World events

Allah, God and Buddha walk into a bar.......

And now would be the best time to go and re-heat my "Ahmed the dead terrorist" love

Very sad. Unbelievably sad. I trully hope that one day, America will realize where all the gun loving leads, every single time.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/14/sh … ?hpt=hp_t1

Absolutely horrendous, unimaginably awful for all those directly involved.

D, I expect to see many more events like this sadly, America won't be giving up any guns.

It is always sad when something like this happens, I recently read that New York alone had for the first time in a long time a day without a shooting occurring. Makes you wonder about all the other isolated incidents; this month in the US a gun carrying man shot his son by accident. Stricter gun laws might not prevent every shooting but it at least diminishes the chance of idiots and crazy people from getting their hands on guns.

Unlisted guns are harder to track down than guns you can buy over the counter. I know Europe has an 'underground' network of gun trade etc. but I have the slightest idea where I would get a gun in Belgium other than perhaps relatives who've hunted in the past and have mostly old guns lingering around, guns that are questionable at best in performance. To kill 26 people you'd need an automatic rifle or at least something that reloads fast. And what's worrisome in the US is that anyone can buy these types of weapons, let alone just a standard pistol.

I'm always reminded of the scene from the Michael Moore docu where you get a free shotgun when you open a bank account (!)

Very sad

I love (and I use the term VERY loosely) how people*) see the need to quote other, utterly unrelated tragedies to somehow put another, utterly unrelated tragedy "in perspective".
I'll be happy to talk about insane Chinese killers when we talk about insane Chinese killers (or the safety on Chinese schools, or mental illness in China or anything pertaining to that). I'll be happy to talk about horrific events in Syria when we talk about unrest in the Middle East, civil war, repressive governments in the region, or anything pertaining to that).

Right NOW the issue is that one boy took three LEGALLY acquired guns (including a fucking ASSAULT RIFLE) and blew away 20+ children and some adults in an awful and disgusting tragedy.

And to me, the only two poignant points to make are this one and this one.

Yes, the world may be a "terrible place", but we can fucking DO something about it.
Rather than point away.


*): not aimed at you, D., but rather the originator of that extremely myopic thought.

I doubt it.

You're quite right, Christopher. It's an incomprehensible debate to me (and I guess to a lot of Europeans). To me it boils down to one very simple point: guns were designed to kill. That is their purpose. Not ONE of their purposes, or a side effect. It is their inherent reason and purpose for existing.

And any tool like that has no place on the street in anyone's hands but law enforcement which legally has a monopoly on violence. Any claim to culture and tradition is as suspect as the claims of religious fundamentalists to repress and mutilate women. Any claim to history is as asinine as claiming legitimacy for slavery.
Times, history and culture have changed.

So yeah, the debate is indeed exceedingly black and white to me. I'd even go so far as to say it is solely black, as there simply is no argument in the world that could in any way convince me a civilised country like the US needs tools that have no goal but to bring death quickly and easily in private hands.

Again please note that I'm not ranting at you or anyone personally, Christopher! It's just the very fact that there's even a debate surrounding this issue that absolutely galls, frustrates and infuriates me.

What I found particularly chilling was a snatch of an interview with one of the children caught up in this horrible event. I got the impression from this small child that hearing gunshots was not an unusual thing for him and that the shots in this occasion were not the same sound as he was accustomed to hearing - it even sounded that he was familiar with hearing gunshots in the school environment, but I must have heard that wrong.

If children are growing up with guns around them in everyday life then it's going to be really difficult to get people to change their attitudes towards them.

I don't think that I have ever heard a gun being fired - I may have had a bit of a sheltered upbringing but I don't think that my experience is any different from a significant number of people.

(from what i read in the press today and aimed generally at stupid comments i read since yesterday on facebook, not someone specific here, although the aliens - 'evil' government - zombie defense theory is stupid)

The mother was obsessive with guns.
She knew the kid was a psycho. she told the babysitter to never turn his back to the kid, not leave him alone at all, even to go to the toilet!
He appears to have suffered from some multiple personality schizophrenia or a similar disorder
was under heavy medication for years
Yet, she kept guns and ammunition around him all these years, and...
bragged about the guns, but also
taking her kids shooting frequently with HER!

Now don't tell me this could have happened in another country which doesn't have your retarded laws, at least not so easily! It's not Breivik, a mastermind with a phd-sized dogma and a cruel manifesto he worked on for years who manufactured explosives out of fertilizer; those lunatics will always find ways to cause harm regardless of gun laws and country of residence. Your case, was a kid.

It's a little sick kid, his obsessive, divorced (failed at all things family it seems) and pushy mother knew about him, he was on medication for years, and yet she kept all the guns and ammo at home and took her sons shooting with her all the time. It' s a wholly US thing and it's completely crazy that those who actually see the sickness and complete lack of logic in all of this, get called lunatics by your majority! I wonder who's the deranged here. You, as a nation, have deep problems to solve.

Don't forget the North-Koreans!

That is true. Although people sometimes make the argument that outlawing guns wouldn't have an effect at all because the country is crammed with guns, and I think that people who say this are fooling themselves. If people weren't allowed to have guns the numbers of guns would drop pretty quickly to begin with, but many would indeed remain in hiding. But within a few decades I think the numbers will be more similar to an average western country; likewise the murder rate.



The funny thing is that countries in Europe haven't even banned guns entirely. Here in Denmark we have very strict gun control, but hunters and the home guard with the right permits are permitted to keep guns in their homes; guns that btw almost never seem to be used in crime. I've talked about it with some american gun lovers, and they seem to think that stuff like hunting would become illegal too. It is indeed black and white thinking.



Indeed. Not only paranoid, but incredibly naive to think that ordinary people with firearms will be able to do much against a professional army, especially a huge, modern one like the american.

Anyway, I guess what I find most annoying about the use of the 2nd ammendment is that the people who argue from it never seem to realize the fact that the definition of the word "arms" has changed significantly. Back then "arms" meant muskets and such. These weapons had a terrible aim, there was only a single shot and it took ages to reload. Why they insist it applies to modern weapons has nothing to do with the intent of the founders, but is entirely about what the arguer in question wants the text to mean.

Peter