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Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
We had an assault weapons ban for over a decade. It didn't have any effect, so there was no justification to extend it, which is what I've been saying over and over in this thread and people have refused to believe it. We tried it, that's why I say it doesn't work. My argument has always been: focus on the people who are going to do these things, and remedies to not just stop these mass killings, but the killings in Oakland and Detroit. But if those remedies don't include banning guns, they're ignored or dismissed.
I'm glad the media has been focusing on the mental health aspect, but unfortunately, blow hards are now, typically and stupidly, going after video games and movies and that "something needs to be done about that" even though every study has shown there is no link. It's kind of like the gun debate, people are railing against what they personally don't like instead of the facts and discussing the realities of the problem. Which is why mental health and the shooter have hardly even been mentioned in this 16 page thread.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
More Americans deaths are caused by guns in 6 months than all terrorists attacks in the last 25 years, the Iraq war and Afghanistan war combined. Hmmmmm... That right to bear arms sure seems to be doing wonders.
You know why the second ammendment exists I assume? I'll give you a hint...it was made lond before the NRA, special interest groups, and lobbyists.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
But those kids could have just as easily died in a bus accident due to a drunk driver.
Yes, in the US. Our laws on drunk driving are so strict the problem are virtually non-existant.
So? What does that have to do with anything?
It's hilarious that you ban a fucking Kinder egg chocolate because it can be dangerous, but allow this nonsense to continue. Oh, dear lord where IS the freedom? Kinder egg doesn't kill kids, kids kill themselves by their actions...or something like that right? Stick that toy in your mouth and you suffocate. And you seem to ban that in a second. But gun sprees, naaah.
Everyone else seems to get it.
Except half of your population or so.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
By Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine
........
What's to blame for this and other recent mass shootings in the United States? There are no easy answers, but Americans are pointing their fingers at several possibilities.
Too many guns. Republican Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative member of the National Rifle Association who posed with a rifle and promised to protect the Second Amendment in his election campaign videos, said on Monday that it's time to reconsider our nation's gun laws.
"I'm a proud outdoors-man and huntsman, like many Americans, and I like shooting, but this doesn't make sense," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I don't know anyone in the sporting or hunting arena that goes out with an assault rifle. I don't know anybody that needs 30 rounds in a clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about."
"Seeing the massacre of so many innocent children has changed everything," Manchin added. "Everything has to be on the table and I think it will be."
"The gun is not the issue. If someone else there had a gun, maybe they could have stopped this," Benjamin Torres, owner of Betor Roofing in Danbury, told Reuters on Monday. "The bad guys are going to get guns illegally anyway."
"Personally, I feel safer where there's guns," 19-year-old Peter Griffin, an apprentice cabinetmaker who owns three guns, told Reuters while shopping in the hunting section of a Dick's Sporting Goods in Danbury. "I don't want to go to any gun-free zones any more."
A need for better gun laws -- or better enforcement of ones already on the books. The guns used in Friday's mass shooting were legally purchased and licensed—albeit to the shooter's mother, who was his first victim. Nancy Lanza was shot four times in the head with one of the many guns she kept in her own home for protection. Current gun laws do not require applicants to disclose whether the applicant has ever voluntarily undergone treatment for mental illness, or whether someone with mental illness lives in the home where the guns will be kept.
Data from 2011 shows that the majority of Americans support bans on high-capacity ammunition clips (which hold more than 10 bullets) and on AK-47-style assault rifles, think that all gun purchasers should undergo background checks to see if they've ever committed a felony, agree that gun-owners should have to register their weapons with local government, and that the mentally ill should not be allowed to possess firearms. According to a CNN survey taken after the Aurora, Colorado shooting earlier this year, a slim majority of Americans -- 54 percent -- are opposed to limiting the number of guns a person can own; when new polls are conducted, they will show if sentiments have changed after the Newtown tragedy.
Mental illness and autism. While some parents are reluctant to address mental health issues in their children -- or themselves -- others find that getting even basic treatment is difficult.
"A persistent shortfall in funding has made access to community-based services difficult for families and patients so that accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatments are not readily available for many who need them," Dr. David Sack MD, CEO of Elements Behavioral Health, told Yahoo! Shine. "Patients with mental health problems, because of their illnesses, often reject services offered to them and are vulnerable to alcohol and other substance abuse which it harder to help them."
