And so it continues....

[Hulyss]

Yes it continues. A Priest was slain today in France, by isis guys. Inside his church. Poor man was 82 years old. If government don't take drastic actions many will form militia and some more guys will die, for sure.

[RSL]

Andrew, for the life of me I can't grasp what highway deaths have to do with the war we're in.

Yes. Let's take our chances on the police. Those guys are well trained and, for the most part, excellent people. Only problem is that once the call is in it takes a while for them to respond. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, people are being mowed down by a truck or by a guy in the middle of a gay bar shooting everybody in sight. If that's your preference, as we used to say in Korea during that war: "Rotsa ruck."

And I certainly agree: you shouldn't try to fly an F15.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... it takes a while for them to respond...

Three hours in the case of Orlando shooting. In the meantime, the whole gun-free zone was his playground.

[Hulyss]

Andrew, for the life of me I can't grasp what highway deaths have to do with the war we're in.

Yes. Let's take our chances on the police. Those guys are well trained and, for the most part, excellent people. Only problem is that once the call is in it takes a while for them to respond. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, people are being mowed down by a truck or by a guy in the middle of a gay bar shooting everybody in sight. If that's your preference, as we used to say in Korea during that war: "Rotsa ruck."

And I certainly agree: you shouldn't try to fly an F15.

Policemen can't sort every problems on this planet. They are far under-numbered. I'm for citizenship self defence, 100%. Engineers needs to develop a new sort of non lethal weapon, but extremely efficient. Even tazers are too dangerous. To be able to carry and use this weapons you'll need a training course, a psychological evaluation and a permit, renewed every years. It will allow people to react immediately, in the street, to neutralise or to try to neutralize a problem.

Since streets are full of cameras, I think there is no problem for armed flying police drones. One drone in each streets.

Like the non lethal weapon, a percentage of citizens will follow training course, deep psychological evaluation, police approval to be able to summon the drones when necessary. This will also necessitate ground targeting with ir, to indicate the intelligent ammunition launched by the drone who is the target. The operator should be over state secrecy under a period of 5 to 10 years.

Financing such project will cost far less than thousand of policemen in the streets.

[digitaldog]

Andrew, for the life of me I can't grasp what highway deaths have to do with the war we're in.

The unreasonable fear of terrorists!

Yes. Let's take our chances on the police. Those guys are well trained and, for the most part, excellent people.

So here's some chilling facts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2015/12/26/2015/12/26/a-year-of-reckoning-police-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000/
Now imagine a street filled with non trained folks and dozen's of guns. You think more bullets flying makes you safer? I don't.

[digitaldog]

To be able to carry and use this weapons you'll need a training course, a psychological evaluation and a permit, renewed every years.

And yet, in the US, that's not the case with the millions of guns. You can be on the no fly list but have no problem buying a gun. Don't get me wrong, I like your idea of some non lethal device but you think Americans will pick that instead of a gun and that they would following your sound logic: a training course, a psychological evaluation and a permit, renewed every years?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... In NSW the biggest threat to school children is peanuts and peanut products...

Or torture:

Australia: Children stripped, assaulted and tear-gassed

[Hulyss]

I'm shooting TLD (long range shooting). Since army I never stopped training myself to shoot at 50/100/500/600m with different kind of ammos. The more precise fire arm is the carbine. I also shoot with handgun when it's possible, with french version of SWAT, the BAC. Sometimes a guys pass by the stand with very fancy weapons and some target to destroy.

The first time I tried a handgun it was a glock 21, 9mm. Blimey... you need a load of training to be able to shoot the target, especially over 20m. I unloaded the refile in no time and hit rate was 15%.

Handguns are too dangerous especially in the street. So I understand this is a problem in US because untrained ppl buy handguns ... and can kill by accident others in the street. I'm not for that at all. Your gun should stay at home and only to protect your family or your home.

[kencameron]

Or torture:

Australia: Children stripped, assaulted and tear-gassed

An awful story which leaves many Australians sickened and ashamed. For the record, it happened in a prison ("juvenile detention centre") rather than a school, and part of the problem is that the kids in question have probably not spent much time in a classroom.

