About the Texas massacre and easy access to guns.

[KennyAtom]

It's like the right wing want to create crime, so they can fight it themselves.

honestly I don't think crime is connected to any party, it's just crime, and it depends on how hard the specific political party fights it.

 

[Foxi4]

from the same article:

"Although knife crime is on the increase, it should be seen in context. It's relatively unusual for a violent incident to involve a knife, and rarer still for someone to need hospital treatment.
Most violence is caused by people hitting, kicking, shoving or slapping someone, sometimes during a fight and often when they're drunk; the police figures on violence also include crimes of harassment and stalking.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales, which includes offences that aren't reported to police, indicates that overall levels of violence have fallen by about a quarter since 2013.
However, the police-recorded statistics - which tend to pick up more "high harm" crimes - have indicated that the most serious violent crime is increasing."

Please don't describe the UK as some sort of Mad Max hellhole with violence at every corner. It is in no way a justification to bear guns, let alone to take them around. I also would like to add that this increased violence happened after 10+ years of Conservative rule (you know, your friends), and there is an undeniable link between violence, poverty and austerity.

I’m not at all surprised that the BBC would spin the government’s yarn and blame the increase in knife crime on everything except the root causes. I’m also uninterested in their opinion, I’m only interested in the figures.

You are pretending that you can train everyone to defend themselves against an attacker. The problem is you can't solve the issue that bad guys will also be able to be trained, they will always be better prepared.

Knife and gun crime in the UK are both lower than the US.

There were 34 firearm homicides in the US per million of population in 2016, compared with 0.48 shooting-related murders in the UK.

Knife murders are also higher stateside: there were 4.96 homicides “due to knives or cutting instruments” in the US for every million of population in 2016.

In Britain there were 3.26 homicides involving a sharp instrument per million people in the year from April 2016 to March 2017.

So it seems that inconveniently for you, the UK strategy works. All we need to do now is get rid of this stupid right wing government and see if we can go back to fixing why people end up wanting to commit crimes in the first place.

The fact that you can’t train everyone to defend themselves is an argument in favour of gun ownership, not against it. I didn’t say that increasing restrictions doesn’t yield results, I said that it’s a pendulum - it swings.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

honestly I don't think crime is connected to any party, it's just crime, and it depends on how hard the specific political party fights it.

Maybe, but it is connected to specific policies. Despite all the bluster, the link between poverty and crime exists. As does the link between crime by "common people" and unpunished crime perpetrated by politicians.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

I’m not at all surprised that the BBC would spin the government’s yarn and blame the increase in knife crime on everything except the root causes. I’m also uninterested in their opinion, I’m only interested in the figures.

The BBC is a Tory mouthpiece, so...

 

[V10lator]

I hear the argument "at the 50s scoolers was armed so there was no massacres" quite often. Did anyone follow this link? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States_(before_2000)

The fact that this was no massacres is pretty often that all they had was pistols, revolvers or shotguns. Just think what could have happened at these few examples if the scooler had access to fully-automatic military grade weapons:

November 12, 1949: Ohio State University freshman James Heer took a .45-caliber handgun from the room of a Delta Tau Delta fraternity brother and killed 21-year-old Jack McKeown, a senior and fraternity brother.

November 18, 1949: 16-year-old LaVon Cain of DuSable High School was shot to death at the school after a group of female students began shooting at another group of female students. The shooting was over domestic disputes that had occurred days prior.

March 12, 1951: Professor W.E. Sweatt, superintendent and teacher at the Alexander School, was killed by 16-year-old Billy Ray Powell and 19-year-old Hugh Justice, students whom he had reprimanded. The boys fled and also shot Wade Johnson, 15, for reporting their rule infraction to Sweatt.

April 8, 1952: A 15-year-old boarding school student shot a dean rather than give up his pin-up pictures of girls in bathing suits.

January 11, 1955: After some of his dormmates urinated on his mattress during a hazing, Robert B. Bechtel, a 22-year-old student proctor at Swarthmore College, returned to his Wharton Hall dorm with a shotgun and killed fellow student 19-year-old Francis Holmes Strozier.

