27 dead in Newtown, Conn. school shooting

Yes, but if he had used a frying pan, he wouldn`t have been able to kill that many children that quickly. The problem with assult rifles is that you can get a high death toll within a much shorter time than other weapons. And wouldn`t you say it would have been better with 10 dead, than 27? That`s 17 children that could have still been alive, if assult rifled had been illegal for the public. AND, for other adults in the school, a crazy guy with a frying pan would have been a lot easier to fight off, than a man armed with a rifle. So your argument for it doesn`t stand to me.

Access to high powered weapons creates a higher death tall, and the fact that USA still allows them is baffling to me. Though Norway had our own shooting a couple of years ago, and we don`t allow them. Some people will get their hands on them regardless, but it could limit how many do. When it is easy to do it, more people will.

Is having the freedom to own guns worth so many lives? A pistol, sure, that is a little more understandable that you would want something in your house to defend your family. But a pistol is defence enough, why on earth would anyone need an assult rifle???

 

see, that as the thing that frustrated me about the norway massacre; everyone was saying "well we shouldnt ban assualt rifles cause it didnt work in norway". Well, look at the fact that countries that ban such weapons have a considerably lower death toll per capita for gun violence, and when they were banned in america, we did too. We still had massacres from time to time, but they were not as frequent, and rarely as deadly.

just because you cant erradicate a crime problem completely does not mean you do nothing that is in your power to limit the number and severities of such crimes.

the cause of this crimes in america is unvoidably tied to the fact that republicans sacrafice human well being for the pursuit of an extremist ideaology that guns should be completely unregulated, and that goverment should have no say in the types of guns civilians get.

 

It's far harder to kill 27 people with a gun or knife than with an assualt rifle.

---------- Post added 15th Dec 2012 at 03:27 PM ----------

With respect, that's a poor argument. By that logic we shouldn't try to make anything illegal or control it as there will always be people who work around the law.

---------- Post added 15th Dec 2012 at 03:33 PM ----------

Posted on Dawkins Foundation FB page:

 

whats funny is number ten has been the format fox news has used, and each time they have said it, within 2-5 minutes, a fox news paid pundit is spouting off how liberals are wrong, and massacres will never happen once we have more guns.

it is weird, we have around 310million people, and about the same number of guns estimated to be amid the population, yet the majority of people dont own a single gun, let alone more than one. why should we sacrafice children at the hands of lunatics because a minority has a gun fetish that prevents us from having meaningful gun control for the safety of the masses who are not boner-popping at the prospect of a gun barrel.

 

The whole point of the Second Amendment was to allow the people to keep the government in check by keeping them as armed as any standing military. Back at the end of the 18th Century, this was simply a matter of keeping firearms. If we were to keep the true spirit of the amendment and allow the citizens to keep all arms, there really should be no weapon that is off limits to citizens. We should be allowed to have tanks, drones, and hell, we should even be allowed to build atomic weapons if we're able to do so. IT KEEPS OBAMA FROM BECOMING A TYRANNICAL OVERLORD!!1!!!11!!

But the deal is, we're not able to do so. With the way our current laws are, hunting and shooting enthusiasts are able to practice their hobby freely, but the average citizen isn't safe from being killed in a mass shooting because a mentally ill person had too easy of access to a gun.

That said, our high firearm death rate is primarily caused by gang wars in which you have no chance of getting involved with unless you're stupid enough to join those monkeys. They already fight with illegal weapons. It's a culture resulting from hundreds of thousands of impoverished immigrants moving here every year. I swear I'm not racist or xenophobic; it's simply a fact of life that most Europeans who like to thumb their nose at us don't realize.

 

Something needs to be done about gun control in this country, and I'm saying this as a gun owner. I'm to the point that I would honestly like to see all these weapons just disappear, but there is no way that will happen. An attempt to ban gun ownership in the US would receive unthinkable backlash. Believe me, I've known some real gun nuts. Another assault weapons ban would also be ineffective in preventing these things. The Columbine shooting occurred during the previous ban.

