Skim through his room, his computer(if you cant google his youtube account). Maybe interview his family, friends. Check his cellphone. Check his work place. Check the government records. Make sure his house isn't being foreclosed. Check for suicidal urges, interview neighbors. Check his finance. Any one of those things, preferably all of them. As for determinations made and potential danger, I don't have a certain opinion yet. I'll have to get back to you on that. For now, use your imagination. At what point do you think a person should have gun privileges withheld?
Ahh. So infringe upon all of his civil liberties. Got it.
daedalus wrote: I've lived 30 years without a house fire. Were I a thinking man like yourself, I would rip out all those costly smoke alarms and sprinkler systems.
I think you'd be safe. I also think that's a genuine curiosity he has about that 240 years.
Oh, well, if you're right, I just feel like a jerk. :(
I would imagine that it probably was used in the civil war quite a bit as well. I doubt everyone who had to participate was a part of the actual army.
Vaktathi wrote: It's a safeguard in case of duress that dates back nearly 240 years.
How many time was it used during those 240 years?
I'm no American but off the top of my head...
French & Indian Wars.
War of Independence.
War of 1812.
Civil War.
And all manner of conflicts, skirmishes and periods of lawlessness.
Those would have surely all involved civilian Militias involved in armed conflict, resisting invasion and oppression or just simply defending themselves in lawless regions (the Frontier) against Indian tribes, bands of outlaws and each other? Having been founded as a nation of Colonial settlers spread out over huge distances far from Authorities and security forces, people had to fend for themselves.
French & Indian Wars.
War of Independence.
War of 1812.
Civil War.
And all manner of conflicts, skirmishes and periods of lawlessness.
Those would have surely all involved civilian Militias involved in armed conflict, resisting invasion and oppression or just simply defending themselves in lawless regions (the Frontier) against Indian tribes, bands of outlaws and each other? Having been founded as a nation of Colonial settlers spread out over huge distances far from Authorities and security forces, people had to fend for themselves.
So, are you both speaking about just using guns, or specifically using guns to keep the government in check? Because I am of course familiar with the whole western/cowboy/civil war thing. I mean, the Italians did such a good job at making movies out of it . But I was wondering about examples specifically against the government of the U.S.A.
In Ohio you have to take 8 hours of classroom training, apply for your license, get fingerprinted, have your fingerprints run through AFIS, and then typically wait 2-3 months to get it (I've seen shorter, I've seen longer).
That's what I was implying earlier: that not all states are "get it and go."
In Ohio you also have to have 4 hours of range time, so it ends up being 12 hours of training total.
Vaktathi wrote: It's a safeguard in case of duress that dates back nearly 240 years.
How many time was it used during those 240 years?
It's been used plenty, there's been Indians and Mexicans to kill all through out US history, and you never know when Canada may step out of line.
Guns are needed for when the government fails the people, which can happen at any point and we're not talking strictly about at national level. Police are managed by the local government, often they are very far away and unable to deal with crimes. This was also the case for much of US history, while major cities have police rural areas do not and you cannot depend on them for help when they may be a very long distance away. Even in modern day there are areas of the country where if you call the police for help they may not respond for an hour or more.
Even inner city areas like Detroit, Los Angeles, New York all have incredibly long response times _if_ they even show up at all.
You have to keep in mind most of our states are larger than the average country in Europe, it's a lot of territory to cover and a lot of areas are pretty sparsely populated and they don't have a regular police force. Suppose you live in Troyes, would you be comfortable waiting for police to reply if they had to come all the way from Paris? There are many areas of the US where police help is that far away or more.
Grey Templar wrote: The downside of not having an armed populace is unacceptable, no matter how low the chance of such a situation happening.
I disagree. I even disagree with the idea that this is a downside. I believe I live in a society developed enough that people can get their voice heard and can even overthrow government without needing guns. Revolutions and regime change have been known to happen without armed populace/mob and heavy fighting in several occasions. Actually, I think those tend to lead on with better, more democratic and stable regime imho.
Europe will eventually again be crushed under the boot of a dictator. It may be a hundred years off, but it will happen eventually. And you will lament that you didn't see it coming, and couldn't stop it with a vote at the polls.
The ultimate folly is thinking your society is incapable of crumbling and falling to a dictatorship.
In Ohio you have to take 8 hours of classroom training, apply for your license, get fingerprinted, have your fingerprints run through AFIS, and then typically wait 2-3 months to get it (I've seen shorter, I've seen longer).
That's what I was implying earlier: that not all states are "get it and go."
In Ohio you also have to have 4 hours of range time, so it ends up being 12 hours of training total.
Forgot about the range time stipulation.
Needless to say the range time wasn't a big concern for me
I disagree. I even disagree with the idea that this is a downside. I believe I live in a society developed enough that people can get their voice heard and can even overthrow government without needing guns. Revolutions and regime change have been known to happen without armed populace/mob and heavy fighting in several occasions. Actually, I think those tend to lead on with better, more democratic and stable regime imho.
stanman wrote: Guns are needed for when the government fails the people, which can happen at any point and we're not talking strictly about at national level. .
The example of Koreatown during the LA riots is instructive.
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Grey Templar wrote: You know the Nazis were pretty popular in Germany, they took over democratically.
I believe we also had Zimmerman in this thread earlier, so... it's going pretty well.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I believe I live in a society developed enough that people can get their voice heard and can even overthrow government without needing guns. Revolutions and regime change have been known to happen without armed populace/mob and heavy fighting in several occasions.
Can you please provide some instances for peaceful revolution on a national level?
I'd love to see an instance where an existing government has been overthrown by the people without armed revolt occurring. It might happen with small townships or villages but on a national level there's always serious fighting involved. A peaceful resolution would be ideal, but the problem is that the world doesn't operate in the realm of ideals and potential violence cannot be eliminated as a consideration in any aspect of life.
Lets have a quick quiz. Does anyone think that to exercise any other right there should be background checks, waiting periods, arbitrary restrictions, licensing, and training?
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Be specific. How precisely do you think that gun control laws can be "more thorough and stringent"? Remember, the attacker got his guns legally in California which is not exactly a Mecca for gun owners, is known for being a "may issue" State, and has been at the forefront of "common sense" restrictions on firearms.
You also ignored the point that a Senator cane out after this tragedy to push for gun control, and pretty much admitted that what he is pushing would have done nothing in this case.
There we go with the contradictions again,. And self-defense against crime or an attack only happens at home?
If you really can't substantiate your position then is it a viable one? Why should someone not be able to possess a CCW in public?
So we install firearms (who installs them? Who purchases them? Who buys the ammunition? Who is responsible for the maintenance? Who is accountable for them? Who has access to them? How are they secured?) that are likely only to see periodic use by people who are unfamiliar with them, and that is supposed to make people safer? Surely it is easier to allow for CCW so that the people possessing the firearm actually know the features of the weapon (location of safeties; whether you hold the sights on target, or at 6 o'clock; recoil to expect; etc.)
How can we be too strict with gun control laws, yet have laws that are too loose when it comes to people buying guns? I would really like you to explain this, and be specific.
Dude, I'm too lazy to post a small essay to explain to you everything I'm thinking. Use your imagination.
You know what, maybe I'll come back to it when I feel like writing an essay. Maybe I'll PM it to you.
So no suggestions as to what could be improved, and I am to make your argument for you. That is certainly an interesting way to have a conversation.
Ouze wrote: This really isn't a gun control issue, since he got it rolling with some stabbings, yes?
That is the elephant in the room. Very few people who want gun control want to talk about that inconvenient fact.
It's a sad thing that this occurred, but at the same time nobody cries tragedy over the number of auto related deaths that occur every day (which is an average of about 90-100 per day in the US).
Guns get a lot of media hype over a fairly small number of related deaths, cars, alcohol, drugs and even cigarettes kill far more people on a daily basis but we don't have news articles lam blasting them at every opportunity.
They refuse to "identify" him... but have no problem showing part of his tape... riiiiight
This reminds me of the boston bombing survivor who backed out of meet the press because they dared mention the names of the bombers. You know, journalism.
Grey Templar wrote: You know the Nazis were pretty popular in Germany, they took over democratically.
Yeah. That is precisely why Germans having guns would not have prevented them rising to power. Especially since gun-toting SA and SS would have certainly out-violenced those that would have faced them.
Guns will not prevent fascism from rising to power through subversion of our democratic systems. And fascism will not be able to gain power by other means in western European countries, or the U.S.A. Hence, if we are to focus on preventing fascism from taking over our countries, really we should focus on educating people about its danger rather than getting more weapons out into the public.
stanman wrote: Can you please provide some instances for peaceful revolution on a national level?
Europe will eventually again be crushed under the boot of a dictator. It may be a hundred years off, but it will happen eventually. And you will lament that you didn't see it coming, and couldn't stop it with a vote at the polls.
And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
This reminds me of the boston bombing survivor who backed out of meet the press because they dared mention the names of the bombers. You know, journalism.
That's funny because I think he was a fan of theirs
maybe not, but any attempting to set up a dictatorship would have to contend with an armed population. And a classic sign of attempting to solidify power is to disarm the civilians(or at least those who don't support you)
An armed populace keeps the politicians scared. And believe me that the gun grabbers are scared of gun holders, because they don't like what they signify. That ultimate power rests with the people.
The vote isn't your power, the vote is just your means of voicing your opinion. The power behind that vote is a .45 in one hand and a Molotov in the other.
And believe me that the gun grabbers are scared of gun holders, because they don't like what they signify.
Yeah. They don't like a bunch of people running around with guns spouting insanity. People get scared by that kind of stuff just as much as you get scared by tyranical government.
I can't decide if that's funny, sad or both. South Korea protests Roh Tae Woo being selected for president without a vote, demands a vote but immediately elects Roh Tae Woo. How is this supposed to be a vast reformation of the government? End result is that it's the same guy in office regardless of if they were to have a vote or not.
So, are you both speaking about just using guns, or specifically using guns to keep the government in check? Because I am of course familiar with the whole western/cowboy/civil war thing. I mean, the Italians did such a good job at making movies out of it . But I was wondering about examples specifically against the government of the U.S.A.
Come on, think. Its not that complicated. Imagine any situation when armed civilians resisted the rule of Governments and other entities of Authority, whether domestic or foreign.
The Civil War would qualify as armed civilians "specifically resisting the Government of the USA".
Other than that, just because Americans have never since been in open, armed conflict with their own government doesn't mean they haven't needed their firearms against invading Foreign powers.
French & Indian Wars. Series of wars and skirmishes between the French and British Colonial powers (with the American states being British colonies at the time). Both sides exploit native Indian tribes to launch raids into enemy territory, harass supply lines, raze communities etc. Regular troops engage in battle, invade and occupy territory. Armed civilians defend themselves against invaders and raiders.
War of Independence. American rebels, patriots and militias overthrew a remote and tyrannical Government. Lots of Militias are formed to resist British rule,
War of 1812. Said tyrannical Government and its Colony invaded America.
Civil War. Civil War erupts between the States and two rival Governments are formed. The South views the Union Government as a tyranny, attempting to force its will onto them and to strip away the Southern States' rights and the rights of Slave-owners. Both sides raid across the borders, terrorising civilians. Civilians form Militias to defend their communities, fight as partisans or sign up to the Confederate or Union armies.
Plus as other posters have mentioned, there was the War with Mexico.
I can't decide if that's funny, sad or both. South Korea protests Roh Tae Woo being selected for president without a vote, demands a vote but immediately elects Roh Tae Woo. How is this supposed to be a vast reformation of the government? End result is that it's the same guy in office regardless of if they were to have a vote or not.
Thats assuming that the vote wasn't rigged to produce the result the Elite wanted...
Europe will eventually again be crushed under the boot of a dictator. It may be a hundred years off, but it will happen eventually. And you will lament that you didn't see it coming, and couldn't stop it with a vote at the polls.
And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
Because they would literally have to kill 80%+ of the population to do that.
But otherwise they'd have no country to rule.
A B-52 is going to be worthless in the event of a guerrilla war against insurgents in your own country. Tanks are VERY vulnerable to people with any amount of ingenuity and some gasoline.
As was pointed out earlier, there is nowhere near enough soldiers in the US army to control all the armed civilians there are in the US. Even if only a portion were involved in resistance they'd still be fighting a losing battle.
You say an insurgence wouldn't work, yet it seems to be working just fine in Iraq and Afghanistan. And beat the US in Vietnam. Even the Russians couldn't beat Afghanistan, and they certainly had no qualms about collateral damage.
Would private gun ownership stop it once it started? No.
Would it help end it and provide one heck of a deterrent? Hell yes.
Peregrine wrote: And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
That is precisely what I think, but apparently I am wrong and the civilians with their guns would somehow crush the army. Apparently they have proof of that from the fact Afghanistan won the war against the U.S.A. thanks to the insurgents or something. I somehow felt like the fact there were many U.S. troops in Afghanistan and no Afghan forces in the U.S. was as a clear sign that the U.S. won, but apparently it is the other way around.
Peregrine wrote: And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
That is precisely what I think, but apparently I am wrong and the civilians with their guns would somehow crush the army. Apparently they have proof of that from the fact Afghanistan won the war against the U.S.A. thanks to the insurgents or something. I somehow felt like the fact there were many U.S. troops in Afghanistan and no Afghan forces in the U.S. was as a clear sign that the U.S. won, but apparently it is the other way around.
They don't have to have won to show its effectiveness.
Insurgents just need to outlast their opponents, or kill them all.
Anyway, take Vietnam. That war got lost because the insurgents outlasted public opinion of the war.
An analogous situation would be the rebels in a Dictatorship lasting till they gain more popular support and overthrow the government.
Even tank drivers have to get out to take a piss or refuel, you don't need to defeat the tank if you can defeat the driver and that's how a lowly rifle or pistol in the hands of an armed citizen will trump a tank.
There's a lot more ex-military members in the US then active military. (Who are every bit as trained and skilled as our active members) They can do some serious damage if it came down to it, and almost all of them exercise their gun ownership rights in a major way. If things got that bad I think there'd also be a lot of active service men siding with the civilians, as much as we like to get into heated debates we tend to put our loyalty with our neighbors before the government. As long as we have the means to protect ourselves then we will, thankfully that's supported by the constitution.
Grey Templar wrote: Because they would literally have to kill 80%+ of the population to do that.
Sorry, but that's an absolutely ridiculous assumption. 80% of the population might own guns, but I seriously doubt you're going to get 100% of the gun owners to support violent revolution. Remember, even the Nazis, as horrifyingly evil as they were, had widespread popular support and only limited opposition to crush. You're going to have a very hard time coming up with a plausible scenario where a government with near-universal opposition manages to get into power in the first place. The much more likely scenario is one where the oppressive government has lots of support, and only oppresses a minority of the population while most gun owners shrug and say "not my problem" because martyrdom in a doomed revolution isn't actually that appealing when it becomes more than just an idle fantasy.
A B-52 is going to be worthless in the event of a guerrilla war against insurgents in your own country.
Depends on how much collateral damage you want to inflict. If the goal is to wipe a rebelling town off the map it's a great option. Though feel free to replace the B-52 with a drone armed with hellfire missiles, and the NSA providing your cell phone records to track you and figure out what house to blow up. The exact weapon isn't important, what matters is the fact that the military has all the big guns and will have no problem killing a few untrained idiots with AR-15s.
As was pointed out earlier, there is nowhere near enough soldiers in the US army to control all the armed civilians there are in the US. Even if only a portion were involved in resistance they'd still be fighting a losing battle.
Depends on the size of the portion. If 1% of gun owners have both the ideological opposition to the government and the courage to risk their lives to fight it, while a solid majority of the rest would happily hand the traitors over to the secret police if they dare to ask for support, then the military won't have very many problems with limited numbers.
Plus, you're also ignoring the fact that the military doesn't need to control everything at once. They just need to kill anyone who openly resists (go ahead, convince your entire town to rebel and declare yourselves independent, the B-52 strike is on its way) and to escort the police as they go around enforcing whatever evil policies your hypothetical evil government wants to enforce. For example, if the government wants to confiscate all guns (the ultimate evil!) they just need to control the immediate area that they're searching, the fact that some town 500 miles away isn't cooperating at the moment isn't very relevant. Once the current confiscation is complete (and anyone who dared to resist is dead) they can move on to the next town.
You say an insurgence wouldn't work, yet it seems to be working just fine in Iraq and Afghanistan. And beat the US in Vietnam. Even the Russians couldn't beat Afghanistan, and they certainly had no qualms about collateral damage.
It only "works" because the US wasn't willing to just massacre the civilian population, take the oil, and bring in our own settlers. The resistance only won because, despite our lack of concern for who else is in the blast radius when we drone a suspected "terrorist", we weren't willing to do whatever it takes to claim Iraq and Afghanistan. We still had those moral limits, and we weren't willing to break them just for the sake of winning. Your hypothetical evil government that justifies armed revolution isn't going to be nearly as generous.
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stanman wrote: Even tank drivers have to get out to take a piss or refuel, you don't need to defeat the tank if you can defeat the driver and that's how a lowly rifle or pistol in the hands of an armed citizen will trump a tank.
Assuming that the military doesn't just bulldoze a mile-wide buffer zone around every military base or fuel station and declare that anyone in that area will be shot on sight. Shooting the tank driver with your rifle assumes that you aren't dead before you can get within rifle range. And of course it also assumes that it's a tank, not an armed drone flying 10,000' overhead while being controlled from a loyal part of the country.
Yeah, I am pretty sure you will do very well against special forces. Or tanks. Or carpet bombing. Or maybe combat gas. Or… well, the possibility to kill you and your puny gun are endless for some fascist overlord, really.
Grey Templar wrote: The power behind that vote is a .45 in one hand and a Molotov in the other.
So, do you mean that were people do not have .45 or Molotov, they have no power and are not living in a democracy?