[BobShaw]

Or torture:
Australia: Children stripped, assaulted and tear-gassed

Also a really feeble attempt to move attention from the subject.
This incident was so rare that it attracted the attention of the Prime Minister.
News stories of shootings in the US don't even make the news unless there is something really unusual about them as they are so common.
If a man is shot in the street in the US unarmed and with his hands up by police then that makes the news. So do mass shooting of kids in schools. We don't have that.
Every kid that dies in a school in the US is the responsibility of those that choose to do nothing about it other than to say they need more guns.

[kencameron]

....the tiny possibility I'll be caught up in a terrorist attack...

This is a real problem in terms of the practical difficulty in getting a decision to spend a lot of public money. I don't doubt that in some places the risk of terrorist or non-terrorist violent attacks on schools and public places is real and will increase. But it will still be tiny. We may see more armed guards, but I suspect that most of them will never fire a shot in anger and I am not convinced that their presence will significantly deter psychologically or ideologically deranged attackers who don't fear death. I worry that bored armed guards being paid minimum wage might be more of a threat than a solution. Maybe we will need to think about multi-skilling the guards so they can have something rewarding and useful to do for most of their working lives. Imagine a job description including weapons but also a wider range of skills which mitigate a wider range of risks. I am thinking of those "root causes". One of my kids attended a school which had a head of discipline known as "sarge". A former  army sergeant major about nine feet tall, he was able to inspire fear in hormonal teenage boys and deal very quickly with incidents, but was also at the centre of the school's anti-bullying program and a loved and trusted confidant for kids having any kind of hard time. And he wasn't on minimum wage. "Send in the guns" is surely never going to be more than part of the solution, any more than "send in the counsellors". I wonder if the two could be combined, either in individuals on in a program. Or, if not, whether we need some other kind of lateral thinking.

[Robert Roaldi]

An interesting podcast (about 30 min long) about the mistakes of the past.

There has been some disparagement of the search for the "root cause" of some problems in these pages. Insofar as the current fear of ISIS is concerned, it might be useful to recall that ISIS didn't exist 10 years. It might be a beneficial exercise to try and understand what happened between then and now, so that maybe we can avoid doing it again. Maybe someone has, who knows. And yes, I know, trying to understand that won't help anyone who is being run down by a truck.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Also a really feeble attempt to move attention from the subject...

Sorry, mate, didn't realize that the only subject allowed in this thread is America-bashing orgy.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... it might be useful to recall that ISIS didn't exist 10 years. It might be a beneficial exercise to try and understand what happened between then and now...

They didn't. But then again, El Qaida did. And Taliban before that. And while each next incarnation makes the previous look like a church choir, they have the same roots. As for what happen between then and now, I think the picture is worth a thousand words (reposting from another thread, sorry, Manoli):

[Tarnash]

Just some simple observations:
1. A significant number of `mass shooters' choose to arm themselves with semi-automatic long guns with high cyclic rates of fire and large capacity magazines.  (the `professional level' of personal weapons if you like)
2. Most handguns are significantly less powerful, less accurate and have lower capacity magazines  (more `consumer level' equivalents).
3. Lots of things come into play in a fire fight but it's generally true to say that the more heavily armed (and possibly armoured) and prepared protagonist is likely to emerge the victor.
4. The first/highest priority target in a `random' or terrorist shooting situation is likely to be the person who poses the biggest threat to the shooter(s). i.e. the `citizen' with the handgun (and, by drawing fire, quite possibly anyone close by, such as a partner, colleague or child).
5. The likelihood of being caught in a terrorist incident is extremely remote.  However, should it occur the best defence might be a good pair of running shoes!   

[kencameron]

Sorry, mate, didn't realize that the only subject allowed in this thread is America-bashing orgy.

