More mass killings in the USA..
.. Biden is puzzled as to why it happens more frequently in his country to that of others..
I have corrected my previous comments.. I was mistaken about Biden.
I won't disagree with you there. :check:
That was his rhetorical question to the American population.
He is in favour of strengthening controls. The NRA gun lobby aren't and are politically influential. They will say that the way to stop school shootings is to arm the teachers.
I have never understood Amercia's love affair with guns. [1080]
It's in their constitution.
That assumes that the way to keep government honest is for the population to have the right to bear arms so they can protect themselves from a corrupt government.
The problem with relinquishing such rights is that they will never be reinstated.
Well, IMO only. The longer they let folks have guns the longer these awful attacks will go on happening.
The problem now is that the place is awash with guns. Passing laws will see the responsible folk hand theirs in. But....
In this country most gun crime is with illegal guns although there have been at least two random mass shootings involving a licenced owner that resulted in tighter controls. Hungerford and Dunblane.
Most Americans carry a firearm of sorts..
It is their way of life..
They are hell bent on protecting their Life.. Liberty and Property..
I doubt the gun laws will be changed.. A school shooting will probably encourage teachers to carry arms.. Fight a gun with a gun .. and so it goes on..
Mass shootings will become commonplace.. As with knife attacks in this country..
Quote from: Scrumpy on May 25, 2022, 02:04:13 PM
Most Americans carry a firearm of sorts..
Not quite.
As of 2020 Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun.
Still way too many though!
So 68% unarmed amidst a load of John Waynes. Courageous.
Quote from: -Oy- on May 25, 2022, 02:32:26 PM
Not quite.
As of 2020 Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun.
Still way too many though!
One thing owning a gun but carrying a gun? I'm not sure that many do. Mind you, the kids of every family that do have one will know where it's kept..
The 2nd amendment will never be amended, so the
killing will never end.
The Cowboys started it all. :-)
No, WE did!! Around about 1776.. :grin:
one interesting fact about the USA is that the states with the most restrictive gun laws tend to have the highest levels of firearm homicide with the reverse also being the case.
It's also virtually a given that we assume the USA has the most firearm homicides - figures a checked two or three years ago show, in terms of homicides per 100k of population places the USA in seventh place behind El Salvador, Jamaica, Venezuela. Mexico, Israel and Ireland (the Republic, not NI). This is despite the USA having vastly more firearms per head of population than those other countries, having 89000 firearms per 100k of population. I don't suppose for a moment anyone would be able to guess the country in second place for gun ownership - it's Switzerland, with 45,700, fractionally ahead of Finland - 45,300.
The comment that 32% of Americans own firearms seems at first to be at odds with the 89,000 figure - but many gun owners have more than one weapon, hence the apparent discrepancy.
Mike
I do not understand why the ability to buy military weapons and take them to a school and murder 21 people , mainly children, should be a protected constitutional right.
The Second amendment was given 250 years ago, the rest of the world has moved on, why hasn't USA? Billy the Kid is dead, they do not need protection from him.
Quote from: 1955vintage on May 26, 2022, 07:57:43 AM
I do not understand why the ability to buy military weapons and take them to a school and murder 21 people , mainly children, should be a protected constitutional right.
It isn't a constitutional right to be able to be able to take military grade weapons into a school & murder 21 people.
Why not ban cars because people use them to deliberately mow down pedestrians.
Quote from: klondike on May 25, 2022, 12:21:53 PM
The problem now is that the place is awash with guns. Passing laws will see the responsible folk hand theirs in. But....
In this country most gun crime is with illegal guns although there have been at least two random mass shootings involving a licenced owner that resulted in tighter controls. Hungerford and Dunblane.
And the result of the tighter contols is that shootings haven't been prevented.
The right to bear arms wasn't for protection from Billy the Kid it was for protection from a corrupt government.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-ii/interps/99
Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.
The USA Constitution protects teh right to bear arm - not to use them to murder - that's a crime there just like anywhere else.
In the UK a shooting outrage leads to cries for every stricter control of guns, more or less bearing out a favourite American saying 'If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns'.
Mike
Certainly the only civilians with handguns in the UK are criminals.
AR 15 sales should be banned. The NRA 'the only cure to too many guns is more guns ' are making huge profits from selling machine guns to nutters, then blame the nutters.
The tighter controls in UK have seen nothing like this since Dunblane....and that pi55es off the Americans.
Single shot versions of the AR15 are legal in the UK. There is no reason the same restriction could not be made in the US.
I think they are only allowed semi auto in the US but semi auto is no huge restriction - they fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. So-called bump stocks which jolt the weapon to give the effect of full auto were banned a few dozen mass shootings back when one was used.
A terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism, quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike
Quote from: Michael Rolls on May 28, 2022, 09:17:13 AMA terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism, quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike
Quote from: Michael Rolls on May 28, 2022, 09:17:13 AMA terrifying statistic, identifying a mass shooting as four fatalities or more, and excluding gang killings, domestic killings or terrorism, quoted by the Washington Post quotes 163 such instances between 1967 and June 2021 - that's an average of three a year. One very clear picture every time such an outrage occurs, more people buy guns for self-protection - and who can blame them?
Mike
Over here under the 'Second Amendment' citizens have the right to 'bear arms'. However as always, States individually apply these laws in their own way. Generally you can't own a fully automatic machine gun if it was manufactured post 1986. So a 1950 50mm Browning is perfectly OK, as are AK47's, Ouzi's and of course the Thompson sub machine gun, of which 1.75 million were made. A strange one is that there's no legislation relating to a Napalm Flame thrower, so anyone can buy and own one.
The Gun Lobby is very powerful here and the NRA (National Rifleman's Association) have great influence over the House of Representatives. Presently they stymie 'Sleepy Joe o'Bidens' ploy to change the law and will continue so to do, ad infinitum.
It's a different take on the world. As a one tine gun owner -target rifle and pistol - who lived in an area noted for large mental illness/handicap hospitals at the time, I could understand the , again American bon mote of 'better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6'
Mike
Listened to a YouTube clip - chap talking about the arming of American police in the 19th century, and something he said struck a chord. He said that in the latter half of the century the American cities were much more violent that their counterparts in Europe and that the reason was largely down to immigration. Large numbers of economic immigrants were flooding the cities – especially New York. They were mostly young men on their own without families nor friends and they gravitated towards ethnic groups in an overcrowded city with an existing population who objected to their life style being changed by these incomers.
Sound familiar?
Mike
Yes Mike, that's a worry.
Didn't the Irish and Italians control New York.. ?
and the Poles, although to a lesser extent. Then there was Chinatown and the Triads.
Mike