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: The Civil War would qualify as armed civilians "specifically resisting the Government of the USA".
Was it not the confederate against the union? Like, two governments facing each other? With armies, training, chain of commands, all that stuff?
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Other than that, just because Americans have never since been in open, armed conflict with their own government doesn't mean they haven't needed their firearms against invading Foreign powers.
Which is something completely different, which is now taken care of by the army.
Grey Templar wrote: Because they would literally have to kill 80%+ of the population to do that.
Are you serious? Do you actually believe people will all choose death over oppression and fight to the last men? Yeah, the army is not the best placed to suppress dissent. Your hypothetical fascist government will therefore use SS/pasdaran/death squads-type militia/police forces for the job. Terror tactics. Massive surveillance of the population. That kind of stuff.
Grey Templar wrote: Would private gun ownership stop it once it started? No.
Would it help end it and provide one heck of a deterrent? Hell yes.
How would it help end it exactly, and why would it act as a deterrent? You do not need mob with guns to execute a dictator after he has been overthrown. The fascist government would have no problem disarming people once it has reached power, and has no mean of reaching power without either massive popular support (in which case guns will help them) or a military coup (in which case they outgun people by a thousand time, and no, people will not jump gladly to their death.
In Ohio you have to take 8 hours of classroom training, apply for your license, get fingerprinted, have your fingerprints run through AFIS, and then typically wait 2-3 months to get it (I've seen shorter, I've seen longer).
That's what I was implying earlier: that not all states are "get it and go."
The Veity Cong was one of the most ineffective insurgencies in history. Their reputation is a myth created by the American Media who regularly attributed to them actions for the North Veitnamese Army.
I laught at your pulled from your hat number btw. Even the American Revoltion didn't have that kind of support. You think they won because they had guns? They won because they were 3000 miles from the government that could crush them otherwise, an advantage that didn't even help others. India and China had guns and numbers and they still got stomped. Seems you're view of the issue is rather shallow.
One can easily argue we've lost the war in Afghanistan in the sense that our long term goals there have likely failed. Losing a war doesn't mean you got conquered by a foreign power.
Another way to look at it would be to ask 'what exactly does your government have to do for a popular revolution to break out? Enslave people? Torture people? Experiment on them? Start illegal wars? Suspend habeas corpus?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that stuff has already happened and there has been no uprising. It's never gonna happen, guys.
If there's a revoltion in the US, all current indicators say it won't be because the government is tyranical. It'll be a class war. And even that idea is far fetched.
Waow this thread went from a Macho psycho nut killer to Macho against feminism to yet another Gun debacle conversation.
A good dictator would kidnap your loved ones and disembowel them on national TV to make a point, A terrorist Attack randomly choose an Elementary school to let the Dictators henchmen have some fun, Death squads at night also work good. Make the opposition disappear, And thanks to the internet, we know who you are! No one is safe!
Peregrine wrote: And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.
So the US military would just bomb its own cities and cripple its own infrastructure? So what would prevent other nation around the world from destablizing regions and expanding their territory?
Agian for people who didn't scroll back the US only has 200,000 combat troops in the US, split equally between the states that 4,000 troops Per state.
sebster wrote: But I think one issue is that unless a crime is committed, its pretty hard to get someone committed unless they're willing, and that appears to be the only other step.
My wife's mother, a few years back, started to have a serious of incidents where she would randomly start screaming at people, and wander around in public lost and agitated. She lived alone, and when it was clear she was a danger to herself, we tried having her committed temporarily for a psychiatric evaluation since we presumed this was incipient schizophrenia, of which there is a family history.
Turns out, it's incredibly hard to have someone committed against their will in this country* (as it probably should be) no matter how clearly they are delusional or outwardly... well, nutso acting. It's pretty heartbreaking to be on the other end of this, when you're impotent to help someone who will not allow themselves to be helped.
*Eventually she got into a screaming match with a cop, and then boom, psychiatric hold and then subsequent treatment.
Thanks for the story. And it's exactly what I was getting at - the restrictions on institutionalising someone are strict as they well should be, but it does leave a pretty problematic grey area where loved ones can see what it happening but can't get much meaningful help from the law until the person actually breaks a law.
I dont' really know how to solve the issue, or if it can be solved.
So the US military would just bomb its own cities and cripple its own infrastructure? So what would prevent other nation around the world from destablizing regions and expanding their territory?
Even tyrannies derive power from popular support. Especially if the theory is that a democracy is going to become a tyranny, it needs the popular support to enter that state to begin with. See Nazi Germany as an example. That regime took power violently, that only became possible for them because they enjoyed the support of a large segment of the population.
Grey Templar wrote: Europe will eventually again be crushed under the boot of a dictator. It may be a hundred years off, but it will happen eventually. And you will lament that you didn't see it coming, and couldn't stop it with a vote at the polls.
The ultimate folly is thinking your society is incapable of crumbling and falling to a dictatorship.
Actually, the ultimate folly is thinking having some guns can stop it happening. The Germans had guns, and contrary to the lies sold by the gun lobby Hitler expanded gun rights (except for the Jews). In Saddam's Iraq people could own assault rifles if they wanted.
A dictatorship that enforces its will through power alone is moments from collapse. Instead a dictatorship survives like any government - by doing enough for enough people (or at the very least making promises about doing enough down the track), that armed resistance doesn’t happen.
The plain and simple reality is that dictatorships flourish because enough of the people, enough of the people with guns, happen to support the dictator.
The idea that it can’t happen in America because you own guns is a fantasy.
Have to think though before one throws US Troops into a situation involving the populace of the United States.
Lawful Orders to Unlawful Orders. We had this thread though quite awhile back.
BTW I endorse going off topic on the original intent of this thread because we are not propping him up in stature anymore be it good or ill.
The weird thing is that all conversations in real life eventually go off topic. Why people get so annoyed by it makes me wonder if they've ever talked to someone else for more than 15 minutes.
LordofHats wrote: The weird thing is that all conversations in real life eventually go off topic. Why people get so annoyed by it makes me wonder if they've ever talked to someone else for more than 15 minutes.
Yea, all the time, but on a forum, you can control that, slightly more. When you just talk with friends, you just go from topic to topic because of the excitement/interest. Whatever that is...
stanman wrote: Guns get a lot of media hype over a fairly small number of related deaths, cars, alcohol, drugs and even cigarettes kill far more people on a daily basis but we don't have news articles lam blasting them at every opportunity.
Are you seriously unaware of the movement to restrict and even ban cigarettes? The drive towards more restrictive alcohol laws? The constant revision and analysis of driving road rules?
Also, 10,000 deaths a year is a big number when other countries with stricter gun laws (and very little gun culture) have homicide numbers per capita a quarter of yours, meaning if your numbers were similar you'd have 2,500 deaths a year. Compare that to, say, driving, where if you had deaths on the roads of four times other countries, you can guarantee you'd accept that what you were doing wasn't working and you'd change. Now, that said there is a point where clearly we accept deaths as a consequence of living our lives - we can't wrap everything in safety foam and never, ever do a dangerous thing ever again. And when alcohol kills 80,000 and people are willing to accept that number as the cost of getting drunk and having a good time when we want, there's an argument that gun deaths are worth the price of going shooting when we please.
But that's a debate that you actually have to have in good faith, and with the basic things I outlined above accepted by all parties. The problem is that right now you aren't even close to that debate, in part because the anti-gun movement runs straight past that debate with emotive nonsense and lurches straight in to writing bad law, while the pro-gun movement avoids that debate entirely with what could be described, at best, as disingenuous bs.
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Grey Templar wrote: Because they would literally have to kill 80%+ of the population to do that.
And if you have 80% of the population resisting, then the wheels fall off that government without ever needing to resort to violence. If 80% of the population simply decide to no longer support government and step back from the economy, you get overnight collapse simple as that.
The reality of political resistance is that your 80% number is total nonsense. People have this idea that because a government looks very bad to us here today, decades and thousands of miles from where it actually happened, then it must have been hated by the people in the country. But the reality is that even governments that do despicable things retain support (taking people in the middle of the night is accepted because it is the other side of politics who are taken, for instance). There was a core of the population that supported Pol Pot, for heaven's sake.
And that support only has to be a modest number, because most people will choose to remain completely outside of politics, just keep on working and looking after their own families. Once people commit to being part of the resistance, well then getting your hands on guns is the easy bit.
Insurgents just need to outlast their opponents, or kill them all.
That's the dynamic for a foreign invader, not a domestic government. Explain exactly how the government is 'outlasted' by the resistance? Eventually the government just gives up, and says losing a handful of soldiers every month is no longer worth it, and so it will no longer be a tyrannical dictatorship, and call for elections.
The dynamic in an internal resistance is quite different, because government, especially a genuinely oppressive one, isn't going to just give up one day and call the troops home. I mean, look at the resistance movements going on in Indonesia, or across half of South America. Those things have gone on since the 50s in some cases, and at no point was there even the slightest suggestion of just giving in to the resistance and calling the troops home.
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Peregrine wrote: Remember, even the Nazis, as horrifyingly evil as they were, had widespread popular support and only limited opposition to crush.
I read an interesting piece recently about the surprising lack of war mobilisation in Germany. It wasn't until 1943 that Germany was even close to fully mobilised (after the US, incredibly). Despite being scary, ruthless bastards, the Nazis never had the free reign over Germany that we often assume, and in fact they were like any government - dependent on a having the support of a significant portion of the population. The Nazis retained much of that support by delivering on their promises of easy military victories, and this made it difficult to enforce the rationing and reallocation of resources that total war mobilisation required. It was only once there was simply no choice but total mobilisation to fight the Red Army, and all effective resistance in Germany had been utterly crushed that finally moved to total mobilisation (Speer's miracle was actually just the Nazis doing what everyone did as soon as they were engaged in fighting).
It's interesting how people who attach a great deal of significance to the possibility of armed revolution seemed to have spent so little time studying real world revolutions.
I suspect this is because they have almost zero interest in actual revolution, and a lot of interest in playing a fantasy game in which their gun makes them as awesome as the revolutionary figures in their heads.
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LordofHats wrote: The weird thing is that all conversations in real life eventually go off topic. Why people get so annoyed by it makes me wonder if they've ever talked to someone else for more than 15 minutes.
Exactly. Everytime I hear someone complain about going off topic I wonder 'isn't that how conversations are supposed to work?'
stanman wrote: Guns get a lot of media hype over a fairly small number of related deaths, cars, alcohol, drugs and even cigarettes kill far more people on a daily basis but we don't have news articles lam blasting them at every opportunity.
Are you seriously unaware of the movement to restrict and even ban cigarettes? The drive towards more restrictive alcohol laws? The constant revision and analysis of driving road rules?
Sure there's some pushes to change some of those, but it's not media headlines or considered sensational news. You might hear about a fatal accident on the news if it shut down the highway during rush hour or killed a whole family, but if those are mentioned it's almost done in passing not as focus of news specials or TV discussions. When a fatal accident happens you get a mention of death count and then it's onto other news, a shooting happens and they run the stories non-stop all day and night as it's sensational. I can't think of the last time I heard a story about "average joe dies of lung cancer", it's sad but it doesn't get people emotionally charged like a shooting does, much less a mass shooting.
Unless it involves a bus load of kids dying to a drunk driver you don't have the president of the US talking about car accidents in a white house address, but it happens for shootings. (and not just mass shootings) Car accidents kill tens of thousands more people every year then guns yet where are all the people clamoring against car ownership and higher standards for driver's licenses? People tend to shrug off auto accidents as for some reason they aren't as dramatic and emotional.
There's maybe 2-3 shark attacks a year (not all of which are fatal) and yet reports of those attacks will hit every news channel for days, cows kill several hundred people a year and it's never on the news as it's a dull story. The media picks and chooses based on what tugs at people's heartstrings.
At a basic level, if a man needs a woman, or feels he needs a woman or women to validate his existence by providing him affections of whatever sort, like this piece of gak, he should have done everyone a favor and pulled his lower lip over his head and swallowed hard (Grumpy Old Men). If you (general you) have such low self esteem that you need other people to validate who you are or where you are at or fit into the universe you need to rethink how you are doing things.
Ninjacommando wrote: So the US military would just bomb its own cities and cripple its own infrastructure?
Sure, if it's necessary to set an example. Let's say the tinfoil hat crowd is right, and a bunch of untrained, out of shape civilians with AR-15s manage to "liberate" a town and declare that they are no longer subject to the laws of the evil government. Oops, said evil government just bombed the town off the map. Anyone else want to try declaring their independence?
So what would prevent other nation around the world from destablizing regions and expanding their territory?
The threat of nuclear retaliation if anyone seriously threatens the US.
Agian for people who didn't scroll back the US only has 200,000 combat troops in the US, split equally between the states that 4,000 troops Per state.
That would be a relevant thing to talk about if this was a revolution against the real US government, rather than one against a hypothetical future US government that has become evil enough to justify a revolution (PS: the current one isn't). In that situation we can expect to have a lot more troops within the US, on top of the national guard, secret police, loyal militia groups, etc.
stanman wrote: When a fatal accident happens you get a mention of death count and then it's onto other news, a shooting happens and they run the stories non-stop all day and night as it's sensational.
Only if it's a dramatic mass shooting, or something else especially attention-grabbing like the guy who killed someone in "self defense" for being too loud in a movie. If one person gets shot robbing a store it's going to be a minor story on the local news that night, and then it's going to be forgotten. The only shootings that get any real attention are the equivalent of the busload of kids dying to a drunk driver.
PS: remember the Zimmerman thing, one of those cases where the president made a big deal about it? Nobody had heard about it until long after it happened, when people started to get outraged about the local government's handling of the case. If they had filed charges against him and had even a token trial instead of just reflexively dismissing it as self defense the president probably wouldn't even have been aware that anything happened.
Ninjacommando wrote: So the US military would just bomb its own cities and cripple its own infrastructure?
Sure, if it's necessary to set an example. Let's say the tinfoil hat crowd is right, and a bunch of untrained, out of shape civilians with AR-15s manage to "liberate" a town and declare that they are no longer subject to the laws of the evil government. Oops, said evil government just bombed the town off the map. Anyone else want to try declaring their independence?
No, what they're going to do is kill the government troops and then fade back into the landscape or general populace like real insurgents do. Not something stupid like painting a target on themselves.
Rinse and repeat. The government will lose eventually. Such a coup wouldn't be popular with a large chunk of the populace, and if they took any real effective measures(like bombing cities and towns off the map) they'll quickly lose any support they may have had.
Which means the ranks of the insurgents will grow, as long as they don't alienate the populace either.
This is even if there was a greatly expanded military(tougher to control your own troops)
Stop saying insurgents couldn't win. Its simply not true, we've seen countless examples of insurgencies winning or at least fighting to a stalemate(which favors the insurgents)
And no government is going to be stupid enough to eradicate their own population, which is what you'd have to do in this event. In which case you've just opted for mutual annihilation and are simply committing suicide out of spite.
You would literally have to eradicate every civilian to be sure you stopped them, and that would never happen.
Grey Templar wrote: Stop saying insurgents couldn't win. Its simply not true, we've seen countless examples of insurgencies winning or at least fighting to a stalemate(which favors the insurgents)
You're examples suck, so yeah. We're going to keep pointing out how wrong you are. Countless revolutions and insurgencies have failed, and most of them were probably better armed than you and your shooting buddies.
You would literally have to eradicate every civilian to be sure you stopped them, and that would never happen.
And you just keep living in that little pretend world where everyone thinks exactly like you do and the masses will rise up and tell you how right you were all along and thank you for showing them the error of their ways oh great master. It's pretty much the only world where you're fantasy doesn't end in failure. There's never, in the history of the human race, been a revolution so widespread that the only way to end it was too kill everyone.
Overall Peregrine due to budget cuts and what not Its cheaper to drone strike the "Leaders" of the domestic "Rebels" in the town. Two Armament "Joe's" load a couple Hellfire, operating cost of the drone, crew chief time and maintenance to throw in, lubricants, fuel, drone pilot, usage of electricity to run the operating center. Couple CIA/FBI/WH rep to verify the "target" from a Kill List. To give a general idea.
Compare
Load crew for a F series attack aircraft, multiple ordinance that needs to be loaded for those target of opportunity, ammo for main gun, experience pilot with pro rated flight pay, also there be two aircrafts since they fly in pairs, Air Traffic Controllers, maintenance team, and a crap load of parts.
Its cheaper slamming a Hellfire through a crapper window and blowing out a building compare to blowing up a town and road ways, power lines, water mains, cable, gas lines (natural), sewer lines, cable TV lines, and whatever else
Edit
We serious on going down the road of US Citizens vs US Military Insurgency?
Grey Templar wrote: No, what they're going to do is kill the government troops and then fade back into the landscape or general populace like real insurgents do. Not something stupid like painting a target on themselves.
Ok, so your insurgents fade back into the general population, and the government bombs the whole town off the map and says "anyone else supporting the traitors gets the same fate". Good luck having any support left.
And of course you're once again assuming that your revolution is popular enough to have that support, instead of your insurgents getting handed over to the secret police as soon as they start talking about getting some guns and fighting back. Just how exactly did this evil government get into power in the first place if nobody supports them?
Such a coup wouldn't be popular with a large chunk of the populace, and if they took any real effective measures(like bombing cities and towns off the map) they'll quickly lose any support they may have had.
The government doesn't need support, it needs obedience. An evil government doesn't particularly care if you hand the rebels over to the secret police out of loyalty to the rightful government, or simply because you're terrified of being murdered if anyone finds out that you gave assistance to traitors.
Stop saying insurgents couldn't win. Its simply not true, we've seen countless examples of insurgencies winning or at least fighting to a stalemate(which favors the insurgents)
We've only seen that happen when they were fighting against an opponent that had moral limits on what they were willing to do to stop the rebellion. And in cases like Vietnam or Iraq there's also the important factor of the insurgents fighting against an occupying power with limited incentive to be there in the first place, so making them get tired of the whole mess and give up is a viable strategy. The hypothetical government that justifies violent revolution isn't going to have either of those things. They aren't going to be reluctant to use any means necessary to win, and they don't have any option to just leave and stop wasting resources on a fight they had questionable justification for being in at all.
