Another week, another mass shooting

[Montmorency]

The old “Fight or Flight” response. One might expect to see more Fight when Flight is lost as an option. Most of these people just seem to be lacking in a desire for self preservation…

The same is true of armed and trained soldiers, when caught off-guard. How many routs and fort captures have been carried out when large forces were confused by small parties and surrendered or fled thinking that they were in a hopeless situation against overwhelming force?

The main issue is confusion. If there are thousands of people, but they are sequestered into rooms in small groups, then someone shooting somewhere in the vicinity leads to panic and chaos. If someone were to walk into a crowded square with a bag full of guns, then pull them out and open fire, he would be neutralized relatively-quickly.

[Ironside]

Mass murder is not that uncommon. What is uncommon is that this is the work of an individual. Usually it is carried out by groups and more often than not by governments.

While the US police is unusually trigger happy, mass murders in the US is most commonly done by a single armed individual.

Why are you trusting the state about food regulations btw? If those get messed up, it can make you sick or kill you. But maybe you lack the desire for preservation...

[wooly_mammoth]

If someone were to walk into a crowded square with a bag full of guns, then pull them out and open fire, he would be neutralized relatively-quickly.

Don't be so sure. The crazy norwegian guy from some years back was surrounded by his victims when he started shooting, yet they all ran away instead of jumping him. And most of them died as a consequence.

[rvg]

Not to mention that he will be a free man before too long.

[Montmorency]

Don't be so sure. The crazy norwegian guy from some years back was surrounded by his victims when he started shooting, yet they all ran away instead of jumping him. And most of them died as a consequence.

They were spread out over an island, and he attacked from long range.

[Gilrandir]

Mass murder is not that uncommon. What is uncommon is that this is the work of an individual. Usually it is carried out by groups and more often than not by governments.

We kinda agreed that the latter case is the only one people (in Europe) are ready to accept (if the government acts within the legal framework).

[wooly_mammoth]

They were spread out over an island, and he attacked from long range.

Maybe I don't remember correctly, but I recall that he posed as a police officer, gathered them to him and then got his weapons out and started shooting.

[Montmorency]

Well, that's partly right.

It was a rocky, wooded island hosting a youth camp for a political party. There were more than 600 people there, and most of them were children or teenagers.

He was disguised as a police officer, and he did gather a small group to him before he started the spree (he killed 2 adults who were suspicious of him before he began), but that's not how he killed most of the 69 individuals who died as a result of the island rampage.

After he started shooting, the people on the island went to seek hiding places or tried to swim the several-hundred meters to another landmass. A few small groups gathered over the course of the event to try to subdue the shooter, but he fought them off, killing a few people in the process.

Ultimately, the people hiding, securing the safety of the younger children, and contacting emergency services proved wise: over 1.5 hours, only 10% of the people on the island were killed.

My point about the crowded square still stands. Denser concentration of people, most of the people are adults, and the shooter is in their midst rather than picking them off one-by-one.

[CrossLOPER]

Or maybe never visit that website. Because, you know, the whole culture is toxic and warps your view. Does /v/ even consider video games pleasure anymore, or is everyone and everything still autistic?

I keep hearing this type of thing everywhere about 4chan, and it seems to me that people who state things like this have never actually been there. To be frank, 4chan does attract major assholes, but the culture is pretty average for internet communities. Adopting a holier than thou attitude towards that site does not really reflect an understanding of the bigger picture. I could say that Facebook and Youtube have much shittier user bases, but people love those services and still have a positive opinion of them. If you really want to talk about toxic cultures online, I would say that stackexchange is far more toxic than /g/. At least the latter will give you advice other than "go google it" and then proceed to lock the discussion after berating the user for a question that could be answered in one sentence.

It's all about perspective.

Last time I checked, /v/ still hates video games, while /vg/ likes video games.

[HopAlongBunny]

The legislated mandate against compiling and analyzing data re: gun control/use may be changing:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ning-all-guns/

We will have to see how effective the inevitable NRA backlash is.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Does it come across as me being afraid? I'm sorry but as someone who educates people in firearm safety I don't find them to be this unknown scary thing a lot of people do. I understand they are deadly weapons when used with that intent. The only time I've ever been afraid from the unknown was taking a wrong turn down a street in Oakland at 11pm.

