Michigan passes bill allowing concealed weapons in schools, day care centers, stadiums, churches

[Harbinger]

More population = more guns.. it also means more houses, more knives, more birth control, etc.

One thing it doesn't mean is more murders, when the murder rate in the US has consistently dropped over the last two decades despite an obvious increase in both guns and population.

What's changed? The dramatically increased scrutiny of shootings, more extensive coverage, and so on. What I'm trying to say is, the masses indeed are susceptible to the media, but not for the reasons you say.. but instead for thinking that shootings are around every corner.

Living in the Bay Area, there were shootings all over despite gun restrictions.

Yet, they were in blatantly bad parts of towns and primarily with extensive populations of minorities and low income housing.

I never encountered this stuff near my house because I chose wisely where I live. The morons who saw low housing prices in, say, East Palo Alto, or Richmond, without paying attention to the crime/murder rate in general, which coincidentally follows the path of shootings.. sucks to be them. The people who picked better places to live, amazingly.. they encountered less crime, despite owning guns.

It's not a complicated equation.

[RUPERTKBD]

Ok first of all, bud...I wasn't talking about any of these recent incidents that have taken place, get me? I'm talking about the "pulse" of a good number of people in this country...do you not realize there are a group of idiot American conspiracy theorists who are CERTAIN that in March Barack Obama is going to sign the US's sovereignty over to the United Nations....getting rid of the guns altogether? People BELIEVE this nonsense. More Americans are paranoid of what they feel the government could do to them it's ridiculous...People here do, believe it or not, think that it is very plausible that Obama is a socialist, that he's a muslim, that he was born in kenya, that he's the anti-christ, and on and on and on...this level of intolerance CAUSES the American people...or a good number of them to be afraid of their government.

[Mr. Ambien]

So which is it then? Is society actually getting better since violent crime is decreasing? Or is it that society is getting worse so violent crime is decreasing?

[Bertuzzi Babe]

Having lived in the US for decades, I'll go with the former. It's pretty safe, and you can make it safer if you choose wisely on where to live, the people you hang around, where you hang around at, and so on.

[Scott Hartnell's Mane]

Apologies if this has already been covered, but this is what confuses me, M.M.

You seem to admit that these people are paranoid nutjobs, yet you also seem to support these people having the right to arm themselves, in the event that they someday decide to act on their delusional fantasies.

To carry the analogy further, in the other thread, we were talking about Timothy McVeigh.

Here was a guy who seems to match the description in your post: A paranoid individual who was convinced that the governement needed to be brought down.

As Wetcoaster pointed out in that thread, after the Oklahoma City bombing, restrictions were placed on the sale of Ammonium Nitrate based fertilizer, which used by McVeigh and Nichols. You can still by fertilizer, it just isn't as easy or readily available as it used to be.

One would have to believe that there are still plenty of paranoids out there who believe the government is out to rob them of all of their personal freedoms. (especially with the black muslim who was born in Kenya, occupying the White House) Yet here we are almost 20 years later and no more bombings of government buildings.

What homeland security did with ammonium nitrate based fertilizers is exactly what we want to do with assault weapons and other firearms that can fire multiple rounds in a short period of time.

[RUPERTKBD]

Half of your equation comes up with an ambiguous term.. "better".

If you tie better to less murders, less gun murders in particular, than say 1992, it's better.

If you tie it to the feeling of fear that media's influence generates to make people believe the prevalence of recent mass shootings means there is no safe place... it's worse.

Having lived in the US for decades, I'll go with the former. It's pretty safe, and you can make it safer if you choose wisely on where to live, the people you hang around, where you hang around at, and so on.

As much as you'd tie ammonium nitrate based fertiliser to guns, there's one distinct difference, which you'll fancifully dismiss:

Guns are a right protected by the constitution, explicitly, with it's own neat little amendment. Ammonium nitrate based fertiliser is not.

[Lockout Casualty]

Living in the Bay Area, there were shootings all over despite gun restrictions.

Yet, they were in blatantly bad parts of towns and primarily with extensive populations of minorities and low income housing.

I never encountered this stuff near my house because I chose wisely where I live. The morons who saw low housing prices in, say, East Palo Alto, or Richmond, without paying attention to the crime/murder rate in general, which coincidentally follows the path of shootings.. sucks to be them. The people who picked better places to live, amazingly.. they encountered less crime, despite owning guns.

It's not a complicated equation.

[Heretic]

Assault weapons aren't really the issue (though why would anyone want one unless you were in the military).

"According to FBI data, of the two-thirds of murders that involve firearms, about 69 percent involve handguns rather than rifles or shotguns of any kind. Most estimates place the contribution of assault weapons to gun crime at around 1 or 2 percent."

