[Misc] Another mass shootin

[beorhthelm]

President Donald Trump, on a tour of Asia, said the gunman was "a very deranged individual" and denied that guns were to blame for the shooting.
"We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, but this isn't a guns situation," he said.- BBC

he has a point though. Canada and some other countries have similar levels of gun ownership, but not the incidence of gun crime and mass shootings. therefore we should assume there is something in the American psyche to account for this. we can look forward to his announcement for federal spending on mental health issues...

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

he has a point though. Canada and some other countries have similar levels of gun ownership, but not the incidence of gun crime and mass shootings. therefore we should assume there is something in the American psyche to account for this. we can look forward to his announcement for federal spending on mental health issues...

Relevant comic from a while back...

 

[Stat Brother]

Jeez.
I may be wrong, but working back, 1975 seems to be the first year not documented.

1995.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

President Donald Trump, on a tour of Asia, said the gunman was "a very deranged individual" and denied that guns were to blame for the shooting.
"We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, but this isn't a guns situation," he said.- BBC

I happen to agree with him to a degree. However, his credibility would be far greater if he accepted that a mass killer is mad regardless of whether or not he shouts 'god is great' in arabic during the deed. In this case, as far as I am aware, allah was not invoked at the scene. So it is 'madness'. Somehow I suspect that had this been 'islamic', Trump would be all for a ban (not of guns, of course, but of 'immigration' and 'muslims').

Unfortunately guns will never be banned in the US because the 'right' is so entrenched, as is the undeniable fact that if somone shoots at you you can only shoot back if you have a gun.

It will be interesting to see if the US ever gets a truly honest president who says 'Dry your eyes, relatives of the dead. This is the price we pay for our freedom'.

Incidentally, "Kelley is reported to have been discharged from the US air force in 2014 following a court martial for assaulting his wife and child.".

Surely, surly Americans must consider the possibility that a trained serviceman with this kind of track record (whether due to PTSD or some other form of instability or unpleasantness) should not be given an automatic pass to arm himself? Surely? Guns, OK if you must, but for everyone and anyone?

 

[Bold Seagull]

he has a point though. Canada and some other countries have similar levels of gun ownership, but not the incidence of gun crime and mass shootings. therefore we should assume there is something in the American psyche to account for this. we can look forward to his announcement for federal spending on mental health issues...

You are probably right about the psyche as the motivation for owning a gun is very different, with Canadians not seeing it as a constitutional right, the majority of their ownership is for hunting. Canada has approx. a third of the gun ownership per person of the US. Canadian gun laws are far stricter, have a much tighter level of screening and licensing, and have restriction and prohibition of certain types of guns making it difficult to compare the two.

Even the data in the US comparing individual states show that more guns / less ownership restrictions = more gun related deaths.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

he has a point though. Canada and some other countries have similar levels of gun ownership, but not the incidence of gun crime and mass shootings. therefore we should assume there is something in the American psyche to account for this. we can look forward to his announcement for federal spending on mental health issues...

I lived in Canada for 4 years. It very certainly does not have gun ownership 'similar' to he US. The cops are armed but the citizens are not. Gun permits are for hunting so more folk own guns than do Brits but in the US it is entirely different. This is why the murder rate is so much highrer in the US than in Canada, and why many (a majority?) of Americans regard Canadians as idiot pussies for allowing the government (police) to be armed while the citizens are not.

I think for us Brits, one other thing we don't factor in when considering the stance of the US is their 'religion'. A large proportion believe in god, don't 'believe' in evolution, and presumably expect 'salvation' after death, so the rightous murdered WILL go to heaven. This is the mentality of peasants; as Bertrand Russell wrote (to paraphrase) humans invented a notion of god and an afterlife to make sense of the misery, cruelty and brevity of their lives, with the salvation of an afterlife pretty much the only thing keeping tthem going. Unfortunately the afterlife is such a seductive idea for the lazy minded and ignorant it allows them to tolerate almost anything, even after the become relatively comfortably off.

