Virginia Tech Shootings

You beat me to it, Jim, I was just about to post up a thread myself after watching the news and hearing the same thing. It strikes me that there is something fundamentally wrong when yet another of these senseless murdering sprees happens and changing the ridiculous gun laws is immediately ruled out as a measure to try to stop it happening again.

You just shake your head in disbelief.

Mark

Mark

I just edited my thread after realizing I had not pasted the full statement from the White House.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by Exiled Highlander:
Mark

I just edited my thread after realizing I had not pasted the full statement from the White House.

Jim

This changes nothing for me, Jim. It is the 'right to bear arms' that results in this type of incident in my opinion. The "all laws must be followed" caveat is just a get out clause as far as I am concerned.

Regards

Mark

Note that there is controversy over the meaning of the right to bear arms. The Constitution states, 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms...'

Some scholars do not support the position of the NRA.

Will the Virginia Tech shootings be considered an act of terrorism?

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Barry:
Note that there is controversy over the meaning of the right to bear arms. The Constitution states, 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms...'

Some scholars do not support the position of the NRA.

see page 12

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200703/04-7041a.pdf

DC argued that "the people" in the right of the people to keep and bear is unlike "the people" anywhere else in the COTUS and infact meant organised state militias or their members. Since state militias no longer exist, DC argues that the right effectively no longer exists.

DC lost. The court found no basis for a special 2d Am meaning for "the people". It followed a Sup Ct. decision noting that the people means individuals.

quote:

Will the Virginia Tech shootings be considered an act of terrorism?

It is in my book.
But not a "typical" act of terrorism, i.e. not directed at a country or ideology. It is murder and a further psychotic break of the murderer making him kill so many more (and then himself, saving the taxpayers from supporting him for extended jail time – perhaps even a life sentence and, of course, the lawyers).
Read the USA version of the Yahoo! news report.
Taking guns away from law-abiding citizens won't stop a lot of the gun crime going on in the US, criminals will hold their guns and organized crime will have them imported.
Keeping firearms, poisons, automobiles, baseball bats, sharp sticks, rocks, etc. out of the hands of unstable people would seems like a good idea, but who exactly are these people and how likely are they to do such things?
Was this guy acting on a premeditation or was it impulsive? Did he just happen to have the two guns ready and loaded? Was it a crime of passion, horrifically extended to those around him?
Preventing such horrible, violent and unnecessary deaths as happened today seems to cry out for stricter gun laws. But I think the cause of such terrible things is not the fault of the guns. The society that breeds such behavior is at fault and needs to be changed first and foremost.
David

A horror. How many years is it since Columbine; has anything changed?

Gun laws did not make a (student?) go berserk and believe it was a good idea to kill as many people as he could. Easy gun availability made it far simpler to put into action though.

Dedicated criminals will always have access to guns, however the free and easy access to weapons for the sad, angry, disaffected and crazy (as well as the 'oridnary' citizen) places far more people under threat of being in harms way. Imagine a screwed up student in the UK with a grudge against his peers. Picking up a gun and just shooting scores of students is simply logistically very difficult.

Having said that I find it hard to imagine that gun law change would have much of an effect, at least for several generations.

Bruce

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce Woodhouse:
Gun laws did not make a (student?) go berserk and believe it was a good idea to kill as many people as he could. Easy gun availability made it far simpler to put into action though.

Dedicated criminals will always have access to guns

Yes, quite. There's no shortage of shootings over here where getting a gun is pretty hard for the average man. People we'd really rather didn't have firearms, however, don't seem to have any trouble sourcing them.

There's evil in the world and that's it. These things will happen I'm afraid, and no amount of law-making will stop it.

EW

quote:

Imagine a screwed up student in the UK with a grudge against his peers. Picking up a gun and just shooting scores of students is simply logistically very difficult.

Having said that I find it hard to imagine that gun law change would have much of an effect, at least for several generations.

Well, Hungerford is only about six miles from where I live. 20 years ago the gun laws in the UK were different to the present, but gun ownership was very much less than in the USA and very much more regulated. Nevertheless, some nutcase (by definition - called Michael Ryan) went on a shooting spree around the town and killed 17 people.

Then a few years later (1996), in a small Scottish town called Dunblane, another nutcase goes into a school and murders 16 children plus their teacher.

