Woman shot following Walking Dead argument

[Trekker4747]

Merry Farrell wrote:

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because standing there shouting 'bang!' never killed anyone?

on a serious note, america locks up a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country (more than china and iran, etc) so maybe its a deeper cultural thing.

Well, to be fair most of those people we lock up do horrible things like... smoke marijuana. Priorities, people!

[Set Harth]

DarthTom wrote:

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and many of the owners of those won't let you take them out of their cold dead hands.

That's the first sign you're dealing with the walking dead.

[Sindatur]

Set Harth wrote:

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What is your position on immolation or being eaten by piranha?

I'd still prefer the gunshot to the head for $500.00, Alex.

[Set Harth]

THAT IS TODAY'S DAILY DOUBLE!!!

YEE HAH!!!

[Kegg]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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Less gun-related crimes, perhaps, but then more knife-related crimes? More bat-related crimes? Why is it the gun to be demonized and not the person themself?

What, is that a rhetorical question?

This guy shooting his girlfriend was clearly impulsive, since he later helped her to the hospital. If he did not have a gun it's not likely he could have done as much damage as he did before he started regreeting it. Guns are particularly bad when it comes to impulsive violence like that.

And stuff like that shooting in Denver this year? You can't do that with a knife or a hurley stick. Guns are better at hurting people and hurting larger groups of people in shorter time periods, and if you can't get your head around that I have no idea what to say.

[PKerr]

Kegg wrote:

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What, is that a rhetorical question?

This guy shooting his girlfriend was clearly impulsive, since he later helped her to the hospital. If he did not have a gun it's not likely he could have done as much damage as he did before he started regreeting it. Guns are particularly bad when it comes to impulsive violence like that.

And stuff like that shooting in Denver this year? You can't do that with a knife or a hurley stick. Guns are better at hurting people and hurting larger groups of people in shorter time periods, and if you can't get your head around that I have no idea what to say.

The guy in Denver could just as easily went down a row of seats stabbing people in the back of the neck or carried a homemade explosive device or a milk jug full of gasoline in a backpack and lit people on fire, bottom line these people are sick and if they want to hurt or kill a bunch of people they could do so, blaming guns for sick peoples violent acts is ludicrous.

[the G-man]

Merry Farrell wrote:

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well in the uk we dont have easy or legal access to firearms. same as a lot of countries. the whole 'only criminals would have guns boo hoo i gotta protect myself against them' arguement just doesnt wash with me. sure theres a lot of crime. very little involves guns.

ABC News:

• After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns....
  
  But this didn't decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.

Reason magazine:

• In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.
  
  The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted....
  
  From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

[Kegg]

PKerr wrote:

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The guy in Denver could just as easily went down a row of seats stabbing people in the back of the neck

Do you have an actual example of a single guy murdering a large civilian crowd with a knife, or is this just random making stuff up?

blaming guns for sick peoples violent acts is ludicrous.

Give people access to simpler and deadlier ways to kill people and they will be able to kill more people with less cause. Give everyone a nuclear warhead, sure, maybe the vast majority of the human race would be responsible and never use it, but it'd only take a few people to blow up the world with them.

Nuclear warhead crime would not be the same thing as tank crime, and tank crime would not be the same thing as gun crime.

I do not get what's so hard to grasp about that. If you want to argue that illegalising guns in the United States would not solve the preponderance of guns, fine, I don't pretend to know otherwise. But if you want to insist they're somehow not significantly more dangerous than knives, that's something I can't understand.

[Drago-Kazov]

I do not get what's so hard to grasp about that. If you want to argue that illegalising guns in the United States would not solve the preponderance of guns, fine, I don't pretend to know otherwise. But if you want to insist they're somehow not significantly more dangerous than knives, that's something I can't understand.

They might be more dangerous but they have their drawbacks, one of them is that they are wery loud.

[PKerr]

Kegg wrote:

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Do you have an actual example of a single guy murdering a large civilian crowd with a knife, or is this just random making stuff up?

