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Another US Gun Massacre - 27 Dead in Texas Church


Dazey

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How sad is this? A 5 year old was killed and the little 17 month old baby Jonah has died too.

26 + people are dead and many are still injured.

This guy had a problem with his in-laws and decided to go to the church they attended and shoot the people there.

This guy has had a long history of violence and that didn't raise any flags for any law enforcement people?

Also what kind of mental test does the armed forces give their recruits because it seems more and more soldiers are suffering from mental issues and no one seems to give a shit to help them. It is very sad. Our soldiers fight for our country and then they slip through the cracks when they come home with problems.

Our country needs to do better.

My heart goes out to the victims and the families and loved ones. It seems every month there's another shooting in our country. Will it stop? I don't know. It's just getting to be a constant state of mourning for so many of us now.

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3 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

Killing 77 people and injuring another 300+ by himself, with a knife?  Well, it's never been done before in modern history.  I think you've been watching too many Rambo movies. :P

I was being a tad hyperbolic here.  

The point remains that the carnage Breivik caused can be explained by who he was targeting (largely kids and teens attending summer camp) in a remote and isolated island.  Attempting to do the same in a city or area where police can respond to quickly would have likely reduced the amount of carnage allowed.  

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This is kinda an aside, but earlier I mentioned about magazine size and it reminded me of a story for my own life.  There are hunters in my family.  Years back one of them was the toast of the family because theyd bought a riffle that had a capacity for (long time ago) lets say 8 bullets instead of 5 bullet magazine which everyone else's riffles had.  8 shots to kill one moose?  "That just means youre a bad shot" I said.  But they were so caught up in fetishizing the bigger magazine (clip?) that they didnt even notice the teasing.  But it does just mean ones a bad shot - 8 shots?!?! The pride and joy that more bullets brought them superseded the pride theyd typically have in their hunting skills.  Its a strange fixation that I do not understand. 

Edited by soon
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2 hours ago, CHRISSY said:

Hmmm, what a touchy and sad subject to discuss.

I don't see why the USA can't at least  ban assault "type" rifles and large capacity magazines in an attempt to do something, to show as human beings we will not just ignore these tragedies.

Maybe it will help maybe it won't, but is it really an assault on gun rights to at least do that.

And of course in tandem with tighter restrictions and more focus on mental health,  a hotline devoted to reporting someone showing troubling behavior, with resources to at the very least dig into the social media background of anyone with multiple reports. It seems in every case, or almost every case there is a troubling electronic trail of some sort.

I hate to break it to you but am "assault" type rifle the news keeps talking about is mechanically the same as a regular rifle...  one looks scary, the other is just a rifle.

7 minutes ago, Graeme said:

Just get rid of the fucking guns. It's that straightforward. Why is this even still a debate? Argh!

Sure that is an option if your into watching MILLIONS of people die in the biggest firefight since the last major war.

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2 hours ago, downzy said:

I was being a tad hyperbolic here.  

The point remains that the carnage Breivik caused can be explained by who he was targeting (largely kids and teens attending summer camp) in a remote and isolated island.  Attempting to do the same in a city or area where police can respond to quickly would have likely reduced the amount of carnage allowed.  

Police would have reduced the damage for sure if in a city unless that city was Vegas for some reason.  I think that island thing is not the same as majority of shootings at all. For a shooter going after humans he picked one of the perfect places to do it :(

Just now, Graeme said:

Kinda hard to have a firefight if no one has anything to shoot anyone else with...

It's not even an option.  The forefathers warned of this, you honestly think the federal government just anounces all guns are banned and the people are just gonna lay them all down?  Not gonna happen.  It would go to civil war overnight...

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3 minutes ago, gunsguy said:

It's not even an option.  The forefathers warned of this, you honestly think the federal government just anounces all guns are banned and the people are just gonna lay them all down?  Not gonna happen.  It would go to civil war overnight...

It's frustrating as fuck to watch from a culture where no-one has guns and no-one gets killed by guns that people cannot realise that the availability of guns is the root of the problem and try to turn it into some sort of intricate, nuanced debate. The solution is ultimately blunt. Get rid of the firearms, no-one gets shot anymore. It happened here after Dunblane, it happened in Australia. The USA needs to grow the fuck up and join the rest of the civilised world.

