What does it take?

[tom b]

Look, it isn't rocket science.

Port Arthur was a gut wrenching event. Two things happened. It was a tipping point. We banned all types of automatic weapons/handguns and the public said mass shootings are unacceptable. Since then there hasn't been a mass shooting in Australia. Lets face it, mass shootings happen very rarely in most advanced western countries.

In America you have 30,000+ gun deaths a year. Mass shootings in schools and drug related crimes happen regularly. What has to happen in America to stop this carnage. The result of Columbine and Sandy Hook was that gun sales went up, WTF.

More than 19,000 of the 31,000 deaths from guns in the United States in 2010 were suicides. Owning a gun is deadly.

It is extremely rare than an armed citizen stops a mass shooting.

As a teacher my mantra has been, "What works and what doesn't". Gun control works, lots of guns doesn't work". It isn't rocket science. Get rid of your guns and create a society where killing each other or yourself is unacceptable.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... It is extremely rare than an armed citizen stops a mass shooting....

[David Eckels]

I just like shooting... of BOTH* kinds



*photographs and bullets

[tom b]

What is your point?

Less than twenty occurrences over how many years? In the same time period there was probably up to 100,000 gun suicides. For most gun owners the real bad guy is in your head. Twenty odd occasions where it was good to have a gun versus 100,000 times when having a gun is a sure way to make sure you kill yourself. I'm glad you never taught me maths.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... the real bad guy is in your head....

Finally we agree on something.

It is what is in your HEAD, not what is in your HAND, that causes crime and suicides.

[Rob C]

Finally we agree on something.

It is what is in your HEAD, not what is in your HAND, that causes crime and suicides.

Slobodan, now you're being a bit disingenuous: a knife is never going to slay eighty people at a concert whereas for a gun it's not a problem; that a bomb could do it too isn't the point: the point is civilian access to machine guns. Because two diseases can kill you does not mean you must stop trying to find solutions for both.

Bringing in comparisons between gun and car deaths, as some do attempting to prove a flawed red herring, is nonsense; nobods sets out to kill somebody else in a car; unless premeditated murder, it's not the purpose or function of a car. A gun, on the other hand, has no purpose or function beyond the delivery or threat of delivery of death.

If you like to kill animals for fun, as long as it's legal, you can buy the relevant weapon though it would be better if you could also hire one instead, with the correct licenses. If you are not a professional farmer, rancher or gamekeeper why would you need a hunting weapon full-time? If you want to fondle, buy a more expensive camera instead and imagine it a Victoria's Secret model.  You don't need a hunting rifle in the city. If you enjoy target shooting, then simply hire at a gallery and never need to take a weapon anywhere outwith the area again.

Problem is, it's not really about self-defence, hunting, targets or anything else: it's the 'equalizer' effect that makes Mr Weed and Mr Slob feel themselves to be Captain America. Macho sucks. That's why more and more countries are finally electing women to positions of power. The era of the hero has passed; especially of the fake hero. No number or calibre of guns will make anyone the man they never were.

Rob

[Jeremy Roussak]

.

[Jeremy Roussak]

That is not true.

It's pretty much true. Intelligence is more or less normally distributed, the distribution is more or less symmetrical and the outliers are more or less the same on each side. Technically, Slobodan was referring to median rather than average (or mean) intelligence, but in this case there's precious little, if any, difference.

Jeremy

[stamper]

A few years ago a Scottish tourist got lost in Florida late at night. He knocked on someone's door to get advice. The person on the other side shot through the door without opening it and killed the tourist. No conviction of any kind happened. Can anyone explain why he didn't get jailed for manslaughter or murder?

[RSL]

Sounds like a rural legend, stamper. When did this supposedly happen and what did the investigation report?

[stamper]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/scot-is-shot-dead-when-mistaken-for-prowler-1398645.html

No legend Russ. It took me less than a minute to Google the incident.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Can anyone explain why he didn't get jailed for manslaughter or murder?

As tragic as it was, there is a legal doctrine behind it: a castle law (as in "my home is my castle"). Known also as "stand your ground" law, "make my day" law, etc. Specific provisions vary by state.

Having said that, and feeling really bad about what happened to the Scot, it is not quite normal that someone bangs loudly and drunkenly on one's BACK door at 5 a.m., in an area known for robberies that start with battering the back door first.

[RSL]

Slobodan's right. And I'd want more information than a blurb from the Independent before I'd come to any conclusions.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... There are numerous instances in which cops were verbally abused, yet kept their cool...

https://www.facebook.com/policelivesmater/videos/234206440270633/

[Robert Roaldi]

A guy knocks on your door at a bad time, so it's ok to shoot him? Really?

