Open Discussion:
In the wake of the horrific movie-theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado at the hands of a 24 year-old graduate student, many people are questioning whether or not America should have more stringent gun control laws.
…I am left with the question of what is going on with our boys that they exclusively are prone to the strike to such powerful, insane, derranged, and hurtful forces that would cause some tiny fraction to come up with a plan to go into a school or a movie theater or an isolated island to kill as many innocent children as possible?
In what ways does “Gun Culture” play into whatever might be happening with young men in Western society?
What do you think? Should all guns be banned? Any guns not used for hunting? Only the automatic or semi-automatic?
Does America’s “Gun Culture” – such as a powerful lobby, gun-saturated media, massive black market gun trade, profitable inter-governmental weapons trade, and weapons export sales damage men, specifically?
Photo of gun courtesy of Shutterstock
http://www.people-press.org/2012/07/30/views-on-gun-laws-unchanged-after-aurora-shooting/
“Views on Gun Laws Unchanged After Aurora Shooting”
Nuff said. The people have spoken….
Now let’s discuss mental health, treatment & getting past the stigma…
One reason that the debate over gun control is not as active as it used to be is that some very large scale “experiments” have been carried out and the results are pretty clear. If one ignores ultra-high profile mass events and focuses on day to day crime stats what one sees is this: Britain and Australia banned handgun ownership in the mid 90s and have seen a steady increase in handgun crime. Texas and many other states liberalized gun laws around the same time and have seen a steady decrease in gun crime. Is there any cause and effect… Read more »
Britain and Australia banned handgun ownership in the mid 90s and have seen a steady increase in handgun crime. the ban has nothing to do with the increase here in the uk, as guns prior to the ban were not allowed to be used as defensive weapons. There was no culture (certainly since the 1960s) of guns being defensive weapons. Guns were for shooting animals, vermin, markmanship. so few people had gun permits. guns were stored in a locked safety box in the home, not in drawer next to the bed, and there was no concealed carry permits here in… Read more »
But the ban did not decrease gun violence.
Besides you have to remember that the body count is so far only 12. Locking/jamming the emergency exits and causing and fire that would have lead to an stampede might have been more effective.
My thoughts, Talking about guns is exploiting the tragedy: If gun availability were a minor side issue I’d agree, but the fact that anyone can go out and buy some pretty heavy artillary (figure of speech) in most parts of the US definitely contributed to this. Other countries which have gun control also have shootings: True, but not nearly as many. Gun control doesn’t result in a complete absence of guns in civilian posession, but it does mean that if someone wants to obtain a weapon they have to jump through a discouraging amount of illegal hoops in order to… Read more »
Correction: Banning certain muzzle velocities would mean banning certain bullets* and/or sturdier bolt mechanisms.
*This would be very easy to bypass by reloading the bullets by yourself.
“it does mean that if someone wants to obtain a weapon they have to jump through a discouraging amount of illegal hoops in order to do so.”
It would reduce spontaneous acts but fanatics; who don’t have anything to lose anyway, want to become martyrs or are otherwise willing to get an SWAT team on their a** will hardly hesitate to break the law.
The difference between one type of gun and another is, more than one would think, just a matter of style. Just like shoes. They might look different but all any of them do is to keep your feet off the ground. Should we try to ban a version of high-heels because Lady GaGa wore them once while singing a naughty song? With a little practice, a person could do as much damage to a crowd with a shotgun designed in 1897 as that fool in Colorado did with his space=aged black plastic guns.
Lets focus on mental health and character development in our youth and stop blaming ‘guns”. It way to easy to focus on anything but people.
I understand that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” but if people can’t get guns, I sure think that’d help. guns may not be the problem in and of themselves, but they’re certainly not helping reduce the violence either. Even if a murderer could still find a way to get a gun if certain ones were illegal, does that mean we shouldn’t even try to put a barrier? What’s so wrong about making it more difficult to get the gun? Canada seems to have some gun control laws that aren’t outlandish but are better than ours. Holmes got two… Read more »
Do you have any sources to back this claim up? Gun sales are up, violent crime rates are down in the US. Also, it is commonly argued that the largest massacres you see are in areas where no guns are allowed, either by law or rules of property owners. Schools, malls, parks, etc.
“Any deterrent to a massacre is better than no deterrent”
How far are you willing to go in that direction? Would stop-and-frisk laws be better than no deterrent?
guns may not be the problem in and of themselves, but they’re certainly not helping reduce the violence either.
