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Since I saw the news I have been feeling :( ...
Even yesterday whilst working my thoughts were on this tragedy... even this morning it has been swirling around in my head...
I just can not imagine how the families must be feeling... what a loss of young children's lives :( ...
What is wrong with these people?
Do we need genetic/mental profiling done forcibly then these types of people removed from society? so normal people can live without this happening to them?
It is sickening isn't it. I really feel for everyone caught up in it. It happens too often in the USA, maybe they need to look at hiw readily available guns are over there.
On Saturday evening I was wrapping pressie with my 9yr old, you can just think what was going on in my head...
Yes adults get together at this time and socialise but the magic is with/for children... my heart wrenches thinking what the families must be feeling :( ...
Only this year my middle child did not do a letter to Santa otherwise every year there has been a letter to him, mapping his progress via the web...
When you look in their eyes you can see this innocence, hope, goodness, faith and belief in things which as adults we probably lose...
If that whatever wanted to do whatever to his mum (not condoning his actions towards her) why take so many innocent childrens/bystanders lives?
I just wish he had been alive to be tortured physically and mentally the bullet was too light...
It is absolutely sickening what happened there,perhaps stricter gun control could be a solution so that this,NEVER happens again.
We have the strictest gun control in the world - it didn't stop Dunblane or Hungerford. You cannot legislate for someone who is unhinged. If they didn't use a gun it could have knives, axes, chainsaws, cars or whatever - you can't ban everything. In most of theses realy distressing cases in the UK the POLICE have failed to act on information given to them and removed the guns and licences
The difference is you're having to go back 30 years in the UK to remember incidents like Hungerford. In the USA, there have been about 3 that I can remember off the top of my head in the last few years. In fact there have been 2 in the last 2 months. I know what you're saying potshot, but if tighter control in the US meant just one of these psychos didn't have access to a gun, wouldn't you say it would have been worth it? And yes, thet could have gone & got a knife, axe etc, but they wouldn't have been able to take nearly as many victims without a long range weapon like a gun.
I gotta agree they need to tighten laws there...
I have family in America and Canada, when they visit they always say come and live here its so much better... regardless of the opportunities and maybe better lifestyle/living costs I can't bring myself to think of moving there because of the gun issue IMO...
I think this is the issue... in any form of detection/prevention of criminal act...Quote:
Originally Posted by potshot
Is the future a Minority Report style law system?
What part of the laws are you going to tighten. What are you going to ban. Here in the UK handguns were banned but hey ho there are still hundreds of handguns on the streets - now only outlaws have handguns - so that really worked. The percentage of legally held sporting guns that are used in firearms crimes is less than half a per cent - so if you tighten up the laws for legally held guns IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL. What you have to do is reduce the amount of illegally held weapons - these weapons (and you notice I use the word weapons rather than guns because weapons by definition are used for fighting) are bought in by organised crime for drugs, prostitution etc etc etc.
How about tightening up the laws on heroin as well, oh sugar, thats already banned but hundreds of people die from heroine addiction every year. But it is all about organised crime so it is no surprise that almost ALL firearms crime takes place in the Met and in the West Midlands.
For me the answer is to increase sentencing on firearms offences -and that goes for the US as well. Over there prisoners are released early because of overcrowding in prisons - if you haven't got enough prisons FFS build more prisons...
Good points and all well made, rational arguments about those gun crimes that have happened in the UK. My suggestion that tighter controls on firearms should be introduced was regarding the USA however, not the UK. Do you think the massive difference in the number of gun-related crimes between the US and the UK could be because guns are far easier to get hold of over there.
I think if you look at the population differences the massive numbers you mention will disappear. You will also find that the number of burgularies and personal assaults in the US are dramatically lower that they are here - I wonder why that might be?
In the USA they have 88.8 firearms in private ownership per 100 citizens. In England & Wales, we have 6.2 firearms per 100. America had 9146 homicides by firearm where England & Wales had 41. Big difference there eh? Certainly bigger than can be explained by them having roughly 200 million population to our 60 million population. Do you still not see/want to admit any correlation? I do note that the data I'm quoting is missing data from Russia, China & Afghanistan.
Admittedly, although the USA does have by far the highest number of homicides per capita, there are countries like Hondouras, El Salvador, St Kitts & Nevis and Puerto Rico where there are more murders per firearm but that's a different issue about society in those countries.
Well one thing it isn't is because people own guns and they are a deterrent, look at brycie's figures.
The US must decide what is more important, the right to bear arms and to walk aroung the street with a small arsenal in your jacket or the opportunity to raise your children in a safe environment.
Yes, we have had our Dunblanes and Hungerfords and you cannot legislate to prevent the odd gun nut from running amok.
However, what you can do is restrict the owning of certain types of weapon, notably those which cannot be described as weapons for self defence.
In that I mean automatic weapons, there is no reason why ANYONE outside of the armed forces should hold an automatic assault weapon NONE WHATSOEVER.
Have an automatic five year prison sentence without parole for holding an automatic weapon illegally and you root out virtually all of those who may have thought its worth taking a chance leaving you with the hardened criminals who accept those risks as the occupational hazards to live in the criminal world in which they are involved.
Had that chap in the US not had an automatic weapon and thousands of rounds of ammunition, the death toll may well have been much lower.
