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So another day and another 20 people die in a pointless mass shooting in the US. Just heard on the news that there were 28 mass shootings in October alone. That’s madness. Surely politicians of all parties have a duty to try and stop this madness. But they don’t! I can’t get get my head round this.
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Sadly theyβd rather their constituents die than take away their right to have guns.
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So sad yet another massacre just a few weeks after Vegas. The right to bear arms is such a strong opinion in the States it frightens off the politicians to make the decision they should.
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Sadly, this case I think will only strengthen the beliefs of those who unconditionally believe in their right to bear arms. The Americans will point to the fact that a vigilante resident chased off the gunman thus preventing further deaths. I can’t see it ever changing
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Ed, that’s a great point and unfortunately exactly what will happen as this last sad case is dissected.
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It’s not going to change, full stop. After the Vegas massacre, I think it was less than 6 hours before a NRA spokesman was on the news suggesting it would be a great idea if hotels increased their security. Incidents like this are practically a daily occurrence (multiple victim shootings).
Off course, and I am being very ironic, there is no way of preventing these mass shootings that happen on a daily basis in the only country in the world where this happens on a daily basis… think about it!!
At the end of the day, it’s about money, and too much money is made by people to stop the sale of armed forces graded of semi-automatic weapons…
Just to cheer up any American’s reading this, thankfully congress passed recent legislation now allowing “silencers” to be sold for these weapons too.
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banjo, re your last para I didn’t know that, that’s unbelievable mate.
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I know mate, it’s a joke of epic fail proportions.
What nobody in the US seems to understand, is the 2nd Amendment was written at a time when both A) they were “planning” for the Brit’s to re-invade after the “War of Independence”, something I think we can all agree isn’t going to happen now, and B) when the “bear arms” in question were basically single shot muskets…
Certain Americans, not all mind you, treat their constitution with the same level of “worship”, if that’s the right word, as certain other religious fanatics around the world.
As for the legalization comment, at least they weren’t quite dumb enough to legalize the “bump-stocks” that turn semi-autos into fully auto’s… although these items can be seemingly bought quite easily on the “black-market” as per the Vegas asshat.
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No, it will not change in the USA. What the UK have to be aware of it does not grow here as well, gun or knife….both are a growing menance in our society.
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I hear what everyone is saying and we all obviously want to see an end to these massacres, but these would be some thoughts. Firstly, I am always surprised when these stories appear that less attention seems to be paid as to why the incident happened as opposed to the means by which it happened. The root causes of these massacres are ultimately people, with the availability of guns obviously exacerbating the problem, and they are usually caused by people who are completely deranged from reality who are often taking powerful mind altering drugs. Having gun control may well reduce some of it, but it will not solve the problem – and bear in mind that some of these people will still be determined to kill others regardless of whether guns are available and so they’ll just find another way – either by way of explosives or other means. China for example have had several knife massacres in recent years. Should we ban the sale of all types of knives? Will that solve the problem?
As for the UK, look at the alarming rate of increase of acid attacks we have, and of knife crime which is now a daily occurrence in many of our cities. Whilst they may not all cause deaths, they cause terrible life changing debilitating injuries.
Calling for the ban of such weapons (which in these cases is impractical anyway) will not solve the root causes. I wish there were more news reports that investigated what the actual causes of these crimes are. But this you hardly hear of, you just hear the usual lone wolf reason or simply gang criminal activity in the case of incidents here – but that isn’t good enough for me. We need to find out *why* more and more people are doing this as opposed to just examining *the means* by which people are doing it. Before people say it – I know a lot more die in the US from such massacres but any death from a massacre anywhere in the world is obviously one death too many and we can’t just shrug our shoulders and put them all down to ‘lone wolves’. There’s clearly more to it than that.
Take the Las Vegas shooter – the bulk of the media reports and discussion since have been about gun control. But I doubt many will have heard that the shooter had been prescribed diazepam in the year before the massacre, which can apparently lead to aggressive behavior. Now this drug may or may not be a cause here – but wouldn’t it be sensible to put the same effort investigating these potential causes as we do when investigating/revising the gun laws? Another problem I would point to is the increasingly individualist nature of society where everyone keeps themselves to themselves with nobody looking out for each other – again society has to take some responsiblity by looking out for strange behaviour in their close family/friends/neighbours etc. This recent Texas shooter posted a picture of his gun the week before on social media with the caption “She’s a bad bitch.” Nobody close to him think that was rather odd when coupled with other behaviour?? If you are to have guns in a society you have to have an extremely vigilant one or else you’re asking for trouble.
