This really gets to me hey. As a father, i could not fathom how hard it would be to lose a child. My heart really goes out to the parents, but seriously, the gun laws over there surely have to be tightened up now. I know it's the american thing about protect your property, right to bear arms etc, but fuck me, this was a bunch of kids who had their whole life ahead of them.
Makes me glad we live in this country to be honest, we're not perfect but we're a hell of a lot safer than most.
From what I read earlier, it was 20 kids lined up execution style, plus the principle and school psychologist. The shooter was a 24 year old whose mother worked at the school, but he'd killed her at home, and his dad at his home somewhere else...
Drives home just how much freedom guns don't bring people.
USA need to tighten up the security ten fold at schools. The security should have been at a level where they could have stopped this fucker at the gates/in his tracks, asked him wtf he's doing there and check his bags etc.
I don't think changing gun laws will help much, if someone really wants a gun, they will get a gun. The population there is over 300 million, how on earth are you going to police that? Each school needs more security presence.
I don't understand why people like this take lives of innocent people (in this case little kids), if your not happy with your life then just kill yourself instead of others ay.
USA need to tighten up the security ten fold at schools. The security should have been at a level where they could have stopped this fucker at the gates/in his tracks, asked him wtf he's doing there and check his bags etc.
I don't think changing gun laws will help much, if someone really wants a gun, they will get a gun. The population there is over 300 million, how on earth are you going to police that? Each school needs more security presence.
I don't understand why people like this take lives of innocent people (in this case little kids), if your not happy with your life then just kill yourself instead of others ay.
Why is this level of security required no where else in the civilized world ?
Seriously they need to look into peoples mental health in the us!
I refer you to the DH radio station/suicide thread.
The attitudes of some idiots here alone which is but a small sample size of the populace is the whole reason mental health will never get more funding, recognition and early intervention.
The NRA/gun lobbyists will be out in force. I still remember the speech Charlton Heston gave (posted below) which, if memory serves was shortly after the Columbine massacre.
I think this comment I saw on youtube sums up the retarded thought process of the gun nuts. "It is better to have warm live hands with a gun in it than cold dead ones without."
Ban your guns already, make them require a license with purpose at the least. There is no reason people 'need' to own pistols and all sorts of other weapons. This is a stupid thing to let people just have.
One of the idiot fuckwit Americans I'm "friends" with on Facebook (as opposed to the totally cool Americans I also have on there) has come out with the following gem:
Today many innocent lives were lost, please pray for those children and the families affected. May the Lord comfort them in this extremely difficult time. All teachers from here on out should be armed to protect there classrooms so a tragedy like this never happens again!
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people like this?
xxxxx in this case they will have to take away Spoons also. Spoons make people fat you know... If you do your research you'll find that People have saved more lives with the help of firearms then taken them.
Very sad, poor bastards left behind to deal with this. Being a dad of a 3 1/2 year old I think that if something like that happened it would just about finish me. What's even sadder is that as bad as it is to admit, these stories raise less rage and sadness and sense of real grief than they once did. We are slowly becoming desenitised to this level of violence, and I think it must be difficult to have perspective living in the US when this is almost taken as a given.
Someone I know on FB posted the following:
[The GF] had a great idea. We should have the national guard deployed in sufficient numbers at every school, movie theater, and public gathering place. We should be like Israel. We should be able to protect our people against these things. That is the #1 duty of a government.
Not sure if he was being sarcastic..
In my opinion, this sort of thinking is part of the problem (I suspect after his election ranting on FB his comment was actually serious). Yeah, don't take responsibility and actually reduce the number of guns in the community, just militarise and move more towards a police state where complacency (regarding putting gun control in the too hard basket) and fear dictate how society operates.
Take away that bloody right to arms; carry conceal and open carry wild west bullshit.... That is plain rediculous. Search Youtube on all the arseholes that flex their rights in regards to open carry... Just useless.
Jesus christ. This is a really bad one. Shootings like this could almost be described as common in the US but occasionally one like this comes along that reminds you exactly what some sick people are capable of.
because criminals will all just stop carrying guns after they're banned. toll saves the world again.
Then do what? Sit back and let it happen. Our laws work well here, i so no reason why the same logic could not be applied in some way to the US? I was honestly emotional watching that video. I can't believe somebody would do something like this. For some reason this one has really driven the point home.
