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 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.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 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.

 cincydooley wrote:
France maintains a military?

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.?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
unfortunately the Germans have a very poor sense of smell, enabling them to win three wars against France back to back.

Which ones?

Which ones?

Napoleonic Wars: Win 27 lose 2
(Frazzled relatives leave and it goes downhill fast)

Franco Prussian War: loss

World War I: Loss (come on admit it without RUssia, Britain and the US you lost.)

WWII: Loss.

Algeria/Indochine: Loss

The War Against American Fast Food: Losing.

 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.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 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:

Do you even have a mandatory military service in the U.S.?

No, we do not. The U.S. military is all volunteer and has been for a pretty long time.


All male citizens have to register for the draft at age 18, but the draft hasn't been used since Vietnam.

 Frazzled wrote:
EDIT: I guess you missed that this was a fart joke and that Germans are immune to farts... (scratches head)

Well, I was curious about those three wars.

 Hordini wrote:
All male citizens have to register for the draft at age 18, but the draft hasn't been used since Vietnam.

You do not even have some small tour of the barracks after registering for the draft? That is sad!

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
You do not even have some small tour of the barracks after registering for the draft? That is sad!

Why? If you get drafted then you'll be seeing plenty of the barracks

The French military has been pretty successful post-Vietnam.

 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.

 Ouze wrote:
The French military has been pretty successful post-Vietnam.

They figured out proper game scheduling. You don't schedule all your games in the global Big Ten. You have to spread them around a bit.

Found this article rather interesting. Not too sure about the source, so grains of salt and all that:

http://libertycrier.com/nearly-every-mass-shooting-last-20-years-shares-one-thing-common-weapons/#LVbkP0hY0Gf17Pgw.01

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Found this article rather interesting. Not too sure about the source, so grains of salt and all that:

http://libertycrier.com/nearly-every-mass-shooting-last-20-years-shares-one-thing-common-weapons/#LVbkP0hY0Gf17Pgw.01

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.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/antidepressants/

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

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).

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Found this article rather interesting. Not too sure about the source, so grains of salt and all that:

http://libertycrier.com/nearly-every-mass-shooting-last-20-years-shares-one-thing-common-weapons/#LVbkP0hY0Gf17Pgw.01

It's almost as if we should be focusing on mental health

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).

Kickstarter for Minority Report program

 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 reasonable gun-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.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
Many cases no psych history

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.

 Blood Hawk wrote:


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?

Rutger professor take on this;

“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?

 Blood Hawk wrote:

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?