Earlier this year, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said that tougher gun laws would not have prevented the mass shooting that killed 12 and wounded 58 others in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in July. Though he now says that he's willing to discuss restricting high-capacity magazines, he feels that educating people about mental illness and supporting those who are dealing with mental health problems could be a better way of addressing violent tragedies.
"That's something we can do immediately without getting into some of the battles of gun legalization or restricting access to guns," Hickenlooper, a Democrat, told CNN.
There's also some confusion about the characteristics of mental illness. The Sandy Hook school shooter's brother, Ryan Lanza, told ABC News that his younger brother "is autistic, or has Asperger's syndrome and a 'personality disorder'," prompting many to wonder whether there could be a link between violent behavior and autism.
A lack of support for parents. In an essay that went viral over the weekend, mother of four Liza Long wrote about what it's like to parent a child with mental illness.
"I love my son," she said of her 13-year-old. "But he terrifies me."
"When he's in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He's in a good mood most of the time," she wrote at The Blue Review. "But when he's not, watch out. And it's impossible to predict what will set him off."
He screams insults and has threatened to kill her—and himself—more than once. His 7- and 9-year-old siblings know to lock themselves in the family car when he gets violent. He's spent time in the ER and in mental hospitals, been diagnosed with a host of disorders, been on antipsychotic and mood-altering drugs, subjected to strict behavioral plans. And nothing has worked. His social worker says that the best way to get help for her son would be to have him charged with a crime, to create a paper trail. "No one will pay attention to you unless you've got charges," Long was told.
Hundreds of responses to the essay show that Long is not alone. Still, amid the outpouring of compassion are plenty of comments and blog posts calling her an unfit parent, accusing her of hiding her own history of mental illness and violent tendencies.
Violent video games and pop culture. Could the popularity of first-person shooter video games, violent movies, and TV shows that glorify killing have desensitized Americans?
"There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge—they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games," Hickenlooper said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Perhaps that's why all these assault weapons are used."
"Our hearts go out to the families of the victims and to all of those affected by this devastating event," Edwina Rogers, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, told Yahoo! Shine in a statement. "No family—no child—should ever have to experience a tragedy such as this."
*condensed because of size. full article:
http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/n … 00959.html
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
Half of our population? DCK I love you, but you literally are lost on this.
There are PLENTY of Democrat/Liberal/Progressive-minded people with MANY guns in their closet. Pistols in their car, etc.
This is something that reaches beyond the borders of party politics and how those types see the world. This is not a 50/50 thing, it's bigger than that.
DCK do you know what's happened here in America since the tragedy?
GUNS SALES HAVE SKYROCKTED
That's right, SKYROCKETED. Ammo sales are up.
It might not make sense to Europeans, and frankly I don't know how much sense it makes to me, but this is the country we live in. It's who we are and we love guns. We fight violence with violence, when shooting occurs, we shoot back, or want to. That's just what we do.
20 kids died as a result of a gun, and guns sales WENT UP. If that doesn't give you any idea of an American mindset, I don't know what will.
It's not changing, and despite that, it's not the actual problem. Either way, I do agree there should be a FULL assault weapons ban. I had an argument recently with my great uncle, a former Navy man who raised a Navy son and a Marine son. So we all went at it about assault weapons, and my great uncle was dead convinced we needed assault weapons in this country. Some blah blah blah about protecting against the government.
Whatever... bottom line is NO ONE can convince me of a reasonable argument why a private citizen in America needs an assault rifle. No one. I have guns, and even I can't wrap my mind around it. Like Intercourse said, "a batallion is not gonna attack your house". No man would ever hunt with an assault weapon.
I don't get at all why they even exist in private hands.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
http://s9.postimage.org/s6jq9wh67/Soto_RIP_Page.jpg
Obama wants your guns on the 10th.
Tell him good luck. Also tell him that page was created several days before the attack.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
It would never happen. Obama has skated on thin ice for years with racists that have wanted him dead. He ever even gets gassy and short and demands you turn in your guns... his own fucking SS officers would take a shot at him.
It will never happen. We're TOO INDOCTRINATED. People equate guns with safety (yeah I know). They'd think Obama was the anti-Christ. Not that they don't already.
Re: Elementary School Shooting in US
Unless the SS officers want your guns too of course.
They can't get you to hand them over, but they can surely take them if they really want to. That wouldn't mean guns would disappear from the market, far from, but it would ensure that law abiding citizens won't have them. Which is obviously what the government wants at some point, cattle without horns.