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6 minutes ago, Graeme said:

It's frustrating as fuck to watch from a culture where no-one has guns and no-one gets killed by guns that people cannot realise that the availability of guns is the root of the problem and try to turn it into some sort of intricate, nuanced debate. The solution is ultimately blunt. Get rid of the firearms, no-one gets shot anymore. It happened here after Dunblane, it happened in Australia. The USA needs to grow the fuck up and join the rest of the civilised world.

I would say that any other country imposed new laws that made it harder to get guns, I can't think they went into peoples homes and took them all or did I miss that?

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9 minutes ago, Graeme said:

It's frustrating as fuck to watch from a culture where no-one has guns and no-one gets killed by guns that people cannot realise that the availability of guns is the root of the problem and try to turn it into some sort of intricate, nuanced debate. The solution is ultimately blunt. Get rid of the firearms, no-one gets shot anymore. It happened here after Dunblane, it happened in Australia. The USA needs to grow the fuck up and join the rest of the civilised world.

23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png Australia 24.1 per capita[12]

   The state of Tasmania has the highest gun ownership in Australia with 25+ guns per 100 people.[13]   

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6 minutes ago, gunsguy said:
23px-Flag_of_Australia.svg.png Australia 24.1 per capita[12]

   The state of Tasmania has the highest gun ownership in Australia with 25+ guns per 100 people.[13]

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/04/world/gun-control-uk-australia/index.html

Australia

Australia had a similar turning point, also in 1996, when Martin Bryant went on a shooting spree in Tasmania and killed 35 people with a semi-automatic rifle.

The massacre began at a historical prison site in Port Arthur -- where the British once kept their most violent criminals when the country was a penal colony -- and continued as Bryant fled. Bryant, who was 28 at the time, was captured alive after an 18-hour standoff with police and is serving 35 life sentences in prison with no parole.

Victims' relatives and community members lay floral tributes at Port Arthur, Australia, on April 28, 2016, to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre in which 35 people were killed.

A gun-control campaign was already well underway in Australia, but the shooting provided the political opportunity to get gun control laws in place, activists say.

Australia, which at the time had a population of less than 20 million people, had already witnessed shooting sprees involving semi-automatic rifles.

"There was a series of smaller massacres that had gone on in the decade before, and people had gotten increasingly angry," said Simon Chapman, a prominent public health activist, who was a member of the Coalition for Gun Control 21 years ago.

"State governments had been really weak in their responses," Chapman told CNN.

"It was (fortuitous) that we had a politician at the beginning of his political term -- you do more radical things at the start than you can at the end."

Chapman was referring to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the conservative leader who was six weeks into his new job when the Port Arthur massacre occurred. He led the effort against a vociferous gun lobby and resistant state governments to push through a federal gunamnesty, in which the government compensated gun owners for the weapons they turned in.

How US gun culture compares with the world in 5 charts

He also oversaw changes to gun laws that included lengthy background and identification checks for would-be gun buyers, and a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

The disarmament is seen by many as Howard's greatest achievement in his 11 years as the country's leader. But there were political costs, Howard has acknowledged.

"It was difficult with two of the states, one in particular that had a conservative government, but they came to the party. But it was quite hard and it probably contributed to the rise of a right-wing populist party, called One Nation, which did us some damage in the subsequent election, but we were able to overcome that," Howard told CNN in an interview in 2013. Howard was himself a conservative.

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9 minutes ago, Graeme said:

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/04/world/gun-control-uk-australia/index.html

Australia

Australia had a similar turning point, also in 1996, when Martin Bryant went on a shooting spree in Tasmania and killed 35 people with a semi-automatic rifle.

The massacre began at a historical prison site in Port Arthur -- where the British once kept their most violent criminals when the country was a penal colony -- and continued as Bryant fled. Bryant, who was 28 at the time, was captured alive after an 18-hour standoff with police and is serving 35 life sentences in prison with no parole.

Victims' relatives and community members lay floral tributes at Port Arthur, Australia, on April 28, 2016, to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre in which 35 people were killed.

A gun-control campaign was already well underway in Australia, but the shooting provided the political opportunity to get gun control laws in place, activists say.

Australia, which at the time had a population of less than 20 million people, had already witnessed shooting sprees involving semi-automatic rifles.

"There was a series of smaller massacres that had gone on in the decade before, and people had gotten increasingly angry," said Simon Chapman, a prominent public health activist, who was a member of the Coalition for Gun Control 21 years ago.

"State governments had been really weak in their responses," Chapman told CNN.

"It was (fortuitous) that we had a politician at the beginning of his political term -- you do more radical things at the start than you can at the end."

