Another one

[[TW]schneidzekk]

Kennesaw. Mother-effing. Georgia.


Go look it up, Europeans.

I am living close to Kennesaw now (Tripwire is located in Roswell) and I looked it up To be honest the murder rate is still quite high (more than 5 times higher than the average rate of Germany (and i am talking about the entire country) .

Kennesaw may work as an example for the US, but you can't use it to impress my good old commie/liberal/socialist european side

I don't think it is the guns or not, it has to be something else.

 

[SchutzeSepp]

I don't think it is the guns or not, it has to be something else.

true, counties like canada or switzerland also have a certain gun culture and have probably as much if not more guns per habitants than the USA.
while those countries have no problems with guns like the usa.
maybe the answer to this can be found in what there is in the US and isn't in other countries?
in the US there is a big lobby culture, (tabacco, petrol, pharmaceutic,...) including in the weapon industry. nobody dears to critiscize them, if they release a drug that kills tens of thousands of people by accident, nooo problem it's not their fault.
same with the holy weapon industry, people are just money pissing donkeys to them. they make obcene amounts of profit out of bad things like war, fear,... and they get their politicians elected by funding them, so those politicians ow them, so they start wars, or don't make laws that hurt the industry.

another problem is the media culture, bad things are emphasized and repeated to create a fake sense of insecurity "the terrorist are gonna kill us" while 90% of americans live in godforgotten places, where chances that a terrorist kills you are nil. needles to say that chances to die from a firearm accident are about 1000x bigger, but telling that hurts the industry, so shhhhh....

 

[D3terioNation]

Nobody can argue with the great John Stossel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyoLuTjguJA&feature=related

Love the way all the felons are black, & how they only interviewed the pro-gunners while just reading out the anti-gun messages! God I feel sorry for you people with such brainwashed media!

In countries where gun ownership is banned or highly restricted, desperate crims dont go out of their way to get a gun in order to rob someone!

Over here it is a minimum of 4 years inside for possessing a firearm. Criminals have to go through a fairly hard time getting one, and will get sent down even before having the chance to use them. I do believe it is getting easier to get hold of guns, but the government is tackling the issue head-on & wont become a major issue where most criminals must be assumed as being armed and dangerous!

Unlike the US, where it is just too easy to get a weapon, civilians are unlikely to lose their lives during an incident, because they are even more unlikely to be armed!

But the main argument is not about the criminals as they are obviously not law abiding people! Its about the average joe going on the rampage and innocent people having their lives cut short because of the vast majority of ignorant Americans supporting gun ownership!

 

[Athena]

About access to guns and guns per habitant:

Well, I live in Switzerland and in most of the past weapon incidents we've had were due to people snapping and grabing their army gun then shooting people (a husband shoots his wife and kid then kills self with this duty gun, a young man straight out of military school climbs on a school roof in full camo gear with his duty gun and snipes a teenager girl, an adult bursts into a muslim prayer center and wants to shoot everybody - with his duty gun. just to mention a few recent ones).

So, add that to your reflection. Here, people who snap, grab their duty gun (FYI, it's a Sig 550 that you get to keep at home with a sealed box of live ammo) and do ****.

 

[SchutzeSepp]

i do think there is no solution for this problem, the weapons are there and thats a fact.
the gun killings we have here oftenly involve old secret weapons, hunting rifles or service weapons. those weapons will cause accidents forever, but on a smaller scale.

in the US there is a non-return situation, it would take a few hundred years to solve it.
the best was to prohibit any firearms 100 years ago, then the problem today would be alot smaller. only it was not done, so you will all have to live with the fact that at any time someone can snap and kill you or your wife while she is shopping or your kids at school.
there is no miracle solution, comparable to iraq: the best was not to go in by force at all, now that they have gone in nothing can solve the situation anymore. the harm is done, live with it.

 

[D3terioNation]

How about not selling guns to anyone too young to even buy a drink? Or raise the age to over 25 and only after stringent tests and background checks?

No, I believe something can be done without an all out ban!

 

[Peter.Steele]

Kennesaw may work as an example for the US, but you can't use it to impress my good old commie/liberal/socialist european side

Let's talk about crime in Europe, actually.

The same pattern can be seen throughout Europe--indeed, in much of the developed world. Crime has recently hit record highs in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Toronto, and a host of other major cities. In a 2001 study, the British Home Office (the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Justice) found violent and property crime increased in the late 1990s in every wealthy country except the United States. American property crime rates have been lower than those in Britain, Canada, and France since the early 1990s, and violent crime rates throughout the E.U., Australia, and Canada have recently begun to equal and even surpass those in the United States. Even Sweden, once the epitome of cosmopolitan socialist prosperity, now has a crime victimization rate 20 percent higher than the United States.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/266umtwb.asp

A UNITED Nations report has labelled Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article568214.ece

http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Kennesaw&state=GA



Back in the USA, compare it to, say, Washington DC. Where guns are, y'know, almost totally illegal.

http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Washington&state=DC

 

[Murphy]

Gun-control is vital: Use both hands!

