Shooting Outside Empire State Building

[Seth]

I agree with Seth that wild shoot-outs don't occur frequently despite the number of guns on hand in the US. The "great blood bath" scenario required that everybody be:

Brave enough to use their weapon.
Willing to use their weapon.
Angry/disturbed/just fucking nuts enough to use their.
AND be in the company of others in a similar state.

And the one thing that would guarantee the scenario would not happen would simply be the absence of people carrying hand guns...

We've noted before the utopian idiocy of this particular argument. Pandora's box is long open and handguns exist, and they exist in large numbers. What's more, they are not particularly difficult to manufacture if you have a modicum of metal-working skills.

What this means is that criminals will always have access to handguns if they want them. They will steal them, smuggle them in from elsewhere, or manufacture them.

So, all you accomplish in trying to ban and collect them all is to disarm law abiding citizens and turn them into helpless victims.

When the government passed the National Firearms Act in 1934, it was a belated attempt to control the use of sawed-off shotguns and rifles and machine guns by criminals. Prior to that, you could buy a Thompson machine gun at your local hardware store with no difficulty at all.

Trouble is, all the NFA did was restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to arm themselves against criminal predation by gang thugs. It didn't stop the thugs from obtaining machine guns and every other sort of firearm they wanted.

Criminals, you see, don't bother to obey the NFA even today, which is why every machine-gun crime since 1934 has been committed with an illegally-owned machine gun except ONE. Yes, in all that time only ONE NFA registered firearm has been used by its owner to commit a murder, and he was a Sheriff's deputy who murdered his wife.

And yet there are lots of illegal machine guns seized in the US every year, including more than a thousand seized by Customs officials that were being smuggled in by the Communist Chinese to arm criminals as a part of Communist China's cold war on the United States.

You can't get rid of guns. It's not going to happen. Therefore, any attempt to do so only disarms the law abiding and makes them more vulnerable to criminal predation.

I know that you, like the UK government, doesn't give a flying fuck about individual rights and are both willing to sacrifice any number of innocent civilians in the name of anti-gun rhetoric and regulation by disarming them, but we here in the US do care, and we are willing to accept that gun crime is going to happen regardless, and that the best defense is a good offense.

Up to two million US citizens per year are saved from violent criminal predation by their privately-owned, lawfully-carried firearms, all of whom would be added to the crime statistics if they had been disarmed by their government. We know this, and we will not tolerate our government turning us into statistics in a hoplophobe's political argument.

You can have my handguns when you pry them from my cold, dead hands...if you live that long.

[Seth]

How does this NY shooting even make the news? Nineteen people were shot overnight in Chicago.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 9779.story

That's just coloured kids blowing off steam....

That seems to be how the press sees it. As long as white people aren't involved, the press doesn't care.

Perhaps the law-abiding citizens of Chicago should arm themselves and take to the streets to wipe out the thugs and criminal gangs that make their lives a living hell.

And after they've taken care of Obama's political cronies at City Hall, they should take out the street criminals too.

[hadespussercats]

I guess it's never as simple as one reason for people doing such things. It's often a culmination of pressures (coupled with a fragile emotional constitution) and then the "final straw". I'm not excusing the act-it's horrific when something like this happens. My kids and I were in that same place a few weeks ago. NYPD taking so long to arrive is not so much (in my opinion) them actually being slack, but the crammed roads full of drivers not really giving a shit about a cop car trying to get through (I witnessed this a multitude of times whilst I was visiting there)

An interesting difference here (in th UK). If a police car or ambulance is trying to get through traffic and they have their sirens on everyone pulls over to the side or makes room one way or another. Not sure what that says. To Seth, probably that we are drones of the state and brainwashed to cooperate with 'the authorities'.

That's the way it is in the city I live in, and the one before that. I think the problem with New York is more about traffic congestion, there's no where to pull over to!

Especially outside one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city.

[mistermack]

I think the media have hit on the cause of all these mass killings.

It always happens when people get dis-gruntled.

And I have the cure. You have a law that all firearms must be stored in a safe that can only be opened by a computer with wifi.

If you want to take your gun out, you have to pass an online psychological test, to prove that you are gruntled.
That gives you 24 hours, before you have to put the gun back and take the test again. If you don't, you get arrested.

Obviously, some people could never pass as gruntled. That means they can never get at their guns.

But if they get home-invaded, they can still throw the safe at the burglars.

Problem solved !

[Seth]

I think the media have hit on the cause of all these mass killings.

It always happens when people get dis-gruntled.

And I have the cure. You have a law that all firearms must be stored in a safe that can only be opened by a computer with wifi.

