Aine Silveria wrote:

My corner of Tumblr, at least, had many mentions of that, so it would lead to an assumption that it was mentioned at least once.

For god's sake, it proves that. Are you getting paid by the word?

I do not care to remember the name of the person doing the act. The very fact the name of the killer is so sensationalized and no other names are known beyond that of the where is galling. It would be better that he remained in ignominy forever, lest others think that such a thing is a path, however twisted, to fame and recognition.

We may forgive, but we must never, ever forget.

Last edited by Atropos (12-24-2012 05:44:25 PM)

Except it wasn't polite at all.

If we forget the past, how can we learn from it? It's the same reason why the n-word will never be a fully acceptable term of endearment.

If someone doesn't see your point, perhaps the better thing to do would be to explain it instead of bowing out? Just a thought.

^Right, because making something illegal will totally ensure that no one will ever have access to it... I mean, who would dare circumvent THE LAW and illegally procure something with malicious intent? That's like, impossible right?

Saw what happened in Ct, as well as all the other recent shootings across the US. I heard about the stabbing in China too (although not on Tumblr... I'm sad enough I actually don't even know what Tumblr is, beyond knowing it's one of those internet things that are apparently popular). It goes without saying that it's terrible and a shame, so I won't really say much about it. Having your five year old kid get killed is ridiculously horrible, and I can't imagine how one would deal with that (to the extent that they even could).

I'm opposed to banning firearms though.

First, as was brought up with the knifings, crazy malcontents can kill innocents easily enough if they set about it. You don't need a semi-automatic to do that. Someone from the NRA brought up how Timothy McVeigh killed several people with a bunch of fertilizer. On 9/11 thousands were killed through the use of your every day commercial airliner and a box cutter or two. Even if you banned semi-automatics, shooting school kids with regular hand guns isn't a challenging endeavor. Not enough bullets in a clip of 17 to kill the 30 children you're after? Buy two guns. Do you ban all handguns and standard hunting firearms too? You've got to kill a constitutional amendment before you do that. Or at least, you should.... unless you just start dealing with it the way we've started dealing with the requirement to "declare" war (ie: pretend it's not there, even though it is). And finally, illegal firearms will always make their way around to the people who want them badly enough. A complete ban would make it a lot harder for your idiotic 20 year olds to grab a gun, but serious criminals or terrorists would certainly be able to).

I personally think the right to bear arms is important, even if only in a purely historical context regarding the US and its origins. The right to bear arms as a guarantee of sorts against governmental oppression might seem like an entirely unnecessary idea now, but I don't think you can really read what the US might become 100 years from now, or 200. I think it's an important guarantee to leave in place, even if it seems ridiculous in that scope. And of course, you can't let people buy real military weapons or vehicles, so the gap would be ridiculous anyways... but access to basic firearms is still something of value as you can see in Syria, which started pretty much that way. Eventually, if the government really is sufficiently inappropriate, I think you can make a case that parts of the military would be swayed to joining whatever uprising it was (as was the case in Libya and several other recent uprisings in the mid east). Syria's a bad example, as all sorts of horrific stuff is going on there. And I'm certainly not bringing it up as a fairy tale "this is such a wonderful place" deal. But without the fire arms there revolt against a strongman who was leading an unjust (truthfully or simply in perception) regime would have been impossible. And again, yeah. It sounds ridiculous to apply that logic at all to the US today with our (fairly) smooth elections and (fairly) well working democracy. But the amendment was put in place with an eye on the past as a hedge on the future, and I think it has value there.

