for the record (re: guns thread)

The scapegoat has changed significantly. It used to be comic books. And yet - in recent years, as game violence has become more realistic and gruesome...as horror movies have become more graphic and terrifying, television has become both more violent and more sexual... violent crime has decreased in the US. If that is ironic then it must be ironic that the loudest proponents of guns always blame other inanimate objects for the high firearm related death rate in the US. Rock n roll, Hip Hop, Leisure suit Larry, Doom, Grand Theft Auto, Black Sabbath....you name it - they have been vociferously attacked by the loudest of the gun proponents.God forbid that anyone should question the prevalence of easily accessible lethal weapons.

Actually, you are the one digging for specifics. The only points that people responding to Petro were making is that, in fact, school shootings did happen prior to Columbine and they were reported in the news.If you wanna snipe, that's fine, but shouldn't you be making the effort to get all the information rather than complain that other people aren't doing the research for you?

Guns are the medium through which many murders take place. We cannot argue with that, and I do not believe anyone here has tried to argue with that point yet. What we on this side of the fence see, however, is that y'all on your side of the fence are trying to put even a partial amount of blame on the guns; this is something you should not do. Consider the following analogy:I'm driving my car through some windy roads that circle around and between several lakes. I bend down to pick something up off the floor, and *BAM*, my car breaks off the through the side rail and goes rolling into the lake. I turn my window down, get out, and quickly swim to safety. My car, on the other hand, is not so lucky, and it sinks to the bottom of the lake, with everything inside being damaged by the water; completely un-salvageable. Now, we all know that my stuff”and perhaps even my entire car”would be safe and okay today if that lake hadn't been there. Hell, if not for the lake, there probably wouldn't 've been even a valley there, just a field, at road level... my car would be doing fine to this day. So, who should I blame? Should we drain all the lakes just so people don't drive their cars into them? It will reduce the number of deaths that occur that way. Now, of course punishing and/or blaming the lake is stupid as Hell. The lake is simply an unsuspecting medium through which a tragic event can occur. The underlying problem is generally inattentive driving. The same is true of guns; they are just an unsuspecting medium through which tragic events can occur. The underlying problem is the people who carry them.Now, I know very well that simply draining the lake getting rid of/reducing the number of guns would help to lower the number of gun deaths, but it's a superficial fix to the problem. Generally, it's a fix proposed by those who don't want to deal with the real problem. It's a fix that the driver of that car might propose, to alleviate the blame on him and pass it onto someone else. Reducing the number of guns will definitely reduce the amount of gun violence, no doubt, but it's just another case of people who aren't willing to put the blame where it really lies: themselves, and the problems that their ignorance brings to society.Jon

And those points are invalid because those were not "school shootings" in any sense relevant to the topic. If you want to make a point about gun control, don't pretend that any gunshot in the general vicinity of a school is a "school shooting". I'm pointing out errors in somebody else's research. I'm doing their research for them.

---

Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation.
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC

Yes, it would be crazy, or at the very least irresponsibly naive.Yes there are more car deaths than gun deaths in a year. But that's an extremely simplified look at the numbers. And if you don't realize that on it's face, I'll bother to explain.While both guns and cars outnumber the actual population of the US. The percentage of people using cars on a daily basis far outnumbers the percentage of people using guns. Which is to say, that more people are using more cars than people using guns.Further, the amount of time cars get used FAR FAR FAR excedes the amount of time guns are being used.What you would need to do to compair these numbers would be to take the number of deaths / the amount of time the triggers are being pulled and compair that to the number of deaths / the amount of time the cars are being driven.So, let's take some 80% of the population, give them all hand guns and have them fire them off non stop for 2-3 hours a day or more and see what that does to your 1000:1 ratio. As I pointed out before, this is a great hypothesis. Please compair the degree of video game / movie violence of the Wild West to that of the 50s. Demonstrate that the video games in Tombstone Arizona were more violent than the video games in the 50's and you'll have proven your point.If, on the other hand, you discover that the non-existant movies and non-existant video games of the Wild West did not have an effect on the number of killings, you may want to reconsider your idea. As I demonstrated above, you are in NO position to describe the people you are debating against was being irrational.If you want to connect the dots, how is it you STILL fail to understand that a kid WITHOUT a gun is VERY VERY VERY unlikely to shoot anyone.

As with the points nemesis made, I happen to agree with you. Excellent, lets get on with it. Where do you suggest we begin? The blame really lies on the seriously screwed up people in the world. If taking away their ak-47 is not an option, what should we do about them?As a side note - why exactly is owning a landmine, an envelope of anthrax, or a surface to air missle illegal?

Lakes are to guns what guns are to nukes. We shouldn't blame nukes for their detonation, since they are blameless we should allow complete proliferation so that everyone has a suitable deterrent!Nobody is blaming lakes or guns or nukes. We are simply stating that we should build better safety barriers on road bends that oversea large bodies of water, that there should be more restrictions on firearms than there are currently, that we should do everything possible to limit the number of nations with possession of nuclear weapons.

I have never said that isn't an option. I am as much for keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people, as I am for restricting people from driving near lakes who have a habit of crashing their cars into them

No, most industrialized nations want to keep nukes out of the hands of other nations, but that's a side point. I agree that there should be more restrictions on who has access to the guns. People who are violent criminals shouldn't have them. People who are mentally/emotionally unstable shouldn't have them. It's the same way that we wouldn't let a 3 year old play with matches.Jon

It's no more of a side note than the lakes were a side note. That's fine, and we both no doubt have different views on how to achieve limiting the number and type of weapon available to the public. And now we both know that nobody is proposing something as absurd as blaming a noun!

That's a bold statement. Would you like to back that up and prove that all the shootings listed are not "school shootings"? Since, it only takes 1 to disprove Petro's statement. And I'm point out errors in your assertion, I'm helping you. Now go google every gun event, interview the witnesses, the cops, etc. Xerox the newspaper clippings and come on back in 2-3 years.By then, maybe, Petro will have conceded that all gun violence didn't start with Columbine and your work will have been for nothing.

Either you really are as dumb as you are pretending, or you are the most disingenuine poster on the boards.Your post can be summed up like this:
"Lakes don't kill people. People who accidently crash into lakes kill people".That's fine, and make stand as a (piss poor but) slightly relavent analogy to guns IF we were ONLY talking about ACCIDENTAL gun deaths.We are not.There aren't a lot of lakes being used in bank robberies.
There aren't a lot of lakes being carried to schools under trench coats.
There aren't a lot of piss drunk abusive husbands who after beating their wives go to their lake cabinet, take out the .357 lake they've had since they were 14 and proceed to wet their wives to death.Your example isn't just childish, it shows a PROFOUND misunderstanding of the debate. Which, given that this thread is ABOUT YOUR PROFOUND MISUNDERSTAND OF THE DEBATE is dead on topic.We all should get back to that main topic, and discuss why it is that Jon is unable to understand what we are talking about.Do you all feel that it's a lack of reading comprehention or a willful denial of points which refute him?

What about the friends of these people?
What about the relatives of these people?
What about the neighbors of these people?The guns the columbine kids had were not their guns. They took them from a relative.Lets say that officials were on the ball and knew that these kids were POTENTIALLY dangerous. You can't arrest them for being potentially criminals. You can't restrict the guns which belong to other individuals. Hell, you can't even force them into therapy for being angry kids.Your system has failed miserably and continues to fail miserably, but you refuse to change it. You are sure you aren't working at the White House?

Maybe you remember the woman a while back who drowned her children in the bathtub. That was intentional; should we outlaw bathtubs too?Tell me, why is it that you want to put such tight restrictions on gun ownership?

I was refering to Kent State and Jackson State, which were not "school shootings" comparable to Columbine.I'll say this one more time: We're discussing control of civilian guns here. Shootings by military and police are not relevant.What part of that is so @#$%ing hard to understand? Unbunch your panties for a split second and read what I wrote. In no way was I trying to support what petro said. I was simply pointing out errors in kuresu's list.

---

Help scientific research in your spare time. No cost. No obligation.
Join the World Community Grid with Team EvC