Chapman was referring to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the conservative leader who was six weeks into his new job when the Port Arthur massacre occurred. He led the effort against a vociferous gun lobby and resistant state governments to push through a federal gunamnesty, in which the government compensated gun owners for the weapons they turned in.

How US gun culture compares with the world in 5 charts

He also oversaw changes to gun laws that included lengthy background and identification checks for would-be gun buyers, and a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons.

The disarmament is seen by many as Howard's greatest achievement in his 11 years as the country's leader. But there were political costs, Howard has acknowledged.

"It was difficult with two of the states, one in particular that had a conservative government, but they came to the party. But it was quite hard and it probably contributed to the rise of a right-wing populist party, called One Nation, which did us some damage in the subsequent election, but we were able to overcome that," Howard told CNN in an interview in 2013. Howard was himself a conservative.

Amnesties gather some guns.. Australia still has plenty of them make no mistake...

Less mentally ill because WAY less population than the USA.  Also for some mentally ill it takes them realizing they have an issue and seek treatment for it, in the USA that becomes a financial barrier to be sure.  Here in Canada we can go to the doc and get help IF we realize there is an issue.  Thats a big if too.  Background checks would fail to see anything if the person never dealt with anything before.  Its a tough one, its a trusting system to be sure

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4 hours ago, gunsguy said:

Why not?  Because we are not talking about gun violence, we are talking specific murders... Mass murders...  The ones that make the news worldwide.

Well, if we care about people dying then it doesn't matter of they die alone or in company. It doesn't matter whether it happens in silence or whether it becomes a news story. Lives are lives. Death is death. Focusing on one arbitrary group of deaths seems pointless. 

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Just now, SoulMonster said:

Well, if we care about people dying then it doesn't matter of they die alone or in company. It doesn't matter whether it happens in silence or whether it becomes a news story. Lives are lives. Death is death. Focusing on one arbitrary group of deaths seems pointless. 

Perhaps to you but to me we must break stuff down to compare, thats how we compare anything in data across the world statistics, it is how it is done because it removes some variables.

Just read this... THIS attack should never have happened... That is seriously a major system failure.  These are the SAME people we would rely on for background checks too....

El Paso officers who detained Devin Kelley five years ago were told he was "a danger to himself and others".

Kelley had been sent to the hospital after he was court-martialled for assaulting his ex-wife and stepson during a stint in the US Air Force.

He was "attempting to carry out death threats" against "his military chain of command", the report states.

Officials say the assault charge should have legally barred him from owning guns.

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3 hours ago, Kasanova King said:

I don't think magazine size/capacity would make a huge difference.  The Norway shooter had a pistol and a regular rifle...yet he was able to kill more people than any modern day US massacre, which may have involved high powered rifles with high capacity mags.

There is no doubt that if Breivik had "better weapons" he would have killed even more kids on that gruesome day. Some of those swimming for safety would have been killed if he had larger capacity, as they were dodging bullets coming at them while they were frantically swimming towards land far away with their clothes on, some of the kids huddling inside buildings would have been killed if more bullets were put through the doors and walls, more kids faking death would have been killed if more bullets were poured into them to make sure they would never rise again, more kids would collapse as they tried to hide behind rock outposts as he was standing 20 meters away shooting at them with a larger capacity gun. 

But yeah, for Breivik this was like shooting fish in a barrel It isn't really comparable to the situation in most mass murderers where you have a smaller numbers of targets and/or more escape routes.

 

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9 minutes ago, gunsguy said:

Perhaps to you but to me we must break stuff down to compare, thats how we compare anything in data across the world statistics, it is how it is done because it removes some variables.

Uh? The only thing that matter is reducing gun deaths, it doesn't matter whether those deaths happens in sprees or separate. The only thing that matters is making sure less people get killed. 

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5 hours ago, Dazey said:

And thanks to our laws we don't also have a gun problem.

We never did have a gun problem to begin with, a problem which needed bottling-up after a certain event, say (to pick the most prominent) Dunblane. Hand guns and a few farmers' hunting rifles perhaps? A completely different scenario to the United States. You could say Britain didn't develop a gun culture irrespective of the law. 

Edited by DieselDaisy
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2 minutes ago, Graeme said:

He's implying that if the US federal government illegalised firearms and announced an amnesty, the gun owners would go to war against the state.

Sort of... An amnesty is different than saying just ban guns.  Amnesty would ask for them, banning would require the state to remove them, I can't think of anyway to remove them without a major war.  I think removing guns is unrealistic.

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