Still, nothing will be done on gun laws. The tears look good on TV but are ultimately hollow, meanwhile the gun manufactures are rubbing their hands as they are about to get another boost in sales as dumb ass Americans feel a need to protect them selves with a gun and partly from a fear that actual gun regulation will happen this time round. But the same people rubbing their hands have made sure that won't happen. Win-win for them.
Such a sad day, feel deeply sorry for all the parents now left with a hollow memory of their children. Already games are getting the bad end of the stick, the mis-labelled killer Ryan Lanza (who is actually the brother of the real killer) "liked" the Mass Effect page and suddenly people flooded it calling out that it was the cause of this horrific event. America logic.
Our laws work well here, i so no reason why the same logic could not be applied in some way to the US?
Our gun laws succeeded because all they required were a little political will and a simple act of parliament. The same logic wouldn't work for the US because there's limited political will, 50 very different and forthright jurisdictions and a pesky constitutional amendment to deal with.
Our gun laws succeeded because all they required were a little political will and a simple act of parliament.The same logic wouldn't work for the US because there's limited political will, 50 very different and forthright jurisdictions and a pesky constitutional amendment to deal with.
I think I have worked out why this keeps happening,
in other countries, if you do something wrong, it is your fault,
in the US often when something wrong happens, they look to blame others, rather than accept fault,
ergo, if you're in this dark and down place, you might look at it all, and take your life, unless you're in the US, where it is clearly everyone else making you feel like this, time to kill them all, them yourself
I think I have worked out why this keeps happening, in other countries, if you do something wrong, it is your fault, in the US often when something wrong happens, they look to blame others, rather than accept fault, ergo, if you're in this dark and down place, you might look at it all, and take your life, unless you're in the US, where it is clearly everyone else making you feel like this, time to kill them all, them yourself
But he did take his own life, it's just that he had 3 guns readily available to him and used them to kill his mother and a bunch of kids before hand. There is no getting around the fact that the US is flooded with guns.
Apparently his mother was an avid range shooter, and it was her 3 guns that he used to kill her and then 27 others.If only she had had more guns and more training experience, she would have been so much safer.
Kind of an unfair poke, since she wouldn't have been expecting to be shot by her son. Even if she was expecting it, who's to say she would have been able to pull the trigger on her own son.
If it was a burglar, however, she may very well have survived it.
... Because most violence is otherwise done in honour-bound duels with regulations and no surprises?..
This is what I don't get about the pro "guns to defend myself" people - if you're not the person starting the violence, you're probably already dead, and didn't see it coming. She was heavily armed and heavily experienced, and it caused the problem in the first place, not in any way prevented it. She took her mentally ill kid to the firing range regularly, and kept a huge collection of guns in her house - and created a mass murderer for it, not gained better security.
I'm pretty sure that it's actually just that they have houses full of guns.
not really, sure all that easy access doesnt help, but hey, in other euro countries where every man past a certain age had at least one military gun in the house, it wasn't mass shooting that changed the rule, it was suicides
these people are driven into a dark place, be it thru bullying or mental illness, the issue is when the blame others for how they feel, and feel they need to take it out on them.
I'm sure the NRA will/has torn it apart but here's an interesting article about the Harvard School of Public Health finding that in wealthy countries more guns result in higher murder rate, even if you exclude the US:
Would the crazy person have killed as many people with out the firearm ? ... of course not.
Guns enable people to kill people faster than most other methods.
limiting the access to the guns I dont have an issue, however it doesn't solve the problem (how people are getting to the point where they feel this is the only option)
if you dont fix the cause, and ban all the guns, it will be bombings, or cars driving thru halls or waiting areas, stabbings on school buses
education, and intervention are going to be long term better fixing than the knee jerk reaction off bans
It's not exactly a "knee jerk reaction" when it's been decades in the making, for attempting to slow these continuous horrible events.
