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I am surprised, but also not surprised about the fact that people use a gun to kill another person. IF those people who actually did that in order to kill people, and not just vent their frustration, they should have gotten drunk, and kill people while driving drunk. You can then claim insanity and *get away with murder* ...The punishment for committing this atrocious event is rather lenient ... when you are apparently not in full control of your measly informed brain.
Contrary to popular belief, in the USA, a gun is *not* the most common item used in the killing of another person.
Surprised because I wonder why they chose a gun, and not surprised, when I notice what kind of a person does that !
They choose a gun because any psycho can walk into Big 5 Sporting Goods or Wal-mart and buy a gun and ammo. It's not hard at all. The best reaction to the shooting from the people is the "which sign will prevent future shootings? The one that says no guns allowed on premises, or the one that says this staff is highly trained and any attempt to harm the children will be met with deadly force."
And they're right, because what's the point of prohibiting guns on the premises when the rest of the country allows guns? There needs to be some sort of regulation. People that need guns for hunting or sport will be willing to go through the extra trouble of legally obtaining, storing, and keeping guns. Thugs, gangsters, psychopaths, etc likely won't go through the trouble just to shoot up a school. Other criminals will get a gun at any cost, (hitmen I guess?) there's no stopping that. But hitmen typically don't shoot up schools. It's the unstable 20 year old kids that go to Wal-mart and buy a gun because they had a bad day (or life) that do.
So I guess the suggestion is to just have every mall, school, business, etc equipped with a S.W.A.T team at all times. Maybe shootings are just part of the culture, or maybe if these psychos simply did not have easy access to weaponry they would go about there business in a less violent matter. Either way something needs to be done, and I would love to hear suggestions from all the pro-gun nuts. It's pretty sad we live in a culture where a kindergarten teacher (hell, everyone and their grandma even) has to have a CCL (Concealed Carry License) and a loaded handgun to go to work or the grocery store. I absolutely agree that if someone had a CCL and a handgun in that school they could have stopped the man, or the man in the VT shooting, or columbine, or the movie theater when Batman came out, or the mall, but guess what? Nobody had one, and nobody was able to stop them, and it will always be that way. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT CARRY AND NEVER WILL! There's nothing you can do about it, so stop saying everybody should just carry, because they won't.
And don't get me wrong, I grew up in Wyoming, I understand the love of guns. You want guns for hunting, for target practice, whatever. Shooting for sport is great fun, who doesn't love to blow stuff up?
What I don't understand is why you would ever -need- the right to carry a gun wherever you want. Why do you need a gun in your home, why do you need a gun strapped to your belt when you go to the store? Why do you need a gun anywhere other than the gun range or out hunting? The answer is hopefully because you don't feel safe. Any other reason for bearing arms is completely invalid, and if you don't feel safe in your own community THEN SOMETHING IS WRONG AND NEEDS TO BE FIXED.
P.S.: I have a concealed carry license, and I shouldn't need one to feel safe.
We've had too many incidents in Belgium, too, the last years: Nordine Amrani randomly shot 5 people and wounded 123 in Liege in 2011. Kim De Gelder, in 2009, knifed 3 people (amongst them two babies) to death in a daycare center in Dendermonde and wounded 12. Hans Van Themse shot 2 people to death in Antwerp back in 2006.
Admittedly, it's not to the scale of anything in the US, but still, to me these are signs of a sick society.
In Belgium, there're about 400,000 registered fire-arms and over 1,5 million illegal fire-arms (estimated). So saying Europe is some kind of gun-free utopia is just nonsense.
A similar shooting took place in France earlier this year; it happened in front of a jewish school in Toulouse; 4 people were killed (3 kids and a rabi). The killer said he acted in the name of Islam, also, he was motivated by the country's ban on wearing a burqa in public places. He came from a broken home and he had some serious psychological problems. He was killed a few days after the attack by the police.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Montguy
Yes, but this fact holds no water in the minds of anti-gun zealots from outside of (and within) the United States.
I guarantee that virtually no one on this thread will scrutinize the motives and background of the killer(s), no one will scrutinize the police response, and everyone will reflexively blame U.S. gun laws alone, with total disregard for the fact that CT, along with most of the NE region, has what are amongst the strictest gun laws in the country.
But who cares, right?
The obliteration of firearm ownerhip is an ideology unto itself--it has nothing to do with facts, statistics, preserving life, etc.
Let the anti-gun moralizing begin...
Let's say Adam Lanza or the Columbine shooters lived in Australia. As a teenager, it's nigh on impossible to obtain a weapon like he used. So yes, nobody is forgetting that these people aren't 'normal', but what is the teenager here gonna do, stab 20 kids? He'd be stopped after he stabbed 1 or 2 at most. Only with a semi-automatic rifle could he so easily mow down 20 innocent children in a matter of minutes, like a video game. There is one mass shooting in Australian history on this scale of civilians, in Port Arthur. Even after that our government responded swiftly - it was a pretty unanimous decision. Any sort of gun death is so rare here it makes the news, let alone a mass shooting which categorically almost never happens. It's not Europe, but the situation is similar to Europe. You can't say gun laws have NO IMPACT on homicide rates or firearm homicide rates, at least.
It seems like major school shootings happen at least once a year in the U.S..In this latest one 27 were murdered, most of them children between the ages of 5-10. I'm moving to Germany in a few years to go to school, and things like this are one of the biggest reasons. I have to keep a loaded gun in my house just for my wife and I to feel safe, it's sad really. I don't think I ever want to have kids in the U.S.. Between the shootings, the poverty, and corporate America I just can't handle it anymore. It's sad too, because America is a beautiful, wide open country.
Good heavens, where do you live?? I've never known anyone who had to keep a gun in the house to feel safe.
Yes, a lot. Remember Sweden, here in Spain it happens occasionally. The only difference in Spain is that few people have repetition weapons. Peasants have shotguns, so they only kill two or three when they run amok before they are neutralized.
I wonder what would happen if people had access to all sorts of weapons, there are many little towns with very old feud between families (Puerto Hurraco). There's a saying in Spanish, "little town, big hell".
Location: In a Galaxy far, far away called Germany
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These incidents are going to happen in those countries that have very large populations. china just had a guy slash over 20 kids at a school (and another incident just like it earlier this year). They are a nation of over a billion people tho and it may seem like they have more than there share - but it is proportional to the population they have. The USA has over 300 million added to the fact that guns are legal and insane people can get access to them. Insane people will use what they have available to them. My concern is that the news media keeps immortalizing these incidents and creating copy-cats and giving ideas to those nut jobs that are looking to be remembered. Seeing how news is world-wide now, this makes incidents like this possible everywhere.
Access to guns isn't necessarily the issue in the US - guns are intrenched into their culture and many are already in circulation, so limiting gun access would make little difference. Conversely, guns have never been popular here.
Access to mental healthcare is a really big factor - people who are mentally ill should be encouraged or even forced to go to mental healthcare professionals/institutes, and not gun stores.
But to answer the question, they happen, but not frequently. Gun related deaths here are very low, as far as the average person is concerned, they might as well not exist.
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