Tougher gun laws will help, but not eliminate these nutcase murders.

Likewise, they might reduce the opportunity for terrorist attack, but won't eliminate it.

There is no magic, guaranteed solution.

Cheers

Don

An American gun enthusiast on the radio news this morning said the basic problem was that campuses were "gun free zones" so students were unable to defend themselves. I'm sure we all think a campus full of armed students is just the ticket.

I agree that gun culture is sick, but I'm also sure that you are not going to get a nutter like this to say:
"I won't murder 31 innocent students today, because carrying a gun is against the law".
If someone wants a gun, whatever the law, they can get one.
The gun didn't do this, it was the person carrying it, and I suppose that anyone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good indication of a sick mind in the first place.

quote:

I suppose that anyone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good indication of a sick mind in the first place.

What percentage of US citizens own a gun? I think it is around 40%. Suggests something more culturally deep rooted than a few 'sick minds'.

Bruce

quote:

If someone wants a gun, whatever the law, they can get one.
The gun didn't do this, it was the person carrying it, and I suppose that anyone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good indication of a sick mind in the first place.

If you can pick a gun with a can of peas practically doesn't that make these sort of incidents more likely to happen?
There is a reason that the USA has more gun deaths(5.7% gun homicide) than the whole of Europe. Interestingly though N Ireland ,Mexico and Brazil have a higher gun homicide rate than the US.
FWIW USA 39% of US households own a firearm 4.7% in England/Wales/Scotland. Canada 30% ownership 0.76 firearm homicide. (2002 stats)

Howard

Statistics are funny things. Looking at statistics are what politicians do. It's people we need to look at.

Ah Rasher - the voice of reason

quote:

I suppose that anyone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good indication of a sick mind in the first place.

A bit of an over-reaction IMO.

Cheers

Don

There was a discussion about gun laws on a NZ current affairs programme this evening. We have fairly strict gun laws here - compared to the US anyway.

But I was interested to learn that half of all gun deaths both here and in the US are suicides.

No sources were quoted for this statistic, however.

I'm not saying the statistics have all the answers but the numbers are interesting all the same.


Have a look for your self

If you want an actual body count work them out for your selves.

Howard

Time to ban all violent computer games and violence on TV methinks. Time to clamp down very harshly on knife and gun crime in the UK. Do we really want to become like the US? I'm all for a complete ban on gun ownership - people who own guns should get some therapy imo.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

quote:

I suppose that anyone wanting to own a gun is a pretty good indication of a sick mind in the first place.

A bit of an over-reaction IMO.

Well it is an overreaction, but the problem you've got in the States is that you need a gun to protect yourself from all the sick bastards who carry guns with a view to shooting your ass.

It's worth trying to control weapons that don't have any civilian use, but it's hard to do and all manner of superficially harmless implements and substances can be weaponised in the absence of something specifically fashioned for that purpose.

I know this sounds defeatist, but I think the innocent are unlikely to win this one.

EW

Yes, of course it is an overreaction, but a gun only has one purpose.
Maybe one day in the USA 40% of the people will have their own nuclear warhead too. Where will it end?
Maybe it shouldn't have started.

quote:

Yes, of course it is an overreaction, but a gun only has one purpose.

....and this ONE purpose is to.....?

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:

There is no magic, guaranteed solution.

Absolutely not. But if we accept that we should thus not change the 'right to bear arms', I think we are missing the point. As Bruce says, the ready availability and acceptance of gun ownership in the States, means that someone who is unstable can just act on an impulse and perpetrate this sort of massacre more easily. It is also the case that the gun culture in the US is deeply ingrained in some states for historical reasons, but this doesn't make it wrong to want to change it. The statistics in the link show that there is apparently not a correlation between gun ownership and gun crime and that it seems to be more of a cultural issue. So surely in countries where there is a propensity towards gun crime it makes sense to reduce the availability of firearms, at least legally, and to make it a crime simply to possess them in order to try and change that culture. Yes, even if it takes generations. Could it make it any worse? To do nothing implies acceptance.

Mark

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:

Well it is an overreaction, but the problem you've got in the States is that you need a gun to protect yourself from all the sick bastards who carry guns with a view to shooting your ass.

I can't help but reflect that the gun lobby in the US is arguing that the "answer" to these campus shootings is to arm the teachers.

How would my carrying a gun protect me from somebody who has a gun?