by jp1692 105 Replies latest jw experiences
There is nothing praise worthy in the act of intentionally killing innocent unexpected people, as a matter of fact its the most abhorrent human behavior there is in all human social interactions.
Lets not enable this devious malicious act to are best purposeful ability
@Cold Steel:
Yes, but how does one keep guns out of the wrong hands without taking them out of the right hands?
Exactly. How do we even try to answer that without first being able to ask the question? We can’t. The other gun thread started off really well, and then someone (maybe it was Fink, maybe not) jumped in with a ban on certain types of weapons. Fine. But it can’t stop there. It can’t stop with ambiguous word salad. You have to go deeper and be exact. We have to be able to ask what is meant by “assault rifle?” What is meant by “mentally ill?” Who makes that call? What is the process? Are we mixing up correlation with causation? (which is what we have been trying to get Fink to respond to)
Even something like how we define the “good” hands and “bad” hands.
Whenever something like this happens, people scream GUN CONTROL without giving any workable solutions. The government needs to register guns before they confiscate them, so any proposals that would implement registration is a non-starter by gun owners.
Yeah. Another thing to consider..
If we take away AR-15s, bad guys will use Ruger Mini-14s. Take away those and they'll use something else. These things don't stop until the guns are gone.
I agree.
In the 1960s, guns were plentiful. Even Sears had them. And anyone could buy them if they were old enough. But school shootings were unheard of. Crime was low and violence was unheard of if one stayed out of the wrong areas.
I was reading up on some gun stats. I don’t have them available right now, as I am on my phone. But even in the 70s the percentage of households with guns was a lot higher. There are more guns now, but also more people. The population was more “saturated”, for lack of a better term, with guns in the 70s. And there were a few shootings. But I mean that literally - like 5 to 10 for the entire decade.
But things are different now. We've become angry, resentful and distrustful as a nation. Our leaders are dishonest, conniving worms and they perhaps they always were. As we've become polarized no one wants to give. Those in the U.S. who voted for Hillary felt they were entitled to victory, and they took to the streets when she lost.
It's just the way things are now.I am not so sure. These shooters end up being people with troubled, abusive childhoods. You don’t find a lot of shooters from stable two-parent families. The breakdown in the family is likely another cause, which has gone up quite a bit since the 60s.
A lot more use of the SSRI anti-depressants as well.
I don't think that everyone with a mental illness of any kind should be prevented from owning a gun.-jwundubbed-
ummmm strange really so then if someone who is acknowledged to occasionally develop serious psychotic or schizophrenic delusions which occasionally get violent should still be able to own their own guns ??? -Finkelstein-
You misunderstood my meaning. I think that people with specific types of mental illnesses and who are violent or a danger to society should be prevented from owning or using guns, to the extent that is possible. I do not think that everyone with any type of mental illness should be prevented from owning guns. That would mean that someone who had depression once because of medication they were on for medical reasons could never own a gun, ever. That would mean that people taking medication for insomnia and migraines might not be able to own guns either since most of those medications are also anti-depressants and can actually cause mild depression or other mild mental illness symptoms.
Most people with mental illnesses are not dangerous and there is no reason to keep them from owning guns. I also don't think that it should be just about specific mental illnesses unless it is proven that every person with that specific type of mental illness is a danger to society if they own and use guns. That isn't typically how mental illnesses work. My mother is a sociopath and yet she isn't motivated to kill because that wouldn't get her what she wants. Most people assume that every sociopath is a killer. That isn't true. Most books, movies, TV, and documentaries discuss criminal sociopaths and never make any mention of the functioning sociopaths in the world that aren't criminals. I'm not qualified to say if non-criminal sociopaths should own guns. I do have enough knowledge to say that not every sociopath is the same, and there are many sociopaths who are neither serial killers nor any other sort of criminal. Most people make a lot of really wrong assumptions about what mental illness is and what it looks like. I don't think those people should get to decide who gets to carry and use guns and who shouldn't. I'm fine if they want to put in their opinion but I would really rather not have decisions about guns in the hands of people making sweeping biased judgments out of gross ignorance.
jwundubbed....I was going to comment on this "mentally ill" business, but I think you have covered it really well. I fully support what you have so eloquently written and I feel that people should realise that just because a person is unwell it does not follow that they are violent and "unhinged".
