Mass shooting

[Guest American Woman]

I love how you double down on stupid at every opportunity.

Just throwing your mindset back at'cha, so good that you can see it for what it is.

[Guest American Woman]

Whoever said taking away guns stops people from killing? Are you arguing with the voices in your head again?

Let me try to dumb it down for you. The argument is that stricter gun laws result in fewer homicides - yet the homicide rate went up in Canada as the number of homicides by gun went down. Higher homicide rate. Lower homicide by gun rate. Again. That's an argument that best serves the other side. Capice?

Edited December 21, 2012 by American Woman

[punked]

Let me try to dumb it down for you. The argument is that stricter gun laws result in fewer homicides - yet the homicide rate went up in Canada as the number of homicides by gun went down. Higher homicide rate. Lower homicide by gun rate. Again. That's an argument that best serves the other side. Capice?

Nope fewer homicides by gun and mass none-targeting shootings.

[Black Dog]

Just throwing your mindset back at'cha, so good that you can see it for what it is.

Stick to your knitting. You're out of your element as usual.

Let me try to dumb it down for you. The argument is that stricter gun laws result in fewer homicides - yet the homicide rate went up in Canada as the number of homicides by gun went down. Higher homicide rate. Lower homicide by gun rate. Again. That's an argument that best serves the other side. Capice?

No one has made that argument. Take your meds, lady.

[Guest American Woman]

Nope fewer homicides by gun and mass none-targeting shootings.

???

Fewer homicides by gun - but an increase in homicides.

[Guest American Woman]

Stick to your knitting. You're out of your element as usual.

No one has made that argument. Take your meds, lady.

So no counter arguments, eh? That you've responded with nothing but insults is duly noted.

[Black Dog]

So no counter arguments, eh? That you've responded with nothing but insults is duly noted.

Why bother when the data is out there?That you would pursue irrelevant tangents about Canada's homicide rate increasing over one year as being meaningful shows a complete, willful ignorance of statistics (google "outlier" and "small sample size" for starters.) I doubt you are aware that there is copious research showing a clear link between the number of guns and murder rates (start here). It's like you simply can't face the possibility that there is actually something amiss in a country where these kinds of events are commonplace. WHat do you think would happen if you did?

Edited December 21, 2012 by Black Dog

[Smallc]

Statistics. 2010 had Canada's lowest homicide rate in 44 years.

[WIP]

What is your point here? I seriously have no clue. Where I live a kid grabbed a pair of scissors off a teachers desk and stabbed another kid. So now you want those scissors to be a gun? That is not a solution. The solution to gun violence is NOT MORE GUNS. You think putting a fire out with gas is a good idea, have fun watching your country burn to the ground.

After hiding for a week, the NRA comes out with their big solution: arm all the teachers! I think that's the mentality expressed behind any story lauding some woman who shoots a gunman dead at church or in a school. Great if it works! But why should a grade one teacher have to carry a gun to school and be able and willing to shoot a potential assailant dead? Is that the kind of society America has become? Maybe it's time to pack up and head into the woods, because you might as well live in Beirut, if you got to go around at all times ready to shoot!

It should be pointed out now that the NRA has spoken, that this is the corporate lobby that has the greatest scam of all going: they receive most of their money from memberships of gun owners, but in Washington, their lobbyists carry out the interests of gun and munition manufacturers. Even the Chamber of Commerce or the Koch Brothers' propaganda organs can't get the people they bleed for money to pay to run the organization. The NRA are a bunch of freakin geniuses!

[Wilber]

After hiding for a week, the NRA comes out with their big solution: arm all the teachers! I think that's the mentality expressed behind any story lauding some woman who shoots a gunman dead at church or in a school. Great if it works! But why should a grade one teacher have to carry a gun to school and be able and willing to shoot a potential assailant dead? Is that the kind of society America has become? Maybe it's time to pack up and head into the woods, because you might as well live in Beirut, if you got to go around at all times ready to shoot!

It should be pointed out now that the NRA has spoken, that this is the corporate lobby that has the greatest scam of all going: they receive most of their money from memberships of gun owners, but in Washington, their lobbyists carry out the interests of gun and munition manufacturers. Even the Chamber of Commerce or the Koch Brothers' propaganda organs can't get the people they bleed for money to pay to run the organization. The NRA are a bunch of freakin geniuses!

The NRA needs to learn the difference between a solution and a reaction. Their solution is everyone else must change so they don't have to change anything. Some solution.

The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads,

sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the

horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.

Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time

for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.

The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never

happens again.

