I say who needs the police anymore. The hell with law and order. Go ahead, make my day, motherfucker!

yes, but in a perfect conspiracy world, the kid was programmed to commit those murders & is nothing but a pawn of the illuminati, so national security is sure at stake, right? besides, it wasn't him, but a body double who committed those murders & then shot the real suspect in the head.

this was done to distract from the depar

tment of justice hearings of course. as we know, further public attention would uncover the fact that the new DAs have been put in place to coordinate a very large drug smuggling operation the likes of which this country has never seen.

no????????????????????????

Dumb Americans.

You should all have guns, stand around in a circle, and kill each other Reservoir Dogs style.

It's what we deserve.

Before we do, I think I'll move to Switzerland or Amsterdam. Guns, um... suck.

I was being facetious in my remarks in the earlier post, of course. Contrary to the impression you'll get from our media, many Americans are concerned about our ineffective gun laws. I've long been a firm believer in stronger gun laws. I don't even like the idea of hunters having guns. The bottom line is, guns kill, in both purposeful and accidental use. Only the police should carry weapons, but if we had much tougher gun laws, there'd also be less reason for them to carry guns as well.

i would rather save more lived by installing breathalizers in all vehicles like they do fro drunks and make everyone breathj into it befor edriving. that would gUARANTEE save over 100 THOUSAND lives in the USA every year, AT LEAST.

banning guns would save what, maybe a thousand? maybe 800?

Really? So you're saying the average prof would be quick enough on the draw to prevent this? Does that mean all teachers should qualify at a certain marksmanship level before they can get in front of a classroom?

What about McDonald's cashiers? Postal workers?--oh, there's a good one for carrying guns!

This is absurd.

Quoting from a Reuters story, to illustrate how stupid Americans are. I don't want to move to Portland anymore. I want the fuck out of this crazy-ass country.

Guns are an integral part of America's often-violent culture. Americans are among the world's most heavily armed people, and the country has among the highest murder rates.
There are an estimated 250 million privately owned guns in the United States, which has a population of about 300 million. About 30,000 people a year die from gun wounds, about evenly split between murders and suicides.
Polls show Americans favor tougher gun laws. But gun-rights groups have helped stop such action by rallying their members, many of them hunters, against it.
Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America said the shootings that left 33 people dead, including the assailant, at Virginia Tech on Monday showed gun bans are the problem, not the solution.
"Isn't it interesting that Utah and Oregon are the only two states that allow faculty to carry guns. And isn't it interesting that you haven't read about any school or university shootings in Utah and Oregon," Pratt said.

***

Okay, I missed that.

Maybe, maybe not. What if a teacher isn't good aiming a gun and misses and hits a bystander student?

What if a teacher is philosophically against carrying a gun?

And whose to say students have a monopoly on psychological problems? What if a teacher goes off the deep end one day and shoots his or her classroom full of students then walks down the hallway and takes out other classrooms?

According to reuters, almost all Americans are armed. I find that incredibly frightening.

Obviously not all Americans. Just the dumb ones who've all shown their dumbness in this thread.

The point is, in America this shit does happen every day, just not on this scale. And there's too many dumb Americans who don't want to do anything about it.

so about 15thou die each year from gun related shootings? does that count the numbers cops kill with their guns? feds? swat teams? I bet it does. that 30 thou number is even split between gun detahs and suicides. they throw that shit in like having no guns would make it harder for people to kill themselves. bullshit I say. More college students (around 1200 a year) kill themselves every year than the entirety of gun deaths at schools in the last 200 years.

overreaction.

There are 200 million privately owned guns in America. Fucking dumb fucking Americans.

Sway, So Reuters made it up? 250 million out of 300 million Americans own guns, according to their news story. That's roughly 83 percent of us. That's a lot.

And your last point--exactly. So what's all the supposed controversy and blame about keeping campuses safer? Since it was an isolated incident, all the reaction seems really alarmist to me. You can't predict or prevent the unexpected. But you can address the root cause--which means not only addressing gun ownership (which I see really as more a symptom of our sick society) but also understanding the reasons our society is so violent.

school shootings do NOT happen every day in america.