You think you need lethal force to defend yourself against fellow countrymen - how can that not be fear?

Also - lets be clear - guns are always deadly weapons - they exist solely to kill people. When people talk about "using guns in self defence" what they mean is "using guns to kill in self defence"

I've never been in a situation like this but I do hope I would act with bravery and put myself between someone who intends harm and those who are to afraid to act. I'm not a cop, ex military, or anything like that.

The unarmed man who faces the man with the gun usually dies. It is unlikely, given your lack of military training, that you have the conditioning necessary to kill at will so even if you had a gun there's a good chance you wouldn't use it properly.

These people aren't "brave" they're trained​ and there's a difference.

[Hooahguy]

Not to mention that he will be a free man before too long.

Probably not, his sentence can (and probably will) be extended.

[Papewaio]

There are 300 million registered firearms in the United States. There are 23.13 million people in Australia. I'll let you do the math on why taking hundreds of billions of dollars and buying back guns for pennies on the dollar isn't going to work here.

Maybe you need to read up about the gun buyback.

Essentially three classes of weapons was established.

1) legal before and after the weapon restrictions. Keep them.
2) legal before, illegal after. These were bought back at market rates not pennies per dollar or whatever propaganda amount you've been lied to about. Check your sources if they are telling you that they are liars and then you have to ask yourself why?
3) illegal before and still illegal after the new rules. Amnesty was given to have those handed in.

=][=

U.S. Dead from terrorism since 1970: 3.5k. Go to war, invade two countries, spend trillions of dollars.
Dead from guns this year: 9k this year alone. Government legislates against gathering data or analysis how and why these deaths occur. Why?

[PROVOST]

I've seen BS stats put up on the net for the Australian gun buy back and for firearms killings in AUS since the buy back too.

All of course to advance an agenda to tell Americans it did not work here.

It did and is working here.

Note - I am a licensed firearms owner and agree with the measures here in AUS.

[Hooahguy]

In other news, having more guns around totally makes for a more polite society. Unless you like the wrong Football team of course.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Priests are not allowed weapons, he should be defrocked and handed to a monastic order for punishment.

Except maces, priests are allowed to use maces and a "Bishop's Knocker".

[Veho Nex]

You think you need lethal force to defend yourself against fellow countrymen - how can that not be fear?

Also - lets be clear - guns are always deadly weapons - they exist solely to kill people. When people talk about "using guns in self defence" what they mean is "using guns to kill in self defence"

The unarmed man who faces the man with the gun usually dies. It is unlikely, given your lack of military training, that you have the conditioning necessary to kill at will so even if you had a gun there's a good chance you wouldn't use it properly.

These people aren't "brave" they're trained​ and there's a difference.

Do I need lethal force to put myself between a gunman and someone I love? No, but I would much rather have it on my side. I have training with firearms, I train others in proper and safe firearm use (and have for 8 years now), and I believe I would be able to do something about a gunman if they tried to do something to me or the people around me.

How would you try to protect those around you? or is your instinct to "flight" instead? It's how people are wired. I believe I would fight in a situation like that. When something drastic happens I'm one of the first to run towards it to help. I was always taught that because of who I am and what I look like I have a duty to protect those smaller than me or those who can't/won't defend themselves.

If you don't see the point to that then I don't think we'll meet at a middle ground for this. I view guns as a tool. Yes, a tool that is meant to kill but it doesn't need to be used as such.

Maybe you need to read up about the gun buyback.

Papewaio, we're talking America here. In LA 3 months ago they paid people $50 per operable gun. Those people got cheated and there's little proof that they helped the community by giving up their firearms.

The Australian gun buyback gathered somewhere betwen 1/5th to 1/3rd of guns. The majority of articles I'm seeing state the number to be roughly 650,000 guns and that being about 20% of firearms in Australia. If they paid market value for each gun, lets put that at $800 per gun just for simplicity, that means the Australian government spent $520,000,000 on 1/5th of guns that they required be sold to them.

