Mass Shooting at Walmart in El Paso

[SoulMonster]

40 minutes ago, Len Cnut said:

You can't REALLY defeat terrorism and extremism. 

Sure, but we shouldn't avoid the fight because we cannot totally win. Just reducing it, say, cutting 50 % of deaths due to terrorism, is invaluable. Same with obesity; you are right we can't eliminate it, but through the fight we reduce the costs of diabetes, heart attacks, knee replacement surgeries, reduction in life quality, etc. So it is worth the fight.

[SoulMonster]

1 hour ago, action said:

In all honesty, I'd seriously question the "happy" part in leading long and happy lives. Suicide rates are very high these days. I'm not particularily happy myself for various reasons. One thing is for sure; I don't see many efforts from society as a whole, to make people happier. Happiness comes from your own, it's of your own making and society is making that increasingly difficult to achieve, as time goes on.

Yes, there is only so much society can do, but it sure helps that you won't have to see your child die form smallpox.

 

1 hour ago, action said:

The great revolutions were not accomplished peacefully, but rather by violence. Never was a bad situation altered peacefully, in negotiation and positive action. 

I disagree. Lots of improvements have come about peacefully. The eradication of smallpox and some other infectious diseases being examples. Trade agreements that result in reducing the danger of wars, too. 

 

1 hour ago, action said:

We've cured disease? Like what? We can't cure cancer. We can't cure aids, ALS and other horrible diseases. Sure, the doctor can prescribe you some painkillers and antibiotics, but if your own body doesn't work along it won't make much difference. When people are "lethally ill", there is absolutely nothing science can do about it. My ancestors in the 17th century went on to live to the age of 80 and beyond. These days many people die young of cancer. I'm not convinced by your utopian depiction of our medical knowledge.

This is patently wrong. Many diseases now has a 100 % recovery rate, whereas before mortality was high. I already mentioned eradicated diseases like smallpox, and examples of existing diseases that we have rendered close to harmless are various bacterial infections (including Yersinia pestis, the infectious agent of the Black Death).

It is true that we aren't able to cure cancer yet, but prognoses for many cancer types have improved remarkably. The general trend is that if you was diagnosed with cancer (average of every type) in 1963, there was a 60-70 % chance you'd be dead in 5 years. Today that number is 30 %, and for some it is close to 0 %.

As for average life span today vs the 17th century. I think your ancestors lived remarkably long lives for the time (!). I don't know where you live, but in "early modern England", covering the 16th to the 18th centuries, the life expectancy at birth was 35 years. Today it is more than 70. In other words, it has doubled. Perhaps your ancestors were nobility? Generally speaking we live longer and longer.

1 hour ago, action said:

If Hitler didn't want to go through the effort of changing things, there wouldn't even have been nazis. The misplaced desire to do something, was fertile ground for his extremist views to grow and evolve.

Sure, but if no one took the effort to change things, we'd still live in caves with a life expectancy of 30 years, fighting for survival against hostile tribes, animals and the elements. It is the desire to do something that leads to progress.

[pugachev]

11 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

Yet the worst gun massacre I can recall occurred in little liberal Norway of all places, 77 people, Breivik. The United Kingdom isn't immune either, Hungerford 1987, Monkseaton '89 (near me), Dunblane '96 which led to changes to the law concerning handguns, but then we had Cumbria 2010. You have to be rather whiter than white to have the audacity to criticise another country, and when London knife crime has quadrupled recently under her lefty mayor Sadiq Khan I don't see how anyone British can really hector Americans upon this complicated subject.

This is honestly hilarious. You're coming up with 4 mass shootings in UK over the past 30 years, when the US had 3 mass shootings in the span of less than 12 hours. 

Trying to equate Norway's single notable mass shooting that occurred 8 years ago versus America's literal DOZENS every year.

And you pulled that "quadrupled" knife crime stat right out of your ass. It has gone up significantly, but no where near four times. The problem is nationwide, not unique to London or its mayor.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42749089

 

Stats speak for themselves.
 

America's homicide rate: 6.2

UK: 1.2

Norway's homicide rate: 0.5
 

Edited August 6, 2019 by pugachev

[Download]

300,000,000 guns in the private collections with probably about one trillion in ammo... 

 

Are guns really the problem? 

 

Brb I gotta gun getting loose from his kennel

[Dazey]

20 minutes ago, Download said:

300,000,000 guns in the private collections with probably about one trillion in ammo... 

Are guns really the problem? 