You don't just let somebody buy and drive a car with no training and license, but anyone with a clean record can buy a gun in 10 minutes. To own a gun, one should be required to take mandatory classes on gun safety. Comprehensive psychological assessment should also be part of the process. An extensive month long course of this stuff should be required for gun ownership. Just recently, a father accidentally shot and killed his 7 year old son in a gun range parking lot. Training could have prevented that. The 2nd amendment allows for regulation, and mandatory training would not be unconstitutional.

My question is, why are we having so many of these spectacle killings? Weapons with this kind of firepower have been on the market for about 100 years. It seems that only recently have these mass killings become so common. Something is wrong with our society.

I know that this issue was already brought up in this thread, but I would like to know the medication history of the killer. The majority of school shootings are committed by young men either on or withdrawing from some kind of antidepressants. These types of medications have horrendous side effects on some people. The big pharmaceutical companies don't give a fuck. They push drugs on kids who need real support, all in the name of profit. In my opinion, they are just as guilty as the NRA/gun industry. This website isn't the most well organized, but it compiles a lot of information on the subject.

Drug Pushers, Drug Users, Antidepressants, & School Shooters | Yoism


Sorry for the rant. It breaks my heart to hear of such tragedies. My prayers go out to all the victims.

 

The thing I find interesting is that, in direct contradiction of the NRA's leadership, and lobbiest, the fact is that the majority of members want comprehensive gun control laws. they are more than willing to wait a little longer on background checks and close loopholes to ensure that guns are kept out of hands of people who shouldnt have them. many of them support RFT chips in guns that many countries use that prevent guns from fucntioning if they are stolen.

but the leadership of the NRA are nothing but egotistical pricks who unlike most NRA members, can't seem to grasp the fact that so much damage is done when we do not temper our gun laws with the cold hard reality that we have a responciblity not to gun owners, but to protecting the lives of citzens.

even without support from the NRA members, the leadership forced republicans to get rid of the assualt weapons ban, and now, where before it took two people with a plethora of guns to kill a dozen or so people over the course of 30-40 minutes, a single gunman with two weapons can kill 30-40 in a few minutes.

they are saying the blessing of the mall shooting three days ago was that the gunman's weapons malfunctioned, and he didnt know how to fix it, so he shot himself before the police could. 2 people died, and one of my friends, i learned yesterday, was in the store when it happened, and thank god the gun malfunctioned.

but we cant hope that always happens.

 

It should be noted that "better" weapons were on the market during the Columbine shooting. They only had access to lower quality guns. Also, lower capacity magazines can still be carried in great number and swapped out in a matter of seconds. And what about the abundance of pre/post ban stuff that is still out there? I agree that we need better gun control laws, but I feel that enacting another assault weapons ban is only paying lip service to a much greater issue.

 

A person with aspergers can go through several emotions in a hour. They can be angry one minute and happy the next. I experienced this in the special ed room so I know how emotions can change very quickly. I would be disappointed if a such a known mental disability did cause this kid to commit such a crime because it makes all of us people who struggle with disabilities look like crazy unstable people. This kid is not one of us not matter what and does not represent us at all

 

maybe the victim's families want to be anonymous & get some peace? i know i would

 

Am I the only one that is angry at how blown out of perspective this is. People get all worked up arguing about gun laws because 20 kids died. Over 41,000 children die every day due to hunger. Not to sound unsympathetic, but I kind of am. There are much easier ways to save the lives of 20 children, yet rarely do people give a shit about the children dying to hunger or neglect.

 

They have companies that make guns, and want people to buy them, so that is why they want this extremely lax deregulation.

 

Correction, people get upset because for the Nth time a massacre of innocent children has taken place.
And one does not exclude the other.

 

This one was really sad to hear about, especially because of the victim's ages.

Also seeing the news footage from CT brings back memories of watching similar-looking footage from back in 1999 here in CO.

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Someone left flowers & a nice little note for the Sandy Hook victims at the Columbine memorial. (stopped by it today because I was going to a couple stores in that area)

 

even some republicans are starting to say we need to enact tighter gun control laws... of course, those are from purple and blue states, but we just have to get enough to overcome republican control in the house. I dont think that boehner will find it easier to block it even come to the floor, but no doubt he will try, if he survives the leadership elections, that is.

