Newtown School Shootings

[rvg]

Ha ha ha, you funny man, I kill you last.
http://www.annefrankguide.net/en-GB/....asp?aid=35657

Visiting cities after the bombings? What's so heroic about it?

Look up Robespierre's reign of terror, france basically went though hell after for years after its revolution

Is it in that hell now?

Yes and you can defend yourself quite well with mace, baseball bats, tazers, putting intruder alarms on you house and and staying near other members of the public while outside.

Do you genuinely think that a can of mace would stop a looting mob?

He was a mobster who was referring to illegal acts of intimidation.

And?

And a gun is generally useless for anything but letting yourself get a chance to drop everything and run when facing more people than you have bullets in the gun.

Oh really? Mob is willing to kill, but it's not very willing to die. Before the guy with gun can be overpowered, a few guys with pitchforks will have to die, something that none of them would be willing to do. Which is why guns are effective in pacifying the mob while mace spray is not.

Yes, people get shot, people are always going to get shot, people are always going to rob liquor stores. That's life, nothings perfect, complete success is rare but you have to try because its not going to get better on its own. Gun restriction is the most effective method we have and it works to a point, but it is a higher point than places with public guns.

Americans in general don't think like that and do not buy this line of thinking.

[Greyblades]

Is it in that hell now?

Doesn't matter. Britain was already where they are now and if the royal family hadn't done what they did britain would have gone through a similar hell.

Do you genuinely think that a can of mace would stop a looting mob?

No, but it will make them think twice about storming you long enough for the authorities to show up or for you to escape, if it doesn't make them decide to loot somewhere easier. Looters want loot, not blood.

And?

Neither side in these situations are going to be using kind words, Also Kind words and tazers works just as well if you have a multi-shot stungun.

Oh really? Mob is willing to kill, but it's not very willing to die. Before the guy with gun can be overpowered, a few guys with pitchforks will have to die, something that none of them would be willing to die. Which is why guns are effective in pacifying the mob while mace spray is not.

If the mob is willing to kill in america they are likely to have guns in this situation too, so one guy with a gun, assuming he's law abiding, is likely to get shot before he has a chance to finish shouting a warning anyway. If niether side has guns the one guy is about as screwed, though he has a better chance to run as he's not going to be shot in the back as he goes.

Americans in general don't think like that and do not buy this line of thinking.

Then that makes you avoiding a proven improvement even more depressingly pointless.

[rvg]

Doesn't matter. Britain was already where they are now and if the royal family hadn't done what they did britain would have gone through a similar hell.

What has the royal family done?

No, but it will make them think twice about storming you long enough for the authorities to show up or for you to escape, if it doesn't make them decide to loot somewhere easier. Looters want loot, not blood.

Just like they showed up in London and quickly quelled the violence and the looting.

Neither side in these situations are going to be using kind words, Also Kind words and tazers works just as well if you have a multi-shot stungun.

No, not really. Tazers rarely maim or kill and the crowd knows that.

If the mob is willing to kill in america they are likely to have guns in this situation too, so one guy with a gun, assuming he's law abiding, is likely to get shot before he has a chance to finish shouting a warning anyway. If niether side has guns the one guy is about as screwed, though he has a better chance to run as he's not going to be shot in the back as he goes.

A lynch mob would be armed, unlike a loot mob.

Then that makes you avoiding a proven improvement even more depressingly pointless.

One man's improvement is another man's disaster.

[Greyblades]

What has the royal family done?

The current one, or the whole family tree?

Just like they showed up in London and quickly quelled the violence and the looting.

Yes and that is a critique of the authorities capacity to respond to mobs. Not lack of guns.

No, not really. Tazers rarely maim or kill and the crowd knows that.

But they hurt, sometimes enough to render people unconscious or at least knock them over and their main problem is the same as a gun, fewer ammo than mob members, assuming we have a similar definition of mob.

A lynch mob would be armed, unlike a loot mob.

Not always, and I already addressed the issues guns would cause in either of them.

[rvg]

The current one, or the whole family tree?

The current one.

Yes and that is a critique of the authorities capacity to respond to mobs. Not lack of guns.