If you want to take your gun out, you have to pass an online psychological test, to prove that you are gruntled.
That gives you 24 hours, before you have to put the gun back and take the test again. If you don't, you get arrested.

Obviously, some people could never pass as gruntled. That means they can never get at their guns.

But if they get home-invaded, they can still throw the safe at the burglars.

Problem solved !

Did it look like this nutbar cared if the police tried to arrest him?

[Blind groper]

What this means is that criminals will always have access to handguns if they want them.

On the other thread, I have pointed out the flaw in this argument several times. Simply, everywhere else, besides the USA, reduced access to hand guns works!

All comparable advanced western nations except the USA, have virtually zero murders by hand gun. The USA has 8,000 per year. The major difference is simply availability.

If the government made a determined effort to remove hand guns from society nationwide (not just one city or one state), then in time, the hand gun murder rate would drop dramatically just as it did in every other advanced western nation except the USA.

[Seth]

What this means is that criminals will always have access to handguns if they want them.

On the other thread, I have pointed out the flaw in this argument several times. Simply, everywhere else, besides the USA, reduced access to hand guns works!

All comparable advanced western nations except the USA, have virtually zero murders by hand gun. The USA has 8,000 per year. The major difference is simply availability.

If the government made a determined effort to remove hand guns from society nationwide (not just one city or one state), then in time, the hand gun murder rate would drop dramatically just as it did in every other advanced western nation except the USA.

And the violent crime victimization rate would skyrocket, just has it has in every other advanced western nation that's banned guns, the UK most specifically.

You don't give a fuck how many people are victimized by violent criminals just so long as you can think you're reducing the "handgun murder" rate. That's pretty myopic. And pretty egregiously immoral.

[Blind groper]

And the violent crime victimization rate would skyrocket, just has it has in every other advanced western nation that's banned guns, the UK most specifically.

Seth

That is crap.

Overall crime rates in other nations are not higher than the USA. They are about the same (some more, some less). The USA has a crime rate of about 0.04 offences per person per year. Greece has a quarter of the guns per person than the USA and a crime rate of 0.01. No other western nation has the number of hand guns in civilian hands that the USA has, and it has not caused any increase in crime rates.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I agree with Seth that wild shoot-outs don't occur frequently despite the number of guns on hand in the US. The "great blood bath" scenario required that everybody be:

Brave enough to use their weapon.
Willing to use their weapon.
Angry/disturbed/just fucking nuts enough to use their.
AND be in the company of others in a similar state.

And the one thing that would guarantee the scenario would not happen would simply be the absence of people carrying hand guns...

Crap.

[Warren Dew]

Overall crime rates in other nations are not higher than the USA. They are about the same (some more, some less). The USA has a crime rate of about 0.04 offences per person per year. Greece has a quarter of the guns per person than the USA and a crime rate of 0.01. No other western nation has the number of hand guns in civilian hands that the USA has, and it has not caused any increase in crime rates.

Greece has rioters burning down banks and radical right gangs persecuting immigrants while the police sit by and do nothing. I doubt their reported crime rate is credible.

[Coito ergo sum]

What this means is that criminals will always have access to handguns if they want them.

On the other thread, I have pointed out the flaw in this argument several times. Simply, everywhere else, besides the USA, reduced access to hand guns works!

....works to reduce the number of gun crimes, yes. But, it does not NECESSARILY work to reduce the number and does not NECESSARILY mean a reduced number of crimes, including but not limited to intentional homicides.

All comparable advanced western nations except the USA, have virtually zero murders by hand gun.

In the USA we have some states that have western European levels of intentional homicides, despite extremely open and common gun ownership. Most gun homicides occur in relation to the illegal drug trade, and in the inner cities. If you eliminated that from the equation, the vast swath of American gun ownership is extraordinarily safe and crime free.

[kiki5711]

I think the media have hit on the cause of all these mass killings.

It always happens when people get dis-gruntled.

And I have the cure. You have a law that all firearms must be stored in a safe that can only be opened by a computer with wifi.

If you want to take your gun out, you have to pass an online psychological test, to prove that you are gruntled.
That gives you 24 hours, before you have to put the gun back and take the test again. If you don't, you get arrested.

Obviously, some people could never pass as gruntled. That means they can never get at their guns.

But if they get home-invaded, they can still throw the safe at the burglars.

Problem solved !

Criminals and other individuals that want weapons will always find a way to have them, no argument there. I also think that the background check should be more thorough, such as medical records. I know that med records are impossible to get without a court order but I think are even more necessary than criminal background. Example is from these kind of shootings where most of the time the shooter is not a criminal but has SERIOUS mental problems which nobody could pin point until after the fact.