Mass shooting at Oregon college: 15+ dead...

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I was talking on the average. Dumbasses exist in all societies.

I think this was meant to be an insult, although I am not sure. Not that it matters, because I completely understand how insignificant the nation that I just happen to live in actually is when it comes to world affairs. The Russian foreign minister was reported to have said that he was "not at all concerned with minnows" when our silly foreign minister tried to apply pressure on Russia over the MH17 affair. He no doubt thinks the Ukraine is more important, and from the perspective of the Russian government, it is. There are too many people where I live, especially our politicians, who seem to believe that when someone from this country makes an official statement the rest of the world pays attention. Well, no, they just ignore us, or do this -

Anyway, I am quite sure there were many who sincerely believed the Roman, and later on the British Empire, were also 'exceptional' and above the possibility of natural catastrophe and decline, and yet this belief did not save them, because they were simply wrong about this. The two most important nations on Earth within the near future will be China and India, if we make the - perfectly reasonable - assumption that their very large populations will continue to grow at the pace they currently are, whilst Europe, Russia and the U.S. will slowly wither away. The trends are all there now, there is no escaping it.

The United States of America is the only self-created country in the world. Your country grew out of a colony. Our ancestors threw off English tyranny and established a political form never seen before, a form of government that has lasted over 200 years.
All other countries have either evolved from preexisting political bodies and/or systems, or are made up of the remnants of the European colonies.
To say we are like every other two-bit former English colony is certainly laughable.
Raptor made a good point. You Aussies know about us because we are significant. We don't know about you because you don't signify.

Glebel our country grew out of 13 colonies. So we evolved from the previous British establishment. The thing that was supposed to make our country exceptional is that we were the first modern democracy. The only thing that is making us exceptional among first world nation is the massive amount of gun massacres. People are people and mostly the same all over the world.

Massive?

^^ Compared to the rest of the first world nations, yeah.

I would concur. Relative to the rest of the West, it is high. But Raptor likes to have his fun by playing devil's advocate!

Individuals on both sides of this issue distort the facts in order to prove their respective points.

Obviously there's a problem with gun violence in America. But what can we do to fix the problem? If we somehow managed to confiscate all the guns in America, obviously there would be significantly less gun violence. But if we confiscated every car in America, we'd probably save even more lives just from the elimination of car accidents.

A car could be used as a weapon to kill just as many people as a gun, but you don't hear about crazy people driving onto school playgrounds and running over kids so there's something other than the availability of guns that is driving people to commit these horrible tragedies.

The idea of a good guy with a gun stopping a tragedy from occurring sounds great in theory but doesn't seem to ever happen, despite the fact that there are a lot of folks carrying in this country. There are also more guns in america than citizens.

On the other hand, most of the gun control laws are pretty much pointless. "Let's ban guns that look scary" seems to be the main reaction to these types of tragedies. Obviously that doesn't really do anything other than ban guns that look scary which is a pretty childish reaction.

Your observations are spot on.

Indeed, paranoia and knee-jerk responses are not at all effective.

If only we knew before hand who is planning such an act of violence. Sometimes a pattern can be determined. I was reading recently about an incident in the UK where someone was planning such an atrocity and was stopped in time. They were able to charge and convict him on the evidence.

Hindsight is a perfect science, and thus they try to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted, by banning guns that look scary, etc.

Nobody proposing legislation are trying to ban scary looking weapons. The most common proposals I have heard is, make sure all buyers go through background checks even at gun shows and banning high capacity magazines that allow the shooter to get thirty rounds of before they have to reload. Some say we should also ban assault rifles and weapons made specifically for military use.

This is not a case of both sides being equal either. The vast majority of people pushing for further gun control actually support the individual right to own a gun. I do. It's groups like Gun Owners of America that are pushing the paranoid fantasy that the government is coming for your guns and the NRA is just a front for gun manufactures. The NRA poses as a gun owners group but one of their main purpose is to prevent any law from being passed that would hurt gun sales.

This constant talk about a gun ban is paralyzing the conversation because to some any gun control law is just a slippery slope to a gun free tyranny.

