thats my point exactly.

after dunblane happened they made handguns illegal, after hungerford they mad automatic rifles illegal. why doesnt america follow suit? they can change the constitution for anything they want and have illegal wars etc so why not this. granted it would not be a good vote winner which probably why not.

who said generation X, i said generation Y (1979-1997), thats the generation the birthed the people that went on to commit the columbine massacre and this massacre.

Well, how come after all the atrocities that happen anywhere, not just in the USA, nothing is done either? That's really stupid too, isn't it?

X or Y, nonsense they are.

hungerford - automatic rifles illegal
dunblane - handguns illegal
stephen lawrence - knife crime dealt with very harshly

i see your point but some things do happen.

i just made a whole school work about this matter. it's not that americans own so much more guns, it's more like they use them quicker.. and this has to do with the idea of 'protecting your family' and the fears that's being pumped in through the media. sickening.

it's really horrible that things like this can happen. it doesn't happen in america only, but seems to be much more common there. any opinions on the reason?

yes i would say its the state of fear that america lives in. when i was there the news was like a comedy show. i laughed so much.

also i guess it is engrained into the culture with things like the legend of cowboys and indians and gangsters etc. its become part of society which is very sad.

Yes, but hasn't gun crime risen quite a bit in England? Have race-hate crimes decreased? Has crime generally decreased anywhere, and not just in Britain? For real? Has it really?

but you dont get as many people with ak47's as in america do you?

So what you're basically saying is that everything needs to be compared to what is done in the USA, in order to make you feel good? They kill more people, therefore there's nothing wrong over here.

no i am not saying that at all.

That's the way it came accross. A bit like worrying about what's happening in your neighbour's garden while the landmower is going mental into your own.

A good short-term plan, maybe, but that's always a slippery slope.

Really the only thing that could help would be a 180-degree societal turnaround. And we all know that won't happen. I'm not saying it to be bitter, it's just reality. It's nothing that one person or one policy could ever solve.

So it's just going to happen again, and everyone will Boo-hoo over it for a while, and then they'll get on with their lives, after internalizing absolutely none of what just happened.

I remember when Columbine happened and how freaked out I was afterward because I could easily put myself in the place of both the shooters and the victims. The social aspect of school has never been an easy thing for me, but I could say that for at least a dozen other kids I've known. So really, after Columbine, a lot of kids were being singled out as future potential murderers basically, and were really kept a close eye on by the school faculty. My own parents sat me down and had a talk with me because they knew I was being teased in school by certain people. It made me feel like I had done something wrong. The teachers of course were trying to cut down on bullying, but you could still tell they were frightened of the kids who were being bullied. So all of their good intentions were for naught. It just created a deeper divide between the bullies and the bullied. In grade school this was a bigger deal than in high school, I would think. Although people do become meaner in high school, there are more outlets for kids there too, which offers some escape. I just can't help but think about all of the kids I knew in grade school who were routinely picked on. Most were from broken homes (which eventually included even myself I suppose), some had older brothers/sisters who were into hard drugs, others were just quiet or didn't fit in because they had been moved up in school and weren't the same age as everyone else. A lot of school policies changed after Columbine, but nothing else did, which may be part of the problem.

pork, you said nothing gets done and i said that after dunblane etc they banned hand guns. i feel safer knowing that not just anyone has them.

that is not comparing america to anything.

well fucking said.

Sure, but do you REALISTICALLY expect that what was done is going to stop anything like that happening again? In fact, wasn't there another case of someone going mental with a knife near a school after that? I'm not sure if i remember well, so excuse my memory.

For the record, I don't really like to hold or even look at guns. My mom made my dad stop hunting as soon as I was born. I watched Bambi a lot as a kid. I'm probably a big softie. Marilyn Manson rules. Etc, etc.

You didn't catch my blatant sarcasm did you?

Oh plus

*devil's advocate* that's speculative *devil's advocate*

How can sarcasm be really sarcasm if it's blatant? That's the recipe for mass murder.

no and i am not saying that.

there will always be people who go crazy and do terrible things but do you think its a good idea if they have easy access to firearms?

having seen first hand what guns can do i dont think it is.

You're never going to stop human beings from wanting to kill each other, unfortunately it's in our nature.
What we can and should do is to try and make it as difficult as possible for those with a prediliction for psycopathy to obtain the weapons needed to carry out these acts of mayhem. Especially weapons that can kill a lot of people in a very short time.
Giving any citizen the right to own and use a gun, no matter what their mental state or criminal record is just not sensible.

I think we should make it more difficult for anyone to obtain firearms and that it's basically ridiculous that anyone can buy instruments of murder at gun shows so easily. The Second Amendment is in desperate need constitutional reform and has been for years, but the gun manufacturers have lawmakers firmly in their pockets.

If you want this to change, please write your representatives.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
http://www.senate.gov/general/contac...nators_cfm.cfm

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html

A really good friend of mine goes up to Blacksburg to see friends and ballgames at VA Tech all the time, and his friends know some of the victims, so these shootings hit close to home.

That's more like it. The problem remains that something like this happening can only be minimized but not eradicated completely, and that is because of the general culture of discontent that exists in any society and the consequent mental illness that it generates in some individuals. Spotting where the seeds of mental illness are growing in all its citizens is something that a government can't do unless you change the whole structure of society itself. Banning guns as such is one good thing, i totally agree, but that would also mean banning a whole set of other things that would make everything way too complicated and would require strict theft of civil liberties.

I will say this again this happen because this man was not able to cope with the pressure life has put on him.

i dont think that more cameras and more security are the solution. i would rather not live my life in a state of fear locked inside my house.

