Very little of that list is true. The US drug market, per capita is no bigger than most European countries, the same with Immigration; this is actually worse in several European countries that still have FAR lower murder rates. In terms of 'prosecutes the fewest', again completely false, the US has the highest per capita prison population of ANY first world country.

Gang problems however is true, the US has more problems with this than most of Europe and the rest of the first world...


The only trend is that most of your points were made up.




I don't accept that. Tougher gun laws in a municipality, when people can get guns easily 100 feet outside the city line, hardly stands any chance of being effective at curbing gun use. Gun laws don't just have to be in place, they have to be realistic.



Between guns and crime? Not really no.
Between guns and Gun crime? Absolutely.



Hard to say of course, but I would say less likely. Of course balance that against the added deaths of having 26,000 partying drinking teenagers away from home for the first time all armed with handguns. Do you think the average mortality rate on campus would go UP or DOWN?



I just think there is this baffling disconnect in otherwise very intelligent people that they cannot understand that there MIGHT just be a link between guns and gun crime, between widely and easily available guns and a vastly higher national murder rate. I have to ask again, how DO you explain the REST of the first world, with its restrictive gun laws, and half or one third as many gun murders? Is it really just a huge coincidence?

People, this business about armed students blasting bad people is a fantasy. It takes a whole load of nerve to squeeze off on another human being. Very few people, no matter how many times they have been to the practice range, have the composure to draw and fire accurately in a life-threatening situation, I opine. And it has to be done in a split second. So if three students per classroom had been armed, there is a nontrivial chance that they would still be dead.

I am willing to admit, for the sake of argument, that if very many people went about heavily armed, there would be marginally fewer mass murders. There would also, I am sure, be many more gun deaths from all other sorts of nonsense. I mean, look at all the frustrated, angry people you encounter on the the highway. Does anyone want to live in a world where these people are toting large-caliber handguns? And what about all those lovely situations that arise when people have had a little too much to drink? Is there anyone here who would feel safer if every citizen carried a 38 in his jacket pocket? A world armed like that is a vision of hell, not of civil society.

I also believe that strong restrictions on handguns and automatic weapons would marginally reduce mass murders, and it would have none of the other proposal's tendency to promote other forms of gun violence.

Ted, I ran around Ohio with rifles and shotguns, never handguns. The people I knew who used handguns were idiots who thought that getting drunk and busting beer bottles with their shots was great fun. Actually you can't hunt with a deer rifle in this state; you can in next-door West Virginia. There are possible sporting uses for handguns, as you point out, but this is a mere convenience that most people can afford to do without. But if some people considered this essential to their hunting, I would be willing to allow in-season handgun carrying with given restrictions -- most particularly, along with a long gun. This would not impede by basic program of no general handgun ownership.

It seems to me that a very sensible form of gun control that preserves hunting is the one I suggest. Automatic weapons, Ted, are weapons that discharge more than one round when the trigger is squeezed once and not released. The last time I checked, a Remington 16 ga. could not do that; an M-16 and a Thompson sub-machine gun (yeah, I have fired one of those) could. In any case, I am not saying how a law would be written, just its basic intent.

And Ted, the entire notion of getting the drop on someone with a concealed handgun is one that facilitates criminality, not crime prevention.

The kids I knew in Maine had fewer hand guns than rifles but still some. And as I said handguns are the best weapons for self defense and always have been. Automatic weapons as you describe Vladimir are illegal and only correctors with Federal Permits are allowed to even have them. Having one illegally can get you the death penalty. What you are no doubt referring to is the semi-auto “assault rifle”. This is one shot per trigger pull and is essentially the same as any semi-auto. Some have bigger magazines which I agree are silly. Crimes with theses weapons are nearly zero.

Lott, if you bother te read him at the link, has done extensive studies. Violent crime drops, esp. against women, when concealed carry is allowed. If you live in the suburbs and have a nice safe neighborhood you may care less but as many have to live in fear the handgun is the best protection in the world. It is estimated 2,000,000 violent crimes are prevented yearly (without shooting fot the most part) by the presence of a gun.





Please post data. My contention is that the % convicted of those accused of a crime in the US is one of the lowest in the world. `

The simple fact is the gun crime rate is highest where legal guns are not allowed as in DC. Places where gun laws are strictly enforced – gun crime drops and gun crime is always associated with gangs and drugs. Places where gun laws are enforced and gun criminals put in jail and kept there have lower gun crime.

http://www.sfdistrictattorney.org/page.asp?id=16




Then post it. There is no correlation in the US. Foreign data is meaningless here. The reality is there are millions of guns in the US and gun crime is focused in the inner cities where the gangs, drugs etc. are and where citizens are usually not allowed to have guns.

So if you think you have something to show this is not correct – can’t wait to see it.

Needless to say this man knew he had the only gun on campus and used it. If he had run into one armed security guard he could have been stopped. Even if doors were just locked he might have been stopped. Instead no one knew about a potential shooter until he started shooting.

This time, I'm just going to quote the experts.

~~The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and from without. We need law and order. Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order. ~~ Adolph Hitler

~~Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of “Emergency”. It was a tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini.... The invasion of New Deal Collectivism was introduced by this same Trojan horse.~~ Herbert Hoover

~~"... a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen..." - Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)

~~"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." [...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.] - (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD), Letters to Lucilius on Morals, Letter 87, c.63-65 AD

~~"What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?" - Thomas Jefferson to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787

~~"If you believe the term "militia" means the National Guard then you must believe that freedom of speech is reserved for the Government Printing Office."

~~"The argument that today's National Guardsmen, members of a select militia, would constitute the only persons entitled to keep and bear arms has no historical foundation." - Joyce Lee Malcolm, Professor of History, Bentley College

~~What luck for the rulers that men do not think. Adolph Hitler

~~This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! Adolph Hitler

~~The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people. Bill Clinton

Heh. Arbalest employs Godwin's Law. But, maybe, this is a comment on the 2004 Presidential election rather than gun control?

