Originally Posted by confused_uk (Post 11280884)

But if rules were tighter & a psych test was required the guy last week wouldn't have been able to get a license, like I said it wouldn't solve everything but it could have stopped at least part of that particular rampage

Originally Posted by orly (Post 11280686)

Not really sure about that. I've played video games since I was a kid. I play them to this day. Some of them are "violent" or are shooters. There were two pistols in the home when I was growing up (parents allowed/required to carry them). My parents showed me them but obviously I was not allowed to use them and I never had any desire to use them. To this day I've never fired anything more dangerous than a pellet gun and I don't feel a bubbling desire inside me to go Elliott Rodger mode and blow people away.

Massacres occur from time to time in the first world because of deranged individuals. Even with tight controls you can't stop everything. In lesser developed nations like the USA the massacres happen more regularly because the society as a whole is generally more violent and prone to idiocy. It's not because they have "more guns". There are plenty of guns floating around in Canada, Switzerland, Finland and basically every other country. It's probably because they're just more aggressive and have a misplaced superiority complex and it leeches into everything.

Originally Posted by Sally Redux (Post 11280888)

The NRA are certainly going with the mental health aspect, can't see how that would work myself, especially with the extremely patchy US healthcare set-up.

Originally Posted by confused_uk (Post 11280894)

But the fact that there are mentally ill people out there is this exact reason why guns shouldn't be available to just anyone, the NRA are not too bright are they

Originally Posted by confused_uk (Post 11280894)

But the fact that there are mentally ill people out there is this exact reason why guns shouldn't be available to just anyone, the NRA are not too bright are they

Originally Posted by Sally Redux (Post 11280900)

My own view is that anyone can have a bad day.

Originally Posted by bats (Post 11280935)

I take exception to this blaming it on mental health. Other countries don't have the same problem and yet gave access to guns. It's part of the American psyche and they just don't want to accept it.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 11280945)

And the Norwegian psyche. And the South African psyche. The human psyche, one might say.

Originally Posted by confused_uk (Post 11280884)

But if rules were tighter & a psych test was required the guy last week wouldn't have been able to get a license, like I said it wouldn't solve everything but it could have stopped at least part of that particular rampage

Originally Posted by bats (Post 11280953)

See my edit above. South Africa has a very recent violent history, with laws allowing you to shoot intruders. I'm not saying these mass killings don't happen elsewhere because they obviously do but they are more frequent in the USA.

Originally Posted by London Mike (Post 11279959)

John Oliver said today:
'One failed attempt at a shoe-bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. 31 school shootings since Columbine and no change in the regulation of guns.'
Wise words.
IMO, if you own a gun at all ask yourself why. I talked with my neighbour the other day after a deer ran on the QEW and he said "see, that's why we need hunting.' He's a twat, and everyone who thinks that way is also a twat.
Or are they ... (pathetic, leading attempt at playing devil's advocate)?

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 11280954)

A psych test? You have a great deal more faith in a) doctors and b) the system than I have.

Understand that, in Canada, PAL testing is privatised, the people who grant you the license are the people paid to teach the course. I saw them grant a pass to a man who was so palsied that he couldn't load a gun.

The idea that licensing people to use guns will make them safe to use guns is like the idea that licensing people to use cars makes them safe to use cars. It certainly doesn't work in Canada.

Originally Posted by dbd33 (Post 11280964)

Are they more frequent in the USA? That is, by number of people with free access to guns, do more go on mass rampages than elsewhere? I doubt that holds, I think if you gave everyone in Scotland a gun and a pile of ammunition you'd have plenty of Dunblanes. I think this is just about access to the machinery of destruction.

It's hard to say, of course, since there aren't a lot of societies with the kind of access to guns that exists in the US. I think South Africa might be the only developed nation with quite that level of access. Do we know that there are less shootings in South Africa? Is Natal calmer than Vermont?

Originally Posted by bats (Post 11280982)

I thought we were discussing mass shootings of strangers rather than an inherently violent society such as SA. Canada vs USA, more guns per capita in Canada I've read and fewer of these mass killings. No reference to hand.

I really don't know, but it does seem a cop out to blame it on mental illness.