Gun control...

Forums: Gun Control, Guns, Killing Machines, Hitting What You Aim At, Aim Small - Miss Small
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I've always had a pretty simple view of this issue. I've generally held the view that if people were allowed to carry guns there would be more killings. And I still believe that. The amount of shootings inspired by fits of rage or emotional outbursts would perhaps increase, but this weekend something happened that made me rethink this issue a bit.

You may have heard, one single person detonated a bomb in Oslo, then went out on an island nearby, and disguised as a police officer he walked around with his guns shooting everyone he could find.
He shot and killed over 80 people...
What I find myself thinking is that if even one of those 80 people had had a weapon there is a chance that he would have been stopped long before he managed to kill so many.
Or, if we were allowed to carry guns he would have reconsidered the whole idea, since it would be reasonable to expect resistance.
It was not a crime of passion, this thing he did. He had planned it for years.

This incident has left me thinking that if disturbed people want guns for malicious intent, they will get them. So perhaps these restrictions on owning guns only serve to deny guns to those who weren't going to shoot anyone anyway, but just wanted the means to protect themselves. In that case gun restriction only serves to make the world safer for those who want to use weapons for criminal intent.

I really do not know anymore what to make of this issue, but I know that if I'd been on that island that day and I'd had a gun, I would have tried to stop the madman...

(feel free to add your tags)

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Type: Question • Score: 12 • Views: 20,517 • Replies: 182

@Cyracuz,

Hi Cryacuz,
So glad you were not one of the victims. This premeditated atrocity would have happened whether or not there were strong restrictions on obtaining weapons such as that used last weekend. Such things will happen, but a large number of relatively preventable homicides are more likely to be avoided by strong weapon controls. Why? Because many killings occur simply because guns are at hand making the deaadly expression of passionate impulses more likely.

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@Cyracuz,

I know exactly how you feel, it does make you step back a bit. I'm sure that there are plenty of gun nuts on this thread who will try to convince you to 'move to the light.' The thing is you are right. The question shouldn't be, how much better it would have been if the victims could shoot back, but why was the gunman able to get hold of the weapons in the first place.

From the BBC website.

Quote:

'Five dead' at Texas skating rink party shooting At least five people have been killed and three injured in a shooting at a roller-skating rink birthday party in the US state of Texas, police say.

The shooting happened after an argument broke out at the party in the city of Grand Prairie, close to Dallas.

The gunman is among the dead, having shot himself after opening fire on fellow guests, police say.

Details about the incident are sketchy but police say the row was a "domestic disturbance between husband and wife".

"It appears to be a domestic situation, at this point," Reuters news agency quoted police spokesman Steve Dye as saying. "That is our initial finding. And it appears the suspect did die from a self-inflicted gun wound."

Police said they first received a call about the shootings at Forum Roller World shortly after 1900 local time on Saturday (0200 GMT on Sunday) and responded immediately.

Witnesses described seeing people fleeing the rink in panic after the gunman opened fire.

The injured party guests were taken to hospital and there was no immediate information about their condition.

This shooting wouldn't have happened if there were tougher gun laws in America. I know it's no way near the same magnitude of what happened in Norway, but this sort of thing seems to happen quite a lot over there. The figures speak for themselves, when you compare the incidences of gun crime in the UK and USA, there are significantly more crimes in America.

The gun nuts like to imagine a situation where the law abiding, gun toting citizen is able to prevent a massacre by taking out some crazed gunman. Actually I think fantasy is a better word than imagine. They do have fantasies, in that they are the brave citizen shooting the bad guy, but the whole idea is fantasy.

Remember Gabrielle Gifford? When the gunman ran amok there were three armed men in the room. Did they shoot back? No, they froze like everybody else does in that situation, shock causes most people to freeze. He was disarmed by an unarmed old woman. We don't need more guns, we need more plucky women.

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@izzythepush,

I repeat my earlier point: large scale premeditated atrocities, like wars, will occur even with strong gun control measures. There are other reasons to control the gun business, as I said earlier. But 9/11 is no reason to ban the manufacture and use of airplanes. But I'm glad their use is carefully regulated.
And I would like to ban the sale of guns designed to kill people. Norway and Mexico provide good reasons for that.

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@JLNobody,

I live in the UK, and I think OUR laws are too liberal. You can never stop gun crime, but these armed rampagers don't tend to do it with illegal weapons. I wasn't responding to your post, just putting my own thoughts out there.

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@JLNobody,

In Norway there are strong restrictions on getting and having weapons. You have to be either an active member of a pistol club, or active in hunting if you want to have a rifle.
That is why this madman could be so sure that his victims wouldn't fire back, and so he could walk around for one and a half hour shooting people.

But I agree that if people were allowed to carry weapons around with them there would be more shootings and killings over trivial things, and instead of someone waking up with a split lip after a night on the town that led to a drunken quarrel, they would perhaps not wake at all.

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@JLNobody,

But, gun ownership is quite restricted in Mexico, at least handguns. Somehow, the restrictions don't seem to apply to the criminals. The results are as you have noted.