And no government is going to be stupid enough to eradicate their own population, which is what you'd have to do in this event.
Except you're once again assuming that the entire population is magically united in opposing the government. More realistically there are probably going to be a lot of people who like the government, and celebrate every time a town of traitors is punished for their offenses.
In which case you've just opted for mutual annihilation and are simply committing suicide out of spite.
So I guess that means that the best possible solution for the random guys with AR-15s is that they succeed well enough that the evil government decides that if they're going to be kicked out of power (and probably killed) that they might as well kill everyone who opposed them?
stanman wrote: Sure there's some pushes to change some of those, but it's not media headlines or considered sensational news.
I have absolutely no idea why the complaint would be just about media coverage, and not .
You also ignored the rest of my answer, that explained in detail why just picking out the death stats for different things was shallow and didn't address the issue in any reality. And after you asked about non-violent revolution, you ignored the first person's answer by talking about a technicality in one case, and then ignored my answer entirely.
So I'm not really sure at this point what you're trying to achieve here.
There's maybe 2-3 shark attacks a year (not all of which are fatal) and yet reports of those attacks will hit every news channel for days, cows kill several hundred people a year and it's never on the news as it's a dull story.
Yeah, the media picks and chooses. No denying that. Not really anything to do with anything, though.
Grey Templar wrote: No, what they're going to do is kill the government troops and then fade back into the landscape or general populace like real insurgents do. Not something stupid like painting a target on themselves.
Rinse and repeat. The government will lose eventually.
Please go and read about the Tamils in Sri Lanka, please. They did what you described, and militarily they were very successful. They didn't just fight the army, they frequently won, defended ground and inflicted heavy casualties. When the Indian army came in as peacekeepers the Tamils routed them in a couple of days (first use of suicide bombers).
But guess what - the Sri Lankan government didn't ever stop fighting. They never just gave up. Because to explain this to you again, governments don't just give up when the fighting is in their own country. Foreign powers might give up and go home (as the beloved examples of the British in the War of Independence, or the Americans in Vietnam prove), but when it is your own country that dynamic isn't there. In order to maintain security inside your own borders governments will just keep paying the price in dead soldiers. The alternative is to stop being a government, and that's something that takes a hell of a lot more than a bodycount.
Once you understand that you might begin to understand what is needed for an actual, real revolution. A bunch of donkey-caves with guns is nowhere near what is needed.
Ninjacommando wrote: by getting 270 electoral votes... which has nothing to do with "People" supporting them.
Because the President is the end all be all of the US government. Right. Ignore that even though it's possible to win the popular vote and still loose, we're talking margins of difference that are in the realm of a few percentage points which is hardly significant enough to produce any scenario where a super tiny minority can come to power with 0 support from everyone else.
Ninjacommando wrote: by getting 270 electoral votes... which has nothing to do with "People" supporting them
Err, lol? You can argue that the current system is flawed because it allows a candidate with slightly less support from the population as a whole to win, but that's not even close to sufficient to elect someone with the kind of near-universal opposition that is being proposed. Either the winning candidate will have widespread support and win 270 electoral votes with 49% of the nationwide vote, or they will have extremely strong regional support and win 270 votes from key states while losing the rest by solid margins. In the first case you have a lot of support everywhere, and probably a lot of people who voted for the other guy but don't care anywhere near enough to risk their life in a violent revolution. In the second case you have areas where the rebellion can get lots of support, but a perfect scenario for the government to bomb whole towns off the map while the loyal states cheer, as long as all the nasty stuff is happening "over there" to "those people".
Not to mention that Congress exists. Congress. That political body we all pretend to hate because it spends all of its time campaigning for reelection. How exactly are they getting reelected if everyone hates them? Even if they're rigging the vote, they have to do what Russia does. Care enough about what we think that the vote can appear legitimate.
And then, how is this government even functioning if everyone hates it? I mean, you wouldn't even need an armed revolution. They'd just collapse from having no paper pushers to keep the basic functions of the state going.
sebster wrote: And when alcohol kills 80,000 and people are willing to accept that number as the cost of getting drunk and having a good time when we want, there's an argument that gun deaths are worth the price of going shooting when we please.
But that's a debate that you actually have to have in good faith, and with the basic things I outlined above accepted by all parties. The problem is that right now you aren't even close to that debate, in part because the anti-gun movement runs straight past that debate with emotive nonsense and lurches straight in to writing bad law, while the pro-gun movement avoids that debate entirely with what could be described, at best, as disingenuous bs.
It's also worth mentioning that these Analogous arguments have many flaws. Even though alcohol can be a social issue, and a contributing factor in driving and firearm deaths. My primary concern with people drinking irresponsibly is that they will hurt themselves, which might be a risk they are willing to take. My primary concern with irresponsible gun owners is that they will hurt others, who obviously aren't able to consent to being at risk.
I would characterize myself as being anti-guns. I think they are one of those things like nuclear weapons: the world would be a better place if they didn't exist. But that doesn't mean I'm pro gun control. I think if I lived in a country like the US or SA then the first thing I would do is get a gun, because it seems like one is almost required in those places. I think more than anything that points towards social issues. It's sad that the same people who are pro-guns seem also to be the ones advocating many of the root causes of gun crime such as poor wealth distribution, and lack of social support.
I would characterize myself as being anti-guns. I think they are one of those things like nuclear weapons: the world would be a better place if they didn't exist. But that doesn't mean I'm pro gun control. I think if I lived in a country like the US or SA then the first thing I would do is get a gun, because it seems like one is almost required in those places.
Hrm, that's quite a stretch. The US as a whole has 3.6 firearms related deaths (including suicide) per 100,000 people, and much of that is clustered around certain metro areas (i.e. most places will have a very low rate of firearms crime, but don't move to central Detroit or East LA, etc.) and it's certainly lower overall than say, Greece, while South Africa has over 4x the US rate at 17 per 100,000 people.
I think more than anything that points towards social issues. It's sad that the same people who are pro-guns seem also to be the ones advocating many of the root causes of gun crime such as poor wealth distribution, and lack of social support.
There is a degree of truth in that, it does exist, though it's by no means universal in the US. I'd hardly describe my politics as anything "right" for example, but do firmly believe in the right to bear arms.
Smacks wrote: It's also worth mentioning that these Analogous arguments have many flaws. Even though alcohol can be a social issue, and a contributing factor in driving and firearm deaths. My primary concern with people drinking irresponsibly is that they will hurt themselves, which might be a risk they are willing to take. My primary concern with irresponsible gun owners is that they will hurt others, who obviously aren't able to consent to being at risk.
It isn't a comparison that if you accept the deaths caused by one you must accept the deaths caused by the other. The purpose of the comparison is give a single framework that ought to be used for considering both items - that you compare the deaths and other negative consequences against the benefits and limitations of any kind of restriction.
I would characterize myself as being anti-guns. I think they are one of those things like nuclear weapons: the world would be a better place if they didn't exist. But that doesn't mean I'm pro gun control. I think if I lived in a country like the US or SA then the first thing I would do is get a gun, because it seems like one is almost required in those places. I think more than anything that points towards social issues. It's sad that the same people who are pro-guns seem also to be the ones advocating many of the root causes of gun crime such as poor wealth distribution, and lack of social support.
The world does tend to take on something of a cartoony impression of the US. We chuckle when Americans reflexively mention tea when Britain comes up, or dangerous creatures when Australia is mentioned, but we do the same thing about the US and guns.
I was only in the US a couple of months, and in that whole time the only guns I saw were on the security at the airports. I would have seen more guns in Vegas but I got sick our last day and couldn't go to the gun range.
Yeah, they have a lot of guns, but day to day the vast majority of those guns just sit in homes, under lock and key. This means your everyday experience will basically be like it is here, only stuff is a little cheaper, the restaurant service is much better and everyone loves your accent. You don't need a gun to get around.
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Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, that's quite a stretch. The US as a whole has 3.6 firearms related deaths (including suicide) per 100,000 people, and much of that is clustered around certain metro areas (i.e. most places will have a very low rate of firearms crime, but don't move to central Detroit or East LA, etc.) and it's certainly lower overall than say, Greece, while South Africa has over 4x the US rate at 17 per 100,000 people.
I agree that developing countries and countries with extreme poverty have far greater rates of murder than the US, though I don't think the US problem is as easily written off as just being due to a few crime hotspots.
Looking at the figures here; http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state, you can see that California and Illinois are actually barely above the national average for gun deaths. The national capital does fit your example of a crime hotspot and leads the list with firearm murders per 100,000 of 12.46, but after that the states next in line are Louisiana at 10.16, Mississippi at 7.46, South Carolina at 5.41 and Michigan at 5.06. From there it's a pretty long spread until you get down to New Hampshire, the second least gun murder state, but even there you have a gun murder rate of 0.53, which is greater than the gun murder rate in any other developed country such as the UK, France, Germany or Australia.
So even in the least murderous states (except Hawaii, who actually do beat the average in other developed countries), there is a problem with gun homicide.
Peregrine wrote: Ok, so your insurgents fade back into the general population, and the government bombs the whole town off the map and says "anyone else supporting the traitors gets the same fate". Good luck having any support left.
It's hard to believe you're a self-taught military/COIN expert.
I think more than anything that points towards social issues. It's sad that the same people who are pro-guns seem also to be the ones advocating many of the root causes of gun crime such as poor wealth distribution, and lack of social support.
There is a degree of truth in that, it does exist, though it's by no means universal in the US. I'd hardly describe my politics as anything "right" for example, but do firmly believe in the right to bear arms.
Yes, I apologize, I didn't mean to lump everyone together. It just seems to me that these issues are part of the same social paradigm. If you promote a dog eat dog world, then it follows that all the dogs will start to need teeth. It bothers me a great deal because it seems to be running in the opposite direction to what living in civilized society is about. It seems to be shifting from people living and working together for a common good, to individuals living and working too close together for their own good (the double meaning here is sort of deliberate).
sebster wrote:This means your everyday experience will basically be like it is here, only stuff is a little cheaper, the restaurant service is much better and everyone loves your accent. You don't need a gun to get around.
Yeah I've been to NY and NJ. It seemed nice enough (unless you needed to use the bathroom outside). I've also been to SA which was nice enough too. But I suppose if you live there it's a bit different, you're much more likely to be the victim of a crime over the long term compared to a short stay.
Grey Templar wrote: And believe me that the gun grabbers are scared of gun holders, because they don't like what they signify. That ultimate power rests with the people.
I like guns, but there are a lot of gun owners that come off as dangerous, crazy donkey-caves. That's why they are scared, but not for some deep philosophical reason, they're scared for the same reason you'd be scared if you saw a idiot with a flamethrower.
This country tolerates levels of gun violence that no other country does. I think what a lot of gun control advocates call for are often misguided, and ineffective, and should be fought simply because they won't work, but I think any writing off the entirety of their motivations as some Machiavellian plot is incredibly simplistic and wrong-headed.
Smacks wrote: I would characterize myself as being anti-guns. I think they are one of those things like nuclear weapons: the world would be a better place if they didn't exist. But that doesn't mean I'm pro gun control. I think if I lived in a country like the US or SA then the first thing I would do is get a gun, because it seems like one is almost required in those places.
I don't consider myself as being either pro or anti-gun. I consider myself to be a reasonable person with a healthy level of respect for the US Constitution, and owning guns is a strongly embedded right in our country and culture. It ranked higher than having soldiers quartered in your very home, your right to be free from a unreasonable search, the right to a fair and swift trial with reasonable bail, and so on. The courts over the years have enshrined this. Like every right, it's not unlimited, and I respect that too. I am all for common sense gun control measures that show efficacy at solving a harm that is proportionate to this impingement on a right. There is a clear and reasonable need to prevent people from yelling "fire" inn a theater, so its a fair impingement on the first, and keeping people from being able to own a Stinger missile is probably a pretty fair impingement on the second.
SO far as "needing a gun to be in the US", it's laughable Our country has a lot of guns, but gun ownership is a little skewed - most people who own guns own several - and I can't think of a place in the US where being armed is really a requirement with perhaps the very dangerous areas of the border, and places where wild animals might be surprised, like back country hiking*. The people who are most likely to carry a gun every day, police officers, will for the vast majority never discharge their firearm in the line of duty.**
Swimming pools are way, way more likely to kill you, and I don't see anyone here that carries around a life vest all the time either. As Sebster said, the movies really skew us I guess.
Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a traditional American breakfast.
*Even then, I think pepper spray is safer to use and more effective, but fething Hiawatha I'm not, I don't know.
**But when they do, hoo boy, look out! They can't hit for gak.
Ouze wrote: I consider myself to be a reasonable person with a healthy level of respect for the US Constitution, and owning guns is a strongly embedded right in our country and culture. It ranked higher than having soldiers quartered in your very home, your right to be free from a unreasonable search, the right to a fair and swift trial with reasonable bail, and so on.
Be that as it may, something ranking higher in a poll doesn't necessarily mean it is more important. You're probably going to run into a sort of Hawthorne effect, because guns are always a talking point. I'm pretty sure if unreasonable searches and unfair trials were a daily occurrence then people would change their tune pretty damn quickly.
I think a constitution is a good idea, but only so long as it benefits society. Dogmatically waving the constitution isn't helpful in a discussion that might be about amending the constitution. I would also question if the right to bear arms really has anything to do with concealed carry or home defense. For example in Switzerland there are a lot of guns in homes for the purpose of national defense, but it it would be highly illegal to use one to shoot a burglar because that is not what they are for. They are often dismantled and hidden around the house in at least two parts, and ammunition is not kept in the house but in a centralized area. Obviously this allows a militia to be formed quickly in the unlikely event of invasion, which I think would be enough to fulfill what has been put down in the US constitution. People trying to use the constitution to argue that they have the right to carry a gun into a crowded McDonald's, or blow gak up in their back yard with an RPG, are clutching at straws (though admittedly, in the US, they have one hell of a grip).
On the matter of culture. Fox hunting was part of out heritage here until recently. You can see paintings of hunting all over the place, my auntie even has dinner mats with images of 'the hunt'. It was a quintessentially British pastime, with the red coats, and the horn and the dogs etc... But now it's gone the same way as dog fighting, and bare knuckle boxing, because modern mortality has grown to look down on cruelty for sport. So even though your culture and you constitution should be treated with care and respect, they are not in and of themselves an argument against change.
I'm not familiar with the wording of the laws in Switzerland, but while it is essentially mandatory for males between the ages of 20-30 to own guns, surely the inability to privately own ammunition would infringe the right to bear arms as defined in the constitution.
For all those focusing on changes to the law, you may wish to note the following (please note, not my own work. I found this elsewhere);
1. Elliot Rodger was being treated by mental health professionals.
2. Rodger's parents contacted law enforcement days prior to the incident, but Elliot did not present himself as an imminent threat to himself or others, so the LEOs didn't take him into custody.
3. Elliot Rodger complied with California's one handgun per 30-days requirement when he purchased each of the three handguns found in his possession.
4. Elliot Rodger waited 10-days before receiving each of his three handguns, per California law.
5. Elliot Rodger passed his three background checks, one for each of his three handguns, per California law.
6. Elliot Rodger passed a written test administered by a California DOJ Certified Instructor, per California law.
7. Elliot Rodger complied with the Safe Handling Demonstration Requirement performed in the presence of a California DOJ Certified Instructor three times, per California law.
8. Elliot Rodger complied with California's Firearms Safety Device Requirement.
9. Elliot Rodger purchased magazines in compliance with California's restrictions on magazine capacity. Each of the magazines had a ten round capacity.
Elliot Rodger had no criminal history or history of violence, his family is affluent and had significant resources, he was being professionally treated, and even when his parents were concerned and law enforcement officers were contacted, he was not deemed to be dangerous at that time.
In all honesty and candor I have no reason to believe that the system failed, or that the laws on the books didn't work. From what we know right now it seems that Elliot Rodger was able to jump through every hoop, even in California, with some of the most restrictive laws in the country when it comes to acquiring firearms.
His family was worried and called police. They didn't perceive him to be a threat. They didn't involuntarily commit him or take his firearms away.
What more could possibly be done? Better training for cops? Adding dedicated mental health professionals to the police force to assist with these types of determinations?
That's why I mentioned about 5 pages ago that it would be much better to treat this as an isolated incident. In general, mass killings could be prevented by better mental health care, but this really was just a freak occurrence.
I agree that developing countries and countries with extreme poverty have far greater rates of murder than the US, though I don't think the US problem is as easily written off as just being due to a few crime hotspots.
Keep in mind these states also have huge populations on their own, having high rates in specific areas is often balanced out by having huge relatively peaceful areas.
The national capital does fit your example of a crime hotspot and leads the list with firearm murders per 100,000 of 12.46, but after that the states next in line are Louisiana at 10.16, Mississippi at 7.46, South Carolina at 5.41 and Michigan at 5.06.
Louisiana and Michigan's statistics are colored strongly by New Orleans and Detroit (New Orleans had a higher murder rate than South Africa for a time IIRC).
From there it's a pretty long spread until you get down to New Hampshire, the second least gun murder state, but even there you have a gun murder rate of 0.53, which is greater than the gun murder rate in any other developed country such as the UK, France, Germany or Australia.
So even in the least murderous states (except Hawaii, who actually do beat the average in other developed countries), there is a problem with gun homicide.
