Another shooting in America, this time Wade Michael Page took his gun into a Sikh Temple and shot dead six worshippers before the police ended his killing spree.
The most repeated claim i have heard is that Page mistook Sikhs for Muslims but further delving finds that he was a right wing extremist who played in a racist white-power band so my guess would be that when he chose his target, he ticked the 'not white' and 'different religion' boxes on his checklist and didn't worry too much about his targets, they were different to him and that was all that mattered.
In an interview with a US reporter on BBC Radio 5 last night, a US journalist was asked after two mass killings in two weeks, both by people with legally held guns, will there now be a debate about gun laws there?
'No' was the simple reply, 'no debate, end of story'.
Apart from the 18 dead people over the past few weeks at the hands of two gunmen, the most shocking thing is that there will not be a debate over 'the right to bear arms'. No talk about tightening of the laws to make sure people like James Holmes or Wade Michael Page do not get their hands on guns, nothing.
Scary thought that being able to own a gun trumps innocent people not being shot while they sit in a cinema, a school or in a temple and nobody wants to discuss it. I can't begin to understand the thought process behind that, i would have thought that making the background checks more robust and making the gun sellers more liable for prosecution if a weapon they sold was used in a crime would be first on the agenda of any administration whose job is to protect their citizens.
13 comments:
lucy,
what is there to talk about? your own UK crime statistics prove that getting rid of guns does one thing - reduces gun deaths (does not eliminate them). further, when guns are eliminated it appears that rape, assult, burgalry, and car theft increase.
and note once again that police do not protect the people. when a shooter is stopped it is almost always done by an armed citizen - which almost never makes the news.
fyi, in Texas, people with a concealed handgun license have a lower crime rate than police.
q
What is there to talk about? How about how two obviously disturbed individuals were able to legally able to own guns. Were there checks done on them by who sold them the guns? If so they are blatantly not thorough enough, if not then they need to be mandatory.
Was either known to the police, if so a criminal record should forfeit anyone from legally holding a firearm.
Was either on pescription medication for depression or a mental illness? If so then the right to bear a firearm should be suspended until a medical states they are mentally stable enough to take control of a gun once again.
The gun seller should be held responsible for any firearm that they sale which is then used in a shooting so they are forced to make all the checks.
The introduction of a test like a driving test to prove that the owner is capable of owning a gun responsibly. If you have to pass a test to be able to drive a car, why not a gun?
There are a lot of things to talk about because what you have now is obviously not working.
I don't understand your comment about 'your own UK crime statistics prove that gettin rid of guns does one thing - reduces gun deaths' about my post which is about reducing gun deaths. Are you agreeing with me or saying that reducing gun deaths is not such a big deal?
Anecdotal evidence doesn't generally form the basis of sound policy.
lucy,
im saying that you have fewer gun crimes because you got rid of guns, but you also have MORE overall violent crime than the USA - there was a consequence for getting rid of guns that was not positive. rape, assult, and burglary are all very violent physically and emotionally. oh, and yawl still have murders too.
the number of deaths is not germane to me. fewer means there is no problem so leave my guns alone. more means i have a greater need to protect myself so leave my guns alone...
we have 330 million people, 2 long and immediate land borders that are mostly wilderness, thousands of miles of coast line. there is no way to keep guns out of the USA short of using nazi tactics. why would i volunteer to make my self defenseless under those conditions (especially since I live 2 hours from the mexican border - which is essentially a modern day lawless wild west).
q
So as i said then, no debate. Don't even want to consider any options to reduce gun crime. Leave my guns alone. End of story. Move on, nothing to see here. Next please.
The attitude truly staggers me but then the whole gun thing does anyway as you know.
Lucy, American males are pre-occupied with two things: their penises and their guns. The smaller their penis, the bigger the guns!
But don't be too hard on them because there's not much else left for them because inside their heads is a Cheesy-type vacuum.
Cheers.
Phew, it's lucky that I spell my name with a 'z' or I might be tempted to take that personally...
@Lucy - our old mate Joe the Troll has just written a guest editorial in his local weekly in New Mexico. I think he sums the situation up very well.
Thanks for the link Cheezy. Joe makes some very good points on both sides and i was very happy to see him take on the idea that having more armed people would stop these types of killings. Will be interesting to check back later and see what sort of comments he gets.
david - you are still the part of the horse that goes over the fence last and i don't mean the hooves or tail...
lucy, give a lucid reason for getting rid of my guns. please. but you must account for the points i made about criminals, proximity to mexico, the complete anarchic condition in mexico, the inability for police to protect me, and the increase in other violent crimes when guns are taken from the law abiding citizens - since i have 2 daughters, a wife, and 3 sisters i'm especially concerned about the much higher incident of rape you have in the UK - i don't want that here.
q
"i'm especially concerned about the much higher incident of rape you have in the UK - i don't want that here."
Are you saying that high gun ownership among the population is effective in keeping the rape rate down but, at the same time, is clearly ineffective at keeping the murder rate down?
How would that work? Particularly since the vast majority of rapes in both countries don't happen like they do in Charles Bronson movies i.e. by a stranger leaping out from behind a tree, but are actually committed by someone the victim knows, often a family member, often a boyfriend/husband... (and it is known that a huge number of these types would never be reported, much less lead to a conviction)...
I think this shows the limitations of comparing one country with another when the topic under discussion has so many different 'inputs' as crime, only one of these inputs being gun ownership.
cheezy,
i appreciate your view that each nation should be allowed to manage their own environments.
there is no way to justify murders or gun crimes regardless of borders. so, lucy's constant nagging (lucy I’m joking – does this make sense on both sides of the pond) to eliminate guns is respected by me as properly motivated. but life is not so simple as getting rid of guns. it is a childish thought (david might understand it even – no, that would require single cell thinking) and is not based in reality. there are many sorts of violent crime and i don't just want to protect my family from murder.
personally (not nationally), I prefer to have a fighting chance and I think a gun is the best way to protect my family. i'm very healthy, very athletic, and have had formal personal defense training. what i learned in the formal training is that 1 man against 2 men is bad odds, 1 versus a heavy club is worse, 1 versus a knife is very very very bad (that is 3 verys david), 1 versus a gun is no contest.
BUT, 1 man or woman trained with a gun levels the field...
further cheezy, your point is well made (as usual - which is why that idiot david g can't understand you). i do not think it can be proven that reduction in guns in the UK was causal to an increase in other violent crimes; however, all violent crime did increase after the concerted effort to reduce guns in both the UK and Australia - it is only corollary. I am referencing UN reports (granted a poor source) from 2 or 3 years ago.
Q
cheezy i thought of another aspect that might interest you.
since our 50 states (sorry obama not 51 or 53 or whatever you said...) have some autonomy each is allowed to have its own gun law.
texas acknowledges the concealed handgun rights of all other states, as do most states, but my texas license is not accepted in Ohio, New York, California.
point is the views are radically different in some states.
q
I appreciate all of that. Not only the right of states in the USA to have autonomy in setting their own laws, but also the rights of different countries to do the same. People should be allowed to compare and comment, but with the acknowledgement that such comparisons are frequently facile and over-simplistic because of countless other inputs preventing meaningful analysis.
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