I've been thinking about how an armed populace would reduce crime. I'm inclined to agree with the logic of this argument (though empirical data is what matters here). I think though that it ignores the cost associated with ubiquitously armed citizenry: specifically, the increase in accidental or mistaken shootings.

So, here's my proposal. Allow citizens to carry concealed weapons for self-defense, but accidental or mistaken shootings would automatically incur a first-degree murder penalty with no exceptions.

As far as I can see, this is a good plan. Out here in California (I might be mistaken or it changed) but you could only own a handgun, and if you carried it with you in the car it had to be in a locked safe-or-sorts, in the trunk. This is the furthest possible thing I can see to discourage personal gun carrying without actually banning it. The thought of someone walking up to you about to jack your car with a glock and you just saying, "well excuse me sir but if you would give me five minutes to go in my trunk, unlock my case and get my pistol thatd be nice". So much for personal security!
People should be able to carry handguns for personal protection- and for anyone that says well that just makes it easier for criminals to shoot people- they already carry guns around. If you're a robber doing a hold-up and you see five people around you pull out pistols, you'll run. Crime would go down.

1. Given the magnitude of the massacre, will this have a lasting effect on the United States, or will it vanish into the media after a month?
Lasting effect? Perhaps. It certainly won't "vanish into the media after a month". Columbine is still commonly referred to, "going postal" has a specific meaning within our society. I don't see this vanishing.

2. What legislative or policy implications will this tragedy have, will it spur lawmakers into some kind of action? Either on a State or Federal level?
I'll answer this from the middle on out. It will likely spur lawmakers, as lawmakers are (collectively) almost incapable of resisting the hue and cry to "do something". It is likely that this hue and cry will spur at the city, county, State and Federal levels. I "opine" that most of the action by lawmakers is far more likely to be injurious to both our liberties and our safety than otherwise.

I cannot hazard a guess as to what policy implications this is likely to have, aside from some alterations in campus notification policies after murders on campuses.

3. How can such massacres be avoided in the future?
We've already avoided a score such massacres (albeit not quite so substantial) over the last 30 years. We just can't get them all...



Gun free zones are target rich environments. None of the evil SOBs are in a hurry to offer themselves as targets until after they've gotten their shots in. Perhaps this is why we never seem to have massacres in gun rich zones. No massacres at gun shows and firing ranges.

That quote, by the way, is a complete invention. Sepping out of the role of gun-control advocate and into the role of Historian, there is very little that irritates me MORE than people who are so desperate to prove their point they are willing to lie and falsify history in order to do it. One of the prime examples of this is the NRA, and apparently those who slavishly follow its words without any thought or check.

The above quote does not exist, period. Not only that, but the entire POINT of the NRA and its followers regarding Hitler (and Stalin) is nothing but a massive hoax, and I am SO tired of it.

Neither Hitler Nor Stalin took away the guns of their people.. This lie has become so predominant it is repeated often on so many bloggs and webpages, yet there is NO reality to it.

Post-first world war, Germany was in absolute chaos, near civil war with armed gangs roaming the streets and countryside, formed mostly of decomissioned soldiers. roups like the Steel helmets and others advocated the overthrow of the government and had the weapons to do so. There were attempted coups nearly monthly (look up origin of the term 'Kaput', from this period). The Weimar Republic introduced a series of laws meant to resore order, among them Gun control laws. They were effective. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he added and subtracted nothing from the preexisting laws, simply kept them on the books. In 1938, Hitler passed the Reichswaffengesetz law which actually liberalised the pre-existing gun control laws.

As for Stalin, the argument there is even less reasonable. There WAS no gun control anywhere in Stalinist Russia for the first decade of Stalin's rule, then in 1929 laws were put into place controlling firearms, but ONLY in the cities. Inside cities there were laws against carrying guns in public, but the laws were pretty lax, hardly the mass confiscation the NRA lies would have you believe. And in the countryside there were NO such laws, in fact the reality that most peasants has and had some skill with a rifle was of enormous assistance to the Russian army in WWII.


To be clear, I don't really like guns very much, and while I don't have a problem with prvate gun ownership in theory, requiring courses, a gun safety course and a permit to own a gun seems just basic intelligence. What I loathe however, is lying and making things up to support an ideological argument.




And of course, your conviction is wrong. 20 seconds worth of searching on Google would have shown you that, so heavens knows why you made that point up. Conviction rates (the stat you are looking for) for major crimes (Murder and rape for example) in the US are higher (FAR higher in fact) than most countries in Europe.

(Note: Oddly enugh, the US seems to have problems with conviction rates on Assault, which are lower than most countries, I have no idea why.)

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/cjusew96/cpp.htm

A few first world nations DO have higher conviction rates, notably Japan.



Why, because it is inconvenient to you? Because you have no answer to those facts? Ok, just in the US, how about the drop in overal gun crimes nationwide after the implementation of the Brady Bill? Or is that just another coincidence?

I don't know why you keep making the remark about municipal gun laws: I deal with that in my previous post, and you ignored it completely, reposting your assertion as if nothing had been said. That is just bad form.

From the Small arms survey 2004(pdf file)



The above report finds no direct correlation between the availability of guns and the rate of homicides. Latin America and the Caribbean especially contradict that theory because the region carries 36 percent of the global burden of firearm deaths, but has few weapons in circulation.

Table 2.4 (pdf) offers a comparison of homicides per 100,000 guns (the "lethality rate"). The United States has an average of 4 homicides per 100,000 guns in circulation, compared with a lethality rate of 260-660 in Ecuador, 302 in South Africa, 220-550 in Colombia, 90-450 in Venezuela, 85-128 in Brazil, 17-23 in Argentina, 5 in Chile, 2 in Canada, and less than 1 homicide per 100,000 guns in Germany.

