Obama to unveil gun violence measures
commanderkai @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:18 pm
andyt andyt:
Can't disagree with anything you wrote here. But as you say, we do care about innocents killed. So dismissing mass shootings as rare isn't helpful - it's common enough to scar the psyche of the nation. Mabye more than all the gang crime, because few people are exposed ot it and as you say, don't care that much about the victims
I'm not dismissing mass shootings just because they're rare. The fact that they are rare, like plane crashes and terrorism, they will certainly make an impact on a nation's populace. If they were commonplace, we would become desensitized by them, like how Israel was during the Second Intifada.
And much like others have said, focusing on guns really doesn't do anything to stop events like Sandy Hook from happening again. Hell, Sandy Hook happened when a mentally ill person murdered their own mother, and stole her firearms, to conduct a massacre at a school. This didn't happen in a state with little gun control. Sure, it might prevent some tragedies like this, but that doesn't really address the root cause of why these events really happen.
To me, we should focus a lot more on the mental health issue from the Sandy Hook tragedy, and past tragedies. Almost all other major mass shooting incidents had the shooter having severe mental health issues, or concerns relating to such. Really, focusing on guns really doesn't change the root causes of these issues. If you want to lower the overall murder rate in the United States (or Canada, or anywhere else), you should focus on the root cause of it, which is generally poverty, poor education, and a highly cynical culture suffering from a cycle of bullshit. You want to stop mass shootings? Focus on the reasons why these shootings happen. Seeing the gun as being at fault, to me, is like blaming the aircraft for 9-11. A mentally disturbed man fired those shots that killed those innocent people.
bootlegga @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:23 pm
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
Actually my points were notice how the China attacks didn't require a gun, and most people didn't hear about that one. Why not, I wonder.
Look in the gun thread - it was debated hugely. Most of the recent mass shootings (Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, etc) had a higher death toll than ALL of the mass stabbings in China in the past several years (a total of eight in case you're wondering).
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
andyt andyt:
Swimming pools kill way more children than guns too. What's your point? Actually the knifing in China have been discussed ad nauseum. How many kids died in those?
None, but people often forget the biggest school mass killing in American history didn't involve guns. It was explosives. The Sandy Hook tragedy is being politicized with false fear tactics so Obama can disarm America. Did you notice how he was standing behind kids when he gave his address last night? I found that kind of sneaky and gutless.
As a parent, that word is the most important thing you said.
fifeboy @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:34 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
andyt andyt:
per capita, the US is by far the champeen of mass murders like this.
Nope. Mexico owns that crown. Mexico makes places like Iraq and Afghanistan look relatively safe.
Over the past six years the total homicide rate in the US has dropped from 5.7 per 100,000 to 4.7 per 100,000.
In Mexico it has gone up by 37% in the same time frame.
While Honduras has the highest murder ate in the world at 78 per 100,000 this past year, Mexico has the highest number of mass murders.
Their mass murders are particularly gruesome, too.
In 2012 the mass murders in Mexico included:
Forty-nine people who were beheaded and had their heads dumped in a city intersection.
One killer who went on a spree and murdered seventy-five people in Ciudad Juarez.
A cultist in Jalisco who murdered eighty to possibly two hundred young people.
A single shooting in Acapulco that included thirty-eight dead.
Eighteen people in Mexico City beheaded and who had their hands cut off while they were still alive.
Fifteen high school students murdered in Tijuana at a restaurant.
A bombing in Nogales killed twenty-four.
Thirty-one bus passengers slaughtered in Chihuahua by Zetas cartel members on a road checkpoint. Among the dead were at least three infants.
But most of this was commited by drug cartels and because the media doesn't like presenting Mexico in a bad light these stories got as little as 49 words worth of coverage in the USA - if they were covered at all.
You can find them on Google (takes some looking) and I'm sure there are more that were only reported in the Spanish language press.
I'm not saying that the USA is all that, I just object to the knee-jerk condemnation you dished out here.
BartSimpson @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:36 pm
fifeboy fifeboy:
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
I'm not saying that the USA is all that, I just object to the knee-jerk condemnation you dished out here.
I would hope that Americans would strive to more than "we are better than Mexico."
That's about what I said, wasn't it?
fifeboy @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:46 pm
bootlegga bootlegga:
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
None
As a parent, that word is the most important thing you said.
Exactly
fifeboy @ Thu Jan 17, 2013 3:47 pm
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
fifeboy fifeboy:
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
I'm not saying that the USA is all that, I just object to the knee-jerk condemnation you dished out here.
I would hope that Americans would strive to more than "we are better than Mexico."
That's about what I said, wasn't it?
Didn't sound like it!
bootlegga @ Fri Jan 18, 2013 4:27 pm
desertdude desertdude:
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
A fine editorial illustration...especially the third panel.
And I repeat
IMO legitimate, sensible and responsible gun owners are the ones who are willing to talk about gun control and come to reasonable solutions and not go bat shit crazy at even the mention of the word gun control and associate everyone who does as either slaves or someone who does not love their children and that in this case that the country is going to turn into Nazi Germany.
And I think this also deserves a repeat in context to the quoted post
Jon Stewart "So this is what it is, their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future, prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present. We can't even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths, that are actually, in reality happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of an imaginary Hitler"
I'd rep if I could!