Give people access to simpler and deadlier ways to kill people and they will be able to kill more people with less cause. Give everyone a nuclear warhead, sure, maybe the vast majority of the human race would be responsible and never use it, but it'd only take a few people to blow up the world with them.

Nuclear warhead crime would not be the same thing as tank crime, and tank crime would not be the same thing as gun crime.

I do not get what's so hard to grasp about that. If you want to argue that illegalising guns in the United States would not solve the preponderance of guns, fine, I don't pretend to know otherwise. But if you want to insist they're somehow not significantly more dangerous than knives, that's something I can't understand.

Of course I'm not saying that a gun is less dangerous as a knife, ever hear the old saying never bring a knife to a gun fight?

What I am saying though is your average Joe doesn't have access to a gun as much as they would a knife, gallon of gas or even a car.

I'm saying IF, in your sick mind (not yours, you know what I mean) you wanted to kill a bunch of people a gun wouldn't be needed.

I wonder statistically (especially the last few years) how many people kill or have been killed while texting while they are driving a car as opposed to gun deaths.

I've heard of 3 in the last month or so right here in my local area.

One of my good friends was rear ended and killed a few years ago because some stupid kid was texting and didn't see that traffic had stopped on the interstate.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publics...cle1013923.ece

Shouldn't we outlaw cars or even texting as well?

We have been killing each other since the beginning of time, blame the person not the tool used to kill.

[Forbin]

The gun control argument is kind of moot, isn't it? The guy used a .22 rifle, which apart from shotguns is the LEAST restricted type of firearm in the world.

[Starkers]

the G-man wrote:

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ABC News:

• After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns....
  
  But this didn't decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.

Reason magazine:

• In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.
  
  The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted....
  
  From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

That’s a bit spurious really given that the banning of guns in the UK is unlikely to have had much of an impact on crime rates. We weren’t like the Wild West beforehand, it isn’t like every granny had a Saturday night special in her handbag and every homeowner had an M-16 under the bed, and for the majority of the population the post Dunblane legislation would have had very little impact on their daily lives.

I could quote stats from this year that shows crime rates in the UK continuing to fall as they have since ’95 (though any stats are open to interpretation, one the one hand there’s the question of whether people are reporting all crimes, but on the other it’s worth noting that something daft like 38% of reported gun crime in Scotland relates to air rifles!)

Still if we’re throwing articles around…

Overall, Branas's study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

This dovetails neatly with the view in the UK that carrying a knife makes you more likely to be stabbed.

This isn't gonna change your views, any more than your stats will change mine. All I know is that I live in the UK and have never felt unsafe because I didn't have a gun. I haven't grown up around guns so I have a hard time understanding the viewpoint of many Americans regarding guns, in the same way I imagine many Americans wouldn't understand my viewpoint.

And yes, nutters will always find a way (a month or so ago somebody went nuts with a transit van in Wales) but a gun does make it easier, and whilst cars kill people all the time that isn't their designed purpose, they're a mode of transport primarily, whereas a gun's primary function is to kill (whether it's people or animals).

One final point, I get the idea that owning a gun gives you a perceived security against criminals, but I find the notion that somehow gun ownership keeps the government in check rather silly. At the end of the day if a totalitarian regieme took over guns in private hands wouldn't make a huge difference. the army/police force are always going to outnumber you, and are always going to be better armed and better trained.

I realise there'll be a Red Dawn response to this but just wanted my tuppence worth

[Starkers]

Forbin wrote:

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The gun control argument is kind of moot, isn't it? The guy used a .22 rifle, which apart from shotguns is the LEAST restricted type of firearm in the world.

I'm just amazed he shot her in the back rather than the head given what was in the forefront of his mind at the time...

[PKerr]

BTW just so everyone knows, I am a HUGE believer in gun control, a full clip center mass is pretty damn good gun control IMO.

[Forbin]

^"Nice grouping!"