This is factually incorrect. There are numerous cases of defensive uses of firearms, including cases in which merely brandishing the weapon without discharging it repelled an attacker. They simply aren’t reported very widely in the media, contributing to a general ignorance of these kinds of uses of firearms.
1. Fully automatic weapon (aka a machine gun)- keeps firing as long as you hold down the trigger until the magazine is empty (some fire 3 shot bursts). These are heavily regulated already: they are subject to special laws, and the transfer of them must be approved by, and registered with the Federal BATFE, and a $200 per weapon transfer tax paid to them. Some states do not permit possession of machine guns by private citizens- most do. A legally owned fully automatic weapon is rarely used in criminal acts. 2. Semi Automatic Weapons- fire a shot every time the… Read more »
Thanks for the clarification, Texpat. That is great info. I think to find solutions we really need to take a multi-faceted look at the trends of mass-shootings and how the numbers have risen and fallen and what the correlating historical events were. For instance, as much as semi-autos may have been around in 1915 for instance, what was their availability? How were they sold and to whom? How about the black market availability of weapons? As black market weapons sales have been increasing, have deaths so increased? How about violent media? I don’t know the answers, I’m just posing questions.… Read more »
Semiautomatic pistols have been fairly available since they came onto the market shortly after 1900. Sears & Roebuck sold them mail order back before WWI, and they were only slightly more expensive than good quality revolvers. Semiauto shotguns have been in common use since about 1908, available through the same commercial channels as other shotguns, and in pretty much the same price range. Semi auto hunting rifles also date from the pre-WWI era, but were considered less accurate and reliable than other types up until after WWII. Who knows what the black market availability is, how would anyone find out?… Read more »
The people are the problem. The society we live in is the problem. Guns are merely the weapon of choice of a disturbed mind. As I said on another site – instead of focusing so much on gun control, maybe we should be focusing on mental illness. (Which clearly this guy had). Guns don’t kill people folks, people kill people. And if you “take the guns away” they will find them anyways. A criminal who wants to hurt someone with a gun is not going to not use one because there is a law against it. If you take away… Read more »
While gun control laws may not curtail a motivated criminal, or one who has plenty of time in which to plan and act, that’s not to say there aren’t other reasons for gun restrictions. Since we both agree such criminals are going to use guns whether they’re legal or not, we can set that group aside. Those are the easy cases. What’s left then are those who might pick up a gun in a rage, in a crime of passion, or on a neighborhood watch. Would gun control laws help prevent shootings in road rage incidents? During domestic violence disputes?… Read more »
Well you bring up a good point, and one we should think about. In the case of a domestic violence disputes, bar fights, other miscellaneous altercations, take away the guns and one could just as easily break a beer bottle and wield that as a weapon, or use a knife, or their fists, or whatever weaponish thing they can find lying around. Road rage incidents, well heck, if you are mad enough, a car can be a pretty deadly weapon all on its own. The little boy shooting his father, well that is just plain ignorance on the gun owner.… Read more »
My husband likes the tagline of Handgun World as his motto…”I carry a gun because I can’t carry a cop.”
But they weren’t there to save 71 people from getting shot. A responsible, legally armed citizen might have been able to drastically reduce the body count. What do you realistically think would happen if there had been let’s say 20 responsible, legally armed citizen in that darkened cinema filled with teargas/smoke while the perpetrator in a body armour created a stampede of panicked people by firing into the crowd? At best the legally armed responsible citizen would be responsible enough to not take a shot under those circumstances and the outcome would be more or less the same. At the… Read more »
Just put enough hard conditions for getting an CCW warrant, problem solved.
Also considering the structure of most movie theaters there must have been an position one could use for taking out the target despite of moving no-hostiles.
Or what if you were enough close to the shooter in the first place?
“Most responsible citizens don’t have the time to undergo that kind of training as a requirement for carrying weapons. ”
Most responsible citizens in the US don’t have any free time?
Then how come the US is currently the leading country in IPSC?
I call BS.
