will steal anything that is not nailed down. I worked very hard to earn my possessions, and unless you can show me some clear and pressing NEED they have for them, thay can't have them. Besides, living will just encourage them.

>The American legal system does not recognise that as murder. But it is, nonetheless.

No, it's vermin disposal. Not only should it be legal, it should be rewarded. I say that should a citizen slay a criminal, and the courts rule it justified, the state should pay that citizen's legal costs, plus a bounty. Something like 1/10 the cost it would have taken to keep the same person incarcerated for the full length of their sentence, plus a rough estimation of the amount they would have stolen during their criminal career, had they continued.

>What if it's a family member you don't recognise in the dark and blow them away? That has happened on more than one occasion in the US.

So have drunk driving accidents. Yet we continue to allow people to privately own cars. Your point? Accidents like these do NOT happen if you follow basic safety rules (so basic, I can remember them 5 seconds after being roused from a sound sleep at 3 AM). So can my father, or I'd be in a lot worse shape than I am now. If we can do it, so can everyone else.

Emotions always run high after an incident like what happened Tuesday. Very few people ever ask what might have happened if some of the potential VICTIMS had been armed, too.

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To make an apple pie from scratch, we must first invent the universe.