In this case, we'd also want to look at the total homicide rate, as otherwise the total homicide rate is relatively similar, the gun crime rate may simply be an expression of preference for guns over say, knives or other weapons due to cultural or availability reasons (e.g. centerfire handguns are illegal and were largely universally confiscated in the UK) while the total danger level in either place is relatively constant. From what I can find, in 2012, New Hampshire had a total homicide rate of 1.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the UK had a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, indicating that total murders are pretty equal.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: For all those focusing on changes to the law, you may wish to note the following (please note, not my own work. I found this elsewhere);
1. Elliot Rodger was being treated by mental health professionals.
2. Rodger's parents contacted law enforcement days prior to the incident, but Elliot did not present himself as an imminent threat to himself or others, so the LEOs didn't take him into custody.
3. Elliot Rodger complied with California's one handgun per 30-days requirement when he purchased each of the three handguns found in his possession.
4. Elliot Rodger waited 10-days before receiving each of his three handguns, per California law.
5. Elliot Rodger passed his three background checks, one for each of his three handguns, per California law.
6. Elliot Rodger passed a written test administered by a California DOJ Certified Instructor, per California law.
7. Elliot Rodger complied with the Safe Handling Demonstration Requirement performed in the presence of a California DOJ Certified Instructor three times, per California law.
8. Elliot Rodger complied with California's Firearms Safety Device Requirement.
9. Elliot Rodger purchased magazines in compliance with California's restrictions on magazine capacity. Each of the magazines had a ten round capacity.
Elliot Rodger had no criminal history or history of violence, his family is affluent and had significant resources, he was being professionally treated, and even when his parents were concerned and law enforcement officers were contacted, he was not deemed to be dangerous at that time.
In all honesty and candor I have no reason to believe that the system failed, or that the laws on the books didn't work. From what we know right now it seems that Elliot Rodger was able to jump through every hoop, even in California, with some of the most restrictive laws in the country when it comes to acquiring firearms.
His family was worried and called police. They didn't perceive him to be a threat. They didn't involuntarily commit him or take his firearms away.
What more could possibly be done? Better training for cops? Adding dedicated mental health professionals to the police force to assist with these types of determinations?
So... what you're saying is no system is perfect... eh? And no matter how many additional laws/regulations are passed, it still won't be perfect.
Having said that, the discussion ought to be centered around what are reasonablegun-control laws/regulations.
"reasonable" can be different for each state of the union... as it should be.
So... what you're saying is no system is perfect... eh? And no matter how many additional laws/regulations are passed, it still won't be perfect.
Having said that, the discussion ought to be centered around what are reasonablegun-control laws/regulations.
"reasonable" can be different for each state of the union... as it should be.
This. Very much this.
I find myself a lot of times in a difficult position.I want to advocate for firearm control, BUT I feel a lot of the methods being pulled out lately, especially those in reaction to a mass shooting, are not going to do anything. It's created a place where the conversation is impossible to have because both sides of the gun argument are so deeply entrenched, and there's zero room for middle ground because of that lack of reasonable middle ground.
I do feel like there can be more done to prevent firearms violence, I do feel like an avenue to aid in that is in revising or re-examining of existing gun laws. It's not a silver bullet, if you'll excuse the pun, but it can be part of something that does help the situation on a wide scale. But sadly, when you mention 'gun laws' anywhere...well, you get this conversation that we've seen, which is not helpful for anyone on either side of the conversation.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: Well, this guy seems to have been failed by his culture. Healthier attitudes towards sex and romance might have stopped him from going off the deep end.
Possibly. He could have also been a nut who picked the one thing that wasn't handed to him on a plate to justify the murderous rampage he was always going to have. I honestly don't know.
I guess the issue is that such a conversation
I agree. I think that line's always going to be blurry with any issue, but I don't think "people's beliefs don't affect their actions at all, they just Go Insane and then pick a random reason from their beliefs" is a reasonable point of view - I think it's a point of view designed to shut down conversation about issues the person advancing it doesn't want discussed. That seems to be a pretty common thread in these shootings, where the murderer will have had a bunch of particular political views and people sympathetic to those views will be trying to avoid the association.
But the cool thing is, trying to combat awful attitudes to relationships and sex like he had gets us much broader benefits as a society than "people won't go on shooting sprees" so we can probably just go along with that and it'll be fine anyway.
Not having access to a gun probably would've helped him not kill as many people, or any at all. I'm not up on where the gun he used was actually from. If he had signs of being mentally disturbed (and the youtube video seems to be a pretty big sign) maybe someone should have confiscated it. I'm sure that would worry a lot of gun-owning Americans, though.
Now, I'm on very much on the side that having more guns in society clearly leads to more gun violence*, but given this guy stabbed to death three of his victims I don't think this is the smartest incident on which to push for gun control.
In a general sense I don't think any mass shooting in the US is a good incident to push for gun control because AFAIK their rate of people being killed by guns is so high that mass shootings don't raise it by all that much. They have so much cultural baggage around it that they need to work through before they can even have a sensible conversation on the issue, and there's a lot standing in the way of that.
But come on, the people he killed without the gun lived with him and may have been asleep at the time of the attack. The three he killed who didn't were all shot to death, and he shot an additional eight people. The only reason that doesn't seem nuts is because it's comparatively tame for a US shooting spree.
On the police front, I don't know. Should posting a video on youtube about how you're going to murder someone be illegal? Isn't it already illegal?
I'm not sure if the video was illegal (it wasn't directed specifically at anyone), nor am I sure the video was brought to police attention before the murder spree. But I think one issue is that unless a crime is committed, its pretty hard to get someone committed unless they're willing, and that appears to be the only other step. This issue isn't just about spree killers, but also really important in terms of domestic violence, where some level of intervention (even just mandatory therapy sessions) could likely have prevented a violent spiral to murder.
*Though that doesn't automatically lead to a justification for greater restrictions on guns, for a whole bunch of reasons that get hashed out in every single gun control thread.
It's sort of mental health related but I didn't actually realise prostitution was illegal in the US until discussing this with Americans.
whembly wrote: So... what you're saying is no system is perfect... eh? And no matter how many additional laws/regulations are passed, it still won't be perfect.
Having said that, the discussion ought to be centered around what are reasonablegun-control laws/regulations.
"reasonable" can be different for each state of the union... as it should be.
What is "reasonable" gun control? I'm genuinely curious as we keep hearing calls for "reasonable" or "common sense" gun control (usually from the same people implying that gun owners are murderers in waiting, condone violence, and need guns because they are under endowed) . California has been touting "common sense" gun control and that did not prevent a young man determined to cause harm. Add to that every reasonable/common sense gun control measure that comes in is never enough and just leads to another one.
I've just learned that Washington, D.C.'s petition for a rehearing of the Parker case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was denied today. This is good news. Readers will recall in this case that the D.C. Circuit overturned the decades-long ban on gun ownership in the nation's capitol on Second Amendment grounds.
However, as my colleague Peter Ferrara explained in his National Review Online article following the initial decision in March, it looks very likely that the United States Supreme Court will take the case on appeal. When it does so - beyond seriously considering the clear original intent of the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to armed self-defense - the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court would be wise to take into account the findings of a recent study out of Harvard.
The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom, and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no, showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and suicide decreases.
The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population).
For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns. As the study's authors write in the report:
If the mantra "more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death" were true, broad cross-national comparisons should show that nations with higher gun ownership per capita consistently have more death. Nations with higher gun ownership rates, however, do not have higher murder or suicide rates than those with lower gun ownership. Indeed many high gun ownership nations have much lower murder rates. (p. 661)
Finally, and as if to prove the bumper sticker correct - that "gun don't kill people, people do" - the study also shows that Russia's murder rate is four times higher than the U.S. and more than 20 times higher than Norway. This, in a country that practically eradicated private gun ownership over the course of decades of totalitarian rule and police state methods of suppression. Needless to say, very few Russian murders involve guns.
The important thing to keep in mind is not the rate of deaths by gun - a statistic that anti-gun advocates are quick to recite - but the overall murder rate, regardless of means. The criminologists explain:
[P]er capita murder overall is only half as frequent in the United States as in several other nations where gun murder is rarer, but murder by strangling, stabbing, or beating is much more frequent. (p. 663 - emphases in original)
It is important to note here that Profs. Kates and Mauser are not pro-gun zealots. In fact, they go out of their way to stress that their study neither proves that gun control causes higher murder rates nor that increased gun ownership necessarily leads to lower murder rates. (Though, in my view, Prof. John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime does indeed prove the latter.) But what is clear, and what they do say, is that gun control is ineffectual at preventing murder, and apparently counterproductive.
Not only is the D.C. gun ban ill-conceived on constitutional grounds, it fails to live up to its purpose. If the astronomical murder rate in the nation's capitol, in comparison to cities where gun ownership is permitted, didn't already make that fact clear, this study out of Harvard should.
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cincydooley wrote: Make any of my firearms safety or marksmanship classes tax write offs and that'd be a start
This would be a start. Had Bloomberg spent $50 million on gun safety (as the group's name suggests) instead of astro-turfing that would have been a start.
So, I somehow managed to make people discuss about an hypothetical war between hypothetical armed U.S. citizen against and hypothetical evil dictatorial U.S. regime. That is pretty neat. Now let us try to put that thread somehow, maybe, a little on topic.
Bromsy wrote: My plan: Step 1 - legalize prostitution.
that's it.
I do not think it would have helped at all. I mean, obviously this guy had delusions about his own grandeur. It was not about sex to him, it was about status and respect. From what he said, it seems pretty clear to me he would have scorned the prostitutes anyway. I mean, people do not kill over not having sex. They do kill, however, about (perceived) insufferable injustice. And what this horrible human being perceived as an insufferable injustice was not being recognized as The Most Awesomest Ever. Prostitutes would not have changed that at all.
cincydooley wrote: Make any of my firearms safety or marksmanship classes tax write offs and that'd be a start
Baby I'm liking this. With a good accountant I should be able to write off all my IDPA related activities and ammo under firearms safety and marksmanship.
whembly wrote: So... what you're saying is no system is perfect... eh? And no matter how many additional laws/regulations are passed, it still won't be perfect.
Having said that, the discussion ought to be centered around what are reasonablegun-control laws/regulations.
"reasonable" can be different for each state of the union... as it should be.
What is "reasonable" gun control? I'm genuinely curious as we keep hearing calls for "reasonable" or "common sense" gun control (usually from the same people implying that gun owners are murderers in waiting, condone violence, and need guns because they are under endowed) . California has been touting "common sense" gun control and that did not prevent a young man determined to cause harm. Add to that every reasonable/common sense gun control measure that comes in is never enough and just leads to another one.
Exactly. To anti-gunners all gun control is "common sense"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: So, I somehow managed to make people discuss about an hypothetical war between hypothetical armed U.S. citizen against and hypothetical evil dictatorial U.S. regime. That is pretty neat. Now let us try to put that thread somehow, maybe, a little on topic.
Bromsy wrote: My plan: Step 1 - legalize prostitution.
that's it.
I do not think it would have helped at all. I mean, obviously this guy had delusions about his own grandeur. It was not about sex to him, it was about status and respect. From what he said, it seems pretty clear to me he would have scorned the prostitutes anyway. I mean, people do not kill over not having sex. They do kill, however, about (perceived) insufferable injustice. And what this horrible human being perceived as an insufferable injustice was not being recognized as The Most Awesomest Ever. Prostitutes would not have changed that at all.
I think it would have helped at least as much if not more than anything else discussed in the thread. Short of a total ban on guns, including confiscation; or an extreme societal value shift nothing is going to stop this sort of thing so we might as well have clean, healthy and safe prostitutes to help get us through these times.
Bromsy wrote: I think it would have helped at least as much if not more than anything else discussed in the thread.
Which does not mean much if “more than anything else” still accounts for nothing.
And I am not advocating a ban on prostitution, I am just talking about this specific issue.
Bromsy wrote: so we might as well have clean, healthy and safe prostitutes to help get us through these times.
Which times? The time where a self-inflated horrible human being believe himself above everyone and everything else, and consider not everyone being amazed at him an injustice big enough to be worth killing random bystanders? Because that is what we are looking at. It really has nothing to do with sex in the end.
Smacks wrote: For example in Switzerland there are a lot of guns in homes for the purpose of national defense, but it it would be highly illegal to use one to shoot a burglar because that is not what they are for. They are often dismantled and hidden around the house in at least two parts, and ammunition is not kept in the house but in a centralized area. Obviously this allows a militia to be formed quickly in the unlikely event of invasion, which I think would be enough to fulfill what has been put down in the US constitution.
This would be wrong, although I don't begrudge you the idea because it was sort of a grey area until 2008 - whether or not the purpose of the 2nd amendment was for the purposes of a militia or not. DC vs Heller interpreted it was an individual right unrelated to militia activities.
If I remember correctly
Mandatory military service
Keep their issued weapon
Keep their issued gear
Free ammo to keep current marksmanship skill
Free weapon locker (might have three generations of issued rifles in the household)
There was another decision right after the one I linked that expanded on that idea but I can't remember the name, I just woke up and am walking out the door to work.
Jihadin wrote: If I remember correctly
Mandatory military service
Keep their issued weapon
Keep their issued gear
Free ammo to keep current marksmanship skill
Free weapon locker (might have three generations of issued rifles in the household)
I explained it all earlier in this thread.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/210/596717.page#6872137 I only avoid the Swiss military service because I took the French one instead. It is a one-day-long service with a free meal and very close to my home, rather than some life-long service where I need to go all the way into Switzerland. But if I go to live in Switzerland, maybe I will check if I can still get the Swiss one, because firing seems fun.
Jihadin wrote: If I remember correctly
Mandatory military service
Keep their issued weapon
Keep their issued gear
Free ammo to keep current marksmanship skill
Free weapon locker (might have three generations of issued rifles in the household)
I explained it all earlier in this thread.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/210/596717.page#6872137 I only avoid the Swiss military service because I took the French one instead. It is a one-day-long service with a free meal and very close to my home, rather than some life-long service where I need to go all the way into Switzerland. But if I go to live in Switzerland, maybe I will check if I can still get the Swiss one, because firing seems fun.
France maintains a military?
Does your one day of service consist of making indignant faces, rolling your eyes in derision, and waving your arms to simulating waving a flag?
Also breaking wind in their opponent's direction. While effective against the British, unfortunately the Germans have a very poor sense of smell, enabling them to win three wars against France back to back.
Yeah. They are pretty much like the U.S., i.e., an invasion force whose task is to enter foreign countries to enforce our interest with a gun. We also have nukes.
cincydooley wrote: Does your one day of service consist of making indignant faces, rolling your eyes in derision, and waving your arms to simulating waving a flag?
Nope. I was at the mountain artillery base. We got to see those nice cannons. Apparently when they train, the shooters cannot even see their target because there is a whole mountain between them and the target. It was quite interesting.
It is also where they make everyone pass a test to see who is illiterate. I was surprised to learn there are still illiterate people here. We get first aid instructions too, and some generic information about the army.
Do you even have a mandatory military service in the U.S.?
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Frazzled wrote: unfortunately the Germans have a very poor sense of smell, enabling them to win three wars against France back to back.
Frazzled wrote: World War I: Loss (come on admit it without RUssia, Britain and the US you lost.)
Lost? As far as I know, before the U.S. came in, it was just a bloody stalemate. Beside, that is like saying the U.S. lost WW2 because without Britain and Russia and all their other allies, they would have lost. It makes no sense.
Frazzled wrote: World War I: Loss (come on admit it without RUssia, Britain and the US you lost.)
Lost? As far as I know, before the U.S. came in, it was just a bloody stalemate. Beside, that is like saying the U.S. lost WW2 because without Britain and Russia and all their other allies, they would have lost. It makes no sense.
Makes lots of sense, but I'll take that back and give you a draw on that one.
EDIT: I guess you missed that this was a fart joke and that Germans are immune to farts... (scratches head)
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: You do not even have some small tour of the barracks after registering for the draft? That is sad!
Well we have roughly five times your populations so the logistics would be a bit wonky, and we really prefer volunteers anyway as they tend to be more motivated.
Anti depressants? If true, I'm not at all surprised.
The most vocal author I know of on on the issue of anti-depressants and similar drugs is Peter Hitchens. Check out his blog's index for Anti-depressants. He's written quite extensively about it.
Anti depressants? If true, I'm not at all surprised.
Not all were anti-depressants. They were however, all anti-psychotropic drugs (there were quite a few on the list at the bottom on Ritalin for ADD/ADHD).
The problem with focusing on mental health is that every country has crazy people. Every country has loners who just no one "gets". Every country has people who think violent thoughts that may just act on them. But countries all have various levels of gun violence.
Also a lot of these shooters never appeared on anyone's radar before the shooting. Many cases no psych history, no criminal history, etc. You have nothing to cause any red flags.
The country just doesn't have the resources to investigate every young kid. A lot of these shooters are buying all their gear and weapons legally, so unless you create a device capable of reading someones mind and give out to all the gun stores around America, how to plan to stop a young kid that has violent thoughts in his head from buying a gun legally. Especially with ways around background checks.
Vaktathi wrote: Keep in mind these states also have huge populations on their own, having high rates in specific areas is often balanced out by having huge relatively peaceful areas.
True to an extent, sure.
The national capital does fit your example of a crime hotspot and leads the list with firearm murders per 100,000 of 12.46, but after that the states next in line are Louisiana at 10.16, Mississippi at 7.46, South Carolina at 5.41 and Michigan at 5.06.
Louisiana and Michigan's statistics are colored strongly by New Orleans and Detroit (New Orleans had a higher murder rate than South Africa for a time IIRC).
Sure, that still leaves Mississippi and South Carolina as higher than Michigan...
In this case, we'd also want to look at the total homicide rate, as otherwise the total homicide rate is relatively similar, the gun crime rate may simply be an expression of preference for guns over say, knives or other weapons due to cultural or availability reasons (e.g. centerfire handguns are illegal and were largely universally confiscated in the UK) while the total danger level in either place is relatively constant. From what I can find, in 2012, New Hampshire had a total homicide rate of 1.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, while the UK had a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, indicating that total murders are pretty equal.