May 4, 1956: 15-year-old student Billy Ray Prevatte fatally shot 32-year-old teacher Frazer Cameron and injured 25-year-old athletic coach Francis Daniel Wagner and 31-year-old teacher Robert Hicks at Maryland Park Junior High School. He left after waiting outside the principal's office for a reprimand due to failing to turn in a written physical education assignment; he returned with a rifle, shooting the three staff members.

February 2, 1960: Hartford City, Indiana, Principal Leonard Redden shot and killed two teachers with a shotgun at William Reed Elementary School before fleeing into a remote forest, where he committed suicide.

October 17, 1961: 14-year-old Tennyson Beard got into an argument with 15-year-old William Hachmeister at Morey Junior High School, shooting and wounding him. Another shot fatally struck 14-year-old Deborah Faith Humphrey. Beard attempted suicide but survived.

April 27, 1966: 48-year-old teacher John S. Lane was fatally wounded when he tried to stop 16-year-old student James Arthur Frampton, who was armed with a shotgun and seeking boys he had argued with earlier that day. Lane died about six weeks later.

August 1, 1966: University of Texas tower shooting: 25-year-old engineering student Charles Whitman fatally shot 15 people and wounded 31 more during a 96-minute shooting rampage from the observation deck of the university. He was shot and killed by police. He had earlier murdered his wife and his mother at their homes.

This dates back so much, the argument "everything was better in the past" just can't be valid:

November 12, 1840: John Anthony Gardner Davis, a law professor at the University of Virginia, was shot by student Joseph Semmes and died three days later.

February 20, 1874: After being ejected from school for disobedience, 20-year-old Thomas Squires fatally shot Prof. Hayes three times in the abdomen.

See, kids don't need to be insane to do this. They just need to have some hard time. Having a hard time is just normal in that age. Didn't you get bullied or even where a bully, too? These hard times are part of slowly transforming into an adult but at the point this happens they are just kids. Kids which should never ever have access to weapons.
Also you won't see this coming as a parent. Did your parents note you where getting bullied? Or in case you where the bully: Didn't you do anything to ensure the ones won't talk to their parents about such things?

//EDIT: So you can't blame the parents for not seeing things they can't see. You also can't blame the scoolers for acting immature as they are immature kids. What else is left to blame?

 

[Foxi4]

The fact that this was no massacres is pretty often that all they had was pistols, revolvers or shotguns. Just think what could have happened at these few examples if the scooler had access to fully-automatic military grade weapons:

…school kids don’t have access to “fully-automatic military grade weapons”, almost nobody does. Fully automatic rifles, aka “assault rifles” are either heavily restricted (special permit required) or outright prohibited (based on calibre and other factors), along with destructive devices and all sorts of military weapons. There is no functional difference between the weapons used in the 50’s compared to weapons used today - semi-automatic autoloading rifles have existed for over a century now.

I always wonder where this weird myth is coming from, what causes this weird misconception that Americans are running around with machine guns and automatic rifles. Is it because modern, modular rifle platforms are “black and scary”? They’re not assault rifles, provided we agree that “assault rifles” are an actual class of rifle rather than a turn of phrase used to describe an automatic rifle, which is debatable.

 

[V10lator]

There is no functional difference between the weapons used in the 50’s compared to weapons used today

What Gun Was Used in The Texas School Shooting?
An AR-15 rifle was used

AR-15 weapons have become increasingly popular since 2004, which was when a ban on federal assault weapons in the U.S. ended.

The firearm has been repeatedly used in mass shootings over the years, including San Bernardino, Las Vegas and Sandy Hook.

It also has a feature that prevents ammunition jams, and in a state such as Texas, you can openly carry rifles in public without a permit, meaning you can legally carry a military-grade weapon such as the AR-15.

Now re-read my examples: Nobody of the scoolers back in the days used such a beast but what they had access to back in the days: Revolvers, Pistols, Shotguns...

