That fact that people still kill people anyway isn’t a reason to enable them to kill more people in a shorter space of time either.
Yes, people will commit murder, people will stab people, smash heads with hammers, whatever. It happens, it’s unavoidable. What is avoidable is the ease in which psychopaths can murder large numbers of people. When no other developed nation in the world has massacres like the United States, maybe there is a reason it happens there and not elsewhere. Maybe that reason is the fact guns make it really easy to murder people.
If a guy is going to go on a rampage, make him do it with a knife, make it harder on him.
I get you like your guns but people liked their slaves and didn’t want to get rid of those either. They were protected by law as well. In the end human lives were what was most important, not the farmers right to have a slave.
Prostitution is completely legal nationwide here in Australia so I think we’re one step ahead on that one. Half the country has regulated brothels.
We don’t have same-sex marriage though and the Prime Minister is a revolving door lately so we’re not perfect but hell we can learn from each other. In the end it’s your backyard and this is ours but whatever makes the world a better place is doing everyone a service.
I don’t get what you are trying to argue about or what you think I am arguing about. You made this whole wall of text that seems like your argument is that banning guns doesn’t mean murders will stop. No shit. No one is saying that banning guns will stop murder from existing, what is being argued that with out guns it’s just easier to prevent mass killings. How the hell can a guy with a knife kill more than 10 people unless no body takes notice? You can’t be serious that the rate of mass killings done by knives is just the same as by guns. You can run from a person with a knife; 5 people can restrain him… there is just less power from the killer. The point is, there is more of a chance to survive a mass murderer if he doesn’t have a gun. It is not about the “low rates” of killing or potentially abolish murderers in general, it’s just making it harder for them to access weapons that can give them the power to kill more than 5 people in an area easily. Why the fuck do you trust these statistics anyway when we have more reports whether local to world wide?
No one denies that psychos will find other means, regardless that is not a good argument to use in opposition because the point is we want to lower the most common resources these assholes have first.
I’ve come to the realisation that even if all guns were banned in America, these types of things wouldn’t stop. In some cases they might actually be worse. This guy knew he wasn’t going to get out of the college alive. He was heavily influenced by the IRA, so he probably would’ve just created a bomb instead. Boston marathon was a bomb, and I don’t know the number of fatalities, but I’m guessing it was more than ten people.
Security should be armed at all colleges really, regardless of if guns are legal for the public to own or not. As much as I don’t like guns, the real problem is these needy, attention seeking anon virgins feel alienated by society and think their beliefs are more important than they really are. They all wants to be someone. Ruining lives and embarrassing other humans to obtain kudos/up votes is “winning the internet”. Twitter, 4chan, R/Kappa, Facebook…it doesn’t matter where you go anymore. Until we are stop being fed how much Kanye and Kim are better than us, people are going to feel disillusioned. There’s so much hate in the air because the pressure to be better than everyone else is there for no apparent reason.
To me, any form of mass murder is an act of terrorism. I didn’t really get that point by Obama either. It seems the word terrorist is now something that’s reserved only for muslim extremists.
I’m not being fed anything. I looked up the data on my own and came to my own conclusion.
First your logic is flawed. You are comparing rates from different countries and using that as your argument. I’m comparing rates FROM THE SAME COUNTRY before and after the implementations of gun regulations. The problem with using different countries is that unless you control for all variables differences (demographics, income level, etc.) those rates may not be directly comparable.
But using the same country fewer variables change. The demographic rarely changed within a year’s time, many of the other policies remain consistent, etc. Which makes comparing the before/after effects much more reliable.
The data is readily available from your own government’s website.
1996 was when the regulation and buyback was put into effect. From 1996 to 2004 murder rates remained unchanged from normal variance. If anything they increased slightly though this might be attributable to an increase in pollution. It wasn’t until 2004, a full 7 years later, that crime saw any kind of decline and one might even be able to argue that it wasn’t until 2006 the decline began. But as mentioned before this drop was seen across the entire western world, including the US.
So sorry, this isn’t propaganda. This is the results given by your government. I work in an evidence based field and when I want to figure something out I look up to see what data is available. You are going to need more than simply the overall murder rates because that tells me nothing.
A bad driver is many thousand times more likely to kill you in the US than a mass murderer, but I don’t see clamoring for more strict regulation for driver’s license even though that would probably save more lives than gun control.
Though sometimes I wish they would limit who can drive just because I get tired of having to dodge idiots on the road.
Let’s say 1000 people die by guns one year. You remove guns. 1000 people die by knives the next year. Is there any difference?
The means of someone’s death is irrelevant if the person still dies. If someone runs you over with a car, shoots you with a gun, stabs you with a knife, throws acid on you, gases you with chlorine gas, blows you up, strangles you, or does any other possible act to kill you doesn’t matter. What matters is if you died or not.
So if removing guns does not lead to a reduction in the murder rate how is the public any safer?
Sure a psycho can’t run into a crowded room with a knife (which isn’t always true either), so instead he becomes a serial killer and kills 20 people over the course of a week and the net result is the same. What matters in the end is the net result, not the manner the result happened in.
Yes I have shot a gun. In fact I’ve taken tactical training thank you very much. You are talking about going to a target range where the conditions are 100% ideal and unloading rapidly while neither you nor the target are moving. That’s the equivalent of me going into training mode in a fighting game and hitting a standing dummy. In a real situation the initial burst can be similar to that, but once people start to run and take cover hitting them is no longer so easy.
And apparently it isn’t all that easy when many of the mass shootings the US result in no deaths.
You haven’t shown you can actually argue with data at this point. Most of your arguments have been anecdotal at best. That and you can’t seem to grasp the concepts I am giving you.
