NRA

[KeithR]

yet more rubbish from those NRA cowboys. dont they realise a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, til he kills someone.

[CliveH]

Totally agree

 

i could not believe they came up with the idea that some sort of armed guard system would work.

 

can you just see the carnage if kids got caught in the crossfire between two opposing groups with guns?

 

The issue is that the US has very lax gun laws.

 

The price of their freedom to carry guns has been paid over the years in children's lives.

 

Obama summed it up very well to my mind.

[spospe]

KeithR - 2012-12-22 10:01 AM

 

yet more rubbish from those NRA cowboys. dont they realise a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, til he kills someone.

 

Or, a bad guy with a car is a good guy with a car, till he kills someone

 

 

[malc d]

spospe - 2012-12-22 11:11 AM

 

KeithR - 2012-12-22 10:01 AM

 

yet more rubbish from those NRA cowboys. dont they realise a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, til he kills someone.

 

Or, a bad guy with a car is a good guy with a car, till he kills someone

 

 

 

Although it has to be said that cars aren't actually designed to kill.

 

:-|

[KeithR]

exactly malc. i think comparing guns with cars is a bit odd. truth is, everything, both man made (ovens, electricity, tractors) or natural (cliffs, rivers) are capable of killing. its an unfortunate by product. guns are made to kill. thats all. i see the previous reply was by a target shooter. thats fine, but there is absolutely no reason for people to have assault weapons, or guns at home.

[malc d]

KeithR - 2012-12-22 11:37 AM

 

exactly malc. i think comparing guns with cars is a bit odd. truth is, everything, both man made (ovens, electricity, tractors) or natural (cliffs, rivers) are capable of killing. its an unfortunate by product. guns are made to kill. thats all. i see the previous reply was by a target shooter. thats fine, but there is absolutely no reason for people to have assault weapons, or guns at home.

 

 

A lot of these gun owning fanatics in the USA appear to be among the " preppers " - I believe the latest killers' mother was one.

 

These are the people, mainly, it seems , in the USA, who are continually preparing for armageddon - it originally started with preparations for nuclear war survival in the earl sixties. They dug shelters, stocked up with food, water etc in the hope that they would survive. Many also stocked up on weapons and ammunition just in case anyone else tried to survive !

Each ' scare '- such as the financial crisis and the millenium bug - sends them all into a panic.

 

Nothing wrong with being prepared of course, but I would have thought that co-operation rather than confrontation would be more beneficial.

 

If you Google 'preppers' you will find there are lots of websites about them.

 

 

:-(

[antony1969]

Even if the States changed the law and made gun buying more difficult there must be millions of guns in circulation now so anyone who wanted to commit such a terrible could do with ease .

Look at our laws on guns , very strict yet gun crime seems rampant . Back in the day if there was a gun crime nationally it made the news because they were so rare , now they hardly make the local paper .

As said previously guns do not commit the crime .

[KeithR]

all very true, but we still have to try to control them, as we do with everything. if a person hasnt got a gun, then he cant shoot anyone., so that platitude 'guns dont kill ' is just an excuse. after 24 years in the military, i never found the need to have a gun at home. as far as i recall, they were always kept in an armoury. they were only drawn out to go on the ranges, or on patrol. and please, dont tell me farmers, pest controllers, etc need guns at home. we're talking of control, not irradication.

[antony1969]

I agree that gun control is important Keith but my point would be that if someone intends to do wrong and they require a gun it would take very little time and money to track one down .

All the gun laws in the world will not stop slaughter like we have just witnessed in the States and it wont stop your local Post Office been done over by a gang of thugs either .

I would suggest that treating those who are found with guns / machetes etc more harshly with much longer jail terms may help . Presently you get punished more severely for doing 35 in a 30 limit .

[KeithR]

i got your point anthony, and agree with you, but we must try to control, and then , as you say, there should be much harder penalties.

[KeithR]

truth is, the bad will always look for another way. if not a gun, then a knife, or a brick. we just have to make it difficult, like the councils do for motorhome parking. (and it works, many of us have given up and head over the water (lol) )

[Tony Jones]

The usual NRA mantra is "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill people" (which I recently saw "relaunched" as "No-one ever blamed the lightsabre!").