Yes. Keep up.

[Graeme]

The amount of common sense being shown in this thread and the lack of tolerance for selective presentation of information is encouraging at least. 

[Download]

2 hours ago, Dazey said:

Yes. Keep up.

If you really think disarming law abiding American citizens is actually the answer to the problem, you really really really really really need to open a history book. 

Thats not even far left ideology, that’s just insanity. 

[DieselDaisy]

What sort of lax bullshit are Norway's laws though, that allowed Breivik to purchase legally?

- a semi-automatic rifle

- Glock pistol

- Benelli Nova

- 308 bolt-action

- Mini-14

[Georgy Zhukov]

 

This to all those who make the "cars" excuse. 

[downzy]

55 minutes ago, Georgy Zhukov said:

 

This to all those who make the "cars" excuse. 

Or anyone else who says "why bother..."

The most asinine response to all of this is that there's nothing we can do; that increased gun control won't do anything.  

It's a good thing the same approach wasn't, or hasn't, been adopted about literally every other human endeavour, social problem, or engineering challenge.

I have to laugh at the fact that the same people who claim increased gun control won't work are like everyone else when it comes to locking their cars or front doors at night.  It's no guarantee at protecting one's property or personal security but we all still do it because it can make a difference.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

1 hour ago, downzy said:

Or anyone else who says "why bother..."

The most asinine response to all of this is that there's nothing we can do; that increased gun control won't do anything.  

It's a good thing the same approach wasn't, or hasn't, been adopted about literally every other human endeavour, social problem, or engineering challenge.

I have to laugh at the fact that the same people who claim increased gun control won't work are like everyone else when it comes to locking their cars or front doors at night.  It's no guarantee at protecting one's property or personal security but we all still do it because it can make a difference.

Yes, everyone with a room temperature IQ knows it would cut down on the school shooter types if you added a bunch of new regs on guns. But the reality is there's a large swatch of people in this country that don't trust or outright hate the elites that run the country (can't really blame them TBH), and the last thing they want to do is disarm themselves. 

[-W.A.R-]

14 minutes ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

Yes, everyone with a room temperature IQ knows it would cut down on the school shooter types if you added a bunch of new regs on guns. But the reality is there's a large swatch of people in this country that don't trust or outright hate the elites that run the country (can't really blame them TBH), and the last thing they want to do is disarm themselves. 

Anyone that paranoid shouldn't own a gun truthfully - yet they probably already own a small arsenal.

[SoulMonster]

8 hours ago, Download said:

If you really think disarming law abiding American citizens is actually the answer to the problem, you really really really really really need to open a history book. 

Reducing the amounts of guns in USA is certainly part of the solution. 

[SoulMonster]

8 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

What sort of lax bullshit are Norway's laws though, that allowed Breivik to purchase legally?

- a semi-automatic rifle

- Glock pistol

- Benelli Nova

- 308 bolt-action

- Mini-14

After the Utøya massacre we banned semi-automatic weapons in Norway.

[SoulMonster]

2 hours ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

Yes, everyone with a room temperature IQ knows it would cut down on the school shooter types if you added a bunch of new regs on guns. But the reality is there's a large swatch of people in this country that don't trust or outright hate the elites that run the country (can't really blame them TBH), and the last thing they want to do is disarm themselves. 

Then there is a large a swathe of Americans suffering from a collective delusion.

[action]

how many deaths / crimes have america's gun laws prevented though?

the general reason given for america's gun laws, is "home / personal protection".

How many crimes did not happen because the criminal was cautious about americans carrying guns?

it's always difficult to take into consideration something that did "not" happen, but since that was the reason for this law to begin with, it needs further investigation.

after that, it's a matter of balancing the pro's and contra's. Moral calculation so to speak. 

I know one thing for sure though. If I was a burglar I'd chose another country to take my chances, frankly. A country where not everyone can wear guns legally. Hell, it makes me cautious about visiting the USA altogether. I avoid traveling there like the plague. 

Edited August 7, 2019 by action

[DieselDaisy]

16 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

After the Utøya massacre we banned semi-automatic weapons in Norway.

Well you were certainly no better than the Americans before this massacre, Brevik's arsenal case in point.

[SoulMonster]

Just now, DieselDaisy said:

Well you were certainly no better than the Americans before this massacre, Brevik's arsenal case in point.

By what criteria were we no better? We had less guns in circulation, we had stricter gun laws (consistent background checks, more illegal weapons than in the US, etc), and -- and this is the only thing that matter to me -- much, much, much lower gun violence rates than in the US. Generally speaking, it worked. Until it didn't.

