Mass shooting in my state

[Terramirabilis]

Another mass shooting in the US and this one is close to home. Local media are saying 13 students dead and 20+ injured. When are people going to see sense on gun control. I just don't understand this.

twitter.com/hashtag/UCCShooting?src=hash

Isn't it the case that virtually all murders/significant violent crime in the UK is perpetrated by someone known to the victim (usually a partner or family member), so adding in guns to the mix would make that easier/more likely?

The image of random intruders wandering the streets of the UK at liberty to attack and kill people in their own homes because they don't have guns is absolutely absurd.

Gun control doesnt help against the nutter who prints a 3d gun and takes it into a local school to kill.

so is he printing off the bullets too? is it an automatic or semi automatic weapon that allows him to shoot lots of people before being overpowered?

Behave. Seriously, the only bit of sense is that you need to start addressing the root problem of the psychology of the people committing the crimes, but taking out the ability for them to do it so easily also has to be at the top of the agenda.

I come from a country that found that the best way to deal with a suicide bomber was to kick him in the balls.

I disagree. There's no way to take out their ability to commit the crime without taking away the ability of law abiding people to use the same kind of weapon for protection.

Automatics are incredibly restricted in the US they are apparently like hens teeth to get hold of without a very good reason.

Automatics are incredibly restricted in the US they are apparently like hens teeth to get hold of without a very good reason.

Thus busting the crap about the second amendment being a bar to gun control.

We have strict gun control and sprees still happen. They have liberal gun control and sprees still happen.

We have strict gun control and you can count our number of shooting sprees on one hand. They have liberal gun control and shooting sprees are common. Do you genuinely not see the link?

The US has had more mass shootings so far than the number of days in the year.

The UK has had three in the last 30 years. And our murder rate is substantially lower.

If you can't see that connection, then you must be deluding yourself.

Totally deluded - you simply cannot compare the two scenarios and you haven't answered the question about ammo either. And how come if they are so hard to get hold off, automatics and semi automatics keep being used?

Anyone who is serious about wanting to kill someone can do it with or without a gun - I travel about everyday in what is essentially a lethal weapon, I'd have an easier time killing someone with it and passing it of as an accident than using a gun. Guns just make it easier and easier to kill at a distance and faster.

I'm totally with whoever said initially that you need to take away the ammo. eventually stocks will run out and these sprees will end. Not soon enough for my liking but at least we shouldn't be sitting here in 50 years time in the exact same boat.

challenge that this is a "fact". How do you explain away times when a home owner has defended themselves against a robber with a weapon, either by killing them, shooting them, or just using it to scare them away?

Well, yes, that probably has happened. But then the robber was not very likely to have broken in with the intent of killing them, so the result of your scenario is that the robber runs off with no loot.
But what I am saying, is that when the victim of the robbery winds up dead, it is more often by her own gun than by the robbers weapon (who may or may not have even had a gun).

Excellent post on the previous page lurkinghusband

I'm totally with whoever said initially that you need to take away the ammo. eventually stocks will run out and these sprees will end

Also pass the risk of breaking the law onto the criminal - I would look forwards to lots of criminals removing themselves from the gene pool trying to make bullets.

Again, the fact that restricting access to ammunition seems a cheap and easy way to progress (not necessarily a solution in itself) weighed against the fact that no-one is really debating it serves to reinforce my statement that the US isd quite happy - by action - with the current state of affairs. I appreciate that by words they say they aren't. But then talk is cheap and lives cheaper.

I wonder how the figures of people who have been saved or potentially could have saved themselves by having a weapon at their disposal compares to those actually shot or killed? Not measureable clearly.

How do people who are so keen on guns explain away the fact that in countries like the UK we haven't all been killed due to the lack of gun ownership? If it would be so ridiculous to not have a gun for protection and if we are so certain to all be shot in our beds why have my family, my friends families, my neighbours families all survived? I live in a large UK city. Yes we have had the odd shooting in the past and a fair few armed robberies, but it's a rare and unremarkable threat in the grand scheme of things. None of us own guns 'to protect our families' and so far it's not been a disadvantage. So why it the none ownership of a gun tantamount to certain death in the USA?