So in summary, the likelihood that a typical gun in the US will be used to kill is very low by comparison to the other countries surveyed. Now, if we are going to use selective criteria and just cherry pick a few countries in Europe and/or Asia, it could be argued either way. "The Swiss yadda yadda" (half of my family is Swiss, incidentally, and even I don't support that argument though I do approve of the right to gun ownership) and "Japan yadda yadda". You might bring up historical details like the USSR and post world war I German gun laws and the effects thereof...but if you do then you can't honestly dismiss overall world statistics at the same time, can you? Post world war I Germany and Stalinist Russia were basically third world countries.

Edited to add: Per the Brady bill, there has been a precipitous drop in crime rates overall since around the 80s in the US, this is not exclusive to gun crime so there is likely no direct correlation. Might be, but it's hardly a compelling argument considering the host of other possibilities.

Sorry Mrs P, but I completely disagree. There are no seletive criteria or cherry picking being done: instead the US is simply being compared to its peers in the first world. What is wrong with that? Comparing gun deaths in the US to countries in which the basic rule of law is either not established or partly established is hardly reasonable. Compare the US to its peers: Canada, Europe, Japan, the rest of the first world.

You dismiss comments regarding the drop in crime following the Brady bill because there might be 'other factors involved'. Do you not think there might be 'other factors involved' when comparing gun deaths in the US to countries with limited rule of law? Why not just go all the way and compare gun deaths in the US to Iraq or Sudan? That way the US looks REALLY favourable!


In reality the ONLY reasonable comparative that can be made is between the US and Canada and Western Europe. They have similar cultures, watch much of the same TV and movies, play the same video games... They deal with the same problems of immigration, political disunity, low level racism, illegal drugs, and so on. Yet the murder and gun murder rate is enormously higher in the US than in these countries, countries which (coincidentally??) All happen to have restrictive gun laws as opposed to the US.


Lastly, while there is some merit in the 'deaths per gun' statistic, it should not be pressed to far, as it skews the numbers. By those statistics, more guns = fewer deaths per gun, even if the number of deaths remains static, or even increases. Double the number of guns, increase the number of gun deaths by 50% and the number of deaths per gun drops, yet are the people actually safer, or less safe? I'm sure you can see the problem.

It's a cost to gains equation as far as I am concerned. The rates of other types of crime like assault, and especially robbery, burglary, and other types of theft are rampant in Europe. Houses are robbed and buildings vandalized so regularly in Italy that few bother to even call the police to report it, unless they need an insurance payment.

The odds of being a victim of a gun crime in America are very very low. Unless you are a member of a gang. Arguments on the contrary border on hyperbole. In your starting post: "Gun massacres are sadly, fairly common in the US". Well, no they aren't. Not in my estimation...what defines "fairly common"? They are extraordinarily uncommon when you consider how very many guns are circulating in the US. I remember an argument I had with a coworker in the laboratory. Direct quote, "I want to be able to sit at a McDonalds with my child and not worry about being shot." Well, by the looks of her she ate at McDonalds every morning, noon, and night. There were no shooting rampages in that town, there had been one several states away, a few years before. Hyperbole abounds.

There have been two times in my life when I really felt that I needed a gun. The first was when the Gainesville serial killer cut off the head of a girl in a neighboring apartment complex and set it on a bookshelf. I had to wait two days for that gun, and it was a long two days. The second time was after a hurricane in Miami. Unlike New Orleans, we had few looters because the first time a gang of bandits drove up to a home to rob them (about a block from our house), the occupant put a bullet hole straight through the head of the leader and the rest drove away. So I guess there is your example of a citizen stopping crime that you were asking for before. But of course, it didn't make the news because "crime didn't happen" doesn't make the news. Nor does news of a deceased, armed dead gang member in Miami.



Well, in my opinion Iraq is a rather direct example of what happens when you selectively disarm a well-armed, inherently violent population. We went door to door disarming those citizens because we couldn't discern the good guys from the bad guys. Result=bad. I'm not saying that was the entire problem, but it is a part of the problem.

If someone has the drop on you, the idea of reaching for your handgun should be far from your mind. About a year ago here, in fact, the owner of a gunstore less than a mile from my house got himself killed when he reached for his gun in the middle of a holdup attempt. And I seriously doubt the the two men who went in to hold him up weren't cognizent of his potential access to a loaded firearm. I will admit that he managed to wound of them and that they were subsequently captured.

If someone doesn't have the drop on you, the best weapon for self defense is, without a doubt, a relatively short shotgun. I would not want anything else to defend my home. I recognize that it is impractical to carry one about on the streets, but there, we differ profoundly over the question of whether a populace heavily armed with concealed handguns would be safer or less safe. It is only those in peculiarly risky and sensitive lines of work that I would permit to carry concealed weapons.



No actually, I was just saying that besides banning handguns from general ownership, I would also ban fully automatic weapons. Apparently they are already banned. I would not ban semi-automatic weapons unless they could easily be converted in fully automatic ones.



Thank you for this info, but I will maintain my respectful doubt on these points. Also I very much doubt that the many of those advocating widespread gun access live in dangerous neighborhoods, or that many of those living in dangerous neighborhoods think that more guns would be a solution to their problems. I rather suspect that most of them would ask for more law enforcement.

It may be appropriate to observe here that, as we have discussed elsewhere, legalizing drugs would be an excellent way to reduce the threat of violence in these neighborhoods, and it would have the excellent side-effect of allowing law enforcement resources to be devoted to real crimes. By that I mean, misdeeds perpetrated upon unwilling persons as opposed to mere transactions, however bad they might be considered by a Methodist minister, between willing persons.



Yes, well, to counterbalance this example I will remind everyone here of the Japanese exchange student who was shot to death in Lousiana because he knocked on someone's door looking for a Haloween party.