Obviously to many citizens, it’s all still a price worth paying for because it would make it a lot harder for a hard-line government to seize control if large parts of the population were heavily armed. So it’s not so much guns they love, but the ability to keep the government from ever becoming all powerful. When you consider the tens of millions of citizens killed by despots over the 20th century, they will see it as a justifiable and essential liberty to have. Interestingly the UK law on guns a century ago was pretty lax – and indeed the reason why gun controls were brought in by the UK state was because they feared popular uprisings by their citizens after the Russian revolution of 1917. See the link below.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7056245.stm
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Mikus, my thoughts are the UK has tight gun controls and have virtually no mass shootings. The US should do the same. This paranoia about stopping the modern us state taking over is frankly ridiculous. What next RPGs on sale to the public?? The only reason I think they don’t is money and probably bribes.
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Mikus… an interesting and well thought out post, has to be said, but I have to disagree somewhat. Although understanding the reasons as to why the person or persons feel the need is one thing, and not entirely a bad idea, but surely making it virtually impossible to persons to get their hand on these weapons is a good start, rather than debating if a person is mentally stable or not after you’ve given them an Uzi?
There is absolutely no reason other than to stroke ones own ego that these weapons are needed by Joe Public. No reason what so ever.
But I do agree, if an asshat is going to be an asshat, they’ll find a way. I just don’t understand why the US makes it far easier than it needs to be. You mention the recent (and disgusting) acid attacks, can you imagine the chaos if you could by an AK-47 at Tesco’s? Because that it basically America.
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Mikus I should add I did enjoy reading your post, but I am of the same opinion as Chucky. Jim
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Yeah fellas, I should stress I certainly wouldn’t want to see such lax gun laws in this country, particularly the automatic arms that can fire huge numbers of rounds rapidly. I was just trying to take somewhat of a neutral position to examine everything.
Jim, as for my last paragraph – I agree on the surface it seems ridiculous that the modern state would take over, though in 1929 many in what was a liberal democracy in Weimar Germany laughed off what they deemed a ridiculous idea that Hitler would ever gain power. As I say above, I wouldn’t want to see the same lax gun laws here, but we should always be wary of an ever more powerful state which we have been seeing in many nations in the West – I’m not saying they’re necessarily going to go rogue but I’m simply stating that a nation in which only the state (and criminals for that matter who get them by smuggling) have guns where the citizens are not allowed them is one that, in many ways, seems troubling.
The root problem here is trust – in the US, there is less and less trust in the citizens because there is less community, more drugs, more mental health problems, as well as other societal problems that help give rise to such massacres. Giving the state more power can work to an extent, but thinking the state will solve the root problem is not the answer either. If western civilisation is ever to solve its problems they need to come from within – the state can only do so much, and if you get the balance wrong and give it too much power, then that too can be dangerous because you can’t always trust the state either.
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Mikus I see where you are coming from. But I just don’t think you would get a violent uprising against a repressive state in a modern western democracy. I don’t know what the gun laws in Germany were in the 1930s but I do know that Hitler and the Nazis were voted into power and had a lot of support until they started to lose the war. So not sure if there was ever going to be a people’s uprising in that case. The problem your suggestion has is that it is impossible to vet and profile everyone who has or or wants to own a gun so as to establish whether they are suitable to own one. Also peoples state of mind changes and a fit and proper person one day might flip for any number of reasons and become a lunatic. Its so much easier to outlaw guns altogether. Why would anyone want to own an assault rifle? No one needs one of them. How many people have to be murdered before they wake up and sell the coffee. The politicians on the payroll of the gun lobby should be asked how many deaths are acceptable.
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Big J… considering there are approx. 35,000 gun related deaths per year in the US, I would say the number of gun deaths that would be deemed acceptable is an irrelevant question as nobody really gives a shit.
Just out of curiosity, I googled “Value of Gun Industry in US”, apparently it’s worth about 15 billion a year… I actually thought it would be more to be honest, although still a fair chunk of change.
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America is a sick society. Guns have undermined a country that, promised much, but is now more interested in monetary gain than human well-being (look at their health service). A president that replies to disasters with more guns as the answer shows how this country is deranged. There is no chance of gun control so instead of dissecting why a crazy person does such a thing, just keep the news in America and let the rest of the sane world carry on.
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Jim, yeah as I say, I’m just partly playing devils advocate in a way just to look at the other side of the debate which I think is worthy of examination and does raise some important points.
If you’ve not seen it yet – a very good recent film (that as often happens goes under the radar of the main blockbusters) is one called “Miss Sloane”. Very much pertinent to this debate, especially the issue of lobbying which is basically an industry over there and the effect on democracy.
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