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

Your last post doesn't make sense. The gun deaths are broken down by type - none are just recorded as 'gun death'.

The kill or be killed conundrum accounted for 9 out of 398 deaths by a firearm kept in the house.

But assuming that they wouldn't have died if guns were banned is just speculation, they might have died anyway. So why ban guns on a theory?

Would you mind telling me how accidental gun deaths would happen without a gun being present? That is not just a theory, it's fact.

Crimes of passion - killing your spouse, for example - is more likely to happen if you have a deadly weapon to hand.

"Would you mind telling me how accidental gun deaths would happen without a gun being present? That is not just a theory, it's fact."

Someone who has an accident with a gun may be a clumsy person in general and kill themselves with any number of items.

"Crimes of passion - killing your spouse, for example - is more likely to happen if you have a deadly weapon to hand."

The world is full of things that can be used as deadly weapons and we can't ban them all. Our pocket knives or the cutlery drawer full of sharp objects, there's loads of every day items that can be used to kill someone in a fit of rage. Banning them isn't the way to solve the underlying problem, it's treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.

I'm loath to use what I believe to be a biblical term given that I am an atheist, but I will attempt it. "There are none so blind as those who just don't see" we are wasting our breath in this case as no amount of rational argument is any use on someone with such an entrenched view. I think the poster has some sort of sociopathic personality disorder.

An accident prone person won't manage to shoot themselves, without a gun though, will they? and the number includes children - known to be quite accident prone, generally parents try to protect them from that.

Crimes of passion are just that - in the heat of the moment. The longer people have to cool down, the less the chance of violence there is. If they have to run to the knife drawer, find a knife and chase down their victim, that victim has a higher chance of a) escaping and b) surviving. If they have a gun in a holster it's just "Bang" and you're dead.

Getting to the root cause of violence in our society would be great, in addition to the legal control of guns, so they don't get into the wrong hands.

So perhaps you could start by not condoning attacking, or even killing people for nicking your property, eh?

You are so, so right, myotherusername - rational argument is indeed lost on this one.

Greenwood again that's speculation. Maybe they would cool down, maybe they wouldn't be able to chase someone with a different item, but maybe they would.

"Getting to the root cause of violence in our society would be great, in addition to the legal control of guns, so they don't get into the wrong hands.

I agree with this. I don't want guns in the wrongs hands.

"So perhaps you could start by not condoning attacking, or even killing people for nicking your property, eh?"

I'm not condoning that. Killing someone because they nicked your stuff seems like revenge/vigilantism to me. Your killing them as a kind of punishment, that's wrong. But that I'm talking about is killing someone in self defence or defence of property. That's different. You're there using reasonable force and the bad guy has escalated it to the point where you are forced to kill them to protect yourself/your property. That's not the same as killing someone in a kind of revenge attack imo.

I've just come back to this thread and I'm a mixture of and horror.

Donthave you need a serious rethink about your values and thinking about human life (which appears to be cheap to you). I don't know anyone in the world like you thank god

So a desperate 16 year old runaway boy who's left home after his stepdad beat the shit out of him is walking up the street. He sees your mobile phone sticking out your back pocket. He hasn't eaten for over a day, the temptation is too much and he tries to take it. You grapple with him, he is scared, you mistake his shouting for aggression when in fact he is just a hungry frightened boy. He's tried to take your phone but you are entitled to shoot him.

if it's a choice between killing them or losing my property, my property has a higher value than their life I'm afraid

Does your statement apply in my scenario? I hope to god not.

What can I say.

What's scarier is that DontHave applies this philosophy to scenarios where there isn't even any physical contact or threat of violence.

So if the burglar/car thief is in the process of making their escape and won't drop the swag then they are fair game.

Scary that people who think like this walk amongst us.

Rossette hindsight is a wonderful thing. I couldn't be expected to know all about the boys circumstances and that he wasn't interested in hurting me. You said I confused his activities for aggression or anger, so wouldn't that be a case of genuine mistake? You do have a legal defence available if you had a reasonable belief, even if the belief turns out to have been wrong, the issue would be whether a reasonable person would have held that belief. So someone comes up to me, assaults me and is shouting, would it be reasonable to form the belief that this person was a threat to you?