I'm not sure what "only the criminals will have guns" is supposed to be arguing for, we criminalise or sorts of undesirable things from driving fast around schools, driving with a blood alcohol level above x, to flying planes without a license, having certain guns, etc. These are pragmatic and realistic solutions to these problems, many will change their habits to fit the law and avoid fines or revoking of licenses.
nerf, dont add extras into my argument (crims have guns etc)
and this argument comes up as a huge passionate thing every year (about how often there is a mass shooting in the US), it is knee jerk, and it will all calm down till the next one,
the way the US works, each state would have to agree to any massive changes, that isn't going to happen
if you look at the problem (kids getting to the point where they lash out, and kill fellow school mates) not the method (shootings)
but removing one method, another will become first choice,
That was in response to somebody who quoted me earlier.
and this argument comes up as a huge passionate thing every year (about how often there is a mass shooting in the US), it is knee jerk, and it will all calm down till the next one,
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. You seem to be arguing with yourself. "It's a regular terrible thing" followed by "Calling it a terrible regular thing is just a knee jerk reaction because it happened yet again, there's no actual reason to call it that."
but removing one method, another will become first choice,
Killing without a tailored killing tool is a much harder task, and much easier to stop. Tools exist for a reason and change the difficulties of their unique problems, you can't just throw that part of reality out.
"Taking away computers won't actually change IT achievements, people can just use an abacus or pen and paper."
"Better not take away nukes from Iran and North Korea, they'll just knife everybody in their target city if you take away their nuclear bomb option. Best not worry about regulating nuclear material so that it doesn't fall into the hands of islamic terrorists, they'll just find another way, any pragmatic action ever taken for security is actually hopeless as of right now because our brains have just fallen out out and we are no longer practical people."
"If you take away the easiest and most deadly form of killing machines, killing won't have aaaanyyy identifiable mechanism for how it might be reduced.' Your logic is broken, not that it's logic, you're really just spouting the typical senseless catchphrases of the gun masturbators. Think.
Maybe if all the kids were carrying then this wouldn't have been as bad as it was. The answer is MORE guns, not less. Implement mandatory gun practice for children from the age of 2 onward.
Better not take away nukes from Iran and North Korea, they'll just knife everybody in their target city if you take away their nuclear bomb option
I lol'd but damn that is the truth right there.
I like the gun laws here, there's still a lot of fuckwits with guns, but bloody hell, there's a fuck load of them without guns and that's how it should be.
i'm almost happy for the crims to have guns if they are mostly just busting caps in one another's arses
don't think anyone posted this yet - gun crime stats in Australia showing before/after the new gun laws brought in after Port Arthur in 1996, and a corresponding drop in gun moida
Our gun laws succeeded because all they required were a little political will and a simple act of parliament.
The same logic wouldn't work for the US because there's limited political will, 50 very different and forthright jurisdictions and a pesky constitutional amendment to deal with.
Not to mention that we are an island with a population that is 1/15 of the US. It would be a completely different story with Mexico and several other developing nations right next door.
Not to mention that we are an island with a population that is 1/15 of the US. It would be a completely different story with Mexico and several other developing nations right next door.
I'm with Nerf. So what if only the crims have guns then, they usually aren't the ones going and conducting these shooting sprees.
When I was in Vegas last year I ended up chatting with a man who turned out to be a very proud member of the NRA and proceeded to show us his membership card and licences for teaching shotgun and rifle use.
"How do you protect yourself in a deadly situation or what if you were going to be robbed?"
"Well luckily, in Australia if you were being attacked or robbed, we would be under the assumption the attacker DOESN'T have a gun".
He couldn't believe how "under-armed" we could all be. "What about your civil rights?!?!" We had a bit of discussion and he couldn't believe our gun laws, started calling us Aussie Commies!
There is a real stigma with mental health in the US and that needs more importance put on it too.
"Well luckily, in Australia if you were being attacked or robbed, we would be under the assumption the attacker DOESN'T have a gun".
On that note, most police in the UK don't even carry guns now, and officers have explained that they don't want to, as it just raises the stakes for criminals. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19641398
I was outside a little shop in st lucia when there was an attempted robbery, the guy used a knife and couldn't do jack shit with it. I think that the woman at the counter actually fought him off with scissors while screaming so loudly that her husband came down and sent the guy running.
i was in a servo at red hill and a little crumb tried to rob the place by saying he had a gun in his jacket. Cashier fucking decked him =0 most unexpected thing ever.
The following quote is pretty much sums up the stupid infesting the US political system:
But others like Republican congressman Louie Gohmert wish the school principal had had a weapon of her own.