I am mostly seeing in the thread what I feel myself and have tried to express in my posts, a sympathetic and respectful interest in a problem of which the American manifestation is well known to us all because of America's centrality in the multinational media, but which affects many other countries in different ways, perhaps requiring different responses. I warmly admire America and don't go in for bashing it. I wondered whether your post was a contribution to the issues being discussed or just an opportunistic and mildly distasteful debating point, but decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. There was some evidence to the contrary. After all, the Australian episode appears to have nothing to do with terrorism or mass shooting. On the other hand, you might simply have been responding to some over-enthusiastic Australian patriotism, and I was reluctant to believe that you would use an sickening example of child abuse merely to make a debating point. Perhaps you could explain what you think we should learn about the subject of the thread (or anything else) from the incident you mentioned. There are certainly some hard lessons for Australia.

[pegelli]

Imagine how many lives might have been saved had a few of those people on that avenue in Nice been armed as the guy with the truck began crashing and crushing through the crowd. Yes, a couple folks might have been hit by stray bullets or ricochets, but a hell of a lot less than 84 likely would have died waiting for the police to respond effectively.

Russ, in my mind you've either picked the wrong example or are way too optimistic about the effectiveness of a few small handguns in the hands of amateur trained people. If you look at the pictures of the truck after the incident it took the trained police a multitude of shots from high power guns to neutralize the driver. I think in this case a few small hand guns on the boulevard would only have made more casualties, not less. I agree a handgun in the hands of a good guy can in some cases (eg. a school or gay bar shootout) prevent a bigger massacre, but with the truck in Nice no way.

[tom b]

Slobodan et al,

"Using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that from 2001 to 2013, 406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil. (2013 is the most recent year CDC data for deaths by firearms is available.) This data covered all manners of death, including homicide, accident and suicide.

According to the U.S. State Department, the number of U.S. citizens killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2013 was 350.

In addition, we compiled all terrorism incidents inside the U.S. and found that between 2001 and 2013, there were 3,030 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism.* This brings the total to 3,380."

2,996 people died in 911, my quote.

I'm not into America bashing, however you seem to have a major problem that is not being addressed. English is the lingua franca of the world and as the largest English speaking country in the world you command attention, good and bad.

Actions speak louder than words, "406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil" since 2001 speaks loudly to me (oh! add another 70,000 odd since then). What is scary is the numbers are close to half those in the Iraq, a deadly war zone.

Something to think about…

[RSL]

Russ, in my mind you've either picked the wrong example or are way too optimistic about the effectiveness of a few small handguns in the hands of amateur trained people. If you look at the pictures of the truck after the incident it took the trained police a multitude of shots from high power guns to neutralize the driver. I think in this case a few small hand guns on the boulevard would only have made more casualties, not less. I agree a handgun in the hands of a good guy can in some cases (eg. a school or gay bar shootout) prevent a bigger massacre, but with the truck in Nice no way.

Hi Pieter, Have you ever fired a handgun? If so, which one? Maybe a 22?

[jfirneno]

Slobodan et al,

"Using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that from 2001 to 2013, 406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil. (2013 is the most recent year CDC data for deaths by firearms is available.) This data covered all manners of death, including homicide, accident and suicide.

According to the U.S. State Department, the number of U.S. citizens killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2013 was 350.

In addition, we compiled all terrorism incidents inside the U.S. and found that between 2001 and 2013, there were 3,030 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism.* This brings the total to 3,380."

2,996 people died in 911, my quote.

I'm not into America bashing, however you seem to have a major problem that is not being addressed. English is the lingua franca of the world and as the largest English speaking country in the world you command attention, good and bad.

Actions speak louder than words, "406,496 people died by firearms on U.S. soil" since 2001 speaks loudly to me (oh! add another 70,000 odd since then). What is scary is the numbers are close to half those in the Iraq, a deadly war zone.

Something to think about…

Well as part of et al (just call me Al) I'll respond.  Looking at the CDC latest figures the US has about 40,000 suicides a year.  So a good chunk of your average of about 31,000 firearm deaths are from suicide.  On top of that suicide is only the tenth leading cause of death in the US.  Murder is a very small contributor to mortality.  Now factor in that most gun deaths are done by criminals (murderers) and you realize that even if guns were illegal (like in France and Germany) bad people will get guns.  So all you are trying to do is disarm the good guys.  As charmingly stated by some poet "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns."  I'd rather have a say in what happens when the bullets start flying.  You don't.