After the terrible school shooting in America the debate (of gun control) will warm up once again. Like any issue it’s got two sides but one thing I think everybody can agree on is the rate of fire. To have automatic weapons in the hands of madmen is not a good thing. Maybe you need a gun to protect yourself but if the problem is not solved after four or five shots it is not going to be solved by another 20 or 30. The guns used in this shooting was not low caliber, slow, small magazine capacity weapons. You’ll never be able to stop some madman from killing but what could have been a two or three killed tragedy is now a twenty six massacre.
And if he didn’t have any guns at all he could always have cooked up a bomb from fertilizer and taken out the whole school.
It really doesn’t matter what laws you pass, if some dude decides to take out something he’ll find a way to do it: Guns or no guns.
Now a different question: Would this have ended quicker had any/more teachers been in possession of (auto or non) firearms?
Would one even attempt it if you knew you’d be gunned down after your second shot? Assuming this person did it for some kind of noteriety, I’d say no.
Edit: Moreover, we live in a country where fully-automatic weapons are NOT allowed to be owned by civilians. And as a result the old adage rings true: The only people with the AK-47’s are criminals. Do you think that is a more reasonable situation than being afforded the same weaponry used by criminals to defend yourself?
In some US states you can buy a gun in the same manner as buying a pair of tekkies. No ID, no background checks, just slap the cash on the counter. Its a scary thought. Most (if not all) of the school shootings are done by under-20’s with access to their parent’s weapons. There should be some sort of gun control imo, although disarming the population in its entirety should not be a scenario - here its a major schlep to purchase and licence a gun and although we have the criminal aspect to content with, we have’nt had any mass school shootings (that I know of), generally our kids tend to stick scissors into each other, and scissors can only kill one at a time.
As for shooting criminals, I’m always reminded of two incidents (one fairly recently) where families were feeling threatened and actually used their guns for “protection”, one shot his housekeeper’s 9 year old grandson and the other his own daughter through a closed door when she came to their bedroom on hearing a disturbance. Both tragedies, both were preventable.
I think that if everybody is armed, then in such a situation very soon everybody will be shooting at everybody else, because it can be difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, and most people are not well enough trained to remain calm. On the other hand, the right to own a gun is not just a safety issue, but also one of civil liberties.
My suggestion for a compromise: anyone can own a gun, even without a license, as long as it is a muzzle loader. Then people who like shooting can still have their guns, but massacres become pretty difficult to pull off. 
Posted by: BoogieMonster And if he didn't have any guns at all he could always have cooked up a bomb from fertilizer and taken out the whole school.It really doesn’t matter what laws you pass, if some dude decides to take out something he’ll find a way to do it: Guns or no guns.
Where do you draw the line? Are we going to sell nukes at the corner shop in the end? To do something quickly, people usually use the tools available. This guy could have got himself some belt-feed Arnold Schwarzenegger type gun, and really do some damage, but he did not. I think this was a spur of the moment thing, and if he could only get hold of, say a 6 shot revolver, he would have used that.
Just a bottom up approach to control would not work. You are also going to need a top down effort. You need to control whats available.
Regarding the AK’s here in SA: The genie is out the bottle and these things are on the street. That is a problem, but to just come up with something bigger, faster or maybe thicker body amour is a silly exercise. The other side would just evolve something better. I think the biggest problem is the uncontrolled manufacturing of weapons and since this happen world wide it is going to need a world wide solution.
There’s another monumental difference: A pair of scissors wasn’t designed and manufactured for the express purpose of killing.
To the best of my knowledge, fully automatic weapons are illegal all over the US.
'Luthon64
I believe that there is a lot of truth in this:-
Morgan Freeman’s take on what happened yesterday :
"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
It’s because of the way the media reports it
. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed
people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
No offense to you personally, but I always find it quaint that people think things like this can be controlled at all. “Madmen” don’t give two hoots about licenses.
Nope, You can legally own a fully automatic firearm in the USA. There are reality TV serieS on discovery devoted to gunsmiths in the USA and the crazy stuff they build their clients. AFAIK this is down to how they interpret their “right to bear arms”. At worst some states regulate them.
Now, which country has the higher incidence of gun violence: SA or the USA, and is the problem gun control/legislation or societal?
For what it’s worth, in Switzerland every male citizen is issued a rifle as part of their military service. This they keep for life. Still think a proliferation of guns is what leads to violence?
