Summations Only

I don't know Rahvin. It would greatly help me if I knew some information from this last shooting would prevent the next dozen massacres. Perhaps. But this is a topic my girlfriend and I talk about ALLLL the time, so I am using it as more than just a buzzword. I would like to see this topic as a different thread some time (it would quickly go off-topic here), but briefly: To make a better society, what school lessons should be added to our schools? I would like to see: 1. Conflict resolution skills taught. EVERY year. 2. Foreign culture studies. Every year. When we understand, we fear less. I am going to India in february. I wish I could take every american with me. Rahvin, I think you would be an interesting co-traveler, especially to a non-westernized nation. 3. Critical thinking skills. Every year. 4. Creative problem solving. Every year. 5. ??? Perhaps others already have their own list in their heads. Yep, I am quite familiar with HIPAA. However, when the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, I wonder if there is at least a compromise? I understand both sides, but don't have a solution. Yep, my girlfriend, a therapist, informs me. However, these last two shooters, the 'joker' and this connecticut shooter make me wonder if there is ANYthing more than can be done to determine risks from certain people. I previously mentioned that the insurance companies should not use bean counting as a method of evaluation. Will this get better or worse under Obamacare? YES. Americans (sometimes me too) are rather insane about too many erroneously perceived threats. But the corporate media and government willfully stirs that pot for intended results. Therefore, education is our only chance of gaining sanity.

The liberals do not really want to correct the bad behavior behind anti-social acts.Correction of the people responsible opposes the politically correct feminist stradegy used in the emasculate home environment.
There, the spanking has been outlaw now governs the mentality of these people in regard to raising up the whole society with coddling, educating, conjoling, and excusing.Consider all the liberal progressive democratic "solutions" supported and recommended on all issue including Gun Control.
The thinking is basically the "mommy-ism" of "take away the toy," but do NOT spank her prize possession:The Democrat solution for the Gun killings is to do away with the Guns.The Democrat solution for the Drug problem is to do away with the Drug Laws.The Democrat solution for the teenage pregnancies is to do away with the babies.The Democrat solution for the Economic recession is to place a Tax on successful business.The Democratic solution for Unemployment is to extend the Unemployment Checks.The Democrat solution for bank insolvency is to do away with the bankruptcy because they are too big to fail.The Democrat solution for keeping Government Bond rates low is to buy their own bonds.The Democrat solution for War is to do away with the military deterrent.The Democrat solution for poverty is to give them other people’s money.The Democrat solution for Conservative Laws is to assign Liberal judges.The Democrat solution for fat kids is to investigate Fast Food restaurants.The Democrat solution for the school bully is to arrest teachers for grabbing them.Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.

That's fine, Heathen, I was answering RAZD's list of information which included the easy availability of guns to criminals and responding that tightening laws on criminals is clearly a good idea, however that can be done.I was not addressing the Connecticut situation or similar occurrences at that time which I'd addressed before as being best dealt with by installing solme sort of security measures, whether arming personnel or hiring guards. It's practical. I didn't claim that better laws against criminals would have stopped Lanza. This is another subject.The problem is that criminals manage to get hold of weapons no matter what laws are in place and since by definition they ignore laws anyway we need COUNTERFORCE to deal with them. And I do believe that a strong counterforce also has deterrent effect. I do beliieve that these mass murderers would very likely not have risked it in any situation where they knew there could be guns aimed at them.My main concern on this whole thread is the emotional wave of opinion that always follows on a horrific tragedy that targets all gun owners, the vast majority of whom are good law abiding citizens. That's an irrational response aimed at depriving us of the second amendment security we are supposed to be able to count on.

Wow.To repeat, education is our only chance of gaining sanity.

I tend to agree with you about those things, Kofh, I just keep hoping that it's still possible to wake some people up to the situation that's being created in our countries. It may be a lost cause, we deserve God's judgment for all those things you've listed and it looks to me like we're getting it, even in the form of this irrational reaction to this tragedy that is going to deprive us of what little security we have left.I realize that what's called for in that case is a return to God and that's not going to happen unless He has extraordinary mercy on us, but without that all the efforts to talk about this stuff from a strictly societal point of view are probably futile. Nevertheless it still seems worth a try.Got to add, though, that after seeing some of your posts involving theology that I don't see much help coming from your side of things. You embrace apostasies as if they were Christian. That's just another way the west is being destroyed -- in fact it's probably THE reason God is judging us. You can't embrace false gods and expect blessing from the true God. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So having a gunfight at the schoolgates between a guard and a nutball is a better option that the guns not being present at all? But these shooters were NOT CRIMINALS, they were by all accounts quite mild mannered law abiding people. In Lanza's case the guns he used were his mothers, legally held weapons. He picked them up without challenge or difficulty. COUNTEFORCE will only lead to an escalation. Bigger guns, better, more deadly weaponry to ensure the counterforce is countered. I DO believe that these mild mannered, otherwise law abiding citizens would not have killed people if guns were not freely available to them. Given that they invariably shoot themselves or attempt to do so, suggests that the threat of death would not act as a deterrent, and would more likely lead to a more elaborate plan to disable the guard and THEN proceed to mass murder.Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.Edited by Heathen, : No reason given.