And even here in Ohio recently, a high school girl was paralyzed when a shot from a window hit her in the spine. She and a carload of her friends were stopping by to gawk at an old, "haunted" house. The frequency of these teenage visitations annoyed the owner, and so he decided to shoot at somebody. They were all in their car at the time of the shooting.


There was no selective disarmament of the Iraqi people leading up to the insurgency. It is not as if the victims of the insurgency (or the militias, or the police, or the army) are not themselve very well armed. The people of Iraq were and are exceedingly heavily armed. AK-47s are ubiquitous. There have been some attempt to disarm presumed insurgents; I would think that were a normal part of counterinsurgency operations.

Firstly, considering the odds of getting murdered are 2 to 3 times as likely, I wonder how people react when told that 'true, but your chance of getting burgled is lower!'


Secondly, all due respect Mrs P, but you are wrong.

For assault, the US has a higher per-capita rate than ANY nation in Western Europe or Canada.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_...ults-per-capita

For rape, the US has a higher per-capita rate than ANY nation in Western Europe.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_...apes-per-capita

For the other crimes you mention, the US sits squarely on the average or above average.

Robbery: Lower rates per capita than the UK or Spain, but higher than the rest of Europe.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rob_...ries-per-capita
Car thefts: Lower than half of Europe, higher than the other half.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_car_...efts-per-capita
Burglaries: again, square in the average.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_...ries-per-capita

In fact most of the arguments about 'rampant crime' in the rest of the world tend to be inventions of gun-advocates trying to distract people from the massive murder rate. These arguments are simply not true. Frankly, for most of these crimes, the US is either far worse or above average. I have not yet found a serious crime statistic where the US is, per capita, below the western European average.




Yes, statistically they are, but you will forgive me if thats a bit of a meaningless statement. The odds of being killed in as a civilian in Baghdad are also, technically, very very low: that doesn't mean it's safe. What is significant is that the odds of getting killed by a firearm are TRIPLE those in most of the rest of the first world nations. That should be a serious cause for concern.



Well... yes they are, compared (again) to the rest of the first world. There have been 19 school shootings involving three or more victims in just the last decade in the US. You would be very hard pressed to find a country other than the US that has more then one, and most have had zero. That is just in schools. Frankly, there is a mass shooting big enough to hit the front pages every month or two in the US. That really should be a serious cause for concern.




I'm sorry Mrs P, are you honestly saying here that you believe a part of the problem in Iraq is that there are not enough guns?

By the way, as an aside... I had never heard before that there was any effort to 'disarm Iraqis door to door' before. Could you post some sort of link to that? That one is news to me...

Well, it seems that this thread is rapidly devolving into a pro-gun vs. anti-gun rant - no surprise there.

Back to the actual school shooting, I think the University has a lot to answer for. It seems that Cho (the shooter) wrote some very violent and disturbing "plays" during his time at Virginia Tech, to the point that he was ordered to attend counseling. Fellow students joked about when he might "do something". He was the classic "loner" we always hear about post-shooting rampage. He was on anti-depressants. For crying out loud, he set FIRE to a dorm room!!! Haven't we learned anything from Columbine (or any of the many other school shootings)?

I think VA Tech dropped the ball on this one.

A quick addendum:

I'm not sure what you mean here. The odds of burglary (from the stats you gave me below) are 7 in a thousand (here, it's over twice that in much of Europe and three times that in Australia), the odds of being murdered .04 in a thousand. That is less than one's odds of being struck by lightening (one in five thousand).



I suppose I was wrong about assault rates, but they are within a fraction of a percentage point from others. For rape rates, the gun is almost never a means used for control, and I would rather have the option to defend myself than not.



Well, again, the odds of being a murder victim are lower than being struck by lightening. So I find assertions of "rampant murder" used by anti-gun advocates to be highly hyperbolic along the lines of what you are asserting that gun advocates do. I lived in Europe for years, so I do come about my experience honestly. I also place a price on peace of mind. It can't be bottled up in a statistic but neither can the fear of being raped and stabbed to death in your home. Though the odds of winning the lottery are better, this happened to someone who was living almost next door to me, and not having the option of being able to defend oneself is not a feeling I wish to experience ever again.

I can tell you that I find it very very hard to believe that those figures on Italy are correct. Nearly everyone I know who lives in Italy has been robbed at least once...and it's a large number of people. It is rampant, but of course it's my anecdotal experience, not a statistic I can post here. I can only tell you what I'm seeing on the charts and what I've personally witnessed as well as heard from relatives (all living in the comparatively low-crime north, not the south), doesn't add up. They closely resemble the statistics for Spain, which makes sense because the culture is similar.




A decade is a long time. I don't find 19 shootings in ten years, out of a massively armed population of almost 300 million people to be that outrageous. Here is a list of the world's worst shootings in the past 25 or so years. Honestly, I'm more afraid of my child drowning in a swimming pool (which is in fact much much more likely).



No, I said selective disarmament. The Iraqi Republican guard kept their guns and went home, and all the looters had mass access to open weapons caches. They couldn't be disarmed as easily as a person in the neighborhood watch group.


I thought I had read this, but I can't find it anywhere. I'd read that to counter the rampant cycle of crime in Iraqi neighborhoods, the citizens armed themselves and began patroling the streets themselves neighborhood watch-style. They were declared illegal militia, disbanded and the residents disarmed though they made no attacks against US forces. At any rate, I don't have a link and might be wrong. Not that there aren't other examples like Rwanda, but I digress...

Edited to add: Wait! I did find a link here. That was in May of 2003.

Good to see the usuals have a new vehicle for "debating" the wrongs of America.