New Hampshire is the lowest state on that list, at 1.1. That's comparable to the murder rates in France or the UK, and still higher than the likes of Germany or Italy.
In fact, if we pick a country like say, Canada, who's relatively high for a developed country at 1.6, we can then list the US states with the same or lower murder rates...
New Hampshire, Iowa, Montana, and with Maine tied at 1.6.
So it isn't just a preference using guns. It's a preference for murder. And unless we want to argue that Americans are somehow an inherently murderous populace, or there are other issues that are unique to the US that lead to more murder (there's some argument on economic inequality, but all the other usual measures like drugs, policing effectiveness etc are not uniquely US issues)... then it becomes clear that having a sea of guns sloshing about your country really does mean more murders.
whembly wrote: So... what you're saying is no system is perfect... eh? And no matter how many additional laws/regulations are passed, it still won't be perfect.
Having said that, the discussion ought to be centered around what are reasonablegun-control laws/regulations.
"reasonable" can be different for each state of the union... as it should be.
Yeah, what reasonable gun laws should be in place, and what reasonable mental health measures are in place as well. With, as you say, a means not to build a completely perfect system, but one that's better and reduces the likelihood of people flipping out and committing murder.
Actually, if theyre on many of these meds (I mean the anti-depressants, not the ADD candy) there IS a psych history, it's just that there's nothing too major to create those red flags and get them more intensive care.
Another thing that I'll point out is that the brain itself is kind of a frontier in its own right.... Each patient has varying degrees of success, and varying reactions to different SSRIs... While Wellbutrin may not work for me, Prozac might. It's unfortunate that there are times where, the doctor or patient doesn't know if there will be a bad reaction to a drug, until it's too late.
Also a lot of these shooters never appeared on anyone's radar before the shooting. Many cases no psych history, no criminal history, etc. You have nothing to cause any red flags.
The fact that many of these mass shooters were on psychotropic drugs is not a red flag?
There appears to be a worrying correlation. Is there any research currently underway to determine if theres a link?
“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”
She then states, “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Actually, if theyre on many of these meds (I mean the anti-depressants, not the ADD candy) there IS a psych history, it's just that there's nothing too major to create those red flags and get them more intensive care.
Another thing that I'll point out is that the brain itself is kind of a frontier in its own right.... Each patient has varying degrees of success, and varying reactions to different SSRIs... While Wellbutrin may not work for me, Prozac might. It's unfortunate that there are times where, the doctor or patient doesn't know if there will be a bad reaction to a drug, until it's too late.
But do you want to honestly start looking at one fourth of all adult women, or one in five men? Those are the sort of numbers we are talking about for Mental Health Medication. No seriously America is over medicated on almost everything. Your anti-depressant example the numbers I have seen is that almost one fourth of women 65 and older are on some sort of drug for it. If you want to red flag for these meds you end up red flaging a lot of people, and do we honestly have the resources to keep track of them or hell what about all the people you have issues who never get treatment.
The fact that many of these mass shooters were on psychotropic drugs is not a red flag?
There appears to be a worrying correlation. Is there any research currently underway to determine if theres a link?
By itself no not necessarily. Not when reactions to these sort of drugs vary and a larger and increasing number of adults are using them. Many of these adults haven't killed anyone either.
And even then comes the question of availability for the guns. Which if it is easy and straight forward to buy guns without any background checks (it is) then how will you stop them even if they are on some sort of drug?
But do you want to honestly start looking at one fourth of all adult women, or one in five men? Those are the sort of numbers we are talking about for Mental Health Medication. No seriously America is over medicated on almost everything. Your anti-depressant example the numbers I have seen is that almost one fourth of women 65 and older are on some sort of drug for it. If you want to red flag for these meds you end up red flaging a lot of people, and do we honestly have the resources to keep track of them or hell what about all the people you have issues who never get treatment.
We were basically agreeing mate... It's just that what I'm saying is that there is such a variety of these meds, combined with just how little we know about the brain and it's inner workings that there is just no feasible way to say "Patient X meets the criteria to safely use drug Y" I mean, with MH, it really is kind of a crap shoot whether you're gonna help the patient, or have them go Columbine on people.
And that "professor" from Rutgers is just rich... GTFOH with that nonsense. She seriously thinks that black males don't kill people??? Guess the Crips/Bloods aren't really a thing then.(yeah, I know gang violence isn't really anything like these incidents in schools, movie theaters and the like)
I'm going to expand on Ensis post. We're rated on severity of mental "stress" (PTSD). We're being, lack of word, tracked by US Military and Veteran Affair. Our medical records are on MedPro. Our mental health records is under HIPAA same as everyone else.
Where does one draw the line on who can own weapons and who can't.
Notionally say if an individual is 40% disable due to PTSD do you allow him/her own a weapon? Would their right be revoked?
Jihadin wrote: I'm going to expand on Ensis post. We're rated on severity of mental "stress" (PTSD). We're being, lack of word, tracked by US Military and Veteran Affair. Our medical records are on MedPro. Our mental health records is under HIPAA same as everyone else.
Where does one draw the line on who can own weapons and who can't.
Notionally say if an individual is 40% disable due to PTSD do you allow him/her own a weapon? Would their right be revoked?
Apparently, with the VA, that line is drawn when the Vet can "no longer keep track of their own finances"... which seems a bit unfair to some of us. (My wife, in my family, takes care of most all of the finances... I CAN do it myself, but she's been doin it since we got married)
It is an interesting idea for sure. I honestly don't think there can be a hard line in the sand, and should probably be as it is now, where if the MH pro feels that there is legitimate or significant threat of harm/violence then they are bound by law to report it to outside agencies.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: I agree. I think that line's always going to be blurry with any issue, but I don't think "people's beliefs don't affect their actions at all, they just Go Insane and then pick a random reason from their beliefs" is a reasonable point of view - I think it's a point of view designed to shut down conversation about issues the person advancing it doesn't want discussed.
That's true. I guess at the end of the day we need to recognise both parts work together, that bitter philosophies like the 'nice guy' stuff play off of mentally disturbed people to get the results like we've seen with this event.
That seems to be a pretty common thread in these shootings, where the murderer will have had a bunch of particular political views and people sympathetic to those views will be trying to avoid the association.
I think what's sparked a lot of the conversation here is that a lot of the people holding similar views didn't look to distance themselves. The #yesallwomen thing seemed to be full of people trying to claim there was some reasonable basis at the bottom of this guy's frustration.
The only time I can think of that people didn't run at full steam away from the murderous nut was when that crazy flew a plane in to the IRS building, and even then most of them were doing it at least in a half joking manner.
But the cool thing is, trying to combat awful attitudes to relationships and sex like he had gets us much broader benefits as a society than "people won't go on shooting sprees" so we can probably just go along with that and it'll be fine anyway.
Yeah, really good point.
In a general sense I don't think any mass shooting in the US is a good incident to push for gun control because AFAIK their rate of people being killed by guns is so high that mass shootings don't raise it by all that much. They have so much cultural baggage around it that they need to work through before they can even have a sensible conversation on the issue, and there's a lot standing in the way of that.
But come on, the people he killed without the gun lived with him and may have been asleep at the time of the attack. The three he killed who didn't were all shot to death, and he shot an additional eight people. The only reason that doesn't seem nuts is because it's comparatively tame for a US shooting spree.
All true. And one of my biggest frustrations with the anti-gun movement is their reliance on media heavy single events like spree killings, while shying away from less emotive, less sensation but far more important reality of the bulk of gun murders. And as a result they try to write laws about big, scary assault weapons, and then look shocked when those don't do anything to bring down the murder rates.
Anyhow, my point really on not using this particular killing to advance the anti-gun clause is that there's an easy 'he killed three people with a knife' escape clause to be thrown out by any pro-gun person. It makes this a much harder instance on which to effectively make any kind of anti-gun argument. Whether such an argument should ever be made is a whole other argument.
It's sort of mental health related but I didn't actually realise prostitution was illegal in the US until discussing this with Americans.
I think like a lot of places around the world it is technically illegal but the reality on the ground can be very different, with informal (or even semi-formal) understandings in place that as long as it is kept of the streets police will turn a blind eye.
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Ouze wrote: The French military has been pretty successful post-Vietnam.
It was pretty successful pre-Republic as well. They just had a really gakky century, and it just happens those are the years everyone talks about.
“Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem,” she begins. “How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills?”
She then states, “Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large amounts of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual, and middle-class.”
I thought I read that his mother was East Asian. Are we now adding 'White Asian' to 'White Hispanic' for when bad things happen?
sebster wrote: All true. And one of my biggest frustrations with the anti-gun movement is their reliance on media heavy single events like spree killings, while shying away from less emotive, less sensation but far more important reality of the bulk of gun murders. And as a result they try to write laws about big, scary assault weapons, and then look shocked when those don't do anything to bring down the murder rates.
I'm still waiting on hearing an actual definition from the antis for "assault weapon" that doesn't just boil down to "black, scary looking rifle" based on cosmetic features. Especially when some legislation in the past has resulted in Civil War firearms, .22s, and hunting rifles being classified as "assault weapons"
Dreadclaw69 wrote: I thought I read that his mother was East Asian. Are we now adding 'White Asian' to 'White Hispanic' for when bad things happen?
Slowly but surely, the term white expands to include whatever ethnic groups we've recently come to see as stereotypically middle class. Do you remember when Irish and Italian people weren't thought of as white?
Anyhow, I first read that comment as a clever piece of irony that was parodying the way that crimes committed by ethnic minorities are used to argue against the whole ethnic group (terrorism used to claim that all of Islam has a problem for example), but then realised it might have actually been serious, and is from a really crazy ass professor who is all about inventing ways to make everything about their one political issue. Honestly neither would surprise me.
I'm still waiting on hearing an actual definition from the antis for "assault weapon" that doesn't just boil down to "black, scary looking rifle" based on cosmetic features. Especially when some legislation in the past has resulted in Civil War firearms, .22s, and hunting rifles being classified as "assault weapons"
Pretty much, the assault weapon thing is the perfect example. And big legislative screw ups like that can happen - a movement can lose its way without the underlying issue being bad... but when the anti-gun movement's approach the assault weapon balls up is to just double down on that stance, and insist that what's needed is a permanent assault weapons ban... well then there's real issues in the movement.
sebster wrote: Slowly but surely, the term white expands to include whatever ethnic groups we've recently come to see as stereotypically middle class. Do you remember when Irish and Italian people weren't thought of as white?
Anyhow, I first read that comment as a clever piece of irony that was parodying the way that crimes committed by ethnic minorities are used to argue against the whole ethnic group (terrorism used to claim that all of Islam has a problem for example), but then realised it might have actually been serious, and is from a really crazy ass professor who is all about inventing ways to make everything about their one political issue. Honestly neither would surprise me.
Mercifully I don't, but I do remember the signs that read "No Irish. No Blacks. No dogs". Sadly I don't see that comment as a parody, I think that we are seeing people trying to inject yet another issue (race) into the mix, along with feminism (ignoring the fact that out of 6 murder victims 4 were male), and gun control.
sebster wrote: Pretty much, the assault weapon thing is the perfect example. And big legislative screw ups like that can happen - a movement can lose its way without the underlying issue being bad... but when the anti-gun movement's approach the assault weapon balls up is to just double down on that stance, and insist that what's needed is a permanent assault weapons ban... well then there's real issues in the movement.
The problem is two fold. The first is the moral panic and emotional response. The second is the poorly drafted legislation, often because "we need to do something".
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Actually, if theyre on many of these meds (I mean the anti-depressants, not the ADD candy) there IS a psych history, it's just that there's nothing too major to create those red flags and get them more intensive care.
Another thing that I'll point out is that the brain itself is kind of a frontier in its own right.... Each patient has varying degrees of success, and varying reactions to different SSRIs... While Wellbutrin may not work for me, Prozac might. It's unfortunate that there are times where, the doctor or patient doesn't know if there will be a bad reaction to a drug, until it's too late.
But do you want to honestly start looking at one fourth of all adult women, or one in five men? Those are the sort of numbers we are talking about for Mental Health Medication. No seriously America is over medicated on almost everything. Your anti-depressant example the numbers I have seen is that almost one fourth of women 65 and older are on some sort of drug for it. If you want to red flag for these meds you end up red flaging a lot of people, and do we honestly have the resources to keep track of them or hell what about all the people you have issues who never get treatment.
Well, surely the important is to research these drugs more thoroughly to determine whether there actually is a link, or whether the correlation is simply coincidental.
Then, having determined whether there actually is a problem, that these drugs do make certain people act violently, you can then decide what to do about it.
We did it with tobacco, once believed to be a harmless drug, and found that it can cause cancer. Shouldn't we do the same with anti-depressants etc?
The fact that many of these mass shooters were on psychotropic drugs is not a red flag?
There appears to be a worrying correlation. Is there any research currently underway to determine if theres a link?
By itself no not necessarily. Not when reactions to these sort of drugs vary and a larger and increasing number of adults are using them. Many of these adults haven't killed anyone either.
Perhaps not, but what proportion of the people using these drugs have experienced negative side effects that affected their behaviour? How many of them became more violent and aggressive than is typical for them? Just because a minority of them end up killing people doesn't mean the majority are particularly safe.
When theres a correlation between mental illness, use of mind altering drugs and mass murders, surely its important to research the issue to determine whether there is a link?
IS this being researched?
And even then comes the question of availability for the guns. Which if it is easy and straight forward to buy guns without any background checks (it is) then how will you stop them even if they are on some sort of drug?
Its possible to legally buy weapons without background checks?
The laws to purchases a firearm varies from State to State. In this instance however;
Dreadclaw69 wrote: For all those focusing on changes to the law, you may wish to note the following (please note, not my own work. I found this elsewhere);
1. Elliot Rodger was being treated by mental health professionals.
2. Rodger's parents contacted law enforcement days prior to the incident, but Elliot did not present himself as an imminent threat to himself or others, so the LEOs didn't take him into custody.
3. Elliot Rodger complied with California's one handgun per 30-days requirement when he purchased each of the three handguns found in his possession.
4. Elliot Rodger waited 10-days before receiving each of his three handguns, per California law.
5. Elliot Rodger passed his three background checks, one for each of his three handguns, per California law.
6. Elliot Rodger passed a written test administered by a California DOJ Certified Instructor, per California law.
7. Elliot Rodger complied with the Safe Handling Demonstration Requirement performed in the presence of a California DOJ Certified Instructor three times, per California law.
8. Elliot Rodger complied with California's Firearms Safety Device Requirement.
9. Elliot Rodger purchased magazines in compliance with California's restrictions on magazine capacity. Each of the magazines had a ten round capacity.
Elliot Rodger had no criminal history or history of violence, his family is affluent and had significant resources, he was being professionally treated, and even when his parents were concerned and law enforcement officers were contacted, he was not deemed to be dangerous at that time.
In all honesty and candor I have no reason to believe that the system failed, or that the laws on the books didn't work. From what we know right now it seems that Elliot Rodger was able to jump through every hoop, even in California, with some of the most restrictive laws in the country when it comes to acquiring firearms.
His family was worried and called police. They didn't perceive him to be a threat. They didn't involuntarily commit him or take his firearms away.
What more could possibly be done? Better training for cops? Adding dedicated mental health professionals to the police force to assist with these types of determinations?
Its possible to legally buy weapons without background checks?
Speaking as a half informed Brit here.
Depends on the weapon actually. You don't need to do squat for a sword/axe/knife/baton/pepper spray/etc.
For firearms however it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check, particularly in California. There are a couple exceptions, some inter-familial transfers are the only ones off the top of my head, like from parent to child, though technically they're still subject to the same restrictions as any other firearms purchase (so no giving a child with a felony conviction grandpa's revolver), but otherwise it's not possible to obtain a firearm without a background check.
Vaktathi wrote: For firearms however it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check
It is actually not to hard to get one without a background check if you are so inclined. You have many states where they don't happen at gun shows, and then private individuals buy/sell/trade to others all the time. I knew an older guy with a small arsenal and every week he was buying and trading guns like they were Pokemon cards. Every week he had a new pistol and usually had sold or traded one. He wasn't doing background checks.
Vaktathi wrote: For firearms however it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check
It is actually not to hard to get one without a background check if you are so inclined. You have many states where they don't happen at gun shows, and then private individuals buy/sell/trade to others all the time. I knew an older guy with a small arsenal and every week he was buying and trading guns like they were Pokemon cards. Every week he had a new pistol and usually had sold or traded one. He wasn't doing background checks.
California (where this shooting occurred) requires background checks for all private party transfers. It's possible in other states for people who do not sell firearms for a living to sell to other individuals without background checks, but not in CA. If an FFL (gun store) is showing up to a Gun Show in any state and isn't doing background checks, they're operating illegally.
Vaktathi wrote: For firearms however it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check
It is actually not to hard to get one without a background check if you are so inclined. You have many states where they don't happen at gun shows, and then private individuals buy/sell/trade to others all the time. I knew an older guy with a small arsenal and every week he was buying and trading guns like they were Pokemon cards. Every week he had a new pistol and usually had sold or traded one. He wasn't doing background checks.
California (where this shooting occurred) requires background checks for all private party transfers. It's possible in other states for people who do not sell firearms for a living to sell to other individuals without background checks, but not in CA. If an FFL (gun store) is showing up to a Gun Show in any state and isn't doing background checks, they're operating illegally.
I don't think the statement was made that no one ever needs to make background checks, just that there are a number of ways to obtain a firearm without one. Of course this was also only stated in response to the idea that "it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check". California is one of the places that requires them for both private and gun shows, but there are states that do not on either. I didn't think "getting it illegally" needed to be said as far as getting one without a background check, but obliviously there is that route as well.
