2013 America (and Friends!) Gun Violence Thread No Plows Allowed!

[thetruepandagod]

Wow, didn't even know about that one. Though New York has I believe, the strictest gun control laws in the country.

I believe so, it's gotta fairly low gun murders as well, no fucking clue whats going on in D.C they ruin the national average like crazy.

[thetruepandagod]

I highly doubt it would "make things worse" if it was abolished.

We don't fight wars with militias anymore, and even our extremely well armed populace is not a useful check against our ridiculously powerful military. Owning guns puts you at a greater risk of gun death than the risk it prevents by being able to use them against intruders.

So basically it's down to "muh freedoms" vs. lots of murder and suicide.

I disagree with the bolded at least until there are automated killing machines like that creepy dog machine with a turret. As long as a person is required to police a corner or pull a trigger an armed populace is still a very powerful thing. But I do agree its a freedoms vs deaths/negatives though. I side with the freedom an important thing however, but would agree with better enforced gun laws.

[Thunder]

That video of him doing interviews and reporting was his resume demo that he's sent to a number of newscasters, including CNN. There's really no ill intent or tell in the video, despite the very first clip being that in a gun store. Killers come in all forms, and can't be readily identified, as Melena has mentioned a post below yours. some people are just normal people who snap and go into kill mode with no prompt at all.

I think you misunderstood my post, as I implied everything you just said? What you said would be the entire point of showing the video. This guy seemed like a perfectly normal guy in the demo, and he went out to maliciously kill two people

It speaks to your post right above mine where you said

I get pretty irked every time a conservative (or a conservative wanna be) explains killings away as being done by a deranged, crazy or disgruntled employee or person.

Wouldn't painting this guy as a regular dude be a different angle to take VS gun control that has been taken in the past?

[Sho]

It speaks to your post right above mine where you said Wouldn't painting this guy as a regular dude be a different angle to take VS gun control that has been taken in the past?

This doesn't matter as people who lean conservative will paint everyone as a deranged/mentally ill person regardless of their background once the crime happens. They will never be seen as a normal person in the media or any other outlet, even if they were seemingly normal before the incident.

If they are crazy looking people who went on a killing spree, they will be seen as deranged. If they were normal and had a mental break and went on a killing spree, they too will be seen as deranged.

My original post challenges conservatives (hypothetically) on finding a solution to people who they deem have mental illness when they commit these murders/killing sprees, one that could side step gun laws and still reduce the number of tragedies. I come back around and state the solution is that there isn't any that doesn't lead to some sort of gun control.

[Blubbartron]

I'd rather not turn into the UK.

>snipped images<

Not saying i'm against reform of gun laws however.



Is this something that people on BG actually want abolished?

I agree that the UK is being ridiculous with the knife ban - a melee weapon will never be as dangerous as a ranged weapon, ever. But yes, I do support the repeal of the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment was created at a time when it was relevant, and it hasn't been relevant in well over a century. Clinging to it is stupid and dangerous, exactly as our forefathers said it would be. The constitution is a living document, and is supposed to change with every generation. It hasn't changed nearly enough.

[Moss]

I really wish you guys wouldn't glorify this dude by sharing videos and crap about him. I think it's completely appropriate to mourn the victims, acknowledge that he was a sick man, and go from there. It makes me sick every time these things happen and the media dives into a biography of the shooter as if that weren't exactly what he wanted. Dude even has some manifesto apparently. Ugh.

So we shouldn't look into his background/biography because that's what he would have wanted? Who the fuck cares. I also fail to see how anyone here is "glorifying" him.

[Aksannyi]

On the gun thing, I do agree with what Melena said regarding guns, particularly with safety and licensing. I think it should be similar to owning a car, you have to get licensed for it before you can do it. However, it should differ in that people should be retested for gun ownership every few years, unlike a driver's license, where you can get it once when you're 16 and be cleared to drive for life (which I kind of think is stupid but it's beside the point).

I also think that gun control to where this citizenship is entirely disarmed is incredibly unrealistic and dangerous. But I also do believe it will never happen. I safely own a gun, along with many members of my family and a lot of my friends (many prior LEO or military) and I have yet to meet a person who is willing to hand their guns over to the government. I sincerely wish them luck if they try, and I know how right-wing nutjob that sounds.

But yeah, it will be very difficult to regulate an already unregulated system and I would be wholly unsurprised if they tried and failed. And changing the legalities of gun ownership isn't going to do anything against those who would obtain them illegally, as they're already doing that now, and they're not suddenly going to be like, "Welp, gotta follow the law now."