 

Now that the victims are children, people are finally being moved to act on gun control. The horrible thing, though is that it had to come to that. So many of these types of incidents could have easily been prevented had we had the laws in the first place. It's sad that it even came to this in the first place, and even though we're across the country everyone I know is crushed. The worst thing about it is that if comprehensive gun laws were passed all those children could have been saved.

 

Its not a gun control issue, its a school security issue.

Last year, a kid walked right into my school with a shotgun.. that was fun.
If my school had better security, it wouldnt of mattered what weapon he had

 

Because there's no way he could have shot children outside the school?

 

He could have. He could have shot kids at a park. He also could have set the school on fire, or stabbed people, or put a bomb in the school.

I'm just saying, school security needs to go up because between 8am and 3pm the school is responsible for the children inside, and it's not fair that someone can walk right in with a weapon and start hurting people

 

Yeah, that's the thing. It would have been great had we had all those laws in the first place to keep the manufacture and sale of guns extremely tightly restricted. I don't own guns and I think it would be wonderful to live in a world where they did not exist. It would have been nice had society had the foresight to recognize that guns serve no good purpose for society and should be eradicated, the blueprints for making them lost to time.

Unfortunately, they didn't. And anyone who thinks "gun control" will work in the United States and solve these problems now is completely delusional. There are millions upon millions of guns out there. Unless we are going to send stormtroopers into every house in America to open every cupboard, raid every shelve and cabinet, have checkpoints to investigate every inch of every car, we're not going to get rid of the guns. And even if we tried to do that, then the backlash of right-wing militias rising up and Ruby Ridge and Waco-style standoffs with police would turn this country into a warzone.

ANY attempt at gun control is going to do nothing but inflame the wingnuts to get more and more guns with more and more firepower, and they will find a way to get them, whether on black markets, foreign sources, or just building them in their garage. Maybe instead of trying to fight such a futile war, we should ask ourselves why such a large segment of the country's population is constantly preparing for battle in the first place.

That list posted is earlier is unfortunately mostly delusional BS. There IS a mental health crisis in this country that is not being addressed. We don't have universal healthcare in this country. As Mitt Romney proudly said on the campaign trail, the approach we have to healthcare in this country is to make people who don't have money wait until their condition requires them to go the emergency room for them to finally receive treatment. Well, when it comes to mental health, often times the 'emergency room' scenario is a mentally ill person snapping and going on a shooting spree like this one. And the mentally ill are often the ones who struggle to maintain employment and make enough money to pay for healthcare. And instead Republicans in Congress (and at the state level), with their friend Obama, are talking about cutting programs like Medicaid that these people depend on.

Quite frankly I find it an extremely annoying distraction to talk about the easy copout of an answer of passing a "gun control" bill rather than make an effort to overhaul our healthcare system to help the mentally ill get the treatments they need, not to mention address the deep cultural problems we have with violence in this country.

A split-second shot of Janet Jackson's breast was cause for national outrage to protect the children, yet we have no problem glorifying violence and guns from a young age. Americans are taught to worship the military as heroes when they are nothing more than trained killers, paid to murder people in foreign countries. The U.S. murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam and Korea), our drones blow up innocent children in Pakistan, and we are told this is something to be proud of. While we cut budgets to provide services to the mentally ill, we spend trillions of dollars developing new and more complicated killing machines and ways to destroy human life. Those assault rifles that cause so much grief and pain for society would not exist if not for the government itself spending taxpayer money developing them in the first place.

This 20-year-old kid fell through the cracks of a severely screwed-up society that has its priorities all wrong and did not have the social institutions in place to get him the help he needed. And this happens again and again and again.

And as usual, the corporate liberals, headed by Wall Street billionaire Bloomberg, want to ignore all that and say they have the easy answer, a quick bill through Congress that will make all the guns evaporate, instant gratification, no asking why so many Americans feel so alienated from society that they believe stockpiling guns is the answer; no deep cultural soul-searching or serious long-term investments in making society work for everyone including its most vulnerable. Nobody wants to ask the simple question "Why?"