So it isn't just a preference using guns. It's a preference for murder. And unless we want to argue that Americans are somehow an inherently murderous populace, or there are other issues that are unique to the US that lead to more murder (there's some argument on economic inequality, but all the other usual measures like drugs, policing effectiveness etc are not uniquely US issues)... then it becomes clear that having a sea of guns sloshing about your country really does mean more murders.
It's actually much more simple than that.. It's how we classify murder in the states vs how the rest of the world does. It's Apples to oranges...
One example is how we classify vehicular homocide.
That's just one example but even when you look at data for homicide rates, even wikipedia is explicit about explaining the misreporting that is being done for "political reasons". The data is pretty much worthless to draw conclusions from.
And btw.. the income inequality argument is completely brain dead. The standard of living in the US is so ridiculously high compared to the rest of the world I seriously doubt people are shooting eachother over food here in the states.
Unfortunately, the bottom rungs of American society are so much lower than that of other developed nations. I've been to The States. 'Poverty' here is pretty mild compared to what you guys have. I was brought up in one of the poorest areas of the uk, and I was pretty shocked, tbh.
Albatross wrote: Unfortunately, the bottom rungs of American society are so much lower than that of other developed nations. I've been to The States. 'Poverty' here is pretty mild compared to what you guys have. I was brought up in one of the poorest areas of the uk, and I was pretty shocked, tbh.
Not arguing for or against your observation, but when something like Isla Vista happens, its almost always comes from the middle class.
And btw.. the income inequality argument is completely brain dead. The standard of living in the US is so ridiculously high compared to the rest of the world I seriously doubt people are shooting eachother over food here in the states.
Nobody is saying they're shooting each other over food because they're starving, but the US does have some rather stark income inequality issues in some places (particularly next to many similarly otherwise wealthy European nations that enjoy similar standards of living), and where gun crime is most prevalent is typically where such issues are income inequality issues are most exacerbated (e.g. New Orleans, Detroit, parts of Chicago, etc).
Ahtman wrote: I don't think the statement was made that no one ever needs to make background checks, just that there are a number of ways to obtain a firearm without one. Of course this was also only stated in response to the idea that "it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check". California is one of the places that requires them for both private and gun shows, but there are states that do not on either. I didn't think "getting it illegally" needed to be said as far as getting one without a background check, but obliviously there is that route as well.
You can not buy from a dealer at a gunshow without going through a background check. 2 unlicensed individuals can make deals but if either part is licensed, they are committing a crime.
Trying to regulate sales between individuals is just dumb. Simply put, it would never work. Plus... Most gun owners aren't selling their weapons to perfect strangers they meet at a gunshow. Mainly because they don't want to get sold a worthless firearm or have knocks on their door when a weapon registered to them gets used in a crime.
btw.. this really isn't a gun issue. The guy was more proficient in killing people with his hammer than he was with a firearm. Ban hammers and cars?
And btw.. the income inequality argument is completely brain dead. The standard of living in the US is so ridiculously high compared to the rest of the world I seriously doubt people are shooting eachother over food here in the states.
Nobody is saying they're shooting each other over food because they're starving, but the US does have some rather stark income inequality issues in some places (particularly next to many similarly otherwise wealthy European nations that enjoy similar standards of living), and where gun crime is most prevalent is typically where such issues are income inequality issues are most exacerbated (e.g. New Orleans, Detroit, parts of Chicago, etc).
Albatross wrote: Unfortunately, the bottom rungs of American society are so much lower than that of other developed nations. I've been to The States. 'Poverty' here is pretty mild compared to what you guys have. I was brought up in one of the poorest areas of the uk, and I was pretty shocked, tbh.
I have an EU passport and have done my share of traveling too.. I can't agree with that assessment based on my own personal experience nor economic numbers I monitor.
Either way.. What this kid did had nothing to do with income inequality. He came from a wealthy family, had a fully paid for college eduction and was driving around hollywood in a BMW. He was mentally ill.
The argument that wealth inequality is not worth discussing because the poor are still better than starving people in Africa bugs me. Just because there's a bigger problem somewhere doesn't mean that you can dismiss the existence of a little problem.
I would suggest that anything that ranks the bottom US 10% as identical to the top 10% of Italians in terms of "quality of life", may be somewhat flawed.
The article also spends a lot of time talking about being "rich", seemingly oblivious to the fact that was a dollar guys in one nation can buy a whole lot more or a whole lot less in another, along with having vastly different costs for housing and food in different nations.
Either way, doesn't change the fact that firearms crime in the US is generally highest where income inequality issues are greatest, though yes in the SB shooter case obviously it probably had nothing to do with it.
dereksatkinson wrote: btw.. this really isn't a gun issue. The guy was more proficient in killing people with his hammer than he was with a firearm. Ban hammers and cars?
Why don't you ask those who made it a gun issue? My only argument has been against the idea that acquiring a firearm without a background check is difficult if not impossible. The vast majority do it the normal way because they are responsible firearm owners, but it is not difficult to get one without it if that is your goal.
The argument that wealth inequality is not worth discussing because the poor are still better than starving people in Africa bugs me. Just because there's a bigger problem somewhere doesn't mean that you can dismiss the existence of a little problem.
Its possible to legally buy weapons without background checks?
Speaking as a half informed Brit here.
Depends on the weapon actually. You don't need to do squat for a sword/axe/knife/baton/pepper spray/etc.
For firearms however it's generally not possible to buy one without a background check, particularly in California. There are a couple exceptions, some inter-familial transfers are the only ones off the top of my head, like from parent to child, though technically they're still subject to the same restrictions as any other firearms purchase (so no giving a child with a felony conviction grandpa's revolver), but otherwise it's not possible to obtain a firearm without a background check.
Well yeah, naturally I meant firearms, not swords and knives.
Its possible to legally buy weapons without background checks?
Speaking as a half informed Brit here.
Yes it is. The most common way is the gun show loop hole. 33 states don't require any background checks there for private sales. Even if you live in a state that does require it getting around it may be as simple as having access to a car and the internet to find a gun show where you can get one without a background check.
And of course there is always the internet and the second hand market. With no gun registry or anyway of tracking private sales you can trade/buy guns rather easily with no paper trail.
Another thing to remember is that there almost as many guns in the US as people, like 90 guns for every 100 people or something like that.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Well, surely the important is to research these drugs more thoroughly to determine whether there actually is a link, or whether the correlation is simply coincidental.
Then, having determined whether there actually is a problem, that these drugs do make certain people act violently, you can then decide what to do about it.
We did it with tobacco, once believed to be a harmless drug, and found that it can cause cancer. Shouldn't we do the same with anti-depressants etc?
Perhaps not, but what proportion of the people using these drugs have experienced negative side effects that affected their behaviour? How many of them became more violent and aggressive than is typical for them? Just because a minority of them end up killing people doesn't mean the majority are particularly safe.
When theres a correlation between mental illness, use of mind altering drugs and mass murders, surely its important to research the issue to determine whether there is a link?
IS this being researched?
The problem with the tobacco example though is that tobacco hurts everyone who takes it and anti depressants cause suicidal thoughts in only in a low number of cases (less than 5%). It is a link that has been studied and even found in initial trials. But it only occurs in small number of patients.
The conclusion is the same with many drugs or procedures in Medicine. The benefits out way any potential downsides. Side affects are the reason why almost any drug advertised in the US on TV has a some narrator at the end quickly listing off potential side affects, some of which are deadly. Hell when I got my wisdom teeth removed the person walking me through the risks mentioned death as a potential risk to having my wisdom teeth removed. And yes I am serious.
I'm still waiting on hearing an actual definition from the antis for "assault weapon" that doesn't just boil down to "black, scary looking rifle" based on cosmetic features. Especially when some legislation in the past has resulted in Civil War firearms, .22s, and hunting rifles being classified as "assault weapons"
Actually, the initial draft of the Clinton era "assault weapon ban" would have made firearms from the revolutionary war illegal... Basically, the way they worded it was "if the firearm has 2 or more of these features, then it's an assault weapon" Among the list was:
-composite body (read, plastic or "black" rifles)
-collapsable stock
-the ability to fire it's full load of ammunition with one trigger pull
-bayonet stud/ring
-a particular style of sight aperture
-a sling, or the ability to affix one
and a few others... but basically, every AWI, and ACW re-enactor would have had an illegal weapon, and gun rights groups threw a fit, and pointed out the absurdity of that bit of legislation. Especially since that whole "ability to fire full load of ammunition with one trigger pull" is so nutty. Obviously the politicians were after the full auto AKs and the like, but failed to remember that there were/ are still single shot weapons in existence today.
Yes it is. The most common way is the gun show loop hole. 33 states don't require any background checks there for private sales. Even if you live in a state that does require it getting around it may be as simple as having access to a car and the internet to find a gun show where you can get one without a background check.
And of course there is always the internet and the second hand market. With no gun registry or anyway of tracking private sales you can trade/buy guns rather easily with no paper trail.
Another thing to remember is that there almost as many guns in the US as people, like 90 guns for every 100 people or something like that.
Any internet sale of a firearm (where it's going to be mailed) will be subject to background check and FFL transfer, meaning you can't just mail a gun to someone, you have to send it to an FFL, they have to background check you, and you have to pick up the weapon from them. The only exception is if you just use an internet forum to set up a private meet up where the firearm is exchanged in person, and even then only if you're in a state that doesn't require private party transfers to be checked.
That said, once the background check goes through, the transaction history isn't saved in a centralized database, just the individual FFL's records.
I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
Vaktathi wrote: I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
The gun show 'loophole', as it were, is the 33 states that don't require a background check at a gun show to purchase a firearm. There is a link about it earlier. Yes, licensed dealers have to still do it, but not unlicensed ones. It is another situation where some are making it worse for the whole, as their are people that identify as hobbyists or private sellers, and legally are allowed to so, while selling a lot of firearms. The question was never about whether most people get guns without a background check, but the level of difficulty, and the answer is still that it isn't all that difficult if that is your desire.
Vaktathi wrote: Any internet sale of a firearm (where it's going to be mailed) will be subject to background check and FFL transfer, meaning you can't just mail a gun to someone, you have to send it to an FFL, they have to background check you, and you have to pick up the weapon from them. The only exception is if you just use an internet forum to set up a private meet up where the firearm is exchanged in person, and even then only if you're in a state that doesn't require private party transfers to be checked.
That said, once the background check goes through, the transaction history isn't saved in a centralized database, just the individual FFL's records.
I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
Yea I was referring to second hand sales, that use several different sites on the internet to set up private sales between citizens. They are legal in some states.
Vaktathi wrote: I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
The gun show 'loophole', as it were, is the 33 states that don't require a background check at a gun show to purchase a firearm. There is a link about it earlier. Yes, licensed dealers have to still do it, but not unlicensed ones.
Right, but it's not specific to gun shows, it's private party transfers in general, gun shows in certain states simply happen to be one place where this occurs, as opposed to it being unique or primarily related to them. I'll fully admit it's a loophole, I just don't see why it's always referenced in regard to gun shows.
That said, anyone considered a "dealer" (as in, they're routinely selling arms for profit as a means of normal income) that isn't licensed is putting themselves at risk of some pretty nasty federal charges. If someone's routinely showing up to a gun show with multiple firearms for sale every month, and aren't operating as, or through, an FFL, that will get them in trouble if they get noticed. The seller is also putting themselves at greater risk, as if they sell to a prohibited person they can be brought up on charges or face civil suit.
Vaktathi wrote: Any internet sale of a firearm (where it's going to be mailed) will be subject to background check and FFL transfer, meaning you can't just mail a gun to someone, you have to send it to an FFL, they have to background check you, and you have to pick up the weapon from them. The only exception is if you just use an internet forum to set up a private meet up where the firearm is exchanged in person, and even then only if you're in a state that doesn't require private party transfers to be checked.
That said, once the background check goes through, the transaction history isn't saved in a centralized database, just the individual FFL's records.
I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
Yea I was referring to second hand sales, that use several different sites on the internet to set up private sales between citizens. They are legal in some states.
Yes, and? Do you think a guy who is intent on murdering someone is going to go through the week plus process of that when he could go to a bass pro, and just pick one up?
An established criminal isn't going to spend money on a person to person sell like that, when he can go to his back alley criminal dealer and get that gun for much cheaper. I would like to see some statistics on how many crimes are committed by weapons bought person to person that don't under-go background checks.
Vaktathi wrote: Any internet sale of a firearm (where it's going to be mailed) will be subject to background check and FFL transfer, meaning you can't just mail a gun to someone, you have to send it to an FFL, they have to background check you, and you have to pick up the weapon from them. The only exception is if you just use an internet forum to set up a private meet up where the firearm is exchanged in person, and even then only if you're in a state that doesn't require private party transfers to be checked.
That said, once the background check goes through, the transaction history isn't saved in a centralized database, just the individual FFL's records.
I'm not sure why it's called the "gun show" loophole, nothing about it is specific to gun shows
Yea I was referring to second hand sales, that use several different sites on the internet to set up private sales between citizens. They are legal in some states.
Ah ok, then yeah that's legal provided there's a face to face meetup and you're in a state that doesn't require checks for private party transfers, just can't mail anything.
Vaktathi wrote: I just don't see why it's always referenced in regard to gun shows.
Becuase the guys selling this way and skirting the law use Gun Shows as a gathering place. It isn't the only place it happens, but a lot goes on there.
Yes, and? Do you think a guy who is intent on murdering someone is going to go through the week plus process of that when he could go to a bass pro, and just pick one up?
An established criminal isn't going to spend money on a person to person sell like that, when he can go to his back alley criminal dealer and get that gun for much cheaper. I would like to see some statistics on how many crimes are committed by weapons bought person to person that don't under-go background checks.
I never said that this would be the primary method of criminals getting guns just some asked if there is a legal way of getting a gun with no background check and the answer is yes.
dereksatkinson wrote: It's actually much more simple than that.. It's how we classify murder in the states vs how the rest of the world does. It's Apples to oranges...
That's a old claim, and a rubbish one that has no relevance to the stats being debated. The reported rates use the intentional homicide figures.
And btw.. the income inequality argument is completely brain dead. The standard of living in the US is so ridiculously high compared to the rest of the world I seriously doubt people are shooting eachother over food here in the states.
Actually, the income in the US is pretty much the same as the rest of the developed world. Germany, France, UK, Denmark, Japan, Australia... the differences in average incomes are minor. Until you start looking at income distributions, where you start seeing some pretty significant variations.
And that level of poverty isn't driving someone to kill for their breakfast, but it is likely to impose greater stress on their life, increase the economic incentive towards crime, increase the likelihood of drug taking etc, all of which increase the likelihood of murder. All of which you'd learn if you went and read something about how criminologists look at this stuff, instead of just making a wild guess in your head that the relationship must be because people are killing in order to eat.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
jasper76 wrote: Not arguing for or against your observation, but when something like Isla Vista happens, its almost always comes from the middle class.
Sure, and income inequality has no place in talking about spree killing. But spree killing is a very small portion of homicides, and the vast bulk are tied, among other things, to poverty levels.
And if you look at murder rates in the non-developed world, they're much higher. They're even significantly higher than the US. So the much lower levels of poverty in the developed world correlate with lower murder rates.
And then if you look at the developed world, you see one country with a significantly higher murder rate, and it also happens to be the one with significantly higher poverty rates - the US.
At which point this really shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Law officers who visited Elliot Rodger three weeks before he killed six college students near a Santa Barbara university were aware that he had posted disturbing videos but didn't watch them, and they didn't know about his final video detailing his "Day of Retribution" until after the deadly rampage, officials said.
The disclosure in a Santa Barbara County sheriff's department statement on Thursday corrected an earlier assertion that deputies were unaware of any video when they checked on him on April 30. The statement also provided new details on the sequence of events during that pivotal visit to Rodger's apartment, a time when he was plotting the rampage ended with him apparently taking his own life.
The guns he used in the killings last Friday were stashed inside his apartment at the time, but police never searched the residence or conducted a check to determine if he owned firearms because they didn't consider him a threat.
The statement does not explain why the videos were not viewed or whether the deputies knew anything about the contents beyond a description of them being "disturbing."
The sheriff's department also revealed new details about the timeline leading up to the killings. It said Rodger uploaded his final video to YouTube detailing his "Day of Retribution" and stating his plans and reasons for the killings, at 9:17 p.m. on the day of the shootings, May 23. One minute later, he emailed a lengthy written manifesto to his mother, father and therapist that also detailed his plans and contempt for everyone he felt were responsible for his sexual frustrations and overall miserable existence.
The first gunshots were reported at 9:27 p.m. The rampage was over and Rodger dead just eight minutes later.
It was another half hour before the therapist saw the emailed manifesto and 11 more minutes until the sheriff's office was contacted at 10:11 p.m. Authorities contacted Rodger's mother and learned about the manifesto and the "Retribution" video.
Deputies wounded Rodger during two separate shootouts as he sped through the unincorporated beach community of Isla Vista, near the University of California, Santa Barbara, leaving a trail of bloodshed that ended with Rodger apparently shooting himself in the head before crashing his black BMW into a parked car. Thirteen people were injured - eight from gunshot wounds, four from being hit by his car and one who suffered a minor injury.
The timing indicates that Rodger stabbed to death three people in the apartment sometime earlier - his two roommates and a third man who might have been another roommate or a visitor at the time of the attack.
Rodger wrote in the manifesto about the April 30 visit by the deputies and said it prompted him to remove most of his videos from YouTube. He re-posted at least some of them in the week leading up to the killings. He wrote that the deputies asked him if he had suicidal thoughts, but "I tactfully told them that it was all a misunderstanding and they finally left. If they had demanded to search my room that would have ended everything."
According to the statement from the sheriff's office, four deputies, a police officer and a dispatcher in training were sent to Rodger's apartment after being informed by the county's mental health hotline that Rodger's therapist and mother were concerned about videos he posted online.
The visit lasted about 10 minutes, during which officers found him shy and polite. The deputies questioned him about the videos. Rodger told them he was having trouble fitting in socially and the videos were "merely a way of expressing himself."
