Another Shooting, Close to Home

[Chaos]

I would say that's the worst-case scenario, yes. Far more likely is that it wouldn't have happened at all. A gun makes the weilder feel invulnerable. I have no evidence to hand and I'm not sure such evidence exists, but I'd be very surprised if this guy would have had the balls to try to kill a roomful of people had he not been carrying a gun.
*snip*

I live in a gun-restricted society as well, and the number of non-gun killing sprees (that were reported in the media) as long as I can remember is exactly 1. In all of Germany. And that incident was a guy with a katana who went to his ex-wife´s workplace and killed her and one of her co-workers.

 

[baron]

Right, and they're just going to magic themselves out of existence the second more restrictive laws are passed?

Er, no. Do you actually have a point?

 

[Bikewer]

There may be a point there. In the United States, there is indeed a very deeply ingrained culture of gun ownership, which is after all in the Constitution.

It's also true that there are very many guns indeed here. Estimates (no one knows for sure, as guns hardly "wear out" as do toasters and microwave ovens. Weapons produced in the 1800s still work fine) are that there may be enough weapons for every man, woman, and child in the country to have his very own.
I have been a member of the NRA (albeit not for many years) and I'm well familiar with the rhetoric that individual gun ownership is a bulwark against tyranny. Whether this is a statement of any merit is open to question, of course, but it is part of the culture.

Political pundits talking about the further restriction of firearm ownership have almost universally said that it's a dead issue. The almost-meaningless restrictions imposed on "assault weapons" years ago have been allowed to expire with scarcely a word of protest save from the anti-gun activists.
The Supreme Court has recently found that an individual city's attempt to ban handguns is unconstitutional.
I would not predict any meaningful legislation in the way of further gun controls in the foreseeable future, and violent resistance to any proposed legislation.

Even the vicious Virginia Tech mass killing only resulted in attempts to regulate ownership by psychiatric patients, which has run into seemingly unsurmountable hurdles due to newly enacted patient-confidentiality rules....

 

[Piggy]

It doesn't matter how often it happens or in what circumstances, the usual suspects will post away about how this has nothing at all to do with easy access to firearms.

Well, since it looks like I'm getting tagged as one of the usual suspects in some quarters, I hope you don't mind if I take the opportunity to say.... it has everything to do with easy access to firearms.

And the claim that "It never would have happened if they didn't have access to the guns" is absolutely true (although in some cases the crimes would have happened, just by other means).

It's the school shootings that are the worst of it, for me. I recall eating breakfast at a Holiday Inn in Portland, OR, when the news came on about Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden murdering 5 people at their school in Arkansas. The killers were 11 and 13 years old.

I felt like the whole world had just gone crazy.

And what makes it even worse is that we now know there's a ripple effect. For every nationally publicized shooting like the VT killings, we can expect 1 to 3 "aftershock" spree shootings.

The question is not whether these incidents could be prevented by stopping easy access to firearms.

The question is, in a nation where 2 out of 5 households has a gun (or guns) in them, and where there's 2 privately owned guns for every 3 citizens, how in the world does anyone propose that such access be curtailed?

 

[Piggy]

Are you serious? What a way to live.

Tell me about it.

I live in a tiny community (the "city" itself is a quarter square mile with a population of under 500, surrounded by lots of farmland and residential zones with no more than 1 home per every 1.5 acres) and at the highly controversial zoning meeting in which the County Commission approved a variance for a high-density development, we all had to empty our pockets and walk thru a metal detector. Police were posted at the front door of the building, at the door to the room, and inside the room.

 

[Kestrel]

There may be a point there. In the United States, there is indeed a very deeply ingrained culture of gun ownership, which is after all in the Constitution.

It's also true that there are very many guns indeed here. Estimates (no one knows for sure, as guns hardly "wear out" as do toasters and microwave ovens. Weapons produced in the 1800s still work fine) are that there may be enough weapons for every man, woman, and child in the country to have his very own.
I have been a member of the NRA (albeit not for many years) and I'm well familiar with the rhetoric that individual gun ownership is a bulwark against tyranny. Whether this is a statement of any merit is open to question, of course, but it is part of the culture.

