Another Shooting, Close to Home

quixotecoyote said:
I think you have yet to appreciate how rural America is arranged. I used to deliver furniture and appliances to little towns in northeast Missouri. Some of the towns were so small they wouldn't be on the map. A lot of them were truly insular and scary. I saw several signs on gas stations, one in particular stands out "If you ain't a local, don't be asking fer air." I kid you not. [snip]
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I just wanted to chime in here and state that quixotecoyote's post does not at all reflect my experiences growing up in rural/small town areas in Illinois and Central Kentucky. Let's not lump all of "rural America" together, here, please.
 
acuity said:
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.
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This isn't quite true. In the USA, we have four levels of government: national, state, county, and city. But not all areas are within the boundaries of an "incorporated" city. The areas outside of cities have only 3 levels of government. Your mail address is based on the location of whatever post office the U.S. Postal Service designates as your local post office. This doesn't necessarily mean that you live within the boundaries of that particular city, and it doesn't even mean that the location is the name of an incorporated city. In my case, my official mail address is for a different city than the one I actually live in.
 
It's like that, sort of, in Britain as well, except it's usually referred to as the "postal town". Every other village I've lived in has had the nearby town as the "postal town". What's odd about the one where I live now is that it itself seems to be the "postal town", despite its small size. Which seems to mean I have to enter it as "city" if ordering anything from the US!

Rolfe.
 
Can I add my name to the list of people noting the utter craziness of having armed guards at town meetings, and also restate my incredulity at the position of those who think that more guns would reduce this type of occurrence.

America - your country is terrifying.
 
It's happened again -

This time, some guy a couple blocks West and South of my house allegedly lit a truck on fire, waited for the emergency responders to arrive, and started shooting. A 22-year-old rookie firefighter is dead and 2 police officers were injured but are expected to survive. The authorities had my neighborhood locked down pretty tightly this morning and you could smell the burning car & house from the front porch of my house (where I was advised not to linger).

Here's a link to the story -

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=150408&catid=40

I don't know what to expect when I get back from work - I've heard a number of different things and I'm not sure what to believe. I have heard that the power was cut to our neighborhood during the standoff and I don't know if it's restored. I heard that the house the guy was was burned to the ground shortly after the SWAT arrived (also neighbors reported "explosions" - perhaps I should cross-post this in Conspiracy Theories) I've heard that he house was the suspect's house and I've also heard that he just broke in there.

It's an odd way to start the week. Maplewood is such a nice little community in the middle of a larger metropolitan area, and it makes me both sad and a little angry that one disturbed individual can make this sort of negative impact; worse in that it's the second such incident to occur so close to home recently.
 
The story yesterday was crazy. I was following it on another forum with a person who was taking pictures from up the road. Wow. :boggled:
 
Drudgewire said:
The story yesterday was crazy. I was following it on another forum with a person who was taking pictures from up the road. Wow. :boggled:
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Reap what you sow, Drudge. This is the inevitable consequence of the laws you champion so loudly.
 
volatile said:
Reap what you sow, Drudge. This is the inevitable consequence of the laws you champion so loudly.
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Which is why I'm armed. Bought my first firearm (well, the first since I'd sold my only other one a decade earlier) the day after Virginia Tech and have never looked back.

Which might be a good bit of advice for new gun owners: Don't let your first gun be something really cool. If I'd bought a basic revolver, who knows how quickly my passion might have died.

Instead I bought an FNP-9 and fell in love.
swoon.gif
 
*sigh* Don't you see any irony in that position whatsoever? The VT guy wouldn't have been able to kill anyone if he hadn't been able to buy guns so easily! By supporting the gun laws as you do, you're making it more likely that you'll be shot at. The case in the OP stands as a stark warning about what happens when guns are easily available. Your logic is completely topsy-turvy.

And to think Luchdog castigated me when I described the gun situation as an arms race...
 
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It's a societal thing. Injecting guns into a society without them is as dangerous as trying to remove them from a society based upon them.

That's why I don't say other countries have guns laws that are too restrictive and need to be relaxed. I say "if you don't like how we do it here, don't live here."
 
Drudgewire said:
It's a societal thing. Injecting guns into a society without them is as dangerous as trying to remove them from a society based upon them.
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Really? Evidence?