Like many other states, California has a law intended to identify and confine dangerously unstable people before they can do harm. It allows authorities to hold people in a mental hospital for up to 72 hours for observation.
Because the deputies concluded Rodger was not a threat to himself or others, they never viewed the videos, searched his apartment or conducted a check to determine if he owned firearms, the statement said.
That sequence of events is different from a statement Sunday from spokeswoman Kelly Hoover, who said "the sheriff's office was not aware of any videos until after the shooting rampage occurred."
In a typical mental-health check, only two deputies would be dispatched. But deputies who were familiar with Rodger as a victim in a January petty theft case were in the area and also decided to go to his apartment.
Hoover did not respond immediately to an email seeking more information on why the deputies didn't watch the videos, the content of the videos and what specific information was relayed from the mother that prompted the check at his apartment.
Rick Wall, a retired Los Angeles police captain who created the agency's procedures for responding to people with mental problems, said that law enforcement officers need to look at all the available evidence when conducting investigations. "Not that the final conclusion that they made on that day would have been any different, but something could have changed," he said.
The visit with Rodger was brief, but Wall said the amount of time they spent talking to his mother was critical in determining why she was concerned about him, while gathering details of his medical history and past behavior. That information isn't known.
"That's going to be the telling piece and where you're going to get the breakdown on the guy's story," Wall said. "Talking to somebody for 10 minutes, you may or may not get the ability to conduct a proper evaluation."
Rodger's parents issued a statement Thursday through family friend Simon Astaire, saying they were "crying out in pain" for the victims and their families.
"The feeling of knowing that it was our son's actions that caused this tragedy can only be described as hell on earth," the statement said. "It is now our responsibility to do everything we can to help avoid this happening to any other family - not only to avoid any more innocence destroyed, but also to identify and deal with the mental issues that drove our son to do what he did."
So the police officers didn't watch the videos to determine if he was dangerous or not. I bet they're glad for the following;
845. Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for
failure to establish a police department or otherwise to provide
police protection service or, if police protection service is
provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection
service.
…
846. Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for
injury caused by the failure to make an arrest or by the failure to
retain an arrested person in custody.
855.6. Except for an examination or diagnosis for the purpose of
treatment, neither a public entity nor a public employee acting
within the scope of his employment is liable for injury caused by the
failure to make a physical or mental examination, or to make an
adequate physical or mental examination, of any person for the
purpose of determining whether such person has a disease or physical
or mental condition that would constitute a hazard to the health or
safety of himself or others.
I'm not blaming the cops who were doing a sight visit. Cops are used to nutjobs who rant and rave (and are drunk/high) and could be a visible threat to them and others.
If you want a better assessment of the situation, you have to bring in people more skilled in that area. Thats not the job of the local sheriff. Someone should have been there with him to check it out.
Our mental health structure in this country is...pardon the pun...insane.
The mental health issue is something that needs addressed. Sadly for many people in public office it is just not sexy, or scary, enough to be used as a platform.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: The mental health issue is something that needs addressed. Sadly for many people in public office it is just not sexy, or scary, enough to be used as a platform.
And by that same vein, how exactly do you "address" it?
Do you advocate for people with health issues to be able to be locked up just because someone thinks they might be a danger? You're getting into the realm of PreCrime there, and that's a dangerous road to travel down.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: The mental health issue is something that needs addressed. Sadly for many people in public office it is just not sexy, or scary, enough to be used as a platform.
And by that same vein, how exactly do you "address" it?
Do you advocate for people with health issues to be able to be locked up just because someone thinks they might be a danger? You're getting into the realm of PreCrime there, and that's a dangerous road to travel down.
More funding for community resources and an investigation in to the link of anti-depressants and mass shootings. I'm not someone who believes you can stop 100% of crimes but I believe that getting more funding to the mentally ill would do a greater service to lowering crime than adding more restrictions to firearms.
Although this in itself can be difficult, because even if the resources are there there is still the social stigma as well as people not knowing they have a problem. So tack on mental health awareness on to the community funding.
Vaktathi wrote: Right, but it's not specific to gun shows, it's private party transfers in general, gun shows in certain states simply happen to be one place where this occurs, as opposed to it being unique or primarily related to them. I'll fully admit it's a loophole, I just don't see why it's always referenced in regard to gun shows.
Because gun shows are where the loophole is abused the most. The law makes sense in some cases, if you're selling a gun to a friend then it's probably not practical to deal with all the paperwork (and let's be honest, even if it was required most people would probably just ignore it anyway), but that's not a big deal because it's a one-time thing that isn't advertised to every random person who wants to buy a gun. At gun shows you have an event that is effectively operating as a business, but the loophole allows them to pretend that it's just a bunch of private individuals selling to their friends that purely by coincidence happen to be in the same place.
Kanluwen wrote: And by that same vein, how exactly do you "address" it?
More funding for mental health services
Better access to mental health services (scholarships/loan forgiveness/tax brakes for practitioners)
More education on mental health
Reduce the stigma of mental health to encourage people to seek therapy
Less reliance on medication as a first course of treatment
Kanluwen wrote: Do you advocate for people with health issues to be able to be locked up just because someone thinks they might be a danger? You're getting into the realm of PreCrime there, and that's a dangerous road to travel down.
That someone would be a trained mental health professional, and that ability (to have someone detained who is a risk to themselves or others) is something that they already possess.
Kanluwen wrote: And by that same vein, how exactly do you "address" it?
More funding for mental health services
Better access to mental health services (scholarships/loan forgiveness/tax brakes for practitioners)
More education on mental health
Reduce the stigma of mental health to encourage people to seek therapy
Less reliance on medication as a first course of treatment
Kanluwen wrote: Do you advocate for people with health issues to be able to be locked up just because someone thinks they might be a danger? You're getting into the realm of PreCrime there, and that's a dangerous road to travel down.
That someone would be a trained mental health professional, and that ability (to have someone detained who is a risk to themselves or others) is something that they already possess.
And none of those are real answers that actually address the question.
How do you address mental illness when it comes to stopping incidents like this? Mental health services can only do so much when people are not required to be screened. So are we going to make mental health screenings a mandatory thing?
Medication isn't as relied upon as you think, by the by. It is certainly overprescribed, but that's not the same as it being "a first course of treatment"--and to be completely blunt, it varies wildly depending upon the institution in question. Some of the private facilities certainly rely upon medicating their 'tenants', but when you get into people who are out in the world at large...they might have a prescription on file but there is no guarantee they are actually taking their medication. That opens up another can of worms: Are you able to forcibly medicate someone in the name of public safety?
In this particular case you have a perfect storm of circumstances: A functional sociopath who is legally recognized as an adult, so the parents cannot forcibly commit him despite having concerns and the therapists having concerns as well.
Why more was not made of the therapists who were purportedly treating Rodgers is something to look into, but it would not be surprising at all to find out that therapists tend to err on the side of caution and as such LEOs are having to respond to a large number of these kinds of concerns from therapists.
Not sure if it's been brought up, but in regards to his ASD diagnosis, people sometimes receive those although they are more likely to have a schizoid disorder of some kind. There isn't anywhere near the support for people with the latter, and the stigma is much more unforgiving, which can lead to some practitioners not considering the alternative diagnosis of a schizoid disorder, because then the patient won't receive anywhere near the support when they are in school/etc as they would with an ASD disorder. And since the symptoms share some similarities, it can just be an honest mistake as well.
I know we've moved on from the whole psych thing a bit, but I just thought I'd throw that in, in case someone found it interesting.
Kanluwen wrote: And none of those are real answers that actually address the question.
How do you address mental illness when it comes to stopping incidents like this?
I would have thought that it was patiently obvious that better access to psychiatrists, and better education on mental health would have given the LEOs more tools when it came to dealing with this individual. More education would have enabled them to better determine that a psychiatrist was needed to be involved at a much earlier stage when they spoke with him, and better access to a mental health expect would have helped facilitate this. At this point the psychiatrist would have also known about the videos that the LEOs did not pass along and this may have lead to the attacks being prevented.
Kanluwen wrote: Mental health services can only do so much when people are not required to be screened. So are we going to make mental health screenings a mandatory thing?
Medication isn't as relied upon as you think, by the by. It is certainly overprescribed, but that's not the same as it being "a first course of treatment"--and to be completely blunt, it varies wildly depending upon the institution in question. Some of the private facilities certainly rely upon medicating their 'tenants', but when you get into people who are out in the world at large...they might have a prescription on file but there is no guarantee they are actually taking their medication. That opens up another can of worms: Are you able to forcibly medicate someone in the name of public safety
No one mentioned anything about mental health screenings being mandatory. So we can drop that discussion at this juncture.
There is lots of evidence that other people who have committed mass killings have been on medication that can also have a side effect of causing aggression and suicidal thoughts - the Columbine shooters, the Navy Yard shooter, Colorado Theater Shooter, Newtown Shooter, Red Lake Shooter, shooting in West Paducah, and many others besides that do not have the 3+ deaths to be deemed mass shootings.
Kanluwen wrote: In this particular case you have a perfect storm of circumstances: A functional sociopath who is legally recognized as an adult, so the parents cannot forcibly commit him despite having concerns and the therapists having concerns as well.
Why more was not made of the therapists who were purportedly treating Rodgers is something to look into, but it would not be surprising at all to find out that therapists tend to err on the side of caution and as such LEOs are having to respond to a large number of these kinds of concerns from therapists.
CALIFORNIA WELFARE AND INSTITUTIONS CODE, SECTION 5150, second paragraph, "... an application in writing stating the circumstances under which the person's condition was called to the attention of the officer, member of the attending staff, or professional person, and stating that the officer, member of the attending staff, or professional person has probable cause to believe that the person is, as a result of mental disorder, a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled."
Had the LEOs involved a psychiatrist at an early stage, or if the family had contacted a psychiatrist directly, and provided the videos for evaluation then that may have lead to;
a) His being detained for 72 hours
b) His abode being searched, the firearms being discovered, and him forfeiting his right to own such items for 5 years.
At the very least it would have reduced the death toll 50%
Dreadclaw69 wrote: The mental health issue is something that needs addressed. Sadly for many people in public office it is just not sexy, or scary, enough to be used as a platform.
And by that same vein, how exactly do you "address" it?
Do you advocate for people with health issues to be able to be locked up just because someone thinks they might be a danger? You're getting into the realm of PreCrime there, and that's a dangerous road to travel down.
More funding for community resources and an investigation in to the link of anti-depressants and mass shootings.
I'm a bit confused here. Presumably these people are getting anti-depressants because they've got a medical condition requiring them, yes? If so, why are we presuming that it's the anti-depressants when the more logical step would be to assume that it's because they've got mental issues in the first place? As in, it's not that anti-depressants make people go on spree shootings, it's that the people who go on spree shootings tend to do it because they have issues that are treated with anti-depressants.
I'm a bit confused here. Presumably these people are getting anti-depressants because they've got a medical condition requiring them, yes? If so, why are we presuming that it's the anti-depressants when the more logical step would be to assume that it's because they've got mental issues in the first place? As in, it's not that anti-depressants make people go on spree shootings, it's that the people who go on spree shootings tend to do it because they have issues that are treated with anti-depressants.
I think that it's really a bit of both... See, we know that most MH professionals are not just handing out Zoloft like candy (unless they're getting a kick back from the pharmaceutical company), so it would be fairly obvious that a person being treated would have issues. Combine this with, as has been stated earlier in the thread, that different SSRIs (psychotropic drugs) don't always react in the predictable manner that say, Tylenol does. Because these drugs actively mess with the brain, the side-effects become a bit more prevalent, and they also seem to become more severe in some cases.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'm a bit confused here. Presumably these people are getting anti-depressants because they've got a medical condition requiring them, yes? If so, why are we presuming that it's the anti-depressants when the more logical step would be to assume that it's because they've got mental issues in the first place?
The whole point of carrying out research is to get to the bottom of this. Why is this so hard to understand?
There is a correlation between mass shootings, and use of anti-depressants and similar drugs. Research is needed to determine whether that correlation is simply coincidental, or whether there is causation behind it. We need to know whether the use of anti-depressants and other drugs contribute to violent behavior in certain individuals.
As in, it's not that anti-depressants make people go on spree shootings, it's that the people who go on spree shootings tend to do it because they have issues that are treated with anti-depressants.
Kanluwen wrote: And none of those are real answers that actually address the question.
How do you address mental illness when it comes to stopping incidents like this?
I would have thought that it was patiently obvious that better access to psychiatrists, and better education on mental health would have given the LEOs more tools when it came to dealing with this individual. More education would have enabled them to better determine that a psychiatrist was needed to be involved at a much earlier stage when they spoke with him, and better access to a mental health expect would have helped facilitate this. At this point the psychiatrist would have also known about the videos that the LEOs did not pass along and this may have lead to the attacks being prevented.
"Patently obvious", not "patiently obvious".
LEOs are actually better educated on mental health than you think. Also you're making an assumption about "the psychiatrist would have also known about the videos".
Kanluwen wrote: Mental health services can only do so much when people are not required to be screened. So are we going to make mental health screenings a mandatory thing?
Medication isn't as relied upon as you think, by the by. It is certainly overprescribed, but that's not the same as it being "a first course of treatment"--and to be completely blunt, it varies wildly depending upon the institution in question. Some of the private facilities certainly rely upon medicating their 'tenants', but when you get into people who are out in the world at large...they might have a prescription on file but there is no guarantee they are actually taking their medication. That opens up another can of worms: Are you able to forcibly medicate someone in the name of public safety
No one mentioned anything about mental health screenings being mandatory. So we can drop that discussion at this juncture.
There is lots of evidence that other people who have committed mass killings have been on medication that can also have a side effect of causing aggression and suicidal thoughts - the Columbine shooters, the Navy Yard shooter, Colorado Theater Shooter, Newtown Shooter, Red Lake Shooter, shooting in West Paducah, and many others besides that do not have the 3+ deaths to be deemed mass shootings.
Oh sure it's "the medication".
Kanluwen wrote: In this particular case you have a perfect storm of circumstances: A functional sociopath who is legally recognized as an adult, so the parents cannot forcibly commit him despite having concerns and the therapists having concerns as well.
Why more was not made of the therapists who were purportedly treating Rodgers is something to look into, but it would not be surprising at all to find out that therapists tend to err on the side of caution and as such LEOs are having to respond to a large number of these kinds of concerns from therapists.
CALIFORNIA WELFARE AND INSTITUTIONS CODE, SECTION 5150, second paragraph, "... an application in writing stating the circumstances under which the person's condition was called to the attention of the officer, member of the attending staff, or professional person, and stating that the officer, member of the attending staff, or professional person has probable cause to believe that the person is, as a result of mental disorder, a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled."
Had the LEOs involved a psychiatrist at an early stage, or if the family had contacted a psychiatrist directly, and provided the videos for evaluation then that may have lead to;
a) His being detained for 72 hours
b) His abode being searched, the firearms being discovered, and him forfeiting his right to own such items for 5 years.
At the very least it would have reduced the death toll 50%
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'm a bit confused here. Presumably these people are getting anti-depressants because they've got a medical condition requiring them, yes? If so, why are we presuming that it's the anti-depressants when the more logical step would be to assume that it's because they've got mental issues in the first place?
The whole point of carrying out research is to get to the bottom of this. Why is this so hard to understand?
It's hard to understand because people are jumping straight to the conclusion that it's the drugs doing it, when a much simpler explanation is that the people who do this have issues to start with. I'm fine with looking at the drugs to make sure it's not an issue with the medication, but it seems as if though people are jumping onto the drugs as the most obvious cause.
Other than the correlation, what reason do we have to blame the medication? If we spent millions of dollars investigating every correlation just because it exists, we'd never get anything done and we'd be broke. Is there any suspicions beyond what appears to be a knee-jerk "those darn psychiatrists"?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: I'm a bit confused here. Presumably these people are getting anti-depressants because they've got a medical condition requiring them, yes? If so, why are we presuming that it's the anti-depressants when the more logical step would be to assume that it's because they've got mental issues in the first place?
The whole point of carrying out research is to get to the bottom of this. Why is this so hard to understand?
It's hard to understand because people are jumping straight to the conclusion that it's the drugs doing it, when a much simpler explanation is that the people who do this have issues to start with. I'm fine with looking at the drugs to make sure it's not an issue with the medication, but it seems as if though people are jumping onto the drugs as the most obvious cause.
Other than the correlation, what reason do we have to blame the medication? If we spent millions of dollars investigating every correlation just because it exists, we'd never get anything done and we'd be broke. Is there any suspicions beyond what appears to be a knee-jerk "those darn psychiatrists"?
I'd say that the main problem is trying to prove any causation. If most spree killers are mentally ill, then most spree killers will be on medication. However, I don't believe there are any killers who aren't mentally ill, but still take the medication. So essentially, even if the medication causes psychotic tendencies in a minority of cases, it's going to be hard to prove that this is the reason for the killings as opposed to the mental illness (that the medication is prescribed for).
The only way we'd be able to tell is by giving a bunch of normal people some serious medication; however, that's quite unlikely to happen.
Kanluwen wrote: "Patently obvious", not "patiently obvious".
Oh goody, you're correcting spelling and grammar now. This is shaping up to bea constructive exchange.
Kanluwen wrote: LEOs are actually better educated on mental health than you think. Also you're making an assumption about "the psychiatrist would have also known about the videos".
Starting your statement with a sweeping assumption I see, then criticizing me for making an assumption. My assumption about the psychiatrist knowing about the videos stems from the fact that the police knew about them. So obviously if the police were accompanied by a psychiatrist then it stands to reason the psychiatrist would also know about the videos. In any event LEOs are not trained in mental health to the same level as a psychiatrist.