Anyway, politics, politics with a good shot of America VS. Europe, starting with guns vs. no guns, going over violence in movies vs. less violence in movies with the obligatory side-discussion about sex in movies vs. less sex in movies peaking in a discussion about how barbaric and undemocratic the respective others really are and coming to a grande finale with a bunch of flames and insults.

 

[Nimsky]

if i lived in a country where having weapons is a constitutional right, then i might be tempted also to defend that "right". just like if you would have the "right" to drive as fast as you want, yeah it's fun but honestly we all know (at least i hope so for your mental sanity) that it's a right you shouldn't have. it's generated a avalanche of bad side-effects, criminals get guns easy, so you get one too so you can defend yourself. everybody ends up having guns, kids get acces to them, fragile minded persons also. and you get all the ingredients for never-ending disasters.

for me an outsider to this, i see no difference between americans who are defending their right to have guns, and the japanese who are defending their right to hunt endangered whales, all in the name of tradition.
this gives a barbaric view of your society, we evoluated from that and i even think we in europe have never even been there.

Belgium made the gunlaw even tougher after some 17 year old went on a rampage in Antwerp a couple of years ago, killing 3 people including a little girl. Now it's nearly impossible to get a weapon and people had to bring their unregistered weapons to the nearest police station to destroy them or to get a permit. Sure, people get stabbed now but people shoot someone sooner then stabbing someone. Shooting is just point and click, stabbing is comming up close, stab a dude repeatedly and feel his life draining out of his body.

Yes criminals have weapons but I would rather have criminal having the only weapon than both of us having one and end up in a shooting where we all die.

The USA has a problem with guns and more guns isn't the answer but I don't believe the government can make the gun law more strict because too many people would protest, they could however do something about the cause of why people go on a rampage. Remove the triggerhappy culture and stuff like that.

These guys speak the truth.

....I'm sure there's a quote somewhere about the oppressed not knowing what freedom is until they experience it.

Funny. Americans keep talking about how they live in the "land of the free", "gun ownership is a right", blah blah blah. People in the USA actually have much less freedom than in most European countries. It's not the Middle East that's "threatening" your freedom, it's your own government. And it's only going to get worse if Hillary gets elected.

The whole "gun culture" in the US is rather silly tbh, keep in mind that guns were invented for only one reason: to kill. Yes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people". We know. But "gunless" countries are generally more peaceful.

Should guns be banned in the US? No, that wouldn't be a good idea because the US has been sucked so far into a vortex of violence, that it's impossible to get out. Ban guns, and you can bet your *** that people will want to fight the government. I'm speaking out to this now, but it doesn't matter. No reasoning can stop all of that. All you can do is just accept the violent culture over there, I guess. It's not going to change.

Please don't take offense, Yanks. I think the USA is a great country. And I'm sure that the majority of gun owners do not have "bad intentions". Just don't start the whole "land of the free" again, it's getting rather old.

 

[Sgt.Rock]

... so you will all have to live with the fact that at any time someone can snap and kill you or your wife while she is shopping or your kids at school.
there is no miracle solution ...

And guns made this man snap? People have been killing people at a whim since the beginning of time. He doesn't need a gun to beat your wife to death (a hammer or a rock would do the trick in less than two hits), nor does he need a gun to abduct your child or wife. Infact, he could kill them in less then 5 seconds with just about anything. He could do it at your very own home, even without a gun. He could run them over with his car and drive off, practically never to be seen again.


The thing is, guns aren't this magical psychological device that just makes people go crazy. The people that do this sort of stuff have been messed up since birth, but everyone is to PC to take any kind of action against it before its to late.


Also, the US is pretty much bigger than the whole of Europe. So you can't just compare all of the US to Britain or Germany, you have to compare the numbers to all of Europe, even the run-down, dangerous ones, because we have the same thing here.

 

[REZ]

Well my personal hope for the posts I made was to blunt the kneejerk reaction towards the tools used in a classic example of a person having a mental episode.

Nobody freaks out and blames the BiC Lighter company when some guy sets a fourth of LA on fire and causes millions of dollars in damage, death, and ruined lives. Or how about the fertilizer company who's product McVeigh and friends used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma - not a peep about how this stuff is readily available.

The fact that there will be people who cannot control their own violent tendencies and the fact that there will be situations that cause a man to want to kill another man - focusing on the tools used will not make the situation any more understandable/digestible; as though they are the root of the situation. The focus is in the wrong place in that instance. And this goes for the US or Europe or South America or anywhere. We're talking about the human condition here, not man-made geographic boundries.

 

[Shadrach]

Let's talk about crime in Europe, actually.

Actually, lets not...
This thread is about school massacres and not about 'regular' violent crime. Derailing it with a discussion about regular crime leads nowhere and they are totally different beasts.

School and workplace shootings are almost exclusively done by middle or upper-middle class, white collar workers, while violent crime like robberies and murders are mostly commited by the poorest parts of the population. Less poverty equals less crime, but thats another discussion... and that would not stop these school massacres because the *motives* behind them are totally different.