True enough, but people with guns can kill far more people than people without guns can!

 

If this particular guy (and all the other mass-murdering nutters) didn't have guns, they might have killed one or two people, but that's all.

In this case, maybe his mother, the first person he met at the school, and himself.

 

You can't do a massacre (single-handedly) with a big kitchen knife, or any other non-firearm weapon!

[George Collings]

Much of the USA is still rural where a gun is just a working tool.

 

How the NRA can justify ownership of automatic weapons with speedily changed magazines totally escapes me.

 

Unarmed people at the scene of these shooting would have at least a chance to disarm the offendor if he had to repeatedly reload.

 

No wonder Americans enjoy visiting UK , it must be nice to leave off the bullet proof vest.

[spospe]

Tony Jones - 2012-12-22 3:21 PM

 

The usual NRA mantra is "Guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill people" (which I recently saw "relaunched" as "No-one ever blamed the lightsabre!").

True enough, but people with guns can kill far more people than people without guns can!

 

If this particular guy (and all the other mass-murdering nutters) didn't have guns, they might have killed one or two people, but that's all.

In this case, maybe his mother, the first person he met at the school, and himself.

 

You can't do a massacre (single-handedly) with a big kitchen knife, or any other non-firearm weapon!

 

Funny thing is Tony, that I seem to remember that on September 11th 2001, someone armed with just a paper cutter (and an aircraft) managed to kill circa 3000 people. Don't think that anyone at the time had a gun. If one of the passengers had had a gun, then perhaps the atrocity would not have happened at all.

[malc d]

George Collings - 2012-12-22 3:22 PM

 

Much of the USA is still rural where a gun is just a working tool.

 

How the NRA can justify ownership of automatic weapons with speedily changed magazines totally escapes me.

 

Unarmed people at the scene of these shooting would have at least a chance to disarm the offendor if he had to repeatedly reload.

 

No wonder Americans enjoy visiting UK , it must be nice to leave off the bullet proof vest.

 

 

The USA seems to be unique among ' westernised' countries in it's love of guns - Europeans - Australians and New Zealanders seem to manage O.K. without.

 

But then their answer to so many things seems to be brute force - remember how they carpet bombed Vietnam ( and lost the war ).

... and then of course there's Rambo !

 

;-)

[malc d]

spospe - 2012-12-22 3:39 PM

 

 

 

. Don't think that anyone at the time had a gun. If one of the passengers had had a gun, then perhaps the atrocity would not have happened at all.

 

 

I somehow doubt if one passenger with a gun could have taken on all five highjackers on each plane, especially as they were determined to commit suicide anyway.

 

 

:-|

[laimeduck]

I think we should all be fairly careful of our criticism of the situation in the USA. After all did the same not happen in :-

 

Hungerford - 1987 , 16 dead

Dunblane - 1996, 16 dead

Cumbria - 2010, 12 dead

 

And also in other gun owning countries:-

 

Tasmania, Australia 1996, 35 dead

Tuusula, Finland 2007, 8 dead

Utoya Island, Norway 2011, 69 dead

 

It is not just a US problem, there are nutters all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BGD]

laimeduck - 2012-12-22 5:17 PM

 

I think we should all be fairly careful of our criticism of the situation in the USA. After all did the same not happen in :-

 

Hungerford - 1987 , 16 dead

Dunblane - 1996, 16 dead

Cumbria - 2010, 12 dead

 

And also in other gun owning countries:-

 

Tasmania, Australia 1996, 35 dead

Tuusula, Finland 2007, 8 dead

Utoya Island, Norway 2011, 69 dead

 

It is not just a US problem, there are nutters all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But surely the central point is that the incidence of shooting deaths is MUCH higher in the USA.

 

The likelihood of you, or one of your loved ones, being shot to death if living/being there isn't just say double, or treble, or even ten times higher than if living in the UK.

The risk is actually OVER 40 times higher. 8-)

 

You have more than 40 times more probability of being killed by shooting there than in the UK.