 

[Foxi4]

Now re-read my examples: Nobody of the scoolers back in the days used such a beast but what they had access to back in the days: Revolvers, Pistols, Shotguns...

What point are you making? This is a normal semi-automatic rifle. I don’t see an automatic option on the selector, although the photo is admittedly blurry. It’s not “a beast”, it’s modern. An AR-15 is not a “military-grade weapon”. People who call it a military-grade weapon don’t know anything about firearms. This weapon is functionally no different than an equivalent semi-automatic rifle with a wooden stock. I don’t know why you’re bringing up the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 - you were talking about the 50’s. Make up your mind - what time do you want to argue about? In any case, point stands. Weapons used in the 50’s weren’t functionally different from the ones used now - they just looked different. The notion that people in the 50’s were limited to shotguns, revolvers and bolt-action rifles is untrue. In fact, people from some of the examples you cited had access to *more* dangerous weapons than what’s available today as many of those cases predate the National Firearms Act of 1923. You think 30 rounds is scary? Try 100 in a drum gun magazine, in a nice, compact submachine gun. There’s a reason why Tommy Guns were called “Chicago Typewriters”. The M1921 was fully automatic and available for civilian use since 1921. Nowadays an equivalent firearm would be an NFA-registered item only available in a handful of states, only from Class-3 dealers and requiring an extensive background check. It’s exceedingly difficult to obtain anything like this on the open market.

 

[smf]

The fact that you can’t train everyone to defend themselves is an argument in favour of gun ownership, not against it.

No, it's not. Because you have to train everyone, everyone has to own a gun and has to be walking around with a finger on a trigger completely expecting to be shot at any point & they can still get shot from behind.

Better that nobody has guns, than everyone has guns.

 

[Foxi4]

No, it's not. Because you have to train everyone, everyone has to own a gun and has to be walking around with a finger on a trigger completely expecting to be shot at any point & they can still get shot from behind.

Better that nobody has guns, than everyone has guns.

Disagreed. Safety is not worth striving for if it comes at the cost of liberty. Nobody *forces* you to be armed, but on the flip side, your desire to feel safe should not come at the cost of someone’s right to purchase whatever means of self-defense they deem appropriate. Guns are the great equaliser - 9mm hits just as hard when shot by a tall, strong man as it does when shot by a short, scrawny woman. It allows everyone capable of bearing arms the same level of defense, assuming adequate proficiency.

 

[KennyAtom]

if someone would give up liberty for a little personal safety, they deserve neither, and will lose both. - Ben Franklin

 

[Dark_Ansem]

if someone would give up liberty for a little personal safety, they deserve neither, and will lose both. - Ben Franklin

Not what the quote is about: https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/3902...t-its-context-in-21st-century?t=1654179141031

And secondly. It's not "little personal safety'. It's life or death.

 

[Foxi4]

It's not "little personal safety'. It's life or death.

Exactly. That’s precisely why this right should never be infringed.

 

[Dark_Ansem]

Exactly. That’s precisely why this right should never be infringed.

Not if preserving said right keeps causing death. Which is what's happening.

 

[AlexMCS]

Better that nobody has guns, than everyone has guns.

How do you stop people from having guns? The cat is out of the bag. Guns exist.
There will always be someone who will have or make one.
You'd have to kill everyone in the world who has any notion of how a gun works (anyone older than 6), and delete all records of its existence, as well as similar contraptions, for it to stop being in someone's hands, and only for a while, mind you. Someone would inevitably invent it again.

Everyone having guns is a FAR better solution than a select few having them, as no one having them is impossible.

So let's be realistic.
I live in a country with rigid gun control, yet guns are the #1 cause of death in homicides over here.
Criminal organizations have tons of military grade guns.

Even if you move towards "more gun control", you end up with an abusive police force and open the country up to military coups.

Wake up.