If someone is trying to ban all guns, they are on the fringe of the conversation. Also if someone is going to oppose any law regarding guns then they are on the fringe. Both people should be ignored. There are too many things the majority if people agree on to waste time arguing with the fringes.

Yeah there are going to be reactionaries and we'll never stop all the gun violence but there are some things we can do.

I'll put forth my own thoughts on this, there is no truly effective manner to banning guns outright within the states, as the problem I see tends to be enforcement therefore, it would not be easy to do however, gun ownership is not necessarily a crime only when someone uses firearms to carry out malicious acts of violence.
My feeling is, I don't think every single person with a firearm is literally going to go shoot somone.Yes, there are people out there whom tend to do with various scenarios by using violence but, one has to consider the easiness of persons whom have either subversive mentalities or mentally unstable mechanics as, those types of people are definitely a threat to all. Truthfully, I'm not sure how to resolve this ongoing problem..

You just contradicted yourself because an assault rifle (that a civilian can buy) is just a scary looking semi-automatic rifle. It's no more lethal than a rifle that looks less militaristic. Also, military weapons are not sold to civilians as it is.

Sorry, I have should have been more clear. I think I might have misspoke as well. I should have said "some want to ban assault weapons made for military use." The assault weapons ban is mainly referring to specific attachments to weapons. That's why I added the part about military use. Also most proposals grandfathered in all guns currently owned. So no one is planning on rounding up the guns. It's reinstating the ban that was in effect during the Clinton administration.

The reason these massacres are not stopped as you pointed out is because they almost always happen in gun free zones. There really is no-one there to stop it.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... ree-zones/
Even the Chattanooga killing of our military happened in a gun free zone.
In May a terrorist attack in Garland was prevented from continuing by an armed police officer and no-one died (except the terrorists themselves).

No, the failure is that you're conflating your idea of value with a universal one; you don't value the enhanced shopping experience and quality that Whole Foods type retailers provide and so consider them to be overpriced, where as others may find those added qualities worth the premium. You're thinking that people are too dumb to know better and are being "suckered" into paying too much rather than choosing an upscale retailer for their own reasons, which is an uncharitable view, to say the least. For the record, I'm a Costco guy myself, as I care less about the shopping environment and more about the pricing, but I don't begrudge Whole Foods or Metropolitan Market their niches, and occasionally shop there for certain esoteric ingredients.



I gotta ask, on what basis are you making that statement? Are you so familiar with me and my thought process that you feel confident making such a proclamation? Cause if you were familiar with my posting history, you'd know that I've changed numerous positions on everything from economics to immigration to diplomacy and everything in between just in the years I've been on WP, and am continually evolving my beliefs as I acquire new information and perspectives. I am very confident in my opinions on guns, but I also have more reason to be confident, as I have a degree in the subject and over a decade of hands on experience, and frankly, those who oppose my beliefs don't bring anything approaching that to the table.



Honestly, I'm less concerned with mass shootings than I am with day to day murders, which kill an order of magnitude more people every year, but I think similar principles can be used to attack both problems. Basically, my approach is to attack the root causes of violence, which my own research has led me to believe are poverty, desperation, and honor culture, and the tools I would use are criminal justice reform including an end to the war on drugs and rolling back the carceral state, an improved social safety net anchored with a guaranteed basic income, plus some pretty wonky education system changes that would take up their own thread to explain. In essence, I want to attack the things that make people violent, not the tools that they use to carry it out once they snap. Mass shooters are a bit trickier because mental illness does play a role, but I think making life less traumatic for people across the board will also alleviate many of the factors that lead to people feel that their one shot at "greatness" is to be the most famous person in the world for a news cycle or two by doing something terrible.

Obviously there are documented defensive uses of guns. My point is 30,000 people die from gun violence each year ( that figure includes suicides too which is a little misleading). The number of times a tragedy is prevented by the use of a gun is nowhere near that number. You can argue that there are many more cases of when a gun is brandished without it being necessary to fire it but there are no statistics on that.

The reason the military doesn't allow guns on bases is because they've come to the conclusion that they're more likely to cause a problem (like being accidentally fired or being involved in a disagreement) than prevent a problem.