Re: Guns
 

I would put access to guns way up there as the reason for these killings. There are also gang wars going on that don't even get reported, and fairly frequent incidents of someone flipping and shooting their own family.

However, I think some other aspects of life here may contribute, for example very defined cliques in schools, which appears to have been a factor with Rodgers.

Re: Guns
 

Does the meat section in Walmart,or the local butchers offend you also?

Re: Guns
 

Actually that just shows your ignorance mate,that breaks storage laws,if you leave a firearm unattended in a car you must apply a trigger lock!
I suggest that you read up on the firearms laws!

Re: Guns
 

Yes, I agree with that. In any case, licensing doesn't deal with the issue of mental illness. Firstly, except in the case of someone who's already gone on a rampage, we don't know who is susceptible to doing so. Secondly, mental health changes over time, it's been seven or eight years since I received the gun license, I might well have become sane in the interim.

I think the choice is between having freedom to arm ourselves and keeping the public safe. Canada and the US are more risk tolerant in this regard than the European countries despite there being no better reason to own a gun in one than the others.

Another cop out, btw, is to say that one shouldn't consider violence in South Africa as being comparable to violence in other countries because there's a lot of violence in South Africa. It's a place with a lot of guns so a lot of people get shot.

Re: Guns
 

Maybe I know that. Maybe I didn't say that it is legal to leave a loaded firearm unlocked in an open car. Maybe I routinely use a trigger lock. Maybe a closer reading of my earlier post is indicated.

Re: Guns
 

It doesn't offend me. Hunting does though. Hunting is vandalism with cruelty. A huge mess made of the countryside just so something, anything, can get splattered.

Re: Guns
 

There have been tons of changes in the regulation around guns in the US since Columbine and since Newtown for that matter.

For someone who is supposed to be up to speed on the news he doesn't seem to have been paying attention!

Re: Guns
 

But, it's his Second Amendment right to have a gun.

All this waffle about changing societal attitudes and so on is so much bollocks. Nothing will change in America until a sufficiently liberal-minded Supreme Court defines the Second Amendment more tightly. Until then, every single attempt to limit access to guns, of any kind, will be overturned by the courts. Just look at what machinations Chicago is having to go through to limit gun sales in the city, where the city government and most of the population (who voted them in) actually want to change the system. They can't ban sales altogether (because Right To Bear Arms) so are playing with regulation in the same way that other municipalities have tried to marginalize released sex offenders: not within x feet of a school, or a park, or whatever. FFS, those are the kind of petty regulatory hurdles that you expect from a dysfunctional council on a nonsense measure (like, oh I don't know, Toronto screwing up the licensing of street food vendors), not as the only avenue left to try to stop its citizens from killing each other.

Until then, too many guns remain too easily accessible to people who are too screwed up to realise that shooting other people is not the appropriate response to whatever it is they have a grievance with. Of course it happens elsewhere in the world, but happens with monotonous regularity in the States, and (as has been mentioned up-thread) the short-term knee jerks that "something must be done" are out-lasted by the long game of the NRA and its good ol' boy supporters.

Re: Guns
 

You are obviously stubborn and refuse to take off the blinkers mate.
You are entitled to your opinion as I am entitled to mine.

Is it vandalism with cruelty when a cow has a metal spike blown through its skull in a slaughterhouse,or is that ok because when it reaches you its in a plastic wrapper?

I clean up after myself when I go shooting,even picking up spent shell casings,yes I agree that some people in any country will make a mess and leave it,look at the recent mess in BC,or the state of the UK countryside these days,nevermind the cities.

Re: Guns
 

LA Times article.

Ah yes,

Re: Guns
 

It's ok because it's in a facility for slaughtering. It's ok because it's as humane as we can contrive. It's not the same as charging across the fields or public lands on some noisy and smelly appliance wounding creatures at random. Furthermore, the captive bolt operator is likely to be halfway sober.

Re: Guns
 

The biggest fallacy is saying one gun is more dangerous than another, because it doesn't matter when the victims are unarmed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

Re: Guns
 

There may have been tons of changes in regulations, but vanishingly few of the proposed changes that actually passed (less than 10% of proposed regulations, and of those several were actually designed to circumvent others...) have made it into law, and fewer still of those have had any noticeable effect.

For example, the background checks law that GWBush signed after Virginia Tech relied on States entering mental health records into the system in order to work. Many states have entered fewer than 100 records, in total, into their systems. Fat lot of good that does to prevent dangerously unbalanced people from getting hold of guns.

And of all the proposed legislative changes after Sandy Hook, just one - yes, one single piece of legislation - was passed into law. That was a New York state law requiring the registration (note, not limiting ownership or use, just requiring registration) of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Can you cite one substantive regulatory change that would give the lie to what John Oliver claims? Do you suppose that what minor changes have been made have actually prevented one single person from possessing a gun?

Re: Guns
 

Very few cows are left limping away from the slaughter house to die a slow death from their injuries, Very few orphaned cows left uncared for as a result either.

To my knowledge a stray captive bolt has never left a hole in any of my riverside neighbors living room picture windows...

Re: Guns
 

As I pointed out in the other thread, the rate of gun ownership in California and Alberta (according to household surveys) is about the same and California now has gun laws that are in various ways more restrictive than the gun laws in Canada.

Yet the rate of firearm-related homicide in California is slightly more than 3/100,000 and is 0.76/100,000 in Alberta. In fact the rate in California is slightly higher than the US national average, despite having much tougher gun laws.

There is something different about the US and Canada, and my personal view is that it is largely cultural. What those factors are is hard to say, lack of social mobility (i.e. gangs in L.A.), worse mental healthcare, worse education system, etc. I'm sure are all factors but Americans culturally just seem to be more trigger happy going by their media.