The educated who resist all forms of gun control (including not letting people with destructive mental health problems or very low intellect to be armed) on the basis of spurious constitutional arguments are perhaps the true evil in this equation.

Collectively this is an immutable status quo, and Trump is in absolute comfort with his 'sick pople' comments when it is a non muslim atrocity, and his 'stop immigrants and muslims' when it is an islamic atrocity. This resonates entirly with the majority of the US electorate and will only boost his standing, bizarre though this may seem to 'liberals', 'lefties' (in US tems) and (many/most?) ordinary British people.

 

[Exile]

It will be interesting to see if the US ever gets a truly honest president who says 'Dry your eyes, relatives of the dead. This is the price we pay for our freedom'.

He may well - this is the President, remember, who recently 'comforted' a grieving service widow with the words "He knew what he was signing up for".

 

[Exile]

They'll have a candle lit prayer vigil - and then life will carry on as normal including the next gun massacre in a few months time. When I was at the airport departure lounge in Austin Texas the bookstore was full of gun magazines - talk about gun porn.

CNN keeps asking for everybody's prayers - they don't need your prayers, they need gun control

As if!

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

He may well - this is the President, remember, who recently 'comforted' a grieving service widow with the words "He knew what he was signing up for".

Indeed.

 

[BBassic]

President Donald Trump, on a tour of Asia, said the gunman was "a very deranged individual" and denied that guns were to blame for the shooting.
"We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, but this isn't a guns situation," he said.- BBC

It's strange that we're also a country with our fair share of people suffering from mental health problems yet our rate of gun crime is quite low. I wonder why that might be.

 

[CHAPPERS]

I lived in Canada for 4 years. It very certainly does not have gun ownership 'similar' to he US. The cops are armed but the citizens are not. Gun permits are for hunting so more folk own guns than do Brits but in the US it is entirely different. This is why the murder rate is so much highrer in the US than in Canada, and why many (a majority?) of Americans regard Canadians as idiot pussies for allowing the government (police) to be armed while the citizens are not.

I think for us Brits, one other thing we don't factor in when considering the stance of the US is their 'religion'. A large proportion believe in god, don't 'believe' in evolution, and presumably expect 'salvation' after death, so the rightous murdered WILL go to heaven. This is the mentality of peasants; as Bertrand Russell wrote (to paraphrase) humans invented a notion of god and an afterlife to make sense of the misery, cruelty and brevity of their lives, with the salvation of an afterlife pretty much the only thing keeping tthem going. Unfortunately the afterlife is such a seductive idea for the lazy minded and ignorant it allows them to tolerate almost anything, even after the become relatively comfortably off.

The educated who resist all forms of gun control (including not letting people with destructive mental health problems or very low intellect to be armed) on the basis of spurious constitutional arguments are perhaps the true evil in this equation.

Collectively this is an immutable status quo, and Trump is in absolute comfort with his 'sick pople' comments when it is a non muslim atrocity, and his 'stop immigrants and muslims' when it is an islamic atrocity. This resonates entirly with the majority of the US electorate and will only boost his standing, bizarre though this may seem to 'liberals', 'lefties' (in US tems) and (many/most?) ordinary British people.

Intersting post.

I read somewhere recently that as much as us Brits think we undertand the American psyche that, in fact, we have no idea. Maybe we share similar ideals as those in New York/California and other more liberal areas but when it comes to the south, for example, things are totally different.

 

[Whoislloydy]

Trump was quick to condemn the Green Card Lottery after the Manhattan terror attack.

He will NEVER condemn guns in any attack, in fact you can bet your bottom dollar he will in fact PRAISE civilians carrying guns due to the fact that Devin Kelley was shot by an armed local Stephen Willeford. Trump will use this to justify guns saying it could of been worse, in the same way he says after every Europe attack that it wouldn't have been as bad if people had guns.