Its kinda sad. Why the hell did they shoot them anyways?/?? Maybe to make them look cool or to make CNN??

Oh, c'mon, you get filmed something like 300 times a day in London (at least if you're out and about, i suppose), but i can't see many people locking themselves into their living room in fear of Big Brother. They do minimize crime to an extent but, again, they don't stop criminal activity for sure.

i do feel safer in some respects in having cameras around but i was making apoint about the bigger picture.

interesting where the topic lead here

i am sure if you saw the video clip on cnn's site
http://www.cnn.com/video/player/play....barghouti.cnn

......from a student in the middle of it all,

there was a certainly a breakdown of the collaboration of the police and the local security, especially what appears to be some campus cops most likely (maybe swat) just standing around while gunfire is being exchanged in the distance, also there is certain breakdown of finding the shooter as the first shootings happened at about 7:15 this morning and then 2 hours later the same shooter went north to another part of the campus and killed more people. crisis management disarray as has been evidenced in other incidents from terrorist attacks to natural disasters at times is appalling

Because if you don't shove it down people's throats that you're being sarcastic online they crucify you.

although whether I agree or not is moot, this is really the first post in this thread (and maybe of what I've seen of the entire debate) that offers any real action-to-solution.

I don't recall seeing these links in your original post, and in fact only came back to read this thread again to see if you made an addendum. making your point without further direction didn't really seem your style. :p

kudos.

Seriously. I find it funny that the ones calling for the most regulation are UK citizens, who's society is so fucked up it's both laughable and sad.

Timothy McVeigh allegedly killed over 150 people using household chemicals that anyone can obtain. Let's ban farming, too.

Also, it seems a lot of you non-Americans are quite ignorant about the gun laws here. In most states, it's not like any idiot can walk into a store and walk out with a WMD. I think you've all fallen for too much Michael Moore propaganda.

What happened today is a tragedy, a severe one. But people who instantly cry for more laws and regulations, as though one bad apple should determine how the rest of the millions of humans in the US or elsewhere are forced to live their lives, are disgusting and diametrically opposed to personal freedom.

And I still find Dunblane to be the most hideous mass-murder of school children in history, with the possible exception of the recent Amish school shooting in Pennsylvania. This is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

All you can do is grieve. Writing your congressman is not going to make a shit of difference.

I'm more curious to know how one person can pull over 30+ murders without being tackled by a group of guys. Flight 93 anyone?

Also, what's the deal with all the cops and shooting going on? Methinks there's way more to this story than we have a right to be commenting upon at this moment, just as there's still much of the Columbine case that the majority of the public is completely unfamiliar with.

You don't really believe that signing petitions or writing letters is taken into SERIOUS consideration, do you? Did millions of people marching against the start of the war stop it in any way? Did they fuck.

they dont even know who the shooter is/was yet

no, I honestly don't. there is nothing that is going to change how things currently are. more so, I'm vehemently opposed to any extra governmental control. although I believe that guns are a means toward destruction I do not believe that they are the cause.

killing people (even LOTS of people) only requires a little bit of ingenuity and a will to do so.

banning guns would decrease the incidence of crime in the short-term. sooner or later some kook would find a way to kill LOADS of people using some new (and painfully simple) way. it wouldn't take long for the attention seekers to follow suit.

that said....Atari at least offered a course of action based on his opinions. that's exponentially more constructive than a thousand posts on the subject.


god I had to edit the fuck out of that....time to go back to work. :p

Does that mean that you generally settle for the better solution, rather than a practical solution to any given problem? Isn't writing letters, in the hope that someone is going to read them and act according to your own whishes, the very same but more glorified and pompous thing as chatting about a subject that was started on an internet forum that happens to have a section dedicated to general discussions? I'm not attacking you or anything, it just comes with the inquisitive nature.

Why does having a camera around make you feel safer?
A camera can't protect you when someone decides it's your time to die. All it will do is film your death.

Surely the aim is to stop the crime from happening in the first place, not to let it happen and then use the footage to catch the criminal.

oh, personally I have no input into any solution of this matter. I think the case is hopeless and the world is going down the shitter faster than we can pull it out.

my comment isn't based on the effectiveness of this "solution" but the fact that one was given at all.

although I do not think that it will do any good, telling your representatives how you feel means a lot more than telling me. I realize that Europeans are stuck being commentative bystanders in this instance...but at least he gave more than his opinion. just trying to give credit where it's due!

Yes but it does happen with alarming regularity in the US. 19 school shootings in the last 10 years I heard.

Dunblane was a catalist for some pretty radical changes in the UK, and as far as I know there hasn't been a school shooting since. Yes I know there have been incidents with knives, but I'm concerned with what is happening in America, and at the moment the weapon of choice for those intent on killing is a gun.

Just throwing your hands in the air and saying 'it's too difficult, so let's do nothing' is not the answer.

Meet the problem head-on. Ban the private ownership of guns except in special circumstances. Hunters can store their guns in secure plces like police stations, collect them when they want to go hunting, and return them when they've finished. Target shooters can store their guns at gun clubs and not at home. Apart from these and maybe a couple of other categories that I can't think of right now, NO other private citizen should be allowed to own a gun.

Banning guns will not stop humans from killing each other, but it will make it a lot more difficult.

This whole 'hypocritical-Europeans-having-a-go-at-America' thing misses the point. While I still can't understand America's continued acceptance of firearms, i'm not therefore suggesting that Europe is some kind of violence-free utopia. All I do know is that if guns were made legal in the way that they are in the States, in a place like England, I dread to think how much worse it would be here.