 

[appleburger]

How do you stop people from having guns? The cat is out of the bag. Guns exist.
There will always be someone who will have or make one.
You'd have to kill everyone in the world who has any notion of how a gun works (anyone older than 6), and delete all records of its existence, as well as similar contraptions, for it to stop being in someone's hands, and only for a while, mind you. Someone would inevitably invent it again.

Everyone having guns is a FAR better solution than a select few having them, as no one having them is impossible.

So let's be realistic.
I live in a country with rigid gun control, yet guns are the #1 cause of death in homicides over here.
Criminal organizations have tons of military grade guns.

Even if you move towards "more gun control", you end up with an abusive police force and open the country up to military coups.

Wake up.

Oh wow. I just looked up the Brazilian gun control history wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_c...firearms are,such as law enforcement officers.

According to the article's sources, gun control measures were initially followed by a drop in crime rate, but then a surge which included the highest rate of gun deaths in 35 years. That's scary stuff.

@AlexMCS Are public shootings an issue there (compared to the US), as well? Or is it more so the crime rate that's talked about? I feel like in the US we've switched from crime rate as a talking point to these highly publicized shootings.

 

[Foxi4]

Not if preserving said right keeps causing death. Which is what's happening.

Driving keeps causing deaths every year too, and we’re at a point where technology allows us to put a stop to that with self-driving. Heck, where do you need to go so badly? The roads could exist for the purposes of commerce only, civilian use of roads is dangerous - think of the children. We can stop, or greatly diminish, traffic fatalities tomorrow. That doesn’t mean that the right to travel should be restricted - it never should.

 

[djpannda]

Even if you move towards "more gun control", you end up with an abusive police force and open the country up to military coups.

Wake up.

yea.. I know look at all the 3rd world countries that restricted Guns. They have suffered Major military coups and the GANGS taking over... Look at.....UK... I mean Scotland........ I mean Australia ...noo Japan..
wait all those countries are 1st world Power houses with with LIMITED Gun deaths because they have Real Gun Laws.

looks like RIDICULOUS Gun deaths number are only a US problem ....

\

 

[Foxi4]

yea.. I know look at all the 3rd world countries that restricted Guns. They have suffered Major military coups and the GANGS taking over... Look at.....UK... I mean Scotland........ I mean Australia ...noo Japan..
wait all those countries are 1st world Power houses with with LIMITED Gun deaths because they have Real Gun Laws.

looks like RIDICULOUS Gun deaths number are only a US problem ....View attachment 312400\

I like how you’re including Ireland in the list - y’know, the country that suffers from regular terrorist/separatist attacks, including shootings and bombings. There hasn’t been a year since 1998 when the Real IRA hasn’t committed some kind of crime or attack on the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Real_Irish_Republican_Army_actions

Mostly peaceful, if you ignore regular bombings and shelling of government buildings with mortars. Canada is a great example after The Honkening, as is Australia, Germany and most of the other countries on this list. I think the French Yellow Vests have a thing or two to say about government tyranny too, but who am I to judge?

I am yet to see someone actually describe what “sensible gun control” is. Anyone can buy an AR-15-style rifle in the UK with relative ease as long as they have a Section 1 license, and as long as it’s chambered in .22 Long Rifle they can even have it in semi-auto. They’re legal here. *Clearly* the platform itself is not the problem.

 

[djpannda]

I like how you’re including Ireland in the list - y’know, the country that suffers from regular terrorist/separatist attacks, including shootings and bombings. There hasn’t been a year since 1998 when the Real IRA hasn’t committed some kind of crime or attack on the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Real_Irish_Republican_Army_actions

Mostly peaceful, if you ignore regular bombings and shelling of government buildings with mortars. Canada is a great example after The Honkening, as is Australia, Germany and most of the other countries on this list. I think the French Yellow Vests have a thing or two to say about government tyranny too, but who am I to judge?

terrorist attacks are not the same as civil gun Death. Arming the Irish is not going to stop terrorist attacks, its going to increase the attack 100 folds as thats more Imperialism issue then a "Gun Violence"