At one minute after 1 p.m. on Jan. 22, 2016, a teenager in La Loche, Sask., wrote a text message to a group of friends.
That message began: "im done with life."
The teen had just killed two people. He was about to kill more.
A friend replied to that initial message by writing: "Why?"
More than two years after the shooting, that question still hangs in the air.
During police interviews and in a statement he read in court, the shooter has given no rationale for why he killed four people or shot up his school.
During a week-long sentencing proceeding, the only hint at a motive was that the teen felt he was "hated at school."
But it's clear from court documents that a few minutes after that text message exchange with friends, the teen walked into the Dene Building of the La Loche Community School with a shotgun and opened fire.
By the time the carnage was over, two people in that school were dead — teacher Adam Wood, 35, and teacher's assistant Marie Janvier, 21 — and seven more were wounded.
read full account here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/documents-account-la-loche-what-happened-1.4545956
During police interviews and in a statement he read in court, the shooter has given no rationale for why he killed four people or shot up his school.
Do they need a rationale? The guy wanted to kill people. That's why he did it. But when shooters survive, they want to escape the death penalty. Is it so difficult to realize that they wanted to shoot people?
It bugs the hell out of me that the shooter is pleading guilty to escape the death penalty. I'm sorry, but 17 people are dead and it's only right he be the 18th casualty.
You know what else bugs the hell out of me? That teachers who are ex-military can't carry guns or even keep them in a nearby drawer when the jackasses who can are outside hiding behind their police cruisers waiting for the shooting to stop! These are the people who are supposed to be taking care of us, and they're hiding!
I don't know who first said it, but I agree with it: namely, that when seconds count the police are just minutes away.
Truer words were never spoken.
COLD STEEL:
It also bugs me about the guys hiding outside who didn’t go in for whatever excuse..and they are supposed to be “protecting” the public.
This whole thing is so screwed up on so many levels. Also, never mind the nonsense about “if you see something say something”. There’s a whole string of complaints and reports from concerned people a mile long - but yet NOBODY stopped this! It’s a failure on many levels..(Sort of like the attacks on 9/11). So everybody stop with the stupid slogans about “seeing something and saying something” if it’s not going to mean anything.
If he couldn’t have shot up the school, he’d pick another target IMO.
I wouldn’t be surprised if fear of lawsuits and political correctness is really at the bottom of this failure! Everybody can talk about gun control til they’re foaming at the mouth. There’s no way to stop attacks like this unless we ALSO address the mentality, culture, lack of decency in the country! This won’t happen of course because it’s.. um...politically incorrect!
That teachers who are ex-military can't carry guns or even keep them in a nearby drawer
Loaded guns in drawers in schools. Genius!
Utah teacher shoots herself in the leg while at school.
Just before 9 a.m., Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery accidentally discharged her gun while using a faculty restroom at Westbrook Elementary School in Taylorsville, the principal said in a letter to students’ parents. The incident occurred before school hours, and no children nor staff were present. The teacher was in legal possession of her gun on school property...
It's time to bear the cost of properly armed and well trained guards at every school in the USA. Then get on with working out how you got to this state and what can be done if anything.
America is a land without limits ... to stupidity.
This current issue can be traced back to leftist politics and the cancer they are to cities in America - the results are always the same, crime, crime, and more crime.
The sheriffs deputies waiting outside while kids were being shot, hiring of people based on politics instead of capability, the lack of action taken over the shooter and the escalation of violence without people being held to account for it are all a symptom of the same issue. To solve the problem you have to solve this, not try and take people's guns away which, when people are creating a society like this, isn't going to happen:
Read this article, it explains a lot about why and how this happened:
