Not again.... (1 Viewer)

[brianoak]

This is madness.I dont know how they are going to stop these shootings.It's gone too far for gun control at this stage because there is already too many out there.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1175600,00.html

 

[jane]

Again, like I said on the politics thread, gun control is part of the issue. It's not the whole problem, of course, but it'd be a start. Selling fucking semi-automatic weapons at Wal-Mart pretty much just tells people that guns are great things to mess around with. Yes, I know, there are more guns in Canada, and fewer killings, but to say it's gone 'beyond gun control' is to throw one's arms up and give up.

The problem isn't one thing. It's poverty, it's disenfranchisement, it's all sorts of crap, but it's not unrelated to the fact that guns are really fucking easy to get in most of the US. Scarily easy. Plus, it's practically encouraged. Anyway, the government loves to see poor people killing each other. That way, they can blame the poor for getting themselves all poor like that, and shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, you gotta expect it."

 

[MDR]

I dunno, I'm not sure the problem is with the Government on this one - it seems more like a societal problem.

 

[jane]

So I don't have to repeat myself, no, I don't think it's just about the government. But I do think gun control is part of the issue:

http://www.thumped.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=20482

 

[jane]

I dunno, I'm not sure the problem is with the Government on this one - it seems more like a societal problem.

By the way, the fact that it is perfectly legal for a shop in Frederick, Maryland to give away free boxes of ammo with every case of Busch beer is pretty much tantamount to encouraging people to go around playing with firearms while all likkered up. Obviously, it doesn't solve the problem, but still, for all of this to be socially and legally acceptable doesn't help people to grasp fully that guns kill.

 

[MDR]

By the way, the fact that it is perfectly legal for a shop in Frederick, Maryland to give away free boxes of ammo with every case of Busch beer is pretty much tantamount to encouraging people to go around playing with firearms while all likkered up. Obviously, it doesn't solve the problem, but still, for all of this to be socially and legally acceptable doesn't help people to grasp fully that guns kill.

I just read your other posts on this and you make a fair case. I just feel that guns are too much a part of societies to make controls work, although of course they may mitigate the problem.

This thread should probably be merged with the one on the politics board.

 

[jane]

Yeah, the threads should be merged. Probably on the Politics board, rather than paying lip service to guns as 'lifestyle' items.

Anyway, I actually think that part of the problem in the US runs so fucking deep that we may never get at it. There's this whole thing -- you see it here, too, but not as much -- where 'If you work hard, you will make it. If you have failed, you haven't worked hard enough'. So people believe it, and then their dreams don't all come true, and they become bitter, and even more bitter when the blame is placed on them for not being able to break out of poverty. The whole 'Land of the Free' bullshit is, paradoxically, what traps people into being afraid of each other.

After all, we are talking about a country that twice elected a man who said -- publicly -- that soup kitchens were not worth funding because it was just encouraging people to be too lazy to cook for themselves. I know that poverty is a worldwide phenomenon and all, but when mixed with a political and economic philosophy that blames people for their own lack of prosperity, and then puts that prosperity at the heart of what it is to belong in America, it's a dangerous fucking cocktail. Throw in a big pile of guns, and, well, I'm just surprised that it doesn't happen more often.

That kid in Minnesota? He probably had some serious shit. He probably needed some serious help. He lived in a country with the greatest health care system in the world, but he probably had no access to it. Why? Because he's poor. Why is he poor? Because it's his own fault, and that of his ancestors, who had the nerve to inhabit a large land mass for thousands of years before being shoved into a horrible corner of the Coldest Place in America.

 

[billygannon]

Chris Rock got it right. Bullets should cost $5,000 each.

 

[The]

ya it's definitely a gun control issue.. I think if countries like Ireland had similar gun laws you would see the very same things happening over here. There's is no reason it wouldn't you have similar people with simialr problems all over the world that just can't deal with life. If there is a gun staring them in the face at home it's obviously only asking for trouble. Man if there was a gun in my house when I was 16/17 I probably would have killed my family too......... I would havw regretted it later of course..ahem

 

[brianoak]

I may have been a gun control issue a few years back but the america is so flooded with illegal guns now that there is no way of getting rid of all the guns or controlling their distribution.I saw a doc on discovery about berretta the gun company and it sais that there were literally hundreds of thousands of these weopons(9mm automatic pistols) in illegal circulation on the streets and they are available for as little as $30.How do you control that?They then showed the victims from some of the gang wars in which these guns were used and it pretty sick.Unfortunately this kind of violence is almost fashionable in some parts of America and England now.Again I direct your attention to U.K. Tings on channel U. The stuff they show on that is fucking ridiculous yet their are those who will take it seriously.Jane I think you make a really point but in my opinion its gone beyond that