28 dead in Texas church shooting

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The guy knew this was the same church his mother in law attended. He had some vendetta and clearly took it to another level.

The NRA will argue this man didn't have a gun license for this weapon - but the fact the market is awash with guns simply makes it easier for him to i) acquire and then ii) conceal his gun ownership.

Improved Gun tech means there are now weapons available that allow one lone nutcase to walk into crowd and take out 50-100 people in a matter of minutes.

I can see what B19 is saying - with access to guns America is at war with itself

For those of you who want to ban guns, just remember, all you will be doing is taking away the means to an end. --We should instead focus on the dysfunction that lies behind whatever compells people to kill others in the first place, but this is not as simplistic as just simply banning guns and leaving the dysfunction to continue, now isn't it?

If congress made it mandatory for all gun owners to be listed on a national register with current details, number and kind of guns held, any convictions for violence of any kind, then that would be a start. To encourage compliance, it would be necessary to regulate the confiscation of all the guns of owners who refused to supply information. That would be a start, the first brick in the wall, not the solution. Gun sellers would also have to register information on sales (type of gun, seller's details) whether these transactions were private or through a dealer. The building of an effective data base would be a very important first step if there is an honest will to tackle the carnage perpetrated by these violent offenders and other lesser gun crime.

Considering the fact that many guns used in crimes are stolen this is ineffective. The concept behind the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution is that we have the right to bear arms not only to prvide food for the table, but as a means of defence against not only just criminals, but against enemies who are both of foreign origin, (IE invaders from foreign nations) as well as people within the country who would eradicate our freedoms.

What you are suggesting smacks of the first steps towards a totalitarian state. Maybe this would work in NZ, but it wouldn't work here in the US.

Governments have data bases for all sorts of things - taxes, motor vehicles, criminal convictions, house ownership, sex offenders, voters, property taxes, births deaths and marriages, entry and exit out of and into the country, and so on. The level of surveillance on communications revealed by Snowden demonstrated that the State is already monitoring in very intensive ways because they have the will to do so. Where there is a political will, they will find a way. One would hope all the more so where there are issues of public safety and deaths of ordinary innocent citizens from gun violence.

If that is your definition of a totalitarian state, then you already have one.

Smear tactics infiltrate media with fake news trying to scapegoat the left for this tragedy. This smear propaganda seems to have been well organised:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -fake-news

I saw it happen myself within a couple of hours of the shooting and it seemed highly suspicious at the time, I thought it was a ploy by the NRA perhaps to direct attention away from the facts of the mass shooting. However perhaps it was organised by others with help from overseas contacts.

Despicable.

I knew that the USA had a terrorist watch list though only learned today (PBS) that some people on it can buy guns quite legally:


Q: Why can people on the terrorist watch list buy guns?

A: That’s the law. Being on a terrorist watch list is not “in and of itself a disqualifying factor” for people purchasing firearms and explosives, according to a 2013 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Apparently they can buy assault rifles and other weapons capable of causing carnage.

Astonishing.

I think the US is referred to as a national security state, effectively totalitarian in terms of monitoring citizens in every possible way - so it does seem strange that the aforementioned citizens are allowed to run around with instruments of death? something akin to a Mad Max movie

But this is not happening in Russia. It just happens in the US. So the farther away from the US you are, the better.

We just saw the cops say Paddock was a gambling loser , that triggered his pride/narcissism anger, and that's the reason why he killed people.

It's a repeated pattern.

Person X is failing at something (likely loner, outcast).
Person X gets angry.
Person X develops mental illness.
Person X kills people.

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 07 Nov 2017, 12:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

For those who see these mass killings as solely a mental health issue, a question: in terms of your explanation, does this mean that men are more mentally ill than women? Where do you place gender in your mental illness theory of causation?

The #1 issue is guns. This type of thing just doesn't happen in countries with gun control. The #2 issue is a mental health system that is a joke. As a result, millions of Americans are walking the streets with untreated mental illnesses. The #3 issue is that most Americans have been brainwashed into believing that the US is the best country in the world, even when there is no evidence to support that. They continue to believe it, even while their kids are having active shooter drills at school, and they are afraid to go to an outdoor concert because some crazy maniac might stick his head out of a hotel window and spray the crowd with machine gun fire.

The best analogy I can think of is that the mentally ill are barrels of gasoline-petrol. The guns are lit matches being thrown into the barrels, and everybody acts all surprised each time a barrel blows up.

Last edited by 0regonGuy on 07 Nov 2017, 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

This purely anecdotal, but I observed something interesting once. I was at a daycare facility where a little cousin was getting picked up. These little kids were in a room playing. There were two giant stuffed bears. The girls were on one side of the room taking care of the bear like it was sick giving it medicine etc. while the boys were attacking their bear hitting and stabbing it. This showed me a major difference between male and female psychology.

Different socialisation perhaps?

Taking guns away from the dysfunctional people is the best short term solution. Millions of people could be dead, before you complete your research into what compels people to kill each other. I suspect that you know that the research would likely be inconclusive, so the question would never be answered, and guns would never be banned. Which is most likely your real agenda.

Actually you are right on the third part. The concept of the Second Amendment is that a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free country. If it had anything to do with food, or self defense against criminals, they would have said that. Criminals or food is not mentioned at all.