 

[GreersElbow]

Trump was quick to condemn the Green Card Lottery after the Manhattan terror attack.

He will NEVER condemn guns in any attack, in fact you can bet your bottom dollar he will in fact PRAISE civilians carrying guns due to the fact that Devin Kelley was shot by an armed local Stephen Willeford. Trump will use this to justify guns saying it could of been worse, in the same way he says after every Europe attack that it wouldn't have been as bad if people had guns.

The frustrating thing is, the attack would likely have been worse had a local not been armed.

The real issue here isnt entirely guns and I think it really obscures the real issue at hand. All these people crying "Why isn't he being called a terrorist" "if he was black he'd be a terrorist", are again, missing the point. Mental health is clearly an issue in the United States. Taking guns away doesn't negate the intention to kill and mass stabbings happen a lot in China and to some extent, Japan.

The real solution is a system of regulation as to WHO can purchase a gun rather than banning guns themselves.

The anti-gun mob and the pro-gun mob literally ignore the issue at hand to grab the moral high ground. Both groups are to blame for the crisis in the U.S. Mental health is a huge stigma in the U.S, and regulating who can purchase a gun based on mental health could go a long way to helping the problem.

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

Between 1968 and 2011, 1.4 million people were killed by firearms (excl suicide) in the USA, which averages 33,000 a year. In the American civil war 620,000 died in five years or 124,000 a year. They’re managing to maintain 27% of the civil war death rate in peacetime.

 

[FatSuperman]

I worked in San Antonio for a few months, I used to frequent a bar called la Tuna, which had a sign up saying no concealed weapons (which I think you need a permit for in Texas). As such, near enough everyone would be sitting about with guns on their hips. As a bloody limey, I found this incredibly uncomfortable at first, but you get used to it surprisingly quickly.

On a similar note, I lived in Philadelphia for a while and remember visiting the university, was helping unload some filming equipment and a university police force chap cycled up to me to ask what we were doing. I couldn't answer because he had a pistol holstered on his handlebars that was pointing directly at me. When a gun, even holstered is pointing at you it is seriously difficult to concentrate on anything else.

In the last 6 or 7 years, 100 gun control proposals have been suggested by congress. Every single one has failed.

 

[Albion my Albion]

I believe that the left in America is just as perplexed by the rightist gun culture as we brits are perplexed.

 

[beorhthelm]

In the last 6 or 7 years, 100 gun control proposals have been suggested by congress. Every single one has failed.

funny thing is at State level and lower, there's an awful lot of gun control legislation. the congressmen voting against federal controls will be from areas that have similar controls in their home town. who they are representing is confusing.

 

[Albion my Albion]

American authorities are now saying that the shooter died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound and was NOT shot by the church's neighbor.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Between 1968 and 2011, 1.4 million people were killed by firearms (excl suicide) in the USA, which averages 33,000 a year. In the American civil war 620,000 died in five years or 124,000 a year. They’re managing to maintain 27% of the civil war death rate in peacetime.

What’s the US birth rate? I’m wondering if the problem might ultimately resolve itself?

 

[Bold Seagull]

Intersting post.

I read somewhere recently that as much as us Brits think we undertand the American psyche that, in fact, we have no idea. Maybe we share similar ideals as those in New York/California and other more liberal areas but when it comes to the south, for example, things are totally different.

The frontier trail blazers who slowly moved across the country had to defend their patch of land with little or no help from any authorities. The history is littered with government betrayal, land disputes and compulsory purchases for railroads etc. that it was a brutal existence where you defended yourself against those that would take what you have away. This psyche has remained as part of much of the US DNA. The eastern cities especially were far more similar to european cities given they were politically stable, with law and order and well settled, separate from the those pioneers heading out West, which is why their gun outlook is not the same as when you start to travel West.

This enshrined right to defend your land against foe and government alike is just completely alien to the much slower evolution of land law Europe built up over 1000s of years which America has had just a few hundred.