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This gun nut picked his destination very carefully. He didn't start shooting on a city street where there was a possibility of someone carrying a gun, he sailed to an island and shot at innocents, who probably never could have conceived the horror that visited them.
Not that the possibility of a gun battle is ever really a deterrent to someone hell bent on mayhem, as witnessed on a fairly regular basis on the streets of the USA.
The reason this crime is so astonishingly awful is because the people of Norway strive for a peaceful society. This man had all the benefits of Norwegian sensibilities and chose to pervert it's liberties. Why is it these once upstanding gun owning animals insist on inflicting their bloody ideals on the world? Why is it they will scream for the right to own a gun and then stomp out the lives that allow them to maintain that right. Why is this done all the while ignoring the pleas of the people that would rather rid the world of guns or at least enjoy some security in gun control. Why is that these very abominations are defended their right to have owned guns, trained with weapon designed only to kill humans all the while insisting people who would love to live in peace must capitulate and live in fear when the next upstanding gun owing citizen decides to follow their skewed ideology.

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@Ceili,

Same reason why those that would love to live in peace must capitulate to the laws of government that ensure that peace. One of those laws, at least in America, is the right to bear arms.

There is no perfect answer, and this isn't a perfect world. Do away with firearms and we'll just go back to people carrying huge knives around. Violent idiocy doesn't require a sound reason or a specific 'tool' to carry out it's agenda. It's sickening what happened in Oslo. No one I know that has spent any time there at all can believe what's happened. But let's not kid ourselves and for a second think it was the fault of the gun, or that the man was able to obtain one. He used explosives too. No one is currently losing their mind on that point.

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@Cyracuz,

Yes, he was like a fox in a chicken coop
because all of his victims were unarmed.

David

1 Reply

By the way, explosives should be regulated as well.

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@Ceili,

Ideology.

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@Ceili,

My husband arrived in my life with, among other aspects, cats and a rifle/shotgun. I don't know the difference. When my father died, I sold his rifles to Abercrombie and Finch, who probably chuckled as I walked away. That was when they were a serious store, or so I thought.

That was the same gun that didn't protect his family in a home invasion. He was raised in what I think of as Los Angeles' most troubled neighborhood, not far from the start of the Watt's riots (he was a somewhat chubby white kid, playing baseball that day, in Watts ) and their house, where the parents still lived, was a mere block or so from the heart of the mess in 1992. I tolerated the gun, given what he had been through (family on the floor, the crippled mother running out the door when the thugs were in the back rooms or in between - if I remember, she was much the closest and certainly craziest). Their fear was that the thugs would shoot her. The gun was in the closet the whole time.

The thugs left, getting only my bro in law's piggy bank.

If I have any identity, it is that I don't like guns and bombs.

3 Replies

@ossobuco,

One more thought -

when I first knew my husband he was always street secure. It took years before he relaxed into not looking behind. Not that he was some kind of twitcher, but that that he was always aware.

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@Questioner,

Questioner wrote:

There is no perfect answer, and this isn't a perfect world. Do away with firearms and we'll just go back to people carrying huge knives around.

Knives don't kill anyway near as many people as guns.

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@izzythepush,

When people learn to actually use computers maybe they drop the guns after all...going low tech is just not an option these days...

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

You are safe. My computer is fully registered.

1 Reply

@roger,

Feeling safer already ! Mr. Green

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@JLNobody,

JLNobody wrote:

By the way, explosives should be regulated as well.

Including home-made ones, right??

Have the murderers apply for licenses, yea.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

My husband arrived in my life with, among other aspects, cats and a rifle/shotgun.
I don't know the difference.

A shotgun is smooth inside its gunbarrel
and it usually fires multiple projectiles at the same time,
forming a cone of metal spray.

A rifle fires one projectile at a time.
The interior surface of its gunbarrel has a spiral shaped groove
cut into the metal, along the length of the gunbarrel, to guide the projectile.
That provides much greater accuracy.

ossobuco wrote:

When my father died, I sold his rifles to Abercrombie and Finch, who probably chuckled as I walked away.
That was when they were a serious store, or so I thought.

Is there a problem with Abercrombie and Finch, now ?

ossobuco wrote:

That was the same gun that didn't protect his family in a home invasion.

Was the car in the driveway the one that did not protect his family
and the police in the precinct, the ones that did not protect the family??
For proper use, the gun must be taken OUT of the closet
and aimed at the home invaders before discharging its contents
in their direction, to give them a 1 gun salute.

ossobuco wrote:

He was raised in what I think of as Los Angeles' most troubled neighborhood, not far from the start of the Watt's riots (he was a somewhat chubby white kid, playing baseball that day, in Watts ) and their house, where the parents still lived, was a mere block or so from the heart of the mess in 1992. I tolerated the gun, given what he had been through (family on the floor, the crippled mother running out the door when the thugs were in the back rooms or in between - if I remember, she was much the closest and certainly craziest). Their fear was that the thugs would shoot her. The gun was in the closet the whole time.

Was that the gun's fault???? or its owners' ???

ossobuco wrote:

The thugs left, getting only my bro in law's piggy bank.

If I have any identity, it is that I don't like guns and bombs.

Each to his own taste, the same as the thread
regarding failure to vaccinate.

How was the Zoo book ???

David

1 Reply

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