If the United States were to buy back 1/5th of our guns that would be roughly 60,000,000 give or take a few. Let us again assume that they paid market value and for simplicity's sake that was $800 per. $48,000,000,000. 48 Billion... That money could be used to better our schools, better our mental healthcare, to improve our society instead it would remove a drop in the bucket of legally owned firearms. Now if we get real and realize that most common firearms, hunting rifles/shotguns/pistols, sell from anywhere between $450 to $3,000 (yes there are cheaper and far more expensive guns) that it's just not viable to buyback guns at market value.

U.S. Dead from terrorism since 1970: 3.5k. Go to war, invade two countries, spend trillions of dollars.
Dead from guns this year: 9k this year alone. Government legislates against gathering data or analysis how and why these deaths occur. Why?

I don't know where you got your statistics for the dead from guns this year. I have checked 12 different websites from slate.com to gunviolencearchive.org to forbes. They can't even agree on gun related deaths for 2010 let alone this year. The stats I'm looking at range anywhere from 11,000 dead in 2010 to a massive 32,000 dead. How much of this is gang related? How many suicides? How many police shootings?

The sources each website pulls from have widely separate numbers than those reported in the article. One website uses an article with studies from 1960-1985 that was published in 2002 as a fact for 2010 (smartgunlaws.org).

This fun little propaganda website: http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2013 shows names and gives arbitrary lifetimes to people who were shot throughout 2013. Supposedly from the 11,419 people that were killed that year, which I can't confirm as I blatantly google my way through this, could have lived for a combined total of 502,025 years. Even in the sources and methods they say they got their statistics through twitter and the information may be incomplete or unreliable.

I really don't believe half the garbage pro-gun organizations put out either. Propaganda is not a reliable source of information and most everything found online is propaganda.

Also why terrorism? Why not choose a real killer. Drunk driving is somewhere around 13k per year for the last 10 years. Tobacco causes around 480,000 deaths per year. 16,060 people die per year from prescription drug over doses. Car crash related deaths, which most likely include the drunk driving deaths, have average 30,000 per year since 2009 and between '93 and 2007 averaged 40,000 per year.

In other news, having more guns around totally makes for a more polite society. Unless you like the wrong Football team of course.

In other news: it was a gun that most anti-gun people consider to be a perfectly fine gun to own, a civil-war style musket.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I only root for teams that have fans two beers away from murder.

[CrossLOPER]

In other news: it was a gun that most anti-gun people consider to be a perfectly fine gun to own, a civil-war style musket.

OK, so back to your original argument, the problem is that there are so many guns that it is impossible to confiscate them, and that the only solution is to make guns even more accessible and have armed militias everywhere, correct?

[Brenus]

Instead to put bombs in USA streets and or flying planes in buildings, Al Quaida and others terrorists should have build a firearms Selling Chain, kind of "buy one get one free" or Dollarland for gun (all guns less than 1 dollar) they would have killed legally much more Americans than by terrorism.

It is their showing off that get them...

[Strike For The South]

Can we please stop referring to guns as a tool?

In any event, you will probably never use your gun in a real fight or flight situation. Unless your are George Zimmerman and goad a 17 year old boy into a fight.

[Fisherking]

You may find this enlightening: http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/0...t-gun-control/

but most of you will ignore it anyway.

[Hooahguy]

You may find this enlightening: http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/0...t-gun-control/

but most of you will ignore it anyway.

I read it. The author makes valid points but I think he neglects one fact: that most rational gun control advocates don't advocate banning guns outright. At least not the ones I've read anyways. Most of the more sane proposals I've read about were to expand the background checks and to include mental health checks so if a customer has any background with mental issues then it would be harder to get a gun. Banning guns outright would never work in the United States and I feel that most rational gun control advocates understand this. Yeah, they might not be able to stop the people from going to Home Depot and buying the materials but that's at least an obstacle. Plus warnings could be put in place for people buying those exact items like they have for fertilizer and stuff like that.

[Montmorency]

The "home construction" complaint is sort of like saying that there's no point keeping people from having ready access to wrecking balls since if they really wanted to destroy a building they could just use a shovel and pickaxe to tunnel under the foundation of a building and eventually cause it to collapse on itself.

[Greyblades]

You may find this enlightening: http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/0...t-gun-control/

but most of you will ignore it anyway.