Knew this was bullshit the moment the moment I saw it.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Wilber

[Wilber]

I heard a radio discussion this morning and it was suggested that retired cops could be the armed guards. I agree that arming teachers is stupid, but something has to be done, they said that there is 300 million guns in the US. Not sure if that is true, but more gun laws won't stop the carnage. I mean, go ahead and make all the new gun laws you want, but maybe get some ex-cop or army people in the schools too. Some kind of mental health check too like they apparently have in California.

All well and good but this is a reaction to a crisis, not a solution but if the NRA is so big on it, perhaps they would be willing to pay for it. Fiscal cliff and all.

Solutions are proactive, not reactive.

[Argus]

I heard a radio discussion this morning and it was suggested that retired cops could be the armed guards. I agree that arming teachers is stupid, but something has to be done, they said that there is 300 million guns in the US. Not sure if that is true, but more gun laws won't stop the carnage. I mean, go ahead and make all the new gun laws you want, but maybe get some ex-cop or army people in the schools too. Some kind of mental health check too like they apparently have in California.

132,000 schools. Putting armed guards in all of them is not realistic. And even if it were possible, well by extension you need armed guards at daycare centers, right? Boy scout meetings? Girl Guides? Soccer and football and baseball practices? What about the malls? Lots of kids hanging around santa right now. Surely there should be a guy with a machinegun standing next to Santa!

[Bonam]

132,000 schools. Putting armed guards in all of them is not realistic.

132,000 schools * $100,000/year per armed guard = $13.2 billion/year. A pretty small price compared to many expenditures in the US. Not that I'm an advocate/supporter of said solution, but it's far from impossible.

Doing the analysis, about 200 people have been killed in mass shootings in the last decade I think (did a quick count, it's anywhere from 150-200). So about 20 people / year. If armed guards at schools could prevent 100% of said shootings, that would be about $13.2 B / 20 = $660 million / life saved. US GDP per capita is ~$50k, assuming an 80 year lifetime, the average lifetime worth of an American is ~$4 million. So, clearly not worth the armed guards.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Bonam

[Wilber]

132,000 schools. Putting armed guards in all of them is not realistic. And even if it were possible, well by extension you need armed guards at daycare centers, right? Boy scout meetings? Girl Guides? Soccer and football and baseball practices? What about the malls? Lots of kids hanging around santa right now. Surely there should be a guy with a machinegun standing next to Santa!

You mean like this guy?

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/abbotsford-police-criminals-gun-toting-santa-christmas-cards-221521243.html

[cybercoma]

I know having armed people everywhere would make me feel safer.

[Guest]

Article on the subject:

http://www.spiked-on.../article/13179/

From the article, this might be the best paragraph I've yet read on the subject:

No one knows what was going on in the mind of the Connecticut shooter. But what was striking about his shooting spree, like that which occurred in Columbine High School in 1999 or at the West Nickel Mines Amish School in 2006, was the utter lack of restraint, the absence of any moral code saying ‘It is wrong to violate a school’ or simply ‘It is wrong to shoot a six-year-old child in the head’. Such a dearth of restraining morality is something new, springing more from today’s culture of estrangement, and the individual nihilism it can nurture, than from the 200-year-old Second Amendment. School shootings are better understood, not as the end product of American revolutionaries’ insistence on the populace’s right to bear arms, but as part of today’s trend for highly anti-social, super-individuated acts of nihilistic, narcissistic violence - from so-called ‘Islamist attacks’ carried out by British men on the London Tube to Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre of 77 of his fellow Norwegians last year. What such assaults share in common is a profound sense of cultural disconnection. They are, in many ways, the most extreme expression of the narcissism of our age, in which there is the constant promotion of self-obsession over socialisation, and individual identity over collective citizenship, giving rise to a sometimes volatile atmosphere - through both removing individuals from any sense of a meaningful social fabric and imbuing them with a powerful sense of entitlement, where one’s self-esteem counts for everything, and thus any undermining of it is a slight of the most dire order. To try to explain mass school shootings through the fact that guns exist is like trying to explain the al-Qaeda phenomenon through the fact that aeroplanes exist: it fetishises the technical means as a way of avoiding grappling with cultural factors.

Edited December 22, 2012 by bcsapper

[Bonam]

Indeed, good paragraph.

[Smallc]

I know having armed people everywhere would make me feel safer.

Like living in Bogota.

[bush_cheney2004]

The NRA has been rather patient compared to the city of Toronto, which parked armed police officers in 27 high schools way back in 2008 in response to one shooting:

Last month, the Toronto board approved an action plan in response to a January report by a safety panel looking into conditions in the city’s public schools.

That panel, headed by lawyer Julian Falconer, was struck following the shooting death of 15-year-old Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys high school in May 2007.

Included in the board’s action plan was a call for “positive police interactions with students in school buildings,” and a way to establish a friendly police presence, as well as boost security.