Do you think the massacre in the OP, or the VTech shooting, or Collumbine, or shootings of those ilks, would have occurred had guns not been easily available?

I understand that certain hardened criminals have guns, and that they truism "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" holds to some degree. Hell, the UK's criminal fraternity (particularly the drugs gangs) are, if the tabloids to be believed, awash with guns. Thing is, though, we don't seem to have any of the types of shootings in the OP any more - because we've made it impossible for the deranged, lone citizen to tool himself up. That's what happens when you remove quotidian access to firearms.

The crims will no doubt continue shooting each other no matter what. I understand that. But removing weapons from the citizenry can only serve to prevent incidents such as the one in the OP that you find so horrific. The UK criminal underworld is flush with weapons, but we hardly ever have average civilians being shot at, and we've certainly not had anything even approaching the severity of the OP since Dunblaine, which prompted the latest raft of handgun restrictions. That's 12 years without a gun massacre, even though our outlaws most certainly do have guns. We've also never had disaffected youths go on gun rampages, because teenagers simply cannot get guns. It's that simple.

That's why I don't say other countries have guns laws that are too restrictive and need to be relaxed. I say "if you don't like how we do it here, don't live here."
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So you're content to perpetuate the cycle of violence rather than aim at policies that at least aim at the reduction of shootings such as those in the OP? That sounds like an illoigcal cop-out to me.
 
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Cop-out, live in fear, perpetuate violence, it's all a bunch of "blah, blah, blah" to me.

Guns are engrained into our society. We can't make them magically disappear, and I wouldn't want them to if we could. Yes I'm content, and every time I buy a new gun I get more content.

We'll simply have to agree to disagree about this forever. You won't be able to grasp the notion of guns increasing my safety any more than I can grasp the notion of not needing one...



...or seven. :o
 
Drudgewire said:
Cop-out, live in fear, perpetuate violence, it's all a bunch of "blah, blah, blah" to me.

Guns are engrained into our society. We can't make them magically disappear, and I wouldn't want them to if we could. Yes I'm content, and every time I buy a new gun I get more content.

We'll simply have to agree to disagree about this forever. You won't be able to grasp the notion of guns increasing my safety any more than I can grasp the notion of not needing one...



...or seven. :o
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:rolleyes: You're weird. You know that, right?

It's a shame that you feel that way. It really is. Of course you can't make guns "magically disappear". No one is suggesting you can. But what you can do is take steps to stop innocent people being massacred. I can't figure out why you wouldn't want to do that. It literally makes no sense to me at all.
 
There were some gun advocates on the KSDK site's comments area yesterday actually suggesting that it would be a good idea to have firemen carry firearms.

Brilliant! Let's have the men who are paid to rush headlong into burning infernos strap live ammunition to their sides while they do it. That should turn out wonderfully.

But anyway, I'm not sure why this always turns into a pro-gun versus anti-gun debate. There are a lot of other issues involved here. Obviously, a firefighter can't be expected to be able to defend himself from a nutcase by carrying a sidearm, and on the other hand I think it's in extremely poor taste to suggest that anyone "reaped what they sowed" here, unless perhaps you're talking about the man who was shooting at the first responders, who ended up burning to death in his own house.
 
volatile said:
It's a shame that you feel that way. It really is. Of course you can't make guns "magically disappear". No one is suggesting you can. But what you can do is take steps to stop innocent people being massacred. I can't figure out why you wouldn't want to do that. It literally makes no sense to me at all.
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I don't see taking away guns as taking steps to stop innocent people being massacred. I see having guns as the opportunity to stop someone from massacring innocent people around me.


:rolleyes: You're weird. You know that, right?
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Boy do I ever. :D
 
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Minadin said:
and on the other hand I think it's in extremely poor taste to suggest that anyone "reaped what they sowed" here, unless perhaps you're talking about the man who was shooting at the first responders, who ended up burning to death in his own house.
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I was just pointing out that nutcases shooting members of the public is an unavoidable consequence of the gun laws Drudgewire has so often praised on this forum. If you want to be able to have guns sold over the counter to anyone without a criminal records or a diagnosed mental illness, then you have to accept that situations like this will occur with more frequency than otherwise.

It wasn't meant personally, or maliciously. I'm sure Drudge knew what I meant, anyway. Apologies if any offence was caused.
 
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