Yeah, madmen are completely incapable of acquiring nuclear arms. Would you prefer it if NK were the ONLY country to sport nukes? Mutual destruction is a powerful motivator for world peace.
To do something quickly, people usually use the tools available. This guy could have got himself some belt-feed Arnold Schwarzenegger type gun, and really do some damage, but he did not. I think this was a spur of the moment thing, and if he could only get hold of, say a 6 shot revolver, he would have used that.
Hey even a 6-shot revolver with a couple of spare clips does a lot of damage if you’re the only person for miles that’s armed.
You need to control whats available.
You can’t, forget it.
I’m with ingwe, make society better, don’t glamorize murderers. That’s where you start.
I still come back to drawing the line somewhere. If hand grenades were freely available there would have been a few incidents by now. It will probably take a few (the sensationalist media, the gun culture, gun control) things to slow this down but to just sit around waiting for the next one is stupid.
Hey even a 6-shot revolver with a couple of spare clips does a lot of damage if you're the only person for miles that's armed.There was something like 100 shots fired. That gives him about a 25% hit rate. With a 6 shooter and say 3 reloads he would have hit maybe 5. A lot better than 27, still bad but better.
Its not just the guns, mr Obama, and its not just the media, mr Freeman, in spite of what we saw on Natural Born Killers. And its not just the violence on TV, or pornography, or the church, or the Bible, or the hormones in the beef. Its not just any one thing. This calibre of sociopathy is set off by a chaotic amalgam of factors, far too complex to address by specific new laws or new ways of writing the news. Somewhere there will always be a nutjob on the edge, and sometimes there are no solutions.
I’m no psychologist but if the madman had no access to any form of gun, I believe he would’ve revenged himself on his mother at the very least (maybe with an axe?!) and then possibly run amok with whatever…even a pick-truck would’ve wreaked havoc. Free access to guns merely makes the killing more efficient. I agree with RK: the nature of this type of sociopathy is far too complex to resolve with simple solutions such as banning guns. My question is why does this seem to take place so often in the US and why is it so often found aimed at schools etc.? The chappy in Finland was an isolated incident with political ramifications.
And now the Westboro loonies want to have their say. http://www.inquisitr.com/440545/anonymous-hacks-the-westboro-baptist-church-posts-all-their-personal-information/
Even in SA it is not all that easy to obtain a firearm illegally. If I wanted to go and shoot a couple of people, I would not know how to obtain a gun on the black market. Surely many people do know how, but I must reject the idea that the supply of firearms cannot be controlled. It would not be 100% effective in the same way that one cannot prevent 100% of bank robberies, but by and large it can be done in an environment where laws are enforced.
The type of weapon that should be legal would depend on the owner’s self-defence requirements. I am inclined to agree with Tweefo that a six round revolver might be the answer in most cases. It has the advantage that you cannot reload by quickly exchanging clips like with a pistol, which places a restriction on the number of rounds that can be fired in a short period, so it would be unsuitable for a massacre, yet provide adequate protection in most domestic situations.
The type of gun used in the shooting. This is a gun designed to kill, to kill as many in as short a period as possible. This is not a self defense weapon. A society that allow things like this on the street is flawed in a deep way. Problem is that we follow America’s way in lots of things.
I agree that there will always be nut jobs trying to do things like this.
But there is must be tighter controls as to who is allowed to own a gun.
If it is harder to obtain a driving licence than to own a gun then there is some problem.
There must be some control as to who is fit to own a weapon and how many.
Who decides? And what gives them the right to so decide?
As I understand it, the issue hits at the very heart of the American Constitution: freedom vs limited freedom; vs autocracy etc. The US has inadvertently become a state where civil rights are limited, yet they seem to miss this. I can remember how pissed off I was when we were required to wear seatbelts!!! Who the fuck is the govt to tell me to protect myself???..now I feel uncomfortable when I don’t wear it! Possession of a gun seems to be an expression of liberty in the US and any attempt to restrict that liberty is resisted by very powerful lobbies. Guns are the symptoms; the right to own one/two/three, a constitutional privilege, but a privilege when abused should be withdrawn/restricted. I think unlimited access to weapons of “mass” destruction is evil in itself.
Agree. They went to war on “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. This is mass destruction.
In a sense every law is a restriction of freedom. Freedom for one person may imply restriction for another. A democratically elected government has a mandate to act in the best interests of the population at large. One of the core duties of government is to provide security for its citizens. If this calls for regulating the ownership of weapons, then it should be done.