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/335976/brief-note-gun-control-reihan-salam

In case you missed that. 2/3 of homicides in the US are done by guns.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/19/murder-by-numbers-digging-into-the-data-of-americas-gun-cultur/

Did you guys read what Austrailia did?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/18/gun-control-port-arthur/1778519/

"Since a 1996 law, there has been no mass shooting there."

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/12/18/opinion/a-lesson-in-gun-control-from-australia/?ref=mostReadBoxOpinion

[Mr. Ambien]

Assault weapons aren't really the issue (though why would anyone want one unless you were in the military).

"According to FBI data, of the two-thirds of murders that involve firearms, about 69 percent involve handguns rather than rifles or shotguns of any kind. Most estimates place the contribution of assault weapons to gun crime at around 1 or 2 percent."

http://www.nationalr...ol-reihan-salam

In case you missed that. 2/3 of homicides in the US are done by guns.

http://www.dailyfina...cas-gun-cultur/

[Bertuzzi Babe]

nvm, there's no point in bringing up rational thinking with some people.

[22Sedinery33]

Stupid Americans, this is the opposite of what they need. Smh...

[Bertuzzi Babe]

I will ask this again, on the remote off chance that you missed it instead of deliberately ignoring my post so you don't have to answer it and commit yourself. (Though I'm leaning more to the latter as the reason. Previous history says this is more likely the case)

Having lived in the US for decades, I'll go with the former. It's pretty safe, and you can make it safer if you choose wisely on where to live, the people you hang around, where you hang around at, and so on.

[DonLever]

As for the society is to blame thing.. Andrew Kehoe in the 1920s massacred students well before video games, and well before there was much if any TV violence at all. Oh, and he didn't use a gun. Society plays a role in what shapes others around them but it obviously varies, and where we need to learn more is about where a person's mental health derives from that puts them in a position to okay massacring a bunch of students/faculty.

[Wetcoaster]

That bombing is a one-off event. Mass shootings at schools are rare until the last twenty years. There were no mass shootings of kids in in the 1800's, 1910's-1960's. The only one was in the 1960s was the Texas clock tower sniper who killed some people.

Society has changed. It is a more permissive time now compared to the pre-1960s'. Thre is no right and wrong these days. Everything goes. Its the me generation, I do what I want, when I want.

[Heretic]

Assault weapons are the issue, and they are the issue because insensible outraged anti-gun populace and media deem it so, despite such evidence slapping them in the face that assault weapon bans in the US are ineffectual and merely a feel good piece of legislation that accomplishes nothing.

http://en.wikipedia....ersity_shooting

The Monash University shooting refers to a shooting in which a student shot his classmates and teacher, killing two and injuring five. It took place at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 21 October 2002.

Must be in some alternate reality Australia. Gotta love when the media doesn't do it's research.

[Electro Rock]

So are you saying then that the families of Newtown, the ones whose children or loved one was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary should have chosen where they live more wisely? That they should have chosen their work colleague more wisely (Nancy Lanza)? Chosen the school for their children more wisely? Nancy Lanza's neighbours should have chosen their neighbour or neighbourhood more wisely? And on it goes.

Look up what sort of community Newtown, CT is. It isn't a ghetto or low income slum full of scuzzy characters and drug dealers on every corner.

[Mr. Ambien]

Yes...but did you read what the government did:

The then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, initiated another review of Australian gun laws after it was discovered that Xiang had acquired his firearms legally.^[25] The Victorian State Government prepared new laws doubling the punishment for misuse of handguns and introducing new laws against trafficking in handguns after the shooting,^[6] and all other states followed.

They took action.

[Wetcoaster]

In the US, the population is over 300 million, the guns amount to roughly the same, there are enough unstable people with the means to get their hand on a weapon or device to commit mass murder.

[Heretic]

Australia has no recognized right to bear arms. The US does.

The difference there cannot be understated.

Much like the situation occurring in the US with 9/11, how one handles things following these events best describes a society.

How would I describe it? Knee jerk. Reactionary. Not productive in the least bit. The uproar following these events tends to be outlandish and overreacting. In these types of events it's easy by fear or anger to make certain rights disposable.

While it was not a right in Australia, the 1996 overreaction was followed-up with another mass shooting. More will follow.

In the US, the population is over 300 million, the guns amount to roughly the same, there are enough unstable people with the means to get their hand on a weapon or device to commit mass murder. Sad when a celebrity has more sense to point out the mental problem than the US President and the reactionaries.

[Buddhas Hand]

2 people died in a "mass" shooting since 1996. That's very productive.

2/3 of all homicides in the US are gun related. How's that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" working out?

It's a "right" not a "requirement".

People have the "right" to live.

So now the slogan is "guns don't kill people, mental people kill people"...sad...