I think a more limited right to bear arms relegated to standard hand guns is valuable also. I don't own any guns presently, and am fortunate enough to live in nice places. If I lived in some other areas though, and felt compelled to bar my windows or take other similar measures, I think I would buy a hand gun for my apartment. And I'd feel much better knowing it was there, even if I (hopefully) never had to touch it. The NRA likes to say "guns are the answer to guns" so much that it takes on a comical/ridiculous tone, but I really would feel safer if I had one around my apartment in a sketchy area. And even if guns aren't entirely the answer (which they're not) they're not entirely the problem either. That gun could sit around my apartment for years, and I can guarantee I'd never run around shooting kids with it. Mental health is the real problem - guns become relevant only inasmuch as they facilitate a mentaly unstable person. They do, so they shouldn't be ignored either. But simply pinning murder on guns is missing the point as much as simply pinning it on poor mental health. And pretending guns are only harmful is as comical as pretending they're the answer to every harm.

Nevertheless it's hard to argue that banning guns will prevent gun related deaths from going down. It will probably have a good result in all murders going down across the board (I hate how piers morgan compares the US murder rates to englands in terms of people on his show every night.... his basic point is right, but seriously: the US has a population of ~315,000,000, while the UK's is ~60,000,000. Of course the US is going to have more deaths. I'm sure the US has a higher per person percentage of deaths also, which would make a good point. The difference probably just isn't as copiously large as the actual number difference. I hate when people play with stats to make things look worse/better than they are to try and advance their argument. It's almost like lying to me.) But yeah, Piers Morgan aside gun violence is a legitimate problem. I'm not sure what to do about it, given that I'm opposed to (significant) changes in gun laws.

I think having more stringent background checks in place makes sense. I think trying to make all sales go through official channels makes sense (again, people will be able to get it illegally... but you might as well try to make that as hard as possible). I don't think the NRA's suggestion of armed guards is as appalling as it seems at face value, so long as they're hidden guns like air marshals on flights use rather than people standing outside schools with assault rifles. But I don't think that would fix it either. The fact is that if you want to murder someone.... it's really difficult to prevent that before the fact. And if you really want to do it without guns, there are plenty of other horrible ways to do it.

Banning guns would probably save some lives, but I value the right to bear arms more than the remote possibility of someone's life being saved I guess. And I don't mean that as crassly or uncompasionately as it sounds. I just don't think we should cave in our constitution because we fear the actions of a few depraved people. In a way, it's very much the same I felt about Iraq after 9/11. Awful things happened and people were scared, but I was infuriated that this was used as an excuse to start what I firmly believe was an illegal war. 20 kids dead in Newton is Awful, but let's not forget the random wedding parties and such we've bombed by accident in Iraq and Afganistan, killing well over 20. Oops. We sure didn't have a two week debate on the merits of military force or the tragedy that befell those families though. No "paradigm shift" in social outlook when they all died. That was a leftist view I guess. Here my view is much more right wing, but again, I don't want something I perceive as problematic to be done using fear as an argument.

That's just my personal ethical stand on it though.... I can understand why someone would have another, and there's really no way I could convince them to change their mind I think. If you place more value on the possibility of upholding a life than the certainty of upholding other rights, than it's very unlikely you'd really agree with me, and I certainly couldn't unequivocally say that you're wrong.

Last edited by Valeli (12-25-2012 04:09:27 AM)

^'xactly. If someone wants to kill people, there's not much the government can do in the way of legislation to stop them. It's the double-edged sword of human resilience. Therefore, the solution is not to attack the guns themselves, but to attack the causes behind violence.

The reason America faces more gun violence than other nations isn't because of its laws, but because of its culture. American media sensationalizes crime to the point where people see it as a legitimate solution to their problems - even when the media in question is something like Law & Order. People see the crime, but not the consequences for the criminal.

Having guns doesn't always lead to violence, nor does a lack of guns eliminate violence. Canada has as many guns as the US, but far fewer homicides; Britain has banned firearms, but crime rates in places like Glasgow are higher than in the US capitol.

I'm not saying we should arm everyone with an assault rifle, but you have to understand that firearms are sometimes useful to defend oneself or others.

Actually, it's not possible to make a blanket statement. Some areas need stricter laws than others.