That's it? That's your rebuttal? You are given evidence of correlation between mass shootings, mental health, and medication (which I admit, warrants further investigation) and you can only muster a pithy response
Fantastic, but not that isn't something I'm disputing. A psychiatrist was involved. But not under 5150. As already outlined a 5150 would have involved detention (which you stated could not happen as he was a legal adult) and a search of property which would likely have found the firearms, and also possibly the manifesto (perhaps not the final video)
Kanluwen wrote: "Patently obvious", not "patiently obvious".
Oh goody, you're correcting spelling and grammar now. This is shaping up to bea constructive exchange.
Well if I thought you would contribute anything except parroting whatever the Conservative mouthpieces are putting forward, I would be more inclined to cut you some slack. But that's not about to happen is it?
Kanluwen wrote: LEOs are actually better educated on mental health than you think. Also you're making an assumption about "the psychiatrist would have also known about the videos".
Starting your statement with a sweeping assumption I see, then criticizing me for making an assumption. My assumption about the psychiatrist knowing about the videos stems from the fact that the police knew about them. So obviously if the police were accompanied by a psychiatrist then it stands to reason the psychiatrist would also know about the videos. In any event LEOs are not trained in mental health to the same level as a psychiatrist.
Which psychiatrist are we talking about here? The psychiatrist who actually was involved in treating Rodgers?
Because I think it's pretty safe to make a statement that if Rodgers' psychiatrist had shown up at his home with cops, then he would have stopped seeing that psychiatrist.
The police knew about the videos, but for whatever reason did not investigate them. That is something worth looking into. Did they choose not to because the home visit that two deputies performed did not raise any red flags to them? Or did they just consider it "People are stupid and post stupid crap on the Internet"?
That's it? That's your rebuttal? You are given evidence of correlation between mass shootings, mental health, and medication (which I admit, warrants further investigation) and you can only muster a pithy response
Given that you put forward earlier that "psychiatrists are overmedicating", why are these kinds of incidents not happening more often?
Pretending that the medication is the root cause is being disingenuous.
Putting it bluntly: Medication is a correlation, not a causation at this juncture. Whenever these shootings occur there are always people who leap for anything but "We can't explain why someone chose to do this but they did it".
Fantastic, but not that isn't something I'm disputing. A psychiatrist was involved. But not under 5150. As already outlined a 5150 would have involved detention (which you stated could not happen as he was a legal adult) and a search of property which would likely have found the firearms, and also possibly the manifesto (perhaps not the final video)
No, what I stated(if you actually bothered to read rather than trying to play your whole "Gotcha!" crap):
In this particular case you have a perfect storm of circumstances: A functional sociopath who is legally recognized as an adult, so the parents cannot forcibly commit him despite having concerns and the therapists having concerns as well.
Why more was not made of the therapists who were purportedly treating Rodgers is something to look into, but it would not be surprising at all to find out that therapists tend to err on the side of caution and as such LEOs are having to respond to a large number of these kinds of concerns from therapists.
The PARENTS could not forcibly commit him. The individuals who could have made a call for a 5150(the Sheriff's deputies) did not see anything that warranted a 5150 when they interviewed Rodgers. Why his therapist(or therapists as some articles have put forward) did not push for a 5150, I don't know.
-Shrike- wrote: The only way we'd be able to tell is by giving a bunch of normal people some serious medication; however, that's quite unlikely to happen.
EDIT: Post 600.
Why not? It happens all the time in voluntary medical trials. And people do sometimes die in those trials.
We know for a fact that these sorts of drugs don't literally kill people. But there is a worrying correlation of prescription anti-depressants etc to violent behavior. If the only way to determine whether or not they increase violent behavior is by carrying out medical trials on healthy volunteers and studying the effects (i.e. seeing if a healthy person prescribed with a certain drug also turns violent), then that's what needs to be done.
At the very least, we could rule these drugs out as a cause.
-Shrike- wrote: The only way we'd be able to tell is by giving a bunch of normal people some serious medication; however, that's quite unlikely to happen.
EDIT: Post 600.
Why not? It happens all the time in voluntary medical trials. And people do sometimes die in those trials.
We know for a fact that these sorts of drugs don't literally kill people. But there is a worrying correlation of prescription anti-depressants etc to violent behavior. If the only way to determine whether or not they increase violent behavior is by carrying out medical trials on healthy volunteers and studying the effects (i.e. seeing if a healthy person prescribed with a certain drug also turns violent), then that's what needs to be done.
At the very least, we could rule these drugs out as a cause.
Yes, the thing is though, other than the correlation, what cause do we have to suspect the drugs?
Kanluwen wrote: Well if I thought you would contribute anything except parroting whatever the Conservative mouthpieces are putting forward, I would be more inclined to cut you some slack. But that's not about to happen is it?. . .Given that you put forward earlier that "psychiatrists are overmedicating". . . No, what I stated(if you actually bothered to read rather than trying to play your whole "Gotcha!" crap)
Looks like I was right about my prediction for a constructive exchange. Good talking with you as always Kan.
I'd say the bigger problem is people stopping taking their meds when they think they are "cured". This seems to happen often and the breakdowns that result can be spectacular. This is only anecdotal though.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: Mercifully I don't, but I do remember the signs that read "No Irish. No Blacks. No dogs".
I never grew up with the anti-Irish thing, but I do remember in the late 80s and 90s the strange 'otherness' that the most recent crop of immigrants had. When the national soccer team was full of people with names ending in -ich and lots of people laughed at how little sense it made to cheer for a national team that didn't have any Australians on it. To clarify, they were natural born Australians, just from families who'd migrated from Eastern Europe instead of England and that made it hard for a lot of people to see them as Australian.
I reckon if someone said something like today they'd get punched in the face, and that's a good thing.
Sadly I don't see that comment as a parody, I think that we are seeing people trying to inject yet another issue (race) into the mix, along with feminism (ignoring the fact that out of 6 murder victims 4 were male), and gun control.
Honestly neither would surprise me. And while the quote is ridiculous (if honestly meant), feminism is an issue here. Feminism isn't simply about women being victims, so therefore if there are more male victims it isn't a feminist issue. Feminism is about how society views women, and when this guy spoke as he did about the sex he felt entitled to (and a large number of people on-line agreed with the sentiment) then pretty clearly there is an issue here about how society views women that is worth talking about.
The problem is two fold. The first is the moral panic and emotional response. The second is the poorly drafted legislation, often because "we need to do something".
The legislation isn't written in the heat of the moment. It will likely be revised in that time, but the bulk of the bill will be written long before, over a long period of time by one lobbying group or another. And those groups write gun control legislation that represents a bizarre fixation with scary guns.
sebster wrote: I never grew up with the anti-Irish thing, but I do remember in the late 80s and 90s the strange 'otherness' that the most recent crop of immigrants had. When the national soccer team was full of people with names ending in -ich and lots of people laughed at how little sense it made to cheer for a national team that didn't have any Australians on it. To clarify, they were natural born Australians, just from families who'd migrated from Eastern Europe instead of England and that made it hard for a lot of people to see them as Australian.
I reckon if someone said something like today they'd get punched in the face, and that's a good thing.
I got to grow up during the Troubles so you got pretty familiar with a lot of things like that sadly Even with all the crap that was going on we were never brought up to hate someone because of their religion or politics.
sebster wrote: Honestly neither would surprise me. And while the quote is ridiculous (if honestly meant), feminism is an issue here. Feminism isn't simply about women being victims, so therefore if there are more male victims it isn't a feminist issue. Feminism is about how society views women, and when this guy spoke as he did about the sex he felt entitled to (and a large number of people on-line agreed with the sentiment) then pretty clearly there is an issue here about how society views women that is worth talking about.
The large number of people online who agreed with what he said did not come close to the the number of people telling them that they were out of line. For that I am grateful. Had it been the case that mainstream society had tried to justify the perpetrator's actions and had sympathy or his views than I would absolutely be worried. Lets not forget that the manifesto also made a point of calling out Black and Asian males who were involved with women. This person just lashed out at everyone in some manner because they didn't give him what he wanted - sex, respect, status
sebster wrote: The legislation isn't written in the heat of the moment. It will likely be revised in that time, but the bulk of the bill will be written long before, over a long period of time by one lobbying group or another. And those groups write gun control legislation that represents a bizarre fixation with scary guns.
It may not be written in the heat of the moment, but gun control legislation is frequently written by people who typify the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", as seen with trying to ban so-called assault rifles based on physical characteristics. And no "common sense" gun control measure (bar an outright ban) is ever enough as California and New York are proving
Dreadclaw69 wrote: The large number of people online who agreed with what he said did not come close to the the number of people telling them that they were out of line. For that I am grateful. Had it been the case that mainstream society had tried to justify the perpetrator's actions and had sympathy or his views than I would absolutely be worried.
Yep, definitely, we're talking about an absolute minority here.
It may not be written in the heat of the moment, but gun control legislation is frequently written by people who typify the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing", as seen with trying to ban so-called assault rifles based on physical characteristics. And no "common sense" gun control measure (bar an outright ban) is ever enough as California and New York are proving
To clarify, I'm not defending the creators of those gun laws. If they were written in the heat of the moment there might be some excuse. That they were written over time, with consideration and debate, and were so stupid, and even years later they still can't see the problem... well that's damning.
That said, picking individual state laws as noting that they're ineffective is a bit of a nonsense. You can't ban a good in one state, maintain open and free trade with other states, and then expect that ban to achieve anything. That just denies common sense... of course the good will flow freely from where it is legal to where it is not. The only gun ban that makes any sense is one maintained across the whole of the nation.
Note that I'm not arguing for a gun ban. Just that the failure of any gun ban at the state level means nothing in terms of how it would work federally.
sebster wrote: To clarify, I'm not defending the creators of those gun laws. If they were written in the heat of the moment there might be some excuse. That they were written over time, with consideration and debate, and were so stupid, and even years later they still can't see the problem... well that's damning.
That said, picking individual state laws as noting that they're ineffective is a bit of a nonsense. You can't ban a good in one state, maintain open and free trade with other states, and then expect that ban to achieve anything. That just denies common sense... of course the good will flow freely from where it is legal to where it is not. The only gun ban that makes any sense is one maintained across the whole of the nation.
Note that I'm not arguing for a gun ban. Just that the failure of any gun ban at the state level means nothing in terms of how it would work federally.
I know you aren't defending hem, if it came across that I somehow thought you were it was not my intention. I blame an early morning and lack of caffeine
In a lot of cases trafficking guns across State lines from a less strict jurisdiction to a more strict jurisdiction, say from Indiana to Chicago, to sell on to someone with a criminal history is criminal at both State and Federal level. But people still do it regardless of the possibility of punishment. We already have a large number of illegally held weapons in the wrong hands. An outright ban will not solve that. We also have a very porous border on our south where everything from guns, to drugs, to people are smuggled in. Again, an outright ban on firearms will not impact that. To pretend that banning something will solve the problem is absolute folly - as evidence I submit prohibition, and the War on Drugs. As I said, I grew up during the Troubles. Firearms were very tightly regulated, and yet rifles and explosives still made it into the country in huge quantities. Banning guns from being legally held by the public just puts power into the hands of criminals, and robs people of the ability to effectively defend themselves.
Automatically Appended Next Post: An interesting piece that undermines my previous point about mental health as the main focus going forward, but is in favour of self defense.
More money for mental health won’t stop these mass murderers.
With the Santa Barbara killings, mental health is again the central focus. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is pushing for more resources on mental health “to make sure that these kinds of horrific, insane, mad occurrences are stopped and the Congress will be complicit if we fail to act.”
But the killer, Elliot Rodger, had already been receiving top-quality mental-health counseling for years. One of his psychiatrists, Dr. Charles Sophy, is nationally known and medical director for the LA County Department of Children and Family Services.
Rodger had, in fact, been seeing multiple psychiatrists. Some blame the sheriff’s deputies for not doing more to investigate an initial complaint, but Rodger’s psychiatrists ultimately had the responsibility to ensure he had the proper treatment. It’s not obvious how more money would have helped.
It’s very common for mass killers to be seeing psychiatrists before their attacks, including Ivan Lopez (the recent Fort Hood shooter), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook elementary), James Holmes (“Batman” movie theater) and Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech).
NO ONE WANTS A DANGEROUS PERSON TO HAVE A WEAPON. BUT OUR MENTAL-HEALTH SYSTEM SIMPLY CAN’T BE THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE.
For Lopez, the Army psychiatrist who last saw him found no “sign of likely violence, either to himself or to others.” In Holmes’ case, while his psychiatrist warned University of Colorado officials about his violent fantasies, she “rejected the idea” that the threat was sufficiently serious for him to be taken into custody.
Seung-Hui Cho was deemed “an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.”
Yet he was determined not to be “an imminent danger to others as a result of mental illness.” The judge stated it was not necessary to have him involuntarily committed.
Again, these prominent mass killers certainly didn’t lack mental health care. The problem was that even top psychiatrists failed to identify real threats.
Yet psychiatrists have strong incentives to get the diagnosis right. Besides their own professional pride and desire to help, they have legal obligations to inform authorities of a threat. Families of those killed by Holmes sued his psychiatrist for not recommending that Holmes be confined. Similar legal action may face Rodger’s psychiatrists.
The psychiatric profession is aware that it is very difficult for mental-health professionals to accept that a patient could pose a serious violent threat. They tend to deny it to themselves. In other words, psychiatrists frequently underestimate threats to safety.
The problem is severe enough that a whole academic literature is devoted to it. Explanations include psychiatrists trying to prove their fearlessness and becoming desensitized to the dangers. It’s possible that added training to understand these unusual cases may help improve their diagnoses.
Yet it’s also simply hard to predict these extremely rare outcomes.
Monday morning quarterbacking is always easy. What seem like obvious telltale signs in retrospect are not so obvious before the attack, even to the experts.
Nor is there much benefit to overly stigmatizing mental illness generally. Extremely few of those with mental illness go on to become killers. Even among schizophrenics, we’re talking about a rate that is much less than one person out of every 100,000.
Renée Binder, the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, advocates “a Gun Violence Restraining Order, a mechanism that would allow those closest to a troubled individual to act when there are warning signs or indications that person is at risk for violence.”
Sorry, that won’t really help. Set aside the fact that half of Rodger’s killings were stabbings; it’s just not hard to get guns illegally in this country — especially if you’re willing to spend months or years planning your attack, as virtually all of these killers do.
There are no cheap or easy answers. If someone poses a true danger to others, why not lock them up? Or provide outpatient care-givers to monitor them?
No one wants a dangerous person to have a weapon. But our mental-health system simply can’t be the last line of defense. There are just too many mistakes. Potential victims need to be able to defend themselves.
Arthur Berg, a former associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is an academic board member at the Crime Prevention Research Center. John Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:
• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...
...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:
• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...
This is ripe for abuses...
This could be abused so easily, I'm not sure what good it will actually do. Also, point two is literally "The Government is taking away our guns!", so this will be interesting.
Just out of interest, what are the existing laws like involving firearms and someone being determined as a "threat to others or themselves"?
...
The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:
• One, it would help ensure that families and others can go to court and seek a gun violence prevention order to temporarily stop someone close to them who poses a danger to themselves or others from purchasing a firearm.
• Two, it would help ensure that families and others can also seek a gun violence prevention warrant that would allow law enforcement to take temporary possession of firearms that have already been purchased if a court determines that the individual poses a threat to themselves or others.
• Three, it would help ensure that law enforcement makes full use of all existing gun registries when assessing a tip, warning or request from a concerned family member or other close associate.
...
This is ripe for abuses...
*begin sarcasm
wait what!
its missing the clause that not only your current, but also your EX spouse must sign off on it and...
oh wait, its future americain law, not current canadian ones.. *end sarcasm*
give it some time though, canuckistan was the proving grounds for lots of the anti gun zealotry.
We also had a quintuple shooting in the maritimes this last week, 3 dead cops two injured, not surprisingly, more gun control seems to be the media friendly answer.
Dreadclaw69 wrote: I know you aren't defending hem, if it came across that I somehow thought you were it was not my intention. I blame an early morning and lack of caffeine
In a lot of cases trafficking guns across State lines from a less strict jurisdiction to a more strict jurisdiction, say from Indiana to Chicago, to sell on to someone with a criminal history is criminal at both State and Federal level. But people still do it regardless of the possibility of punishment.
Sure, it's illegal, but then China has some of the harshest copyright protection laws in the world... there's a difference between something being illegal and something having an actual enforcement mechanism in place.
Point is that everyday thousands of trucks haul all kinds of goods into and through Chicago, it's a major trade point. And there is no customs check for those goods, trying to monitor those goods would be disastrous for US trade and economic health - half the point of the union is to have free trade between states. So all those trucks roll through and it's simply impossible to check them all. You say the border to Mexico is porous and that's true, but at least there is a border through which you have to poke holes... taking goods in to New York or Chicago doesn't even have that.
And thanks for the article on the mental health angle. It made a lot of good points. I think part of the issue there is that people are noting that mental health isn't good enough, and when the suggestion that more money might not deliver better health services people just give up on the issue altogether. At which point I'm reminded of that old saying that you don't get a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant The point is that throwing lots more money at the issue won't make it happen faster, but it is happening anyway, it's just a process that takes time.
Mental health understanding has improved massively in the last couple of decades, and massively more in the decades before then. Getting better mental healthcare is just a process that takes time.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
whembly wrote: The new legislation – The Pause for Safety Act – will include the following provisions:
Wow, gun legislation even more pointless and wrong-headed than the "assault weapons" law. I wouldn't have thought that was possible.
. But I was wondering about examples specifically against the government of the U.S.A.
Our country has a lot of guns, but gun ownership is a little skewed - most people who own guns own several - and I can't think of a place in the US where being armed is really a requirement with perhaps the very dangerous areas of the border, and places where wild animals might be surprised, like back country hiking*. The people who are most likely to carry a gun every day, police officers, will for the vast majority never discharge their firearm in the line of duty.**