Political pundits talking about the further restriction of firearm ownership have almost universally said that it's a dead issue. The almost-meaningless restrictions imposed on "assault weapons" years ago have been allowed to expire with scarcely a word of protest save from the anti-gun activists.
The Supreme Court has recently found that an individual city's attempt to ban handguns is unconstitutional.
I would not predict any meaningful legislation in the way of further gun controls in the foreseeable future, and violent resistance to any proposed legislation.

Even the vicious Virginia Tech mass killing only resulted in attempts to regulate ownership by psychiatric patients, which has run into seemingly unsurmountable hurdles due to newly enacted patient-confidentiality rules....

Hadn't the Virginia Tech killer been judged to be a threat to himself and others in a court of law?

If so, it's not an insurmountable problem. It's just a question of record keeping and updating the database that is queried when someone tries to purchase a handgun.

 

[Piggy]

Hadn't the Virginia Tech killer been judged to be a threat to himself and others in a court of law?

In late 2005 he was judged to be an "imminent" danger to himself and others. For some reason, however, he was given outpatient treatment. I don't know why.

It's not unusual for folks with this designation to be released after treatment makes them no longer an imminent danger. People who are so chronically deluded and violent that they pose a permanent threat are usually committed to an institution, although many of them have been released for reasons unrelated to their condition, such as defunding of the services which keep them off the streets.

Under the circumstances, it does seem bizarre that he was given outpatient treatment at that time.

However, even if he had been treated as an inpatient, chances are he would have been released once he was judged stable enough as to not pose an immediate threat, so it may have made no difference in the long run.

 

[baron]

There may be a point there. In the United States, there is indeed a very deeply ingrained culture of gun ownership, which is after all in the Constitution.

It's also true that there are very many guns indeed here. Estimates (no one knows for sure, as guns hardly "wear out" as do toasters and microwave ovens. Weapons produced in the 1800s still work fine) are that there may be enough weapons for every man, woman, and child in the country to have his very own.
I have been a member of the NRA (albeit not for many years) and I'm well familiar with the rhetoric that individual gun ownership is a bulwark against tyranny. Whether this is a statement of any merit is open to question, of course, but it is part of the culture.

I understand this, and I don't doubt the magnitude of any task to restrict firearms in the US, but this discussion only arises after people have acknowledged there's a problem. Many US citizens appear to deny an issue exists and a proportion of these actually propose that more guns should be available to combat the situation that was caused by guns in the first place.

 

[baron]

I live in a tiny community (the "city" itself is a quarter square mile with a population of under 500, surrounded by lots of farmland and residential zones with no more than 1 home per every 1.5 acres) and at the highly controversial zoning meeting in which the County Commission approved a variance for a high-density development, we all had to empty our pockets and walk thru a metal detector. Police were posted at the front door of the building, at the door to the room, and inside the room.

Well, maybe you get used to it, but I couldn't deal with that.

 

[fuelair]

Indeed. I always sort of assumed that rural America was, for the most part, like rural Australia. It seems, from the post above, to be pretty much the exact opposite.

It was. Now, let's look at what has changed: Many people started moving to city suburbs (or even the city apartments) instead of the country. Mostly those who could afford it and were brighter (please note the Mostly. also, note that this is based on a lot of studies over the last 35-40 years. also note that this is a topic of very limited interest to me so I am not hunting up links. My folks got out of small country towns [Sango,TN and Elkview W.Va. environs].
A lot of those who remained were poor, limitedly educated (dropping out to work as early as possible), had lower access to technology BUT most had access to TV whatever it meant doing without (this is common to many poor countries also). The world of drugs was open, it was (meth production) open to the simplest of chemical minds (as moonshining had been in earlier times) and (also as in earlier times) the government was viewed as fine for getting money from but mean and evil for trying to stop good xtian people from trying to make a living and having what little fun was available.

Thus the conversion of very small rural areas to the equivalent of certain rural areas of Kentucky (alcohol) and California (+) (marijuana) in terms of trust, sociability and crime.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, maybe you get used to it, but I couldn't deal with that.

Me neither. I can't say I'm enchanted by all the security cameras, but when they work as intended (as in a child abduction foiled in the early stages due to CCTV pictures being broadcast), I feel I can live with it.

But all these weapons? Such security? Never!

And yet this is the country which let a bunch of Arabs with Stanley knives on some planes because they didn't take internal security seriously. Whereas we've had strict internal security for ages because of the IRA.

