Another school shooting

[JayMcGee]

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

Testy? Absolutly. I've been working 13 hour days for the past two weeks including weekends. September/October is hell for students anyway and taking 20 credits doesn't help matters. Temper tends to go short on 5 hours of sleep.

hey, chill out man..... grab a gun, go shoot some kids....

[Dr. Zaius]

Geez...this is so twisted. Coldly executing children you don't know isn't bad enough. He executes kids dressed in 19th century headbonnets and homemade garb. Why not kill Santa Claus while yer at it?

I wanna divorce from the human race.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

I think it would be harder to kill a large number of people if you were armed with only knives, sticks, and rocks.

Probably not in the case today, as the victims were bound before being shot.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by BigV

Are you saying that I, a citizen who is not armed, am MORE likely to be a criminal than you, who are legally armed? Because you're "legally armed"? That makes you...more law abiding than me? Based on what?

I call bull shit.

Statistically, those licenced for concealed carry commit fewer crimes per capita than the general population. Not surprising, because they're screened for criminal history, and if they're convicted of a crime they lose their licences.

Originally Posted by http://gunfacts.info

Myth: People with concealed weapons will commit crimes
Fact: The results for the 30 states that have passed “shall-issue” laws for concealed carry permits are similar. Here are some specific cases:
State Permits issued Revoked permits % Revoked
Florida 551,000 109 0.02%[31]
Virginia 50,000 0 0.00%[32]
Arizona 63,000 50 0.08%[33]
Fact: People with concealed carry permits are:[34]
· 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public
· 13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public
-----------------
[30] FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992 – for following bullet points
[31] October 1987 through Jan 1999
[32] 1995 – no follow-up data available
[33] 1994 through 1998
[34] William Strdevant, unpublished study reported in August 2000 edition of America’s 1st Freedom
-----------------
Fact: In Texas, citizens with concealed carry permits are 14 times less likely to commit a crime. They are also five times less likely to commit a violent crime.[35]

Fact: Even gun control organizations agree it is a non-problem, as in Texas – “because there haven't been Wild West shootouts in the streets”.[36]

Fact: Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm.

Fact: In Florida, a state that has allowed concealed carry since 1989, you are twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator than a person with a concealed carry permit.[37]

Myth: Texas CCW holders are arrested 66% more often
Fact: This claim comes from the Violence Policy Center (VPC), a gun control policy group. Most arrests the VPC cites are not for any form of violent crime (for example, bounced checks or tax delinquency). [38]

Fact: This data is also for arrests, not convictions.

Fact: Many of these arrests came in the early years of Texas CCWs, when the law was not understood by most of the law enforcement community or prosecutors.

Fact: Compared to the entire population, Texas CCW holders are about 7.6 times less likely to be arrested of a violent crime.[39] The numbers breakdown as follows:

° 214,000 CCW holders
° 526 (0.2%) felony arrests of CCW holders that have been adjudicated
° 100 (0.05%) felony convictions

Fact: The four year violent crime rate for CCW holders is 128 per 100,000. For the general population, it is 710 per 100,000. In other words, CCW holders are 5.3 times less likely to commit a violent crime.[40]
-------------------
[35] Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-
News, September, 2000
[36] Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence, Dallas Morning News, August 10, 2000
[37] Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report”, 1998 – Florida
Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, December 1998
[38] “Basis For Revocation Or Suspension Of Texas Concealed “, Texas Department of Public Safety,
December 1, 1998
[39] Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association,
www.tsra.com/arrests.htm
[40] “An Analysis Of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population”, William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000

What are we coming to that we are killing helpless children? Sometimes I grow so weary of this world. The guy picked the people least able to defend themselves, too. The Amish don't beleive in guns. As someone else pointed out, since his victims were tied up anyway, he could have used a knife or strangled them with his bear hands. He could have thrown a homemade bomb into the classroom.

The problem is not gun ownership. In Finland, 50% of all households own at least one gun, and their gun related homicide rate is only .87%. By contrast, the US with a mere 42% of all households owning guns has a gun related homicide rate of something like 6.7%.

Finland has a free press, too; so its not Maggie's liberal media which is responsible for this disparity. US society has some deep problems, in case no one has noticed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by marichiko

The Amish don't beleive in guns.

I don't believe that to be true for the Lancaster, County, PA Amish. It's my understanding that they hunt.

[wolf]

Amish County, Amish School, but plain old shooter with a mysterious grudge.

The location of the incident is interesting, but irrelevant. Until they know more about the shooter's motivation, the notion of a "school shooting" is not really what we have here, except in the sense that it occured in a school. The shooter was some guy ... a milk truck driver, not a student at the school, not even an age mate.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by marichiko

The problem is not gun ownership. In Finland, 50% of all households own at least one gun, and their gun related homicide rate is only .87%. By contrast, the US with a mere 42% of all households owning guns has a gun related homicide rate of something like 6.7%.

Finland has a free press, too; so its not Maggie's liberal media which is responsible for this disparity. US society has some deep problems, in case no one has noticed.

The United States problems include the drug trade, lack of family structure, and unlike Finland, we do not have a homogenous population.

I do wonder what the homicide statistics would look like if you removed all drug-related shootings ... probably a lot closer to Finland's number.

[wolf]

PEOPLE who don't deserve it.

[morethanpretty]

And it was clear from interviews with his co-workers at the dairy that his mood had darkened in recent days and he had stopped chatting and joking around with fellow employees and customers, the officer said.

If I had started behaving this way my co-workers and customers would have called the phsyc immediately. If people cared more about each other (even those they don't particularly know) then we probably wouldn't have so many problems with crimes related to mental instablility. But its all in retrospect sometimes. :-(

Yup... because it sounded to me like "if people were more nosy and fucked with someone who was having a bad day more....". Shit like that would make me want to shoot someone.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

Yup... because it sounded to me like "if people were more nosy and fucked with someone who was having a bad day more....". Shit like that would make me want to shoot someone.

I see your point, rkz, but I also have come to believe that more intervention-esp. among the fringe-(identified mental health folk and assorted other identified) is really needed in this country. We've thrown a lot of nuts out on the street in the name of saving a buck (those bucks aren't really saved, just spend elsewhere) and cut mental health reimbursments/services down to the nubbin. Watching a paranoid-schizophrenic walk down the street carrying all her earthly possessions into nowhere is a sad sight. I've seen it many a time--crazies get discharged into a no-win situation and end up doing a crazy thing.
I don't know for a fact that mr. shoot-up-the-Amish was crazed but I suspect he was.

[Pangloss62]

they prefer to keep their licences.

But at the core, they REALLY LOVE their guns. Most every gun owner in this country doesn't really "need" his gun/s, for self-defense or otherwise. They just LOVE them sooooooo much. The guns are substitutes for their essential insecurity and self-loathing.

Then some kid yesterday in AZ steals an AK-47 from his parents house. I hear the gun people say "They did not store the gun properly...blah blah blah." That may be true, but why do these people have an AK-47 in their house? For self defense? I doubt it. It's because they love the power they feel when they hold it in their hands. Eventually, if life becomes too much to deal with for them or their children, they will use it on others. I fear gun owners because they all have a bit of that gun lust in them, and it's bound to come out eventually.

[Trilby]

"When I held that gun in my hand, I felt a surge of power...like God must feel when he's holding a gun." ---quoth Homer S., NRA member--for a brief time.

[Pangloss62]