VIOLENCE does, and it is not because of guns. it is because of our culture. and banning guns would do nothing for the drive that makes some people want to kill

the US has directly or indirectly caused over 120 THOUSAND deaths of men women and chuildren in Iraq over the past 5 years. where is the outrage and crybaby tears about that?

30,000 deaths is about 82 a day

15,000 is about 41 a day

more people died from guns outside the school any day than died inside.

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ps im outraged about iraq. but the death toll is over 600,000 if you believe the lancet rather than the stoophid american media

bush and the neocons are a bunch of mass-murdering assholes.

most gun owners own more than one weapon. just like any collector owns more than one of their collection.

guns are TOOLS.

never ever shift the blam efrom the indivudual to the weapon that individual chooses to use to kill.

it is stupid, easy, and flawed to do so.

You're generalizing, of course. A few of us are still sane over here.

so nuclear weapons, or daisy cutters, or mustard gas, or nerve gas, or napalm, or weapons-grade anthrax... they are innocent?

Guns, weapons, enable the killer to kill. I'm not blaming the weapon. I'm blaming the easy access to them that has caused their widespread proliferation.

I love the smell of tac-nukes in the morning.

Hey, Sway, I attempted a PM to ya, but got a message that says you've "exceeded" your "stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until [you] clear some space." Just wanted to let you know I appreciate the message, and same to you from me, etc.

They carry billy clubs and throw meat pies at one another.

Jeez you guys are still talking about this?

You know everyone is all "our prayers and thoughts are on VT," VT bla bla bla freaking bla. I just wish people were honest. Most of the people saying that shit don't even really care. They just pretend to care so that they can sleep at night. They are like those teenagers that will go to a funeral of a classmate they didn't even fucking know or were friends with.

Sure when I heard about it I was like "that's awful and really fucked up," but I'm not going to spend a week crying about it. But awful shit is going on everyday. There are wars going on right now- people are getting shot there. People are dying of AIDS, starvation, and malnutrition in africa and other parts of the 3rd world.

Death is a part of life that is upsetting that you've got to accept. People die every fucking day. Just because some people in your country died instead of in another country doesn't mean you have to get all upset about it. Your countrymen are not any closer to you.

And nothing is gonna stop this kind of stuff. People are sick fucks.

Maybe if guns were illegal he would have made a fertilizer bomb. When someone is going to commit themselves to that kind of crime, they will do it by any means necessary.

Illegalizing guns would prevent crimes of passion from occurring. But it wouldn't stop psychopaths.

I agree, Spectral. Right now I'm just pissed off at the media for sensationalizing the whole thing and all the alarmist over-reaction.

Nothing's going to change on campuses. Most of them are integrated with large cities. You can't put gates on them and guards. And you're not going to convince bleeding-heart liberal profs to go all Don Johnson with shoulder holsters and 45 magnums under their patch-sleeve tweed jackets. It's just not going to happen.

And if you locked up everyone who ever saw a doctor for a mental illness, that'd leave darned few us walking around on the streets. And who's to say they'd be any more sane just because they hadn't seen a doctor. They could be in worse shape!

yep, nukes, poisin gas, anthrax weapons are TOOLS. they are amoral. they are neither guilty nor innocent. they just ARE.
those that choose to use them in a negative way are the guilty. in essence those that choose to USE THEM are the guilty.

And I would say that those who choose to allow easy and widespread access to them are the guilty.

that is a very valid point, when it comes to assult rifles, nukes, poison gas, and nerve gas, but hunting weapona nd personal sidearms are, like any deadly weapon or possible deadly weapon (baseball bats, hammers, screwdrivers, ice picks, etc) only bad when used by a person to do bad things.
if some creep locks himself into a Lu by's cafeteria and decides to kill everyone with a baseball bat, will there be an uproar over baseball bats?

any discussion of gun control over this massacre detracts from the tragedy and the pain and the sickness and the BLAME that lies in that fucking ridiculous dead fucker.

Baseball bats don't fire solid-metal projectiles at many miles per hour to pierce life-taking holes through human flesh.

I see your point, but at the same time, even I could (possibly) stand even odds overtaking a bat-swinging maniac, but a gun in the hand of a maniac would put the odds well out of my favor.

one good swing can end any life. one good swing can KILL.