Last edited by Atropos (12-26-2012 11:14:49 AM)

gorgeousshutin wrote:

And on Canada's side, Toronto's gun-crime rate is unacceptably high by any standard, though it still may pale compared to the nightmare that's the U.S.'s situation.

Parts of the UK are even worse, and it banned firearms altogether! As I said before, if someone wants to kill, there's very little you can do to stop them.

Quick fact check.

Atropos wrote:

Having guns doesn't always lead to violence, nor does a lack of guns eliminate violence.

Clearly true.  I don't disagree with this broad point.  But I do think that guns lead to a greater incidence of violence, and I think we should want to avoid that when it's reasonably practical.

Canada has as many guns as the US, but far fewer homicides.

Canada does not have as many guns as the US.  No one has as many guns as the US.  According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, usefully organized here, the US has 88.8 privately owned small guns for every hundred people -- the first in the world by a considerable margin -- while Canada has only 30.8, slightly more than a third as many.  The difference is even starker if you look only at handguns; in a 2005 survey (see page 279), while 16% of Canadian households owned a gun, only 3% owned handguns.  (In the US these numbers were 43% and 18%, respectively.)  But the part about homicides is true; in America about 4.2 people per hundred thousand become homicide victims each year, while in Canada it's 1.6, also a little more than a third as many.  Could be because there are fewer gun owners, and fewer handgun owners, but these things are tricky to disentangle.

Britain has banned firearms, but crime rates in places like Glasgow are higher than in the US capitol.

Britain has not banned firearms.  The UK has banned small arms, but exceptions (with registration) exist for hunting weapons, including things like long-barreled revolvers.  Nonetheless, gun ownership there is very low; there are 6.2 privately owned small guns per hundred people in England and Wales, and 5.5 in Scotland, where Glasgow is located.

Glasgow is a well-known pocket of crime in what is generally a very safe part of the world.  The homicide rate in the United Kingdom is 1.2 per hundred thousand, even lower than Canada's.  Again, could be because of the relatively strict gun control; I don't know.  As to the comparison between Glasgow and Washington DC specifically, I can't find numbers that are intercomparable and I'd be interested to see your source, but I don't find the idea unbelievable; property and violent crime rates in DC are near all-time lows right now, while Glasgow is Europe's poster child for violent and poorly policed cities.  Still, one unsafe city does not make a particularly compelling case that gun control won't help reduce violence.

You have to understand that firearms are sometimes useful to defend oneself or others.

No argument here.  I just wonder whether we might have to defend ourselves and others less often if we made it harder for criminals to get guns -- for instance, via effective gun control.

Last edited by satyreyes (12-26-2012 01:17:17 PM)

Atropos wrote:

Although I can't find the original source for Glasgow vs. DC, this might be relevant to the conversation.

The Daily Mail is a tabloid.  I'd give about as much credence to anything in it as I'd give to something I saw in the National Enquirer when it doesn't cite its source, which this article does not.  One giveaway is that it tries to compare violent crime rates among nations without making much effort to define violent crime; it turns out that different countries define violent crime differently, and it's very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons among them.

DC is definitely a troubled city in spite of recent improvements.  FBI information, collated here, suggests that Washington, DC has roughly the ninth most violent crimes per capita of any major city in America, though in the same breath the FBI warns that it's not the best idea to use their data to rank cities, so take that with a grain of salt.  But the point is not which city you chose; the problem was that you compared individual cities when it seems that it would have been more appropriate to compare the whole countries (or associations of countries, in the case of the UK) that enforce the laws we're talking about.

The United States is such a violent place because largely speaking, we hate each other. Other people are obstacles to overcome. This is also why socialized healthcare is a non-starter in the United States. The most common inner monologue myth is that of the rugged individualist. People largely think that they have achieved their station in life through their own actions and hard work or the favor of their deity. There is a massive collective blind spot for all of the social services which got a person to where they are -- taxpayer-supported roads, postal service, military, schools, police, fire protection, and so on.

In small enclaves, Americans are capable of astonishing hospitality, but as a culture we fucking despise each other.