I read it, I also read the comments where this point came up from a member named jamie:

Interesting, but what I’d really like to know is not the effect of gun bans on murder, but it’s effect on mass murders…shootings like the recent one in Oregon. Really, the number of victims of mass shootings is a very small percentage of the total number of people murdered each year. So yes, while gun bans may have an insignificant effect on total murders, that’s really not the point. People are going to murder people – stopping that would be an impossible task. more But that’s not the same as cutting back on the frequency of mass murder/shootings.

I think this article is a red herring – a smokescreen – obscuring the truth by presenting statistics that are not relevant to the issue.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Do I need lethal force to put myself between a gunman and someone I love? No, but I would much rather have it on my side. I have training with firearms, I train others in proper and safe firearm use (and have for 8 years now), and I believe I would be able to do something about a gunman if they tried to do something to me or the people around me.

It's nice that you believe that, but unless you've been de-sensitised and trained to ignore your flight or fight response then you'll likely lock up like most people.

"Few men are born brave. Many become so through training and force of discipline."
That was true for the Romans it's even more true today because, I think, your brain basically sees a gun as magic - you point it at someone and they die. That's why people lock up or hide, it's because your flight or fight response analyses the situation and determines you're screwed.

By the way "flight or fight" isn't a "brave vs coward" thing, it's a decision making process that your brain uses - it ways the options, fight or flight, and tries to choose between them based on which is most likely to lead to your survival.

How would you try to protect those around you? or is your instinct to "flight" instead? It's how people are wired. I believe I would fight in a situation like that. When something drastic happens I'm one of the first to run towards it to help. I was always taught that because of who I am and what I look like I have a duty to protect those smaller than me or those who can't/won't defend themselves.

See above - the majority of people will react the same in a given situation because the Flight/Fight" response is a logical decision making process, not a matter of bravery.

Brave people usually have an unrealistic estimation of their survival chances - they're basically borderline insane.

In a situation where there was a man with a gun, and I had a gun and a clear field of fire I'd put two bullets in him/her centre of mass and hope they go down. I decided that years ago and I keep telling myself that so that hopefully if I'm ever in such a situation I won't have to think about it, I'll just do it.

Likewise, if someone was threatening someone I love with a gun I'd place myself between them in the expectation I would die.

In other situations I have not thought of I confess I am less sure, it's likely I might lock up if there was someone with a gun pointed at me.

If you don't see the point to that then I don't think we'll meet at a middle ground for this. I view guns as a tool. Yes, a tool that is meant to kill but it doesn't need to be used as such.

A tool used to kill someone or something is a weapon - guns have no purpose other than to kill, they are therefore weapons. Calling them tools is like calling shell-shock "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder"

[CrossLOPER]

I read it, I also read the comments where this point came up from a member named jamie:

So his problem is that gun control would not stop all the gun murders, only most of them?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You may find this enlightening: http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/0...t-gun-control/

but most of you will ignore it anyway.

That article ignores a number of factors that confound the statistics, it also ignores the fact that the UK ban was aimed specifically at preventing school massacres and has been successful in that, we never had a re-run of Dunblane and despite rising gang violence in London there has been only one spree-shooting since 1996, in Cumbria in 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

As it notes in the preamble there, the last shooting was in 1996, the one before that in 1989 and the one before that in 1987. Note that the 1987 and 1996 shootings all involved legally owned firearms.

[Beskar]

I think one problem is perception.

USA views this issue completely different to the rest of the world, so whilst a school shooting is another week in the good ol' USA, to the rest of us, it is a sign of out of control gun violence epidemic. To the majority of the world, people shooting each other up in the US is viewed as being as common as an English man drinking tea.

The issue might be down to desensitization. In a lot of places, gun crime is so rare, that it hits the news big time. In the US, gun crime is so common, it only comes up when there is a political agenda or someone goes postal.

What makes this worse, in the USA there is a wide-spread cult of gun worshipping where people fight tooth and nail to oppose even the most sensible measures, even actively working to sabotage efforts to even provide proper statistics on the issue.

[Papewaio]

Exactly how dumb are TV hosts getting today?

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-1...reedom/6831618

An American Fox News anchor has claimed Australians "have no freedom" while lambasting Australia's gun laws during a live discussion on the recent Oregon shooting