"I wish to God she had had an M4 [military assault rifle] in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."
Taken from ABC News, and this guy is a policy maker. That is the sort of quote I expect from a 15 year old kid, not from a 60 year old 'professional'. (BTW he thinks more guns are the answer...)
"I wish to God she had had an M4 [military assault rifle] in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids."
Yeh the problem is that lots of Americans love their guns too much, and honestly believe that there is a little Rambo in everyone waiting to strike down with great vengeance and furious anger.
Gun control would work but its a massively hard sell.
if there was ever a time that gun reform happened in the US it would be now. The NRA and associated gun clubs all supported the Republicans, in the election just gone, so if Obama were to push for it early in his 2nd term he might have some level of success. Americans do love their guns though and it would be quite difficult to achieve this.
Obama's got a fresh four years to do something right. He doesn't have to worry about re-election, but there's little that can be done. Let's say he goes best-case - bans new purchases, makes it illegal to be in possession of firearms, and issues a buyback at massive cost to the US treasury. The number of firearms that would still be out there because people insist it's unconstitutional, and because groups of organised crime realise just how easier it would make things for them when they have all the guns - I doubt the US would become a safer place, such is the sheer number of firearms they have for every man, woman and child.
While yes, having barely any firearms would solve so many problems, firearms are so deeply entrenched in the US that I can't see there being any going back.
Caught this off reddit earlier - Onion did a story, which while satire is probably the best article I've seen on the matter.
WASHINGTON—Following the fatal shooting this morning at a Connecticut elementary school that left at least 27 dead, including 20 small children, sources across the nation shook their heads, stifled a sob in their voices, and reported fuck everything. Just fuck it all to hell.
Her story is sad, yet she's arguing for the perpetuation of a scenario where you need weapons to have an improbable chance of saving yourself from crazier people with weapons, rather than just going the way that the rest of the world did and largely stopping weapons from being out there in the first place.
"If only those preschoolers had guns in their purses, there'd totally be less killing"
@Nerf The UK police has never been armed with firearms, other then their special firearms officers (Kind of like SWAT).
Same in Ireland. They carry battons and their wits into battle.
Edit: Just to clarify, that's the Garda on the beat. My second cousin is a detective and carries a gun. Was actually a bit of an odd feeling when I was visiting and she came around to say hi and she just put the gun on the coffee table next to her hand bag.
Its funny, was reading that the UK police are actually RESISTANT to getting firearms. They feel it will interfere and make it harder for them to do their core role, community policing. They want people to feel they can safely come to the cops for help.
This is surely the first time people have rushed to buy an item that's at risk of being banned.
Awesome sarcasm! I bet you felt really proud of yourself for that one!!
Stocking up on something they're worried will be banned in the near future is the understandable part of it. The fact that they want or think they need assault rifles in the first place is the bit that is actually disturbing, dipshit.
Not to mention the parts unrelated to reactionary purchasing:
Freedom Group, the weapon's manufacturer, reported a 20 percent increase in revenue for the first nine months of this year. “The manufacturers [of the AR-15] can’t keep up with the demand,” Caselnova said.
But I guess you didn't even read down to that part cause you were too excited about posting your hilariously intelligent sarcastic reply!
Despite them being banned, you would not believe the number of discarded Fireworks shells and packages I find around where my new house is being built.
Despite them being banned, you would not believe the number of discarded Fireworks shells and packages I find around where my new house is being built.
Heh, I remember cracker night before it was banned. If you are saying the ban hasn't impacted the number of fireworks in circulation I have to seriously disagree. For the month before the night it was like Christmas decorations, they were everywhere!
For the record I miss cracker night and wish dumbshit people didn't fuck it up.
Well I don't have a problem with civilians owning semi-automatic rifles Kos, so the fact that the manufacturers sales are increasing doesn't disturb me at all.
Cracker night was awesome. If you were born after the 70s you probably missed it.
For any young child growing up in the suburbs of 1970s Australia, there were three days of any year that you held as holy. One was your birthday, one was Christmas, one – and by far the most primordially sensual, wondrous and potentially lethal to your young life – was Crackernight.