I could be wrong, but I believe Toronto is in Ontario, Canada.

[Guest Derek L]

I heard a radio discussion this morning and it was suggested that retired cops could be the armed guards. I agree that arming teachers is stupid, but something has to be done, they said that there is 300 million guns in the US. Not sure if that is true, but more gun laws won't stop the carnage. I mean, go ahead and make all the new gun laws you want, but maybe get some ex-cop or army people in the schools too. Some kind of mental health check too like they apparently have in California.

There are thousands of unemployed veterans out there………..We have armed guards protecting money in Canada and the United States, why not our children?

[Guest Derek L]

132,000 schools * $100,000/year per armed guard = $13.2 billion/year. A pretty small price compared to many expenditures in the US. Not that I'm an advocate/supporter of said solution, but it's far from impossible.

Doing the analysis, about 200 people have been killed in mass shootings in the last decade I think (did a quick count, it's anywhere from 150-200). So about 20 people / year. If armed guards at schools could prevent 100% of said shootings, that would be about $13.2 B / 20 = $660 million / life saved. US GDP per capita is ~$50k, assuming an 80 year lifetime, the average lifetime worth of an American is ~$4 million. So, clearly not worth the armed guards.

I’d assume the 100k figure includes overhead………..There are currently many thousands of unemployed military veterans within the States………..I think it’s a great idea, and so do the majority of Americans:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/12/21/Poll-Majority-support-NRA-Plan

Lost in our objective, unbiased, and non-partisan media's zeal to mock the National Rifle Association's proposal to guard our public schools is the fact that, in a Gallup poll taken Wednesday, a majority of 53% of Americans expressed their support for doing exactly what the NRA's proposing – increasing police presence at schools.

And this from the same poll:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/19/Gallup-To-Stop-Shootings-Americans-Focus-On-Police-Mental-Health-Not-Banning-Guns

Despite the attempts by the Left to use the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut to forward their anti-gun agenda, Americans feel that there are other avenues they would rather explore to protect to innocent children, according to a new Gallup Poll. In order of preference, the poll shows that 53% of Americans would favor an increased police presence at schools, 50% wanted to increase government spending on mental health screening and treatment, 47% thought that gun violence on TV, in movies and in video games should be decreased, and 42% thought the sale of assault and semi-automatic guns should be banned.

Like myself and BC said, the guns aren't going anywhere.........And remember, the anti-gun lobby was given a one week head start to frame the issue by the NRA.......Remember:

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun ~ Mao Zedong

[Bonam]

I’d assume the 100k figure includes overhead………..

It was intended as a rough estimate to get a basic order of magnitude result for the cost... but yes, 100k each could well be with overhead.

I think it’s a great idea, and so do the majority of Americans:

Looking at the numbers though, it just doesn't seem worth the cost. At $600 million+ per life saved, there are many many other ways to save more lives at a much lower cost.

[jacee]

They are, in many ways, the most extreme exp<b></b>ression of the narcissism of our age, in which there is the constant promotion of self-obsession over socialisation, and individual identity over collective citizenship, giving rise to a sometimes volatile atmosphere - through both removing individuals from any sense of a meaningful social fabric and imbuing them with a powerful sense of entitlement, where one’s self-esteem counts for everything, and thus any undermining of it is a slight of the most dire order. To try to explain mass school shootings through the fact that guns exist is like trying to explain the al-Qaeda phenomenon through the fact that aeroplanes exist: it fetishises the technical means as a way of avoiding grappling with cultural factors.[/b][/i]

Such a bunch of BS.

Adam Lantz had a diagnosed social disorder and apparently delusional mental illness.

And he had easy access to very dangerous guns.

The writer of such drivel is blaming whom?

'Children today' ?

Their parents?

What about parents who have an arsenal of guns available to their children?

[Guest Derek L]

Looking at the numbers though, it just doesn't seem worth the cost. At $600 million+ per life saved, there are many many other ways to save more lives at a much lower cost.

Like what? I would also factor in what the Government is currently paying said unemployed, or under employed, military vets in terms of unemployment benefits, food stamps, welfare etc, and subtract it from the cost…….Also if said vets were employed, paying taxes and making a greater financial impact on the economy, that should be considered also……….

Or look at in another light, how much will you pay in terms of various levels of insurance over the course of your life, even if, you don’t ever need it?

[Guest]

Such a bunch of BS.

Adam Lantz had a diagnosed social disorder and apparently delusional mental illness.

And he had easy access to very dangerous guns.

The writer of such drivel is blaming whom?

'Children today' ?

Their parents?

What about parents who have an arsenal of guns available to their children?

It's not drivel. It's a good attempt at trying to find a reason for such actions.

What is drivel is arguing that such actions happen solely because there are guns laying around.