Make the most of your freedom DontHave, do you carry a knice because guns aren't allowed over here? Genuine mistake shooting someone just for the price of a phone? Threat or no threat to me, I would hand over my phone and not be intent on taking their life because I think a phone is more important than someone's life.

I agree with what someone said upthread, you can't really believe all this bollocks, I think you're on a wind up. Life is cheap according to you. Nasty.

"Genuine mistake shooting someone just for the price of a phone?"

But how would I know that's all they wanted? I wouldn't know the boys circumstances, so how could I be expected to know that he wasn't out to hurt me? The only information I would have to go on is that a stranger has grabbed my phone, assaulted me, and is shouting at me. That would definitely make me think they wanted to hurt me.

"Life is cheap according to you. "

It's not, I would try to avoid killing if I could.

I'm assuming Donthave is on a wind up mission too.
Anyway his/ her options are so extreme as to be irrelevant. And our laws mean that no one, including Donthave can carry a concealed gun or have a gun on the house not under lock and key.

It's not a wind up, it's that I don't think gun control works, because there are still shootings that happen in this country although it's rare. So at best all you can do is reduce the frequency of gun sprees, which is a good thing, but the cost is that you are depriving other people of the ability to carry protection and in doing so open them up to a greater risk, which is a bad thing. Ultimately it seems to me to be an exercise in saving one person by endangering another, it's not worth it

Evidently the situation we have in this country whereby guns are strictly controlled works very well. It would be incredibly difficult to pass laws like we have in the U.S, in part because of sophistry and sheer bloody mindedness on the part of the gun lobby. As you live in the UK, you should just be very very grateful not to have a dog in this race and show a little humility and gratitude to luck and history.
Defending your rights to protect your property at the expense of another's life when the chances of you ever having to make that choice are infintisismal, certainly much much smaller than that of an American, is tasteless.

Yes Seriously thank god Donthave can't fulfil his wish to be tooled up to protect his mobile phone. I have no idea about all this shootings in the UK he keeps referring to, I think he's been playing too many shoot 'em up games online.

An irrelevance I agree.

Don'thave

I notice you've repeatedly said you live in the UK BUT are you British born/raised?

Your posts sound to me:
Delusional, irrational, sociopathic and bloody frightening actually.

I sincerely hope never to meet you or anyone like you or with your opinions as stated on this thread.

I agree with others. Gun control in UK and other countries with strict control means we have MASSIVELY fewer gun deaths accidental or deliberate. I am of an age to well remember hungerford and dunblane. The reason both those incidents were so shocking was because such incidents are so incredibly thankfully rare in the UK.

I honestly am shocked and bewildered by your frankly ridiculous assertion that gun control would save some but endanger others! Just. Not. True!

" I have no idea about all this shootings in the UK he keeps referring to"

What about these two ?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northumbria_Police_manhunt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

"I agree with others. Gun control in UK and other countries with strict control means we have MASSIVELY fewer gun deaths accidental or deliberate. I am of an age to well remember hungerford and dunblane. The reason both those incidents were so shocking was because such incidents are so incredibly thankfully rare in the UK."

Yes I agree, sprees like those two and the two I referenced are so rare that when they do happen it's a major thing. The UK has always a low number of shooting sprees but this was before all the gun laws so the rarity of the sprees can't really be attributed to those laws.

"I notice you've repeatedly said you live in the UK BUT are you British born/raised? "

Yes, born and raised here.

Yes Donthave, as you have illustrated with your links - rare occurrences. Unlike the US.

Yes they are rare, but it's always been rare, even before the introduction of our gun control laws. So if you say that gun control has resulted in shootings being rare, why were they rare before those laws?

Oh fuck off with your school room debating. It's irrelevant and sick. Children die in the states in massive numbers because their parents keep guns in the home because of sophistry and scare mongering like you're doing here. It's not an intellectual parlour game- it's a real life situation which leads to innocent people dying. Again FUCK OFF.

"it's a real life situation which leads to innocent people dying."

I agree, liberal gun control in America has led to innocent people dying. But the reason I don't think stricter gun control is the answer is that it also leads to innocent people dying. Of all the times the presence of an armed civilian has saved a life, or prevented an attack, stricter gun control means that they would probably die, and those in the college campus last week probably wouldn't. I don't see any policy that could save all of those lives, rather than just some.