If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Not as much speculation as your suggestions that had the victims been armed they would be alive today, at any rate.
Legally and freely acquired weapons + gun culture = far more murders than there would be otherwise. That is the undeniable fact.
What about the rights of all those victims? I should think their right to life is more important than the 'right' to possess an instrument which sole use is to end human life.
Another question? You know you're always very quick to question everyone elses ideas, yet you offer very little insight into the reasons for, or solutions to the fact that around 30,000 people die in the USA every year from gun shots, yourself.
Although about 17,000 of those are suicides, so perhaps the 30,000 isn't quite representative as if they really want to kill themselves they'd take pills or do something else.
How about a Seeker`s Law for TheSite as a kind of Godwin`s Law with "nazi" replaced by "de-railing" and "side tracking" ?
Your mental buddy in the Guardian isn`t correct in his paragraph about the "constitution".
As I have pointed out previously, the authors of "that goddam piece of paper"(copyright George W Bush) included the 2nd amendment as right to self-defence against ANY oppressors of the individual NO MATTER who they be. Specifically your existential "police forces and armies".
Legalities aside,I suggest that the most selfish action is self preservation.
I don`t know that, and I suspect you don`t either.
Perhaps they left them in their cars.
Perhaps they left them at home.
Perhaps they were so anti-gun that they would have never touched one had they lived.
Perhaps,perhaps,perhaps,perhaps.....
Perhaps they should have had that choice ? :chin:
I don`t recall suggesting that.
What about their rights ?
One possible tool to preserve their lives was legally removed from their armoury, if they had chosen to use it.
You probably don`t care but I didn`t expect that from you.
I don`t usually see that kind of superlative exaggeration in your posts.
Its also simplistic in the extreme to say if the US banned handguns murders would go down. Possibly they would in the long term, but in the medium-short term they would go way up, simply because the people who'd give in their guns are not the armed robbers, muggers etc who wouldn't have the deterrance that your armed robbery of your local drug store may be foiled by the armed owner....
It is one of the ironies that some of the most legally armed states are the safest in the US, with low levels of gun crime, accidents etc. And the highest level of shootings generally are in the cities, which generally have more stringent laws.
Now this isn't to say that the UK should emulate the US and become an armed society, but then it wouldn't work for the US to disarm either. What they need to do is make policies which take into account the US is going to remain armed and try and control what can be sold, (ammunition as much as weapons), who too and what checks are in place
I often find introspection insightful.
I was aware of that.
Another effectual argumentation that could be made in this debate is the Appalachian School of Law incident 5 years ago.
My previous posts have been concerned from a somewhat moral/philosophical point of view, and in that respect I guess we would disagree.
Illegal weapons in the US = those and tens of thousands of other gun murder victims would still be alive today.
Fact.
End of.
I have no problem with people questioning other people's opinions, providing they're putting their own opinions and counter-argument across at the same time. Otherwise it's just one person having to justify their point of view all the time rather than a proper, and that's just dull.
Like I said, you haven't offered any possible reasons for or solutions to the problem of people feeling the need to shoot each other.
Perhaps they didn`t care.
Who knows ?
However I`m convinced that someone would have been prepared ultimately to (legally) shoot them if they had chosen to protect themselves by "bearing arms".
That doesn`t seem "right" to me.
Aladdin the omniscient !
Call yourself an atheist ?
An admission of fallibility ?
I try not to question people`s opinions until they attempt to pass them off as facts.
If someone does indeed do that, wouldn`t you agree that they perhaps ought to justify themselves ?
Reasons ?
Some people refuse to answer me when I ask them so that stalls my conclusions.:D
Many people I meet and converse with seem to exhibit a "need to be right" mentality.
If you go deeper psychologically, you could study such models as Jung`s "feeling" circuit/ Freud`s "anal" circuit/ Leary`s "emotional-territorial" circuit etc. which may give you insights into the power hierachy in an individual`s consciousness.
Solutions ?
The only solution I can think of is getting people not to feel the need to shoot others.
Simple but highly effective.
I speak from experience because it works for me.
Would you expand your question in the hope of me understanding what you are asking ?
Although it has to be said, the media was doing a good job of demonising the killer as a sad demented killer - nicely shifting all the blame onto him. Of course I'm not saying he wasn't responsible for his actions. But if there weren't guns available, would he have killed 30 people? Arguably, someone who is determined enough to murder someone will aquire the weapon anyway, even in the UK. But someone who's just had a breakdown is 'fragile' to put it one way, in that they're unpredictable, potentially dangerous, and need an eye keeping on them.
Letting an individual like this walk into a gun store and buy a gun like that is a recipe for disaster. Especially a 9mm pistol which can be concealed easily, which is why yes, I think all of them should be banned.
Although I have a lot of respect for the English lecturer who spoke, she wasn't just sensationalising everything.
I always try and think before I post.
Should I nitpick about your use of the word "everyone" or just enquire about the "big picture" you are accusing me of ignoring ?
What "big picture" ?
Talking of fallibility...
Was it you who said they shot a gun in the USA and said it was "fucking brilliant" but guns shoul dbe locked safely in an armoury?