“Most responsible citizens don’t have the time to undergo that kind of training as a requirement for carrying weapons. ” Most responsible citizens in the US don’t have any free time? I suspect most of them don’t have enough spare time outside their ordinary job to undergo the same level of training as army personell get – it’s a full time job for a soldier. There probably are some differences in cinema layouts, but most I’ve been to are one big room which offers no covers but the seats and with just a few exits. I don’t think I’ve ever… Read more »
[quote]There probably are some differences in cinema layouts, but most I’ve been to are one big room which offers no covers but the seats and with just a few exits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cinema seat I would trust to stop a .223/5.56 round.[/quote] An good position in the sense that you could get an line of sight to the target and shoot without risking collateral damage. [quote]Out of curiosity, what hard conditions would you like to see as requirements for a CCW warrant? How often should it be reviewed (mental health can change for instance).[/quote] –… Read more »
What’s left then are those who might pick up a gun in a rage, in a crime of passion, or on a neighborhood watch. You forgot some. For example, I keep a gun at home and carry it gun with me when I travel for personal self-defense. I live by myself, and I bought it when I lived alone in a somewhat remote area of desert in Arizona after my house was broken into. I often car camp at rest stops, in parking lots, on the street in neighborhoods, etc. by myself. If I am attacked, I don’t have anyone… Read more »
You forgot some. I was illustrating some of the uses that might call for gun control laws. It would appear the uses you list would be reasons for not banning guns outright. None of the uses you cite would give rise to the need for fully automatic weapons, or high-capacity clips. If that bear isn’t dead by the time you pumped him with thirteen 9mm slugs, I’m afraid you were destined to be kodiak food. Again, all I’m saying is that the fact that stricter gun control laws don’t stop lunatics isn’t a trump card against all gun legislation. It… Read more »
It’s a fair point that we have a sick and violence-obsessed society, but the tools of violence are still a legitimate topic for discussion.
You ever try to take out a shopping mall with a rock or a sharp stick? The fact is that guns make it easy, safe, and convenient to kill large numbers of people quickly. In fact, aside from military ordnance or biological/chemical weapons, they’re the #1 best option for making murder way too easy for cowards to carry out from a safe distance. That difference matters.
Isn’t an assault rifle specifically one which has been designed to provide accurate fire within 300m? That said the definition you provided is probably closer to how it’s used.
Negative. An assault rifle can always shoot full auto but all are not accurate even up to 100 meters.
Why oh why does this tragedy have to be made into another venue to trot out our positions on gun control? There will be a time and a place for that. Now is not it. Tragedy makes bad policy. If we’re pro-gun control, our gut-level instinct is to legislate tougher gun laws (as Finland did following the shooting in Norway). On the other side of the argument, opponents of gun restrictions point out that gun laws are unlikely to have prevented anything (Norway had some of toughest gun laws in the world at the time of the Breivik shooting). In… Read more »
The blame for not getting to the root of the problem falls squarely on the gun phobiacs. 2nd amendment proponents live by the motto “guns don’t kill, people do”. In other words we know the problem lies with the people.
You know the result of increased gun control in Finland seems to be that lunatics rely either on illegal guns or explosives. Just last weekend some 260 kilograms of materials for explosives were uncovered by chance. And the Schengen area ensures that there is an decent supply of illegal guns for those who want them. On the other hand proper mental health care that is easily available does statistically have some sort of an preventive effect. However that would cost money and would be socialism. Also the decision to tighten gun laws was made 27.10.2010 well before the Norway shootings… Read more »
They accelerated the implementation of the toughened gun laws that were scheduled to go into effect a year later. But that’s really a minor point – is there something I’ve written with which you disagree?
WTF?!!! HE 106/2009 came into effect 13.6.2011 as it was supposed to be. The Utøya Massacre happened over 30 days later on 22.07.2011.
The transition period was supposed to be one year and it was one year.
“is there something I’ve written with which you disagree?”
Yes.
“They accelerated the implementation of the toughened gun laws that were scheduled to go into effect a year later.”
“legislate tougher gun laws (as Finland did following the shooting in Norway)”
Both claims are simply wrong. You might want to re-consider your information sources.
Thanks for the correction. The news source I read apparently was incorrect as it stated the law’s effective date was accelerated. I’ll see if I can find that source again.
“Why oh why does this tragedy have to be made into another venue to trot out our positions on gun control?” Because the only time Americans are even slightly willing to discuss gun control (although they never do anything about it) is when an obvious example of the NEED for gun control happens. Gabrielle Giffords, for example, might have a relevant opinion on the subject. “There will be a time and a place for that. Now is not it.” Now IS the best time and place to address the issue. Sadly, we won’t… and the next mass shooting is guaranteed… Read more »