That's a thought. I was startled having my bag searched in London, because it never happened in Scotland - the IRA didn't target Scotland so there was no need. But people understand, when the threat is obviously real. No litter bins in stations, because bombs had been secreted there. Bag searches to get in to see the opera. Strict luggage control at airports even for internal flights (that was after Lockerbie). And so on.

But nobody ever suggested we'd be better all having guns than security searches! Armed guards in a village meeting with total population 500? What is it with Merikans?

Rolfe.

 

[Piggy]

Well, maybe you get used to it, but I couldn't deal with that.

What would you do?

 

[Rolfe]

Emigrate!

Rolfe.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Of course they do. I'm thinking maybe I misinterpreted your post, because I assumed your were talking about armed guards, but then you cited analogies to bouncers who are not armed, and I can't see the relationship.

Off duty cops tend to be armed, at least where I live.

It does not matter that they are, or are not armed. They are there to provide security. They are a latent threat of physical force being used on someone who goes off in a public setting that presumes reasonably rational behavior.

If you find armed to be the problem, our discussion is at an end in this thread. That concern is probably more related to a topic in one of those gun threads.

Thanks for the rest of your comments, appreciated.

DR

 

[Piggy]

Emigrate!

I've considered it.

Y'know what stops me?

The hills.

I love them too much. I want to die in the Appalachians.

But y'know, whenever I come back from Spain, I can't help but think, "Oh my God, we're such hicks!" And we're proud of it, too.

 

[Rolfe]

I know what you mean. When I was working in England, one of the tunes I couldn't get out of my head was "The green hills of Tyrol".

And fair as these green foreign hills may be
They are not the hills of home.

It would be hard to consider leaving, but if circumstances got to the point you're describing, I'd certainly consider it.

Rolfe.

 

[Francesca R]

I'm still boggling about this. Less than 1000 population? We call that a village, here, and not a very big one at that.

I think you have yet to appreciate how rural America is arranged. [ . . . ] These were towns where 200-600 people was common, very insular and isolated.

[ . . . ]

I think that's what fuels that psychological need for guns. There were guns everywhere, gas station guy had his visible behind the counter. Virtually every house I delivered to (mostly the upper classes) had gun cabinets. I think that when you perceive your society as hostile and dangerous, owning a gun helps balance things mentally.

That said, I see parallels in that mentality in other social groups. People in the suburbs who have no idea who their neighbors are because theirs no social mechanism to introduce yourself. Urban dwellers who have to call the police to make their neighbors turn the music down because they fear getting shot asking themselves. I see guns as a band-aid on the psyche of society.

America lacks a group identity right down to the town level. Sure people are happy to wave a flag and downright pleased to ostracize people who don't support the troops, but the idea that our governments are forums for communities, states, and the nation to come together and advance the common interest is dead. Government is, not altogether unreasonably, seen as one more danger in an already hostile and broken world.

That's why America is scary, not because everyone has guns, but because of the individual fortress mentality which drives the demand.

I assumed that the "city with population less than 1000" statement arose because of the standardised way in which geographic administrations and postal addresses in the US are organised. If my understanding is correct, pretty much every address in the country has a street number, street name (perhaps apartment/unit number), city, state and zip-code. So no matter where you live, you technically live in a "city" with a city boundary.

quixotecoyote's follow up about how this influences (or is influenced by) social attitudes is actually news to me (and I don't assume it to be generally true right off the bat).

 

[Policenaut]

Calling the cops to make people turn down music seems to be the best course of action when everyone there is drunk and won't listen to you anyway. I'm never afraid I'll get shot and I live in Philly. It's that people who listen to loud music late at night are usually partying and drunk and/or high and won't listen to reason.

 

[bignickel]

Rolfe will never have a full understanding of America until viewing an episode of 'Squidbillies'.

 

[Tailgater]

So it's just as easy to make a large bomb, smuggle it into a public hall and detonate it than it is to pull a trigger?

How many stabbing sprees have claimed seven lives that you know of?

How many times have seven people been deliberately run over and killed?

Lots of people are nuts but in many countries that doesn't regularly result in carnage.

People find a way. This guy spent months building a vehicle of destruction for a similar dispute. Amazing no one was killed, but he took out a big chunk of the town.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA&feature=related