How do you explain away times when a home owner has defended themselves against a robber with a weapon, either by killing them, shooting them, or just using it to scare them away?

I'd love to see stats weighing up times a homeowner scares off a burglar with their gun vs 'accidental' deaths in the home from legally held weapons or those same guns being used against their owners by the burglars.

The whole mindset needs to change. If an unarmed burglar comes to steal your jewellery and car, it shouldn't be OK to get out a gun and kill him. It just shouldn't. That's escalating a situation from bad to worse. Give him what he wants.

Until that mindset changes (which it won't), people will keep on getting killed.

How do people who are so keen on guns explain away the fact that in countries like the UK we haven't all been killed due to the lack of gun ownership

They don't.

You also need to know that "gun control" in the UK is a relatively recent phenomenon - being gradually introduced in the 1900s. There is a newspaper account in the London Standard from the 1920s, where a robber snatched a bag and ran down Piccadilly several passers by offered the pursuing constable the use of their revolvers

I said before. I am a libertarian. I believe the state should butt out of peoples lives unless it is to prevent very real harm to innocent citizens. (I don't agree with the current drugs laws, for example). However, even with all that, for me, strict gun control is a no-brainer. I am not sure if they can be made any tougher, but if they can I'm all for it.

The bottom line is - irrespective of political standing - most UK citizens agree with me that they don't need to own a gun.

Incidentally, my DB lives in the US and has never owned - nor fired - a gun.

The whole mindset needs to change. If an unarmed burglar comes to steal your jewellery and car, it shouldn't be OK to get out a gun and kill him. It just shouldn't.

In the UK it (quite correctly) isn't. Ask Tony Martin.

So why it the none ownership of a gun tantamount to certain death in the USA

because of the shear number of guns there now - and the solution to every event being more guns rather than less guns.

I can see the point that if they said, "right we are making gun ownership illegal, please had in your weapons" the only guns that would be handed in would be from some law abiding citizens who would never have used them in anger anyway so it would be a waste of time, criminals and the paranoid would not give them up. Removing the availability of bulllets is the only way and don't give people the chance to stockpile them either (more than they already have).

Correct I'd you confront a burglar trying to take your things and he gives up, it shouldn't be alright to kill him. But if he doesn't give up and still attempts to take your things, why shouldn't you be allowed to defend your property using reasonable force? If the burglar escalates it to the point where you have to either kill him or let him steal your stuff, then that's tough luck for him and he shouldn't have put you in that position.

We have a lower amount of murders but I'd like to know why it's assumed this is down to gun control.

See, that's where we differ, DontHaveAUsername.

I think if you are standing pointing the gun at the burglar and he still refuses to stop rifling through your jewellery box, and you pull the trigger IN COLD BLOOD rather than getting your family out of the house, calling the police, leaving him to it, then that makes you a murderer.

No one's property is ever precious enough that protecting it should involve murder Imo. Having your home broken into must be awful, being there at the time would be terrifying, but taking a life should only ever be an option when you have no others left. And that's why we all need gun control. Some people are too 'act now think later'. You punch someone in anger and you normally get a chance to make amends - you shoot someone... not so much.

No one's property is ever precious enough that protecting it should involve murder

Or, as Gandhi said, there are many things worth dying for, but none worth killing for.

The only acceptable use of violence is to protect oneself, or others. Their iShit no.

That said, as I suggested upthread, I don't like the fact that courts use hindsight to trump the terror, panic, and adrenaline that anybody encountering a stranger - possibly armed - in their house.

Well Rumpus that's where we disagree. You wouldn't be murdering them, you'd be defending your property. If they don't want to die then perhaps they shouldn't burglar the home of someone with a gun. You say you should only kill of there is no other choice, but if the burglar is leaving you with no other choice by refusing to give up then I say that's justified. Self defence or defence of property isn't murder.