 

Have a look at the stats:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

 

[laimeduck]

BGD - 2012-12-22 4:32 PM

 

laimeduck - 2012-12-22 5:17 PM

 

I think we should all be fairly careful of our criticism of the situation in the USA. After all did the same not happen in :-

 

Hungerford - 1987 , 16 dead

Dunblane - 1996, 16 dead

Cumbria - 2010, 12 dead

 

And also in other gun owning countries:-

 

Tasmania, Australia 1996, 35 dead

Tuusula, Finland 2007, 8 dead

Utoya Island, Norway 2011, 69 dead

 

It is not just a US problem, there are nutters all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But surely the central point is that the incidence of shooting deaths is MUCH higher in the USA.

 

The likelihood of you, or one of your loved ones, being shot to death if living/being there isn't just say double, or treble, or even ten times higher than if living in the UK.

The risk is actually OVER 40 times higher. 8-)

 

You have more than 40 times more probability of being killed by shooting there than in the UK.

 

Have a look at the stats:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

 

Yes Bruce I accept that, & it is probably a function of the number of guns freely available in the USA.

 

However, it still happens whether guns are easily available or not, if a nutter gets a gun there is a potential problem, and we on this side of the pond have our nutters.

 

I lived in the USA for 4 years & only saw a gun on a couple of occasions, and never saw one fired. I found most everyday Yanks to be very similar to most everyday Brits, or French or Spanish or others - generally nice people. I also lived in Germany for a year and found them far more beligerent & confrontational than most other races. Still made some good friends though.

 

 

 

 

[colin]

KeithR - 2012-12-22 2:06 PM

 

all very true, but we still have to try to control them, as we do with everything. if a person hasnt got a gun, then he cant shoot anyone., so that platitude 'guns dont kill ' is just an excuse. after 24 years in the military, i never found the need to have a gun at home. as far as i recall, they were always kept in an armoury. they were only drawn out to go on the ranges, or on patrol. and please, dont tell me farmers, pest controllers, etc need guns at home. we're talking of control, not irradication.

 

You have no idea at all as to what your talking about.

[Guest pelmetman]

36% of Americans have a passport....................89% of Americans have a gun.............. 8-)

 

 

Some would say they need to get out more *-)............others might say we're safer if they stay at home ;-)

[CliveH]

And I think that sums it up.

 

The majority of US citizens (89%) think that they still live in the wild wild west.

 

Whilst just 36% know that there is more to the world than the US of A.

 

[colin]

CliveH - 2012-12-22 11:08 PM

 

And I think that sums it up.

 

The majority of US citizens (89%) think that they still live in the wild wild west.

 

Whilst just 36% know that there is more to the world than the US of A.

 

Not realy as the figures you are quoting are spectaulary wrong, an estimated 32% of americans own guns, but I think your post sums up this thread very well, a load of posts by people who have no idea of the basic problems the US has with gun ownership.

[CliveH]

You say the figures are spectacularly wrong but do not offer alternative data Colin.

 

The data from the UK Guardian back up the figs Dave posted.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

 

As for anyone knowing and understanding what goes on in the US - I would suggest one persons view is as valid as any others.

 

Whilst the US is not the leader in gun crime despite the amazing percentage of guns per head of population - I would suggest that this is due to the lawless nature of the other countries.

 

In the US, they may be down the list at number 28 overall re gun related crime - but I would suggest in the specific area of malcontents getting hold of guns and shooting children - the US, sadly, is pretty much world leader.

 

My specific comment is related to the fact that in my personal and professional experience Americans are both enormously welcoming but equally enormously insular and genuinely ignorant about the world in general. I admit that this is a huge generalisation and some individuals certainly do not fit this overview - but the majority of US citizens - like their one time President do not know where Australia is or know that Germany is in Europe, not the other way round. 8-)

 

 

[colin]

CliveH - 2012-12-23 5:18 AM

 

You say the figures are spectacularly wrong but do not offer alternative data Colin.

 

The data from the UK Guardian back up the figs Dave posted.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

 

Lies,damn lies and statistics. That article in no way backs up the figures.

I'm very supprised you have quoted those figures in such a way. The number of guns in any country does nessaraly relate to the number of people owning a gun. As I said an estimated 32% of people own a gun in the US, the country that is estimated to have the highest proportion of gun owners is Switzerland.

Lets take me and my neighbor, between us we have 6 fire arms and 6 people, so 100% ownership? no we have 33% ownership.