I think the focus is misdirected. I think that social violence will happen no matter the tools available, a gun is just a tool and only an extension of a person's desires. If someone desires to kill then I would imagine they will kill, gun or no gun. I think we should be asking ourselves how do we as a society protect ourselves from killers like this man?
How do we identify their behavior and then address it? I often feel like the US has a culture of not meddling with others, it is apparent to me in various situations, where we seem to often value our individual rights to be freaky or different more than we value the rights of our society's safety as a whole. I am sure the right to bear arms does fit into that way of thinking also, but so does walking around dark and scary stalking people and constantly writing about death.

The problem is of course had any criminal proceedings be borne against Cho VA Tech would have been sued. The bleating of First Amendment Violations, Police State, Fascists, etc would over-whelm the VA Tech into inaction.

However, you are right VA Tech did drop the ball. Especially in their Gun Free Zone that left Campus Security unarmed.

I'm not going to let you twist my words into an endorsement of an armed populace. I did not advocate that, nor would I. "Gun Free Zone" - what kind of insanity is that? As far as I'm concerned, every school campus should be a gun free zone.

I wasn't aware this thread was about universal gun ownership. I thought it was about the mentally-disturbed individual who went on a killing spree (with his legally purchased handguns).

Yes, I suppose that's true, but you never hear of "mass knifings" or "mass bludgeonings" at schools, do you?

Are you trying to sound tough channeling William Kristol or do you appreciate censorship in general? Glancing at CNN's headlines the school was aware of his psychiatric problems and at some point Seung-Hui was taken for evaluation. What are the chances of the school having no clue about his mental state if Seung-Hui had evaded detection and criminal proceedings by curbing what he wrote? If you or anyone can top Professor Emerson's First Amendment theory and disprove the idea that free speech acts as a safety valve let's hear it. It will no doubt be as convincing as the argument that prohibiting people from arming themselves makes society safer.


There was the matter of mass bludgeonings in Rwanda. Technology dictates which tools people bent on a murdering spree use. If you remove access to some technology people will adapt and use something else.

Yes, in fact it happened in Japan relatively recently. Osaka school massacre.

Again, should the focus of this incident be on the tools used or the individual who killed? I suppose that is what the essence of my complaint is on how this debate was presented ... I see this as a human event.

I just feel like we would have more success addressing issues like this with the human factor in mind, treating these threats as public health issues and not always attempting to eliminate the human aspect, to dehumanize the event by focusing on inanimate objects. Murder is by it's very definition an act of a human being.

I stand corrected. In countries without easy access to guns, mass knifings/bludgeonings do occur. My point is why would someone in the US bother, when guns are so much more efficient, less messy, and easy to get?

Bucket is right, though; this is more an issue about a disturbed human being than it is about the weapon used in his rampage. There are many, many Chos out there who feel angry and alienated from the rest of society, and as we've seen, many of them snap and decide to take as many other people with them as they commit suicide. Recognizing the Chos of this world is the first step in preventing these kinds of things. In Cho's case, his pathology was pretty well-known. He had been committed to a mental institution in 2005 after several women complained of him stalking them. All his behavior in the last couple of years should have raised red flag after red flag. Students even joked about him becoming a "school shooter". Mentally disturbed people with anger issues are nothing to laugh about.

I know it'll get the gun nuts all lathered up, but I think a psych eval isn't too much to ask of gun owners.

Homicide rates began to decline sharply in 1992. The Brady Bill was passed in 1994.

As for the longer-term crime trends, demographics explain most of it. Less young males = less crime. Lots of politicians have taken credit for declining crime, and now they are going to be accountable as our young male population once again starts to grow.

In the 1970's males 14-24 made up more than 10% of the population. That number has been declining for 30 years, to where it's mostly stable now. If we didn't have massive young male immigration from Mexico the declines in crime rates would be even more pronounced. The chart at the bottom of this page shows homicide stats and young males as % of the population, victim and perpetrator of the crime. The perp stats basically don't change, but the % of the population has been declining. (Note that these charts include race, which has nothing to do with my point)


I have to say that I feel the same way. Even though I live near the 'projects' and there is a fair amount of property crime, I don't really worry about home invasion violence. I just don't believe that a thief is going to keep on coming into my home with the burglar alarm blaring, just begging to be shot should he make it up to my bedroom. My gun is for self-defense only, and I hope I never use it.

The one lingering fear I have is social unrest. We certainly have a rich history of riots in Chicago, from Haymarket Square to the Democratic convention in '68, to the Bulls winning championship number one of six. Living close to where the "whole world was watching" in 1968, I can see a protest in Grant Park getting out of control, and having to defend my home in some way. I never felt this more clearly than when watching CNN a few years ago when hooligans were trying to break into a home after a nazi march in Toledo gave gang members the excuse to loot and riot. Ditto New Orleans circa Katrina. In addition to a check on government tyranny, I find it quite elegant that our founders enshrined a right to self-defense in the Bill of Rights.

Echoing bucket's and DaffyGrl's thoughts, do let's keep in mind that this whole incident is a disturbed individual going bonkers and taking his sickness out on society. It's a shame that this lost individual could not be helped in time. Given the time he had to plan, he could have easily committed arson or built a bomb and accomplished something nearly as tragic in terms of loss of life. I pray for the victims and abhor the political opportunism on both sides.

edited to add, here is question 11 on the ATF application regarding mental health.



I suppose that requiring training and licensing would catch some people who have mental health issues, but creating a registry or something would be pretty scary. I don't think I trust the government telling me who is crazy and who isn't...

I don't know what you read in my post but I said nothing of the sort. I said the Campus Security should be armed - even in a Gun Free Zone. I twisted nothing you said.

But thats the point, isn't it? Your previous post made it seem like one had the option between double or triple the murder rate and soaring other crimes. But in fact that is not the case. The first world nation with the most liberal gun laws of any of its peers STILL has HIGHER assault and Rape rates than its unarmed brethren, and thats over and above having double to triple the murder rate. That seems to destroy the argument that guns make people safer.