A fourth criteria could be to look at how we respond to domestic mass murder tragedies. USA sends out their thoughts and prayers. We tightened gun access by making it very hard to obtain semi-automatic weapons (in addition to a lot more that was done after we analyzed the tragedy and discussed how to prevent something similar happening again). Don't get me wrong, another tragedy of course can happen again in Norway, and given enough time it will. There are no ways to reduce the probability of a nutcase killing lots of people to zero, but it was pretty low in Norway before Utøya and I believe we have reduced it even further. USA does nothing. 

 

 

[DieselDaisy]

16 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

By what criteria were we no better? We had less guns in circulation, we had stricter gun laws (consistent background checks, more illegal weapons than in the US, etc), and -- and this is the only thing that matter to me -- much, much, much lower gun violence rates than in the US. Generally speaking, it worked. Until it didn't.

A fourth criteria could be to look at how we respond to domestic mass murder tragedies. USA sends out their thoughts and prayers. We tightened gun access by making it very hard to obtain semi-automatic weapons (in addition to a lot more that was done after we analyzed the tragedy and discussed how to prevent something similar happening again). Don't get me wrong, another tragedy of course can happen again in Norway, and given enough time it will. There are no ways to reduce the probability of a nutcase killing lots of people to zero, but it was pretty low in Norway before Utøya and I believe we have reduced it even further. USA does nothing. 

 

 

Yes but you cannot really be lecturing Americans on this with such a massacre in your recent history, enacted with legally (by your legal system) procured firearms. The largest mass shooting in United States history since 1949 was Las Vegas, 2017, in which 58 died. Brevik butchered 77!

 

[action]

the biggest massacre in US history (9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in history) was not committed with legal arms but 4 airplanes. 265 casualties on the four planes, 2606 in the WTC buildings and 125 at the pentagon. Your anti-gun laws are useless in this case.

the biggest massacre in france was the 2015 paris attack, killing 137 people, using illegal firearms. Again, banning guns didn't help much to prevent this attack.

These are two examples in western history, that to me show that banning guns won't prevent the worst crimes. It will prevent some, but the biggest attacks happen anyway.

[SoulMonster]

2 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Yes but you cannot really be lecturing Americans on this with such a massacre in your recent history, enacted with legally (by your legal system) procured firearms. The largest mass shooting in United States history since 1949 was Las Vegas, 2017, in which 58 died. Brevik butchered 77!

Oh, Diesel 

Everybody can discuss anything! Individuals aren't disqualified from having good and valuable opinions on a subject simply because they come from a country that has not remarked itself in that regard. I think you confuse individuals and nations now, and apply your stereotypic imagination of nations onto all its citizens in that quasi-racist way of yours. So an Australian can lecture Norwegians on skiing, if they she wants. A Brit can lecture Californians on mouth hygiene, if he want to. And a German can lecture English on comedy. Opinions have their own intrinsic value base don not who it comes from, but on how much sense it makes.

So that means that I, even if I didn't come from a country with a gun homicide rate of as low as 0.1 (deaths/100,000/year), which I do, can certainly lecture Americans (rate of 44.5) on gun laws and how to prevent gun violence.

 

6 minutes ago, action said:

the biggest massacre in US history (9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in history) was not committed with legal arms but 4 airplanes. 265 casualties on the four planes, 2606 in the WTC buildings and 125 at the pentagon. Your anti-gun laws are useless in this case.

the biggest massacre in france was the 2015 paris attack, killing 137 people, using illegal firearms. Again, banning guns didn't help much to prevent this attack.

These are two examples in western history, that to me show that banning guns won't prevent the worst crimes. It will prevent some, but the biggest attacks happen anyway.

No one has said that more sensible gun laws will eradicate massacres. The point is to try to reduce the amount of gun mass murders in the USA down to "normal" levels. Not win over terrorism, cure cancer, and develop a new color.

[DieselDaisy]

For the record I do endorse some sort of firearm prohibition in the United States, just that I don't think it (banning firearms) is this fool-proof solution people make out. But it is your Yankees' shit show to sort out. We have 2-4 people being knifed to death in London every night so we have our own problems. 