The perpetrators behind school shootings usually have no previous history of violence or connection with the police, and their friends and familiy suspect nothing beforehand. This is also why its impossible to do any type of 'screening' of likely suspects for these kinds of shooters as their profiles vary so much.

And btw, since when is the Weekly Standard a reputable, non-biased source to quote in these matters?
You're not getting away with that one

I agree with Murphy though -- lets keep it civil please, its an interesting discussion.

 

[Grobut]

They way i see it, the real problem is people who snap, not what weapon they end up using once that snapping has occured, allmost anything can be used as a deadly weapon, and in societies with low or no guns among civillians, an axe or a bread knife can certainly kill alot of people, in armed societies, a gun is more effective.. but its besides the point really, the end result is allways going to be that someone got hurt or died.

I can think of no country that has a propper system that helps people before they spiral out of control, and do something insane, no society on this planet is to my knowledge in any way good enough at helping thease people, and stepping in and doing something constructive whilst the problem is still small and contained.

There is so much more that could be done, in any country you choose to look at, and we will continue to see thease killing spree's untill something is done to tackle the problem at its root cause.

 

[Switchblade]

Let's talk about crime in Europe, actually.










http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Kennesaw&state=GA

Let's do.
I live in the country with the highest population per square mile in the world.
It is also known to be the most "drug liberal" country.

16 milion people in a country the size of New York.
we have an annual murderrate of just over 200, only a couple of those are by guns (which are illiegal here) you can not even own a airsoftgun because of our strict laws.
Give me any USA state or even a big city that can beat that

In 2005 zijn 201 moorden gepleegd. Daarmee is sprake van het laagste moordcijfer van de afgelopen vijftien jaar. Dat blijkt uit eigen onderzoek van het weekblad Elsevier voor de jaarlijkse Moordlijst.

In 2005, 201 assassinations have been committed. With that talk of the lowest assassination figure of the past fifteen years is. That becomes clear from own research of the magazine Elsevier for the annual assassination list.

Nobody here has the feeling they need a gun to "protect" themselves.

But this discussion is going the wrong way, (wich is quite common when the discussion goes about guncontrol, pro gunners are very experienced in steering away form the real issue)
The true topic is that if someone snaps (and that can happen anywhere in any country) that in country's where a gun is a common householditem, the results of this "snap" are far more deadlier then in country's with strict gun law.
If someone snaps here there is no lethal damage.

edit
did some calculation but with Kennesaw only having 25.000 inhabitants we even beat that figure with app. 400

 

[SchutzeSepp]

And guns made this man snap? People have been killing people at a whim since the beginning of time. He doesn't need a gun to beat your wife to death (a hammer or a rock would do the trick in less than two hits), nor does he need a gun to abduct your child or wife. Infact, he could kill them in less then 5 seconds with just about anything. He could do it at your very own home, even without a gun. He could run them over with his car and drive off, practically never to be seen again.



Also, the US is pretty much bigger than the whole of Europe. So you can't just compare all of the US to Britain or Germany, you have to compare the numbers to all of Europe, even the run-down, dangerous ones, because we have the same thing here.

guns are only tools yes, but tools for cowards.
as mentioned before, going on a kill spree with a gun is the most easy way of doing it. i have yet to see a "snap" killer going on a rampage with a hammer or ax, it takes alot of courage to use those weapons.
im even tempted to think that those killers, if they had no guns available, that its probable that they just would have done nothing at all. immagine that if you could kill people by the thought, how many people would you have killed already? i would have killed alot, but i had no weapons so i just got over it like we all did.

about the US being bigger and more populated then europe, its a myth
USA has 300 mil. habitants, the EU has 500 mil habitants. but recently the EU was enlarged to east europe, so that explains the 200 mil extra habitants. but i suspect it also drastically increased the criminality rate of our western countries
most of the criminality here in belgium comes from eastern european criminals, who enjoy that we have a veeeerrry soft justice.
i checked and usa had a murder rate of about 8.4 for 100.000 habitants, belgium has trouble reaching 1 to 100.000.
murders are mostly comitted in urban centers whith large groups of defavorised social groups, blacks, migrants, etc... for europe this means that it is not in our culture to use guns, most of the murders occur in big cities where there are big migrant populations with a different culture or religion

 

[[TW]schneidzekk]

We shouldn't turn this into another political thread, it leads nowhere. I am guilty myself, i apologize.

Let's agree that these school shootings are horrible and very sad.

 

[Wiglaf]

How about we enforce concealed automatics to "more reliable" citicens? That way the nutties and certain minority groups whit bad taste of music recieve warm wellcome right away!
Also I'd like to point out that Finland is far less pussy about it. We got huge number of beatings and stabbings. People seem to favour blades beyond bombs. Suck it up sugar bellied south-europeans and yankees!


Uh...ppl snap, why and why none seems tobother ask that question?

"He was a quiet man" and "The air that I Breath" in the "Happines part" deals whit this from the latest movies.