[Andalusian girls]

modern day gun ownership is and ought be a privilege, not a right. when he wrote the 2nd Amendment James Madison was clearly concerned with maintaining a militia to both combat central government overreach and to provide the state with the troops necessary to wage war in lieu of a standing army (which many of the founders were terrified of as historically when democracies died it was at the hands of a domestic professional soldier), but the evolution of the nation-state, particularly its monopolization of violence, has rendered both rationales anachronistic. no one fears a coup from the military any longer and all available evidence suggests the prevalence of private gun ownership increases rather than decreases the rate of state violence directed against the civilian populace, primarily in the form of an edgy police force far too quick to resort to lethal force

i skeet shoot and hunt and as such imagine i use guns more than 95% of blue but the level of gun violence in the country is a national disgrace when you look at the rates of our first-world neighbors. repealing the 2nd amendment is a fiction, but a national assault weapons ban, the ban of high capacity clips, a mandatory waiting period and strict background check for all gun sales including the extralegal ones at gun shows, and a general tightening of gun owner licensing coupled with registering the remaining legal firearms with a codified national registry are all realistic, ameliorative steps.

essentially the Australian model writ large, a nation that saw 50% homicide by firearm + 80% suicide by firearm reductions since enacting sweeping gun reform laws following the Port Arthur Massacre

[Sho]

But yeah, it will be very difficult to regulate an already unregulated system and I would be wholly unsurprised if they tried and failed. And changing the legalities of gun ownership isn't going to do anything against those who would obtain them illegally, as they're already doing that now, and they're not suddenly going to be like, "Welp, gotta follow the law now."

This is why gun laws would work in tandem with the feds tightening up on illegal gun trafficking. They both have to be implemented at literally the same time. I mean if not this, then it would still lead to something Blubba posted a while back -- it would put people on notice if it was a wholly illegal act to have a gun.

[Xajii]

So we shouldn't look into his background/biography because that's what he would have wanted? Who the fuck cares. I also fail to see how anyone here is "glorifying" him.

Here is what I wrote elsewhere when I had a bit more time to formulate my thoughts on it:

To share video on the hour every hour and report on every detail of a murderer's personal life, motives, and actions effectively guides the news away from the issues that lay under the tragedy. Mental illness is a well-documented and complex issue that is being researched exhaustively every day and the media has neither the qualifications nor the authority to serve as educators on this matter.

Due to the prevalence of mental illness in the United States relative to other countries (if you are to believe the narrowly scoped, admittedly flawed study on the matter from WHO in 2004), we tend to ignore other factors in the disproportionate violent crime rate of our country. Aside from giving two days' lip service to circular gun control arguments, we plaster the photo of a murderer everywhere, dig up their social media, perform completely irresponsible analysis of their thoughts/actions, and shake our heads sadly for about a week.

I just want to ask people to please think about what role you play in the narrative. To say we are saddened by the actions of a sick man is one thing - to satiate our morbid curiosity by consuming and sharing every bit of information about him is quite another. Moreover, the discussion cannot stop at mental health, and we are not making any progress or raising any awareness by nodding when our news anchors tell us that this was a deeply disturbed man.


Thankfully, in the case of BG, it seems that people are having a more targeted discussion about some of the problems associated with this type of crime, so it isn't as relevant here now as it was elsewhere in my social circles

[Galkaeater]

We don't fight wars with militias anymore, and even our extremely well armed populace is not a useful check against our ridiculously powerful military.

Afganistan

[archibaldcrane]

Afganistan

Wat

[archibaldcrane]

Xaiji, I don't really have reason to believe he was "mentally ill".

He had a problem, and saw a gun as his solution. Seeing guns as the solution is a national problem, not limited to the mentally ill.

[Meph]

Flamethrowers spark Second Amendment debate

[6souls]

I don't see this mentioned yet, but the gunman was pronounced dead at 1:26 pm et.

WDBJ Director Dan Dennison went on air to say the guy was an "unhappy man" who had a reputation of being difficult to work with.

[AidenCarby]

Xaiji, I don't really have reason to believe he was "mentally ill".

He had a problem, and saw a gun as his solution. Seeing guns as the solution is a national problem, not limited to the mentally ill.

This

[Xajii]

Xaiji, I don't really have reason to believe he was "mentally ill".

He had a problem, and saw a gun as his solution. Seeing guns as the solution is a national problem, not limited to the mentally ill.

I completely agree with the last sentence. That being said, I have a hard time parsing that someone could make that logical jump and not be mentally ill.

Mental illness is a wide, wide spectrum. I'm not saying he had to have been American Psycho. Still...

[AidenCarby]

Or maybe he just snapped, doesn't mean he's mentally ill. We all at some point in our lives have made irrational decisions, some more irrational than others.

[Andalusian girls]

people don't snap, violence is a learned behavior and violent outbursts such as these usually have lengthy psychological progressions behind them. and the mentally ill are not more violent than the general populace

[Xajii]

At any rate, the entire point of what I pasted there was to steer away a discussion I was a part of from "what a sick person mental illness is such a big usse why is no one talking about it" and more towards things liek, y'know, guns.

It is a trend in the media to use a perpetrator's past, social media, and their posted words/actions (i.e., video form his POV, his tweets, etc.) as evidence of his illness to explain away the violence. That's what I was worried about.

As I said, BG quickly turned to the discussion about guns, given that that is the topic of this thread. I did not mean to be critical of the userbase here, I am just a little sensitive to the whole "here's the kiler's face and life story for a week" shit for a whole host of reasons, some of which you all clearly don't agree with, and I'd rather just drop it than debate that in the wrong thread.