In texas, where I reside, it is perfectly legal to walk around with an unloaded asemiautomatic rifle, a shotgun, etc, and concealed handguns are allowed with a permit and a license. it does not amke the streets any less safe or any more safe. blame the human using the tool for evil, not the tool for warping a "normal" human.

One more reason I'm glad I don't live in Texas. Y'all are a bunch of cowboys. I mean, why do you need to walk around with guns in the first place? And seriously, where does that leave the enfeebled, or just those opposed to carrying a gun? They must feel a little intimidated.

see, it's not a matter of there being a line or not, but where do you draw the line. for you, assault rifles should have limited access, for others, they are a god-given right.

it's simply that some people have a lower threshold of tolerance for weapons of destruction. things that are made for killing. sure you can kill with anything, but there's the question of the intent in making that tool. you can kill with a baseball bat but the thing is not designed & perfected for that function. a gun is.

you know there's a line; where that line lies is a cultural debate, not a philosophical one.

True, but killing does not equal murder any more than a car is designed to murder. The deadly accident is an integral of the car, but no one suggests it is purposeful. But just like guns, cars kill. And they can murder.

It is a major error of judgement to think the US elites will in any way protect the masses unless its in their interest. Look at how they dealt with Katrina. and one of the first thing the Govt did there was start confiscating weapons - yet we hear how the cops stopped people at gun point on the bridges and made them return to New Orleans. We should be hearing about this every single day.

sure you start from the premise that an armed populace is harder to control by tyrants. which i think is the basic idea behind the 2nd amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

i think tyrants however are too well-armed these days for a .38 to put a dent in their plans. besides, where's the "well regulated militia" we're talking about?

in any case-- you can kill with anything-- sure. but about guns etc. *where do you draw the line*? is it with handguns? automatic weapons? how about hand grenades? high-power explosives? rocket launchers? is it ok for the people to keep an apache helicopter in their backyard?

since the word Arms doesnt' specify "handguns" "sabers" or "blowguns", do i have the constitutional right to make mustard gas in my kitchen? what about the right to keep weapons-grade uranium in my fridge?

these are obvious exaggerations. i reiterate my point-- there IS a line. where do you draw it?

The Bath School disaster is the name given to three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.

all these things (and this has been a very good discussion so far, with minimal vitriol and namecalling) are all very true, which is why this whole topic is way too complex for the knee jerk reaction of "let's get rid of all guns"

"enfeebled" old ladies also own guns and use them to stop intruders and rapists and killers as well.
remember, when people say there are 250 million guns in the USA, that doe snot mean 250 million people with guns.
Like i stated before, most gun owners own more than one gun and in many cases many many guns. That would leave you with about 40% of the population owning a firearm.

Remmeber Katrina. Remmeber the lawlesness that occurred after that catastrophe. In a situation such as that, and think beforre you say that it is a rare ituation, for it can happen to anyone anywhere at any time, you want to b able to defend yourself with DEADLY FORCE if need be. what if a foreign power sends nukes and destroys the 10 largest metroplexes? what if a force 5 hurricane wipes out the eastern seaboard like it did the gulf coast a few years ago?
there is much more to be concerned with in our RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS than just accidental gun deaths.
there are more accidental deaths in the home each year from falling than from handguns. accidents happen. catatsrophes happen. tyrants HAPPEN. sure, one handgun against a tyrant army will do nothing, but a state like texas, with 25 million people, armed against a tyrant? come on. No army in the world would take that on. it is why we are so deadly afraid of china.

the actual stats are over 44 milion gun owners


the right to bear arms is not equivalent to the right to self-defense. the right to self-defense did not require a constitutional amendment.

the right to bear arms has to do with the ability of the state to organize a militia because in the earlier days the u.s. didn't have a proper army.

...

also because states wanted the option to raise their own militias against a federal army. the bill of rights limits the power of the federal govenment, which was enabled by the constitution to raise a standing army.

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all that shit blew up during the civil war


a hydrogen bomb can destroy 25 million handguns. sorry. you might as well fight with toothpicks.

oh, and then there's the neutron bomb. that one is priceless. leaves all the shit intact, only people die.

That won't ever happen. It's a faulty analogy.
Refer to the ikara cult's posts.
Thanks for the ammo.