A friend sent me this site on mapping violence. There is no way for me to verify its accuracy, and I'm not going to try. The one stat I find interesting is that of the blacks killed by police, 1 out of 3 were un-armed and not committing a crime at the time of the shooting. Even if this is exaggerated by 100%, isn't it still worrying? Do you really think that's ok? Are you saying that it's more or less ok to shoot people if you think you have a more or less good reason? This is acceptable?

Everything is fine. Don't change a thing.

[tom b]

My brother committed suicide, it was a devastating act that brought about the breakdown of my family. As a teacher for twenty years plus my primary goal was to protect the children in my care and make sure that they were civil citizens and that they didn't harm themselves or others.

I've taught hundreds of refugee and migrant children in Sydney's western suburbs. I've seen how gun control and public education can be highly successful. I just despair that I keep on hearing about mass murders in America, particularly in schools.

Once again, "What does it take?".

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Are you saying that it's more or less ok to shoot people if you think you have a more or less good reason? This is acceptable?

Everything is fine. Don't change a thing.

It doesn't really matter what I am saying, it's the law. And it (the law) has nothing to do with police and guns. Police often get blamed for simply enforcing the law. You have a problem with the law, talk to politicians and legislators who pass it or interpret it (e.g., Supreme Court).

As for statistics, it is not whether it is accurate or not (and it often isn't). It is the interpretation of the stats that is the issue. You might quote numerous stats that blacks are disproportionally affected by the police, and those stats might be right, yet we will differ in what it means. You say it is racism, I say it is because blacks are disproportionally engaged in criminal activities.

Let see what Martin Luther King had to say about it in 1961:

“Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. “We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”

One particular statistic in the link you provided is especially indicative of the deliberate and gross misuse of stats. They claim there is no correlation between crime levels in a city and police killings, presumably meant to mean that if the crime in a city is relatively low compared to the killings, that police department is more racists. Chicago is a good example of that misuse of comparing apples and oranges (or in statistical parlance, different pool of data). Most police killings happen in the South Side, notorious for ghettos and gangs. And yet they use the overall crime rate for the whole city of Chicago (and often include safe suburbs) to compare to. If you would compare apples to apples, you'd compare very high crime rates in the South Side with police killings there.

For what it is worth, Chicago until very recently had very strict gun-control laws...didn't prevent it from becoming the murder capital of the U.S.A.

And yes, I would like to change a lot. Just not the superficial symptoms, but the underlying causes, poverty and unemployment. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

My brother committed suicide...

My sincere condolences. May I ask how (i.e., with a gun or...)?

As for "what does it take," the answer is simple: create more decent-paying jobs to lift people of all colors from poverty. It would also help if politicians would stop pandering for votes, peddling victimhood theories, and inflaming racial tensions.

[Zorki5]

Once again, "What does it take?".

To quote max Planck:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

That is not so say gun control is a "new scientific truth" that will prevail when supporters of the gun ownership die; far from that. I for one do not know what's right for Americans. What I do know is that it's for them to decide. I do have my opinion, but it's... not strong enough to publicly defend it.

What I do know is that the issue is extremely complicated. Gun ownership is very big part of the American spirit. How much of it will go along with the right to carry guns? How much more tolerable will American citizens become to abuse of their other rights as a result? Restrictions creep from where general public sadly does not expect them... Like, allow girls that want to wear hijabs at schools do that (good thing to let people do what they want, right?), and next thing you know is girls that do not want to wear hijabs get stoned... PC could admittedly be an even better example here, but hope you got the idea.

[MattBurt]

I think if the ban was lifted from the CDC even studying gun-related deaths, that could be the beginning of a shift. The fact that they are banned from even looking at this from a statistical/clinical point of view means someone knows this is a problem and doesn't want that made public.
Once the evidence that smoking was a truly public health hazard was accepted as fact by the majority of people, a gradual shift began. I'm hoping the same might happen with firearms. Of course we still have smoking but it's not nearly as widespread as it once was when everyone was either ignorant of or in denial about its effects.

The Supreme Court should also clearly define what a "Well-regulated militia" is. I'm pretty sure it wasn't originally intended as everyone can have all the guns they want.

If people want their guns so they can exercise their right to fight the tyranny of our government, the are completely delusional. At best it will look like suicide by cop and at worst it will look like the recent shootings in Dallas.