Trained gun owners do not get into "gunfights" and that's a ridiculous straw man. The problem was that guns were NOT present at all except in the hands of the murderer. THAT is the problem. You wiill NOT solve THAT problem by removing MORE guns from the people who SHOULD have them. You'll just add to the problem that allows a Lanza to commit horrific murders. That seems so obvious to me that I can hardly make sense of all this screaming about taking away people's guns. The problem in Connecticut and in Aurora was that GUNS WERE PROHIBITED. What can't you guys get about this? The prohibitions are the problem but that's what you want more of! Nobody is a criminal until he does something criminal for pete's sake. Lanza became a criminal. No, you can't prevent people who haven't shown criminal tendencies from obtaining guns, didn't I say that? You can only be armed yourself as a deterrent and a protection against them. I suppose even a school principal COULD decide to shoot up her school and become a criminal too, but that's such an improbable scenario I can't even give it a second thought. Nonsense, it would make him think twice about shooting up a school. And if he did get that far an armed teacher, principal or security guard could have taken him down with one well aimed shot. We're not talking shootouts and escalation. You people have no idea what you are talking about. Oddly enough the threat of death DOES act as a deterrent. They want to kill people and dying is going to prevent them from doing that. The ones who are bent on criminal behavior, even formerly mild mannered good citizens will always be able to get the weapons to do it with. Depriving millions of good citizens of their guns is an absolutely ridiculous solution to this problem.I doubt that a lone murderers would bother with a plan to disable a guard, but that is a reason to have some teachers or the principal armed.

The liberal solution for Education seems to be to raise tuition so high people wise up.
The get "educated" enough to count four years time and tuition = $200,000.
They will simply buy their kids a franchise business and drop out of school.

Errrm, . . . I take it back, . . . there is no chance of gaining sanity.(We are all doomed, . . . can those Mayan's prophetize or what?.)

...of course they do.Hell, two people with guns (the assailant and the armed bystander) shooting at each other is the very definition of a gunfight! You can't have your armed bystander take out the assailant without getting into a gunfight!And police get into gunfights with some regularity, despite being among the most trained gun owners around.The point, of course, is that if you add more people shooting into the mix, all of the potential victims are caught in the crossfire. Can you imagine the actual result if the Joker shooter had been shot at from the crowd? Everyone between him and the armed bystander would have been caught in the crossfire. That's a very bad place to be. In a school...all the kids had better have an object thick enough to stop bullets between them and everyone with a gun, because a stray round or a ricochet is enough to kill.It's amazing that you don;t even think about things like this.

Like bullet-proof backpacks?Bulletproof backpack sales spike after Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. — New York Daily News

Why single out deaths due to gunfire as something that should be specifically desired over deaths due to other means? If deaths due to gunfire is reduced but deaths due to other means rises, and therefore the total number of deaths remains the same, then there was no benefit to exchanging the cause of death from one type to another.Too, reducing the deaths due to gunfire in exchange for an increase in violent crime isn't worth it either. Would you really exchange one violent criminal's life for more violent crimes against law abiding citizens?Regarding the murder rate, there's no correlation between the amount of guns a country has and its murder rate. Table 1 on page 4 of the pdf I linked to shows that lack of correlation.

Actually it doesn't. There's no requirement to be regulated by the states in order to "be constitutional".

In 2006 a survey was conducted in which 82% of British police officers stated that they do not want all officers to be routinely armed on duty.

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I don’t think there’s any desire from the police service, top to bottom, quite frankly for a routinely armed police service,

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Sir Hugh Orde, president of the U.K.’s Association of Chief Police Officers,

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Now I would imagine that you consider NOT arming the police as bonkers as I consider the idea of arming teachers. Yet the figures seem to speak for themselves.

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Despite police being unarmed, shooting fatalities of members of the police are extremely rare; there were three in England and Wales in the eleven-year period from 2000/01 to 2010/11.

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So I find your assumption that having everyone carry guns makes everyone safer on the simple basis that our unarmed police seem to be a lot safer than your police who are invariably armed. I have no idea where (or when) you got that video from but the idea that the UK populace are clamouring for guns or think that some sort of divine freedom has been diminished by their absence is complete nonsense.

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In the United Kingdom firearms are tightly controlled by law, and while there is opposition to existing legislation from shooting organisations, there is little wider political debate, and public opinion favours stronger control. The British Shooting Sports Council now believes that the law needs to be consolidated but it does not call for a review. The United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world with 0.07 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009 compared to the United States' 3.0 (over 40 times higher) and to Germany's 0.21 (3 times higher).

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WikiSeriously - The American attitude to guns has much of the rest of the civilised world looking on in complete bewilderment.

The video I mentioned to you interviews some police in the UK about how they've had to arm themselves with more high powered weapons because of the gun ban. It would be nice not to have to have a totally armed police force. The unarmed English "bobbies" were always a very attractive idea. Times have changed. Fine if you can still get away with an unarmed police force but it sounds like you can't any more. Actually I'm not particularly in favor of arming police and armies, because they are the ones who can become agents of tyranny against the people. The idea of an armed citizenry is what I've been defending, and the messages I recommended that you read are all about that. No. See above. Teachers are citizens, police are run by the state, I'm for arming citizens, not so much agents of the state although that too does seem necessary these days. The two societies have different kinds of problems, different demographics, different situations. Sort through all that before making a comparison. Did you WATCH the video? I found it on You Tube. Those ARE British people being interviewed, people who had their guns taken away from them back in 1997. Lucky you. I still haven't seen any statistics that I feel I can trust. They don't make necessary distinctions, no idea who did what to whom or why, and so on, and when I do take somebody's statistics straight, which happened yesterday with something Tangle posted, then people start yelling at me because I took them straight. So I don't trust yours either as long as I don't know how to interpret them. Except to say lucky you that you don't have a lot of homicides but apparently you do now have a lot of home invasiions because guns have been taken away. That doesn't persuade me of anything I'm afraid. They just don't grasp the reason for citizen gun ownership and haven't yet encountered the real-life reasons for its necessity. But from here it looks like you're all being set up for the very tyrannies that gun rights are necessary to prevent. Hasn't happened yet, but it's inevitable eventually I'm afraid.