There isn’t a difference, but your analogy is pure theory. As said multiple times, banning of guns is not to assure the elimination of murder but it is too decrease the capabilities of the person trying to accomplish murders to mass murder. Do you think all these victims in Oregon would be the same count if that person had a knife? I can assure you that the amount of people that fucker managed to kill was all because he had a gun, if that guy had only a knife i highly doubt that he would of been able to kill that much with in the same time frame.
WTF is the matter with you and how many times does it need to be stated that the banning of guns isn’t based on the logic that murder will be eliminated. Please fucking read. Everybody is aware that murders will find other methods, the difference is mass murders can’t be easily accomplished with out a gun. It’s taking away the power the person can get… people can actually commit mass murder with out any effort due to easy reach of easy mass murdering weapons (guns). Prevention is better than cure. I can care less if all results remain the same, i think it’s important we try to control various possibilities and banning of guns gives the common jack ass less possibility to kill 10+ people in 20-30 min. Fuck a man can kill 10 people in a minute just with a gun. What the hell is the matter with you americans and your love for guns that you got to be using this “even though guns are gone, people will still get murdered so don’t hate on guns…” shit?
I can understand why Australians would carry a gun, that whole nation is loaded with animals of various sizes that will fucking kill you… plus the fact that most of the natives there are descendants of convicts.
By pure theory you mean we have statistics from the UK and Australia? Because that’s exactly my argument is that the same number of people who were murdered in Australia in 1996 was pretty much the same number of people who were murdered in 97, 98 , 99, 00, 01, 02, and 03. Or in other words the same number of people were dying which meant the gun regulations did nothing to actually prevent any murders from happening.
No I can read, the problem is you haven’t thought your argument through past your talking points. Let me take you through your own reasoning and why I’m saying it’s bunk.
Ok let’s start with your initial premise
Guns make it easier for a single person who went insane to kill many people
So far so good right? Now let’s move onto the second point
If we remove/regulate guns, it will be harder for psychos to kill many people
Correct? Ok now let’s take this another step
If it is harder, there will be fewer mass attacks and/or fewer people will die in a single attack
Is this accurate? So now let’s take this a step further. This point will seem redundant, but stay with me
If fewer people die in an attack and/or there are fewer attacks, then there will be fewer deaths due to mass murder
And now the final point
If fewer people die in mass attacks and all other forms of murder remain nearly constant. The total murder rate should decline proportional to the decline in mass murder
And this is where I am arguing. If making it harder actually results in a decline in deaths then THE OVERALL RATE OF MURDER SHOULD DECLINE PROPORTIONALLY TO THE DECLINE IN MASS MURDER.
This is statistics 101.
So if a knife can only kill half as much in a mass attack as a gun and there are 350 deaths in 250 gun attacks, then you should have roughly 150-190 murders if you remove guns from the equation. Which would result in overall deaths dropping by 150-190 murders. If you can kill the same number of people with a knife, but only 1/10 knife attacks succeed compared to 100% of gun attacks, then you should see deaths dude to mass attacks drop to roughly 35 which would mean the overall death rate will drop by 315 deaths per year.
Do you see what I am getting at? That is the argument you are making even if you yourself are not aware of it.
So if “making it harder” to get guns was as effective as you claim, then in the UK and Australia we should have seen the murder rate drop in response even if it is small. The problem is that they didn’t see a decrease. ** In fact both countries saw a mild increase. ** Which renders your claim baseless at the moment.
Before you strawman my argument again. I am not claiming ALL MURDER will be gone. I have not once said that. What I am saying is that if your argument had any basis in reality, we should have seen some decline, even a very small one, in the countries which have done this already. Which we don’t. This in turn could imply things such as A. Mass murders due to guns were already an insignificant fraction of murders, B. People found other avenues to perform mass murder, C. Other forms of murder rose as a result of the loss of guns, D. The change had absolutely no effect and all murders are being committed by the same methods at equal rates., E. (Fill in the Blank)
So basically what you are saying is that it’s ok for people to die so long as it wasn’t a gun that killed them? I thought the whole point of limiting “mass murder” was to save lives no?
I think that’s partly due to the (stereotypical) 'Muricans caring more about the possibility that their gun rights might be taken than they do about the fact that people’s lives were taken. That those folks were singled out didn’t even cross their minds because whoever died that day and any details about them aren’t important to them, but their firearms ARE important to them, and thus they are focused on that.
The only way these acts of violence can stop or be reduiced is like how FrostyAU was saying. You can own guns, just not guns where you can pepper anything to get sure kills. Like I don’t have a commercial drivers license. Even if I knew somebody who had a freight truck I couldn’t legally drive it. I can’t even legally drive a forklift without certification! Why should gun ownership be any different? Because “the constitution is sacred”? Fuck that. If you own a weapon that can blast holes in walls, or carve people up like turkeys, You better have some state-certified paperwork stating your right to own such weapons.
The 2nd Amendment has long been in need of an update. Much more than any gay marriage law. There’s no practical reason anybody should have a firearm stronger than a shotgun, or a rifle. The gun issue needs to reach a compromise without being an all-or-nothing debate.
what? What kind of weirdos still have a goddamn MySpace page in 2015? Jesus H. Christ, man…
Dammit, man… the guy’s even a loser at taking a simple picture…couldn’t even get that shit right, just like everything else in his pathetic ass life…unbelievable, man…
edit—Ohhhhh what a surprise that this latest shooter had consistent trouble with a non-existent love life…basically another Elliot Rodger? Oh I am just flabbergasted from how unexpected this is.