Crackernight was a night of skyrockets, bungers, po-hahs, thunders, Tom Thumbs, ball-shooters, throwdowns, Roman candles, blazing parachutes, Catherine wheels and more. If my birthday celebrated my birth, Christmas the birth of Christ, then Crackernight was my childhood’s annual pagan festival. One night a year, the infinite normality of the suburbs was shot with utter magic.
Basically, one night a year we used to stock up on fireworks, and then set them off. Adults would get drunk and people would do stupid things with fireworks and sometimes got pretty hurt. There were bonfires and huge parties, and we made scarecrows and then burned them on said bonfires. There was something definitely wicked and darkly fun for a kid to build a man made of straw and clothes, knowing he was going to burn, watching the bonfire eat his legs etc.
These days the closest thing kids get to it is holding a fucking sparkler under the watchful eye of multiple helicopter parents. Sparklers were what we used to get down to when the fun stuff was all exploded, and we used to throw them at each other. I miss cracker night. It was the antithesis of the politically correct nanny state and its first casualty.
I'm wondering if that shotgun ban mentioned from 1996 here has been overturned, because I pretty damn sure you can have a shot gun here.
It wasn't a total shotgun ban, just pump-action and semi-auto shotguns. The video words it a bit poorly by saying "Rapid-fire rifles and shotguns were banned".
It wasn't a total shotgun ban, just pump-action and semi-auto shotguns. The video words it a bit poorly by saying "Rapid-fire rifles and shotguns were banned".
Ah, I see.
Just read this John Howard opinion piece from The Age, which says "A key component of the 1996 measure, which banned the sale, importation and possession of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, was a national buy-back scheme involving the compulsory forfeiture of newly illegal weapons." So yea that helps clear that up, there must be an acception for double barrel shotguns though. Probably due to the limited shots before a reload.
Not to mention that we are an island with a population that is 1/15 of the US. It would be a completely different story with Mexico and several other developing nations right next door.
Canada, Europe?
I think you've missed the point. I was simply addressing how difficult (and moreso costly) it would be to implement such a policy in the US given their proximity to developing nations whose arms issuance policies are by no means strict. Realistically, outlawing most weapons in the US (with a policy similar to our own) would just give rise to a huge black market.
Our decision was made so much simpler because Australians didn't have the psychological attachment to guns that so many Americans do, or the separate jurisdictions previously mentioned, such strong lobbyists and because of the reason I previously mentioned. Education is key.
On a side note, I have no idea why you mentioned Canada...
Was wondering how long it would take before video games would be brought up in this tragic case...
"Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza covered his bedroom walls in posters of guns and tanks and spent hours playing violent video games such as Call of Duty, according to reports."
Obama the sly cunt goes on air crying (or at least pretending to) and condemns the school shooting but then orders drone strikes and kills 10 afghan children just a few days after. Not to mention the 150 children that got blown up to pieces by drone strikes in Pakistan. But obviously those children don't matter as much as American children so it's ok.
I don't understand how the debate about video games didn't just start and end at the point made in the TYT video, that many other countries around the world play as much or more violent video games and they just don't have the shootings that the US has.
Obama the sly cunt goes on air crying (or at least pretending to) and condemns the school shooting but then orders drone strikes and kills 10 afghan children just a few days after. Not to mention the 150 children that got blown up to pieces by drone strikes in Pakistan. But obviously those children don't matter as much as American children so it's ok.
The war deaths are horrible, but there's no comparison between the intentional targeted murder of children without reason or purpose, and the casualties in the war with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The very people who they're fighting are going into schools and shooting, beheading, and poisoning students, yet that doesn't get a mention in your analysis of that situation?
If the Taliban did gain control of Pakistan, how many people do you think would die?
I don't understand how the debate about video games didn't just start and end at the point made in the TYT video, that many other countries around the world play as much or more violent video games and they just don't have the shootings that the US has.How is not any more clear than that?
TYT don't have the audience to drive it home, refer to Malcom Turnbulls tweet at Rupert Murdoch on page one.
I didn't mean that people should get the point from that specific source, I just meant how has that line of reasoning not shot this whole thing down long ago... I guess as usual it all just comes down to looking for something easy to blame (just like the prank call suicide thing was).
Awesome video Trauma. I always like hearing what totalbiscuit has to say about stuff. Plus there's something about his voice which makes listening so much easier.
