is it just me?

[Ekstra]

It's only natural that this stuff happens. You can look at them as victims of a flawed system or that individuals must be held accountable for their own actions and crazy people...happen(doesn't matter if we create people or not). It's no different in the case of that trader who lost $7 Billion in unauthorized trades. The fact that there have been multiple similar incidents in recent times acts as a precedent for future incidents.

As for the big cities thing...here in New York there are police every 10 square feet, makes me worried just fiddling with my Mp3 player. In fact the state is actually increasing Home Land Security spending and cutting state(at least college) education spending...says something, im not sure what. Maybe if they made schools a better place, maybe if more kids discover the reason they wanna live and be something....this honeysuckle wouldnt happen as much.

Oh and just to get my 2 cents in the gun control thing...It probably would reduce conventional crime but I'm not so sure about violence in general. I'd take that risk though, I'd rather that the government didn't have a monopoly on force because as we've seen time and time again and as it was intended in the constitution, the government isn't always right. Of course theres a limit to that, individuals don't need automatic weapons. I'm more worried about private organizations like Blackwater, the government can't license the right to kill to an amoral private organization.

 

[Matt]

No more frightening than any of the following ideas:

1) That the sole responsibility for my safety lies in the hand of authority figures(police) that are not necessarily accountable for my safety and who are as potentially corrupt as anyone else, but have far more power to utilize their corruption.

2) That said authority figures will then centralize and legalize their ownership of firearms, while depriving me of the same ability to utilize force, essentially forcing me to surrender either to their power and their intepretation of society or to criminals with guns.

3) That every single adult human being has the ability to potentially destroy the world, no matter how poorly educated, irrational, or even insane, by giving them one vote.

True democracy cannot coexist with gun control, especially if you understand the origins of modern democracy. I would be very happy if all guns vanished from the Earth immediately, because chances are my bloodline and the bloodlines of all other warrior nobility would immediately come to dominate again.

Guns made people equal by giving them all more or less the same killing power, whereas in the past, someone of the warrior caste such as a knight or a samurai was easily the equal fighter over eight or ten untrained men. There would have been no vote, and no mass enfranchisement as the hereditary nobility would simply suppress any movement toward equality by force. Only with the dawning of gunpowder did every single angry peasant become a real threat, and the playing field was levelled.

And soon after that, came modern democracy.

Its not a concidence.

Regards,
IO

Um...don't you realize that the number of shootings would skyrocket if everyone could easily attain a gun?

Something you may be forgetting is that all of these school shooters eventually shot themselves anyways. So the fact that someone else could shoot them down wouldn't stop them from first taking out a couple of victims.

Besides, if guns, then why not other weapons? I suppose a true democracy necessitates that every citizen have the right to own a bomb? ><

 

[armor4sleepPA]

[Luckily i haven't had any incidents at my school, though there are a fair amounts of fights that occur, we've got some security guards. but in big cities they have metal detecters, and that stuff, but sometimes it doesn't prevent violence

I remember when I worked in the ghetto... there was a shooting in our building. Some guys got into a fight, and one of them left the building, only to come back later with two of his cousins and a 9mm. The guy who came back stormed through the door, and started looking for the boy with whom he was fighting earlier. he couldn't find hiim, and his cousins were impatient, so he found someone who was walking with the other guy earlier that day and shot him.... along with that guy's brother, who just happend to be there...

Seriously, watching three guys with a gun run out, unchased, while simultaneously uselessly attempting to clear the halls so I could figure out what medical attention was needed (shot in the stomach, both of them...they lived, thank God) was a surreal experience.

I'll never understand why kids in the City run out to the hallway when they hear gunshots, while suburban kids know well enough to lock the door and hide.

Schools are dangerous these days. I have to go to semiannual training for weapon removal, defensive tactics, student protection/first aid, etc. because I'm on my school's crisis team. I hate doing code red drills, because one day it won't be a drill, and it's going to suck really, really bad....

 

[IgnoredOne]

Um...don't you realize that the number of shootings would skyrocket if everyone could easily attain a gun?

Simply untrue.

The "Wild West" was one of the most heavily armed periods in US history, and yet it featured remarkably little crime in spite of movies of the period. You assume that it is the availability of guns that increases gun crimes. There are countries that have a much higher % of gun ownership than the US, yet has a much lower crime rate - Switzerland for example, where there are 420,000 Assault Weapons in private homes and between 1.2 and 3 millions total firearms in a county with a total population of only 7.5 million.

If you look at assault and burglary, you are much more likely to be robbed in the UK and are fast catching up in the assault category and these numbers have increased dramatically (by 50%) since the UKs gun ban took effect. Do you think perhaps this is because all the criminals KNOW that their victims will be unarmed?

Burlaries per capita:
#7 United Kingdom 13.8321 per 1,000 people
#17 United States 7.09996 per 1,000 people

Assaults per capita:
#6 United States 7.56923 per 1,000 people
#8 United Kingdom 7.45959 per 1,000 people

And I've never felt that individuals should be restricted from any type of arms.

Regards,
IO

PS: I live in Texas, and in one of the most heavily armed cities in the United States - and surprisingly, we haven't turned into a wartorn landscape. We haven't forgotten how the lawman Dallas Stoudenmire lowered crime by 50% personally by killing four men in five seconds in a gunfight, either.

PPS: LA, with its very strong gun control laws, on the other hand, has turned into a wartorn landscape. Take what you will from it.

 

[Matt]

Simply untrue.

The "Wild West" was one of the most heavily armed periods in US history, and yet it featured remarkably little crime in spite of movies of the period. You assume that it is the availability of guns that increases gun crimes. There are countries that have a much higher % of gun ownership than the US, yet has a much lower crime rate - Switzerland for example, where there are 420,000 Assault Weapons in private homes and between 1.2 and 3 millions total firearms in a county with a total population of only 7.5 million.

If you look at assault and burglary, you are much more likely to be robbed in the UK and are fast catching up in the assault category and these numbers have increased dramatically (by 50%) since the UKs gun ban took effect. Do you think perhaps this is because all the criminals KNOW that their victims will be unarmed?

Furthermore, there is no evidence that gun control laws impact crime at all.

Burlaries per capita:
#7 United Kingdom 13.8321 per 1,000 people
#17 United States 7.09996 per 1,000 people

Assaults per capita:
#6 United States 7.56923 per 1,000 people
#8 United Kingdom 7.45959 per 1,000 people

And I've never felt that individuals should be restricted from any type of arms.

Regards,
IO

Yes, but there's one aspect you're forgetting - the process of "arming" the nation. If you grow up in a society that's mature in respect to its use and handling of firearms, then problems will be minimal.

But give every American a gun? It's not unrealistic to realize that many emotionally immature Americans would utilize this newfound freedom as a way of resolving non-life-or-death conflicts like cheating spouses, hated coworkers, and domestic turmoil.

An analogous situation would be legalizing public nudity. Sure, in an ideal world with mature citizens, it would work. And nudity isn't even inherently dangerous. But given a realistic context of people whose social orthodoxy dictated an antithetical lifestyle, this social transformation would be disastrous.