Well, last year in the US there were 82 deaths by lightning and 16,137 murders, so with respect I think there is a pretty significant statistical difference. In fact your chances of getting murdered in the US are FAR higher than your chances of being struck by lightning OR winning the lottery. Besides, I addressed this in my last post: yes the pure odds of getting murdered are small, but they are still double to TRIPLE most of the rest of the first world, as high as Quadruple for some European nations. These are facts that cannot be denied.

The worst thing is, Americans should be happy that they are ONLY getting murdered at triple the first world average: 15 years ago the murder rate in the US wasn't 5.5 per 100,000 (stat last year) it was a staggering 9.5 per 100,000, almsot double what it is today. Was the society less well armed then? Why did more guns not make you safe in 1993?


SOMETHING is wrong here. Gun advocated continue to proclaim liberal gun laws equals safer, yet the stats simply show the opposite, unless anyone else can give me a good reason why Americans murder each other at such a phenominal rate, and why most other violent crime rates in the US are above the average of their first world peers.




So have I, I am in fact writing this post from Europe: I have lived in countries actoss the continent for on and of almost a decade. While I commend your world travelling, thats not relevant. The fact is gun effects CAN be bottled up in a statistic. You are MORE likely to be rapes in well-armed America than any other first world country. How do you explain that if more guns = safety? Apparently the 'peace of mind' is a phantom.




Well I think that sums up the difference then. You don't find 19 mass school shootings in a decade to be outrageous, nor I presume do you find the many mass out-of school shootings in the US to be outrageous.

The rest of the world, however, does. When you look a the list of the worst shootings you provided (of which the majority are in the US, and of which no other country is reprsented more than once) what is interesting is that in almost all those cases, the massacres were followed by serious restrictions on gun availability and tightening gun laws: Germany, Scotland, Australia, Canada... Only in the US does a percentage of the population get up after each and every gun massacre (and they happen once every two months or so) and claim the gun massacre had nothing to do with guns.



I always dislike comments like that (no offense), or comments about automobile deaths or the many other attempts to downplay the frighteningly high murder rate in the US, because it imples these are mutually exclusive. Of COURSE you should be afraid of your child drowning in a pool. (Though again your facts are in error, two years ago 2400 children died in the US drowning in pools, asignificantly lower number than the annual murder rate). You should ALSO be afraid that in the armed society, your child is just as or more likely to be the victim of a violent crime as any other first world nation, and three times as likely to be murdered.


EDIT to add: let me put this in another light. In the UK last year there were 57 gun murders. In the US last year, 778 people were killed though accidental discharges of guns. Even considering the 4x larger population, that means even if we IGNORE US murders and look only at gun accidents, those numbers are frightening... Are you SURE more guns = safer?

No, but you do hear of mass bombings and poisonings here and all over the world....

Where there are wackos, there will be mass killings....

Oh, and the murder rate in the US has been going steadily down over the last 15 years, a combination of an aging population and longer prison sentences and fewer paroles for repeat offenders, most experts agree.

I think we are all overlooking a few important factors when trying to perform a comparative analysis between US violent crime and crime in the rest of the civilized world. The first thing that must be kept in mind is the mere size of the US when compared to every other nation in Europe. If we took a rough sample of the US v. a few European nations whose sum is equal to the US, then perhaps we would get a different picture of the violence?

We are also disregarding culture when we talk about this. The US and Western Europe may have similar commercial likes, but that in no way means that their cultures are similar. Culture plays a huge role in this debate because you have a country like Switzerland (or is it Sweden?) that actually arms its populace and yet their gun violence is lower. Obviously it is not guns that explain this but rather something deeper. Same goes when we look at the nation's capital. For a long time, there was a ban on firearms yet that did nothing to stem to the level of gun violence. This can only lead one to the conclusion that it is not guns that are the problem. I mean, there is no denying that the use of guns raises the threat of lethality, but this alone is not justification to take away guns from law abiding citizens. Drunk drivers can use their car as a lethal weapon, and cars are ultimately a more lethal weapon than guns, but nobody is advocating we ban them. Thats because one individual is not responsible for the illegal actions of others.

What happened at VA Tech was certainly a tragedy, but it is hardly a reason to reach irrational conclusions based on fear. I learned that well after 9/11.

Well... No. All the numbers I give are murder rates per capita, meaning per 100,000 population. The absolute size of the nation in question is irrelevant to these statistics. Were we to agglomerate several European nations together to make a unit of roughly the same size as the US... the numbers would remain exactly the same.



It is Switzerland, and yes (as the NRA often points out) they arm their populace. What they don't mention however, is that Switzerland has by FAR the most restrictive gun laws in all of Europe.

-Every gun in Switzerland is government registered and is required by law to be stored safely with trigger-lock.
-Every Gun owner is compelled to take an extensive gun safety and training course before being given access to a firearm, in the majority of cases this course is provided by the military, but in the case of immigrants an extremely difficult and lengthy training and test proceedure is followed before gun permits are allowed.
-Purchase of Ammunition in Switzerland is strictly registered, with a permit and another peice of ID being required, the purchase being registered and limits on how much ammunition can be bought at once in place.

Switzerland is in fact a perfect example of how good gun regulation can reduce gun deaths, while not requiring actual gun confiscation.



No but last I checked a car owner required a driving course, a permit and the car was registered by the government.



Personally, I have never suggested the US Ban guns. The second amendment would prohibit that. The US should take a lesson from Switzerland and realise that requiring registration, trigger-locks and safe storage, gun training and permits all make guns FAR safer while still allowing gun ownership.

I don’t think messiness is an obstacle for the insane. If they’re incapable of refusing the suggestions of the homicidal voice in their heads the ick factor shouldn’t present a problem.

Like Vladimir observed, not everyone with a gun will pull the trigger. A sane person determined to kill without access to guns may take a little longer to work up the gumption but they will convince themselves of the righteousness of their actions and get on with it. What’s important is the will to kill.


