Guns
May 29th 2014 | 6:05 am
#46
Lost in BE Cyberspace
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 41,517
Re: Guns
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.
May 29th 2014 | 6:06 am
#47
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 635
Re: Guns
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.
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.
May 29th 2014 | 6:09 am
#48
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Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 635
Re: Guns
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
May 29th 2014 | 6:38 am
#50
Dive Bar Drunk
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 8,671
From: Toronto
Re: Guns
Michael Bloomberg is the person who can inspire the change in the US.
May 29th 2014 | 6:39 am
#51
limey party pooper
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 10,000
Re: Guns
Edit. He stabbed the first three people. I don't have the insight or knowledge to explain it but I feel the urge for retribution by killing is a more USA thing. Is it a leftover from recent history, the 'wild west'? A sense of entitlement?
Last edited by bats; May 29th 2014 at 6:47 am.
May 29th 2014 | 6:46 am
#53
Assimilated Pauper
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 40,070
From: Ontario
Re: Guns
And the Norwegian psyche. And the South African psyche. The human psyche, one might say.
May 29th 2014 | 6:50 am
#54
limey party pooper
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 10,000
Re: Guns
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. What the Americans do we copy eventually.
May 29th 2014 | 6:51 am
#55
Assimilated Pauper
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 40,070
From: Ontario
Re: Guns
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.
May 29th 2014 | 6:58 am
#56
Assimilated Pauper
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 40,070
From: Ontario
Re: Guns
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?
May 29th 2014 | 7:05 am
#57
Moderαtor Emeritus
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,771
From: Upstate South Carolina
Re: Guns
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)?
'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)?
My own kids (8 and 11) have had great fun at the range firing 22s and shotguns.
The problem is not gun ownership per se, its a lack checks in some jurisdictions about who can own them and how, and in particular the rampages that occur now and then are symptomatic of a lack of mental heath provision under a pay to use health care system.
Last edited by iaink; May 29th 2014 at 7:21 am.
May 29th 2014 | 7:05 am
#58
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 635
Re: Guns
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.
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.
May 29th 2014 | 7:07 am
#59
limey party pooper
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 10,000
Re: Guns
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?
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?
I really don't know, but it does seem a cop out to blame it on mental illness.
May 29th 2014 | 7:14 am
#60
BE Enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 635
Re: Guns
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.
I really don't know, but it does seem a cop out to blame it on mental illness.
