Sinfest

mouse · Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 15441 Location: under the bed

this is a rather stunning story about the gun culture in newtown. i think it illuminates the real basis of american gun culture: people just love to blow things up.

darq, i don't know about an increase in home schooling. school shootings are rare, but they get a lot of publicity, so that makes them seem more of a problem. but really - look at where other shootings have happened recently - a mall, a movie theatre, outside a grocery store. unless you keep the kids locked in the house for the rest of their lives, they are at risk.

it's early days yet, but this at least does seem to be getting a reaction in washington. from the descriptions, it sounds like the guy must have fired well over 100 rounds, and it all happened fast enough that the only reloading he could have done would be to slap in another magazine. and he did have an assault rife. so banning assault rifles and large-volume magazines (whatever the hell those are called) - that should at least make it harder to kill large numbers of people. it's a step.

but i don't know what you do to convince people we need some gun control when they figure they have a god-given right to shoot at targets filled with explosives, just to hear the bang.
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Michael · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 10429

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

Snorri · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 12:41 am Post subject:

Darqcyde · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 1:57 am Post subject:

WheelsOfConfusion · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 11132 Location: Unknown Kaddath

Bankers collapse the world economy.
Nobody jailed.
Bankers with ties to terrorists admit to money laundering for murderous cartels that are waging a war in Mexico and posting body parts up in towns.
Nobody jailed.

Guy hacks Scarlett Johansson's email account.
Ten years in jail.

Darqcyde · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 5:02 am Post subject:

Darqcyde · Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:47 pm Post subject:

There's NO WAY this can go bad:

Texas school’s ‘Guardian Plan’ allows teachers to have guns
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CTrees · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3609

CTrees · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3609

Wow, Dick's and Walmart are suspending sales on modern rifles? Crazy...
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“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

Michael · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 10429

Jen & Joe, I wanted to reply on your facebook but I thought this would be a better place. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You both argued for better mental health programs. I'm not sure that's the issue.

Reason is, the US tends to have shitty health programs, and yet, where mental health is concerned, you can easily discuss various medications, common diagnoses etc, that I have never even heard of. My office is in a psychology department, I lunch with psycho people every day. Yet if I think about the non US people I know, only 2 have ever seen a psychiatrist. It took me several days to get to that figure.
I'm not trying to say we're all good clean healthy normal people. Far far from it. But US citizens to me seem to have an obsession with mental health. 99.999% of all shrinks I've ever seen were in Hollywood movies. Youessians know about mental afflictions, know sufferers, know remedies, can accept people who suffered in the past and let them back into their lives, really, I don't know of another country that is so focussed on mental health.

So if you're asking yourself how do we stop mall shootings from happening? Yes, I think mental health experts have a lot to offer. But if the question is why here and not in Switzerland, I don't think mental health care laws are the way to argue.

Michael · Joined: 09 Jul 2006 Posts: 10429

In other news, I can't tell if Obama should steer clear of weapon laws and marijuana legislation because he has enough work to do, or if he should keep going further and further and shock conservative america out of it's winning state of apathy

fritterdonut · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 9:26 am Post subject:

Facebook has been swamped with people posting "OMG, you can get {insert picture of scary looking firearm here} in the US, no wonder they have shootings".

So yeah, in Canada you can own these:

Our last mass shooting was in 1989, using one of these:

Some people (not necessarily any on this forum) need to wake up and realize that it's not just a gun control issue, although the media sure seems to like to paint it that way.
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Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country did to you

CTrees · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3609

Which of course goes back to my problems with the various assault weapons bans - they ban guns based on being scary looking, not on actual effectiveness. Not that the pro-gun control legislators know what they're regulating anyway: old, but a classic
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“Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation”
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.

Dennis J. Squidbunny · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 12:49 pm Post subject:

I feel like it can be a gun control issue AND a mental health issue. I do agree with recent articles talking about how talk of the state of mental health care in the States is drawing away from the issue of gun control.

Its just such a fucking mess. I read an article from our old, conservative froggy Priminister, Howard about it. He did a lot of fairly awful shit, but when the Port Arthur Massacre happened in '90 he pushed for the gun bans and the buy back amnesty. The article talked about how gun homicide rates in Australia were already too low for the change in statistics to really make a difference, but the gun related suicide rates dropped right down.

I also feel like that is not quite the problem either.

The problem is a society that says "Criminals have guns, so I should have guns. Criminals will have guns whether or not it is legal to have guns, because they are criminals. Therefore, legally, I should have guns to protect myself from criminals.

Lasairfiona · Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 3:01 pm Post subject:

The other thing that drives me mad is that I keep hearing people point out that no one shoots up a police station - shooters choose to shoot up unarmed areas like schools and malls, "obviously" because people are unarmed there. I think this is just not true. Perhaps the shooters are cowards but I think the majority of these rampages are done in such locations for far more complicated reasons than "location with the least resistance." Sure that might be part of the equation but the shootings are also emotional things and the location will be tied to where the emotion lies (schools, movies where bullies might be, etc).

Shooters are not beings of pure evil - they have emotions and motivations. Dumbing down the motivations certainly makes it harder to understand and combat the problem. Criminals do have guns but why are they criminals and why do they have access to guns? That seems like a far more useful question with possibly useful answers that would give options on a path forward.
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Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael