School Shooting in Connecticut - Multiple Fatalities

[AiliailiA]

^this. I consider myself a Libertarian, but people need to start treading medicine the same way they treat crime and fire prevention. It shouldn't be a for profit industry.

Mental health and gun control are intertwined...you can't have a discussion regarding gun crime without either of those two subjects.

They are at loggerheads in this case though. Better mental health provision may have prevented this tragedy.

But it is no more a better time to call for that, than to call for stricter gun control. Neither government policy should be founded in the prominent examples, but rather in response to all of the problems in proportion. Teenage suicide is a better reason than teenage psychopathy, to get mental health care out there: it has more victims and those more profoundly affected.

Gun control should not be promoted on the back of "headline" events, but nor really should mental health care. Health care in general should be promoted in the interests of the person treated. Health care is for patients. The justification for it should not be "protecting everyone else: that just plays right to the existing stigma of mental health care, that to be "sick" is nearly equivalent to a moral failing.

I certainly agree that health care should not be a for profit industry.

I broadly agree with that. Though a social purpose is served by allowing private insurance: even with profits and administrative costs standing between them and the treatment, patients who can pay more for care than the public system would pay help everyone else. Even after the commercial dealer has taken their cut, more money flows from those people to providers of health services. They fund new treatments which otherwise would not be explored. They are "early adopters" of such treatments, mediated of course by doctors.

Something around 10% to 20% of people being privately insured to a higher standard, with all others being automatically covered to a decent standard, is in my opinion better than 100% being covered to the decent standard with no alternative. If some people want a higher standard and are prepared to pay for it from their own pockets, we really should let them do so.

[Northern Dominus]

and again, when you can grow firearms on trees, it would be a valid comparison.

you can cook up meth in a 2 litre drinks bottle.

It's no more complex a process to manufacture a gun than to manufacture crystal meth.

Except for the metallurgy, the engineering... although to be fair, if you get the manufacture of both wrong they can both explode with rather disasterous consequences.

Then again, there is no firearms version of shake n' bake meth.
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/meth/a/s ... d_bake.htm

[Forsher]

It's pretty fucking depressing that we've all resigned ourselves to the idea that we can only have one little advance at a time. We have to scrabble for every tiny gain, so the idea that we could demand improved gun control measures AND a discussion on the culture that gives rise to this kind of rampage AND decent modern-era health care isn't even on the radar.

I'm not convinced that making it more difficult for people to legally own guns will reduce the number of people willing to circumvent the law in order to own one for nefarious purposes.

I believe the argument was to address supply. If guns are rarer than a inidividual gun's relative worth is increased. It is harder to acquire a new one. Therefore, with a greater risk the potential reward must be higher. As such, a decrease in crime with guns would be seen as, well, a lot of crimes don't generate high enough rewards.

I probably stuffed it up, I'm just trying to re-convey what I'm pretty sure I read in this thread.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

I'm not convinced that making it more difficult for people to legally own guns will reduce the number of people willing to circumvent the law in order to own one for nefarious purposes.

Perhaps increase the severity of the punishment for those who obtain guns illegally?

I'm okay with that. Making the penalty for hijacking planes draconian reduced the incidence of plane hijackings in the seventies. Making the punishment for using a gun in a crime similarly excessive might reduce the incidence of gun crime. But it still doesn't address the problem; that being the damaged person wielding it.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

I'm not convinced that making it more difficult for people to legally own guns will reduce the number of people willing to circumvent the law in order to own one for nefarious purposes.

I believe the argument was to address supply. If guns are rarer than a inidividual gun's relative worth is increased. It is harder to acquire a new one. Therefore, with a greater risk the potential reward must be higher. As such, a decrease in crime with guns would be seen as, well, a lot of crimes don't generate high enough rewards.

I probably stuffed it up, I'm just trying to re-convey what I'm pretty sure I read in this thread.

How do you propose restricting supply?

[Lunatic Goofballs]

It's no more complex a process to manufacture a gun than to manufacture crystal meth.

Except for the metallurgy, the engineering... although to be fair, if you get the manufacture of both wrong they can both explode with rather disasterous consequences.

Then again, there is no firearms version of shake n' bake meth.
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/meth/a/s ... d_bake.htm

Guns are 500 year old technology. You could make a machine gun from parts bought at a Home Depot. Soon, you will be able to print a gun from a 3d printer in the comfort of your own home. It really isn't that hard to make a gun.

[Forsher]

I believe the argument was to address supply. If guns are rarer than a inidividual gun's relative worth is increased. It is harder to acquire a new one. Therefore, with a greater risk the potential reward must be higher. As such, a decrease in crime with guns would be seen as, well, a lot of crimes don't generate high enough rewards.

I probably stuffed it up, I'm just trying to re-convey what I'm pretty sure I read in this thread.

How do you propose restricting supply?

Making guns harder to get. And it was Tubbsalot who first made the argument that I repeated, and here is the now found quote.

The whole country is supposed to be a marijuana and heroin free zone, and look how well that's working out.

Funnily enough, other first-world countries are struggling with drugs, yet they're not struggling with guns, even though it's the same strategy in principle. Why is that?

Because a poor supply of guns causes criminals to restrict the usage of the guns they have to make best use of them. That means they're usually deployed in criminal infighting - gang war and the like - rather than being busted out for every street mugging. This is both to reduce the risk of losing the firearm (just generally, or by law enforcement confiscating the weapon) and to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities, who naturally assign a very high priority to gun crime. Nor is it anywhere near as easy to smuggle guns into a country. That combination of poor supply and 'censorship' of weapons means that civilians are massively safer from guns in a country with effective gun control measures.

A straight-across ban on guns is an even worse idea than flat legalization of everything gun-related. We have thousands of miles of border we cannot secure, and guns are by no means only able to be built by ultra-pros.

I'm not claiming you'll be able to get rid of every gun ever. But you don't need to. You just need to reduce the supply sufficiently that it becomes prohibitively expensive to use guns unnecessarily. We have legally available guns in Australia, but the restrictions on their purchase are sufficient that guns remain highly scarce and rarely used on civilians. (Although it sounds like you're really overestimating the ease of illicit gun manufacture.) The real problem is, with the US' gun supply, it's a question of decades to get the gun supply down to the point other countries enjoy.

So, basically. The sale of guns, that'd have to be more rigorous. Better policing of borders. The destruction or sale overseas of surplus stock would be handy. Perhaps limit gun manufacture, tax it potentially.

There are options.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

I'm not convinced that making it more difficult for people to legally own guns will reduce the number of people willing to circumvent the law in order to own one for nefarious purposes.

So? The shooter in this case didn't own any of the weapons he used. From what I've read, he used guns that were legally owned by a non-criminal gun owner.

I am far, far, far more afraid of people who legally own 10 guns than I am of a criminal who illegally obtains a single gun. I believe I am more at risk from legal gun owners and their legal guns in this country than I am at risk from criminals or those who have illegal weapons.

Why?

[The UK in Exile]

Except for the metallurgy, the engineering... although to be fair, if you get the manufacture of both wrong they can both explode with rather disasterous consequences.

Then again, there is no firearms version of shake n' bake meth.
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/meth/a/s ... d_bake.htm

Guns are 500 year old technology. You could make a machine gun from parts bought at a Home Depot. Soon, you will be able to print a gun from a 3d printer in the comfort of your own home. It really isn't that hard to make a gun.

and it'll be about as useful as everything else made by a 3-d printer.

not very.

[Northern Dominus]

Except for the metallurgy, the engineering... although to be fair, if you get the manufacture of both wrong they can both explode with rather disasterous consequences.

Then again, there is no firearms version of shake n' bake meth.
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/meth/a/s ... d_bake.htm

Guns are 500 year old technology. You could make a machine gun from parts bought at a Home Depot. Soon, you will be able to print a gun from a 3d printer in the comfort of your own home. It really isn't that hard to make a gun.

Right, but it takes more skill than rolling a joint or cooking up shake n' bake, so the equivalence between the war on drugs and gun control rings just as false as anything the flat earth society puts out. Even in those scenarios you mentioned, a person would still have to be a helluva backyard engineer and have access to some pretty expensive or monitored items in order to pull that off, whereas any idiot can grab the ingredients to meth off of the shelves or basic gardening supplies to grow their own marijuana plant. There is no one for one equivalence between anti-drug interdiction and firearms control, period.

[Obeko]

It's unreasonable to assume that any gun control initiative could ever entirely wipe out gun related crime.

It's more so that it reduces the incident of gun related violence, which obviously can only be a good thing.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

How do you propose restricting supply?

Making guns harder to get. And it was Tubbsalot who first made the argument that I repeated, and here is the now found quote.

Funnily enough, other first-world countries are struggling with drugs, yet they're not struggling with guns, even though it's the same strategy in principle. Why is that?

Because a poor supply of guns causes criminals to restrict the usage of the guns they have to make best use of them. That means they're usually deployed in criminal infighting - gang war and the like - rather than being busted out for every street mugging. This is both to reduce the risk of losing the firearm (just generally, or by law enforcement confiscating the weapon) and to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities, who naturally assign a very high priority to gun crime. Nor is it anywhere near as easy to smuggle guns into a country. That combination of poor supply and 'censorship' of weapons means that civilians are massively safer from guns in a country with effective gun control measures.


I'm not claiming you'll be able to get rid of every gun ever. But you don't need to. You just need to reduce the supply sufficiently that it becomes prohibitively expensive to use guns unnecessarily. We have legally available guns in Australia, but the restrictions on their purchase are sufficient that guns remain highly scarce and rarely used on civilians. (Although it sounds like you're really overestimating the ease of illicit gun manufacture.) The real problem is, with the US' gun supply, it's a question of decades to get the gun supply down to the point other countries enjoy.

So, basically. The sale of guns, that'd have to be more rigorous. Better policing of borders. The destruction or sale overseas of surplus stock would be handy. Perhaps limit gun manufacture, tax it potentially.

There are options.

As someone pointed out a few pages ago, there are countries with more guns per capita that don't even have a fraction of our violent crime rate. We still aren't addressing the problem. Even if you could somehow keep a gun out of the hands of a homicidal maniac(a tall order to be sure), you still have a homicidal maniac. At best, all you are reducing is the body count. At best.

[Cameroi]

while the availability of fire arms is one factor, several others may loom just as large. (and anyone who knows me knows i'm not saying this to defend gun sales and manufacture)
two others specificly are population levels and there influence upon conditions often undesirable, and what i feel likely to be the biggest single factor, and that is a culture that romantacizes and rewards aggressiveness.

people get impatient do to population, but would they even consider turning to violence as a result, if it weren't for aggressiveness being portrayed as heroic, rather then the retardedness that it is?

[The UK in Exile]

Making guns harder to get. And it was Tubbsalot who first made the argument that I repeated, and here is the now found quote.




So, basically. The sale of guns, that'd have to be more rigorous. Better policing of borders. The destruction or sale overseas of surplus stock would be handy. Perhaps limit gun manufacture, tax it potentially.

There are options.

As someone pointed out a few pages ago, there are countries with more guns per capita that don't even have a fraction of our violent crime rate. We still aren't addressing the problem. Even if you could somehow keep a gun out of the hands of a homicidal maniac(a tall order to be sure), you still have a homicidal maniac. At best, all you are reducing is the body count. At best.

The US has the highest rate of Guns per capita in the world.

followed by the utterly peaceful paradises of serbia and yemen.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

Guns are 500 year old technology. You could make a machine gun from parts bought at a Home Depot. Soon, you will be able to print a gun from a 3d printer in the comfort of your own home. It really isn't that hard to make a gun.

Right, but it takes more skill than rolling a joint or cooking up shake n' bake, so the equivalence between the war on drugs and gun control rings just as false as anything the flat earth society puts out. Even in those scenarios you mentioned, a person would still have to be a helluva backyard engineer and have access to some pretty expensive or monitored items in order to pull that off, whereas any idiot can grab the ingredients to meth off of the shelves or basic gardening supplies to grow their own marijuana plant. There is no one for one equivalence between anti-drug interdiction and firearms control, period.

You are still waaaay overestimating how difficult it is to make a gun. It's very easy to make a gun. If you took a high school Industrial Arts class, you could make a gun.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

As someone pointed out a few pages ago, there are countries with more guns per capita that don't even have a fraction of our violent crime rate. We still aren't addressing the problem. Even if you could somehow keep a gun out of the hands of a homicidal maniac(a tall order to be sure), you still have a homicidal maniac. At best, all you are reducing is the body count. At best.

The US has the highest rate of Guns per capita in the world.

followed by the utterly peaceful paradises of serbia and yemen.

Source?

Edit: Nevermind. I found one. it turns out you are correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country

[AiliailiA]

I honestly don't understand why the right to bear arms is so fiercely defended. Even if the majority follow the rules, keep their guns locked away safely and so on, there are plenty of others who don't and plenty of unbalanced people around being fed ideas by tv, movies, video games etc. I'm from the UK so I don't know exactly how it works, but from what I've seen and read it seems very easy to get hold of guns over there. Would licenses for example, presuming of course that they aren't already in use, really infringe so much on your rights? You'd still be able to own a gun. If everyone was checked out first, you'd be less likely to be regarded with suspicion by those that dislike the current system meaning less conflict and it might reduce the frequency of shootings.

Most healthcare systems need some work but there isn't so much money to go around at the moment, and surely it's better to prevent than to cure anyway? If less people were shot, the healthcare system would be able to put the money saved into mental health. Less people would need to be treated in that area because there would be less people being traumatised by seeing people shot or having a gun waved in their face, meaning that other potential shooters could be treated earlier and more effectively. It seems silly to me to throw money at a cycle like that and hope it fixes itself without actually changing anything. And frankly, I'd rather live in a world with one less 'right' than in one in which children are shot.

I like gun licensing.

Give reasons why you need a gun ... and yes, in some circumstances "self defence" would be sufficient reason ... and have an appeal process for those who feel they were unjustly denied a gun. This would be a law so of course it would be subject to legal challenge.

Having satisfied that condition, you can buy ONE gun for that purpose. You present it on demand of police bearing a warrant, or if you won't present it you would be suspect of providing guns to criminals.

The ability of currently law-abiding persons to buy unlimited numbers of guns is an obvious and very dangerous loophole in the "right to keep and bear arms". And it does not infringe too badly on the rights of a gun-owner, to limit the number of guns they can own.

[Sdaeriji]

The US has the highest rate of Guns per capita in the world.

followed by the utterly peaceful paradises of serbia and yemen.

Source?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country

[The IASM]

Am I the only one who does not care at all?

[Lunatic Goofballs]

Source?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country

Yeah, I found it. Thanks though.

[Sdaeriji]

Am I the only one who does not care at all?

No. All the other people who didn't care didn't post because they didn't care. You posting here sort of betrays you.

[Rubiconic Crossings V2 rev 1f]

Right, but it takes more skill than rolling a joint or cooking up shake n' bake, so the equivalence between the war on drugs and gun control rings just as false as anything the flat earth society puts out. Even in those scenarios you mentioned, a person would still have to be a helluva backyard engineer and have access to some pretty expensive or monitored items in order to pull that off, whereas any idiot can grab the ingredients to meth off of the shelves or basic gardening supplies to grow their own marijuana plant. There is no one for one equivalence between anti-drug interdiction and firearms control, period.

You are still waaaay overestimating how difficult it is to make a gun. It's very easy to make a gun. If you took a high school Industrial Arts class, you could make a gun.

If you are saying that someone can make a gun like those used in these shootings so easily (with no misfires, jams, overheating causing barrel warping) then I would have to say I would be very surprised indeed (high school industrial arts class). Now if you are saying a cobbled together firearm that is a single shot or at best a revolver...or at worst a flintlock...yeah.

[Citron]

`http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20730717

Connecticut 'gunman dead' after US school shooting

Students at a US primary school have been evacuated as police respond to reports of a shooting in Newtown, in the north-eastern state of Connecticut.

One person, said to be the gunman, is reported dead, with three injured. Two weapons have reportedly been recovered.

Schools across the district are on lock-down as a preventive measure, officials say.

Police arrived at the school soon after 09:40 local time (14:40 GMT), with a full search of the site ongoing.

Local news reports suggest that several people may have been killed.

It is also reported that there are some children among the victims, although it is not clear whether they are among any dead.

Meanwhile, the three people who have been taken to hospital are in "very serious condition", Newtown Mayor Mark Boughton told CNN.

A police news conference is expected around 13:00 ET.
'Collecting facts'

There are unconfirmed reports of two shooters, according to a report in the local Hartford Courant newspaper.

The paper also reports "multiple deaths" at the school, but that cannot be confirmed independently.

As the situation began, police received a call reporting that a gunman was in the school's main office. One person there had "numerous gunshot wounds", the Courant added.
Map of Newtown, Connecticut

With the children now evacuated, aerial images of the school show several emergency vehicles still at the scene and scores of cars surrounding the area.

Teams of officers are on the scene, some with dogs, as a thorough search of the school continues.

A local NBC news channel said that a hospital in nearby Danbury had reported receiving three injured patients.

Local media are reporting that one teacher was shot in the foot.

Several parents are reportedly at the school, standing by and waiting for more information. Officials say they are trying to unite children with their parents.

Sandy Hook School - described by correspondents as a highly rated school - has cancelled its kindergarten class on Friday and will not operate midday bus runs, the school's website says.

The public school has more than 600 students in classes from Kindergarten to 4th Grade - including students aged from five to 10.

On its website, Danbury Hospital said it was aware of a "situation" at the school.

"Please know we're collecting facts now and will be back to you as soon as possible with the most accurate information," the hospital said in a statement.

So more deaths...

Is it really worth it? Really?

edit - cleaned up news report

Welcome to the United States of America.

[AiliailiA]

EDIT: Done already. I hate these fast threads.

[German American States]

This poses the question of why assault weapons are legalized.