I am so thankful we do not allow the vast majority of people in this country to hold automatic weapons, there is no need for them to do so , and the risks associated with allowing them to do so are too great in that it only needs some nutcase with a psychiatric disorder to inflict death on innocents.
Unfortunately the actions of a few always affect the responsible majority.
I have never seen a gun fired in public and long may these restrictions keep it that way.
If you need to decide between the rights of the majority of responsible gun owners to enjoy their pastime against the carnage and death caused by one unhinged gun nut to innocent six year old children, it is a no brainer here in the UK.
I have visited the US notably in Utah where guns are commonplace and we recalled a tragedy on the news in in the US in a gun shooting party where a young lad of seven accidentally shot his own mother through the head after picking up his dads handgun, he will never recover from that trauma. I saw ammunition touted on displays much like you'd see shampoo here in the UK, this weeks special 7.62mm full metal jacket hollow point hunting rounds, buy 50 get 50 free!!!!!!
I fear however that guns are so entrenched in the US and the influence of the NRA so pervasive that if you asked americans to vote between restricting guns and maintaining the status quo, things will remain the same, tragedies will continue all I am thankful for is I don't live in the US, not a place I'd bring children up in such circumstances.
Gazza57
Hard times so no asylums anymore due to funding, not that there ever was in the US anyway, all there's came with standard patient sales packages, or is we live amongst big babies whose response to not getting their own way every time is to throw Uzi's out of the pram,
One thing that I find odd and another reason why any real God can go get seen to is the one that owes never seems to pay, it all runs along like a man getting nailed for shoplifting as he steps out of his car in the car park to go shopping and the real theif is totally ignored and given a free reign,
Mollycoddle world, a world where you aren't allowed to speak for fear of offending, a world that requires all sorts of security measures because people simply can't play the game, a world where every one thinks it's their right to come and go first all the time, I'm glad I'm quite a way through my jail term on Hellearth, the way it's going you will be constantly monitored from birth to death, every move you make/made will be recorded on film, and if I'm honest about it as one who deals with the public, a good % of the public is simply vile, I see the look on the faces as strokes are being thought up, scheming all time, the face can't lie and that's why Poker is such a great game,
As for the losers in all of this, lets hope when they eventually die Mr Gunny is being held somewhere where they can torture him for as long as they feel the need, or the children that died are now with him on a equal non body term and are really making him have it.
Sadly in the States I don't think anything will change. It's in their Constitution....the right to bear arms. Was recently put through the Senate and approved to mean not only to defend your country but also to to defend your person and property.....NRA has over 4 million members many of whom are in positions of authority. If any changes are to be made it will have to come from the will of the general population....and that will never happen.
Oh...and as an aside it was Hungerford and Dunblane that brought in the ban on automation hand guns respectively....and there have been no mass shootings here since then.
Neil
Sent from my phone...
Another very valid point... sometimes I think these type of organisations must give funding to politicians/posts of power... even if there are anti-corruption measures/funding transparency,etc,etc the people who wish to line the pockets of someone still find a way, then they get their way...Quote:
Originally Posted by neilos100
IMO in the developed world corruption at high level of society/government is more rife then we would like to think...
That's for sure. I'm sure there are things that go on in Government that would shock even the most cynical of us. And yes, you just know the NRA is populated by decision makers in (and in with)the highest echelons of power. Makes me sick that they put their rihht to free choice (in this case to bear arms) and their pastimes ahead of the lives of their citizens, especially when so often recently the victims have been kids.
When there are series of programmes broadcast on TV that are about gunsmiths the culture is so deeply ingrained it can never change. Even showing on TV over here now....Sons of Guns is one.and I forget the name of the other.
Sent from my phone...
Everything is for sale in this world, one man loses somebody special while another makes a profit on that mans demise, we live in whore world, everything is for sale and the consequences don't matter.
That's nonsense. Sorry, but it is. You can't argue that just because Switzerland has less murders but more guns means that gun control doesn't work. It dies however make a statement about social problems in Germany compared to Switzerland. Yes, hardened criminals will find a way to get guns if the will is there, but maybe one kid with a screw loose who loses it & decides to open fire on his classmates like in Columbine wouldn't be able to grab his Dads guns in a fit of rage. ANY incidents like that that can be avoided is worth taking the precaution of tighter gun control.
And you can't argue that if just one person in the States had been unable to access his Dad's gun for instance & a few childrens':lives had been saved, it would be worth the precious independence and freedom to bear arms that NRA members protect so much.
If only NRA members valued human lives as much as their right to free choice.
Just another couple of thoughts o that article. I'm sure if it's sharing your opinion, you won't question the writer. I do have problems with the afticke however. In the fact & figures I quoted previously, the murders were firearms related specifically. The above article just talks of murders generally. So this article is, without reporting on firearms specifically, just discussing scial problems of a nation generally, and I'm sure we all knew Germany has more social problems than Switzerland and Russia has more social problems than the States. This writer is clearly doing his job by getting a story into print & could even be enjoying the controversy that his article will generate. He's either too lazy to get the genuinely important figures or they weren't making it easy for him to make his point against tighter gun control.
I think I read somewhere that around half of all the Senate has received money for their election campaigns from NRA members! If this isn't bribery in its most basic form I don't know what is.....:banghead:Quote:
Originally Posted by gupsterg
Sent from my phone...