Guns don't kill people, they just make it a whole hell of a lot easier to do so. You notice how in that china knife attack, there were no reported deaths...

clearly by that example knives must not be capable of killing people right?

If this was a gun or security issue it would be much easier to fix. This is a problem with the fundamentals of society. We should not have to worry about someone entering an elementary school and killing kindergartners.

The purpose of a gun is to kill people. Knives have many purposes. Knives are also much less efficient at killing, particularly en masse.

If guns are outlawed what am I supposed to do when a criminal enters my house with an illegal gun?

He can't do that, it's against the law.

Stop worrying about it. Just smoke some marijuana, and you'll stop worrying about it. It's a good thing marijuana is so extremely easy to get, I'd hate if they outlawed it...

It is a problem how lack of gun control has disseminated guns so widely in this country. Gun control has to start sometime though. Escalating the problem does not solve it. The threat of being shot is a deterrent to sane people - not criminals and mass murders. Removing access to these super dangerous tools is what is needed. I am not even saying that guns need to be entirely banned - but there is no need for a civilian to own a semi-automatic or gigantic clip of ammo other than to commit mass murder.

http://www.cbsnews.com/...attack-leaves-23-injured/


Read some of the details in that report. There have been plenty of knife-related deaths not just wounds. Violent offenders will always find a way to be violent...

No one died. What do you think would of happened if it was a gun? Knives might kill people but they do a far worse job at it and they at least have other uses. Automatic weapons or even handguns do not have other uses.



@Sublime.. I saw someone else on another site say this.. when is the right time to debate this? Is it when it is no longer fresh in our minds or when it is fresh? I think that if any change is ever going to happen it has to be mostly fresh in people's minds. I don't discuss it to disrespect the victims. I just believe some could be saved with the change and maybe this wouldn't have happened. Those kids would never have been carrying to protect themselves either way afterall.

Klown, I had something typed out but you wouldn't care about it anyways so meh :P

Completely inaccurate.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/...16-114754-1427r/?page=all

Assault weapons are used in less than 2% of all gun violence.

I plan to purchase an assault rifle here soon (especially since the dems are trying to ban the sale of them). Do you know why? Because I enjoy target shooting with the weapon. I'm not a hunter, nor will I ever be because I personally do not want to take the life of something that I don't need to. There are TONs of assault rifles sold at gunshows all over the united states, do you know how few of those are used in gun violence?

Someone posted a great paper/study, it is long but if you seriously want to have a discussion you should arm yourself with the facts. No pun intended.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/...No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

Its sick that people like this do this stuff. Hopefully there is a special place in hell for this guy.

Now this is my opinion of course, but saying gun control would have prevented this....I don't know if that is the case.

A good example would be (from what I can read, so if i'm wrong correct me Norwegians) is Norway has a much stronger gun control law in the books then any state in the U.S., yet we all know what that psycho did there.

If people want to do harm to other people, they are going to find a way, guns or not. Take for example the Oklahoma City bombing. No guns where used there but it killed 168 people. Psychos. The knife attacks in China that seem to be a lot more common then any attacks in the US. Psychos. Psychos are going to use anything they can find to kill people.

I guess I feel more strongly against say the issue of drunk driver then gun control because according to MADD (Mothers against Drunk Driving) 28 Americans die every day to drunk driving, yet there is no national call for alcohol control.

Very good points Magellan.

One of the most important assumptions to make is that laws don't stop lawbreakers. We've banned murder, rape, and even marijuana, and briefly alcohol, too. And we failed to eliminate those.

Murder and rape definitely should be banned, but we need to realize that laws do not stop an action from occurring, they just penalize it after it occurs, if it is caught.

You are wrong. That paper has nothing to do with these mass murders - their thesis is basically that guns do not affect violent crime rate which is not news. I am talking about these relatively rare events where many people are killed. I am sorry you did not understand the context of this discussion or what you are blithely linking.

You don't need to own an assault rifle for target shooting. You can rent one at a shooting range. Furthermore target shooting is a completely secondary use of guns right in line with knife throwing. Guns were not invented for the purpose of target practice.

I dont think target shooting is a secondary use. Personally, I target shoot way more often than I kill people.

You all can say what you want. My wife is a 1st grade teacher and my son is in kindergarten, and today wasnt a great day mentally for me, however not once did I blame a gun. Seriously, this guy was going to do what he was going to do.

I read someone in here blamed high capacity magazines and said they were only to kill. Do you even own a gun? I have a Glock 9mm similar to what was used and I own a 32 round mag. It is for the range. Anyone who has been to the range knows that a 32 round mag is way more fun to shoot and is easier on the thumbs for reloading. Not once have I thought about going on a murder spree just because I have a high capacity mag. WTF is with you gun control nuts. The problem is with mental health and people not seeing signs of disturbia IMO. You can't blame the tool when in every one of the last half dozen shootings have signs been there for months prior and nothing was done and I am sure the same will surface here with such a methodical chain of events.

Guns arnt the problem, it is a mental and society thing. And trying to restrict the guns is only a poor scapegoat and stopgap. Countries with defeat gun restrictions still have mass shootings re: the shootings in scandanavia a few years ago. Can't remember the exact country but you know what I am talking about.

I think I have rambled on enough. Have a nice day.

If range shooting is so popular for things that are meant to kill people then the ranges could have guns for you to use there and guns could still be banned from the public. But meh.

Klown thats a lie, People buy rifles primarily to kill people, they just happen to target shoot in between victims....

Detmer, places with stricter gun laws dont have a lower rate of crime then areas without strict gun laws, in alot of cases it has a higher rate of crime. besides "assault weapons" account for hardly any gun crime. so what does a ban on them help?

What does a ban on them hurt?

Are cars to blame when drunks go on a rampage running people over?

Also the storage of guns I think. One report I saw was that he used guns registered in his mother's name. If this is true, how is it possible for these weapons to be stored in such a way that an ASD individual would be able to access them? Shouldn't there be locks etc. on the trigger, ammunition and weapon itself?

our freedom. you start banning one thing, where is the line drawn?

youre canadian, i dont expect you to understand what that means.

ban people, err, socialists, not guns!

Are cars only for the purpose of killing? Didnt think so.

Canada knows more freedom than you do :) Funny how stopping you from using guns is stealing your freedom but stopping you from raping or not smoking till a certain age is fine.

ok. a few thoughts.
Firstly, this is a terrible tragedy for all concerned.
Secondly: tighter gun controls would help. Aus had the Martin Bryant tragedy a few years ago, and tightened the gun laws after. NOW, it would be practically impossible for someone to pull a similar sort of scale effort.
People kill people, not guns, but guns make it a whole hell of a lot easier to kill large numbers of people in extremely short order, as compred to other weapons.

Klown: so do you keep your gun/s in an unsecured location rather than a safe then? If your gun/s is in a safe, then you can't defend yourself with it in a situation unless your safe is right to hand, and if you don't have your gun in a safe, then you are allowing the distinct possibility of your gun being stolen and used to commit further gun crimes etc.

That aside, it's interesting that most mass rampages reported in the media occur in the US. I turn the news on I hear something about "mass shooting in blah" and generally it will be the US. offhand, I can only think of anders breivik outside of the us in the last year in terms of reported shootings.

Yeah, locket, cause owning a gun is a great comparison to say, raping.

You might be taken seriously if your arguments weren't so emotionally driven and ridiculously stupid.

A ban on guns (in the form of no concealed carry) has been shown to lead to an increase in violent crime. More lax laws on guns (allowing concealed carry) has been shown to lead to a decrease in violent crime. You can ignore it all you want, but this great fact is not going away, and didn't take manipulation of the stats to reach that conclusion.

Whine, flail your arms all you want about it, state with certainty all you want that guns are only meant to kill people, that nobody should ever own an assault weapon, and the fact that you're wrong will remain.

Enjoy life with blinders.

I was using the same arguments the gun lovers here were. They compared it to cars which doesn't work either so I went sensationalist too :)

No one here has actually provided any evidence, with the exception of Mr Copper who posted a paper that seems to suggest that the "myth" that gun control reduces crime is some sort of Soviet propaganda which should be enough to dismiss the idea that the authors started writing the paper without a strong bias either way.

I like the statistics in that paper though, well in the first section because I was just about done reading it by then. Norway was shown as an example of a country with a lot of guns and a low murder rate. Funnily enough, if you look at the statistics for the year of the Breivik massacre, Norway's murder rate would have been higher than Hungary's, good for third on the table and completely disproving that point. That's the problem, you need to take these stats over 10+ years.

lol

Well, game politics and real world decisions don't have much correlation IMO.

Most of these arguments are fluffing stupid. Look at prohibition, the war on drugs, etc. It will not work.

First off, you can't get all of the guns. If you ban all guns you're empowering criminals because I guarantee they'll have them.

Secondly, what some are suggesting is taking away everyone's guns and freedom because of a small percentage of lunatics that might shoot someone (these same lunatics could still get their hands on guns illegally).

Lastly, saying that banning guns will stop these violent crimes is about as stupid as saying if you ban guns they're going to start hijacking planes or doing suicide bombs.

If someone is suggesting we tighten gun laws I could respect that, saying to ban guns is idiotic.

If it's not guns, it's something else. It happened in China the day before (and a few times this year):

http://www.aljazeera.com/.../2012121481220620325.html

1) Actually most facts I see show that stricter gun laws do reduce gun crime. I am having a hard time finding any concise source to portray any sort of gun control information.

2) Trying to lump statistics on "traditional" gun crime to mass killings is completely misleading. We aren't talking about the bulk of gun crime here. I know guns nuts like to jump off the deep end and assume everything is about a complete ban on fire arms to create world peace but that is complete nonsense.

I knew it would turn into a gun debate.

I wish we lived in a world where it was as simple as that, where it was as simple as saying "Ok no more guns" and all the bad things just stop.

Sadly I think we live in a much more complicated reality than that...

Detmer-- you're taking the focus off of mentally ill people and placing it on gun control. That's fine but you're ignoring the other issue.


In china 28 people were injured by a knife weilding man:
http://www.courant.com/...-20121213,0,5592318.story

I'd rather investigate our culture of violence before taking the easy road of blaming the gun.

I am not ignoring the other issues - I recognize that we live in a society that glorifies killing, gun rampages (if you don't think so watch a movie), etc. Couple that with the lack of mental health services provided and I agree there is a reason we have so many psychos compared to other places. The other component is access to needlessly deadly guns which is something that is more on the capabilities of this country to address.

And it is a good thing that guy in China didn't have a semi-automatic gun. Looks like you can't stamp out insanity...

I can see where we wouldn't need an AR13 assault rifle... I own guns but do not one one assault riffle.

Why don't I have an assault riffle? Well because I don't need one! I do agree with you on the point that weapons such as that are not needed or necessary in any way for an ordinary civilian.

But again I think our society needs to focus on the violence we are exposed to. What's the difference between today and say 60 years ago? More people had guns back then and more people carried their guns everywhere with them. I think one major difference is the society that they lived in vs what we do today. You cannot deny our society today is far more violent than that of the past.

I agree our society is overly violent and has become increasingly violent.
I do sort of doubt more people carried their guns with them everywhere. I don't know any statistics on that but it seems improbable to me. I do know that by some metrics gun ownership has declined.

Gun control does not always mean banning guns. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of gun control proponents are not suggesting we do away with guns entirely. But as many of you pointed out, it is incredibly easy to obtain a firearm, whether it is a handgun or an assault rifle. THIS is ABSOLUTELY part of the problem. Is it the only issue here? Hell no. As Detmer pointed out, there is a serious mental health issue lurking in the background that is not being addressed properly.

But is ANYONE here seriously saying that there is NO possible benefit from stricter controls on the sale and possession of firearms? Can you not see how putting these tighter controls might just help avoid some of these types of mass shootings? Most gun control opponents remind me of children whose parents have threatened to take away their toy...

Why are you guys so so passionate about gun control yet more people die to alchohol related events than guns but nothing is said about alcohol.

Is it because its a more "sexy" topic?

1) There are many people outspoken against alcohol
2) There are many regulations on alcohol
3) The purpose of alcohol is not to kill

1. Where are these people? Last I check it was not a national debate and when it was made illegal it was repealed.
2. There are more rgulations on guns than alcohol. The only regulation on alcohol is to be of legal age. THAT'S IT!
3. I own many guns and have never killed anything, besides hunting animals.

1) Google makes this easy.
2) THAT'S NOT IT! You aren't allowed to drive, operate heavy machinery, etc after drinking for an obvious one...
3) I own a fire extinguisher. Just because I haven't used it to put out a fire does not mean that its purpose is decoration.

In the county I live, you cannot buy alcohol (it's a dry county). You can have a gun in 5 minutes though.

1) Google also says guns are good
2) what's stopping people from driving drunk oh that's right a law same thing that should have stopped this dumb ass from shooting up a school
3)I own many guns as well even the bad nasty semi automatic ones I have never even thought of killing any one you gun control people are all the same you have never handled a gun you just hear and assume their only purpose is to kill people

Why were guns invented?

did not feel like reading everything though i did read triff comments about gun lobby etc....if he did not have a gun he would have used a knife or a pipe bomb or something else.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...abbed-at-ki_n_556520.html

to oust mongolians from china, requiem.

For hunting req

Buch you need an assault rifle to hunt?

I bow hunt usually but yes an ar-15 is a great coyote rifle and is the rifle of choice for coyote hunting in my area almost every one I know has one and guess what we haven't had a murder in 100+ years