I've been thinking about this a lot today and I understand that the knee jerk reaction is to blame guns, but guns aren't the problem. The problem is figuring out why these gunmen are willing to kill innocent people who they've never met, and in this case small children. What is bringing these people to cross that line? The guns are just the tool of choice for these evil deeds. The reasoning behind the actions is what we need to be targeting. Is it mental illness? Is it too much violence on TV or video games or the internet? Is it a desire for attention? Guns have been around for hundreds of years, and automatic guns with high capacity magazines have been around for nearly a hundred years. Thompson sub machine guns were available to the general public back in the 1920's. Why are people suddenly acting out and killing people they've never met? If we can figure out the "why", maybe we can stop these shootings from happening, because taking away guns is not going to stop the problem. It might diminish the damages, but it won't fix the imbalance in these people's heads.
He probably watched that scene in Star Wars where anakin skywalker slaughtered the young Jedi kids and copied it.
Japan has a huge problem with suicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan Also, this is interesting: [video=youtube;4FDSdg09df8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDSdg09df8[/video]
oh and here is the answer to the question: [video=youtube;a01QQZyl-_I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=a01QQZyl-_I&NR=1[/video]
Ok, so if it's just plain, old fashioned, crazy..... how do you stop that? You can't just lock them up for no reason, but if they make threats or can legitimately be considered a danger to themselves or others, then something has to be done. Therapy and drugs only can go so far.
They commit suicide rather than shame their family. It has a long history of being an honorable way to go out
Isn't that the argument for banning guns essentially? Even though a small number of guns result in gun deaths, you have to ban them for the greater good?
But that's the whole point.... you ban guns, you aren't addressing the problem. You're just changing what these people will end up using. Perhaps it will be a bomb next time, or a knife. They're still crazy. They will still have thoughts of killing innocent people. Maybe you don't have a huge mass killing with a knife, but China has mostly disproved that thought. Though there weren't any deaths today in that mass stabbing, the prior stabbings took many young lives. If someone is intent on killing, they will find a way. After England restricted guns, assault with a knife went up to the highest numbers in the history of the country. We aren't going to restrict knives, so at what point do we actually start looking at the problem? Why are so many kids being born with autism? The numbers have gone up drastically over the last twenty years.
Some people say immunizations. There are other theories as well. But like I said earlier that people don't want to talk about it or the negative repercussions. How many more mass murders Aspergers individuals will it take to realize they aren't all Rainman.
Because nobody wants to look at what could be the reason... Is it all the radio waves floating around out there? Cell phones, wifi, etc. Is it our diets? Could be from all the GMO foods. Is it the immunizations? We have our comfort level and we don't want to take a long, hard look at what is causing our kids to be born with some serious problems.
I have to admit, i started this thread out of profound heartache for those children. That said, I got a big laugh out of your comment. The primary reason is our Sony dvd/cd disc changer went bad last night and the wife and I had just settled in with some popcorn, Christmas lights on and a good Christmas dvd in and the Sony decided to fail. But to add to it, we went to Worst Buy and bought another Sony CD player, Sony dvd player- but the new receiver (the old one only works now via remote) is a Denon.
(when sober, my dad was an MD for the state hospital system, so here is my insight based on what I learned from that) Most people with profound mental/emotional illness do not fully "blossom" until their late 20's. So prior to that a lot of time is spent diagnosing and looking into various treatments. It's not until via trial and error it is determined they need to be in institutionalized. And the hope is that along the way something like this doesn't happen. Also, most states (like Oregon) have placed money to run institutions into education or other to pay for pensions and out of mental health. I know 3 large Oregon state hospitals went extinct and the money reappointed. Add to that the federal money has also shrunk over the years.
And rather than look at that, we have a horde of angry people screaming about gun control right now. Why aren't people looking at the cause and not the effect? Guns are not the cause.
The thing is, we could add stricter gun control laws. Make it harder to get certain types of guns, or take longer to get a gun, but that's not going to stop these shootings. In both cases, the Clackamas and the Newtown shootings, the gunmen took the guns from other people. They did not acquire the guns themselves. What's going to stop that from happening after stricter laws are put in place?
Man, I hate this cliche. Guns are easy to get, easy to use and capable of causing a mass damage. This most certainly is part of the problem. Will you eliminate the problem completely if there were no guns? Of course not. Will you eliminate some of the problems (and not a trivial amount)? Yeah, I believe so. Sure, guns are not the problem. It's (unstable) people with guns that are the problem. Separate the two and you have less of an issue... The obvious solution is to make them harder to get and better controlled. It does not mean eliminate them. It means however that you need better checks on getting them, better education on using them - and bigger fines for losing them or not reporting them lost/taken. Heck, many states have mandatory periodic vehicle checks for safety. No reason not to require the same for guns. The modern world gave us many efficient ways to get lots of dangerous stuff produced and distributed, not using better technology and processes to control it will cause problems. It's really not hard to grasp. and lets face it - if you bought a dangerous equipment and you can not protect it from unstable people - than maybe you should not be entitled to own it...
All depends on the stricter laws. Like someone mentioned in the other thread, something like not allowing guns in a house with someone with mental problems, defined...somehow. I don't know. There's likely a line you can draw. You're never going to stop them all. Would that stop some? Possibly.
That's not the cliche. I didn't say guns weren't the problem. I said they aren't the cause. They aren't causing these attacks. They are definitely part of the problem, but they aren't the cause of the problem. That's the whole point of this thread. Why? What is causing this to happen? People are becoming so fixated on the aftermath that they aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Why are people walking into a school full of strangers and killing them? Terrorism is a horrible thing, but at least you can say that you know why a terrorist does what he does. Why are these people going through with these shootings?
Well, judging by the way most people want to fight terrorism, there is no use in finding the root cause, just kill the people, and try to stop the means in which they carry out their attacks.