I don’t remember the specific statistical term for it now but as long as Simpson’s paradox isn’t in play your complaint is correct for total population percentages, but the comparison is relevant when you compare rates per thousands. Culture and other variables, on the other hand, are harder to quantify but they are still important considerations.


Huzzah.

1. No lasting effect. The pro-gun lobby is too strong and the anti-gun forces are too weak. The news media can only focus on one story at a time and you never know when the next celebrity will do something brain-dead. Paris Hilton will forget to wear panties or Nicole Ritchie will eat something or Angelina Jolie will adopt other orphan.

2. Virginia may toughen up their laws regarding background checks, but Congress won't do anything and even if they do, President Bush will veto it. Americans love their guns. Shoot 333 people next time and they'll only love their guns more.

3. You can no more avoid the next massacre than you can avoid the next thunderstorm. Guns are cheap and easy to get in America and sick, twisted individuals will always find a way to get all the firepower and ammo they need to get the job done. More laws will not stop the next idiot with a gun and a grudge. Sooner or later someone will walk onto a schoolyard or into a shopping mall or a sporting event and we'll be back here asking the same banal questions and coming up with the same inadequate answers.

More guns could have prevented this tragedy. Less guns could have prevented this tragedy. The only thing that makes this slaughter stand out is the body count. Most of the other details are almost tedious in how similar they are to past shootings. "Loner...nutcase...indications of a predilection towards violence...anti-social...blah, blah, blah."

The politicians will pontificate. The pundits will write stories no one will read. The president will say all the right things. Six weeks, six months, six years later and we'll do this same macabre dance again. Only the names, location and details will change.

Here is a link to profiles and pictures of the Virginia Tech victims. link

I just had a look at that list Mrs. P posted and it is incorrect. When I read it I thought where is the Canadian college massacre of women, I know of this incident because I read about it in an article about gendercide. The École Polytechnique Massacre had a total of 14 killed. Why did it not make "the list"? So then I thought well if that info is wrong what else is?
Here is a list from Wikipedia which lists New Zealand as also having a a gun massacre of 13 total dead in 1990 which is the same total as the Seattle, US one the Australian paper listed but it happened more recently, why did it not make "the list?"
Then there was this link to a South Korean who actually should have had that article's top slot at killing 56 ppl in 1982. Why did that not make "the list" either? Is it because it would have knocked one more American incident off ?

I think often information like this is presented with an agenda and already preconceived bias. This list illustrates my point.

Then what I didn't bother to list was the political killings that happen in even Western European countries (The Troubles, ETA and other various massacres ) not to mention the other mass killings that happen not by use of a gun but rather a bomb, or poison.

I just don't think it does us much good to only focus on gun shootings or concern ourselves most with the higher ranked deaths..does a poor marksman cause less concern somehow?

If we do look to the facts without any of this "filtering" Then many countries do in fact become more fairly represented and yes even appear more than once.

Well said, leder. I've been trying to find a way to say this without sounding snarky. Let's grieve first and then have a reasonable discussion on what we can do to curb these mass murders in the future. But, sadly, it may not even be possible to have these discussions in the US. Clearly, on this thread, people are already drawing ideological lines. Neither the pro-gun nor anti-gun folks are even willing to concede the merits of each other's arguments. This isn't debate; it's just gainsaying.

You are technically correct, several mass shootings such as the ones you listed did not make the list, and I don't know why. Howver the bigger question is, so what? Adding Canada, South Korea and New Zealand to the list still means no country other than the US is reprsesented more than once, and its not like it erases the reality of mass shootings in the US, nor the plain-as-day statistics regarding murder and crime rates.



Well, if you work from the end of the Cold war, you have the IRA and the ETA, thats about it in Europe. And again, so what? Yes, you are correct, countries involved in a low rade civil war or counter-insurgency will have a higher death rate than countries that do not. That does not alter or conceal or affect the peacetime high murder rates of the US compared with its peers.

Also, again focussing on peacetime nations with no major counter-insurgencies ongoing, can you give me an example of a mass killing using bomb or poison? I can think of Anthrax, which may or may not have been a terrorist attack against the US... and thats about it.




Sure, I accept that other countries become represented (though not appearing more than once) but again, that has no bearing on the issue at hand, nor the reality of the statistics. If more guns= safety, then somebody that advocated that position is gong to need to explain inetail why all the international statistical evidence seems to say exactly the opposite.

In 1997, it cost this country $800 million in hospital costs for gunfire-related injuries. For all those who think this country doesn’t have enough guns or armed citizens, I propose that the same onerous taxes applied to tobacco products should be applied to firearms. After all, the whole rationale behind cigarette taxes was to “compensate for the health costs incurred by smokers”. So why shouldn’t gun owners have to pay a similar tax to defray the medical costs involved in treating gun injuries? It’s a helluva lot easier to prove a direct link between a bullet and a severed spinal cord than it is that tobacco causes (insert disease here).

We’d knock down our federal deficit in no time.

(emphasis mine)
And if the gun has nothing to do with the equation, consider this. Until the psych organizations realize that depressed loners who play too many video games comprise a rather large percentage of students, and come up with criteria more realistic and specific to define those people who are prone to go on a killing rampage, then nothing will change. Focusing more negative attention on kids who don’t fit a preconceived ideal of “jock”, “cheerleader” or whatever social group is deemed acceptable, will only exacerbate the problem.

Freedom has risks; you can live in a heavily-regulated society and presumably be safer from strangers, but of course you'll likely live in fear of your govt, which historically has been the greatest source of death and destruction; or you can live in freedom with a limited govt.

I'll be the first to admit that our "limited" govt is way too big and way too powerful, and that needs to be fixed, but...but the principle is accurate. I'll keep my guns and take my risks because it means I am free--and freedom IS the goal, at least as this nation was conceived by our Founders, not achieving some statistical result for reduced gun crime rates.