Just now, SoulMonster said:

Oh, Diesel 

Everybody can discuss anything! Individuals aren't disqualified from having good and valuable opinions on a subject simply because they come from a country that has not remarked itself in that regard. I think you confuse individuals and nations now, and apply your stereotypic imagination of nations onto all its citizens in that quasi-racist way of yours. So an Australian can lecture Norwegians on skiing, if they she wants. A Brit can lecture Californians on mouth hygiene, if he want to. And a German can lecture English on comedy. Opinions have their own intrinsic value base don not who it comes from, but on how much sense it makes.

So that means that I, even if I didn't come from a country with a gun homicide rate of as low as 0.1 (deaths/100,000/year), which I do, can certainly lecture Americans (rate of 44.5) on gun laws and how to prevent gun violence.

 

No, and you have just wasted your time writing this. It is that Norway's gun laws seem about as ship tight as a wet fanny pad. So you are basically saying, ''Americans, do this and do that because we are all more intellectual and smug here in Europe than you and have prohibited our firearms'' whilst sitting in a country which boasts some of the most lackadaisical gun regulations ever conceived to such an extent that allowed Breivik to equip himself like the Terminator and butcher more people than has ever been butchered in these American attacks. 

It is a tad hypocritical. 

Not that I am necessarily disagreeing with the premise that the United States should have some sort of prohibition on firearms, just that (switching to my personal aspect) I don't really believe I can morally argue that case with too much passion considering 2-4 young people are being stabbed to death each night in London.

[action]

1 hour ago, SoulMonster said:

No one has said that more sensible gun laws will eradicate massacres. The point is to try to reduce the amount of gun mass murders in the USA down to "normal" levels. Not win over terrorism, cure cancer, and develop a new color.

If that is your point, it is inherently flawed.

I see you make an artificial distinction between "gun mass murders" and "terrorism". I'm not sure why. I'd argue that it's pointless to make a distinction. If that is the premise from which to generate effective gun laws, then you're going to end up with massive massacres anyway (I posted two examples to show this).

The point should rather be "to try to reduce the amount of gun mass-murders to "normal" levels". Because there is no logical reason to narrow your interest down to "gun" related massacres. "All" massacres should be adressed. I think this is a far more coherent premise to start with. It already incorporates the notion that mass-attacks will never be truly prevented, but it also adresses the two main forms of mass-attacks: terrorism and, let's call it "white lunatic extremist massacres".

From this premise, one has to consider if allowing ordinary people to carry guns, is more efficient to prevent these, than not allowing them.

To prevent "white lunatic extremist massacres" I'd argue in favor of severe age-restrictions, say the age of 25 below which arms can not be sold legally. You're going to prevent a lot of school shootings already, with this rule.

Over to "terrorist attacks" then. If you then allow people above 25 to carry guns, then you have to make the thought exercise: given the terrorist attacks that have happened in the past, and the way they have happened, would it have made a big difference if one of the bystanders happened to carry a gun? Hypothetically, could a bystander with a gun have shot a terrorist before he could make (even more) victims? Food for thought. The question has already been posed, if the 9/11 attacks could have happened if one of the airplane passengers carried a gun so they could overtake the terrorists. Interestingly, that's what the people on the pennsylvania plane tried to do, the best they could.

 

Edited August 7, 2019 by action

[SoulMonster]

2 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Not that I am necessarily disagreeing with the premise that the United States should have some sort of prohibition on firearms, just that (switching to my personal aspect) I don't really believe I can morally argue that case with too much passion considering 2-4 young people are being stabbed to death each night in London.

Why would you be morally prohibited for having good opinions on gun laws, or knife laws, because you live in a country with lots of knife attacks. It doesn't make any sense  Of all the silly things you have said...

5 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

For the record I do endorse some sort of firearm prohibition in the United States, just that I don't think it (banning firearms) is this fool-proof solution people make out. 

No one in this thread is advocating a ban on firearms. You are not paying attention, or not understanding what you read.

[SoulMonster]

7 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

No, and you have just wasted your time writing this. It is that Norway's gun laws seem about as ship tight as a wet fanny pad.

You still don't get it. Lax gun laws isn't the problem in itself. Lax gun laws is ONLY a problem when it leads to high gun homicide rates. If people could be trusted with guns, everybody could have their own personal arsenal. And a tank. And land mines.

So Norway's gun laws wasn't a problem until Utøya, then we realized we should make it stricter and we did. We responded. 

Besides, characterizing our gun laws as "as tight as a wet fanny pad" is just silly exaggeration from a person who has run out of arguments and have nothing left. We have, and have always had, stricter gun laws than the US. And we enjoy a very low gun homicide rate.