If the government is powerless, the people should be allowed to do what the government can't.

But they hurt, sometimes enough to render people unconscious or at least knock them over and their main problem is the same as a gun, fewer ammo than mob members, assuming we have a similar definition of mob.

Something that "hurts" isn't quite as scary as something that "kills".

Not always, and I already addressed the issues guns would cause in either of them.

Not always, but enough to make a difference.

[Don Corleone]

Merry Christmas, Happy Chaunakah (belatedly), Happy New Year, and all the other raz-mataz. It's been a while since I've posted in the Org, and this thread seems as appropriate a reentry point as any.

I cried several times during the day on Friday. The very night before, I had attended a Christmas concert put on by the Kindergarten through 2nd grades (5-7) at my daughter's school. There were about 20 children on stage at a time, including for various portions, my own divine Miss J. I was heartsick, to the point of nausea, at the idea of each and every one of those lives being snuffed out.

People have made some really good points in this thread (I was careful to read as much of the 10 pages as I could prior to responding). People also posted some rather inane propositions, I think in some misguided effort to be 'clever'. Reminded me of my own antics in posting in the Backroom over the years.

Here's what I know:

-Our government has access to such high forms of technology that a discussion of "protecting our liberties from tyranny" is laughable. A cheaply made AR-15 or AK-47 clone isn't going to do a damn thing against a predator drone. The only thing that can defeat a tyrranical government is human spirit.

-An assault weapons ban will not end these tragedies. It will however make the likelihood of the severity significantly reduced. I own several guns for hunting and personal protection. I am 100% in favor background checks, restrictions placed on the capacity of guns, etc. I do not need an assault weapon, nor can I put forward a good reason why any private citizen would need one.

-Yes, illegal trade in restricted armaments will occur. What people fail to understand is that it is far easier to traffic narcotics than arms. I will no longer let the perfect be the enemy of the good on this issue. I would like to eliminate gun violence. If I cannot, I will settle for reducing it, at the very least, reducing it's severity.

-I also know, courtesy of Timothy McVeigh, that large scale mass murder will still happen. But when you compare the number of fertilizer bombs to the number of mass shootings over the past 30 years or so, I think the data points to restricting firearms before one restricts lawn fertilizer.

-Yes, our country needs desparatetly to address our mental health issues. We have a lot of untreated mental illness. In reading about this tragedy, I uncovered a bone-chillingly disturbing fact: the 3 largest mental health facilities in the US are in Riker's, LA County Jail and Cook County Jail.

-Yet even more than mental illness, our society (and this extends outside the US) suffers from spiritual sickness. We have lost compassion, lost humanity. We do not value life. Regardless of the reasons we attribute, we have failed our young: failed to keep them safe, failed to make them whole, failed to make them see that they are a part of something greater than their finite selves.

I prayed for the shooter in my morning prayers and meditation on Saturday. First, somebody had to. But secondly, HIS story is a tragedy. That a human soul can be so anguished and despondent to resort to this...

I pray for us all. We have now evolved to a point where we are at a crisis point. Our technology and our knowledge have far oustripped our evolution and our wisdom. We MUST change, we MUST find a way to stop destroying each other and everything else upon this Earth, or we will cease to exist.

[Lemur]

Another shockingly reasonable post from Don C. Thanks, man.

You're quite correct, both the mental health and the deregulation of guns need to be reconsidered.

Deinstitutionalization needs to be re-examined. The extreme difficulty of involuntary commitment, and chronic underfunding of mental health services, are both obvious problems.

The loopholes in background checks for firearm purchases should be closed. Likewise, the extremely limited registration of firearms needs to be expanded.

As I said earlier in the thread, owning a gun should involve about as much safety training and mandatory recordkeeping as owning an automobile.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Americans in general don't think like that and do not buy this line of thinking.

We know - that's why your healthcare sucks.

An example of a Good King: Spain, after Franco'death Juan Carlos steered the country successfully towards democracy and prevented a violent Coup by a junta of Generals. He averted War - by it's very nature a good rifle would have encouraged it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yes, US society suffers from spiritual sickness. I long for the days of old when Americans took the time to help each other

Unless they were black
or Hispanic
or Asian
or gay
or left leaning (which equals communist)
or not christian
or female

All of us white, male Christians have not been successful in preventing white, male Christians from going berserk. Society as a whole is tainted.

[Don Corleone]

I apologize if my post implied that a nostalgia for the days of segregation or other social ills. That wasn't my intent. Perhaps we've always been rotten to the core, and it only appears worse at this period of history because this is the only one I've lived through. My intent was to point to deficient compassion and love of one's fellow man as the primary culprit in many of our current social woes, including school shootings.

No offense intended.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I apologize if my post implied that a nostalgia for the days of segregation or other social ills. That wasn't my intent. Perhaps we've always been rotten to the core, and it only appears worse at this period of history because this is the only one I've lived through. My intent was to point to deficient compassion and love of one's fellow man as the primary culprit in many of our current social woes, including school shootings.

No offense intended.

No offense taken. I completely agree we need more compassion and love. I just want to keep things in perspective. In many ways, society is better than it ever has been, not just in material things. But we can and should always strive to be better, no need to compare ourselves to the past to spur that drive.

[Brenus]

“Look up Robespierre's reign of terror, france basically went though hell after for years after its revolution and it ultimately failed when napoleon crowned himself emperor, a king by another name, they are doing fine now but it did not become that way because of the revolution.”
You should read a little more about the French Revolution, and not the only the conventional one.
France was in hell thanks to Kings and consorts who just pillage it. Versailles is beautiful, but it ruined France. And I even don’t want to speak of wars raged by Louis XIV, Louis XV, and XVI. At least, the XIV intended to “unite” France.
The French Revolution created a shock still felt nowadays, in France and in the rest of the World.
In France, it meant abolition of the privileges (August the 4th), Republic with the UNIVERSAL Human Rights, suppression of the Nobility, end of Religious domination, first abolition of Slavery (cancelled by Napoleon), 1st Constitution and new legal system (known under Code Napoleon). We can add the universal measuring system…
The Civil Wars were first due to the “levee en masse”, thanks to the Foreign Invasions from all the European Monarchies. Without these Foreign Interventions (we would call them containment, or pre-emptive) , no repression needed, no Napoleon…
And France became what it is now because the French Revolution. It is too long to develop, but France is France not because a territory (changed during the centuries), language (we had different local ones) or ethnicities. France is a political construction based on a shared idea, roughly Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

And to end this paragraph, The English Civil War was as bloody, violent and nasty than the French Revolution.

[Greyblades]

“Look up Robespierre's reign of terror, france basically went though hell after for years after its revolution and it ultimately failed when napoleon crowned himself emperor, a king by another name, they are doing fine now but it did not become that way because of the revolution.”
You should read a little more about the French Revolution, and not the only the conventional one.
France was in hell thanks to Kings and consorts who just pillage it. Versailles is beautiful, but it ruined France. And I even don’t want to speak of wars raged by Louis XIV, Louis XV, and XVI. At least, the XIV intended to “unite” France.
The French Revolution created a shock still felt nowadays, in France and in the rest of the World.
In France, it meant abolition of the privileges (August the 4th), Republic with the UNIVERSAL Human Rights, suppression of the Nobility, end of Religious domination, first abolition of Slavery (cancelled by Napoleon), 1st Constitution and new legal system (known under Code Napoleon). We can add the universal measuring system…
The Civil Wars were first due to the “levee en masse”, thanks to the Foreign Invasions from all the European Monarchies. Without these Foreign Interventions (we would call them containment, or pre-emptive) , no repression needed, no Napoleon…
And France became what it is now because the French Revolution. It is too long to develop, but France is France not because a territory (changed during the centuries), language (we had different local ones) or ethnicities. France is a political construction based on a shared idea, roughly Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

And to end this paragraph, The English Civil War was as bloody, violent and nasty than the French Revolution.

I'm not sure what your problem is, as I said life was rubbish for the french poor before the revolution it was even worse for every frenchman during and, for a time, after and the main cause was the disparity between the classes, my point was that this was in mind when George 6th decided to risk the blitz and an indication of what might have happened if they had stayed in safety and comfort.