I am not doubting the numbers Vermillion but rather am skeptical of the extent to which Europe is safer than America. We are not comparing two equal entities. The US has 300 million in its population while it would take a few European nations in order to fill that sum. The demographic makeup of the countries are different. The way the country is set up is also quite different. Europe lacks a suburban environment, its either urban or rural. This is significant in determing how the proximity of people plays a role in gun deaths. Thats why gun deaths will be highest in urban areas and lowest in rural areas. 100,000 people in France or Germany could cover a much larger piece of land than it would in the US because the people are not as close together. That skews the data.



But the logic remains because although cars are registered with the government, they are still more lethal than firearms. But nobody is complaining about the lethality of cars. This is because although there is a a portion of people who abuse the privilege to drive, the strong majority of people do not. This is why one cannot justify harming the majority of people for the actions of a few.

When it comes to the VA Tech tragedy, I think we need to reassess the problem. Is the fact that this student used a legal handgun a problem? Yes. Its disingenuous to say that whether he used a gun or a 2x4 with a nail on it is insignificant. The lethality and probability to do more damage is higher when a gun is used. What should be the issue is the fact that the security officers on campus were not allowed to carry guns. The inability of campus security to handle the situation probably cost more lives than it would have since they had to wait for local police to arrive. Here at AU, campus police do not carry firearms, but they do have a few firearms locked in the Public Safety building for extreme cases. Further, all AU Public safety officers are trained in the use of firearms and can use them if necessary. The point is that while the gunmen did the shooting, the campus police were not able to do their job and protect the student body. This tragedy could have been less severe if trained on-campus police could have intervened.

I am not a pro-gun advocate, I have never fired a gun and do not plan on doing so in the near future. But i am a pro-2nd Amendment advocate because I believe in the principles behind it. Guns are dangerous, and surely the Founders new this even at their level of technology. But they knew that freedom and responsiblity are two concepts that go hand and hand. Without personal responsibility, there can be no freedom because things are decided for you by an outside power. If this was a police-state country where all guns are taken away from the populace, then the level of gun violence would obviously drop. Free societies are dangerous because they give people to make decisions for themselves that could potentially be harmful, such as electing a horrible person as president. But we are intrusted with this responsibility because we all believe that it is better to live in freedom and make our own choices than to live under an authoritarian system that takes care of our security.

It's all in perspective quick. With the exception of a bb and pellet gun, I've never owned a gun, never been to a shooting range, and never wanted to go out and kill animals. I will, however, admit to wanting to go hunting with a fine camera equipped with a long lense.

I consider myself as free (and as safe) as you do without the guns.

~~~
a person who carries concealed is already accepting significan responsibility for their actions. They can count on lawsuits a plenty for even showing they are armed, let alone using the weapon. This is true even if the person they use the weapon on was committing a mass murder.

Nevertheless, I can agree that the person carrying a weapon being involved in a mistaken shooting should definately be facing serious charges. I ASSUME by first degree murder charges you only include mistakes or accidents which result in death.

It would be silly for a person to be incurring a first degree murder penalty for a negligent discharge of a firearm where no one was injured.

I have problems with absolutes in any situation, 'no exceptions' is a tough one for me to accept.

but I think we're close on agreeing on this issue

Well that viewpoint goes down quite the slippery slope BoF. I am sure that the people of North Korea see themselves as free even though their government is totalitarian. Same goes for a lot of regimes throughout the 20th century. Perhaps another person would argue that they feel as free and as safe as you do with closed-circuit cameras on every street corner.

Well firstly, if you think Europe lacks sub-urban environments I can only invite you to witness the massive suburban sprawl that is Paris outside the 'inner 20' as it is caller: or London or any major European city. These environments are most certainly not unique to the Unuted states and are just as prevalent in Europe. I lived in one of them, sub-urban paris, for 7 months last year. Just like in the US it tends to be made up of more ethnic poor than the prosperous regions of the city...

Secondly, as for 'not as close together', I remind you that the population of the entire EU is 456 million, and that the United States is almost twice the size of the entire EU in terms of geographical area, and thats just the continental 48. There is a LOT more room in the US than there is in Europe.


I don't think these differences are as pronounced as you say, and even where there are differences, I have yet to see one which explains why the US (if it has nothing to do with guns) is so much more homocidal than the rest of the first world.

lastly, even if your points WERE true, they don't apply to Canada, which is in makeup and culture almost identical, but still has less than half the murder rate. Why is that?



I have no problem at all with arming the campus security, provided each of them goes through an extensive training anf gun safety course. That seems reasonable to me. What I oppose is the ised that arming the students is a good idea.

Sorry for nitpicking, but I think you're confusing inner suburbs with outer suburbs in Paris. The suburbs in America tend to be wealthier than the cities, much like Paris' outer suburbs (think Versailles). In some cities like Chicago, the inner ring of suburbs are becoming more poor as cities regentrify, but in general the suburbs are largely considered better quality of life vs. the city proper, even the inner suburbs.

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Come on please stop joking. The CRIMINALS are doing the gun crime. Why should I pay esp. when I PAY for courts and jails and enforcement and the liberal judges just pour the gun criminals back on the street. How many times have we read about a murderer who had a ten – twenty year record of repeated gun crimes?? And still ON the STREET. Try law enforcement for a change. So how about we keep the scum bags in jail and make THEM work to pay for the 800 mil.

Today I heard some stupid Dem congresswoman (NY of course) babbeling about how she is a nurse and has been trying to ban guns for years. Apparently she missed the fact that her former profession (medicine) KILLS 90,000+ people a year at a cost of billions.

This debate should be about security at schools not guns. Check out the news from Baghdad and realize that when they come here with the explosive vests it will make all US shootings look like nothing.